*
At four, after finishing the bed pans and turning Mr. Randolph and checking on Mrs. Rodriguez just because she liked to see the woman’s zonked-out little half-smile at various points during her day, she called Henry. She stood at the nurses’ station and heard the phone ring and ring and was about to hang up when his voice lurched into her ear.
“H’lo? H’lo?”
She didn’t say anything. She could hear familiar music in the background. Thelonious Monk, Pannonica. It hit her hard, at the knees. She could still hang up— “Denise? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
He chuckled. “I’d know that silence anywhere.”
“Well, then,” she said. And gave him more of it.
“Charlie okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine.” How many months had it been since they’d talked? She’d lost count.
“Well, and how are you?”
“I’m just fine, Henry. You?”
“Ah, you know. They finally got rid of the principal with his head up his ass and now we got a new one, just as pigheaded. And don’t get me started on the budget. Don’t even have a room or a piano anymore, I go from room to room with a cart, like I’m selling doughnuts. Now how can you do anything with a cart?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to talk about teaching. A vision of the classroom came through to her anyway, the feeling of chalk powder on her fingers, the construction-paper-covered walls. Not that anyone used chalk anymore. At Charlie’s high school it was all smart boards.
“I got them all singing a capella. And let me tell you, a second grade singing a cappella is a sorry thing. This land is your land…” He sang, humorously off-key, the sound lingering in her silence. He’s trying, she thought. He really is.
“What’s Charlie up to, then?”
“Still nuts about that band of his. Practices all the time.”
“Practicing, hmm? He any good?”
“I don’t know.” She thought about it. “Maybe.”
“God help him, then.”
“Oh, so you’re a religious man, now?”
“Drummer needs all the help he can get.”
They laughed, a tinge of the old complicity that made her throat ache.
“You could call him up, you know. Hear for yourself. I know he misses you. He won’t say it, but he does.”
“Won’t say it, huh.”
She could feel the anger beginning to burn in him.
“He’s just private. A teenager. That’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Henry.”
“Just tell me this. Do you ever say my name in that house? Do you ever think of me at all? Or is it like I’ve never even lived there? Because that’s how it feels to me.”
“Of course we talk about you, all the time,” she lied. “It’s been five years, Henry, I think we both need to—”
“Five years is nothing. Five years is shit.”
She winced. He was speaking that way to provoke her. She must not be provoked.
“All right. Well, on that note, then, I’m going to—”
“Denise? You know what day it is?”
She said nothing.
“That’s why you called me, isn’t it? To talk about Tommy?”
The name caught her. She couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“No,” she said.
“I see him all the time. You know? In my dreams.”
“Listen, Henry, I’m going to get off the phone now.” But she stood there, holding on to it.
“He’s standing at the edge of the bed, looking at me. You know. With that look he had. Like he wants you to help him but he’s never gonna ask.”
She was silent. This was why they hadn’t made it: she moved and kept on moving, as if they could find Tommy that way and only that way, and he stayed stock-still, head bowed, letting it break over him again and again.
“You still think Tommy’s coming back someday? You don’t think that, do you? Denise?”
His voice had an urgency that reached all the way down … a voice that was a hand burrowing inside her, winding her guts around and around like a skein of yarn. She was aware suddenly that the name had never stopped repeating itself since she’d woken up with it that morning. Had been going on in the background all through the day. She was going to be sick. Going to be sick right now if she didn’t get off the phone. Her hands started to shake.
“Denise?”
She readied herself to say something. But there was nothing to say.
She hung up the phone.
She was going to throw up.
No. She wasn’t. (For one thing, she hadn’t eaten anything all day.) Okay, then. She needed a pill.
No. She didn’t.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten.
Then to twenty.