Fountain of Death(30)

“Do you need me to come home?” Dessa asked Mrs. O’Reilly.

“I don’t need you here. I can cope. I just don’t know how much longer I can cope.”

“What about tomorrow? Are you going to need me there tomorrow?”

“You take your time with your exercising,” Mrs. O’Reilly said. “I know this is important to you. I was just talking about the long run. You have to think about the long run.”

“Fine.” Dessa was finding it easier to breathe now. She didn’t have the faintest intention of thinking about the long run. Not here. Not today. “I’m going to go have my lunch now. You keep him locked up as long as you have to. I’ll come right home at the end of the day.”

“Take your time. Do what you have to do.”

“We’ll talk the whole thing through as soon as I see you. Is there anything he can hurt himself on in the bathroom?”

“We took the razors out months ago. We took the scissors out.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember that. It ought to be all right, then. Just do the best you can.”

“I always do the best I can.”

“I know you do. You’ve been a godsend, Mrs. O’Reilly. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You’d have managed. God always sends us the strength to do what we have to do.”

God is in a nursing home, Dessa thought. God has Alzheimer’s disease. God is dead.

“He’s stopped pounding now,” Mrs. O’Reilly said. “I’m going to go listen at the door. If he’s fallen asleep, I’ll open up.”

“Good.”

“It’s not as bad as that time before. I don’t think I’m going to have to tie him up.”

“That’s good, too.”

“God only knows what those social workers would think, if they saw him all tied up. People don’t understand what it’s like anymore, caring for the old. People don’t care for the old. They dump them in hospitals and walk away.”

“Yes,” Dessa said, even though this made absolutely no sense to her. Didn’t Mrs. O’Reilly want her to dump her father in a hospital, or the next best thing to a hospital? Wasn’t that what they had been talking about for the last five minutes? Dessa thought of her father tied to the bed that time, the harsh sound of his voice in the dark room, the stink of him as he soiled himself over and over again, the craziness.

“There was another one in the papers today,” Mrs. O’Reilly continued. “Old lady left in the emergency room at Yale New Haven. Left in her wheelchair. Name unknown. Address unknown. Relatives unknown. People just take them out and drop them off and never look back again.”

Oh, Dessa thought. That’s what she’s talking about. Granny dumping. “I’ve got to go now,” she said. “We’ve only got an hour to eat lunch, and I’m starving.”

“I’m sure you are. All that exercise. It works up an appetite.”

It was really supposed to suppress your appetite, but Dessa didn’t want to go into it, not with Mrs. O’Reilly on the phone, not with her father locked in the bathroom.

“I really have to go now,” she said. “Do you want me to call you back? Maybe at three?”

“There’s no need. If I have an emergency, I can call you.”

“All right. All right then. I’ll see you tonight.”

Mrs. O’Reilly was making mewling polite little sounds, the kinds of sounds that could keep this phone call going forever. Dessa said a firm good-bye and hung up. Then she stood stock-still in the hall and stared at the phone she had been talking into. She felt weak. In the old days, pay phones were in booths with seats in them. Why weren’t pay phones like that anymore? She knew the answer to that. Her father wasn’t the only one who was crazy. Everyone was crazy all the time now. They fed on each other.

Dessa pushed away from the phone and went down the hall into the foyer. She was too aware of how her flesh jiggled and swayed against the stretchy fabric of her leotard. It made her feel as if she were wearing body armor. Oddly enough, she wasn’t hungry anymore. The idea of going up to the dining room and facing a salad bar brought her close to despair. What she really felt was fear. I can’t handle this. I can’t stand this. I can’t do this, she thought, but she was too close to paralysis to be hysterical. She could see it stretching out in front of her for years. Her father, who was only seventy-two. That house, sinking into the landscape of crack parlors and pimp hotels the neighborhood had become. Mrs. O’Reilly.

Dessa was crossing the foyer to the curving staircase when Traci Cardinale appeared on the balcony. Traci walked up to an unbroken piece of balcony rail, seemed to make a determined effort not to be afraid of it, saw Dessa, and waved.