World Without End (17 page)

His body went limp. Conway forgot about the fire, forgot about the phone and the smoke. He couldn't hear Randy screaming or see the bright pool of blood that had formed around Randy's head. Con-way was drifting away.

Wait. He wasn't alone. A woman was kneeling beside him. Samantha Merrill, his one-time foster mother. She was dressed in one of her stylish blue suits, the kind she normally wore for Sunday church. She stroked his hair and looked down at him with a loving acceptance, and when she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, he could smell the mixture of baby powder and perfume she wore. Then she looked deep into his eyes and touched his chin, her voice full of warmth when she smiled and whispered You're finally going to get what you deserve.

The hospital room's white-painted walls are decorated with cheap, framed watercolors, and the air is stale and uncomfortably warm and as quiet as a tomb. Outside, the day begins its quick winter descent into evening. With his good eye, his right, the one that isn't swollen shut, he stares up at the ceiling and watches the daggers of dying golden sunlight stretch across the white tiles. The stillness makes him feel as if he's inside a confessional. He would like to turn on the TV, to have something to break the silence and distract him from the parade of thoughts inside his head, but he can't find the remote.

He suspects the nurse has taken it away. As punishment.

The nurse is a lumpy woman with lacquered gold straw hair tied behind her head with a blue elastic, her face a constant, severe grimace the look of a woman who believes that life and everyone she has known or met have secretly conspired to keep her down. When she came in here earlier, her eyes were cold and detached as her plump and doughy fingers checked his bandages and changed his IV line. Finished, she shot him a look of such disgust, it made him feel like that piece of waste that stubbornly refuses to be flushed down the toilet.

But he is still gripped by the hope that she will believe him. Steve Con-way is young; hope is plentiful. Each foster home brings another possibility, another chance to prove himself. This new one, the Merrill home, has lasted longer than the others, and each day when he wakes up in his own room and in his own bed and looks out the back window and sees the backyard with its jungle gym and swimming pool and hears the noise coming from downstairs -where Samantha Merrill is getting breakfast ready for him… it's like a sunrise in his heart, soft and warm.

The nurse was busy making notes on his chart when he felt the words burning inside his throat. He wet his swollen lips and ran his damaged tongue across the coarse bridge of stitches and took in a deep breath to force out the words.

"I didn't do it."

The nurse ignores him and keeps on writing.

"I didn't do it," he says again.

"So stop looking at me like I'm a nobody."

Her eyes move up from the clipboard and sight him, they seem tender now, maybe even concerned for his plight, and for a brief moment he believes that the truth has penetrated her callused skin. Then her eyes harden, and when she places the chart back down at the end of the bed, he knows that she is just like all the other adults in his world, people who need to label the sick and unfortunate and different, people whose worlds are defined by the boxes into which they place people like himself. The nurse leaves the room without a word. He is alone again, alone with the truth that burns inside his skin and begs for release and understanding, the truth useless because of who he is.

He stares at the ceiling, knowing he can't afford to look out the window. Seeing what's out there… he is strong, but the sight of it will destroy him. Instead, he looks at the IV line attached to his hand, the bag and its clear liquid sending pain medication into his system. Three of his ribs are broken, his left eye is swollen shut, his lips are stitched, his nose is broken, and a line of surgical staples runs across the back of his head where the skin had been ripped open by one of Todd Merrill's many violent kicks. He had heard the word concussion tossed around by the doctor. All of it is meaningless.

The pain medication has deadened his physical discomfort, but it is useless against his rising anger at the unfairness of what has happened, and it cannot stop the inevitable event that looms on the horizon like a storm cloud.

The door swings open. He expects to see Nurse Bitch Face or the lardo cop he had spotted earlier outside his room. It's Samantha Merrill, Todd's mother. He is taken aback by the sight of her. Hope rises.

The door shuts. Mrs. Merrill stands in front of the door, her thin body masked in a blanket of soft gray light. Her black hair, threaded with gray, is pulled back into a tight bun she always wears her hair this way and the fine, porcelain skin along her face is patted with makeup and stretched tight against the bone of her jawline. She is bundled up in her long cashmere overcoat; her gloved hands hold an expensive purse. Everything about her is expensive and elegant, almost regal, the kind of older woman who can partake of the finer things in life but doesn't brand her good fortune and higher status into your skin with condescending stares or demeaning words. She is above no one and treats everyone she meets as an equal.

"Hello, Stephen." Her voice isn't angry; it's warm and inviting, just like it was on that first day when she brought him to her magnificent Newton home and took him upstairs to show him his bedroom. The memory is overwhelming, so quick and sharp, he feels a sting in his good eye followed by a slight wetness. He blinks it away, knowing he can't afford to indulge in his emotions. Concentrate. Don't give up hope yet. You've still got a chance.

Samantha Merrill walks up next to him and then unbuttons her coat. He sees the gold cross pinned to the lapel of her black suit jacket, and when she sits down on the bed and adjusts her scarf, he notices the string of elegant antique pearls draped across the cream-colored fabric of her blouse. The pearls, he knows, were a gift from her great-grandmother. He looks away, his eyes burning, knowing he shouldn't feel ashamed.

"I didn't do it," he blurts out, and his voice breaks. He feels weak and disgusted with himself for a reason he can't pinpoint. This wasn't his fault. But knowing the truth doesn't help purge the feelings.

Mrs. Merrill sits down on the bed and stares down at him, her eyes remote as her attention retreats inside to weigh an important decision.

He can smell her perfume, a clean, fruity aroma that reminds him of standing in an apple orchard on a crisp, fall day. He notices that she has not taken off her coat. Her hands remain gloved.

"Stephen, remember last Sunday's sermon when the priest talked about lying."

He nods. He has attended church with the Merrill family every Sunday morning she had even bought him a nice span coat to wear; it made him look like one of her sons. Now it hangs in his closet back in his bedroom, and he thinks that he will never wear it again and his eyes well up with tears.

"You know God can see into our hearts, Stephen. He knows when you're lying. You can go to hell for lying. It's a mortal sin."

"I wouldn't lie to you or God." It hurts to talk, hut what hurts even more is suffering alone with the truth.

"I didn't do it."

"Stephen."

"I said I didn't do it."

"Stephen, I found in your pocket my diamond stud earrings, which were a gift from my mother, and these." She taps the pearls strung across her neck.

"They're not worth anything, but they hold a great deal of sentimental value to me."

He is shaking his head, he is frightened, he is drowning. He grabs the truth and fights against the suffocating tide of feelings. He has been a tough scrapper all his life, and he isn't going to give up now. Not with the truth on his side.

"I don't agree with what Todd did to you he should never have hit you like that, and he's going to be severely punished for it, believe me,"

Samantha Merrill says. She takes in a deep breath and then adds, "But I can understand Todd's anger. He thought he was protecting me and the family."

"Todd's a liar and a thief," he says.

Samantha Merrill looks like she has been slapped. Her eyes grow wide in surprise and horror and then she recovers and her eyes narrow with a hard light. He is on dangerous ground. Samantha Merrill is an understanding and patient woman she has opened up her home to him in a way he could never have dreamed but the one thing that he has learned during these months with the Merrill family is that Samantha Merrill will not, under any circumstances, tolerate anyone speaking badly of her two sons, Todd and the youngest one, Jarrod.

It doesn't matter. Samantha Merrill needs to hear the truth.

Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it frightens us, but she needs to hear it and accept it.

"Todd was inside your bedroom," he says.

"I caught him with a handful of money and your pearls. I told him to put them back, and he told me that he was going to beat me up. When I tried to run outside he caught me and started kicking me and I couldn't move because he's so big."

She looks away from him and stares out the window and he sees that her face has changed. Did she believe him? Had his words forced her to surrender herself to the harsh facts about her son? Don't stop, keep going.

"When Todd heard your car pull up, he didn't expect you home so early, so what he did was he put the stuff from his pockets into mine and made up that story."

Dusk has settled; the room is carved with shadows. Samantha Merrill stares out the window for what seems like a long time. His heart is racing with fear and hope.

"Why would he steal from me?" she asks. Her voice sounds small. Far away.

"To buy dope."

Samantha Merrill's lips crimp together as if to prevent something vile from escaping.

He knows he should stop but doesn't. She needs to hear the truth. It's the only way he can prevent his loss from happening.

"I've seen him do it. Behind the gym after basketball practice. That sickly sweet smell on his clothes why do you think he washes his clothes the second he gets home? Why he never wants you to pick him up?"

She looks down at the floor and presses a gloved hand against her forehead.

"This isn't the first time you've found stuff missing from inside your house, right? Money's been missing and all this time you thought you misplaced it " "I've heard enough," she says and stands up.

"I'm telling you the truth. Todd's not who you think he is. He's a liar and a thief, and he has you and everyone else fooled."

Samantha Merrill slaps him so hard across the face that stars dance across his eyes. She leans into him, her eyes watering and threaded with tiny red veins but at the same time so hard and angry that all he can think about is a crevice suddenly opening up on top of a snow-covered mountain and swallowing him.

"You, Stephen Conway, are the liar and the thief," she hisses.

"The second someone showed you an act of kindness, showed you love and offered you a chance to prove yourself, you took advantage of it. Todd caught you stealing from me the person who loved and trusted you and now you have the audacity to lie to me?"

"I didn't steal " She strikes him again. It's not the pain that causes him to cry out, it's the fear of what is about to happen next, what he is about to lose.

"You lie and steal because you're an awful person, Stephen Conway awful and I will thank the Lord every day for having Todd catch you in the act before we brought you into our home permanently. I'm ashamed to have known you. You're rotten to the core."

His lips quiver as they try to form words. His throat seizes up.

Through a watery curtain he watches her blurred shape turn and storm out of the room.

Samantha Merrill and her world, with all its hope and promise, is gone.

Outside the window he sees the homes decorated with hundreds of glowing strings of colored lights, and he realizes that Christmas is only two weeks away. He will be going back to the dreary halls of St. Anthony's Boys Home. Back to the large cafeteria hall with its holiday dinner of rubber turkey and tasteless gravy, back alone with the haunted stares of miserable children who fight and kick and scream themselves to sleep.

He slams his good eye shut and sees himself last Sunday afternoon playing Scrabble with Mr. Merrill in the family room. Outside the windows a light snow was falling, and Samantha Merrill was busy inside the kitchen cooking a roast beef, the aroma wafting through the rooms filled with laughter and talk and mixing with the smell of the burning wood inside a fireplace and the sharp bite of the tall pine Christmas tree in the corner of the room it's gone now, it's all gone.

He feels his anger rising and embraces it embraces its strength. He is a survivor. Fuck you, Samantha Merrill. Fuck you, fuck Todd, I will rise above you. I will rise above you and show you I will show everyone. Just you wait and see.

Conway's eyes fluttered open. The world was a blur, and his head felt heavy, his mind still clinging to the dream. Why did he dream of Samantha Merrill? He hadn't thought about her in years.

He blinked and slowly the white ceiling tiles came into sharper focus.

He lifted up his head Jesus Christ, his temples felt like they had daggers stuck in them and looked around the room.

A hospital room.

I'm alive.

But possibly disfigured, a voice added.

And then it all came back to him in a frightening rush: the explosions and then the entire lab was on fire, smoke curling up across the ceiling like great black snakes and then… he couldn't remember what had happened after that.

Conway closed his eyes. He saw the flames inching closer to him, the heat drilling into his skin… a cold sweat broke out all over his body.

I must be in a burn unit.

But there was no pain. Possibly a morphine drip, he thought. He turned his head to the right and saw a feeding tube attached to the veins in his hand. The skin was tanned and healthy. With his left hand he reached up and patted down his face. A sizable bandage was strapped across his forehead. Another one was on the back of his head; they had shaved his hair. He didn't know what had happened, but he did know he wasn't facially disfigured.