Sentinel of Heaven (9 page)

Because
they couldn't find anyone else who'd speak up for me,
she thought.  Moira
remembered the woman but not her name: slender but plain, with tired gray eyes
and frizzy black hair she pulled back in an unflattering bun.

“She was the
one that had to give me the good news.”

You didn't
have an address book or any other material like that with you during the
accident, so we tracked down the address on your ID, the lady said.  No one was
there.  The other person on your lease has left; the phone number the landlord
had for him has been disconnected.

Wow –
Taylor really must have been pissed,
she thought, muzzy with the morphine.

We looked for
someone who could speak for you during your treatment; we managed to find an
address and phone number for your mother in Georgia but when we called, there
was no answer.

Do you have
anyone else, she was asking.  Do you have any close friends?  Other family
members, siblings or cousins?

No, she had to
answer.  Everyone else in my family is dead.  I don't really have close
friends.

The advocate
had smiled gently.  That's okay, she said.  I'll make sure you're taken care
of.  You're not the first to not have anyone... that's why we have this process
in place.

Moira was sure
she had meant those words to be comforting.

“It was weeks
more until I could get the full answers.  I called my landlord finally; he told
me that no one had told him I was in the hospital, just that they needed to
know the names and phone numbers of who was on the lease.  He didn't get a rent
payment for that first month I was gone and he couldn't get hold of me or
Taylor, so he evicted us. 

“He put all my
stuff out on the street corner with the trash.  He said it didn't look like
much – someone else had obviously packed up all the rest and left.  He thought
we'd just walked out on him.

“He
apologized, though.  Seemed sorry that he'd had to do it, sorry he hadn't known
to keep any of my personal belongings safe for me.

“I no longer
even had the clothes on my back; they'd been cut off me in the ER.

“I called my
mother's phone number at the house; it had been turned off by then.  I called
the police here in town, asking them to check on her, she was an old woman and
she lived alone, and the dispatcher said to me 'Didn't anyone tell you?' “

Nine days after
the wreck her mother had died.  She didn't come in to work that Monday and
didn't call out and the other transcribers knew that wasn't like her.  So they
had sent an officer to check on her and found her in bed, cold.

Moira looked
down at her hands, clenching on the crook of her cane.

“She wasn't a
very old woman so they did an autopsy; found out she had cancer.  She may not
even have known it herself because she never went to the doctor's.  She just
got more and more tired and eventually just shut down.

“They couldn't
find me and she had no other living relatives; they buried her body in Potter's
Field.”

I passed it on
the way to the Greyhound station when I was seventeen, Moira thought distantly,
dragging my suitcase those ten miles alone.  Goodbye-so-long, Mother.

“The
dispatcher, maybe finally realizing she'd given horrible news to a woman's only
daughter living seven hundred miles away, was kind enough to give me the number
and address of the lawyer that would be executing her will.  That's when I got another
surprise.”

The washing
machines buzzed quietly and Moira looked up, startled – had she really been
talking so long?  But on the other hand, how could the first two hellish months
of her new life after the accident take so short a telling?

She wished
she'd brought some water; her throat was dry and she was beginning to feel the
pain creep back.  She pushed up and onto her feet again, beginning the slow
dance of moving each load of wet clothes into the dryers, adding the static
sheets, setting the time, paying the money.

She couldn't
remember the last time she'd felt so calm doing laundry.  Even when she did it
in the city where she worked it never failed to bring back memories of Chester
and his assault.

And yet here
she was, in the same room with him and she barely cared.  It had to be the
presence of those blue eyes, that tarnished silver mane of hair (pulled back in
its sophisticated tail at the base of his neck, no less beautiful for its
confinement), that massive muscled body with its lightly tanned flesh... that
sense of controlled power and mayhem, with her hand resting on the trigger.

She smiled to
herself. 
Bang.

Once the loads
were put on to dry she reached out and rested a hand on his forearm.  “I really
could use a soda to take my meds with, and there's a drug store across the way –
could we step across and get something to drink?”

He smiled at
her affectionately and nodded consent.  Picking up laundry supplies in one hand
he followed her to the door of the laundromat, held it open for her, then
walked her across the street with his free palm resting in the small of her
back, a proprietary gesture.

“Do you think
he's still watching?” she asked him.  Leo gave her the same look – what do you
think?

If the
laundromat was a source of fear and shame, the drug store was just the
opposite.  One of the old time locations from back when they were called
'chemists', this one still had its small soda bar and she gave short shrift to
the refrigerated cases up front in its favor.

They used to
come here when she was very little, after they moved in with Grandmother. 
Grandmother used to slip her nickels to buy gumballs and most of her birthday
and Christmas presents – small as they usually were – were purchased here. 
Little board games, little dolls, little items of costume jewelry that a little
girl could wear.  God, out in the forest behind her house there might still be
a cache of them where she'd played at being a pirate for almost one whole week
solid when she was eleven and buried them in a cigar box as her 'booty'.

She eased
herself carefully up onto one of the old red leather-covered stools by the bar
and ordered a cherry soda for herself and a glass of water for Leo after
catching his quiet nod.  He sat down beside her, walking over the top of his
seat.  The old battle-ax who made their orders didn't blink at Leo's
half-dressed state, even in November; she'd probably seen five decades or more
of farmers and field-hands coming in here with nothing between themselves and
God but their coveralls, Moira decided.

The drink was
cold and just on the right side of too sweet; she didn't have sodas often and
most of the premade store-bought ones she couldn't stand when she did.  Only
this place did them just right.

“I love this
little store,” she said, glancing around at the walls and smiling.  “If
something were to happen that destroyed this whole town but left this one spot
standing, I'd be happy.”

Leo made a
check-mark slash with one finger, sipping his water: duly noted.

“You couldn't
really destroy the whole town, right?” she muttered into her glass.  Leo made a
face and shrugged, admitting nothing.

Moira pulled
her car keys out of her pocket.  “So, to continue the story – what we'd never
known is that Grandmother owned the little house and the land it was built
on... and the sixty or so acres around it.  She never mentioned it, never did
anything useful with it, just sat on it like a broody hen on a doorknob.”

She had a little
metal vial as a keychain; inside she kept a supply of her pain medication.  She
shook two pills out into her hand and swallowed them down.

“Mother got it
when Grandmother died, but she was used to being poor for so much of her life–
I guess part of her couldn't imagine any other way to live.  So she never did
anything with it either, other than keep paying the taxes on it, with the money
that she would have used to pay rent somewhere else instead.”

“The very nice
lawyer happened to mention he had a friend in Atlanta who was looking to build
an upscale housing community somewhere, who might be interested in taking some
of the land off my hands.  People were doing the same sort of thing I am,
living far out where the cost to buy was cheaper and the scenery nicer, and
then driving all the way to the cities to work.  Only they could do it because
they're rich, and I have to do it because I'm poor.”

She took a
long sip and smiled up at Leo.  “I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. 
I did what research I could from my hospital bed in Philadelphia, made a few
calls.  What they were offering for the land was reasonable, even though I'm
sure the lawyer was getting a kickback from his friend for the deal, so I took
them up on it.  I kept just four acres around the house and the land the dirt
driveway was on so I had right of access to the main road.

“Now I had
some cash to work with, but not for long – soon it was going to be some big
hospital bills coming due, and as a poor young college student I didn't have
insurance.  First thing I did was withdraw from college on a medical code.”

Leo quirked an
eyebrow at her.  She sighed and toyed with her straw.

“Back when I
thought I was robust and healthy” –
and married to Taylor, although I was
beginning to have second thoughts on that
– “it was just fine to be a
starving English major, or an English teacher, or a journalist, or any other
thing one can do with a liberal arts degree.  It was fine because I could work
additional jobs to fill in the gap, or I could live with my belt tightened. 
I'd done it before.

“But after the
accident, I wouldn’t have a choice.  I had to have a roof over my head, a
dependable one.  I had to have medication.  I had to have physical therapy for
a long time.  I had to have food.  I had to have accommodations.  I had to have
a job that would make enough money to give me those things, and eventually pay
down the medical bills, at the same time.  Even if I got some sort of insurance
payment from the family of the kid who was driving, who could say how much it’d
be or how long it would last?

“I didn't have
any help.  So I decided to change my life again.  I did some research on what
jobs I could do sitting down, not moving much, not lifting things.  Something
that would have people paying me for my mind, and not my back or legs. 
Something that I could learn remotely, relatively quickly.  I couldn't survive
on my new money for another two or three years to pick up another collegiate
major.

“Out of all
the jobs I could find I chose to become a certified public accountant.  This...
was a bit of a culture shock.”

Yeah, to
go from the world of feeling to the world of thinking.  To go from letters to
numbers.  To go from naive youth to jaded adulthood, maybe.  At least as far as
I was concerned.

She finished
her drink and laid a fiver on the old pitted surface of the bar, not bothering
to wait for the change.  Leo led her across the street once more, managing to
make her feel more like a debutante with an escort rather than an old lady with
a Boy Scout.

This time
Chester was studiously ignoring them in favor of his two month old copy of
Juggs and they were able to settle in the back corner again without incident. 
She checked one of the dryers to make sure the loads were coming along; looked
like everything would be dry enough for her satisfaction at the end of the
first cycle, what a surprise!

Leo leaned into
his chosen spot nonchalantly and gestured for her to continue.

“They finally
let me out of the hospital at the end of four months, after they confirmed
they'd be able to ship all my records to town here and I'd made several
promises to continue necessary treatments and physical therapies – oh, and they
got my billing address.  Very important.  My patient advocate was kind enough to
drive me to the airport.”

Vicki –
that was the woman's name.  Vicki of the black hair and tired eyes.  She found
me some charity clothes to wear out and shoes that nearly fit (on the right, at
least; the left was in a brace still, so I carried the spare shoe along in a
bag) and she took me by a thrift store to get a few other personal items to
tide me over, and a carry-on duffle to put all in, and even a couple of
paperbacks for the flight.  I remember she had a huge white Caddy with burgundy
interior, twenty years old but the A/C was still good, thank God.  That was a
punishing September, even in the North.

She didn't
stop me when I wheeled my new collapsible wheelchair into the pawn shop next
door and put my engagement ring in the palm of the balding man who leaned over
the counter to speak to me.  She did look concerned when he hesitantly told me
what it was worth and I began to laugh so hard.  A good fake – but still a
fake, he had said.  Oh, that was the funniest thing ever.  Just like Taylor
himself.

He said he
could give me ten for the silver finding, silver being in a market slump
lately.  I told him that was fine; it was the most I ever got out of it. 

“Thank you
for everything, Vicki,” I said when she got me to the gate.

“You'll be
fine from here on out,” she answered.  “You're one of the most capable women
I've ever met.”

Ahh yes,
capable.  When you come right down to where the shit hits the fan, we capable
women are the only ones still standing – covered in shit, perhaps, but still we
stand.  They can write that on my tombstone:  She Was Capable.

Perhaps
feeling like there should be something more, Vicki shuffled her feet and
murmured “I don't know what you believe – I know we've not gotten close – but I
just want to say:  God bless you, Moira.”

I nodded
at her and tried to smile; she was doing the absolute best she could.  But when
I opened my mouth to answer all that would come out was “I believe it's about
time He did.”