The Odds (13 page)

Carl is shivering much more now. He tries other stations. The radio seems to be whispering to him. Even the baseball announcer on the sports station is murmuring. It’s nice, like people in the other room talking when you’re a little kid. You don’t care what they’re saying, only that they’re there.

   MEG HAS DONE THE PASTA this time with just butter and a little cheese. The four of them sit in the kitchen, eating, but her sisters are angry.

“I have a lot to explain. I know that,” Meg says.

“I thought you weren’t coming home,” Susannah says. She is now plastered next to Laurie.

“I’m here,” she says. “Always. My goal is … keeping us together. I don’t want us to ever be apart.”

Even Laurie, who is usually afraid of nothing, looks frightened. “Where were you?” she asks in a tight voice. “You made me steal. And Susannah was here all by herself.”

“I know. We have to do this one thing to help this man.”

Laurie says, “We don’t have to. You
want
to.”

“I do.”

“I don’t get it.” She looks to her brother. “Why?”

Joel gives the stage to Meg with a glance.

“It’s the pizza man,” Meg says finally. “I kind of know him.”

Laurie’s jaw drops. “Oh.”

“I got us into this,” Joel says gamely.

Meg hastens to press her advantage with her sisters. “We’re just doing what we have to do. We owe him. This food is bought with his money.”

She knows Joel’s reason is different. For him, it’s work, challenge, being a doctor.

“After today, we’ll talk again, after we do what we know to do for him. Nick is his name. He’s scared. Remember when Joel found a bird and wanted to fix it, but the bird was so scared, remember? If it tried to fly, or hopped on the ground, it would get killed. So Joel saved it, remember?”

Susannah’s face becomes soft with the memory.

“Same thing going on here,” Meg explains. “We have to try to calm him down. If he seems to get worse, well, I’ll give it all up and call the ambulance.” She has them, for now. “Please eat. If you’re in with me, we have work to do.”

They all eat faster now.

As small children, they all used to pretend each slippery strand was a worm. The memory shadows them every time they eat pasta. Meg pauses, takes two strands with her fingers, and tilting her head back lowers them into her mouth. “Slithery worms,” she says, winking to entertain Susannah.

“Is the pizza man hurt bad?” Laurie asks.

“Yes. His leg. He can’t walk. But he’s also messed up in his thinking. We need things. The pills you got us. Crutches—we still need to find crutches. And something to set the leg.”

Joel nods.

“Think of it as a job we’re all doing—for pay.” She is certain Laurie will point out the food came before the job, but for now Laurie is thoughtful. Meg is sorting some of the pages from the hospital while she’s eating.

“What are you reading?”

“About fractures.”

Susannah asks, “Doesn’t he want a real doctor?”

“Doctors call the police. He’s afraid of the police.”

Fork clinks against bowl. A truth blossoms in the middle of their dinner. Life without the criminal bird is less dangerous, certainly, but also less interesting.

After dinner, Meg has them call around to a few of their friends, asking do the friends have a set of crutches their older sister could borrow for a school science project? Nobody they know has crutches. By then it’s after seven o’clock.

She and Joel hurry to the small table they use as a desk in the living room. The two of them trade information. Laurie has volunteered to do dishes, but she’s too curious to stay away from their work. She is fascinated by the pictures and hands them on to Susannah, who studies them as if she understands.

“Let’s get to the pharmacy before it gets any later.”

“What can I do?” Laurie asks.

“Boil a big pot of water. Let it cool.”

“Susannah will help me. Won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Come here, sweetie,” Meg says. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.” She enfolds Susannah. “You understand?”

Her sister says, “Yes,” and strokes Meg’s hair. Meg feels relief that she’s won her over again.

“There’s one thing here—” Meg shuffles among the papers. “It’s about braces made of polyester foam and straps. If only we had something like that for him. No, what am I thinking? Those things get put on
after
surgical nails.”

“Right,” Joel says. He takes the pages from her hands and considers them as if he were an engineer. “On the Web it said a person could use rolled newspaper for a temporary splint,” he tells all of them. “But I want something firmer that hugs the leg and isn’t temporary and looks okay. He can’t go anywhere with tree branches hanging off him.”

Susannah is hugging Meg very hard, and Meg is hugging back even as she’s saying almost breathlessly, “We’ve got to get moving, but if you could all just keep thinking …”

“We have to give him all kinds of bad news,” Joel says.

Meg nods, but this is where she really needs to get them on her side.

“What?” Laurie wants to know.

“Well, see, he’s supposed to be immobile for six weeks. Tricky problem. In any circumstances.”

Laurie says, “He’s going to need a lot of books.”

“And he … his name is Nick. … See, he thought he had a car, but the car is gone.”

“We can keep him for a couple of days,” Laurie says gamely. There is a crackle of silence as they all consider this and allow it to sink in. “What will you use instead of that stuff?” Laurie points to the papers.

Meg lets go of Susannah, saying, “It’s going to have to be with something we can find. We need the right lightweight materials and we have to replace the branches. The thing is, I didn’t even have time to wrap the branches very thoroughly. We can do better. With time and light. And good tape. We ought to buy duct tape at the supermarket,” she tells Joel.

“With what?” Laurie asks.

“He gave us a little more money.”

Laurie whistles.

Joel paces like an old man. “For the splint, I don’t have an idea yet.”

“We can cut up Tupperware or something,” Laurie volunteers. “How would that work?”

“Too inflexible. Wrong shape.”

“We must have something around here?”

Meg looks at her watch. “Okay. We still have time before the pharmacy closes. Five minutes, even ten. Look around, see what we might have that … would work.”

It’s like a scavenger hunt. They all run. “I’ll take the basement,” Laurie cries. But Susannah goes with her. Joel takes the second floor, Meg the first.

In the kitchen closet, she finds some Styrofoam from liquor Alison once bought, just a few little chunks of a reverse mold, but it makes her wonder if she could cut it up and carve it effectively to the right shape. No. Too small, too narrow. She rejects it, puts it on the kitchen table. After she’s combed the kitchen for anything else—Tupperware, even though it’s too unyielding—the lids to things, the cardboard from the roll of paper towels, seeing everything in a new way, according to durability and shape, Joel comes into the kitchen. His eye lights on the Styrofoam.

“Too small,” she says, defeated.

And it’s Saturday night. The Salvation Army and the Goodwill are closed tonight; tomorrow is Sunday; those places will be closed tomorrow and Monday because Monday is Memorial Day; and so the world will come to a stop, has already
begun
to grind to a stop. It’s the worst time to
need
things.

But Joel is handling the Styrofoam, saying, “The right size would work. We have to find places where they throw things out.”

“The Giant Eagle?” she tries. “The Dumpster behind the Rite Aid?”

“Maybe. We’ll look.”

This is what she loves about them. Joel has not given up. The other two have come in and are eager to help, Susannah patting Meg’s arm with encouragement.

   POTOCKI ASKS, “YOU HAVE plans tonight?”

“Um. I was going to hop up to the hospital. Visit Commander. You … want to come?”

“I don’t feel right about seeing him when he’s down. Just a personal thing. If you want to get something to eat after your visit, I can wait.”

The two of them have had quite a few meals together today—after the pastrami wore off, they split a falafel at Janet’s Middle Eastern, all the while cracking up about the skinny flatiron building a block away that had a worn-out sign saying TERMINAL LUNCH. For a while it had been Brad’s Terminal Lunch. Then Rita’s Terminal Lunch.

Truth is, dinner with company sounds good. “You could eat as late as nine?”

“Sure.” He brightens.

So, the nut of it is, she runs home, showers, changes into a new pair of linen pants she’s been eager to wear and a lacy stretch top, zips over to the hospital, arriving at five minutes after eight. Through the maze of hallways, familiar now, she speeds toward the elevator that takes her up to his room.

Marina is there.

Christie looks horrible. His eyes are vague, his lids keep closing. It’s all she can do not to gasp.

“It’s just the chemo,” he says. “My body isn’t liking it.”

“Does the nausea go away after a while?”

“They tell me yes.” He motions to Marina to continue.

“They’re trying different antinausea drugs,” she explains.

There is a silence. “Solve your boy’s identity?” Christie asks finally.

“Not yet.”

He smiles.

She feels ridiculously intrusive and forces small talk for a few minutes to soften her early exit. All the way down the elevator she beats herself up for coming at all.

Outside the building, she calls Potocki to say, “Meet me at Tessaro’s.”

They get there around nine and they order gazpacho and drinks to start.

“How’s Commander?”

“Brave. Miserable. Way out of it.”

“Shit.”

“I can’t imagine things without him. Can you?”

“No.”

At Tessaro’s, the ball game is on TV. Everything seems easy, friendly, chatty, and at one conversational turn, Potocki is telling her, “Judy and I went into therapy two years ago. It didn’t fix anything.”

“Was it police work?”

“In a way. Any case I was on, she accused me of infidelity.”

“Police work, then.”

“It took us a while to figure out she wanted to see someone else, so she projected that onto me. She was interested in the idea of it—having a lover—even before she cast the role. It was in everything she said. I didn’t hear it at the time, but I heard it later, you know, in retrospect.”

Colleen is grateful when her grilled scallops arrive. Hearing about another woman’s infidelity is unsettling.

It is almost eleven when they leave the place. He kisses her on the eye before they part to go to their separate cars. The eye. He was aiming for her forehead but missed. Sort of funny.

Now she sits in front of the television, not really watching, Nick and Potocki and Christie all dancing in her head.

   THEY ZIGZAG UP THE HILL, trying to look casual yet purposeful, so that no policeman will stop them, two children out at midnight. Meg pretends to be talking to Joel, walking ahead of him and facing backwards toward him, just a kid, ragging her brother. She’s scanning the streets. Joel is watching everything from the other direction. “Anybody looking at us?” she asks.

“No. Just a minute.”

“What?”

“Look what I found,” he says.

She turns to see he’s looking at a shopping cart up ahead. Wheels, yes, oh, they need wheels all right, but how to use it?

“We need to go into the alley,” Joel says. “Find something to fill it with.”

“But how—?” Meg asks. How do the two of them lift a heavy body up to the basket, no matter that it’s filled, maybe even harder when it’s filled. They both look at the lower rack, where people put crates of soda, laundry detergent. Maybe the bottom of the cart could work. When they get into the alley, to test it, Joel climbs onto the lower section and backs up until his leg is supported. He has to squeeze his body through the space in back and then hold on to the basket in a sitting position. Meg says, “He’s a lot bigger.”

“Fill the basket, in case we need to lift him up.” They scout garage areas.

“This is taking too long,” he says.

“There. That’s a box. Grab it.”

“Couple of these—”

“We might have something at home.”

“No, keep going. I don’t want to lose more time.” They pretend to be cuffing each other, goofing around.

By the time they get to the alley where they have hidden Nick, they have managed to fill the cart with four boxes inside each other for strength and a couple of small stray pieces of wood.

A quick look up and down the alley, then they duck behind the boarded-up garage. He’s still there. Asleep. Like a little baby.

The man’s eyes open. They search Meg’s face. It looks as if he is going to cry. Like this, when he’s not angry, this is how she likes him. She feels his head. Warm. Not so hot as it was.

“We have to get you onto this,” she whispers, tapping at the cart.

“Oh,” he says, despondent. “I can’t. It isn’t possible.”

“You have to try.”

“How will we get down the street?”

“Fast,” Joel says.

The man almost laughs. A good sign?

They try to wedge the cart with their feet while lifting him onto the bottom. But the cart keeps moving.

“It isn’t going to work,” he says.

Meg nods.

“We have to put him on top,” Joel murmurs.

He tugs at the cart until he’s tipped it over so it’s lying on its side. “We have to get him in it this way, support him, then lift it up.”

The pizza man closes his eyes. Is he praying? Dying?

For twenty minutes, the kids angle things this way and that, until finally they manage to get him in while the cart is down. It takes some doing to right the cart. But they do that, too. Then they arrange the sheet around Nick, covering his legs as well as they can. “What a shame this isn’t one of those carts that opens in the front,” Joel says in that voice that made Alison call him an old man. Nick is wincing with pain, biting into his hand. They’ve jostled him after all.