Or his long boy? The thing with the endless piebald side?
It doesn't exist, Lisey, it never did outside of his imagination…which was sometimes powerful enough to cast itself over people who were close to him. Powerful enough to make you uneasy about eating fruit after dark, for instance, even though you knew it was just some childhood superstition he never completely cast away. And the long boy was like that, too. You know it, right?
Did she? Then why, when she tried to consider the idea, did a kind of mist seem to creep over her thoughts, disrupting them? Why did that interior voice tell her to hush?
Darla was looking at her oddly. Lisey gathered herself and brought herself back to the present moment, the present people, the present problem. And for the first time noticed how tired Darl looked: the grooved lines around her mouth and the dark circles under her eyes. She took her sister by the upper arms, not liking how bony they felt, or the loose way Darl's bra-straps slid between her thumbs and the too-deep hollows of Darla's shoulders. Lisey could remember watching enviously as her big sisters went off to Lisbon High, home of the Greyhounds. Now Amanda was on the cusp of sixty and Darl wasn't far behind. They had become old dogs, indeed.
'But listen, hon,' she told Darla, 'they don't call it suicide watch—that's mean. They just call it observation.' Not sure how she knew this, but almost positive, just the same. 'They keep them for twenty-four hours, I think. Maybe forty-eight.'
'Can they do it without permission?'
'Unless the person's committed a crime and the cops have brought them in, I don't think so.'
'Maybe you ought to call your lawyer and make sure. The Montana guy.'
'His name's Montano, and he's probably at home by now. That number's unlisted. I've got it in my address book, but my book's back at the house. I think if we take her to Stephens Memorial in No Soapa, we'll be okay.'
No Soapa was how the locals referred to Norway–South Paris in neighboring Oxford County, towns which also happened to be within a day's drive of such exotic-sounding wide spots in the road as Mexico, Madrid, Gilead, China, and Corinth. Unlike the city hospitals in Portland and Lewiston, Stephens Memorial was a sleepy little place.
'I think they'll bandage her hands and let us take her home without too much trouble.' Lisey paused. 'If.'
'If?'
'If we want to take her home. And if she wants to come. I mean, we don't lie or make up some big story, okay? If they ask—and I'm sure they will—we tell the truth. Yes, she's done it before when she's depressed, but not for a long time.' 'Five years is not such a long —'
'Everything's relative,' Lisey said. 'And she can explain that her boyfriend of several years just showed up in town with a brand-new wife and that had her feeling rather pissy.'
'What if she won't talk?'
'If she won't talk, Darl, I think they'll probably be keeping her for at least twenty-four hours, and with permission from both of us. I mean, do you want her back here if she's still touring the outer planets?'
Darla thought about it, sighed, and shook her head.
'I think a lot of this depends on Amanda,' Lisey said. 'Step one is getting her cleaned up. I'll get in the shower with her myself, if that's what it takes.'
'Yeah,' Darla said, running her hand through her cropped hair. 'I guess that's the way to go.' She suddenly yawned. It was a startlingly wide gawp, one that would have put her tonsils on view if she'd had any left. Lisey took another look at the dark circles under her eyes and realized something she might have gotten much earlier if not for 'Zack''s call.
She took hold of Darla's arms again, lightly but insistently. 'Mrs. Jones didn't call you today, did she?'
Darla blinked at her in owly surprise. 'No, honey,' she said. 'Yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon. I came over, bandaged her up as well as I could, and sat up with her most of last night. Didn't I tell you that?'
'No. I was thinking it all happened today.'
'Silly Lisey,' Darla said, and smiled wanly.
'Why didn't you call me sooner?'
'Didn't want to bother you. You do so much for all of us.'
'That's not true,' Lisey said. It always hurt her when Darla or Canty (or even Jodotha, over the telephone) said crap like that. She knew it was crazy, but crazy or not, there it was. 'That's just Scott's money.'
'No, Lisey. It's you. Always you.' Darla paused a second, then shook her head. 'Never mind. Point is, I thought we could get through it, just the two of us. I was wrong.'
Lisey kissed her sister on the cheek, gave her a hug, then went to Amanda and sat down next to her on the couch.
5
'Manda.'
Nothing.
'Manda-Bunny?' What the smuck, it had worked before.
And yes, Amanda raised her head. 'What. Do you want.'
'We have to take you to the hospital, Manda-Bunny.'
'I. Don't. Want. To go there.'
Lisey was nodding halfway through this short but tortured speech, and starting to unbutton Amanda's blood-spattered blouse. 'I know, but your poor old hands need more fixing than Darl and I can give them. Now the question is whether or not you want to come back here or spend the night at the hospital over in No Soapa. If you want to come back here, you get me for a roommate.' And maybe we'll talk about bools in general and blood-bools in particular. 'What do you say, Manda? Do you want to come back here or do you think you need to be in St. Steve's for awhile?'
'Want. To. Come back. Here.' When Lisey urged Amanda to her feet so she could get Amanda's cargo pants off, Amanda stood up willingly enough, but she appeared to be studying the room's light-fixture. If this wasn't what her shrink had called 'semi-catatonia,' it was too close for Lisey's comfort, and she felt sharp relief when Amanda's next words came out sounding more like those of a human being and less like those of a robot: 'If we're going… somewhere…why are you undressing me?'
'Because you need a run through the shower,' Lisey said, guiding her in the direction of the bathroom. 'And you need fresh clothes. These are…dirty.' She glanced back and saw Darla gathering up the shed blouse and pants. Amanda, meanwhile, padded toward the bathroom docilely enough, but the sight of her going away squeezed Lisey's heart. It wasn't Amanda's scabbed and scarred body that did it, but rather the seat of her plain white Boxercraft underpants. For years Amanda had worn boy-shorts; they suited her angular body, were even sexy. Tonight the right cheek of the boxers she wore was smeared a muddy maroon.
Oh Manda, Lisey thought. Oh my dear.
Then she was through the bathroom door, an antisocial X-ray dressed in bra, pants, and white tube socks. Lisey turned to Darla. Darla was there. For a moment all the years and clamoring Debusher voices were, too. Then Lisey turned and went into the bathroom after the one she'd once called big sissa Manda-Bunny, who only stood there on the mat with her head bent and her hands dangling, waiting to be undressed the rest of the way.
Lisey was reaching for the hooks of Manda's bra when Amanda suddenly turned and grabbed her by the arm. Her hands were horribly cold. For a moment Lisey was convinced big sissa Manda-Bunny was going to spill the whole thing, blood-bools and all. Instead she looked at Lisey with eyes that were perfectly clear, perfectly there, and said: 'My Charles has married another.' Then she put her waxy-cool forehead against Lisey's shoulder and began to
