I turned my head and opened my eyes. There was something in her voice that sounded wrong. “Yeah, I suppose it would… be-is something wrong?”
She blinked, then fished a cigarette from her pocketbook. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead. I can’t smell anything anyway.”
She lit up and inhaled so deeply I could almost hear the cancer cells cheering. “Had another meeting about the budget today.”
“Bad news?”
“No. Looks like we’ve got another investor and will be able to hire back almost everyone who was laid off.”
“That’s great.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, wanting to give this my full attention. Both she and Beth had been nervous about what was going to happen should there be another budget cut. “Mabel?”
“Yeah, hon?”
“It is good news, right?”
She blinked, then, after a moment’s consideration, nodded her head. “Oh, you bet it is. Sure. Only they want us to sign something.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. And that’s what’s bothering me. All we know is that it’s called a ‘confidentiality agreement’ and we can’t tell anyone about what it says.”
“Have you seen it yet?”
“Lord, no-the paperwork won’t come through for another week or two, but the director thought we should be warned. I asked him if he knew what it was all about and he said, ‘Hey, if they want to give us X-millions of dollars to keep this place open for the next ten years, I’ll have the cafeteria serve Billy Beer at every meal if that’s what they want.’ ”
“A man of principles. Have to admire that.”
“He’s doing the best he can. Truth be told, a lot more of us should have been let go this last time, but he managed to convince the board to keep us.” She looked at me and I could see there were tears in her eyes. “I haven’t let on to you and Beth about how bad it’s really been. I’ve been hanging on by a thread for a while now, financially. They could have let me go any time this past year, just walk in any day and- kapow! -no more job. Helluva thing to live with.”
I squeezed her arm. “You never said anything.”
“Why would I? Look at me, will you? I’m a sixty-one-year-old lesbian with no special someone in her life. I cook meals and clean bedpans and change diapers. I got a nursing degree but all that means to most doctors and administrators is that they don’t have to be the ones to wipe the asses and write the reports and make sure the charts are in order-and when you get a two-fer like me, well, that’s all the better. I can cook and mop up the mess they make after eating it.”
“You’re a great cook.”
She grinned. “You’re sweet for trying to change the subject, but I’m an old gal and I’m scared and pissed off so just let me gripe for a bit.”
“Okay.”
She flicked some ashes out the window. “I didn’t want to say anything to Beth about… about this-”
“-about the job?”
“No, something else.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m gonna need you to help me tell her something. I got a call from the landlord a couple days ago. Some of the neighbors, they’ve been complaining about the Its. I guess one of their kids supposedly came home with fleas or lice-which God knows they couldn’t have picked up at school or somewhere else, must be the old lezzie’s animals-so they threatened to call the health department unless the landlord does something.”
I had a terrible feeling I knew what was coming.
“We have to get rid of half of them,” she said, her voice cracking. “Isn’t that a pisser? Most of the poor things had no home to begin with, and now we gotta get rid of them to keep ours. I’d buy the house if I could afford it, but I can’t, and there’s been no rent increase in I don’t know how long, and I’d never be able to find a house that size for what I’m paying-”
“-calm down, Mabel-”
“-and the landlord’s a nice guy, he really is. He could’ve just been a bastard and told me to get rid of all of them but he didn’t, he said we can keep four but four of them have to go and they have to be gone by the first of the month, so that means that sometime in the next ten days we have to choose which ones to get rid of-”
“-we’ll take them to the Humane Society, it’ll be-”
“-oh like hell we will. I mean”-she wiped a tear from her cheek-“I know they care for them as best they can, but after a certain amount of time they have no choice but to put them down. I can’t do that. I can’t hand them over to someone I know is going to have to kill them eventually. I have no idea how I’m going to tell Beth about this, I really don’t…”
“You won’t have to. I will.”
“Would you? She’ll hear it better, coming from you. She and I get along but… I’m not her mother. I wish I were, I love her like my own daughter, but she’s always acted like I think I got stuck with her or something. I don’t know…” She took a last drag from the cigarette and tossed it out the window. “Maybe something’ll come up.”
I had no idea what “something” she was referring to, or how it was going to “come up,” or in connection with what.
“There ought to be a place,” she said, “where they’d keep them healthy and happy for as long as they live, let them pass away naturally after a good life. Instead it’s dump the old people here, dump the animals there; you wait for one to die, kill the other if they don’t die soon enough. It isn’t right, however you look at it, however you justify it. It’s not right. There ought to be a place.”
“I know,” I said, my eyes closing as the decongestants kicked in. “I know.”
“There really ought to.”
“Mabel?”
“What is it, hon?”
“Why did you introduce me to Whitey as ‘Beth’s guy’? You know that we’re not… well, she says that… I mean…”
“I love my niece, Gil, you know that, but sometimes she hasn’t got the brains God gave an ice cube. You’re her guy. She’ll figure it out, eventually.”
By the time we got back to the house what I thought was only a sinus headache brought on by a cold turned into a fever, then a 4 A.M . trip to the emergency room followed by a five-day stay in the hospital for pneumonia and dehydration. I never saw it coming.
What I remember of that first day or so was the cloud-that’s the only thing I can call it. When I tried to open my eyes the lids would only lift halfway because there was a cloud pressing down on them. This cloud was a dull silver. It covered my entire face. I could feel it slipping through my lips and spreading down into my chest. It was hot and humid and felt like oil in my lungs.
I was sitting on a hillside, and it was raining. God, how it was raining. The wind was so strong that the rain was falling sideways.
I was sitting on a hillside, alone, watching as a ship of some sort sailed past in the distance. I thought perhaps I had friends on that ship, but they were leaving me behind.
And I was so angry.
So angry.
The anger was so powerful it made a soft buzzing noise inside. And whenever I dared peek out from under my too-heavy lids, I saw things hiding in the silver cloud made by the rain and mist.
Hunched things.
Silent things.
Things with bright red pinpoint eyes. I never saw their faces. I didn’t think they had any. But their eyes told me enough. They were watching me. They had always been watching me. And someday they would step out of the cloud so I could see them. They would flip over the sky and tear out its tongue as they choked it to death. And I would be crushed by it. They would feed me to the dead animals who would claw down from their graves. They
