Before the change of shift, I wandered up to the counter and noticed that the duffel had been partially unzipped. On one of her predatory rambles through the unit, May had opened the bag and nabbed whatever caught her magpie eye—she didn't know it was mine. I knelt down and took out the blazer, which had been shoved back in by someone even less worried about wrinkles than me, and sorted through my clothes. Nothing seemed to be missing, including the Discman and the CDs. I went to the desk.
'Nurse Zwick,' I said, 'did you see anyone touch my bag? Or open it up?'
'Only you,' she said.
After7:00p.m.,a nurse said that Mrs. Grenville Milton had sent a bouquet, but since flowers were not permitted in the ICU, it was being held downstairs. I told her to give it to the children's ward.
Clarkdropped into a chair and fell sonorously asleep.
Star kept rising toward clarity and fading back. My aunts told hershe needed sleep. I thought my mother needed to talk to me, and that was why she never let go of my hand.
Around9:00p.m.,Nettie poked her head around the curtain and whispered, 'May, Clyde Prentiss has two visitors. You have to see them to believe them.'
'Maybe it's his
The arrival of two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes detective at cubicle 3 that afternoon had roused them into an investigative flurry. Prentiss's history of wrongdoing ranged from petty larceny, in my aunts' book merely a technique of economic redistribution, through assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to distribute illegal substances, to the big-time villainy of armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, and one accusation of rape. That he had been acquitted of most of these charges in no way implied his innocence. Hadn't he been shot by a night watchman while attempting to flee through a warehouse window? Hadn't his accomplices made their getaway in a pickup truck laden with microwave ovens? Added to his transgressions was that world-class felony, the breaking of his mother's heart. Nettie and May would have hammered a stake through Clyde Prentiss's own heart in an instant, and they were not about to pass up an opportunity to inspect his partners in crime.
Star clutched my hand. 'Do you want to tell me about my father?' I asked.
Her eyes bore into mine. She opened her mouth and uttered a succession of vowels. She gasped with frustration.
'Was his name Robert?'
'Nnnn!'
“I thought that's what you were telling me before.'
She summoned her powers. 'Not
'What was his last name?'
She sipped air and met my eyes with a glance that nearly lifted me off the floor.
'Rinnt?'
Star jerked herself up from the pillow.
A name came to me from the furthest reaches of my childhood. 'Rinehart?'
The night nurse erupted through the curtain and threw me out, but not before I saw her nod.
Ten feet up the aisle, the aunts werepoised at the counter like bird
Clark issued a thunderclap snore that jerked him to his feet. He staggered, recovered himself, and joined us. 'What're you gawping at?'
Nettie said, 'The Clyde Prentiss gang is over there. The ones that got away when he almost met his Maker.'
A scrawny little weasel with a goatee and a black leather jacket twitched out through the curtain, followed by a sturdy blonde wearing a lot of mascara, a brief black leather skirt, and a denim jacket buttoned to her bra.Clark chuckled.
The blonde looked across the station and said, 'Hey,Clark.'
'You're lookin' mighty fine, Cassie,'Clark said. 'Sorry about your friend.' The weasel glanced at him and pulled the blonde through the doors.
The aunts turned toClark in astonishment. 'How do you know trash like that?'
'Cassie Little isn't trash. She tends bar down at theSpeedway. The shrimpy fellow, Frenchy, I don't know him but to greet. Seems to me Cassie ought to be able to find a better man than that.'
I went back inside and said goodbye to Star. Her hands lay at her sides, and her chest rose and fell. I told her I would see her in the morning, said that I loved her, and kissed her cheek.
Alongside May in the back seat of the Buick, I said that I wanted to talk about something before everybody went to bed.
• Nettie placed herself on the old davenport, thumped her bag on the floor, peeked inside, and folded it shut again. Clark gave me a wary glance from the easy chair. May sat beside Nettie with a deep sigh. I dropped my bags next to the staircase and took the rocking chair. I knit my hands together and leaned forward. The rocker creaked. Multiple doubts, doubts arranged into layers, whirled through my head and stalled my tongue.
“I saw you wave to Joy,' Nettie said. “If you don't stop off and see her after escorting May home, her feelings will be wounded. Now I guess you had better tell us what's on your mind.'
“I'm trying to figure out how to begin,' I said. 'When you were waiting to see Clyde Prentiss's visitors, my mother wouldn't let go of my hand. She wanted to give me a name.'
A beat ahead of the others, Nettie fixed me with a warning glare.
“I don't know what we're talking about,' May said. 'Shouldn't we divide up what's in Nettie's bag, so I can go home?'
'Does Edward Rinehart mean anything to you?'
My aunts exchanged a glance almost too brief to be seen. May said, 'Do you know that name, Nettie?'
“I do not,' Nettie said.
'Star moved out of here to live with this man. She and her friends used to visit you, and they scattered cigarette ash all over the porch. Probably Edward Rinehart came with them.'
“It was just Suki and a couple other mixed-up girls, all jabbering away about Al-Bear Cam-oo,' said Nettie, proving that her memory hadn't lost any ground.
“If you can remember Albert Camus, you can hardly have forgotten the name of the man who took my mother away from Cherry Street.'
'You'd be surprised what you forget when you get to be my age.'
'What you got in that bag?' Clark asked.
The seat cushion between my aunts disappeared beneath a mound of pens and pencils, pads of paper, scissors, paperclips, tubes of lip balm and skin moisturizer, cigarette lighters, paperweights, envelopes, desk calendars, coffee mugs, wrapped coils of plastic tubing, light bulbs, antihistamines and nasal steroids in sample packets, cotton balls, a stack of gauze bandages and rolls of tape, stamps, and toilet paper. After a while, my dismay surrendered to amazement, and I had to force myself not to laugh. It was like going to the circus and watching the clowns pile out of the little car.
The sisters began dividing the plunder into two equal piles, now and then adding things to a third, smaller share.
I could no longer keep from laughing. 'No alligator shoes for Uncle Clark? I could use some new underwear and socks.'
'Medical gentlemen seldom wear alligator,' May said, 'and as for the other, you'll have to wait until the next time I go to Lyall's.'
Nettie floated into the kitchen and returned with two grocery bags, one to hold May's spoils and the other for the smaller pile. 'After you see May home, you can drop this off at Joy's. I'll leave some lights on.'
I helped May down the steps. On the other side of the street, Joy's dark figure peered through a slit in her curtain. The lamps cast circles of thick yellow light onto the pavement and threw the trees intostark relief. The moist night air hovered like fog. May and I stepped down from the curb. 'Don't you ever worry about getting
