A Quiet Death

SIX

Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while using this medication.

Great. It was either the pain or the pills. Not a choice I was prepared to make.

Caution: May cause drowsiness. Alcohol may intensify this effect.

I carefully considered this warning while standing in front of the medicine cabinet several hours before my usual bedtime. Then I popped a pain pill and headed down to the kitchen to fetch a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from the Box-o-Wine we kept on tap in the fridge. The pain was getting easier to deal with, but the nightmares were another story. Over the past two days, even my doctor-prescribed naps had been interrupted by dreams, grotesque variations of the crash that jolted me awake, heart pounding. I chased the pill with half a glass of wine topped off with crushed ice and club soda, then padded back up to bed. For the time being, at least, drowsiness definitely needed to be intensified.

The next morning, I lay awake in bed trying to figure out what day it was – Friday – while communing with a pair of cardinals peeping sweet nothings to one another from the tree outside my open window. The telephone rang, interrupting my reverie. I waited for Paul to pick up, but when he hadn’t by the third ring, I figured he’d already left for work, so I fumbled for the telephone myself.

‘Hannah, it’s Connie. I’ve been wanting to call, but Paul said you needed to rest. How are you doing?’

Connie is Paul’s sister. She lives on the Ives family farm down in Chesapeake County, thirty miles or so south of Annapolis.

‘Battered and bruised,’ I told her. ‘Creeping around like an old lady, but at least I’m creeping. Others weren’t so lucky.’

‘Paul filled us in. It must have been horrible.’

‘Horrible doesn’t begin to describe it, Connie. It’ll be a long time before I get back on the Metro.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Ah, ha! I was hoping you’d say that.’ I explained about the mix-up with the Garfinkel’s bag and asked Connie if she’d be willing to drive me back to the hospital. ‘Paul’s got classes and faculty meetings all day, so I’m on my own. I’m not supposed to drive. Hard to do, even if I wanted to, with this pesky cast on my arm.’

‘No problem,’ Connie said. ‘After lunch, OK?’

‘Super.’

The heatwave had broken at last, ushering in a glorious fall. Connie picked me up in her lime-green Volkswagen bug with the top down.

‘There is nothing that can’t be cured by taking a ride in a convertible,’ I told my sister-in-law as I eased into the passenger seat and tried to strap myself in. The effort brought tears to my eyes.

Connie drew the seatbelt across my lap and snapped it into place. ‘Happy to contribute to the cure.’ She had a scarf tied around her auburn curls and a white swathe of sunscreen across her nose. A lemon-yellow chrysanthemum bobbed cheerfully in the bud vase attached to the VW’s dashboard.

‘How’s Dennis?’ I asked as she waited to make the left turn from Prince George Street on to College Avenue. Dennis was my brother-in-law, a Chesapeake County police lieutenant.

‘He’s got a murder on his hands, I’m afraid. A student at the community college. I wish they’d keep the murders over in P.G. County where they belong.’ She clapped a hand over her mouth, blinked innocently. ‘Oh, my, did I say that?’

‘You did. Bad girl. I should report you to Dennis for insubordination.’

By the time we took the exit out of Annapolis on to Route 50 west, I had told Connie as much as I knew about Skip and explained what I wanted to do.

‘So, let me get this straight. You need to find this man and return his property.’

‘Right.’

‘And the only thing you know about him is that his name is Skip, last name maybe Chaloux.’

‘Uh huh. And that he’s new to the area, because he hadn’t a clue about our weather. And his phone is with Verizon.’

Connie groaned. ‘Well, that’s really going to help us, isn’t it?’ She eased the VW out into the fast lane and passed a school bus as if it were standing still. ‘What’s Skip short for, then?’

‘Skipper?’ I suggested.

Connie grinned. ‘Skipper is Barbie’s little sister, Hannah.’

‘Or a castaway on Gilligan’s Island,’ I added helpfully.

‘I know a Steve who’s called Skip,’ Connie continued, slipping into the HOV2 lane and pushing the little Bug up to seventy. ‘And isn’t that guy Skip, who fixes your car, really named Wilfred?’

‘Nobody’s named Wilfred.’ I laughed. As Connie sped on, I stared at the cars we passed, silently counting the number of people driving while talking on their cell phones, making the most of the risky practice before Maryland’s ban went into effect in a few weeks’ time.

‘Could he be a third?’ Connie said brightly.

‘A third of what?’ I asked.

‘A third. Like Alfred P. Newman the Third, named after his grandfather Alfred P. Newman the First. In other words, the name skips a generation.’

‘In that case,’ I said sweetly, ‘he’d be a second.’

Connie stuck out her tongue. ‘Picky, picky.’

‘Whether he’s a second, third or even a fourth isn’t going to help us much if we don’t know whether the namesake grandfather was a Charles or a George or, God help him, a Wilfred, is it?’

When we got to the hospital, Connie dropped me off at the main entrance under the portico while she sped off to park. To my left, a row of ambulances stood backed into emergency-room bays, their crews waiting for their ill or injured passengers to be admitted before driving the vehicles back to the firehouses where they normally lived. I stared at the ambulances for a moment, wondering if any of them had delivered me there.

When Connie caught up with me, I was making zero progress with the staff at the information desk in the hospital lobby. ‘We can confirm whether or not someone’s a patient here,’ the gentleman who was helping me said, ‘but you have to know his name.’

‘Skip,’ I said. ‘His name is Skip. His last name could be Chaloux.’

‘We don’t have any Skips on the patient list,’ he explained for the second time. ‘How do you spell Chaloux?’

‘C-H-A-L-O-U-X.’

He tapped a few keys, shook his head. ‘Nope, no Chaloux either.’

‘Look,’ I said, waving my fluorescent cast under his nose as Exhibit A. ‘I was a patient here on Tuesday. I think Skip was a patient, too. We were both involved in the Metro crash,’ I added, hoping to earn a sympathy vote. ‘The hospital, i.e. you, mixed up some of his belongings with mine, and I simply want to return them.’

The volunteer fixed me with a steely glare. ‘Ma’am, I will explain it to you once again. We are required by federal law to protect the privacy of our patients. Unless you are a family member, or a designated person, even if you knew the name of this Skip person, even if you are telling me now that he’s your very best friend in the whole wide world, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about his condition.’

My sister-in-law stood at the counter next to me, wisely staying out of the discussion. I leaned in her direction. ‘I should have lied,’ I whispered. ‘Said I was his aunt or something.’

‘In that case,’ Connie whispered back, ‘you would have known his last name.’

I felt my face flush. ‘Duh.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ the staffer began again. Maybe he was softening. ‘Why don’t you leave whatever the mixed-up thing is with me, and if this fellow called Skip is in the hospital here, surely he’ll notice that it’s missing and ask about it. Then, we can make sure it gets back to him.’

I tend to get huffy when thwarted, so I fixed the volunteer with a steely gaze of my own. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that unless you can confirm or deny the presence of a patient nicknamed Skip in this hospital, I can’t return the items now in my possession to you directly, only to Skip himself, or to a designated member of his family.’

The old guy smiled. He actually smiled. ‘OK. Point taken. Why don’t you write Skip a note? If it turns out he is, or was, a patient here, I can see that it gets to him. If, regrettably, he’s passed away, I’m sure his next of kin would want all his effects returned and they’ll get in touch with you. How does that sound?’

I faced Connie. ‘I don’t have anything to write on. Do you?’

Connie pawed through her handbag, then shook her head.

‘There’s a gift shop,’ the staffer pointed out helpfully.

I popped into the gift shop and purchased a greeting card – a cocker spaniel holding daisies in his mouth on the outside, blank on the inside, where I wrote:

‘Skip. I hope this finds you recovering from your injuries. I have your Garfinkel’s bag. If you get this note, please telephone me at…’ I turned to Connie who was inspecting some stuffed bears. ‘Home or cell, do you think?’

‘Both, I imagine.’ So I wrote the numbers down, signed the note ‘Hannah (the woman on the train),’ stuffed the card into its envelope, scribbled on the front and handed it to the staffer behind the desk.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Skip. Parens. Garfinkel bag. Not a lot to go on.’

I shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s all I know.’

‘What now?’ Connie asked as we strolled back to the spot where she’d parked her car.

‘Now?’ I asked.

Connie pressed the keyless remote and the car beeped. ‘Yes, now.’

Using my good arm, I reached for the door. ‘Nothing to do but wait.

Later that afternoon, when Paul came home from class, he found me sitting in the dining room, the contents of the Garfinkel’s bag spread out neatly on the table in front of me, a photograph in my hand.

After Connie dropped me off, I’d untied the letters, carefully preserving the pale green ribbons that had held them together for so long. I’d arranged them in chronological order – 1976 through 1986 – like a game of solitaire.

I held a pencil, freshly sharpened, with an eraser on the end. A spare pencil, equally sharp, was tucked behind my right ear.

I had a notebook in which I had already written ‘#1, Sep 15 1976 New York’ and the address of the apartment in Paris where Lilith had been living at the time.

A cup of tea sat at my right hand, the bottle of pain pills at my left, but, surprisingly, I’d been so engrossed in what I was doing that I’d missed the last dose and hadn’t even noticed.

‘Hannah, what on earth are you doing?’

I looked up at my husband and grinned. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Research.’

‘Well,’ Paul said as he set his briefcase down on one of the dining-room chairs, ‘so much for your protestations about invasion of privacy.’

‘I feel like a voyeur, I admit. But I’ve promised myself that I’ll read only enough to help me find out who these letters belong to.’ I tapped the letter dated 1976. ‘There have to be clues in the letters somewhere.’

Paul dragged a chair over from the wall next to the buffet and sat down at the table across from me. ‘What progress have you made?’

‘Look at this picture,’ I said, sliding it toward him across the polished mahogany.

Paul studied the black and white image carefully. It showed a young man in his twenties with dark fluffy hair, long in back and trimmed to just cover the tips of his ears. Sunglasses dangled by one earpiece from the three-button placket of his Izod polo shirt. He was perched on the lip of an ornate fountain and smiling broadly for the photographer.

‘Who’s this, then?’

‘His name is Zan.’