Praying for Sleep

3

They signed their names a dozen times and became millionaires.

A hundred sheets of paper, filled with scrolly writing, peppered with words like whereas and hereby, sat on the desk before the two women. Affidavits, receipts, tax returns, releases, powers of attorney. Owen, stern and looking very much the lawyer, circulated each document and said, “Duly executed,” every time a signature was scratched upon a sheet. He’d squeeze his notarial seal and sign his own name with a Mont Blanc and then check off another item on his closing sheet. Portia seemed amused at his severity and on the verge of needling him about it. Lis on the other hand-after six years of marriage-had grown used to her husband’s playing Rumpole and paid little attention to his gravity.

“I feel,” she said, “like a president signing a treaty.”

The three of them were in the den, encircling the massive black mahogany desk that Lis’s father had bought in Barcelona in the sixties. For this occasion-the closing of his estate-Lis had unearthed a shellacked découpage poster that she herself had made ten years ago. It had been a decoration for the party following the sale of her father’s business and his retirement. On the left side of the canvas was pasted a photograph of his company’s very first sign, a small hand-painted rectangle from the early fifties, which read, L’Auberget et Fils Ltd. Next to it was a glossy photo of the huge billboard that crowned the company when it was sold: L’Auberget Liquor Importing, Inc. Around the border was Lis’s own diligent, stiff rendering of vines and grapes, done in purple and green marker. The years had turned the shellac coating a deep, sickly yellow.

Although the old man had never discussed the company with his daughters (there was no male heir; the fils was strictly for image), Lis-as executrix of the estate-had learned what an astonishing businessman her father had been. She knew from his frequent absences throughout her childhood that he’d been addicted to his job. But she’d never guessed, until their mother died and the money passed to her and Portia, exactly how much that hard work had amassed: nine million, plus this house, the Fifth Avenue co-op and a cottage outside of Lisbon.

Owen gathered up papers and put them into tidy bundles, labeling each with a yellow Post-it tag marked with his boxy writing.

“I’ll have copies made for you, Portia.”

“Keep them safe,” Lis warned.

Portia tightened her mouth at the motherly tone and Lis winced, looking for a way to apologize. But before she could find the words, Owen lifted a bottle of champagne to the desk and opened it. He poured three glasses.

“Here’s to…” Lis began and noticed the others gazing at her expectantly. She said the first thing into her mind. “Father and Mother.”

Glasses chimed together.

“Practically speaking,” Owen explained, “that’s the end of the estate. Most of the transfers and disbursements’ve been made. We have one account still open. That’s for the outstanding fees-the executrix, law firm and accountant. Oh, and for that other little matter.” He looked at Lis. “Did you tell her?”

Lis shook her head.

Portia kept her eyes on Owen. “Tell me what?”

“We just got notice on Friday. You’re going to be sued.”

“What?”

“A challenge to the bequests.”

“No! Who?”

“That problem with your father’s will.”

“What problem? There a fuck-up someplace?” Portia looked at Owen with amused suspicion.

“Not from me there wasn’t. I didn’t draft it. I’m talking about the problem with his school. Doesn’t this ring a bell?”

Portia shook her head and Owen continued, explaining that when Andrew L’Auberget passed away he’d left his entire estate in trust for his wife. When she died the money went to the daughters, with a small bequest going to his alma mater, a private college in Massachusetts.

“Oh, bless me, for I have sinned,” Portia whispered sarcastically and crossed herself. Their father had often reminisced-reverently and at great length-about his days at Kensington College.

“The bequest was for a thousand.”

“So what? Let ’em have it.”

Owen laughed. “Oh, but they don’t want that. They want the million he was going to leave them originally.”

“A million?”

“About a year before he died,” Lis continued, “the school started admitting women. That was bad enough. But it also adopted a resolution banning gender and sexual-orientation discrimination. You must know all this, Portia.” She turned to her husband. “Didn’t you send her copies of the correspondence?”

“Please, Lis, a little credit. She’s a beneficiary. She had to be copied.”

“I probably got it. But, you know, if it’s got a lawyer’s letterhead on it and there’s no check inside, who pays any attention?”

Lis started to speak but remained silent. Owen continued, “Your father did a codicil to his will, cutting his bequest to the school to a thousand. In protest.”

“The old shit.”

“Portia!”

“When he wrote the chancellor telling him about the change, he said he wasn’t, I’m pretty much quoting, he wasn’t against women and deviates. He was simply for tradition.”

“I repeat, what a shit.”

“The school’s challenging the codicil.”

“What do we do?”

“Basically, all we have to do is keep an amount equal to their original bequest in the estate account until it’s settled. You don’t have to worry. We’ll win. But we still have to go through the formalities.”

“Not worry?” Portia blurted. “It’s a million dollars.”

“Oh, they’ll lose,” Owen announced. “He did execute the codicil during that spell when he was taking Percodan pretty regularly and Lis was spending a lot of time at the house. That’s what the school’s lawyer’s going to argue. Lack of capacity and undue influence by one of the other beneficiaries.”

“Why do you say they won’t win?”

Grim-faced, Lis sipped her champagne. “I don’t want to hear this again.”

Her husband smiled.

“I’m serious, Owen.”

He said to his sister-in-law, “The lawyer for the school? I did a little investigating. Turns out he’s been negotiating contracts on behalf of the school with a company his wife’s got a major interest in. Big conflict of interest. And a felony, by the way. I’m going to offer him four or five to settle.”

Lis said to Portia, “He makes it sound like a legal tactic. To me, it’s blackmail.”

“Of course it’s blackmail,” Portia said. “So? But you think this lawyer’ll talk the school into settling?”

“He’ll be… persuasive, I’m sure,” Owen said. “Unless he wants an address change to the Bridewell Men’s Colony.”

“So basically, he’s fucked.” Portia laughed. She held up her glass. “Good job, Attorney.”

Owen tapped his glass to hers.

Portia drained her champagne and let Owen pour her more. To her sister she said, “I wouldn’t get on this boy’s bad side, Lis. He might do to you what he does unto others.”

Owen’s stony façade slipped and he laughed briefly.

Lis said, “I guess I just feel insulted. I didn’t even know the school was getting any money in the will. I mean, can you imagine Father even talking to me about it? Undue influence? I say let them sue.”

“Well, I say let our lawyer handle it.” With her working-girl hair rimmed by the black lace headband Portia seemed miraculously transported back to six or seven-the age at which it first was clear that the sisters would be such different people. This process seemed to continue, by inches and miles, Lis sensed, even tonight.

Owen poured more Moët. “Never would’ve been a problem if your father’d kept his money to himself and his mouth shut. That’s the moral: no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Your services expensive, Owen?” Portia asked wryly.

“Never. At least not for beautiful women. It’s in my retainer agreement.”

Lis stepped between these two people, bound to her one by blood and one by law, and put her arms around Owen. “See why he’s such a rainmaker?”

“Can’t make much rain if he doesn’t charge.”

“I didn’t say I’m free.” Owen looked at Portia. “I just said I’m not expensive. You always have to pay for quality.”

Lis walked to the stairway. “Portia, come here. I want to show you something.”

The sisters left Owen stacking the papers and climbed upstairs. The silence again grew thick and Lis realized that it was her husband’s presence that had made conversation possible between the sisters.

“Here we go.” She stepped in front of Portia and then pushed open the door to a small bedroom, sweeping on the overhead light. “Voilà.”

Portia was nodding as she studied the recently decorated room. Lis had spent a month on the place, making dozens of trips to Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley for fabrics and wallpaper, to antique stores for furniture. She’d managed to find an old canopy bed that was virtually identical to the one that had been Portia’s when this was her room years ago.

“What do you think?”

“Taking up interior decorating, are we?”

“That’s the same curtain material. Amazing that I found it. Maybe a little yellower is all. Remember when we helped Mother sew them? I was, what, fourteen? You were nine.”

“I don’t remember. Probably.”

Lis looked at the woman’s eyes.

“What a job,” Portia offered, walking in a slow circle on the oval braided rug. “Incredible. Last time I was here it looked like an old closet. Mother’d just let it go to hell.”

Then why don’t you like it? Lis wondered silently.

She asked, “Remember Pooh?” and nodded at a mangy Steiff bear, whose glassy eyes stared vacantly at the corner of the room, where a shimmery cobweb had emerged since Lis had last cleaned the place, twenty-four hours ago.

Portia touched the bear’s nose then stepped back to the door and crossed her arms.

“What’s the matter?” Lis asked.

“It’s just that I’m not sure I can stay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t really planning on it.”

“You’re talking about tonight? Portia, really… It’s too late to go.”

“There’re trains all night.”

Lis’s face grew hot. “I thought you’d be here for a couple of days.”

“I know we talked about it. I… I guess I’d really rather just get the train back. I should’ve told you.”

“You don’t even call and say you’ll be late. You don’t even tell us you’ve gotten a ride. You just show up, get your money and leave?”

“Lis.”

“But you can’t just sit on a train for two hours and then turn around and go back. It’s crazy.” Lis walked to the bed. She reached for the bear then thought better of it. She sat on the chenille spread. “Portia, we haven’t spoken in months. We’ve hardly said a damn word since last summer.”

Portia finished her champagne and put the flute on the dresser. A questioning look started to cross her face.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Lis said.

“Right now’s tough for me to be away. Lee and I’re going through a hard time.”

“When’ll be a good time?”

Portia waved her hands at the room. “I’m sorry you went to all this work. Maybe next week. A couple weeks. I’ll come out earlier. Spend the day.”

The silence was suddenly broken by Owen’s voice, calling sharply for Lis. Startled, she looked toward the door then back to her lap and found that she’d picked up the bear after all. She stood abruptly, setting the toy back on the pillow.

“Lis,” came Owen’s urgent voice, “come down here.”

“Coming.” Then Lis turned to her sister. She said,

“Let’s talk about it,” and before Portia could open her mouth to protest, walked out of the room.

“This smells of being whipped.”

“Well, I’d guess.”

Before the two men lay a sharp valley that rose fifty feet above them, filled with black rocks and tangles of vine and barkless branches, many dead and rotten. Moisture glittered on undergrowth like a million snake scales, and the dew stained their jumpsuits the same dark blue the uniforms turned when they worked the Piss ’n’ Shit Ward.

“Look at that. How d’we even know it’s his footprint?”

“Because it’s size fourteen and he’s barefoot. Who the hell’s do you think it is? Now shut up.”

The moon was fading behind clouds and in the growing darkness each man thought the scene before him was straight out of a horror film.

“Say, meaning to ask-you bumping uglies with Psaltz?”

“Adler’s secretary?” Stuart Lowe snickered. “Like that’d be a real smart thing to do. I’m really thinking we should’ve bitched more. Didn’t either of us have to come. We ain’t cops.”

The men were large-both muscular and tall-and sported crew cuts. Lowe, a blond. Frank Jessup was dark. They were easygoing and had neither hatred nor love for the troubled men and women under their care. Their job was a job and they were pleased to be paid decent money in an area that had little money for any work.

They were not, however, pleased about this assignment tonight.

“Was a honest mistake,” Lowe muttered. “Who’d’ve guessed he’d do what he done?”

Jessup leaned against a pine tree and his nostrils flared at the aroma of turpentine. “How ’bout Mona? You fucking her?”

“Who?”

“Mona Cabrill. Mona the Moaner. The nurse. From D Ward.”

“Oh. Right. No. Are you?”

“Not yet,” Jessup said. “I myself’d slip her a dose of thiopental and jump her bones the minute she conked out.”

Lowe grunted disagreeably. “Let’s stay focused here, Frank.”

“We’d hear him. Big fellow like that can’t walk past without knocking something down. She didn’t wear a bra last week. Tuesday. The head nurse sent her home to get one. But it was Tit City for a while.”

There was a faint scent of campfire or woodstove smoke in the damp air. Lowe pressed a thick palm into each of his eye sockets while he examined exactly how scared he was. “My point is, they pay cops for this kind of stuff.”

“Shhh,” Jessup hissed abruptly. Lowe jumped, then-at the bark of laughter-hit his partner very hard on the arm. “You son of a bitch.” They sparred for a moment, rougher than they meant to be because they were bleeding off tension. Then they started up the valley once more. The men were spooked, true, but it was more the setting than the escapee; both men knew Michael Hrubek. Lowe had supervised him for most of the four months the patient had been incarcerated at Marsden State hospital. Hrubek could be a real son of a bitch-sarcastic, picky, irritating-but he hadn’t seemed particularly violent. Still, Lowe added, “I’m thinking we deep-six it and call the cops.”

“We bring him back, we keep our jobs.”

“They can’t fire us for this. How was we to know?”

“They can’t fire us?” Jessup snorted. “You’re dreaming, boy. You and me’re white men under forty. They can fire us ’cause they don’t like the way we crap.”

Lowe decided they should stop talking. They proceeded in silence thirty yards up the cold, suffocating valley before they noticed the motion. It was indistinct and might have been nothing more than a discarded grocery bag shifting in the breeze. But there was no breeze. Maybe a deer. But deer don’t walk through the forest, humming singsong tunes to themselves. The orderlies glanced at each other and took stock of their weaponry-each had a container of Mace and a rubber truncheon. They adjusted their grips on the clubs and continued up the hill.

“He doesn’t want to hurt anybody,” Lowe announced, then added, “I’ve worked with him plenty.”

“I’m pleased about that,” Jessup whispered. “Shut the fuck up.”

The moaning reminded Lowe, who was from Utah, of a leg-trapped coyote that wouldn’t last the night. “It’s getting louder,” he said unnecessarily, and Frank Jessup was far too spooked by now to shush him again.

“It’s a dog,” Lowe suggested.

But it wasn’t a dog. The sound came straight from the thick throat of Michael Hrubek, who with an astonishingly loud crash stumbled into the midst of the path twenty feet in front of the orderlies and froze like a fat statue.

Lowe, thinking of the many times he’d bathed and coddled and reasoned with Hrubek, suddenly felt himself the team leader. He stepped forward. “Hello, Michael. How are you?”

The response was mumbled.

Jessup called, “Hey, Mr. Michael! My fave patient! You all right?”

Except for muddy shorts Hrubek was naked. His face was outlandishly alien-with its blue tint, pursing lips and possessed eyes.

“Aren’tcha cold?” Lowe found the voice to say.

“You’re Pinkerton agents, you fuckers.”

“No, it’s me. It’s Frank. You remember me, Michael. From the hospital. And you know Stu here. We’re the fuckin’-A orderlies from E Ward. You know us, man. Hey…” He laughed good-naturedly. “What are you doing without any clothes on?”

“What are you doing hiding in yours, fucker?” Hrubek retorted with a sneer.

Suddenly the reality of their mission struck Lowe with a jolt. My God, they weren’t in the hospital. They weren’t surrounded by fellow staffers. There was no telephone here, no psychiatric nurses nearby with two hundred milligrams of phenobarb. He grew weak with fear and when Hrubek gave a shout and fled up the valley, Jessup not far behind, Lowe remained where he was.

“Frank, hold up!” Lowe called.

But Jessup didn’t wait, and reluctantly Lowe too started after the huge blue-white monster, who was leaping along the trail. Hrubek’s voice echoed in the damp valley, begging not to be shot or tortured. Lowe caught up with Jessup and they ran side by side.

The orderlies crashed through the undergrowth, swinging their truncheons like machetes. Jessup panted, “Jesus, on these rocks! How can he run on these rocks?” A memory suddenly came to Lowe-the image of Hrubek standing behind the hospital’s main building, his shoes around his neck, walking barefoot on gravel, over and over, muttering as if speaking to his feet and encouraging them to toughen up. That had been just last week.

“Frank,” Lowe wheezed, “there’s something funny about this. We oughta-”

And then they were flying.

Sailing through the black air. Trees and rocks tumbling upside down, over and over. With identical screams they plunged into the ravine that Hrubek had easily leapt over. The orderlies smacked against the rocks and branches on their way down and their spinning bodies slammed into the ground with vicious jolts. An icy cold began to radiate through Lowe’s thigh and arm. They lay motionless in the gray ooze of the mud.

Jessup tasted blood. Lowe examined his bent fingers, attention to which flagged when he wiped the mud from his forearm and found that it wasn’t mud at all but a wide, foot-long scrape where skin used to be. “Cock-sucker,” he wailed. “I’m gonna hurt that asshole bad, it’s the last thing I do. Oh, shit. I’m bleeding to death. Oh, shit…” Lowe rolled into a sitting position and pressed the scrape, feeling in horror his own hot, torn flesh. Jessup was content to lie unmoving in the methane-scented mud and breathe a few cubic centimeters of air, the most his stunned lungs would accept. He gasped wetly. After a moment he was able to whisper, “I think-”

Lowe never found out what was on Jessup’s mind because at that moment Hrubek strode into the middle of the ravine. He casually bent down, pushing Stuart Lowe aside, and plucked the men’s tear-gas canisters from their belts, flinging them deep into the woods. He turned abruptly back to Lowe, who looked up into Hrubek’s leering face and began to scream.

“Stop that!” Hrubek screamed in return. “Stop that noise!”

Lowe did, and using the advantage of Hrubek’s own panic scrabbled away. Jessup’s eyes closed and he began muttering incoherently.

Lowe lifted the truncheon.

“You’re from Pinkerton,” Hrubek barked. “Pinker-ton. I’m in the pink, Mr. Fuckin’-A Orderly. Your arm looks pretty pink and tend-er. Nice try, but you shouldn’t’ve come after me-I’ve got a death to at-tend to.”

The rubber stick in Lowe’s hand remained poised for a moment, then with a gushing sound landed in the mud at his feet. He took off, running blindly through the woods, his courage suddenly as flimsy as the grass and saplings that bent beneath his pounding feet.

“Oh, don’t leave me, Stu,” Jessup cried into the mud at his lips. “I don’t want to die alone.”

Hrubek watched the disappearing form of Stuart Lowe then knelt on top of Jessup, pushing his head further into the ground. The orderly tasted dirt and grass, the flavor of which reminded him of his childhood. He began to cry.

“You dumb fucker,” Hrubek said. Then he raged, “And I can’t wear your clothes either.” He poked sharply at the stitched label, Marsden State Mental Health Facility, on Jessup’s jumpsuit. “What good are you?” He began to sing, “ ‘Good night, ladies, good night, ladies, I’m going to see you cry…’ ”

“Will you let me go, please, Michael?”

“You found me out, and what I’m doing has to be a surprise. ‘Good night, laaaaaaadies, I’m going to see you die!’ ”

“I won’t tell nobody, Michael. Please let me go. Oh, please. I got a wife.”

“Oh, is she pret-ty? Do you fuck her often? Do you fuck her in unpleasant ways? Say, what’s her address?”

“Please, Michael…”

“Sorry,” Hrubek whispered and leaned down.

The orderly’s scream was very loud and very brief. To Michael Hrubek’s unbounded pleasure, it set in flight an exquisite owl, curiously golden in the ravine’s blue light, which soared from a nearby oak tree and passed not five feet from the huge man’s astounded face.

“… repeating, the National Weather Service has issued an emergency storm warning for residents of Marsden, Cooper and Mahican counties. Winds in excess of eighty miles an hour, tornadoes and severe flooding in low-lying areas are expected. The Marsden River is already at flood level and expected to rise at least three more feet, cresting around one or two a.m. We’ll bring you bulletins as more information is available…”

Portia found them in the den, leaning over the teak stereo cabinet, both grim.

Classical music resumed and Owen shut the radio off.

Portia asked what the problem was.

“Storm.” He turned to look out the window. “The Marsden-it’s one of the rivers that feed the lake.”

“We were getting estimates on building up the shoreline,” Lis said. “But we didn’t think there’d be any flooding till the spring.”

Lis left the den and walked into the large greenhouse, looking up at the sky, murky but still placid.

Her sister saw her troubled face and glanced at Owen.

“There’s no foundation,” he explained to her. “The greenhouse. Your parents built it right on the ground. If the yard floods-”

“It’ll be the first to go,” Lis said. Not to mention, she thought, what the fifty-foot oak tree, hovering overhead, might do to the thin glass panes of the greenhouse roof. She glanced at the brick wall beside her and absently straightened a stone gargoyle, who grinned mischievously as he stuck out his long, curly tongue. “Damn,” she whispered.

“Are you sure it’ll flood?” Portia asked. She sounded irritated-because, Lis supposed, her escape from the L’Auberget manse tonight was looking complicated.

“If it goes up three feet,” Lis said, “it’ll flood. It’ll come right into the yard. It happened in the sixties, remember? Washed away the old porch. That was right here. Where we’re standing.”

Portia said she didn’t recall.

Lis looked at the windows again, wishing they had time to put plywood on the roof and sides. They’d be lucky to build up the lakefront by two feet and tape half the windows before the storm hit. “So,” she said, sighing, “we tape and sandbag.”

Owen nodded.

Lis turned to her sister. “Portia, could I ask you to stay?”

The young woman said nothing. She seemed less irritated than daunted by a conspiracy to keep her there.

“We could really use your help.”

Owen looked from one sister to the other, frowning. “Weren’t you going to stay for a few days?”

“I’m really supposed to get back tonight.”

Supposed? Lis wondered. And who had dictated that? The hard-times boyfriend? “I’ll take you to the station tomorrow. First thing. You won’t miss more than an hour of work.”

Portia nodded. “Okay.”

“Listen,” Lis said sincerely, “I appreciate this.”

She hurried outside to the garage, giving a short, silent prayer of thanks for the weather that would keep her sister here at least for the night. Suddenly, however, this benediction struck Lis as a token of bad luck and superstitiously she retracted it. She then went to work assembling shovels and tape and burlap bags.