“You should know that my phone got stolen by a band of roving dwarfs. I hope you didn’t call and get hung up on by one of them,” she added.
“Oh, I just thought that was you, being a bi—” he didn’t finish, and looked down.
“Bird?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Something like that.” Their eyes met. She willed herself not to look away.
Jayne grinned ear to ear like a kid, and Audrey felt a swell of affection for her, and Saraub, and even for herself. They were all pretty okay people. You make me happy, she wanted to tell him, and Jayne, too.
Saraub sighed, as if just then remembering something. “I came here for a reason. Can we talk alone?” he asked.
Audrey nodded. “Yeah, but Jayne’s my friend. It’s fine.”
A car alarm resounded, beeping and thrumping like a siren getting closer, then farther away. He closed the turret window. Doubled birds became single. The room got darker, and the air thickened. She hated this apartment, she really did. She hated everything it represented, too.
“It’s bad news. You should sit down.” His grin had gone from tense to rictus. She noticed that he was wearing a suit instead of his usual corduroys. A job interview? Had Maginot Lines finally gotten backing?
“I tried to get you at work, and here, too. I stopped by a few hours ago, but you weren’t home yet.”
“What?” she asked, still without sitting. She tried to sound natural, but her voice had a frog in it. Was he leaving town?
Saraub squatted, so that they were eye to eye. “The hospital’s emergency contact was the landline at our apartment,” he said. “I didn’t give them your cell-phone number. Maybe I should have, but I wanted it to come from me.”
Something clicked. It took her a second, her mind raced forward, then back. At first it was a possibility, then she knew without a doubt. There was only one thing it could be.
“There was an emergency at the Nebraska State Psychiatric Hospital?” she asked.
Saraub nodded.
She got breathless. In her mind, the birds flapped their wings inside the stained glass but couldn’t break free, and the rotted floor under the piano opened along broken, uneven lines. Something intelligent, but not sane crept out. She looked down at the wood, and thought about how high up she was—the fourteenth floor. What hubris to believe that men could erect buildings in the clouds and trust that they didn’t collapse into ashes. What hubris to believe that she’d escaped the Midwest, when all along, it had only been biding its time, waiting to snap her back. Clever Betty.
Her knees buckled, but Saraub clamped his hand around her upper arm and held her steady. Crippled Jayne reached up from her seat, and held her other arm with an ice-cold claw.
She knew what had happened. Betty had gone AWOL, just like in Omaha, and Hinton, and Sioux City. “Have they looked in the bars nearby? That’s usually the first place. I’ll need them to come up with a list. Or maybe you guys could help.”
Saraub pushed her down into a chair, and then knelt in front of her. His skin had gotten sallow since she left. Drinking? Eating every meal out? The man was good at taking care of other people but terrible at taking care of himself. She regretted that it hadn’t occurred to her to worry about him until now.
“Audrey,” he said.
She nodded, to let him know that yes, she was ready for this. She was prepared.
“Your mother tried to kill herself. She’s in a coma.”
15
Children’s Hour
It didn’t hit her. She didn’t believe it. “You’re sure? Betty Lucas?”
Saraub nodded. “Positive. Betty Lucas. Nebraska State Psychiatric Hospital. An overdose. She’d been hoarding her pills, they think.”
“A suicide,” Audrey heard herself say. Her tongue was dry and flopping in her mouth. “She cycled again.”
Saraub let out a breath. “That’s the word they used, too…They said you needed to get out there right away if you want to see her before…”
She nodded and touched her throat, which was dry. “Did they tell you what pills, or when?”
He shrugged. Only one bulb in the ceiling was working, so the room was pretty dark. The television still played, but someone had turned down the volume. His shiny face and the water in his eyes reflected the miserly light. “I don’t remember what pills. But I checked the airports—there’s a flight out of JFK tomorrow morning through the Twin Cities, to Omaha.”