Mona nodded, staring off at the blank walls of this place, at its sparse signs and its large sand-filled cylindrical ashtrays. One half hour ago, Mona had been sound asleep when something waked her as surely as a hand touching her—a smell, a song coming from a Victrola. She pictured that open window again, the sash all the way up, the night outside bending in with its dark yews and oaks. She tried to remember the smell. “Talk to me, kid,” said Anne Marie. “I’m worried about you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m fine. OK. Everybody better follow that advice, don’t be alone, whether they think they could be pregnant or not. You’re right. Doesn’t matter. I’m going upstairs to see Mother.”
“Don’t wake her up.”
“You said she’s been sleeping since morning? Maybe she’s in a coma. Maybe she’s dead.”
Anne Marie smiled and shook her head. She picked up her magazine and started reading again. “Don’t get in an argument with her, Mona,” she said, just as Mona turned away.
The elevator doors opened quietly on the seventh floor. This was where they always put Mayfairs, unless there was some pressing reason to be in a special department. Mayfairs had rooms with parlors here, and little kitchens where they could make their own microwave coffee, or store their ice cream. Alicia had been in here before, four times as a matter of fact—dehydrated, malnourished, broken ankle, suicidal—and vowed never to be brought back. They’d probably had to restrain her.
Mona padded softly down the corridor, catching a glimpse of herself in the dark glass of an observation room, and hating what she saw—the chunky white cotton dress, shapeless on a person who wasn’t a little girl. Well, that was the least of her problems.
She caught the fragrance as soon as she reached the doors to Seventh Floor West. That was it. The exact same smell.
She stopped, took a deep breath and realized that for the first time in her life she felt really afraid of something. It made her disgusted. She stood, head cocked to the side, thinking it over. There was an exit to the stairs. There were the doors ahead. There was an exit on the other side of the ward. There were people right inside at the desk.
If only she had Michael here, she’d push open that exit door, see if someone was standing in the stairwell, someone who gave off this odor.
But the smell was already weak. It was going away. And as she stood there, considering this, getting quietly furious that she didn’t have the guts to just open that damned door, someone else opened it, and let it swing shut as he went down the corridor. A young doctor with a stethoscope over his shoulder. The landing had been empty.
But that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t hiding above or below. Either the smell was going away, however, or Mona was simply getting used to it. She took a deep slow breath; it was so rich, so sensuous, so delicious. But what was it?
She pushed through the double doors into the ward. The smell grew stronger. But there were the three nurses, sitting, writing away, in an island of light surrounded by high wooden counters, one of them whispering on a phone as she wrote, the others seemingly in deep concentration.
No one noticed as Mona walked past the station and passed into the narrow corridor. The smell was very strong here.
“Jesus Christ, don’t tell me this,” Mona whispered. She glanced at the doors to her left and her right But the smell told her before she even saw the chart that said “Alicia (CeeCee) Mayfair.”
The door was ajar, and the room was dark; its one window opened upon an airwell. Blank wall stared in through the glass at the still woman, lying with her head to the wall, beneath the white covers. A small digital machine recorded the progress of the IV—a plastic sack of glucose, clear as glass, feeding down through a tiny tube into the woman’s right hand, beneath a mass of tape, the hand itself flat on the white blanket.
Mona stood very still, then pushed open the door. She pushed it all the way back, so that she could see into the open bathroom to the right Porcelain toilet Empty shower stall. Quickly, she examined the rest of the room, and then turned back to the bed, confident that she and her mother were alone.
Her mother’s profile bore a remarkable resemblance to that