Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,21

her ankles. Was about to go to her mom’s room when Nurse Lynne plunked down on the couch and said, “There you are. Been looking all over.” She seemed out of breath. And looked as if she’d applied her eyeliner in an earthquake. What kind of nurse had a hand that unsteady?

“Why? How’s my mom?”

“Down for the count. I gave her a sedative.”

“Another one?” And because Anne-Janet was a little afraid of her, she looked at Lynne’s shoes. Not the rubber clogs made famous by that fat Italian chef, but black suede pumps. “I’ve never seen a nurse wear those,” she said.

Lynne outstretched her foot. “Shift’s over. I’m on my way out. Just stopped to check on you.”

“Oh. Well, that’s nice.”

She noticed that Lynne’s calves were tremendous. Water balloons. Amazing.

Lynne scratched one with the tip of her pump. She said, “Your mom tells me you work for the Department of the Interior. What’s that like?

It sounds grand.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I mean it. I’m a nurse, what do I do all day? A man came in this morning, he weighs five hundred pounds. We had to get him from the gurney to a bed. Exciting, right? But you work for the government. You’re doing something that matters.”

Anne-Janet blushed. She had never thought of herself as a woman who did work that mattered. “Well,” she said, “I guess it’s sort of grand. I don’t know how up you are on the divvying of responsibilities in government, but my department pretty much runs the show. I mean, the fundamentals. Land, water, energy.”

“Wow. And what’s your part?”

“Research.”

“Yeah? Do you go out into the field or whatever?”

Anne-Janet sat up with zero regard for the crossroads before a giant lie and said, “Yes. I am out there all the time. Oil production, gas lines, reservoirs, coal mines—you wouldn’t believe what would happen to these things if we didn’t step in. People need guidance. They need oversight.”

“It’s great they have you,” said Lynne.

Anne-Janet smiled. She plumed and bluffed and grinned.

“But I’ve been thinking,” said Lynne—and here her face lost that admiring ingenue quality Anne-Janet had quickly come to love—“I’ve been wondering: is it hard working for the government these days? Because of what’s happening?”

“What do you mean?” Though the fact was, even World War III would have registered but faintly on Anne-Janet’s screen. Such was the colonizing tyranny of cancer; you hardly noticed anything else.

“Oh,” Lynne said. She looked disappointed. “So you’re not involved with how to deal with the Helix? The movement’s so big, there are rumors of an Indian land-claim thing going on. Like they want to be self-sufficient. Carve up the states. I hear Thurlow Dan is a secessionist.”

“Uh, yeah,” Anne-Janet said, feeling the need to recoup Lynne’s respect tussle with the need to defend or conceal her patronage of the Helix—she wasn’t sure which. “We’re on top of that,” she said. But also: Carve up the states? What? There were rumors, yes, but they were stupid conservative rumors. The Helix wasn’t militant. It was about reconciliation, and, in Anne-Janet’s exercise of the fundamental option of faith, it was about consigning the pitch of your heart to God and letting him restore what being human fractures to bits every day. So, in fact, the Helix was about the opposite of secession. And Thurlow Dan? He started the thing. Had devoted his life to bringing unity where there was strife. Who knew what this nurse was on about. She was an idiot.

“Aha,” Lynne said. “So you’re not interested?” She inched forward with a disregard for personal space that gave Anne-Janet the creeps. Already Anne-Janet had retreated to the edge of the last cushion; any farther and she’d fall off.

“No, I am. I’m interested.”

Lynne was squared before her; their knees touched. “What do you really know about the Helix?”

Anne-Janet frowned. “Is there any chance you’re talking DNA because we’re in a hospital and my mother broke her hip and maybe I am next because osteoporosis is genetic?”

“No.”

“Okay then. As far as I know, the Helix has a pretty comprehensive website. Lots of info. Events, literature, stuff like that. In its name, people get together to talk and share about their lives. Make new friends. You know.”

“Yes, fine, but I mean—oh, never mind. Why am I even asking you.” Lynne pulled back a good two feet.

Anne-Janet took offense. It was bad being crowded in but worse to repel the crowd once it had started. She thought hard. Did she know anything about the Helix that departed from