A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [141]
He ran down her walkway, then stood staring up and down the street. The young woman who lived on the corner was pushing her toddler, who sat huddled in the stroller between bags of groceries. She lowered her gaze and hurried by. “Excuse me. Ma’am!” he called on her heels. Turning, she hissed some Spanish invective warning him away. He ran into his house and grabbed the phone to call his brother. “Is Dennis there?” he gasped. The answering service said the office was closed, but if he wanted to leave—
Before, he’d always had to look up Delores’s number, but this time he didn’t. Suddenly all things seemed clear, but with a clarity that placed him outside of himself, witness to this blundering, slow-moving, incompetent man. “Please, please, please be there,” he squealed, eyes closed, head bobbing with each ring as if trying to reel her in, home from wherever she might be. Her new job. She was probably at work.
“Hello!” She was out of breath.
“Delores! Something’s happened. Mrs. Jukas, I think she’s hurt. She must be. I saw her foot. It looks like she fell down, and I don’t know what to do.”
She asked if her door was open. He didn’t know, he said. He was afraid to try it. “Call the police, then,” she said. “Call 911, they’ll come. They’ll be there in two minutes. They’ll know what to do.”
“I can’t! I’m afraid. What if they think I did something to her?”
“All right. Look, Gordon, now just calm down. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call. Wait there. I’ll be right over.”
Jada heard the sirens and knew. The ambulance backed up onto the lawn. Three cruisers had arrived, one parked directly below.
“Are they coming here?” her mother shrieked from the bed.
“No. It’s the old lady’s house. They’re going in.”
“What’re they doing? What’re they doing?” her mother whimpered into her hands, rocking back like a terrified child desperate to soothe herself.
“Nothing yet. They keep going in and out,” Jada reported from the front window. The cops kept moving around. Mostly, though, they were talking to each other. The black cop with white hair was the one that had been there last night. He was talking to Gordon. Delores stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. A small crowd had gathered in front of Gordon’s house.
“They’re coming out. They got her. They’re taking her out,” Jada said, her mother screeching with each report. “She’s on a stretcher. The doctor, he’s holding some kinda thing on her face. An oxygen mask it looks like. They just stopped so he can fix it.”
“She’s alive?” her mother asked incredulously. She emerged, squinting and cowering, from the dark room into the midday glare.
“I don’t know. Maybe. They keep doing things, like, working on her.”
“Jesus Christ!” Her mother covered her face and crouched low.
“At least she’s not dead.” Jada was relieved. For the last few days she’d been convinced the old lady’s body was over there swelling up in the heat. Sometimes she even thought she could smell it.
“So now she’ll tell, she’ll say it was us. Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! What’re they doing now?” Her mother turned in little circles.
“Nothing. They’re putting her in the ambulance. They shut the doors. They got the lights on. They’re leaving.”
Her mother staggered against the wall as she tried to run back into the bedroom. “I gotta go! Quick, we gotta get outta here!”
“No! No, it’s too late. They’re coming. Two cops, they’re coming up the stairs, Ma!”
Her mother wasn’t home, she told them. The older cop remembered Jada, but not