American Boy - Larry Watson [27]
“That’d work. Are they all fatal?”
“They’ve got to be, don’t they?”
“I guess.” I rolled the clay between my palm. “Your parents didn’t ground you or anything?”
“They gave me the talk. You know, we’re disappointed in you, we expect better from you, we hope you’ve learned something....”
I wanted to know whether my name came up during the course of that talk, but before I could ask him, Johnny turned back to the poster board. “I think the models of the organs should be to the same scale as the drawing. So it looks like they’ve just been removed.”
“Or could be put back.”
“Yeah, like you’d want to put a diseased liver back.”
“Well, if there’s no hope...”
The Dunbar house had a narrow staircase that led from the floor above down to the pantry off the kitchen. They called it the maid’s staircase, though the Dunbars had never employed anyone in that capacity. Coming down into the kitchen through that entrance enabled Louisa to arrive without our having heard or seen her approach. We looked up, and she was there.
Without a word of greeting, she walked over to the sink and filled a glass of water from the tap. She was dressed exactly as she had been on New Year’s Eve, right down to the slippers. After she drank, she leaned back, crossed her arms, and watched us as intently as we watched her. She seemed bored but a little on edge, as if even a quarrel would be a welcome distraction.
“Don’t mind me,” she said finally. “Go ahead with whatever you were doing.”
“A science project,” Johnny explained.
“Yeah? Looks like you’re performing a—what do you call it?—an autopsy.”
“Nope,” said Johnny. “The patient is still alive.”
She came over to the table and looked down at our unfinished work. “Maybe you should call in a specialist.”
“Won’t do any good,” I said. “He’s doomed.”
“Might as well sew him up and send him on his way then.” Louisa bent over and looked closely at me. “The doctor sure did a nice job with your stitches.” She touched her own eyebrow.
I pointed to her midsection. “How’d he do with yours?”
She set down her water glass, backed up from the table, bent over, and grabbed the hem of her dress. While Johnny and I watched in disbelief, Louisa Lindahl slowly pulled and gathered up material until her dress rose above her knees, above her pale thighs, above her once-white-nowgraying cotton underpants, above that navel into which my fingertip had once inserted itself, and still higher, until the scar that traversed her abdomen was exposed, a puckered pink slash that looked more like a healed-over knife wound than a bullet’s track. She let us gape for a moment—not knowing that she had been bared to us previously in a similar way—and then she dropped her dress and smoothed it down the front.
This little act apparently provided the amusement she’d been seeking. Louisa clapped her hands and laughed. “You are a pair, you know that? You should see the look on your faces!”
Johnny and I glanced quickly at each other as if to verify what she had seen. His face was pure amazement.
“Well?” Louisa asked. “Did you want to look or didn’t you?”
“He did a nice job,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say, Johnny? Your dad did a nice job?”
“He knows how to pull a stitch tight, that’s for sure.”
Only seconds had passed, but I was already making demands on my memory. Had I seen a mound at the front of her underpants, a springy little swelling underneath the fabric? Had an inch or two of cotton torn away from the elastic waistband and left a triangle of flesh uncovered? If she had only given us some warning, I would have known to focus even more carefully.
Louisa walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. “Suppose anyone would notice if one of these beers went missing?”
“They’d notice,” said Johnny. “But they’d blame me.”
“Or me,” I added.
Still peering around the refrigerator’s interior, Louisa replied, “Really? I thought you two were brandy drinkers.”
“Beer, when we can get it,” I said.
“When you can get it?”
“A couple guys will buy for us sometimes,” Johnny said. “But they’re not always around. It’s kind of hit or miss.”
She closed