American Boy - Larry Watson [59]
Mrs. Dunbar reached a hand toward her husband, but stopped short of touching him. “But Rex ... this storm.”
The doctor bent toward his wife, his expression stern. “I have to do this, Alice. Do you understand? Dale’s life depends on him getting to a hospital as soon as possible. I can’t ask someone else to make that trip.” Then the movie-star smile returned. “Besides, you know very well that this is the tail end of the storm. It wasn’t even predicted.”
“It will be worse out in the open. You know that.”
His look hardened again. “I don’t have a choice here, Alice. Don’t make this harder.”
Louisa had been edging away from the table during this exchange, and now the doctor looked her way and nodded, a signal so subtle that you had to wonder about other communications that might have passed between them without anyone noticing. Louisa hurried off toward Dale McDonough.
“With any luck at all,” Dr. Dunbar said to his wife, “I’ll be home before dark.” But when he bent down for a farewell kiss, she offered her cheek rather than her lips.
The way the snow was swirling and billowing in clouds, it looked as if darkness might fall by noon.
16.
HOURS PASSED WITH NO LETUP in the storm, and no word from Dr. Dunbar and Louisa. Mrs. Dunbar chain-smoked and paced from room to room, looking out one window and then another as if the blizzard might show a milder face if examined from the south side of the house instead of the north. The twins worked on a jigsaw puzzle and quarreled ceaselessly about whether the other was deliberately hiding pieces. Johnny and I tried to study for a history test.
Of course, with the possible exception of the twins, we were all doing math computations. Bellamy was fifty miles away, an hour’s drive at most in ideal conditions. But in this storm, Dr. Dunbar’s travel time might double. That said, he still should have arrived by now. Even granting an extra hour to assist the doctors with Dale McDonough, we should have heard from him by now. Why, we all wondered, hadn’t the phone rung? Or, for that matter, why weren’t the doctor and Louisa home already?
For the third time that afternoon, Julia went to the telephone, dialed zero, and—though she was in a house full of clocks—asked the operator for the correct time. “Stop calling,” Mrs. Dunbar snapped at her daughter. “I don’t want you tying up the line.”
“It only takes a second,” said Julia.
“Not even for a second!”
The wind whistled around the house’s turrets and cornices, and the snow swept along the wide porch and hissed at the front door. Johnny’s mother backed into the middle of the room as if she feared the walls might blow in. She put her palms to her ears. “This country!” she said, a comment to which she expected no response. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Mrs. Dunbar was more worried about her husband being out in a blizzard, or that he was in the company of Louisa Lindahl.
I leaned across the dining room table and whispered to Johnny, “Let’s go upstairs to Louisa’s room.”
Had I suggested that he and I take off our clothes and run out into the storm, Johnny could not have looked more dumbfounded. Nevertheless, he closed his history book and got up from the table. He didn’t say anything until we had climbed the three flights of stairs and stood outside the closed door leading to Louisa’s room.
Johnny put his hand on the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. With his arm stretched across the doorway, he said softly, “Hey, Matt. What’s going on with you anyway?”
“I thought this would be a good opportunity to have a look around.”
“For what? What the hell do you expect to find?”
“Nothing in particular. But maybe something that would—”
“Would what?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. “Something that will let us in on her secrets and mysteries.”
He twisted the knob and pushed the door open. “Jesus. You got it bad.”
Louisa’s room looked barely lived in. An iron-framed twin bed