The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [63]
“Where?” Ken asks.
Oliver looks down at his frozen right arm, his clawed hand. “Fuck!” he says, and no one speaks. They have never heard him utter such a word. “The times! Go … see … the the the … the times!” He strains forward with a despairing groan. Drool seeps from the corner of his crooked mouth. The right side of his deeply wrinkled face is slack and the eye droops.
“New York? The Times?” Annette asks.
Looking around, Nora realizes what he wants. The fender. The finder. His BlackBerry on the nightstand.
He grunts and shakes his head as she tries to give it to him. He wants Ken to take it. “On!” he directs, watching closely, anxiously, until Ken gets it going. “Day! Day!”
“Which day? Today? Today's Thursday,” Ken says.
“No!” Oliver lifts his left hand. “More. One. The one.”
“The next day?” Annette asks. “Tomorrow?” She sighs with fatigue.
“Morning!” Oliver says.
A look of helplessness befalls Ken with the realization of what this means, what Oliver needs, what he is asking. Ordering: Ken to take over for him.
“Ed. board, ten thirty. Jannerby at one,” Ken reads, scrolling through Oliver's schedule. “Hugh Delaney … Chris Ramiriz.” An annoyed, put-upon child, he looks up and rolls his eyes with a heavy sigh, like Drew whenever he's asked to clean his room or set the table. This, Nora knows, is the very last thing on earth Ken wants to be doing right now. “Hell,” he says with a dismissive flip of his hand. “Every one of these can wait, Oll. You'll be up and at 'em in no time, you'll see.” Grinning, Ken pats his unmoving arm.
“No!” Oliver erupts in spittle-foaming, thick-tongued protest. “You! You do the … the flings!” His left arm thrashes into the bed rail. “You!”
“All right! I'll do the flings!” Ken says, but when no one smiles or speaks in the strained silence, he looks back sheepishly, leaning close so Oliver can see the BlackBerry “Here. Okay, the ed. board, now what's up with that? Who knows? Who should I call? Who's best, Goldman?”
Oliver nods and Ken points to the next item on the small bright screen. Annette slips from the room in search of coffee, somehow more dispirited, Nora thinks, than relieved. Even though he's not supposed to be using his cell phone in this part of the hospital, Stephen is checking his messages. Watching the two brothers struggle to communicate, Nora is touched, encouraged by Ken's tenderness. He would never abandon his brother. Or her. Certainly never his children. He can be careless and immature but is incapable of deliberate cruelty. They've turned a corner somehow. These deepening responsibilities will make him a stronger, better man, she thinks, while a part of her, albeit a shrinking part, rattles the bars, demanding to know if she's this desperate, that even her brother-in-law's stroke must be turned to her own advantage?
I know,” Ken agrees when they get home. Of course he should have called her when he knew he was running late. “But after the meeting with Bailey I ran into this guy. An energy consultant. He's been everywhere. The last year mostly in Iraq. Interesting, his take on the whole thing. The worst thing we can do right now, he said, is pull out. That's what the sheiks want—”
“Sheiks? You mean mullahs? Sorry,” she adds with his quick glance. “You're probably right.” One of the biggest surprises in therapy was Ken's admission of often feeling undermined by her easy criticism and “steely” self-assurance. Steely? More like Swiss cheese, thanks to you, she wanted to say, but didn't. Couldn't, not from this high wire, anyway, though she has been trying to be more positive. Supportive, even when the effort chafes.
According to the consultant, there's a deeply entrenched Iraqi underground. It's all about money. Politics and religion are just smoke screens, Ken declares, because oil is everyone's bottom line. Sunnis, Shiites, whoever controls the oil flow can bring the free world to its knees.
“Which is why we're there,” Nora says, again too quickly, though not snidely, she hopes. She and Ken are so often at odds politically that they long ago declared these