The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [95]
“He’s not here,” the bartender said when he noticed her looking.
“Who?” Louise gulped some chardonnay. Lately she hadn’t been getting those hang-up phone calls.
Brian presented his ID and turned to Louise. “At this point, whatever’s in your garden could be just about anything,” he said, interrupting. He gulped down the first shot of whisky as soon as he was served. “We’ll have to collect the bones, clean them, then send them to Cambridge and have them carbon dated. I’ll have to call Professor Seymour in on this.” He laughed, delighted. “I’m in way over my head.”
When Brian turned away for a moment, the bartender leaned in. “He’s in the hospital,” he told Louise. “His appendix burst.”
“People don’t even need their appendixes,” Brian assured Louise when he noticed she looked stricken. He was already pouring another shot. He planned on getting drunk. “I’m going to be famous. Your house is going to be famous.”
“It already is,” Louise said.
THERE WAS NO chinking of the shovel the next day at 5:00 a.m. While Brian was sleeping off his hangover, Louise went out to the garden. She peered down at the pile of bones. She had a shivery feeling, as if they’d perhaps discovered something that was meant to be left alone. She gathered an armful of flowers from the piles that had been torn out, then set off in her mother’s Jeep. It wasn’t yet visiting hour at the hospital, but the floor nurse recognized her from all those weeks she’d spent at her mother’s bedside and let her in.
Louise had told herself she’d never walk into another hospital, but here she was. Johnny Mott was sharing a room with Mr. Hirsch, who was the principal of the high school. Mr. Hirsch had had a seizure the doctors thought might have been a stroke and was there for observation. Johnny looked aggravated over being trapped in a hospital bed, especially in a room with Mr. Hirsch, who had suspended him from high school three times for ridiculous infractions. Johnny had had his share of trouble as a kid and was headed in the wrong direction, then had straightened himself out. He still had scars and tattoos that seemed to belong to somebody else.
When he saw Louise Partridge with her half-dead flowers, he thought he was hallucinating. They’d been giving him Percocet for the pain.
“I hate hospitals,” she said.
“Agreed.” Johnny sat up in bed. He assumed he looked like an idiot—he was wearing a hospital gown—but actually Louise felt mutely and stupidly drawn to him. He was half naked and staring at her. She sat down on the edge of Mr. Hirsch’s bed. She thought she might have a hangover herself.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Hirsch said bitterly. “Don’t mind me. Make yourself comfortable.”
He’d spent forty years being sarcastic, but as Louise had gone to private school she took him at his word and said, “Thanks.”
“Allegra told me you’re living with someone. She said he drives a Volvo.” Johnny sneered. “Those cars are so overrated.”
“Your sister isn’t as observant as she thinks she is. Is that why you stopped calling and hanging up, because of the Volvo?”
“Calling?” Johnny said, feeling shifty, even if he was a police officer.
Louise rose off Mr. Hirsch’s bed and came to stand beside Johnny. She had something in her hand. A smooth white arc. She couldn’t help but notice that they kept the temperature much too hot in hospitals. They thought only of the dying, never of the living. But wasn’t that always the way?
Louise thought she might burn alive standing there.
“I don’t think a basset hound’s behind this,” she said, showing Johnny the bone she carried with her.
“You never know,” Johnny Mott said. People who knew him would have been shocked to hear just how thoughtful he sounded.
“Really?” Louise said. “Maybe that’s true for you, but I always do. I don’t have to think twice about things.”
AFTER A TIME, Brian had collected all of the bones and washed them in a bucket. They were then spread out on Louise’s porch, to dry in the sun. A spine, ribs, long femurs, knobby things that