Mercy House Read online

  He checked the time on his laptop. The dinner would be starting soon, which meant he could hit the kitchen and raid the leftovers in an hour. Tabbing over to a minimized window he put on his headphones and decided to chill out with a little villainy. In high school it had been Limp Bizkit and Slipknot, but his tastes had matured since then: A little Dying Fetus looped over some streaming porn should do the trick. If he got bored or spent, he could always hit the kettle bells.

  Teddy the handyman cranked the volume, the erotic brutality drowning out the rest of the world.

  As tough as he was trying to be, his mind kept turning to tonight, the dose of tenderness he would receive, would be allowed to reciprocate. It was exhausting sometimes, keeping up mental appearances, always playing the villain.

  Chapter 6

  Beatrice Kent had spent three quarters of a century staring into mirrors, fixing up her face.

  A lesser woman would have given up by now, resigned herself. There were plenty of those women here, and not just among the residents but the staff as well. Queen Bea pitied and envied these women in equal measure.

  What must it be like to walk, out in the open, in sight of God and men, and not give one jot for how your hair looked, or if your eyeliner was on straight, or that you were wearing eyeliner at all?

  Terrible and wonderful, probably. That was as far and complexly as Beatrice could conceptualize it. She never went out without looking good.

  She made an O with her lips and then lined them with an unsteady hand—more unsteady by the day, it seemed. She then used a tissue pinched under one of her fingernails to remove the smudges. Growing up poor meant growing up smart; the million little tricks that her mother had taught her, from mixing her own foundation to stretching a bottle of nail polish to its absolute maximum, were all tricks that Beatrice employed to this day, not because she couldn’t afford the finer things but because they had made her a better artist within her medium.

  She looked down at her bottles and puffs, her brushes and palettes. Every day her hands got a little shakier, and the materials on her countertop got a little fuzzier. The day she couldn’t put them on would be the day she accidentally fell over the third-floor banister, her head bouncing against every railing on the way down. She’d decided that early on in her tenure at Mercy House.

  But they weren’t there yet, not nearly.

  Having her room on the third floor not only had its perks—a wider countertop to keep her makeup, for example—but Beatrice also considered living on the third floor her civic duty, to some extent. The poor souls on the third floor were nearer to heaven in more sense than one than those on the second floor. They needed her vivacity. It helped them. This was not pride, it was fact. They needed to see Beatrice walk out of her room under her own power, face painted and hair immaculate. Even those who didn’t spread gossip themselves needed to hear whispers of her bawdy conquests, of her gentlemen suitors, of the broken hearts she’d left speckling their little community.

  Queen Bea, a nickname that she’d initially disliked but now secretly coveted, worked hard to inspire hope, to keep passion kindled where it could so easily wither and die. It was not strictly for her own entertainment but for all those who couldn’t: couldn’t get a date, couldn’t stay awake, couldn’t sneak out of their rooms, couldn’t get it up. Beatrice was doing it for the people.

  Her appearance at the welcome dinners was part of it. Gail Donner asked Beatrice to attend because she was well spoken, but Beatrice didn’t think Donner was observant enough to realize the best reasons for having her there. Beatrice was the best proof the administration had that life didn’t end when you got to Mercy House, that if you wanted it badly enough, it could be a party on par with those of Roman emperors.

  That Beatrice enjoyed herself while providing hope to the little people of Mercy House was completely beside the point. By giving hope to the dowdy dames like Marta Rosen or Candice Amato, the chatty Cathys who never worked up the nerve or energy to go where she went, Beatrice did enough public service to have earned her rewards, secrets she could keep to herself.

  Yes, everyone knew about her and Harry Beaumont, but they were supposed to. It may have been scandalous years ago, an interracial coupling, but Beatrice Kent was nothing if not progressive. Harold was younger than most men at Mercy House, but not all the men.

  Perhaps Queen Bea’s greatest conquest was the reason she was paying extra close attention to her eyebrows and the smoothness of her hairline.

  She was dating a younger man.

  She smiled to herself and ran a hand over her scalp, feeling for wispy stray hairs, finding a patch, and then running a safety razor over the hairs until her head was smooth. After that it was a foundation of rubbing alcohol, applied with a cotton swab, and then she arranged her strips of Supertape, bottles of scalp protector, and Ultra Hold.

  He was young and strong, even if he was timid and inexperienced in bed. He vehemently denied it, but Beatrice knew that she was his first. If he’d had any friends, this would probably be a point of embarrassment for him, but as the situation was, he was Beatrice’s little secret.

  She painted on her protector and adhesive, turned her hair dryer to its lowest setting, and blew onto her bald head until the glue was tacky.

  “Beatrice,” Flores said outside the door, just as Beatrice turned off the hair dryer. “I’m going down to the dinner, should I wait for you?”

  Beatrice tensed her arms, then quickly picked up the wig and dropped it on her head before she spoke.

  “I’ll be right out,” she said, locking eyes with herself in the mirror, lips as sexy as she could make them. “I was just freshening up.”

  It was going to be a great night.

  Chapter 7

  “You jump every time. Don’t piss yourself or I’m going to have to smell you all night,” Klopic said, his cigarette dangling with his hand in front of it, blocking the cherry. He had his arm propped up on the edge of a rock wall so his shoulder wouldn’t get tired.

  “I can’t help it, but I’m not going to piss, either,” Arnold said, his voice more of a whisper than Klopic’s. He dropped the binoculars and let them swing into his chest, their weight always a surprise as they came back around.

  “If it’s any consolation, Pie, you won’t hear the shot that takes your head off,” Klopic said, ashing into his own hand and wincing as the embers hit his palm. They weren’t supposed to be smoking outdoors, but it was unlikely that the bulk of the NKPA inside the city was concerned with their southern flank. They needed to worry about the mess that had just landed in Inchon Harbor and was moving to meet them.

  Klopic got to go by “Klopic,” but Arnold went by “Pie.” As the men made their way north, Arnold’s name had gone from Piper to the Pied Piper to just Pie. Not out of affection but because Pie was shorter. That was how bad it had gotten by the time they’d reached Seoul. Nobody wanted to bother with that extra syllable for PFC Arnold Piper.

  Klopic was lance corporal, so he’d earned the extra half second it took to say Klo-pick by putting in the time.

  There was another crack of sniper fire and, as he had for the past hour, Arnie jumped.

  Their own boys returned fire in the small cluster of pops that followed. Not that they could see any of this in the darkness; it was just what they assumed. The retaliation, and the success of it, was something that they took on faith.

  “Now is not the time to be worried,” Klopic said. “MacArthur’s made some kind of blood oath. We’re all going in there tomorrow. You thought marching over the hills and down the valleys was bad?” Klopic whistled, the cigarette flaring red as he pulled in an extra breath through his teeth. “We’re going door-to-door tomorrow, like the fucking Avon lady. Leaving free hand grenade samples for all the—”

  That was all Klopic got to say before half of his face exploded. The bullet sliced through his hand, two fingers and the cigarette butt, and Klopic’s digits collided with Arnie’s chest before scattering into the shadows. Th
e entry wound was right below Klopic’s cheekbone and his whole head had collapsed inward as if a black hole had formed in one of his fillings. The other half of his face was pure splatter, some of the debris collecting in the man’s helmet, but most of it painting the concrete wall behind him.

  A second and a half later, as the chunks began to roll down the rock wall, the report of the rifle sounded. Arnie jumped, even though he had known it was coming.

  Before another shot could be squeezed off, Arnie hit the deck, crawled back inside, and reported what had happened. The next morning he’d see fifteen more men shot, two of them by his own hands as the detachment went door-to-door in Seoul.

  —

  There was nothing dreamlike about this dream. It was an exact re-creation of how Klopic’s death had happened, and the shot was a sound that Arnold Piper awoke to often. Sometimes the memory jarred him awake enough that he realized he needed to visit the bathroom, and sometimes he could get back to sleep, the last words he shared with Klopic harmlessly tucked back with the rest of his dreams, neutralized and unremembered upon waking.

  Today he’d only been napping, so the slaughterhouse stink of L. Cpl. Klopic’s hopes and memories falling down that garden wall on the outskirts of Seoul would be with him for the duration of the night. Normally, after a nap like this, Arnold would turn on the TV above his bed and try to anesthetize himself with the most syrupy program he could find, but tonight his thoughts hung on that night in 1950.

  Even more out of character, Arnold thought about how he never really liked Klopic, anyway. As a vet who’d lived long enough to end up in a place like Mercy House, Arnold Piper knew that death had a way of elevating average men to saints and assholes to admirable salt-of-the-earth types. Klopic was an asshole, the kind of guy who would have enjoyed watching the South Koreans ride into town after the city had been captured and drag all the collaborators into the street, their wives and kids, too, to put a bullet in them.

  I’m glad he’s dead. The words came unbidden into his mind, a comment he’d never allowed himself to think, even about the men he’d killed himself.

  What’s wrong with me? Arnold thought, closing his fist and feeling the power that had grown there, with his nails digging into his palm but not breaking the skin, as if his skin was tougher now than when he’d drifted off to sleep an hour ago.

  The scent of rotten fruit in his room was stronger, too. So strong that it was hard to focus on anything else but the soup of Klopic’s brain and the flecks of teeth and bone. The memory was so fresh that the smell of the room became the stench of Klopic’s voided bowels.

  Arnold Piper leaped out of bed. Impressed by his own agility and incensed by thoughts of violence, a smile spread across his lips.

  Chapter 8

  The third floor was quiet, but that in and of itself was not odd.

  There were days like this. Whether it was because the sky had been overcast or whether the activities in the rec room had been particularly taxing, there were late afternoons when bedtime came a few hours earlier than usual, as if the residents of Mercy House had sent out a memo that the nurses and docs had not been privy to.

  Not that many of Mercy House’s patients were night owls; many of them didn’t make it past sundown most nights. And a select few of them never stirred at all.

  Sarah entered Mrs. Samson’s room and frowned. She hadn’t expected anything different from what she’d found previously, but it was hard not to hold at least a spark of hope when going into the comatose patient’s room.

  Mrs. Samson had slipped into this state of unconsciousness six weeks ago. A stroke had caused her condition, and a series of ministrokes, aftershocks, had peeled back brain activity at a discouraging rate in the days that followed.

  Now Mrs. Samson—it was not Ms. Samson, as she was always quick to correct Sarah, even though Mr. Samson had checked out of Mercy House nearly a decade prior—was buttressed in tight by a series of well-placed pillows of various sizes. It was not uncommon for her to suffer a seizure or two a day and kick the arrangement out of order, but there were enough pillows to keep her in place.

  After Sarah had changed her fluids and pads, checked and swabbed all her connections, she would replace the assemblage of pillows as she did every night.

  Before Mrs. Samson had entered this state, with about as much brain activity as Sarah’s clipboard, she had been one of the few third-floor residents to prefer Sarah to Flores. The woman’s dislike of Flores might have been racially motivated, but Sarah tried not to dwell on that, or Mrs. Samson’s baseless accusations that Flores had been stealing from her. Instead Sarah had relished the positive attention. Mrs. Samson had the capacity to be severe, borderline cold, but then again, so did Sarah.

  Sarah approached the bed, taking in the personal items that adorned Mrs. Samson’s room. There were two distinct layers of belongings: pre- and post-consciousness. The first layer was easy to distinguish because of the sheen of dust, and the slight sun-fade that had fallen onto the items. Over the bedside table hung a simplistic landscape, an oil painting of some trees and a brook. On the third floor and with the way that Mrs. Samson’s window was angled, the woman could not see the treetops from her bed, only the sky and a snatch of mountain, hence her fondness for the landscape. Below the painting, on the table, were framed pictures of her husband, children, and grandchildren. That was the extent of the first layer, as Mrs. Samson was not a fan of knickknacks.

  But stacked on top of the picture frames were get-well-soon cards, some of them the size of small posters, many of them prominently featuring Garfield or the Peanuts gang. There were also stuffed animals, sad-eyed dogs and plush hearts that talked or played music when you squeezed them. Sarah liked to think that she was familiar enough with Mrs. Samson’s simple, Spartan tastes to know that the woman would be appalled by her family’s gifts, but at least she had people who cared enough to visit.

  Sarah took gloves from her white coat pocket and stretched them on. Then she took off the coat and laid it over a chair. There were nights when this got messy. Sarah did not hold the mess against her patients, though. She knew that it was likely she would require the same help one day, and would thus do her duty without flinching, hoping that the same dignity would be granted to her, when she would need it.

  Never heavy, Mrs. Samson had gotten much easier to move over the past few weeks. Not that Sarah was celebrating that fact. It meant that she was nearing the end.

  Removing her blankets and turning Mrs. Samson onto her side, Sarah pulled a sheaf of paper down over the mattress before pulling up the old woman’s hospital gown and undoing the fixtures of her pad—another professional substitution meant to shield patients from the word diaper. With her face pressed against one of the pillows propped by her head, Mrs. Samson made a sound like a surprised gasp. It was nothing, though, just air escaping after the body had shifted.

  Sarah peeled the pad down an inch or so, checking it, before pulling it back up. Yes, it would need to be replaced. She made sure the woman wasn’t going to roll back down, then bent under the bed to one of the plastic storage bins, removing a fresh change. There was a rustle of sheets and paper, the sound of Mrs. Samson’s body slumping back down, maybe shifting the old diaper out of alignment. In a hurry to rise up and catch her, Sarah raised her head too fast and bumped the base of her skull on one of the metal rungs of the hospital bed.

  Rubbing her head, Sarah allowed herself to fall back into a seated position on the floor, unable and unwilling to get up. As her mind cleared, she could hear a new sound. The EKG machine, which had been issuing at a weak two-count between beats when Sarah had entered the room, was chiming faster now.

  Oh, God, what if she had bumped a cord out of alignment? Sarah might have to call the doctor up from the dinner.

  Sarah gripped the edge of the bed and pulled herself up with the guardrail.

  Whatever she had been expecting to see, it had not been Mrs. Samson’s panicked eyes fixed on her, her lids open and her pupil
s moving with enough agency to mimic consciousness. It scared her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sarah whispered, and reached out to move Mrs. Samson’s gaze, either by turning the old woman’s face away or flipping her whole body back toward the window, she hadn’t decided which. That was when the woman spoke.

  “Don’t say that,” Mrs. Samson said, her voice so dry and cracked that it was hard to make out the words.

  Unable to help herself, Sarah took a step back while stifling a yelp with her hand. She could smell the latex of her gloves as her fingertips pushed flat over her nose and mouth. It hadn’t been her imagination; the woman who was a few brain cells away from legally brain dead had just spoken to her.

  “Mrs. Samson?” Sarah asked, not moving her hand far, becoming sensitive enough of her audience now that she did not want to show whatever grimace or expression of horror must have been plastered over her lips.

  “The Lord’s name,” Samson said, her eyes making separate, looping circles like a chameleon’s, but one still pointed in Sarah’s general direction.

  The room was quiet. There was the slight crinkle of wax paper under Mrs. Samson as her body quivered, either from whatever synaptic event she was going through now or the chill of being left uncovered. Sarah could not let herself believe that there was any connection between what she had said and what had to be random words the woman was speaking right now.

  As if in response to this thought, Mrs. Samson’s head moved a few degrees so she was no longer looking at Sarah but instead seeing the wave of get-well gifts that had broken over her bedside table during the last few weeks.

  “Where are my things? What is this?”

  Mrs. Samson was no longer fighting to get the words out, but her breaths were still ragged, as if her inner workings had dried out while she was sleeping, her tongue and vocal cords shriveling.

  Impossibly, the old woman lifted a hand to the edge of the bed. Reality reasserted itself, just a shade, as the woman’s wrist went limp when she tried to lift herself, strength enough in her muscles to move the arm, but not in the joints to withstand the weight. Even if she was regaining brain function, her body had wasted; it would take her weeks of PT to walk again.