The Decoding of Lana Morris Read online

  “Okay!” Lana yells up.

  It’s Wednesday. A week before, Lana had proclaimed it Pink Wednesday in Tilly’s honor. She’d put strawberry syrup in everybody’s milk and red food coloring in the pancakes. She’s done the same thing today, and when she takes the pancakes upstairs, Veronica sits up in bed, picks up a fork with her right hand—her only hand—and then stops. She stares down at the tray. “What’s wrong with the pancakes?”

  “Nothing,” Lana says. “They’re regular except I put red food coloring in them to make them pink. Tilly likes it, and so do the others.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Veronica says. Then, looking evenly at Lana, “Maybe it’s the kind of thing you have to be a little on the mongo side to appreciate. But my disability is physical, not mental, so if you wouldn’t mind bringing me some unpinkened pancakes …”

  “The whole batch is that way.”

  This seems, oddly, to please Veronica. Her shoulders drop into a relaxed bow, and a cold smile stretches across her lips. “Then make another batch,” she says.

  Lana stares at Veronica. Veronica stares at Lana. But there is a difference, and Lana can see it. Veronica is enjoying this. She says, “You know what Whit said the other day when he came into my hospital room? He said he found my new look disarming.”

  It takes Lana a long second to get it, and then—she can’t help herself—a quick, nervous laugh slips from her lips.

  Veronica nods. “Whit thought it was funny, too, but you tell me, do you think this is funny?” And here, with her one hand, Veronica slides the sleeve off her left shoulder.

  Lana doesn’t want to look, but before she can avert her eyes, they light on the pale, fleshy protuberance that at its end is conical and pink. It reminds her, strangely, of an extra breast, but nippleless and misshapen, as alien as a third eye on a forehead.

  Lana has looked away but now hears a raspy sound and glances again: Veronica is raking at the fleshy stump’s soft pink end with her fingernails, hard, so hard Lana expects the tear of skin and ooze of blood.

  “Don’t,” she hears herself say. And then—she isn’t looking anymore; she can’t look anymore—she actually hears the scratching stop.

  Veronica laughs a cold laugh. “You and Dr. Gooch,” she says.

  A rustling follows, and when Lana looks again, Veronica has covered herself, and a thick silence has filled the room, a waiting silence, because there’s more coming, Lana can feel it.

  “Things have changed,” Veronica says finally, “and I’m not just talking about the itch where my arm used to be.” She blinks a long, slow blink. “We need to come to an understanding.”

  Lana tries to harden her expression, but this merely produces a fresh gleam of cold pleasure in Veronica’s eyes. She says, “There’s only one reason you’re still at this address, and that’s because you’re the little den mother.” Her smile stretches slightly thinner. “Den mother and upstairs maid. And the day you don’t handle your duties in a top-notch fashion is the last day you spend under Whit Winters’s roof. Comprende?”

  Outside, the gentle hoo-hooing of a mourning dove, and Lana thinks of gliding away in flight. She imagines a stilted cottage with a thatched roof on a sunny beach.

  “Comprende?” Veronica repeats, and Lana is brought back.

  “Comprende,” she says in a small voice.

  “Well, then,” Veronica says, and she pushes the tray of offending pancakes in Lana’s direction.

  Lana, despising herself as much as Veronica, bends forward to pick up the tray. But as she carries it to the door, Veronica speaks again. “Magazines,” she says.

  Lana turns to see Veronica pointing her black cane toward some magazines stacked on a chair in the corner. Lana sets down the tray and begins to bring the entire stack to Veronica.

  “Not all of them!” Veronica says.

  Lana looks at her.

  “The new Cosmo.”

  Lana finds it near the top and slides it out. Veronica waits until she’s nearly to the bed before she says, “And the Us.”

  It turns out there are several copies of Us in the stack. “Which one?”

  Veronica yawns. “The one with the ten hottest widowers on the cover.”

  Through the window Lana sees a taxi slowly passing as if looking for an address and she watches until it rolls out of view. Then, in the stack of magazines, she finds a People with a cover story of the ten wealthiest widowers. “You mean this?”

  Veronica shrugs a yes, and Lana sullenly sets the magazines on the bedside table. Veronica regards them, yawns again, and says, “And a small glass of orange juice while I’m waiting for breakfast.”

  Lana glares at her.

  “Faith,” Veronica says. “Unity.” She takes a deep breath as if of alpine air. “They really are words that lift the spirits.”

  Downstairs, a knocking sound is followed by footsteps.

  Veronica glances at the clock. “Oh my God,” she says, “it must be John.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Gooch. He said he’d drop by this morning. Give me five minutes to get presentable.” Then, slipping into a cold smile, she adds, “Offer him some pink pancakes or something.”

  Lana, leaving with the tray in hand, bumps Veronica’s door closed with her hip and has to resist the urge to scream. Scream and throw things.

  Which would mean, as Veronica had put it, the end of her time under Whit’s roof. Things had changed, all right, and not for the better.

  As Lana descends the stairs with the tray, the first thing she sees is Garth’s Popeye doll lying on the floor. Then she sees Garth himself, his skinny arms wrapping and unwrapping his chest, his head and feet bobbing, his face tense with rapture. Lana looks beyond him to a middle-aged woman who stands stiffly on the front porch, and the woman casts her dull brown eyes up at Lana.

  31.

  Garth’s mother, Mrs. Stoneman, seems as mystified by her presence here as everybody else. She tells Lana that she just decided to come, and something behind the tiredness in her eyes seems to say that now that she’s here, she wonders why she is. She’d taken the train from Salt Lake to Cheyenne, she says, and then a bus to Two Rivers, and then a taxi to the house. The house didn’t seem familiar to her, but the address was right, so she’d gone ahead and knocked.

  Still bobbing, Garth takes Mrs. Stoneman to his room, showing her where he always lines up his action heroes on the sill of his window facing out so they can keep on the lookout for danger, and to the kitchen, where he eats his Cocoa Puffs or pancakes every morning. Each time they run into one of the other Snicks, Garth with a tense, beaming face says, “Is ’y ’om!”

  He even takes Mrs. Stoneman upstairs, where Veronica in a weak voice gives the details of what she calls her “personal tragedy” and tells of Dr. Gooch’s strict protocol for total bed rest and, letting her eyes shift to Lana standing in the door, thanks her lucky stars that “our Lana has been here to take over as the house major domo.” (This is a grade up, Lana notices, from den mother and upstairs maid. She also notices that Veronica, in making herself presentable for Dr. Gooch, has merely changed into a fancier nightgown. What Veronica means to present, Lana guesses, is her blimp-sized bazookas.)

  As happy as she is for Garth, Lana cannot stop herself from thinking over and over again, It works! It works! It works! This is proof, isn’t it?—absolute proof. She erases the pills and now they’re gone. She draws Garth’s mother coming back and now she’s here. She tries not to think about Veronica’s red, aching stump. Lana wants to get away to her room, find the paper, and figure out how to make it work for her and Whit. It’s better than winning the lottery. It’s better than a magic fish or a genie in a bottle.

  But Lana can’t get away. She’s the major domo. She’s in charge.

  She sets out orange slices, Chips Ahoys, and lemonade at the kitchen table as a special treat for everyone. Garth sits next to his mother while she sips lemonade and doesn’t touch the Chips Ahoys. She doesn’t talk either. She just sits
and looks around.

  “Alfred ate a whole toothpaste today,” Tilly announces, and then looks at Alfred. “Didn’t you?”

  Alfred ducks his head and grins.

  “And the other day he ate a whole bag of ’Ronica’s pills!”

  Mrs. Stoneman turns to Lana, who says, “They weren’t pills, Tilly. They were Red Hots, right, Alfred?”

  Alfred beams.

  “But you thought they were pills!” Tilly says. “You told Whit they were pills!”

  “But I was wrong,” Lana says in a curt voice, and the table falls quiet. She turns to Mrs. Stoneman and says, “I guess you’re pretty tired after all the traveling.”

  Mrs. Stoneman nods. Then she says, “So Mrs. Winters is bedridden?”

  “For a while, I guess. Not for long.”

  “And where’s Mr. Winters?”

  “He’s painting today.” Lana feels oddly defensive. “Usually he’s home, but today’s he’s painting. He’s painting a three-story Victorian over in Fawnskin, with three colors, yellow, black, and green, except it’s more like a sage green.” She would keep talking, but she sees Mrs. Stoneman’s not listening. Mrs. Stoneman’s eyes are crawling around the room, taking in information. She doesn’t like this place, Lana can tell, but that’s fine. Good, even. It’ll just make it easier for her to take Garth and go.

  When Tilly distracts Garth by building a leaning tower of orange peels, Lana asks Garth’s mother the question she’s been dying to ask: “So what made you decide to come back?”

  Mrs. Stoneman shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Garth, giving his chest a happy squeeze, is staring with obvious pleasure at Tilly’s budding construction. Mrs. Stoneman regards him for a moment, then her gaze drifts and Lana needs to bring her back.

  “But do you remember what day you decided or anything?” Lana says.

  Mrs. Stoneman says, “It was just an idea is all. I just kind of woke up with it. What’s funny is, I didn’t …”

  Tilly’s construction has collapsed and at once Garth says, “ ’Ee now!” and Alfred starts piling up his own orange peels.

  “Do you let them do that?” Mrs. Stoneman says.

  Lana shrugs. “It’s supposedly good for their fine-motor skills.”

  “Arguing and clamoring?”

  Lana hears the nervousness in her own laugh. “No, the arguing and clamoring aren’t good for much of anything, but they’re hard to get rid of.”

  Garth, who’s eaten all his own cookies and none of his orange wedges, reaches across his mother to take one of the cookies from her plate, and, in the quickest instant, something flickers in Mrs. Stoneman, and Lana has the feeling that Mrs. Stoneman wants to slap Garth’s hand away but keeps herself from it. Again her eyes light hard on the kids at the table, then they become gauzy and drift off, as if she no longer needs to see anything in this house, has seen all there is to see, and is now trying to see all the way back to Salt Lake.

  Sudden heavy laughs burst from the table, all directed at Carlito, who’s holding an orange wedge in his mouth so that it looks like a giant orange smile. Garth, when he laughs, opens his mouth to expose half-chewed chocolate chip cookie. Again something seems to flicker through Mrs. Stoneman, and again she suppresses it. But a moment or two later, she pries Garth’s hand from her last cookie. He stops laughing and looks up.

  “You know sugar makes you worse,” she says. “I need something out of my bag.”

  A nasal decongestant, it turns out. While Garth watches, Mrs. Stoneman sprays decongestant first in one nostril, then the other. After she caps the bottle and puts it away, she wraps her hands around the cold, beading lemonade glass, and Garth presses his hands into his armpits as if to trap them. “ ’Ot eat,” he says, shaking his head.

  “So you just decided to come back,” Lana says.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Stoneman says, and there is now a clear tone of irritation in her voice. “I just decided.”

  There’s more giggling laughter at the table, and now Tilly and Alfred are wearing giant smiles made with cookie halves, and Garth, laughing his thick laugh, abruptly grabs the Chips Ahoy, and in the instant he starts to position it on his face, his mother turns rigid.

  “Stop that right now!” she barks, and as the whole table turns quiet, Garth puts down the cookie and seems to shrink down into himself.

  “ ’Orry,” he says in his mangled voice, and it reminds Lana of Tilly saying she was a big mistake, and Lana sees suddenly and all at once how all of the Snicks have been made to know they are big mistakes and that what small portions of love or affection or even tolerance might come their way will come at the pleasure of people like Mrs. Stoneman, or Veronica, or her own mother.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Mrs. Stoneman says, her voice still hard, “just be good.”

  Garth looks like a scraggly dog who’s just been hit and might be hit again. Without a word, he slips from the table and leaves the kitchen, probably to get Popeye, Lana thinks.

  In the silence that follows, Mrs. Stoneman becomes self-conscious. “Please,” she says in a tight voice, “just go on about your business. Whatever it is you do. Just go ahead and do it.” She turns to Lana with a helpless look. “In Salt Lake City, I do the bookkeeping for a restaurant called Mack’s. I take the bus, two transfers each way. I eat lunch at my desk so I can leave early enough to catch the four twenty-five. I have a room with a hot plate and its own bathroom and cable TV.” Mrs. Stoneman makes a small unhappy smile. “I like that room. I like that job. I like that life. How …,” she begins, but she doesn’t finish. She collapses back into her thoughts.

  In the quiet, from the other room, Garth’s feet shuffle toward them. He stops at the kitchen door. He looks limp again, and he’s holding Popeye in one hand and twisting Popeye’s head around and around with the other.

  It’s quiet for a few seconds and then, again, the sounds carry down from overhead: thunk thunk thunk.

  32.

  When Lana has mixed up the fresh pancakes (without any offer of help from Mrs. Stoneman), she delivers them to Veronica and explains the situation. Mrs. Stoneman is tired and is having some kind of allergic reaction to the pollens here and wants to get a motel room, but she doesn’t want to spend money on a taxi and Whit’s gone, so there’s nobody to take her.

  Veronica seems not to hear. She hands Lana her orange juice and says, “Sip this.”

  “What?”

  “Sip it.”

  “Why?”

  “Yours is not to reason why.”

  Lana sips it. “It’s fine.”

  “Good. Now try a bite of this.” She extends a forkful of pancake.

  Lana already has it in her mouth when she realizes what Veronica’s doing. She swallows and says, “Doesn’t seem poisoned to me.”

  Veronica doesn’t respond to this, but she does begin to eat. “Here’s my question,” she says while she chews. “Does Garth’s mother think she can just walk in here and whisk him away, because if she does …”

  But Lana interrupts. “I don’t think she thinks anything,” she says. “I don’t even think she’s sure why she’s here.”

  This interests Veronica. “Then why did she come?”

  Because I drew her here, Lana thinks. “I have no idea,” she says.

  Veronica chews, swallows, sips. “Okay. How about asking your little boy chum to take Mrs. Stoneman to the motel. He can drive her in my car.” The Monte Carlo, which was finally back from the auto shop.

  “If you’re talking about Chet, he’s not my boy chum or whatever goofy thing you just called him.”

  Veronica shrugs this off. “He’s got his license, doesn’t he?”

  Lana has no idea. All she knows is that K.C. has let Chet drive his LeSabre once or twice. “Yeah,” she says.

  Veronica leans from her bed, uses the crook of the black cane to hook the strap of her purse, and pulls it toward her. Her hand disappears into the purse. “A shame about Alfred stealing those pills,” Veronica says casually, and lets her gaze slid
e toward Lana. “But the nice thing about pills is they’re replaceable.” A moment later, she hands Lana the keys. “Tell your little boy chum, no new scratches.”

  Lana ignores this and asks where he should take her.

  “I don’t know much about motels,” Veronica says, “but my recommendation is the Best Western on Highway 20.”

  33.

  “Not much of a recommendation,” Chet says when Lana hands him the keys. “The only other motel is the Wagon Wheel, and it’s a different kind of motel.”

  Lana asks what “different” means.

  “Well, it was an old five-unit apartment building before they converted it, and what motel customers of a certain type like is that you can park your car in a garage, close the garage door behind you, and go right into your room without prying eyes knowing you or your vehicle is there”—he wags his eyebrows—“if you get my drift.”

  She does. “I thought it was a big trucker place.”

  “Is. That’s the other clientele.” He rattles the keys. “Is Mrs. Stoneybrook going to tip me?”

  “It’s Mrs. Stoneman, and I doubt it very much.”

  Chet is nodding. “Though I don’t see what would keep me from doing a little joyriding on the way back.”

  “That’s some staunch thinking,” Lana says, which, to her surprise, seems to embarrass Chet. Something’s changed in Chet. Something’s definitely changed. Maybe he has a girlfriend or something. She thinks of asking, but she’s afraid that’ll embarrass him, too.

  “So do you have a driver’s license?” she says.

  “The question is, Do I have a driver’s license? And the answer is, Yes, I do.”

  Lana thinks she sees the loophole he’s wormed through. “Okay. You have a driver’s license, but is it yours?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Lana laughs. “All righty, then. What I’m going to remember here is the ‘Yes, I do.’ ”

  “Glad we could do business,” Chet says, and adds an easy smile.