“Okay, sure.” Mack watched as she lugged a substantial cardboard box from the corner of the room. He took it from her, and stood holding it while she went over some details of his mother’s care—medicines and trips to the specialist dentist and,Oh, Mrs. Evans also has her hair done by the visiting beautician twice a week, andMrs. Weigand has offered to keep that up, so that’s good news, isn’t it?
Mack tried his best to look grateful.
“I’ll let you get back to your mom now, Mr. Evans,” Marilyn said finally, “and we’ll just stay in touch over the next few weeks. Ah, and one last formality: Iamrequired to tell you that your mother is categorized as an extremely vulnerable adult. What that means is that we do need to have information about where she’s being transferred to, if you indeed decide that Mrs. Evans is going to leave us. We need to make sure it’s an appropriate facility that can meet her care needs.”
“Right.” Mack hugged the box of papers to his stomach; he looked and felt like he’d just been fired from something.
As he bade Marilyn goodbye and started down the empty hallway, Mack realized that he was being watched. An elderly woman stood in one of the doorways he passed, and with surprising swiftness she stepped into the elevator with him just as the doors were closing. As Mack pushed the button for his mother’s floor with his elbow, the old lady reached out and gripped his arm with such force that he almost dropped his box.
“Help me,” she begged, clutching at him with both hands. “They’re watching. Get me out of here.” Her cloudy eyes were full of desperation; her fingernails dug into his skin.
“I—” The box pitched sideways. He righted it with his knee and used the opposite hand to frantically push for the button to open the doors.
“You have to help me,” she said again. “I’m trapped, and they’re watching. I want to go home.”
Salt poured into Mack’s every wound. His heart fluttered, and his mind went utterly blank. All he could think about was the painful pressure being applied to his wrist by this small, wrinkled woman.
“Please,” he said to her. “Please, just hold on a sec, and we’ll call someone—” The elevator was moving.
“No! Don’t tell them! Just get me out of here!”
The doors pinged, then what felt like a thousand years passed while they shuddered open.
“Tilda!” yelled Mack, and the sight of the nurse’s puzzled face appearing from Leonora’s room was like the second coming to him. “Tilda, I think this lady needs some help.”
As Tilda took her arm—Ah, Miss Angela, on the move again, are we?—the old woman shook her head and bared her teeth at Mack. “You—”
He didn’t hear the rest because he fled to Leonora’s room and shut the door behind him. He stood by the side of his mother’s bed, next to his wife, and made no move to stop the tears running down his face. He was grateful when Hailey didn’t speak, and when she reached out for his hand.
“I had this crazy idea,” he finally managed. “That we’d take Mom home with us today. Don’t laugh. I mean, I didn’treallythink that, but it crossed my mind in some way, you know? Not being able to pay for this place seemed like a great excuse to just... I’ve always wondered if I could just get her out of here and... maybe, maybe take her out for a beer or something, or a drive, then she’d want to wake up and be alive again.Fuck!”
He saw Hailey jump as the huge sob escaped from him. She dropped his hand, took a step back, and Mack felt like he might just burst apart. But then Hailey’s arms were around his shoulders, and even though he was rocking back and forth and sobbing and shuddering like mad, she was so damn strong that he couldn’t break free of her. After a while, he stopped trying to.
15.
Hailey
The price tag on the red bathing suit was $495. It was not a brand Hailey had heard of before, but the color was striking, just a touch of aBaywatchvibe while still classy enough for the pool at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. She bought it, and a pair of nearly-as-pricey trunks for Mack too. She declined the offer of a shopping bag and returned to her husband’s side at the check-in desk.
They had possibly collectively lost their minds. The Breakers was almost a thousand dollars a night. Hailey was still in deep shit at work, Mack seemed to be in deep shit at life in general, and they had no real savings left apart from the untouchable check from Sunshine Enterprises. Yet here they were, checking into one of the most luxurious hotels in the country, choosing theNew York Timesas their morning paper option, asking about breakfast.
“Tell me where you’d take her,” Hailey had said to Mack as she’d held him by Leonora’s bedside. “One place your mom always wanted to go.”
Mack’s mother had apparently aspired way beyond her means, and so, in a flurry of emotion and rash decision, here they were—though, of course, without Mack’s mother. Sunlight streamed into the giant lobby of the Breakers, its beams bathing the furniture, the rugs, and the endless flower displays in an otherworldly and dust-particle-free glow. Hailey searched the edges of her consciousness for the first hints of panic but couldn’t find any. Bad thoughts were banned from here, best left outside with the poor people.
Mack took the room key from the receptionist, and they made their way to the elevator. A bellboy wheeled the trolley of their embarrassing luggage—L.L.Bean duffel bags, the cardboard box with Leonora’s papers that Mack had refused to leave in the car—on its own discrete journey, freeing Hailey to pretend that they belonged in this place. She wondered, fleetingly, if David Rainier had ever stayed here, and then slapped him from her mind. Mack needed her; what was done was done, and now she had to press ahead without overthinking.
The hotel room was not a room, but a suite, with two Juliet balconies overlooking the ocean.
“Did you ask for a—”
“It was all they had,” Mack said, sinking onto a pristine white sofa. She could not bring herself to ask him how much. The bellboy knocked, and Mack didn’t move, so it was Hailey who let him in, watched him place their bags on the luggage racks, awkwardly gave him a twenty-dollar bill. (Five hardly seemed enough, given the pile on the carpet and the exotic fruit basket on the dining table.) Once the man was dispatched with, Hailey stretched out on the bed, closed her eyes, and breathed in the scent of unattainable wealth. No matter how many coffee stains she had had laundered, no matter how many broken hearts she had achieved revenge for or Cartier love bracelets she bought herself, she would never be immune to this kind of luxury. Too much blue-collar water had passed under the bridge for her to take even a lesser five-star hotel for granted. Maybe they should bring the girls here, whet their sense of entitlement, acclimatize them early.
When she opened her eyes, Mack had not moved from the sofa. Hailey sat up.
“How about we try the pool?”
He didn’t respond. Hailey had the distinct feeling that twenty years’ worth of denying his traumatic past may have come to an abrupt end. Which was just great. She really needed him to keep it buried for a while longer; this was not a good year for digging up a nervous breakdown.
