Thirty-Two

I have trouble with hospitals. Big deal, right? Who doesn’t? I especially have trouble with the idea of a hospice—a hospital of no return. Even when I knew beyond doubt, beyond reason—confirmed by every doctor worth his stethoscope—that this attack of emphysema was Dad’s final round, there was still that tiny undeniable ray of hope. Maybe this time, this once, one puny human will confound the experts and defy the odds.

My dad’s Scots-Irish Catholic family believed in miracles; maybe they passed that on to me. My mom believed God had cleared out of the miracle business, left people to create their own if they could. She also believed human beings had gravely disappointed their maker.

The only miracle I was praying for was that Cal’s informant had made a mistake.

St. John of God Hospital is a small place that keeps a low profile. Unless you drive directly down Allston Street between Summit Avenue and Washington Street, you’d never know it existed. It’s on a taxi route, a good shortcut between Brookline and Cambridge; otherwise I’d never have heard of it, much less known the way there.

I pulled my Toyota into the cement square of parking lot. There weren’t many cars.

The lobby looked too cheery, like Christmas in August. The front desk was staffed by two women, one heavy, one thin. The thin one wore a cardigan sweater in spite of the heat, and was busily filing a broken fingernail; the plump one was tapping at a computer keyboard.

I caught a faint quiver of interest when I asked for David Dunrobie.

“He doesn’t get many visitors,” I ventured.

“You’re the only ones I’ve seen,” the woman working at the terminal replied. The other woman nodded her head in solemn agreement.

“Are there, like, visiting hours?” Cal said. He’d stayed half a foot behind me. I could hear the faint snap of his fingers, a nervous habit I’d long forgotten.

The thin woman picked up a phone receiver and said, “Let me check whether one of Mr. Dunrobie’s doctors is available. See if it’s a good day for a visit.”

“Sometimes he’s not well enough for visitors?” Cal asked, a little too quickly.

The heavy woman at the keyboard exchanged a glance with the nail-filer, then spoke in a confidential whisper. “He’s got a sort of, uh, amnesia, as a symptom of the disease. He fades in and out. Some days he talks up a storm. Some days …” She shrugged her massive shoulders.

Suddenly I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to keep a picture of him in my mind: Davey Dunrobie, young, talented, graceful, on his way to the top.

Cal voiced my misgivings. “Do we need to do this?”

“I have to,” I said. “You can wait for me, take a walk, go home, whatever.”

The thin woman murmured, “Here comes the doctor now.” I noticed that her nail file had disappeared discreetly into a pocket. She bent her head and diligently sorted forms.

The man in the white lab coat, white shirt, and red bow tie had entered the lobby through swinging doors. The nameplate on his breast pocket read: Dr. Sanderley. He spoke in a reedy tenor. “Are you related to Mr. Dunrobie?” he asked.

“Close friends,” I said. “We just found out.”

“He’s been with us six months,” the doctor replied.

“Off and on?” I asked.

“Six months.”

“Does he go out much? Travel?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” the doctor said. “When he goes out, which isn’t frequently, it’s in a wheelchair. Sometimes we get a chair-van for day trips. Not often.” He seemed puzzled by my questions.

“How is he?” I said. The doctor seemed more comfortable with that one.

He consulted his wristwatch as if to figure out exactly how much detail he could fit into his schedule. “Well, he’s had several bouts of pneumonia,” he began. “Pneumocystic, the kind most HIV patients get. Each attack has left him a bit weaker, more open to other infections. He had a go with meningitis. He has thrush, an infection that interferes with the clarity of his speech.”

“Break it to us gently, doc,” Cal muttered in a bitter tone I remembered like a whiplash.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said gently, taking no offense. “But if you intend to see him, you ought to be prepared. He’s also losing his eyesight. And in addition to attacking the immune system, HIV may also attack and destroy brain cells, causing dementia.”

“The nurse up front told us he sometimes had amnesia,” I said.

“She’s not a nurse; she’s a receptionist. And she has no business discussing the patients. Absolutely no business.” Doctor Sanderley’s anger subsided abruptly. “It’s often difficult to get good people to work in a place like this,” he said with a sigh.

I swallowed. “Does Davey know where he is? What’s happening to him?”

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.”

I bit my lip. “Look, I need to see him.”

“You need to see him? This isn’t a social call?”

“It may be a police matter,” I said. If I’d had the photostat of my license, the one in my stolen purse, I’d have shown it to him. All I had was a business card. “I’d like to keep the police out of it.”

“Would Mr. Dunrobie recognize your names?”

“If he recognizes anything. Tell him Carlotta and Cal are here.”

“I’ll try.”

We were left in the lobby for five minutes, maybe four, maybe fewer, but it felt like forever. I had time to memorize the burgundy carpet, the blue sofas and chairs, the framed landscapes, the portraits of long-dead benefactors. There were too many vases of overblown flowers in the room, too many smelly plants.

The double doors opened and the stink of disinfectant invaded my nostrils. I thought of Dee in her four-star hotel suite, Davey in his hospice bed. A lucky toss of the dice. An unlucky one.

Dr. Sanderley led us through the double doors and down a long corridor. Women in white slacks and bright-colored T-shirts hurried by in rubber-soled shoes.

Sanderley hesitated before a door labeled 101A. “Go ahead in. I’m not sure how much he’ll say or how responsive it might be, but there’s no reason not to visit.” He smiled encouragingly. “I’ll come by in a while if I can get away.”

I braced myself, the way I used to when I wore the uniform, when I had to stand watch over a stiff until the homicide detectives came to take charge—before I became a homicide detective myself.

Then I was inside, staring at the name on the chart at the foot of the bed, straining to believe, trying to disbelieve, that this was the man, the boy, I’d known. His head was a skull. He was so thin his forearms looked breakable, like matchsticks. His eyes burned. Then, suddenly, he smiled at me, at Cal, and his bloodless lips had to stretch to cover the width of the grin.

“Long time,” Davey said. “Oh, boy, long time. Carlotta, Dee, Cal, Lorraine, the old gang.”

I had to lean forward to hear his cracked voice.

“Yeah,” Cal said. He walked right over and shook Davey’s outstretched hand. I did the same. It felt like a bird’s wing. I barely touched it.

Tubes dripped clear liquids into the veins of his left arm; urine dripped into a plastic bag attached to the mattress of the mechanical bed.

“Davey,” I said, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about what happened to you after the group disbanded, after Lorraine died, until this week, until Dee told me.”

“Dee’s swell. Man, anytime I need anything, you know, I got a famous friend. Did I tell you I know Dee Willis? Man, I’m practically responsible for Dee Willis.”

“Here we go again.” I hadn’t even realized Davey wasn’t in a private room until I heard the other voice. His roommate was a tiny wizened man. I was afraid even to guess his age because he looked well over sixty and I was pretty certain he wasn’t yet forty.

I rounded on him. “What do you mean?”

“Hi,” he said. “My name’s Mike. I used to be with the Merchant Marine. That’s why I’ve got the travel posters all over the walls. Every place you see, I’ve been, some twice.”

“They’re great posters, Mike,” I said. “What did you mean by that ‘Here we go again’?”

“It’s not so bad really. I’ve had worse roomies than Davey here. It’s just every once in a while he gets on this Dee Willis rag, and you can’t stop him. He talks about her for hours on end. Same stuff over and over. I mean, I talk about some of the best ports I ever landed in, but at least I only tell the same story once.”

In his whispery voice, Davey said, “I knew Dee when she was nobody. Nobody. She made me fuckin’ famous, ’cause I’m the first guy she ever slept with, you know that?”

In a bored voice, Mike said, “Yeah, Davey, I know you slept with Dee Willis. You sleep with Dolly Parton? Cher? Were they the greatest or what? You can tell me all about them too.”

“Davey was Dee Willis’s singing partner,” I said with enough volume for Mike to hear. “She hired me to find him. Davey, do you understand? Dee told me to find you.”

I looked up at Cal. He’d frozen at the mention of Dee’s name.

Davey started to cry, but it wasn’t really crying. It was more an overflow of tears, as if he couldn’t control his eyes anymore.

Doctor Sanderley said softly, “That happens a lot. Emotional control goes. Don’t let it bother you. It doesn’t bother him.”

I hadn’t even heard the doctor enter the room.

Davey said, “Sweet Lorraine. I gotta stop talking about Lorraine and Dee. I know that, man. But Dee, shit, maybe Dee shouldn’t have laid that on me. I mean, I hear Dee on the radio, man, I see her on TV. I hear Dee all the time, singing to me, singing those songs for me.”

I didn’t think it would do any good, but I decided to ask. “Davey, did you write any of Dee’s songs?”

He looked at me and said clearly, “Maybe one chord. Maybe nothing. Dee sang to me. Dee sang to me like a bird in a tree once. I love Dee like my mother, like my sister, like my baby, my lover. Dee sings me songs on the radio.”

Mike, the roommate, laughed. “Yesterday he told me he wrote everything she ever sang. He said if he had his rights he’d have maybe three, four hundred thousand bucks.”

“Really?” I said. “He mentioned that figure?”

“Just about all the time. Three hundred thousand smackers. Do a lot of first-class travel on that kind of bread.”

I turned back to Davey. “Does Dee give you money?”

“If I ever need money, Dee gives me money. Man, all I ever have to do is ask. Dee, she’d give me anything.”

“Have you talked to her lately?”

“No.”

“Why would Dee give you anything, Davey?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Secret, secret.”

“Come on, Davey,” I said. “It’s me, Carlotta. It’s Cal. We won’t tell.”

“You’ll tell,” he said in his eerie ruined voice. I wondered if it hurt him to speak. “Dee, she’ll get angry. Throw one of those fits. You know how she is.”

“No, Davey, she told me to find you. Dee wants me to know.”

“I’m not telling,” he said, narrowing his eyes cannily. “I know what you’re doing. You’re not even here, right? It’s those drugs, right? They make me talk all the time, say all this stuff. I never knew her, really. Just knew sweet Lorraine, that’s all, just sweet Lorraine.”

The roomie said, “It goes on like this for hours. Sometimes he sings. That’s a real treat.”

“Does he have a guitar?” I asked.

The doctor shook his head.

“He used to play. If he had one, do you think he might like to, I don’t know, just hold it, or play it or something?”

“He might,” the doctor said.

“Could he, with all that junk in his arm?”

“I’m not sure,” the doctor said.

“I’ll bring his over,” Cal said.

“No, Cal,” I said. “Let me bring him mine.”

“I’ll bring his Hummingbird, Carly. Shut up.”

Davey said, “Did I ever tell you about the night Dee and I got so drunk we couldn’t stand up onstage? We had to play our guitars standing back-to-back so we could hold each other up.”

The roomie said, “Yeah, Davey, you told me that. Doc, you think I can get another roommate? Somebody who’s done a little traveling? Somebody knows where Singapore is?”

Davey rambled on about Malcolm, his guru on the hill, and other people we didn’t know. He started to cry again when he said he couldn’t find his old pictures, his photos of Dee and the gang. He accused Mike of stealing them, and Mike put his pillow over his ears and repeated his request for a new roommate.

“I’d like a little intelligent conversation before I die,” Mike said. His last word seemed to echo off the walls.

When Cal and I left we weren’t sure Davey knew we’d gone. We weren’t sure he knew we’d been there.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked Sanderley out in the hall. “Does he have a radio, a tape deck?”

“We have good sound equipment. Donated.”

I’d get him a tape of Dee’s latest album. Maybe Dee could send a tape of the concert.

“Anything else?”

“He likes mocha almond ice cream,” Dr. Sanderley said.

“Mocha almond,” I echoed.

“To tell the truth,” Sanderley said, softening his words with his gentle smile, “there’s not a lot anybody can do for him. Just accept him the way he is.” The doctor’s nostrils flared in a well-disguised yawn, and I wondered how long it had been since the man had slept.