Night Navigation Page 4

  "Totally." He laughs again. "These people, they even steal from each other. Nooley's got forty thousand dollars stashed from his marijuana harvest. Somebody breaks into his garage and steals it all. He calls me up, crying: the money for his mortgage, his taxes, his kid's braces."

  10:15. Please. Only about sixty miles to go. She rolls down the window, puts her hand out to gauge the temperature.

  "See, that's the point: I know. And if they fuck with me: 'Hello, guess what?' But here's the best part, I've fucked my own shit over. My deal's done. Finito. I've burned all my connections." Again that laugh. "Because I can never live there again. That house: Aaron's everywhere. Danford. All my junkie friends. I'm not even coming back to the house for a night if it turns out there's a gap between rehab and halfway. Rozmer'll put me up."

  Route 11 takes them through what must have been the old part of Watertown: nothing is open. No people anywhere and only an occasional car. They come to a fork. No route sign.

  "Which way?" Mark says.

  She leans forward. "How can they not put a sign at a place like this?"

  Mark bears to the right. They go for four or five blocks. Still no signs for 11.

  "Why don't you pull over. I'll drive. We've only got fifty miles to go. I don't mind these two-lane roads. You can watch for the signs." He stops the car abruptly. No resistance. They switch. She adjusts the seat, the mirrors. Mark puts his hood up and lowers the seat back as far as it will go.

  She pulls out. "How are you doing?"

  "I am not doing well."

  "One hour," she says. "Just one more hour. Hang on."

  ROUTE 11 NORTH

  An arrow straight ahead and within minutes they're out on the open road again. 10:45. Dark and the steady mist of rain, so hard to see. And constantly she must turn the wipers on, but after a minute, the squeaking is so grating, she must turn them off again. Still almost no cars.

  Mark's head is back. His arms are across his chest. Maybe he will fall asleep. Leaning forward, her right hand tight on the wheel, when she turns the wipers off and on, that spot at the base of her neck is on fire. Once, she had been saying something about Lee in such a rage that her anger grabbed hold of the muscles in the back of her neck, a spasm so severe it has never completely relaxed. Twenty-five years ago. Right after Lee's death. August 10, 1977. She and the kids had been living in town for a couple of months. She'd packed up a car full of stuff and moved them as soon as school was out, left Lee, his silence, his strange looks, to live by himself in the pole barn, the stone house still just a shell. He'd told her he was sorry he'd taken her best years. Deargod, old at thirty-seven. And deargod, for a while she'd believed that. Their third separation and this time she said she was never going back. He would never reject her again. So many years before she understood it wasn't about her. Sitting in a chair in that little town kitchen—him dead only a few days—her scorned, damning him forever, she was seized by the neck. She presses her fingers on the burning vertebra. She's sixty-two years old. How could she have believed that, at thirty-seven, her best years were over? Then up from her belly comes a laugh so loud, Mark bolts upright.

  "What?" he says.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to alarm you. We're getting there. Try to sleep."

  Mark has twisted onto his side. She reaches over and touches his back. His sweatshirt is damp. "Cramps," he says.

  BROOKFIELD 5 MILES

  "Only five more miles." He sits up, puts his hood down. "Is the hospital right in town?"

  "Yeah, we'll start to see signs soon after we get there."

  11:30. They'll go right to the Emergency entrance. Emergency is always open. They'll see what shape he's in. Surely they'll take him even if they no longer have a bed in detox. They move through the outskirts of Brookfield.

  "Should be seeing signs soon," he says. "I hope they're going to give me the first thirty milligrams right after I walk in the door. Not have to go through a bunch of paperwork."

  "I'm not seeing any signs. Are you sure they're on the main route through town?" And then they are leaving Brookfield. "Somehow we missed it. I can't believe it. You'll have to help me find a good place to turn around; it's so dark."

  Mark is looking back. His voice in the darkness is low. "I think the hospital may be in Camden."

  "Camden? My god, Mark. How can it be in Camden all of a sudden? All along you've been saying Brookfield. Why would you have thought it was in Brookfield if it wasn't?"

  "Now it's coming to me that it's in Camden. I'm pretty sure it's in Camden."

  "What if we go all the way to Camden and it turns out it was in Brookfield?"

  Mark turns his back, curls up again. The fetal position. How fitting. "Mark."

  "Go back. Turn around if you think that's right. But I'm telling you, I think it's in Camden."

  She slows down. Still the squeaking wipers. "How far to Camden, do you think?"

  "I don't think it's too far. Must be the next town."

  She hears his teeth chattering. He's a dark mound beside her, but she can't reach in and save him. "Luke's blanket is on the floor in back. Put it over you. Okay, I think you're right."

  It's raining harder. "At least the fucking wipers have stopped squeaking," he says.

  CAMDEN

  Right away there's a blue hospital sign. "Thank you, thank you," she says.

  Mark sits up, kind of shakes himself the way Luke does. "Bluuuuuh." Another sign. He rolls down the window and leans his head into the rain.

  She slows. "Are you all right?"

  "Oxygen." He wipes his face with his hood and points. "I think, just beyond the Burger King, you're going to turn right." An arrow. And here it is: Camden-Brookfield Hospital Emergency Entrance. "Well, I wasn't totally wrong," Mark says. He reaches over the seat and wrestles his backpack to the front.

  The car in park, the ignition off. She does not ask, Are you sure you've got everything?

  "Ready?" he says.

  They push out of the car and rush toward the light. Just inside the portico they halt, smooth themselves. Breathe. Foreign shores. They pass through the invisible beam, the door opens and they march in. Three people behind the desk: a young woman with a pierced eyebrow; a lean, older woman, busy at a computer; and a large black man, tipped back in a chair, wearing a dark shirt and a security badge. She steps off to the side. Suppresses her instinct to take charge, her longing to hover.

  Mark goes to the desk. All three turn a little his way. "My name's Mark Merrick." His voice is weary. "I was supposed to be admitted to detox around nine thirty. Bad roads."

  The older woman scans her computer. "Here you are. Mark L. Merrick. Birthday: November 13, 1964. Medicare and Medicaid." Mark shakes his head yes, yes, yes. "I'll just need to have your insurance cards to make copies. We'll call the floor and someone will be down to get you, but it may be a few minutes. They'll do the admission once you get up there. After you sign a release, after they've made you more comfortable." She smiles.

  Mark digs out his cards. "Is there a bathroom?"

  "Right over there." The guard points down the hall. Just as Mark starts that way, he says, "But leave your bag here."

  A clear imperative, but said in a friendly way. So far so good for the Camden-Brookfield Hospital. She finds the ladies' room. There's the smell of vomit beneath the antiseptic spray. The yellow walls make her skin appear jaundiced. Looks like she could use thirty milligrams of something. The woman staring back at her is her mother: this never stops being a surprise. Especially now with this very short haircut she'd thought very beachy in Crystal Key, but now, flattened from the rain, it's got a female-inmate slant to it.

  Back in the lobby and no Mark. "He went to try the pay phone," the guard tells her. "Then he said he might step out for a cigarette. They'll be down to get him in a few minutes."

  "Thank you. We're so glad to finally arrive."

  "I'll bet," he says and his entire face smiles, like he's looked down the road they've come on and he's glad they made it too
.

  "Is there some sort of smoking room in detox?" It just comes out. One blink and a jumpy question escapes.

  "Oh, sure," the guard says. "Twenty-four-seven. One thing at a time, right?"

  Even though she doesn't completely follow this, she's reassured. The first time Mark was hospitalized, after taking one hundred Klonopin, when they refused to allow him to go out with the aide during the smoking break, he had crashed one of the chairs through the sunroom window and escaped. The Marwick police, out searching for hours. In a call to Sammi, he'd included his whereabouts in his colorful tale, so that she could inform the police. Once again she's glad it was Sammi who did the dirty work. They pepper-sprayed him. Back at the hospital, they stripped him and put him in a straitjacket. Shot him full of Thorazine. She somehow felt responsible, but his psychiatrist said, Maybe he's paid off some of his guilt about his brother. She leans into the counter; she is that exhausted. "I was wondering if one of you might know of a motel in the area."

  The young girl glances at the clock. 12:20. "There's the Gateway Inn. Where a lot of the parents stay when they come for something at the college. Very expensive. There's the Fairmont, more reasonable."

  "I just need a single. As long as it's clean. Reasonable's good. If you could just give me the numbers or a phone book."

  "Oh, I'll call for you," the young woman says.

  The other woman looks up from her printouts. "Why don't you have a seat. You're a long way from home."

  "Yes," she says. "Yes, I am." She feels her body let down. She can just catch bits of the girl's words.

  "The Fairmont's full," the girl tells her.

  "Why don't you give Parson's a call," the guard says. "Under new management. The new owners may be using the same number."

  Again she nods. She watches the girl's expressions. She sees her nodding. "They need your name."

  "Del Merrick."

  "I told her you'd be over in the next half hour. It's their last room. I'll write out the directions. Just off 11. Big neon sign out front says Nomad Motel."

  Nomad Motel. How right that is. Relief. Tomorrow she'll find her way home. Richard. Luke. But don't think about any of that now. Maybe she will go searching for Mark. Where could he be for so long? Then there's that surge of fear: Mark has taken off. She gropes in her bag for her keys. Down the hall, a man in hospital greens steps off the elevator. She's about to offer some defense for Mark's absence when Mark comes around the corner.

  "Mark Merrick?" the man says.

  Mark nods, shifts his backpack. Then he turns her way. "Just had a good talk with Rozmer," he says. "I'll give you a call." He leans over and hugs her.

  "Yes," she says. "Call." Call. But don't come home. Don't come to live with me again.

  She watches him walk away, this tall, thin boy-man with the graying hair. How grateful she was when she saw that the Canastota hospital nursery was almost dark—no shock of antiseptic bright—only one dim light far from his crib; just visible, the crown of his small head, covered by a thicket of black hair.

  The elevator door starts to close, a gray sleeve appears. He waves.

  4 : ID

  HE DOES NOT READ what he's giving them permission to do to him, just signs the release. The tremor in his hand when he squeezes the pen ekes out its own message. His nose is running and he is cold, an ache that spreads from the bones of his feet, his wrists, the sockets of his hips. Diarrhea and puking to follow, he knows. Terrible dreams. Someone places a warm something around him, hands him a wad of tissues. Just need to check your vitals. The pump of the blood pressure cuff tightening makes him clamp his clicking teeth: he's tying off, the end of his belt clenched in his mouth. He wants to moan. Maybe he does. Then someone in white reaches over and hands him a paper cup, pink liquid, glowing inside. Thirty milligrams. In half an hour, you're going to start to feel better. Tomorrow, twenty. Monday, ten. By Tuesday or Wednesday your system will be clean.

  He follows the pink glow down, flashing into the rush of his blood, washing up along his edges. There's a plastic band snapped to his wrist. His ID bracelet: Mark Merrick. In case he forgets who he is. In case when they check his vitals there aren't any there. His vitals. If he had the strength, he knows he could do a riff on that one. Why don't I walk you to the smoking room, she says. It's open twenty-four hours, every day. She shows him the safety-lighter in the wall. Just like the one at New Vistas. Yes, he nods, he's used these before. Soon you may feel like a shower, clean clothes before you get into bed, she says. Just push this button if you need anything or come on out to the nurses' station when you're ready.

  He lights a Camel, takes the smoke all the way down. The comforting hiss of the radiator: radiating, radiating. He reaches over and opens the refrigerator. Shelves of water, juices. Ginger ale. Cold cuts. Withdrawal heaven.

  They say it only takes seventy-two hours to kick. Seventy-two hours for all the opiate to leave the body. Kicking on your own: seventy-two hours of being inside the torture cage, up to your nose in black water—cold, and the dope-snakes biting you all over. But with methadone you pay the piper less. That's why he's here. He is sick of being dope-sick. He's heard there's an even quicker fix: they knock you out, drain your kidneys, your liver, few hours later you're all better. Follow-up pill-a-day, keeps the cravings away. Even if you take a hit, you can't get high.

  The main thing: put the dope-demon out on the street; double lock the door. He remembers the time some junkies robbed the guy in the apartment right below where he and Sammi were staying, blowtorched the center panel right out of the door. That's the way the junkie-joker operates. Extreme measures always up his sleeve.

  The shower is hot, pulses of heat prick the muscles of his neck. Under these lights his skin over his bony ribs has that shocking hue of things long under rocks: colorless, see-through.

  The sheets are hospital-clean. There's someone in the bed just beyond the divider: a compadre of the depths. A quiet breather, and the methadone is in charge, not a high, just a steady patrolling of the perimeters.

  How did he get here?

  He doesn't have a real ugly habit. Usually keeps it under control. Shoots only two or three times a week. Takes it easy going through a bundle. Usually holds back a little to come down slow. Takes a few weeks off before he shoots again. Not like Rudy. A real superduper dope fiend. Picking and scratching. Got the junkie-itch. Sores all over his body. Keeps ripping off the scabs. Nasty. If Smithy and Rudy hadn't had all that money, he wouldn't have gotten so fucking wasted. Every breaker blown.

  Only the shadow of hall-light through the half-open door.

  Dark. Bring it on. He's got a lot he needs not to think about.

  Aaron.

  You knew he was delusional, but you left him up there in his cabin all alone. Getting weird messages from Dad. Our father, who … Father? Where was he? Blew himself to kingdom gone.

  And what about you? The Wizard who beakered up your chemistry fucked the formula for sure. Eight years old and already a monster. Misfire. Misfire.

  Stay with me, Mark. Wood is safe. Stone is dangerous.

  5 : Leave a Message

  ALMOST HOME. Blue sky, the icy rain over at last—only five hours from the Nomad to here. Even the ruts in their road are sweet. There's a twist of gray beyond the trees: chimney smoke. Richard has been here this morning. Just as the car lifts over the rise, she sees Luke's eyes looking out from the kitchen. Del rolls down her window to the rush of the brook, the smell of March mud. Soon the geese will return.

  She loves this long view of the stone house. Once the drive curves past the pole barn, the lawn stretching to the woods in back, broken only by a few trees: the big maple, some of its low-reaching branches almost touching her studio windows; the two old thorn apples, their gnarled silhouettes reminding her of Mings. And by itself across from the barn, the Japanese cherry Kyle, Aaron's music school friend, planted after the memorial service. She and Mark, many of the people closest to Aaron, in a circle, each holding a small candle, whil
e Kyle placed the tiny tree in the ground.

  Rather than going for a view and wind, she and Lee had chosen to nestle the house between the brook, with its line of poplars, and a hill of sumac and hemlocks. Close enough for her to haul most of the stones for the house walls from the brook bed to be piled by the site. Hundreds and hundreds. Her job, while Lee dug the footer trenches by hand.

  Luke has both paws up on the sill, his nose pressed to the glass. As soon as she opens the car door, she hears his bark. The yard in front is littered with bits of trash: cigarette butts, Luke's sodden stuffed animals, Mark's basketball tucked under the lilac bush. November and March, the world exposed.

  What to do first? Maybe enough calm to begin to work on the drawings from Crystal Key. Five days of detox. Then, please, rehab: twenty-eight days. Then a year or two in halfway. He's said himself he mustn't come back here. But, no matter what, the chances are more than good she's got five low-worry days to be here all by herself. A bubble of joy expands in her chest. Luke bursts out as she unlocks the door. Del wraps her arms around his neck, breathes in his dog-breath.

  "I'm thrilled too," she says. "But what to do with you weekends?" Luke will not be welcome at Richard's. She'd tried that a few times. Then Luke chewed up Richard's reading glasses.

  The house is toasty. The gauge on the stovepipe registers in the yellow zone. Perfect: no creosote buildup and no danger of flashing out of control. Richard is the great fire builder. Willing to load the stove to the top, the front vents opened just enough. Fires that burn through the night. Luke's water bowl is brimming. Richard hasn't been gone long. He must have gotten her message from Watertown. What did people do before answering machines? Talked to each other.

  For a few minutes she's not going near where their machine sits. Luke leans against her. She knuckles his ears and scratches just below his chin. When she gets up, he's still fastened to her leg. "I'm not going anywhere." It's likely Richard took Luke for a run while he surveyed the needs of the property: what trees should be thinned, how much the bank has eroded along the drive, how the roof he did for her a few years ago is holding up. The inventory habit. Richard likes to intone deeply, You don't own the land; the land owns you. And Richard is owned by one hundred acres in the hills on the other side of Danford, only fifteen minutes away by the Back River Road. One hundred acres of deep woods and a beaver pond and fields. Richard is a hunter and a lover of machinery. Whenever the world is too much with him, he brush hogs: mows and mows and mows.