Say Goodnight, Gracie Read online

  “Actors Equity,” a woman said. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh, yeah. . . . I’d like to know if Jimmy Woolf is still there. He had a four forty-five appointment—”

  “I know,” the woman said. “We’ve been trying to reach him.”

  “Reach him. . . .”

  “He never showed up.”

  “But he left for there over an hour and a half ago.”

  “Maybe he had car trouble. When you see him, will you ask him to give us a call? We can only hold that summer-stock job open one more day.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I went back outside. It wasn’t like Jimmy not to call. Even if he’d had car trouble—which was certainly possible the way that old heap of his kept falling apart—he would have found a way to get to a phone. It was city streets all the way from Old Town to the Loop, and if Jimmy’s car had stopped in the middle of all that traffic, someone would have called a tow truck. And how long would it take a tow truck to reach him? Fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty? I looked at my watch and decided to give him another hour. Then I’d definitely call someone. His mother. Or the police. I walked back and forth in front of the theater. I stood by the curb and looked down North Wells. I must have stood there a long time. Long enough for my fingers and toes to get numb, long enough to count over two hundred cars. And my eyes tricked me: Three times I was sure I saw Jimmy’s MG, three times I was wrong. He never came, and my mind turned to practical matters: How would I get home? I had a little cash on me, but not enough for cab and train fare. I was thinking about going inside and calling my aunt when a car pulled right up beside me and jerked to a stop. It was our car, and my mother was driving. She reached over and opened the door.

  “You must be frozen,” she said. “Get in, darling.”

  “But Jimmy—”

  “I know. I’ll tell you all about it. Get in.” So I got in and barely had a chance to slam the door shut before my mother’s foot went down on the accelerator.

  “Listen to me now,” she said in a tone of measured calm. “Jimmy’s been hurt. There was an accident—”

  I looked at her. “What do you mean hurt?”

  “There was a car accident. We’re still not sure how bad it was—”

  “What happened? He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “We just don’t know. Your aunt’s in the emergency room right now trying to find out what’s going on—”

  “But I don’t understand!” I said. “He’s a careful driver! He’s always been such a careful driver!”

  “The police said the other driver had been drinking. Apparently he jumped lanes and skidded into Jimmy’s car—

  “What did Aunt Lo say? Jimmy’s not unconscious, is he?”

  “Darling, I didn’t have time to talk to her. I dropped Enid off at the hospital and came right over here to pick you up.”

  I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. “I knew something was wrong . . . when he didn’t come.”

  “Oh, dear God,” my mother said. “I was just . . . I was just thinking how glad I was you weren’t riding with him when it happened.”

  15

  “I remember something Mrs. Woolf said to me once,” I said to my mother. She wasn’t even listening. She was hurrying—running ahead of me—taking the hospital steps two at a time. “Mother, will you wait? I want to tell you something—”

  “Now?”

  “It’s important. I was talking to Mrs. Woolf—”

  “Oh, damn, I’m all turned around,” my mother said. She stopped just inside the hospital doors. “Which way is Emergency?”

  “It’s downstairs. We have to take the elevator.”

  “I must be losing my mind,” my mother said. We went over to the elevators, and she punched the down button and we waited.

  “Anyway,” I said, “she was talking about Jimmy—”

  “Who was?”

  “Mrs. Woolf. Mrs. Woolf and I were talking about Jimmy once,” I said. “And she told me Jimmy always bounces back.”

  “Oh . . . Morgan . . .”

  “I’m just telling you what she said.”

  We took the elevator downstairs and hurried down the hall. I was getting a stitch in my side from walking so fast. We passed a lounge Jimmy and I had played cards in while we waited to take my aunt to dinner one night. He had beaten me roundly—he always did. I still owed him $4.80.

  We turned a corner. My aunt was sitting there holding Mrs. Woolf’s hands and talking to her. I knew by the way she was talking that Jimmy was dead. Nobody had to tell me.

  “No,” my mother said. “Oh, no . . .”

  She went over and put her arms around Mrs. Woolf and I sort of shuffled off into the background. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to do. Jimmy dead? I had just seen him a few hours earlier. I was still wearing his jacket. How could he be dead? I turned around and walked back down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going—I was just automatically walking. I went around a corner and bumped into a nurse—my aunt’s friend, Mrs. Getz. She tried to put her arm around my shoulders, but I pulled away and kept walking. I went into the lounge and sat down on a couch and tried to make my hands stop shaking and my heart slow down. I couldn’t think.

  Suddenly I felt my aunt’s hand on the back of my neck. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said.

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.” I didn’t like not being in control. I know I place too much importance on the way I appear to the outside world, and I keep things inside too much. I don’t like to give pieces of myself away. There are very few people I’m willing to do that for. Jimmy was one. My aunt is one.

  I looked up at her. She seemed very concerned. “I’ll get through this,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Of course you will.”

  My mother walked into the lounge and stopped and looked at me. Her mascara had run and made black half-moons under her eyes. I wanted to cry too, but I couldn’t. It was like there was a curtain of glass between the part of my brain that knew Jimmy was dead and the part that could feel anything about it.

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. I pushed my hands down into my pockets so no one would see them shaking.

  “I think we’ll quiet you down a little,” my aunt said. “Betty?” She looked across the hall to Mrs. Getz. “I want to get ten milligrams of diazepam i.m. into Morgan.”

  “I’ll go ask one of the emergency room nurses for it,” Mrs. Getz said.

  My mother sat down in a chair and put her head in her hands. “Enid’s talking long distance to Jack,” she said. “He’s catching a late flight home from Cleveland, and I’m going to stay with her until he gets here.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “Enid? I don’t know. I don’t see how she’s going to live through this, I honestly don’t.”

  “I want to know how it happened,” I said. “I want to know how he died.”

  “Oh, Morgan, no,” my mother said.

  “I want to KNOW!”

  My aunt didn’t say anything right away. She sat down on the couch and looked at me. “Jimmy was thrown about a hundred feet from his car. He was in a coma when they brought him in, and he never regained consciousness. He died of massive head injuries.”

  “He was in a coma? When did he die?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “I was right there,” my aunt said. “I held his hand.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked. “The body, I mean. Where is it?”

  My mother took a bunched-up Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose. She was crying again. “Loey . . . why is she doing this?”

  “I have to know,” I whispered to my aunt. “Where is he?”

  “The body is in the emergency room,” she said. “The mortuary is going to pick it up.”

  “Oh.”
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  Mrs. Getz walked into the lounge and handed my aunt a capped hypodermic needle. I think I was a little nuts.

  “I’m not going to take it off,” I said.

  My mother stopped sniffling and looked at me blankly. “Take what off?”

  “The jacket,” I said. “It’s Jimmy’s. I’m not going to take it off.”

  My mother looked from me to my aunt. There was a mixture of confusion and worry in her face.

  “It hasn’t caught up with her yet,” my aunt said. She unbuttoned the cuff of Jimmy’s jacket and pushed up the sleeve. “You don’t have to take off his jacket until you want to, honey.”

  “My heart,” I said. “I can feel my heart.”

  “I’m going to give you some sedation,” my aunt said, “and it’s going to make your heart stop pounding . . . and calm you down so the shaking will stop.” She tore open this little packet Mrs. Getz handed her and took out an alcohol pad and swabbed my arm.

  “I don’t want that,” I said. I looked at my aunt. “I mean it. I don’t want a shot.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie—this is something you just don’t have any choice about.” She uncapped the needle and squirted a little fountain of liquid into the air. “Okay? It only hurts for a second.” She brought the needle down against my arm. I looked away. Damn you, Jimmy, I thought. Where are you and your lousy jokes when I need you? I felt a sharp sting, then bit by bit the shaking stopped. My heart slowed. I was able to breathe and see.

  “It feels funny,” I said. “Like I’m . . . floating or something.”

  “Mm-hmm,” my aunt said. She handed the empty hypodermic needle to Mrs. Getz and looked at me. “Are you feeling a little sleepy yet?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I’m going to take you home with me tonight, all right?” She pulled the sleeve of Jimmy’s jacket down and buttoned the cuff at my wrist. “Betty . . . would you have someone bring my car around?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Getz said.

  My aunt put her arms around me and pulled me against her white coat. “Fay, do you want me to have someone drive you and Enid home?”

  “No—we’ll be all right.” My mother cleared her throat. I could tell she was trying really hard to pull herself together. “Loey . . . she’s okay, isn’t she? For tonight, I mean.”

  “. . . a walloping dose of a tranquilizer . . . she’ll sleep through the night . . .”

  “And then?”

  “. . . rough . . . for Enid, too . . .”

  I could barely sort out what they were saying. I tried hard to focus on my mother, tried hard to concentrate.

  “. . . should be getting back to Enid,” my mother said. She stood up and came over and kissed me.

  “Fay . . . try not to worry. . . . I’ll call you in the morning. . . .”

  My mother nodded. I must have slept: The next thing I knew, my aunt was shifting me from her shoulder, my mother was gone, and Mrs. Getz was standing there holding my aunt’s coat and medical bag and purse.

  “Okay, come on,” my aunt said. “Let’s go home.” She took her coat from Mrs. Getz and threw it over my shoulders.

  “I can’t walk,” I said. “My legs feel funny.”

  “Make your knees stiff,” my aunt said. “Come on now. . . . Mrs. Getz and I have got you. . . .” We walked out of the hospital and up some steps to the car. “Betty, one more thing,” my aunt said. “Give my housekeeper a call and tell her we’re on the way.”

  “I’ll call her right away,” Mrs. Getz said. She opened the door, and I slid onto the front seat while my aunt went around and got in on the other side.

  “Aunt Lo, are those new?” I asked. “Your earrings—did you get them for Christmas?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She reached over and pulled my seat belt across me and buckled it.

  “Jimmy gave me tickets for a play next Tuesday,” I said. “What should I do with them?”

  “Oh, honey.” She started the car. “Don’t worry about it now.”

  Mrs. Rassin came out to the car as soon as we pulled into the drive. She opened the door on my side, and I could see her eyes were red rimmed and watery.

  “Dr. Hackett . . . I just can’t believe this has happened.”

  “I know,” my aunt said. “Give me a hand here, will you?”

  “Is she all right?”

  “A little unsteady,” my aunt said. “I sedated her. Is the bed in the guest room made up?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Rassin said.

  The covers on the bed were turned back. My aunt sat me down on the bed and pulled her coat off my shoulders.

  “Aunt Lo . . . Jimmy’s really dead?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “You’re a doctor,” I said. “You’ve seen people die before.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you ever get used to it?”

  “No.” She bent down and unzipped my boots and pulled them off.

  “Dr. Hackett,” Mrs. Rassin said, “I just put some coffee on.”

  “How about something a little stronger?”

  “I’ll get you a drink.”

  “Come on, lie back,” my aunt said. She pushed me down against the pillows. “I want you to give that shot a chance to work.”

  “I don’t feel sad or anything,” I said. “Is that wrong?”

  “No, honey, it’s not wrong.”

  “I don’t feel anything at all.”

  Everyone had gone to pieces except me. Mrs. Woolf and my mother and Mrs. Rassin. Even my aunt. As soon as she pulled the covers up around me, she turned out the light and sat down on the bed. I saw the flare from her cigarette lighter.

  She was smoking again.

  Part Two

  16

  I couldn’t figure out what I was doing in my aunt’s guest room. I really didn’t connect why I was there, not until I rolled over onto my arm and it hurt and I remembered the shot my aunt had given me and why.

  “How do you feel?” my aunt asked. She sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, just like it was an ordinary day.

  “What happened to the other driver?” I asked. “Was he killed too?”

  Killed was the word for it. Jimmy didn’t die, he wouldn’t do that to me, he was killed.

  “The other driver wasn’t even hurt,” my aunt said. “He was charged with reckless homicide, and dammit, he’s already out on bail.”

  “What happens now?” I said. “I mean . . . I guess there’ll be a funeral—”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I’m okay,” I said, and my aunt smiled and touched my face. I don’t think she believed me. “What was that,” I said. “You know . . . that shot you gave me last night. What was it?”

  “Valium.”

  “I didn’t need it,” I said. “I tried to tell you I was all right. I tried to tell you I could handle this.”

  My aunt squinted at me and took a drag on her cigarette. She didn’t say anything.

  My father drove in that afternoon to pick me up. My aunt bundled up and went out to the car to meet him. I watched them from the kitchen window. His arm went around my aunt’s shoulders, his head was down. My guess was confirmed when they walked into the kitchen: He was crying.

  “How you doing?” he asked.

  “Okay. I’m almost ready.” He put his arms around me, but it was like I didn’t even feel his hug. “You don’t look too good,” I said.

  “Well, I was up all night with Jack,” my father said. “Poor Jack. . . . When he got off the plane, he was drunk and crying and full of regrets. He kept talking about all the things he never had a chance to tell Jimmy . . . all the things they’d never done together.”

  I thought maybe my father was going to break down. I couldn’t stand it. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled my boots on. “Is Mother with Mrs. Woolf?”

  “She’s helping Enid talk to the minister.”

  “Minister!” I said. “What minister? The Woolf
s never go to church.”

  “They’re Presbyterian, I think,” my father said. “Anyway, this minister is setting up the arrangements—”

  “What arrangements?”

  “For the funeral.”

  “Oh.”

  “Enid thought you might want to say something at the service,” my father said.

  “Say something . . . what . . . you mean like a eulogy or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. She thought you could read a poem that meant something to Jimmy—she says he liked Carl Sandburg.”

  “You didn’t tell her I’d do it, did you?”

  “No, of course not,” my father said.

  “Because I don’t think I could. Get up in front of all those people and—I just don’t think I could do it.”

  “You don’t have to,” my father said. “It was just an idea, that’s all. Are you going to be warm enough in that?”

  I was still wearing Jimmy’s jacket. I pulled up the collar and nodded. Before I went out the door, my aunt took off her long white muffler and wrapped it around my neck. “I’m driving out for the funeral,” she said. “But if you need anything before then—even if you just want to talk—you can reach me here or at the hospital.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

  My aunt and my father looked at each other, and my father put his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s get going,” he said. “We’ve got a long drive ahead.”

  On the way home I said to my father, “Aunt Lo’s waiting for me to fall apart, and I’m not going to.”

  “Would it be so terrible,” my father said, “if you fell apart a little?”

  “Sometimes you and Aunt Lo sound exactly alike.”