The Waiting Room Read online

  "Twenty years," he said. "So what?!"

  "Sorry?"

  "Two hundred years, a thousand years—"

  "I don't understand, Abner."

  "It is a world of confusion, Sam. You're right. I can see that."

  "Good for you," I said, and added, "Abner, I think you've gone over into Munchkin Land. Why don't you let your big brother Sam help you back?"

  "No," he said, his tone suddenly clipped, and deadly serious. He looked questioningly at me: "Munchkin Land—that's from The Wizard of Oz, isn't it?"

  "I think so," I said.

  He shook his head, frowning a little. "No," he repeated, "it's not Munchkin Land." He opened the front door of the beach house. "And you're not my big brother."

  ~ * ~

  It was a very large room I entered; "the great room," Abner called it. There were at least a hundred photographs on the walls, some in black and white, some in color, most of them five by seven or eight by ten, some larger. Abner told me he'd taken them for the photographic book he'd once planned to do—"About Manhattan," he said. Indeed, most of the pictures had a nice Manhattan flavor to them. "They remind me of who I am," he said.

  "Sure," I said, "I guess we all need that." I was still feeling the sting from his "And you're not my big brother" remark.

  There were at least a dozen plants in the room, although there was very little direct sunlight because the two windows faced north. Several of the plants were of the large, floor-standing variety that would have dominated a smaller room. Abner said they were "a kind of fern" and went on to give me their scientific name, which I can't remember and couldn't spell if I did. Some of the others were in small clay pots that had been hung from the ceiling on lengths of decorative reddish-brown twine. I recognized some of these; one was a nerve plant—so named because its leaves curl up when touched—and another was clover, which I like because it's so simple. The plants gave the room a slight tangy smell, "the smell of the earth," Abner said, "a good smell, a real smell."

  A huge gray stone fireplace took up half the north wall. Several large, brightly colored throw pillows lay in various places around it.

  "The plants don't live long," Abner said. "About a week, most of them, then I've got to throw them out and buy new ones."

  "Don't they need more light?" I asked.

  He nodded. "Yes. That's one of the reasons they don't live long."

  "Then why have them at all?"

  He answered simply, in the same vaguely pleading tone he'd used earlier, "Because I need them, Sam. Because they're alive."

  ~ * ~

  When I was growing up, there were a few words that I regularly used to describe Abner W. Cray. "Nerd," of course, fit him well. But he was also a pretender, and an actor, like Art DeGraff, though, unlike Art DeGraff, Abner is just about the gentlest person I've known.

  He was an actor when he was holding one of his séances, for instance, and wanted to impress one of the women there with how sensitive he was. He'd sit down with someone he hardly knew, get this earnest and interested look on his face, and let the other person talk, and talk, and talk. I supposed it was either because he had precious little to say or because he thought that if he kept quiet, and didn't offer anything of himself, he'd be less vulnerable. But most of the people he listened to thought it was because he was especially interested in them, and especially sensitive, and especially caring.

  So there in his tumbledown beach house, surrounded by his photographs, his plants, and his brightly colored throw pillows, I suspected that Because I need them, Sam. Because they're alive! was only an example of what I'd first seen twenty years earlier—an Abner W. Cray pose, a way of demonstrating his incredible sensitivity. But I was wrong.

  ~ * ~

  "Why do you live here, Abner?" I asked. He'd led me through the great room, down a narrow hallway—also festooned with his photographs of Manhattan—and into the kitchen, which was, oddly, at the beach side of the house. I thought, following him, that the inside of the house, in stark contrast to the way it looked outside, had the same dead-end feel to it as that mausoleum we'd broken into twenty years earlier, like a still life of stale beer. I couldn't imagine anyone, even Abner, actually wanting to live in it.

  "It's safe," he answered. "For now, it's safe, and I can live here. Alone, if I want."

  The kitchen was tidy, which surprised me—I'd always thought of Abner as a slob. One wall, opposite four large windows and a door that faced the beach, had an upper row of freshly polished knotty-pine cupboards on it, a stainless-steel double sink below, more knotty-pine cupboards to the left of it. At the center of the room there was a small table with a white enamel top and wooden base, painted white, and three old ladder-back chairs with cane seats. A rounded-top General Electric refrigerator, circa 1960, stood next to the sink, and a huge, battered gas stove was kitty-corner to it. The side of the stove next to the outside door—the door that led to the beach was badly chipped, and I guessed that the door hit it every time it was opened. There was a cream-colored cereal bowl in the sink that had a spoon in it, a little milk, and some remnants of what looked like Rice Krispies.

  I sat in one of the ladder-back chairs. It wobbled. I hoped it would hold me. Abner stood in front of me, at the sink, with his arms folded in front of him. I asked him, "What do you mean, 'alone'? What about that woman I saw—what was her name? Al? What about her?"

  "She doesn't live here. She's a guest."

  "Oh," I said. "It must be nice to have guests like that."

  "I've got lots of guests here. I've got at least a dozen guests. Maybe you'll meet some of them." This seemed to amuse him.

  I stared at him for a few moments, then I said, "Where, Abner?"

  "Where what?"

  "For God's sake, where are your guests?" I held my hand up, palm out, as if stopping traffic. "Sorry, Abner. It's just that I hate to see a friend . . . teetering on the edge—"

  "The edge of what, Sam?" He was clearly confused.

  I sighed. "Abner, I'm sorry, but maybe I'd better go."

  "Go?" He shook his head. "You can't go, Sam. They won't let you."

  Another sigh. " 'They' won't let me? Who's 'they,' Abner?"

  "My guests, the people in the house."

  "Abner, Christ!" I pushed my chair back noisily. The racket seemed to jar Abner because he stiffened up. I stood, glanced first at the door to the beach, then toward the hallway that led back to the great room. "There are no 'other people' in this house!"

  "Yes, Sam, there are. They live in the walls. Most of them. Except Madeline, of course. She lives upstairs." He grinned flatly.

  Again I stared at him, and for a moment I felt an incredible urge to slap him around, as if that might shake the rocks out of his head. Instead I said, "Abner, you need help, probably a lot more than I can give you." Then I turned, went quickly down the hallway, to the great room, and out the door.

  I had to walk at least three or four miles until I found a bus stop, but I was back in my apartment early that evening.

  EIGHT

  He called soon after I got back.

  “Sam? I'm sorry, I guess I was spooking you a little, wasn't I? It's just that . . . how do I explain this? It's just that when you get used to a thing, when a situation, no matter how bizarre it is, becomes a real part of your life, you take it for granted, and you talk about it as if everyone's life has the same sort of situation in it. Am I making any sense? Tell me if I'm making any sense, Sam?"

  "You're not making any sense, Abner."

  "Okay." He paused. "Okay. Tell me what you don't understand."

  I sighed. "Listen, Abner, we share some… interesting memories. We went to the same high school, we did some stupid things together. We were friends—"

  "I thought we still were friends, Sam."

  "Sure. Sure we are." I didn't know how to continue. It was clear that Abner was in some kind of trouble. Whether it came from outside him, from something in that house, or from within, didn't matter much to me then.
I'd assumed that I was going to renew acquaintance with a close friend from high school, that we'd have some good times together, and that that would be that. I didn't expect him to be carrying the kind of emotional baggage he seemed to be carrying. I had my own emotional baggage, and it was damned heavy—hell, I thought I was losing the woman I hoped to marry. In retrospect, I think all that goes a long way toward explaining why I ran from his house. But there was this, too: He was right—he'd spooked the hell out of me. "Sure we're friends," I went on, "but Abner—"

  "Abner Doubleday," he cut in.

  "Abner Doubleday? What are you talking about?"

  "Abner Doubleday, remember?—Abner W. Cray, Abner Doubleday—the two sound pretty much alike, don't they?"

  "For God's sake, Abner—"

  "Sam, I just wanted to warn you."

  "Abner, I know where you're staying. Just give me some time to get my own life squared away, then—"

  "Sam," he broke in, "listen to me. They don't like people ... knowing—"

  That was it. "The only thing I know, Abner, is that I want to sit back, watch some football, slug down a few beers, maybe send out for a pizza—"

  "They won't let go of you, Sam."

  "Maybe they won't," I cut in, "but you sure as hell better, pal," and I hung up. Half a minute later, I called him back to apologize, to give him a good long chance to talk—maybe that was all he needed, someone to talk to—but after his phone rang a good two dozen times, I gave up. "Damn!" I breathed, and decided I'd try to find my way back to the beach house in the morning.

  ~ * ~

  The L.A. Rams were playing the Dallas Cowboys that evening, but the cable system was on the fritz, so all I got was colored snow and a play-by-play that sounded like it was being broadcast from a fishbowl. I listened anyway, and in the middle of the game I heard a knock at my door. I thought it was the super or one of the other tenants, because no one gets in my building without being buzzed in.

  "Who is it?" I hollered.

  "Sorry?" I heard. It was a woman's voice.

  "I said, 'Who is it?'"

  "Oh," the woman called back, "no one. I need to come in to your apartment."

  "Why?"

  "To use the phone?"

  "Is that a question?"

  "Sorry?" she called.

  I sighed, got out of my chair, went to the door, put my hand on the knob, and hesitated. "Do you need to use the phone?"

  "Yes," she answered quickly, and crisply, as if she had just then decided that that was what she needed to do. "Yes, I need to use the phone."

  I looked through the security peephole in the center of the door. I saw only the left side of her face, a swatch of red hair. "Are you one of the other tenants?" I called.

  "Sorry?" she called back.

  "I said are you one of the other tenants?"

  "Oh. Yes. I am. I'm one of the other tenants."

  "I don't believe you."

  Silence.

  "I said I don't believe that you're one of the other tenants."

  "I'm not."

  "You just said you were."

  "I'd like to come in and talk with you, if that's okay."

  I hesitated, looked through the peephole again, saw the same thing—the left side of her face, a swatch of red hair, a bit of her eye—green, I guessed. "No. I'm sorry," I called. "Maybe you could ask the super, down on one—how'd you get in, anyway?"

  "Through the door," she answered. "Don't you remember me?"

  I looked again through the peephole. She'd stepped further to her right and back a bit, so I could get a good look at her. "We were on the ferry together, do you remember?"

  Again I hesitated, then I said, "Yes, I remember. What do you want?"

  "Only to talk."

  I turned the knob and opened the door until one of the chain locks stopped it. "Okay—talk."

  "I'd like to come inside." She nodded to indicate my apartment. "Could I come inside?"

  "How'd you find me?" I asked.

  She answered simply, "I looked. I found you." She nodded again to indicate my apartment. "Could I come inside? I can't talk to you out here. I need to come into your house. Please, tell me I can come into your house."

  I didn't like the sound of that. It sounded half like a plea, half like a threat, and I told her, "Find the super, he's on one, you can use his phone."

  "I don't know the super. I know you."

  I shook my head. "No, you don't."

  "I do," she said. "Your name's Sam." She stepped closer to the door, put one hand on it and one on the frame, and stuck her face into the opening so only her left eye, part of her nose, and the left side of her lips were visible. She whispered, her voice suddenly very low and coarse, "Let me into your house, Sam—tell me I can come into your house."

  The phone rang.

  She glanced quickly toward the noise, as if she'd been startled.

  I backed away from the door, toward the phone. I called again, "Find the super, he's on one, he'll help you.”

  She was gone.

  I hesitated, took a couple of steps toward the door, and called, "Hello, miss, are you there?"

  The phone continued ringing. I looked at it and snapped, "Hold on, for Christ's sake!" It rang again. "Goddammit!" I went to the door, looked through the opening, saw nothing. "Miss?" I called. Still nothing. The phone rang again. "Blow it out your ass!" I yelled, then went and answered it.

  It was Abner.

  "Listen to me, Sam, please listen to me."

  "No more bullshit, Abner. Let's just let the whole thing rest overnight, okay, then tomorrow I’ll—"

  "It won't rest, Sam. They won't rest, no one rests!"

  "Abner, did you send her here? Was it some kind of dumb joke?"

  "Send who? I didn't send anyone there. Who was there?"

  "That woman from the ferry. Is she part of your scheme, Abner, like the cop, and the woman at the house—"

  "You mean Al? What about her? Was she there?"

  "No, she wasn't here. The woman from the ferry was here—"

  "That redhead, you mean? She was there, at your apartment, Sam?"

  I shook my head in disbelief. "Good Lord," I whispered.

  "Sorry, I didn't hear you, Sam—what'd you say?"

  "I said bullshit, Abner. I said you're full of bullshit! And when you've unloaded it, then we'll talk—"

  "No, Sam, please, trust me—"

  I hung up and took the receiver off the hook.

  ~ * ~

  The cable reception got back to normal a half hour later, and I settled grumblingly down to watch the end of the football game—guilt and bad feelings pushing through me like a fever. The Cowboys won, but that didn't cheer me up at all, because I kept telling myself things like, "Some friend you are, some big brother you are," and, "The guy needs your help, for God's sake," and, "What if he ends up doing something to himself?" and, "You're just afraid of getting involved, admit it."

  I admitted it. In Nam I'd gotten involved a lot more, it turned out, than I should have. For one reason or another, I was one of the lucky ones who didn't spend half their time being homesick, or depressed, or strung out. I'd told myself that if I was fortunate, I'd make it through to the end of my tour of duty, but that along the way I'd have to bide my time, count the days, do what I was told, within reason, and eventually that miserable war would be behind me. But there were plenty of guys who didn't do that, and I was the one they chose to talk to. I was a big-brother figure, I suppose—not only am I big physically, I also look a good ten years older than I really am. They told me what they thought of the war and what they thought of themselves for getting involved in it—and opinions on that score varied widely. They told me about their lives back home, about their girlfriends (and some of them about their boyfriends), about Mom and Dad and little sister. After a while, I got awfully depressed just from the sheer weight of their agony. At last I said No more, and forced myself to climb up out of the pit they'd dragged me into.

  That's t
he way it seemed with Abner, too, there in his dismal Long Island beach house. He was someone drenched in his own pain, someone who was reaching out to me—big brother Sam—telling me to listen, to lift him up, out of the world of confusion he'd gotten himself into.

  I went to bed feeling like I was being slowly pinned to a wall by a semi.

  ~ * ~

  I woke at just past three-thirty that morning, feeling ravenous. It came to me that although I'd planned on sending out for a pizza during the game, I never had, so my poor stomach had staged a minor revolution.

  I threw back the blanket, swung my feet to the floor, and sat up.

  I sleep naked, and this late March night was damned chilly, so I reached for my pants, which were on the back of a chair near the bed. I heard low, suppressed giggling from the far corner of the room.

  It was very dark in the room—the only light was the diffused yellow glow of a streetlamp four stories below—but I hurried into my pants, muttered, "Christ's sake, Abner, this is going too far," switched on a reading lamp over the bed, and looked at the corner where the giggling had come from.

  There were two young girls, fourteen or fifteen, both in knee-length pink taffeta gowns, each with a blue corsage in hand, standing very stiffly and solemnly between the bookcase on one wall and the radiator on the other, and I said to them, my voice rising in pitch because they'd surprised me, "Who the hell are you?"

  Their mouths opened in unison. Two soft, suppressed giggles came out, but their bodies remained stiff, as if everything but their lips had been painted there, on the beige wall. And again their mouths opened, again two soft, suppressed giggles danced about in the room.

  Below, on the street, a car horn blared.

  Above me, in an apartment rented by a guy I knew worked the 8:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. shift, a radio was switched on, and a late-sixties protest song filtered down through the ceiling.

  And from the corner, where the two young girls in pink taffeta stood so very, very stiffly, I caught the odor of waterlogged, decaying wood. I whispered at them, "Who in the hell are you?"