Say Goodnight, Gracie by Julie Reece Deaver

Author:Julie Reece Deaver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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

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