Goodnight Beautiful Read online

  Sam’s eyes flutter open.

  The room is dark and he can’t remember the last time he saw light. His body aches and something feels off. It takes him a moment but he gets it, eventually. It’s his legs.

  He can’t move them.

  He reaches down, and feels the rough surface of plaster against his fingers. His legs are in casts. Both of them. He tries to lift them, but he can’t. Either the casts are too heavy or his legs are too weak. His only option is to go back to sleep and he doesn’t know how much time has passed when he’s jarred awake by the sound of the door opening, the flash of light from the hallway stinging his eyes. A figure appears next to his bed and he waits for a light to turn on but it doesn’t.

  “What happened to my legs?” he asks, his throat painfully dry.

  “Oh, you’re awake.” The man’s voice is familiar—it’s the doctor who was here earlier, stitching up Sam’s forehead. “You were in an accident.”

  “An accident?” Sam says. “How long have I been here?”

  “Three days.”

  Three days. “Where’s my wife?” he asks, as the doctor wraps a Velcro band around Sam’s bicep.

  “You were gotten to just in time,” the doctor says, ignoring his question, pumping the band tighter around Sam’s arm. “Pulled from the wreckage of that fancy car of yours. You’d think a man of your intelligence would have heeded the police chief’s advice and stayed off the roads.”

  The Velcro rips apart and then a tube of light, like that of a flashlight, appears in the darkness, shining down on a medical chart in the doctor’s hands. Sam’s eyes adjust enough to make out the details of the room, cast mostly in shadow. He’s in a single bed, under a patchwork quilt. There’s a closet door and a small window, floral curtains drawn in front of it. Wallpaper—chartreuse yellow shapes feeding on themselves, like some sort of Escher-on-acid creation. Sam squeezes his eyes shut, realizing this isn’t a hospital room. It’s what looks to be someone’s bedroom.

  “Where am I?” Sam asks.

  “I don’t expect you would remember,” the doctor says. “The brain’s reasoning and cognitive processing centers tend to shut down during traumatic events. A way to help us forget the bad things.” The doctor turns to face Sam and Sam sees that what he thought was a flashlight isn’t a flashlight but a headlamp secured to the doctor’s head. “What am I telling you this for though, right, Dr. Statler? You probably understand that better than anyone.”

  The doctor is beside him peering down at Sam over a pair of eyeglasses, and Sam can’t pull his eyes away from the face, his brain slow to put the pieces into place.

  The short hair, graying at the temples. The bright blue eyeglasses hiding the same pair of eyes Sam felt watching from a window upstairs, in the Lawrence House, every day when he arrived for work.

  “Albert Bitterman?” Sam says, sure he’s imagining it. “My landlord?”

  Albert leans closer and smiles. “Hey there, heartbreaker.”

  “Albert,” Sam says again, confused. “Why am I at your house?”

  But Albert just shushes into Sam’s ear and presses two pills into his mouth. “Go to sleep, Dr. Statler,” he says, clicking off the headlamp as Sam floats toward the darkness. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Part III

  Chapter 27

  “Albert Bitterman?” the UPS man shouts from the open door of his truck the next morning.

  “Yes, that’s me!” I call out, pulling on my jacket as I step onto the porch. He disappears to the back of the truck and then reemerges, pushing a hand trolley loaded with boxes. “You made good time,” I say as he approaches. “Saw you on the GPS. A little blue dot leaving the pickup facility just after 8 a.m. Quite a feature on the redesigned website.”

  The man bangs the hand trolley backward up the steps. “It’s creepy, if you ask me,” he says and now I wish I’d said it first, because I completely agree. (In fact, if he were to check the recent comments on the UPS Facebook page, he’d see that an anonymous user (me) made the same observation twenty minutes ago: Am I the only one who sees the danger in allowing any schmo with an internet connection to follow a truck carrying thousands of dollars of top-ranked medical equipment?)

  Rain drips from the brim of his UPS baseball hat as he draws a small machine from his back pocket, and I take stock of the inventory. One metal rolling cart with a retractable arm. One emergency crash cart with an attached trash can and side hooks for both a broom and a mop—one of the few pieces of equipment I’ve given a five-star rating to as a twenty-five-year employee of Home Health Angels, Inc.

  “Looks like it’s all here,” I say.

  “Want me to bring it in?”

  “Inside the foyer is fine.”

  “Suit yourself.” He backs the trolley inside and drops the boxes onto the floor. “Cool place,” he says, looking into the living room. “Nice and bright.”

  “Can’t take any credit,” I say, as he hands me the computer to sign. “It was just as the last owner left it, and I haven’t wanted to change a thing.”

  “Agatha, right? Nice lady.”

  I pause, the plastic pen hovering over the screen. “You knew her?”

  “A little bit. Work a route long enough, you meet everyone at least once.” He shoves the computer back into his pocket. “I was sorry to read that she’d died. You know she laid there for five days before she was found by the woman who cleaned her house?”

  “It was a man,” I say.

  “Sorry?”

  “The person who found her. It was a man.”

  “Is that right?” He shrugs. “I heard it was the housekeeper, so I assumed it was a woman. Anyway.” He pulls down his hat and tucks into his collar as he steps onto the cold porch. “Have a good one.”

  I wait for his taillights to recede over the hill before going into the kitchen for the blue Home Health Angels apron I couldn’t bear to throw away after losing my job. I tie it around my waist and fill the pocket with my supplies—a tube of Neosporin, a fresh bandage, and a pair of latex gloves. I head down the hall, insert the key quietly into the lock, and flick the light switch when I enter. Sam’s stirring in his bed and murmuring his wife’s name. I close the door and go to his side, my back straight, my heart full, feeling more useful than I have in a long time.

  Chapter 28

  Annie parks between two police cruisers and pulls up her hood, sick to death of the rain. John Gently is behind the desk when she steps into the waiting room.

  “Is Chief Sheehy here?”

  Gently picks up the phone and presses a button. “You hear from your husband yet?” he asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “Hello, Chief,” he says into the phone, adding some heft to his voice. “That doctor’s wife is here. She wants to talk to you.” He nods twice and hangs up. “Last door on the right.”

  Franklin Sheehy is sitting behind his desk, his sleeves rolled up, the buttons of his shirt straining against his stomach. “Come right in, Mrs. Statler,” he says, waving her inside.

  “It’s Potter,” she corrects him.

  “Sorry, I keep forgetting. Want some coffee? It’s not the fancy stuff you’re probably used to, but it’s hot.”

  “I’d do a line of coffee grounds if you offered,” Annie says. “I’ve hardly slept in three days.”

  Sheehy presses a button on the desk phone. “Two coffees, Gently,” he says. “Milk and sugar on the side.” He hangs up. “He hates when I do that.”

  “I brought you a few more photographs of Sam,” Annie says, digging in her bag for them. She slides them across the desk—three photos, taken the day they were married in their new backyard by a local yoga instructor. Maddie was on FaceTime, serving as Annie’s maid of honor from the phone screen, propped on a branch of the tree they stood under. Annie had printed these photos at the CVS and given them to Sam, suggesting he send them to his father. Instead he shoved them into a kitchen drawer and forgot about them.

  “I also printed the specs fo
r Sam’s car, his exact make and model,” she says, fighting the urge to use her nickname for the car: Jasper, the douchiest name she could think of.

  She had been upstairs in their apartment, packing for the move to the prairie, when he called and told her to look out the window, like some sort of John Hughes movie. He was parked in front of a fire hydrant, his face lit up. “I bought a Lexus,” he said into the phone.

  “I see that.” A Lexus 350, with leather interior and automatic ignition. He used to love doing that: standing in the living room and pressing the button, watching the car light up and the engine start. (“Look at you,” Annie said the first time she saw him do this. “Proud as a southern dad at a purity ball.”)

  The door is nudged open, and John Gently enters, two paper cups of coffee balanced in his left palm, milk and sugar in the right. “Here you go, Chief,” he says, extending the cups toward them, spilling a few drops on the desk. He makes a show of pulling the door firmly shut behind him as he leaves.

  Annie watches Sheehy comb through the sugar packets until he gets to the Splenda. “Is there any news at all on Sam, or his car?”

  “Gently!” Sheehy yells.

  The door flies open, as if he’d been standing in the hallway, listening. “Mrs. Statler would like an update on the investigation.”

  “Yes, sir.” John Gently steps into the room. “We sent an APB out on the car three nights ago, immediately after you reported him missing. A silver Lexus 350 with automatic ignition and leather seating. A very nice machine. We also contacted the thruway department and area agencies with license plate readers. If he passed any of those, we can get his route of travel. We are now going through footage from public and private video cameras throughout the area. If his car’s out there, we’ll find it.”

  “And if he were in an accident?” Annie asks.

  Sheehy shakes his head. “Truth be told, Mrs. Statler, that’s unlikely. It’s been seventy-two hours, and there’s been no report of any accidents. My men have traveled the route from Sam’s office to your house a few times now. We would have found his car.” He offers a downcast smile, doing his best to appear sympathetic. “I know you’re worried, but rest assured we’re doing everything we can. We’ll call you the minute we hear anything. But the thing you can do, Mrs. Statler, is try to manage those nerves.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she says, standing up. “And maybe in return you can try to manage my name. It’s Potter.”

  Chapter 29

  Sam feels the faint flutter of wings against his cheek and opens his eyes. The moths fade to black and it’s him again. Albert Bitterman, his landlord, standing at the doorway, a blue apron tied at his waist. “Hey there, heartbreaker,” Albert says, pushing a medical cart into the room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Confused,” Sam says, trying to sit up. “Why am I at your house?” And why do you have a medical cart?

  “I’ve told you already,” Albert says. “You had an accident.” He parks the cart at the foot of Sam’s bed and snaps on a pair of blue latex gloves. “A tree came down as you pulled out of the driveway. Lucky for you, I saw the whole thing from my porch. I ran out as quick as I could.”

  “Why am I not at the hospital—”

  “Seems you shattered both of your legs,” Albert says, cutting him off. “Don’t worry, though. I fixed them all up. And I’m giving you something to manage the pain.”

  The idea seems strange, and yet oddly familiar—two broken legs, a steady stream of pills—but he can’t pinpoint why. “Annie,” he says. “I need to call Annie, my wife. Can I use your phone?”

  But Albert ignores him and takes a bottle of pills from the pocket of his apron.

  “No,” Sam says. “No more pills. I need to call Annie.”

  Sam tries to turn his face away, but Albert is gripping Sam’s chin and forcing three pills into his mouth, holding Sam’s jaw closed with a shaky hand, long enough for the pills to dissolve. The taste is bad, Buckley’s Mixture bad, the stuff his mom used to give him when he had a sore throat. “It tastes awful. And it works” is Buckley’s actual slogan, printed right there on the box, but even that tastes a million times better than these pills, which work impressively quickly, melting his body, summoning the moths, reducing reality to two facts: his head doesn’t hurt anymore, and he is just so very fucked.

  Chapter 30

  “Hang on, Professor Potter,” the kid sauntering down the center aisle calls to Annie the following day. “Nice job today,” he says, throwing her a smile as she hands him the paper she’d finished grading this morning, barely in time for class, in which he twice put the word “patriarchy” in quotes. “You’re almost starting to convince me I should question the assumptions I make when I read. Almost.”

  “Thanks, Brett,” Annie says.

  His face reddens. “My name’s Jonathan.”

  I know your name’s Jonathan—you’re one of the guys who signed up for this class solely because most of the students are women—but Brett is a prick’s name, and you seem like a prick. “Sorry,” Annie says. “Have a good day.”

  She collects her notes and waits for the last students to leave before turning off the lights, unsure how she survived that class. Forty-five minutes in front of a packed auditorium of sleep-deprived college kids, exploring how male authors describe female characters in six works of popular fiction, beginning with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. “‘Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood,’” she read out loud from the front of the room, hoping the students didn’t notice the way the book trembled in her hand. “‘She was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her.’” She had gone back and forth a hundred times about canceling the class, but decided this morning not to. She’s going to lose her mind at home, waiting to hear his key in the lock.

  She hurries across the quad to the department building, simple and run-down, nothing like Columbia. But this is what she wanted, what she and Sam both wanted: a simpler life. She’d been carrying a heavy load since getting her degree at Cornell, where she stayed on to teach. She was finishing up her next stint, a two-year gig at Columbia, when she met Sam, contemplating what was next. She’d been offered tenure track at Utah State with little expectation to publish, but she turned it down and accepted a visiting scholar position here, at a tiny liberal arts college in upstate New York, following the first man she ever loved.

  There’s a small crowd waiting for the elevator, and she decides to take the stairs to her office on the third floor. She’s unlocking the door when Elisabeth Mitchell, the dean of the department, steps out of her office three doors down.

  “Annie,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have office hours,” Annie says.

  “I know, I mean . . .” Dr. Mitchell hesitates. “I saw the article about Sam.”

  “Oh, that,” Annie says.

  “You don’t need to be here,” Dr. Mitchell says. “You could have—”

  “My dad was from a long line of industrious Irish Catholics,” Annie says. “I’ve learned to work through my pain.”

  “Well, if you need some time . . .”

  “Thank you,” Annie says, stepping into her office, keeping her door slightly ajar as she checks the clock. One hour. She can do this. She sits at the desk and takes out the sandwich she bought before class, at the café in the student union. A pressed turkey with Swiss cheese and extra jalapeños, the same sandwich she gets before office hours each week. It’s a habit of hers, ordering the same thing again and again. It drives Sam crazy. Back in New York, when they first started dating, they’d meet at the same restaurant at least twice a week: Frankies 457, a block away from her apartment. Sam would stare at her, incredulous, as she placed the same order, every time—sausage cavatelli and a green salad.

  She can picture the bewildered expression on his face. “You’re not going to try anything else?”

  “I know what I like, and I’m okay asking for it,” she told him. “
Get used to it.”

  But today the sight of the sandwich turns her stomach, and she drops it into the trash can and digs for her phone in her bag. She opens FaceTime and calls Maddie, who answers right away. Her brown curls are pulled into a bun, and she’s wearing earphones.

  “What are you doing?” Annie asks.

  “About to go for a jog,” Maddie says, and just the sound of her voice calms Annie’s nerves.

  “You hate jogging.”

  “I know I do, but everyone at the restaurant’s doing some stupid 5K, and— Wait.” Maddie stops walking. “What happened? I can tell by your face.”

  Annie stands and shuts her office door. “Some bills came for Sam,” she whispers.

  “What do you mean, bills?” Maddie asks.

  “Credit cards.” The first arrived yesterday: Chase Sapphire Preferred, maxed to its credit limit of $75,000. She was stunned, but tried not to read too much into it. The move, the new house—she knew things were adding up. But when she checked the mailbox earlier today, she found another: Capital One, with a $35,000 balance.

  “What the hell did he buy?” Maddie asks.

  “What didn’t he buy is more like it.” It’s ridiculous, what he spent on things. She sat in her car in the faculty parking lot, going through the list. Three hundred for running shoes. Five grand for a rug for his office. Six coffee cups at $34 apiece.

  “Did you know he had these cards?” Maddie asks Annie.

  “No, but Sam’s a forty-year-old man. He’s going to have credit cards. We haven’t joined our money.” She paces the office, eight steps back and forth, then collapses in the chair, hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion. “I guess this explains why he was so distracted.”

  “Distracted?” Maddie says. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “We moved to a new town and he’s starting a practice while his mother deteriorates,” Annie says, defensively. “It would have been weirder if he wasn’t distracted.”