The Way It Happens In Novels Read online

  An Available Press Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1989 by Kathleen O’Connor

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Shannon Keith Kelley, “Room With a View,” from About in the Dark,

  Shaun Higgins, Publisher. Copyright © 1977 by Shannon Keith Kelley.

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-92173

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78842-9

  v3.1

  For my father, William O’Connor,

  and my husband, Douglas Salmon.

  With thanks to James A. Michener

  and the Copernicus Society of America.

  ROOM WITH A VIEW

  Outside his window, seasons degenerate

  with the incessant bleariness of booze.

  Days yawn by, yet he is fascinated

  by nothing but his tight rear view

  of buildings closeting other buildings

  and the rote avenues of escape repeated

  against the bricks like locust shells

  clinging in death to autumnal trees.

  Fearing reminiscence as the only afterlife,

  he fears his present life ill-spent.

  One day, he imagines, having never seen it,

  he will descend the grid outside his view

  and like a child’s bad dream at last outgrown,

  one day be gone.

  SHANNON KEITH KELLEY

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgement

  Room With a View

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Other Books by This Author

  PROLOGUE

  The mailman had a package for Richard Olsen. Vernice gave him the $1.35 forwarding fee and stuffed the small Jiffy bag into the pocket of her uniform.

  A buck thirty-five. What a bargain! It cost two dollars to see the early-bird matinee of some foolish movie. Vernice would have paid considerably more than that to see who had written to this lost soul.

  Richard Olsen had been in the Michael Keep Nursing Home three months and in that time had not received a scrap of mail or a solitary visitor. It amazed Vernice that someone so young and once so famous could end up friendless. Even after all that had happened to him, he was still good-looking in a blond beachboy way. It was just too bad he was so crazy.

  During Olsen’s first week at Michael Keep, the director of nursing had told the assembled aides that Richard’s brain resembled an empty classroom. She pointed to the hastily sketched stick furniture on the portable blackboard and said, “Once there were smiling children in these seats, but the explosion scared them away.”

  “Aha, aha,” Maria Alvarez had muttered, nodding her sleek head back and forth as if this were some sort of revelation. Even then that South American shoplifter knew that, among her patients, Richard was the easiest target for her pilfering. After three days at the home, he didn’t have a blanket, a wastebasket, or a soap dish.

  Vernice tucked the Jiffy bag under her arm and turned down the green corridor. Richard’s room was the last on the left. He never greeted anyone who came in. He was too busy staring at his window.

  “I don’t know why you’re so crazy for that window, Richard. The one in the lobby is a lot bigger.” When in Richard’s room, Vernice talked constantly. She was afraid if more than thirty seconds of silence passed between them, all the children in her brain would scramble away, and she would become as empty-headed as Richard.

  “You got a package.” He was still staring at the room’s only window and paid no attention. “Try and curb your excitement,” she said, setting the packet on his bedside table, “ ’cause I got to work on that bedsore of yours first.”

  She crossed his legs at the ankles, grabbed the draw sheet, and pulled him onto his side. “No, no!” he screamed, more likely in reaction to the coldness of her hands than to the violence of the motion.

  His blond head now faced the bars of the bed’s side rail. “Can’t see your window anymore, can you?” she asked, somewhat savagely. Something about Richard brought out the beast in people. Vernice pushed his pale blue hospital gown out of the way and efficiently rubbed Maalox on the tear in the blue-pink skin at the base of his spine. “It’s looking better,” she told him. “We’ll lick this sucker yet.” Then she pushed a pillow behind him and waddled back to the nurse’s station for a hair blower to dry the Maalox with.

  Richard used to have a fancy blow-dryer of his own, but it had disappeared along with his gold razor. This morning Vernice had shaved him with the plastic razor she had gotten free with her McDonald’s breakfast. Quite a comedown for a hotshot football player, but she guessed Richard didn’t know any better.

  Vernice put the hair blower on high (though the medium setting would have worked) and aimed it at her patient’s bare butt. Vernice was tender with the old folks, but she liked to hurt Richard a little bit now and then just to get his attention. Instead the boy just stretched his lips a little as if enjoying some private joke. The poor crazy loon.

  When she was finished, Vernice sat down wearily in the visitor’s chair, the only unnecessary furnishing in the room, and one of the few objects Maria had not taken. “Rest your back a little, Richard,” she instructed. Not that he had any choice in the matter. Richard would remain suspended on his right side with his paralyzed left arm clamped to his chest like a chicken wing, until she removed the supporting pillow.

  Vernice’s youngest son was a rabid football fan. Though he could barely read or write, he knew all the teams’ statistics: Buffalo, 9–4; Tampa Bay, 2–11. Someday she ought to bring him here and make him look at this mess—Olsen. But hell, she reflected, you couldn’t blame football for Richard’s stroke. She heard he hadn’t been much of a boozer either—just damned unlucky.

  “Been worried about my little one, Richard. He’s not doing so hot in school. And he sees his brothers coming home from dates at eight o’clock in the morning, and I wonder what he thinks. He don’t ask, so I guess he knows. Kids today know everything, but they don’t know right from wrong. When I was a kid we didn’t know nothing, but we did know right and wrong.”

  Vernice consulted her watch. In ten minutes she could go home. Then she remembered the package. “We better roll you over, sugar, and check out your mail.” She pulled the four staples off the flap of the Jiffy bag and dumped the contents onto Richard’s table. “B
ubble gum! Lord, Richard. My kids had better than that left over from Halloween.”

  Olsen did not seem disappointed by the gift. He immediately began sliding the twelve pieces of gum into groups of two.

  Vernice looked at the Jiffy bag. It had been forwarded from the McKuehn Rehabilitation Center in New York City, where Richard had undergone physical therapy, but the return address was local: C. F. Freedman, 700 Heritage Square, Ridgely, Connecticut.

  “That’s not seven miles from here, Richard. You know what I’m going to do? When I get a chance, I’ll give your friend a call. I’m not sure if you want company or not, but a visitor sure wouldn’t do you any harm. How about that?”

  Richard finished dividing the gum into six groups.

  “And if this C. F. Freedman is a woman, you know what else I’ll do?”

  Using his right hand and his teeth, he removed the Bazooka wrapper from one piece of gum, then stuffed the gum into his mouth.

  “I’m going to wash your hair. That’s what.” Vernice leaned over and pushed a strand of Richard’s greasy limp hair away from his face.

  She had finally succeeded in capturing his attention. He stopped chewing and stared at her, fish-eyed and hateful. “Curses on you, women,” he hissed.

  “Curses on you, too, Richard,” Vernice answered pleasantly, and then waddled down the hallway for her coat. Her shift was over.

  CHAPTER ONE

  For the last two miles of the trip in to Software International, Cheryl used Interstate 84. In the brief space between Route 7 and the entrance ramp, she could see what was left of the old state fairgrounds. The grandstand was still visible but the storybook village—the ceramic statues of snowmen, Santa Claus, and Paul Bunyan—had been torn down. A land developer had bought the property and was preparing to build a shopping mall. Cheryl sometimes felt as if everything familiar was being ripped away. But no, not everything, she thought as she stubbed out her cigarette. Her boss, Mr. Raymond, was dependably predictable.

  Mr. Raymond smoked a solitary cigar every morning. Had he known that the smell of it sickened Cheryl, he would have ordered her a slightly more elaborate floral arrangement on Secretary’s Day.

  Cheryl poked her head into his office. “Good morning, Mr. Raymond.”

  “Good morning, dear.”

  His smile was impersonal, theatrical. Cheryl was not fooled by the dear either. It simply meant he was preoccupied and could not for the moment remember her name. But he had it right later when she brought him the night’s stack of telex messages. “Thank you, Cheryl.”

  “You’re welcome.” Cheryl often wondered if Mrs. Raymond asked her husband to describe his secretary what he would say—surely nothing as specific as red-haired, small-shouldered, wide-hipped. No, she was fairly certain he would spread his long fingers apart, pause for a second, then reply: “Youngish.”

  Cheryl was generally glad for his lack of scrutiny. Though her marriage had been annulled two years before, she had not yet notified either of her bosses and probably never would, since she was keeping her married name. Cheryl Freedman might be taken seriously, but she was sure Cheryl Farrell never would be.

  Mr. Raymond finished his cigar with one loud satisfied sigh. It was odd, she thought, that he enjoyed the cigar so much but took no pleasure in the Danish he consumed before it. He ate the pastry quickly and furtively with his back to the door. Maybe he was embarrassed because his wife did not cook him a proper breakfast.

  Her other boss, Mr. Derrigo, by contrast, was not embarrassed about cooking his own breakfast. Several times she heard him brag about it to coworkers. “Marge,” he would say, “does all the cooking at night and on the weekends. But on weekdays she sleeps in and I’m in the driver’s seat. So I get out that fry pan and I fry my own egg.” It was a terrible eye-opener to Cheryl that a senior manager who signed one-hundred-thousand-dollar contracts and controlled millions in discretionary investment funds was enormously challenged by frying an egg.

  But if one remained a secretary long enough, eventually all childhood myths would be shattered. Take, for instance, the myth of the male’s superior business acumen. Cheryl was in a position to know that that was perpetrated simply by desk arrangements. Men seated themselves in quiet, comfortable cubicles while their secretaries (usually female) were put at work stations out in the heavily trafficked hallways. A call director was attached to the desk and the constant ringing of these phones guaranteed that the women could not concentrate on any given subject for more than three seconds at a time.

  “Good morning. Mr. Raymond’s office. Yes, he is. But he is not at his desk right now. Could I take a message? Okay. Fine. I’ll tell him. You’re welcome.”

  To keep her voice soft, fluid, and nonabrasive, Cheryl took periodic beverage breaks. At ten she bought coffee and then again at three. Each time she fished thirty cents from her wallet, locked her desk, and went downstairs to the first-floor coffee machine, counting in increments of 1.2 as she descended the twelve concrete steps: 1.2, 2.4, 3.6, 4.8…. Coffee with one packet of sugar and a heaping teaspoon of Cremora cost her thirty-five calories, but the downtrip sloughed off nearly fourteen calories and ascending the stairs knocked off another twenty-nine. Therefore, the entire transaction left her eight calories in the red.

  Despite the caloric advantages of the breaks, Cheryl went for coffee reluctantly. To the left of the coffee dispenser was a refrigerated vending machine with five windows that illuminated the dark hallway like votive candles in an empty church. Behind the top pane today was a large-pored, thick-skinned orange. Showcased in the next three windows were an apple, a container of yogurt, and a sandwich with yellow curling cheese. None of these items disturbed Cheryl. It was the bottom pane with the hot cross bun behind it that she could not so much as glance at without remembering her first football game and how Richard Olsen had looked in his white and gray jersey as he ran across the field, hands on hips.

  All through the game she had kidded herself into believing her growing infatuation with Richard Olsen was as innocent as admiration for a sleek cat or a fine racehorse. Then at work she had stared at the plastic-wrapped roll with pounding heart and flaming cheeks and known better. Maybe it was Stu’s desertion that had left her so vulnerable. But nothing could excuse her. Later, when she read in the newspaper that Olsen had been stricken with an aneurysm, she felt as if her own foul thoughts had somehow blighted him. Now, carrying her coffee, she passed the vending machine with averted eyes and went back upstairs.

  Cheryl set the Styrofoam cup down gently, careful not to spill coffee on the list of frequently used phone numbers taped to her desk. A green plush surface meant to accommodate such reminders bordered the front of her work station. But the green pile surface was soft, fleshlike, and she was unwilling to stick pins into it. Instead, in direct defiance of corporate directives, she Scotch-taped all memos to the face of her desk.

  “Cheryl.”

  Mr. Raymond was back in his office. “Yes, Mr. Raymond.”

  She put down her cup. The coffee was just right—hot but not steaming. In five minutes it would be tepid and tasteless. She wished just this once Raymond would come to her. Instead he began mumbling and she was forced to walk into his office. “I’m sorry, Mr. Raymond. I couldn’t hear you.”

  He was reclining backward in his executive chair with a set of plane tickets on his lap. He displayed the bottom ticket. “Coming back, Travel has booked me tourist.”

  Tomorrow he was going to England, and she could catch up on her filing. It would be a vacation of sorts. Cheryl eyed the blue and green ticket. “Yes, that’s right. Going over you’re on Pan Am and they have a businessman’s class. But you’re coming back EurAir and they don’t offer that service.”

  “That was all Travel could book me on?”

  “I’m sure.” She was not in a position to challenge the Travel Department’s decision. If Mr. Raymond wanted to tackle Travel, he could. She doubted he would. Raymond was a bully only to his wife and secretary.

&n
bsp; Sure enough, he shook his head and said, “That’s all right. It’s not that long a flight. Not like I’m coming back from a symposium in Russia.”

  Cheryl nodded and backed toward the door but halted when Raymond asked, “How’s your work going? Everything all right?”

  “Fine.” Men had underestimated their own loneliness when they had designed these private cubicles. When his phone was not ringing and subordinates were not dropping in, Raymond often appeared at the side of her desk and asked if her work needed what he called “prioritizing.” She required no such assistance but would obligingly hand him a sheath of papers to rearrange so he could spend a few minutes standing beside her.

  Today she couldn’t provide solace. A phone was ringing and her coffee was getting cold. “Mr. Derrigo’s office. No, he’s out of town. Could I help you?” A message began clattering in on the telex: rat a tat tat. Ba de boom. Ba de boom. Raymond’s phone rang and then his overflow line rang. The signals on the call director flashed like miniature Christmas tree lights. “… Yes, he is, but he’s on another line right now. Can he return your call?”

  Cheryl looked up as the mailboy noisily dumped an armful of mail into her in box, then lifted a large box from his cart and left it precariously tilting on the ledge over her desk. The box blocked her view, so she slid it down to her desk and then onto the floor. If Mr. Derrigo were in and unengaged, he might have emerged from his office to assist her. But he was visiting three branch offices on the West Coast. Last Friday he had asked her, “You know how to reach me?”

  She had managed to nod without smiling, though the question amused her. She had made all his travel and hotel reservations, booked two hotel meeting rooms, and arranged a banquet for him. But in his mind such arrangements took care of themselves in the same magical way that coffee, doughnuts, and lined pads always appeared in his conference room at the beginning of staff meetings.