The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) by Robert Hough Read Free Book Online Page A

more that day, mostly about the hospital and
how I was getting along with the other patients. He left shortly after,
though not before promising to see what could be done about my problem. I tried not to get my hopes up.
    I had my fifth tubbing that afternoon; like Linda and Joan had
promised, it was getting easier, though it was still miles from being
easy. I now spent the four hours in a state of quivery boredom, not panicking exactly but feeling as though any moment I might. Linda had
suggested I make up mental games to help pass the time; apparently,
she'd pretend the tub was a magic carpet and she was soaring through
space, visiting places she'd been and could conjure up in her head, like
New York City or the ocean or the body of the man she should've married. I tried it too but didn't have much luck, imagination never having
been my strong suit. Instead, I exercised my arms and legs, swishing
them about in the water, flexing my wrists and ankles, for I didn't want
my muscles going soft in case I was to need them.
    After I'd spent a half-hour or so of arm and leg swishing, the
door to the tubbing room opened and I got scared, for the orderlies had
a reputation for sneaking in during a tubbing and unzipping the leather
covers and taking their pleasures. Squinting against the light flooding
the room, I was relieved to see it was Levine. He said hello and opened
the gaslight enough to cast a dim, soft light over the room.
    "Is that better?"
    I told him it was. He asked if I'd like it lighter, saying he could do
that too, and I told him it was a fine restful light if restful's a thing that's
possible in a tubbing room. This made him smile, thank God. He took a stool and placed it behind the tub. In his other hand he held a notebook and pen.

    "I'm afraid there is nothing I can do about the restraints," he said.
"Hospital policy. However, I was thinking you might not be so bored if
you had someone to talk to. Do you think that would help?"
    I said I thought it would. He sat on the stool and, after a few seconds of rustling, said, all of sudden, straight out of the blue and without a moment's notice, "How did your parents die, Mrs. Aganosticus?"
    Now, this question caught me off guard, my first reaction being,
That's personal, Mister. But seeing as how he'd helped me a little
already and it was something I did want off my chest I figured I might
as well play along. So I told him how the TB scare of 1902 had gotten
my father-how over a four-month period the air had seeped out of
him, his face thinner and paler each day, the area beneath his eyes growing darker and more sack-like as the ailment progressed. How when he
coughed you could hear it coming from deep down inside him, rumbling like the slow, distant thunder you get when the weather turns hot.
How he died on a Sunday morning, a fitting day since he was a man
who believed in God; I remember listening at the door of his room and
hearing the doctor say to my mother, "He picked a good day to go,
Lela. Heaven's got him now." How after the doctor left I cried and my
mother just sat there, quiet as a log, which is the English way of handling strong emotion.
    Throughout my little story, Levine sat on his stool, scribbling
and saying, "Yes, yes, go on, go on," so I told him how a wagon pulled
up and two men dressed in dungarees and work shirts came in and carried my father out in a burlap bag. Afterwards my mother thanked
them and paid them, both of which seemed like crazy things to do considering what they were taking away. The news must've spread, for
the house soon filled with neighbours bearing food, some of them
coming from so far away they didn't pay taxes in the same county.
Course, many of them offered up their teenage sons to help out with the fieldwork, offers my mother turned down as she didn't like being
reliant on the kindnesses of non-relatives. As a consequence, she had
to spend more and more time out in the fields, tilling for