Page 15 of A Map to Paradise

14

The call from the hospital the night of Elwood’s accident tore June away from a dream of her mother.

She’d been back at the little one-room cottage in Venice Beach, inside the closet that, when she was little and her mother left her alone overnight, she’d wished was a time-travel machine that could vault her forward to the moment when Lorena would return. In the dream, Lorena was inside the closet with her and they were both adults. June had been about to ask her mother why she was there when a ringing phone yanked her awake.

June fumbled for the receiver on the bedside before realizing there was no longer a telephone at the side of the bed.

She and Frank had sold his half of the duplex and used the minimal capital gain to buy shares in a land development company that was to have been a sure thing. It had become insolvent, however, three months after Frank invested in it. Frank and June were now living in a lunch box of a place in the Olympic Trailer Court in Santa Monica. It had been a harsh blow, losing all that money, but June couldn’t fault Frank alone for what had been nothing short of financial disaster. She’d agreed to both the sale of the half duplex and investing in the company that had all but swindled their money from them.

And she wished to God she hadn’t.

She was also back to wishing—now every day—that the time-travel closet at the Venice bungalow had been a real thing, and that she could find it again and use it. She’d crawl inside and go back to the moment Frank showed her that brochure and she’d tell him she had a bad feeling about it. Elwood, who’d had misgivings about the investment opportunity, offered to help them out with a nicer rental after they lost everything, and Frank declined.

These thoughts that plagued her during the day were surely why she’d been dreaming of the closet when she was awakened by the jangling phone.

The house trailer was only fifteen feet across and fifty feet long; so even though the phone sat on an itsy-bitsy shelf by the front door, it wasn’t that far away from the bed June and Frank were sleeping in.

“Just let it ring,” Frank mumbled. “Probably wrong number anyway.”

After eight rings, the phone fell silent only to start up again a minute later.

June pushed back the blanket, crawled across the mattress on all fours since the narrowness of the trailer made it impossible for her to stand at her side of the bed, and made her way through the dimness to the phone.

“Hello?” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“May I speak with Frank Blankenship, please?” The man on the other end of the line sounded very much awake. And in charge. And serious.

Something was wrong.

June turned to Frank, sprawled across his half of the mattress. “It’s for you.”

“It’s three o’ clock in the goddamn morning,” he muttered.

“I think something has happened.”

Frank sighed. “Who is it?”

June lifted her cupped hand from the mouthpiece. “May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Is this June Blankenship?”

Her breath stalled in her chest. Something terrible had happened. She could feel it. “Yes.”

“This is Deputy Randall Owens from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Your husband’s brother, Elwood Blankenship, has been in an automobile accident.”

Cold zipped through her body like she’d been injected with it, and she nearly dropped the receiver. Elwood and Ruthie had left for Palm Springs earlier that day. Petite and redheaded, Ruthie was quite a bit younger than Elwood’s forty-nine, though June could only guess by how much. She had two young sons, eight and nine, and her husband had been a naval aviator who died in the bombing at Pearl Harbor more than five years earlier. Elwood was the first man she’d dated in all that time.

It seemed they had that in common, too—a very long stretch of years since they’d wanted to be a part of anything romantic.

June liked Ruthie—a lot—but she worried that she would end up hurting Elwood like other women had done before her when they’d break up with him after discovering he was a little eccentric. A little awkward. A little moody. A little strange.

All things she loved about him now. All things that made him precious to her. All things that made her jealous of Ruthie for reasons she could not explain. She was married. To Frank.

Elwood had invited Ruthie to spend the weekend with him in the desert, and, to his surprise, she’d said yes. She left her boys with her parents in Newport Beach and then they’d left for Palm Springs.

And now there’d been an accident.

“Oh, God! What happened?” June said, breathless. “Is Elwood okay? Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Ma’am, if your husband is there, I need to speak with him.”

She looked behind her to the bed. “Frank! Frank, there’s been an accident! With Elwood!”

Frank was already clambering off the bed and stumbling toward her. He grabbed the phone. “What’s happened? Where’s my brother?”

June put her head as close to Frank and the handset as she could to hear the deputy’s answer.

“Your brother was involved in a car accident earlier this evening, thirty miles west of Palm Springs on Highway 99.”

“Is he okay?”

June had never heard Frank sound so afraid. Tears pooled in her eyes, though at the moment all she knew was that there had been a crash.

“He’s been transported to St. Vincent’s in Los Angeles.”

“So he’s okay? He’ll be all right?”

“You’ll need to discuss all of that with the doctors there at St. Vincent’s, sir.”

“But you can tell me if he was alive when he was taken there! You can tell me that! Can’t you tell me that? And what about Ruthie?”

“All I can tell you is your brother has been transported to St. Vincent’s. Do you need the address?”

“Is Ruthie there, too? Did you call her parents? They have her boys.”

June heard a slight hesitation in the deputy’s voice before he repeated his question. “Do you need the address of the hospital, Mr. Blankenship?”

Frank brought a hand up to his face and covered his eyes, as though he was seeing something terrible and was desperate to stop seeing it. “No. No, I know where it is.”

“You’ll be on your way, then?”

“Yes, yes. We’ll leave right now.”

“I’ll pass that along. I’m sorry you had to hear this news, Mr. Blankenship.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Frank hung up and, for just a moment, he drew June to him and buried his face in her hair.

“We have to go,” he said.

She nodded and they groped around in the dark for their clothes until June remembered there were light switches in the trailer. Of course there were. Dazed, they’d forgotten.

There were few cars on the roads at that hour and Frank sped all the way, but it still seemed to take far too long to cover the sixteen miles. They said nothing to each other until Frank was parking the used Chevy he’d bought after the war to replace Elwood’s old roadster.

Frank set the brake and then took June’s hand across the seat. “We need to be ready to hear the worst, June.”

He hardly ever called her June. It was always Junebug or Junie or JuJu. Something fun.

“I know,” she whispered.

They sat in the car in silence for several long minutes, June sure that neither of them knew what one did to be ready to hear the worst. But then Frank whispered, “Amen.”

He put his hand on the car door. “Let’s go.”

The hospital emergency room was active: nurses and attendants coming and going, the phone at the desk ringing, the injured in chairs waiting.

Frank tapped his fingers nervously on the reception counter as he waited for a nurse to finish a phone conversation.

The second she hung up, he told her who he was and who they were there to see.

“Yes. So your brother is in surgery, Mr. Blankenship,” she said, placidly and yet with a hint of compassion. “If you’d like to head up to the surgical floor waiting area, you’ll be able to chat with the surgeon afterward. And it’s quieter up there.”

Frank’s next words came in a rush. “Surgery for what? What happened to him? What’s wrong?”

“You can speak to the surgeon when he’s finished, okay? He’ll come out and talk to you.”

The nurse smiled minimally, gave them directions to the elevator and the surgical floor, and then reached for a chart.

“And Ruthie?” June asked the nurse, her voice sounding thready in her ears. “Is she here, too? Is she okay? Her name is Ruthie Brink.”

The woman looked up. “Are you family?”

“I’m…I am Elwood’s sister-in-law.”

“I can only speak to immediate family regarding any patient, Mrs. Blankenship.”

“You can’t even tell us if she’s here?” June felt as if she was about to explode and not just because the nurse wouldn’t tell her where Ruthie was. She was deathly afraid everything was about to change. Had already changed.

“Junie.” Frank gently took her arm. “Come. Let’s go see about Elwood.”

They arrived at the elevator and Frank pushed the up button. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon where Ruthie is. One thing at a time, love. Let’s just focus on one thing at a time.”

There was no one in the surgery waiting area, and only one charge nurse sitting in subdued lighting at the entry station for the post-surgery patient wards. Frank told this woman who they were.

The nurse picked up a black telephone handset. “I’ll let the OR know you’re here.”

Frank and June took seats in the empty waiting room, the ticking of a wall clock marking off the seconds as they waited. And then waited and waited.

They dozed off and on.

Morning sunlight was filtering in through the curtains at the one window in the waiting room when a man in surgical scrubs finally emerged through a set of double doors.

“You must be the Blankenships,” he said. “I’m Dr. Fremont. I’m the surgeon who operated on your brother. He’s pretty banged up and the repairs took a little longer than I’d anticipated, but he made it through all right, and while he’s got some major recovering to do, I expect he’s going to be okay.”

“Thank God.” Frank closed his eyes and shook his head in what looked like near disbelief that the doctor hadn’t just said instead that Elwood was dead. His eyes stayed closed for only a moment. “What was the surgery for? Why did it take so long? What happened in the crash?”

“You’ll want to contact the Riverside County sheriff for details on the accident,” the doctor said. “I don’t know those. I can just tell you that your brother’s injuries were significant and he’s lucky to be alive. His right leg was broken in a couple of places. That will take some time to heal. He might have a slight limp on the other side of his recovery but likely nothing too debilitating. He’s got some fractured ribs, a broken collarbone, some contusions and lacerations, and there was some internal bleeding that we took care of in the OR but I will be watching to see if there are complications post-op there. Like I said, he was very lucky. The internal bleeding alone could have killed him.”

Both Frank and June needed a moment to let that thought sink in.

“When can we see him?” Frank said a moment later.

“He’ll be in the recovery room for a little while yet and he’s going to be very groggy for a while as he’ll be on some pretty strong pain medication. Perhaps you’d like to go down to the cafeteria and get some breakfast and we’ll look at maybe letting you see him in a couple of hours.”

Neither June nor Frank had an appetite.

They stayed in the waiting room as the surgical floor came to life with breakfast trays on rolling carts and doctors making their rounds and another couple, about their ages, taking seats across from them while someone they loved was also behind the double doors leading to the surgical suites.

Finally, a little after nine, a nurse came for them to lead them to Elwood’s room, admonishing them as they walked the polished linoleum to keep the visit short.

They entered a room with two beds. One was empty with sheets pulled tight. On the other on a cloud of white, Elwood lay, swathed in bandages. His right leg, in a cast, was lifted and held in the air by a sling and pulley. Bruises and scrapes covered the parts of his body not covered by bedding or gauze. He did not appear to be awake. June grabbed onto Frank at the sight of Elwood this way, her eyes burning with ready-to-fall tears. Frank patted her arm as they approached the bed, saying in a whisper, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” seemingly as much to himself as to her. When they arrived at the bedside, Frank leaned forward to lay a hand atop his brother’s bruised one. The fingernails underneath were rimmed with dried blood.

“We’re here, Elwood,” Frank said softly. “June and I are here.”

For a long moment there was no movement or sound from the man on the bed. But then Elwood slowly opened his eyes. He seemed to need a moment to recognize who they were, but June would learn later he was merely trying not to yell at them to go away and leave him to die.

“The doc says you’re gonna be okay,” Frank continued. “You’re banged up pretty bad, but you’ll heal. He says you’re real lucky.”

Elwood said nothing as he gave the slightest shake of his head. His eyes turned glassy with moisture.

Frank patted his hand gently. “Did you hear me? He said you’ll be okay.”

Elwood shook his head again and closed his eyes. Two tears slid down his bruised cheeks.

June felt tears sliding down her own cheeks and she was afraid she already knew why.

Ruthie.

“Woody?” Frank said.

“She’s dead,” Elwood whispered, eyes still closed.

“Oh, God,” Frank breathed.

Two more tears slid down Elwood’s cheeks.

Two more slid down June’s.

Elwood opened his eyes and looked at them. “I killed her.”

Over the next few hours it became clearer to June why Elwood believed it wasn’t the car accident that had killed Ruthie, but rather him.

He’d been at the wheel of the car.

He’d had a couple drinks beforehand.

He’d been driving too fast.

He’d dared to think she was falling in love with him, and he with her, and that they might actually have a chance.

The Riverside County sheriff’s deputy who showed up that afternoon wanting a full report on what had happened the night before didn’t care about that fourth reason. He did, however, care about the first three. But by the time that deputy was at the nurses’ station asking for permission to speak to Elwood, Max was also at the hospital, having arrived an hour after Frank called him.

Max instructed Elwood to let him handle the deputy’s questions.

Elwood told him no.

Max, who’d also heard Elwood say he’d killed Ruthie, then said, “I insist.”

“No.”

Max inhaled heavily and then let the breath out. “El, you’re upset. I understand that. But you didn’t kill that woman. It’s very sad that she died, but it was an accident. An accident that nearly killed you, too, okay?”

Elwood moved his head slightly to look at his agent and then moved it back. “Those little boys are orphans now because of me.”

“No. No, they lost their mother in a terrible accident that you had no control over. You didn’t kidnap her and put her in that car. She willingly got in it. Everyone who gets inside an automobile to go for a ride knows there is danger in doing so. It’s a risk we all take when we head out to go anywhere. And you had nothing to do with the death of their father. You can blame a Japanese Zero for that. They are not orphans because of you.”

Elwood said nothing.

“And didn’t you tell me you just had brake work done on that car?” Max continued.

“Frank told you that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? You just had brake work done and something probably wasn’t right. You tried to stop and the car just wouldn’t obey.”

“I was driving too fast.”

“You don’t actually know how fast you were going, right? You weren’t looking down at the speedometer when that pack of coyotes decided to run across the road.”

“It was only two. Three, maybe.”

“Oh, so now you’re telling me you counted all of them? You don’t know how many there were. It was an instinctual response to swerve to miss them. You only did what is natural for any of us when we suddenly see something in the road that’s not supposed to be there.”

Elwood blinked languidly. “I’d been drinking.”

Max sighed. “You had two martinis with dinner, El. You weren’t drunk. I’m telling you, you need to let me handle this. I’m trying to keep you out of jail.”

Elwood said nothing.

“I’m going to go talk with him.” Max started for the door but he’d only taken a couple steps when Frank and the deputy entered the room.

Max put up a hand. “I don’t know that Mr. Blankenship is able to answer a whole bunch of questions, Officer. Maybe another day?”

The deputy, holding a small tablet, continued into the room, the implements on his belt bumping against each other and making clinking noises as he did so. “I don’t have a lot of questions. I just need to get the details that we were unable to get last night. It’s for the official report. And, as you know, there was a fatality. We’re required by law to investigate casualties.”

The room went silent except for the deputy’s boots as he approached Elwood. Frank followed quietly behind him. Max scurried to stand at the foot of the bed.

“Mr. Blankenship?” the deputy said.

He waited until Elwood turned from the window to look at him.

“I’m Deputy Owens. I need to ask you some questions about the accident. I know you’re probably in a lot of pain so I’ll make this as quick as I can. All right?”

Elwood nodded.

The deputy asked if Elwood knew how fast he’d been driving. Elwood shook his head. He asked if he’d consumed alcohol prior to getting behind the wheel.

Yes. Two martinis.

Did Elwood recall what caused him to lose control of the car?

He swerved to miss coyotes in the road.

This answer was supplied by Max when Elwood took too long to answer. When Deputy Owens asked if that was correct, Elwood nodded once.

“And he’d just had brake work done on that car, so it could easily have been that something was out of whack, somebody forgot to tighten something,” Max added. “I can show you the paperwork from the garage. He just had it done.”

The deputy wrote something down, asked a few more questions about road and weather conditions, and said he had one last question. “Did you attempt any lifesaving measures on your passenger, Mr. Blankenship?”

Elwood closed his eyes in obvious sorrow and June reached for his hand.

“Mr. Blankenship?”

“She was already gone when the car stopped rolling,” Elwood whispered. “She was looking at me. She wouldn’t stop looking. She wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t reach her to close her eyes. I couldn’t reach her…”

For a moment no one said a word.

Then the deputy closed his little notebook. “Thank you, Mr. Blankenship. I have the information I need to file the report. It will go to the county but my guess is no charges will be filed. I can’t promise you the family of Ruthie Brink won’t look at a wrongful death suit, though. It happens sometimes in cases like this. I am just telling you so that you will be aware. Do you have any questions for me?”

Elwood shook his head.

“Thank you for your time.” The deputy walked out of the room.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. Then Elwood spoke.

“I’d like to be alone now.”

June would remember those words of his, said that way, for years to come.