The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (essential books to read .txt) 📗

matching streak in her hair. “I’m not sure what’s happened.”

“Took a tumble,” said Arturo, squatting down.

Jack looked at him. “Why isn’t she at a hospital?”

“She said, don’t want to go. Hey, maybe me and Lindy will beat you two to the altar.”

“We’re not getting married,” Linda told Jack.

“You don’t know,” said Arturo. “Who can predict the vicissitudes of life?”

Linda frowned, put the cloth back, and Jack touched his own head. His brain felt injured; he wanted somebody else to take charge of the situation, load him onto a litter. The boxes around her were filled with items wrapped in newspaper.

“Are you moving again?” he asked.

“No. Just putting things in order.”

“Selling some stuff off, hopefully,” said Arturo.

“Who are you,” Jack asked, and Linda answered for him: “Antique dealer. Old friend. Do you think you can help me get to my feet?”

“Shoulder,” said Arturo, pointing.

The arm that wasn’t holding the cloth to her head dangled, as though she had no shoulder at all.

“Bet any amount of money that’s dislocated,” said Arturo. “Head, shoulder, let’s don’t touch her.”

“Linda,” said Jack. He couldn’t stand to look at the wrongness of arm. “I’m going to call an ambulance. Then I’m going to call Sadie.”

After a moment Linda said, “If you must, call the ambulance.”

“For the record,” said Arturo, “I wanted to call both.”

What record?

“Sadie’s terrible in situations like this,” said Linda.

“Is she?”

“Tell her afterward, when I’m all patched up and home.”

“You don’t think that will hurt her feelings?”

“Tough if it does,” said Linda. “I mean, maybe. Jack, don’t call her. I know you think I spoil her, but—of course, you understand, you were basically an only child yourself. Sadie told me—what with your sisters grown and out of the house, I’m sure your parents coddled you.”

He was thirty-six years old and had never been coddled a day in his life. Even when he went out with Linda, he paid for everything: the movie tickets, the museum admissions, the garlic soups and strong coffees at Café Pamplona.

“All right,” said Jack.

Arturo squatted by one of the boxes, knees apart to give his stomach room. “I called nine-one-one.” Then he pulled a newspaper-wrapped lump from a box. “Might as well, while we’re waiting.” Inside was a blue-and-white vase with twisted handles, a scowling profile painted on one side—Breton, Jack knew. He’d grown up with pottery like it, though nothing so fine as this. That old notion: a thing of beauty. Jack wanted it.

“Tim had good taste,” said Arturo to Linda.

“That thing,” said Linda. “I haven’t seen it in years. Plenty more like it, from what I remember.”

The EMTs rang the bell then came with their stretcher down the corridor, three bland young people, all with lank ponytails. “What did you do, Linda?” one shouted at her. Another said, “This place is cute.”

“It’s not cute,” said Linda. They lifted her to the stretcher.

“It’s cute,” said Arturo, “you’re cute, it’s very cute.”

“I’m a grown woman,” said Linda, rolling out the door.

“For sure,” said Arturo. “And now you live in a schoolhouse, in the principal’s office, like a storybook mouse.”

Once they’d taken her away, Arturo said to Jack, “Come on. I’ll drive you to the hospital. Where you from? You got a little accent.”

“Upstate New York,” he said.

Arturo had a set of keys; he locked the front door. “Oh. I thought Linda said you were British. Look at the bubblers!” he said, coming down the hall. He tried to operate one of the low water fountains with his foot.

In his mind Jack saw first Linda’s shoulder, then the Breton vase, then all the boxes around, then Sadie. “What’s she doing with all those boxes?”

“Unburdening herself?” said Arturo, elbowing open the Schoolhouse’s front door. “Past twenty years she’s had them in storage. When Tim died she just—packed ’em away. She’s been paying monthly ever since. Crazy. Here you go.” Arturo unlocked the passenger side of a pristine old Mercedes-Benz. Jack had imagined a piece-of-shit car, filled with old books. “It’s all her husband’s stuff. I think she thought she and the kid would move. You know he died in that house. Somehow, they got stuck. Stuck in Swampscott. Nice girl.”

“Sadie? She is.”

“I’m not asking you she’s a nice girl, I’m telling you: she’s a nice girl.”

“You’ve met her.”

“I knew her when she was a kid. Lived across from them in Swampscott. I did see her awhile, Linda, till she moved away, another thing don’t tell Sadie. Last week she—Linda—called me up to say she’s clearing out the storage, did I want to look at some of Tim’s stuff, I say sure, why not. Mostly I deal in prints, but you know: overlap. Newton-Wellesley’s up this way?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know a lot,” said Arturo.

Inside the ER, Jack was trying to orient himself when he heard what he understood, though he had never heard it before, was Linda making a long animal noise of pain: a bay, a caterwaul. It did not sound like something you could live through. Instinctively he began to run, toward the source of pain or past it. The little area where he expected to find her had been closed up with blue-gray curtains. He stood outside of it trembling, and then one medical professional drew the curtains and another stepped out, and there was Linda, forehead spangled with sweat.

“Ah,” she said, “that’s better. They put my shoulder right. Arturo knew what he was talking about. You shouldn’t have bet him.”

“I didn’t bet him. Jesus.”

“They call it reducing a shoulder,” said Linda.

Because of the head injury they wanted to keep her overnight; they wanted to keep an eye on her foot, too. She would stay in the ER till a bed was found on some distant floor.

“A bother,” she said.

“You’re not a bother.”

She said, “I need to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“Sadie was nine when her father died.”

“That’s a bad age,” said Jack, trying to sound sage and empathetic.

“They’re all bad ages,” said Linda. “Let’s not rank them. I have a friend who says, if you lose a parent early, there