Read Lying with the Dead for Free Online

stinging till bedtime.
    But I wasn’t in so much pain that I didn’t notice something strange. Kids on the ward started wailing even before the orderlies wheeled in the cauldrons. They knew, their skin knew, what was coming.
    When I told this to Lawrence, he explained about Pavlov’s dogs. Right off the bat I realized that that described polio. It was a disease that reduced you to a howling mongrel.
    After three months, they discharged me to what I dreamed would be happiness at home. But I had to stay in the house and rest most of the day in bed. With Mom at Safeway and Dad still hiding, Maury was all the company I had.
    Out the window, I watched people on the sidewalk across the street, staring at our house and whispering, just as they did years later after Maury was arrested. Neighbors and rubbernecking strangers from around town had read in the newspapers about me, the umpteenth polio victim of the season, and they were anxious to have a look. They kept their distance, though. Like with AIDS today, people didn’t know whether to feel sorry or disgusted.
    Parents wouldn’t even let their kids play on my side of the street. One daring little friend did dart over, and for a minute we hollered back and forth, me at the open window, she down on the lawn. But then her mother swooped in and toted her off to safety.
    I suppose that’s when it started, this sense I have that I’m excluded, that my feelings don’t matter and I might as well not have them. That’s been the hardest part for Lawrence to handle—the way I act like if I ever drop my guard the past will eat into every corner of my life.
    “Candy, you’re daydreaming,” Mom breaks in. “Shut your mouth before you catch flies.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Not to me, you’re not.”
    “I’m here as a Eucharistic minister,” I remind her. “I’m concentrating on the prayers. Are you ready?”
    “I told you, I prayed all night. I have so many special intentions,” she says between cigarette puffs, “there aren’t enough hours in the day. ‘Hear me, Lord,’ I beg. ‘Your will, not mine, be done.’”
    I know she prays for me to land a good man, which I regard as an insult to Lawrence. She prays for Maury to find a good woman and for Quinn to win an Oscar. Then on top of the missionaries and the souls in purgatory, she prays for God to have mercy on an A-list of dead celebrities—Audrey Hepburn, Elvis, Natalie Wood, Rock Hudson …
    “Oh Lord, life is hard,” she groans. “The old griefs, the memories, so much pain.”
    “Why don’t you just tell God that He knows what you need and leave it in His hands?”
    “I’d rather itemize. It calms me down. At least it did. Now I’m so nervous you’ll ship me off to assisted living, I pray I’ll die soon.”
    “What do you have against living in a nice room with all your needs looked after?”
    “Roaches,” she says. “Those dumps are crawling with roaches.”
    “We’ll find you a clean place.”
    “And they’re expensive. A couple years of living like Lady Bountiful and there’d be nothing left for you and Maury.”
    “Don’t worry about me. And you can count on Quinn to look after Maury.”
    Mom flicks an ash from her cigarette. It misses the ashtray and floats to the floor. “Promise me one thing. Don’t commit me against my will.”
    I tell her the truth. I wouldn’t dare to do anything against her will. If I did, she’d attack tooth and nail. They’d have to strap her into a straitjacket and stuff a gag in her mouth. Mom’s like those guys Maury did time with, cons who can turn anything—a rolled magazine, a comb, a toothbrush—into a deadly weapon.
    As she gropes in the box for more photographs, she resembles a dealer plucking cards out of that gadget called a shoe. She deals me a shot of Dad, his hair brilliantined, his sport shirt splotched with Hawaiian flowers. Gamblers, I’ve heard it said, stay in the game secretly hoping to lose. But judging by his cocky grin, Dad