The Bed Lucy Made, And She Lies In It

by DRD Bruton

Tuesday April 20th, 2010
Lucy turned the key in the lock. She heard the mechanism snap open and she pushed against the door, had to push against the mail that had piled up on the mat. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her. Then she breathed again.

The first room that she went into was the living room. The curtains were open and the light in the room was bright. She crept across the floor, not making anything but small sounds, not wanting to disturb the room, wanting to keep everything as it was, as he must have left it.

No, that was not true. She laid his jacket over the back of a chair and put the keys into one of the pockets. Then she collected dirty cups from the small table and a plate he’d eaten from and a fork. She carried them into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen. She washed them in cold water and set them to drain beside the sink. She removed some things from the fridge and dropped them into a black bag, and green bread from the bread-bin and past-its-date fruit from the wooden bowl.

On the calendar above the fridge she noticed her own name, pencilled in for the date they had arranged to meet. He’d drawn a star next to her name and underneath he’d written the time and the place. Lucy turned the page on the calendar; more than a month had passed. The new page was empty. Lucy found a pen and wrote her name onto today’s date.

In the bedroom she picked up his dirty clothes from the floor and put them into a wicker laundry basket that sat in one corner. She closed the cupboard doors and set two pairs of shoes to attention beside the bed. She found his diary, even though she wasn’t looking. The pages were mostly blank, except there was some record of her: her name again, and the colour of her hair and how she was a student at the university and she was studying Art History and was in her first year. Then he’d put a star on the date they were to meet, just like the one on the calendar. Lucy closed the diary and put it into a drawer.

Then she set about making the bed. She threw up the sheets and made them lie as flat as flat. And she folded the corners, neat, like she’d been taught. Hospital corners she’d been told they were. She plumped up the eiderdown and made sure it hung straight and even all the way round. She turned down the bed, just as they would in the hotel.

There was a photograph on the wall that she recognised: his parents and his sister.

Lucy undressed, laying her clothes on the one chair in the room. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, briefly, just a part of herself, not her face. She slipped naked into the bed, his bed, and closed her eyes. She held her breath again and listened to the noises the flat made as the day turned to warm.

‘All of this is a lie,’ Lucy thought. ‘All of this.’

Friday April 16th, 2010
Lucy stood at the gates, on the outside looking in on a formal garden. The name of the place was written in gold letters on a green sign above her head. He was there, in a wheelchair, all the buttons of his coat fastened and a red scarf tied round his neck, a tartan blanket covering his legs. A woman sat with him. She was older and when she looked at him there was hurt in her eyes even when she smiled. She fussed over the blanket and his hair and did not stop talking, though Lucy could not hear what the woman was saying.

Spikes of daffodils poked from the black soil, but they were not yet in flower. Late this year, she’d heard someone say on the bus. A wilting drift of snowdrops blown into one corner and the fingers of trees not yet gloved in green and scratching at the sky, Lucy noticed them, too. It was the third day in a row that she had come and the third day in a row that she had watched the woman talking to her son. Two until three, the woman stayed, and then she wheeled him back into the red stone building and left.

Lucy played with the keys in her pocket.

A man in a suit and tie squeezed past Lucy. He said he was sorry and he opened the gate. ‘Lovely day,’ he remarked. Lucy said, ‘Yes, it is.’ And she knew it was a lie, for him and for her. He shut the gate and walked quickly away from her. He was there to see a woman who shouted and spat. It was his wife once, but not his wife now. Lucy knew this because he had stopped at the gate to speak to her the day before. ‘Changed,’ is what the man had said. Lucy wondered if it was the same with the man in the wheelchair, a boy really. Lucy wondered if he was changed from what he was.

Lucy returned her attention to him. His name was Blaise. She’d never heard the name before. She’d had to ask him to repeat it. Then he’d shrugged, not knowing where it came from, except it was the name of a saint. She had said there was a saint called Lucy, too. She watched him in the garden, looked for some small sign in him – some sign that he was who he was, that he knew where he sat, that he had seen her and recognised her. She watched in vain. No sign for three days. She was not even sure that his eyes were open.

Suddenly the woman who sat with Blaise turned to look at Lucy at the gates. It was as if Lucy had called out and the woman had heard. Later, when she thought about it, Lucy wasn’t sure that she hadn’t called out, though what she would have shouted she did not know. Lucy did not move immediately. She stayed rooted to the spot long enough for the woman to see her. Then she did move, moved as one who has been caught doing what she should not. Lucy turned and walked quickly away from the gates and did not look back. She did not know if she would visit again.

Wednesday March 24th, 2010
She’d said at the desk that she was his sister. They would not have let her in otherwise. She’d used her real name. If she’d thought about it before speaking she would have had another name instead. She said she had some flowers and a card for him and she held them up for the nurse to see that it was no lie. She’d be ok if she could just leave them for him, she said, and her voice was cracked when she spoke. The nurse looked up his name on the screen and said he was in room 214. The nurse said she was sorry and they were doing their best for him. Then she directed Lucy to the hospital elevator and told her which floor to get off at and which way to turn when she did.

He was alone. That made it easier. She laid the flowers and the card on a small table beside his bed. There were other cards there and a bowl of fruit and a picture of his mother and his father and his sister – she was nothing like Lucy, the sister. Lucy sat down in a blue plastic chair and just looked at him, at the tubes and wires that came from him and were attached to drip-bags and monitors. There was a bandage on his head and she could just see the puckered skin that ran underneath it and into his hair, and stitches laid like spider legs across the join.
‘I lied,’ she said. That was all. She stayed for just a few minutes. A male nurse popped his head in at the door and asked if she wanted a cup of tea. She shook her head and smiled weakly. He said if she changed her mind he was just along the corridor.

Lucy got up and straightened the bed. She tucked the corners in, like at work. She smiled then, seeing what she had done. Then she brushed his hair from his eyes using just the tips of her fingers, and she said his name, said it so quiet that there was no sound to it.

She watched him sleeping for a moment longer and then was gone.

Tuesday 16th March, 2010
He’d been waiting for her. As they’d arranged. Outside the university. She’d told him she was a student there. That was a lie. He was there before her. They were meant to meet at 2. She could see him from across the park. He was not wearing his jacket, but had it slung over his shoulder as if it was a brighter day than it was. He kept looking at his watch, even though he was early. She saw him stop one student and ask for the time, checking that his watch was telling the truth.

Earlier, she’d phoned the hotel where she worked and said she was sick and would not be in. That was another lie. The girl on the switchboard had asked Lucy what was wrong and she’d said her throat was sore and she could hardly speak. She’d made the words all strain and squeak when she was talking. And a bit of a temperature, she’d added, her skin hot and damp to the touch. The girl had said she should get to her bed and drink lots.

It wasn’t his fault. When Lucy looked back on the moment, she thought she was to blame. He was looking the other way. He was looking her way, as if he’d seen her. Maybe he was about to raise his hand and wave. Maybe he was about to call her name. He was smiling, the first that he had in the time she had been watching him, and he took a step towards her. Then it was over.

Out of nowhere and so fast it was a blur even in her stilled memory, like she was seeing through glass and it was smeared. Afterwards, she could not even say if the car was blue or red or green. By the time she reached Blaise there was a small crowd round his body. Someone had phoned for an ambulance and a man was kneeling beside him as though Blaise was already dead except the man was talking to him in a loud voice.

‘His name is Blaise,’ she told the man. She had to repeat it so he understood. ‘I was supposed to be meeting him. That’s why he’s here. Only it wasn’t really me he was waiting for, not really.’

She picked up Blaise’s jacket and went with him in the ambulance. At the hospital they asked her questions she had no answers to. ‘His name is Blaise,’ is all she said, and she kept saying it over and over so they would know. A nurse led her into a waiting room and brought her a cup of tea and sat with her for a short while.

Lucy left when no one was looking. She left carrying Blaise’s jacket over one arm. She caught the bus back to her flat and went straight to her bed, just as the hotel switchboard girl had suggested.

It was not until the next day that Lucy remembered the jacket. There were keys in the pocket and a wallet with his address inside and a mobile phone with two messages.

Monday 15th March, 2010
They sat together over coffee. The world rushed past them and the coffee grew cold without them noticing. He talked for the both of them. He told her about books he’d read and music he was listening to and films he had seen. He was like a small boy with a pocketful of treasure or secrets that he could not wait to share with her. This is who I am, he seemed to be saying. And Lucy already knew that she liked who he was.

That was where the lie came from. He was not the sort to be with a girl who made beds in a hotel of over a hundred rooms. That was what she thought and why she lied. ‘Art History,’ she’d said. He raised his eyebrows and nodded, as though he was impressed. ‘At the university,’ she said, ‘my first year.’ There were the names of artists she knew from school and paintings she had liked. She dropped them into the conversation and let him talk around them. It was easier than she had thought.

He was holding her hand before they left the shop. She looked down at their clasped fingers, as if she could not believe it – and that was another lie, for she was really looking for the time on his watch. She figured she was already late for her shift.

They made an arrangement to meet again the next day. He said he’d come to the university and she said that would be great. He’d kissed her then. The first kiss: Blaise kissed a new art history student from the university and Lucy kissed Blaise who loved books and films and music. And something in the kiss felt honest enough, she thought.

Monday 8th March, 2010
If truth be told, she’d had her eye on him for several weeks. They went to the same coffee shop at around eleven on weekdays. She’d watched him from behind a dozen empty coffee cups. She saw the way he held the door open for others to get through, and how he smiled for no reason and how he kept brushing his hair out of his eyes.

Their first collision was no accident. She waited for him, pretended to not see him and he stumbled into her, seeming to knock her off balance.
He said he was sorry and he was always doing that, walking into people, walking into things, never really looking where he was going.
‘That’ll get you into trouble one day,’ she said.
He hoped she was not hurt. She shook her head and touched his arm with her hand and laughed softly.

That’s when he said his name was Blaise and she had to ask him to say it again.
‘It’s the name of a saint, that’s all I know,’ he said.
‘I’m Lucy,’ she said. ‘And that’s a saint, too.’
He bought her coffee and sat with her till she had to go.
Maybe they’d bump into each other again, that’s what he said to her when she got up to leave. He hoped they would, and he said that, too.
Lucy shrugged as if she didn’t care, and that would be the biggest lie of all.