Life Expectancy

Wind whipped the coattails of pedestrians on the sidewalks.
        Charlene had met us at our hotel that morning- Now, after hugs and thank-yous and God-blesses all around, she drove back to Snow Village.
        In our Explorer again, just the two of us, with Lorrie behind the wheel, on the way to the hospital, I said, "You scared the hell out of me when you told him Annie would never be a part of his life."
        "He knew we'd never allow that," she explained. "If we had agreed, he'd have known we were lying. Then he'd have been sure you were lying about killing Vivacemente, too. But now he thinks you'll really do it- because, like he said, look what you did to the great Beezo. If he thinks you'll do it, he'll keep his end of the bargain."
        We were silent for a block or two, and then I said, "Is he crazy or evil?"
        "The distinction doesn't matter to me. Either way, we have to deal with him."
        "If he was crazy first and found his way to evil, there's some explanation for him. And almost some sympathy."
        "None here," she said, for she was a lioness with an endangered cub and would give no consideration to the predator.
        "If he was evil first, and being evil made him crazy, I don't owe him anything that one brother would owe another."
        "You've been thinking about this for some time."
        "Yeah."
        "Give yourself a pass. Forget it. The courts already settled the issue when he was judged mentally fit to stand trial."
        She braked to a stop at a red traffic light.
        On the cross street, a black Cadillac hearse glided past. The windows were tinted for privacy. Maybe it was transporting a dead celebrity.
        "I'm not actually going to kill Vivacemente," I assured Lorrie.
        "Good. If you ever decide to turn homicidal, don't just run around offing people at random. Talk with me. I'll give you a list."
        The signal light changed to green.
        As we passed through the intersection, three laughing teenage boys on the corner gestured obscenely at us. They were wearing black gloves from each of which the middle finger had been cut away to add emphasis to insult. One of them threw an ice-riddled snowball that cracked hard against my door.
        A block from the hospital, still brooding about Punchinello and worrying about Annie, I said, "He'll back out."
        "Don't even think it."
        "Because this is the fourth of my five terrible days."
        "It was already pretty terrible there for a while."
        "Not terrible enough. There's worse coming. There's got to be, judging by the past."
        "The power of negative thinking," she warned me.
        In spite of the defroster, ice began to crust on the windshield wipers, and the blades stuttered across the glass.
        This was the day before Thanksgiving. It looked like the frozen heart of January. It felt like Halloween.
        Captain Fluffy, brave guardian bear who prevented night monsters from creeping out of the closet and nibbling on children, shared the hospital bed with Annie. This was the most difficult assignment of his career.
        When we arrived, we found our daughter sleeping. Always tired, she slept a lot these days. Too much.
        Though Annie didn't know how close her mother had come to dying eleven months earlier, she knew the story of the cameo pendant, that it had survived an all-destroying fire, that her mother had worn it in the I.C.U. She had asked for it. She wore it now.
        My beautiful little Annie had withdrawn into a gray disguise of sallow skin and brittle hair. Her eyes were mascaraed with mortality, her lips pale. She looked tiny, birdlike, old.
        Neither magazines nor TV, nor the view from the window, had any interest for me. I could not stop staring at my little girl, seeing her in my mind's eye as she had been and as she might be again.
        I was reluctant to look away from her or to leave the room, for fear that when I returned, I would not have Annie to look at anymore, only photographs as she had once been.
        Her indomitable spirit, her courage through these exhausting months of illness, pain, and decline, had been an inspiration to me. But I wanted more than inspiration. I wanted her-healed, healthy, full of life once more. My tomboy. My little bullshit-artist wannabe.
        My parents didn't raise me to ask God for blessings or benefits. For guidance, yes. For the strength to do