A Month of Summer (10 page)

She paused long enough to take a breath. Part of me wanted to reach through the phone and hug her for saying she missed me. Tonight I needed someone to miss me. Another part of me felt the compulsion to cross-examine, to make my point about breaking the rules. “If you started the movie at seven, why is it still on?”

“Huh?”

“Macey, you heard me.”

She gave a huge, dramatic sigh. “Isha fell asleep before it was over, and it wasn’t quite bedtime, and there was this one
really
good part I wanted to see, like, just in case you said we couldn’t buy the movie and Isha had to take it back tomorrow? I went back to find that part.”

“And it took an hour and a half?” The picture was becoming clearer. Poor Isha. If Kyle came home and found Isha asleep and Macey watching a movie at this time of night, he’d go ballistic.

“No.” Macey sighed again. “I forgot to turn it off. I didn’t mean to, but it’s really good, and—”

“Macey . . .” I stopped her. “You didn’t
accidentally forget
to turn off the movie. You wanted to stay up and watch, and so you
chose
to do that, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to. Just because Isha didn’t stop you doesn’t make it all right. You know the rules, and it’s your responsibility to follow them. Aside from that, you made a commitment to Isha to go to bed when the movie was over, and you didn’t keep your promise.” Glancing toward the hallway, I thought of the unspoken commitment that had brought me here. “We all have to do things we don’t want to, just because it’s right. Learning to do those things is part of growing up, part of being a responsible adult.”

“I know,” Macey huffed, as in,
I’ve heard this speech before. Would you like me to quote it for you?
“I’m sorry.” The happy jingle in her voice was gone, replaced by a defeated, remorseful monotone that said,
Well, darn, I messed up again.

I felt the inconvenient tug of empathy, of being in her place, listening to my mother’s oft-repeated lecture about people who don’t keep commitments, who don’t stick to the rules. Such people grow up to be unstable, starry-eyed dreamers who flit off from their families and start entirely new lives, and think everyone ought to forgive them for it. . . . “I just don’t want you to be tired during school tomorrow, Mace.”

“I know.” The answer was sullen, the undertone unmistakable. She didn’t feel like chatting with the fun-killer anymore.

“We’ll talk about the DVD when I get home.”

“Okay.”

Weary, lonesome tears prickled behind my eyes. I found myself wanting to keep her on the phone, even though it was bedtime. “Did you have a good day?”

“Yes.” The simple answer was Macey’s way of sulking—a passive-aggressive protest.

“Some details, please.”

“It was okay. The social studies test was easy. Coach Kara was sick, so we didn’t do much in gymnastics. We stopped to get subs on the way home. I bought a foot-long for Isha and me. She had to pick off the olives because she hates olives. I did my homework. Dad called and said he’d be late, and so Isha and me went out to get a movie.”

“Isha and I.” The correction was out of my mouth before I thought about it.

“Isha and I,” she repeated with an exaggerated yawn. “I guess I better go to bed.”

“All right.” Part of me wished she would launch into some long-winded story about school, or gymnastics, or going to the movie store with Isha.

“Night, Mom.” Macey yawned again.

“Good night, sweetheart. Go to bed now. Wake Isha up and tell her she can head on to bed, too. Tell her to check the doors and turn on the alarm first.”
You’d think your father could have come home, considering that he knew I was out of town tonight.
“I love you.”

Macey didn’t answer, and I felt loneliness closing in around me.

“Night,” she repeated.

“Sweet dreams, Mace.” My voice quavered, and despite knowing better, I felt myself falling down the slippery slope of coercion and preteen emotional blackmail. “Listen, about the movie. Just go ahead and tell Isha I said you can keep it. It sounds good. Maybe we can watch it when I get back.”

“Cool!” Macey squealed. “Thanks, Mom. You’ll really like it. I love you.”

I love you.
Even though I’d just bought them with a DVD, the words felt good. They were the salve I needed. “I love you, too. No more late nights, okay?”

“ ’Kay, Mom. Bye.”

I said good-bye and hung up, then sat on the edge of the bed feeling vacant and exhausted. Picking up the sandwich plate and tea, I studied the partially open door. The hallway was dark, the house quiet. There was no sound of a TV, or anyone moving around. I set the sandwich and drink on the night table, stood up, then crossed the room and peered out. At the end of the hall, the bedroom door, open earlier, was closed now, the threshold dark underneath. I tiptoed out, descended the stairs, and went through the entryway to the living room. The chairs were empty, and my father was snoring in the master bedroom. I walked to his door, looked in, saw him lying in the king-sized bed with his back turned toward the wall. On Hanna Beth’s side, a nightgown lay neatly atop the covers. My father’s arm was stretched over it. I stood watching, not knowing how to feel. Had Teddy told him I was here? Did he understand?

Finally, I went to the kitchen, rifled through the refrigerator, the pantry, the cabinets. The shelves were bare save for bags of macaroni, beans, flour, and rice. On the counter were two loaves of bread and a jar of peanut butter. When I opened the refrigerator, the stench was overwhelming, even though it was empty except for a jar of jelly, something molding in a casserole dish, and a cache of rotting produce in the vegetable drawer. My stomach rolled over as I closed the door, then stood looking at the piles of dirty dishes in the sink, on the countertops, on the breakfast table. Every dish in the house must have been used.

Bracing my hands on the counter, I let my head sag forward. There was no way I could sort this out tonight. I needed to go to sleep, attack the problem in the morning, figure out . . . something.

I couldn’t imagine what
something
might be.

CHAPTER 6

I heard a thunderstorm rumbling in the distance and thought of Teddy. Teddy hated thunderstorms, especially at night. I hoped that, at home, he was sleeping soundly.

The first muted rays of dawn were peeking through the window when Betty, the third-shift nurse’s aide, came to clean the bed and change my sheets. Betty was heavyset and less than five feet tall, with a scraggly graying bouffant that added several inches to her height. The bouffant was so tall and thin that when she entered with the hallway light behind her, the hair formed a translucent web of tangled strands. As she approached the bed, the hair solidified, so that she seemed to grow taller the closer she came.

As usual, Betty couldn’t be troubled with niceties. She yanked back the covers, rolled the top sheet into a wad and threw it in her laundry cart, then shoved me roughly to one side, slid a plastic pad under me, ripped off the adult diaper, wrinkled her nose and scowled at the mess.

“For heaven’s sake,” she grumbled as she rolled me over again, so that I collided with the rail hard enough that I felt it. Wadding the pad into a ball, she tossed it into the trash, replaced the bottom sheet, then changed her gloves, checked her cart for something, and walked out the door, leaving it hanging open so that people in the hall could see everything. A man pushing a laundry cart passed by, and I pressed my eyes closed, heat rushing into my face.

“Git outa here,” Betty snapped as she whisked in with another disposable undergarment, letting the door remain ajar. Without looking at me, she grabbed my arm and measured my pulse, then glanced down at my body, said, “Looks like we’re dry now,” and slapped on another diaper. Covering me with a new top sheet and blanket, she grunted as she folded the corners, propped up my knees with pillows, and slightly lowered the head of the bed.

“Stinks in here,” she muttered, and pulled out a large white spray bottle. A cloud of aerosol followed her as she pushed her cart toward the door.

In her wake, I tried to catch the scent of Mary’s little boys, but all that remained was the antiseptic.Outside in the hall, Betty hollered at Claude Fisher. Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to be up and around this early. Betty wanted to know how he’d gotten out of bed. She’d put him back once already. He told her he was old, not an invalid, and she instructed him to go back to his room.

Claude returned to his room next door, and I closed my eyes again, trying to find the scent of little boys as the aerosol cloud faded. There was nothing. No trace of sweet-smelling memories.

In my legs, the charley horses were running wild. Betty had whipped them into a frenzy, and I felt as if I might lose my mind. I wanted to scream, but I knew all I’d manage was an unintelligible groan. A wave of helplessness and loneliness and misery swept over me. I wanted to be home. I wanted life to be normal again, but I didn’t think I had the strength to get from here to there. It was too hard, too far uphill.

I started to weep. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. It would be easier to die right now and be done with it.

“Hey, Birdie, don’t cry.” Claude’s soft voice came through the darkness, through the haze of pain, a focus point of light, drawing me out. “I got somethin’ for ya. Watch this.”

Catching a breath, I blinked away the blur and watched him shuffle across the room, dragging his chair to the window. Soft pink light poured in as he raised the blind, then secured the cord with three pushpins. “Stole these from the bulletin board. Betty’s picture kind of slipped down behind the CPR chart. I reckon they’ll find it one of these days.” Sitting back in his chair, he admired his handiwork and grinned mischievously. “Birdie, just look at that sunrise. Ain’t that a promise to behold?”

I turned to the window as much as I could. Outside, the sky was ablaze with shades of amber and crimson, amethyst and rose against pure turquoise blue. The clouds that had dimmed the light and threatened rain had passed over, creating a dazzling panorama of shape and color, a glistening shore filled with possibilities.

I was reminded of something Edward said to me once, when we climbed the scaffold of an old drilling rig and, together, watched the sun descend.
The most beautiful sunsets begin with the passing of a storm. . . .

Edward was always such a wise and sentimental man. He would not have shown that side of himself to others, but he never hesitated in opening it to me. We were always safe with each other. Watching the sun awaken, I imagined I was sitting with him on the patio, enjoying a summer morning, fresh mugs of coffee steaming into the air. I knew how the garden would smell. I drank it in, felt the dew in the air, tasted the faded scent of night-blooming jasmine as it turned shy in the early light.

By the window, Claude sat silent, as if he were imagining something, too. Finally, he excused himself, saying he’d better take his usual stroll before breakfast. He smiled and patted the edge of the bed as he went past, leaving me to watch the dawning sky alone.

The sunrise had come and gone by the time Betty returned. She breezed into the room, then repossessed the pushpins and lowered the blind. “Who the heck did this?” she grumbled, making it clear that the blind, and everything else in the room, myself included, was too much trouble.

“Nnnoooo,” I protested as she closed off the sky, relegating me to a narrow view of the parking lot through the broken slats.

Betty glanced over her shoulder, seeming peeved that I had some speech returning. “Hush up, now. You better rest. You’re set for a swallow study today. That oughta be somethin’ to look forward to.” The blind fell the rest of the way to the windowsill with a slap, and Betty muttered to herself, “Just what I need—one more off-the-peg tube and on mush. Like I got all day to sit around and spoon-feed people.” An irritated puff of air escaped her lips as she yanked the covers back over my legs. “G’night, Irene,” she said on her way out the door, and I listened as her spongy white shoes squeaked out of earshot.

I lay wondering if Rebecca would come again today. Had she gone to the house to see Teddy and Edward? If so, I hoped Edward was having a good day. On good days, he didn’t mind new people. Evenings were not his best time, though. It was as if the Aricept and his other medications wore off by evening, leaving him confused and restless, wandering the house but unable to remember why. Sundowner’s syndrome, the doctor called it. Kay-Kay would explain all of that to Rebecca, of course. . . .

Maybe, if she could convince Rebecca to help her, Kay-Kay would bring Teddy and Edward to the nursing center to see me. It was probably too much for Kay-Kay to accomplish on her own and that was why she hadn’t brought them to visit already. I hoped that was why. I hoped Edward’s state hadn’t worsened. If he was worse, surely Kay-Kay would have come to tell me. When had Kay-Kay last been here? Or had she been here? Had she come since I’d been transferred from the hospital? It was all such a blur—the time in the hospital, the time here. The days slid together like spills of wet paint, drab colors swirling and mixing until they formed a quiet gray. I remembered Kay-Kay standing over my bed, telling me everything was all right at home, promising she would take care of Teddy and Edward.

I hoped she had the dishes cleaned up, so Rebecca wouldn’t see the place a mess. Kay-Kay could be a little lax about the dishes sometimes. . . .

For a moment, I was back in the kitchen. My kitchen. I was home, and I could clean up the dishes myself. . . .

The door opened, the sound forcing me back to the nursing center. Claude came in with a new supply of pushpins. He raised the blind and secured the string to the wall again, carefully pressing in the pins. “Gret’s picture fell off the bulletin board, so these wasn’t bein’ used.” He sat back and again admired his work. “Reckon she’ll notice?”