A Month of Summer (11 page)

I imagined Gretchen’s picture in the dusty crevice behind the CPR chart. It was a wickedly pleasant thought.

Glancing over his shoulder at me, Claude blinked in surprise. “Why, Birdie. I think you’re smilin’. ’Course, that out there’s somethin’ to smile about. Hear all them birds singing? Every bird in the air’s come down to join the choir.”

I breathed deeply of the new day and listened to the birdsong in the Bradford pear trees outside. My mind slowed, my body relaxed, and the tightness Betty had left behind ebbed away.

“Silver linings.” Claude leaned forward to take in more of the sky. “Normally, it’d be
red sky in the morning, sailor take warning
, but I seen mares’ tails out there last night, and there’s even a few this mornin’.” He pointed out the window, but my view was limited. “See them high, thin ones that start at a little tip and whisk upward into the last of the pink? Mares’ tails. The mares are runnin’ happy this mornin’. They got their tails flying up in the wind. Farmers know what that means. When the mares’ tails point down, watch out, but when they’re runnin’ up, good day ahead. My pappy always watched the mares’ tails.” Rolling his chair back, he turned to me. “Why, Birdie, I believe you got the prettiest smile I ever seen.”

Dimly, I could feel movement tickling my lips. I wondered if Claude was flirting with me, but the thought seemed foolish, considering our present situation. Aside from that, he had to be well over eighty, far older than me, and I was a married woman.

Claude swiveled the wheelchair and returned to contemplating the sky. “My pappy believed in working smart and working hard.” He paused to take a hankie from his pocket and wipe a disemboweled fly from the window glass. “He was forty-eight years old when I was born. My folks’d long since give up on ever having kids before they had me and my twin sister. My mama nearly didn’t make it through the birth, and the doctors thought we wouldn’t make it, either. Back then, they didn’t have all the medicine like they do now.” A chuckle slipped past his lips and he patted his stomach, which was thin and sunken like the rest of him. “As boy children go, I was a pretty poor disappointment, kinda scrawny, but my pappy never let me know it. He loved us both, just like we was strappin’ and perfect.”

Claude went on with the story about the farm where he grew up. I heard it only dimly. I was thinking of Edward, and what a good father he’d been to Teddy. He’d never made Teddy feel any less than perfect. It was sad that Rebecca didn’t know that part of her father. I’d so tried to discourage him from giving her up to her mother, but he let it happen out of guilt, as a form of penance for leaving Marilyn. There was so much Rebecca didn’t know, so much she didn’t understand about her father and the events of that year.

Claude was rambling on about the trains when Ifeoma walked in. I was glad it was she and not Betty who discovered him. Ifeoma must have been working an extra shift, which she often did. As far as I could tell, she was a single gal with no family to go home to. I supposed she needed the money additional work could provide. Perhaps she sent it back to someone in Ghana.

Bracing her hands on her hips, she frowned, towering over Claude like a parent correcting an errant child. “You are not to be here, Mr. Fisher.”

Claude smiled up at her like she’d said something nice to him. “I was just telling Birdie about my trains.” He watched her expectantly as she circled the wheelchair and grabbed the handles. “Ifeoma, did I ever tell you about my trains?”

“Maaa-ny times.” Ifeoma sighed, turning him toward the door. “Out wit’cha now. You cannot go about waking all the others—do you hear?”

Putting his feet on the footrests, Claude folded his hands over his stomach and sat back for the ride. “All right, but if Nurse Betty ain’t gone home yet, just put me in the closet ’til she leaves.”

“Betty must complete her work,” Ifeoma defended. “She has no time to chase around an old man.”

“If she wouldn’t be so hateful to me, I might not hide from her,” Claude protested. “I don’t never hide from you, Ifay. Back in Buffalo River School, my first-grade teacher had a sayin’—Squawking bird’s unwelcome soon no matter the color the wing, but songbird, plain gray, is welcome long as she sings, and sings, and sings.”

Ifeoma rolled her eyes, her habitually formal posture softening slightly. “In Ghana, we have also a saying—Old rooster, he loud on the fence, quiet in the stew.”

Hooking a finger in the neck of his robe, Claude loosened it like a hangman’s noose. “That’s a good sayin’, too. If you give me my medication, Ifeoma, I won’t even fuss.”

I heard myself laughing before I felt the muscles contracting, puffs of air lifting me off the bed.

Ifeoma raised a brow at me, surprised. Her full lips parted into a wide, slow smile that was dazzlingly white against her mahogany skin, and she threw her head back, laughing as she went out the door.

I listened as the sound drifted away. It was good to hear someone laugh with abandon, a real laugh, not the forced, controlled kind reserved for places where no one is supposed to be too happy. The picture of her smile stayed with me as I turned back to the window, watching the third-shift staff go home and the day shift come in. I waited for Mary to arrive. She and her little boys would ride the DART bus in at seven. They’d get off at the stop out front, then wait until the day-care van came at seven thirty. She was late today. The bus came and went, and then the day-care van, with no sign of her. She’d never been late before.

Ifeoma came back in and took care of providing my breakfast through the peg tube, and I surmised that she was covering for Mary. As efficient as Ifeoma was, I wanted Mary. The prospects for the day would be dimmer without her.

When Gretchen showed up with her cart, her brawny form blocking the light from the hall, the prospects dimmed further yet.

“You’re first on the list today,” she informed me brusquely. From her box, she whipped out the wide leather therapy belt she used to move people around. “I hear you been holding out on me. Let’s see what you can do.” There was axle grease under her fingernails.

I jerked my leg away as she came closer. The movement surprised me.

Gretchen was pleased. Her pale gray eyes sparkled with enthusiasm for her work. “Well, lookie there. That’s something new.” After lowering the bed, she grasped the belt between her hands and stood over me like Dr. Frankenstein about to flip the switch and illuminate his helpless creature like a Christmas decoration. “Betcha there’s more where that came from.”

“Don’t let her whup ya, Birdie,” Claude’s voice came from the doorway.

Gretchen glanced over her shoulder. “When I need your opinion, I’ll ask for it, Fisher. You better head on back to your room now. I got some special exercises planned for you today.”

I had the vague sense that Gretchen was trying to make a funny, and I started laughing again.

Gretchen squinted one eye and peered at me through the other. “Mmm-hmm. Well, look at this. A cheerful patient. I love a cheerful patient.” She cracked her knuckles in preparation and closed the window blind. She held the pushpins up, studying them for a moment, then glanced speculatively toward the doorway before tossing them into the corner, where someone could step on them later. “Let’s see what else we can do, shall we?”

Our session began whether I wanted it to or not, and within a half hour, Gretchen had explored every inch of my abilities. We’d discovered that some motor control was coming back in my right leg, and I could squeeze the fingers of my right hand a bit. At least Gretchen said I could. I couldn’t feel it, really. The fiery muscle cramps started, and I closed my eyes, groaning.

“Looks like we’ve got some involuntary muscle activity here,” Gret observed. “Feel like you’ve got kind of a charley horse in there?”

Kind of ?
I thought.
Kind of ?
“Eeeehhhsssh,” I groaned.

“That’s good.” Gretchen was delighted. She began kneading my leg between her brawny hands like a long, white lump of dough. The pain ebbed with amazing speed, and for a short while Gretchen and I were on good terms. Then Gretchen grabbed the therapy belt, yanked me onto my side, and pulled me into a pro wrestling move similar to the ones Teddy watched on TV.

“Aaahowww,” I moaned.

“Gotta keep those muscles stretched,” Gretchen said, then propped me high on the pillows and slipped off the therapy belt. Without a word, she packed up her tools and left the room. If I never saw her again, it would be far too soon. Even as that thought crossed my mind, however, there was a sense of accomplishment, a still, small voice telling me that finally this work and suffering were leading somewhere. These were baby steps, but they were steps.

Mary came in as I was recovering. She looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. She forced a smile when she realized I was awake. “I hear you’re doing well today.”

Yes
, I thought, and the word came out, “Essshhh.” I was disappointed with the sound of it.

Mary smiled again. “See. That was better.”

“Eeeyyye?” I wanted to ask why she’d been late this morning, why she looked sad.

She didn’t understand, and I experienced the usual moment of irritation at being unable to communicate. I wanted to comfort her, to be useful for something.

“You look good today,” she said, moving the pillows on the lower half of the bed, changing the position of my legs. She took the brush from the nightstand to comb my hair. “How about we fix your hair? You’ve got such pretty hair, Mrs. Parker.”

I wanted to tell her she had beautiful hair—thick, in a glossy, chestnut color. It was a shame she kept it wound up in a bun like that. She was a lovely girl, even in her plain, unassuming clothes and with no makeup.

A noise from the doorway caught her attention, and she glanced up, surprised as the door pushed open wider and her little boy slipped through. The top of his head crossed my vision as he bolted to her, holding up a piece of paper with a Magic Marker drawing on it.

“Mama. Wook! Twain-twain!” he squealed, tugging at her skirt and trying to show her the drawing. “Man make twain. Woo-ooo-woo!”

Mary scooped him up, blushing and stepping back from the bed. “That’s a pretty train, Brady, but you’re not supposed to be in here. You’re supposed to be in the TV room until the day-care van comes. Where’s Cindy? She said she’d keep an eye on you.”

“Her in da pod-dy,” Brady replied, unabashedly.

Mary frowned toward the door. “Where’s Brandon? Why isn’t he watching you?”

“B-andon talk the twain man.”

“Mr. Fisher?” Brady shrugged, and she explained, “The man you met last night? The one who told you about his trains?”

Brady nodded vigorously, then swiveled in her arms as his brother skidded through the door. “Brady, you stupid! You’re supposed to stay down there!” Brandon’s high-pitched voice echoed around the room and escaped into the hall. A few doors down, the moaning woman called out in response.

Mary silenced Brandon with a finger to her lips, then set Brady down and turned to me, her cheeks red, her eyes nervous and fearful. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker . . . I really apologize . . . I . . . we had a mix-up this morning and missed the early bus. The day-care van’s coming back to get them. Brandon’s going to be a little late for school, huh?” Laying a hand on Brandon’s head, she forced an encouraging smile and turned him toward the door.

Down the hall, the moaning woman wailed for help, and Brady’s eyes grew large.

Mary reached for his hand. “Come on, guys.”

I wanted to tell her to wait, not to take the boys away. “A-aaate,” I heard myself say, and my hand jerked toward Brady’s picture. I tried to conjure the name for the thing that pulls a train, but the words were a jumble in my mind. “Tss-eee?”

Mary squinted, trying to make sense of me. I moved my hand toward the paper again.

“Tss-eee,” I repeated, growing hopeful.

Brady clutched his chubby hands around the bed rail, wrinkling the paper as he climbed up like a little boy on monkey bars. “Her wanna see twain,” he interpreted, his bright eyes turning my way with a look of eureka.

“Yeee-sssh!” I cheered, suddenly triumphant.

Mary smiled indulgently. “Just for a minute.” She glanced toward the door. No doubt she had work to do, and she was already behind from being late this morning.

Hooking an elbow on the railing, Brady tapped my arm and began describing the parts of his train engine. That was the word— “engine.” I felt another small burst of victory. I wouldn’t lose that word again.

I soaked in the little-boy scent of Brady, the feel of his nearness, the precious ring of his high voice. He was a very bright boy. He knew a lot about trains. Perhaps Mr. Fisher had given him an education.

Claude appeared in the doorway, finally. “Well, there you boys are. Y’all disappeared on me,” he said, and wheeled himself into the room.

We were all gathered around the picture, and Brady had shinnied in next to me, when Dr. Barnhill, whom I remembered from my stay in the hospital, came by. He frowned sternly, surveying the commotion.

Mary scooped Brady off the bed, blushed, and steered the boys, then Mr. Fisher, toward the door. “Sorry, Dr. Barnhill,” she mumbled, slipping past him.

“Mary.” His reply held little intonation, then he turned to his charts.

“Morning, Doc!” Claude called back.

“Good morning, Claude. How’s the pacemaker doing?” Dr. Barnhill answered without looking up.

Claude’s hand made a hollow sound, thumping his chair. “Right as rain, Doc. I ain’t had a single spell since it got put in. You should of seen me dancin’ down the hall while-ago.”

Dr. Barnhill chuckled and shook his head as he turned to me. “Looks like you’re feeling well enough for visitors, Mrs. Parker.”

“Yyy-eeesh!” I answered, and Dr. Barnhill smiled again.

CHAPTER 7