A Month of Summer (28 page)

She flirted with a boy, shared a first kiss with him behind the barns, hid her legs in the creek when he passed by.

Later, she heard that his sister was stricken with polio. . . .

He ran away and joined the army. She never saw the boy again, but she’d always wondered what became of him, how things might have been different if she hadn’t hidden her legs in the pool. . . .

My mind spun through the connections, nimble like a spider pulling together bits of a broken web, quickly weaving silken ties until everything was connected. The boy had blue eyes . . . the bluest eyes. Blue eyes like Claude’s.

“Wee-da,” I whispered. Ouita Mae was the girl with the braces on her legs. She’d been injured in a horse riding accident when she was young. . . .

Claude looked up from his musings.

“Wee-da,” I said again, knowing there was no way I could possibly communicate to him that his story and Ouita Mae’s melded together like puzzle pieces, creating a picture that seemed so clear now. She was the girl at the pool and he was the boy on the tall yellow horse. They’d passed by each other all those years ago, and now their paths had intersected again. “Wee-da Maaae.”

“Ouita Mae?” Claude interpreted, glancing toward the door. “I imagine she’ll be by to read to you after a while. She usually has breakfast with the doc down in the cafeteria first thing, before he starts to work. Never seen a man work as much as that fella does. I’m thinkin’ I ought to introduce him to my niece. They could make a life plan together.” Where he normally would have finished the joke with a grin, he managed only a little smile. “I’m sorry, Birdie. I ain’t much company today.” He turned his wheelchair around and started toward the door.

“Wee-da, pu-ll.” “Pull” wasn’t the word . . .
pool . . . pool. Ouita was the girl at the pool.
Even though I knew it was impossible, I tried again. “Wee-da, pu-ll.”

“Yeah.” Claude stopped in the alcove. “I imagine she’ll be along to read the book in a while, but I’ll tell her you’re lookin’ for her.” Then he was gone. I fell back against the pillow, rigid with frustration. Somehow, I had to find a way to make Claude, or Ouita Mae, understand . . .but how? In spite of the frustration, I was filled with a new sense of purpose, the idea that, even lying here crippled in this bed, I had been given something important to do.

I drifted into my thoughts, listening for Teddy, imagining that, after all these years, Ouita Mae and Claude were meant to meet again. Gazing out the window, I lost myself in a daydream of the girl by the pool and the young farm boy on his golden horse, connected by a chance encounter, separated all these years, now brought back together. How strange a plan, but how miraculous.

Sometime later, I was pulled back to the present by the sound of a visitor coming. I hoped at first that it was Teddy, but I heard the
click-swish
of a wheelchair. When I looked up, Ouita Mae was appearing from the alcove.

“I hear you had a good chat with your family yesterday,” Ouita Mae said, and smiled. “I’m glad. Thought I’d get on in here and read us some more in this book before your people come again.” She picked up the book and leafed through the pages. “Let’s see . . . where’d we quit?”

I tried to tell her Claude was the boy on the yellow horse. She only smiled indulgently and said, “Oh, he’s fine, sweetie. I seen Gretchen come get him after breakfast and head for the therapy room. If he survives it, I imagine he’ll come by and say how-do in a while.” Finding our page in the book, she pressed it open against her leg, then held it up and squinted through her glasses. “I won’t miss therapy when I go home, that’s for darned sure.”

“Ugg-go?” I asked.

Ouita Mae assumed I was worried about finishing the book. “Well, I’m not headed back home for a week or so,” she promised, and started to read.

I hoped that reading about Gavin and Marcella would remind her of the boy at the pool, and she would bring it up again, but she didn’t. When she put the book away, I tried to tell her about Claude, but it was impossible to communicate the thought, out of the blue.

Ouita Mae left, and I went back to listening for Teddy. He and Rebecca came just as the aide was bringing my lunch tray of mushy delights. Rebecca exited quickly to take a call on her cell phone. The occupational therapist popped in and showed Teddy how to help me put the special spoon in my hand and move it from the tray to my mouth. It was a messy process, and the motion was mostly on the part of my helper, but the therapist insisted that I must do as much as I could, so as to redevelop the muscular control required for independence.

Independence
. Such a beautiful word to which we so seldom attach the proper weight. Teddy worked patiently, cheering me toward it. “Come on, Mama. You do it, now. Good job, good job! ’Nother bite, come on, Mama. . . .”

I couldn’t help thinking of all the milestones I’d coaxed, prodded, dragged Teddy through over the years. Now we were operating in reverse. He was the teacher and I the student, my own words of encouragement being delivered back to me. His mouth hung partially open as he concentrated, trying to make his hands travel smoothly from plate to mouth and back, guiding mine. He helped me more than he should have. I wondered if, over the years, I’d done the same for him—if by helping and protecting, seeing that he took life in small bites, I’d thwarted his independence more than was necessary.

Rebecca came in to check on us after lunch. She spoke to me pleasantly enough, told me she was still waiting to talk with Dr. Amadi about Edward’s condition, but the nurse said he was improving. Rebecca warned that she and Teddy might not be able to come to the nursing center tomorrow, because they hoped to be making arrangements for bringing Edward home.

When they left, Teddy didn’t cry. He was looking forward to eating supper and playing ski-ball at Chuck E. Cheese. He joked with Rebecca, made her promise to order extra pepperoni. She laughed and said she would.

Jealousy sent a sharp, painful stab through me that I tried to suppress.

The day passed by, and then another, and another. Betty and Ifeoma came and went, Ouita Mae read the book, therapists performed therapy. My focus was less than ideal. I was worried about Teddy, and Edward, and things at home. I would have asked Mary to go by and see about them, but Mary was absent for two days because her son was too sick to attend school. Ifeoma, Betty, and a nurse’s aide from a temp agency covered her shifts.

I wondered where Mary was staying, because I didn’t hear her in Claude’s bathroom in the mornings. By the time she came back on the third day, I’d begun to worry that she wouldn’t return at all. She entered my room looking exhausted and thinner than usual. “Sorry I’ve been gone,” she said. Rubbing the back of her wrist across her forehead, she sighed. “Gretchen says you haven’t been cooperating with your therapy as well as you could.”

“Ffff! Grrr-chn,” I grumbled.

Mary gave me a sad look. “She wants you to get better. It takes a hard person to do a hard job sometimes.”

“Ffff!” As soon as the sound came out, I was sorry for it. I wanted to tell Mary I was glad she was back, and ask her if she knew why Teddy and Rebecca hadn’t come. There was momentary confusion between my mouth and my brain, like a light switch flipping on and off. I threw my head back against the pillow, impatient to clear the fog.

“You have to try to . . .” Mary’s urging lacked the usual enthusiasm. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she leaned away, her fingers trembling.

“Maryyy.” I reached out and touched her arm.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled, covering her eyes. Her lips parted as breath trembled in and out of her. “I’m just . . . tired. I’m sorry.”

“Maryyy,” I whispered again. “Whyeee?”

She shook her head.

“Sss-it,” I said.

She managed a wan smile, wiping her cheeks. “I can’t. I’m so far behind today. If I don’t get busy, I’ll get fi— I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker. Just ignore me.”

I caught her hand before she could leave. My fingers closed around it, strong and determined. Independent. “Maryyy . . . ssshhh . . . All-rye -t? Whyeee?”

Sighing, she sank to the edge of the chair. Her shoulders rounded forward into a weary arc. “Do you ever just . . . not know what to ask for anymore? Do you ever just feel like . . . like things will never be all right again?”

“Yes,” I whispered, filled with a shared feeling of desperation, of loss and unanswered prayers. Even though I’d always had faith, always believed, I couldn’t imagine where we would all go from here.

CHAPTER 17

After three days of calling home health care agencies, conducting interviews, dealing with my father’s hospitalization, and trying to make arrangements for a power of attorney over my father’s bank accounts, I was close to the breaking point. To make matters worse, back at the office, two important visa applications had been sent in without the proper supporting documentation, and I’d been spending hours on the phone with Bree, trying to clear things up before the potential employer, my client, decided to find another law firm. Kyle hit the end of his rope and wanted me to come home.

“Just hire someone to take care of it and get on a plane, Rebecca,” he snapped. “It can’t be that hard.” As usual, there was the insinuation that he could handily take care of what I could not—that this situation in Dallas was dragging on because I was soft, unwilling to do what needed to be done. There was always, between us, this silent competition, one winner, one loser. He was the better lawyer, the more successful income producer, the one with the Pepperdine education, the one willing to put in the over-and-above time, the superhero who could tie things up in profitable little packages so everyone could be happy. No allowances were made for the fact that, while he was burning the midnight oil, I was raising our daughter and trying to create a home that was more than just a place where we kept our stuff.

“You know what, Kyle, it’s not as easy as that. You can’t just look in the want ads and hire a . . . a responsible family member to look after things.” I didn’t want to fight with him. I wanted to lean on him, to purge myself of all the details, to have him shore me up. I wanted to admit that I wasn’t sure what to do next, or how to handle things, or whether I could. Instead of being honest, admitting weakness, I felt the need to defend my position.

“You’re in Dallas, for heaven’s sake,” he pointed out. “There must be any number of agencies.”

“And I’ve called them all.” I could feel the discussion taking on a life of its own, spiraling into an argument. “I’ve either interviewed or talked to at least a dozen people the past few days, Kyle. That’s all I’ve done, other than search my father’s files and wade through the runaround at the bank. I was hoping to get my father out of the hospital two days ago, but instead he’s still there and it’s been two days since we’ve even made it by to visit, and a day longer than that since I took Teddy to the nursing center. He’s about to have a breakdown, the hospital is
finally
discharging my father today, and I have no idea what shape he’s in, because I haven’t seen him. On top of all that, I talked to the nursing center administrator yesterday, and they’d like to brief me on the kinds of renovations needed to bring Hanna Beth home. Whatever personnel I hire here will eventually be dealing with that, on top of Hanna Beth’s care, scheduling her physical therapy, taking her for medical visits. The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, I can’t get into my father’s bank accounts, but I do know that the water, phone, electric, and trash services were behind in payment due to lack of funds for the automatic drafts. There should be plenty of money in my father’s accounts, but given his mental state when I got here, anything’s possible. He may have cashed in all his CDs and buried the money in the backyard to keep it away from
those people
. I’m going flipping crazy here, Kyle. Instead of a butt-chewing about things at the office, a little
support
from my
husband
would be nice.” To my complete irritation, a lump of tears blocked my throat—a reaction completely unlike me. In the throes of a negotiation, which this was, I never succumbed to emotion. Female lawyers couldn’t afford that luxury.

“Macey needs . . .” Kyle stopped mid-sentence, puzzled. “Rebecca?”

“I’m sorry,” I sniffed, trying to gain control. What was wrong with me lately? “I’m just so . . . wiped out. I think I’m allergic to something in this house. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“You’ve been under quite a bit of stress, Beck.” It felt good to have him recognize the fact, to hear a note of tenderness in the pet name he so seldom used anymore. I wanted to fall into him, have him wrap his arms around me long-distance and hold me up.

“A little.” My voice was raw and hoarse. “Did Mace get her cast on yesterday?” One more thing that had been on and off my mind. The swelling in Macey’s ankle hadn’t subsided as quickly as the doctors expected.

“Yes. Pink.” There was a smile in Kyle’s voice. I pictured that smile, knew just how it would look if I were there in the room with him. I would smile back at him, feel warm and connected for a moment before we moved on to other topics. “My mother helped her glue rhinestones on the toe, and she took a Sharpie to school today to have everyone sign it. She wanted you to know she’s saving a spot for you, though. She put a sticker over it so no one would encroach on your space.”

I sniffle-laughed and felt homesick all at once. I wanted to be the first one to sign Macey’s cast. I wanted to be there to help her glue rhinestones on it. “Did you go with her to the doctor?”

Kyle sighed. “Yes, I went with her. I sat outside the MRI machine, and I voted on the cast colors, and she overruled me. I voted for rainbow, and she picked pink because she thought you would like it.”

“I’m surprised. Usually whatever Dad says is golden.” A tenderness blossomed in my chest. My daughter picked pink for me. Macey was always seeking evidence of her father’s approval—pulling out school assignments, gymnastics medals, performing new tricks on the living room floor in an effort to garner a bit of his attention.