Boy Minus Girl (15 page)

Feel a tug at my elbow. Standing behind me: Cookie. Wearing a nurse’s uniform, but with black high-heeled boots.

“Come.” Gestures with her finger.

“Where are we going?”

She pulls open my closet door. Pushes away the clothes. Reveals a long, dark hallway. Follow her down it. Mesmerized by her round butt moving against her white uniform. Reach out to touch it. It shocks my hand painfully. Damn.

She glances over her shoulder, smiles. “Be very, very careful, little boy.”

Hallway ends at a large red door. Cookie opens it. Suddenly we are in Charity’s kitchen. Charity. Dressed in a man’s gray-flannel business suit. Hair slicked back. She sets down a baking sheet of chocolate chip cookies. Says, “Hello, darling.”

“Hello,” say I. Start to go toward her. But Cookie steps in front of me. Brushes her hand through Charity’s hair. Now they are French-kissing. Touching each other all over. Then . . .

Charity lays her cheek against Cookie’s. Smirks at me. Says, “Told you so.”

Charity starts laughing. Cookie, too. I hear a third person laughing. Turn and see Howard howling in the corner, where he sits holding a large container of rocky road ice cream.

I turn. Run back down the long hallway. Their laughter reverberates off the walls. The hallway seems to stretch out interminably.
Gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here.
Cover my ears, but their laughter is deafening. A door! A door! Thank God! Throw it open. Stumble into my parents’ living room. The room is bathed in blue light from the TV. Mom, her back to me, sits on the sofa.

I slam the door shut, shutting off the laughter.

Mom turns to me. Her face seems to be drooping down toward her white uniform and black boots—galoshes.

“Les, come sit with me.” Her voice cracker-thin in that old-lady way. “It’s almost time for Johnny.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Gone.” She pats the cushion beside her. “Now come sit right here in your special place. The show’s about to start.”

On the TV Ed McMahon bellows, “Heeeere’s Johnny!” and the brassy
Tonight Show
theme swells and swells.

I awake and find myself on the top bunk. It’s dark outside. I lean over the side and see Uncle Ray snoring on the bottom bunk, his mouth hanging open like that of a victim in a crime-scene photo. His flask is on the floor beside him, and on his chest lies a big maroon book. I turn my head and read
HARKER CITY HIGH SCHOOL
1965 on the yearbook’s spine. Why in the world would he want to look at that old thing?

Seduction Tip Number 11:

It’s What’s Inside

After school I bike out to the motel to check on Cookie. I knock on her door. Nothing. I knock louder; then I hear her faint voice: “It’s open.”

The air inside is heavy. On the bed Cookie is shivering on her side, her knees drawn to her chest. She wears only black panties and a white T-shirt. Her face—I didn’t know black people could look so pale. Mr. Mister paws my legs.

“You okay?” I ask, instantly regretting my stupid question. I close the door.

Flinching, she shakes her head and brushes her hair from her perspiring forehead.

“Pain’s worse,” she gasps.

Even sick and forlorn she is beautiful.

“I’m going to get my dad,” I say.

I race downtown on my bike and wrack my brain for a way that I can explain Cookie to Dad. I turn onto Broadway and pedal through the three-block business district. Dad’s office is a narrow one-story flagstone building squeezed between Harkness Rexall and the senior citizen center (a prime location for a doctor). I ride around to the alley and go in the back door so as to avoid Mom, who works the front desk. Dad is in his small, paneled, windowless office, sitting behind his chart-piled desk and talking into a handheld Dictaphone. He looks surprised to see me, pushes a button, and the machine clicks off.

“Les . . .”

“Dad.” I am winded from the bike ride. “There’s someone you need to make a house call on right now.”

“Ray?”

I shake my head. “You don’t know her.”

“Her?”

“She’s real sick. And she’s pregnant. Come on!”

“Les, what’s going on here?”

I tug on his shirtsleeve. “Please, Dad. Hurry.”

He gets to his feet and grabs his black leather house-call bag from the bookshelf. “Go get your mother.”

“I don’t think we should.”

He faces me. “For heaven’s sake, why not?”

“It’s Uncle Ray’s baby. It’ll only make her angrier at him.”

“If I’m to examine this woman, your mother must be present.”

“Then you tell her,” I say. “The woman’s in room three at the motel. I’ll meet you there.”

The last place I want to be is in the car with my parents, trying to explain why we’re going to see a sick stripper in a motel room. Racing back out to the Sleep Inn, I imagine Mom’s reaction to what she’s about to see. My mom isn’t exactly a racist, but she isn’t exactly used to being around people who aren’t white, either. She is mostly . . . inexperienced. Just as I turn into the motel lot, Dad’s Charger pulls up beside me, and I see Mom, lips pursed, in the passenger seat.

They are stepping from the car when I climb off my bike. Ignoring Mom, I sprint past them onto the porch and knock. “Cookie, I’m, uh, here with my parents.”

Cookie is still balled up on the bed, her face wincing with pain.

I wave Mom and Dad inside. Mom, the first to come in, switches on the overhead light. Cookie rolls on her back and squints.

“Mom, Dad, this is Cookie.” Maybe I should say, “Not my lesbian un-girlfriend, my exotic-dancer un-girlfriend.”

“I’m Dr. Eckhardt and this is my wife, Beverly.” Dad sets his black bag on the nightstand. “She’s a nurse.”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Mom asks.

Cookie speaks of being eight weeks pregnant and of the extreme pain she is having in her abdomen. “It hurts real bad when I pee, too.”

Dad seats himself on the edge of the bed while Mom wraps a blood-pressure cuff around Cookie’s right arm.

“When was your last doctor visit?” Dad asks as he lifts Cookie’s wrist, places two fingers over her veins, and stares at his watch.

“Three weeks ago, before the pain started.”

“Is this the first time you’ve been pregnant?” Dad asks.

“No,” Cookie says, “I had an abortion when I was seventeen.”

Mom doesn’t so much as blink! She just keeps puffing up the blood-pressure cuff, her eyes fixed on the little white gauge. Cookie shrieks.

Dad turns to me. “Son, you better go wait outside.”

On the porch I pull the door shut and lean against the post. The window air conditioner muffles what is being said inside. Mr. Mister pads over and rubs against my right leg, and I scratch his chin the way he likes. After a few minutes I feel antsy, so I start ambling around. I spot Mrs. Stone, the ancient motel manager, staring out the office window at me. When I give a little wave, she lets the curtains drop in front of her face. Mr. Mister leads me to some evergreens around the back of the motel, where he sniffs and paws.

When Mr. Mister and I come around the front of the motel a few minutes later, Mom and Dad are helping a robe-clad Cookie into the backseat of the Charger. Mom slides into the backseat with her, and Dad closes the door after them.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re taking the lady to the hospital for some tests,” Dad says as he walks around the front of the car. “Why don’t you take her dog and put it in Rusty’s pen for the time being?” Dad situates himself behind the steering wheel, and I watch as they drive off. Mr. Mister barks and whines after them. I scoop him up, petting his shaking body and reassuring him everything is going to be all right.
Isn’t it?

When I step into the kitchen at home, I’m surprised to find Uncle Ray seated at the table eating a plate of leftover Special K casserole. Crumbs cling to his beard and grimy neck brace.

“That her dog I saw you put in the pen?” he asks, cream of mushroom soup and cereal churning in his mouth.

“Cookie’s sick. Seriously sick. Mom and Dad took her to the hospital.”

His forehead crinkles. “What? Well, now . . . I . . .”

I shrug and walk out.

A few minutes later, in the dining room, I am setting out my American history book and study guide on the Revolutionary War when Uncle Ray hobbles through the doorway.

“Les, man, don’t you see what she’s doing?” he says. “This is her way of getting you all to feel sorry for her, to win you over.”

“And I’m supposed to believe a drunk like you?”

He looks at me a long moment. I steel myself against the hurt I see in his eyes.

“You just, you—you used her like you use everyone,” I stammer. “Like you used me. There’s never going to be any Australia! You’re a liar and a drunk!”

He slowly steps forward. “You want to hit me, don’t you?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“I am tempting you.” He points at his nose, then his jaw. “Right, left, just like I taught you. Go on. Get it out of your system.”

“I hate you.”

“Face it, you were nothing before I came along,” he says. “I taught you how to defend yourself, I taught you how to talk to women—”

“Shut up.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d spend the rest of your life a little mama’s boy. With your magic tricks and your pansy music—”

It isn’t until my knuckles are stinging that I realize I have punched him. Massaging his jaw, he looks at me, surprised. “Guess it’s official. I’m no longer your favorite uncle.”

I run out of the room.

Mom, Dad, and I eat pork chops and applesauce in utter silence at the kitchen table. It is unnerving waiting for that moment when Mom will blow her top and read me the riot act.

Uncle Ray left the house shortly after I hit him and hasn’t returned.

Earlier, when Dad came home from work, I asked him how Cookie was.

“Now, Les, you know I can’t disclose patient information. But I have started her on some antibiotics. It’s just a waiting game now.”

It isn’t until we are finishing our cherry Jell-O parfait that Mom sets down her spoon, looks at me, and says in an even, calm voice, “Tell me, Les, just exactly how did you come to know Miss Cookie?”

I draw in a deep breath and tell her the truth. Mom nods, her face reactionless. When she finally speaks, she turns to Dad and says, “Roger, I want Ray out of here immediately.”

Dad, staring down at his Jell-O, spoon in hand, sighs his patented long-suffering sigh and nods.

“The bus doesn’t come to town till Saturday afternoon,” Mom says. “That gives him two days to pack up and figure out where he’s going. Now, are you going to tell him or am I?”

“Let me tell him,” I say.

Mom and Dad exchange surprised looks.

“Please,” I say. “I want to.”

“Very well,” Mom says. “The Saturday bus. In no uncertain terms, understand?”

I nod.

After dinner, while standing at the sink scrubbing pork-chop grease from the plates, I can smell cherry-scented tobacco wafting in through the window. Dad is seated on the front porch, smoking his pipe and reading
National Geographic.

“ ’Evening, Doc,” I hear a familiar high-pitched male voice say.

I look through the curtains and see Gary Mills, the Harker City Hospital administrator, step onto our porch. A chubby man with a comb-over and no neck, Mr. Mills lives with his wife three doors to the east of us in a ranch-style.

“Why, Gary.” Dad closes his magazine. “This is a surprise.”

“Beautiful evening, huh, Doc?”

“Couldn’t be better. Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Mr. Mills settles his Santa Claus physique onto the porch swing. “Yard sure looks nice and green, Doc. Not a dandelion in sight.”

“What’s on your mind, Gary?”

Mr. Mills clears his throat and says in a grave tone, “I’m afraid we have a potential problem on our hands at the hospital.”

“Oh?”

“You admitted a patient today, an uninsured colored woman.”

“That’s right.”

“Who, if I’m not mistaken”—he lowers his volume considerably—“has a sexually transmitted disease.”

My stomach churns at these words, and my legs suddenly feel as if they can’t support me.

There is a pause before Dad says, “You read her chart?”

“You know I never look at patients’ charts,” he says. “Besides, I can’t make heads or tails out of your handwriting.”

Dad laughs, but a bit warily. “That would make two of us.”

“Anyway, the director of nursing came to me this afternoon,” Mr. Mills continues. “She informed me the staff is scared to go near this woman. They fear she’s carrying that deadly immune virus you hear about in the news.”

Panic rises in my throat. AIDS. He has to be talking about that AIDS. Certain death—the worst kind of death. But isn’t it supposed to be some kind of gay disease? If Cookie has it, does Uncle Ray have it, too? Suddenly I feel light-headed.

Dear Jesus . . . don’t let it be AIDS. Please.

“Why on earth would they think that?” Dad asks, and I feel a little better.

“Because the woman is a prostitute, or so folks are saying.”

“This is ridiculous,” Dad scoffs. “All of it.”

“Doc, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you say that,” Mr. Mills says. “Now, if you’ll just have a little talk with the nurses at tomorrow morning rounds and assure them this woman isn’t infected . . .”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t infected,” Dad says, and my heart drops.

Another gaping pause; then Mr. Mills asks in a very grave tone, “You mean, she is?”

“I don’t know if she is or not. We’ll treat her the same as everyone else, regardless.”

Mr. Mills sighs. “Doc, how many years have we worked together? Going on fifteen. Fifteen years and we’ve never had a dispute. Not one. And that’s because we’re both reasonable men who want what’s best for the hospital. And for the record, I believe I’ve always done what’s best for the patient. Now, I’m asking you to transfer her to a big-city hospital where they know how to handle a case like this.”

“I won’t do it, Gary. I’m sorry.”

“Damn it, Roger, don’t do this! The nursing staff is scared out of their wits. And who can blame ’em? We’ve all seen those awful images of Rock Hudson on TV. . . .”

“I’ve placed her in isolation,” Dad says. “And as long as the staff follows the infectious-disease precautions, which are posted at the nurses’ desk and clearly direct them to use rubber gloves when handling blood and needles, there should be no problem.” Dad opens his
National Geographic.
“That’s all I’ve got to say about that. Now good evening to you, Gary.”

Twenty minutes later I sneak through the back door of the hospital. The nurses’ desk is vacant as I head down the hallway to the patients’ rooms. I stop at a door where an isolation sign hangs, check to see if anyone is around, then open the door and slip inside. Cookie is lying in bed watching TV and wearing one of those blue and white hospital gowns, an IV stuck in her right arm.

“Hi,” I whisper. “Mind if I come in?”

She nods a little, eking out a smile. “Les, my little buddy.”

I close the door behind me and approach her bed. She has more pinkness to her face than she did this afternoon, but darkness still rings her eyes.

“How’re you feeling?” I ask as I glance at the IV tube and the plastic liquid-filled bag above it.

“Better. Your dad gave me something for the pain. You know, your folks have been real good to me. When I informed ’em I had no medical insurance, they told me not to worry, said we’d work something out. You’re lucky to come from good people like them. You really are.”

Second time I’ve heard that. “Well, thanks.”

“Your dad tells me I got somethin’ called pelvic inflammatory disease.”

I can’t help but grin—she doesn’t have AIDS!
Thank You, Jesus!

“It was a gift from your uncle,” she says wryly. “Among others.”

Wait, is it possible this pelvic inflammatory disease is another name for AIDS?

“Anyway, your dad started me on this IV stuff. We’re gonna have to wait a few days to see if it works.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I could lose the . . .” She points to her stomach. “And possibly become infertile.”

What do I say?

She grimaces and gasps as she repositions herself on the bed. “How’s my big baby?”