Hope and Other Luxuries (51 page)

I was not meeting my grandchild under the best of circumstances. Valerie's apartment was small and dim, and it reeked of mildew and poverty. Valerie and Clint were hurrying by with what appeared to be random pieces of appliances and trash bags full of laundry and clothes hangers.

It was
The Grapes of Wrath
, twenty-first-century-style.

“Okay, Momma,” Valerie said, returning and whisking Gemma out of my hands, “let's start up the cars while I take the apartment key to the front office. Itty Bitty's coming with me, so Clint goes with you. Keep your phone on!”

And we pulled out of the parking lot for the long drive back to Texas.

Once we navigated to the highway, I had attention to spare for my traveling companion. Although Clint had a slight smile on his face, his blue-green eyes betrayed flashes of nervousness, like the uncertain look in a dog's eyes when it's afraid it might be going to the vet. I could imagine what he was thinking:
Four hours alone in a car with the mother-in-law!

“So, how's life as a new dad?” I asked him.

“It's okay,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Not much sleep, though.”

Yes
, announced the committee of my body.
Yes, we remember those days
. The eyelids remembered heaviness, and the brain remembered drowsiness, while the feet remembered small, quiet, monotonous steps, back and forth.

Meanwhile, the arms—the arms sang with happiness.
We remember!
they sang.
We remember!

“Any idea what job the Air Force will train you for?” I asked.

Clint appeared to consider this new question carefully.

“You know,” he said after a minute, “I don't really know.”

A few more casual questions and a few more thoughtful but equally brief answers later, I thought,
I'm just torturing this poor sleep-deprived boy
. So I pushed
American Idiot
into the player, turned it up, and started singing along.

I have to sing along. And I have to think about the words. That's how my imagination finds things to look at while I'm traveling along a boring highway.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Clint give me a couple of sidelong glances. I sing loudly but horribly. It's just something my family has to cope with.

Then Clint started singing along, too.

By the time another day was up and we were driving through Louisiana, Clint was talking to me. “Tell me a story,” he would say from time to time.

What writer could resist such an appeal? I ransacked my ghostly lore for interesting hauntings to tell him. And in return, he related Stephen King stories he had read. Clint told ghost stories very well.

We reached home at last, after three days on the road. We drove up to the house and filled the driveway with small sedans: Valerie's avocado-green Elantra next to my white Elantra, with Elena's tan Elantra out at the curb. Three identical Hyundais in three different colors. It was the Korean invasion.

Joe opened the garage door, and we hauled in the contents of the cars: cracked plastic drawers full of random silverware and pots, trash bags stuffed with T-shirts and scuffed Converse sneakers, and electronics in cheap plastic silver-colored cases, sprouting black wires out the back. No household item looks good when it's not in a house, but Valerie and Clint's meager possessions looked particularly sad.

“These kids are worse off than we were!” Joe marveled as he surveyed the pile of trash bags and appliance parts. “At least when you and I got married, I had a ten-speed bike and a plastic desk.”

Valerie and I set up Gemma's portable crib. Meanwhile, the men were supposed to move in the essential stuff. This turned out to be Clint's black nylon folder of PS3 games. By the time Gemma had settled down for a nap, Clint was blasting zombies with a shotgun while explaining to Joe the best use of the various weapons available. Joe seemed to favor an ax, which his avatar was wielding with untiring vigor. Perhaps he hadn't progressed far enough to get his hands on a gun yet.

“Valerie wants tacos,” I announced from the doorway. “We're going to Taco Cabana. Who wants what?”

The next few days varied from this pleasant script in only a few particulars. Clint's avatar might be shooting a crossbow at dragons instead, or Valerie's avatar might be jumping from rooftop to rooftop, pursued by a gang of medieval knights. But the routine was the same: playing with baby Gemma when she was awake and playing games on the PS3 when she was asleep, occasionally varied by movies, some of which were based on games for the PS3. In the meantime, we ate lots of candy, and I cooked or baked all of Valerie's most fondly remembered meals and desserts.

It was like a family-wide slumber party.

“Oh, wow! Thanks!” Clint said one afternoon when a plate of hot chocolate-chip cookies appeared at his elbow. I paused to look at the screen:
a retro underwater world. I could see vividly colored art deco interior design, but fish were swimming by outside the windows.

“What's that?” I asked. “Oh! Watch out!” Because a creature, half human, half spider, had scuttled rapidly across the underwater ceiling.

Clint hurled a fireball and followed up with shotgun blasts as the creature flitted rapidly to and fro. Finally, it fell to the floor. It wasn't a spider, it was a thin man with hooks for hands. He was wearing an elaborate bunny-ear mask.

Bunny ears? That tickled my imagination. Which genius had thought of that?

“You don't know
BioShock
?” Clint asked as his avatar strode over and robbed the creature's corpse.

This was more interesting than zombies or dragons. This game's monsters reminded me of my goblins, and the setting was grimly beautiful: a kind of blood-spattered, poorly cleaned
Titanic
.

“What's it about?” I asked, sitting down and taking a chocolate-chip cookie.

“It's kind of complicated,” Clint said. “Here, I'll start a new game.”

Half an hour later, Joe was watching, too, and I was completely obsessed. “Does anybody want margaritas?” Joe offered as he polished off a cookie.

And the Dunkle slumber party rolled on.

Next afternoon, Valerie was changing Gemma on the floor while I picked up soda cans. Valerie never asked me to change a diaper. She was up with Gemma night after night for hours, and she never asked me to take a turn. I got to play with Gemma during the day, but I didn't have to do the hard work.

“Do you think Clint would like pizza?” I asked. “Yes? Then let's have pizza tonight.”

Valerie laughed. “You're such a sucker, Mom. You spoil him. But hey, that's okay, I like pizza, too.”

Valerie was right that I was catering to Clint. I couldn't help wanting to spoil him. Clint was very nice as well as smart and funny, and he and I liked the same kinds of monsters. Besides, he had worked hard to
provide for his family. He had completed a year of college in his time off work, and in a few weeks, drill sergeants would be yelling in his face.

Clint's mother did everything she could to help Valerie
, I thought as I dialed the phone for pizza.
I'm standing in for her right now. I owe her a debt I can never repay. She'd want to know that her boy is enjoying himself
.

But a few days later, as I was driving Valerie, Clint, and Gemma home from my parents' house through north Texas thunderstorms, a call came in on Valerie's cell phone.

“It's your recruiter,” she said, handing the phone to Clint.

He talked for a minute, quiet
yes
es and
I understand
s. Then he handed the phone back to Valerie.

“They're not putting me in the April group,” he said. “They're putting me through basic training in July.”

This was a blow to Valerie and Clint. It meant another two and a half months added onto the time they would have to wait before they would be in a place of their own. I sneaked a glance at Valerie. She was in tears.

“You know it's fine with your father and me,” I said. “You three are no trouble. You're the opposite of trouble.” And I thought about how nice it would be to have my family around me for another two months. My granddaughter would be sitting up and learning to crawl.

“I'd better get a job,” Clint said thoughtfully.

Valerie was silent for another minute. Then she gave a nod.

“Okay, here's what we do,” she said. “Clint, you go back to Georgia and ask your old boss there if he can pick you up on the payroll again for another few weeks. You know it doesn't matter how many workers he's hired since, he'll take you back the minute he sees you.”

“He never has enough guys he can count on,” Clint agreed.

“Then I'll drive out to pick you up in the middle of June,” Valerie said. “And your mom can visit with Gemma again.”

Soberly, the two of them discussed the details while I changed lanes and watched through the watery windshield the parade of red taillights in front of me.
Valerie's stronger
, I thought with pride.
She really is a grownup now
.

“Okay,” Valerie concluded. “That's what we'll do. We've got a plan.”

A plan. She sounds like me
, I thought.
That's the first thing I do, too: set up a plan
.

But my own plans were about to change.

The next day, I got a call from Emily, Elena's therapist at Clove House. The last month had been quiet, and what little we had heard had felt like good news. But this new phone call shook me up considerably.

“Your insurance company wants to move Elena into day therapy,” she said. “They won't continue to pay for residential care. Elena's finally putting on weight, but her negative feelings are intensifying. She's not ready for this. We're afraid she may try to harm herself.”

Harm herself? What did that mean? What did they think she would do? And a horrible memory heaved itself up from the darkest, gloomiest corner of my mind: Valerie, coming down the stairs, humming softly, and her hands . . . What was wrong with her hands? . . .

“I . . . Okay,” I stammered. “But what—what can
I
do?”

Emily's voice was carefully neutral. “We need to know if you'll pay the difference between day therapy and residential care.”

“That's three hundred dollars a day!”

“Can you do it?”

My brain spun.

Three hundred times seven. Twenty-one hundred dollars. Over two thousand dollars a week!

“I don't know,” I heard myself say out loud. “Maybe—but not for very long.”

“Mrs. Dunkle, we need a definite answer. Her residential care stops today.”

Today?!

Why do they always need these answers
today
?
I thought frantically.
Can't they plan at
all
?

“Okay,” I said. “For . . . a week.”

A week! Twenty-one hundred dollars!

I hung up and called Lynn, the brisk nurse who was Elena's liaison—the one who worked for the dark side now.

“Please understand, we do want what's best for your daughter,” Lynn told me. “But she's been in residential care for a month and a half. She should be ready to move to full-day therapy now.”

“Her care team says she's not ready,” I said. “They're concerned that she'll hurt herself. Twelve unsupervised hours a day is a huge risk.”

“We need to try it,” Lynn said. “Six weeks in the hospital is a very long time. If your daughter isn't willing to make progress by now, there's not much anybody can do.”

I felt the cold realism of this statement. It was practical. It made sense. And it sent panic coursing through me—panic so profound that it was all I could do to keep holding the phone. I felt as if I were sliding into a pit. I wanted to strike out, to claw the walls, to struggle free.

Because . . . what if the treatment didn't work?

I had never even
considered
that it might not work.

A plan. A plan! I would fight this decision. That steadied me and filled me with courage. It was good, in that moment, to have something to fight.

“Lynn, I have to go over your head,” I said. “I'm calling Washington, DC. As long as the insurance company is standing between Elena's treatment team and the care they say she needs, I have to fight you any way I can.”

“Of course you do!” Lynn said, and she meant that sincerely. “Mrs. Dunkle, I wish you the best of luck.”

I spent hours on the phone that day and the next. Against the maze of bewildering phone lines in Washington, DC, I used every trick I had learned. I was pleasant. I was appealingly helpless. I let people rescue me. I used my storytelling skills to bring to life the tale of my tragic, desperately ill daughter.

“Please help me,” I would beg each new person who came on the line. “I know I'm not calling the right number, but it's the only number I have. My daughter's doctors think her life is in danger.”

Time after time, friendly voices reassured me, told me what they knew, and gave out phone numbers that weren't public. “When he asks, just tell him Leticia gave you this extension. I'm praying for you and your daughter.”

For five anxious days, Joe and I had to pay the three hundred dollars a day that kept Elena safe in residential care. But by the time those five days were up, my phone calls had paid off. Another psychiatrist at the insurance company reviewed her case and okayed residential care yet again.

But the handwriting was on the wall. Day therapy was coming. It wouldn't mean two thousand dollars a week, but it did mean a fifty-dollar copay each day—probably for months. That meant fifteen hundred dollars a month. And then, there would be the cost of an overnight stay somewhere, and possibly a rental car, too.

Over coffee that weekend, Joe and I discussed strategies.

“You bought that pricey BMW because it was a great deal in Germany,” I pointed out. “But it's a hassle to look after here in Texas, and you end up borrowing my car all the time because the Bimmer won't transport your bicycle. Maybe it's time to sell it.”