Nancy Culpepper (8 page)

Those dizzy spells turned out to be little strokes—TIAs, the doctor in Paducah called them. The blood wasn’t feeding to her brain. Now Spence shudders in the night, imagining a scene in Florida—Lila having a major stroke on one of those lonely trails. The nearest hospital was fifty miles away, and they would not have known how to find it. If something had happened to her then, he would have been to blame.

Dawn is creeping under the shades. The sheets are wadded, the quilt is lying on the rug, the cat scratching at the back door. Lila is crazy about the cat, Abraham. Spence has never seen her so crazy about a cat, the way she baby-talks to him. The morning after Spence heard that wildcat, Abraham’s fur was ruffled, as though something had been chewing on him and rolling him in the dirt. Abraham has long hair and is spotted like a Guernsey. Stiff and aching, Spence gets up and watches the sun rise over the soybean fields. Oscar is out there, walking slowly, sniffing close to the ground.

While CNN blares out the latest on Iran-Iraq, Iran-contra, Nicaragua, South Africa, something in Idaho, Spence makes breakfast in the microwave. He watches the strips of bacon curl up and ooze grease down the ridges of the bacon rack. When the bacon is done, he makes scrambled eggs. He sets the dish in for twenty-five seconds, then stirs the eggs with a fork and cooks them for twentyfive more seconds. Spence bought the microwave so he could fix his meals while Lila was away on her trips with the senior citizens. She has been to Hawaii, the Badlands, Savannah and New Orleans.

He bought the microwave at a flea market, almost new. At first, he set it on top of the refrigerator, but Lila couldn’t reach it. So he found a wobbly metal table at a sale and set the oven on it next to the kitchen table. The first time he tried the microwave, he cracked an egg in a dish and the egg exploded in the oven with a sound like a shotgun. He learned to punch the yolk with a fork to let the pressure out. “Crazy thing,” Lila said on the telephone to one of her friends. “He never reads the directions to anything.” The oven came with an incomplete set of instructions, and he had to learn how to use it by trial and error. Once, he exploded a potato, for fun.

After eating, he and Oscar head for the barn to feed the calves, five little Holsteins he is raising for beef in a pasture between the barn and the woods. The fencing is makeshift—boards and an electric wire.

“Oscar, you sure are smart,” Spence says. “You learned about that electric fence in one easy lesson.”

Oscar wags his tail. The calves flick flies with their tails. They amble forward, rubbing each other and gazing at Spence with liquid eyes the texture and size of fried eggs. A horrifying image flashes through his mind—jabbing their eyes with a fork. Once he tried raising a veal calf, and every time he remembers it he hates himself. The little thing stayed in the dark stall alone, and whenever Spence came to bottle-feed him, the calf cried. When after only a few weeks Spence took him to the slaughterhouse, the calf couldn’t stand up. The meat was tender and pale. He and Lila couldn’t talk about it. The packages languished in the freezer, and by the time she cooked the last ones, the meat had lost its freshness.

He steadies himself against the barn door for a moment, then enters the barn, the calves following. He distributes cups of feed into the troughs, and the calves dig their heads in. He fastens their necks to the stanchions, and while they feed he talks to them.

“Sunflower,” he says. “You’re too skinny. Whoa, there, Mudpuddle. Watch what you’re doing, Dexter. Delbert. Boss Hogg, don’t get crazy now.”

Always, when Spence feeds his calves, he goes through their names.

4

Lila says, “They sure don’t let you get lonesome here—all the traipsing in and out they do at all hours.”

Cat and Nancy are hovering over the bed, staring at her with an unnatural sort of eagerness. “Did you sleep?” Cat asks.

“Off and on,” says Lila. She tries to sit up against the pillow, but she feels woozy from this morning’s medicine. “That coffee last night made me jumpy, but they give me some pills and a shot.”

Nancy says, “That’s outrageous! There was no good reason to give you coffee. You should have refused it.”

Cat’s earrings dangle in Lila’s face. Lila’s mind feels fuzzy, far away. She is afraid the operating room will be cold.

“Are you scared?” Nancy asks, holding Lila’s hand.

“They work you over too much for you to be scared. I haven’t had time to think.” Lila squeezes Nancy’s hand and reaches for Cat’s. “You girls are being good to me,” she says. “I sure am lucky.”

“Well, we care about you,” Cat says.

“You’re going to be just fine, Mom,” says Nancy. “You’re tough.”

“I guess I better say goodbye to my jug,” Lila says, laughing and looking down at herself. “If Spence don’t hurry on here, he’s going to miss his chance.”

Just then Spence appears, still in short sleeves. Yesterday she tried to tell him to wear long sleeves, but he wouldn’t listen to her. After giving Nancy a hug, he steps back and eyes her up and down to see how much older she seems.

“You look poor as a snake,” he says. “Why didn’t you bring Robert?”

“He’s going off to camp tomorrow. Jack’s taking him up to New Hampshire. It’s the same place he went last year, where they go on treks into the mountains.”

“Bring him down here. I’ll see that he communes with nature.” Spence grins at Nancy.

“I’m sure you will. You’ll have him out planting soybeans.” Nancy twists out of a nurse’s way.

“It would be good for him,” Lila says sleepily. “Working out in the fields would teach him something.”

She closes her eyes, vaguely listening to Spence and the girls talk. If this is her time to go, she should be ready. And she has her family with her, except for Lee, who had to work. She feels she is looking over her whole life, holding it up to see how it has turned out—like a piece of sewing. She can see Cat trying on a dress Lila has made for her, and Lila checks to see whether it needs taking up. She turns up the hem, jerks the top to see how it fits across the shoulders, considers an extra tuck in the waist. In a recurrent dream she has had for years, she is trying to finish a garment, sewing fast against the clock.

They are still chattering nervously around her when the surgeon appears. He’s young, with sensitive hands that look skilled at delicate finger work. Lila always notices people’s fingers. Nancy and Cat keep asking questions, but Lila is sleepy and can’t follow all that he is saying. Then he moves closer to her and says, “If the biopsy shows a malignancy, I’m going to recommend a modified radical mastectomy. I’ll remove the breast tissue and the lymph nodes under the arm. But I’ll leave the chest muscles. If you follow the physical therapy, then you’ll have full use of your arm and you’ll be just fine.” He smiles reassuringly. He resembles a cousin of Lila’s—Whip Stanton, a little man with a lisp and a wife with palsy.

“How small would the lump have to be for you to recommend a lumpectomy instead?” Nancy asks the doctor.

“Infinitesimal,” he says. “It’s better to get it all out and be sure. This way is more certain.”

“Well, more and more doctors are recommending lumpectomies instead of mastectomies,” Nancy argues. “What I’m asking is, what is the dividing line? How large should the lump be for the mastectomy to be preferable?”

Lila sees Spence cringe. Nancy has always asked questions and done things differently, just to be contrary. “Nancy, Nancy, quite contrary,” they used to tease her.

The doctor shrugs and leans against the wall. “It depends on a number of factors,” he says. “You can’t reduce it to a question of size. If it’s an aggressive tumor, a fast-growing one, then a smaller lump might be more dangerous than one that has grown slowly over a longer period of time. And my suspicion is that this is an aggressive tumor. You can get a second opinion if you want to, but we’ve got her prepped, and if the second opinion was in favor of a lumpectomy, then wouldn’t you have to go for a third opinion, so you could take two out of three? But in this case, time is of the essence.” The doctor grins at Lila. “What do you think, Mrs. Culpepper? You look like a pretty smart lady.”

“Why, you’re just a little whippersnapper,” Lila says. “All the big words make me bumfuzzled. I guess you know your stuff, but I got you beat when it comes to producing pretty daughters.” She has heard he is single, and she heard the nurses joking with him. She can’t keep her mind on the conversation. It’s as though she’s floating around the room, dipping in and out of the situation, the way the nurses do.

“That’s for certain,” he says, twirling his stethoscope like a toy.

“My daughters are curious, though,” Lila says apologetically. Even the outfits they are wearing are curious—layers of dark, wrinkled cotton.

“They’re weird,” Spence says.

“No, we’re not,” says Cat indignantly. She’s dressed up in one of her man-catching outfits, with heavy jewelry, but what man would like that getup? Cat claims women actually dress for women. Nancy was always too impatient to fool with her appearance. She’s like Lila that way, wearing any old thing handy. When Nancy moved up North she stopped wearing lipstick and curling her hair, and for a while she didn’t even wear a brassiere. Lila was afraid Nancy’s breasts would be damaged.

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Culpepper?” the doctor asks. “Is there anything I can clarify?”

Lila senses Spence’s embarrassment as he shakes his head no. The nurses are whizzing around, and the woman in the other bed is arguing with her doctor.

“What about them strokes?” Spence pipes up then.

“Well, the first priority is to deal with this lump in her breast, and later we’ll check the obstructions in the carotid arteries.” The doctor touches his neck, indicating the main blood vessels. He says, “It’s possible that I’ll recommend further surgery next week to clean out the plaque in those arteries.”

“I was having strokes in Florida,” Lila says. She touches her arm, where the numbness spreads a few times a day. As they talk, she feels one of her dizzy spells coming on. She longs for a cigarette.

“How risky is that second operation?” Cat demands.

“Well, there’s always the risk of death,” the doctor says bluntly. He’s not looking at anyone. His eyes are fixed on the doorframe. “And a carotid endarterectomy is tricky because there’s always the chance the patient will have a stroke on the table. But the benefits outweigh the risks. Increase the blood supply to the brain and she’ll stop having those transient ischemic attacks, and we’ll prevent the big stroke down the road.”

“The big stroke down the road,” Nancy repeats, after he leaves. “It sounds like the title of a children’s book.”

Spence seems frozen in his position in the corner chair. His eyes stare vacantly as a nurse comes in with a syringe in her hand like a weapon. “Are you ready, Mrs. Culpepper?”

“Oh, must I?”

“It’ll all be over with before you know it.”

“Y’all messed up my fishing trip,” Lila says crossly, trying to manage a smile. “I was aiming to go fishing this week.”

“That’s why we call you patients—because you have to be patient,” the nurse says cheerfully. “Now you want to lie back for me? And make a fist.”

From out of nowhere, Lila can hear Spence telling about the war, about a guy on his ship who went ashore one night on one of the Pacific islands and got himself tattooed. Spence wrote in his letter, “He had his whole butt tattooed with a picture of two beagles in a field— a pretty field, with green grass. And the dogs were after a rabbit that was disappearing into his crack. The next day the bos’n made him chip paint all day, and he hurt so bad he cried. It was a pretty picture, though, the grass was just as green! But I sure bet that hurt. He’s a big guy too.” She’s about to laugh, remembering that letter.

She sees the girls whispering. The patient in the other bed is up walking again, but she refused her breakfast. Lila’s breakfast was ice water. She wasn’t hungry anyway. Food doesn’t taste right to her anymore. The food on her trip to New Orleans back in March was unappetizing. The gumbo even had shells in it. Now Nancy is bending over her, hugging her, followed by Cat, her face close to Lila’s. Cat whispers, “Hang in there, Mom.” Spence is edging out the door as the orderlies appear with a bed on wheels. In their green outfits, they are leprechauns. Or men from Mars. “Are you going to give me some sugar or not?” Lila calls to Spence.

“I reckon,” he says, clutching her hand and bending down to kiss her. He’s self-conscious, but the nurse is busy filling out a chart and doesn’t notice them.

“Take care of my babies,” she says, meaning the cat and dog. “And don’t forget them beans.”

“I won’t forget your old beans!” He chokes on his laugh.

As the leprechauns wheel her away, she sees Spence gazing after her helplessly. She has forgotten to tell Nancy and Cat something, something important she meant to say about Spence. His face disappears and she is in an elevator, with music playing, the kind of music they play in heaven.

5

Spence can’t stand hospitals. The smells make him sick. The sounds of pain hurt. In an hour, the doctor will telephone Lila’s room with the biopsy report, which will determine how he should proceed with the surgery. Spence hates waiting.

He drives to a gas station that has a mini-market. There, he buys two baked potatoes with cheese topping and eats them in the car with a can of Coke. He plays the radio, his rock station. The potatoes need more pepper. Nancy and Cat urged him to eat in the cafeteria with them, but he had little appetite in a building with so many sick people and their germs. In the corridor when he arrived at the hospital that morning, Spence saw a man with a hole in his face where his nose had been. Spence knows a man who went to the cancer specialists in Memphis and had a new nose grafted on. His face doesn’t look bad with the new nose, considering it came from a dead man. When Spence told Nancy about it, she didn’t believe him. Nancy always believes what she wants to believe. He smiles, thinking of how the doctor outsmarted her when she tried to challenge him. Spence is proud of his daughter, though. She has an important job—something to do with computers—with a company that requires her to travel all over the United States. When Nancy married Jack Cleveland, a Yankee, Spence was sure she was making a mistake. He was afraid there wasn’t a living in photography—more of a hobby than work—but the marriage has lasted, and Robert is a smart, good-looking boy. It pains Spence that Nancy lives so far away. She went up there right after college. She was always restless and adventurous, because of the books she read. When she was little, she would read the same book over and over, as if she could make it come true.