Read Between the Lines (2 page)

The nurse swivels around on her stool when she hears me come in. Her thick thighs bulge over it so you can’t see the fake leather seat. She eyes me up and down, scanning me for what’s wrong. Her eyes settle on my cradled hand, then hone in on my finger.

“Ouch,” she says, wheeling herself over to me. She reaches for my hand, just like Ms. Sawyer did. She’s a nurse. Doesn’t she know that’s a terrible idea? Why do people always want to touch what hurts?

I pull my hand out of reach.

“I need to take a look,” she says, smiling in a gentle sort of way. She has eyes like a deer. They are deep brown and too big for her face. She blinks at me. She’s wearing green eye shadow and thick purple mascara. The green matches her nurse’s shirt.

“I won’t touch it. Promise.”

I step forward and hold out my swollen finger. It’s even bigger than a sausage now. It makes me think of those old-fashioned cartoons of Tom and Jerry when Jerry hammers Tom on the head and a furless pink bump pops up out of his skull and pulses like a neon sign.

Womp-womp-womp.

“Hmmm,” she says, squinting. Her name is Mrs. O’Connor. She darts her head around my hand, trying to see my finger from all sides. “Looks like a bad one. Think you broke it, hon?”

I remember the sound I heard when the ball hit. I’m sure there was a crack. But I don’t think bones really make a sound when they break.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Could I just lie down for a while?” The floor has started to sway again.

“I wonder if you should have that X-rayed,” she says, ignoring my question.

The floor sways in a new direction and I stumble a little. “No,” I say. “I’m sure it’s just a sprain.”

She frowns.

“Couldn’t I just lie down?” I ask again.

“Of course, hon. Let me call your folks and see if it’s OK to give you some ibuprofen for the swelling.”

I don’t have folks. I have a
folk.
She should know this by now since I’ve spent enough time in here. Maybe it’s just a word she’s used to saying in the plural. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, that there is someone else she could call besides my father. She’s had to deal with that
folk
on the phone before. It couldn’t possibly have been pleasant.

She glides back over to her desk. There is something graceful in how she moves across the floor on that stool, her feet pointing at the same angle, as she zooms away from me. Like she’s trying to fly.

“What’s the number, hon?”

I tell her.

She clicks the number using the eraser end of a pencil.

“Hello, is this Mr. Granger?” she asks. She turns to me and winks, as if to say,
I got this.

I’m pretty sure she’s about to be disappointed.

“This is the school nurse at Irving High. I have your son here with me. He hurt his hand in gym class this morning.”

She’s quiet while my dad replies. Then she squirms, ever so slightly.

I picture my dad on the other line, making his combination disgusted and disappointed face. It’s a bit like Ben Mead’s, come to think of it.

What did the hurt magnet get up to this time?
I imagine him asking.

My dad thinks everyone wants to beat me up.

I wish he wasn’t right.

When I was younger and still dumb enough to go to him after “getting hurt on the playground at school” (someone kicked the crap out of me), he would always have the same two reactions: “Christ, don’t be such a baby” followed by “What did you do that for?” As if I had a choice. He really loved that second one. The old joke that was never funny.

“Well, no,” Mrs. O’Connor says. “It’s not his hand exactly.” She pauses. It’s like she knows what she is going to say will sound pathetic. “He hurt his finger. Actually.”

Another pause. Probably while she waits for him to stop bitching about what a lost cause I am.

“It’s very swollen,” she says. “I think it might be broken. I’d like to give him some ibuprofen and ice it, try to get the swelling down so I can get a better look.”

She squirms on her stool and turns to smile at me sympathetically, as if to say,
I’m so sorry your father is such an asshole
, even though she doesn’t seem the type to use that word except in extreme cases. I shrug back like,
No worries. I can handle him.

She looks doubtful.

“All right, Mr. Granger,” she says, twisting away from me again. “I’ll do that. Yes. I’ll keep you posted. [Pause.] Yes, I’m sure you’re busy. [Pause.] Well, it does look like a nasty injury. [Pause.] Finger injuries can be very painful, sir. [Pause.] All right. Yes. I’ll call you back.”

She hangs up the phone but waits a minute before turning around to face me again. Her shoulders and back rise up and down. Deep breaths. Calming breaths. My dad has that effect on people.

When she stands, the squished cushion seat slowly begins to inflate, erasing the indent her huge rear left on it. “He says it’s fine to give you some pain relief,” she says. She walks to the cupboard and unlocks it with the key she wears on a cord around her neck, similar to the one Ms. Sawyer keeps her whistle on.

She opens a bottle and empties two pills into a tiny paper cup that always reminds me of the kind you put ketchup in at the food court at the interstate rest area. I used to love stopping there on road trips with my parents. It was always my job to fill the cups with ketchup, mustard, and relish. Before my mom left, it was the best job ever. We’d share cups and dip our fries in, talking about how much fun we were going to have wherever it was we were headed. Sometimes she’d tap my nose with the end of a fry and get ketchup on me, and before I could wipe it off, she’d call me Rudolph. Then one day my dad said, “More like Bozo,” and that put an end to that. Even so, my dad seemed happy then. Happy to be with my mom, at least. But that was before. The last time I went anywhere with him, I tried to carry two cups of ketchup in one hand, and they tipped and oozed down my hand and onto my new sneakers. My dad called me a “waste of space” and everyone looked at us, like they were trying to figure out if I really was, or if my father was one for calling me that. I think the jury is still out.

Mrs. O’Connor hands me the mini cup. “Let me get you some water to swallow those down with,” she says. She reaches for the cone cup dispenser next to the sink and fills one up.

“Here you go, hon,” she says sweetly.

Confession: I like it when she calls me
hon.
It is so much nicer than the words my dad is fond of:
Little prick. Loser. Moron. Good-for-nothing. Dumbass. Little queer. Pussy. Worthless little —

I drop the pills onto my tongue, lift the cup to my mouth, and breathe in the familiar school water and paper smell. I swallow the pills and water in one giant gulp.

Mrs. O’Connor smiles at me again in her sympathetic way. Sometimes I think she’s the only one who cares. Who understands.

I am still holding my hurt hand against my chest. It’s throbbing like crazy. My finger is more swollen now and turning purple. I can almost hear the sound of the throb.

Womp-womp-womp.

I’ve seen my hand look like this before. When I was nine. It was only a year after my mom left. My dad had forced me to eat everything on my plate even though I hated everything on it. Especially the peas. They were cold and wrinkled, but he made me sit there until I ate every last one. When I finished, I very calmly brought my plate into the kitchen and washed and dried it. Then I walked to the front door.

I was leaving. For good. I had decided as I choked down the last pea. This was it. I would be homeless. I would starve. But at least I wouldn’t have to eat any more cold peas while my father looked on with hatred. I couldn’t understand why he tortured me. Blamed me. I knew the truth about my mom. I knew it wasn’t my fault she left us. Why couldn’t he?

So, I was leaving. And I wanted to go with a bang. Or, more accurately, a slam. I knew it would piss him off, but I wanted to show him I didn’t care anymore. I wanted him to know I wasn’t afraid. Sure, I knew he’d probably come after me. Make me pay. But maybe I could outrun him. My anger was stronger than my fear and common sense.

I gripped the edge of the door and felt the solidness of it. Then I put everything I had into slamming it closed against the House of Horror.

Somehow though, I wasn’t able to move my hand away at the same time. It was as if the door itself was grabbing me. Trapping me.

I’ve got you. You’re not going anywhere.

I felt a hot, hot pain when I finally freed myself from the door’s jaw. My finger swelled up just like it is now. I bit my lips together to keep in my scream because if my father heard, if he knew I couldn’t even get slamming the door right, he would laugh. He would say it served me right. And I couldn’t let him say that. So I swallowed the scream and my tears and choked on the pain as I ran down the driveway and up the road. I ran and ran and wished I would never have to turn back. Never have to face the ugly mouth of That House again.

I ran until I found a stand of lilac bushes. I crawled under the lowest branches and hid there, crying privately under the green leaves, just as I did the day my mother left us. A deep hole had been dug out there by some neighborhood dog. I fit myself into the hole and wished I was that dog. A dog someone probably loved and didn’t mind if he dug a hole under the lilacs to stay cool in the summer. My dad would make fun of me for knowing the name of the bushes. He would call me a sissy or mama’s boy or worse.

But lilacs were my mom’s favorite, so of course I recognized them. Every spring she would cut a few sprigs and put them in a vase so the house would smell nice. “Like the promise of summer days coming,” she always said. Then she would hug me close, and I could feel her hope and love settle into me.

That’s how I knew what the bush was called.

I was no sissy.

Maybe I was a mama’s boy, though.

Until she left me.

Then I was no one’s boy.

When someone leaves unexpectedly, it has to be someone’s fault. You need someone to blame. My father blamed me. He blamed me, so he hated me.

The day my mother left us, I was never his boy again. I was his burden.

When the neighbor and her dog found me in the bushes that night, I begged to be left alone. But she brought me home anyway. And that night, more than my finger throbbed with pain.

No one slams the door on my father.

But secretly, I really thought he beat the crap out of me because I came back.

Mrs. O’Connor waddles over to the refrigerator to get an ice pack for me. I glance at her very tidy desk. There’s a bouquet of flowers on one corner with a card sticking out. I bet it’s from her husband. On the other corner, there’s a framed photo of her family. She has four kids, and she’s posing with them and her husband. They’re all wearing jeans and white T-shirts. They’re beaming, as if they are the happiest family in the world, even if they also look like the dorkiest family in their matching outfits. The kids seem to range in age from about four to twelve or so. They all have really white teeth. I wonder if they were Photoshopped. I wonder if they are all really that happy. Probably.

“This will hurt at first,” Mrs. O’Connor says as she hands me the ice pack. “But it should help with the swelling.”

She pulls a piece of paper across the bed behind the curtain and puts a fresh paper case on the pillow. “Can you sit and lean against the wall? I think you should keep your hand raised above your heart for now.”

I nod and adjust myself on the bed. It farts awkwardly as predicted. I lean against the cinder-block wall. It’s cold and reassuringly hard. Solid. I close my eyes and feel myself disappearing, just like little kids think they do when they hide their faces. If only.

“You’ll be all right,” Mrs. O’Connor tells me. “Let me know if you need anything.”

She pulls the curtain shut.

I listen to her nursing shoes creak under her weight as she makes her way back to the stool. The air in the cushion empties out in a quiet whistle-breath when she sits back down. She starts to hum the tune to “It’s a Small World.” She probably takes her family to Disney World every year. That’s probably where they took that picture. That’s probably why they all look so happy.

I concentrate on my pulsing finger, almost throbbing to the rhythm of the song. I sing it in my head as Mrs. O’Connor hums.

I find that song kind of depressing, to tell the truth. People like Mrs. O’Connor’s kids get the laughter and hope part of the world; people like me get the rest: tears and fear.

Womp-womp-womp.

I close my eyes and pretend the invisible trick works.

After a while Mrs. O’Connor peeks her head around the curtain to check on me. “How’re you doing?” she asks.

I lift the ice pack off and look. The swelling is about the same, but my finger seems to be getting more purple.

“Ooh. That’s not good,” she says, stepping closer to inspect.

“Does that mean I broke it?”

“Maybe. I better call your dad back. I really think you need to have it X-rayed.”

I look up at the ceiling and sigh. She pats my knee. “It’ll be OK,” she says.

But I don’t know what she means by
it.

She goes to make the call. It takes about two seconds to figure out that my dad is not happy.

“Well, it does look pretty bad,” Mrs. O’Connor says quietly. Pause. “Yes, I really think he needs to have an X-ray. [Pause.] No, I can’t tell just by looking. But I’ve seen a lot of broken fingers over the years, sir.” Her voice gets louder. “No, I’m not a doctor. [Pause.] All right. Yes. He’ll be here. We’ll see you soon.”

I brace myself for the look on her face when she pulls the curtain back again.

“He’s such a dick,” I tell her, surprising myself with my choice of words. “Sorry.”

“I don’t like that talk,” she says. But she pats my knee again and smiles. Code for
But, yes. He really is.

I lean my head back against the hard wall and close my eyes again.

Here is my fantasy:

I’m sitting with my dad in the waiting room at the hospital. It’s full of people moaning about whatever pain it is that brought them there. My father will appear physically uncomfortable having to be near so many people, especially people who are “bellyaching.” I will enjoy watching him squirm. A hot nurse walks into the room. She’s holding a clipboard. She scans the list on it and calls out, “Nathan Granger?” My father and I will both stand up at the same time because my name is the one and only thing we share. But the nurse will check
me
out, not my dad. She’ll smile and give me a sexy look and say, “Come with me,” in this really suggestive way, and I will smile back at her and then give my father a very fake-sorry face. The hot nurse and I will disappear down the hall together, leaving my father alone with all the drug addicts and runny-nose coughing little kids. Instead of taking me to some tiny little cubicle with curtains for walls, the nurse will take me to a supply closet. She’ll tell me how hot I am and start to undress and say how she wants to be the one I lose my virginity to and how she’s going to make sure I never forget my first time and . . .