Читать книгу Replacing Dad - Shelley Fraser Mickle - Страница 5

I knew my mother hated her job at the county dump. She didn’t piss and moan about it, but still, I knew. Sometimes I’d hear her cussing out her boss while she was putting stuff in the washing machine, thinking the sound of the water swishing and all that would cover up what she said. So I guess it really was a good thing that happened the day I was baby-sitting George, except that for a while, it sure looked like a tragedy in the making.

It was one of those school holidays—teacher conference day—which always made things hard for us. Because Dad was at the school, couldn’t watch George or Mandy, and Mom had to be at The Dump. So between her and me, we worked it out. If I stayed home and watched George and Mandy, she’d save a little on day care. Mandy was too old for it anyway,but not old enough to stay home alone. So Mom would go to work, and we’d both forget that my teachers needed conferencing. “Your dad ought to take care of that, anyway,” she said. It was my first year in high school; I’d only been in the ninth grade for nine weeks, so how bad could it be?

She taught me how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, balance it off with a can of pears and a sliced apple and a heated-up can of baked beans. That way Mandy and George, as well as me, would have one of the meals she believed in. She always said we had to have something raw, yellow or green; something white like potatoes or rice; and a lot of milk. My mother fixed meals with a color wheel, and she never gave in.

It was about two o’clock. I’d already cleaned up the kitchen after our lunch. And I’d just about had it taking care of Mandy and George. The summer before, when Dad had driven us down to a white-sand beach for a long weekend, Mandy had sat up in the hotel room while the rest of us went out for a swim. And when Poltergeist came on a cable channel, Mandy didn’t do a damn thing about turning it off. (At home, Mom wouldn’t let us have cable, so when we got in a hotel room, we went nuts.) So there Mandy sat, getting the wits scared out of her, so that ever since last summer, I’d had to escort her to the bathroom and just about everywhere else in the house where she had to go alone. (And neither of us wanted to tell Mom why either, so we snuck around in front of her when she was home.) Already that day I’d gone into the bathroom ahead of Mandy twice to check behind the john, in the cabinets, behind the shower curtain. And all the while, she had just stood in the doorway watching me, and when I complained that the poltergeist thing was not really real, she yelled at me: “It happened in a house, Drew, don’t you understand! It could happen in a house like this.”

“It was just a movie, Mandy.”

“Yeah, but did you check in the hamper?”

And then I’d have to go through all the dirty clothes.

Now she and George had obviously seen that my patience was just about shot, and she had offered to take George to ride bikes out front, maybe walk the shoreline and hunt for stuff that had gotten washed up. I went out to sit on the porch, listen to my Walkman. The tide was out, making the shoreline look like the world was being sucked dry. The edge of the water was a long way away now on the other side of the road, and the oyster bars were sticking up like the scaly backs of some kinds of monsters. Palm trees dot the edge of our front lawn, their bark wrinkled like elephant skins, and their big leaves were rustling.

Beside me, our old car was parked in the drive, the crushed­in back now like the nose of a Pekingese. Mom had collected the money for it that the insurance company had given her, but she said she didn’t want to fix the old, silly, ugly car—which I knew meant fix the car Dad had left her. Instead, whatever money the company gave her she put into a little foreign job, a lime green Toyota station wagon. It was already nearly ten years old, but Mr. Duffy said he’d work on it for her and help keep it running. He was a good mechanic. It’d had a FOR SALE sign on it parked out on the highway for three months. It was sort of okay. Not radical or anything I’d want for myself; Mom called it the Granny Apple. But most of all, it was hers, the first and only she’d ever bought.

That meant we were now a two-car family, except that the second one, which was really the first, was not exactly what I had in mind for myself. Didn’t even have a back end. And riding around in the reminder of your first wreck sort of sucks.

I plugged in the earphones to my Walkman, mainly out of respect to the bird who lives in front of our house: an osprey, with a nest on a light pole. And the bird was up there, every once in a while getting up and stretching, pushing out her wings. She had been up there every time I’d looked to check on her over the last few days. Big as an eagle. Just not colored like one. Instead plain brown. And the nest looked like my room: big twigs and stuff woven all together, messy, but really real organized. That exact nest had made it through the last hurricane, while half the stuff on the street hadn’t. So out of respect for her, I had my earplugs in and was deep into KISS 105 and didn’t hear Mandy call me. She rode her bike up into the yard and stopped, then punched my knee. (The only part of Mandy that looks like me, as far as I can see, is her chin. It has a little dip in it, dimple, I guess, that makes it look like that’s where the two halves of our faces come together. Otherwise, she’s blond. Looks like Dad and George the Second.) I took the earplugs out of my ears. “Yeah, what?”

“George put a rock up his nose. Says he can’t breathe.”

“What in the hell did he do that for?”

“I don’t know. George doesn’t know. But it’s not my fault.”

I walked down the road, Mandy riding on ahead of me. I saw George sitting on this little sand beach a short way away, his trike mired in the sand. How bad could a rock be? Probably wasn’t anything.

Mandy laid down her bike. “Show him, George.”

George was wiggling his nose and snorting.

“Did you put something up there?” I knelt in the sand and tipped George’s head back.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

“What?”

“Rock.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

We sounded like two Indians in a Wild West movie. I mashed down on his nose for a while, trying to work the skin like you would a hose. Nothing came out. I wasn’t sure if I believed something really was up there. George has a wild imagination; makes up explanations for things all the time, sometimes even when he had the real answers, like when he believed barrettes held people up in water so they could swim. He’d insisted on wearing some of Mandy’s barrettes the summer before when we’d taken him for swimming lessons, ‘cause all the other kids in the class were girls and were swimming before him.

“Snort, George. Give it a big heave-ho.”

He did.

Nothing came out.

“You sure something’s up there?”

Suddenly his eyes puddled up. He really was scared.

“It’s okay, George. We’ll go call Mom. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.” I picked him up.

I carried him back to the house. I didn’t want to jerk him or move him. I wasn’t sure exactly how far up the rock was, but I figured if I tilted him too far either way it might end up somewhere worse, like his brain.

“Mom.” When I got her on the phone, I wasn’t sure how to break the news.

“Yeah, Drew. What you need?”

“Oh, nothing. We had lunch. Didn’t burn the grilled cheese. Didn’t burn the house down either.” I laughed. Then when she didn’t: “That’s a joke, Mom.”

“Oh.”

“No, I unplugged the electric frying pan, just like you told me. The beans were good. The apple was fresh, too, no bruises.”

“Drew, why are you calling?”

“We got just one little problem.”

“What’s that?”

“George put a rock up his nose.”

“Oh God!” She sucked in her breath. “It could go to his lung! It could kill him!”

“It could? I wasn’t sure if it was really serious.”

“It is. It’s awful. I’ve got to come home. No, first take him to the clinic. To that new doctor. I’ll call first, tell them you’re on the way. I’ll meet you there.”

She hung up, and we flew into high gear. “Don’t move your head, George,” I said. “Don’t sniff or do anything. Just hold yourself like a frozen person.” I took him by the hand. The clinic was half a mile away, just up the road and one turn. Mandy rode the bike beside us. I put George on my back, piggyback. I had decided not to ride my own bike, because I might jostle him. This way I could put a lot of spring into my feet and keep him steady. I could also keep his mind off himself by playing like I was a pack mule and we were headed up Pike’s Peak.

When I walked into the clinic, which is this little white building next to the bank, the whole waiting room was full of people. The clinic seemed to be drawing from all over; people weren’t just from Palm Key. George was still on my back, and just like my mother said, the nurse, Mrs. MacHenry, was waiting for us. There just wasn’t much of anything she could do. She said Dr. Haley wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen him since I’d knocked the front in on his Mercedes. Now he was up the highway at a nursing home giving flu shots, she said. She’d sent for him, and we’d just have to wait a little while. She set George down on a chair in the waiting room and gave him a sucker. “Breathe through your mouth, George,” she said. “Every time you lick this sucker, breathe in, then out.”

It was at least a comfort to turn George over to Mrs. MacHenry. She lived on the same street with us, in a stilt house with a boathouse on the canal that went behind all our houses. She had red hair about the color of a rusted yard chair and a mouth that wouldn’t quite close because of her teeth. And to me, that made her look like any second she was about to scream. She was a good singer, though. She was asked to sing at all the weddings and the Shrimp Festival on the bandstand. She had this deep-throated country voice that, if it hadn’t sounded so much like she had something caught in her throat, might have been good enough for making a record. My mother used to always call her a mess. “Oh, Betty, you’re such a mess!” she’d say, which supposedly was a compliment.

My mother has all these funny sayings from having grown up in Alabama. (She’s passed them on to me, too, and I’m not too sure I’m glad of that. Sometimes my friends, Northerners who’ve moved down here to get away from snow, can’t understand what I’m saying, like when I tell them I’m fixin’ to go fishing, and they say, “Why don’t you just say go?” To me and my mom, it wouldn’t be the same. There’s a whole lot that goes into going somewhere, and, in that sense, fixin’ makes sense.) One time soon after my dad moved out, Mrs. MacHenry paid me to baby-sit because, as she said, she was fixin’ to drive my mother up the highway for some fun, which turned out to be The Flesh Paradise. They had male strippers there. Mom never did mention it. Only reason I ever knew that’s where Mrs. MacHenry took her was that Mom’d insisted on leaving me a number where I could reach her. And then George threw up, and when I dialed the number, some deep­throated dude had answered, “Flesh Paradise.” So I hung up. Told George Mom said it was just a two-hour virus, and he had only five more minutes before time was up. Which seemed to work, because George just sat down and watched ‘’The Flintstones” on TV, ate a package of Cajun spiced potato chips, and fell asleep.

Now Mrs. MacHenry was coaching George on how to breathe. “Through your mouth, George. That’s right. In. Out. Up. Down.” And Mandy had picked up the movie star magazines and was sitting on the floor, reading them, or at least flipping through the pages.

Meanwhile, everybody in the waiting room was looking at George. It was as if any minute he could just keel over and die, like an old person barely hanging on. He sure was sucking that sucker like there was no tomorrow.

I didn’t have a place to sit down, so I stood, leaning against the wall beside George. Then Mrs. Conner, my first grade teacher, came in. I hadn’t seen her in a while. She didn’t look good. She didn’t look around, just walked straight up to Mrs. MacHenry’s desk. “Is the doctor in?”

Since Mrs. MacHenry was standing with me, it was like Mrs. Conner was announcing the president or something. She just spoke her question out loud, and Mrs. MacHenry headed over.

Mrs. MacHenry’s white uniform brushed against her hose, which sounded to me a little like a katydid. (In the Florida heat, women don’t wear them often, but I’ve decided I really love the sound of stockings.) And all the while she was explaining: “Dr. Haley’s up the highway, giving flu shots at a nursing home.”

Mrs. Conner looked around. She’d always tried to come off as this sweet old lady, but she was the kind who’d give you pencils with no erasers and then make you stay in at recess for spitting on your paper and rubbing out mistakes. I could never understand why she had this thing about mistakes. She said we were supposed to not worry about them. But hell, even at six you know you make them, and want to fix them. In my book, that’s normal.

“I have to see Dr. Haley today,” she said, still looking around. “Do all these other people have appointments?”

Mrs. MacHenry sat down at her desk. “No. We do walk-ins. You just have to be willing to wait a while. Sometimes maybe even a long while. “

Mrs. Conner leaned over closer, but there was no way an old first grade teacher could talk low. “Betty, I got this sore on my nose, you see, and I’m afraid it’s cancer. I got to see him. I put a little of this medicine on it that I got from my sister. A little home remedy.” She laughed. “But it hadn’t gotten a bit better.” She lifted up her Band-Aid.

I’d never heard that before—home remedy. It must have been the name of something an old person would use. But instead it sounded like something we ought to get—me, Mandy, George the Second, and especially Mom. Mrs. MacHenry looked at Mrs. Conner’s nose. “Sure is some bump, Elaine. You better get it checked. I just don’t know when exactly Dr. Haley’ll get to you.”

“So you think this is a bad bump, too?”

“Could be nothing. Could be a mosquito bite. Could be a passion hickey. “ She laughed, flashing her teeth. “Could be, I guess, something more serious like a skin cancer, or a wart. Why don’t you just join in with the rest and wait.”

“Guess I’ll have to.” Mrs. Conner looked around the waiting room, then saw me. “Drew,” she said, coming over. “Just look at you—all tall and nearly grown.”

“Sort of.” I grinned. I could never get over trying to get on her good side.

“And you’re in your first year of high school?”

I grinned again. I knew she’d never thought I’d make it that far. And then it hit me: Mrs. Conner had this Band-Aid over her nose, and I could see this green medicine under it, oozing out. I guess it was her home remedy. And it smelled awful, all rotten and fishy. It made me think of something you’d get out of a swamp.

There was no place for either of us to sit down, so we were stuck standing beside each other. In a few minutes my mother came whizzing in, her face all red; and she’d been rushing like crazy, you could tell. She picked George up and set him on her lap and held his head real still against her.

Mrs. MacHenry came over, her white uniform crisp as a Ritz cracker. “I sent for Dr. Haley, Linda. He’s on his way. I told him it was an emergency.”

“God, thanks, Betty.” Mom glanced up. Then, “Don’t move, George.” She clamped his head between her palms.

Mrs. Conner stepped closer. “Is he sick?”

“He’s got a rock up his nose.” My mother was petting George’s cheek.

Mrs. MacHenry added: “Dr. Haley should be here any minute.”

My mom was close to frantic. I could tell because she was stiff, trying to look good like she wasn’t going to lose it and all, yet talking like her tongue had diarrhea. She does that when she gets nervous. It really bothers me to see her like that, and her voice climbing high: “I just wish I were closer; my job an hour away makes this so much harder. I worry, you know. Being that far. I need to get a job closer. Something that’ll let me be here, near home. Something that’ll . . .”

Mrs. MacHenry touched my mother’s hand. “Let you raise your kids like you want to?” She laughed. “In Palm Key that means if you don’t fish or oyster, then you got to stick to hairdressing, or punching a cash register, or waitressing till your feet are flat.”

“Or teaching school.” Mrs. Conner chimed in, leaning closer. Wow!Did she smell bad!

“Wasn’t anything for me either,” Mrs. MacHenry said, “till this clinic opened up. I’ve worn out the top layer of Highway 40 for over twenty years.”

“You’re gonna be fine, George.” My mother was still rubbing his head.

Mrs. Conner bent down. “Bet you won’t put anything up your nose after this.” Then she reached out and touched his knee. He had on these cut-off overalls; he did look cute. Suddenly his nose crinkled up, and as Mrs. Conner got her own nose closer, George sneezed. The rock flew out of his nose and hit Mrs. Conner on the cheek, then fell to the floor between her shoes. “Lord-a­mercy!” she said.

Good shot, I thought.

My mother stood up. Mrs. Conner stepped back. My mother was still holding George, his feet dangling like wet clothes. And everybody was staring at the rock. The door opened, and Dr. Haley came in.

He walked straight over to my mom and George. “So, this the fellow with a little trouble?” He reached to take George out of my mother’s arms. Boy, that guy was smooth.

My mother smiled. “I’m so sorry,” she said. ‘‘I know you rushed back here.” “It’s okay,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for, to handle emergencies.” “I just mean, it’s not an emergency anymore.” She looked down at the rug and pointed.

Dr. Haley stepped back, still holding George. He saw the rock my mother was pointing to, and then my mother added, “He just sneezed.”

Dr. Haley looked at George. Then he laughed. “Well done,” he said. He added that he ought to check George over just to make sure no damage was done.

As he carried George through the door to the other parts of the clinic, we all followed him. I don’t know why. I guess we were morbid or so stuck together out of habit, we all just went with him. Mrs. MacHenry held open the examining room door, then came in, too.

Dr. Haley set George down on the treatment table and looked up his nose with a flashlight, while Mrs. MacHenry held his head. Boy, that guy was tall! Six-four, at least.

My mom was watching, but was still talking like her tongue was having a jerk-fit. I wished we could get her looked at next. “I was just so worried it would go to his lung,” she said. “I had to rush here; I just knew this wasn’t something I should take lightly, but I’m so sorry we made you rush back.”

“Not many people know something like that. How’d you know it could go to his lung?”

My mother looked at Dr. Haley, and for a minute she was quiet, her eyes squinted like she does when she’s trying to think. Then she smiled and let loose, her words fast and hooked together. “I guess it’s something I picked up when I was working for my uncle. I was fifteen, about Drew’s age here—yes, just exactly Drew’s age—and I had this thing about how I was going to be a doctor.” She smiled, then sort of laughed. “So my parents let me spend a summer with my uncle, working in his office. He was a pediatrician, and we had a lot of kids that summer with things up their noses.” She laughed loud then. “I’d forgotten that.”

He was watching her, holding that little flashlight thing and unscrewing it, and then he handed it to Mrs. MacHenry, and she put it away. George was now down to the end of his sucker.

“Did you go on to medical school?”

“No. My parents kept telling me it’d be best for me to be a nurse.” She laughed again. “You know, that girl thing: We ought to be nurses, not doctors. Everything’s changed now, thank God. But not then—and not to my parents. “

Just then George started cutting up, wiggling around and wanting down from the examining table. “I want that rock,” he said, heading for the waiting room.

Dr. Haley followed him; everybody was still there, and watching. We stood at the office door, watching, too, as Dr. Haley and just about everybody else in the waiting room got down on their hands and knees to help George find his rock. Then Dr. Haley came back into the examining room carrying George, with George holding the rock, and then Dr. Haley shut the door. “I have to listen to your chest, George,” he said. “Make sure your lungs are clear. Won’t take but a minute.”

While my mother was taking offGeorge’s shirt, Mrs. MacHenry was handing Dr. Haley his stethoscope, and then before he put it in his ears, he said to my mom, “I’ve been wanting to hire a medical assistant or another nurse. We’ve gotten so busy. I had no idea this practice would be like this.” Then he put the stethoscope tubes in his ears and put his head close to George’s chest.

“Breathe deep, George,” he said.

Mrs. MacHenry stood behind Dr. Haley mouthing: “Linda, if he offers you this job, take it.” “Are you crazy?” Mom was shaking her head, her eyes wide, doing a no-go pantomime.

George was huffing and puffing in the background. “It’s all right,” Mrs. MacHenry whispered, “I’ll cover for you. We don’t need a R.N.”

“But, Betty.”

“Hell, I’m just an L.P.N. We don’t need no genius. Just do it.” She coughed, making a sound that covered part of her words, but since Dr. Haley had the stethoscope in his ears, me and Mandy were the only ones knowing what was going on, and maybe not even Mandy. She had this horrified look on her face, studying the reflex hammer on a little white table with a bunch of other things, probably trying to figure out which body parts all that stuff could be poked into.

My mother was breathing like George, coaching him. Then Dr. Haley pulled the things out of his ears and turned around. Both my mother and Mrs. MacHenry froze. “All clear,” he said. “Must have been a lone rock.”

My mother folded up George’s shirt. She was mashing it up into this little square. ‘’Thank God,” she said. Then she smiled, adding, “and you.” She had on this blue-and-white-striped suit, real neat. And her face was still flushed. She’d gotten into scarves in the last few months, and she had on a red one now draped over her shoulder. I don’t know why, but she always dressed real fine to go to work at The Dump. “We’ve needed a doctor here for a long time,” she said.

“So how about it?” He looked at her.

“How about what?”

Mrs. MacHenry was lifting George down off the treatment table, and she looked at my mom, her eyes glaring and rolling, with some blue stuff on her lids.

“You want the job?”

Dr. Haley was still looking at my mom; his mustache reminded me of the handlebars on a bike. I knew that in just a minute Mom was going to tell Dr. Haley the truth: that she’d gone to school to be an artist and didn’t even finish that. I didn’t even know she’d once had that nurse and doctor thing.

But instead she said, calm and quick, “Fine. Sounds wonderful. Give me two weeks.”

She put on George’s shirt, patted him on the back, made sure he had a close hold on his rock, thanked Dr. Haley again, and was standing in front of Mrs. MacHenry’s desk by the time Mandy and I caught up. “I can’t believe I did that,” she was saying to Mrs. MacHenry.

“I can,” Mrs. MacHenry laughed. “This is just the job you’ve needed all along. And don’t worry. I’ll help.”

My mother reached over and touched Mrs. MacHenry’s arm. “God, Betty. What would I do without you?”

Mrs. MacHenry grinned, “Not much. That’s for sure.” Her teeth parted her lips, reminding me a little of how my johnboat plows through the Gulf.

My mother laughed, “Betty, you’re such a mess,” she whispered, then added: “And by the way, send the bill to George the First.” “Damn tootin’,” Mrs. MacHenry said.

And we were out the door.

A second later. Mom stopped on the sidewalk, still holding George, looking stunned and just staring at the green Toyota parked at the curb. “Why did I do that? Am I losing my mind? What’s wrong with me?”

Neither me nor Mandy nor George answered. Hell! What were we supposed to know? Besides, it wasn’t our job. I didn’t know what to say to women. Even if it was my mother who was asking, I didn’t know what to say.

I watched her looking out across the street at nothing, her eyes glazed. “He didn’t say he definitely wanted a nurse. He just said medical assistant. Didn’t he say that first?” she glanced at us.

We were all nodding.

“Of course he did. I’m that. I can be a medical assistant. Betty’s right. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

She pressed George close to her again. “I had to do it,” she said. “I’ll be here, close. I bet it even pays more. Anything would.”

We were still standing, looking out into the street. Whenever Mom got stuck like that, we tried to just stay calm and wait it out. The sky was slate gray, almost dusk. The sun was hunkering down like an orange basketball, sweetly dunked and about to fall through the net of the Gulf. And then my mother opened the door to the Granny Apple and got in.

Mandy and George the Second got in the back, and I sat in front. “This is going to be fine. Really fine,” she was saying.

She was still talking as she put the gear in D, and we blasted off onto the main road of Palm Key. We sped along the coast road and out to the airport. She was giving us a little spin, like we’d often done after those first few days when Dad moved out. “Let’s get out of here for a while,” she’d say, even sometimes late at night when we’d all be up watching movies. And we’d all get in the car, sometimes George asleep, and she’d drive and drive and drive. We’d skirt the Gulf, hugging the gray water and curling around it wherever it touched land. George would be asleep in my lap, the smell of his pajamas coming up over me, clean, sweet, and sour all at the same time—his head jostling in my lap like a warm melon.

And now we were driving out to the airport, which was just a big strip of pavement between marsh and ocean. Only little things could land, tiny private planes that came in on weekends like metal mosquitoes touching down. Sometimes the people flying them just taxied them up into the yards of their weekend houses and parked them. Which I guess said a lot about the kind of people who took a liking to Palm Key.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” Mom parked beside the end of the runway. We looked out into the Gulf, where the sky at dusk reached the water in the same color.

The sun sat on the water for a long second, and we said goodbye to it as it slipped slowly down, then fell into the water and disappeared. The sky was now like gray cotton, thick and even, and swallowing the water, too.

Mom didn’t start the motor, or even move. We just sat awhile, the windows rolled up so the little no-see-um bugs couldn’t get in and eat us.

She was calmer now. Dressed up in the clothes she wore to work, she looked pretty fine—even though it’s hard to be sure about how your mother looks. But she seemed to look business­like, at least. And not bad for someone so old. And I could tell as she sat beside me that she was scared. Just practically about to lose it good after she’d taken a job she had no business taking. Except that the business was us.

I knew we were the reason she was staying in Palm Key. Same house. Same car, till only recently. Every day we get to see Dad. Even when she grounds us, she says that doesn’t include Dad.

She’d do anything for us. Which, I guess, in the whole long run of things, is really probably the best of all things to know.

“Look.” She pointed up into the sky out over the Gulf where a tiny plane was coming in, its lights like a net of stars. We sat there, watching, still, not saying a thing, following the path of the lights out over the water, and holding our breath at the mystery of how it could land in the dark.

We needed to see that.