(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (42 page)

WE ARRIVED IN WALTERBORO JUST AFTER THE lunch crowd had exited Ira's Cafe. Ira, decked out in turquoise blue, met us at the door looking like a color swatch. She hugged Maggie and gave me a huge wet kiss on the cheek, which I wiped with my sleeve.

She pointed her coffeepot at me. "You best not be wiping off my kisses. I don't give too many out."

"Take my word for it," a guy in the kitchen hollered. "She's telling the truth."

"Hey, Ira," I said. "Good to see you."

Ira winked at us, smiled, smacked her gum from side to side, and then adjusted her left bosom with the V in her elbow, kind of lifting it back into place. Evidently business had been good in the last year, because they were bigger, and she looked as though she was trying to get used to them getting in her way. She pointed us to a booth. "You just missed Amos, but sit down and I'll stir up some lunch."

We sat in our booth and watched the Walterboro lunch crowd scurry across the town square en route to their jobs or in search of the next pocket of gossip. Across the square sat the town hall and what looked like both Amos's truck and Pastor John's Cadillac.

Ten minutes later, Ira delivered a lunch that looked a whole lot like breakfast. A mound of steaming eggs, piping hot biscuits, fresh sweet cream butter, honey, and cheese grits. She even threw in a few slices of salty fried ham.

It took us nearly an hour to eat it all. We washed it down with syrupy sweet tea, and when I asked Ira for the check, her face became contorted.

"Look here, you little whippersnapper, you get cute with me and I'll take a broomstick to the side of your head." She looked down at my backside. "Among other places." She sloshed the coffeepot at me again. "Now, don't you come in here and start snapping your fingers at me. No, sir."

I left twenty dollars on the table and grabbed two toothpicks at the counter-one for now and one for later-and we walked out. While I picked my teeth, we stood in the center of the sidewalk, gauging our level of fullness.

Maggie turned to me and shaded her eyes from the sun. "You know, that sounds gross."

I pulled the toothpick from my mouth. "What?"

"That." She pointed.

I stuck the toothpick back in my mouth and kept picking while she watched my fingers work. Then she ran her tongue over her teeth, sucked through them, and looked up at me again. "Does it really work?"

I nodded and offered her my second toothpick. She eyed it, stuck it in her mouth, and started picking. Finally she mumbled something I couldn't understand and nodded.

We turned toward the truck and walked directly past the alley where I had vomited breakfast about a year and a half earlier. Vomited because I'd eaten a huge breakfast with Amos and then realized that I'd gone forty-five minutes without thinking of my wife lying in a coma at the hospital. I looked at the ground where I'd stood that day, remembered the feeling in my stomach and the splatter on my boots, and felt it return when I remembered that I'd cut that scene out of Maggie's version of my story.

She clenched my arm more tightly, and her eyes innocently searched mine. "You okay?"

I swallowed hard and lied again.

We backed out of our parking spot and eased around the corner, where Amos and Pastor John were just exiting the courthouse. I waved and pulled up along a No Parking zone, thinking they'd walk up to the window and act sociable, but once I got a closer look, their faces told me otherwise. When they reached the sidewalk, Pastor John patted Amos on the shoulder and said something I couldn't hear, then they walked directly to their cars.

Amos, dressed in SWAT black, looked as if he'd been up all night. The stubble on his face and head was at least a day overgrown, and his clothes were stained with salt rings where he'd been sweating. He looked tired and aggravated. He stepped up into his truck, pulled down his glasses, held an imaginary phone to his ear, and then pointed at me and drove off, quickly.

Pastor John opened his car door and stepped in, but I waved him out and tried to break the tension that was thick in the air.

"Pastor John!" I pointed toward Amos. "If that guy causes you any trouble, I know where he lives."

He halfsmiled and waved. If I thought Amos looked tired, then Pastor John looked like a man who'd spent three days walking through the desert without food or water. His face was drawn and his eyes bloodshot. He tried to smile again and cupped his hand around his ear as if he were having a hard time hearing me because of the other cars.

"You two okay?" I hollered.

Pastor John looked toward the courthouse, brushed some pollen off the top of his car with the flat of his palm, and said, "Son, I'm looking over my shoulder. . . " He took what looked like a deep, painful breath and shook his head. Then he slid into his seat, shut the door, and drove off.

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "What was all that about?"

I followed his license tag with my eyes and then saw him place a cell phone to his ear. "I don't know, but evidently whatever it was didn't go very well."

I SAT IN THE OFFICE CHAIR, MAGGIE'S HAND ON MY knee, and fidgeted. We had come to make sure the pink lines weren't lying. I slid Papa's watch from my pocket for the fourth time since we'd sat down. I eyed the face, and it told me that Dr. Frank's office was overbooked and running behind schedule. It was a twenty-one-jewel, Hamilton railroad pocket watch, and if I kept it wound, it lost only two to three seconds a month. Nanny had given it to him as a tenth-anniversary gift, and I don't ever remember a day that he didn't carry it. When he died, I thought about burying it with him, but then I wound it, heard the ticking, and thought better of it.

Catty-corner to the hospital, the professional office building sat brimming with people. I looked out the waiting room window and across the parking lot toward the hospital. I spotted the window of Maggie's room down at the far end of the hospital and thought of all the times I had looked down from it. It didn't take me very long to realize that I liked the view from Dr. Frank's office better.

I looked around the office and took notice of all the pregnant women and their husbands. And not just pregnant, but busting-at-the-seams, could-go-anytime pregnant. I whispered to Maggie, "Why are there so many people in here?"

She looked up from her magazine and cocked one eye. "Why do you think?"

"I know that. But why now? I mean, last time we were here, the place was empty. Today it's packed."

She shook her head and put down her magazine. "You're killing me, Doc."

"What?"

She rolled her eyes. "Can you count backward?"

"Yes."

"Well, count nine months backward from June."

I used both hands, opening each finger. Messing up once, I had to start over. "October." I shrugged.

"Right." She closed her magazine. "What happens in October and November?"

"Monday Night Football?"

She shook her head and whispered, "It gets colder."

It took me a few seconds. "Oh."

A nurse walked into the room and called, "Maggie Styles?"

Maggie stood up, and all heads turned toward us. I stood and reached for her hand, but she smiled. "I'll be back," she whispered. "You can't really help with this."

She walked to the door, where the nurse handed her a small plastic cup with a screw-on lid. A few minutes later, Maggie poked her head around the corner and motioned for me to follow.

The nurse led us to a small examining room and handed Maggie a gown. "It's less than flattering, but here ... The doctor'll be here in a minute."

Maggie stood behind the curtain, stripped down to her birthday suit, and handed me everything but her socks. "If he wants my socks, he's going to have to ask." She came out, turned, and lifted her hair off her shoulders. "Tie me?"

I gathered the gown around her waist and watched goose bumps appear at the base of her back, along the outline of her hips, and on the backs of her thighs. When I messed up tying the third bow, Maggie shook her head slightly and whispered, "You did that on purpose."

Busted.

I said nothing, pulled fresh paper out of the roll on the table where her bottom would be, and then helped her step up onto the examining table. I stood alongside, holding her hand and looking at the stirrups folded out of sight. Maggie saw me staring and leaned over. "Hey, you in there?"

Busted again.

I had a few things on my mind. First, there was the physical side. Given what her body had endured both in delivery and in the atrophy of the coma, could Maggie handle the next eight months and what they led up to? Second, could she handle it emotionally? Eight months is a long time to wonder if those will be your last months on earth, and if you'll be leaving your widowed husband to raise an only child alone. Or, even worse, just alone. Maggie was strong, but was she that strong? I had my doubts. Both about her and about me.

Which brings me to my last issue. While I was uncertain about Maggs, I was relatively certain about myself. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to suffer hell until I knew the answers to the above.

While the knot in my stomach grew and ground against my nerves, the door opened and Dr. Frank walked in wearing an exasperated face. Given the state of the waiting room and all the hormones that came with it, I'd have looked that way too.

He sat down on the rolling stool and scooted up to us, taking in and then letting out an enormous breath. "Hey, guys. How're you two doing? You holding up?" He shook my hand and put his other appropriately on Maggie's knee.

We nodded.

"I guess I don't need to tell you what you already know."

Maggie tilted her shoulders. "So those little sticks really are telling the truth?"

He nodded. "They usually do."

She looked at me. I scratched her back and looked at him, not wanting Maggie to see into my eyes.

"Hey, it's a walk in the park from here," he said. `Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Your body will take care of the rest."

I never knew that one man's words could be so prophetic.

He inserted the earpieces of his stethoscope and spoke while he listened to Maggs's heart. "You picked out names yet?"

"Haven't gotten that far."

"You've got time." He paused and moved the stethoscope to her back. Maggie breathed deeply without being told. He examined her back and the muscles in her shoulders that had returned over the last year. "Maggie, you really are healthy. Whatever you're doing, keep it up, because you're looking great."

The nurse came back in and helped him slip his hands into two whitish rubber gloves that each made a distinctive smack as he pulled them tight. Maggie lay back on the table and placed her feet in the stirrups while the nurse covered Dr. Frank's fingertips in jelly.

I held her hand, noticed that Maggs had painted her toenails bright red sometime between last night and this morning, and then watched her wince as he examined her.

"I won't lie to you; you've got some pretty good scar tissue that will take some stretching." He pulled off his gloves, pitched them in the trash, and helped Maggs sit up. "So as the baby grows, understand that it will feel different from last time. Little aches and pains that will make you wonder. But that's normal. So take a deep breath"-which Maggie did"and start painting the nursery."

He followed the nurse to the door and stood in the doorway, smiling at us. "I'm excited for you guys. I've been waiting for this day."

Maggie was beaming.

"But take it easy. No marathons. Just live your life. Get as much rest as you want, eat right, and make sure you take enough time for each other." He pointed at me. "Go on a date every couple of days, like it or not."

Maggs squeezed my hand. "We can handle that."

The nurse reappeared over his shoulder and looked at Maggie. "I forgot to weigh you. Come see me when you get dressed."

They shut the door, and Maggie wrapped a bear hug around me. We stood in the doctor's office several minutes just holding each other. Maybe everything was going to be okay. Maybe I was just being a little paranoid. Maybe ...

A few minutes later we walked out the door, and Maggie headed toward the nurse and the scale.

Seeing his moment, Dr. Frank tapped me on the shoulder and motioned me around the corner. "You want it sugarcoated or straight?"

I looked down the hall toward the sound of Maggie laughing with some nurses. "Straight up."

He lowered his voice. "Sometimes, when women who've suffered some type of trauma become pregnant, their bodies will reject it."

I leaned in closer, and he put a hand on my shoulder.

"If so, it's got nothing to do with you two. It's the body's natural reaction to protect itself. Honestly, I'm amazed it let you get this far this soon. But that is one strong woman. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but the next few weeks are critical. No bumpy tractor rides, no car wrecks, no scary movies, no nothing that will shock her system and make it unconsciously want to shut down and protect itself."

He looked down the hall to where Maggie was stepping off the scale. "If you've ever protected her," he said, looking back at me, "now is the time to do it."