A Month of Summer (14 page)

"K-ul. K-ul R-baa.”
Call Rebecca, call Rebecca, call Rebecca.
My fingers clenched in frustration. My breathing sped up until my throat became dry and I fell into a fit of coughing and choking.

Mary grabbed the cup from the bedside table, dribbled a few drops of water into my mouth with the bendy straw. “Ssshhh,” she whispered. “Don’t try so hard. It’ll come. Stress makes things worse, that’s all. I think you better rest now, Mrs. Parker. I’ll be back again later.” After tucking the sheet around me, she moved toward the door.

I didn’t want her to go. I wanted her to call Rebecca, to call Kay-Kay, to find out what was happening at my house. I willed my hand to move to the remote, to lay over the button. My arm jerked, then moved, my fingers landing on the remote. The TV blared to life, and Mary jumped back, then threw a hand over her chest.

“Oh, my gosh,” she breathed, lowering the volume, then returning to the bed with a triumphant smile. “You did it, Mrs. Parker. Good for you!” She moved my finger to the channel button. “There, now you can watch what you want, and you won’t be bored.” She patted my hand, then started toward the door again, adding, “Good for you.”

I rested my wrist on the sound button, pushed down, and the TV blared again.

Mary turned in the alcove, braced her hands on her thin hips, quirking an eyebrow. “Well, Mrs. Parker!” she said, shocked and a little aggravated. “You’re going to have us both in trouble.” She crossed the room again and reached for the remote.

I rolled away, dragging it with me.

“Mrs. Parker!” Leaning over the bed, she recovered the remote and turned off the TV, sounding as forceful as I’d ever heard her. “What in the world has gotten into you? You are going to have to calm down.” She tied the remote to the bed rail, out of reach, then helped me onto my pillows again and fixed the sheet.

Desperation welled in my eyes, spilled over. Mary’s face became tender. “It’s all right, okay? Just try to relax and we’ll talk again later. There are some volunteer readers in today. I’ll ask one of them to come by and read to you for a while. It’s good for your language processing. How would that be?”

I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes without answering. My legs had started to ache and burn, and I was suddenly exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to continue trying to make myself understood.

“Ssshhh,” Mary soothed. “Just rest.” She slipped away on silent feet, assuming I was drifting off to sleep. Instead, I stared out the window, tried to conjure a plan to make her understand. Nothing came to mind.

Sometime later, the squeal of the door hinges told me I had a visitor. I turned away from the window, hoping it was Rebecca. Instead, Mary was coming back, pushing a woman in a wheelchair. The woman, her hair plaited in a thin gray braid behind her head, her face weathered and wrinkled, looked older than me, but her manner, the upward tilt of her chin, her brightly colored Bugs Bunny sweat suit, testified to a spunkiness that even the wheelchair couldn’t camouflage. Any other time, I would have wanted to know her, but right now, I wasn’t in the mood for guests.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Mary said as she wheeled the woman around to the side of my bed and parked the chair. “Mrs. Parker, this is Ouita Mae Barnhill, Dr. Barnhill’s grandmother. She’s here with us, healing up from a little surgery and doing some volunteer reading to keep busy. Dr. Barnhill thought you two might enjoy spending time together.”

I wanted to tell Ouita Mae that I wouldn’t be much company, but perhaps the lack of words was a mercy, considering my mood. In truth, it was kind of her to read to me, particularly when she was just healing up from surgery. Clearly, Dr. Barnhill came by his caring ways naturally.

Mary gave me an encouraging smile as she exited the room, leaving the two of us alone.

Ouita Mae sighed, reached for the book on the table. “You probably don’t really want company,” she said matter-of-factly, opening the book to the place where my last volunteer reader, a student from SMU, had tucked in a scrap of plastic from her soda bottle label as a marker. “I didn’t want company after I had my stroke. I couldn’t talk, nor anything, and I hated having people see my face saggin’ and my hands curled up. I looked lots worse than you, by the way. You don’t look bad a’tall, sweetie. Of course, you’re younger than me, so you’ll heal up in no time. I was eighty when I had my stroke. Left side.” She held her hand in the air between us, turning it over and back. “You can’t tell it now, though. Don’t let this chair fool you, either. That’s just because I had this orthoscotic surgery day before yesterday. I got some problems with my legs, but I usually get around pretty good.”

“Ooooh,” I said, and for the first time in weeks, the hope I’d been fostering grew and radiated warmth. If Ouita Mae Barnhill could come through a stroke and return to a normal life, so could I.

Clearing her throat, Ouita Mae slipped her reading glasses onto the end of her nose and turned her attention to
Pirate’s Promise
. “I like a good love story with a happy ending,” she remarked, then began reading aloud the story of Gavin and Marcella’s star-crossed romance. When we reached a scene in which Gavin and Marcella could no longer resist the attraction between them, she paused after the first kiss, skimmed ahead, and said, “This don’t leave much to the imagination. Reckon it’ll do to say that, even though his pirates raided her father’s ships and caused her daddy to lose all his money and die a broken man, she’s sure got a thing for him, and she can’t keep herself from it. He ain’t lookin’ for a woman, but he hasn’t ever seen one like her.”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

Ouita Mae smiled at me. “Makes me think of bein’ young, lookin’ at a boy, and feelin’ the kind of love that takes your breath away. You know, I got a sweet little neighbor girl who’s twenty-four. I’ve known her since she was born. She’s been dating the same boy off and on since her junior year of high school. After all these years, they decided they ought to get engaged, start planning a wedding. A part of me was sad to see it, a little. I’m afraid she’ll just get married, go on through life with the fella that seems safe and easy, and she’ll never feel the kind of passion that Marcella’s got for Gavin.” Misty-eyed, she turned to me and added, “You know?”

“Yeeesh,” I whispered, because I did know. I had that kind of passion for Edward. Even now, I felt incomplete without him near.

Ouita Mae rested her chin on her hand and sighed, then returned to the story. In her relaxed, slow-paced East Texas accent, the tale of Lord Winston’s plot to steal Marcella from her pirate lover and force her into marriage took on an entirely new flavor—a bit like hearing John Wayne read Shakespeare. Occasionally, Ouita Mae paused to insert comments that made me laugh. I let my worries go and just enjoyed her company.

By the time she closed the book, the lunch trays were being delivered, and in the hall, ambulatory patients were moving to the cafeteria. I was surprised that so much time had passed. “If that Lord Winston isn’t a sorry lot. He’s got Gavin and Marcella gettin’ along about like two alley cats in a tow sack,” she said, as she set the book on my night table. She braced it against the lamp so that the pirate’s picture was facing outward. “Thought you might want somethin’ to look at.” Winking at me, she turned her chair around. “I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll find out what happens next.”

“Aaann-ooo,” I said, which didn’t sound much like
thank you
, but Ouita Mae nodded, patting my foot as she wheeled her chair past.

“Don’t you think a thing of it, y’hear?”

Mary poked her head in the door. “You ready to go down to the dining hall, Mrs. Barnhill?”

I beckoned Mary to the bed, moving my arm in a clumsy, sweeping motion, then letting it fall to the mattress.

Mary crossed the room and stood by me, glanced at the pirate on the book’s cover, and blushed. “Did you need something, Mrs. Parker?”

"K-ul Rrr-buk-uhhh.”

Mary sighed, inclining her head sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker. I don’t know what you’re asking for. Want me to turn on the TV?” She picked up the remote.

"K-ul Rrr-buk-uhhh,” I said again.

Mary lifted her hands helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Ouita Mae paused halfway to the door. “It’s clear as day. She wants you to
call Rebecca
.”

Mary’s face lifted with understanding as Ouita Mae disappeared down the hall. “Call Rebecca,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker, I should have gotten that.”

“Yesssh,” I repeated, relieved that finally I’d communicated. "K-ul R-buk-uh.”

Mary’s look of excitement quickly faded. “Mrs. Parker, they’ve been trying to call the contact number in your file for a couple days now, and it’s not a working line.” Fidgeting with the water glass, she frowned. “They don’t have any way to get ahold of your family.”

They don’t have any way to get ahold of your family.
The reality of the words struck a hard blow. All my previous joy flew from the room like a sweet scent before a storm. Why would our phone have been disconnected? How? Much of the recent past was foggy in my memory, but years ago, Edward had arranged for all of our monthly bills to be drafted automatically from our bank account. We’d had a disagreement about it, because I was afraid the bank’s computer might fail to pay on time. Edward laughed and said that computers don’t forget things, people do. There was no way our bills could have gone unpaid.

Unless Rebecca had changed things. Unless, as I feared, she was closing down the house, moving Teddy and Edward . . . where? What if this was her final revenge for my taking her father from her all those years ago? Having heard only her mother’s side of the story, she probably had no reason to feel charitable toward Edward, or toward me. At twelve, she was powerless, but now, all the power rested with her.

The idea tensed the pit of my stomach, tying a hard knot of fear. I grabbed Mary’s hand on the railing. “Myeee hhh . . .” I couldn’t form the word house.
My house. My house. My house.
“Myeee hhhow.”
That isn’t right. That’s not right.
I turned my body, tried to reach for the TV remote.

“Mrs. Parker, what are . . . the TV?” Mary took the remote and turned on the television. “All right, tell me when you see something you want to watch.”

I waited while she flipped through the channels. A commercial came on, something about vinyl siding. “Hhhow! Hhhow!”

Mary turned to the screen, took in the picture. “House?” she muttered, then, “House! Your house?” Her lips parted in a silent
Ohhh
. “Mrs. Parker, you can’t go home right now. You have to stay here until you’re better.”

“Nnno.” The sound was louder than I’d expected. It filled the room “Yyyou ugg-go.” We’d practiced
stop
and
go
in speech therapy, thank goodness. I punched my hand clumsily toward the screen again.

She considered the words for a moment, like a contestant trying to solve a puzzle. “You want me to go home?”

My hand fell against the railing, my arm exhausted by the effort. “Yyyyou hhhowt uggg-go. Myeee.”

“You want me to go to your house?”

“Yesh,” I breathed, and let my head sink to the pillow. “Yyyou ugg-go.”

Mary drew back, unsettled by the dawning realization of what I was asking her to do—something far beyond the scope of her job. What choice did I have but to ask, to plead with her? There was no one else. There was only Mary, with her wide jade-colored eyes and her soft heart, who might understand that I needed to know what was happening to Edward and Teddy.

Without Mary, I was helpless.

CHAPTER 9

The days were passing in a blur of phone calls and visits to utility companies, cleaning the house and throwing out all the rotten food, hours spent digging through piles of mail, both opened and unopened, which my father had randomly combined with paperwork from the file cabinet in his office and stacked in odd places. There seemed to be no pattern to his actions, only a determination to protect various pieces of information from
those people
, who came and went silently, rummaging through the house, moving things, hiding bills beneath the paint cans in the garage, stealing the peanut butter and tucking it under the bathroom sink with the spare toilet paper. When I brought home groceries on the first day, half of them disappeared before the next morning. My father insisted that
those people
had come and eaten the food. I found hamburger rotting under his bed two days later. If he didn’t take his sleeping pill in the evening, he moved through the rooms at night, turning the lights on and off, sometimes talking to
those people
, sometimes threatening them, sometimes hiding from them.

He wanted to be sure that I, Marilyn, didn’t listen to anything
those people
said about him. They told lies. They wanted him to be fired from his job. In the evenings, when his delusions reached their height, he was certain that Teddy was one of
those people
. He screamed at Teddy, tried to make him leave the house. Teddy ran upstairs to his bedroom, turned out the lights, and stayed, no matter what time it was. My father had trouble navigating the stairs, so Teddy was safe there. If he turned out the lights and kept silent, Daddy Ed would eventually stop hollering from the entry hall.

Teddy had developed an amazing set of coping mechanisms for dealing with the increasing dementia. He’d learned to get up early, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, eat quickly, leave a sandwich by my father’s chair, then go to the backyard, where various stray cats waited for crusts of bread and Teddy’s tender attention.

For whatever reason, my father wouldn’t enter the backyard, so Teddy could remain there unmolested, except for an occasional back-door rant, during which Teddy hid in the garden house. When Daddy Ed slept in the afternoons, Teddy came in, made sandwiches again, took one, left one by the chair, then went back outside. In the evening, he sneaked inside and hid in the coatroom or the maid’s pantry until my father went to bed. On windy nights, he carried seedlings with him in his makeshift pots and put them inside where they wouldn’t blow over. He was preparing for spring planting of the flower beds, convinced that growing the plants and readying the flower beds would make Hanna Beth come home.