A Month of Summer (15 page)

Watching him work outside, I felt a nagging sympathy and an intense sadness. Teddy knew everything about plants—how to grow them, how to nurture them, how to prune the rosebushes and thin the iris bulbs—but he couldn’t understand the events taking place inside the house. He couldn’t comprehend the severity of his mother’s condition, or the fact that raising a multitude of seedlings wouldn’t bring her back. He was convinced that if he kept planting, she would come. When she did, he was certain she would fix Daddy Ed, and things would be normal again.

If only the problem were that simple. After three days of house-cleaning, sneaking the gas man in to relight the pilot lights on the stove and furnace, replacing pieces of the cable box, which I later found hidden in a kitchen drawer, and arranging for the electric service, I felt as if I’d been dropped into some strange docudrama about the monumental problems facing the elderly and mentally ill.

The difficulty of caretaking, an issue I’d only considered in the context of my mother’s lupus, became increasingly clear. In my mother’s case, there were shop workers and a live-in maid to help her. Even on her worst days, I knew she was in good hands when I couldn’t be there with her. When I returned, she would be peacefully reading a book or watching TV in the apartment above the shop, or she’d be downstairs rearranging displays and showing customers the latest goodies from the garment district. Her surroundings would be immaculately clean, everything in order, sweet-smelling, despite the collection of prescribed medications, exotic essential oils, and herbal remedies on the counter.

When I left the house on Blue Sky Hill, even just to go to the closest grocery store, to the electric or gas company offices, or to the bank in a futile effort to gain access to my father’s accounts, I had no idea what I would return to. I left Teddy behind in hopes that if something happened, he could handle it, but the truth was that Teddy was even more lost than I was.

On the third day, the utilities finally in order, the television fixed, and stashes of rotten food cleaned out, the house took on a vague sense of sanity. My father found the television both mesmerizing and calming. The old reruns on TV Land were a particular comfort to him. They fit neatly within the time period into which his mind had slipped. He’d decided that we had just returned from Saudi.

“There you are, Marilyn,” he’d say, when I walked through the living room. “Shouldn’t Rebecca be coming in from school?”

There was a strange satisfaction in his asking about me. The sensation came, unwanted, then flew away when I reminded myself that he wasn’t really thinking about me, just remembering the past.

Teddy didn’t fit easily into his recollections. After trying repeatedly to explain who Teddy was, I finally gave up and started telling him that Teddy was the gardener. Trying to force the current reality on my father only caused him to become agitated, loud, and aggressive.

Teddy was happy to be the gardener, as long as the house remained relatively peaceful and the TV in his bedroom was working again. He came in and out the back door of the garage and typically sneaked up the stairs when my father wasn’t looking.

After three days of intermittently searching for information about my father’s doctors and medications, calling pharmacies listed on aging prescription bottles, and talking to administrators at Hanna Beth’s nursing center, I was beginning to wonder if my father had ever received any supervised medical treatment for his illness. The drawers in the kitchen and master bath contained a hodgepodge of prescriptions, filled at different times by various online pharmacies—strange, considering that there was no computer in the house. When I logged on to the Internet with my laptop and Googled the attending physicians listed on the bottles, they hailed from locations throughout the United States and Canada, even Mexico. As far as I could discern, he hadn’t seen a local doctor in well over a year. The last prescription authorized by a nearby doctor was for Aricept, an Alzheimer’s medication. I called Dr. Amadi’s office and explained my father’s situation.

“I don’t have your name as an emergency contact in your father’s file,” the receptionist informed me. “I can’t give out his medical information.”

“May I bring him in for an appointment?”

“Yes, ma’am. When did you want the appointment?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ma’am, we’re running three weeks out on appointments.”

My frustration bubbled up and poured into the phone. “You don’t understand. I need to bring him in
tomorrow
. His wife is in the hospital, and he has been alone in the house. I have no idea what medications he’s been taking, or should be taking, and he can’t tell me. He’s confused, and he’s seeing things that aren’t there. I don’t know how long he’s been this way, and there’s no one I can ask. I
need
to bring him in
tomorrow.
”

“Ma’am, our files show that we haven’t seen Mr. Parker in well over a year. I don’t have any record of a request for a transfer of his files, but he
must
have been receiving treatment somewhere else.”

I paused, rubbing clammy palms on my jeans, struggling to keep my desperation from spiraling out of control. I was tired of uncertainty and fear, tired of getting the runaround from utility companies, tired of the bank refusing to allow me to access my father’s accounts, tired of trying to produce order from insanity, alone. “I don’t
have
any more recent information. I need to bring him in
tomorrow
. This is an emergency . . .
please
.”

The receptionist sighed. “I can squeeze you in at ten thirty.”

Relief opened my lungs. “We’ll be there. Can you tell me where your office is located?” As I jotted down the information, a new problem crept to the forefront. So far, I hadn’t seen my father leave the house. My contact with him had consisted of trying to mollify his outbursts, keep him calm—either sleeping or watching television— convince him to take in regular meals when he wasn’t hungry, and reassure him that
those people
had left the house. I had no idea what might be involved in getting him into the car and to a doctor’s office.

After hanging up the phone, I went in search of Teddy. At least he was aware of Hanna Beth’s routines, and some information was better than none. He would know how often she took Daddy Ed out of the house, and how she accomplished it.

I looked for Teddy in the backyard, then in his room, the kitchen, the garage. Finally, it became clear that he was gone.

My pulse raced faster and faster until it thrummed in my ears, and I felt dizzy. I paced back and forth in the entry hall, looking out the front door, checking up and down the street, alternately walking to the living room and making sure my father was still settled in front of the TV.

An hour passed, then another twenty minutes. My father fell asleep; I stood on the front steps, trying to decide what to do. In the days I’d been there, Teddy hadn’t left the yard. He’d asked me repeatedly to take him to see his mother, and I’d told him I couldn’t until I had things straightened out at the house. What if he’d grown impatient and decided to try the DART system again? What if he was wandering around town on buses and light rail trains, alone, lost, at the mercy of anyone he might happen across? It was already almost five o’clock. What if darkness fell, and he was still out there?

I checked the living room again, then grabbed my purse and car keys. Hopefully, my father would sleep until I got back. If not, there would be trouble. When he awoke in the early evenings, he was always confused, his paranoia heightened. If I, Marilyn, wasn’t there to redirect his attention with some supper and then more TV, he started wandering the house, looking for
those people
, and hiding various items in secret places.

Please, God, please, please,
I muttered under my breath, hurrying to my car. The plea, the prayer in my head surprised me, but at the moment there was no one else to ask.
Please keep him quiet until I get home. Please let Teddy be all right.

The muscles in my neck and arms stretched tight as I started down the block, gripping and ungripping the steering wheel. From the driveway of a neighboring garage house that was probably a rental, a dark-haired man with a ponytail watched me. Glancing toward my father’s house, he took an art portfolio and a briefcase from his car and turned away.

I pulled to the curb, rolled down the window, and called out, “Excuse me. Have you seen a man walk by? He’s tall, salt-and-pepper hair? He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and jeans.”

The neighbor swiveled his head in my direction, keeping his body pointed toward the garage door, showing a silent reluctance to get involved. “Just got home,” he said, then hesitated a moment, checking up and down the street. “Sorry.”

“Do you know anyone else who might have been around today— any of the neighbors I could call?” I pressed.

He shifted a step closer, seeming to consider the request, then pushed the car door shut. “I just moved in a couple weeks ago. You might ask at the shops down on the corner of Vista.” Satisfied to have pointed me in another direction, he tucked the portfolio under his arm. “If I see him go by, I’ll tell him you’re looking,” he added, then disappeared into the garage.

I wondered if he was the one who’d called the police about Teddy and my father.

I continued down the street, rounded the block, turned onto Vista again, drove past the shops at the corner of Vista and Greenville. I asked about Teddy at the convenience store, where the clerk claimed to have seen him in the past but not today. I continued winding through the neighborhood streets, past quiet houses, past a creek and an overgrown park with playground equipment rusty from disuse, down a few blocks to the border of Blue Sky Hill, where small, bungalow-style houses lined the edges of neighborhoods my mother would have referred to as
unsavory,
or
off-hill
, which meant pretty much the same thing. In front of a flamingo pink Prairie-style house, two women who looked out of place in the low-rent district were locking up after an estate sale. I pulled over and asked them about Teddy. They said he’d walked by earlier and stopped to take some empty foam cups from the trash pile out front.

“He didn’t hurt anything,” one of the women added as she watched me from behind the old woven-wire yard fence. “He just took the cups and went on down the block.”

I thanked her for the information, then sat trapped in a moment of uncertainty before finally turning toward home. Maybe Teddy had come back by now, and in any case, I didn’t dare leave my father alone any longer.

At the condominium construction site on Vista, workers were packing up their tools for the day. I pulled to the curb as they loaded equipment into a pickup truck. “Have you seen a man pass by here?”

One of the construction workers, a short muscular man with long corn-rowed hair and cinnamon-brown skin, leaned close to the car and grinned, displaying a row of gold-capped front teeth. “You lookin’ for any man, or someone in particular?”

I ignored the obvious undertone. “Tall, salt-and-pepper hair, big shoulders, kind of overweight. He had on jeans and a yellow T-shirt, probably green tennis shoes.”

The construction worker laughed, shrugged, unscrewed the top of his thermos and poured the contents onto the ground. “Lotsa people pass by here.”

A second worker, a redheaded guy who looked no more than eighteen years old, ambled toward the car, rolling up an extension cord.

“He walks kind of . . .” I tried to think of how to describe Teddy’s lumbering gait, his mannerisms. Over the years, my mother had turned “mentally challenged” into a curse word. I couldn’t apply that term to Teddy anymore. “He has . . . health problems. He’s not supposed to be out alone.”

The redheaded man slapped his coworker on the shoulder. “She’s talkin’ about the dude that gets the scrap lumber—the dumb guy.” Turning to me, he pointed down the block. “Last week, he come by here wanting to trade a plant in a McDonald’s cup for my san’wich. I seen him hangin’ out by the school after that. I figured maybe he was lookin’ for scraps there.” Dusting off his hands, he frowned. “I ain’t ever seen him cause nobody no trouble. He’s just kinda slow—you know, like retarded and stuff.”

His partner jabbed him playfully in the arm. “Yeah, he ain’t the only one, Rusty.”

“Shut up, Boomer,” Rusty answered, then turned back to me. “You a social worker or somethin’?”

“No, he’s my . . .”
Stepbrother
still wouldn’t roll off my tongue. Old habits die hard. “I’m taking care of him. He left the house without telling me.”

Boomer blinked, his mouth dropping open. “Dang, I figured he lived under a box or somethin’. There’s lots of them street people down by the bridge.”

There’s lots of them street people. . . .
I pictured Teddy wandering lost among the homeless. My emotions swung violently, and a prickly, tear-filled lump formed in my throat. “I don’t know if he can . . . find his way home. I’m not sure . . .”
Of anything.
Even though it was completely unlike me to get emotional in front of strangers, my voice trembled. I let my head fall back against the seat. What now? What next?

“Hey, lady, chill out.” Boomer touched the window frame, then pulled his hand away. “The dude goes by here all the time. He’ll come back. He . . .” Pausing, he looked down the street, shading his eyes. “That him?”

Slapping the car into Park, I leaned out the window. The figure materializing in the distance was, unmistakably, Teddy. He was walking carefully, carrying something in his arms, cradling it like a baby. As he came closer, I made out the torn remnants of a Wal-Mart sack strung around a collection of dirty foam cups, empty aluminum cans, and fast-food containers. On top of the pile, he was balancing a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, holding them with his chin.

When I stepped onto the curb, he called, “Hiiieee, A-becka!” To the construction workers, he added, “Hiiieee!” He almost lost his cargo, then clumsily wrapped his arms and body around it, bending lower and lower, until he was limping along with his legs pressed together, his collection trapped between his arms, chest, and thighs. “Hiiieee!” he said again, smiling crookedly upward when he reached us.