A Month of Summer (21 page)

“Ye-es,” I snapped. The tone surprised me. I was in a mood, after looking for Rebecca all day and coming up empty.

Claude drew back, then chuckled under his breath. “Reckon I did. I forget things sometimes.”

I felt like a poor neighbor and an ungrateful friend. I hoped Claude wouldn’t decide to leave.

He just stared out the window. “I don’t mean to talk your ear off. You get old, and when you live by yourself, all you got to talk about is doctor visits, your Social Security check, and things that happened a long time ago. You forget that folks don’t want to hear all that stuff.” The sadness in those words made my heart sink low. I’d never heard him sound so melancholy.

I concentrated very hard on forming words. “Yeeewww he . . . hewwwp . . . eee.” The end of the sentence wouldn’t come out.
Me. You help me.

He smiled again and winked at me. “Ah, Birdie, you’re a light,” he said. “You, and Mary, and those boys make this place livable.” He paused to think. “And maybe Ifeoma, but I gotta have a little more time to figure her out. She’s got a little boy back in Ghana, but the daddy didn’t want her to keep him because his skin ain’t light-colored enough. I asked her one day if she had a family, and that’s what she told me.” His fingers drummed the arm of his wheelchair. “Ain’t that a sad thing?”

“Ye-esh,” I murmured, and in my mind the picture of Ifeoma began to change into something soft and sympathetic. I felt a sense of kinship, the bond of mothers raising children in a world that judged by appearances.

Claude tapped the glass with his fingertip. “It’s hard to understand people sometimes, ain’t it, Birdie?”

“Yes.” A single, perfect word.

He laughed softly. “My daddy used to say that working with mules could teach you a lot about dealin’ with people. I ever tell you about my daddy workin’ those mules?”

“Nnno.”

Claude seemed pleased. He’d found a new story to tell. “To work a mule, you got to try to figure him out, you know. A mule’s slow, and he’s stubborn in the bridle. If you whip him too much, he’s like to lay right down on his belly, harness and all. You can’t get a mule up if he don’t want to get up. You got to work
with
a mule, not against him. A horse won’t do them things. Good horse will labor ’til he drops over dead, if you whip him hard enough. He’ll work fast, or slow. He’ll come light in the bridle. Mule’s got a mind of his own, but that’s because he’s smart—comes from the jackstock in him. In the wild, a burro don’t have the speed of a horse, so he’s got to be intelligent. He’s got to think his way out of trouble. He’s always thinkin’, lookin’, cogitatin’ things over in his mind. Bird flies up, or a car goes by, he ain’t gonna panic and bolt like a horse would. He’s gonna think things through, just like he’s gonna think you over when you put a harness on him. You do him wrong, he don’t forget it. My daddy was like them mules. He never did forgive me for joinin’ the army without permission. Reckon I deserved him being mad. It was a bad thing I done, runnin’ off like that when he needed me.”

I tried to imagine Claude Fisher ever doing a bad thing. It was a hard instance to picture. Then I thought of my own father, how bitter he was when he sent me to the home for unwed mothers, and then I chose to keep Teddy. I wasn’t trying to hurt him, but when I awakened and saw my baby boy, my heart fell into those eyes. I knew I couldn’t give him up. I knew I would do everything I could to give him a good life.

I had no idea how difficult that would be.

I wasn’t trying to hurt Rebecca or Marilyn when Edward and I found each other again, all those years later. I wanted Teddy to have his father. I yearned to be able to give Teddy a safe, stable home in which to grow up, to provide for him the extra help that might eventually make the difference between an institution and a good life. New treatments, new therapies were being discovered all the time. I wanted Teddy to have those things, but I couldn’t afford them. Between working and raising Teddy, I didn’t even have time to research the possibilities. I knew Edward could give us a better life. But I never desired that Rebecca suffer for it. I’d hoped to explain that to her, make her see that her father and mother were divorcing because of choices that were made, lies that were told, a deception that had festered. I didn’t want Edward to lose his daughter because of me. I didn’t want Rebecca to lose her father.

The wounds we cause, while unintentional, still bleed.

“G’night, Birdie.” Claude rolled past my bed, headed for the door. “You have sweet dreams, there.”

“Oooo-oo,” I said.
You, too.
The muscles in my face and jaw were tiring, going slack. Talking was always harder in the evening.

Claude’s wheelchair stopped squeaking at the threshold. “I saw Ifeoma workin’ her way down the hall. Maybe if I hurry out, she won’t come in here and get onto me again.” With a sly laugh, he added, “I’m still winnin’ her over with my charms. She ain’t such a dry patch of ground as she wants folks to think.”

I watched his shadow disappear from the doorway light, then turned toward the window again, thinking that I should enjoy the view before someone came in and took the pushpins away again. Outside in the hall, Ifeoma captured Claude. She warned him that if he didn’t stop bothering people, she was going to lock him in his room. Claude just laughed.

Mary came up the hall on her way to take one of her boys to the bathroom. Claude asked if she and the boys wanted to go to the TV room for a while. No doubt he was hoping Mary would rescue him from Ifeoma.

Ifeoma inquired as to Mary’s reasons for still being at the nursing home, now that the day shift was over. Mary said her car wouldn’t turn over, and she was waiting for a friend to come and jump-start it. She told Claude good night, and that she’d better go outside and wait for her friend. The boys were disappointed to miss the TV watching.

I wanted to tell her to let the boys come in and watch television with me, but they were already headed down the hall. Ifeoma took Claude back to his room, admonishing him to stop wandering the corridor.

Claude tried to make a joke of it. “You know I’m just lookin’ for you, Ifay,” he said, but Ifeoma wasn’t amused.

“I have no time for your nonsense, old rooster. You must not bother the others, or I will give a shot in your tail, and put you to sleep.”

Claude laughed. “Ifay, you sure know how to break a man’s heart.”

She snorted, walked out his door, and disappeared down the corridor with long, nearly silent strides. Claude’s roommate, a bedfast man whose mind had failed before his body, moaned.

“It’s all right, Herb. She don’t mean anything by it,” Claude soothed. A few minutes later, Claude switched on his TV and turned the sound up loud. His wheelchair squealed as he opened his window, then called Mary’s kids over from where they were playing in the grass by the car. They stood at the window, watching Claude’s TV like customers at a drive-in movie, and Claude turned the sound up a little louder.

If Ifeoma comes by again,
I thought,
there’s no telling what she’ll do to him.

I fished my remote from under the covers and turned my TV up loud, too, so maybe Ifeoma wouldn’t notice his. The boys stood at the window, the glow illuminating their sweet faces. I fell asleep watching them watch the TV.

In the morning, I awoke smiling. I remembered the boys at the window and imagined I could hear them laughing. As I opened my eyes, the laughter remained, and I knew it was real. I looked around the room, trying to make sense of it. The first rays of dawn were breaking outside. It was before seven, yet. After so many days of watching, I knew exactly what time the sun rose. My blind was still up, and I couldn’t remember having been awakened last evening when Betty arrived on her shift.

The little giggle came again, seeming to originate from somewhere within the walls and float around the room. I wondered if I was imagining it, after all. Perhaps my mind had finally gone round the bend.

“Ssshhh,” someone whispered from inside the wall. “Ssshhh.”

I cocked an ear in that direction.

“It tick-ewll,” a child’s voice whispered back.

The sound was coming from Claude’s room, drifting through the air-conditioning system from his bathroom vent to mine in the early-morning silence. The mild night had caused the air system to hush its constant attempts to regulate the temperature.

“Ssshhh, we have to be quiet in here, remember?” It was Mary’s voice.

The shower came on, and Brandon said, “It’s too cold.”

“Ssshhh,” Mary answered. “Here. That’s better. Hurry, sweetheart.”

I heard them moving around in the bathroom, the water turning off and on. In the hallway, Betty’s squeaky shoes passed by.

“Mornin’, Betty.” Claude’s voice seemed close. He must have been sitting in his doorway. “My lands, but don’t you look bright-eyed and lovely this mornin’. Fine day out there, ain’t it?”

A high-pitched, sarcastic laugh traveled the corridor. “What’re you doin’ up so early, Fisher?”

“Scared to sleep late,” he replied.

Betty grumbled and moved on.

I heard Claude chuckling to himself. He sat in the hall awhile longer, then his chair scraped against the jamb as he pushed back into his room. He knocked on the bathroom door, whispered something I couldn’t hear.

“Almost done,” Mary’s hushed answer came through the vent. “Here, Brandon, just put these back on. Brush your teeth real quick, let’s . . .”

The air-conditioning system fired up, and I couldn’t hear the rest. I leaned over in my bed so I could see out the window. As dawn eclipsed the streetlights, Mary and her boys hurried from the building and disappeared into the parking lot. The boys were still in their pajamas, carrying little backpacks, their hair freshly washed and still wet. Mary was dressed in her long skirt and scrub top for work, her hair hanging loose and damp down her back.

I kept watch out the window as the nursing center came to life, Betty working her way down the hall, the breakfast trays coming around, ambulatory patients proceeding to the cafeteria.

When it was time for the day-care van, Mary was on the sidewalk with the boys, now dressed and ready to begin their day at Brighter Horizons Child Care Center.

I heard Claude next door in the bathroom, turning the water on and off. Betty came by and knocked, demanding to know what he was up to.

The bathroom door lock clicked as he opened it. “Doin’ a man’s business,” he replied. “Already got myself all washed up and ready for breakfast, too. Thought I’d save ya the trouble. Used up the towels, though. I spilt some water and wiped it up the best I could.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she replied suspiciously. “Don’t be gettin’ in the shower alone, Fisher.”

“No, ma’am,” Claude replied. “I just parked my chair right by-side it. Worked out real good, and . . .” The air system clicked on again.

Outside, Mary hugged her boys tight, put them on the day-care van, then stood combing her long hair and twisting it into a bun.

The truth became clear, as I watched. Mary was bathing her children in Claude’s bathroom and getting ready for work on the sidewalk, not because she’d had some schedule mix-up with her husband, or because the van needed a jump-start, but because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

CHAPTER 13

In the middle of the night, I heard someone in the house crying. My first thought was of Macey—that she’d had a bad dream and was afraid to get out of bed and come to my room.

“Mace?” I mumbled drowsily, but no one answered. I opened my eyes and reached for the button on the bottom of the terra-cotta night lamp beside the bed, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. My fingers settled, instead, on a ruffled, ballerina-style shade, the lace covering crispy and old.
I’m in a hotel
, I thought, fumbling for the switch.

My eyes adjusted to the ambient glow from the streetlights outside. The thick wooden blinds and the heavy, ornate window trims clarified my surroundings with sudden focus. I rolled over and checked the windup clock on the desk across the room. Four thirty.

I listened for the noise, wondering if I’d only dreamed it, or if, a thousand miles away in California, Macey was in pain, and through some invisible connection only mothers understand, I was feeling it, hearing her sob. I’d called home three times last evening, but Macey was out cold from pain medication. Finally, I’d lain awake thinking about her, about everything, tormenting myself with hypothetical scenarios. What if Macey awakened in the middle of the night, and Grandma Macklin couldn’t hear her from the guest room? A freight train could run through the house, and Kyle wouldn’t wake up. What if Kyle wasn’t even there? He could tell his mother he had an overnight business trip—she’d never know the difference.

The questions swirled again as I listened for the sound. I sat up, feeling dizzy and disoriented. Unsteady on my feet, I started toward the bathroom. The sound came again, a long, sniffling sob, but not a child’s. I stepped into the hall, then traced the noise down the darkened stairs. As I turned the corner to the living room, I saw Teddy on the sofa, his body curled awkwardly around the white crocheted throw that had been draped over the back of the sofa. Sobbing, Teddy rocked back and forth, his face buried in the folds of the blanket.

“Teddy?” I whispered. He’d been fine last night. I’d explained to him that Daddy Ed was in the hospital for a few days so the doctors could straighten out his medicines and help him feel better. I’d let him listen in while I called the hospital and checked to be sure everything was all right. Teddy and I had ordered a pizza and watched part of a movie together. The evening was peaceful. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. When I woke up, Teddy was carefully covering me with the white afghan and getting ready to go to bed.

Now he was clenching the blanket and weeping, his body trembling in spasms of grief.