A Month of Summer (27 page)

Another temperate night had left the air-conditioning system inactive. I heard Mary sneak the boys in the back door and take them to Claude’s bathroom to get them ready for school. Brandon wheezed and coughed, and she tried to quiet him. Despite Mary’s efforts, the boys made such a racket I was afraid they’d be discovered. If I heard anyone coming, I decided I would scream, or pretend to have a seizure, to cause a diversion.

Brandon started crying, and Mr. Fisher came into the bathroom. “What’ve we got here?” he soothed. “Got a little paint in those cheeks today, huh?”

“His asthma’s still acting up,” Mary said wearily. “He was awake all night, coughing. I shouldn’t have tried using the old inhalers I had in the car. There’s nothing left. I should have bought a new one yesterday.”

“You got the money for that?”

“Oh, sure.” Mary’s answer was too quick, light and false. “I just hope he’ll make it through school until I can go get his medicine. I have to work today.”

“Miss Mary, you ain’t never gonna have a career in poker,” Claude scolded tenderly. “I got a little money the girl next door brung me with my picture book yesterday. Pharmacy’s right down on the corner. You go on and get this boy’s medicine before you put him on that bus.”

I couldn’t make out Mary’s response, but after she spoke, Claude insisted she accept the money. “It ain’t gonna do any good if he gets sick and you have to take off work again, now is it?” he pointed out. “You take my money, and no more fussin’, you hear? All the good you done for me, it don’t seem like much to give in return. Besides, if them circles under his eyes get any bigger, they’re gonna hang plumb down to his feet.”

Mary must have finally agreed, because she gathered up the boys and left in a hurry. Later on, I saw the three of them waiting for the day-care van. She had the pharmacy bag in her hand.

I went back to listening for Teddy and contemplating ways of attempting to communicate to Rebecca that, if Mary was in such need of money, I would like to help. Certainly, Edward and I could afford it. With our investments, and Edward’s pension, we’d never suffered for money.

I pondered the question, trying to conjure a way to make Rebecca understand.

Betty breezed through the door in a hurry to finish her work in the B hall and clock out. I closed my eyes and tried to be somewhere else as she changed my disposable undergarment and the bedding. The odd thing this morning was that I felt it. I felt her skin touch mine, not because I saw it with my eyes and knew how it should feel. My eyes were closed, but I experienced the sensation of touch. I knew that I was hot underneath my back and cold on top. I could feel my toes touching the metal railing. It was cold, round. . . .

I’d been so busy thinking about Mary, I hadn’t considered that something was different this morning.

“I fe-lll,” I said, looking at my foot pressed against the bar. “I feeul . . . fooo . . . foo-ttt.” A spray of spit went out with the word, and Betty curled her lip.

She glanced at my hand, at my finger lifting off the bed, pointing to my foot. “Comin’ back, huh?” she muttered. It was a poor congratulation.

“Ye-sh.” I felt the need to share my moment of discovery with someone, even Betty.

“Tell the OT to get you busy with a spoon. Then you can feed yourself,” she grumbled, then gathered her things and headed out the door.

Claude came by on his way to the cafeteria. He said he was checking to be sure Betty hadn’t lowered my window blind, but I suspected he wanted to watch Mary put the kids on the van, and from his room, the hydrangea bush probably obscured the bus stop. Perhaps he was looking to see how Brandon was doing.

“Mornin’, Birdie,” he said. “It’s a pretty sky outside today. Mares’ tails pointed up last night. Good farmin’ weather ahead.” I thought he was leading into the story about the mules again, but instead he sat staring out the window, as if his mind were elsewhere.

Finally he sighed, kneading his hands in his lap and watching his fingers. His lips moved back and forth in a pleated downward line. I’d never seen him seem so dejected. Was he concerned about Mary, or just not feeling well?

Drumming absently on the wheelchair arm, he sighed. “I thought I about had Doc Barnhill convinced to cut me loose from this place. After they put in this new pacemaker, Doc said if I could go a month without my heart giving a bad spell, it might be I could move on back home. I miss being home with my own things, you know? The little girl next door says she’s keeping my cat dish full. They’re just stray cats, but they’ve got used to coming to my place to eat. I got twenty-two now. I give ’em all names. Every critter deserves a name, and a full belly, and a little love, don’t you think, Birdie?” He paused as if he were waiting for me to answer, then finally went on. “Neighbor kids call me the cat man, like that comic book character, you know? Cat woman? I miss sittin’ out on the patio, taking my mornin’ coffee and conversatin’ with my cats. I got a big backyard on account of the creek runs behind my place and there’s a flood plain back there. The kids come play baseball sometimes. I help ’em with their swing, or teach ’em how to make a good slide. Lots of kids don’t have daddies to do that these days. It’s comin’ up on the end of school soon, and the kids’ll all be home for summer. Time to get the back lot mowed and pull the bases out of the shed, keep those kids busy so they don’t get in trouble. Time to be back in my own place.”

A hollowness spread through me at the thought of his leaving. I couldn’t bear the idea of passing the days without him stopping by, telling stories, opening the blind and saying,
Just look at that sky, Birdie. Ain’t that a beauty?
I wanted to tell him,
You’re needed here. I need you. You can’t go.

He sighed, shrinking into the chair so that his back was bowed, his hands hanging limp in his lap. “I had a spell last night. It was just a little one, but it showed right up on the heart monitor. Doc says I’m just to the point where livin’ alone ain’t gonna be practical for me anymore. I got to have somebody with me, in case I have a spell and need my heart started up again. He wanted to know, did I have any family I might want to move in with? I told him I got a niece I’m close to—Kathy. She used to come stay summers with my wife and me. We always hoped she’d have some babies and live nearby in our old age. She’s got her a big-deal job with the Oceanographic Institution out in Seattle, though. She ain’t much interested in the production of grandchildren. It ain’t in her life plan yet—that’s what she says.” He chuckled. “Back in the day, we didn’t think about a life plan. Folks just got married, set up housekeeping, and if you were lucky, the babies come along, natural-like. Life unfolded like a paper wad, and you made the best of it. Good job, little house, family. Heck, if we could afford a car that’d start regular, we was livin’ high.” He leaned over to watch something outside the window, his gaze drifting far away. “It was an easier time, Birdie.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Claude lifted a hand and rubbed his chin, stretched the loose, gray-stubbled skin and let it fall into place again. “If I’d of planned my life, I’d of done some things different, Birdie. I would’ve stayed there when you got sick. I’d of lifted you out of bed and took you to the porch and set you in a chair in the sun, so it could get deep down inside. I’d of hooked up the team and took you all over the farm, and let you look out over the canyon and sit at the waterfall down by the creek.” Shoulders quaking, he let his head fall forward. Tears traced the network of wrinkles on his cheek, fell and shattered against the arms of his wheelchair. “I shouldn’t of let Daddy send me away and bring you here, Birdie. I shouldn’t of run off to the army. I should of gone and brung you back home, but, truth is, I was weak. I couldn’t stand to see you layin’ in bed like that, so I left.”

Silence enveloped the room as he surrendered to tears. I wanted to stand up, cross the distance between us, kneel by his chair and comfort him, tell him no matter what had happened in the past, he was one of the kindest souls I’d ever known. He might not have been there to save Birdie, but he had saved me. “Noooo,” I whispered, reaching toward him. “Nooo, ssshhh, ssshhh.”

He lifted his head finally, took his hankie from his pocket, and turned to me. Looking around the room, he seemed to realize where he was. “I’m sorry. I ain’t sure where my mind goes sometimes. I know you ain’t Birdie.”

“All-rye-t,” I whispered, clasping and unclasping my fingers to beckon him closer. He came to the bed, put his hand on the rail, and I laid mine over it. “All-rye-t. Ssshhh . . . ssshhh.”

We sat that way, joined in a bond of shared need—to love, to be loved, to be understood and to understand. I wanted to tell him about Teddy, about all the times I’d wondered—if I’d done things differently, would Teddy be different?

There was a day, the lowest of my life, when Teddy was almost kindergarten age, and I finally accepted the grim prognosis the doctors had given. I packed Teddy’s things, took him to a special school, and left him there. I prepared to sign over his custody to the state because I couldn’t afford the sort of care and schooling he would need, because my parents thought it would be best, because I was young and it was time for me to get on with my life, because I couldn’t manage on my own, because I couldn’t bear to look at him and wonder if it was my fault.

I wanted to tell Claude about that day, about the weeks that followed, when I moved back to my parents’ house, enrolled in city college, went out with girlfriends, breathed fresh air that didn’t smell of strained food and soiled diapers on a child who should have been fully potty trained long ago. I never told anyone about that time, and Teddy couldn’t remember it. He didn’t know that I left him at the school for six weeks, or that I came back and told the director I was studying to be a teacher. I begged him to give me a position at the school, where I could be close to my son, learn how to teach him and help him. The director took pity on me, life went on, and I never left Teddy again.

I knew how it was to come to the breaking point, to struggle between self-preservation and selfless love. We were, all of us, only human, trying to be less imperfect creations and become more like our creator.

“Ssshhh,” I soothed again, the way I might have calmed Teddy when he had an upset. “Ssshhh.”

Claude wasn’t of a mind to be comforted. Men so often choose to wear the hair shirt rather than to examine the causes of the pain. How many years had I pleaded with Edward to fly to California, to go to his daughter and explain everything to her? He felt that it was better to let her move on and lead her own life—that it was only fair, since he’d been the one to leave Marilyn, that Marilyn should have their child. All these years, he’d suffered in silence rather than confronting the mistakes and betrayals of the past.

“I’m sorry to bring up them old things,” Claude said finally, then released the railing and pulled his hand away. “I don’t know why that all come back, except it bein’ my birthday, and my sister’s, and I wanted to be home by now, back with all my old things, back with the old pictures of Birdie and me. There was gonna be a birthday party the year the two of us turned seventeen. My auntie had it all planned out. She come up from south Texas to help my daddy with all the preparations, but then Birdie got sick. We didn’t know what it was at first. My daddy canceled the party and sent for the doctor. A part of me was mad at Birdie because she’d messed up the birthday fun. Birdie was always sick a lot. When the doctors told us she’d come down with the polio, all I could think was it was my fault, that I’d brung it on by bein’ so selfish. No matter what we did, Birdie just lay there and got sicker and sicker.

“Finally, my daddy made plans to take her to a specialist. He give me the white mules to take to a sale and sent me off to my uncle’s place in Tom Green County. It darn near killed me to saddle my horse and ride off pulling Jes and Tab behind me, but I understood it had to be done. We needed the money for Birdie. Right after the mules was sold, Birdie took a turn for the worse. When I heard about it, I packed my stuff and left my uncle’s house, and I didn’t look back.” Moving away from the bed, he turned his chair around. “It’s strange the way a young man’s mind works. I told myself if I joined the army and did somethin’ good, somethin’ to earn a favor, God would heal Birdie’s body, and she’d get stronger. But the truth is, bein’ here in this place, I know the best thing I could of done for her was to sit at her bedside and hold her hand. Maybe that would of made the difference.”

He rolled back to the window, and we sat together in silence. I couldn’t offer the comfort he needed, any more than I could become the twin sister he’d left behind all those years ago.

Watching him, I thought about the young man in the picture with the mules, a sandy-haired farm boy greeting the world with a haphazard grin, alive with the follies of youth. I imagined him behind the team of white mules, breaking dry ground, changing the soil, patiently turning it over again, and again, looking forward to becoming seventeen, looking forward to a birthday party, making plans for a life that would soon take a path he hadn’t expected, that would steal away his sister, lead him far from the farm, first to Tom Green County, and then to the killing fields of Europe. . . .

Tom Green County. . . .

I remembered the days of the polio scare, when parents, families, entire communities feared the ravages of that disease.

We’d been talking about it just the other day. Polio. Those frightening times when children you knew were healthy, then later they came back to school with twisted bodies and crippled legs. Claude’s sister had a special saddle, and she liked to wear pants when she rode, so no one could see the braces. . . .

Was that Claude’s sister? Had she been telling me about the livestock auction a few days ago?

But Claude’s sister, Birdie, had died. She couldn’t have told me her story. Where had I heard that story? Who was the girl riding her horse at the livestock auction? Had I only dreamed that? Read it in a book or seen it in a movie?