Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (17 page)

Mom could focus her thoughts enough to walk on her own, so she didn't need the rolling recliner chair anymore. Her hair had been combed and pulled back into a ponytail, and somebody had helped her put on a little makeup. She had on her own clothes too—jeans and an orange Tennessee Volunteer Nation jersey with sleeves that stopped at the elbows, and orange sneakers. She would have looked pretty normal as she came to the visiting room off her unit, if it hadn't been for the nurse walking her, holding her arm to help with balance.

I watched Mom's feet drag as much as move, and I felt sick inside. I had gotten used to what she looked like as she got ill, right before she got sent to the hospital, and what she looked like when she came home. I had even gotten a little used to watching her slide toward nutty
thinking and not be able to take care of herself when she quit taking her pills. This in-between-sick-and-getting-well phase—I hadn't seen it before, and it made me sad.

Dad hugged Mom when she got to the doorway of the room, and she hugged him back. He kissed the top of her head with his eyes closed and thanked the nurse for looking after her. Then the nurse walked her in to me and eased her down on one of the small two-seat couches. The air went out of the plastic cushion, and it sounded so much like a fart, I had to smile.

Mom smiled too, but her mouth didn't go all the way up at the corners. Her eyes settled on me, but they didn't focus. When she quit smiling, her lips sagged, and I worried that she might drool. She put both hands on the couch, like she had to hold herself up to keep from falling.

“She's had her morning meds,” the nurse told me. “She may be a little drowsy, but that'll pass.” Then she slipped out of the visiting room to go talk to Dad, and she closed the door behind her.

“I hate the way these pills make me feel,” Mom said.

The room was too cold, like rooms in hospitals always were. I rubbed my hands together to keep feeling in my fingers as I said, “I know. But you don't do so good without them. Last time I was here, you thought you had a piano in your wrist.”

Mom lifted her arm and gazed down at it. “Huh. That's a new one.”

She didn't remember. She usually didn't remember the really crazy stuff later, when she started getting well.

“Sharks and barracudas,” she muttered, but that wasn't nutty stuff. She was talking about a picture she showed me once, the emblem of one of her support groups. The picture showed a person on a tightrope trying to get across a pool labeled
LIFE
. On one side, a big shark named
ILLNESS
swam, mouth open. On the other side, hoards of barracudas labeled
SIDE EFFECTS
waited to eat the person if she tripped.

The group talked a lot about needing options better than the shark or the barracudas and pushing scientists to find cures instead of more treatments to make drug companies rich. I didn't understand all that, but I knew it had something to do with why I found Mom's medication in places like her desk drawer because she hadn't taken it.

Mom lifted her arm so I could see her wrist. Her arm and hand shook rhythmically, back and forth. “No piano,” she said, and tried to smile again.

“So that probably was just your sickness talking?” I asked, because I hadn't been able to figure out anything the piano might have meant or stood for.

“Probably just the crazy,” Mom agreed.

“Don't call yourself crazy,” I told her.

She nodded but didn't say anything, and looked totally exhausted.

The sick sensation inside me threatened to turn into
actual nausea. How could I ask Mom the questions I needed to ask? She wasn't even all the way Mom again. What if I made her sicker and she had to stay longer? What if she got upset and just fell over and busted her head or something?

I went over to one of the chairs and pulled it around until I was facing Mom. When I sat, our knees almost touched. There. At least I could catch her if I had to. Why didn't that make me feel any better?

Mom's shaky hand patted my leg. “So, how's it going, honey?”

“I miss you,” I whispered, then got mad at myself, because I wanted to cry.

“I miss you, too.” A tear dribbled out of Mom's eye, and I
really
wanted to cry then, but I couldn't. Me starting to sob would bring Dad and the nurse running. I made fists and dug my fingertips into my palms.

The almost-pain kept me steady enough to say, “We're having some trouble, Dad and me. He didn't speak to me the whole way here. We listened to the radio instead.”

Mom's eyebrows pulled together, and her saggy smile turned into a frown. “That's not like him.”

Deep breath. In, out. In, out. I could do this. I had to do this. “Dad's mad because I tried to tell him about what I remembered from the night of the fire.”

Mom twitched like I'd hit her with lightning. “We don't need to talk about that, honey.”

Her eyes glazed, and she went away. “Did you feed the mice, baby?”

“Yeah, sure.” I knew better than to argue with her about stuff I didn't have to. Even with me humoring her, it took a full ten seconds for her to come back into the room with me.

Once I could tell she was back again, I tried a different direction. “Why did you make me a counseling appointment with Dr. Zephram's office?”

“I—I'm not sure.” She didn't twitch this time, but she was lying. She wouldn't meet my eyes, and her face screwed up like she had gas.

I could see part of the fading green bruise on her shoulder, from when she shot the snake. Maybe if I didn't watch her face when I hurt her, I could keep going. “Did you think I might have problems because of what I saw? You were right. It was bad, and really gross.”

Another twitch.

“I'm sorry, Footer,” she whispered, then lost focus.

I shrugged, trying to play it as no big deal.

When Mom touched my leg again, I let my eyes trace her fingers, trying to ignore the tremors from her medication. “I know Cissy shot Mr. Abrams, and I know why. Did you set the fire?”

Mom's fingers gripped my knee hard enough to make me wince. “Doesn't matter,” she muttered. “The snake is dead. Let him stay dead, okay?”

The room's cold seeped into my skin, my muscles, my bones, until I froze solid, sitting there in front of Mom. I even imagined her hand frosted to my leg. When I met her gaze, we turned into ice statues together, except for her shaking.

Don't ask me anything else
, her green eyes pleaded.

“A woman called,” I told her, my lips numb. “She sounded pretty out of it, and she said to tell you she couldn't do it. Was that Cissy and Doc's mother?”

Slowly, slowly, Mom nodded.

“I read the letters from their dad, the ones in your desk drawer. I'm sorry I went into your room. I just missed you so bad. I didn't even mean to be snooping, but now I really have to know—I
need
to know—if I'm starting to get sick. If none of this stuff in my head that I'm remembering actually happened, if I'm making it all up, then I need to see a doctor and get medicine.”

This made Mom look confused, and not in a sick way—more normal, everyday perplexed. “You're not getting sick.”

My muscles went suddenly loose, and I realized just how tight they had been the second before. And then Mom was looking at me again, really looking at me, and we both knew I had to ask. I saw it in the way her expression started to melt to sadness and fear, and the way her mind seemed to be trying to run away from me again, before I could get out the words.

“Did Doc and Cissy die in the fire, Mom?”

Mom's mouth quivered. Then her whole body shook.

I wanted to smack my head with my hands. I sort of wanted to smack her, too, but I felt awful about that. “Please. You have to tell me the rest of what happened.”

“No!” she yelled, and let go of me and pounded her hands on the couch, her eyes flipping from unfocused to terrified so fast that I didn't see it coming. I shoved my chair backward, even though I knew she wouldn't hurt me. I hadn't ever seen her so upset, and it was my fault. I did it. I knew something like this would happen—but I did it anyway.

I had to. No, I didn't. “Mom!”

Dad and the nurse burst into the visiting room.

Mom sobbed, hitting the couch over and over again. “Leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it alone!”

Tears washed down my face as I got out of my chair, and I started apologizing and telling her over and over that I would leave everything alone, because I didn't know what else to do.

“Sorry,” Dad said to the nurse, or maybe to Mom or to me—I couldn't tell. “Adele, take it easy.” He picked me up like I was five, holding me to him as he backed out of the room, keeping me faced away from Mom.

The nurse spoke to her in low tones as we moved into the hall. “That's it. Let it out. Let it all out of you. Just hit the couch.”

Dad turned to walk down the hospital corridor, and I could see Mom over his shoulder. She stared at me and stopped hitting the furniture, and her face focused again, and she cried harder. Then she leaned forward, put her face in her hands, and started rocking.

My stomach tied itself into a hundred knots. I squirmed in Dad's grip as he hurried away. “Wait. Let me talk to her. I shouldn't have asked her anything. It's my fault. Let me go! Please, Dad, it's all my fault. We can't leave her like this. It's my fault!”

Dad kept walking, holding tighter to me. “Your mom isn't anybody's fault,” he said into my ear. “She's just not ready yet.”

She'll never be ready, will she? Because she probably set that fire and accidentally killed those kids. This time, she's never coming home.

And it was my fault. Dad didn't understand. I balled up my fists and hit his shoulders like Mom had hit the couch. He didn't stop walking.

Mom receded, getting smaller and smaller, until the visiting-room door closed and Dad turned a corner and I couldn't see my mother anymore.

From the Notebook of Astronaut Angel Jones

Because When I Am an Astronaut, Journalists Will Need Notes for My Biography

My Notebook Will Be a Lot Better Than My Brother's Notebook.

I Don't Remember When the Fire Was Exactly. Sorry.

All Me: My brother's sweet on Footer Davis.

They'll probably get married when they're old and ugly.

I grabbed Footer's list off my brother's printer.

I gave the list and the barrette to Mom.

Mom is taking the list and the barrette to Mr. Davis.

The police need to talk to Ms. Davis again.

Everybody needs to stop pretending.

Pretending should only be in books with dragons and knights and wizards.

If I was a wizard, I'd make it so people never got hit or murdered or burned.

I am not going to be a wizard. I am going to be an astronaut.

Dad:
I don't even know what to say to you about this list.

Me:
Am I in trouble?

Dad:
I think we're all in trouble now.

I thought it had been awful making Mom so upset like that, then having to leave her.

It was five hundred times more awful seeing Dad upset.

He didn't believe me. Not about any of it. He thought I was exaggerating. And the sad painted all over his face—he thought I was imagining things like Mom does, and that I just didn't understand what kind of disaster I was creating.

After Ms. Jones came over and gave him my list and
the barrette, then left, Dad called the station where he worked. I sat on the kitchen floor hugging my knees and thinking about how I never wanted to talk to Peavine or Angel ever again, how Dad didn't want to talk to me anymore, and how Mom didn't want to talk to anybody.

How could Peavine have let Angel get her hands on that list? He knew how she was. He knew she wouldn't keep it private. Why didn't he get it back from her? He was my friend. My
best
friend. I should have been able to tell him anything and trust that he'd keep it safe from Angel.

The thought of not talking to him made my insides hurt from loneliness.

Peavine let Angel snatch my list, and when she gave it to their mom, he didn't try to talk her out of worrying about it. He told our secrets. And now those secrets were right here, surrounding Dad and me like shadows with fangs, waiting to bite us to death.

Dad hung up the phone. He didn't look at me when he wiped his cheeks with a hanky, or when he tucked the hanky back in his jeans pocket. For a few moments he stood staring at the sink, both hands on his orange T-shirt, the one from Tennessee's national championship year.

I would have given anything for it to be fall, with a football game coming on. We could watch it together and yell at referees and eat popcorn, and maybe, somehow, all of this would go away, or at least get better.