Seeing Things (5 page)
Authors: Patti Hill
“I have a grandson a little older than you. He's built like a scarecrow with hair about as wild and the color of, well, General, a handsome dark chestnut. I'm sure you've seen some fine horseflesh during your day.”
Huck scratched his chin but seemed content to listen.
I rambled on about the time I'd sewn the legs of Evelyn's underwear closed up tight before I left for Sunday school camp. I thought it was a pretty good story, especially since I'd remembered to leave the underwear on top unstitched. The prank dimmed my homecoming some as I wasn't allowed to play outside for a week, and I had to do all of Evelyn's chores until I could apologize without smirking. That took a good long while.
Hearing my voice, Bee returned to bed, and as I talked, I stroked her long back. The motion clarified my memories. When I looked up, Huck had disappeared.
I'd gone and bored an imaginary boy to death.
Chapter 6
There's a huge difference between an English Labrador retriever and an American Lab. It's what you would expect. The English version is a phlegmatic fellow with a square head and body and the disposition of an old soldierâstrong, loyal, and a comfort to have around, not that he ever forgets how to be a puppy. Not so the American. Bred for field work, the American Lab owns the single-mindedness ofâwell, a bird dogâall with paws the size of oven mitts. Bee is an American Lab. She woke me up pawing at my shoulder.
“Ouch!”
Undaunted, she pinned me to the mattress to wash my face. I tightened my lips as I pushed against her chest. I glimpsed a slice of sunlight outlining the window.
“Get off, Bee.”
I tapped my alarm clock. “Nine-oh-nine.”
“For goodness sake, Bee, I'm sorry. Your bladder must be busting.”
Bee jumped off the bed to bark at the door.
“Okay, okay. I'm coming. Don't get your tail in a knot.”
Lupe knocked and walked past me to let Bee out. “I thought maybe you had turned into Sleeping Beauty or something.”
I ran fingers through my hair. “I smell coffee.”
“Miz Doctor Lady insisted I make a fresh pot. She's upstairs talking to herself.”
At the mention of Suzanne, I remembered Huck's muddy feet and headed for the recliner, as if a woman hopping with a walker could outpace Lupe's sharp eye. She leaned against the doorjamb, oblivious to my dive into the chair.
“She messes up my routine when she works at home. She watches me like I might steal the silverware or something. Does she think I'm dumb enough to steal something while she's watching? Don't answer that. I know the answer.”
I ran my hand over the recliner's arms. No mud. Had Huckleberry Finn come to call or not?
Lupe shuffled away. I called after her, “At home, I'm up before five every morning to bake pies.”
“Whatever.”
Fresh from the shower, I settled into the recliner to study my Amsler chart. I held the graph of small squares at arm's length, looking for bent or distorted lines that weren't there the day before. No matter how many times I looked at the chart, I still held my breath. The fog remained within the boundaries I'd marked.
Thank you, Jesus.
Bee trotted into the room with a lump of somethingâa tree limb? a car fender?âand dove under the bed. Suzanne screamed from the other end of the house. Lord help me, I thought of howler monkeys. She stormed in, waving a length of fabric, heavy and dark, maybe brown. I couldn't tell. She stopped to push an end with an irregular edge at my nose. The odor of dog food and slobber wafted from the fabric.
Suzanne spoke from a fiery place, raw and deep. “Where is that stupid, stupid dog?” She walked into the bathroom. “Where is it? I want it out of here today. Do you hear me? Out of here. Gone.”
This would have been upsetting if Bee hadn't been banished almost daily since our arrival.
“What happened?” I said, trying not to sound bored.
Huck walked out of the bathroom to stand behind Suzanne. I sat up straighter, blotted the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. What was he doing here?
“It chewed the skirt off of a ten-thousand-dollar sofa, that's what it did,” Suzanne said, stomping her foot. “I'm calling a kennel.”
Huck put the back of his hand to his forehead in a mock swoon, and I must have smiled, because Suzanne asked, “Is this funny to you?”
“No, absolutely not. Your furniture is very important to me.” Despite Bee's eccentric brand of loyalty, putting her in a kennel was out of the question. But even more than that, I didn't want Suzanne to turn around. Huck mimicked her stance, hand on hip, shaking the other as if waving the ruined sofa skirt.
“Putting Bee in a kennel won't be necessary. Bee and I will be out of here by six,” I said evenly, although I had no idea how to make good on my promise.
Suzanne's arms hung limp at her sides. “Birdieâ
Mom,
I'm trying really hard to be reasonable. The sofa isn't the only problem. The dog is scratching the floors terribly, but that isn't the biggest point. Andy won't be happy if you leave. Can't you control that dog?”
Mom,
I'm trying really hard to be reasonable. The sofa isn't the only problem. The dog is scratching the floors terribly, but that isn't the biggest point. Andy won't be happy if you leave. Can't you control that dog?”
Huck wiped away a fake tear with the back of his hand.
I sucked in a breath to stifle a laugh. “Not always, but I'm willing to try. I'll keep the bedroom door closed.” I wasn't sure I promised this to keep Bee in or to give Huck and me some privacy. “I'm very, very sorry about your sofa. If there's anythingâ”
Suzanne stepped closer and I totally lost her behind the fog. I checked her location with a slight dip of my chin and fixed my gaze in her direction. My ankle throbbed like crazy.
“To be completely truthful, I've never been around dogs much,” she said as if gliding on ice.
“Bee's a pussy cat, in a manner of speaking.”
“I'm allergic to cats.”
“You've never had a pet?”
“They're messy.”
Huck stuck out a pouty lip and laced his fingers under his chin.
I willed myself to look at Suzanne. “You don't have a thing to worry about. From now on, Bee won't venture from this room, unless, of course, she's outside. Cross my heart.”
I waited for Suzanne to leave, but she didn't. Instead, she ran her fingers lightly over my ankle. “How is your ankle feeling?” she said with a kindness that tipped me back on my heels.
“It aches a little.”
“Are you still taking the pain pills?”
“Just Tylenol.”
“How often are you getting out of bed?”
“Every hour. I'm walking to the end of the front walk and back.”
“Good. Throwing a clot is the last thing you want.” She slipped the icy disk of her stethoscope between my blouse and skin. “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.” She moved the stethoscope to my back. “Again. Again. Again.”
Huck puffed up his cheeks, holding his breath until his face reddened.
“Are you sleeping okay?” Suzanne asked.
“Perfectly. Couldn't be better.” Now please go.
She took my pulse at each ankle and wrist and checked my blood pressure. Then she palpated my stomach, digging deeply enough to check the firmness of the mattress. When she asked if my bowels were passing every day, Huck covered his ears. I grunted.
“Everything sounds great.” She turned to go but stopped. “It would kill Andrew to know we'd argued.”
“Please, Suzanne, it was all my fault. I should have kept a better eye on Bee. I really am sorry about your sofa. All that was said today is between you and me. You have my word.”
“Thank you,” she said as she closed the door with the faintest thud.
I turned to look for Huck, but he'd already gone.
“I DIDN'T WAKE YOU, did I?”
Emory's voice triggered a butterfly stampede in my gut. I ran my hands through my hair and licked my lips. “It's almost noon, for goodness' sake.”
“You sound hoarse, is all.”
“I had a bout of heartburn in the middle of the night.” And I'd talked an imaginary boy into oblivion.
“I could overnight some Mylanta tablets.”
“That's terribly sweet of you, but I ate something I shouldn't have. Fletcher ordered dim sum from a Chinese place. You wouldn't like it. A bit spicy, I'm afraid.”
“Is your family treating you well?”
“Bee ripped the skirt off of Suzanne's sofa, so we're sequestered in the guest bedroom.”
“You can't leave the bedroom?”
“Technically, I can, but Bee can't. The problem is, if I close the door on her, she'll claw straight through the wood. So unless she's outside, I am stuck in this room.”
“That won't do. It's not healthy. Let me come get you. We'll figure something out. I'm sure Josie would stay with you . . . or you could stay with me.”
“Emory!”
“You'd have the whole downstairs to yourself. You wouldn't even know I was here, unless of course you needed me. And Bee would have the run of the mountain.”
My face warmed. Honestly, I had no business acting like a school girl with Emory McCune. Thirteen years my junior, he was; I could have changed his diapers back in my babysitting days. I patted my chest, hoping to settle the beating of my heart. Still, I wore flats in deference to his height and found comfort in the restrained strength of his lead on the dance floor.
“You have too many coyotes up there,” I said.
“Then we'll set you up at home. I'll stop by before and after work, bring something from Elsie's for lunch.”
“I can't do stairs.”
Emory sighed.
My heart flip-flopped. “You're worrying like an old hen. Bee and I are doing just fine. Suzanne, while she has her quirks, is keeping a good eye on me.”
The peppermint Emory always held in his cheek, clacked against his teeth. “It's been six months, not that I've been counting. I'd planned on proposingâ”
“Emoryâ”
“Please, Birdie, hear me out.”
His voice was a warm blanket, a skill he'd developed from reassuring mothers everything would be fine once a little fella took his antibiotic. Little old ladies like me stopped stewing once he told us a stool softener takes a few days to work. Even burly truckers sighed when he explained how Lipitor lowered cholesterol.
He said, “I'd planned on proposing after the tango competition. I figured you couldn't say no to me then, not with a medal for us to share. Yes, I'm younger, but even my mother said I was born an old man. Ask any of my brothers or sisters. I wore wing tips to junior high. I'm the one who's robbing the cradle here. You won't catch me hiking up a fourteener. You're all the adventure I need.” He paused and I held my breath. “I've been waiting for you my whole life.”
Had I not just purchased nonrefundable passage on a Columbia River cruise, I would have said yes immediately with just as much thought as accepting a cookie warm from the oven. Irresistible. Wondering if Gladys Conner would buy my ticket gave me pause to question myself: Do I want to be married again? I wasn't sure. No doubt about it, Emory enticed me with many fine qualities typical of the better males of our species. After all, I wasn't dead yet. As fuzzy and cushiony as Emory was, I would no longer need to dress like a Sherpa to go to bed in the winter. My heart thumped wildly.
Hold the phone!
Men liked meals at certain times of the day. And, hey howdy, they loved their meat. Emory ate steaks as big as roasts, with hash browns and dinner rolls on the side; I slapped peanut butter and apricot jam on slices of Elsie's bread and called dinner done. And then there was the laundry, and telling him everywhere I went, and that sad-puppy face saying
wherever you want to go
when he really wanted us to sit like bags of salt in matching recliners to watch
Bass Fishing World.
True, we danced twice a week now, but the Hoopers had dropped their Moose membership within weeks of their wedding. I like to travel when I'm good and ready to go, and I'm inclined to go with whomever I please. Emory claimed he liked to travel, but in all the years I'd known him, he hadn't ventured farther than a yearly pharmacological convention. Sure, he ended up in some swanky resorts, but that wasn't traveling. Travel should be unsettling enough to test my mettle and beguiling enough to raise my heart rate. And most discouraging of allâfeel free to check this with any woman married more than one yearâmen have egos as fragile as robins' eggs.
wherever you want to go
when he really wanted us to sit like bags of salt in matching recliners to watch
Bass Fishing World.
True, we danced twice a week now, but the Hoopers had dropped their Moose membership within weeks of their wedding. I like to travel when I'm good and ready to go, and I'm inclined to go with whomever I please. Emory claimed he liked to travel, but in all the years I'd known him, he hadn't ventured farther than a yearly pharmacological convention. Sure, he ended up in some swanky resorts, but that wasn't traveling. Travel should be unsettling enough to test my mettle and beguiling enough to raise my heart rate. And most discouraging of allâfeel free to check this with any woman married more than one yearâmen have egos as fragile as robins' eggs.
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