Seeing Things (7 page)
Authors: Patti Hill
“Come on, Bee. Paula Dean is on in a few minutes.”
ANDY APPARENTLY SLIPPED INTO the house as I scribbled notes on cinnamon rolls from Paula's show. Bee snored at my feet.
“Fletcher, come down here now!” he called.
“Andy?” I called out.
The clock announced the time: “Four-thirty-nine.” Early for Andy to be home. Very early. He entered the room, slapping a piece of paper with the back of his hand.
“What's up?” I said.
“Your grandson is getting a
B
in English Comp. He missed an assignment.”
B
in English Comp. He missed an assignment.”
All this drama over a
B?
I chose my words carefully, “Can you sit with me for a minute?”
B?
I chose my words carefully, “Can you sit with me for a minute?”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, I wanted to show you my new boot.”
He whistled. “Impressive.”
“And I can put weight on the foot.”
“I suppose you want to go home?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No, not at all.” He shuffled around a bit. “Suzanne told me about the sofa.”
“Bee can be a beast. One minute she's an angel; the next minute she's gnawing a leg off a table. I should have been watching her more closely. I'm so sorry.” Men are the toughest of the species to read through the fog. So often, and I learned this before I lost my central vision, they believe they've answered a question when they haven't uttered a word. More than once, Chuck swore up and down he'd replied to my inquiry when, in truth, not a word passed his lips. Sitting there with Andy, no doubt, he believed he'd just said:
Think nothing of it, Ma. I hated that sofa. You did me a favor.
Think nothing of it, Ma. I hated that sofa. You did me a favor.
I continued as if he had. “What's up with Fletcher?”
“I don't know. According to all the tests, he's brilliant. But unless I keep a fire under him, he loses interest.”
“Like the time you built a volcano the night before it was due?”
“It's different now. Competition is fierce for the best colleges.”
“He's fifteen. A boy. Boys get distracted . . . as I remember.”
Andy stood. “I won first place in the science fair with that volcano.”
Fletcher stepped into the room. “Yeah?”
Andy expelled a long breath. “I received this letter from your school today. Life isn't a game, young man.”
Fletcher spoke like a plodding plow mule. “I turned the assignment in. We had a sub. She was new. Everyone got a letter.”
The two of them stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door. Faster than I thought possible, I was up with my ear to the door. Andy dressed down Fletcher, more like the boy had invited pirates to pillage the family treasures than missing an English assignment. I turned and reached for my walker. Stopped.
Huck stood outside, leaning against the white bark of a birch. He raised a finger to shush me. I waved him closer, but he slid down the tree to lean against its trunk and tapped his pipe on the ground.
Hmph.
I moved toward the window. Bee, ever vigilant about visitors, twitched in her sleep. “You're missing a chance to play with a boy,” I said. That's how utterly real Huck seemed to me. After all, I was leaving my battling son and grandson in hopes of some conversation. That didn't seem right, even to me. “See you later, Huck.”
I peeked out the bedroom door to see Andy and Fletcher now toe to toe. Andy barked orders at Fletcher. “This assignment. On my desk. In one hour!”
An edge sharpened Fletcher's voice. “You won't be home in an hour.”
Andy stabbed at Fletcher's chest with a finger. “One hour!”
“Dad,” pleaded Fletcher open handed, “it's only a vocab assignment, worth five stupid points. I did it in class. I have a chem lab due tomorrow and a test in calc the next day. I can't redo the assignment and get it all done.”
“That'll teach you to screw around when you have work to do. If you're going to make anything of yourselfâand as my son, you willânothing can slip by. Trust me, there will always be someone to step into your place. Remember that.” And he slammed the office door.
Fletcher took the stairs three at a time, mumbling something about Johnny Bench winning ten Gold Gloves for the Cincinnati Reds.
Father, let your love reign here.
Chapter 8
I'd surrendered my dream to run the Olympic marathon a few years earlier. A seventy-something woman outpacing long-legged runners was such a cliché anymore, but I experienced the same sense of triumph ambling down to the corner for the first time, albeit with a walker. The cold biting my cheeks only magnified my sense of accomplishment.
A steady rumble of tires and engines sounded from the main north-south road only a few blocks away. On the trip to the surgeon, I'd seen buses loping along with the rise and fall of each intersection. Surely one of them ended up at the Greyhound station and on to Ouray. Forget that I couldn't walk more thanâI looked over my shoulderâtwenty yards, maybe, or that carrying luggage was out of the question, or that Bee hadn't learned her bus manners. I deflated as surely as if someone had poked me with a pin. I returned to the backyard to throw a ball for Bee.
“Hello there!” came a call through the fence. “Is that an actual dog barking?”
I called over my shoulder to the inquisitive voice. “I'm sorry. She's riled up. I'll try to keep her quiet.”
“Don't you dare! There's not a happier sound than a barking dog.”
I didn't know what to say to that. Besides the birds chirping and the drone of traffic, the neighborhood had remained ominously quiet. The voice called again. “Say, do you have time for a cup of tea? I've just put on the kettle. I'll meet you at the front door.” The bushes rustled and a door slammed.
Anyone who loved barking dogs would be interesting at best, paddling her rowboat with only one oar at worst. Or she could be an axe murderer. Still, under the ice pack, my ankle felt perfectly fine. No problem. I called for Lupe.
“YOU POOR DEAR,” THE woman cooed as I shuffled up her front walk. “If I'd known you were wounded, I would have brought the tea to you.”
Lupe grunted as I leaned on her to take the last step inside the front door.
The woman, no bigger than a mite and bent at the shoulders, pushed aside the coffee table to give me room to pass with the walker. “Take this seat and I'll bring you an ottoman.”
Before I could object, the woman disappeared into the fog and, I assumed, into another room.
“I've never seen so much green,” Lupe said. “It's like living in a Coke bottle.”
“I thought you had toilets to clean.”
She turned toward the door and waved halfheartedly over her shoulder. “I'm getting queasy anyway.”
The woman introduced herself as Ruth as she lifted my leg, boot and all, onto the ottoman. “I'm so pleased you accepted my invitation. Neighbors don't seem to want to be neighbors anymore. I know what I'm talking about. We bought this house just after Don graduated from DU. He'd been in the Pacific, like so many other boys. We cashed in a life insurance policy to make the down payment and walked away from the bank with a mortgage and fifty cents left for groceries. We were the two happiest people on earth.”
Ruth sat on the edge of the sofa. She sported a salon hairdo as white as clouds on a summer sky. I'd yet to meet anyone who fussed over their hair who actually managed their side of a conversation. If Ruth thought I'd come to compare shampoos, she had one big disappointment coming.
“Now, Birdie, I have a cupboard full of tutti-frutti tea bags. My girls make sure I'm well supplied with the latest flavors. Name your fruit, flower, or mood. I have a tea for it.”
“Do you have black tea?”
“That's my girl. I like nothing better than a strong cup of Lipton's with a pinch of sugar and milk. I'll be right back.”
Drawers opened and closed in the kitchen. The kettle whistled and stopped abruptly. Somewhere a grandfather clock ticked like a metronome, steady and reassuring. Flouncy curtains framed the window by the front door. And Lupe was right: Ruth liked green. Carpet the color of moss, walls of spring sage, and upholstery as pale as cabbage gave me a sense of lolling about in Farmer Pearcy's hay field when the stalks were no higher than my knee. I felt sleepy.
Ruth moved from the kitchen to the living room with lithe movements I instantly envied. The china clinked as she set the tray on the coffee table. She handed me a cup and saucer. I dipped my finger in the hot liquid to judge how full she'd filled the cup.
“Did I fill the cup too full?”
Observant. I liked that. “It's perfect.” I blew on the tea.
This was the moment I dreaded when meeting people for the first time. Do I tell them I have macular degeneration, accept their pity, or spill tea all over their prized furniture? “Ruth, I should warn you that I have low vision. In fact, a patch of gray fog blocks my central vision. I can't even see your face.”
Nary a heartbeat passed before she said, “No problem, sweetie. I look just like Marilyn Monroe.”
I played along. “And I run the hundred-meter dash in under ten seconds.”
Ruth snorted then belly laughed for a good while, and I joined her. When she spoke, her voice was clogged with tears. “You remind me of Helen. Nobody made me laugh like Helen. She lived right next door where your family now lives. Such a silly girl, but I can't count the times she came to my rescue. Everyone should have a friend like Helen.” We sat quietly for a long moment. “Birdie, I have AMD too, in my right eye, the dry kind. I was diagnosed when I was fifty, but it's not nearly as bad as yours.”
“I'm so sorry.”
“Don't be. It's not much more than an annoyance at my age. My heart's fine. A dose of ibuprofen soothes the arthritis in my fingers. My children are scared to death I'll live forever.” She patted my knee. “Do you believe in divine appointments, Birdie?”
“Yes, but I neverâ”
“Will you be here for a while? A small group of ladies with AMD meets here every Thursday. We call ourselves the Three Bs, short for the blind bats in the belfry. I know, it's awful. Some folks at church objected, thought the name disrespectful. When it's just us, we call ourselves the Bats. If you can't have fun with a disease, what's the point?”
I explained how difficult getting around with a broken ankle had proven.
“That won't do for an independent lady like you. You're my new hero, Birdie, coming for tea at an unfamiliar house with a broken ankle and limited vision. I won't let you go nuts in that house. Like it or not, you're one of the girls now.”
I swallowed down a lump. I liked the idea of belonging to a group of ladies more than I dreamed.
“The girls and I will get you here, no problem. You'll love them all. I've known them forâoh my goodness!âone for over sixty years, the others for at least thirty. Each one lives within a block or two, although Betty is living with her son in Lakewood. He takes off work to drive her to our meetings.”
“Can I bring a pie? That's what I'm known for in Ouray.”
“Do you use lard in your crust?”
“That's my preferenceâwith a chunk of butter added for good measure.”
“Birdie, I proclaim you an honorary member, expired only by death, in the Bats, contingent upon your willingness to share your piecrust recipe. Are you in?”
“I'll start nagging my grandson to type up the recipe immediately.”
Ruth set her teacup on the tray. “I used to see that boy walking to school but not so much anymore. That's one full head of hair,” she said. “It's all I can do to keep my hands off the hedge clippers when he walks by.”
“And he's trying to stay incognito at school.”
“It's wonderful to have a young boy in the neighborhood. I know there are children around. I see them pushed around the neighborhood in their perambulators, mostly by nannies. But the streets are oddly quiet. There was a time when you could use the children's heads as stepping-stones around here. Someone was always shouting, and many a day I cleaned a knee of one of the neighbor children.” She sighed. “I miss those days. Nothing topped the whoops and hollers when the ice-cream man came jingling down the street at two-forty-five sharp.”
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