Shem Creek (36 page)

“Is she okay?”

“Of course she’s okay! Listen, come sit. It’s one of those things where you look worse on the outside than you are on the inside. Anyway, I’m sure she’s gonna wake up soon and when she does, she’s not going to be very happy. Her head took quite a hit.”

“Did you call Lindsey?”

“No, I didn’t. Why don’t you take my cell outside and call her yourself?”

“First, I’m just gonna look in her room and see if she’s awake.”

I opened Mom’s door slowly and when I saw her, I thought I was going to faint. My knees got weak and my hands became clammy. Poor Momma! She had ice packs over her eyes and cheeks, a bandage on her forehead and she was breathing through her mouth. And what in the hell were the plastic things in her nose?

“Mimi?” she said.

Well, at least she sounded normal.

“No, Momma, it’s me. Gracie.”

“Some mess, huh?”

“Man! That woman ought to be put away! Seriously!” I tiptoed to her side and took her hand. “Does it hurt?”

“No, not too much. It’s sort of like somebody hits you across the face with a baseball bat, that’s all.” She sat up a little. “Here, help me, honey. I want to powder my nose. I took all these pills and I’m still a little wobbly.”

I leaned over and helped her untangle her feet from the covers and brought her up to a sitting position.

“Well, first of all, Mom, you should not be wearing a long nightgown. You’ll trip and bust your behind! Don’t you have enough trouble as it is?”

“Do I look really terrible?”

Was she kidding? “Uh, no, you look fabulous! We should take a picture right now and put it up on
match.com
.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. A real beauty queen, right?”

“Hey, you got a broken nose and a ton of stitches, what do you expect?” I led her into the bathroom. “Um, do you want me to help you . . . ?”

“No, thanks, honey. I can handle it now. Tell Mimi that I’m up, okay?”

I went back into the kitchen, where Mimi was digging around in our cabinets, presumably to concoct some creation that would cure the world and feed us at the same time.

“Mom’s awake,” I said, “she’s in the bathroom.”

“Oh! How’s she doing?”

“Like crap, but who wouldn’t be?”

“I just want her to keep her eyes iced so they don’t turn black, but they probably will anyway. Do you want to split a Coke?”

“Sure, do we have diet?”

“Yep!” She popped the top and divided it between two glasses filled with ice. “So, that was some story, right?”

“Like no other. I mean, you can’t make stuff like that up! Is Mom gonna press charges?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she’s had time to think about it yet. Can I tell you how bad Brad and O’Malley feel? They were standing right there when it happened. Brad said he thought she was just going to take a look at what he was eating.”

“Yeah, right.” I imitated the attempted murderer’s voice.
“This needs salt!”

“Exactly. And, O’Malley said he was standing there because he thought something might happen and then, when it did, he didn’t do a blessed thing to stop it!”

“Another tale of failed macho hoo-rah,” I said.

“Well, that’s not entirely fair. I think the whole incident happened so fast that there wasn’t time to react. Anyway, your momma is supposed to go up to Yankee territory this weekend and empty the house, but I think she should wait until next weekend. Do you know where her ticket is? I’ll call Louise for her, see if it’s okay to change her time off and then I can change her reservation for her.”

It was just like Aunt Mimi to think of the next step. It was just like me to be clueless about the next step. I guess I wasn’t quite the adult I liked to think I almost was, but I figured the mere fact that I recognized my limits was progress.

Mom gave Mimi her flight information and Mimi got busy coaxing the reservation agent into changing Mom’s ticket and waiving the change fee. Naturally, she had to talk to her supervisor and explain why Mom couldn’t travel and even the supervisor gave her a hard time.

“I can send you a copy of the report from the emergency room if you want,” Mimi said, shaking her head. “Of course, we can get a doctor’s letter!”

People probably made up crazy stories all the time to try and get out of extra charges, but the drama with the airline sure seemed like a lot of unnecessary aggravation to me. When she finally convinced the supervisor she wasn’t lying and was given a new reservation number, she hung up the phone and turned to me.

“That was ridiculous,” she said and sighed hard enough to move the furniture. “Well, let’s call Lindsey and then I have to go. I put a frozen lasagna in the oven for you. Take it out in fifty minutes. I have to go home and bake! Did your momma tell you I was baking cakes for the restaurant?”

Big surprise.

We dialed Lindsey’s number and she was actually in her dorm room, studying. Of course she was studying. That was all she ever did! I could tell from Aunt Mimi’s end of the conversation that Lindsey was very upset, but when she finally talked to Mom she calmed down.

“We all need to learn when to hold our tongues, right?” Mom said.

Lindsey must have felt that Mom wasn’t in any danger because Mom said, “Oh, I’ll be fine.” And then they started talking about her classes and her roommate—a girl named Naomi from Wyoming—and after a few minutes, they said good-bye.

“Hey! I didn’t even get to say hello!”

My complaint fell on deaf ears, as most of them did, but I didn’t rag on them. Mimi was leaving and I could see that Mom was exhausted. I told her to go back to bed.

That night I made Mom sip some chicken noodle soup through a straw and I put the noodles on a spoon and into her mouth. I fought my way through some of the lasagna, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. Around nine-thirty, there was a knock at the door. I was doing geometry homework, cussing my head off over the areas of triangles. Imagine my shock to see O’Malley and Duane standing there with flowers.

“Is your Mom awake?”

“I think so. Come on in.”

O’Malley was wearing a knit shirt and khaki shorts and Duane still had on his chef’s jacket and black-and-white check pants. They had both combed their hair, which seemed a little strange to me. I mean, wasn’t Duane a queen? And didn’t O’Malley have a flame? Maybe they thought they were coming to a wake.

They stood inside the door like they didn’t know what to do with themselves and so I said, “Lemme see if she wants to get up. . . .”

“Oh, no! Don’t make her get out of bed!” Duane said.

“Okay. I’ll just tell her you’re here.”

I opened Mom’s door and she wasn’t in her bed where I had left her. So I tapped on her bathroom door and heard her muttering to herself.

“Mom? Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Duane and O’Malley are here to see you.”

“Oh, God . . .” The bathroom door opened and out came Mom with a very swollen upper lip and the beginnings of black eyes. “Look at me. My eyes are turning purple.”

The purple was just in a couple of spots and her cheeks were a little yellow. Overall, I didn’t think she looked that much worse than she had earlier that afternoon.

“Come on,” I said, “you’re gorgeous.”

I followed her out to the hall and living room.

“Hey,” O’Malley said, and handed her a little book that was gift wrapped. I could tell he was shocked that Mom looked so beaten up. “I brought you a bartender’s guide. Figured you could use some fun reading? How’re you feeling? Did you get the license number of the truck?”

“Thanks a lot,” Mom said with a very lopsided grin. “It was a big redneck Amy truck.”

“Jesus!” Duane said. “Girlfriend! Don’t you worry! I’ve got this little compact from Chanel—it’s not mine; it belongs to my sister; she left it at my apartment—anyway, it’s got four kinds of cover-up in it and we can hide everything! But
what
have they stuck up your nose?”

No one believed for a makeover minute that Duane didn’t have his own compact of cover-up.

“Splints,” Mom said, “comes out Thursday.”

“Well, that can’t feel so great,” Duane said. “Here. I brought you something to start your collection. And there are flowers in the sink from both of us. Connie and the Zone Man send their love too.”

He handed her a small box from Williams-Sonoma. Mom opened it and lifted out a paring knife.

“Oh, y’all, this is so sweet of you to do this, you didn’t have to. . . .”

I could see Mom was really moved by what they had done. It was completely unexpected and very thoughtful.

“Um, do you guys want something to drink?” I said.

“
You guys
? Lawsamercy, Gracie!” Duane said, with this look on his face that seemed to say that saying
you guys
was worse than using the F word.

“Okay, okay. Do
y’aaaall
want something to drink?”

They laughed and said,
That’s better,
and I knew the reason they were laughing was because they were uncomfortable. It was funny that they were so relaxed in the restaurant but so awkward in our house. Or maybe it was because Mom looked worse than they thought she would.

“No, thanks, Gracie, we gotta get going,” O’Malley said. “It’s late. We just wanted to come by and say we were sorry this happened, Linda. I feel terrible that . . .”

“Don’t even think about it,” Mom said. “Amy was so quick, no one could have done anything.”

“Thanks for saying that. Brad’s seriously pissed. He’s been on the phone with Robert all night.”

“You know what?” Mom said. “I think we’re better off just letting it go. I don’t want a lawsuit. If this whole crazy incident gets her away from Brad and all of us, then that’s really what we want.”

“Well, you can discuss that with Brad,” O’Malley said. “We just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine. I swear,” she said.

“Okay, if you say so. But if you want me to kill the bitch, just say the word,” Duane said. We all smiled when he said that because Duane was about my size. He cleared his throat with the realization that everyone knew he wouldn’t mash a bug and said in the most tender voice, “I just wanted to see with my own eyes that you were okay. That’s all.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You know, we’re sort of like a family at the restaurant—a weird family, but a family nonetheless. And now you’re one of us, you know? If I had been in that office I would have slapped her face off. I’m not kidding.”

“Oh, Duane,” Mom said, smiling all crooked because of her big lip, “there wasn’t an instant that anyone could have, even if they had thought of it. Really. But thank you. And you too, O’Malley.”

They left, Mom shuffled back to bed and I put the flowers in a vase. That night I was the one who turned out the lights and locked the door. I went to Mom’s room to check on her and was happy that she was sound asleep. I put the flowers on the dresser in a spot where she could see them when she woke up in the morning. I went back to the kitchen and called Lindsey.

“Hey, got a sec?”

“Sure. How’s Mom?”

“Mom’s fine. She just has to heal. Needless to say, she ain’t coming to New Jersey this weekend. She’s got splints up her nose and stitches and everything. Aunt Mimi changed her trip to next weekend. Maybe you could go out to Montclair and help her?”

“No problem. How does Mom really look?”

“Well, she’s on the way to two black eyes, which she’s not going to like one f-ing bit, and her cheekbones are bruised too. I think it’s one of those deals that’s gonna get worse before it gets better. But she will survive. You know Linda!”

We said good night and I thought about school for a few minutes. We had a field trip the next day. I was trying to figure out what to wear. I took Mom’s alarm clock, intending to let her sleep. I made one more phone call to ask Alex to ask Lupe to pick me up in the morning.

“No problem,” he said. “How’s your mom?”

I guess the whole world knew.

“Okay. You know what’s really kinda odd about this?”

“What?”

“Who does something like really throw stuff except for the bad guys on a show like
Law and Order
? I mean, that’s pretty crazy, right?”

“Yeah, you would think that by the time you’re grown up, you’re civilized.”

“Yeah. No kidding. Okay, well, I gotta close up the house and all . . .”

In the morning, I tiptoed out of the house and left Mom a note to say that I would be home by four. I drew a big heart on it and left lots of X’s on the bottom so she would know I was thinking about her. In a rare act of maturity I even put my cereal bowl in the dishwasher and left home feeling pretty good about myself.

It turned out we were going to the aquarium for the field trip and I was pretty psyched for it. We rode on the big yellow bus like a bunch of first-graders, laughing and carrying on. Mom may have been right that Mr. Miller was a bit of a jerk, and I agreed with her that his protesting in front of the restaurants was a little psycho, but at least he got us out of classes for the day.

We arrived and were milling around the lobby waiting for our guide to show up and enlighten us on ecosystems and watersheds. Miller was getting antsy and kept asking the receptionist to call the office and tell them that we were on a schedule. Well, after about ten minutes, this nice little old lady with a cup of coffee came waltzing out from the staff offices and I thought old Miller was gonna need resuscitation. I guess he was figuring, what could an old biddy like her know? We couldn’t have cared less if she was a hundred years old. As long as I got to skip geometry for the day I was happy. Turned out she knew plenty.

She began her talk with a lecture on the Sustainable Seafood Project, which actually made my ears perk up. Turns out a lot of restaurants in Charleston no longer served Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and shark. Well, I never ate shark anyway. I was dangerous enough as it was. You are what you eat, right? But Chilean sea bass was delish! Then she told us that orange roughy lived to be a hundred years old and I looked over at Alex.