Some Kind of Normal (19 page)

There's more silence on the other end, but I don't
get the feeling she's considering me so much as taking time to load
her weapon. "The fact that he had the test in his locker is enough
for us to bring him in for questioning."

"Bring him in for questioning? What are you, Law and
Order? I still don't see no crime."

"Having a copy of this test is a crime."

"How do you even know it was him that had it? If you
didn't find it until after school was out, how do you know it was
his locker, or that he put it in there?"

"We know it's his locker because we have the records
of which student had which one from last year."

"Do you know where I am right now?"

"I'm not in the mood for a game," she snaps.

"I'm in the hospital." Well dang if that don't shut
her up. "In case you didn't know, my other child is real sick, and
our family is spending every minute of every day trying to find the
cure that's gonna bring her home. Right now, I don't give a hoot
about your test. All I care about is keeping my daughter
alive."

"I didn't know. I'm very sorry to hear that." She
does, actually, sound sorry.

"Look, Mrs. Gianuzzi. I'll talk to Logan, okay? I'll
ask him about it, and if he took it I'll make him come by and
personally apologize."

"It doesn't work that way. This is very serious."

I sigh, because this ain't getting nowhere. "I'll
make him take the test over again, then. How about that? Will that
make it right?"

"It's not a matter of the scores. This is going to go
before the school board. Logan may be facing expulsion."

The word expulsion is just getting funnier and
funnier. "You're gonna have to wait in line. I gotta see the board
about my daughter first. Her crime was trying to take the medicine
she needs to stay alive."

"The school board meeting is the end of the month,
Mrs. Babcock. You and Logan will have to show up then to present
your defense."

"Yeah," I say. "I'll just make sure my daughter is
all better by then so we can make your issues our priority." I hang
up without saying goodbye. A moment later the phone rings again. I
turn it off without answering. I try to collect myself before
leaving the bathroom.

Travis and Logan are there already, looking at me
strangely as I exit the loo so gracefully. Travis looks at the
phone in my hand. "Trouble?"

"Apparently Logan swiped some big test at school, and
the principal has her panties all in a wad." The color drains from
Logan's face and Travis turns to him, the mood in the room suddenly
chilled.

"Logan?"

"It wasn't mine. I swear."

"So you know about this?" I ask, angrier than I have
a right to be now. "I just told your principal you couldn't
possibly have been involved." I didn't, but I'd been wanting to say
that to her. I'd been thinking it, and the fact that Logan so
easily cops to the crime makes me feel betrayed.

"I wasn't involved. I didn't take the test. I didn't
even look at it."

"Then how did it land in your locker?"

"Another kid stole it."

"Who?" demands Travis.

"I can't say. He stole it, but he didn't use it
either. I found him sneaking out of the counselor's office with it
when I went in to. . ." He trails off a minute and before I can ask
why he's going to the school counselor he finishes. "I saw him with
it and told him he needed to give it back or he'd be in real
trouble."

"Real trouble? As opposed to. . ."

"Failing the test."

"I thought it was one of those state tests. That
doesn't even affect his grades does it?" I know it can't, 'cause
Logan got hugely good scores, but his grades didn't go up an
iota.

"If he failed, he couldn't graduate."

"Doesn't he have another year to take it?"

Logan flops onto the daybed. "He's a senior. He
flunked it last year. This was his last year."

Travis sits in the chair across from him and leans
back, folding his arms across his chest. "So you took the test and
he failed?"

"No. I told him he needed to return it, and I'd tutor
him."

"You?" I realize I have snorted at this idea, and I
cover it by pretending I am sneezing. As good as his test scores
are, I can't imagine Logan teaching anyone.

"Except by the time I convinced him I could help, the
counselor was back and he couldn't get in to the office to return
it. I took it, cause I didn't want him being tempted to cheat, and
I thought I could put it back when. . ." He breaks off again, and
then adds, "later."

"So?" Travis says.

"So what?"

"Did he pass?"

Logan grins that cat-in-the-fish tank kind of grin.
"Yeah."

"That don't excuse it," I say, frustrated at the
situation he's just put us all in. "Now, you're the one in trouble.
They want to expel you."

This wipes the grin off his face, and he pales again.
"But I didn't do anything wrong."

"You have a test in your locker you shouldn't have.
That's all they care about."

"But it's not even the test I took."

"What?" I stop pacing and stare hard at him.

"It's not my test. They give a different one to the
juniors and to the seniors."

"Well, there's your defense," Travis says, as if that
settles that. He gets up and walks to the door. "Anyone want a Dr.
Pepper?"

When he's gone I sit down across from Logan, who
picks up a magazine and flips through it just to not make eye
contact with me. "Logan, put that down." He does, and sighs
heavily.

"I was trying to do the right thing, Mom."

"Why didn't you just take the test back to the
counselor, or tell your friend to?"

"Obviously if he took it back, he'd get in trouble.
And if I took it back, I'd get in trouble."

"But, like you said, you didn't do anything
wrong."

"You think they'd believe me?" I look at his hair,
his clothes, the way he hangs over the daybed like he's been draped
there. I think about his grades and the way he's more likely than
not to say exactly what's on his mind the moment it pops into it.
And I know he's right. And like a flash I realize the two of us is
just peas in a pod.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I'll take care of it."

"Take care of what?" Ashley says in that groggy voice
we've come to know as her usual voice.

"Doing what I do best: cleaning up after the two of
you. I'm going to go see what happened to your dad."

I close the door behind me and lean against it. I
have no idea how to fix this. Stolen tests. Contraband needles.
Unfist-fights. Even in doing right, they did wrong. Right now
there's just too much of life to battle, and I am tired.

~~~~

In my room at the Ronald McDonald house, the last
resident had left a calendar. It's a diary of sorts, the small
boxes that are supposed to represent days filled with appointment
reminders, medicine changes, drug reactions, simple facts of life
with a dying child.

Meagan admitted, relapse, acute lymphoblastic
leukemia. chemo/radiation ruled out as options cbc-white count 1500
Meagan falls getting to bathroom, breaks tibia, wheelchair bound
hip bone marrow aspiration, spinal tap done

m.d.b.g and g tested for compatibility. negative.
Meagan put on bone marrow transplant list

The notes are jottings of facts, but I wonder how
many tears were shed writing them.

The notes end abruptly. I don't know how to interpret
the facts of the last few days to know if it ended well, but I tend
to think not. If'n it were me, I'd take the calendar home and put
it in the baby box where I keep Ashley's treasured things, so that
one day I could pull it out and show her and say--

But I don't know what I'd say.
See how God answers prayers? See what a
little faith can accomplish?
Or will I say,
See how miraculous science is? See
what the persistence of doctors and the will of a family can
accomplish?

I sit on the bed fingering the pages, the glossy
photos of Texas wildflowers. I find a pen and turn back a month,
just two days after Meagan's last treatment and write, "Ashley
admitted, diagnosed type 1 diabetes." I fill in as many days I can.
First low blood sugar. First shots: lantus and humalin. Leave
hospital. And then I stop to decide if I want to fill in the days
we are home and decide not to, merely drawing a line though them
with the word HOME on top,

Next I fill in our current stay. I end with today.
1 month anniversary.
Dr. says desens a failure
. It is all that will fit in the
box but it says so little about what is going on.

Travis walks out of the bathroom as I'm hanging it
back on the wall. "The shower was cold tonight."

"Visiting hours are over. Everyone is coming back to
clean up for dinner." Dinner has come to mean less of a meal and
more a time of day. No one here eats much.

He looks at the calendar where I've written and
points at a blank one at the end of the month. "One day we'll
write, 'took Ashley home' on one of those squares," he says.

"Not take it home?"

"No. We should leave it for the next family. So they
know."

"About Ashley?"

"Yes. And hope."

I don't answer, so he takes me by the shoulders and
turns me around.

"You have to believe, Babs."

"In what?"

"Just believe--that Ashley will get better."

But that makes no sense to me. You can't just believe
without believing in something. And right now neither God nor
science is pulling through for me.

"Did Dr. Benton tell you what he's going to do now?"
Travis asks.

"No," I answer.

Travis lets go of me and picks up his towel to rub
his hair dry. "He said he has someone flying in to talk to us
tomorrow. Where are you going?"

"Back to the hospital. Do you want to come?"

"I thought we were going to spend some time together.
I just got here. I ain't hardly seen you in weeks."

"Then come with me."

"We can't talk there. Not in front of Ashley."

"She's asleep."

"Exactly. Now's the perfect time to go out. Let me
take you out for real food, Babs."

It's been three weeks since our last eating out
disaster, and seeing as how that one didn't end so well, I'm not
anxious to repeat it. "I'm not hungry."

"It's not about the food."

"So why go out?"

"To be together," he insists. I want to remind him
that our last togetherness thing ended with me alone at the table
and him fuming in the bathroom until his enchilada got cold.

"We can be together in the hospital."

"This conversation's like a dog chasing his tail." He
grabs the remote to the TV and throws himself in the one chair we
got in the room.

"What?"

"Just go." He punches buttons on the remote. A
baseball game appears.

"Are you coming with me?"

"No."

When I get to Ashley's room she's asleep, and I sit
in the dark watching her chest rise and fall. Her hair has thinned,
and she is ghostly white.

I should be at the house with Travis. We've barely
spoken in the weeks since Ashley and I packed up and moved our
lives to Austin. He drives back and forth every night and we talk
on the phone, but mostly when we talk it's about his roofing job
and TV shows and Logan, who is now out of school and working at a
music store selling guitar strings and clarinet reeds. The
conversations are clipped; we are both exhausted. If we speak about
anything truly important, we argue, so we don't.

It's not because of Ashley, though. It's been years
since we've had more than these surface conversations. I don't know
when we stopped having the real conversations that newlyweds have:
the kinds that are about what you hope and dream for your life and
for the world in general. It must have been when I couldn't see no
further than getting through the piles of laundry and how to make
dinner with no cheese or ground beef in the house. Sometime around
when Travis gave up running his own contracting business to work
for someone else so we could have insurance and afford to fix the
brakes on the truck.

Brakes and insurance are important things, but not
much of a conversation starter.

The monitor hooked up to Ashley's heart is beating
unbearably fast. Tiny bleeps across a black screen. I move over to
the bed and sit beside her. Brushing her hair back, I can tell her
head is hot, like she's running a fever. I feel like she's slipping
away from me.

"Can't we do a transplant?" I asked Dr. Benton last
week. Pulling out my notebook and flipping to the pages full of
examples of islet and pancreas transplants, I ask again, "Why
aren't we doing this?"

"I'm not ruling it out. But she's going to be hard to
find a match, and on top of that, the success rate is about 64
percent. The likelihood that her immune system would attack the new
pancreas is high. It's just delaying the decision we have to make
now."

"But it might buy us time, right? Isn't that all we
need? A little more time? Then maybe that mice vaccine thing might
be working."

"We don't want to trade one very serious problem with
another. There's a risk of death with the surgery, along with a
long list of complications that could have Ashley needing to come
back to the hospital several times a year. And whether the new
pancreas works or not, Ashley would have to be on immunosuppressant
drugs for the rest of her life."

"We'd be trading one poison for another?"

"In a sense. There's also a good chance, a very real
chance, that the transplant would only be partially
successful."

"How can it be partially successful?"

"The body accepts the new pancreas. It works, but not
well enough that the diabetic can stop taking insulin
altogether."