The Blue Cotton Gown (33 page)

Tom scrapes out his ice cream bowl, smiling. “Yeah, send something big. All three of them.”

nila

Going through a pile of labs at the end of the day, I come to Nila’s and wonder briefly if she’s called the counselor. There’s a computer-

generated lab report clipped to the front of her chart. All the results are normal but one. I don’t even remember requesting the serum pregnancy test on the requisition but I’d checked everything else having anything to do with fatigue. No doubt about it. It’s positive. Nila is pregnant again.

How could this be? Doug’s been gone, what, a month? It must be his baby. I flip open the chart. There were two weeks when Nila was bleeding and she stopped the birth control patches. Maybe then? I shake my head and try twice to call her, staring out the window at the rain. When there’s no answer, I leave a message. “Nila, it’s Patsy at the gyn office. I have some lab results for you. Can you return my call at your earliest convenience?”

*

At 11:15 p.m. my cell phone goes off. Tom and I are snuggled in bed watching a video. We both groan. I’m on call for emergencies. “Turn it down, will you?” I whisper. “Hello?” I’m expecting the answering service. Patients aren’t supposed to have my personal num-ber. “Hello,” I say again. It’s still hard to hear and I carry the phone into the living room.

“Patsy?” a woman’s breathless voice asks. “Yes, this is Patsy Harman. Who
is
this?”

“It’s Nila. I’m sorry to get you on your cell at home, but I still had the number saved on mine from when you answered my page the other morning.”

“Yeah, what’s up, Nila?” I shift the receiver to my other ear and sink down on the couch, waving Tom through the doorway to go on with the movie. “Did you get my message from the office?”

“About the lab tests?”

“Yeah, I’ve got your results.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m okay.
I found Doug.
I found him! I’m going back to South Dakota. I’m so happy!” she bubbles out.

Then her voice drops four notes. “But I have to get out of town fast. Gibby is going crazy that I won’t let him see the kids. Buddy, my nine-year-old, says his dad has a gun.”

“What do you mean, a gun? Is Gibby after you? What kind of gun?”

“I don’t know the type. What does it matter? Buddy just told me his dad bought a gun. Gibby was bragging about it when he talked to him on the phone. Doug wants to come get me from South Dakota, but I can’t wait. We’ve got to get out of town. We’re leaving Torrington tonight.” Nila hesitates.

“Tonight?” I say, wondering why she’s calling me about this. “But it’s so late and raining so hard . . .”

“Well, you can say no if you have to, but I need to ask you a favor.

It’s a big one.”

“What? What can I do?”

“I have to get some cash. I feel real bad asking and I
swear
I’ll pay you back, but we have to get out of here and there’s no one else. I’m not waiting around until something terrible happens. Can I borrow a hundred dollars?” She stops abruptly.

“You need money for gas?”

“Yeah, Doug’s good for it. He’s working at the propane plant in Sioux City.”

I shake my head and draw in a breath. “This is crazy. What about your furniture, all your household things? You can’t just split.” Tom has turned off the video and come into the living room. He leans against the doorway in his tie-dyed T-shirt and plaid boxers, listening. He can tell it’s some kind of crisis. “Nila, hold on, I have another call coming in. Stay right there.” This is a lie, but I put her on hold.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Nila.” Tom knows the story of the patient’s earlier road trip west with seven kids in a van, the subsequent return to Torrington pregnant, the late miscarriage, and the sexual abuse of little Tilly

by her father. “She’s found Doug, her lover, and she’s going back to South Dakota with all the kids. She sounds desperate and says she has to leave tonight because she just found out that her ex-husband purchased a gun. She sounds
desperate,
thinks he’s coming after her. She wants to borrow a hundred dollars. Do we have any cash?”

Tom frowns. “I guess we could get some at the money machine at Quik Mart, but this is a little over the top, isn’t it? Lending money to a patient. We’ll probably never get it back.”

“No,
we will.
I know it sounds like a lot. But she says Doug is

working at a propane plant. She says he’s good for it.” “So when does she need it?”

“Right now.”

Tom shrugs. “It’s just a hundred dollars, consider it a donation to the Rape and Domestic Violence Shelter. One less victim.”

I smile and kiss him on his unshaved cheek. I could have done it without his approval, but his support means a lot.

The cell phone is ringing. “Patsy. Are you still there? I thought I got cut off.” It’s Nila.

“No, I’m still here. Okay, where do you want me to meet you? I’ll have to stop at a money machine.”

“We’re loading up now. You know where I live? Out on Weimer Road? Could you meet me by the Dairy Queen at exit ten on the freeway? I’ll be driving a big blue Chevy van.”

“By the Dairy Queen at the Pinewood exit?” I’m trying to picture the spot and don’t want to end up sitting all night at the wrong place.

“Yeah.” “What time?”

“Half an hour.”

“You really think Gibby is coming after you tonight, Nila? It’s so late to start a cross-country trip. Is the van in good shape?”

“No. It’s a bucket of bolts, but I gotta go. We’ll be okay. I’ve already told the kids we’re leaving. They’re scrambling around to get ready. I just have a bad feeling about Gibby. The son of a bitch

bought the gun this afternoon, then called Buddy to brag about it, made a big deal. He knew Buddy would tell me. You know how he’s been lately. I’m not taking chances.”

“Can you really get to Pinewood in thirty minutes?”

“I’ll be there. The kids are loading a few changes of clothes right now.”

“Okay, see you there.” I check my watch. “I’ll see you at midnight.”

As I pull on my jeans, Tom comes into the bathroom with his worn leather wallet. “What kind of a vehicle is she driving? She’s got all those kids. We’d better give her more. One hundred dollars in gas won’t get far.” He peels off four twenties. “Get more at the ATM.”

*

“I just need the money machine for a second,” I yell to the young man who’s locking the door to the convenience store. “Please, this is an emergency.” The pimple-faced guy in the red Quik Mart shirt backs away from the door and glances at the clock above the register, then jerks his head that I can enter. Inside, I’m so nervous I for-get my password at the money machine.
Glaze, Potter, Photo
. . . I can’t remember.

“We’re closing in five minutes,” the guy says, lighting a cigarette and blowing it out the door.

“Okay, okay. I’ll be out of here.”
Daisy.
That’s it. I punch the letters in.

The machine coughs up three hundred dollars. “Thanks a million. Is your cash register still turned on?”

He sighs resignedly and nods, so I run up and down the aisles grabbing cookies and juice boxes. I throw him a ten as I run to the car. “Keep the change.” Nothing like a little health food for a road trip. There’s no traffic this time of night between Hope Lake and exit 10. If I push I should be there by midnight.

Twenty minutes later, sitting in the dark in the gravel lot at the

Dairy Queen, I begin to wonder:
Do I have the right spot? She did say exit 10, didn’t she?
I’m thinking of calling Tom on my cell when a dark van pulls up and someone rolls down the window.

A towheaded school-age boy leans out. “Are you Mrs. Harman?” Is that a
blue
van? In the dark I can’t tell. “Yeah, is that Nila?” I know it is but worry that somehow I’ll be the victim of a clever ruse.

This could be some
other
van full of children trying to get my money. I jump out of the Civic with the roll of bills. “Hey.”

Nila, her hair pulled up in a sandy ponytail, wears her worn jean jacket. She bounces out of the vehicle and runs to my side. “Oh, Patsy. Thank you so much.” I hand her the money and she smooths it out flat. “This is more than a hundred dollars.” She counts it. “This is three hundred and eighty dollars.”

“Tom thought you’d need more.”

Nila lights the night with a smile and hugs me. Her head comes just under my chin and I hold her too long, knowing I may never see her again and wanting to give her my last bit of strength. By the red neon light of the Dairy Queen sign, her face looks flushed.

“Well, I gotta get going.” She stares down the road, looking for Gibby. “I want to make it to Columbus tonight.” Then she ducks out of my embrace, trots to the van, and gets in. “Don’t worry. I’ll get this back to you.” She holds up the money balled in her fist. “And don’t
ever
tell Gibby where I’ve gone.” Nila waves again and spins out in the gravel.

“Wait!” I yell after her. “Wait! I forgot.” I run across the parking lot, and when Nila stops I lean into the driver’s-side window. Seven serious children of all sizes stare back at me. Three are strapped in car seats. “I got your labs back. I found out why you’re so tired. You’re pregnant again. You and Doug are pregnant with a new baby!”

Nila grins. “I figured.” “You figured?”

“Yeah, you know how I am.” She beams. “My nipples are sore,

and no period. I was a little sick to my stomach yesterday.” She touches my cheek with the tips of her fingers. “I’ll write . . . You’re a peach.”

As the red lights of the van fade away I hear geese overhead in the dark wet sky. Geese going north again, going home to breed. I get back in my Civic and stare at the bag of food that I’d purchased for Nila and the kids.

When I walk into the bedroom, Tom’s watching a nature show on PBS about global warming. “No dieting tonight.” I toss the bag of chocolate chip cookies on the bed and go to the fridge for two glasses of milk.

Almost Heaven

I’m driving a vanload of artwork across West Virginia to Athens, Ohio, in the 4Runner. Orion has a show in a gallery in Cincinnati next weekend, and I’m meeting him halfway to trade vehicles. These four-foot-by-five-foot framed prints and drawings have been stored in our basement for months. Our son has nowhere to keep them in his narrow walk-up in the city. Tom offered to come with me but was pleased when I said I’d make the run alone. He gets so little time at home lately. This will give him a chance to work in his pottery studio. My only worry is that with no one to keep me com-pany, I’ll fall asleep at the wheel.

I pick up the freeway at Clarksburg and take Route 50 toward Parkersburg, passing the exits for West Union, Salem, Cairo, and North Bend State Park. This isn’t the scenic route, but all of West Virginia is scenic. Along the freeway the creeks are swollen from days of rain. Last week a woman and her grandson were killed near here when their trailer was swept away in a flash flood. I pass signs for Raccoon Run, Ten Mile Creek, and Dark Hollow.

Thirty miles into Ohio, I miss the turnoff to Athens, home of Ohio University. This is where Orion got his bachelor of fine arts, but I haven’t been here in over two years. I circle down State Street back to Bob Evans, a chain restaurant with comfort food. Here, Orion and I meet for dinner and to trade vehicles for a few weeks, his small Honda for the 4Runner loaded with artwork.

I look across the table at him. “So how are you?”

He’s shaved his long goatee and I can now see the cleft in his chin, just like Tom’s. His eyes are like Tom’s too, the warm green of sum-mer fields. He shrugs as he cuts up his steak. “I met a new girl,” my middle son says, wiping his mouth.

This sounds positive. “Yeah?”

With my boys, if I appear overly interested they’ll clam up, so I casually stare at the family in the next booth, but all my attention is on Orion. “She someone from the university?”

“No, I met her at the bar where my artist friends hang out on Fridays. She’s a nursing student at the community college. Really cute.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows. “We hit it off. She has a two-year- old.”

I shrug. “Mica was two when I got together with Tom.”

We eat for a while, not saying anything. Though physically he so much resembles Tom, inside Orion’s like me, intense, dramatic, sensitive.

“Did you ask her out?” I finish my salad and push away my plate. Orion is only half done with his steak. He’s the slow eater in the family.

“Yeah, I’m taking her to the zoo on Saturday with her little girl, Lizzy.”

We finish eating and stand behind the restaurant, ready to leave. “I got an e-mail from Lucy the other day,” Orion says, carefully adjusting his drawings and prints in the back of the 4Runner. “It’s been almost two years since she left me. It’s funny, I found I wasn’t angry at her anymore. She’s going out with some sculptor in DC. I didn’t even care, just wished her well. It was a good feeling.”

We hug in the parking lot. Orion holds me tight against his worn brown leather jacket. “Thanks, Mom,” he says and gives me a grin just like his dad’s.

Fifty minutes later, back into West Virginia, I once again pass the signs for Dark Hollow, Ten Mile Creek, and Raccoon Run. My eyes are getting heavy. I shake my head and open the window to breathe deeply the scent of honeysuckle and hay. We got the check from Accordia on Friday as Miss Hooper had said we would. I have to remember to order everyone flowers.

Ahead, the full moon rises over the hills, shining golden like a porthole to heaven. I’m getting sleepy again and shake my head. When I turn on the radio a song comes on like the sound track of a movie. It’s John Denver.

Country roads, take me home.

aran

“Trish? It’s Patsy. Can you talk?” I hold the phone under my ear as I sort the mail at the dining room table. The door to the porch is open and the sound of the peepers comes in with the sweet fragrance of lilacs.

“It’s kind of a bad time; what’s up? Melody’s fussing.” I can hear the sound of a wailing baby in the background.

“I know, it’s almost nine o’clock, too late for a call, but this can’t wait. Can you call me back after you get the kids settled?”