The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (10 page)

My farm is situated on the western edge of the town; Gina’s address was several miles to the southeast, but I found myself driving in her direction.  It wasn’t so strange, when I finally started thinking rationally again, because I knew I had to see her. And once I started thinking again, I couldn’t stop.  As I drove, my mind was racing faster than the car’s engine.  I didn’t know if Gina would be home—she probably drove straight to Cal’s--but I had to find out; I had to see her.  I had no idea what I would say to her, was terrified at what she would say to me, but the look she had given me as she turned away had worked its way into my pores and I had to at least try for absolution.  But absolution from what?  I had told her that Donny and I were not seeing each other and I felt bad for making that seem like a lie.  I had also told Gina about my weakness around men and I was disappointed in myself for having let her see that weakness.  Still, I told myself that who I dated or slept with was none of her business.  But I didn’t think of turning the truck around.

Hundreds of snippets of conversation were born and died on that ride, yet I didn’t understand why I was so upset.  Gina was the enemy; had always been the enemy.  Yet she was also the one who had always forced me to the limit of my powers and beyond.  And in the last couple of days she had been kind to me. 

The sun had gone down and it was difficult for me to see street signs, so when I got into Gina’s neighborhood I had to drive up and down a couple of times before I finally found the right street—the green metal sign on its crooked pole was half-hidden by a cedar limb growing on a corner lot.  It wasn’t a ritzy neighborhood; but it wasn’t a poor one, either.  Most of houses looked small, maybe one or two bedroom, and most had brick facades.  It was already too dark to see the numbers on mailboxes, but when I had driven almost to the end of the street I spotted Gina’s light PT Cruiser in a short asphalt driveway in front of a cozy-looking house—more of a cottage than a family residence.  I turned off my lights and parked in back of the Cruiser.  In that order.  Didn’t I want her to know I was there?  Did I want to be able to back out?  Who knows.  I got out of the car quickly and walked just as quickly up to a short porch leading to the front door.  There I stopped, not because I had changed my mind, but because I heard the faint strumming of a guitar coming from just inside the door.  I quieted my steps and climbed the porch until I could look in the window.  Gina was sitting in an armchair, playing a guitar and singing softly.  Her voice and the music were country, the words something about heartache.  Her eyes were open and she looked straight ahead.  She didn’t look sad.  She didn’t look anything.

I knocked loudly on the door, but if I expected Gina to be startled, I was mistaken.  She simply leaned the guitar against the far arm of the chair, got up, and came to the door.  She was wearing a loose t-shirt, a pair of ragged, cutoff jeans, and nothing else.  Her hair was still damp from a shower.

She opened the door and looked at me as if she had expected me, yet she raised her eyebrows almost imperceptibly and asked, “What are you doin here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’ you be ‘restin?’”  Although there was no inflection in her voice I heard the irony.  She turned away from me and walked back to the armchair.

“I’ll rest after I’ve killed myself.”

Gina sat down in the chair tucking her legs and feet under her like a resting fawn, then looked back at me still standing in the open doorway.

“Comin in?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah thought you were the one who always knew everythin.”

“I don’t know anything,” I said desperately, but I closed the door and walked over and sat down on a couch near Gina’s armchair.  Just sat there, mute, for what must have been ten or twenty seconds. 

“So,” Gina began.  “You and Donny’s a thing again, huh?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “No.”

“No?” 

My head had started throbbing again, probably had been throbbing for hours and I had left my pills in the truck. “You think I’m a hose monster, don’t you?” I asked, but didn’t let her reply.  Instead, I continued quickly, “I’m not.  I’m . . . I’m a need magnet.  There’s something that draws me toward guys with problems.  Donny just came over to see if I was all right.  Dilly told him that story about me being in an accident.  I didn’t even want him in the house, but when he was, things started, you know, replaying themselves—he started brooding and getting down on himself and generally blaming himself for every problem in the world.  One look at Donny hidin his face in his hands and lookin like he was ready to cry and I was just as drowned as if I had jumped in a pond with a tractor in my pocket.” 

I knew I was starting to babble and I forgot twelve years of self-imposed elocution lessons between one breath and another.  “When me and Donny broke up, I missed him some, I did,” I told her.  “I didn’t wanna be lonely, but at the same time I didn’t wanna feel sucked on all the time.  It’s like I’m this big nipple connected to all the answers in the world.  I’m about sucked out and I don’t have many answers left.  I let Donny down just like I let down ten or twenty guys before him.”

“Let him down how?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted.  I looked at Gina and tried to concentrate, to explain what was going through my mind.  “When guys are with me, they don’t feel like losers.  They feel good about themselves, they get motivated.  But it takes so much out of me.  Why do you think Donny and me split?  It’s because I was gettin too weak to prop him up.  Linda C is perfect for him because she’s so good at it.”

“It’s all she knows how to do,” said Gina. 

“Wanna hear somethin worse?” I went on.   “I got a phone message from Jack Stafford—the guy I lived with in Richmond.  He wants to drive down and see me; I think he wants us to get back together.  I could’ve picked up the phone and told him to stay put, but I didn’t.  An I really, really don’t want to see him!” 

“Wah not?” she asked curiously.

“Guilt, what do you think?  Raw, unadulterated guilt.  I’m not sayin that all my old boyfriends are saints, but Donny and Jack are both nice guys.  They came to me because they needed me to feel good about themselves.  And I left em worse off than they were before.”

“That ain’t true, Sue-Ann.”

“Then I left
myself
worse off, okay?  I wasted years taking care of guys instead of gettin on with my own life.  And I can’t help it, when I’m alone with guys like Jack or Donny I just let em feed.  Is it any wonder that I tried to steal Cal from you?  Oh, shit, Gina,” I cried, leaning forward and putting my throbbing head in my hands.  “What’s wrong with me?  Why don’t I think before I do stupid things like lettin Donny mess with me when all I wanted was for him to go home and be happy with Linda C?  I hurt everybody I’m around,” I babbled, “and someday I’m gonna hurt somebody I love.”  And with that I lost it completely and started sobbing loudly.  Gina let me cry and cry and when I finally quit and raised my head and wiped my wet hands on my pants I realized how I must look. 

“God,” I breathed.  “I’m such a mess.”

Gina appeared not to have moved, but I thought I saw a narrow wet streak down one of her cheeks.  She slowly uncoiled her body and rested her bare feet on the coffee table.  Her cutoffs showed a full twelve inches of thigh and she had removed the polish from her toenails.  I stared.  They were even more perfect than before.

“That’s it, Gina,” I said.  “Just make me fucking crazy.”

“That’s what ah do,” Gina said simply.  “Ah make people crazy.  But don’t worry, it don’t last.  People screw me, then screw me over.  So you see, you’re not the only one who’s a mess.”   She leaned over and began massaging her feet.  “It’s your fault,” she finished.

“My fault?” I said stupidly.

“Didn’t ya know?” she smiled. 

“I told you,” I said desperately, “I don’t know anything.”

She tucked her feet back under her and looked at me like she might look at a painting in a museum.  “Ah always knew ah was better’n you in some things, but ah was always scared that they were the
wrong
things.  So ah kept tryin to get smarter, to do things that were more important, to do things that
you
maht do, although ah woulda died if anyone’d guessed.  And what ah found out was that ah didn’t have any use.  After you left and went off to college ah didn’t have anyone around me that was worth the inside of a pig’s butt, so ah started askin myself questions, lahk, you know, lahk why ah was alahve, so ah started tryin to read stuff, to learn, to trah and find out how ah could do somethin that would have any value.  And ah
did
learn stuff, and ah
did
better mahself, but it made things worse.  That’s how ah lost Jimmy—he didn’t lahk it that ah was smarter’n him.  If ah’da been stupid, we’d still be together.”

“Do you wish you were still married to Jimmy?” I asked softly.

“Of course not, but it’s because ah
know
better.  Remember ah told you about mah professor in Tallahassee?  Well ah lost him because ah never got quite smart
enough
.  Even after he knocked me up ah knew he’d leave.  All he wanted was somebody that could discuss, ah dunno, Keynes or Heegel or some other dead asshole over the breakfast table.”

“And all this happened because of me?” I asked, shyly.

“Gloat if you wanna.”

“There’s no gloating involved,” I told her.  “You win, Gina.”

“Win what?”  She gave me that museum look again.

“This lifelong war we’ve been having to see who’s best.  It’s no contest.  Maybe it was once, but not any more.  Look at me—banged up, sick as a drunk, disillusioned about everything in the world you can name.  I’ve been to a place where I saw people die and I’ve run back to a place where no one knows how to live.  I’m a blot on the landscape and you’re still the shining diamond you always were.  I lied when I said I didn’t know anything because I do know one thing, and it makes me feel like a boulder has rolled downhill right into my stomach.  I know that you win and I lose.”

Gina looked at me.  Only her green eyes had any expression, but it was those eyes—bright and questioning in the lamplight—that calmed me and let me feel like coming to see her had been the one thing on earth that I had needed to do.  She got up from her chair and leaned over me.  She fiddled with my bandage with gentle fingers.  Then she reached out and wiped a smudge from behind my ear with a fingertip and studied it.  It was grease.  She wiped it on her cutoffs, put both hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes.  “Sue-Ann,” she said softly, only inches from my face, “either we both win or we both lose.”   She took her hands away and sat back down in her armchair.  Still looking at me, she lit a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table, and curled into her resting-fawn attitude.

“What does that
mean
?”  I asked, getting frantic.  I couldn’t believe that I had once considered Ginette Cartwright a bimbo, or that I had ever considered myself intelligent.  It seemed like everything that came out of her mouth had about six meanings.

“You jist go home and think about it, Sue-Ann.  And figure out how you’re going to get better.”

And then I remembered.  “Gina,” I said excitedly. “You know that doctor you saw in my hospital room?”

“Ah remember.  He stopped me in the hall when I was leavin and asked me a few questions.”

“Like your phone number?” I asked.

“Questions about you,” she replied.

“I think he might know what’s wrong with me.  He did some tests.  Said he’d call me with the results.”

Gina smiled and straightened up in her chair.  “That’s great, darlin.  But, ya know, that’s not what ah meant just then about you gittin better.”

Her words sobered me.  “You mean, this thing I have with men?”  Too late I realized the double meaning in my own words, but I couldn’t call them back.

Gina’s lips twitched but she pretended she hadn’t caught on.  “If they’re the
wrong
men, yes.” she said.  “You need to straighten it out, don’t ya think?”

“I guess there’s a lot of things I need to straighten out.”

“And you need to git home and git some rest.  Some
real
rest.”

“Will you play the guitar for me?”

“Not to-naht,” she was still smiling.

“I’ll keep asking until you do,” I told her, rising from the couch and moving toward the door.  “Maybe I’ll see you in the office this week.”

“Stay home and rest,” she told me.

“Thanks for listening to me,” I told her. “I owe you.”

“An ah’ll collect someday,” she said.

“What does
that
mean?”  I asked.

Gina just kept on smiling.

Chapter 7

I went straight home after I left Gina’s but as usual, couldn’t sleep.  The moon was almost full and shone like a flashlight through the open curtains.  I was fatigued and felt my heart running its long-distance race, but I was alert, wide-eyed in the semidarkness.  I thought briefly about the sex with Donny earlier, winced, and passed on.  My muscles tightened involuntarily as I thought of Gina seeing him draped over my half-naked body; but that, too, I could pass over without much reflection.  My mind kept going back to Gina’s porch, hearing the chords of her guitar and her soft voice.

I didn’t know what to make of her.  I had never really had any close female friends—only professional acquaintances or women I occasionally met at archery competitions—no one who could sluice the impurities off my heart as Gina had done.  It felt strange, like the first bite of a glorious new dish.  Sick as I was, screwed up as I could possibly be, I felt more at peace than I had for years and I finally closed my eyes and drifted off, smiling at the ceiling.

I awoke somewhat later with a headache.  I had been dreaming about my mother.  I guess coming close to death reminds us of other deaths we have known, and certainly my mother’s was the one closest and most frightening to me.  I remembered her long legs, her assurance, her perfect balance when she walked and when she rode.  Riding had not just been her passion, it was what had molded her as a girl and continued to craft and perfect her until the day she died.  And when anyone complimented her on some achievement or some personal quality, she was quick to give credit to her horses.  I thought about her horses with sadness.  Where were they now?  My dad had probably not given a thought as to what kind of homes they had gone to and my overtaxed mind saw them having to stand in deep snow or exercise in a barbwire-enclosed quarter-acre of hock-deep mud.  I made another resolve to ask him where they had gone and, sleepily, imagined buying horses of my own, cleaning out the stables, and reconstructing the dressage ring. 

Then I thought of Gina again, but this time we were back in high school.

My first rated jumping competition was also my last.  Getting dumped by my horse had nothing to do with it but having Ginette Cartwright come to my rescue and possibly save me from serious injury was too much for my sixteen-year-old psyche to handle with any kind of grace.  I still rode and I still jumped, but only at schooling shows—venues that would never tempt an experienced rider like Gina.  When I saw her at school I would sometimes smile, sometimes nod, and sometimes cut her dead.  She would do the same, depending on her mood and, except for a brief contest of wills on this or that school matter, our senior year passed uneventfully.  But I remember many episodes in which she influenced me in subtle, almost unaccountable ways.

One incident concerned a Mexican boy named Jorge, who I knew from the boys’ bowling team.  He was nice enough and fairly good looking—straight teeth, straight black hair.  He dressed casually but always looked clean and fresh, kind of like a plate just out of the dishwasher.  But his English was poor and sometimes Linda C and some of the others in the popular crowd would make fun of him.  I would see Jorge sometimes in the school cafeteria, and we would practice our English and Spanish together over lunch.  I really didn’t think much about him until one Thursday I saw Ginette at his table as I entered the lunchroom.  I was furious at Ginette; I thought we had moved beyond that kind of cheapness.  Used to thinking on my feet, I turned and spied an acquaintance on the yearbook staff and persuaded her to walk across the street to Hardees for a Texas sourdough bacon cheeseburger.  I was sure Jorge hadn’t seen me, but Ginette had; and as her gaze found mine her face was totally expressionless.

The next day, Jorge was waiting for me before school, outside my home room.

“I didn’ see you yesterday at lunch,” he began, his white teeth gleaming.

“You looked busy yesterday,” I told him.

“What, you saw me sitting with blondie?” he said.

“I saw you sitting with Ginette Cartwright,” I told him.

“I was waitin for you and she just come and sit down,” he said.

“What did she want?” I asked.

“I donno.  Just asking me stupid questions bout my family.  Prolly just lookin for somethin to tell her friends so they can laugh.”

“Maybe she was just curious,” I said.  “Don’t you like her?”

“She’s pretty, but stupid like a cow.  I tole the bitch she better go back to her own table.  Twat mus think I’m a moron.”

Jorge never understood why, but that morning I found an excuse not to meet him for lunch, and I found other excuses on other days until finally he lost interest.  Ginette was my bitterest enemy, but she was neither stupid nor bovine.  On the other hand, if she thought Jorge was a moron, that was good enough for me.

You know, things like that.

I managed to doze off again long enough for the telephone to shake me like a rattle at about 9:30 the next morning.  I picked it up before I knew what I was doing.

“Wha?” I answered.

“Good, good,” came back a bright, vaguely familiar voice.  “I’m glad to see that you’re getting a lot of bed rest.”

“Who’s this?”

“Will Morris, your friendly neighborhood intern.”

I sat up in bed, instantly and completely awake.  “You found out what’s wrong with me,” I stated.

“Yes indeedy,” he said.

“What?” I urged. 

“Hmmm?”

“What do I have?”

“That would be telling.”

It took me an hour to shower, dress in the clothes I had worn to Gina’s the night before, and drive into Forester.  At the hospital it took only a few minutes until I was shown into an examining room, and only a few minutes more before Mr. Blue Smock walked in, pencil in teeth and clipboard in hand.

“Mmmphh,” he began, but I gave him a quick vicious look and he took the pencil out of his mouth and said “Morning.”

“For another few seconds.”

“Time flies when you’re cutting people open,” he replied.  “Let me have a look at your head.”

I leaned over and he began taking off the bandages.  “What have you—” I began, but he cut me off. 

“You need to be quiet while I do this,” he said.  Very softly, he swabbed my wound with some kind of antiseptic solution.  “It’s healing nicely,” he said.  “Is it giving you any trouble?”

“Itches,” I said.

“I’ll give you some pills,” he replied.  “Right now I’m going to replace these bandages with this patch.  Leave it alone or it’ll come off.  And I’ll give you a couple more patches for when you screw up and it
does
come off.  But we’ll leave the stitches in for another few days.  Then you can concentrate on growing out that fabulous shock of dark hair.”

“Rat’s nest, you mean,” I said grumpily.

“Okay, I’m through.  Sit up.”

Will Morris took a seat next to me and crossed his legs.  He grinned and ran his hand through his hair.  “You’re lucky I played golf in college,” he said.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” I told him.

“You have Graves’ disease,” said Dr. Morris.

“Never heard of it,” I responded.  “What does it have to do with golf?”

“Ben Crenshaw had it,” he answered.

“Never heard of him,” I told him.  “What’s Graves’ disease?”

“It means you have an overactive thyroid,” he explained.  “And Ben Crenshaw was one of the top golfers in the world until he went through a bad slump that couldn’t be explained by nerves or a poor swing.  I may not be much of a doctor, but I know a lot about golf.”   

“He had, um, Graves’ disease?”

“Right.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He was cured by the miracle of modern medicine,” he smiled.  “And won the Masters a couple of years later.”

“What does it mean?” I asked. “I mean, what’s happening in my body?”

“Okay.  The thyroid gland is located right here.”  He touched the lower part of his neck, right below his Adam’s apple.  “It releases hormones that regulate how fast your body uses energy—if you’re walking leisurely down the street, looking in store windows, your thyroid tells your body not to burn up a whole lot of energy.  If you’re playing a hard game of soccer, your thyroid releases a bigger dose of the hormones because you’re exerting yourself more.  It causes your body to burn up more fuel—more stored fat and anything else your body burns.  Clear so far?”

“I guess.  Yes.”

“That’s a normal thyroid. But when your thyroid is overactive it makes more of these hormones than you need.  You might still be doing leisurely window shopping, but your body thinks you’re running a marathon.  You burn fuel, your heart rate increases, you get the sweats, you lose weight, and all without the benefit of exercise.”

“How did I get it?” I asked.

“Who knows,” he shrugged.  “Some say it’s genetic, some say environmental; there’s a lot of theories.  Maybe I’ll have my own one day.”

“Could it kill me?” I asked.

“Could,” he said. “Especially if you insist on running around in the woods playing investigative reporter.” 

“Can’t you give me a pill or something?” I asked.

“It’s more complicated than that,”

“I thought it might be,” I said. 

“Sue-Ann,” he began.  “There’s no cure for Graves’ disease.”

“But it can be treated,” I said. “You told me about Ben Crenshaw.”

“Yes. It may take a few months, but you can get pretty close to normal again.  Get your weight and strength back, get your heart rate down, get that shock of beautiful dark hair thick and shiny and long again.  Right now I’m going to give you some antithyroid drugs that will bring your levels down to normal and some literature on treatment options.  Then you’ll have to make a choice.”

“What kind of a choice?”

“You can keep taking these hormone adjustment drugs.  That’s the first choice.  Sometimes, that will actually fix the thyroid, at least for a while and you can stop taking them.  Trouble is, your thyroid might go bananas again at any time, like maybe in the middle of a soccer game.  Then you’re SOL.

“The second option is to shrink the thyroid with radioactive iodine and take hormone replacements for the rest of your life.  The bad news about that one is that you can’t have sex for about a week after the treatment.  Bummer.”

“It will make me sick?” I asked.

“It will make you radioactive,” he answered.

“There’s a third option?”

“The third option is to have your thyroid surgically removed.” 

“Like having your appendix out?” I asked.

He looked at me seriously.  “Your appendix isn’t useful, your thyroid gland is. Without the hormones it spits out, you’ll die.”

“And I can avoid that how?”

“You’ll need synthetic hormones.”

“For the rest of my life?”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“Is the operation dangerous?” I asked.

“Piece of cake.”

I walked out of the hospital in a kind of thoughtful daze.  I was glad to know that sometime, soon maybe, I would be back to normal.  But, although I had occasionally gotten high and had no qualms about taking a few Vicodins for a cracked skull, having to take drugs every day for the rest of my life was an idea that didn’t settle in easily.  I had been given a lot to digest, and I hardly noticed the miles back to Pine Oak. 

My route took me past
The Courier
office, so I stopped, hoping to see Gina so I could tell her the news.  I had taken my first dose of the antithyroid drug called PTU and I already thought I could tell a difference.  I thought I felt better, that I could see better, that my heart rate was slowing.  A similar dose of Placebo X would probably have done exactly the same, but I was feeling pretty good.

I walked into the office, but Gina was not at her desk.   I saw Betty toiling over her paste-up board and Cal was bent over some papers in his office with a pen in his hand.  I wondered if Gina had gone to his place after I left last night.  I took a breath and went in.  I was going to keep this short and businesslike.

Cal looked up and seeing me, smiled widely.  “Sue-Ann,” he said.  “Hey.  How are you?”  He was genuinely happy to see me.   I blinked.

“I’m okay, just banged up a little.”

“Listen, I wanted to come to the hospital . . .”

“S’awrght.  Gi—Ginette told me you were working on that housing cost piece.  Thanks for asking her to come.  It helped, having someone there when I woke up.”

“I don’t know why you were running around in the woods, Sue-Ann,” he began, “but I hope it didn’t have anything to do with a dead goat.”

“Any reason why I can’t go stump shooting in my spare time?” I asked.

“What’s that?  What’s stump shooting?”

“It’s what some people enjoy doing with bows and arrows in the woods.  Shoot at cans and pine cones and stumps.  It relaxes me, plus I usually pack out any trash I find.”

“You shoot bows and arrows?” he asked.  “You hunt?”

“No hunting.  I’m a target shooter.”