The Reading Lessons (43 page)

For Meg, waiting for her test results was an excruitating experience. Panic took hold of every spare second of her life that wasn’t suitably mired in distraction. In vivid detail, she recalled every balled up Kleenex she’d retrieved from under Old Hadley’s bed in the last few weeks. She’d washed her hands over and over again, she reminded herself. But did she wash well enough? Sometimes she was in a hurry. 

Laying in bed at night, she wondered about the temperture of the dishwater she used to clean Old Hadley’s drinking glasses. Was it hot enough to kill his deadly germs? And what about that half empty bag of peanut M&Ms she’d found in the cabinet and dipped into one night when she hadn’t gotten a chance to eat dinner. It seemed impossible that she could have avoided catching his terminal illness.

Whenever there was a lull in customers at the bank, she’d find herself standing frozen behind the counter, listening to Dr. Simon with his kindly owl eyes speaking to her inside her head, informing her that there was no hope. It terrified her that she could not daydream him saying that the tests had come back, and that everything was fine. She sat in her car on her lunchbreak and practiced giving her parents the bad news. She rehearsed what to say when her friends learned that she was dying. She wept on her tuna sandwiches.

Grandma was cranky so no change there. Whether this was due to a fear of dying or rage over Old Hadley’s intentions to put himself in harm’s way for tests that could not possibly beneifit him in any way or simply just her usual unpleasant funk, who could say? She refused to discuss anything relating to Old Hadley’s illness. She refused to say much of anything at all. 

Old Hadley looked placid enough, but he jumped everytime Meg or Grandma wallked through the bedroom door. “Anything?” 

Meg didn’t like having to put on a happy face for him when she was worried sick inside, but acting like everything would be okay had the unexpected effect of helping her believe that it might. Truth be told, their shared case of nerves about the test results provided a temporary excuse to worry about something besides his own very real, very much confirmed diognoisis. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him one afternoon.

He shook his head. “My prayers are tied up with other business right now.”

The call finally came at 3 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon at the bank. Meg was not supposed to receive personal phone calls, but she’d requested to be notified about her test results the first minute they were available. When prune-faced Miss Dutton motioned her over to her desk and held out the phone, Meg gave no thought to the evil look she got. 

“Yes?” she gasped into the receiver.

“I’m pleased to tell you, Margaret, that your test revealed nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary in the least,” Dr. Simon said. Meg’s knees gave out, and she let out a sharp cry. Dutton was so shocked, the wrinkles on her face fell away, and she looked half-way human for half a second. A teenage boy signing up for a savings account gawked at her. “Carry on with good hand washing and follow all the precautions on the from we gave you . . . ” the doctor was saying, and Meg solemnly vowed that she would. 

Dr. Simon could not share Grandma’s results, and when Meg risked losing her job to ring the old woman at home, she got no answer. Waiting out the rest of her shift until five was second only in agony to waiting for her test results. The drive to Grandma’s had never seemed longer. When she reached Wisteria Walk, she found a note scotch-taped to the front door. 

Meg,

Please tell Hadley that I am not going to die. I hope as much for you. I am off to bed now.

Grandma

###

The University of Alabama sent a special medical team to travel with Old Hadley. They were springing for the airfare, too, and Old Hadley was tickled pink. He’d never been on an airplane before. Since the incident at the Hemrosa Avenue Clinic and her own misable experience with testing, Meg had noticed a lot of news stories about the general state of unrest going on. There were doctors who feared treating the disease. An infected college student had not been allowed to return to class. No one could promise Old Hadley that there would not be another angry mob on hand when they got to the medical center in Alabama, but this time they would be on the lookout for trouble.

With three full weeks of medication in him, Old Hadley was feeling improved and excited. He’d never been to Alabama before, and he got a dreamy look in his eyes anytime the word Alabama came up. 

Grandma, on the other hand, was still treating them both decidely cool. Her anger (or was it sorrow?) was turning her into a crazy old woman, and Meg was worried about her state of mind. The day before old Hadley was to leave for his trip, she gave Meg a musty old snow muff made of white fur and asked her to pack it in Hadley’s suitcase. “Don’t look at me like that, girl. Just put in there with his shirts. He’s going to need it.”

“In Alabama?” Meg said.

“Yes, in Alabama. You don’t know everything, missy.”

On the appointed day, Meg drove her grandma to the airport so they could see him off. They stood at a window and waved as his plane taxied down the runway. Well, Meg waved. Grandma was still too bent out of shape about the trip to do anything but scowl at him through the glass. He was to be gone two weeks.

Poor Patti Carol. She had no choice but to play pinochle in Old Hadley’s place every afternoon. The clock in the hall ticked extra loud and extra slow as they shuffled their cards. It was so loud, one could barely hear Meg’s feeble attempt at small talk under the tick tick tick. The only thing to cover the sound was the sporadic fits of fury that erupted whenever Patti Carol lost. 

Meg was back to bringing Big Macs. At first, every bite stuck in her throat, refusing to go down, but she learned to combat this by pretending that Old Hadley was out digging in the garden. The strategy worked well until the third day when Grandma dipped a French fry in a pool of ketchup on her china plate and said, “Hadley’s going to die.”

No one had mentioned this out loud since Dr. Simon had spelled it all out in his office. Old Hadley went home that day, took his medicine, and asked for a map and a red Magic Marker so he could trace the way to Birmingham. No one mentioned dying.

“Maybe it will take years,” Meg said. This was the only thing she could think to hope for. He was already an old man. Two or three more years would be about ordinary, wouldn’t it? “He’s had a long life.”

“You only say that because you’re not sitting where I am, Meg. Doesn’t seem long to me at all. I want longer.” She pushed her half-eaten burger away.

“Not to worry, Grandma. You’re so stubborn, I don’t guess you’ll die a minute sooner than you choose to.” 

“Damned right I won’t,” Grandma said.

Meg’s mother was still too busy to visit, even with Old Hadley out of the way, but she did send Tilda over with a crock pot of beanies and weenies one night. She paid the boy who cut their grass to cut Grandma’s grass, too. And the second week that Old Hadley was gone, she made an applesauce cake and wrapped up three pieces for Meg to take to Grandma. 

“I like chocolate better,” Grandma said when Meg gave her the cake. 

It was a long two weeks.

On the day Hadley flew home, Meg skipped her lunch break so she could leave an hour early and take Grandma to the airport to meet him. Grandma was furious that he had not called home even once. 

“I have half a mind to ring the little cheapskate’s neck when I see him,” she said as she waited for him to deplane at the gate. She tapped her foot and called him ten bad names for every minute that passed. Ungrateful son of a bitch. Thoughtless fool. Worthless no good shifty-eyed skinny-ass ugly old Negro with gay disease . . . 

“Hi,” he said, as his medical team rolled him off the plane in a wheelchair. He looked well enough, in spite of the wheelchair. He handed Grandma a bouquet of flowers. 

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Azaleas. I carried them all the way from Alabama.”

The woman who was pushing his chair confirmed this. “He held them in one hand and ate with the other.”

 “Smell ‘em,” Old Hadley said. “They smell just like lemons.”

Grandma took a tentative sniff.

“Don’t get too attached to them though,” he said. “You have to share them with Meg. I picked them for the both of you.”

###

God sure did know how to throw a mean curve ball. Meg’s friends wondered what had happened to her since she’d all but disappeared off the planet. Some thought it sweet when they found out she’d been spending her evenings with her grandma. Some thought she was weird. “But you don’t even like your grandma,” Brenda James said. Brenda was the sub on Meg’s bowling team, and she felt put out because she’d been promised she’d only need to fill in here and there, not every week. 

“Oh, she’s completely awful,” Meg said. “But I’m all she has right now.”

After Old Hadley got back from Alabama, her time was more her own. He was tired after the trip, but whatever they were giving him, he was not as sick as he was before. A few days after his return, he rubbed Grandma’s stinky old snow muff against his cheek and passed it back to the old woman. 

“Thanks for letting me borrow this, Lucinda,” he said, like he’d walked around Alabama wearing her silly fur muff. Either he was humoring Grandma or they were both a little nuts. It was hard to tell with old people. 

In any case, Grandma seemed less angry. Things felt more stable. Meg went back to visiting once a week. Old Hadley went back to his garden. He said he well might be the first person to survive Gay-related Immune Deficiency, which is what they were calling the disease in Alabama. 

For a while, it seemed like this might be true. Even Buckerfield and Simon were amazed by how well their old patient was faring. But the newspapers didn’t have anything promising at all to say about GRID. It crossed Meg’s mind a time or two to worry whether or not she could become infected. Buckerfield said no and Simon referred again and again to the Good Handwashing sheet. She washed her hands sore most days even so, a fact that caused her a good bit of shame even as she felt helpless to stop herself. One day she realized that, if they were to suddenly announce that the disease was catching through casual contact, she was hopelessly screwed. Somehow this freed her of the hand-washing compulsion. It also gave her a new appreciation for the fear that was griping the country. It was terrifying to think that this disease could slip into your blood and sleep there for years, waiting to reveal itself. 

“Aren’t you scared?’ she asked Old Hadley once.

“Sure I am.” He was putting away the pinochle cards at the time. “No one wants to be sick.”

“You don’t seem to be letting it bother you,” she observed.

“Oh, I’ve always been good at looking unbothered,” Old Hadley said.

His health remained decent through Meg’s birthday the following March, which seemed a minor miracle. He’d taken sick the previous spring, recovered by June, and had been feeling well for almost a full year. Between this and the fact that it was Meg’s twenty-first birthday, there was a lot to celebrate.

She had plans to go to a bar with some girls from work so Grandma was organizing an afternoon party for the family, a luncheon catered by her favorite restaurant. The dining room had been set up for fourteen guests, and Meg was excited.

A week earlier, her mom had asked what she wanted for her birthday. It was clear by the way the woman clapped her hands that she expected Meg to say she wanted a new tape deck or the fringy black dress they’d seen at the mall. “Name it, honey. This is a special birthday, and I want you to be happy.”

“Good,” Meg said. “Because what I really want more than anything in the world is for you to patch things up with Grandma.”

God! She might as well have asked her mom to cut off her own head and fork it over on a platter. “You can’t ask for that, Meg. That has nothing to do with you. It’s private.”

Meg was determined that things were going to change. Life was too short for this kind of nonesense. “And I want you to say hi to Old Hadley at my birthday luncheon, too. I’m tired of watching you ignore him every year like he doesn’t count.”

Mom gave their cat, Ichabod, a little kick with her foot. She knew Old Hadley might not have long to live, but she hated to give up a fight. “Its just so quixotic of you to even ask for such a thing,” she snapped. Mom was fond of using bizarre words that nobody understood. “Oh all right. I’ll do it. But only because it’s your birthday.”

On the day of her party, Meg arrived early because Grandma said she had something special to give her before everyone else arrived. It was a book called
The Meaning of Flowers
, and it looked very old. “Hadley gave me this years ago, and I thought you might find it interesting.”

Meg was too stunned to speak. Grandma was known for giving meaningless gifts. Meg had more monogramed fingertip towels than the law allows. Too touched to do anything else, she gave her grandmother the first real hug she’d ever given her.

“It’s just a crumbling old book,” Grandma said.

Before the doorbell started ringing, Meg went into the dining room and rearranged the place cards. She put her mother across from Old Hadley and next to Grandma, even though Grandma originally had Mom at the other end between the two boys. She reminded herself to be happy if her grandma and her mother would simply drop The Nod and actually say a few real words to each other. She had especially high hopes when it came to Old Hadley. 

Ever since Mom had heard he was terminal, she’d been better about asking after him. She even looked a little worried on occasion. Old Hadley was the main reason Meg had asked her mother for this particular gift this year. The old man had watched Meg’s mom grow up and for some unfathomable reason, he still seemed to care how she treated him, even though it was never good. If Mom would just say hello to him, it would make his day, Meg was sure of it. He perked right up when Meg told him that Mom was looking forward to seeing for herself how he was doing today. She wondered if the new blue shirt he was wearing was for Mom. The color somehow made him look more robust than normal. Then again, maybe he was just in a good mood.