“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 forget 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 company, 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 summer 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?”
“I don’t know, Pats, I’m beat. It’s been an exhausting day. I’ll probably fall asleep with Melody. Is it important? I mean, could it wait until tomorrow? I’ll meet you for lunch.”
“Yeah, I guess so, but you might want to hear this tonight. I was going through some of the stories I’ve been writing and found one about Aran. You know what we were talking about before, about the autopsy and what that cop told you?”
“You mean the detective saying she committed suicide?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a moment of silence, and I make a face. Maybe this was a bad idea. Finally, Trish sighs resignedly. “Okay, just give me a sec, let me see if Dan can feed Melody. Hold on.” The phone clunks down on the table. There’s silence on the line and then—
“Okay, I’m back. Let me close the door. I’ll do the dishes while we talk.”
“No, you better sit down. I found something that Aran said to me a long time ago. Remember that time I asked her about depression? Remember that? When I read this I felt she was speaking right to us.”
Trish sighs. “I’m sitting.” I hear the scrape of a chair, can picture the sink full of dishes, the smell of meat loaf still in the air.
“Well, it was the visit I had with Aran in the exam room right after she started staying out all night. Remember? I was concerned she had postpartum depression and was soothing herself by getting high or drunk. I told her the story of when I used to live on the farm and had postpartum depression. So, are you ready for this?”
“Yeah, go ahead. I’m sitting.” I can tell that she’s not. Plates are clinking softly in the background, but I go on.
“Okay, so here’s what I wrote. I printed it out. We were in the exam room and I’d just asked her if she ever thought of killing herself, you know, just to escape. And this is what she told me, word for word. I swear, Trish, this is exactly what she said.”
I clear my throat, reading Aran’s words aloud. “‘No, I could never do that. I think that this is the life God gave me and even if it hurts right now, everything happens for a purpose. I really believe that. I didn’t want to have a baby. I never wanted to be a mom. I don’t even like little kids very much. But I got one, for whatever reason. I would never kill myself. I would never.’”
There’s silence on the other end of the phone, no clinking, no breathing. “Trish? Did you hear that? She would never kill herself. Never.”
“Thanks, Patsy.” I picture Trish with her eyes closed, her sandy head leaning back on the kitchen wall.
“Are you okay? I’m sorry. Did it make you feel worse? It made me feel better. Her death was an accident. I’m sure of it.”
“No, I’m okay. It’s good. I’m glad you called. Can I get a copy of that for Dan?”
“Sure. I’ll bring one tomorrow … I’m really sorry if I made you sad.”
“No, it’s just that when you read what she said I could hear her voice so clearly, and I miss her so much. Even if she was rotten sometimes, I miss her, and she’s never coming back—” A door opens and I can hear Melody crying again. “I got to go now,” Trish says, and the line clicks off.
Shit. I’m not sure the call was the right thing to do. Maybe I should have waited. I’m always so impulsive.
I read the passage to myself again, remembering the beautiful teenager.
“I would never kill myself. I would never.”
Pestilence
Something is wrong today, I can tell. All morning I’ve heard my husband sigh. I know that sigh. He’s depressed. I watch him as he passes back and forth from his exam rooms to the lab. He’s avoiding me.
At noon I tread cautiously into his office, put his bag lunch on the desk, close the door, and flop down in his leather guest chair. “Nila sent a letter that she made it to South Dakota without the car breaking down. She’s with Doug again and she sent a check for the whole three hundred and eighty. Something wrong?” I ask Tom, touching his arm. “What’s up?”
“It’s a letter,” he says, meeting my eyes. “Another damn letter.” He hands over an envelope with Community Hospital’s return address.
“What is it?” I remove the stationery and contemplate the signature on the bottom: Leonard Noble, MD, Chief of Staff. “What does he want?”
Tom opens his cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread. He inspects the pickle and mayo, closes it, and takes a big bite. He may be low, but it doesn’t interfere with his appetite.
“It’s a case from four months ago,” he says with his mouth full. “The peer-review committee is requesting my rationale for not staging the lymph nodes in a woman with uterine cancer.” He talks while he chews, and then swallows. “I was working with Dr. Jamison, doing a hysterectomy on Cybil Reinhart. She had a bad Pap test, cancer in situ.” He takes another big bite. “When we opened the patient and went to take out the uterus, it was all mush, obviously full of cancer. We could have staged her lymph nodes, assessed the invasion of cancer, but it wasn’t necessary.” He sighs again. “She’ll still get both chemotherapy and radiation.”
“So why does Noble need to talk to you?” My paranoia is running wild. “Maybe the committee’s going to restrict your privileges? Did the patient ever come back for a post-op? Is she okay?” I’m pacing around the room like a trapped lioness. “Maybe she’s seen a lawyer. I’ll call her, see how she’s doing, feel her out.”
I should stop, but I can’t. “You call Dr. Jamison and see if he got a letter from peer-review too—”
“Stop, Patsy. That’s why I don’t tell you about these things.”
“What things? Are there more?”
“Yeah,” he snaps. He’s being mean now, and throws it out. “Mrs. Teresi, the neurologist’s wife with post-op complications, failed to show up for her follow-up appointment today. When I had Sherry call her, all Dottie Teresi would say is she’s never coming back to our practice. She’s seeing a gynecologist in Pittsburgh from now on.”
Something splits open in me. Something purulent and rotten, like a boil that’s been festering just under the skin. “Shit, she’s going to s
ue! Remember, I told you. I told you this would happen.”
“Do you want the rest of that?” Tom asks, nodding toward my lunch.
“How can you eat?” I shove my cheese sandwich at him and it spills down his front. We both stare at the dime-size gob of mayonnaise sliding down his favorite silk Beatles tie.
“Patsy, get out of here.” Tom jumps from his chair, wiping himself. “I don’t want your help, and I don’t want to be near you. You’re crazy when you get like this. I’m her physician. I’ll take care of it!”
He’s backing me toward the door. My husband isn’t a big man, but he’s mostly muscle. He hasn’t touched me, but there’s threat in his voice. When Tom Harman’s mad, you don’t want to be there.
Still, I’m the one with no self-control. If I had something to throw right now, I’d do it. I look wildly around the room and, not seeing anything I can get my hands on, pull open the door, planning to slam it in his face. Sherry, Tom’s nurse, stands just outside.
“Your first afternoon patient is ready in room one,” she says formally and abruptly hands me the chart.
KAZ
Kaz frowns as I’m palpating his hairy abdomen. “Do you think Dr. Harman would do a hysterectomy on me?” I pull down the thin blue cotton exam gown to cover his masculine belly. At this moment the mere mention of Tom Harman’s name enrages me and I don’t give a damn what Dr. Harman would or wouldn’t do, but I take a deep breath to calm myself and answer professionally.
“I imagine he would. The trouble is, your insurance won’t cover it. I mean, what would we use for a medical necessity? There’s no bleeding or pain.”
“Yeah, I know, I just wondered.”
I turn to wash my hands and hold out the tissues. The checkup over, Kaz pushes up to sit on the end of the exam table. “I’m thinking of saving my money and paying for it myself. Someday, I’d like to stop having these Pap tests.” He runs his hands over his hairy thighs.
I’m vaguely uncomfortable, not used to sitting alone with a naked man in the exam room. There’s something disorienting about his being here in this safe feminine haven. Kaz has no womanly contours. His body is muscular and hairy. Still, he has a vagina, uterus, and ovaries and has to be examined, like the rest of us.
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