Specter (9780307823403)

by Nixon, Joan Lowery

  “I haven’t got a robe,” she says.

  “No problem.” I find a second hospital gown in the closet. It’s even bigger than the first, so it comes to her ankles. But I put it on with the opening in front, so she’s wearing them one on top of the other, back to back. It will never make the fashion scene, but it serves the purpose.

  She takes my hand as we walk. Her hand is a thin, five-pronged clamp, and I’m surprised again at her strength. Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent the last few months being weak. There’s a contrast.

  As we get close to the office, I hear Dr. Cruz saying, “Red tape! All this red tape! Why can’t people do things the sensible way?”

  “Tell her not to mail the application,” Dr. Lynn says. “I’ll pick it up. That will save time.”

  “What do they ask at the interview?” Mrs. Cardenas says. “I thought the hard part would be to get Carlos to say yes. But he said if it would keep me home, then he’d go for it. Now we gotta be interviewed. I don’t know what they’ll ask.”

  “TB test, food handler health card, fire inspection,” Julie’s doctor says. “All that will take time.”

  “I got a sister-in-law who’s a social worker for the county,” Mrs. Cardenas tells him. “I’ll call Dolores and see what she can do.”

  “It may take a few days,” Dr. Lynn says, “but it’s going to work out well for everyone. Mrs. Cardenas, we’re so glad that—”

  I step into the small office, pulling Julie with me. “We’re going to stay with you, Mrs. Cardenas? Really? Is it true?”

  She laughs. “Es verdad.”

  “It’s just a matter of getting through some forms, interviews, home checks—that sort of thing,” Dr. Cruz explains.

  “And in the meantime, we can get you both some clothes,” Dr. Lynn says.

  “What do you think? They worked it out with the office here to give me two weeks vacation time, so I still get paid, but I can quit at the end of the week!” Mrs. Cardenas’s cheeks are flushed, and she wiggles as though she wanted to bounce up and down. “I hope I get my party,” she adds.

  ‘What party?”

  “When somebody who works here leaves, the people on the floor usually have a cake and some punch. Areal nice party.”

  “You’ll certainly have your party,” Dr. Lynn says.

  I should be glad that Mrs. Cardenas wants us. But for some reason I am sad. Why? I try to move back, to look inside my mind, to find this mixed-up person who lives inside, but there are too many people in the room, too much chatter. I am locked into the now, planted firmly in the here.

  Dr. Lynn has moved beside me. She takes my other hand and leads me into the hall. Julie comes, too, with her grip that won’t let go.

  “On Thursday, Jack—Dr. Paull—and I are off duty. Would you like us to take you to the home where you lived, so you can see your friends? Get your things?”

  “Oh, yes!” Thursday is real. A square on the calendar. A time I can count on. Three days away. “Yes,” I repeat. “I’ll be ready.”

  “Can I come, too?” There is a tugging on my arm.

  I’d like to cry out at Julie, “I don’t want to be your mother!” but instead I take a long breath and wait.

  Dr. Lynn picks up the answer. “I think it would be nice if Julie came with us. After we drop you off to see your friends, Dr. Paull and I can show her some of the countryside.”

  Thank you thank you thank you thank you. “You’d like that, Julie. You wouldn’t know anyone at the home.”

  Julie thinks a moment, then nods. “Okay.”

  “I’ll let them know we’re coming,” Dr. Lynn says. “And I’ll make sure they give the message to Holley Jo.”

  The days go slowly. Dr. Lynn comes in each day to talk to Julie, and Mrs. Cardenas pops in as often as the witch on a temperature gauge who announces the rain in the dripping months of autumn. But Mrs. Cardenas’s announcements are all positive. Her sister-in-law got the paperwork speeded up, and her cousin, Carmen, is dating someone in the fire department who got the Cardenas house inspection at the head of the list. There’s a slight delay on the food handler license because none of the relatives have connections there, but Dr. Cruz has used his deep-voiced authority to try to get things moving in that department.

  “After my party on Friday,” Mrs. Cardenas tells us, “you’ll come home with me.”

  Wednesday, and Dr. Lynn has brought Julie some clothes. I have my jeans and blouse, which I wore when I came here. I put them on and stare at myself in the mirror. These are clothes that fit another girl who lived in another world. What am I doing, trying to put my skinny bones in pants so large I have to hold them up? In a blouse that droops over the shoulders and flaps around my waist?

  Mrs. Cardenas shakes her head when she sees me. “This is the place for a needle and thread,” she says. Somehow the juice cartons get delivered to patients in record time, and she comes back to our room with everything she needs to pin and tuck and sew and cut. I try the clothes on again, and this time they fit.

  Thursday moves from a long, sleepless night into a sudden rush of morning. The air is still, the sky is golden. I can’t eat. I am dressed and waiting in the chair by the window before Julie has even finished her breakfast.

  “Hurry up,” I tell her.

  “You keep saying that,” she complains. “Dr. Lynn won’t be here for a long time.”

  She dawdles, so I help her. I pull her twiglike arms through the sleeves of her T-shirt and jam the neck of it down over her head.

  “Ouch!” she says. “You messed up my hair.”

  “I’ll brush it for you.” More slowly, more gently, I brush her pale hair, reminding myself that she’s only nine years old.

  Dr. Lynn and Dr. Paull arrive together. His professional dignity is punctured with the smiles he keeps giving Dr. Lynn. He looks much nicer when he smiles.

  “We have a great day for a drive,” he says.

  And we do. The wild flowers are gone now, but the air is fragrant with sun-warmed field grass and the prickly-sour smell of new oak leaves.

  “I’d like us to be friends, Dina,” Dr. Paull says.

  “Okay,” I answer.

  It’s hard for him to unbend, but I can see that he’s trying, for Dr. Lynn’s sake. Then he tells us some fourth-grade jokes that he probably memorized from a book for kids. He’s just not with it. He’s wearing those green plaid slacks again, and it’s awfully hard not to think of him as “old grasshopper legs.”

  The highway passes the farms on the outskirts of Boerne and climbs past the exit to Kerrville. We chat about a number of things. What, I don’t know. My mind is already at the home.

  Holley Jo will be waiting for me. She’ll be wearing shorts, her legs already tanned, and she’ll brighten like the floodlights on the baseball field when she sees me coming. She’ll run to meet me, and we’ll hug each other and laugh, and she’ll try to tell me everything that has happened since we last were together. It will be like always. And I need it. I need it to happen just this way. I need her to say, “Oh, Dina! Welcome back! I’ve missed you so much!”

  It takes another hour before we are close enough so that I can recognize things: the old white house where the farm-market road cuts across the highway, the windmill that has been rotting away forever, the road to the right that leads to the home.

  I perch on the edge of my seat. It’s hard to breathe. Dr. Lynn smiles and says something to me, but I don’t hear her. I don’t want to hear. In a moment we’ll round the curve, and I’ll see Holley Jo.

  The car makes a wide swing, and I grip the seat in front of me. There is the main building. There is the porch. I am able to breathe again. I give a shout. There is Holley Jo, pacing in front, watching the road.

  She stops and stares. As we get closer, she waves. She runs toward the car. And I am out and running toward her before the car has come to a complete stop.

  My arms are wide. “Holley Jo!” I shout. “I’m back!”

  She falters, and there i
s such shock on her face that I stop, too. For an instant we stare at each other, unable to cross an invisible barrier that has sprung up between us.

  At first I don’t understand. “Holley Jo?”

  She looks the way she did last summer when she managed to take a young bird away from one of the yard cats, and she held it in her hands and knew it was too late.

  When she speaks, her voice is a whisper. “Oh, Dina,” she says. “Is it you?”

  CHAPTER

  6

  Dr. Lynn is out of the car now. She has one arm around my shoulders, and she propels me toward Holley Jo. “I’m Dr. Lynn Manning,” she says. “I’m so happy to meet you, Holley Jo, because you’re Dina’s closest friend. She’s told me so many lovely things about you.”

  Holley Jo has wiped the shock from her eyes. She reaches out and hugs me, but gently, as though she’s afraid I’m going to crack into little pieces.

  “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you,” she tells me.

  I answer, “And I’ve missed you.”

  “Everyone’s waiting to see you, but I said I wanted to be the first.”

  “I’m glad.” I kick at a little brown bug that is trying to crawl on my sandal.

  “Carlotta baked a huge cake for you.”

  “She sent me a card.”

  “Mrs. Pettigrew said to say hello for her. She left this week to live with her daughter.”

  “There’s so much I want you to tell me. Everything that’s gone on since I left.”

  Up until now our words have politely skirted each other, keeping a distance, moving in self-conscious little circles. But Holley Jo suddenly grins. “Guess what! Daisy’s getting married! To one of the Parker brothers. The gooney one.”

  We laugh, and time is back in place.

  Dr. Lynn says, “We’ll pick you up about two o’clock, Dina.”

  I wave as they leave. A small white face stares at me from the backseat. I refuse to think about Julie right now. This is where I’ve wanted to be for so long, and I’m not going to think of anything or anyone else.

  As we enter the main building, Dr. Martin and his wife come to meet me. Her broad, toothy grin hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed, except me.

  Everyone swarms into the room, and I’m pulled into the dining room. Someone has fastened balloons and a banner saying “Hi, Dina” around the door to the dining room. There’s pink punch, and a cake, and laughter, and all of them looking at me through glittery glass eyes that hide their feelings. It’s a nice party. I didn’t expect a party. And I’m tired. So tired.

  People are drifting into little groups, and talking about baseball games and how glad they are the semester has ended, and who has to go to summer school. I tug at Holley Jo’s arm and whisper, “Could we go to our room for a little while?”

  “Sure,” she says. “I know you’re tired.” So I must show how I feel, and I hate my body even more for not being strong enough to hide its horrible secret.

  My feet have become so heavy. One step at a time. That’s the way. Try to keep pace with Holley Jo, who is awkwardly trying to keep pace with me. My whole body is exhausted, so unwilling to move. Here are the stairs. I can make it. I will I will I will. There is a room up there. A room with my bed in it. And I can rest. My mind pulls and pushes and prods this body, and it obeys.

  “I’ll get the door,” Holley Jo says.

  My bed is nearest the door, and I flop on it gratefully, closing my eyes, feeling the pieces of my body settle into place again.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “Sometimes I get so tired.”

  “Just lie there as long as you want,” she says. “Ellen won’t mind.”

  “Ellen?” My eyelids flip open.

  I’m on a yellow-and-green-printed bedspread. I roll on my side and stare at the room. It’s yellow, and there are curtains with a ruffle in this same yellow, trimmed in green.

  “Everything’s changed!” I cry.

  “The Women’s Gospel Committee decided to redecorate this wing,” Holley Jo says. “I don’t much like it. I wish they’d picked blue.”

  “Ellen?” I ask. “Did they give my bed to Ellen Greeley?”

  Holley Jo squirms and twists her feet around the chair at her desk. “They did some shifting. They said you wouldn’t be back.”

  “I guess they had to. It’s just that in my mind this has always been my bed and our room.”

  She leans forward eagerly. “If—when—you get better and come back, I know they’ll put you in here, if you want.”

  I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

  “Tell me about Rob.”

  “He’s a nothing.”

  “Who’s he dating?”

  She shrugs and gives me a quick look. “Debbie, I guess.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’m over him.”

  “Did he ever write you?”

  “Rob held an early funeral for me. It was easier for him that way.”

  “Dina!” she says. “Don’t talk like that!”

  “Then tell me about Daisy and her wedding. Isn’t the one she’s marrying named Floyd?

  “Yes,” she says with a rush of words, “and they’re going to be married in the Clarewood Baptist Church next month, and Daisy wants daisies in her bridal bouquet, and I think Pamela is going to be her only attendant because Floyd’s mother is picking up the bills, and—”

  The wedding is in this room, and the bride wears a dress that matches the bedspread and curtains. “Ugly!” I whisper, and everyone stares. The wedding cake is pink, and around the top is written Hi, Dina. Good-bye, Dina. I don’t like this wedding, and I wish I hadn’t come. All the hollow places inside of me are filled with sadness.

  Through a faraway humming I hear Holley Jo saying, “She’s been asleep.”

  “But you’ve both missed lunch.”

  “I didn’t want to wake her up. She looks so—so—I just had to let her sleep.”

  “You’ve been sitting here with her all this time?”

  “Of course! I want to be with her!”

  I open my eyes. Mrs. Martin is standing at the foot of my bed, watching me. “Your friends have come to pick you up,” she says.

  I struggle to a sitting position and cry out, “Oh, no! I didn’t want to sleep!”

  “It’s okay,” Holley Jo says. She comes to sit beside me.

  “There was so much I wanted to talk about.”

  “Next time, when you’re feeling better.”

  Mrs. Martin’s face stretches into that toothy smile. “I’ll serve your friends some iced tea, and I’m sure there’s some of the cake left. That will give you and Holley Jo a chance to chat while you pack your things.”

  She closes the door as she leaves. I look around the unfamiliar yellow room again. “I had wanted everything to be the same.”

  Holley Jo tries to look cheerful, but I can see the traces of red around her eyes. “Nothing stays the same. Each year is different. Next year we’ll be seniors and graduate and—”

  “I’m a semester behind you now,” I say.

  “Oh. Well, you know, that we’ll probably be going to different colleges—wherever we can get scholarships—and we’ll be moving away from the home, and things won’t be the same. You know that.”

  She jumps up and drags a cardboard box from the closet. “I folded up your clothes and put them in here. And there are the things from your desk in a smaller box inside. I was very careful with them. I packed them so neatly you’ll be proud of me.”

  “I wish I had something of value to give you,” I tell her. “Something of mine that would last forever, so you’ll never forget me.”

  “How could I forget you? We’ve been sisters. We’ll always write to each other and have vacations together. Remember all our plans? We’re going to take a cruise through the Caribbean, and fly to London and visit all the castles that have ghosts in them, and go someplace where they have lots of snow and learn to ski.” She stops, and her voice quavers. “You have to g
et better, Dina.”

  “We’d better go down,” I finally say.

  “I’ll carry the box.”

  “Maybe Dr. Lynn will bring me back for another visit.” I try a smile. “Next time I won’t fall asleep.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I was glad to be with you, no matter what.”

  Down the stairs. It’s easier now. Some of my energy has come back. I follow Holley Jo into the dining room, where Julie stares at me over a mustache of pink frosting.

  Dr. Paull leaps up to take the box from Holley Jo. He looks surprised that it isn’t heavier.

  “We had hamburgers,” Julie says. “In Fredericksburg.”

  Everyone is introduced, and Dr. Lynn says, “We’ll have to leave now, or we’ll get to the city in time to be caught in the rush-hour traffic.”

  “Please come again,” Holley Jo says. “Please bring Dina back to us.”

  “Maybe in a few weeks,” Dr. Lynn says. “We’ll see how our schedules are set up.”

  There are all the little good-bye things to say and thanks for the rest of the cake, which Carlotta has wrapped for me to take and nearly squashes in her pillowed hug.

  Holley Jo’s good-bye is the last word I hear as the car swings around the driveway and pulls onto the road. Anger swells through me like the blue norther winds that strip the sky as they rush through winter. It’s not fair. Even my retreat has been taken from me. I think of my room, and all I can see now are the yellow walls, the stiff gauze curtains, the tidy green and yellow spreads, which have obliterated any part of me that clung to that room.

  “Well, well,” Dr. Paull says into the silence. “Dina, you must tell us what you did today. Did you have a good time?”

  I am trying to dredge up words through a deep pain, but Dr. Lynn quickly says, “I think we should let Julie tell Dina what we did.”

  Julie turns toward me. Whoever wiped off her face forgot a spot of frosting over the left corner of her mouth. It wiggles as she talks. “We went to a park,” she says. “There were swings and slides, but the slides were too hot. And when we got hungry, we bought hamburgers. Mine had pickles and onions on it. And we did a lot of riding around in the car, and I got tired of all that riding.”