Things I Want to Say

by Cyndi Myers

  “I was just about to make a pot.” She’d taken out the coffee canister as soon as Sara walked into the house. Her mother lived on caffeine, martinis and deli salads, which perhaps explained why she still wore a size six at age sixty-nine.

  “Where is my ex, anyway? I should say hello.”

  “He’s working with the occupational therapist.”

  “He doesn’t have an occupation, so what’s the point? Though I suppose they could work on holding binoculars and typing on the computer.”

  “I believe they’re doing something called ‘fundamentals of daily living.’ She’s teaching Dad to dress himself, brush his teeth, maneuver his wheelchair, plus some speech therapy.” It was depressing to think of a seventy-year-old man having to relearn how to tie his shoes, but the alternative was more horrible to contemplate.

  “How’s he doing with that?” Sara asked.

  “All right, I guess. He gets frustrated and impatient, I think.” Just last week, he’d thrown a shoe at the therapist, Lola.

  “Martin can be a bear when he doesn’t get his way, but then, can’t we all?” She checked the coffeepot, then studied her manicure. “I saw your brother last night at Kelso’s. He bought me a drink.”

  Kelso’s was the local watering hole, a bar with pool tables upstairs and a big-screen TV in the main room, where matrons gathered for cocktails alongside beer-drinking truck drivers. Her brother and mother were both regulars. “What’s Del up to?” Besides fishing, playing pool and avoiding responsibilities.

  “The manager of his oil-change shop quit and the poor boy has been working himself near to death trying to keep things going.” She took out an emery board and began filing her nails.

  “I seriously doubt Del is in danger of working himself to death. Not as long as he has time to drink beer at Kelso’s.”

  “Now, as a business owner yourself, you should know the kind of stress he’s under. Nothing wrong with letting off a little steam.” She put away the emery board. “Is that coffee ready yet?”

  “I’ll fix you a cup.” She poured the coffee into an oversize mug, and added sugar and milk, reminded of mornings when she was a little girl when she’d beg for the privilege of fixing her parents’ coffee. It had seemed such a grown-up thing to her then, and she always felt proud when they praised her for getting it “just right.”

  She served the coffee and sat down across from her mother with her own cup. “I’ve taken up bird-watching,” she said. “Dad is teaching me.”

  Sara made a face. “Please tell me you haven’t inherited his crazy obsession with birds.”

  “No, but I’m enjoying it. It’s very relaxing. Contemplative.”

  “That must be why I never cared for it. Of course, I never liked yoga, either. I’d much rather do something than sit around meditating or whatever.”

  “Do you think if you’d shared Daddy’s interest in birding, you’d have stayed together?”

  Sara leveled astern gaze at her daughter. “I never waste time contemplating what might have been. And your father and I had problems that went beyond common interests. The man is incapable of developing an emotional attachment to anyone.”

  The harsh ness of her words stung. “You make him sound like some kind of sociopath,” Karen said. “Granted, he’s reserved, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have feelings.”

  Sara’s expression softened. “I hope you don’t think taking up this hobby is going to give you some kind of instant spiritual connection to the man. Or that he’ll suddenly grow all warm and sentimental.”

  “No, of course I don’t think that.” She shifted in her chair. If she couldn’t have warm and sentimental, she’d settle for some sense of…close ness. Some sign that he was proud to have her as his daughter. That he loved her.

  “You should get out of this house more. I’ve signed up for ice skating lessons at the rink over in Nacogdoches. You should join me.”

  “Ice skating? Mama, are you crazy? You could fall and break something.”

  “If I do, I know I can count on you to look after me.”

  Karen’s heart stopped beating for a minute and she sucked in her breath, a vision filling her head of her mother lying back in a hospital bed, issuing orders left and right.

  “Don’t look so horrified, dear.” Sara laughed. “Oh my, I can see that would be your idea of hell—playing nurse maid to both of us at once.” She sipped her coffee. “Well, don’t worry. If I get sick I’m going to find some handsome male nurse to wait on me.”

  Except what were the odds of that happening? Her mother had no money, really. Not enough to pay for private care. There was no one else but Karen to come to her rescue. What she’d told herself would only be a few months’ inconvenience could become years of being caught between the demands of her parents and her husband and children. The idea wrapped itself around her like a python, strangling her breath.

  Lola emerged from Martin’s bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. “That’s all for today,” she said as she joined them in the kitchen.

  “How did it go?” Karen asked.

  “He didn’t throw anything today, if that’s what you mean.” She grinned. She was a small, round woman with olive skin and almond-shaped eyes, her black hair cut very short all over and sticking out in all directions like quills on a porcupine.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Karen asked, already reaching for a cup.

  “That would be good.” She set her bag of equipment on the floor. “Make it about half milk so I can drink it fast. I can’t stay long.”

  “Have a seat.” Sara nodded to the chair next to her. “I’m the ex-wife by the way. How’s the old man doing?”

  “He’s making progress. Slowly. His speech is a little clearer, but there are things he needs to work on.” She accepted the cup of coffee with a grateful look. “He’s stubborn, which can be good and bad when it comes to therapy. It’s good when they’re determined to get well, bad when they resist going through the steps needed to get there.”

  “I can guess which kind of stubborn Martin is,” Sara said. “He always hated being told what to do.”

  “I’ve dealt with worse.” She smiled. “I can usually convince them to do things for their own good.”

  “So you think he’s doing well?” Karen joined the women at the table. “I mean, well enough that he’ll be able to talk again and do things for himself?”

  “That’s hard to say.” Lola cradled the cup in both hands.

  “What she really wants to know is, will he be able to live on his own again?” Sara said.

  Lola shook her head. “At this stage, there’s no way to know the answer to that. These things have to be taken in baby steps. Martin may never get back to the way he was, but the goal is to improve his quality of life and give him as much in dependence as possible.”

  Karen swallowed hard. “What will happen if he can’t look after himself?”

  “Then you may want to consider some sort of assisted living facility.”

  “A nursing home,” Sara said.

  “There are worse places to be,” Lola said.

  “I doubt my father would agree.”

  “The ideal situation would be for family to continue to look after him, but that isn’t always possible.” Lola drained her cup and set it on the table. “I’d better go now. I have one more client to see this afternoon.”

  “Thank you for everything.” Karen walked her to the door. “I’ll talk to Dad, see if I can’t get him to be more cooperative.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a more definite prognosis, but I don’t like to raise false hopes.”

  “I understand.”

  “Try not to worry.” Lola patted her arm. “What ever his final prognosis, you’ll figure out what to do. Families always do.”

  Sure. She didn’t bother telling Lola, but she’d ceased being the woman with all the answers six weeks ago some where between here and the Denver Airport.

  Martin’s body ached to
o much to let him sleep. Lola had been a tyrant today, demanding he bend and stretch and lift until he was in agony. She’d shown no pity, telling him over and over again that he had to challenge himself, to teach his dormant nerves and muscles to work properly again.

  His spirit was bruised as well, from the shame of failing over and over at such simple tasks as but toning his shirt correctly or cutting up food.

  Lola had the grace not to comment on his fumbling, except to correct his mistakes and urge him to try harder.

  It hadn’t helped any that he’d gotten e-mails this morning from no less than three people in the birding Community, crowing about their planned trips to Arkansas to look for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker—a species that until recently had been thought to be extinct. To add one to their personal list was now the holy grail of every birder. And Martin, though he lived only a few hours from the place where the woodpeckers had been found, was stuck, unable to move.

  Sara had stopped by for a few minutes not long after Lola left. “How are you doing?” she’d asked, with real concern.

  He’d shaken his head, and refused to say anything, his bad mood making conversation unwise. Though they’d been divorced for years, he still felt close enough to Sara to forgo politeness, and let her bear the brunt of his ill will, as he had too often in the latter days of their marriage.

  “It’s hell getting old,” she’d said sympathetically. She patted his shoulder lightly, then sat across from him, on the side of the bed. “The therapist says you’re doing pretty well for a stubborn old coot.”

  He’d always wondered how old men had come to be associated with a large black waterbird. As far as he knew, coots weren’t particularly cantankerous.

  “When this gets to be too tough, just remember it’s not forever,” Sara said. “I’ve found I can get through a lot of things that way.”

  He nodded. Had she gotten through their marriage that way? Maybe toward the end. In the early years they’d both believed in till death do us part. Only later did they realize how difficult, even impossible, that was sometimes.

  “I won’t wear you out chattering on. Just wanted to see how you’re holding up.” She stood, then bent to kiss his cheek. “Hang in there. You really are looking better.”

  He listened to her high heels clacking on the wood floor of the hallway as she left. Even at sixty-nine she still insisted on wearing heels and makeup and having her hair and nails done. “A high-maintenance woman” one of his coworkers had labeled her, and it was true. But he’d never minded. Through out his marriage, and even now, he hadn’t lost his amazement that Sara Ellen Delwood had agreed to marry him.

  When Martin was a teenager, he worked for a time for an old rancher, doing odd jobs and helping with the cattle. The old man had seen it as his duty to pass on advice to his young helper. On marriage, he’d been succinct: “Find the prettiest girl in town who will agree to sleep with you and stick with her,” he’d said. “Unless you’ve got money or looks—and trust me, boy, you don’t have neither—then you won’t go wrong with that philosophy.”

  The first time he met Sara Delwood, Martin thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He was too shy to ask her out, but she’d turned the tables and approached him first. “I was thinking about going into town and getting a ham burger and a malt,” she’d said late one Friday after school. “Would you take me?”

  He took her, and continued to escort her around all that summer and through their senior year. The night after graduation she’d turned to him and said, “Everybody thinks we’ve been dating so long we should get married. What do you think?”

  So Sara had dragged him along with her into marriage and buying a house and having children and all the trap pings of a conventional life. The only thing un conventional was his constant pursuit of birds. Eventually, the thing that had brought him the most peace and satisfaction in his life separated him from the family he’d acquired through no real effort of his own.

  When she’d asked for the divorce, he hadn’t argued. He had never completely lost the feeling that she deserved more than he could give her. He missed her for months—at times missed her still. But there was relief in being on his own, too, freedom from the guilt that he was letting someone else down when he focused on his passion for birds.

  He was counting on that passion to get him through this rough time, as well. “You should set some goals for yourself,” Lola had said. “It’s good to give yourself something to aim for.”

  Goals. His goal was to get out of this bed and this house and back in the field. He wanted to go to Arkansas, and most especially, he wanted to return to Brazil. He had to find the Brown-chested Barbet. That one omission on his list loomed over his career like a dark cloud, overshadowing his other achievements. To be within a single species of cleaning up an entire country and not achieve that goal felt like the most ignoble failure.

  How would he get there? He’d need help, obviously, though it pained him to admit it. A guide, then. Not one of those professional birding guides others hired to locate and point out the species for him. That wasn’t true birding to him.

  No, he needed someone to provide transportation to the area where the barbet would most likely be found. Someone to carry his bags and help him communicate with the natives.

  Ed Delgado knew some people down there. Tomorrow Martin would e-mail and ask him for the names of some reliable guides. He wouldn’t have the stamina he usually did; he’d have to allow for shorter days. He could go out early in the morning, then rest during the day and return at dusk, taking advantage of the prime hours for bird activity.

  He’d have to be able to get around on his own more. He couldn’t maneuver a wheelchair in the jungle. And he’d have to be able to talk to his interpreter. Lola had said with effort, and practice, he could do this thing. “Bar-bet.” He tried the name on his tongue. To his ears, it sounded like Ar-eth.

  “Bar-bet.” He pressed his lips together to shape the B. Better that time. “Bor-ba.” The name of the province he’d need to visit. “Ma-pi-a.” The river where he’d be most likely to spot the barbet. The syllables were clumsy on his tongue. He repeated them over and over, mumbling to himself, trying to make the sounds as clear as he heard them in his head.

  He fell asleep in a few moments, exhausted, birds darting through his dreams, elusive and always just beyond recognition.

  Determined to force Del to do something to help her and his father, Karen knocked on his door one hot early July morning. As soon as he opened the door, she said, “The yard needs mowing. When can you do it?”

  He looked over her shoulder at the over grown yard and rubbed his chin. “It doesn’t look that bad to me.”

  “Del, it’s up past my ankles. And it looks terrible.”

  He shook his head. “Nobody around here really cares. The neighbors haven’t complained.”

  “I care. I’m asking you to please mow it.”

  He sighed, the sound of a greatly burdened man. “All right, sis. I’ll get around to it as soon as I can.”

  “That’s not good enough, Del. I want you to do it today.” Even as she listened to herself talk, part of her realized the unreasonableness of her request. Why should Del do anything she asked? Why should he try to please her now when he never had before?

  But she couldn’t stop herself from trying to berate him into be having—just once—in the manner she thought he ought to behave. She wanted him to be the thoughtful, helpful brother she needed him to be right now. If he wouldn’t do it voluntarily, then she would do her best to nag him into it.

  “Can’t. I’ve got plans.”

  “Then change them.”

  He stood back a little and looked her up and down. “Your problem, sis, is that you’re too uptight. You need to learn to relax and go with the flow.”

  “Uh-huh. And while I’m relaxing, who’s going to do all the work that needs doing around here?” How many times had she said that before—begging the boys to clean their rooms or na
gging Tom into catching up on his share of the paper work at the office.

  “Maybe some of it won’t get done.” He shrugged. “It won’t be the end of the world.” He stood up straighter. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I take you out Saturday night? Casey can look after Dad for a few hours. Take your mind off your worries for a while.”

  A night out with Del? “Where would you take me?”

  “Oh, you know. Just around.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? Are you afraid you might have a good time for a change?”

  She flinched at this dig. “No, that’s not it. I just don’t think your idea of fun and mine are the same.”

  “You know what they say—when in Rome… I think you’re scared you might find out the two of us aren’t so different after all—that you’re not as smart and sophisticated as you like to pretend, and that I’m not the dumb hick you make me out to be.”

  Ouch! He made her sound so snobby. “I’ve never thought you were dumb.” Lazy, immoral, dishonest and sneaky, but never dumb.

  “Then I dare you to go out with me. Just once. Don’t be afraid to have a good time.” He winked. “You might even find out I’m not so bad after all.”

  His smile made her remember the Del who had been her child hood playmate, the one who had always been able to make her laugh—the one she still loved. Maybe this was his way of ex tending an olive branch, offering them the chance to be friends again. “If I go out with you, will you mow the lawn?”

  “You bet. First free day I get.”

  It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but she sensed it was the best she was going to get. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go out with you.” Who knows, she might enjoy herself. Or even learn to enjoy her brother again.

  11

  You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

  —William Henry Hudson, Afoot in England