Then again, Tammy might be staring at the blood he’d smeared on the student assessment sheet. Ruth had sure done a number on him, just when he thought she was plumb out of her dirty tricks. Jerrell dabbed at the oozing punctures stippling his hand with the towel he’d grabbed from Assisted Living. Snapped open the glove box to hunt down a Band-Aid. “Turn right at the Big Boy up there, about a half mile down.”
He’d given her plenty of time to anticipate the turn, so Tammy’s choppy acceleration through the stop Jerrell first took for nerves, not confusion. Pretty Tammy was a real Betty-and-Veronica type. Tom-Dick-and-Harry sat slouched in the back seat, eyes wide and wary. Mr. Salisbury. Jerrell always referred to the young men as mister, just in case they needed the reminder about who was boss in the driver’s training instructional environment. But a young man’s cockiness usually evaporated in the Gold Star car. Jerrell chalked up the humility to the situation, not anything about Jerrell’s demeanor. No, the men just wanted that license fast, no hassle. The first step toward getting out of this town. Deflating the blowhards sure made the job easier to stomach. Jerrell’s change from construction manager with Southeast Michigan’s largest contractor to driver’s ed instructor began as a desperation move during the recession but was looking more and more like a permanent career shift. At least he’d traded up on dealing with assholes.
Jerrell dug out a Band-Aid and slammed the glove box shut. Tammy flinched but kept her hands firmly on the wheel. “Mr. Jerrell? Where’s the Big Boy?”
The Big Boy was now the Palace, home of finer family dining than the Big Boy ever was. At times the places of Jerrell’s youth still seeped through the town’s canvas.
“Well, it used to be the Big Boy.” With his uninjured hand he pointed to the restaurant’s steep purple roof just past the Dairy Queen Brazier, which had always been the Brazier. Like the Speedway gas and Jackie’s Tavern at the four corners, some businesses had escaped the state economy’s rip tide. The A&P, the Farmer Jack, the Shanghai Shack, all had gone bust. Although the Shanghai Shack was history because the Chinese immigrant family had relocated the business to a strip mall in liberal Ann Arbor. Not that Brecon wasn’t liberal, in the small town sense of the word.
“Can we get an ice cream for the ride?” Mr. Salisbury asked.
Jerrell tore open the Band-Aid and pressed it to the punctures. The deep impressions circling the wounds were filling with purple. He could just make out a bracket’s smug dimple smack dab on each tooth mark. No wonder his hand hurt like hell. Dr. Frank’s office was open until five on Wednesdays; Jerrell ought to know. Best to drive Tammy around a bit so he could cool off before paying the good doctor a visit. “What did we learn about driving distractions in unit six, Mr. Salisbury?”
Salisbury slumped in his seat. “I was only kidding. My dad says eating while driving increases your chance of a crash by 80 percent.”
“Doesn’t the textbook say 65 percent?” Tammy was bearing down fast on the Brazier.
“Watch your speed, young lady.”
Tammy dutifully slowed to the posted limit. Salisbury piped up, “That’s the number of near misses caused by eating while driving. Right, Mr. Jerrell?”
“Any type of distraction is to be avoided behind the wheel.” Jerrell stared out the window at the Dairy Queen’s squat barn-red roof and impassive row of shining glass windows. He hadn’t even understood what a brazier was until he was these kids’ age. He’d only been to the Dairy Queen once before he could drive there himself, pay for his own damn burger and fries. Even that one time, a special occasion, Ruth only allowed him to order the smallest ice cream on the menu.
“Will eating and driving be on the test?” Tammy cruised past the Brazier. On the other side of the DQ lot, the Palace’s parking lot was hopping. An elderly couple, bundled in bulky coats and sweetly holding hands, was hurrying in the front door for the senior special of the day. Tammy was still failing to signal the turn ahead.
“Signaling turns will be. Left blinker, Tammy, don’t forget.”
“Are we doing the highway today, Mr. Jerrell?” Was the boy eager or nervous? When the young men’s voices dropped their octave, it became harder to tell genuine bravado from the tough guy act. Mr. Salisbury looked to be a reluctant tough at best. The hoodlum jacket was a size too big. The leather puffed at the shoulders, shrank his round head to a pale, tiny globe. The slicked-back look didn’t achieve the desired effect, either. A boyish nest of unruly curls bounced along the pizza-pie pimples on his brow. The small-town young these days were so very harmless. And, well, so very young.
“That’s for next time, Mr. Salisbury.”
“Where are we going today?”
Nervous, Jerrell decided. The childish persistence was a give-away. Mr. Salisbury had a habit of bobbling over the center line. His overcorrections mashed the wheels to the curb. Mr. Salisbury might turn out to be one of the rare few who failed driver’s training. “Thought we’d stick to town today. That OK with you, Mr. Salisbury?”
The kid nodded, curled his hand around the door handle. Frequent stoplights would work to his advantage. The white, even smile flashed in the rear view mirror. Lucky kid to have that smile. Luckier still if it stayed that way.
Jerrell positioned the rearview mirror to Tammy’s view. “Adjust your mirrors before you begin driving, remember. Swing a left at the golf course.” He’d take Tammy out of town a bit before circling back to the four corners in the heart of downtown Brecon, if the dinky village could be said to have a downtown. Or a heart. Give the hand some time to settle into a dull throb, because the way it was howling now made Jerrell want to punch Dr. Frank right in the pickets.
“Did you know that the force of a crash can wrap a golf club right around a guy’s neck?” Mr. Salisbury offered.
“That would never happen.” Tammy brought a finger to her lips to perform a dainty nibble at a hangnail. “Right, Mr. Jerrell?”
“It did, though.” Mr. Salisbury popped a fly over Jerrell’s reassurance that no, such a thing could never happen.
“How do you know?”
“My dad’s a crash-site investigator. Sees all kinds of bizarre shit.”
“Let’s watch the language,” Jerrell suggested. His glance into the back seat held the embers of a warning. Mr. Salisbury grinned, blister white. Hard to tell whether it was the curry-favor type of smile or the wise-guy preamble to more trouble.
“You’re seeping.” Tammy hung a left past the greens without signaling.
“Left blinker next time, young lady. Don’t forget.”
“Your hand, Mr. Jerrell. You’re seeping. What happened?”
Jerrell studied the wound. Blood had soaked through the Band-Aid. He wondered how Tammy could have seen it and kept her eyes on the road, since his hand had been tucked in his lap. Under the clipboard. Which meant she’d scrutinized his lap. Jerrell clicked open the glove box. Rummaged for another Band-Aid and a packet of Kleenex. No future in thinking about where a little girl’s gaze might rove during her driving maneuvers. “Just got hung up on something sharp there. Watch your speed.”
“Did you know that in a crash a Kleenex box can kill you if the sharp edge hits you in the temple?” the backseat peanut gallery informed them.
“That would never happen.” Tammy’s nibble was more doubtful this time around.
“Can so. Killed this one guy. Dad said it was a freak thing.”
Tammy glanced at Jerrell’s tissues. Jerrell tucked the packet between his knees, under the clipboard. Swabbed the blood, crisscrossed another Band-Aid over the first.
“Dad said anything can kill you if it hits your temple dead-on,” Mr. Salisbury added.
“I don’t think we should be talking about car accidents during driver’s training. Right, Mr. Jerrell?” Tammy applied the brake, glided to a four-way stop. Already they were in the suburbs. The threshold between town and country in this flat patch of Michigan farmland was a matter of a couple of miles. Modest ranch homes lined the private cul-de-sacs
cut rudely from long-fallow cornfields. An abandoned cobblestone farmhouse stood near the intersection, the weed-choked driveway shaded by maples just shedding their crimson leaves. Traffic was backed up behind the Gold Star sedan. Tammy was waiting for Jerrell’s instruction. Which he’d failed to give, fooling with his hand. He rode out a wave of rage over Ruth’s nasty decline, Dr. Frank’s chintzy orthodontics, the blood dribbling from the second Band-Aid’s tan edge.
“There are no accidents when it comes to transportation. Only crashes.” Mr. Salisbury leaned forward, gripped the back of Tammy’s headrest. “My dad says someone’s always at fault.”
Jerrell couldn’t agree more.
Before this decline, Jerrell could make short work of Ruth’s care. Between sessions he’d pull up to Brecon Heights Assisted Living for a quick dash in. Need anything, Mom? He’d have to sort the errands from the complaints. My legs feel like pin cushions, Son, I’m so fuzzy in the head, I have my taste for butterscotch back so bad. So during the next instructional run he’d grab a bag of Werther’s, the only obtainable mercy on that list.
But with this decline there were mercies of the body to perform, rituals just shy of washing the dead. That’s what the Assisted Living Staff was calling his mother’s condition. This decline. Like this and that. Like there would be this decline, and then there would be that decline. The Assisted Living Staff would only do so much for Ruth, and Jerrell did the rest.
This decline meant stiff, painful limbs to massage, groans of pleasure to endure under the sensual relief of his hands.
This decline meant thrush. Jerrell would thrust his fingers into his mother’s mouth to clear the cottony fungus so she could swallow. Ice chips under her tongue soothed the inflammation. Despite the gruesome infection, Jerrell came to realize that he found her mouth comforting in ways he didn’t care to investigate. Like her baby’s-milk breath, sour and new. Like the last thing she would ever give him was this tenderness. Maybe make up for the mother she’d never been, or the son he’d failed to be, their chicken-and-egg, their covenant. Also the warm sensation distracted him from the hope that this decline would turn out to be the decline.
Yesterday the Assisted Living Staff told Jerrell this infection might be resistant to the usual treatments. The Assisted Living Staff blamed the thrush on the morphine, but Jerrell had his own ideas about the cause. He’d looked it up, had goddamn confirmed that the braces could be, were very likely to be, the wellspring of the trouble. Metal complicated the mouth’s environment, he’d read. One obtainable mercy was to have the damn brackets removed. Yet another was a refund.
Today, before he left Ruth to meet Tammy and Mr. Salisbury, the situation had escalated. The mucus lodged in Ruth’s throat like a jellyfish. Clearing the goo and scrubbing his hands at the kitchenette sink was a long, painstaking process. After he was clean, Jerrell filled a Dixie cup full of ice chips and pulled a hard chair from the dinette to her bedside. As he slipped ice under her tongue, he let his fingers linger in her mouth. Her irritated gums pillowed the gleaming brackets. He had to be careful around the unmoored wire dangling from her left molar. The braces made the swabbing and the icing a surefire hazard. Yesterday he’d nicked his palm on the wire. He’d taken up pliers himself, tucked the wire back into her cheek’s soft pouch. Yet another reason the braces had to go. Dr. Frank was no longer returning Jerrell’s calls about his mother’s oral health and welfare, so a visit to the man’s office was, in Jerrell’s view, unavoidable. Anyway, the student drivers never minded a midsession break, he reasoned. The kids could grab a soda at the Lucky Drug while Jerrell took care of business.
A quickening of his mother’s parchment eyelids startled Jerrell mid-icing. He pulled his hand from her mouth.
“I feel like a zombie.” Ruth blinked at him as if he were a puff of air, the looking-through he’d always hated.
“What, Mom?” Jerrell had heard her perfectly. But Ruth’s spiritual and moral outlook did not include the possibility of the undead, so her statement was odd.
“I feel like a zombie.”
Well, that could mean anything. She could barely move her legs. She complained constantly about her sizzling nerves, live wires under her skin that ignited sensation but not movement. Or morphine could be the zombie. This decline involved liberal, even dangerous, levels of morphine. The Assisted Living Staff had cautioned against accidental overdose, but the caution had been given with that clinical boredom he resented, as if to say don’t be too careful, might be doing her a favor. Any accident was all up to Jerrell, was what they seemed to be saying.
“Come again, Mom?” Jerrell pulled the chair closer, looked deep into those periwinkle eyes. Hammered metal was her usual expression, but she was soft today, fuzzy, addled. A film on her gaze, her limbs dopey and slow. Good things come in threes, had been his thinking there. So did death. Not that Jerrell was superstitious. But she’d barely spoken in a week, so if she said one thing three times, well, that could be a sign.
But she wouldn’t say it the third time, only looked at him placidly. Like she used to watch his silent weeping, satisfied he was keeping quiet after she decked him for his smart mouth. Mama’s little man. Back then messing him up had been her only joy. Maybe she was just screwing with him now for old time’s sake.
Jerrell stood up. One of Ruth’s Hull Collectible treasures, the Sad Eyes puppy, mooned over the wadded Kleenex and pill boxes scattered on her bedside table. The baseboards hummed. Geriatric humidity wafted from the slats, reeking of rose water and rubbing alcohol. Jerrell took up a tissue. Wiped a rivulet of cloudy water from her chin. “Want a popsicle, Mom?”
“Butterscotch, Son.” A command. A plea. Hard to say anymore what she was really trying to tell him. The blue bird clock on the kitchenette wall chimed the hour. Another of those damn Hull Collectibles she’d worried would never make it to Assisted Living in one piece. Ruth especially treasured her Swan Planters, a horrifying duo trumpeting from the sofa table, enormous brown bills held high like military buglers, open backs filled with sparse sprigs of dried flowers where the internal organs would be. Jerrell had carried in each bird under Ruth’s anxious watch from her old green recliner he’d placed by the apartment’s only window. He’d positioned each swan so the light wouldn’t catch the jagged fracture line where the bills were glued to the downy white jaws. His mother did not like to be reminded of Jerrell’s hoodlum stunt. Cared more for the collectibles’ welfare than his. He’d never liked that schmaltzy crap, anyway. Used to scare him as a kid. Who was afraid of puppies and swans and tiny birds daisy-chained around a clock face? But the exaggerated features had upset him when he was, himself, tiny. He still cringed at the puppy’s droopy eyes, those trumpeting swan bills like trippy clown feet.
Jerrell crossed to the refrigerator. The clock finished chiming. School was letting out. Tammy and Mr. Salisbury would be arriving at the Gold Star training center for their second cruise. He dug more ice from the plastic bin in the freezer. Slivered some chunks with a steak knife. Wished he could afford to install an icemaker that would crush the cubes for him. He filled the cup, unwrapped a Werther’s. Hard candy wasn’t allowed on the Brace Watcher’s Diet, but seeing as those damn things were coming out if Jerrell had his way, what was the harm in a little sweet?
A high sound drifted from the bed. Jerrell turned to see Ruth’s arm arcing in a ballerina’s flourish. Her back arched off the mattress. Her loose breasts rolled under her lacy housecoat. Blood soared down her chin, freckled her housecoat’s scallop neckline. The broken wire must have cut her when she cried out.
Quickly, Jerrell buzzed the red button by the wall phone.
The response was prompt. With that practiced, bored efficiency, the young Assisted Living Staffer took in the arcing arm, the stiffened limbs, and arching back, the high pitched lonesome wail. “She’s keening.”
Jerrell moistened a cloth to clean up the blood. “Come again?”
“Keening.” The young woman moved to the bedside. A real Morticia, w
ith the pale skin and perfect ebony widow’s peak. A lovely cloak on a ghoulish heart. She pressed the morphine-drip pump’s button. A hiss, and Ruth’s arm floated to her hip. Her legs shuddered, her back relaxed. The lonesome wail dropped to a low whistle, faded into the rosewater air. “It’s a stage of this decline.”
Jerrell squeezed the cloth to Ruth’s chin. Rage bathed him, the source of which he didn’t care to investigate. Might be the blood foaming around the brackets, a mark of his failure to fix and please her. Might be the way this Assisted Living Staffer, not much older than his teen drivers, viewed his mother’s terrifying ballet as routine.
Might be Ruth, acting out just to scare him.
He wanted to pinch her wrinkled chin, get her to cut that shit out. Show her a thing or two now that she was down for the count. Didn’t it stand to reason that after all those years of being slapped around he’d want to give her some of it back? What was his duty toward Ruth anyway, considering the mess she’d made of her duty toward him?
The Assisted Living Staffer moved to the bedside table. Her soft shoes hummed on the floorboards. She checked the pill box contents. Must have approved of Jerrell’s organization because back the box went between the Sad Eyes puppy paws.
Well, no future in thinking about who owed whom, anyway. There his mother lay, and over her suffering body he would stand under Assisted Living’s watchful eye. As Lydia would say, quit your brooding and do what you have to do. Which ended up being exactly what Lydia did. She was always complaining about his complicated feelings for his mother, but a woman didn’t leave a man just for being a dutiful son.
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