Poked

by Naomi Niles

  She didn’t spell out what she meant, but she didn’t have to. “You were fine,” I said. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. You took off into the water after about a second, so I didn’t see much.”

  Nic nodded, her cheeks burning scarlet. “Well, we can’t all be as cute as Penny,” she said quietly and returned to her book.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Penny

  I awoke with a start in the middle of the night. It was early Monday morning, about three or four in the morning. I had fallen asleep in a chair next to my dad’s bed, and now I was too stiff to move. As I turned around and reached for my phone on the windowsill next to the geraniums, I felt a sharp pain in my neck and sides. The overhead lights shone brightly and hurt my eyes.

  But I was awake now, and there was no getting back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Instead, I would probably sit there for the next three or four hours shifting uncomfortably and feeling irritable. I was too tired to drive home. I didn’t want to risk falling asleep at the wheel and swerving off the road or, God forbid, running into someone.

  At least Dad seemed to be sleeping soundly; he had only awoken once since my arrival at the hospital the day before, and then only for a few hours. We had talked for a bit, and I had read to him from Anne of Green Gables until he nodded off.

  I scanned back through my recent texts wondering if maybe I had missed a text from Darren. There were none. He hadn’t texted or called since I had left his house. He seemed irritated when I told him my dad was in the hospital, as if making out should have taken precedence over a medical emergency. Sorry, my dad’s cancer isn’t convenient for you, I imagined myself saying. Maybe find another girlfriend who would wait until after sex to go visit her ailing parent.

  In the back of my mind, I think I knew I was just being cranky and irritable. Darren wasn’t really that selfish… was he? In any case, I would almost certainly feel better after I had gotten a couple more hours’ sleep. Things had a way of looking better in the light of morning.

  ***

  When I awoke at around 8:00am, I had a text from Darren. He said he hadn’t heard from me in a while and wanted to know how I was doing. I was still debating whether I should text him back or what I would say when Dad stirred and turned toward me.

  “Hey, pumpkin,” he said sleepily. “You doing okay?”

  I didn’t want him to worry about me, so I told a half-truth. “I’ll be fine. What I really want to know is how you’re doing.”

  Dad scoffed and waved a hand in the air dismissively as if the question itself was ridiculous. “Don’t worry about your old man. Like I said, I’m not in my twenties anymore, and you can’t expect me to be in peak physical condition. As long as I’ve got you and the nurses here to look after me, I’ll be fine.”

  His tone wasn’t exactly reassuring. I had the distinct impression that he was underplaying the amount of pain he was in so that I wouldn’t worry. For a moment, my irritation at Darren faded away into nothing as I came over and took his hand.

  He smiled with a contented air as I stroked the back of his head. “I never did ask you yesterday how you and the boy are doing.”

  “We’ll be fine in a bit. Every relationship has troubles when it starts out, right? Didn’t you and Mom used to quarrel when you were first dating?”

  “We did—mostly over money. I remember about a month into our marriage she went out and bought a three-hundred dollar mattress as a surprise gift for us. She thought I would be pleased, but I yelled at her because I didn’t think we could afford it. We barely had that much money in savings. I told her if we were going to buy a mattress, it ought to be second-hand from a thrift store or garage sale. She said that was a white trash way of thinking and she wasn’t going to sleep on a mattress that somebody else had already slept on. Of course, I got offended because I thought she was insulting my family—she had always had more money than me, a fact which caused me no end of embarrassment.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly, continuing to stroke his hair. As a girl, these stories had often bored me, but lately, I could listen for hours without interruption.

  “Anyway, we argued for a bit, and then I stormed out into the rain. I came back a few hours later carrying a new headboard for the bed. While out driving, I had done some thinking and decided I liked the mattress after all.”

  “How did Mom react?”

  “She was pleased, of course. We spent the rest of the night putting the bed together, then sat down with ice cream and watched Night Court. Looking back on it, I can’t believe we ever fought over something as silly as a mattress. If I had known how things were going to end, I might not have let my anger get the best of me so often. I would do anything to have her back now, recklessly spending our money on things we don’t need and can’t really afford.”

  “You did need a mattress, though,” I reminded him. “And not a cheap, second-rate mattress, but a quality mattress that would last you twenty years or more.” Seeing the glint of pride in his eyes, I added, “Sorry, did I sound just like Mom just then?”

  “You did,” he said, nuzzling my hand. “But it’s okay.”

  I sat down and read to him from the last few chapters of Anne of Green Gables, and had just reached the part where Gilbert gives up his teaching position, when the door opened, and Doctor Rendell came into the room.

  “How are you both doing?” he asked, brisk and quietly cheerful. Walking over to the nightstand by the bed, he picked up a box of tissues in both hands. Something in his manner made me uneasy, and I began to feel a sense of dread in my belly without knowing why.

  “I’ve been better, but I’ll get over it,” I said. “Dad?”

  “About as good as can be expected. What’s the prognosis?”

  “Well, that’s actually what I came to talk to you about,” he said in a grave tone. Instantly my mouth dried, my stomach disappearing. He had something to tell us. We weren’t going to like it, and we couldn’t avoid it.

  Spreading his arms wide in a gesture of welcoming, Doctor Rendell said, “I’m afraid I have some very serious news…”

  But I only heard about half of the conversation that followed, as Rendell explained that the cancer had progressed and that there wasn’t much more we could do except to make Dad “comfortable,” as he put it. As if we were just finding the right chair for him to sit in, rather than making preparations for his imminent death.

  Dad nodded amiably, and only a faint trickle of tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, that all sounds good. Yes, of course.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “I think we would both like that.” From the tone of his voice, you’d have thought they were just having a friendly chat.

  It was like being in the path of a tornado, standing motionless and glass-eyed as you watched it barreling toward you in slow motion. I asked myself again and again, as I had been asking myself for months, whether this could have been avoided. But no, this wasn’t that kind of cancer. There was no change in his lifestyle or diet that could have prevented it. It was an accident of nature, titanic and unavoidable.

  With a dazed feeling, I walked out into the hall and called Darren. The phone rang four times before going to his voicemail. Frustrated, I tried calling him again with the same result.

  This wasn’t the response I had wanted. I was tired and scared, and nothing in my life was going right. And I just wanted to hear a reassuring voice on the other end of the phone telling me I would pull through this. Even though I knew I wouldn’t. Even though my dad was facing the worst crisis of his life and there was no hope of survival.

  “Please, pick up the phone!” I whispered in desperation, near tears, as the phone went to voicemail for the third time. I seldom cursed, but I felt a strong desire to curse at that moment.

  There was an empty chair at the end of the hallway. I walked toward it and sank down, burying my head in my hands, numb with shock. I kept trying to find a way to make it be okay, but there were none. Maybe the prognosis was mistaken. Maybe D
ad was stronger than they thought. Maybe he’d prove them all wrong.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Fear—fear of the unknown—twisted my insides into knots, making me want to vomit.

  Dad was texting me, wanting to know where I had gone, but I couldn’t go back just yet. There would be some hard conversations ahead, and I wasn’t ready to have them. Doctor Rendell had given him a few days at best, and then what? He was dying, and all the medical specialists and cancer surgeons in the world couldn’t stop it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Darren

  Five days passed, and I still hadn’t heard from Penny. I was supposed to be getting ready for the big race on Saturday, but lately, she was my sole concern.

  On Wednesday night, I went out for drinks with Nic. Penny had texted her the day before saying she’d be out of contact for a few days, but not saying why. Nic was beginning to worry about her.

  “Normally she doesn’t withdraw for this long,” she told me over a pint of Blue Moon at The Old Monk. She was wearing a black lace top and a pair of faded white khakis. “I always give her two or three days before I start to get worried, but this is beyond anything she’s done before. I think something may be really wrong.”

  “Do you think maybe her dad died?”

  She shook her head. “No, she would’ve told me that.”

  I didn’t like the implication that she would have kept it from me, but I held my peace. “We ought to try calling up to the hospital to see if he’s still there.”

  “I might do that tomorrow,” Nic said. “I figured I’d give her at least another day before I start asking around. Penny’s a hard person to care for, you know? Easy in some ways and hard in others.”

  “In what ways?”

  “If you know her well, I’d say it’s fairly simple. She has habits and rituals and routines that she uses to make sense of her life. As long as you know what those are and don’t try to disrupt them, I think you’ll be fine. The trick is getting close enough to learn what her routines are.”

  This resonated with my own experience. I grabbed a handful of nachos and shoved the rest of the tray toward Nic. “See, ever since we started dating, I thought I would be a good boyfriend once I figured out what all the rules are. The way she organizes her life is very different from most girls. Like, I’ve had to learn not to text ‘LOL’ unless I’m actually laughing out loud because it annoys her. And she doesn’t like swearing, and she doesn’t like songs with swearing in them.”

  “Yeah. I remember one time I was going through her bookshelf and I picked up a book at random. And she knocked it out of my hand and said, ‘Don’t read that book. It’s from Iowa.’ She, it turns out, has a visceral hatred of Iowa. But she never explained why.”

  “Yeah, things like that!” I pointed a finger at Nic. “Things that would never come up in any other relationship, but are very important to Penny. You defy them at your own peril.”

  “Exactly. But the upside is that she so loves and treasures those few who invest in her and take the time to understand her quirks. Once she’s allowed you into her circle and deemed you worthy of knowing her secrets, she will love you forever.”

  “I want to get there,” I said. “I’m still not sure I’m there yet.”

  “You’ll get there,” said Nic. “Like I said, being her friend is easy in some ways because you just have to be sensitive and attentive. It’s not a job everyone is cut out for, but I think you’ll do fine because you’re devoted and loving and patient.”

  By now, Nic had downed two pints of Blue Moon, and the drink seemed to have loosened her tongue. Never before had she spoken so highly of me. I wondered if maybe it was just the beer talking and if tomorrow we would go back to being annoyed with each other.

  She leaned over and placed an arm on my shoulder. “Listen,” she said in a low voice. “I know I’ve been making it sound like dating Penny is just a matter of knowing the right buttons to push, as if the relationship is a computer program whose instructions you could follow on the way to romantic bliss. It would be great if you knew everything about her, and knew what to do and not to do, and what to say and not to say. But what she really needs is just someone who will treat her with kindness. Penny is a very loving, sometimes very needy person who hasn’t always been treated rightly, even by me. But if you go into the relationship with the attitude of ‘I’m just going to love her, no matter what happens,’ you’ll be on your way.”

  “That’s what I want for us.” I clutched my pint-glass miserably. “I just wish I was better at giving it.”

  “I know, but you’re moving in the right direction. I wouldn’t be too hard on myself if I were you.”

  I continued to mull over our conversation over the next few days as I prepared for the race on Saturday. By now, I had given up hope that Penny was going to call or text. I just wished I knew the secret code or password that would make things right between us.

  But if what Nic had said was true, then maybe I was showing patience by waiting for her to call me instead of running after her. She had made it abundantly clear that she needed some time to herself, and I was determined to honor that.

  On Saturday morning before the race, Dickie and I took the Mustang out for a couple test runs. It had been raining on and off throughout the week, and the roads were still slippery. Dickie had to warn me repeatedly to watch the curves, and it became obvious about midway through our first trip that I wasn’t paying attention.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as I pulled into the Kroger parking lot. “I’ve never seen you less interested in a race. Does the lure of two hundred grand do nothing for you, my friend?”

  “Dickie, I’ve won a bunch of money,” I said with a shrug. “After a certain point, you don’t need anymore.”

  This admission, coming from someone who had once sped down the highway blasting Pink Floyd’s “Money” at full volume, must have alarmed Dickie. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked warily.

  “Yeah, lately I’ve just realized there’s more to life than winning all the time. I think I’m getting to that age where I’m about ready to settle down and have a family. It’s funny because I promised myself I would never be that guy, but I’m rapidly becoming that guy.”

  “Yikes.” Dickie raised his brows in alarm. “I mean, I can’t really argue. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that racing is more important than marrying and starting a family. It obviously is, even if I prefer racing.”

  “Even if you don’t want a family, I think most people would agree that they’re good and important,” I replied. “And lately all my brothers are dating and starting to get engaged, and I don’t want to be left behind.”

  “It makes sense. You come from a family that places a huge amount of importance on the family unit. I’d think growing up and seeing how in love your parents were with each other would’ve had an effect on you.”

  “It definitely had an effect. And I’ll tell you what had even more of an effect, is having a girlfriend I love and who cares about me.”

  “Yeah, that must be nice.” Dickie pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it. “But I would’ve thought that would be incentive to try harder and make as much bling as you could.”

  “You’d think, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I’m in that weird, puppy love stage of the relationship where she’s all I can think about. Sometimes I forget to eat.”

  “That doesn’t sound very healthy,” said Dickie, rolling down the window and flicking the ashes out.

  I smiled paternally. “Someday you’ll have a girl of your own, and you’ll understand.”

  We rode together to the dragstrip while the rain tapped against the windows. On our way, we passed abandoned strip centers with boarded-up windows and parking lots filled with plastic bags and rusted shopping carts. A stray dog sniffed curiously at an open bag of potato chips in a drainage ditch. It was one of those days that make you question the purpose of everything.

  When we pu
lled up to the strip, Adam was already standing there waiting for us. He wore a red single-layer speedway uniform that somehow perfectly matched the color of his hair and beard. The moment I brought the car to a stop, he ran over and tapped on the rain-fogged window, beaming proudly.

  “You ready for the ass-whoopin’ of your life?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m ready,” I said with a slight shake of my head. “I don’t know if you’re ready.”

  Adam must have noticed the circles under my eyes, for he said, “Were you up all night? You look exhausted. No way you spent all that time practicing, not someone like you who’s won so many races, I think you must be getting tired of winning.”

  Adam had a way of owning himself even when he was trying to badmouth me that made our conversations consistently entertaining. I opened the door and stepped out, rising to my full height. “I dunno, Adam. Winning still looks pretty good when there’s two hundred thousand dollars at stake.”

  “Too bad you’ll never see it,” Adam said with a smirk.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Seems to me you’ve said that about the last three races we competed in, and I ended up taking home the cash prize in all of them.”

  “I can hear the exhaustion in your voice,” he said with an air of feigned sympathy. “It’s okay. I know it’s hard. By the end of the day, you won’t have to worry about being the greatest.”

  “Didn’t say I was worried.”

  But before I could respond, Nic came running up to us. At first, I thought she was here to wish me luck, and I wondered why she hadn’t brought Penny with her. But as she came closer I saw the urgent look in her eyes, and I knew something was wrong.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  Nic shook her head vigorously. “It’s Penny—I’m so sorry you had to find out this way. Her dad just passed away. She’s up at the hospital now with his brothers.”

  “You think I ought to go check on her?”