by Devan Sipher
“Godwin!” Lila called out.
An attractive dark-skinned man embraced her. “Are you having a good time?”
“I’m having the best time! This is a friend of Naomi’s.” Lila turned to Austin. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your name—”
A waiter came between them with a tray of shrimp and some kind of green dipping sauce. There was a commotion around Austin as guests flocked to the shrimp, clearly a popular item, and he found himself cut off from Lila. His phone buzzed again. This time it was Mandy. Her timing was impeccable.
He answered, cupping a hand around his opposite ear. “Hello?” he shouted, hoping she could hear him.
“Mr. Gittleman?” It wasn’t Mandy.
Austin pressed his hand tighter against his ear. “Who is this?”
“My name is Dr. Chun Kwan—”
“What?”
“My name is Dr. Chun Kwan. I’m a doctor in the emergency room of Beaumont Hospital, and I’m calling about your sister.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Austin didn’t know why Mr. Douglas had called him out of his fourth-grade math class. He didn’t think he had been doing anything wrong. Or not terribly wrong. He was doodling in his notebook, making pictures of Superman fighting extraterrestrials, when he should have been doing his math problem set. But wasn’t it his choice whether or not he wanted to do the math problems? If he didn’t do well on the next quiz, then that would be his punishment. But if he could do well on his quizzes without doing all of the boring problem sets, he didn’t see why that shouldn’t be his choice. Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Hadn’t they just studied that in social studies class? Austin thought his social studies teacher and his math teacher needed to have a conversation.
Mr. Douglas opened the classroom door and followed Austin into the hallway.
“How are you doing, Austin?”
“I’m okay.” Was he supposed to confess to his crime? Wasn’t there a law that said you didn’t have to? Your Amanda rights. That’s what he heard them call it on TV. He remembered thinking it was the same name as his sister. But his sister didn’t like the name Amanda. So everyone called her Mandy. Sometimes Austin called her Amanda just to get her upset. Mandy was pretty funny when she got upset. Her face would get all red until it almost matched her hair. Then she would try to hit him. But she was too small to hit him very hard. And she was a girl, so it’s not like she really knew how to hit. Sometimes she scratched him pretty good, though. She was a good scratcher. He had to watch out for that.
“Austin,” Mr. Douglas said, “I’m going to take you to the principal’s office.”
“I’m sorry about the doodling,” Austin confessed. “I promise if you let me go back to the class I’ll do all the math problems. I’ll even do extra ones.” Austin was not at all happy to make that offer. But he thought it was a good idea to sweeten the deal. He really didn’t want to go to the principal’s office. He had been sent to the principal’s office only one other time, and his father gave him a spanking afterward. Of course, that time he had done something a little worse. He had called Charlie Flugelheimer a bad name. Austin thought Charlie Flugelheimer deserved it because he had spit at Austin. But the principal didn’t agree. And neither did Austin’s dad.
“Austin, don’t worry about the math problems,” Mr. Douglas said.
“I don’t want to be in trouble,” Austin said.
Mr. Douglas seemed very upset when he looked at Austin. But he didn’t sound upset when he spoke. “You’re not in trouble, Austin.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not.”
That made Austin feel a little better, but he still wasn’t happy about having to go to the principal’s office. And if he wasn’t in trouble, he didn’t know why he had to go.
When they arrived at the principal’s office, Austin was surprised to see that Mandy was sitting in the waiting area. Had she also done something wrong? Daddy was going to be really angry this time. Austin sat next to her and asked her what she did.
“I ate a pink marshmallow,” Mandy said.
That didn’t sound all that terrible.
Principal Higgins came out of his office and Mr. Douglas left. Before he left, he clutched Austin’s shoulder and squeezed it tight. He was acting kind of strange. Austin wondered if there was something wrong with Mr. Douglas. When Grandpa Joe had acted strange, he was taken to a hospital. And now he was living in a prison for old people. They had bars on the beds, and they weren’t allowed to leave. Grandpa Joe rarely smiled anymore. Sometimes he didn’t even say anything when they visited. But Daddy said he liked it when Austin visited, even if Grandpa Joe didn’t tell him. But Austin didn’t like visiting Grandpa Joe. He didn’t like it at all.
Principal Higgins crouched down on one knee to talk to them. Austin didn’t think he looked very comfortable. He told them that their mother was coming to pick them up from school.
“Are we being kicked out?” Austin asked.
Principal Higgins also looked upset. “No, Austin,” he said.
Everyone seemed upset, and they were making Austin and Mandy leave school early. But no one was saying what Austin and Mandy had done wrong. That seemed very unfair to Austin. It was also unfair they had to wait in the principal’s office. It seemed like they were waiting forever. Principal Higgins’s secretary, Ms. Clark, kept asking if they wanted some water. Austin wasn’t thirsty, but he asked Ms. Clark to give Mandy a cup of water.
When their mother finally arrived, she didn’t look like herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t look like their mother; she just looked like a different version of herself. This version had puffy red skin, and her eyes were also red. Her shoulder-length dark hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed and Austin’s mother always spent a long time brushing her hair. A very long time. Sometimes Austin thought he was going to die waiting for his mother to finish brushing her hair. Then she would try to brush his, but he would shake his head until she left him alone. When it was Mandy’s turn, there was always a lot of crying. Mandy didn’t hate having her hair brushed the way Austin did, but she sure acted like it sitting on the bathroom counter and looking at her reflection in the mirror with her hair sticking out like a Chia Pet. Austin’s mother would always tell Mandy afterward how nice her hair looked, but Mandy didn’t seem to believe her. Austin thought it usually looked better before his mother brushed it.
But Austin’s mother’s hair didn’t look better unbrushed and clumpy. She came running over and put one arm around each of them. And she held them tight like the time he got separated from her at Walmart, and he couldn’t find her until a store manager helped him and called over the loudspeaker for her, saying, “Will the mother of Austin Gittleman come to the Sports Department.” Austin was worried his mother would be upset with him because he wasn’t supposed to give his name to strangers. But when she saw him, she came running up to him just like she did in Principal Higgins’s office, and she held him just as close, so close not even air came between them. She rocked him back and forth and kissed his forehead, saying over and over how much she loved him and that everything was going to be okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Penelope hadn’t slept in three days.
She had lain down. She had closed her eyes. But she hadn’t slept. Not really. Sometimes she thought she might never sleep again. She couldn’t go through this. Not again. She barely got through it the first time. But she was thinking negatively. This was not the same thing. Mandy was going to make it.
Mandy was actually lucky. She could have discovered the aneurysm after she was in the Congo. Or she might not have discovered it at all. So she was lucky. Very lucky. Penelope kept repeating this to herself, in the hope she would start to believe it.
She needed to believe it. She needed to pull herself together. With Larry, she wasn’t prepared. She was too young. She was only th
irty-four. She was younger than Mandy. How was that possible? She was a different person then. A more foolish person. A person who still believed in free love and socialism. Yet a person who thought agreeing to live in a fancy beach town meant she was somehow protected from . . . from the things that happen to the people who don’t have such options. It wasn’t that she expected not to have problems. She just expected to have bourgeois problems. And compared to people in the Congo, she did.
Now she was older and less foolish. But she also had less stamina. Thank God for Austin. He had the stamina for both of them. The stamina to put up a brave front. He was there by Mandy’s side, as he had been almost nonstop, while Penelope hung farther back, afraid Mandy would read the fear in her face. But Austin joked with Mandy. He teased her and rallied her. He helped her pretend everything was normal and fine, when neither could be further from the truth. Penelope didn’t know what she would have done without him. He was still her little soldier. But he wasn’t so little anymore.
She was worried about him. He seemed so sad, and not just now in the hospital. He’d been sad for some time. Even with Dallas and Coal. He just hid it better then. Both of her children were sad. Had she passed that on to them? It didn’t seem possible, but she knew it was very much possible. She didn’t spend six years getting two degrees in psychology and get nothing out of it. She had planned to do clinical work once the kids were grown. But she lost faith. Psychology was a religion in many ways, and Penelope had become agnostic.
But that was the easy out. The truth was there were many things she could have done with her degrees instead of remaining at a dead-end civil service job. There were few occupations more disheartening than being a human resources manager in the city of Detroit, where human resources sometimes seemed the only resources remaining. There were growing rumors about an emergency manager being brought in to run the city. There were also rumors of layoffs and pension reductions for all municipal employees. Penelope had no energy for rumors. And no illusions about happy endings. But she wasn’t giving up on Detroit. If the city was a shadow of its former self, well, so was she, and she had somehow survived all the same.
Mandy was opening her eyes. She had been going in and out. Penelope knew it was mostly the drugs they had her on, making her sleepy. But every time Mandy closed her eyes, Penelope feared . . . No, what mattered was that Mandy opened her eyes.
“How you doing, champ?” Austin asked.
“I feel like crap,” she said hoarsely.
“Well, you look like crap, if that’s any consolation.”
“Thanks a lot.” She was speaking slowly, as if the words were coming from a great distance.
“Are you still feeling woozy?”
“A little.”
“They have you on blood pressure medication.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yes, it’s a good thing.”
Penelope didn’t think it was a good thing. Nothing about this was a good thing. Mandy had survived the surgery. But the doctors kept saying things like “her age will work in her favor,” which was very different from saying she was going to be okay.
Mandy had closed her eyes again.
“You still with us, champ?” Austin asked, wiping a wet cloth across her forehead. Penelope should be doing that. Why wasn’t she doing that?
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mandy said without opening her eyes.
“That’s good.” Austin smoothed her hair. Her crazy-colored hair. Even crazier now with half of it shaved off. What had she done to herself? She used to have such beautiful hair. Penelope used to brush it out when Mandy was a child, and it was like a red halo around her head.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Evolution.”
“Evolution?”
She took a deep breath and made a soft guttural sound as she exhaled. “I was thinking that if evolution is random, what chance do we have on a day-to-day basis?”
“Ow,” Austin said. “You’re hurting my head. Don’t you want to talk about something less taxing, like who George Clooney is dating?”
“What happened in New York? Did you see Naomi?”
Who was Naomi? Penelope’s children had lives she knew nothing about. They lived so close to her, and they remained so far away. She had friends whose children couldn’t get far enough away from them, who knew more about what their children were doing.
“I said something less taxing.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Why do you think I went to New York?”
Penelope thought he’d gone to New York for a job interview. That’s what he’d told her. And to see his friend Stu. She thought he’d said Stu. But Stu lived in California. Or he used to. Or she was confused. She definitely was confused. Her brain was so tired she could almost hear the neurons firing in slow motion.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” Mandy said.
“Love is complicated.”
“Don’t plan a second career as a poet.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mandy was silent a few seconds. Then she said, “You’re getting old.”
“Hey! No hitting in a hospital.”
“I wasn’t hitting; I was scratching.”
They sounded like children again. Penelope wished they were children again. She wished they were all together in their Ford station wagon traveling to see Grandpa Joe in Phoenix. They used to torment her and Larry with their endless squabbling. She wished she could go back.
“But it’s true, you know,” Mandy said. “You’re in your late thirties.”
“Thirty-seven is not late thirties. And I think we should go back to discussing evolution.”
“You’re getting too old to be young and careless.”
“That’s okay,” Austin said. “I was never good at being young and careless.”
“No,” she said, “you weren’t.”
This time it was Austin who was silent for a moment. “It’s hard, Mandy.”
“Being thirty-seven?”
“No. Yes. That’s hard too. Love is hard.”
“Love takes practice,” she said, speaking even slower than before. “Like anything else. The idea of love is ludicrous. What could be less natural than love? What could be less natural than putting someone else’s well-being before your own? It goes against every evolutionary instinct.”
Penelope thought about that. Austin seemed to be thinking about it as well. She wanted to tell Mandy that she was right. Love does take practice. And you still get it wrong. And even when you get it right, sometimes it vanishes on a beautiful spring day. No, she didn’t want to say that. But she realized it was too late. She had already said it too many times.
“So I guess we’re back to talking about evolution,” he said.
“I guess we are,” Mandy agreed. Then she closed her eyes again.
“What did the doctor say?” Penelope asked. She was standing with Austin in the small waiting room, after purchasing the vending machine’s last Junior Mints. She’d been popping them like, well, like candy.
“You heard him,” Austin said.
“But I don’t understand him.”
“What don’t you understand? He’s talking in English, and you supposedly have two science degrees.”
He was losing patience with her. It was like all the patience he had with Mandy used up his supply, and there was nothing left for her.
“It’s not the same thing,” she said, “and you know it. You’re a doctor, and you know what these words mean.”
“He said she’s doing fine.”
“And?”
Austin took a paper cup from the water cooler’s dispenser. “And they’re concerned about rebleeding.”
Penelope knew what that meant. She had read enough about aneurysms in the last two days to know th
at rebleeding meant a stroke or death. “Well, what can we do?” she asked.
“There’s nothing we can do but wait and see,” he said, filling his cup.
“There must be something.”
“Well, there isn’t.” Austin sounded so remote. He needed to stop being annoyed with her and think about his sister. He was a doctor. There was always some new drug or treatment they were testing. He should be able to find out about these things.
“There has to be something that we can do. Someplace we can contact. We can’t just sit on our hands and hope for the best.”
“Oh, now you want to do something?” he muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you had your chance to do something.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t know she had an aneurysm. How would I possibly know she had an aneurysm?”
“I’m not talking about the aneurysm.” Austin threw his cup away. Water sloshed across the waste can as he headed for the door of the waiting room.
“Then what you are talking about?” Penelope called after him. “Come back here. Austin!”
He pivoted around. His face was red, and his eyes were squinched. She hadn’t seen him look that way since he was a young child. Usually it was the expression on his face when it was time to leave the swimming pool on a day he hadn’t taken a nap.
“You want to know what I’m talking about?” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Austin,” she said, wanting to soothe him. “I have no idea.”
“I’m talking about Daddy.”
“Daddy?” Now she was even more confused. “What does your father have to do with—”
“You had a chance to do something. And you did nothing.”
Did nothing? Was he losing his mind? “I raced to the hospital like a madwoman. I pounded on desks and begged doctors to help him. I was beside myself. But there was nothing they could do. There was nothing I could do.”