“Bits, Mama?”
“I guess, Angel,” I said.
Jon pushed the door open and followed me out. He put his arm over my shoulder the way Stroud had Leeann. I shrugged him off. I was having enough trouble keeping my shoulders up. We loaded everyone back in the car and headed north.
I started to cry. He reached over to take my hand, but I pulled away. My blubbering got Meggie started. Then Chance. What was it with those two? My mother cried every night after my father died, it just pissed me off. I was sick of all the crying. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.
“Pull over at the farm stand. It’s the next exit,” I said. “We can get everyone settled down.”
“We’re not going to stop again,” he said.
“Yes we are, Jon. I’m not going to dinner empty handed.”
∞
He pulled off and parked in back by the picnic tables and dog bowl. His face looked like stone. Meggie stopped crying when she recognized the happy place. I got her out to play while I washed my face with the hose, dried it with a diaper, and put on lip gloss. Jon got Chance and went to look around. He came back with pickled garlic and asparagus, and sunflowers wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine.
“This okay?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Did you meet the woman who owns the place? Bandana. Raw hands. I haven’t slept with her yet, in case you’re wondering. I left a few stones unturned in the boondocks.”
“I didn’t think we’d run into him,” he said.
“Yeah, well, he lives here.”
“He’s a good guy,” he said.
“You want Meggie to meet that good guy?” I asked. “He lied to me about her.”
We sat in silence until Marty called.
He had a job proposition he wanted to talk over, a dinosaur movie on the Big Island. Volcano and rubbery ferns. They were just forming up the crew. Script still a ways out. Details to follow. I hung up and told Jon we were on for lunch the next day. He nodded but didn’t say anything.
“You played with us too, Jon.”
We loaded everyone again and headed north. Meggie filled the silence with her backseat chatter. Chance smiled at every enlightened word. I directed Jon to the cemetery.
Meggie dragged Jon over to see the angels and lambs while I stood at my grandmother’s grave and wondered if she’d gone through the same weak patches in her life. She always seemed so strong. Jon’s voice rumbled a few rows over. I could see Stroud’s smiling blue eyes and his arm around Leeann who had been smart enough to fall in love with a man who didn’t have children. I wondered if his ex-wife came around. What difference did it make? Even if she did, it had nothing to do with my life.
“Everybody still there?” asked Bob.
His smiling face came over the wall.
“Bob Bob Bob!” said Meggie. She did a happy dance to Gus yipping over the wall.
“Come on over, Margaret,” yelled Sherry.
“You want to hand her over?” asked Bob.
“Sure,” I said.
Jon managed to avoid the sleeping souls I’d ridden rough shod over last time and parked at the base of the wall.
“Meet Jon,” I said.
“Nice to finally meet you in person, Jon,” said Bob.
Sherry yelled from the other side of the wall that it was going to be nice to meet Jon too. He climbed up on the car and handed Meggie over. She screamed at the top, then immediately started calling to Gus.
“See you when you get here,” said Bob. “Think you can find it?”
“I never told him, Bob,” I said.
He disappeared down the ladder and Jon climbed off the car.
“That’s a new one,” said Jon. “What didn’t you tell me?”
“A lot of things,” I said.
He put his arms around me.
“He loved you, Hannah. It was in his face.”
“It wasn’t love,” I said. “I only knew him a few days.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I don’t even know why I was so sad. I didn’t want to live at a truck stop and have a baby a year while my husband spent his days on the road, bullshitting like a car salesman about whether or not a woman would turn up dead. I loved Jon.
“I love you more,” said Jon.
“Why did you want to go there?” I asked. “We were just getting back on track.”
“I thought it was fair, that I should see where you’d been. I didn’t realize. You worried her.”
“She doesn’t need to worry about me. I would never sleep with a married man. Not when I have one at home.”
He kissed me and slid his hand down my ass. I was pissed about his little side trip, but I had to hand it to him, it had been entertaining. He got a hell of a lot more than he bargained for and we were eighty dollars to the good.
“You going to want a side of cowboy boots with that thong and tattoo?” I asked.
“Jesus. Whatever you want. Let’s ask them to take the kids for ice cream tonight. A single scoop will do it.”
“You’re relentless,” I said.
SIXTEEN
I found Bob and Sherry’s with only one wrong turn. Chance woke up from a self-defense nap and gave Sherry his most charming toothless smile.
“Oh, Sugar. Look at you smile,” she laughed.
He bounced up and down in Jon’s arms and air suck laughed. She laughed her musical laugh in return. Gus was letting Meggie think she was in charge. Bob and Jon sat in the backyard with Meggie while I gave Chance a bottle in the kitchen and watched Sherry finish dinner. I told her about getting the eighty dollars back and seeing Stroud.
“He the rhubarb man?” she asked.
“He was,” I said. “Now he’s a married man with four kids. Jon claims he still loves me. Though Jon says he loves me more.”
“Jon’s a smart man. He rhubarb?”
“He is this week. He’s usually butterscotch pudding.”
“I see it,” she said. “You look pale. You want to lie down for a while before dinner? I’ll take that baby.”
I was overcome with exhaustion. Just thinking about their guest bedroom made me sag with relief. I told them to go ahead and eat, my stomach felt off from the pain medication. I watched a slice of sky through a crack in the linen curtains as I fell asleep to their low murmurs and an occasional yip.
∞
I was so groggy. I couldn’t remember where I was. I stood up but was so dizzy I had to sit down on the floor before I fell. My stomach roiled. I was on fire. Richie Havens played softly in the other room. Jon must have brought the CD in from the car. Their voices were far away. I shook with violent chills. I tried to stand up again but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.
The next time the ceiling light was blasting in my eyes when it wasn’t blocked by the shapes of the EMTs. Where was I? Was I dreaming? I looked sideways and found Jon’s worried eyes. He started toward me but the EMT motioned for him to stay back.
They lifted me onto a gurney and telescoped the legs up then pushed me through the door to the waiting ambulance. Jon rode in back with me and held my good hand. The bandage was gone from my left arm, my finger and forearm were swollen and looked red hot angry. The stitches had popped off all the careful repair work. The EMT sprayed something on the area and covered it in a loose gauze wrap.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Infection,” she said. “They’ll know more in the ER. It’s a good unit. You’ll be in good hands.”
We rode with lights, no sirens that time of night. Equipment rattled around us. The driver slowed at lights, but not quite enough to take the turns without swaying. I squeezed Jon’s hand and we looked at each other. This ordeal would never end.
“Did you ride in the ambulance with me after the accident?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t remember that. Did you call Eric?”
“They’re on the way.”
“Did he mention Monday surgery?”
“You know he did.”
“I’m impatient. It’s a bad habit. I end up making bad decisions.”
“It doesn’t matter why,” he said. “It only matters how to fix it.”
∞
The next few hours were about getting checked in and checked over. The first thing was to get the infection stopped, then deal with the damage to my finger. I had a form of cellulitis. Not the full-blown flesh-eating disease that can take you down in a matter of hours, but destructive all the same.
My arm had tick marks from pens as the doctors tracked its spread. The first antibiotic seemed to be slowing it down. I was isolated in a private room and treated like a one-woman plague. They didn’t want whatever it was let loose in the hospital.
Jon drifted off to sleep in a lounge chair. A nurse came in and put a blanket over him and turned down the lights. I finally fell asleep.
∞
I woke up alone in the dark room. The doctor was lit up in the hall light talking to Jon, Eric and Anna. I could hear snippets, “Save the hand. Save the arm. IV line in her heart.”
I hit the call button. The doctor glanced up at the light that came on over my door and peered into the darkened room. They trooped in. Anna gave me a hug. Eric, the hospital sissy, kept his distance. He didn’t look so hot.
The doctor explained the basics. They were doing cultures. They needed to hit on the right antibiotic. If it looked like it was out-of-control, they would amputate my arm to prevent it from reaching my heart. He did not want it to get to my heart, or set up shop in any of my organs. I should be prepared to lose the finger. He’d sent pictures to my surgeon; they weren’t optimistic that there would be enough left to repair a second time.
“There was always a possibility that I’d lose the finger,” I said. “At one point I thought maybe it would be better to just do it and get on with my life. I wish I had now. A finger doesn’t sound like a lot compared to an arm.”
“We always try to preserve what we can,” said the doctor. “It’s a difficult decision for all concerned when it might be optional.”
“One of the doctors in Hawaii was in constant pain from an ankle injury. He had it cut off and now he uses one of those curved springs to run marathons.”
“People do it,” he said, “but it takes a mindset most people don’t have when it comes right down to it. In your case, I don’t think you have a choice. We’ll know in the next day or two.”
He switched on the light over the bed and felt up and down my arm. It was still red, swollen and hot. It had started creeping up past the last tick mark again.
“Have you ever taken Cipro?” he asked.
“Sure. They used to pass it out like candy on foreign shoots. I took it once in India when they thought it might be cholera. I was fine.”
He left us. Eric was giving me a strange look.
“Do we need to get a planter?” I asked.
“I’ve never thought about you going on foreign shoots,” he said. “Hearing that about cholera. I always thought it was glamorous.”
“Shooting is never glamorous.”
“How’d you like India, Jon?” he asked.
“I liked it fine. I watched Hannah work, rode around in rickshaws with Ed, drank gin on the hotel roof, and waited for her to come home. Running restaurants is easier.”
The nurse came in with a bag of antibiotics and said breakfast was on the way. Jon left to give Bob and Sherry a hand with the kids; Eric and Anna went along to meet them. I was left alone to float in the empty room and stare at the steady IV drip.
I needed to wrap my mind around the new reality. I was going to lose the finger, maybe an arm. The question was: did I want to live with one arm? If I did, would I get a prosthetic? I couldn’t paddle anymore; I’d just go in circles. I could probably still ski, I rarely used poles. I needed to talk to someone.
I thought about calling Mark. He put his scarred face to the world everyday. I wondered how his torso looked. If he had women or if he felt too damaged to do that. I thought the need for human closeness would overcome the fear, but what did I know? I was going to know something that never entered my mind before. I didn’t know how Jon would deal with a missing arm. I didn’t know how I’d feel about it if the tables were turned. I didn’t think I’d care. I knew I wouldn’t, but that was just speculation. We were just getting back on track. I’d been worrying about him over one finger. I’d never wrap my arms around him or the babies again. Lots of people were like that, they did fine, more than fine. They discovered inner resources and mental strength the rest of us never experience. Blah blah blah. My negotiations with life had begun.
∞
By the next morning, Cipro had put the infection in retreat. My phone rang with a California number; there was a long pause when I answered.
“Who’s this?” asked a woman.
I hate when people do that. Why ask me?
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
She hung up. I started eating and it rang again.
“I think you have the wrong number,” I said.
“I’m trying to reach Jon Moon.”
I looked at the phone; it was Jon’s. He’d apparently left me his so I could call him.
“This is his wife,” I said. “Who’s this?”
“It’s Celeste. I need Mark’s number.”
“I don’t have it, Celeste. Call Jon on my phone, he’ll have it.”
I gave her the number and she hung up without saying good-bye. She wasn’t finding a way to get along with me. I opened the saltines and drank the hot tea. The Jell-O cubes had gluey skin. I pushed the tray away and lay back.
Jon arrived with food from Sherry.
“Bob and Sherry are pretty incredible. The whole neighborhood has turned out to help. Meggie’s showing the neighbor kids how trike riding is done while Gus keeps her out of the street. Sherry is singing to Chance, he can’t stop smiling.”
Eric and Anna had gone home. Karin and Oscar would be over after work. Jon had headed off Mom and Arthur. I didn’t want her angst around. She was having trouble with my bad haircut, an arm would send her over the edge.
“We’ve already adjusted to this once,” he said.
“It might be my whole arm.”
“We’ll adjust,” he said.
“This isn’t henna, this is real. I’m trying to decide whether I’ll get a prosthesis. What would you do?”
“No idea.”
“It’s a big deal, Jon.”
“It’s an accessory, H. If you think you’re getting out of having sex with me for the next forty years because you’re worried about one lousy finger or arm, you can think again.”
“When you’re eighty-seven?”
“Why not? I figure between paddling and pharmaceuticals I can keep up with you.”
“Oh brother. Not Arthur.”
“Arthur’s happy. You promised when we got married.”
“There was no mention of missing body parts or Viagra in our vows.”
“I rest my case.”
“Did Celeste get a hold of you?”
“She wanted Mark’s number. She wants to send him a thank you gift for the ride.”
“How proper. And what perfect timing. She was calling you.”
“I don’t think so, she didn’t mention Chana or her stepchildren.”
“Oh brother. Do you think she’s interested in Mark?”
“Now there’s a picture. She’s terrified of dogs. I was surprised she accepted the ride.”
“I think she was too dazzled by Nancy to put it together. Now I understand the look on her face when they left. I hope Belle chewed on her neck the whole way.”
“What did the doc say?” he asked.
“At best, I’ll end up with a floppy shriveled mess of a finger that’s not dead, but not useful. It sounds worse than having nothing. I feel weirdly calm about losing a finger. I’m afraid of what happens when that wears off.”
“You worried that you’d freak out about setting Margaret on fire. You never di
d.”
“She wanted that and I had a choice. I don’t want this and I don’t have a choice.”
“You didn’t have a choice with Margaret,” he said. “How could you not? You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
“Jung again?”
He smiled and started putting away food.
“What did he mean about Chance being a favorable thing?” he asked.
“That’s what Chance means in Latin,” I said.
“He speaks Latin?” he asked.
“I don’t know if he speaks it. He knows some, he taught biology.”
“I really hate that guy. I’m not sorry your cool place burned down. Saves me the trouble.”
“God, we have two pyros in the family. You’re worried about a truck driver in cowville?”
“Who talks about my son in Latin and is into my wife. He looks pretty fit too.”
“You’re totally fit. What did you think of his wife?”
“She’s cute, but I’d be gone in the morning.”
“Good answer. You could have skipped cute and the reference to morning.”
“I’d never ask her out.”
“You never asked me out.”
“I asked you out,” he said. “I took you to Victor’s for a fancy dinner. I picked you up. I even wore a new shirt.”
“But I didn’t know it was a date.”
“You didn’t know getting naked with Mike was a date either. You can’t blame us. We knew why we were there. He called a while ago.”
“Mike? What is this, old boyfriends week?”
“Latin guy.”
“He want the money back?”
“He wasn’t calling about money. The number is in your memory.”
He swapped my phone for his.
“He wants to talk to you,” he said.
“What about?” I asked.
Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon Page 28