“Ladder fell and hit me in the face,” he said.
“You must be one unlucky son of a gun.”
He smiled. “I’ll get to work.”
“You do that. I’m ten years off a hundred, and I want a lot more days with this place looking good.”
Penny gave him a tour of the other damaged rooms, a bathroom and a guestroom. Marcus stood under the patched spots in the guestroom ceiling and ran his fingers over rough ridges.
“He sanded this?” Marcus said.
“’Course he did.”
Like heck.
“Ready to prime,” she said, “that was how he was supposed to leave it. Is it not right or something?”
It was fine, if the guy wanted her ceiling to feel like tree bark. “I’ve got to sand this again.”
“You go right ahead. You need anything? Tea, soda pop, coffee? Cookies? Spinach pie?”
“Spinach? Pie?”
Her parchment hands sprang to her hips. “Now what kind of a look is that? It happens to be tasty, and I happen to have some left over.”
“No, thanks. But coffee would be good.”
The crags of her face tugged at each other, and the smile lit her pale eyes. “You tell me how big a pot to make, and then you get to work. Keith said you do an excellent job.”
Good to know. “Four cups.” She’d save him a Starbucks run.
Hours later, he’d learned about Penny’s forty years of work as a teacher and fifty-three years of marriage to her late husband, Roy. He’d also discovered patch screen under every bit of mudding in the house. A few swipes with the sander had revealed the lousy workmanship. He’d have to re-mud. Everything.
Penny questioned his every move. Maybe she saw him as one of the fourth graders she’d taught in decades past, though the top of her head barely hit his shoulder. The questions and sideways glances continued throughout the day as reliably as the supply of coffee. It was no match for Belinda’s gourmet blend, but he’d tasted worse. Gulped worse, if he couldn’t get hold of the good stuff. Addicts weren’t choosy when a fix was at stake.
By midafternoon, he had finished re-covering the patch screens. He couldn’t do anything else today. Mudding was one job that couldn’t be rushed. Penny had disappeared in the last half hour, so he followed the blaring voice of the news anchor into her living room. Did one elderly woman really need three coffee tables, two overstuffed chairs, and an L-shaped sectional? He squeezed between a table and chair and waved an arm to get her attention.
“Leave the tarps down. I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said over the TV.
She looked up from her perch on the edge of the sectional. “If you stay longer, you could finish painting.”
His mouth tugged upward. “Not today.”
“Priming, at least.”
“I’ve got to come back and sand everything.”
“I told you, the other young man did that.”
“He didn’t do it right. I’ll be back tomorrow to sand, and then probably patch some spots again. It’s going to take a few days to—”
“What if I don’t have a few days left? You never know, at my age.”
“Penny,” he said, but her attention had drifted back to the TV.
The house behind the anchorwoman, squared off in yellow tape, squatted on its hill. “Left where it landed.” He’d heard about the arrests on the radio this morning, but the visual reminder clenched his gut.
“… recovered eleven copies of various banned Bible translations from the home, some behind a wall in the bedroom of eight-year-old Enrique …”
Oh, that was brilliant, something to make the public really shudder—hate-filled books just inches from a helpless kid.
“How old are you, Marcus?”
He met a gaze that suddenly bored into his, that seemed to care about more than primer and paint.
“Thirty-two,” he said.
She nodded. Her eyes left his for a quick moment of calculation. “When you were born, I was fif—when’s your birthday?”
“June.”
“I was fifty-eight. How about that?” Her fingers encircled the TV remote, and her rigid thumb pressed the mute button. A quiet, rhythmic swish, unnoticeable before, reigned over the sudden quiet. It came from the pendulum tail of a bulbous-eyed cat clock that hung over her front door.
“Well,” Marcus said. “I’ll get the house fixed as soon as—”
“Do you know how all this got started?” She waved her hand at the TV.
“The Constabulary?”
She didn’t nod, just raised her chin, as though trying to look up at him and down at him at the same time.
Marcus forced a shrug. “Officially? Springfield.”
“Oh, sure, officially, after the Springfield tragedy. Six years ago now, wasn’t it?”
She waited for him to nod. Was she just making conversation? Or was she trying to figure out something about him?
“But that’s obviously not when everything started,” Penny said. “It was a couple years before, when they found Bibles after those crazy cultists opened fire on those government guys—liquor, tobacco, and whatever else they regulate.”
“ATF. And the cult was in Bozeman. Montana.”
“Right. Got the whole country scared of freedom. But that’s not when everything started. It was …” Penny shifted, then pulled herself up on the arm of the couch. “It was the schools, and the courts, and the media, and things.”
“I know. I’m not that young.”
“Oh, you’re definitely young. Maybe we’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said.
He walked the few steps to her front door with curiosity nibbling at his brain. Her words stopped him with his hand on the cold doorknob.
“Remember, young man, if a ladder starts falling, make sure you duck. Avoid a lot of scrapes that way, and if there is bad luck, you’ll avoid that, too.”
“Right.”
In his truck, he turned the ignition as his phone vibrated in his pocket. He shifted his weight to pull it out. An unfamiliar number.
“Hello,” Marcus said.
“Hey, is this Marcus Brenner?”
“Yeah.”
“Jason Mayweather. Don’t think you know me, but I got your number from Keith. I was wondering if you’ve got time for another client.”
Didn’t know him? The guy really didn’t remember anything when he was boozed up.
“Well.” One hand on the phone, one hand on the wheel. He couldn’t knead the tension from his neck.
“If you’re booked, that’s cool too. It’s mostly handyman kind of stuff, but I don’t have the time to deal with it, and my wife’s been putting up with it long enough, you know?”
“Sure.”
“I’d rather hire you than a complete stranger. Think you could swing it?”
Why couldn’t he get away from this guy? Was God giving him a third chance? Certainty landed on his shoulders. “I’ve got some open time this week.”
10
Aubrey’s fingers danced over the keys, seventy-five words per minute, as she navigated the billing software. Enter patient’s account number, click on Post Charges, enter procedure codes. As she set the final patient’s chart on the finished stack, Mary-Beth’s face sprang into the doorway like a stressed jack-in-the-box.
“Hey, I’ve got two insurance companies to call and three patients on hold. Could you take the next patient back?”
Aubrey nodded and hurried to the front. They ought to stop hiring part-time high school girls who called in sick more often than they worked. She snatched up a patient’s chart from the ordered stack, opened the door, and stepped into the waiting room with a practiced smile.
“Gina?”
She had hoped Gina would be looking up as the waiting room door opened, but her head was turned to
ward the magazine rack. Aubrey stepped forward. Would she have to tap the woman on the shoulder? Did deaf people consider that rude? As she reached the center of the room, Gina looked up with eyes that seemed too wide.
“Hi,” Aubrey said. She was pretty sure Gina could read lips but motioned to her anyway. “You can come with me.”
Gina smiled and stood to follow. Aubrey led her down the hall to an adjustment room and motioned to a chair in the corner.
“You can have a seat. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”
“Thank you,” Gina said. The expression was missing its k and proper inflection but was unmistakable.
“You’re welcome.”
Aubrey filled the other rooms with patients, sorted charts to file while listening for Dr. O’Shaughnessy’s cue, and finally heard, “Okay, Aubrey’s coming back to give you a quick massage.”
Gina’s head was lifted to watch Aubrey enter the room, unlike other patients who lay facedown on the table to wait.
“You can lie back down,” Aubrey said. “This will take about a minute.”
She ran the massager up and down the woman’s spine, into her shoulders, exactly enough pressure. When she turned it off and hooked it back onto the wall, Gina sat up.
“That thing vibrate your hands, bother you?” she said.
Aubrey’s surprised blink was less at the clarity of the voice despite a few slurred letters, and more at the question itself. Countless other patients had asked it too. Well, of course. A lack of hearing didn’t change how one saw things, or felt them, or tasted or smelled them.
“No,” she said. “I don’t even notice it, really.”
“Oh.” Gina turned to gather up her purse and a purple water bottle, then turned back to meet Aubrey’s eyes.
“My son is deaf,” Aubrey said.
A smile lit her round face. “You sign?” Her words were now accompanied by hand movement, first pointing at Aubrey, then moving her hands in rhythmic circles in front of her body.
She was smiling at the handicap of a baby. “No, I don’t, no. I—I just found out. Two weeks ago. He’s four months old.”
Gina’s brow drew down, and she nodded.
“He’s seeing a specialist. There’s been a lot of tests. They want to give him something called a cochlear implant.”
Before the last word was out of Aubrey’s mouth, Gina was shaking her head. “You don’t do that to him.”
“Do that to him?”
“Cochlear implant means they drill his skull. They put metal in his head.”
“I know.” An electrode array in his inner ear. A receiving unit under his scalp. Permanent damage to his cochlea. But in the confounding realm of technology, intentional damage to biology could restore its function. Sometimes.
“You can’t do that to a child only four months old. It should be his choice, if he wants it.”
“He’s too young to choose,” Aubrey said.
“Right. Too young.”
“I’m his mother. I have to choose for him.”
“No.” Again the firm shake of the head. “It’s not your choice. It’s his. If he wants to have it, he decides when he’s older.”
Internet searches had sealed the grotesque images into her mind—incision diagrams, operation photos of exposed tissue, post-op photos of children with wires protruding like alien growths from a shaved section behind their ears. The specialist called it “minimally invasive,” but he didn’t deny that it was irreversible. He didn’t deny that if it failed, no hearing aid would work for Elliott.
All those things, she understood. What she didn’t understand was the woman in front of her. The specialist’s voice crowded into her thoughts. “This ought to be done as quickly as possible. He’s already lost several key months of language development.”
“I can’t wait,” Aubrey said. “If the procedure’s going to be done, it has to be done now, while he’s learning how to communicate.”
“You can communicate with him now. You don’t have to wait for a surgery.”
“You mean sign language?” That option had been laid out for her briefly but was hardly the doctor’s first choice. Talking to her son with her hands. Admitting he wasn’t normal, never could be. Learning how to squash the English language into gestures.
Gina was nodding with conviction. “Learn sign, talk to your son in his language.”
“It isn’t his language.” Judging from the quick furrow of Gina’s brow, the sharp points of the words must be visible on Aubrey’s face. “He’s just a baby with a … a—”
“Handicap?” Gina said. “Impairment? Disability? You saying I’m disabled?”
Yes, of course she was. She couldn’t hear.
“You see your son disabled, you make him disabled. You see him a smart, strong baby, then that’s how he grows up.”
If Aubrey continued this conversation, her words would cross the professional boundary. “I’m sorry, I should let you go. I’m sure you have places to be.”
Gina’s face was a wide window to feeling that most faces never unveiled. Right now, disappointment and frustration peeked from her eyes. “You talk to other Deaf, too. See what they say. Don’t make this choice for your baby.”
Well, maybe deaf people lived in mass denial. “Have a nice day, Gina.”
Before Gina could answer, Aubrey fled down the hall to her workspace in the back and sank into the leather computer chair.
Mary-Beth’s voice came through the door. “Okay, we will see you Monday at four. Bye, Gina.”
The front door squeaked closed, and Aubrey stepped back into the waiting room with a plastic smile. She’d spent hours in the almost-ten months of waiting for her baby talking and humming and singing to nobody but herself. A womb must be lonely when swathed in silence as well as darkness.
Please, Father God. Don’t punish Elliott for his mother’s sins. Let him hear. She couldn’t resist throwing pleas to heaven sometimes, though God couldn’t possibly be listening anymore.
“Medicare’s on line two for you,” Mary-Beth said as Aubrey approached the front desk.
“Thanks.” She ducked into her office, picked up the phone, and pressed the button. “Thank you for holding. This is Aubrey.”
The explanation for rejection of the claims bounced around Aubrey’s mind without processing. Only after she’d hung up with the representative did she notice the blank Post-it note stuck to the desk in front of her. What had she been told to do, again? Rebill the claims with … what?
A knock sounded, too timid to be Mary-Beth, but her head was the one that poked around the door. “You okay?”
“My son’s deaf. I’m perfectly fine.”
The glossy pink bow of Mary-Beth’s lips tugged downward. “Did Gina say something inappropriate?”
“It’s nothing, Mary-Beth. I mean, it’s not nothing, but it’s not something to talk about in the middle of work.”
“I’m taking you to lunch,” Mary-Beth said. “Not today, I’ve got a hair appointment, but soon. My treat, and you can unload whatever you need to, okay?”
Mary-Beth wasn’t even a mother. Her showers of sympathy, however well intentioned, would only scald. “Maybe. I’ve got … a lot of stuff going on right now, but I’ll let you know when.”
As if Aubrey had given a true yes, Mary-Beth smiled, then held out a driver’s license and insurance card. “Great. Meanwhile, if you could scan these and return them to the new patient in room five, that would be great.”
Aubrey accepted the cards and shoved them into the scanner’s card slot without bothering to look at them, then clicked the Scan button on her screen.
The enlarged images coalesced moments later. An unmistakable face, up close and in color.
Oh. No.
His presence could be a coincidence, didn’t necessarily mean he’d been assigned to s
hadow her. Mary-Beth had taken the call this morning and said he’d hurt his back in a tennis match, and—who played tennis in Michigan in November?
Her fingertips had gone cold along with the plastic cards they clutched. She’d seen his name on the appointment screen—Jeff Young. But he’d never mentioned his first name, and his last alone was too generic to resonate.
She had to face him at some point, and nothing about her job would concern the Constabulary. She was on their radar only as a re-education success story, and they’d already grilled her about Jim and Karlyn. She breathed in, out, in, out, then pocketed the man’s cards and headed for room five.
“Here you go.” Aubrey offered the cards back and forced herself to meet his startled eyes.
“Small world,” Young said as he inserted the cards back into his wallet. “How’s the kid?”
“The doctor will just be a minute.” She turned to leave.
“Aubrey.” When she turned back, his pale hands were settled on the arms of the chair.
“Did you need something?”
“I wanted to let you know that I leave my work at the office. I’m just another patient here, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” The smile warmed his eyes.
She nodded and left the room, mind spinning. He was a very nice man, or he was pretending to be a very nice man. He had no intention of collecting information on her while he was here. Or he’d been sent here to do exactly that.
Her back office had become a haven. She was being irrational and childish.
“Aubrey?”
She fumbled with a random stack of papers as if she’d been sorting them all along. “Yeah, sorry, I got distracted. Be right out.”
Mary-Beth’s green eyes darted from the pile in Aubrey’s hands to her averted face. Her foot nudged the worn doorstep under the door, to keep the waiting room in sight. Then she stepped into Aubrey’s alcove. “Who’re you hiding from?”
“Nothing, nobody, I said I’m on my way out.”
“Look. Elliott’s one thing, but you can’t get all paranoid on me here. If anyone ought to be cool with the con-cops, it’s you. You’ve already been through their stuff, so—”
Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers) Page 6