by F. X. Toole
~ * ~
It was late afternoon. Frankie was sitting by her bed when she woke up. “You okay, darlin?” he asked.
She was still groggy. “Well, you know, they got tubes stickin up me in places I’druther not think about. You ever heard of dysreflexia?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“It’s somethin that happens real quick, like when you git a kink in your pee tube? Gits your heartbeat all to rushin.” Embarrassed, she looked away. “I didn’t tell you, but a couple a times I liked to have a heart attack in the night. Awful as it is when your heart’s fixin to explode, it made me happy, boss, ‘cause I thought I’d be free of this mess. Almost made it once. But then I was brought back to bein this same old snowman in January, same old twisted-up snowman sittin here wishin to God it was July.”
“Ah, Jaysus,” Frankie said. “I knew I was wrong to train you.”
“Don’t say that, “ Maggie said. “Hail, workin with you was the only time since Daddy passed I had respect. Hey!, and we almost did her, too, didn’t we, boss?, huh? almost made me the world’s first Million Dollar Baby!, ain’t that rat?” She smiled but then had to look away, her lips quivering. “Daddy’d a been proud.”
~ * ~
The Boxing Commission would pay for Maggie’s hospitalization and rehab. Frankie remained in Vegas for the time Maggie was there. He bunked with a trainer friend and spent all the time with Maggie her doctors would allow. He read newspapers and magazines to her. He brought in a small TV set with a VCR so she could watch movies. He wheeled her around the hospital grounds when it was cool enough.
He arranged for trainers in Los Angeles to work with his fighters and called his boys once a week. They were devastated by what happened to Maggie. All were proud to say they knew her. They called her Macushla.
Maggie could have gone to a rehab clinic in Las Vegas or Missouri but chose to return to Los Angeles for treatment to be close to Frankie. They made the six-hour trip by ambulance. Twice she spasmed into a grotesque caricature of herself, and the attending pulmonologist had to ask Maggie how to untwist her.
“Worse part is the dang bedsores, when they git to stinkin.”
~ * ~
At the Evergreen Rehabilitation Center near Third and Alvarado, there was a wide expanse of landscaped lawn, California sycamores, and palms. Maggie was given first-class treatment with genuine concern for her well-being. She was one of ten quadriplegics there, but there were many more paraplegics, and amputees of all kinds. Most of the patients were cheerful. Maggie was one of the ones who wasn’t, as each day the dread of a frozen life engulfed her.
Frankie tried to tell her that there was always hope, that new medical miracles were developed every day, but she would turn away and bite her tongue to keep from screaming.
“And even if they don’t, now that you’re off the heart monitor, you’ll be able to move around on your own. They got wheelchairs you can use by blowin into a straw, and TV sets and computers you can operate by your voice. You could go to school. I’d drive you.”
Maggie would nod. “I know you would, boss. But somewhere down the line I’ll finish up here like ever’body else. I surely can’t go home, and there’s nowhere else I can go.”
“You can stay with me.”
“Bein a burden ain’t somethin I could handle.”
“You’re same as my daughter to me,” Frankie said, pain and tenderness washing across his Irish moosh. “You’d be no burden, not to me.”
“You have no idea,” she said. “And all the money I made’d be gone quicker than a whitetail over barb wire.”
“I got money.”
When Frankie wasn’t there, and once her daily care had been administered, Maggie was wheeled from her room at the end of the wing out onto the second-floor balcony. On cold or windy days she sat before the domed window of her room. She never complained, never asked for anything, except for stronger sleep medication. She wished to God she’d get dysreflexia again, get it so bad her heart would squirt right out her ears. If she felt it coming on, she’d keep it to herself next time.
Someone from Maggie’s family called every day at first, then once a week. When her brother J.D. learned she was being moved to Los Angeles, he said the family would be out. Maggie told him not to bother.
“Naw, naw, big sister,” he said. “Mama wonts to make sure our bidness matters is bein tended to.”
~ * ~
The family had been in town a week, spending more time at Universal Studios and Disneyland than with Maggie. On what was to be their last day in Los Angeles, they arrived in Maggie’s room with a notary public and a lawyer, who had drawn up papers giving power of attorney to Earline. Maggie told them all to get their hillbilly asses back to the Ozarks. Frankie had watched in silence.
“Did I do wrong?” Maggie asked, when everyone had left.
“Whatever you want is right by me.”
“What I want is to donate my money to the American Paralysis Association, so no one else has to live like this.”
“Check with your doctor and do it.”
“Already did,” she said. “Family made that trip out here for nothin.”
“Not nothin,” said Frankie. “Saw Donald Duck and Mickey”
A day later Maggie’s family confronted Frankie in the parking lot. Maggie watched from her balcony. J.D. was six feet three and weighed 260. He was a big-boned man with beefy arms and legs. His hair was a pale blond, and his belly strained the shirt of his uniform. Frankie was five-eight and weighed 160.
“Hey there, bud,” said J.D. “We wont you to stay away from our kin.”
“Tell you what,” said Frankie. “Let’s go see Maggie. She tells me to stay away, I stay away.”
‘Ain’t gonna be like that,” said J.D “You’re suckin up to Sis just to git her money, an’ that dog don’t hunt.”
“You’re wrong, bubba. Just knowin her’s been enough.”
“If I gotta hurt you, I’ll hurt you, old man,” said J.D.
“You couldn’t hurt a ant with a hammer.”
“How old are you, bud?”
“Pick a number,” Frankie said.
J.D. slammed Frankie into a car and tried to get him in a choke hold. Frankie dropped his chin to his chest, kneed J.D. in the balls, and spun free when J.D. involuntarily grabbed to protect himself. Frankie faked a left, then threw a right-hand lead, and J.D. raised his hands to cover his face. As Frankie threw the right, he’d also stepped to his right and drilled a left hook to J.D.’s big gut, popping the buttons off his shirt. J.D. grunted and bent over in pain as Frankie slipped to his right again, which placed him behind J.D. Frankie put everything into a right hand and a hook that were designed to rupture J.D.’s left kidney. J.D. screamed and rolled into a gasping ball on the asphalt.
Frankie took two quick steps to the mother and daughter and slapped both of them full force in the face. The sister sat flat down, and Earline yelled at J.D. for not protecting her.
Frankie was on fire. “Git!” he shouted, treating them like dogs. “Go on, git!”
Maggie’s mother struck a pose. “Take us back home, J.D., where folks is decent.”
Maggie had seen the beef and was proud of Frankie when he climbed the back steps to her balcony.
“Dang if you still ain’t got some of the moves, Mr. Dunn,” she said, smiling.
“Sorry about what happened, it bein your family,” said Frankie, sitting down.
Maggie said, “You remind me of my daddy, I ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“Same slopey shoulders, same veiny arms,” she said, watching as her family drove out of the parking lot. “See, he was a over-the-road trucker, Daddy was, and he kept that rig of his lookin like a Easter egg. Had this big ol’ dog Axel, a German shepherd that traveled ever’where with him. Daddy was gone a lot, but whenever he come home it was like Christmas, and we’d have us a high old time. Clothes and toys for us kids, dresses and silky things for Mama, and store-bought pie
, if he’d come through Collins.
“Only thing Daddy spent money on for himself, besides work clothes, was chew, and he was a dude about chew. Back then there was this tobacco shop out here in Santa Monica someplace where he’d drive outta his way to stop in and buy ten pounds at a time ‘cause it was so far from home. It was tasty stuff, flavored and sweet like candy He’d buy licorish, and lime- and rum-flavored stuff called dakree, and the thick, dark natural stuff, and peach-flavored. His favorite was peach-flavored, and it was my favorite, too. You ever chew, boss?”
“Not me,” said Frankie, smiling and shaking his head. He was delighted that Maggie was talking. It was the first spark he’d seen in her since the accident.
“Chew got a hail of a kick to her, yessir.”
“You used to chew?”
“Dip, too. Hail, when I was ten I could shift gears from compound low all the way up and on back down again, double-clutchin all the way. Daddy promised to take me on a run with him soon’s I finished sixth grade. I was a all-A student, too. And I could outrun, out-hit, and outfling a football farther than any of the boys my age, and a lot of them older. Daddy said I was a pistol.”
“How old were you when your daddy passed on?”
“Almost twelve. It was April, and I was due to make that rim in June. Daddy said he’d try for a load out here so we could buy peach chew together, and eat lobster out Santa Monica Pier, and ride the merry-go-round till we caught the brass ring. We had a house, and Mama had a new pickup, and there was money in the bank. Then Daddy come down with cancer of the tongue and throat, and you don’t wont to hear more ‘bout what that’s like. But Mama stuck it out.
“See, Mama wasn’t born bad, but what she needed was a keeper. She was the prettiest little ol’ thing you ever did see, and afterwards I saw after the kids, and she went to waitressin to keep the house. Lost it, a course, and we become standard trailer trash.
“When Daddy got sick, old Axel didn’t know what to do with hisself. He’d come and stand with his chin on the side of Daddy’s bed. Daddy couldn’t talk, but all he had to do was to look at that dog, and ol’ Axel’d start yippin and his tail’d start to waggin. It wasn’t long before Axel’s hindquarters started to give out on him. Happens a lot to shepherds, comes from inbreedin. Pretty soon ol’ Axel couldn’t barely walk from the pain. Daddy was so sick he couldn’t hardly stand, but one day he got Axel into his rig by hisself, and both of ‘em sat there half a hour while Daddy got his truck warmed up. Daddy took a shovel and a forty-five with him. Axel thought he was a goin on a run and was actin like a pup. Then Daddy drove up into the hills so’s he could put his best friend down. Mama and us kids sat close on the floor waitin. Near sundown the shot come through the trees. It took Daddy a long time to git back home. His eyes was all burny when he come in, and he never got into his Easter egg again.
“Somethin died in me, too. When I was sixteen, I quit school and went to waitressin myself. Then I was a box girl at Shop ‘n’ Save and part-time cashier. Only thing I was ever gonna git was burger-flippin jobs, I knew that.
“I got a little stake together and moved around. I took karate for a time when I worked up Springfield, and I was good at it. I played baseball and basketball in the night leagues up Kansas City, where I was a security guard in a mall. And then I saw the gal fighters on TV, and I figured my luck had changed. Luck has a lot to do with things.”
“It does.”
“Frankie, I was wonderin,” Maggie said, her eyes squinting against the glare, “would you do me a favor?”
“Anything at all, you know that.”
“Favor bigger’n a tranny in a Peterbilt?”
“Bigger than that, if you want it.”
“Frankie,” she said, now looking him straight in the eye. “I want you to put me down like Daddy did Axel.”
Frankie bent forward in his chair, felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. “I’d die if I did that.”
“I’ma dyin ever’ day. Now they’re talkin ‘bout cuttin off my ulcerated leg. I know you can smell it.”
Frankie nodded.
“I’m gettin worse, boss,” she said, speaking in what seemed slow motion to Frankie. “I don’t wont to live on like this.”
“Don’t ask me this. I love you.”
“That’s why I’ma askin.”
~ * ~
The next day she asked him again. “You’d do it for a dog.”
“You’re not a dog. You’re my blood.”
They remained silent for twenty-eight minutes.
Frankie said, “You can’t give up hope. Even the doctors say— “
She cut him off. “Ain’t no hope. I’m deadweight, can’t you see? Ain’t no insides to this body you’re lookin at. The bird in me can’t fly.”
Frankie’s heart began to race, and he felt his face flush with blood and his mouth go dry. He had no answer for her. He’d die for Maggie, but he couldn’t kill her. He felt like a coward for the first time in his life. He tried to breathe normally but couldn’t. After a deep breath he heard her voice again, still in slow motion.
“Night nurse makes her rounds at midnight, at two, at four, and at six. Quads like me is the first on her list. Takes her forty minutes, and then she’s back doin paperwork at her desk. You could come in while she’s busy. You could stick a Buck knife into my heart. I wouldn’t even feel it.”
“Ah, God.”
“I ain’t one to beg, Mr. Dunn,” she said, a little smile at the corner of her mouth. “But I’ma beggin.”
Frankie covered his face with his hands and shook his head.
“I understand,” she said.
~ * ~
When Frankie returned the next day, the nurse told him he couldn’t visit Maggie.
“Why?”
“I’ll get the doctor.”
The doctor hurried in. “She’s been transferred to Cedars-Sinai in West Hollywood. She’s in Intensive Care.”
“Why?”
“She tried to commit suicide,” said the doctor.
“How could she do that?, she can’t move!”
“She bit off her tongue in an effort to bleed to death.”
At Cedars Frankie was allowed to look in on her. What remained of her tongue was sutured and so swollen it protruded from her mouth. Frankie camped in the waiting room at Cedars, though Maggie was sedated most of the two weeks she was there.
She was returned to Evergreen alert, but she was unable to speak. The nurses taught her to communicate with her eyes. To say Yes to a question, she was to blink her eyes twice slowly, then look away. To answer No, she learned to close her eyes and count to three before looking back at the person who was speaking.
On the second day after she returned to rehab, Frankie asked if she was feeling better. She closed her eyes and counted to three. No.
She opened her eyes and Frankie said, “Fightin Maggie Fitzgerald. God, I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
She closed her eyes for a three-count. No.
“‘Tis,” said Frankie. “If only it had been me.”
She closed her eyes for another three-count.
“Ah, Christ,” said Frankie, swallowing hard to keep from losing control. “Isn’t there anything I can do at all, at all?”
She blinked twice and looked away.
Yes.
She looked back at him and blinked twice again.
Yes.
Then she blinked nonstop, Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes!
Frankie placed his hand over her eyes. He felt the flutter of her eyelashes as she continued to blink.
~ * ~
Frankie squinted against the slanting sunlight as he climbed the steps of St. Brendan’s Roman Catholic Church like an old man. It was October 28, the Feast Day of St. Jude. Though it had been a typically hot autumn day for Southern California, a chill was now coming in off the nearby Pacific, where distant passing tankers, shrouded in fog, wailed. In his heart, Frankie Dunn was already doomed.
In a few days it would be
All Saints’ Day, a Holy Day of Obligation. Frankie hadn’t received the Eucharist since Maggie’s injury. He felt gut-shot for staying away, his rage at God having ruined his faith like a drop of Monsell’s solution in an eyeball. He yearned for the sacred host, to taste its unleavened blandness, was not whole without it—feared he would never be whole again. He dreaded going to confession like this, a half confession, something he’d never done and something he knew would do him no good, not in his eyes and not in the eyes of God, not with God knowing what was in his heart. He hoped that Father Tim O’Gorman wouldn’t be the one hearing his confession; then he reversed himself and wished it would be Tim. Whoever the priest was, Frankie ached for absolution of all his sins, venial and mortal, but especially this mortal sin slithering through his soul.