by P. D. Cacek
“And then there’s you,” she said. “You’re always calling and checking up on me and taking me to lunch and stuff. So I’m not really alone.”
He stopped when they reached his car – a boring dark blue sedan – and touched her arm.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“What?”
“It never dawned on me that my presence might bother you.”
“It doesn’t!”
“I mean, I was Helen’s surgeon and, well, I don’t want you to feel that my only interest is based on that.”
“What was Helen like?”
Frank thought a moment. “I really don’t know. She was my patient so I probably knew more about her medical history than about her personally.”
“Kate says she was a strong woman who knew what she wanted out of life.”
“That’s good. I do know she did her homework on what her medical options were before she contacted me. She wanted to get her life back without compromise as soon as possible.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“No, it didn’t. The surgery was a success but the patient died.”
“And I came back.”
He smiled. “And you came back.”
“Do you still like me, Frank?”
“What?”
Crissy took a step forward, hands on her hips, and stared at him (through the designer sunglasses she’d found in Helen’s purse) the same way she had the last day she was really Crissy Moore, inside and out. They were almost the same height now. Helen was taller than her own original five foot five, and the two-inch heels she’d found in Helen’s closet almost made her eyeball to eyeball with Frank.
And that seemed to make him almost as uncomfortable as her question had.
“I asked,” she repeated slowly, “if you still liked me? You said you had a crush on me in school, and I knew you were watching me in the cafeteria. You were always looking at me, weren’t you, Frankie?”
He stared at her and for a minute, just a minute, he looked like the Blankie Frankie she knew and tormented.
“Well?”
Frankie faded and Frank came back. “God help me. I forgot how manipulative sixteen-year-old girls can be.”
“Seventeen.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is September, my birthday was in April…so I’m seventeen now.”
They stood looking at each other for another long moment until a car trying to leave the parking lot gunned its motor, reminding them they were still standing far enough away from the car to block traffic. Frank waved to the driver then took her arm and escorted her to the sedan’s passenger side door.
“Well, happy belated birthday,” he said as he opened the door.
Crissy waited until he’d settled behind the wheel, seat belt in place, and turned the car on before asking. “So, are you going to get me a present?”
He turned to her and smiled. “What?”
“Well, I have missed a lot of birthdays….” Pout.
“Right. Okay, so what would you like?”
“Hmm…let me think and I’ll get back to you on that.”
Frank turned and slowly backed the car out. “Why do I have the feeling I should be worried?” Crissy gave him an evil laugh. “Is there any place you’d like to go before I get back to the hospital?”
She didn’t need to think about it because that’s all she had been thinking about, more or less, since she ‘woke up’.
“Yeah. I want to see my grave.”
The car did a little lurch when he stomped on the brakes. The car behind them honked.
Frank waved, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” and sped up, taking the turn onto Beverly Boulevard with a squeal of tire rubber on asphalt.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Crissy.”
“Why not?”
“It’s morbid and both you and your heart are still recovering from major surgery, remember. I shouldn’t even have let you eat what you had – we’ll talk about your diet later – but it was a special occasion and—”
“I want to see it.”
“Crissy.”
“Do you know where it is? Did you go to my…you know?”
He nodded without answering.
“Was it nice?”
“No. It was your funeral, how could it be nice?”
Crissy kept quiet until Frank took the turn onto the Hollywood Freeway.
“Please?”
Silence.
“I need to see it.”
“Why?”
“To make it real.”
“Fine, but afterward I’m taking you right home and you’re going to rest. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
It was harder than she thought it would be, standing there looking down at the heart-shaped pink marble tombstone.
Christine Taylor Moore
April 20, 1976 – June 4, 1992
Beloved daughter
Forever in our hearts
She was a star that shone so brightly
she filled the world with light
Rest in Peace, little girl
It was in the middle of a row, on a small hill that looked out over the San Pedro harbor. It was a great view and she wondered if her mom and dad had looked at it during the funeral. She hoped so, she hoped they’d watched the clouds on the horizon and the boats on the water and the birds, instead of watching her coffin go in the ground.
Although the day was seasonably warm, the wind coming off the sea was cold and it made Crissy shiver.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“We should go.”
She nodded again. “You said my mom and dad moved?”
“Yes.”
“The flowers.” She nudged the bouquet of pink roses lying on the grave with the toe of Helen’s shoe. “They’re fresh.”
“Not really, they’re about a week old.”
Why wasn’t she surprised? “You put flowers on my grave?”
“I’ve always thought graves look lonely without flowers.”
Crissy looked at the other graves. Some had flowers, some had little American flags fluttering in the breeze; most had neither and they really did look lonely.
“But…I’m back,” she said. “Why are you still putting flowers here?”
“Habit, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
When the tears came she didn’t try to stop them and neither did Frank. It was just so strange to stand at her own grave, knowing that her body, her real body, was down there and probably nothing more than bones covered in rags.
“Okay, that’s enough. I was afraid this might happen. Let’s go.”
“In a minute.”
“Crissy.”
“It’s kinda like that old song Mr. Byrd used to sing at all the cast parties, remember?”
Frank frowned, shaking his head. “Song?”
“‘It’s My Party’?” She looked up at him and gave him a quivering smile. “Come on, it’s my grave. Can’t I cry if I want to?”
PART SIX
OCTOBER
Chapter Twenty-Six
Timmy
Nora heard them laughing in the front room and stopped rummaging through the Halloween decorations to listen. Although it was Timmy laughing, there was a low, gravelly undertone to the child’s voice that sounded like Henry when they first began seeing each other. He’d been such a handsome, strapping young man, tall and straight and polite, with hands that were equally happy crushing walnut shells for her papa as they were plucking off daisy petals – she loves me, she loves me not – until he got the answer he wanted. She loves me.
Her sisters and cousins had been so jealous they chewed nails and talked tras
h and tried their best to put him down to her.
As if they could.
She’d fallen in love with Henry the first time she’d seen him standing big and awkward and hunched against the back wall of the school gymnasium like some misplaced shadow. For all the size and strength he showed outwardly, inside he was just a shy little boy.
Just like Timmy.
Timmy was shy only until he got to know you and then, my, oh my, that child was anything but. He laughed and enjoyed life more than anyone Nora had ever known. And talk? The child never stopped from the moment he woke up until he fell asleep.
Timmy was a lot like Henry’d been before the disease whittled him down.
Henry and Timmy, her two boys in one body; no woman could be more blessed.
“…and the duck went quack!”
Nora hadn’t heard the first part of Dr. Ellison’s joke – he was always telling Timmy jokes or riddles – but it must have been a good one because Timmy’s shrill laughter filled the house again. He was such a happy little boy despite everything.
He couldn’t walk anymore and was so weak he could barely help Nora get himself in and out of the wheelchair, but it’d been the same with Henry in those last few weeks and Nora was used to it. Timmy’s appetite was still better than Henry’s though, and he never tried to hit her or spoke mean to her, and, except for the few times he remembered his mama and daddy, which were getting fewer now, he was a happy little boy.
“Quack!” Timmy yelled. “The duck said QUACK!”
Nora heard Dr. Ellison chuckle and mutter something she couldn’t make out, but Timmy said “Okey-dokey, Mr. Pokey!” and laughed again.
Smiling, Nora went back to sorting decorations. She hadn’t seen some of them in almost forty years, maybe longer, and hadn’t decorated the house for Halloween except for putting up a smiling paper witch on the front door and a carved jack-o’-lantern on the porch since Marjorie was a teenager. But she knew exactly where the box was when she went down to the basement to get it.
And it felt good to be doing it.
Even before Marjorie came along, she and Henry had always decorated the house every chance they got. There’d be paper hearts for Valentine’s Day; lilies and candy dishes filled with jelly beans for Easter; flags for the Fourth of July; autumn leaves, corn stalks and pumpkins for Halloween and Thanksgiving; and a hundred twinkling lights that Henry would put all along the front of the house for Christmas while she frosted the windows and hung holly.
After Marjorie came, there were even more lights and pumpkins and paper hearts, but then she grew up and got married and had her own house to decorate. After that, a carved pumpkin and paper witch or plastic wreath on the front door was all they put up.
But the decorations never got thrown away, oh no, because there might come a time when you needed them again.
Like now.
It was going to be Timmy’s last Halloween, probably his last holiday ever. Nora knew that even without Dr. Ellison or Martin telling her every time they saw her, so she was bound and determined to make it the best Halloween he ever had.
Nora pulled out the plastic Frankenstein’s monster mask Henry used to wear to hand out candy. It was cracked and faded and the elastic band had disappeared years ago, taking a small piece of the monster’s left temple with it. The mask had caused many a trick-or-treater to squeal and scream, but now it just looked sad and lonely.
She held it up to her face when she heard Dr. Ellison coming.
“Okay, okay, I’ll ask, but don’t get your hopes—” She turned around. “Yah!”
Nora lowered the mask, laughing.
“Whazza matter, Dr. Ellison?” Timmy called from the front room.
“Oh, nothing,” he answered, “Missus Nora just tried to scare me to death, that’s all.”
“Yay!” Timmy laughed, clapping his hands. “’Cause it’s a’most Halloween!”
Dr. Ellison took the mask from Nora and shook his head. “Yes, it is. It most certainly is almost Halloween.”
“I’m gonna be Howdy Doody! Missus Nora’s gonna make me a costume, aren’t you, Missus Nora?”
“I sure am, Timmy.”
“See,” he yelled as though Dr. Ellison had doubted him. “Ask her, Dr. Ellison!”
“Ask me what, Dr. Ellison?”
Dr. Ellison set the mask down carefully on the table. “He’d like to know if he can stay up until ten tonight.”
“That boy. He’s always asking to stay up late but never can make it past nine.” Shaking her head, Nora turned toward the front room and shouted, “Dr. Ellison asked me…I’ll think about it, okay?”
“Okay,” he called back. “Can I have a cookie?”
“You just had a cookie.”
“N’uh. Dr. Ellison ate all of them.”
Nora looked back at the psychiatrist and arched an eyebrow. Dr. Ellison smiled. “They were delicious, but I only ate my share.”
“I’ll bring you some in a minute. You watch your programs now, and let me talk to Dr. Ellison, okay?”
“Okay.”
Nora waited until she heard the television go on. He’d mastered the use of the remote control without any problem.
“You want me to get the cookies?” Dr. Ellison asked and Nora shook her head.
“He’ll forget about it as soon as his cartoons are on. Here, let me move those out of the way so you can sit down.”
Dr. Ellison helped stack the timeworn paper decorations while Nora shoved the bulkier items to the opposite end of the dining room table. The strips of black and orange construction paper she’d cut that morning while the hospice nurse was giving Timmy his sponge bath were in a pile at the head of the table, Henry’s spot, so she could get to them after supper. They were going to make new chain garlands to replace the ones she and Marjorie had made years before.
Paper chains, Karo syrup popcorn balls, cookies and one of the Howdy Doody DVDs she’d bought from Amazon.com – that’s what Nora had planned for them and she was anxious to get to it. They didn’t have many projects left.
“My gosh,” Dr. Ellison said and picked up a smiling pumpkin noisemaker. “I think I had one of these when I was a kid.”
Holding it gently by its wooden handle, he gave the tin rattle a shake.
“Yep, just as loud and annoying as I remember.” He set it back down on the table as carefully as if it were made of spun glass. “You’ve got quite a collection here.”
“A bit,” Nora agreed, “and it will probably take me a couple days to put them all up.”
Dr. Ellison ran a finger over the Frankenstein mask.
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get us both a cup of tea. Or would you rather have coffee?”
“Nothing for me, thanks.” He sat down in what had been Marjorie’s chair. “But don’t let me stop you from having any.”
“Oh, I drink too much and Lord knows I’ll be up and down all night if I have another cup this late in the afternoon.” He laughed politely. “You know, he likes when you visit.”
“He said that but I just thought he was being polite.”
“Oh, no, he really does like you…you always bring him treats.”
Dr. Ellison hung his head. “Busted.”
“He tells me everything you two talk about.”
“Everything?”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, “he tells me about the memory games and guessing games you play and how you cheat at Chinese Checkers.”
“I don’t cheat!”
“He says you let him win and his daddy said that cheating to lose is just as bad as cheating to win. How’s he supposed to learn and get better if you let him win?”
“Ah, clever boy, I’ll remember that. Anything else?”
“Only that he’s very happy that you’re not the kind of doctor who gives shots,” Nora sai
d. “That’s very important to him.”
Dr. Ellison nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Does he still ask about his family?”
“Not as much as he did. Maybe that means he’s getting used to being here…children can adjust to anything. I remember once when Marjorie was in second grade and they had to move her and a couple of other students to a new class because…well, I can’t remember why they had to, maybe the old class was too crowded or something, but she hated it! She loved her old teacher and all her friends were in the old room. It just about broke my heart to see her so upset. She cried for a whole week and then she got used to it and couldn’t have been happier. I think children can handle change better than adults.”
“I think so too, but it’s a little different in Timmy’s case.”
“Because of the Alzheimer’s.”
“Partially, that’s true, the disease is compromising his memory, but it’s more than that. He thinks his parents gave him away because he got hurt.”
“Oh, that poor child.” Nora felt tears come to her eyes. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know if there’s anything either of us can do. I’ve talked to him about it and reinforced what you’ve told him – that his parents are at the hospital with the new baby and will come for him as soon as they can – but I think there’s a part of him that knows we’re lying. It’s very hard to tell what a typical child knows or doesn’t know and it’s a hundred times harder in Timmy’s case. His cognitive functions are impaired and deteriorating. All we can do is keep telling him his parents love him and will come back for him.”