by Pamela Morsi
“That’s all we can do,” Dr. Reberdi said, his expression for the first time showing signs of sympathy.
He urged them to contact him if they had questions then he, and his white coat, disappeared back through the doorway of the inner sanctum of the emergency room.
The three adults stood there and stared at each other for a long moment, not saying anything.
“Wil-ma can’t come home?” Jet’s question was full of concern.
“She’ll come home in a day or two,” Ellen assured the child with the warmest, most hopeful smile that she could manage.
“Is she going to miss my birthday?” Jet asked. “My birthday is coming up and I don’t want Wil-ma to miss it.”
“We’ll see,” Ellen said.
The answer didn’t suffice for Jet. She turned to Amber.
“Mama, we can’t let Wil-ma miss my birthday,” she said.
“She won’t,” Amber assured the little girl. “Somehow we’ll make sure that she won’t.”
Ellen was disappointed in her daughter’s response. But she thought it best not to go into it in front of Jet.
“You’re going to have to take Jet home,” Ellen said. “She’s hungry and she’s going to be tired. And a hospital emergency room is the best place in town to pick up a nasty cold or flu.”
“What about you?” Amber said. “I’m the one who’s used to evening work and late nights. You’ve been up since daybreak. You must be exhausted.”
“I’m okay,” Ellen assured her. “I’ll stay here until Wilma’s in her room. I just need to see her, reassure myself that she’s all right. You go on and take Jet and I’ll call you to come get me later.”
Amber didn’t look like she wanted to agree. And it turned out that she didn’t have to.
“I’ll take Jet home,” Brent said. “I can get her something to eat and get her to bed. You two can both stay here. Then you can come home in the car together whenever you’re ready, and nobody will have to pick anybody up.”
Neither woman had an opportunity to respond to that before Jet burst in with her approval.
“Brent can take me to McDonald’s,” she announced. “And then when we get home he can read me Gus and Button. That’s my favorite. It’s Wil-ma’s favorite, too.”
So it was settled. Jet kissed them both and waved goodbye as she walked out the door, hand-in-hand with Brent.
Ellen and Amber were barely seated when Ellen thought of something and jumped up.
“We need to give him the car seat,” she said.
“He has his own,” Amber told her.
“What?”
“Brent bought a car seat so Jet could ride with him,” Amber said.
Ellen raised an amused eyebrow. “That guy never gives up,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that he used to try to impress you with books he’d read and music he was into,” Ellen said. “Now he’s trying to show what a great father he’d be.”
“That’s your fantasy, Mother,” Amber said. “He’s not even remotely interested in me.”
Ellen shook her head. “Yeah, like a twenty-one-year-old single guy has nothing better to do this summer but hang out with us.”
The automatic doors opened and a young couple, he looking wide-eyed and afraid and she so pregnant she resembled a shoplifter smuggling an armchair out under her shirt, made their way inside. The woman was immediately seated in a wheelchair and after only a couple of questions, she was whisked away.
“You are like way off about Brent and me,” Amber told her. “There is just no they’re, there. The guy and I used to be friends. Now we have nothing in common and no interest whatsoever in each other.”
“He was crazy about you for a very long time,” Ellen pointed out.
Amber waved that suggestion away. “That was years ago,” she said. “We were both in the honor society and we both had braces. By the time I left school we’d already gone our separate ways. He was totally hooked up with Lissa.”
“And you were pregnant with another man’s baby,” Ellen reminded her. “Most guys would take that as a signal that you weren’t particularly interested in them.”
The receptionist called for the family of the little boy that Jet had been playing with. They were being sent home with a prescription for antibiotics and some saline nose drops.
“I wasn’t interested in Brent then and I’m not interested in him now,” Amber told her, emphatically.
“You could do a lot worse,” Ellen said. “He’s a nice, smart, good-looking guy with drive and ambition.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “And guys like that don’t get involved with girls like me. Try to get this part, Mom,” Amber said, snidely. “I’m a basic beer-party kind of girl. Not little wifey material.”
“You are whoever you want to be, Amber,” Ellen told her. “Don’t place these ridiculous limitations on yourself.”
“You’re as bad as Wilma,” she said. “Thinking that men can solve everything.”
“I don’t think that men can necessarily solve anything, but I do know from experience that it’s easier to raise a child with one than without one.”
“You think I need more help to raise Jet?” she asked. “I can’t imagine why. I’ve already got you butting into it every minute of the day and night.”
“Butting in?” Ellen was incensed by her suggestion. “I’m not butting in, I’m trying to help.”
“Because you think I can’t do it myself,” Amber said.
“I just think you don’t always think things through,” Ellen said. “You’re young and still finding your way. It’s absolutely normal to get things wrong.”
“What am I getting wrong?” Amber asked, her tone defensive.
“Nothing irreversible,” Ellen said. “Not even anything big. Just little things.”
“Such as?”
Ellen thought for a moment. “Well, what you said to Jet just a few minutes ago.”
“What?”
“She asked you if Wilma would be at her birthday party,” Ellen pointed out. “And you said that she would. I know that’s what you want. I know that’s what we all want. But it’s not good to promise things to children that you have no control over being able to deliver.”
Amber just stared at her for a long moment before she responded.
“That’s rich,” she said, facetiously. “Absolutely rich. How many times, hundreds of times, thousands of times, did you reassure me that Daddy was going to get well, that Daddy was going to be fine, that everything was going to be just exactly as it always had been?”
Ellen felt as if she had been slapped. She let the sting of the equivalent blow sink through her.
A man walked through the doorway and over to the reception desk. He was carrying a motorcycle helmet. His jeans were torn and he was bleeding from his elbows.
“I’m sorry,” Ellen told Amber. “I suppose I have a lot to answer for as a mother. Maybe I just want to help you so that you’ll not make the same mistakes that I did.”
Amber shrugged with unrealistic bravado. “Hey, you want to do better with Jet than you have with me, go for it,” Amber said. “She’s probably got more potential as a daughter than I ever did.”
“I don’t want to take over parenting your daughter,” Ellen said. “I’m only picking up slack. If you would knuckle down and take responsibility for your own child, nobody else would have to.”
“Then you wouldn’t have a damn thing to live for,” Amber said. “You could just crawl up in the bed with Wilma and then you could both go to meet your late lamented husbands over on that golden shore.”
“That is a very cruel thing to say.”
“Yeah, well the truth hurts,” Amber told her.
“That’s not the truth.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been sleepwalking ever since Daddy died,” she said. “And by the way, hello! You weren’t the only person that happened to. I was just a kid. I lost my father and I felt like I’d lost
my mother, too. If I hadn’t given birth, I doubt you would have noticed I was still around.”
“Is that why you had Jet, so that I’d notice you were still around?”
“I had Jet because I was stupid enough to get pregnant and then excited by the prospect of bringing another life into the world. My father’s grandchild. Someone to belong to me.”
“No one ever truly belongs to anyone else,” Ellen told her. “And in a mother/daughter relationship, it’s always the child who has the most claim on ownership.”
“So I screwed up,” Amber said. “That’s no big news. I’ve been screwing up routinely now for years. It’s okay. I’ve got a plan to fix things once and for all.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m moving out,” Amber said. “Gwen and I are getting an apartment together.”
Ellen was momentarily stunned into silence.
“Can you afford that?” she asked finally.
“We think we can,” Amber said. “We both work full-time and she’s found a very reasonably priced apartment in the same complex as our friend Kayla. Kayla has her own car, so we’ll be able to hitch a ride with her when we need one. We’ve almost got enough money together to move in.”
“So you’ve been planning this for quite a while,” she said.
Amber shrugged rather than answered.
“What brought this on?”
“Well, with the problems with Wilma’s house, I thought that maybe now was the time to get out on my own,” Amber said.
“Your grandmother is not losing that house,” Ellen told her. “If I have to walk up and down outside with a placard, she’s not losing that house.”
“I hope not,” Amber told her. “But whether she does or doesn’t, it’s really not going to affect my decision.”
Inside Ellen was a jumble of emotions, deliberately she tried to remain calm.
“I know that every young person wants to be out on their own,” she said. “It’s completely natural for you to want that. All the chicks leave the nest eventually. It’s what I want for you, too.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Ellen folded her hands prayerfully and propped her chin upon them, looking at her daughter.
“But you haven’t lived on your own yet,” she told Amber. “I’m not sure you realize how difficult it can be.”
“As long as we can pay the rent and buy food, I don’t see that it’s much different than what we’ve got going now,” she said. “Instead of having you and Wilma as roommates, I’ll have Gwen. We get along really well.”
Ellen listened to what she said and she did nod, but only slowly.
“Wilma and I are more than just roommates, I think,” she said.
“Oh, well, sure,” Amber agreed. “You are my family. But most everybody agrees that it’s harder to live with family than with friends your own age. It’s just easier for Gwen and I to understand each other.”
“I’m sure that there are ways in which friends are easier than family members,” Ellen agreed. “Because you are not as intimately involved. But they can also be less tolerant. What if she doesn’t like you leaving dishes in the sink or your laundry strewn everywhere?”
“I can be neater,” Amber assured her.
“What if she spends all her money on clothes or music and expects to eat the food that you bought.”
“We’ll work that out.”
“What if Jet’s little singsong stuff gets on her nerves,” Ellen said. “Not everybody likes kids.”
“Gwen has a little boy of her own,” Amber said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“And how old is he?”
“Eight.”
“Oh my goodness,” Ellen said. “Then he’s in school already.”
“Yeah.”
“So what if he and Jet don’t get along?” she asked.
“He’s not going to be living with us,” Amber said. “He’s living with Gwen’s mother.”
“Oh,” Ellen said.
Amber took a deep breath. Now was the time. She had to tell her mother and now was exactly the moment to do it.
Unfortunately, the words got stuck in her throat.
“You have to think very carefully about this,” Ellen said. “There are lots of details to be taken into consideration. I won’t try to stop you or hold you back in any way. You are a grown-up, adult woman with your own life. I’m really proud of you for wanting to take charge of your own little family. But it won’t be easy. And I’m sure you know that I won’t be able to help you.”
Amber nodded.
“I always thought that you would go to college,” Ellen said with an almost wistful sigh. “Even after Jet was born and you had all the parenting considerations, I hoped that you would find something that interested you and really pursue it.”
“Mom, the whole college thing was shot the minute Dad died,” Amber said.
Ellen’s expression was puzzled.
“It was never your father’s death that kept you from college,” she said. “It was having a baby. Jet is, quite rightly, your first priority. Truthfully, with Wilma ill, I hate for you to tear Jet away from things that are familiar.”
“I’m not tearing Jet from anything,” Amber said. “I’m leaving her with you.”
15
It wasn’t that late when they arrived home from the hospital, only a little after ten o’clock. As Ellen had predicted, their visit with Wilma had been very brief. She didn’t look great, but she’d been looking so spiffed up the last few weeks that seeing her faded and old was a bit of a shock. Amber decided that fixing her hair and doing her makeup would mean immediate improvement.
Weakness, however, was not cosmetic, and her grandmother could hardly hold her head up to take a sip of water through a bent straw.
“Don’t look so worried,” Wilma told Ellen. “It’s just a touch of bronchitis. I’ll be back home in a couple of days.”
The nurses came to shoo them out. Ellen made sure that Wilma could reach her call button and kissed her goodbye.
When it was Amber’s turn, Wilma didn’t let her go that easy.
“Do you have my purse?” she asked in a whisper.
Amber glanced back toward her mother. Ellen obligingly stepped out into the hallway.
“Mom’s got it,” Amber said.
“Damn! Do you have any cigarettes on you?”
Amber had Wilma’s pack in her shoulderbag, but she dodged the question.
“I don’t think you can light up in here,” Amber told her. “The whole building is smoke-free and with this oxygen going and a big red sign on the ICU door, I don’t think tobacco is going to be a possibility, unless you’re chewing.”
“I could make them haul me out on the roof or something,” Wilma said. “I hate to be cornered somewhere without my cigarettes.”
Amber nodded sympathetically, but didn’t volunteer to help her. She’d plainly heard what the doctor had said. Cigarettes were going to kill Wilma, and soon, if she didn’t stop smoking. Like Ellen, Amber didn’t think it was very likely that Wilma would quit. But it wasn’t within her capabilities to aid and abet her continuing.
“Maybe the doctor will give you a patch or something to get you through the next day or so,” Amber said. She kissed Wilma on the forehead. “Get better, we need you at home.”
Amber caught up with her mother outside the doorway.
“Did she ask you for cigarettes?”
Amber nodded.
Ellen didn’t question her about whether or not she handed them over. Amber didn’t know if that meant her mother assumed she had or not.
They walked together, mostly in silence to the car. The discussion about Amber leaving Jet had been effectively tabled. But the fact that it was now out in the open made it seem, at last, as if it were likely to happen. It was, at the same time, both exciting and painful. She loved Jet. She wanted to be a part of her life. Could she be satisfied with such a small part?
Thinking ab
out it made her head hurt, so she made a determined effort to think about something else. Ellen let her drive. That helped a lot. Although she had been at the very top of her driver’s ed class and had earned her license on the first try, her opportunities to drive were still rare enough to be pleasurable.
The Tahoe was parked on the street when she pulled into the driveway. The lights were on in the living room. Brent was sitting in Wilma’s chair in front of the TV, asleep. Amber bypassed him to check on Jet.
She was sound asleep as well. Her hair wasn’t braided and the buttons on her pajamas were mismatched, as if she’d done them up herself, but she looked like a little angel. Amber bent down and placed a feather-light kiss on her forehead.
When she came out of the room her mother was in the kitchen.
“Should I call Bud tonight and tell him about Wilma or wait until the morning?”
Amber gave her an exaggerated frown. “Do we have to tell them at all?” she asked. “They’ll just show up at the hospital, all smug and superior. I’d hate for Wilma to have to take them on when she’s not in top fighting condition.”
Ellen was trying to look disapproving, but she was amused.
“My brother’s wife is a bit of a snit, isn’t she?”
“That’s understating it, Mom,” Amber said. “She’s the ultimate snit-meister, the snit-o-rama, the snit-isimo.”
“Okay, maybe I’ll ask Wilma before I call them.”
“Good thinking.”
“You’d better wake the baby-sitter and send him home,” Ellen said with a nod toward Brent in the other room.
Amber nodded. “I think I’m going to wake him up and make him take me out for a drink,” she said. “I’m wide-awake.”
If her mother disapproved, she managed not to show it.
Amber went into the bathroom and repaired her hair and makeup, before returning to the living room to nudge Brent awake. For a second he looked confused.
“Is it past your bedtime, sleepyhead?” she asked him.
Brent grinned and rubbed his hand over his face.
“How’s Wilma?” he asked.
Amber shrugged. “She’s pretty weak, but I think she’s okay. She asked me for cigarettes.”
“And that was a surprise?”