Quinn

by Sally Mandel

  Sunday morning John asked her in a neutral voice if she would be coming to mass with him. She declined politely. After he left, Quinn made up a tray for her mother. Her inclination was to load it until it sagged under the weight of pancakes, cereal, pastries, and fruit, food to pad Ann’s too prominent cheekbones. But she resisted and kept it simple, just two slices of toast, juice, and a cup of tea. Otherwise the leftovers would be too discouraging for them both.

  Ann was propped up in bed reading the Sunday Globe, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose. When Quinn appeared, she whipped them off.

  “Vanity, vanity,” Quinn said, setting down the tray. “You look nice in glasses. How come you’re always hiding them?”

  “Oh, it’s silly. I keep thinking I just got them and have to adjust.” She laughed. “It must be ten years now. How lovely, dear. This is really very nice. Come sit.”

  Quinn sat on the end of the bed, cross-legged as always, sipping her coffee. Ann munched deliberately at her toast.

  “How do you feel?” Quinn asked.

  “All right. Fine.”

  “No. I don’t want the bullshit. I want to know really.”

  Ann regarded her daughter over the rim of her teacup.

  “I need to get ready,” Quinn said. “If I have to. Do I have to?”

  “I’m not getting any better.”

  “Today you’re not, or this week? Or ever?”

  “Darling—”

  “Please, Mom. It’s the not knowing I can’t take. It’s no protection being in the dark. You just trip yourself up.”

  “Well, Quinn, sometimes I’m not so sure who I’m trying to protect.” Ann’s eyes filled with tears. “I think you give me too much credit.”

  “I feel like I can’t talk to you anymore about anything. Not with this big question hanging here.” She traced a giant question mark in the air above their heads.

  “All right.” Ann paused, then stretched out her hand to touch Quinn’s foot. “I think God’s made up His mind about me.”

  Quinn dropped her eyes. In a moment the tears that had collected at the tip of her nose splashed onto the bedspread. “How long?” she asked in a choked voice.

  “I don’t know. It gets a little better, then a lot worse. I’ve had estimates anywhere from six months to a few years.”

  “Estimates,” Quinn echoed.

  “I’m sorry, darling.”

  Quinn looked up fiercely. “Don’t apologize.” She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, the way she had done as a child. “What does Dr. Gunther say?”

  “He’s not guessing.”

  Quinn was silent.

  “I don’t know how to help you live with this,” Ann said.

  Quinn blew her nose. “You’re going to have to put up with a lot of tender loving care, that’s for damn sure. I’m not going to leave you alone. You’ll throw up at the very sight of me.”

  Ann touched Quinn’s toes one by one, her fingers remembering the old game: This little pig went to market. “I can’t imagine having a child who could give me more pleasure.” The next thing she knew, Quinn was in her arms, sobbing.

  “Oh, Mommy, I love you. Please don’t leave me. Please.”

  The cups had spilled onto the bed, coffee and tea soaking all the way through to the mattress. But Ann just held her daughter’s trembling body and let her grieve.

  Chapter 27

  Despite the formal disbanding of the Big Brother program, an earnest sophomore named Steve Sawyer had volunteered to replace Will for Harvey Jackson. At four o’clock in the afternoon on a brilliant early April Thursday, Will and Steve stood in the doorway of Harvey’s building. Will was despondent. He stared at the graffiti—a new artist had been hard at work. Primary blue paint to match the primary blue spring sky. Cops suck. Someone else had smeared the “cops” with white paint and substituted “Pigs.”

  “Pretty grim,” Steve said, looking around.

  Will nodded. Was graffiti a symptom of the decade, he wondered, or was the impulse for public inscription a timeless one? He thought of the stone walls surrounding medieval English towns. Perhaps in centuries past there had been scribblings on those rough surfaces, too. Alison doon it up-swa-dune.

  “How long is he going to be?” Steve asked. Reluctantly, Will shook himself into the present. He seemed to be dwelling in past history a lot these days. Steve rapped his knuckles against the doorjamb in a nervous drumbeat.

  Finally they heard footsteps descending the stairway inside, not the usual eager clatter but measured, dutiful, soldier steps. Will chastised himself for delaying today’s confrontation. Here, kid. Here’s your new surrogate Dad. You like?

  “Harvey Jackson, Steve Sawyer,” Will said.

  Harvey stuck out his hand, but kept his eyes on the floor. Steve sent Will a look of dismay.

  “Come on, let’s go shoot some pool,” Will said. In trying to figure out how to win Harvey over, he had sat in Steve’s room last night, asking questions and delving into Steve’s motivations for volunteering. There was something reminiscent of Stanley Markowitz in Steve Sawyer, a clean-cut version. Like Stan he was gentle, dark, rounded at the edges. Steve gave an initial impression of reserve; his room, however, was anything but quiet. Rock’n’roll pounded throughout Will’s visit, and there were posters taped from ceiling to floor: Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, Little Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles.

  It came out that Steve was proficient at billiards. Harvey appreciated competence, so Will’s decision was to spend the afternoon beside a green felt table. Unfortunately, the only game close enough to Harvey’s apartment was in the bowling alley of the first disastrous outing with Quinn. Will hoped Harvey would associate the place with his present regard for her rather than his initial sullen resistance.

  Will was not looking forward to being there himself. He remembered too well Quinn’s rueful grin after her ball had crashed to the floor and wobbled into the gutter. He remembered her triumph when she had accomplished a strike. Small body, compact energy, easily mastering the necessary motions. Jesus. He closed his eyes against the memories, but they clung inside his lids, images in merciless rerun.

  “How’s school?” he heard Steve ask Harvey. The bus was coming, thank God. How long had they been standing at the curb in silence?

  “Okay,” Harvey answered in monotone.

  Damn her, Will thought. She was not going to screw this up, too. He vowed to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  Will did most of the talking. First he spoke to Harvey, then he spoke to Steve, taking it slow. He had thought about the seats, and engineered it so that Harvey sat between them in the back row. There would be Will’s familiar body on one side and Steve’s on the other. Let Harvey get used to Steve’s size and bulk.

  Steve showed Harvey how to choose a stick and chalk the tip, while Will talked to the attendant, bribing him with five dollars extra to let them remain uninterrupted past the allotted half hour, just in case it worked.

  Steve broke first. The balls careened around the table, and the green solid ticked into a corner pocket. Harvey tried to look bored. Steve showed him how to rest the cue against the fleshy part beside his thumb. He drew the unwieldy stick back and plunged it into the felt. It missed the ball altogether.

  “This is stupid,” he muttered.

  “My turn,” Will said. His ball struck two others, neither of which landed in a pocket. Steve chalked his cue as he circled the table, checking out possibilities. Will prayed for a truly impressive shot. He wasn’t disappointed. The ball bounced off the side, clicked gently against the solid red, and spun it neatly into the center pocket. Will glanced at Harvey. The boy’s black eyes said I know what you’re doing. So he’s good. Big deal. Will sighed.

  Finally, Steve missed. There were only three balls left on the table, with the cue ball positioned so that it was in a direct line with the striped blue. What’s more, the shot was within easy reach of Harvey’s ten
-year-old arms. When Harvey bent over the table, Steve winked at Will.

  The cue ball struck the blue striped, and it plunked into the pocket, clean and swift.

  “Way to go!” Steve said.

  Harvey smiled, not exactly at Steve, but in his general direction. Steve put his hand on Harvey’s shoulder. Instantly the boy froze and moved away. Steve realized his mistake at once and winced. Will watched the exchange. Steve was a sensitive guy, he decided. It was going to be okay. He felt a sudden bleak loneliness. Come on, Harve. Put up more of a fight. I’m losing you, too.

  They ate in the coffee shop attached to the bowling alley. Steve sat across from Will in the seat Quinn had occupied. Under the table she had wrapped her stocking feet around his ankles, crawling up his leg with her toes until every piece of erectile tissue in his body stood at attention. When Harvey had wanted another Coke, Will had asked Quinn in a croaking voice if she would fetch it.

  “I’ll treat you to a hot fudge sundae,” Steve said.

  Harvey glanced suspiciously at Will. It was his favorite treat. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  “Get one for yourself, Steve,” Will suggested. “If you don’t eat it all, somebody will.”

  Harvey’s eyes narrowed. I will not.

  Harvey had nearly finished his Coke. Will nursed a cup of coffee, and the only thing melting was Steve’s gooey sundae. Nobody was saying anything. Will began to despair. He was exhausted. The jukebox blared: “I wanna hold your hand.” Your gland, Quinn always piped. Will had never known a girl who was so comfortable with profanity. Ironic that she was Catholic, though perhaps that was why. He’d give it some thought. No, he would not give it some thought.

  He slipped out of the booth. “Going to the john,” he explained. Steve and Harvey looked at him in mutual panic.

  On his way back from the bathroom Will dropped a quarter in the jukebox and pressed K-4 three times: Fingertips. Neither Harvey nor Steve saw him do it. When he got back to the table, they were sitting as before, silent and miserable.

  As soon as the music started, Will began to fret. “Explain something to me, Harve. What do you see in this stuff?”

  “That’s Little Stevie Wonder, man,” Harvey protested.

  “I heard he’s working on a new album,” Steve said. “The best one ever.”

  Harvey stopped fiddling with his straw.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a fan,” Will said to Steve, remembering the posters and the thumping cacophony of Steve’s room. The record began again: “Jesus, what are they trying to do to me?”

  “I’ve got every disk he ever cut,” Steve said with a touch of reverence.

  This was too much for Harvey. “Yeah?” he said, looking directly at Steve for the first time.

  Steve nodded. “People keep saying he’s finished, but I don’t think so.”

  “Right,” Harvey said. “He’s a real genius, man, and he’s only a kid.” Suddenly he caught himself and clamped his mouth shut tight.

  Steve waited a moment, then said quietly, “He’s coming to Springfield for Memorial Day.”

  “You’re shittin’ me,” Harvey said, glancing at Will for confirmation. Will shrugged. What did he know about such things?

  “I’ve got tickets.”

  “Wow,” Harvey whispered.

  “You want to go?”

  Harvey couldn’t believe it. Steve smiled at the astonished face, and Will felt his throat tighten. ’Bye, Harve.

  “Yeah, man,” Harvey breathed finally. “I wanna go.”

  “Good.” Steve was matter-of-fact. “I was looking for somebody with real appreciation.”

  Harvey eyed the soupy remains of Steve’s hot fudge sundae. “You gonna eat that?”

  Steve shook his head and slid it over. The boy dug in.

  Fingertips began its cycle on the jukebox again. When Will groaned, Harvey laughed out loud.

  Chapter 28

  Quinn kept finding excuses to delay her departure. First she decided to take the late bus back Sunday night. Then, as Sunday afternoon wore on, she began to talk about how she could work on her Religion term paper in the Medham library and go back to school later in the week. She waited on Ann constantly, bringing her cup after cup of tea, fetching magazines Ann hadn’t asked for, and hovering either at bedside or just outside the door.

  While Quinn doted, Ann grew increasingly anxious. No one in the family had ever achieved a college education. And here Quinn was so close. Ann saw her daughter’s degree being sabotaged, perhaps forever. On the other hand, every moment spent together felt precious now.

  At eight o’clock that evening Ann said to Quinn, “Pack your bag.”

  “What?” Quinn said. She had just plunked herself down on the end of the bed to read Ann another chapter from Travels with Charley.

  “Get off my bed and pack. You’re going to be on that ten o’clock bus and make no mistake about it.”

  Quinn stretched out her hand imploringly. But Ann’s face did not yield. Quinn dipped her head.

  “Go on,” Ann urged.

  Slowly, wordlessly, Quinn crept off the bed and left the room. When the door clicked shut, Ann clasped John’s pillow to her face and wept.

  John drove Quinn to the bus station. The atmosphere inside the Ford was relaxed, the steam from their argument having evaporated out of a shared concern for Ann. This morning as Quinn had watched John go off to mass in his best blue suit with his hair slick from the shower, she vowed to restrain herself from further outbursts against God. If religion offered him consolation, she wasn’t going to spoil it.

  Quinn tossed her suitcase on the bed at 1:00 A.M. and without unpacking sat down to write Ted Manning a letter turning down the job. She felt no conflict, only gratitude that there was something in her life worth sacrificing. If I lay this lamb at your feet, God, will you give me back my mother? The pain felt good.

  Her reading assignments sat neglected on her desk in piles that looked like the Manhattan skyline. For the past two weeks everything had seemed so pointless. The only thing that mattered now was somehow enduring until graduation, grabbing her diploma, and hurrying home to care for Ann.

  Wednesday evening she was on the garage floor under a broken fuel line when Gus appeared to tell her there was a phone call. She stood up and wiped the grease off trembling fingers.

  Carefully Gus said, “It’s Vanessa.”

  “Oh.” Quinn had never spoken with Gus about not seeing Will anymore, but he knew.

  “You’ve had a call from Springfield General,” Van said. “It’s Harvey.”

  Quinn’s heart began to thump. She clung to the phone, dreading what she would hear, yet frantic for information.

  “There’s been some trouble at home and he was hurt. Will’s there and wants you to meet him in Pediatrics.”

  “Do you know the floor?”

  “Five. Quinn, he’s all right.”

  “Thanks. I’m on my way.”

  Quinn stripped off her overalls and borrowed the campus pickup truck. She took the highway rather than the more direct route through the residential streets. Stop signs were intolerable. What she wanted was speed.

  She tried to prepare herself. A dismayed expression on her face would frighten Harvey. She wanted to comfort, not inflict more pain.

  Simmering beneath her fright was the realization that she would see Will. Soon. Despite her effort to suppress it, there was a stirring of hope.

  Just inside the Emergency entrance was a narrow slot marked “Official Vehicles Only.” She pulled in. The university insignia on the truck was official enough.

  The nurse at the fifth-floor reception desk directed her to Harvey’s room with an admonition to keep it short. These were not formal visiting hours.

  Three of the four beds were unoccupied, with Harvey a small lump in the other. Will’s back was toward Quinn, but she could see that he was holding the boy’s hand. She moved to the bedside. Harvey seemed to be as
leep. His left eye was bruised purple, and swollen to the size of a fist. The long eyelashes were invisible. An ugly slash down his cheek had required eight stitches, and a plaster cast on his shoulder forced his right arm to jut out at a bizarre angle.

  “God,” Quinn said. Will turned and she saw his face through a watery blur. “What happened?”

  “Leroy.” Will’s voice was strange. She must have forgotten the sound of it. She stared at him numbly without understanding.

  “Leroy did this,” he repeated. Quinn realized now that the unrecognizable color in his voice was something she had never heard there before. It was hatred.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “He was drunk.”

  “What about that eye?”

  “They say it’ll be okay. Everything’s superficial.” Quinn understood the bitter irony. There were internal injuries that would never heal.

  “He was so scared,” Will said.

  Quinn’s stomach felt as if it had been kicked hard. She put one hand on her solar plexus and reached out with the other to touch Harvey’s soft kinky hair. “Baby,” she whispered. He was so small. His feet made little points in the sheets halfway down the bed.

  “Where’s his mother?”

  “At the police station trying to get Leroy off.”

  Quinn shook her head. “How’d he get here?”

  “They brought him in a cab, and the hospital called the cops.”

  “But how did you find out?”

  “The resident in Emergency called the school. Apparently he kept crying for me and wouldn’t let anybody near him. They couldn’t stitch him up until I got here.” He gazed out the window into the dark, remembering. “What a mess. Thank Christ they took the other two away before I got here. I would have murdered them both.”

  She believed him. The quiet voice did not dilute the ferocity of his rage. Her own anger lifted a little in the presence of his, and she was able to think about what they should do now.

  “Can we get him out of that house?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we’ve got to find a way to keep him safe. Somebody’s got to scare the shit out of Leroy.”