“Is this for the patients or us?” Steph’Annie pointed to the rice pudding.
I chose a lemon pie slice. She picked the pudding. We both got cocoa.
In this unpopulated space, we found a clean table and sat down.
“It’s all a big conspiracy. The government has cures for everything, but it just doesn’t want to use them. Health care is a billion-dollar industry.” She took a sip of her beverage. “He’ll be all right.”
“He told me yesterday he had to go to the doctor. They must have taken him in then.”
“He’ll be all right, Samara. He was fine yesterday. People don’t go downhill that quick.”
“Did you just see what I did? Steph’Annie, he’s in intensive care. That’s the last exit on the turnpike.”
“He’s not going to die. He doesn’t have the look.”
“What look?”
“The look. Before my nana died, I knew it. I could see it in her face. It was so washed out. Her features were gone. Plus, her legs were like sticks.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“Last year. I was out of school for two weeks straight. Don’t you remember? We had algebra together.”
It didn’t register. Last year? I didn’t even know her name until just a few weeks ago. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”
“She wanted to die at home. She didn’t want to be hooked up to anything. My mom okayed the ventilator anyway. Sometimes people come off that. It’s just as well. She’s in a better place.”
“Better than SoSo?” I asked, not meaning it to come out as flippant as it sounded.
“You’re a comedienne.” She put a spoonful of her rice pudding into my cocoa.
Not counting it as a loss, I poured the cocoa into her rice pudding.
She took a scoop and flicked it on me. Luckily, I blinked before it hit my eye.
I searched for new ammo.
The pie was already running at room temperature.
Steph’Annie rose. She had a heart-shaped face. When she laughed, her tiny chin came to a sharp point. She backed away holding her hands out. “No. No. Please.”
I crept toward her with that slice in my hand.
I aimed and fired.
It hit her square in the face.
“Samara!” I heard a scream. But it wasn’t from Steph’Annie—she was picking the yellow glob out of her dyed blue hair.
I spun around and saw my mom.
fifteen
“What are you doing here again, Samara?” Mom demanded.
“I’m not here to see you,” I told her.
Mom gestured at Steph’Annie. “Who’s that? Who are you?”
“This is Steph’Annie.”
“Hi, Mrs. Tuttle,” Steph said.
“It’s Miss,” Mom quickly corrected her.
“There’s a teacher who’s—” I began.
“A teacher. What? What makes you think a teacher wants to see either of you?” Mom shot out her questions at bullet speed. There was no dodging them. “Steph’Annie what?”
“Huh?” Steph’Annie asked.
“What difference does it make?” I asked my mom.
“How long have you known her? Why does she dress like that?” Mom asked.
Steph’Annie scooped another hunk of pie off her face and held out her clean hand for Mom to shake. “It’s Perdomo, Miss Tuttle.”
Mom wouldn’t shake her hand. She looked at her like she was contaminated. “How did you get a Spanish name?”
My face burned with embarrassment.
One of the blue smocks came up to Mom and told her she was needed on the floor.
“I want to talk to you when you get home,” Mom told me before leaving.
The confrontation commenced as soon as I stepped in the door.
“Don’t you ever do something like that again!” Mom told me.
“Like what?”
“You are supposed to be in school, for one thing.”
“School? What difference does school make?”
“I don’t see how you plan to lead a normal life—”
“Normal? Like what? Like you?”
“Samara, I saw you throw pie at that girl.”
“We were just kidding around.”
“In a hospital?”
“I know where I was.”
“Why does she dress like that? And Perdomo, is that Spanish or Italian?”
“Sounds Eye-talian to me.” Q rose to his feet. He just had to get into the act.
“What do you know, genius?” I asked him. “She’s Afro Puerto Rican.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” he said.
“There’s a lot of things you haven’t heard of.”
“You better watch it,” he warned me.
“Why are you here, Q?”
“You don’t have any say over anything,” Q told me, pointing his finger in my face. “You need to learn to shut up.”
I’ve been shutting up, I thought, and where has it gotten me? I’ve been shutting up and taking shit from him for long enough. I turned to my mother. “Let me tell you what’s been going on here while you’re at work.”
He glared at me as he stepped closer to me. “I’m warning you.”
Though he was so close I could feel his breath, I didn’t retreat. I beamed at him. I wanted him to do something, and I wanted my mom to see it.
“Q’s having a little trouble keeping it in his pants.”
I enjoyed the momentary pleasure of watching the muscles in my mother’s face quiver. She scrutinized me gravely for signs that I was lying. I gave her none. This was the most attention I had received from her since I could remember.
Q punched me before I could duck. I flew back and immediately tasted blood.
Holding my cheek, I turned my eyes to Mom.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
sixteen
The next morning the sky smelled like stale linen. Everything was fog. It was the kind of day when you wished it would snow, sleet, rain, or clear up already.
They were on to Steph’Annie and me as we approached the intensive care ward.
That cosmetic-junkie nurse headed us off at the pass.
“Immediate family only,” she told us.
“Can’t we even see him for a minute?” Steph’Annie asked.
“Immediate family only,” she repeated, blocking the doorway that led to the intensive care unit.
“Is he up?” I asked.
“Immediate family,” she said without inflection.
“You have been so helpful,” Steph’Annie said.
She winked at us and said, “I take Christmas cards.”
As we made our way back outside, Steph’Annie asked, “What happened to your face?”
I gave her the universal encrypted message for SOS. “I fell,” I told her.
She nodded knowingly. “If you need a place to stay for a little while, I would love to have you stay over.”
“I’ll be all right. I’m sorry about yesterday. My mom acts like that.”
“Don’t be sorry. She’s not the first person to think I’m weird. You sure you don’t want to hide out?”
“I’ll be all right.”
She opened her arms wide for me and during her hug she said, “We’ll come back later. It’ll be a whole new crew.”
We came back in the early evening only to be halted again.
It turned out that Mr. Jerome Halbrook had left specific instructions that he didn’t want to see anyone.
Steph’Annie squeezed my arm. “That’s a good sign, Samara. At least he’s up.”
I came home dejected. The house was empty. It was Friday night. Q and Mom were out Red Lobstering it up. Having a real Olive Garden of a good time. Yippee!
I went to the kitchen and began microwaving a bag of popcorn. The phone rang. Whoever was on the other end was not giving up easily. It went ten times, then ceased. The microwave buzzer went off. Then the phone started ringing again. The microwav
e buzzer. Phone. Microwave. Phone.
I grabbed the bag and answered the phone.
“May I speak to Samara?” the voice asked.
“Jeff?” I asked. That’s right, I thought, I had a date tonight.
“I’m sorry, I got an audition last minute, so I couldn’t make it. I hope you didn’t think you were being stood up. I tried calling you earlier, but some crazy man answered.”
“That was no crazy man, that was my mother’s boy toy,” I said without thinking.
“He sounded young. Like our age. So you never got the message?”
“No, today’s been a mess. I just got in—a friend of mine is in the hospital.”
“Not the punk-looking one?” he asked.
“No. My sub.”
“Your what?”
“This teacher who gave out poetry.” I started choking up.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
He was full of questions and the bag of popcorn was burning in my palm.
“Samara?”
“I’m sorry, Jeff. Can I call you back?”
He was saying something as I hung up on him.
My mother came in alone around ten that night. I was surprised she was Q-less. When I stepped into the kitchen, she was not so much cleaning as moving things around.
“How’s your face?”
“What difference does it make?” I asked her.
“I asked you, didn’t I?”
“How come you’re never on my side? Besides being born, what have I ever done to you?”
She went back to moving a stack of papers from a chair to the top of the fridge. “Stay out of his way, Samara.”
“You think really that’s why I’m here, Mom? I don’t mean in this house. I mean on this earth. Do you think I was put on this earth to get punched by your current boyfriend? Or to satisfy the lust of your former boyfriend?”
“I don’t need this.”
“So this one slaps me every now and then and the other one feels me up. What difference does it make?”
“You asked for that slap, Samara,” she said bluntly.
“Sure I did. This is my fault. Everything is.”
“By now you should have learned that if you stay out of a man’s way he won’t bother you.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do? Of the parade of men that I have seen come through here, who have I started up with?”
“What do you want me to do, Samara?”
“Something. Put me first for a change. You gave that engineer full access.”
“He said he never—”
“He was all over me, Ma.”
“So you say, Samara.”
“I’m telling you what happened. Why would I lie?”
“He’s long gone, Samara. The time to tell me all this has passed.”
“I told you then, Mom. You didn’t do anything. If he didn’t get transferred, he would still be after me. And now you let Q belt me one right in front of you. Do you expect me to stay here like a target?” I asked.
“You aren’t the target, Samara—I am,” she said in a hoarse and tired voice. “I’m an easy target. Everything that goes wrong is my fault. Your father walked before you were born. He never even tried to look after you, but I’m the bad one. I’m supposed to raise you alone, work, keep up a house without anyone’s help. And God damn me if I ever want someone in my life to spend time with. When I do that, I’m selfish. Well, let me tell you something. I’ve done the best that I can, and when you get out there on the other side of that door you will find that you can’t read minds and you don’t know what’s in everyone’s heart and no one, no one is who you think they are. And maybe then you’ll realize that I’m not the biggest monster going, Samara. I’m just your mother.”
seventeen
So I didn’t get along with my mother. Did that make me special? Out of the ordinary? It’s not like I didn’t try with her. All my life, I have been a chicken. A chicken scratching for seeds of concern in her soil.
If our fight had been a Movie of the Week, we would have found a way to iron things out if it had taken all night.
Maybe one day I’ll write a memoir. Isn’t that what everyone with a sucky childhood is supposed to do? Chronicle (and when possible, embellish) each and every slight till everything sounds really, really, really bad. Then I’ll get all the attention. All of it. Everyone will be talking about poor, pitiful Samara Tuttle.
In the following days, however, my mom and Q’s problems took a serious backseat. Mr. Brook took center stage in my mind, even though I couldn’t see him. I called the hospital every day instead, sometimes two or three times.
Mr. Brook was moved to the fourteenth floor, the rehab unit.
“Rehab?” I asked. “He doesn’t drink.”
“No. Physical rehabilitation,” the person on the line repeated.
I waited ten minutes and phoned back to find out that a rehabilitation center is actually a good thing because it means you’re close to dismissal. Another perk was that the rehab hospital has a wide-open-door policy. I could visit anytime.
So the next day, I played hooky. The fluorescent lights of the hospital hallway burned. I was going to see him, and I didn’t care if his voice was a hoarse whisper or booming again. Or if his skin had gone from a proud dark brown to a timid light gray. Or if those brilliant blue eyes were shaded and withdrawn.
I was happy to see him looking as good as new. Mr. Brook was in blue slippers and a bathrobe. He was sitting in front of the tube.
The blaring TV reminded me of home, only Mr. Brook had on a game show.
Walking in, I felt that I was teetering off the edge of his flat earth. I placed a vase of flowers on the end table. Silence stretched as he held me in his grim straightforward stare.
The set was mounted on the wall too high to reach, so the remote control was essential. It was nestled in the palm of his hand.
Not daring to sit down, I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.
“I brought your book,” I told him.
He said nothing.
“We’re friends again, remember?” I said gently.
“I told them no visitors.” I was taken aback by the testiness in his voice.
I fluffed his pillow.
More silence.
“Are you on some kind of drug?” I asked.
His face was fixed. “I’m not on any drugs; I refused them.”
Was this Mr. Brook or had an invasion of the body snatchers taken place?
“This is no time to just say no. Your specialty is poetry, not medicine. I’m not sure you should be second-guessing medical professionals.”
“If I’m meant to go, I’m meant to go.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“I will do what I want with the life I have left.”
“The life you have left?” I asked. “You’re in rehab. That means you’re better.”
“It just means your condition has stabilized, and they can’t do anything else for you. You have to wait to die.”
“Wait to what? Die?” I frantically cracked open Immortal Poetry.
“Close it,” he ordered.
“You told me to—”
“Close it.”
“But—”
“Do as I say.”
I put the book down and started reciting from memory.
“But what about Dylan Thomas—‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’? ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ ”
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Old MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o.”
I drew back in horror.
“You’re messing with my mind again,” I told him. “You told me about hope and courage and making the most of things. Is that advice too good for you?”
“Samara, go to school. Do you know what time it is?”
“School?”
“I don’t want you to take off school,” he said.
“Don’t come visit me anymore.”
“Why?”
“I just told you.”
He used his thumb to up the TV’s volume. My heart beat violently. I heard: “MaryBeth Frazer. You are the next contestant on The Price Is Right!”
eighteen
I was like a trout swimming upstream. It was 11:17 a.m. on a Tuesday. I roamed the streets, thinking of all those contestants who jumped around like lunatics because they were told to “come on down.” I had stayed with Mr. Brook until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
That MaryBeth woman correctly guessed the cost of a Kenmore dishwasher, and now she had the chance to win a brand-new car!
I hated The Price Is Right! I hated anything that came between Mr. Brook and me—cancer, game shows, age gaps, teacher ethics . . . damn them all.
I would rather have seen him hooked up to a million gadgets. His sophistication and warmth were replaced by frost and superficiality. My Mr. Brook watching daytime TV? My Mr. Brook would never be so easily entertained.
That night, I was haunted by my Mr. Brook. In my nightmare, I had an IV needle in my arm and there was a steady drip of “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
After Bowman’s one-day fill-in, a parade of subs took stints: a weird guy with medallions and sweat stains on his shirt; a hyper guy who paced the room like he was on foot patrol (he must have believed the hype that all us inner-city kids were animals); one lady who did absolutely nothing with us while she opened her mail, sorted her bills, balanced her checkbook, and otherwise got her affairs in order (most students liked her); and another lady who taught nights at the community college, only her discipline was American history. Since Mr. Brook had gone, we hadn’t learned anything. It was just like Flanders was back.
One day in homeroom I was given that familiar summons. I trekked to Bowman’s office thinking I was about to be reamed for skipping school. Finally, he was going to do it—throw me in jail for truancy.
When I entered his robin’s-egg blue office, I was surprised by his question. “How is he?”
How is he? I collapsed into his chair.
Concern? Sincerity?
No threats?
No bullying?
No ominous soothsaying about what a dead end my life will be if I flunk out of high school?
Life Is Fine Page 6