by Baer, Judy
I took out the notebook I carry, looked up a phone number, jotted it down on a slip of paper and handed it to Bonnie, whose real last name is Cochran. “This is the name and number of a fabulous carpet cleaner. He will come in and do whatever is necessary. I’d recommend you call him. It’s going to get musty in here very soon.”
“Oh, thank you!” She tucked the paper into the pocket of her Hilfigers. “Little Roy has allergies. We can’t let that happen.”
I considered pointing out that the moldy birds’ nests, decaying fauna, decomposing skeleton of something that may once have been a reptile and the stale food rotting in plates around Little Roy’s room were probably having an equally grave effect on the child. Of course, they were no doubt science projects of one sort or another and hence, cute and clever, like the queen-sized water bed, its contents now spread across a good portion of the lower level of their house.
“Maybe we should go upstairs,” Bonnie suggested. “I have some other things to consult you about.”
Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. I’ll bet you do.
I’d seen her three hoodlum sons grinding Cheetos into her ivory carpet when I came in.
Dutifully I followed her into “Big Ronnie’s” room. Ronnie, it appeared, was the oldest of the boys, but named more for his size than his rank in the family pecking order.
“He was experimenting with some household products. He wants to be an inventor when he grows up.” She stared at the ragged hole in the carpet, the polka dotted white patches in the bedspread and then up at the smoke stain on the ceiling. “I guess I shouldn’t have let him use the bleach. I had no idea it could be combustible.”
Then she looked up hopefully. “Someday I know we’ll be so proud of our boys and what they accomplish.”
If they don’t blow up the house first.
I wrote down a few more numbers—interior painters, reliable one-day carpet installers and places I know that sell high-quality bedspreads…cheap.
“And, of course, there’s Middy’s room.”
“‘Middy’? As in ‘middle’?” Say it isn’t so!
She looked at me, shocked. “Whatever made you think that? Middy is short for Roy Middleton Cochran junior. He’s named after his father.”
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?
It also explained “Little Roy.”
“What’s been going on in Middy’s room?” I asked
“Frankly I’d be more upset if I he’d done it on a whim, but he really does want to be a physicist when he grows up.”
“Yes, and…” Didn’t physicists put together the atom bomb?
“I’m not sure if this was supposed to be an experiment in centrifugal force or gravitational pull, but…”
A small darting missile in a red T-shirt and a baseball cap bolted by and Bonnie, with a swiftness that impressed me, reached out and stopped its trajectory. “Middy, will you explain to Ms. Smith what you were doing in your bedroom when…you know.”
Middy looked at me with an expression that said he would die from terminal boredom if he had to have an entire conversation with me, but he did open his mouth, and gobbledygook spewed out.
“Centrifugal force doesn’t really exist, but an object traveling in a circle will behave as if it is experiencing some outward force. This is the force we call centrifugal force. This ‘force’ depends on the mass of the object, the speed of the rotation and how far the object is from the center. The bigger the object, the greater the speed in which it is traveling and the more distance the object is from the center, the greater the force.
“It’s like being on a merry-go-round. It’s harder for Mom or Dad to stay on it without exerting some inward force because their masses are greater.” Middy got an evil look in his eye. “Dad’s fat.”
“Now, Middy,” Bonnie said placidly. “He’s big-boned.”
“Whatever.” And he bolted off.
“He’s explained it to me before, but the boys are so bright I barely understand them sometimes.”
I took a breath, opened the door to Middy’s room and entered what felt like a Jackson Pollock abstract splatter painting. Red paint was splashed on every white wall in a rather intriguing-looking asymmetrical pattern of loops and splatters. There was also a huge red splash mark in the center of the beige carpet and above, a ceiling fan hanging by its wires and a bit of Sheetrock.
“Middy likes it this way and wants me to leave it, but I just don’t know,” Bonnie said. “It will be very hard to decorate around.”
“What is ‘it’?” I was in total awe of the disarray. This made my short list of all-time worst messes. It was as amazing as one of the wonders of the world—the Taj Mahal of paint damage.
“Middy had been to the doctor for his checkup. They did a blood test and he, of course, demanded to know what they were going to do with it. The technician explained how it’s spun out and tested. Middy was fascinated by the concept of centrifugal force so he decided to see how spinning a can of paint might work. Naturally, he thought of using his ceiling fan to do the spinning.”
Oh, naturally.
“Bonnie, I’ve given you the names of the people you need to contact, the painter, carpet people and oh, yes, I’ll give you the name of an electrician in this area who is very good. But I don’t think you need me. I’m a personal organizer and clutter coach. This…your boys…are out of my area of expertise.”
I was trying to recall a good child therapist I could recommend when Bonnie said, “Maybe you’re right. It didn’t occur to me until just now that all the boys really need is a little direction in their areas of interest. An art tutor, perhaps, or someone in the sciences….” She clapped her hands together delightedly. “Thank you, Sammi. You have helped me a lot whether you know it or not.”
“Delighted to be of service.”
I hot-footed it down the steps and to my car as Mrs. Cochran stood in the door waving. I didn’t want to be around when she turned to go into the house and saw what was going on behind her back.
I think Middy was preparing to test a theory of how fast Little Roy would slide down a banister with rocks in his pockets.
Ben arrived at my house carrying a plastic grocery sack. He was dressed in high-water jeans, a shirt buttoned to the top button on the collar and festooned with pen protectors, and tennis shoes—Keds.
“Do you have a Geeks Anonymous meeting today?” I asked when I opened the door.
He looked down at himself as if just registering what he was wearing. Then he shrugged. Fortunately for Ben, he would have been handsome dressed in a diaper and masquerading as Baby New Year.
“This will do. I was wondering if I could come to the hospital with you today. I’d like to see Molly.”
“Absolutely. I appreciate it.” Jared grows more and more morose each day that Molly doesn’t respond. Frankly, Geneva is almost as worried about him as she is about Molly.
“He was this way as a child,” she’d told me. “Tough as nails except where it came to Molly. The only times I ever saw him cry was when Molly got hurt. He’d stoically let me wash his cuts and scraps, but let Molly fall off her bike….” Geneva had shaken her head. “Then they’d both be worked up.”
She’d paused and gotten a faraway look in her eyes. “I know why he was so protective, but I could never figure out how to temper it in him.”
My face must have shown my confusion because she had smiled.
“My father was still living when Molly was born. He was ill, but hanging on by sheer willpower to see his new granddaughter. It meant so much to him.” Geneva had sighed then. “Anyway, I caught them together one day—my father and Jared in Molly’s bedroom. She was sound asleep in her crib. Jared was looking through the bars of the crib and Father was watching both of them.”
She was silent for a long time before she had continued. “I’ll never forget what my father said to Jared. I wish I’d spoken up back then, but I had no idea of the impact on him at the time or how he took it to heart. He said, ‘Jared, fro
m now on, Molly is your responsibility. Take care of her for me, will you?’
“It reminded me of what Jesus said to John from the cross. It’s in John 19, verses 26 and 27. ‘When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.’
“It was only weeks later that my father died. I recalled it later and realized that it felt in that moment that my father, Jared’s grandfather, had commissioned Jared to care for Molly, that he was specially made for the job and no one else could do it better. He took his grandfather’s death very hard. He was only eight years old, after all, and the relationship between him and Molly was set.” Commissioned. That’s significant in the Bible. In Numbers, the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua…and lay your hand on him, have him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and commission him in their sight.” In Deuteronomy when the Lord commissioned Joshua, He said, “Be strong and bold, for you shall bring the Israelites into the land that I promised them. I will be with you.” Being appointed by God is a huge deal, no matter how one looks at it.
Gradually I was beginning to understand Jared’s dedication to Molly. What would I have thought at eight years old if I’d been given such a responsibility by someone I loved deeply? I remembered my own grandfather’s booming voice and large stature. Sometimes I childishly assumed he was God’s spokesperson. Since he was a pastor and an imposing presence, it only made sense. Why wouldn’t a young Jared see his own grandfather in much the same way?
And then, after appointing him Molly’s guardian, Jared’s grandfather died and the commission was sealed.
“I’m sure by now Jared would dismiss that episode as a mere childhood incident, but I know how deeply it affected him at the time…and has ever since. Consciously or unconsciously, Molly has been ‘his’ ever since she was born.”
Geneva had smiled wanly and my heart went out to her. “Until recently, neither my husband nor I have thought it a bad thing. Molly’s been a handful sometimes, and we’ve needed Jared in the mix.”
“What was she like as a child in school?”
“Oh, my, she was a note a week from the teacher! ‘Smart,’ they’d say, but a ‘discipline problem’ or ‘has a poor attention span’ or ‘cannot quit talking in class.’ Every teacher loved her sunny personality and loving disposition and yet they all tore their hair out over her.” Geneva had paused before adding, “Not much different than the present day.”
Tears had welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. “Sammi, I’m so worried about both of them.”
Both Molly and Jared were slipping away. Not only was Molly’s well-being in grave jeopardy, but so was any “happily ever after” Jared and I had been anticipating.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ben’s been acting very peculiar. It’s difficult to tell when Ben’s being odd and when he’s just being Ben, but something is up. I stopped at his place to compare the framed photo Aunt Gertie had sent me with the one she’d sent to him.
Aunt Gertie frightens me sometimes. Ever since her contemporary “mood” started, she’s been sending us strange and wonderful surrealistic photography. It’s always beautifully mounted and for a while I thought that she was buying it at some wigged out art gallery she’d found. Recently, however, Ben told me that it is my aunt who is taking the pictures and her husband Arthur doing the framing.
It’s been entertaining trying to guess what her subject matter is, because she zeros in on one point in an object and photographs it in great detail—like the pocket on a pair of Levi’s jeans, a pomegranate, the bottom of the trash can and once, horribly, Arthur flexing a muscle. I was never sure which muscle, exactly, and didn’t dare ask.
The latest offering is the weirdest yet. I have several guesses as to what it might be, but I want to consult with Ben, who usually “gets” Aunt Gertie before I do.
I knocked and walked into his house with my gift in hand. On the table in the foyer was the other half of my set, a photograph of…well…it could have been a close-up of a very tiny Rorschach test, an outbreak of black measles, something Gertie had grown in a Petri dish or age spots on an elderly hand.
“What do you think?” Ben walked into the foyer with a bowl of cereal in one hand and a spoon in the other.
I offered my guesses. He shook his head at each one.
“Nope. At first I thought it was a close-up of the back of old, mildewed wallpaper—the wicked looking decomposing spots and all—but I finally got it.”
“What is it?” I refuse to hang anything on my walls that might be in questionable taste—especially Arthur’s bicep or oblique.
“I’ve got one going in the kitchen.” Ben waved his spoon in that direction.
I followed him into the room which looked much like it always did—a mad scientist’s laboratory. There’s never much actual food in Ben’s kitchen but you can take your pick of weird strains of who-knows-what in his fridge. Actually, today there was more food than usual; a loaf of bread, a carton of orange juice and a bowl of moldy fruit.
I edged nearer the fruit and squinted. Something was coming into view. I glanced at my photo and back at the fruit. “It’s rotting bananas!” I crowed.
“Bingo. That banana she photographed has some age on it, that’s for sure. That Gertie, she’s something, isn’t she?”
Something, yes. What, I’m not sure.
“Are you going to the hospital?” Ben asked.
“Yes. I don’t have another client this afternoon so I thought I’d stop by.” And see Jared.
“Can I come with you? I made something for Molly.” He held up a device that looked like a portable headset with a flashlight hooked to it by a long piece of stiff wire. “Music, light and color all at once. Or books on tapes.” He looked up hopefully. “It might work.”
I sank onto a chair but resisted the urge to bury my head in my hands. “The doctors are puzzled as to why she hasn’t come out of this yet. She reacts negatively to loud noises, for example, and positively to her family’s voices. The longer this goes on…”
My time with Jared at the Oasis seemed like it was a million years ago.
It had occurred to me—sometime in the night when Imelda and Zelda were jockeying for position in my bed and woke me—that if Molly didn’t wake up and Jared continued to blame himself for not saving Molly from herself, there was no future for Jared and me, either.
“He has no mercy for himself, Ben. He won’t forgive himself for firing her, for losing it over the damage she did to the company.”
“I thought he was a Christian,” Ben said bluntly. “That he knew God forgives him.”
“But he doesn’t forgive himself.”
“So he thinks his word counts for more than God’s?”
My head snapped up.
“If Jared won’t accept God’s forgiveness because he can’t forgive himself, then he thinks his problems are too big for God, that he knows better than God, right?”
Wendy’s friend Mike had learned that lesson. Just as we’d had to turn Molly over to God’s healing hand, Jared had to surrender his guilt and regret to God, as well. As long as he held on to it, he was flying in the face of God’s promise to forgive and wipe our sins away. While Molly was in a physical crisis, Jared was in a crisis of trust.
“Come on, Ben, let’s go. I want to talk to Jared.”
Ben gathered up his invention for Molly and followed me toward the door. On impulse, I picked up my photo of Aunt Gertie’s rotting banana and took it with me.
Jared looked up as Ben and I entered the room.
He’d lost weight. His belt was a notch tighter and his tailored white shirt seemed loose around the collar beneath his tie. He was also taking on the pallor of the hospital lights as his energy drained out the soles of his feet.
Molly, on the other hand, looked wonderful. Geneva made sure her hair
was always fixed and had even given her daughter a manicure. Mrs. Hamilton said that Molly would be furious if she woke up and realized she looked a mess.
“Hey,” Jared said as he lifted a hand in greeting. “Thanks for coming.”
I walked over and kissed Molly on the cheek. “It’s me. Sammi. I brought something for you to look at.” I propped the photo of the rotting banana skin on the bed table. “I’ll bet you can’t figure out what it is. Of course, you’ll have to open your eyes to see it.”
Then I heard a paroxysm of throat clearing. “And I brought you a playmate. Ben is here.”
I suppose it was wishful thinking, but I would have sworn that one corner of her lip tipped in a smile.
Ben loped over to the bed and whipped his new contraption out of his pocket. “I made this for you, Molly. I think you’re going to like it. And I have the most amazing magic tricks to show you….”
Jared and I escaped into the hallway.
“Thanks for bringing Ben,” he said as he wearily rubbed his neck. “I can’t say why, but I feel like Molly must enjoy him—or she would, if she could.”
“Then she’s in good hands. Want to take a walk?”
We headed for a small park on the hospital grounds with a few scattered picnic tables, grills and a cover of trees.
Jared rolled his shoulders as we walked. “Feels good to move. I’ve been frozen over Molly’s bed. I suppose I think if I sit there, willing her to wake up, she’ll do it.”
“And what does the doctor say?”
“That the swelling in her head is going down slowly. That now would be a wonderful time for Molly to open her eyes.”
I leaned back against a big oak tree, savoring the feel of something solid and real against my body. Nothing else about trips to the hospital ever felt real anymore. We were all living in a surrealistic dream from which we wanted to wake.
Jared put his palms against the oak over my head and looked down at me. Then he leaned down and kissed my forehead so gently it felt as though a butterfly had landed there.