by Nancy Rue
But I knew the minute I saw him cringing against the headboard, eyes darting sightlessly, that he wasn’t even awake.
“Desmond,” I said.
I touched his good shoulder, and he jerked away and spewed out a jumble of sentences I couldn’t understand. I didn’t need the words to know he was seeing something that terrified him.
“Desmond,” I said again. I tried to keep my voice calm, despite the terror climbing up my own throat. “You’re dreaming, son. It’s okay.”
His breathing slowed, but he remained so taut I would have to break his legs to get him unwound from his frightened fetal position. I reassured him, over and over, that it was just a dream, that he was asleep, that no one was going to hurt him. I wasn’t sure which one of us I was trying to convince.
When he finally went limp, I eased him down under the covers and pulled them up to the base of his marvelous pyramid of hair. If it hadn’t been under a helmet that day, I wouldn’t be sinking my fingers into it right now. But I was, and I stayed there the rest of the night.
He woke up the next morning still quiet—for Desmond—until I told him he was staying home from school. That lifted his spirits enough for him to consume two bowls of the Froot Loops I kept hidden and allowed him handfuls of only on special occasions. I plugged him into a movie on my laptop while I took a shower and tried to figure out how to talk to him about Priscilla. I was no closer to a decision when Stan showed up with the new sissy bar for Chief’s bike.
“Thought you’d need it so you can get around,” he said.
“I appreciate it, Stan,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll be taking Desmond out with a broken collarbone. Besides, I can’t ride Chief’s bike.”
“You probably can, but maybe you shouldn’t until you feel up to it.”
“I look that bad?” I said.
“Uh—yeah. But Chief looks worse.”
“You’ve already seen him?”
“I did my fifteen minutes before I came over here.” Stan’s eyes swam. “I told him we’d all take care of you until he was up and around again.”
I put my arms around his neck and held on until we could both pretend we weren’t crying.
Things went that way for the next few days—that way of unexpected people doing unexpected things.
Owen stayed with Desmond several times a day while I went to be with Chief.
Hank cooked meals in my kitchen and made me eat them.
That wasn’t unexpected, but Jasmine and Mercedes cleaned my house and did my laundry and reported that Nicholas Kent drove down Palm Row every couple of hours.
As was par for Nita and Leighanne, they took Ophelia to AA meetings, but the rest of the time Ophelia chopped and peeled and diced things for Hank and helped Desmond with the homework Erin O’Hare gathered and brought by for him. The doctor said he could go back to school, but I knew he wasn’t ready. On the days I suggested it, the following night was filled with nightmares he didn’t even seem to remember having the next morning. Though he did the work without complaint, perhaps a sure sign that he truly was unwell, I couldn’t even interest him in returning to campus so he could check on his women. That only served to remind me that I hadn’t had another chance to ask Chief to discuss that issue with Desmond, and that sent me into another paroxysm of pain. There was actually very little that didn’t connect me back to Chief—the things left unsaid, the things I might never get to say.
The only relief for that was my time at the hospital. Chief showed no change as the days went by, and I stopped asking what that meant because the answer was always the same: We had to wait and see. I clung to the fact that although his face was bloated and pale and looked nothing like my eagle Chief, he was still breathing on his own, and that the bruising on his head turned from angry purple to a less disconcerting yellow-green at the same rate Ophelia’s did. The leg that hung in traction with the alien rods protruding from it was reportedly healing, and that was reassuring too. I mentioned to God countless times that surely the leg wouldn’t recover if the man wasn’t going to. How could that be?
Yet how could it be that Chief was even in that bed, relying on IVs and nurses and round-the-clock one-sided conversations to keep him from slipping away forever? Chief didn’t need like this, and that alone was enough to wake me up in the middle of every night in a sweat of anxiety.
But it was also enough to bring me to his side four and five times a day. I always waited until the nurse left before I pulled the stool close to his bed and rested one arm on the pillow above his head. The other arm I kept in my lap where I could squeeze my own knee if I started to cry. If he could hear me, I didn’t want him to know I had doubts.
Most of my monologues were renditions of Desmond’s latest outrageous statements and the lack of progress Detective Kylie was making on finding the driver of the hit-and-run vehicle and the lack of anything at all happening with Ophelia’s rape. When that got too depressing, I assured him I wouldn’t ride his bike, even though he had wrecked mine, although it occurred to me by Thursday—Day Five of the Coma—that maybe if I told him I was going to ride the Road King, he might snap out of it.
It didn’t work, and for some silly reason I couldn’t handle that.
“Please, Chief,” I said, tears pouring shamelessly down my face. “You have to come back. How am I supposed to make any decent decisions without you? Huh? Don’t you see that I need you? Do you think I’d be admitting that if I weren’t desperate to have you open your eyes and say, ‘Classic, I’d advise against that.’”
I fixed my eyes on the screen that traced his brain activity, as if it could tell me that any of this was registering. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place. Maybe it was the line on the heart monitor that would bring him awake if he knew.
I leaned on the stool until it was only on its front two feet, until I could get my lips close to his ear, until perhaps he could feel my breath in it, the way I loved to feel his in mine.
“I’m afraid you don’t love me the way I love you, Chief,” I whispered. “But I can’t let that keep me from telling you. I love you enough to walk away if you wake up and tell me you don’t feel that way. I love you enough to hurt for you.”
“I think he knows that.”
I put my hand up to the one that rested on my shoulder.
“How can you say that, Bonner?” I said.
Bonner squatted beside me and brushed the tears from my cheek with the corner of his handkerchief, the kind only Bonner Bailey would carry. “I saw it on his face.”
“When?”
“You remember that night at O. C.’s ?”
“You had the oysters.”
“Yeah.”
“And he and I were arguing.” I turned to look up at Bonner. “I sure didn’t see any love on his face that night.”
“Oh, it was there. He said, ‘I’m not going to let you do this, Classic.’ And you didn’t argue with him. I expected the engagement ring to come out next. ”
I laughed for the first time in days. It was a snot-filled, snorty sort of thing, but it mixed with my sobs until it all came out as hope.
“We’re going to get in trouble if they find two of us in here,” I said.
“Nah. Your Dr. Doyle told them to lighten up for you.” He nudged my shoulder. “You’re getting a lot of mileage out of rescuing Liz in high school.”
“Yeah, who knew, huh?”
“God?”
“Maybe.”
Bonner tucked his chin in. “Just ‘maybe’?”
“I’m struggling, Bonner,” I said. “I just keep thinking that all this stuff that’s happened is because of my doing what I thought God wanted me to do.”
“And now you’re not sure it’s what God wanted.”
“I think I am. I wouldn’t have bought a Harley on my own—or started S
acrament House or got people washing each other’s feet in buckets on my front lawn.” I dragged my fingers under my eyes to make room for more tears. “How far is it really getting us, though?”
“Maybe farther than you think,” Bonner said.
Chief’s nurse stepped in and began to adjust his IV. Although she smiled at us, Bonner motioned for me to follow him out into the hall.
“I found out about Zelda,” he said.
“You did?” I said. “How?”
“That’s my assignment.”
“Your what?”
“We all have assignments so you can concentrate on Chief and Desmond.” He shrugged lightly. “You want to hear about her?”
“Tell me.”
“She wants to come back.”
“And you know this how?”
“I went to see her.”
The image of Bonner in a starched Oxford shirt looking through a glass at Zelda clad in county orange stopped my tears in their tracks.
“Seriously?” I said.
“I took her some toiletries, put a little cash in her account so she could at least get a candy bar.”
I blinked to make sure it was still Bonner I was looking at. He merely blinked back.
“So how is she doing?” I said.
“She looks like death eatin’ a cracker, as Mercedes would say, but she’s hanging on to the chance that she can come back to the House.”
“What about God?”
Bonner tilted his head.
“The last time I saw her, she was spitting at him.”
“Spitting? At God?”
“Literally. And ever since then she’s refused to see me, and I know it’s because she doesn’t want to hear about the heart and soul of this whole ministry.” I rubbed at my forehead. “I don’t know, Bonner. Can we take her in just because she sees that Sacrament House is a better deal than jail?”
“It may be a moot point anyway,” Bonner said. “We don’t really have a place to put her yet.”
My mind flipped back through the days like it was going through a Rolodex.
“Is that house across from Sacrament up for sale yet?” I said.
“I think the owner’s real close to putting it on the market. We did take in some cash at the Feast, but not enough.”
“I want to sell the Palm Row house,” I said. “That’ll give us more than enough.”
Bonner rested his chin on his knuckles.
“Don’t try to talk me out of it,” I said. “It’s what I want to do. I have to.”
“Allison.”
“Make the guy an offer contingent on the sale of my house. Zelda probably has another thirty days before her case even comes up in court, right?”
“About that, yeah. That still isn’t enough time.”
“Can’t we work it out somehow? Rent the house from the guy until mine sells and closes? You said he was already fixing it up.”
“You’ve thought this through?”
“Truthfully? No. I’m making it up as I go along.” I wrapped my fingers around his cuffed wrist. “I don’t see any other way, Bonner. And in the meantime …”
“In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get her to stop spitting at God.”
I kissed him on the forehead. When I drew back, he was swallowing hard.
“I hate it,” he said. “That house is yours. Where are you and Desmond going to live?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.” It was true. Every time I tried to think of us finding a new place, I had to wonder if I would even have him, if Priscilla Sanborn really was going to get a lawyer and try to take him from me. That was one pain I couldn’t allow right now, or I knew it would kill me.
“All right,” Bonner said. “I’ll start the paperwork. How much are you asking?”
“I’ll leave that up to you. What’s wrong?”
A shadow was crossing Bonner’s face as he looked over my shoulder toward the nurses’ station. I turned, and felt a darker shadow fall across mine. The Reverend Garry Howard was showing his ID to the charge nurse.
“What’s he doing here?” I said.
“I think we’re about to find out,” Bonner said.
Garry came toward us, tucking his wallet back inside his jacket. All I could see were his white wings of hair, just as they appeared in my fitful dreams.
He dispensed with hellos and put his hands in his slacks pockets. I was tempted to say, Who are you and what have you done with the Reverend Garry? I had never known him to show a single sign that he didn’t know what to say in any situation. Right now, it was written all over him.
“I was here visiting a few people and I saw Jack Ellington’s name,” he said. “I’ve gathered you two are close, Allison.” He pulled his shoulders up to his ears. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” I searched his face for an agenda. I found none.
“What can we do?” he said. “Do you need meals? Shall I call Mary Alice?”
Mary Alice. I had the immediate image of my multi-chinned friend sitting across from me in my living room the day after Sylvia died, pulling a needle in and out of a piece of embroidery in a hoop and listening to me while I talked and cried. And another of her bringing casseroles to try to fill my empty place when Geneveve was murdered. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to the rest of my Wednesday Night Watchdogs—who prayed and coached and fed me for seven years as I discovered who Jesus was. They were the people who at one time I would have turned to in a crisis like this—Frank Parker and Mary Alice Moss and—
“You seem to have a praying community.”
I blinked back to Garry.
“We do,” Bonner said.
“I suppose I just came by to show my—our—support.” Garry pulled his hands from his pockets as if he wanted to do something with them. When he couldn’t seem to decide what, he put them back again. “No matter how far you’ve wandered, Allison,” he said, “your church family still loves you. Anything you need—”
“We’re fine,” Bonner said.
The pause that ensued was torturous. The Reverend Garry seemed to take all he could and then hurried down the hall.
Bonner let out an exasperated sigh. “He had me until ‘no matter how far you’ve wandered.’ You’re right, Allison: He’s—”
“Where is India, Bonner?” I said.
He let the anger slide from his face. “At work, I would assume.”
“You know what I mean. Is she that angry with me that she hasn’t even come by?”
“Do you want her to come by?”
“Of course I do. Do you know what’s going on?”
“No, but I know who does.” Bonner rubbed my arm. “Look, I’m on it, okay? Like I said, you focus on Chief and Desmond.”
Yeah. As if I had a choice.
That night Desmond had another nightmare, and this time I was able to ferret out that somebody in the depths of his dreams was trying to take him. All week there hadn’t been a single moment that seemed like the right one to bring up his aunt’s visit. I’d even been able to convince myself at times that if she hadn’t sicced her lawyer on me by now, she probably wasn’t going to. Now, with Des screaming, “You can’t have me!” I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer.
But when he got up the next morning and announced that he wanted to go to school, I mentally rescheduled that discussion for the afternoon.
“You must be feeling better,” I said.
“I got to pick up somethin’,” he said. “Then maybe I’ll knock off early.”
“It’s not a job, Desmond, it’s school.” I bounced my hand off of his hair. “You can’t just ‘knock off’ whenever you want to.”
Fear shot through his eyes.
“But if you get to feeling bad, call
me,” I added quickly. “I’ll be with Hank this morning and I’ll always have my cell with me.”
He nodded uncertainly.
“Tell you what: If you feel like you need to come home, just go to Miss O’Hare and have her call, and then stay with her until I get there.”
He seemed okay with that. He did load a second baggie full of Oreos into his lunch. But the swagger was missing when I watched him walk across the schoolyard, even when two junior coeds ran to him squealing. Even with them cooing and dancing, he looked back over his shoulder until his eyes found mine behind the windshield of the van. I gave him a thumbs-up, which he answered with only half a grin.
I was so ready for my weekly talk with Hank I caught air with the van going over the speed bump at the entrance to the parking lot behind St. George Street. Hank was standing there, helmet in hand.
“It’s not a Harley, hon,” she said when I climbed out.
“I know. I’m not sure I’ll ever ride one again.”
She peered at me over her sunglasses as we walked toward St. George Street. “Why not? Insurance is paying for a new one, right? That’s what Bonner told me.”
“It is. But I don’t know if I have the heart.”
Hank stopped me on the corner and waited for the blaring voice of the tour bus guide to take his spiel on up to Orange Street.
“I don’t have to think very hard to know what Chief’s going to say when he hears you say that. And I’m not even the prophet.”
I sagged against a light pole. “You really think he’s going to wake up? Be honest with me. It’s been six days now, and even Dr. Doyle said the longer he’s out, the less likely it is that he’s going to make a full recovery.”
“Then it sounds like you’ve had about all the honesty you can handle,” she said. “Let’s opt for some faith instead.”
She crooked her elbow through mine and pulled us both down St. George at Boston speed.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I said. When I’d asked her the day before where we should meet now that the Spanish Galleon had closed, she just said we’d figure it out in the parking lot.