Do Not Deny Me

by Jean Thompson

  The doctor placed a hand on Hurley’s arm, the good one. “I’m going to arrange for some intensive speech therapy for you. I think if we can get your communication skills to a higher level, it’s going to make a big difference in your quality of life.”

  Hurley nodded. Fine. Great. He didn’t think for a minute that anything they came up with was going to help, and even if it did, what then? Nobody was going to want to hear the kinds of things he’d stored up to say.

  The doctor seemed pretty pleased with himself though, and he told Hurley he’d be right back. Hurley waited, boring himself with the charts on the wall. The Circulatory System, a freeway laid out in red and blue. The Endocrine System, a heap of rocks you had to carry around inside you.

  The doctor was gone so long, he wondered if they’d forgotten about him. He opened to the door to the little room, peered out. Wheeled himself a ways down the corridor. Voices reached him from behind the closed doors he passed, though he couldn’t be sure if it was the doctor. Took himself all the way up to the front desk, hoping his mere presence would serve as a reproach, a complaint.

  But nobody was there. You had to wonder about hospitals these days. They didn’t so much run them as run them into the ground. And when he pushed his way out into the waiting room, it was populated by all manner of waiting people, none of whom was Claudine.

  Here was the levelevelevelator, now that was silly, he knew exactly what it was. He stabbed the button, down, and when he got on, here was a crowd of nice people anxious to help. Hurley held up one finger. “Lobby, sir?” And when they got there, didn’t they let him off first, all smiles.

  He could hardly believe his luck. He rolled soundlessly along the well-carpeted corridors. No one paid him any mind. The great thing about a wheelchair was that people expected you to be all kinds of crippled up, nothing they had to stare at trying to figure out. There was a side entrance with those automatic doors that whooshed open as you approached, and in this way Hurley shot through, a free man.

  He decided to stick with the wheelchair, at least for now. It was the closest he’d come to driving in a long time. Lord, he missed driving. He’d come out onto a cement courtyard, and beyond it a busy street, sunlight making him squint, and the only question how far he could get before Claudine turned the U.S. Marshalls loose on his trail.

  Hurley chose a direction that looked promising—no hills, not too crowded—and set off at a pretty good clip, even with the obstacles posed by curbs and cracks, even though his weak arm couldn’t push as hard as the other and he kept snailing to his left. The downtown buildings were largely uninteresting, banks and such. He couldn’t remember one block from another, what might be up ahead. Hoping he might come across such a thing as a tavern, foolish hope, because he didn’t have any money, hadn’t seen his wallet in weeks—where had Claudine put it?—and anyway he’d want to walk in on his own two feet like he always had, order his drink as unremarkably as anyone else. Because that was what you missed more than the liquor—which Claudine had also put somewhere he couldn’t find—the comfort of simple ritual, being a man standing among men, taking his ease.

  But say he never got any better. It was still possible to imagine a place where they might come to know him, get used to his squawks and thumps, understand that his drink was Jim Beam with a little water, give him a peaceable corner where he could sit and watch a ball game . . .

  Hurley was just beginning to think in terms of subterfuge, getting off this particular street, when his own car came screeching to the curb. Claudine was driving, and a young man in green hospital clothes stepped out of the passenger side. The jig was up.

  “Mr. Hurley?” Approaching him cautiously, like he was some dangerous wild animal instead of his busted self. He was even younger than the doctor. The world was run by children. “Hi there. We’ve come to get you back home.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot me in the head,” Hurley told him, no good, it came out garbage.

  Hurley allowed himself to be hoisted out of the wheelchair and placed in the car’s front seat. Claudine was staring straight in front of her. The young man stuck his head inside to speak to her. “Don’t worry about the wheelchair, Mrs. Hurley. I’ll just run it right back.” When Claudine didn’t answer, he said, “You all have a nice day now,” and closed the car door.

  Claudine jerked the car into gear. She didn’t speak while she bumped and braked her way through downtown traffic. She drove the way she did everything else, with a heavy hand. Once they were out on the parkway, she started in on him. “Whatever pleasure you take from humiliating me, go ahead and make the most of it. Where is it you think you’re headed on these jaunts anyway? You take the cake, mister. I wish you’d took yourself off before, when you were a whole man. Would have spared me a lot of work and worry. You couldn’t just up and die a natural death, could you? No, you had to do it halfway.”

  There was a slow-moving bus ahead of them and Claudine occupied herself with stomping on the brake before she took it up again. “All those years I spent picking up after you, setting your food on the table the exact moment you had to have it. You think I lived for that? You think I never wanted anything else in life? You always begrudged me any little bit of money I spent on myself. Oh how I got tired of that sour face you made over anything I took pleasure in. And don’t think I don’t know about that piece of trash from your office that you snuck around with. I’ve got your number, yes indeed, and it comes in at a big fat zero.”

  Right then and there Hurley changed his mind about speech therapy. What a pure pleasure it would have been to answer back.

  He had to wonder just which girl from the office she meant. He only wished there’d been a few more.

  Claudine put bells on all the doors and motion sensor bulbs in the outdoor lights. His car keys were long gone. There were people he might have called—some of the old birds, the old truckers, were still around—if he wouldn’t have scared them off with his telephone voice. His notions of what he would do once he got away were hazy, a daydream he kept practicing and perfecting. Sometimes it was enough to think of himself out in the world again, enjoying the free air. Sometimes he went further, set himself up someplace quiet where people minded their own business. He could get a dog. Claudine had never had any use for a dog.

  The one fight he won was over shaving. The next time Claudine came after him with the razor and the shaving cream and the towel, he rose up and shoved her arm away, hard. Claudine yelped. Hurley could tell from the shaken look in her eyes that she was genuinely afraid. Then she rallied.

  “Have it your way, then. Go ahead and look like a complete bum. I’ll just tell everybody you’re too hateful for me to deal with. And if you start in abusing me, I will pack you off to the VA home. Nobody on earth would blame me.”

  Hurley wondered what everybody she was thinking of. It wasn’t like they saw other people these days. He didn’t think she’d put him in a home, for the same reason she never let him get away without tracking him down. He had to be there for her to complain about, and for the rest of the world to see how nobly she suffered and sacrificed.

  But the thought made for a little yellow flame of fear that he couldn’t quite extinguish.

  Hurley had just about forgotten about speech the the the give up, until Claudine got off the phone one morning and said, “They’re sending somebody over tomorrow to help you practice talking. Try not to act like a wild animal.” Hurley figured the insurance was paying for it. He couldn’t imagine Claudine handing out a penny for his thoughts.

  The visit put Claudine into a fit of housecleaning. The vacuum revved up. The air smelled of bleach. Hurley himself was dusted off and made to put on a clean shirt. The doorbell rang and Claudine went to answer it. Hurley could tell from the tone of her voice that whoever was there, she didn’t like them. It had to be a girl.

  Claudine led her in to him. “This is Miss Lewis. Don’t give her any trouble.” Claudine left and went into the kitchen to throw dishes around.
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  Hurley and Miss Lewis stared at each other. She wasn’t a looker. Skirt down to there, big black glasses. He couldn’t help being disappointed. “Good morning,” she said. “Let’s hear you say it too.”

  “Groming,” Hurley came out with. Hopeless.

  “Good breath control. Not bad. Can you say my name? Lewis.”

  “Looo.”

  “And your name.”

  “Killer.” It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but at least he’d said it right.

  Miss Lewis probably thought it was just more gibberish. She had a big cloth bag with her and she set about unpacking it. “Music therapy,” she said, hauling out one of those music-playing machines. “We use the music functions in the undamaged part of the brain to help rewire your language functions. I can explain more if you like.”

  Hurley shook his head. He could have told her that he wasn’t big on music. Mostly whatever came out of the truck radio, back when they played songs you might actually sing along to. He hoped he wouldn’t have to sing. That would be purely embarrassing.

  She got the machine plugged in and a miniature orchestra started up, playing what used to be called longhair music, back before other types of longhairs had appeared on the scene. Music Hurley associated with the unlucky kids back in school who had to tote violin cases around, music that required seriousness and foreign words. But he had to admit it was tuneful enough. Long ripples of notes running up and down. Hurley found his foot, his good foot, tapping along.

  “Mozart,” said Miss Lewis. “I like to start with him. He seems to make the brain happy. Let’s try some exercises now.”

  She put a red glove on her right hand and a blue glove on her left. Another pair for Hurley. Hurley was supposed to follow her, red blue right left, as the same little piece of music played again and again. It didn’t make much sense to Hurley, but he didn’t mind. He liked the music just fine. Red red blue blue. His brain needed new wires. That was something he could understand, like needing new sparkplugs. He had a short somewhere. The music flew up and down. He reached and tapped, tapped and reached. Red red ready, bluebird blue. Claudine had stopped making her kitchen noise. Probably trying to spy on them. Let her. What color was Claudine? Black, like a black eye.

  The music stopped. Miss Lewis put down her red blue hands. “Tell me your name.”

  “Henry.” It just came out. He marveled.

  Miss Lewis put her thin lips together into a smile. “That’s very good. Let’s try again tomorrow.”

  Miss Lewis came every day for two weeks. He learned the whole of the Mozart and now he was on Vivaldi. “Vi-val-di.” He could say it. He thought he liked Moz-art better, though. He still sounded like a moose with a cold. Getting rewired took time. He hummed to himself in the shower. Lefty blue, righty red. He soaped his hair, ran his hands over his beard. It was coming in patchy and needed trimming.

  Once he’d dressed, Hurley went in search of Claudine. She was watching one of her television shows, with her short little legs propped up on a footstool. He stood in the door and waited for her to say something. When she just kept staring at the screen, he shambled over and stood in front of it.

  “Get out of the way, old man, or I’ll call the loony house and have them come pick you up.”

  She said something like that every couple of days. It wasn’t anything he paid attention to anymore. “Where?” Hurley demanded.

  “Where what?” Claudine bounced around in her seat, trying to look past him. Hurley bounced too. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if you want something, tell me. I notice you always manage to have something to say when your little friend comes over.”

  Only Claudine could have managed anything spiteful about Miss Lewis. Miss Lewis was very not interested in being anybody’s little friend. She didn’t have any more juice in her than a board fence. Hurley rubbed his chin with one hand. He tried to say “shave.” It came out as “vashe.” But Claudine knew what he meant.

  “I threw all the razors out. You won’t let me do it and you can’t do it yourself. End of story. Grow hair up to your eyeballs, see if I care.”

  Hurley looked at the television and he looked at Claudine. Of the two, the television would be easier. He unplugged it and pushed it on its stand across the floor. Claudine was out of her chair and slapping at him. She grabbed the television and tried to push back. Hurley blew past her. He noted with pleasure how much stronger he was getting. Moz-art! Viv-al-di! He trundled the television cart into the kitchen and all the way to the back door. Opened it and with one hand held off Claudine, with the other rolled the cart to the teetering edge of the back stairs.

  “Vashe!”

  “Get back in here with that!”

  “Hellcat!” It came out clear as a bell. They were both shocked.

  Claudine made another swipe at him. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  Hurley regarded the television balancing on the brink of the concrete steps. He was holding it back by its cord, the way you might hold on to a dog’s tail in a fight. He looked at Claudine’s purpling face. He let the cord go. The television fell end over end, hit the steps three times, and landed, smash, facedown.

  Now it was open war between them. There was no more of Miss Lewis. Two days after the death of the television, a new television was delivered. Claudine had it carried up to the guest bedroom. She installed a hasp on the door and kept a combination lock on it. Hurley crept down to the basement and threw the breakers in the fuse box in the middle of her shows. Claudine cooked only food that he hated, like oatmeal for breakfast. Hurley spit it out. He suspected Claudine of dosing him with sleeping pills. When she brought him his medicine, which she still did, iron-faced, mornings and bedtimes, there were more pills. If he took them all, he dragged himself through his days and fell into a black hole at night. Sometimes he slept in his chair and woke, dry-mouthed, to find Claudine in the kitchen rustling grocery bags.

  Why didn’t she just let him go? Spite, Hurley guessed, revenge for all those years she was forced to spend her days occupied with the television and the telephone, when she could have been the toast of two continents. And if the neighbors were to see him stumping along the sidewalk and Claudine lighting out behind him, trying to lasso him, they might draw conclusions.

  Hurley thought it was the blue pills that made him sleep. The others were for all his different jumbled parts, his blood pressure and twitching muscles and fatty heart. He started holding them in his mouth instead of swallowing, and squirreled them away in a matchbox he kept under the bed. Then one morning he pretended to fall asleep in his chair. He heard Claudine swish into the room and stand watching him. Hurley let his mouth sag, sent a wet snore her way.

  There was the churning sound of her legs as she left, then the snick of the back door lock, then, more distantly, the car starting up.

  He had to hurry, and he wasn’t very good at hurrying these days. First there was the screwdriver to be fetched from the kitchen drawer, then the stairs to climb, resting along the way, then the devilish little screws, his hands shaking, but finally he had the hasp off, the useless lock dangling from it.

  The guest room, Claudine’s room now, was scattered with her magazines and face creams and crumpled Kleenex. For all her fuss about housecleaning, the woman was a downright slob and always had been. The new television was set up like an altar. Where to look? Hurley braced himself to search through her underwear drawer, was instantly reminded of parachutes, but here was his reward, a wad of hidden bills, really, she had no imagination. Twenty forty two three four and one hundred and one phooey, counting still hard for him. He scooped up the money and galumphed downstairs.

  Out on the street! He needed a a a slow down, a little stroll, nothing to get concerned about calling the police about. Taxi! Taxi! They didn’t have any around here. The sidewalk was too hard. It sent jarring pains along his spine. His leg was lopsided, he was afraid of it giving out. But just when he was starting to feel hopeless, expecting Claudine to come around the corner any minute,
a car pulled up next to him and a girl said, “Hey, do you know how to get to the mall from here?”

  Girls! Three of them! High school girls with lipstick and pink ears! Hurley hitched his way over to them, trying not to look like something scary.

  “Nice. Car.” And it was, a sporty little red he used to know it Japanese thingy. The girls gaped at him. Foolishly, he pulled out the wad of money, peeled off a bill. “Ride?”

  “You want a ride to the mall?” The driver had a twang in her voice. She wasn’t the prettiest one. The others were probably only friends with her because of the car.

  Hurley waited while they conferred, heads together. Finally the driver held her hand out for the money, and the girl in the backseat got out.

  None of them would sit with him; they all crowded into the front seat. It would have been nice if one of them sat on his lap. Hey! But this was all right because he could watch them all he wanted, the soft neck of the one with short hair, their earrings and thin shoulderblades, their faces, when they turned around to giggle at him, made up with pink and blue and glitter. Their perfume smelled like bubblegum. The radio played noisy, bangboom music.

  They were out on the highway, going fast. Wind from the open windows buffeted him. There had been an argument about how to get to the mall and now they’d settled it one way or the other, though not all of them seemed convinced. Hurley didn’t care where they ended up. He could have stayed there forever, listening to the girl voices and the racketing music, while the wind tried to blow him all over the sky.