A Month of Summer (30 page)

“I’m sorry. I called and asked the nurse to make sure she knew we might not be able to come for a few days.”

He nodded in understanding. “Well, some of the nursing staff has been out this past week, so it’s possible your message got lost in transit. Anyway, I’m sure Hanna Beth will be relieved you’re here. I think she’s ready for a little company, other than my grandmother and the romance novel.” He gave me a friendly, reassuring smile, Ouita Mae’s smile.

“How’s your grandmother doing? She told me she had some surgery while she was here.”

“Well, they weren’t able to do as much arthroscopically as they’d hoped. I’m not sure she’s ready to face that fact yet.” Shaking his head, he laughed softly. “She checked with me this morning to make sure I’d booked her plane ticket back to Houston, but the truth is it’s not going to be feasible for her to go back home again. She’s unstable doing a lot of things, and living alone in an old house that requires a lot of care is just not possible.”

I groaned under my breath. “That sounds familiar.” It was comforting to talk to someone who could understand what I was dealing with. “I’ve been going crazy this week, doing interviews, talking to home health agencies, trying to find a live-in caretaker for my father and Teddy, and eventually Hanna Beth. It’s just . . . incredibly difficult.”

“You might check with the administrator here and see if she has any ideas.”

“I already did,” I admitted. “She gave me the agency lists I’ve been using.”

He nodded solemnly. “I know it’s not much comfort, but it’s good that they have you looking to their interests. So many of our elderly patients aren’t so fortunate.”

It was hard to think of my father and Hanna Beth as fortunate. “I should have come back sooner.” Guilt welled up inside me and spilled over. The next thing I knew, I was telling him our family story—mine, my father’s, Hanna Beth’s.
He doesn’t need to hear all of this,
I thought.
He’s not interested in more problems. The man deals with tragedies every day.

His pager went off again. He checked it and glanced toward the reception desk. I knew he needed to leave. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you. That was completely . . .”
Unlike me. Unacceptable. Abnormal.
“I really apologize.”

“I don’t mind.” He met my gaze in a way that acknowledged a connection, a shared battle between us.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, and looked away. “Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime.” Tucking his pager back in his pocket, he glanced up as Teddy came in the door again. “Hey there, Teddy. You get that door working like it’s supposed to yet?”

Teddy laughed, waving as Dr. Barnhill turned and headed toward the hallway opposite Hanna Beth’s. Just before Dr. Barnhill disappeared around the corner, Teddy went out the door again.

I caught Teddy on his next trip through, and we proceeded to Hanna Beth’s room. Hurrying ahead of me, he checked the names on the doors, peeked into the rooms, then went into Hanna Beth’s.

“Hi-eee, Mama!” His voice echoed down the hall.

Hanna Beth’s response was an outcry of pure elation.

Mary came out of a room across the hall to see what was going on. She hesitated as I approached. I suspected that she was waiting for me, giving me the opportunity to respond to her offer to move into the apartment over my father’s garage.

“Hello, Mary,” I said. “How’s Hanna Beth doing?”

“She’ll be better now that y’all are here.” She peeked in Hanna Beth’s doorway, her face filled with a tender concern. “She was really worried.”

“I know. The last few days have been busy . . .” I paused before blurting out that I’d been interviewing prospective caretakers for my father. “I called and explained the situation to someone . . . Betty, I think? She promised she would tell Hanna Beth.”

“Oh,” Mary replied, her eyes narrowing with something as close to disgust as I’d ever seen her fashion. “She probably forgot.” There was more to that, but Mary didn’t elaborate. Smoothing the front of her scrub top, she stood waiting for me to say something.

“I’m sorry Hanna Beth was worried.”

Mary nodded. “How’s your dad doing?”

I was surprised she remembered that my father was in the hospital. “Better. His reports are good, and they’re discharging him today. I wanted to come by here first. Once he’s home, I don’t know how things will . . . be.” I realized too late that I’d just opened the door to a conversation about the caretaking job.

Her cheeks tightened and she swallowed hard, scanning the floor as if the right words might be scattered there. Her chin came up and her speech rushed out. “You know, if you need someone just temporary, I could do that. I mean, until you find someone permanent. . . . Not that I’m not still interested in permanent . . . me and Ifeoma, I mean. I talked to her about it, and she thought it would work out good. She gets off at two in the mornings, and she can’t sleep past daylight. I could look after things at night while she’s sleeping and gone to work. The boy’s don’t . . .” She focused on the floor again, twisted her hands together tightly. “. . . wake up much at night.”

I stood silent, afraid to say yes, afraid to say no, afraid I would be inviting more problems into the house, afraid I couldn’t handle things on my own any longer.

“Sorry,” Mary muttered. “I didn’t mean to be pushy. My apartment lease is up, that’s all.”

Somewhere amid all my own concerns, I was reminded that Mary had concerns of her own. Her hair was unwashed, her clothes wrinkled as if she’d slept in them, her normally clear skin red and broken out. She looked tired and stressed.

Whatever the reasons, whatever she wasn’t saying, she needed me, she needed this job.

“I think something temporary would be good,” I said. My heart fluttered upward, did an uncertain flip-flop. I hoped this was right.
Please, let this be the right thing.
“Let’s start that way, and then we’ll see how it works out.”

CHAPTER 18

In our little white church some years ago, Pastor Al preached a sermon about counting all things joy. We must believe, he asserted, that all things, even the ones we do not choose, work together for our good. Pastor Al was scheduled for cancer surgery the next week. He was facing a stiff regimen of chemotherapy and even odds for survival, and I suppose, as I sat there in the pew, I thought he was largely trying to convince himself.

I was steeped in my own worries, having for the first time left Edward home rather than bringing him out to church. Kay-Kay had insisted that the travel and all the people he had difficulty recognizing now were too upsetting for him, and she was probably right. I knew she would watch after Edward while I was gone, but it broke my heart to walk out the door and leave him sitting there. I found it impossible to count it as joy that he would wait at home while I went to service. It was impossible to see how this situation could be for anyone’s good. It was impossible to understand how Teddy, sitting beside me rather than helping entertain children in the preschool room, was good. Teddy’s banishment from the nursery was merely the work of a few closed-minded parents who judged Teddy at first sight and protested his presence with the children. Being new to the area, they didn’t know Teddy at all and didn’t care to.

The following Sunday, Teddy and I stayed home with Edward. There seemed to be no point in our attending a place where we were not wanted. At first, Teddy had a difficult time with the alteration in our Sunday routine. He was afraid God would be angry with us.

When I lay on the floor in the laundry room, fading out, unable to move, it crossed my mind that perhaps he’d been right all these months. I began attempting to strike a bargain. I promised that if God brought me through this, allowed me to return to Teddy and Edward, I would never question again.

All the same, lying for hours on end in the nursing center, with Edward now in the hospital and Rebecca taking charge of my house, I began to question again. But the day Teddy came back to my room, as he hugged me, and I heard Mary and Rebecca talking in the hall, a light shined down the well, and I wasn’t looking through the glass darkly anymore. The plan was as clear to me as the ceiling overhead or the clock on the wall.

This illness, this time in the care center, was meant to bring all of us together. We needed one another, Mary, Rebecca, Teddy and Edward, me.

We were Jes and Tab in Claude’s story, drawn together by needs we couldn’t fully understand, but also couldn’t deny. The empty places in each of us fit together like pieces of a whole.

Like members of a family.

The idea was at once wondrous and startling.

When Rebecca and Mary came in the door, I held out my hands, took both of theirs, felt a smile come. I was unashamed of its lopsidedness. “Gu-ood!” I said, my voice trembling with jubilant emotion. “Good! Good!” I felt as if I could throw off the covers, spring from the bed and scamper around the room. The next time Gretchen brought in the wheelchair, I’d show her a thing or two.

Mary laughed. “I guess you heard what we were talking about.”

“Yesh!” I cheered. “Myeee how-t. Good! Shhhow . . .”
No, not show . . . so.
The letters were flying through my mind. “So go-od!”

The clarity of the words surprised Rebecca, pleasantly so. “I guess she approves.” Rebecca turned to Teddy, who’d moved away a step, startled by all the activity. “Teddy,” she said very carefully, “Mary’s going to move into the apartment over the garage and help take care of Daddy Ed—like Kay-Kay used to.”

Teddy reacted cautiously, trying to process the idea of a change. I held my breath, hoping Mary and Rebecca wouldn’t mistake his response for a negative reaction. It was just Teddy struggling to make an adjustment. “No . . . ,” he said finally, shaking his head. “No. Mary workin’ here. She work here. Take care Mama.”

I waited apprehensively. I wanted to be able to explain, to help all of them see that Teddy wasn’t being difficult, just struggling to understand. For years, his doctors, his educational therapists, and schoolteachers had been trying to teach him to react more benignly to unfamiliar stimuli. The doctor described Teddy’s routines as being hardwired into his body, reflexes like blinking, or swallowing, or breathing. When those things were interrupted, it was akin to being deprived of oxygen, held underwater. Panic was only natural.

To my surprise, Rebecca reached out, stopped his frenzied movement. “Mary’s still going to work here during the days and take care of your mom. Then in the evenings and at night, she’ll be with us. In the daytime, we might have another nurse there, named Ifeoma.”

Teddy pushed his lips upward, his regard traveling back and forth between Mary and Rebecca. I heard the faint tapping of his teeth. He’d always done that when he was trying very hard to assimilate new information, to connect to events that lay far outside his practiced spheres of thought. His focus moved slowly away from Rebecca, drifted to the lights overhead. It was a bad sign, a signal that he was pulling into himself, drawing back to comfortable stimulations.

The silence in the room seemed deafening. I reached for Teddy, but he didn’t react.

Rebecca rubbed his shoulder like she was trying to increase blood flow. “What do you think about that, Teddy?”

Teddy drew away, stared up at the light.

Mary tucked stray strands of hair behind her ear, then folded her arms over her stomach. “It’s okay if he needs some time to think about it.” Her gaze darted toward the parking lot—toward her car, perhaps? Was she wondering whether she and her boys would be sleeping there tonight?

Teddy stood unblinking by the wall, watching the lights, his face relaxed, his mouth hanging open slightly, his expression vacant.

“Teddy?” Rebecca ventured again. She touched his hands, and he jerked away, as if the contact were surprising, or painful.

Swallowing hard, taking a breath, I tried to remember the voice we’d used in therapy at the institutional school, the low, guttural tone in which we said students’ names when they were distracted, almost more of an animal sound than a word.

“Tad-eee!” The utterance bounced around the room like the bark of a dog. Both Mary and Rebecca drew back, their eyes widening, but Teddy didn’t respond. “Tad-eee!” I said again. “Tad-eee!”

A buzzer beckoned from the hallway, and Mary took a step toward the door. “It’s okay. I don’t need an answer right now.”

“No. Mary, it’s fine.” Rebecca chewed a fingernail, then pressed the pads of her fingers together, looking tired and worried. “It’ll be fine. Just plan on it, all right? By the time you get off work, we should be home from the hospital with my father.”

Mary’s response was a tentative nod. “I’ll talk to Ifeoma about everything when she comes in, if you want. I can let her know it’s just temporary and stuff.”

“That’ll be fine.” Rebecca pulled her lip between her teeth, looking at Teddy, no doubt wondering what to do next, how she would manage to get him out of here, and whether the afternoon would come off as planned.

“Okay,” Mary said. “I’m sorry if I made Teddy upset.”

“It isn’t you,” Rebecca answered, her helplessness, frustration, and uncertainty unmasked. I understood all of them.

I reached for her, pulling her hand into mine. She pushed her lips into a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll . . .”

“Where she gone put the boy and the udder boy?” Teddy’s question came out of the blue. All three of us turned to look at him. “Where she gone put the two boy?”

I felt like laughing and weeping all at once. I wasn’t sure Rebecca understood the question, but I did.

“Rrrr howt,” I said. “Arrr how-se.” Mary gave the words a pleased smile.