Billie Standish Was Here (23 page)

It was a look that started me wondering. If her gratitude was genuine, did my intentions really matter?

Her purse was still hanging on her arm and she handed me a dollar out of her billfold. “No use having cake without ice cream,” she said. “Run up to the elevator and get a half gallon.”

When I walked back in a few minutes later she had saucers out and was cutting the cake. “What the—?” I mentally backed up and started over. “I mean, I thought we'd wait for Daddy.”

Her mouth barely turned up at one corner when she looked up and said, “Why? It's not
his
birthday.” We both giggled and I said a great big “thank you” to Miss Lydia in my head.

I set the ice cream on the table and went for a big spoon. “Shouldn't we wait till after supper at least?” I don't know why I felt like I had to be the grown-up.

Mama straightened up, hands on hips, and surveyed the table. “Vegetable, dairy . . . you put eggs in the cake?”

I nodded.

“Protein,” she went on. “I think any home ec teacher would say we're covered.” We giggled some more.

We had demolished half the cake and most of the ice cream when Daddy walked in later, and I suppose we looked like a couple of raccoons caught in the trash barrel. “What are you celebrating?” he asked.

A couple of seconds went by and I said, “Mama's birthday,” and she and I both burst out laughing.

He frowned, looked over at the empty stovetop, then turned and started pulling sandwich stuff out of the refrigerator. I looked at Mama and she shrugged.

I had never found her on the same side as me across from Daddy. On anything. That was one momentous sandwich he made.

The carrot cake, even if my motive for making it had not been pure, was enough to buy me a good long honeymoon period with Miss Lydia and her Cadillac.

When we went to town on errands, it was like the old days, just the two of us laughing, telling stories, and singing songs. I had her all to myself and didn't feel guilty
one bit. She was my true family. And I was all the family she had.

The day before Easter we hit the Milton Library and the grocery store and lightened the dime store by three big Easter baskets before we headed for home. Miss Lydia and I were swapping Easter Bunny stories and I had my eyes on the road. All at once a terrible moan came out of her.

I hit the brakes and swerved onto the shoulder. When I could look, the hair stood up on my neck. The right side of her face looked like it was melting. She was slumped against the door.

I squealed through a U-turn and then floored it. We were doing ninety when we passed the city limits sign, and I barely slowed down for that. Just laid on the horn every time we blew through a stop sign and thought
God help the person who hits this tank.

I pulled right up into the ambulance bay at the back of the hospital and left my door swinging open. A nurse was walking into the emergency room. I spun her around and yanked her out to the Caddie, no time to waste on words.

They were fast, I'll tell you that. A TV doctor would be pressed to beat their time. They had Miss Lydia on a gurney and inside the emergency room before I could draw breath to tell her everything would be okay.

A security guard showed up and told me I had to
move the Cadillac to the parking lot. I argued with him and tried to give him the key, but there was nothing doing but I run and do it myself. I felt like I was letting Miss Lydia down, giving something worse a chance to happen by leaving even for a minute.

There are three hard chairs outside that windowless room and that's where I spent the next two hours. It felt like eight, it felt like a lifetime, sitting there alone. I wanted to call Harlan so badly but didn't know how far it was to the closest pay phone and couldn't make myself leave again. I tried to think about him so hard that he'd just
know
he should come.

I prayed, but not to God. To Miss Lydia. “Don't leave me. Please don't. I know you have to go sometime, but please, not yet. I'll try to get ready, honest I will. But not now. Not yet. Please. . . .”

She stayed.

I jumped up when the gurney pushed the doors open. Dr. Strunk and his big belly blocked me and I couldn't get close enough to see. He motioned me aside. The rest of the crew moved down the hall without a sound. Pallbearers for the living.

“Billie, isn't it?”

He'd only seen me a billion times in my life. I nodded.

“Good work, getting her here so quickly. You probably saved her life.”

I almost fainted.

He went on, “It was a stroke. A fairly mild one, I believe, but at her age we won't know what the . . . extent will be for a couple of days. She'll live, but she's got a rough road just ahead.”

I gulped. “Can I see her?”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I don't think that's a good idea right now,” he said. “She's . . . pretty-well sedated and probably wouldn't know you were there anyway.”

“I just want to tell her I love her.” I was prepared to grab the sleeves of his white coat and beg.

He stared at the floor and sighed. “Well, I suppose we could all stand to hear that.”

I was already five steps gone when he called, “Don't stay long.”

She looked so small in that bed. Her breathing was raspy and even so it was the finest sound I'd ever heard. Her eyes were closed and half her face drooped like it had witnessed something sorrowful the other half hadn't seen.

I made the sign of the cross. It just seemed appropriate. “I love you, Miss Lydia,” I whispered.

I thought she was sleeping but her left eyelid fluttered. Her mouth worked a bit. It cost so much effort I put a finger to her lips.

Her left hand inched upward. After a minute that felt
like agony to me, she rested it on her breast with her finger pointing to her heart. I gave her a light kiss. Mumbled something about seeing her soon. Hauled butt out of there before I started crying.

That night Mama told me since I had never driven alone, I wasn't to drive in to the hospital after school. But it was planting season and she wasn't getting home before dark any night of the week. The Caddie made the trip so many times I could have let loose the steering wheel and given it its head like a barn-bound horse. Harlan went with me whenever he could.

Miss Lydia being a stubborn old cuss paid off in spades during her rehabilitation. Within a week you could understand half of what she said. Within another she was shuffling along behind a walker. Nurses said they'd seen people twenty years younger never make it that far.

The doctor wanted to send her to a nursing home when she was well enough. But every time he raised the subject, she fixed him with her one good eye and said, “Hooome.” It sounded half hymn and half dirge. Nobody could pretend they didn't understand.

Miss Lydia had been in the hospital nearly two months by the time school let out in May. The first day I stayed home I cooked a huge dinner and Harlan brought his parents to our house around the time my folks were
coming in. Mama and Daddy were surprised, of course, but I had counted on the fact that they wouldn't yell at me in front of other people. Our table had been used so little in recent years it felt really strange to sit there in a group of six.

Harlan and I took turns talking and laid out our case for bringing Miss Lydia home. When we started out it looked like we were going to have a snowball's chance in July. We were looking at a Mount Rushmore of parents. But we stayed calm and took it point by point. Just like we had practiced. We were both pretty good debaters by then.

Finally it seemed like they had run out of questions. Everybody sat there waiting. Then Mama spoke up and said, “Well, I can't argue with her wanting to come home. I imagine we'll all want to when the time comes. And it's not like she has anybody else. As far as I'm concerned, you can try.”

That made everybody sit up. The other grown-ups looked at her like she was crazy.

Her chin jutted out and a faint pink spot appeared on each of her cheeks. “When's the last time any of you started out on a project with a guarantee it was going to work out just the way you wanted it to?” she asked them.

Nobody answered.

“That's all anybody ever really does, is try.”

She looked around the table and I watched the other parents each cow a little in turn. Mama has looks that can burn better than a magnifying glass in the sunshine.

She turned to me and her expression still contained a challenge. I didn't get it at first. But something in her face and something about sitting there at that table started conjuring up a carrot cake, ice cream, and Daddy making his own dinner while she and I sat on the other side of an unseen fence.

And I got it. Ever since I'd confronted her about the son she had wanted instead of me, she'd tried to make up. Clumsy gestures offered from time to time. I hadn't bought into any of them and she knew it.

So here was the granddaddy of all offerings. Taking a stand for me against all of the others. It was an act of penitence.

If I had still needed her to be my mother I might have forgiven her everything on the spot.

Mrs. Willits finally allowed, “I don't suppose the decision would be irreversible. If it didn't work out . . .” She looked to the men, but they had both just realized they were overdue for fingernail inspection.

We had a meeting at the hospital the next day. Dr. Strunk, the charge nurse from rehab, Harlan and his parents, Mama, Daddy, me. Dr. Strunk must have been building up quite an aggravation with Miss Lydia, to come off
the golf course on a Sunday and settle the matter.

Harlan and I made our pitch and our parents backed us up. The others had all decided overnight that they agreed with Mama—or at least none of them were ready to take her on. They explained all we had already done for Miss Lydia. Almost five years' worth. And Dr. Strunk listened to them. God and parents know a doctor isn't going to take the word of a couple of teenagers.

When Doc finally gave his okay it was more like he was washing his hands in Pontius Pilate's basin. Harlan and I didn't care. We were giving Miss Lydia what she wanted. We were bringing her home.

W
  hen our folks went back to chores that day, Harlan and I went to Miss Lydia's. He had built handrails by the steps a year before. Now we found enough lumber in her garage to build a ramp out front. I pried open six rusty cans and found the red door paint. When we were finished, it looked like we had rolled out the red carpet.

Then we moved inside. All the big dining room furniture went out to the kitchen. Miss Lydia's bedroom came downstairs. It made sense to store the dining room stuff up in her room, but I couldn't make that sit right in my head.

I explained, “That's like telling her she'll never move back up there. That we're calling this permanent.”

I swear Harlan's eyes get even bluer when they're sad.

“I know, I know,” I said. “But one step at a time, okay?”

Of course it wasn't really about Miss Lydia. We could say the dining room set was on the roof or that we had sold it to gypsies and she would have to take our word for it.

“Okay. Where, then?” Harlan isn't nearly as stubborn as me, so he'd learned to pick his battles.

I couldn't bear to junk up my favorite bedroom. “The . . . closed room,” I decided. Harlan just nodded and picked up a chair.

There was an overlay of pine cleaner and air spray in Curtis's room, but it was like perfume on a pig. His smell still hung so thick in the air I wanted to wipe it off my skin. It made my lungs feel spongy, breathing it in.

I ran up and down the stairs partly so my huffing could be laid to exertion, but I also wanted to slam that door as soon as possible.

We were both sweaty after we wrestled the table and buffet up there. We sat down in the kitchen with a pitcher of iced tea Miss Lydia had made one Saturday morning two months earlier. She had expected to drink it that afternoon.

I started a shopping list. We discussed handgrips by the toilet and the fact that Miss Lydia must have seen this day coming when she had a shower put in her downstairs bathroom years before.

Harlan was talking about the problem of fastening hardware to tile when I said, “It was him.” I hadn't even known it was coming out. But there it was, plain as if I'd set it on a platter between us.

“Huh?” Harlan frowned, his mind still at the hardware store.

All I could do for an answer was turn red. Our eyes locked and I watched his face go from preoccupied to bewildered. Then it tensed, one muscle at a time, into something fearsome.

“It
was
him.” His voice sounded so hard. It had quit breaking months before, but I hadn't noticed how deep it had become.

I couldn't trust my own voice so I nodded. My ears felt like they were on fire and I clenched my jaw to stop my teeth from rattling.