Read Every Waking Moment Online
Authors: Chris Fabry
Every Waking Moment (6 page)
“Your mom tell you that?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s right. It’s working. You convinced me. It was really good.”
“Thanks.”
“And you’re right.”
“About what?”
“All of it.”
Jonah lifted an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I’m a narcissistic, overbearing, grandiose thinker who only wants to do things the best way because
my
way is the best way, and if you don’t like it, hit the road. It’s in my DNA. Passed from generation to generation. I don’t see reality. Someone like you can.”
“Someone like me? What does that mean?”
“Just that you’re different; you complement me. My weakness is your strength.”
“So you want to help me move the equipment?”
“No, give me a couple of days.”
“Devin . . .”
“He’s not changing the locks until the end of the week, right? Give me a chance to get the money. If it doesn’t come in, I’ll personally carry everything in here over to your mother’s house and put it in her spare bedroom. And I’ll do it from the heart, with passion.”
Jonah took a breath and shook his head. “End of the week. That’s it.”
Streams from Desert Gardens
scene 4
Wide shot of medical certificates on wall. Tight shot of Dr. Crenshaw’s name and his accreditation as an ob-gyn.
Crenshaw voice-over:
The year was 1937
—toward the end of the Depression, but there were still heavy pockets of despair and hopelessness.
Picture of a young Crenshaw in hat and gloves.
Just surviving was the most anyone could hope for. Many children were sent to live with family members. Aunts and uncles who had means.
Wide shot of Crenshaw in his leather chair by the window. Early morning light.
My mother had begun to cry, days on end. I was very young. Too young to understand. But it’s here, in my memory. My mother stayed home that day with the other children and my father walked with me into town
—he had sold the car. We got a ride from someone passing and they let us off in front of an ice cream shop. We couldn’t afford ice cream. We couldn’t afford
food
. But as a child you don’t understand that.
My father took me inside and ordered an ice cream cone and handed it to me. Then he had me sit down in a booth across from a man and woman I had never seen. And while I ate my ice cream, he walked out the door.
I never saw him again. I never saw my mother. Or my siblings.
Tight shot of Crenshaw’s pictures with his adoptive mother and father.
My adoptive parents couldn’t have children. They made an agreement with my mother and father that there would be no contact after the ice cream shop. Years later I asked them about what had happened. I suppose they thought I would forget. Everything was hush-hush; you didn’t talk about such things back then. You didn’t bring it up because it meant you were ungrateful or you were trying to cause trouble.
My biological parents knew they couldn’t take care of all of us children. I was the youngest of three. And they saw something in me, or so my adoptive mother said. They thought I had some intellect, a promise of something greater. My adoptive father was a medical doctor. My parents simply felt this would be better for me. So they gave me away.
Tight shot of Dr. Crenshaw’s face, eyes moist.
I’ve helped many people through the years. I like to think I’ve saved some lives. I don’t know if that’s true. I like to think their sacrifice led to my success in medicine. But I often think of what it must have taken for them to make that choice. What led to that decision? Did they argue? Were there tears?
Struggle? I have no idea if they knew I became a doctor. Were they proud of me? Those questions have haunted me all my life.
Cutaway to Crenshaw’s bare feet, his empty slippers beside them.
Cut to picture of adoptive father, mother, and Crenshaw at medical school graduation.
I’ve often wondered if I would have made that kind of sacrifice. Or what would have happened if they had kept me. Would I still have become a doctor? In God’s providence or fate, would I have found a way into the medical profession, or would I have learned a trade, perhaps? Carpentry? Plumbing?
Tight shot of Crenshaw’s face as a tear escapes.
Is life worth living if the children are hungry? If it doesn’t improve, would it be better to stay together or separate? . . . A life hangs on these questions.
Fade to black.
CHAPTER 8
BEFORE LEAVING
each evening
—and most nights she didn’t leave until dark
—Treha would visit Dr. Crenshaw, also known as Cranky Crenshaw. He had been one of her success stories, though the abyss he gravitated toward felt different from dementia. Not as much disease as disconnection and depression. It seemed there was a past cloud that hung over him, and Treha tried to be the warm air that pushed the cold front away.
She had no real clue of how it actually worked. All she knew was that some were locked inside themselves and couldn’t break through without help. She wasn’t sure where the keys came from, only that she had them. Each time she saw eyes open, she was given something. But what? Hope? A vision of the future? She lived in a world of possibility, where one day someone might call her forth as well. It was a little like the fairy tales of Rapunzel, trapped in the tower. Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss. Perhaps her prince would come. She would awaken and find the world different, her mind repaired.
Or perhaps there was no one with a similar key for her.
She knocked lightly on the door and pushed it open. Sunlight faded on the lonely room and she saw his silhouette in the chair by the window, a well-read newspaper folded in front of him.
“Treha,” Dr. Crenshaw said. It sent a warm feeling through
her. He tapped the chair beside him, identical to his own. “Come in and sit.”
She kicked off her shoes and sat, drawing her knees to herself and closing her eyes. “All right. Ready.”
“X-T-E-R-E,”
he said, pronouncing each letter slowly.
As soon as he had said the final letter, she replied,
“Exert.”
In truth, she had known how to begin the word as soon as he said the first
E
.
“Good,” he said. “How about
R-E-B-O-D
?”
“Bored.”
“No, try another. There are several
—”
“
Robed
.
Orbed
,” she said quickly, without effort.
“Yes, it was
robed
. I should run a timer, my dear.”
He gave her the next two words, which she solved just as quickly, and then a list of letters for the paper’s final jumble below a cartoon that was supposed to help.
The old man laughed, his eyes twinkling. Treha squeezed her legs with her arms and watched him fill the blanks with a pencil.
“I have been working on this all day, staring at it, moving the letters around in my brain, and you simply hear them and fit them together. It’s amazing.”
She paused, not responding to the adulation. “How was your day?”
“Oh, it was full of excitement.” He gestured with a hand, overdramatizing the words. “Way too much to talk about. If I told you all of it, we’d be here all night and my blood pressure would be through the roof.” He chuckled, though he didn’t receive anything back. “How about you, Treha? Anything happen to you today?”
“I like hearing about you.”
He folded the paper neatly and she noticed he had made
marks and notes on the front. He put the paper on the small table between them. Sitting back, he took a breath as if gaining momentum.
“All right, let me see. At breakfast the oatmeal was tepid and the orange juice was warm, so I mixed them together. I was doing it to disgust Elsie, of course. I called it ‘orangemeal.’ And just to get her goat, I tried it, and it turned out not that bad.”
“So you’re eating again.”
“I had some toast and the orangemeal, and for lunch I managed to down the mystery meat of the day and some yogurt. Oh, and the Lovebirds were back. Though she’s not doing well. She’s using oxygen now and seems more pale. You probably heard about it. He brought her a rose, a single red rose. I have no idea where he found it
—probably took it from the garden
—but the other women swooned when he wheeled himself up to her. He gave her the rose and kissed her on the cheek as she ate. It makes me sick the way those two carry on. Like teenagers.”
“I think they are sweet.”
“Yes, you would. You haven’t seen as much life as I have. There is a fine line between sweet and nauseating.” He smiled and shook as he laughed. “The Opera Singer was in rare form today
—tuning her voice, running the scales. Then Hemingway arrived and thought he was in Pamplona. He was ordering drinks for everyone, saying the great DiMaggio would be coming soon, and then his eyes grew wide and he said the bulls were coming. He actually got out of his chair and put his ear to the floor and yelled that they were coming down the corridor and we needed to clear the dining room.”
Crenshaw imitated the man perfectly but Treha did not smile. She simply burrowed her head further behind her knees and watched.
“Did the bulls show up?” she said.
“Yes, the bulls in the white uniforms with the syringe. I suspect he’s off his medication again.” He looked at her in the fading sunlight and leaned forward, making something in his arm or his back pop. He frowned. “My bones sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies.”
“You should stretch more,” Treha said.
“No amount of stretching will stop the popping and snapping inside, my dear. I need an oil change. A transmission flush. A complete overhaul.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s not talk about me tonight. Let’s talk about you.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Au contraire. There’s much to learn. Much to know.”
“I could tell you what I did today, but it would bore you.”
“No, I don’t mean about today. I mean about your life. Where you’ve been. What you’ve done. What you’ve seen. You never talk about it.”
“I told you, I don’t remember much.”
“I don’t believe you. You remember everything. The things you read. The things told to you. How could you say you don’t remember?”
“Maybe I don’t want to remember.”
“Aha, now you’re getting closer to the truth, I think.”
She gripped her legs tighter and lowered her head where he couldn’t see her.
“Close your eyes and let me ask you some questions. If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know. Or make something up. If you can ask me questions, it only seems fair that I should do the same with you.”
She closed her eyes but they still moved behind the eyelids. Her fingers were engaged now, typing on some unseen
keyboard. She bit her lip, tearing at a chapped area. Crenshaw got like this frequently, asking questions about her past. It almost seemed to her that he wanted to tell her something, reveal something hidden, but what could he know?
“Tell me about your parents. What do you remember?”
Her head moved slightly left and right. “I only remember my mother in the ice cream shop. The color of her dress. A little perfume. And her walking across the street.”
When he didn’t speak, she opened her eyes and found him staring at her with condescension. “That’s not nice, Treha. You can’t take another person’s story and make it your own.”
“You said to make something up.”
“You know what I mean.”
She sat all the way back. “All right. I remember my mother taking me into a jewelry store. Or maybe it was a watch repair shop. And she left and I never saw her again.”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“Hopeless?”
“Go ahead. Give me synonyms for the word
hopeless
. Thirty seconds. Go.”
She closed her eyes again and rhythmically, without hesitation, spoke the words that passed across the synapses. “
Hopeless
.
Despairing
.
Miserable
.
Depressed
.
Downcast
.
Disconsolate
.
Dejected
.
Melancholic
.
Wretched
. . .”
He interrupted. “What about this: ‘The wretched refuse’? Does that ring a bell?”
“‘The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”
“Emma Lazarus,” he said, beaming. “You are amazing,” he whispered. “Simply amazing.”
“Remembering the words is not amazing. The words are amazing.”
“True. But most people are not able to remember like you.” He looked at the floor, at the slippers beside his chair. At the bed and the television and desk and nightstand, the circumference of his limited world. “I was reading earlier today,” he said, picking up a dog-eared book. “A sentence jumped out of a novel at me. Arrested me. I thought of you.”
“What did it say?”
He flipped to a bookmarked section. “Here it is. ‘Scared money can’t win and a worried man can’t love.’ Marvelous, isn’t it?” He read it again. “What do you think that means?”
She sat, unmoving except for her eyes, mulling the words. “The first part has something to do with gambling. If you want to win, you have to risk. Put your money where your mouth is?”
“Good.” He nodded. “And what about the second part? ‘A worried man can’t love.’”
Her head swayed like a blind performer’s, with no concern for who noticed. “If you worry, you can only think of yourself. You can’t love someone else.”
“Why not?”
“Because love is not about what you receive. It’s about what you give.”
“How do you know this, Treha?”
She shrugged. “There are some things you just know.”
He turned his head to look at the ceiling for a moment. “That’s very insightful. Maybe that’s why it jumped out at me. It brought back all the mistakes. Things I regret.”
“What regrets do you have?” she said.
He waved a hand and the splotches on his skin shone in the
dim light. Other signs of unwanted age too
—the weary movement, the misshapen nails, the telltale wrinkles and sags.
“There are things in my life I would like to do over. I used to look at my life as a long tunnel, a hole in the side of a huge mountain that I entered and couldn’t see the light on the other end. It felt like it stretched forever. But now I can’t see the light behind me. And the rest of the tunnel is very short, I’m afraid.”
“Can you see the light ahead?”
“Yes, and I think it’s a train.” He studied her as if to see any hint of joy or laughter. “When I read that sentence, I saw for an instant what has held me back.”
“From what?”
“From living fully. The choices you make when you are younger . . . there is no way to undo them. You can ask forgiveness. You can beg pardon. From others you hurt, from God, even. But there is no way to erase what happened. There is no way to untie the knots of a life. There are so many strings and they’re pulled together so tightly.” He held up his arthritic hands. “With these, you can’t get the threads apart. And you can’t distinguish the individual strands with your eyes because you can’t focus. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “What is it you would like to erase?”
“Little decisions. A thousand things I said or did. To my children. My wife. My patients. Little decisions always lead to bigger ones, of course. You take a wrong turn on a road and you can quickly head in a direction you shouldn’t go. But there aren’t many off-ramps to life.” He remained in that far-off place, reflecting. Then he returned and ran his tongue over his dentures. “I was talking with Elsie. She said you have memories of your mother. Do you recall this?”
“I recall telling Elsie, yes.”
He dipped his head and waited like some wizened prophet.
“My mother was not a nice woman. I became angry with her. Very angry.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. It may not have actually happened. It could be a memory I’ve stolen.”
“True. But I think you know the difference between what is real and what is imaginary. What actually happened and what has been appropriated.”
“I’m not as sure as you.”
“You know you were not left in an ice cream shop. You know that is my story.”
Treha remained silent.
“Why do you think you do this?” Crenshaw said. “You co-opt these shared histories. Do they give a structure to your life? A past, a way to become comfortable?”
“If you say so.”
“I’m asking about your childhood. What is the real story?”
“Why is it so important?”
He seemed frightened by her stare. It felt like he was trying to open a cellar door on some unimaginable horror in her life that made her numb. She looked out the window at the fluorescent lights of the parking lot.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Perhaps I’m trying to expel the fear so that I can love well.”
He smiled and Treha chewed on her thumbnail. She put a foot on the floor and then the other and then brought them both back to the chair.
“I don’t remember my parents. I don’t think I ever had any.”
“How could that be?”
Staring at the floor now, her head swaying, eyes moving, her
right hand typing and left thumb in her mouth. She slipped her feet into the open shoes. “I need to go.”
“Treha, don’t be upset.”
“I’m not upset. I need to go.”
Crenshaw nodded. “I understand. Treha, what would you say if I told you . . . ?”
“Told me what?” she said.
“What if I told you I need you to mail something for me? An important letter?” He struggled to stand and she told him to stay seated. “It’s on the desk. The one addressed to Calvin Davidson. Do you see it?”
She nodded and put the letter in her pocket and walked to the door, shoelaces flapping.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” he said.
She spoke to the door. “Of course.”
