Imaginary Men (14 page)

Read Imaginary Men Online

Authors: Enid Shomer

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #Literary Collections, #Literary Criticism, #test

BOOK: Imaginary Men
10.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 86
At least he had always understood pain. Now, she thinks, he might be trying to understand friendship, even joy. "Let's get out of here," she blurts. "We have to pick up Gerald from Momma's."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Diane makes popcorn while Joe plays the short version of Monopoly with Gerald. Then they all watch TV, sitting on the floor eating popcorn out of a big wooden bowl. After a while Gerald goes to bed. Joe shuts off the TV, sits down, and takes Diane's hand.
"Will you come with me tomorrow for my counseling?"
"Okay."
Joe removes Gerald's baby book from its shelf under the coffee table and starts looking at the pictures. "How can I expect you to take me back?" He points to Gerald at two in a bedraggled diaper.
"What do you mean?"
"I look at Gerald now and I look at this snapshot of him, and all I can think is, how did I treat Diane then? I mean, I don't think it was just Maryanne."
"Please don't mention her name anymore."
"I'm sorry. I just don't seem to know how to do it." Joe leans back and studies the ceiling.
"What?"
"Love someone the right way."
Diane watches Joe flip the album pages backward. Gerald gets smaller and smaller until finally he's a bulge at Diane's middle in the photo taken a week before he was born. Joe touches the picture lightly with his forefinger. For the first time Diane notices deep lines in Joe's face.
Diane leans back against the couch and closes her eyes. Joe begins stroking her forearm. Her body goes slack. She drifts into the half-sleep she often experienced between night feedings when Gerald was an infant. Words begin to form unexpectedly in her head, pulling her back to consciousness like the instinct that brought her sharply awake when the baby fretted even slightly. "There's something I want to tell you, Joe." Her voice is grave but relaxed. Joe's expression is identical to Gerald's when she interrupts him playing with crayons or airplane kits.
 
Page 87
"Remember when I went to my cousin's wedding in Norfolk two years ago? You stayed home with Gerald?"
"Mm hmm."
Diane's head is a jumble of thoughtsthe New Woman, equality, divorce, sexbut she speaks easily, as if reciting a familiar bedtime story. Images of Momma flit through her mind: Momma dancing at the wedding reception; Momma talking about her cross-eyed brother in the mall parking lot; Momma hip-deep in glossy magazines, each one rolled up like a diploma.
Diane describes the man she met at the weddinga friend of the groomand how lonely she felt watching the bridal pair all evening. Joe doesn't move a muscle. Swallowing hard, she tells how the man invited her to his hotel room. "I knew why I was going there," she admits. Joe looks stricken, though he still doesn't move. Diane sees the man fold back the orange floral bedspread, then pull the thickly lined drapes closed with a long plastic wand. He hangs the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. "What I noticed about him first," she says, convinced herself, "was his hands."
 
Page 88
Stony Limits
When I wheeled through the door of Room 12A at the Heloise Gumm High School for Exceptional Children, the first thing I saw was a shiny red football helmet looming over a blond wooden desk. Well, I thought, at least the dress code is lenient. The last school I attended was pretty strict: no denims or T-shirts, no high heels, no more makeup than Jackie Kennedy wore.
Mrs. Page motioned me toward the front of the room. "Class," she began officially, "this is our new student, Maggie Freer. I'm sure that you'll all make her feel at home." I hate being reduced to third person, so I stared at my little toe which was wiggling. It's the only part of me from the waist down that moves. When I'm nervous it gets going on its own.
 
Page 89
Mrs. Page asked all the kids to state their name and handicap. "It saves a lot of time and questions later," she explained.
"I had polio when I was ten," I said when my turn came. "Six months before the vaccine came out." There was a little awed hush in the room. This was familiar to meI call it the Prestige of Polio. When it comes to wheelchair disabilities, it's the top of the heap. Maybe because a U.S. president had it. I don't know. But for six years now people have always been impressed when I mention my disease.
The football helmet was called Julio, and there was a kid with real bad cerebral palsy named Carl. And I was wrong about the dress code: Julio had hydrocephalus and wore the helmet day and night for protection. What would it take to get him to remove it for me?
Mrs. Page was teaching Geography. She pulled a glossy map of the world down in front of the chalkboard. Lots of pink, yellow, green, and blue blotches. I noticed that Thailand was still called Siam. The bell rang, but no one left. They wheeled their chairs back from the desks and huddled, chatting, in small groups. Only Julio stood, tall and lean, without a chair. Then, in about ten minutes, the bell rang again and Mrs. Page began English. I had gone to regular schools all my life, and I missed being carried along with the crush of students changing classes at a regular schoolthe commotion, the sly remarks and quick digs.
"
Romeo and Juliet
is a tragedy," Mrs. Page started, "of doomed love, of a love which tries to go against tradition and the weight of social custom." I detected a faint snicker behind me. "But there are many other important messages in this play, as in all of Shakespeare." She quoted: "'He that is strucken blind cannot forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost,''' then paused respectfully. "But mainly,'' she went on, "we could sum it up with these words: 'Alas that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof . . . violent delights have violent ends.'" Having read the play aloud with my dad many times after my spinal fusion, I quoted to myself the apt, "She speaks, yet she says nothing," while I doodled a cartoon of Julio on the inside of my notebook.
At lunch the kids were real friendly. First everybody in chairs went through the line, then Julio, then the born-deaf kids from the second floor who talked rapidly with their hands in miniature karate chops. The only sign language I knew was the international screw-you fin-
 
Page 90
ger, so I smiled a lot at them but didn't try to join in. I showed Julio my sketch of him, thinking he'd be flattered.
"Someday I won't need this," he said, adjusting his chin strap. "Otherwise, I'm completely normal."
"That's good."
"What about you?" he asked, looking at my small legs.
"This is it," I answered.
"Yeah, well, at least you're not in a potty chair like some of them."
"I'll remember that next time I say my prayers."
"You wanna take a walk?" He didn't hurry to rephrase his question, which was a good sign. I was tired of people adjusting their vocabularies to accommodate my wheels.
We headed out the door onto the playgrounda dismal paved area surrounded by very tall fences. Across the alley was a body shop and an envelope warehouse. I remembered the photograph on the school brochure. It showed the front with its wide, spanking-white double doors and closely cropped shrubs. Julio twined his fingers in the chain Link and was silent. I felt like a parked car with all the glare and concrete. My wheels were hot to the touch, and my foot pedals were starting to burn. Then we saw Carl motioning us and returned to the lunchroom.
"She's going to announce it after lunch," Carl said, fighting for each word.
"You sure?" Julio asked. I watched Carl struggle to maintain control of his movements. He nodded, then rested against his chairback.
"What?" I asked.
"Another field trip," Julio said. He tore open a pack of Tom's Peanut Butter Crackers, dropped the wrapper, and crushed it under his foot. The cellophane unfolded spastically, just like Carl.
"I saw a cow in person once," Carl managed to say.
"Oh yeah," Julio said, "we've had some stellar field trips."
"Now I'm going to get to see God," Carl continued.
"Like one time they loaded all of us into a bus," Julio crunched down on the whole bundle of crackers at once. "You know how
long
that takes? And then they drove us over to the rich end of town toget thissee the azaleas in bloom." At that moment his front teeth were blooming with orange flecks of cracker and peanut butter.
"And music," Carl said, touching my hand.
"Yeah," Julio explained for him. "We go to the symphony four
 
Page 91
times a year. They have to take out the whole first row of seats for us."
"I like music," I said. "It makes me feel like I'm flying."
"Me too," Julio conceded. "The music part is great. It's the way they talk to us that gets me. You know, like we're retarded, too."
"
Bolero
was good," Carl said. "Have you heard
Bolero?
"
The deaf kids were returning their trays through the cafeteria pass-through. They were a rough-and-tumble grouppunching each other on the arm, banging the trays around. It never occurred to me that deaf people would be so noisy. "What about them?" I asked. "Do they go to the concerts?"
"Course not," Julio answered.
The deaf kids lined up at the bottom of the stairs. It was a steep metal staircase with one landing and rivetlike pockmarks all over it, like something salvaged from a battleship. The noise was tremendous as they stampeded up. Julio pointed out their teacher, Miss Simons, who brought up the end of the linea powerful-looking woman with meaty arms and legs and a long chestnut-colored ponytail. She looked about forty but bounded up the steps energetically, her arms extended to catch all of them if the tide turned.
After lunch we had a rest period in the physical therapy room. Everyone got out of their chairs and lay down on thick leatherette mats. Mrs. Page brought me an upholstered cube and placed it at the end of my mat. I got into Fowler's antigravity positionmy knees crooked as if I were seated in a chair that had been tilted back onto the floor. Mrs. Page put on a recording of
Swan Lake
, and my mind began to drift.
The next thing I knew a little dog was licking my face, a toy poodle with pink skin and eyes streaked like marbles.
"Oh my poor, darling, sweet thing," a voice behind me said. I twisted my head around to see two heavy brown walking shoes and thick support hose. Then a hand brushed my face. "Lamar! How rude of you." She scooped the dog up, then touched my face again. ''You precious little thing,'' she crooned. I realized, then, that she was talking not to the dog but to me.
"Who are you?" I asked, raising up on both elbows and reaching for my chair parked alongside.
"Let me help you, dear," she said, going for my armpits.
"No!"
 
Page 92
Mrs. Page lunged between us. "Maggie, this is Mrs.
Gumm
." Suddenly I made the connectionshe was Heloise Gumm, the benefactor and founder of the school.
"Pleased to meet you." I hoisted myself into my chair.
We arranged ourselves in rows for Mrs. Gumm. Then the deaf kids torpedoed through the doorway, laughing and poking each other.
Mrs. Gumm beamed. "My dear silent angels," she said. They ignored her. Miss Simons settled them in and joined her at the front to translate into sign language.
"My dear children," said Mrs. Gumm. "It's all been arranged for two weeks from Friday. A big field trip." She looked to Miss Simons for help, then mimicked the sign for "big." ''Pilgrims and tourists from all over the country come to Withlahatchee Springs, Florida. The radioactive waters are said to be healing."
Carl, seated next to me, raised his hand jerkily.
"Yes?" Mrs. Gumm noticed.
"Are we spending the night?"
"No, dear. But we'll have lunch and dinner on the road, and the park has refreshment stands. Won't that be fun?"
I quickly scrawled a note to Carl: OH GOD, JUNK FOOD AT LAST. He smiled.
"Where was I?" Mrs. Gumm asked Lamar, whose head peeked out from her arm. "Yes. Christ of the Orange Grove. A magnificent statue. A holy shrine without the great expense and danger of traveling to the Holy Land. A modern wonder of the world."
I looked over at Miss Simons, trying to verify what I'd heard. She jabbed the palm of her left hand with her right index finger, then punched a similar "hole" in the right hand. Then she tapped her way up one arm, like someone playing "this little piggy." She kept repeating these gestures. A fat tear slid down Carl's cheek. Taking my pen hand in his own, he made me circle the word "GOD" on my notepad.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Mrs. Gumm visited our classroom every morning to give an inspirational message. "I was without shoes," she began on Wednesday in an ominous tone, "and wanting the pity of the world until I saw a

Other books

Antiques Disposal by Barbara Allan
Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell
Zera and the Green Man by Sandra Knauf
Bullet to the Heart by Lea Griffith
In My Time by Dick Cheney
Pickers 4: The Pick by Garth Owen
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Alpha Choice by M.D. Hall