Matters of Faith (35 page)

“I think we're going to want to schedule another MRI. Dr. Makarushka will be over on Thursday, so let's get it done Wednesday and we can see where we're at.”

“Did you see something?” I asked excitedly. This is what you wanted from doctors, ability that nobody else has, finer eyes, keener hearing, faster synapses. Did he feel a vibration through her skin when he touched her, observe the slightest quiver of an eyelash? But he shook his head.

“I didn't,” he said. “But we rely on the family a lot. You're here more often, you're more attuned to what's normal, what's not. It's almost always the family who sees the first signs.”

I was counting on the doctors to be supernaturally observant, only to learn they were depending upon me. I nodded, disappointed. “Okay, MRI on Wednesday.”

“Now,” he said, “let's see what's going on with you.” He motioned me over to the table and held his hands out on it. I hesitated, but the throb was too insistent, so I laid my wrist down on the table and allowed him to carefully unwrap the bandage.

“What happened?” he murmured, stopping for a moment when a pain shot through me and I sucked air in through my teeth.

I cleared my throat, trying to stave off tears. “I tripped, well, really I was viciously attacked by my screen door. I guess I tried to break my fall, but it didn't do much good. I think I must have sprained my wrist pretty badly.”

The last loop of the elastic bandage sprung off my wrist and I gasped. My wrist had doubled in size, and yes, it definitely looked . . . wrong. Dr. Tyska traced his fingers over the top of my wrist and nodded.

“We'll get you to X-ray and I'll send the orthopedist in to take a look, but definitely looks like a Colles' fracture.”

“What's that?”

“That's what you get when a screen door viciously attacks you and you try to break your fall,” he said, raising his eyebrows, trying to make me laugh. I could only manage a weak smile. “It's a break in the radius, right here,” he said, tracing the top of my wrist again. “You'll need a cast.”

“Great,” I said faintly. “Shall we check for cancer while we're at it? I'm sure that's right around the corner.”

“Hey,” he said softly, “listen, you're going to get through this. This? This is just a little broken bone. This is easy stuff. Easy to diagnose, easy to treat, easy to recover from. Save your energy for Meghan. You're doing great, okay?”

I sniffed and bit my lip before nodding. A broken wrist was painful, and it couldn't come at a worse time, but for a little while, during the x-rays, the orthopedist's exam, and the application of the cast, I was being taken care of, and it felt like lying back in a cloud.

I checked my cell phone when they finished with me, hoping for a call from Cal telling me that he and Marshall were on their way, but there was only a message from Sandy, asking if there was anything she could get me, and telling me how nice the previous night had been.

I grabbed a sandwich from the cafeteria and ate it in Meghan's room, feeling the painkillers slowly, beautifully kick in. The afternoon took on a drowsy, dreamy quality as clouds slid over the sun, making it even darker in the room. I leaned my head back in the chair, and finally gave in and put my feet up, thinking about Marshall, feeling the frustration over him calling Cal instead of me well up again.

I slept, I don't know for how long. When I woke, in that foggy way you do when you've been drugged, not sure if you're going to wake all the way or just go back under, my frustration was gone. I thought for a moment I was dreaming, the drugs acting as a genie in a bottle, granting me my wishes. I blinked once, twice, and then slowly began to smile.

Because looking back at me from her bed, was my daughter.

Meghan had opened her eyes.

His dad hadn't said anything for almost an hour. He'd cranked up the music, the old classic stuff he liked. Marshall could never understand his father's complaints about his music, which was a hell of a lot lighter on the bass than some of this stuff from the seventies he wouldn't stop listening to.

Marshall looked over at him at one point during the second playing of “Black Dog” and his father seemed less to be enjoying the music than internalizing it, his eyes locked on the road, silently mouthing the words when his mouth wasn't clenched, bobbing his head.

It seemed to wind him up and relax him at the same time, and a half hour later he finally reached some balance and turned down Neil Young wailing away just when Marshall thought his head would explode if he heard about anyone else dying in O-HI-O one more time.

“Marshall?” His father's voice was measured, and very, very calm. Marshall had spent the day in fear, but it had receded to some manageable level over lunch, what little of it he'd eaten. Now, hearing that voice made Marshall glad he hadn't had much fried fish or he'd have to make his father pull over and make a dash for the bushes.

“I'm going to say this, and I don't want any pretending that you don't know what I'm talking about, I don't want anything left out, and I don't want any lies. I want it all. You hear me?”

He took his eyes off the road long enough to look at him, and Marshall swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Now, I want you to tell me what happened. You can start with how you met her, or if there's something important before you met her, then start there. Do not make me ask questions.”

“Her” was perfectly clear. His father thought it had all started with Ada. It hadn't, of course, but no, he wasn't going to be coy. He'd start where his father wanted him to. At the beginning. With him.

“You never told me about your father,” he started.

“God dammit, Marshall. That's not what I want and you know it. You can blame me for all your problems, but you're gonna have to be a man one day. I suggest you make it today.”

Marshall had to think.
Make it today
. He shook his head, his lip trembling, determined to not cry. “But you want to know where it started. Ira—”

He jumped when his father hit the dashboard hard enough to rock the car.

“No!” he bellowed. “Don't you blame this on that poor kid!”

“He died right in front of me,” Marshall screamed back at him. “And you never even asked me about it. You never even . . .” And damn if he didn't start crying anyway. Huge, horrible, humiliating gasps of sobs. His father punched the button for the glove box and pulled out a stack of fast-food restaurant napkins, throwing them in Marshall's lap.

Oh, shit, what a mistake this was, Marshall thought. He should have left with Ada, he should have stuck to the plan. He grabbed a wad of the napkins and tried to pull himself together, tried to match his father's stoicism, tried to work up some manly rage to counteract the childish fear, but they both seemed like the same thing to him, and the tears took longer to get under control than he would have thought.

“Fuck,” he finally said, kicking the front of the footwell in frustration and savagely wiping his face. His father stayed silent and Marshall put the window down and took great gulps of wind. His father was grim-faced and just reached out and turned the music up, Jim Morrison, screaming himself hoarse at the end of “Moonlight Drive.” Perfectly fitting.

He finally caught his breath and slid the window up, wishing for a crank to turn instead of a button to delicately press, wishing for hard mechanical things to put his hands on, vinyl to press his sweaty head against instead of soft, fragrant leather.

His father turned down the music again and they rode in near silence, but it didn't last for long. “Got that out of your system, you little shit?”

“Whatever,” Marshall answered, exhausted.

“Okay,” his father said, suddenly swerving the truck off-road. Marshall gripped the seat and the door, something more than fear blooming in him as he realized that there were no cars around, these were still the little-traveled roads of backwater Florida, and this was his father's country, not the open waters of the Gulf he was more familiar with.

The truck, nice as the interior was, was still a real truck, and it ate up the dry grasses beside the road in great jouncing strides as his father headed toward the heavier brush. The ride got noticeably rougher within seconds, and Marshall would have screamed again when a canal suddenly loomed in front of them, but terror had seized up his throat, and he clutched the door when his father made a hard left and took them along the canal and into a stand of melaleuca trees before slamming on the brakes and throwing open his door.

As soon as his father hit the ground and slammed his door shut, Marshall punched the automatic locks and watched in terror as his father rounded the back of the truck and came for his door. Sadly, his dad had the keys and he quickly hit the unlock button and jerked the door open at the same time, while Marshall frantically poked at the button.

“Dammit, Marshall,” his father yelled. “I'm not going to hurt you. Now get down here. When have I ever touched a hair on your head? Hell, I probably should have, I probably should have beat the crap out of you the way my father did me and Randy. But I didn't, did I? And I'm not gonna start now. So get down here.”

His father stepped away from the truck and folded his arms across his chest, as if to prove he wasn't going to wrap his hands around Marshall's throat. Marshall wasn't convinced, but he slid down from the seat and sidled against the truck, watching his father carefully, his heart racing. His father didn't move.

“Shut the door,” he said, and Marshall leaned over without taking his eyes off his father and slammed the door shut. He jumped at the sound of the doors locking, and then his father turned around and set off through the melaleuca, calling over his shoulder, “Come on. I want to show you something.”

He stood by the truck for a minute. It felt a lot like a mob movie, and even though his father was telling the truth—he hadn't ever laid a hand on him—he felt a lot safer near the truck. But his father just kept going and Marshall finally followed him, his back suddenly feeling vulnerable.

The melaleucas had nearly ruined the Everglades, but Marshall loved them, their mellow, camphor smell, the way the trunks shed their silvery, paperlike bark in velvety sheets. He used to peel it off and tell Meghan that the Indians used to pound it flat and make paper from it. Complete crap, of course. But she swallowed it, like she swallowed everything he ever fed her.

Had he shelled a peanut right in front of her and held it out she would have opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like a novice taking communion. Jesus, she was so stupid and naïve and trusting. He tramped behind his father, breathing in the scent of his childhood, his feet trudging through softer and softer ground.

His father finally broke out of the stand and stood waiting on the banks of a wide canal, the remains of an old, wood bridge crossing to the other side, where palm trees curved out over black water. His dad was looking hard at the bridge, and Marshall followed his gaze, taking in the rotting planks, the sagging supports.

“We actually used to drive across that,” he father said, shaking his head, a small smile on his lips. “Randy had a Scout, that thing could do about anything. He used to pull people out of the canals with it all the time. We'd come out here on the weekends.” He turned, looking over the overgrown banks, the palms. He pointed to a palm dripping with dead fronds like a giant's hula skirt. “Used to jump off that into the water. Randy could do a flip off it. I'd like to break my back when I tried it. Come on.”

His father made his way to the edge of the bridge, and Marshall watched in disbelief as he slid his foot forward and tested his weight on it. The plank held and he looked back at Marshall. “I'm going over.”

He left it open, but the challenge was clear. Marshall watched him, almost crying out when his foot broke through, but his dad gained his balance and grinned over at him. “It's just water, you know.”

Marshall looked down at the water. It looked safe enough, but the “just water” could have anything at all in it. Water moccasins, gators, amoebae that could crawl up his nose or his urethra and grow in his brain, his gut. But his dad was making it, even seemed to be enjoying it.

Marshall picked his way down to the end of the bridge and gingerly edged his foot forward, feeling for a solid base. He closed his eyes as he transferred his weight. It held. He toed his way across like that, only glancing at his father once. Cal was standing on the bank, watching him intently. To Marshall, he looked like an outfielder with a killer at bat, tense, waiting for the ball to come straight at him. He knew, without a doubt, that if he fell, it was likely that his father's body would hit the water before his did.

He felt more confident with that, and covered the second half of the bridge more quickly, jumping the last five feet of nothingness to land, crouched low, on the bank beside his father. He grinned up at him. “Holy shit,” he said, forgetting for a moment that this was anything other than a testosterone packed day out with his father, proving his manhood by daredevilry and swearing.

His smile faltered when he recalled that his father had asked him to prove his manhood in another way not fifteen minutes ago in the truck and he hadn't been able to. He considered Ira and the ritual of a bar mitzvah. How much easier it would be if he'd had some cultural, public agreement that yes, he was a man, instead of these constant, fluctuating, daily tests in life that he was never certain he'd passed, but nearly always knew, undeniably, when he failed.

“Come on,” his father said, walking along the bank, swishing the hard, broken stem of a dead palm frond through the grass in front of him. Marshall followed his father's path, remembering the king snake he'd found as a child and brought to his father, planting his mother's gardenia near the house. His father had gone white, and with his perma-tan that had been an astonishing sight indeed.