Penny from Heaven (10 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

So This Is Heaven

Me and Frankie are in the basement of Nonny’s house.

Frankie’s got his heart set on finding Grandpa Falucci’s treasure, and he’s got a new theory about where it’s buried.

“What if Uncle Sally had it all wrong? What if Grandpa put it ‘underground’ and not ‘in the ground’? What if it’s in the basement?” Frankie says.

So now Frankie’s been sneaking down here every chance he gets, which isn’t very often because Nonny’s almost always cooking. But this morning Frankie volunteered us to do the laundry so Uncle Paulie could take Nonny and Aunt Gina to Uncle Nunzio’s factory to get new coats. Uncle Dominic’s napping in his car, so the coast is clear.

Frankie’s across the room, teetering on top of a shaky-looking ladder, studying a brick near the ceiling while I feed wet clothes through the wringer.

“Looks sort of loose,” he says, but I’m not really listening to him; I have too much on my mind.

This morning I had a fight with Me-me. We were sitting at the breakfast table eating watery scrambled eggs when she told me that Mr. Mulligan was coming over for dinner tonight.

“Again?” I asked.

“He’s a nice man,” she said.

“He’s boring.”

“Young lady,” Me-me said, her tone sharp.

“What do we need him for, anyway?” I asked.

“You need a man in your life,” she said.

“I have Uncle Dominic and Uncle Paulie and Uncle Ralphie and—”

“Your mother needs a husband,” she said flatly. “She’s been alone for a long time. You think it’s been easy for her?”

“But why him?” I demanded. “I don’t want him for my father.”

“He’s not going to be if you keep this up,” she said under her breath.

Across the room, Frankie gives a low whistle. “This brick is a different color than the other ones, like it was replaced or something.”

“I could use some help, you know,” I say loudly. “I’m the only one doing any laundry here.”

“Aw, knock it off already,” he says. “We find the loot, and you can hire someone to do the wash.”

“But isn’t it stealing?” I ask.

Frankie turns on me with a scowl. “It’s not stealing if nobody knows about it. Besides, you think Grandpa would want all this money just going to waste here?”

“I guess not,” I say.

As I feed a wet slip into the wringer, I start thinking about what’s going to happen if my mother marries Mr. Mulligan. What then? Will I have to call him Daddy?

I can already tell Mother is getting different. I lost the lucky bean somewhere in the house and was up late last night looking for it, and she didn’t even help me look!

“You want me to have bad luck?” I asked her.

“That’s all just superstitious nonsense anyway, Penny,” she said.

Frankie’s yelp of excitement startles me.

“Holy smoke!” he shouts. “Penny! Look!”

I turn as Frankie pulls a cigar box from a hole high in the wall. A waterfall of loose dirt and old cement rains down on his head. He opens it and gasps, teetering on the ladder. The box goes flying into the air, and bills start fluttering out like butterflies set free. It must be a million bucks, there’s so much money everywhere, and I’m thinking that this is a miracle or something when I feel a tug on my fingers.

My right arm’s yanked, and when I look back, I see it being pulled through the wringer. I try to scream, but all that comes out is a wheeze like Scarlett O’Hara used to make when you stepped on her tail. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, ’cause I can’t. I mean, that mangled thing caught in the wringer can’t be part of me, ’cause if it was, wouldn’t I be feeling some pain or something. And that’s when it hits me, the pain, like a shot, and I yell, I yell, “Frankie! Frankie! Frankie!” and he comes running over, his face white as snow. He just stands there staring in disbelief.

My right arm has been pulled through the wringer all the way up to my armpit and it’s stuck, but the wringer’s still going, grinding down on my arm, like Uncle Dominic making ground beef.

“Make it stop!” I scream.

Frankie jumps to life and pulls the plug out of the wall, and I feel a jolt as it stops.

For a moment we both just stare at my arm stuck in the wringer, and when I meet Frankie’s eyes, he’s got the same look he had that morning he showed up in my backyard, and I know it’s bad, it’s terrible, it’s horrible, it’s the end.

All at once the pain washes over me, and I start to scream, my voice loud—I never knew I had a voice this loud—and I’m screaming, “Get it out! Get it out!” and Frankie’s saying, “It’ll be okay! It’ll be okay!” but I just scream and scream and he’s running upstairs, shouting for Uncle Dominic.

Then I’m all alone in the basement, money littering the floor, and everything slows down so that my whole life, my whole world, is reduced to this moment, this wringer, this arm that used to be an arm that I can’t imagine will ever hold a lucky bean or a baseball or an ice cream cone or anything at all, ever again.

Frankie comes running back with Uncle Dominic and they get my arm out of the wringer, but by the time they do, I’m done with screaming, I’m all screamed out, and all I can do is moan low in my throat. When Uncle Dominic picks me up to carry me upstairs, the sudden jolting makes me throw up the scrambled eggs from breakfast, and then everything goes black for a moment.

I blink my eyes open, and Uncle Dominic is leaning over me and I’m laying across the front seat of his car, the wheels rumbling beneath my head, my arm wrapped in what looks like the white lacy tablecloth from the dining room table, and then I realize that all the red on it is my blood.

“Hang on, Princess. We’re almost at the hospital,” Uncle Dominic says urgently.

But his face changes, and it’s not Uncle Dominic anymore; the face looking down at me is younger, the jaw thinner, the eyes darker.

“My Penny,” my father says, leaning down, touching my forehead, his hand soft as an angel’s.
“Cocca di papà.”

And that’s when I know I’m dying.

The best thing about dying, I decide, is that I’m finally going to get to see my father. He’ll be waiting for me, I’ll have a ticker-tape parade, and there’ll be butter pecan ice cream. I can already see Scarlett O’Hara yipping around, trying to bite my ankles and tinkling all over the clouds. We’ll go for a nice long swim in the big pool and maybe take in a movie. Then we’ll go see a Dodgers game.

But when I open my eyes, there’s no ice cream or ticker tape, just a terrible numb feeling on the right side of my body and the sound of yelling, like someone’s having a boxing match. I half expect to see some fella selling peanuts and taking bets.

Except the voice doing the shouting is my mother’s.

“You were supposed to watch her!” she’s shouting. “You were supposed to watch her!”

I hear Uncle Nunzio’s voice, the same steady voice he uses when he talks to his customers.

“Ellie,” he says, “it was an accident. It’s not Dominic’s fault—”

“Don’t you talk to me about accidents!” she shrieks wildly. “He killed Freddy and now he’s almost killed my daughter!”

“Ellie, don’t,” Uncle Paulie pleads. “Please don’t.”

I open my eyes to see the room crowded with people—it seems like everyone’s here. There’s Frankie and Uncle Paulie and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nunzio and Aunt Rosa and Me-me and Pop-pop and Nonny. In the middle of the room my mother and Uncle Dominic are standing across from each other like boxers in a ring.

“Ellie,” Uncle Dominic says in a choked voice.

But it’s too much for my mother somehow, and she takes two steps until she’s standing in front of him, and she slaps him, slaps him so hard, I’m sure they hear it in New York City.

The whole room gasps, and Mother raises her hand again.

Uncle Dominic blanches, like he’s been sucker punched, but he doesn’t say anything; he just stands there, waiting for the next blow to fall. He looks terrible. His shirt is stained under the armpits, and my blood’s on it too, and I can’t take it, I can’t take seeing that horrible look in his eyes, like he wishes he was dead and my mother is his executioner. My two favorite people standing there, hating each other.

“Stop,” I say. It comes out as a croak.

My mother whirls around, her face white, and she is at my side in two steps, her hand on my forehead, saying, “My baby, my baby.”

Behind her I see Uncle Dominic’s eyes close, and then Uncle Nunzio starts shooing everyone out.

“Leave them be,” Uncle Nunzio says.

When it’s only me and Mother and Me-me and Pop-pop, the doctor comes in.

“I’m Dr. Goldstein,” he says.

Dr. Goldstein kind of looks like Gregory Peck, except that he’s wearing a white coat and a stethoscope. He’s got those movie-star good looks: the greased-back hair, the sparkly smile. He looks too handsome to be a doctor, and the first words out of my mouth are “You’re a doctor?”

He laughs a pleasant laugh. “My mother likes to think I am.”

I can’t help but smile back at him, but it’s an effort, because my whole body feels leaden and fuzzy.

“Are you in any pain?” he asks.

“I can’t feel anything,” I tell him, and that’s when I notice that my right arm is wrapped in thick bandages and sitting on a pillow propped at a funny angle.

He nods. “Can you wiggle your fingers?”

I look at my hand and see something that looks like fingers sticking out from the bandages, but when I try to make them move, they just lie there.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

I’m expecting him to say that everything will be fine, but instead he shakes his head and says, “These wringer injuries are difficult. Your arm was badly hurt.”

My mother moans as if it’s her arm they’re talking about.

“What’s gonna happen to it?” I whisper.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he says.

“Tell me,” I say. “You gotta tell me.”

“Listen to the doctor, Penny,” Me-me says, trying to sound stern, but her voice is shaking. “We’ll wait and see.”

“Please,” I beg.

Dr. Goldstein studies my face and says, “The nerves at your shoulder have been damaged.” He pauses. “We hope they’ll heal.”

“What if they don’t?” I ask.

“It’s early yet,” he says.

“What if they don’t heal? What if they don’t?” I demand, my voice rising.

“Then your arm may not work again,” the doctor says gently. “I’m terribly sorry.”

My mother starts crying, crying so hard that the nurse comes over and makes her sit down, and Me-me has her hand over her mouth, and there are tears running down her papery cheeks, and even Pop-pop, who always has something to say, opens his mouth but nothing comes out; he’s like a fish gasping for air.

And me?

I close my eyes, and the whole world disappears.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dumb and Unlucky

Spending my summer vacation at the hospital is starting to be a bad habit. One of the nurses who was here last summer when I was in with my burned back remembered me.

“Try going to the beach next year,” she suggested.

Ha-ha. A regular comedian.

I’m in the pediatric ward with the rest of the kids. Most of them can be divided into two categories: dumb or just plain unlucky.

The dumb kids include a boy who was baiting a dog and the dog decided he didn’t like it and bit off half the kid’s ear and took a good chunk out of one of his arms. Another knucklehead boy got burned by a camp stove when he was camping with the Boy Scouts, which just goes to show you that the Boy Scouts don’t know as much as they’re always saying. The dumbest boy is the one who’s allergic to poison ivy but figured that burning it with some dried leaves in his backyard didn’t count. His eyes are all swollen and he’s covered from head to toe with oozing blisters. It’s so bad that he even has blisters in his mouth. I’ve never seen anything like it. He looks like he should be in a monster movie.
The Poison Ivy Boy!

The unlucky kid is a little girl who the nurses hover over. She has blood cancer, and the nurses whisper that she’s
dying.

And then there’s me. Dumb
and
unlucky.

The hospital’s just like a regular neighborhood, and after a while I know all the nurses and doctors, and even the orderlies. I prefer the nurses to the doctors; they spend time with you and talk to you and feed you and change your sheets and help you go to the bathroom, which, believe me, is pretty hard to do with just one arm when you can’t leave the bed. I’m right-handed and now I can’t do anything. It’s the little things I miss most, like trying to brush my teeth or cut my own food, or even comb my stupid-looking hair. I never knew how important an arm was until now.

My Gregory Peck doctor is pretty nice, and our family doctor, Dr. Lathrop, checks on me every few days, but I don’t like most of the other doctors. No wonder my mother quit being a nurse. A whole pack of doctors comes by every morning, and they wake me up and poke and prod me and talk about me like I’m not even there. They’ll say, “The patient has reported that she has no sensation below the brachial plexus,” and then they start talking all this medical mumbo jumbo. One morning I was so fed up that I interrupted them and said in a loud voice,
“The patient
has to go to the bathroom right now!” That got them out of here fast.

I get a lot of visitors. My mother comes by every morning, and when she leaves, Me-me and Pop-pop show up, and my father’s family visits in the afternoons, and then my mother comes by again after work. I guess someone negotiated visiting times to avoid World War III.

My uncles give me presents, as usual. Uncle Nunzio brings me some fancy silk slippers with rabbit-fur trim and a matching silk robe. Uncle Ralphie brings me a box of pecan cookies, and Uncle Paulie gives me some Archie comic books, which I don’t like very much, but they’re better than nothing. All Betty and Veronica ever do is worry about dating stupid Archie and Reggie. My biggest present is a radio from Uncle Sally, so that I won’t miss any of the ball games. All the uncles visit, except for Uncle Dominic, who’s the one I want to see most of all. Maybe he’s scared to come to the hospital after what happened with my mother.

Frankie can come whenever he wants, even when visiting hours are over. The nurses think he’s sweet because he gave them a big bunch of flowers. Red roses.

“Where’d you get them?” I ask him.

“Stole ’em from a dead lady upstairs,” he tells me.

“You stole flowers from a dead lady?”

“It ain’t like she needed them,” he says, and eyes my arm. “Guess I’m gonna have to find a new shortstop.”

“Frankie,” I say.

“Sorry. Hey, it ain’t all bad. We can get into ball games for free now!” He grins at me. “Wait’ll the policemen get a look at your arm! You’re better than that crippled kid!”

I just shake my head at him.

“What happened to all the money in Nonny’s basement? Grandpa’s treasure?”

Frankie’s face falls. “Uncle Nunzio said it’ll be used to pay for your hospital bill.”

“It’s gonna be some bill,” I say.

It’s not so bad, once you get past the boring part. I have a pretty busy schedule. Someone’s always waking me to take my temperature or to change the bandages on my arm, or to put on clean sheets or feed me lunch, so by the end of the day I’m beat and I haven’t done anything except lie in bed.

The other kids are okay—not that I can be choosy or anything. We’re all in the same boat. Since I have a radio, I’m pretty popular. The nurses wheel the kids into a circle around my bed, and we sit and listen to the programs. They even let the girl with cancer get out of bed. They wheel her over but won’t let the poison ivy kid sit near her.

We listen to
The Shadow
and
The Lone Ranger.
Somehow, hearing all the familiar voices makes things seem not so bad. We’re like a regular family. We fight over what programs to listen to, and if someone talks, we tell him to be quiet.

When we’re all laughing and shouting, I almost forget where I am.

“How are you feeling?” my mother asks when she arrives in the morning.

What she’s really asking is if my arm is working, because Dr. Goldstein said if it doesn’t move in the next few weeks, then it probably never will. It’ll just hang there for the rest of my life, like a roll of salami. But each day when I try to move my fingers, nothing happens. Some days I don’t even think it’s part of me.

“The same,” I say. “I guess we won’t be going to Lake George.”

“No, we won’t,” she agrees. “I spoke with Aunt Francine, and she said that Lou Ellen was very upset when she heard you wouldn’t be coming.”

I’ll just bet she was. She’ll have to find someone else to torture.

She places a tin on my bedside table. “Me-me’s oatmeal-raisin cookies. Maybe you can share them with the other kids.”

“Mother, the other kids are trying to get better, not sicker.”

She gives me a reluctant smile. Even though I’m the patient, I spend most of my time trying to make Mother feel better about things.

“Did you find the lucky bean?” I ask.

My mother nods and opens her handbag and then places the bean on the sheet.

“We tore the house apart looking for it,” she says.

I pick it up with my good hand and give it a squeeze. I figure I need all the luck I can get now.

After my mother leaves, Me-me and Pop-pop arrive. Me-me bustles about, straightening up my things, pouring me water, brushing my hair, while Pop-pop clomps around complaining about everything that’s wrong with this place. He talks to anyone who will listen to him—the doctors, the nurses, you name it.

“I tell you what,” he says loudly. “You should have your own room.”

“They’re for the really sick kids,” I say.

“What? You’re sick! Look at that arm of yours! Doesn’t that count for anything? They want you to catch the plague?”

I sigh, and Pop-pop settles himself in the chair next to my bed. Next he’ll start in on all the injured people he saw during the war.

“You know, when I was in Europe, I saw things that would make your insides turn purple,” he says.

I yawn.

“There was this fella who had all his fingers blown right off. What do you think of that?”

The boy who got bit by the dog says, “Hey, if he didn’t have any fingers, could he still pick his nose?”

Pop-pop scowls. “’Course he couldn’t pick his nose. But he wasn’t half as bad as this other fella, who got this fungus and his skin started to fall off.”

The kid with the poison ivy pulls his sheet up higher.

“Enough with all that ghoulish talk,” Me-me says to Pop-pop. “Go take a walk.”

“What?” he says. “What?”

“I said, stop scaring Penny with all those awful stories,” she says loudly.

“True stories is what they are,” he grumbles, but he hobbles off with his cane.

“Here,” Me-me says, placing a plate in front of me. “I brought you some meat loaf.”

The hospital food is pretty awful, but Me-me’s got it beat.

“The nurses’ll be mad if I eat it,” I lie, trying to look grave.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she says. “Turn away a nutritious meal?”

“They only want me eating what’s on the trays. Doctors’ orders.”

She purses her lips and marches over to the nurses’ station, and a few moments later she comes marching back with a satisfied expression on her face.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about those pesky doctors’ orders anymore,” Me-me says, and beams. “That lovely nurse says you can eat whatever I bring you.”

I groan before I can stop myself.

“Penny, dear, is your arm paining you?” Me-me asks.

“It sure is,” I say.

Not to mention my stomach.

After lunch, Me-me and Pop-pop leave and my father’s family starts showing up.

First is Uncle Paulie. He brings Aunt Gina and Nonny, who, of course, bursts into tears the minute she sees me.

“Hi, Nonny,” I say.

“How ya doin’, doll?” Aunt Gina asks.

“Still alive,” I say.

“You look great,” Uncle Paulie says, which is what he always says. “Don’t she look great, Gina?”

Aunt Gina smiles at me. “I was thinking maybe we could go to New York City and see a show at Radio City when you get out of this joint.”

“Really?” I ask.

She winks. “Sure, doll. I think you’ve earned a little fun.”

Uncle Nunzio and Aunt Rosa show up next, and then come Uncle Sally and Uncle Ralphie. It’s hard work being in the hospital. I never knew how much socializing was involved.

All my visitors want to know how I’m feeling, if the food’s okay, if the bed’s comfortable. Nobody will come right out and talk about my arm, even though it’s hard to miss, kind of like Uncle Dominic living in the car.

Except Frankie, of course. He talks about my arm all the time.

“They gonna chop your arm off if it don’t work?” he asks. “You know, amputate it?”

“How would I know?” I say. “They don’t tell me anything.”

“Why don’t you ask the doctor?”

“Ask him yourself,” I say.

Frankie goes right up to Dr. Goldstein. “Say, you gonna chop Penny’s arm off if it don’t get better?” he asks.

“Why do you want to know, young man?”

Frankie lowers his voice and says, “My uncle owns a butcher shop, and fresh arms get good money.”

Dr. Goldstein grabs Frankie’s arm and studies it. “In that case, I’m sure you’d be able to make some money on this specimen. I believe we have an operating room already prepared.”

“Hey,” Frankie says, yanking his arm back. “You even got a license?”

Dr. Goldstein winks at me, and I laugh.

After Frankie leaves, I have dinner, and then Mother stops by, and then it’s lights-out. The nice nurse with the big laugh, Miss Simkins, comes over and makes sure we’re okay. All the kids on the ward like her better than Miss Lombardo, who’s kind of stern.

This is the rottenest part of the day. When the ward is bright and sunny and the nurses are rushing about and visitors are coming and going, it’s easy to be brave, to believe that everything’s going to be okay after all. It’s harder at night, when the ward is dark and quiet. I miss home. I miss Mother’s voice and Pop-pop’s burping, and I sort of miss Me-me’s cooking. I even miss the toilet leaking on my bed.

“You still awake, Penny?” the boy in the bed next to me whispers. He’s the one who got bit by the dog. His name is Jonathan.

“Yeah,” I say. “My back itches and I can’t scratch it.”

“I hate it here,” he says. “Food’s terrible.”

“You haven’t eaten at my house,” I say.

“I hate it here too,” another kid whispers farther down.

“Me too!” says another.

Pretty soon we’re all complaining about the place, like we have any say in it at all. Maybe we can start a club: the Dumb and Unlucky Kids.

I lie there and think of all the things I may never get to do. I’ll never be able to drive a car or put both my arms around Jack Teitelzweig’s back while he whispers in my ear that I’m the most beautiful girl in the room, which I won’t be. I’ll be the girl that mothers point out to their children, the dumb one who doesn’t have any sense. Like a character from one of Frankie’s comics.

The One-Armed Girl.

“I’m sorry, Penny,” my movie-star doctor says. “But there’s no avoiding it.”

The doctors had been waiting to see if the skin under my armpit would get better. But it got ground up pretty good by the wringer, and now they say I have to have a skin graft, which means an operation. The doctors are gonna borrow some skin from my thigh and put it under my arm. It sounds terrible to me. Mother’s not very happy about this either, but Frankie’s eyes practically bug out when I tell him.

“Holy Toledo!” he says. “They’re gonna carve skin off you and sew it under your arm?”

“That’s what they’re saying,” I say.

“You’re gonna look like Frankenstein!”

“Thanks a lot, Frankie,” I say.

“Nah, it’s great!” he says. “Now I just gotta get a camera.”

“What for?”

He looks at me like I’m stupid. “So I can take pictures, of course! People pay to see gruesome things like that!”

The next morning when they come to take me in for the operation, I’m feeling pretty scared. What if I end up like Cora Lamb, in the cemetery being visited by her mother? What if I die? What then?

Mother kisses me on the forehead.

“I love you, Bunny,” she says.

“I’ll take good care of her, Eleanor,” Dr. Goldstein tells my mother as they wheel me out.

The operating room is a buzz of activity. I look up and see my movie-star doctor staring down at me on the table.

“Did you know that your mother and I started at the hospital at the same time, Penny?” Dr. Goldstein asks.

“Mother told me,” I say. “Did you know my father?”

He hesitates and then says, “No. But your mother was my favorite nurse.” He winks. “Didn’t listen to a thing I said, but she always laughed at my jokes.”

“Tell me one,” I say.

“How do you stop a nose from running?” Dr. Goldstein asks.