Range of Motion (10 page)

I know I have a hard time dealing with real life. I know I glorify the past. Alice calls me Nostalgia Woman. I say, What about you, you’re not so modern, you don’t even work. She says that has nothing to do with it; she doesn’t wish she
lived fifty years ago. Well, I can’t help it. Open marriage. Isn’t that liberating, one person being given permission to break the other’s heart. I think it was better when promises were kept. When people meant what they said, or at least tried to. I’ll take the guys in bow ties working in the gas stations over sullen men slumped in chairs behind bullet-proof glass, who take your money with a kind of hatred.

T
he next day, when the kids are in school, I go to the grocery store with Alice. I need everything, so we go to the huge Super Save, which has what seems to be a drugstore built into the middle of it. I throw Q-Tips into my cart, then wait for Alice, who is standing in front of the boxes of hair dye. She picks one up, puts it down, picks up another, puts that down. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Just looking.”

“Are you going to dye your hair?”

“I might.”

“What for?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

I want to ask her if she’s out of her mind. I want to tell her that instead of dyeing her hair she should ask
him
to change. Instead, I pick up the ash blond, hold it up to the side of her head. “How about this one?”

“No, not blond,” Alice says. “I’m sure
she’s
blond.”

“Right. You’re probably right.”

Alice looks at my hair. “No offense.”

“None taken. Mine’s dirty blond, anyway.”

Alice picks up a box with an auburn-haired model on the front. “You think?”

I look at the model. She is wearing a blue scarf around her perfect neck, smiling with her perfect mouth open to reveal perfect teeth. She would look quite lovely bald. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s the one.”

Alice puts the dye in her cart next to the Cheerios, walks away too nonchalantly. Later, when I’ve gone to see Jay, I bet I know exactly what she’ll do. She’ll buy gorgeous underwear, a new nightgown not made for cold nights. I look at Alice’s straight back moving away from me, sigh quietly. It happens to the best of us.

In front of the chicken bin, I tell Alice about a friend of mine who dyed her hair a different color every week. “It was fun,” I say. “I always kind of admired her, playing around like that.” I throw a package of drumsticks in my cart. “That girl is the same one who used her vagina to perfume herself.” An older woman standing next to us looks up, moves away.

“She used
what
?” Alice says.

“Didn’t I tell you about her? She stuck her fingers in her vagina and then rubbed the stuff behind her ears. She said it made the men crazy.”

“
That
is so dis
gust
ing,” Alice says.

“I know.”

“God!”

“I
know
.”

“Did you try it?” she asks.

“Of course.”

“Did it work?”

“Not for me.”

Alice looks over both of our carts. “Are you done?”

“Done enough.” I hardly ever finish at the grocery store anymore.

When I get home that night, Alice comes over with a bag from Victoria’s Secret. “Nice,” I say. Over and over again. “Nice.”

S
aturday afternoon, Alice and Timothy come to the playground with us. Timothy swings listlessly, his forehead wrinkled, deeply engrossed in thought. Amy swings beside him, seeing, with each forward thrust, how far she can lean back. The idea is that her ponytail will make a design in the dirt. Sarah, who has declared herself too old for playgrounds—and is—pouts on the bench farthest away from us. She has brought a book, but she is ignoring it for the time being, focusing instead on communicating her silent anger.

“She’s getting so moody,” I tell Alice. “She’s too young for PMS isn’t she?”

“Who knows? Probably not.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s something else. I feel like she’s begun this pull away from me. I know she has to do it, but it seems too soon. I’m worried that Jay’s accident is making for all this unexpected fallout.”

“She’s just pissed, Lainey. Let her be pissed. Of course there’s fallout. This didn’t just happen to Jay. It happened to all of you.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” I look up into the cloudless blue sky, wrestle with an impulse to stand up and scream. If I did it, the sound would reach far. Coast to coast.

“Maybe I’ll come along and see Jay today,” Alice says. “I haven’t visited him since he moved.”

“That would be good. I’m trying to … kind of … approximate his normal life. It would be good for him to hear your voice.”

“What do you mean, ‘approximate’ his life?”

“Well, just … you know, to put as much around him that’s as familiar as possible. Smells. Fabrics. Sounds. I just thought … I don’t know. Never mind.”

“No, I think it’s a good idea,” Alice says. “It is.” She crosses her arms, leans back against the bench, squints at our kids on the swing set. “Timothy?” she calls, and when he looks over at her, she says, “Why don’t you play?”

“What?” he yells.

“Go run around,” Alice says. “Go down the slide or something.”

“I’m doing something,” he says.

Alice watches him for a while, then looks away. “I don’t know why I bother him. He’s fine. I don’t know why I think he needs to run around.” She looks back at him. “But he does need to run around! He thinks too much. He needs to kick some rocks. He needs to beg me to play football.”

“He’s only seven, Alice.”

“Yes, but he’s too serious.”

“Maybe he’ll be the next Einstein. Let him be. If I have to leave Sarah alone, you have to leave Timothy alone.”

“I can’t. I’m his mother. I have to drive him crazy. Somebody’s got to give him material for his therapist later on. I don’t want him to feel deprived.”

From under the bench, Maggie rushes out to bark at a new arrival. Twin girls, one on each side of a harried-looking father. He is of the new breed, fathers trying to take equal responsibility and do the right thing, while in a secret corner of their hearts they wonder if their fathers didn’t get a better deal. The twins are perhaps two, cautious-stepped and wide-eyed at the sight of a playground that is the equivalent of Disneyland for them. They choose the sandbox, begin digging distractedly.

Alice grabs Maggie, who is growling now, and pulls her up onto her lap. “Quiet!” she says. “You’re so bad. Someone
who looks like you ought to at least have a decent personality.” Something about this notion sticks in my brain. “Wait a minute,” I want to say to Alice. “Maggie doesn’t owe anything to anybody because of the way she looks. You do know that, right?” But I don’t say anything. Alice’s looks are like a body of water only she knows about and we walk along the edge. Someday we’ll get wet together, and she’ll show me the depth of that place. But not yet.

Maggie turns around to lick Alice’s face. “Ugh,” Alice says. “Your breath!” Maggie licks her again, more enthusiastically. “We should bring her to see Jay,” Alice says. “That smell ought to get to him.”

“We should,” I say, smiling, and then, “We should! Jay loves her! We should put her on his bed a little bit, let him feel her fur.”

“We can’t bring a dog into a nursing home.”

“Why not? They have those programs where they bring puppies and kittens into nursing homes. It’s good for people. It makes them happy. It lowers their blood pressure.”

Alice puts Maggie back down, holds her finger up to tell her to stay. “Yeah, but those are planned. You can’t just walk in with pets. People might be allergic.”

“We can hide her in a basket, like Toto. Jay’s got a private room, nobody will see.”

“What if she barks?”

“She won’t.”

“How do you know? She probably will.”

“Well, that would be good, for him to hear a dog bark. It’s been a long time. It would be good.”

“Oh, all right, we’ll bring her,” Alice says, and then, looking at Timothy, sighs. He has abandoned all efforts at swinging. He sits motionless, staring into space, oblivious to Amy who is squatting in the dirt beside her ponytail art, saying, “Look, Timothy, what my hair did. Look at this! Timothy!” Her voice is a high, sweet sound, carried on spring air. I hope she keeps trying to get through to him. I hope she doesn’t give up.

Alice follows me into the nursing home, Maggie wrapped in a tablecloth in a picnic basket. The kids stay close by. They’ve been instructed to make noise if Maggie starts to bark, and they are taking their job seriously, even Sarah, who is walking straight ahead but keeping her eyes sideways, on the basket. Maggie is quiet until we get to Jay’s room. Then, as soon as we open the lid to take her out, she starts barking. Amid the “Shhhhh!”s, we fail to hear the door open behind us. Then there is Gloria’s voice saying, “Y’all brought a
dog
in here?”

I turn around quickly. “Oh. Hello, Gloria. Yes. Yes, we did. Please don’t—”

“
I
don’t care,” she says. “But you’d best not let Patty see.”

“Is she working today?”

“Sure is. Bad mood, too.”

“Well … can you let me know if she comes?”

“I ain’t got eyes in the back of my head. And I got work to do.”

We stand staring at her, all of us, until, sighing, she turns the television on. Loudly. “There,” she says. “That’s the best I can do. But try to keep that thing quiet. What is it, anyway? Don’t look like no dog I ever seen.”

“She’s a very rare breed,” I say. “First of her kind.” The kids have moved to Jay’s bedside, and are trying to get Maggie to lie down beside him. She is more interested in walking around, sniffing. The bed rail holds particular allure.

“It’s okay,” Alice tells them. “Let her be. She’ll settle down in a minute.” Then, to Gloria, with her hand extended, “I’m Alice.”

“Nice to meet you. You a friend or a relative?”

“A friend. A very good one.”

Gloria gestures with her head to the night table. “You see what I brung him?”

In a white plastic cup, there is a piece of geranium, a bright red blossom opening on top. “That’s from a plant been in our family for years. It’s the good-luck geranium, no fooling, it’s brung good luck to everybody’s who’s gotten it.”

I walk over, pick up the cup, then turn around to thank her. This is such a good thing for her to do. Last time I visited, Gloria didn’t hear me come in, and she was talking to Jay, telling him about her son Lamont, the basketball player. She was embarrassed when she saw me. I wanted to say, yes, that’s it, just talk to him, but I was afraid if I said it she’d
never do it again. We stood looking at each other for a moment, exchanging something, and then she continued with his range of motion. “You should be doing this for him too,” she told me gruffly and I said yes I knew that, that I did it regularly.

Now she says about the geranium, “You plant that, when it gets its roots. And when it’s big enough, you give a piece to someone else.”

“I will.”

“Okay.” She goes to the door. “He’s all washed. I just turned him and rubbed him down. Don’t be putting him back over. Leave him on his side.”

“Yes, all right.”

“I’m going to close the door. If Patty comes, I didn’t see a thing.”

“Right.”

“Gloria?” Amy asks. “Is Flozell here today?”

What is it, I wonder, her fascination with him? I suppose he’s the most interesting thing around here. Diversion.

“He’s here every day. Drive you crazy. He’s not mine, Wanda got him today.”

“Oh.”

She narrows her eyes at Amy, leans forward. “You like him, huh?”

Amy smiles, shrugs.

“You think he’s funny, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I tell you what. You take care of him, how’s that? Go in there and wash him up, make his bed.”

“No thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You right.”

Maggie settles down into the small of Jay’s back, stretches out along the pillow that supports him, closes her eyes.

“Snore, Maggie,” Alice says. “Remind him.”

Timothy scratches the top of Maggie’s head. “First she has to go to sleep,” he says. “This ought to do it.”

Maggie’s eyes close, then reopen.

“Well,” he says. “Wait a minute.” He resumes scratching, the rest of us watching as though Timothy were dressed in God white, tools for miracles sticking out of his pockets.

Just before it’s time to go, I take Amy and Sarah to the break room, give them each a handful of quarters. “Get whatever you want,” I tell them. “I’ll come get you in just a few minutes.” They deserve a treat. They’ve stayed here with me long after Timothy and Alice left, without complaint.

Back in Jay’s room, I lower the rail and sit beside him on the bed. “I couldn’t believe how pissed Patty got, could you? Big deal, a dog.” He breathes in, breathes out. “Remember when we tried to free the dogs from the pound, you and me and Paul and Annie? We almost got arrested, all of us. You had a ponytail then. You looked good in a ponytail. Maybe when you come home you should grow another one. They’re back in style. Everybody will think you make movies.” I sit
for a while, swing my leg. “Dolly called me the other day, from work? She’s dating someone! I can’t believe she’s giving up on Frank. Well, not giving up. I mean, you know …” I hear Flozell yelling, stop talking to listen. “Don’t you
call
me by my first name!” he is saying. “You don’t even know me. Until you know me, you call me Mr. Smith!”

“It’s Flozell,” I tell Jay. “He yells a lot, doesn’t he? Do you hear him all the time?”

“Okay,” I say. “I’d better go. I’ll come tomorrow around noon. I’ll bring your navy blue T-shirt. It’s warm in here lately. You don’t need long sleeves. You know, that blue one you wear all the time in the summer.”

I turn to go, and am almost out the door when I hear something. I believe it is my name. I stand still, then walk on stiff legs back to the bedside. “Jay? Did you call me?”

Nothing.

“Jay?”

I wait a long time, then go to get the kids.

Lainey?

As we are on our way out the door, Flozell wheels up to us. “Well, well, well,” he says. “It’s Shirley and Hannah. And their lovely mother, Peaches.”