Some Kind of Normal (16 page)

By the third day she's sleeping a lot. I don't know
if it's boredom or the blood sugars they just can't seem to get
down. She's running in the three hundreds regularly now, and
hospital workers stop acting like this is common.

Travis can't get off work much anymore. His boss let
go all the other workers because business is so bad and needs
Travis there every day. We're thankful he's keeping Travis on, for
the money of course, but mostly for the insurance. He drives in at
night for a few hours every day and then drives back home. Logan
stays at home during the week since it's so close to the end of
school. He's got finals coming up. His visits, when he comes, are
the only thing Ashley don't sleep through. They sit together and
play games and talk while Travis and me get something to eat in the
cafeteria.

I call Pastor Joel and tell him to tell the women at
the church not to come by. It's not that I don't appreciate their
efforts and all, but it's more work to have them here. And I don't
want to plan any more functions.

Travis tells me Brenda organized a committee of women
to bring breakfasts and sack lunches every morning to him and
Logan. She connived a few teens to mow and water the lawn and weed
the garden. Ashley perked up a bit when she heard Brian Lee was the
first to volunteer. Janise began a magazine drive to gather "fun
and useless" magazines to send with Travis for Ashley and me, and
Donna Jean has taken over the job of dealing with our insurance
company, which has turned into a full time job in itself. "You have
enough to deal with without worrying about where the money is
coming from," she told us.

Saturday morning, she calls and asks if the youth
group can meet at the hospital for the movie night. "They want to
do this. They are so worried for Ashley. And my guess is it might
be good for Ashley to have some friends around. If she's feeling up
for it."

"I don't know." I take stock of the tiny room. "We
might fit about seven kids in here, maybe one or two more, but not
the entire group. And we don't have a DVD player in the room."

"I already called the hospital," she says, not a whit
of apology in her voice. "They said we could use their recreation
room, and there's a DVD player in there along with plenty of
couches and floor space for the entire group." She pauses, and then
adds, "And they said it should be fine for Ashley to go."

I'm dumbfounded silent by this.

"Please let us do this. Pastor Joel says we can bring
the church bus, and all the kids are already counting on it."

"I don't know if Ashley'll want to see 'em. She's so
embarrassed about her looks right now."

"I bought her a new outfit. A shirt, really
lightweight, but long sleeves, to cover the swelling. And some
Capri's. Very trendy. And I'll bring some make-up and do her hair
before anyone gets there. She'll feel like a princess."

I have run out of excuses. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah."

"I'll see you in a couple hours then. The kids are
planning to get there about seven. Maybe Ashley can invite some of
the other kids from the hospital to join us."

"Sure," I say. "Donna Jean?"

"Yes?"

I want to tell her how much this means to us. How
much it'll mean to Ashley. How I don't know how we would've made it
through this week without her. But I can't find words that do it
justice.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, Babs." There is a second silence
before she hangs up the phone. I think of the bracelet Ashley wore
last year, the leather strap with the letters WWJD engraved into
them. What Would Jesus Do?

He would do this, I think.

~~~~

While the kids gather for movie night, Travis and I
decide to go somewhere for dinner where we aren't eating off
plastic trays. Even though Travis done plenty of back and forth,
I've barely left the hospital since we got here, and I'm feeling
like a caged cat.

Dr. Benton gives us the name of a restaurant, and we
drive down towards the river, across the bridge, and down a winding
road until I make Travis pull over so I can check the directions
again. By the time he finds a place to pull off, we're in a lot
packed with cars thick as flies under a neon light that says
"Chuy's."

"We're here," he says.

The place is crowded and noisy, so loud we have to
scream to the hostess who takes our names and asks us if we want to
sit inside or out and tells us we're welcome to wait at the bar. I
blush to think what Pastor Joel and the ladies of First Baptist
would say if they saw us here. In the bar area there are a bunch of
kids playing pool under pink and blue lights, and the Pepto Bismal
pink walls and ceilings are lined with velvet Elvis paintings and
hubcaps. I'm starting to reevaluate my opinion of Dr. Benton.

For forty minutes we wait while young college kids
swirl around us. We don't talk much, 'cause we can't hear each
other anyways, and we sip at our sweet tea, lost in our own
thoughts. When the hostess takes us to a table outside, my ears are
ringing and my stomach growling.

Normally, a deck in Texas summer is not the place to
eat, but tonight the stars are out and the breeze is blowing enough
to keep us cool. I'm glad not to be inside where everyone's happy
and drinking and being normal when our lives are turned upside
down. A perky waitress brings us chips and salsa and flashes her
outlandishly white teeth at us and takes our orders. I watch trucks
come and go from the parking lot and nibble on the chips until I
finally blurt out what both of us is thinking.

"Ashley'd sure love this place."

"We'll bring her here when she gets out. Like a
celebration." He uses his napkin to wipe up the salsa he's dripped
all over the table. "She's gonna be fine. You know that." It's a
statement. Which don't make no sense to me, because I know no such
thing.

"Sure." I shrug and look down at my hands, and I
break the chip into tiny pieces.

"Babs?"

"What do you want me to say, Travis? You want to hear
I don't know that she's gonna be fine? That I sit in her room all
day watching her waste away planning what songs she'd want at her
funeral while you and Logan are going 'bout your normal lives back
home?" It's unfair. As soon as it's out I know it's unfair to say
that.

I see him lean back in his chair and look up at the
string of colorful lights above us, hurt in his eyes. "I'm
sorry."

He don't look at me, so I add, "I know you'd be there
if you could. I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at this whole thing.
I feel like I'm all alone in this."

He still don't answer me, like he crawled into
himself again and shut me out. I'm so tired of this by now. I don't
know when it happened, this quiet between us. Sometime when the
kids were small and loud and demanding attention, and I didn't
notice that we stopped talking. Or rather, that he stopped talking
back. And by the time I noticed, he'd buried himself in work and
that dang chair and ESPN.

I'd thought for awhile, right after Ashley came home
from the hospital the first time, we were doing better. We were
talking more. He kissed me more. I'd almost forgotten how much I'd
missed that. I thought maybe there really was a silver lining from
all this. But now we hardly see each other again, and it's all
changed. Or it hasn't.

"How's Logan's finals going?" I change topics.

"Okay. He don't talk about them much. But he studies
a lot, so I think he's doing all right. He told me about the
baseball team."

"Oh?" I try to be nonchalant. That means casual,
which is hard to do when you feel guilty for keeping a secret.

"He said you gave him a tongue-lashing for it."

"Yeah. He's lucky I didn't ground him for a month of
Sundays. A fight's a fight, whether there's fists involved or
not."

"Do you even know who it was with?"

"Does it matter?" I ask, laying out the pieces of the
chip on my napkin and putting the small bites into my mouth one by
one so it takes forever to eat it all.

"It was Troy Donegan."

I suddenly know why Logan got in a fight. Troy is
this small, bony boy with a chip on his privileged little
shoulder.

"What was it about?" I finally ask, chewing very
slowly.

"He was talking trash."

"About Logan?" It's not hard to imagine someone
talking trash about Logan. He draws it on himself.

"About Ash." I stop chewing, a stabbing pain in my
heart replacing the hardness. "You and Logan are so alike you can't
even see straight," he adds.

"We are not," I protest, and then immediately wonder
why I'm protesting being like my own son. I think of Logan telling
me the apple don't fall far from the tree.

"Give the kid a little slack now and then." He
signals the waitress for another drink. "What I don't get," he
says, "is why you didn't tell me about it in the first place."

I shrug and hunt out a blue tortilla chip from the
basket. "Why didn't you tell me Bob's company is going under?" Bob
is his boss--that company is our lifeline. I've had this
information for awhile now but haven't said a word about it until
now. Like by saying it out loud our lives might come crashing down.
It's not that I'm angry so much as really worried.

He stares at me, not blinking. "How did you
know?"

I shrug again. "People in the church talk. A
lot."

"I was gonna tell you. When Ashley was better." He
puts down the chip that's halfway to his mouth, and looks down. I
can tell he's embarrassed. Or ashamed. "We still got the insurance.
For now. And he's trying to find me work with other contractors.
The housing market ain't what it use to be, Babs. He just don't
have work for me, but I'm getting other stuff."

"We got no security, Travis." My voice comes out high
and tight, more mad than what I feel. "What happens when he can't
pay his bills, and we got no insurance? It's probably costing us a
thousand dollars a day to keep Ashley in this fancy hospital, for
who knows how long." I'm scared. I want to roll back time a week to
when Travis might have reached out to take my hand, to squeeze it
and tell me everything will be all right. I'd even take having him
tell me to trust God. I need him to tell me God will provide, even
if I don't agree. I need to hear that.

But Travis slams his hand on the table instead. "I'm
looking, Babs. What do you want me to do? I can't make people buy
houses they can't afford just so I can build them."

We sit for a few minutes not talking, listening to
the music blaring through the doorway and watching the young kids
without a care in the world drinking and flirting and playing
pool.

I push the salsa and chips aside. "Are we going to be
all right, Travis?"

"Of course. We got some money tucked away. And we can
sell some stuff if we need to." The food comes, and I wait until
the server is gone to talk again.

"I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about us.
What happens if Ashley don't make it?"

He uses his knife to make a barrier between the rice
and the beans so they don't touch: a habit that drives me nuts.
"We've got to trust God will heal Ashley."

It's what I wanted to hear, but now that it's out
there, I can't help but answer, "And if he don't?"

He freezes for a second, then takes a breath. "And if
he don't, we've got to trust that it's his will, and he'll give us
strength."

I don't like that answer. I don't know what I wanted
him to say, but this isn't it. I'd be mad at him except he's got
that pinched look on his face, and he won't look at me, and I know,
even though a place in him believes it, it hurts to say it.

"How could Ashley dying be his will? It just don't
make any sense to me that he'd do that to a little girl."

"He's not doing it to her, Babs. It's not like he's
sitting up there on his throne and says, hey, lets kill off one of
my kids."

I flinch. "Whether he's doing it or not, he could
stop it. Why won't he?"

He pushes his food around more, not eating. "I don't
know, Babs. Pastor Joel says sometimes God makes great things come
out of tragedies. Greater things than could come without them."

I stare at him hard. "I don't want great things. I
want Ashley."

"Me too, Babs." He sighs and looks at me, finally.
"I'm not against you. I just don't know. I just know we have to
trust that God is in control, and whatever happens he'll work out
for the best."

"I don't want to trust God." There. I said it. I
expect Travis to react, but he don't. He just lays his fork down
and then looks up at me. His eyes mirror the Christmas lights above
us.

"What do you want to trust in, Babs?"

"Us," I say. "You, and me, and Logan, and Ashley. And
Dr. Benton. And science. I want to believe in things I can see and
feel and know work."

"Just because you can't see God don't mean he's not
real."

"I know that," I say exasperatedly. "But God. . . I
can't depend on God. Sometimes when you pray, he answers, and
sometimes he don't." I have a vision of my own dad suddenly in
front of me. Not the dad I knew and loved. The dad all wasted away
with cancer, breathing through an oxygen mask, eyes empty. Travis
and I sat by his bed day and night that last month, pouring out
prayers that if he had to die, he'd do it quickly and painlessly.
It was anything but quick and painless.

I shake the vision off. "Sometimes he makes sick
people better, and sometimes he don't. Sometimes babies that should
live, die, and old people that should die, live. You can lay it all
in God's hands, but it don't mean it will work out. Medicine works.
You have a headache, you take a pill and it takes the headache
away. It don't care whether or not you believe in it. It don't care
if it will make you stronger if you have to brave through the
headache. It don't care if you been a good person or a bad person.
It just works. You can't trust God to work."