Specter (9780307823403) (7 page)

“Just to be near her, that’s all, nothing more. And what about later?”

He starts rubbing his thumb again, and I take a step toward him. “All I want to do right now is go home.”

“But you can’t.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’re old enough to accept facts. We think the odds are in your favor, but you’re going to have to live a different life-style with regular treatments at the hospital as an outpatient. Those are the facts.”

The facts taste bitter. They stick in my throat and swell my tongue and make me want to vomit.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says. “And I’ll see if
we can’t get the rest of your clothes and things sent here from the home.”

“I could go there and get them!” I grab his arm. My hands are trembling. “Dr. Lynn said she might—that maybe—” My desire is so deep that I can’t speak.

He seems to understand. “Dina,” he says, “we’ll all do our best.”

I go back in the room and stand at the window, gazing over the low hills to the horizon. If I could only steal a cookie from Carlotta, greet the people I’ve known for so long, laugh once more with Holley Jo. The possibility is so close, so precarious, that I can hardly bear it.

“What are you thinking about, Dina? What’s the matter?”

Julie is staring at me with concern. For a few moments I’ve forgotten her. “I’ve been thinking of the place where I’ve grown up. There may be a chance I can go back to visit and get my things.”

“You’ll stay there.”

“No. They won’t let me.”

“What are they going to do with us?”

When I was nine, I still hoped to be part of a family someday. Dreams have a way of clinging long after they’ve grown thin and impractical. My world was not a secure one, and I can remember. Nine can be fragile. Ten is a milestone, a strengthening point; but nine needs a helping hand.

I perch on the foot of Julie’s bed, facing her. “I don’t know where we’ll be. I’m hoping that Mrs.
Cardenas and her husband will want to have us. But I know that Dr. Cruz and Dr. Lynn will do their best to find us a home together.”

“I’m scared,” she says. “Are you?”

“I stopped being scared,” I tell her. “One day I just stopped.”

“When we live with someone else, will we be like their children?”

“They’ll take care of us the way they would their children or anyone’s children. And we’ll help around the house. Didn’t you do dishes and make beds and all that for your parents?”

Surprisingly she shudders. “My mother got mad at me if I didn’t do it right.”

“No one’s going to get mad at you. And I’ll be with you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I listen to myself make this promise, and I wonder what I’m doing.

Julie’s shoulders relax, and I have to ask, “Who beat you?”

When she doesn’t answer, I add, “I know this is what you’ve been trying to hide from the doctors and the police. But they know.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about Sikes.”

“Sikes?” I’ve spoken too loudly, and I glance around, not wanting anyone to hear. “I don’t understand. Where was your father? How could he let this happen?”

Julie’s knees are up, and she hugs them tightly. “I told you,” she whispers. “Sikes killed my father.”

There is a knock, and the door swings wide. It’s Detective MacGarvey.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” I answer as I untangle my legs and slide off the bed. “Is Dr. Lynn coming, too?”

“I doubt it.” He crooks one finger under the metal tube rim of a chair and easily deposits it next to Julie’s bed. “She and a couple of doctors and somebody named Mrs. Cardenas are in an office at the end of the hall. And they’re having a very loud conversation, one at a time, with someone on the other end of the telephone.”

“Julie!” I say. “They may be talking about our going to live with Mrs. Cardenas!”

“Oh!” is all that Julie answers. She has backed away from MacGarvey as far as she can go, pressing the headboard of the bed with her spine.

MacGarvey lowers himself into the small chair, which wobbles into place. He opens his notebook. “Julie, do you know if your parents were running from someone?” I wonder if he’s been talking to Mrs. Cardenas.

Julie just stares at him without answering.

He waits a moment, then tries again. “Tell me about this man you call Sikes,” he says. “Was your father afraid of him?”

I break in. “Julie, please answer Detective MacGarvey’s questions. He wants to help you.”

She hesitates for a moment, then says, “I don’t think my father was afraid of Sikes. But I know he
hated Sikes. Lots of times when I was little, Sikes came to the house.”

“How little?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you too young to go to school?”

“It’s hard to remember.”

“What did Sikes do?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him do anything. But my father hated him.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because he told my mother he never wanted that man to come to the house again.”

There really was a Sikes. There is a Sikes. And it sounds as though Julie’s mother— But if it’s true that Sikes killed her parents, why? And why did he chase them? And why should he want to kill Julie?

“What did your mother say when your father told her that?” MacGarvey asks.

“She cried. They argued.”

“What did they say?”

“I don’t remember.”

Julie has knotted her fingers in a tight ball under her chin. “Sikes killed my father,” she says. “I told you that. I told everybody. He killed my father.”

“Can you give me a first name for this man Sikes?”

“Bill Sikes,” she says.

The name sounds familiar, as though I’d heard it before. I don’t know where. I guess there are more
Bills in the world than anyone could count. There were ten Bills and Billys in my class at school.

MacGarvey folds up his notebook and tucks it in his pocket. “Thank you, Julie,” he says. “We may talk another time.”

It’s not until he leaves that Julie begins to relax.

“Let’s walk down the hall,” I tell her. “I want to know what’s going on in the office.”

“I haven’t got a robe,” she says.

“No problem.” I find a second hospital gown in the closet. It’s even bigger than the first, so it comes to her ankles. But I put it on with the opening in front, so she’s wearing them one on top of the other, back to back. It will never make the fashion scene, but it serves the purpose.

She takes my hand as we walk. Her hand is a thin, five-pronged clamp, and I’m surprised again at her strength. Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent the last few months being weak. There’s a contrast.

As we get close to the office, I hear Dr. Cruz saying, “Red tape! All this red tape! Why can’t people do things the sensible way?”

“Tell her not to mail the application,” Dr. Lynn says. “I’ll pick it up. That will save time.”

“What do they ask at the interview?” Mrs. Cardenas says. “I thought the hard part would be to get Carlos to say yes. But he said if it would keep me home, then he’d go for it. Now we gotta be interviewed. I don’t know what they’ll ask.”

“TB test, food handler health card, fire inspection,” Julie’s doctor says. “All that will take time.”

“I got a sister-in-law who’s a social worker for the county,” Mrs. Cardenas tells him. “I’ll call Dolores and see what she can do.”

“It may take a few days,” Dr. Lynn says, “but it’s going to work out well for everyone. Mrs. Cardenas, we’re so glad that—”

I step into the small office, pulling Julie with me. “We’re going to stay with you, Mrs. Cardenas? Really? Is it true?”

She laughs. “
Es verdad
.”

“It’s just a matter of getting through some forms, interviews, home checks—that sort of thing,” Dr. Cruz explains.

“And in the meantime, we can get you both some clothes,” Dr. Lynn says.

“What do you think? They worked it out with the office here to give me two weeks vacation time, so I still get paid, but I can quit at the end of the week!” Mrs. Cardenas’s cheeks are flushed, and she wiggles as though she wanted to bounce up and down. “I hope I get my party,” she adds.

‘What party?”

“When somebody who works here leaves, the people on the floor usually have a cake and some punch. Areal nice party.”

“You’ll certainly have your party,” Dr. Lynn says.

I should be glad that Mrs. Cardenas wants us. But for some reason I am sad. Why? I try to move back, to look inside my mind, to find this mixed-up person who lives inside, but there are too many
people in the room, too much chatter. I am locked into the now, planted firmly in the here.

Dr. Lynn has moved beside me. She takes my other hand and leads me into the hall. Julie comes, too, with her grip that won’t let go.

“On Thursday, Jack—Dr. Paull—and I are off duty. Would you like us to take you to the home where you lived, so you can see your friends? Get your things?”

“Oh, yes!” Thursday is real. A square on the calendar. A time I can count on. Three days away. “Yes,” I repeat. “I’ll be ready.”

“Can I come, too?” There is a tugging on my arm.

I’d like to cry out at Julie, “I don’t want to be your mother!” but instead I take a long breath and wait.

Dr. Lynn picks up the answer. “I think it would be nice if Julie came with us. After we drop you off to see your friends, Dr. Paull and I can show her some of the countryside.”

Thank you thank you thank you thank you. “You’d like that, Julie. You wouldn’t know anyone at the home.”

Julie thinks a moment, then nods. “Okay.”

“I’ll let them know we’re coming,” Dr. Lynn says. “And I’ll make sure they give the message to Holley Jo.”

The days go slowly. Dr. Lynn comes in each day to talk to Julie, and Mrs. Cardenas pops in as often as the witch on a temperature gauge who
announces the rain in the dripping months of autumn. But Mrs. Cardenas’s announcements are all positive. Her sister-in-law got the paperwork speeded up, and her cousin, Carmen, is dating someone in the fire department who got the Cardenas house inspection at the head of the list. There’s a slight delay on the food handler license because none of the relatives have connections there, but Dr. Cruz has used his deep-voiced authority to try to get things moving in that department.

“After my party on Friday,” Mrs. Cardenas tells us, “you’ll come home with me.”

Wednesday, and Dr. Lynn has brought Julie some clothes. I have my jeans and blouse, which I wore when I came here. I put them on and stare at myself in the mirror. These are clothes that fit another girl who lived in another world. What am I doing, trying to put my skinny bones in pants so large I have to hold them up? In a blouse that droops over the shoulders and flaps around my waist?

Mrs. Cardenas shakes her head when she sees me. “This is the place for a needle and thread,” she says. Somehow the juice cartons get delivered to patients in record time, and she comes back to our room with everything she needs to pin and tuck and sew and cut. I try the clothes on again, and this time they fit.

Thursday moves from a long, sleepless night into a sudden rush of morning. The air is still, the sky
is golden. I can’t eat. I am dressed and waiting in the chair by the window before Julie has even finished her breakfast.

“Hurry up,” I tell her.

“You keep saying that,” she complains. “Dr. Lynn won’t be here for a long time.”

She dawdles, so I help her. I pull her twiglike arms through the sleeves of her T-shirt and jam the neck of it down over her head.

“Ouch!” she says. “You messed up my hair.”

“I’ll brush it for you.” More slowly, more gently, I brush her pale hair, reminding myself that she’s only nine years old.

Dr. Lynn and Dr. Paull arrive together. His professional dignity is punctured with the smiles he keeps giving Dr. Lynn. He looks much nicer when he smiles.

“We have a great day for a drive,” he says.

And we do. The wild flowers are gone now, but the air is fragrant with sun-warmed field grass and the prickly-sour smell of new oak leaves.

“I’d like us to be friends, Dina,” Dr. Paull says.

“Okay,” I answer.

It’s hard for him to unbend, but I can see that he’s trying, for Dr. Lynn’s sake. Then he tells us some fourth-grade jokes that he probably memorized from a book for kids. He’s just not with it. He’s wearing those green plaid slacks again, and it’s awfully hard not to think of him as “old grasshopper legs.”

The highway passes the farms on the outskirts of Boerne and climbs past the exit to Kerrville. We chat about a number of things. What, I don’t know. My mind is already at the home.

Holley Jo will be waiting for me. She’ll be wearing shorts, her legs already tanned, and she’ll brighten like the floodlights on the baseball field when she sees me coming. She’ll run to meet me, and we’ll hug each other and laugh, and she’ll try to tell me everything that has happened since we last were together. It will be like always. And I need it. I need it to happen just this way. I need her to say, “Oh, Dina! Welcome back! I’ve missed you so much!”

It takes another hour before we are close enough so that I can recognize things: the old white house where the farm-market road cuts across the highway, the windmill that has been rotting away forever, the road to the right that leads to the home.

I perch on the edge of my seat. It’s hard to breathe. Dr. Lynn smiles and says something to me, but I don’t hear her. I don’t want to hear. In a moment we’ll round the curve, and I’ll see Holley Jo.

The car makes a wide swing, and I grip the seat in front of me. There is the main building. There is the porch. I am able to breathe again. I give a shout. There is Holley Jo, pacing in front, watching the road.

She stops and stares. As we get closer, she waves.
She runs toward the car. And I am out and running toward her before the car has come to a complete stop.

My arms are wide. “Holley Jo!” I shout. “I’m back!”

She falters, and there is such shock on her face that I stop, too. For an instant we stare at each other, unable to cross an invisible barrier that has sprung up between us.

At first I don’t understand. “Holley Jo?”

She looks the way she did last summer when she managed to take a young bird away from one of the yard cats, and she held it in her hands and knew it was too late.