The Great Good Summer (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

K
nock, knock, Mrs. Green,” says Nan. “I've got visitors for you!” She moves through the doorway toward the fuzzy feet, and I follow, my own breath noisy in my ears. Paul is right behind me—I can hear his breath too, slower and softer than my own. And then there she is, my mama, lying stock-still upon the bed, with her eyes closed. She's dressed in a lavender jogging suit and the fuzzy socks, and there's a thin blanket partway covering her belly and chest. She looks smaller than usual, and pale, and I can't help myself, not for one second longer. I push past Nan and rush up against the side of the bed.

“Mama!” I say. “Mama, it's me,” and before the words are even fully out of my mouth, Mama opens her eyes and turns her head toward me.

“Oh, Ivy,” she says, in her same old Mama voice that I know and love. “Oh, baby doll.”

She looks me straight in the eye, and it's almost too much for me to bear. I sort of sit-fall into the chair by the head of the bed, and Mama reaches out for me, just
as Paul pats one hand very softly on my shoulder from behind. My head falls forward, and I hear Nan scootch herself out of the room, which is best, because if I completely lose it, it won't be in public (though having Paul here is bad enough).

But it turns out I don't cry. I just sit there with my head down, and I breathe and shake. I don't know if I'm upset or relieved or tired or scared. I don't know what I am besides all wrung out, and maybe it doesn't even matter. It's just been weeks and weeks since I've seen my mama, is all.

So I breathe and shake, and Mama holds on to me and whispers, “Ivy, Ivy,” over and over again.

“Mama,” I finally say, lifting my head up to look at her, “where have you been and what on earth is the matter with you?” I push myself back up to sitting a bit. “We've been so worried about you.”

I don't say, “And here's Paul. We ran away from home and took a bus all the way to Florida and we've come to break you out,” because that might rush things a tidge. So Paul just stands behind me quietly without an introduction. Waiting. He's had to do a lot of that today.

“Oh, Ivy,” Mama says again. And then she says, “It is a long story, baby. I am so, so sorry. About everything. I'm
fine, though, now. I promise you I am. I needed to get my blood pressure under control. I was having fainting spells. I thought they were due to all my upset over that scoundrel of a man I was fool enough to follow down here, but really it was just my blood pressure acting up. I forgot my medicines at home.” She pulls herself up onto her elbow as she talks, which makes her look more like her normal self than she did lying flat on her back. “That scoundrel of a man” is Hallelujah Dave, I guess, and it doesn't sound like she's too fond of him anymore. Which seems like a minor miracle, if you ask me.

I hurry to pull Mama's bottles of pills out of my backpack and set them on the bed beside her. “Here. I brought them to you. But I guess I'm a little late.”

Mama looks down at the pills, and she doesn't look back up at me. She starts talking in this really low, slow way. “Oh, Ivy. Oh, you dear, dear heart. It doesn't matter, baby. I got what I needed right here. I'm really perfectly healthy now. I think I'm only still in the hospital because I haven't gotten up the courage to come on home, so help me heavenly Father, and I had nowhere else to go.”

Without turning her head to look up at me, she reaches to touch the gold cross at
her
neck, the one Daddy gave her for their tenth anniversary when she passed her old
one down to me. They're nearly the same, only this one's real gold, through and through.

“All your life I've tried to set a good example for you, baby.” She holds on to the cross as she talks. “And now I'm just so embarrassed, really too embarrassed to make my way back to y'all. I failed you, and I failed your daddy, too. I—” She stops suddenly and leans up higher and looks around. Her eyes are wide and worried. They flutter, flutter, flutter, and finally find me again. “Ivy, where
is
your daddy?”

And I know this sounds sillier than a girl my age has any right to be, but I wasn't expecting that question. It catches me straight up, and my breath hooks a little in my chest.

“He is, um . . . well . . . Daddy isn't here. He didn't come.”

Mama pops all the way up now, and she swings her legs over the side of the bed so she's facing me and looking very much like my mama again.

“What do you mean he didn't come? Where is he and how did you get here, Ivy Green?”

My breath hooks again, and I truly can't tell if anything's going to come out of my mouth when I open it. “On the bus,” I say. And that's it. That's all I say. That's all that comes out.

“The bus? You came to Florida on the bus? Alone, or with Daddy?”

“No, ma'am. She didn't come alone. She came with me.” Paul's voice, clear and strong, comes from behind me. Thank goodness.

I squeeze my hands onto my knees, to remind myself and make absolutely certain that I
am
here, sitting solidly in this chair instead of floating. And then I turn my head slowly to look up at Paul.

“She came with
you
?” asks Mama. “What in heaven's name? You're Paul Dobbs, isn't that right?” Mama sounds like she's just this very moment noticed Paul standing in the room with us, which seems, no offense, kind of clueless.

“Yes, ma'am,” says Paul.

“Okay, well. Mercy. And aren't
you
lucky to be right smack dab in the middle of this family drama,” Mama says. And then she actually laughs a little, in a tired sort of way.

“Mama, I wanted to find you,” I say, turning back toward her and reaching out to hold her hand again. “And Paul was willing to help. It's not that far on the bus, honestly, and here we are. We found you, and you're okay. So. That's that.”

Only, that
isn't
that. Not at all. Because we're still trapped in a hospital room in the panhandle of Florida, and Daddy's on his way to rescue us right now. If he finds us here, I'm no better than Mama, needing to be hauled home, and that is
not
how I'm going to finish this whole thing. I'm gonna succeed. I'm gonna get it right. Mama's flopped back on the bed again, only her legs are still hanging over the side, so everything looks kind of dislocated. And she shuts her eyes in a headachy grimace. It looks like we're a long way from right.

“Mama, really,” I say. “We're gonna go home now and this'll all be over. Daddy's gonna be glad to have us back!” I think about Paul saying the very same thing to me, and I cannot tell you how much and deeply I hope that it's true.

“This is all my fault, Ivy. You don't need to make excuses. My twelve-year-old daughter took a bus to Florida, alone. Well, not quite alone, Paul, but you know what I mean. All on account of me. Good God in heaven, what hath I wrought?”

Which is a Bibley way of saying “What have I done?”

There's a little three-knock rap on the door, and I have never been so relieved to be interrupted in all my life. Another nurse—not Nan—comes in. She is towering tall and her eyes are very bright. “I am sorry to interrupt this
happy powwow,” she says, “but I need to grab your vitals, Ms. Green.”

“Kids, this is Raquel,” says Mama, and she sticks out her arm for the blood pressure cuff without being asked. I realize as I watch her that Mama's got a whole little life going on down here. Hallelujah Dave and The Great Good Bible Church. Nan and Raquel. Blood pressure cuffs and hospital food. A whole little life I know nothing about at all. She's been gone that long.

Raquel chitchats with us while she takes Mama's blood pressure and pulse and temperature, makes notes on a chart at the head of the bed, and moves over to crank open the window a bit.

“Alrighty, friends,” she says. “I'll leave you to it. And I don't see why you can't head home soon, m'dear,” she says to Mama. “You're doing very well, and now your family's here. We'll see if we can get the doctor to clear you tomorrow morning.”

Which, with Daddy hot on our trail, is not soon enough for us. And it doesn't take much to convince Mama that we owe it to everyone to hustle up and head on home.

When we sneak out of the hospital forty-five minutes later, Mama leaves a note that reads:

To Whom It May Concern—

I'm sorry I had to check out rather suddenly. Thank you for the fine care you've given me. I'm feeling much better. Here is my home address in Loomer, Texas, in case you need that. God bless you and keep you in his care.

Diana Green, patient

2203 Magpie Lane

Loomer, TX 78972

That's the thing about Mama. She can sometimes be kind of freakily polite. I mean, who on God's green earth leaves a thank-you note and a forwarding address when they're running away?

I wish she would've done that when she ran away from us.

The plan is this:

We sneak Mama from the hospital.

We rent a car.

We call Daddy and Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs from the car to tell them we're okay.

We start driving west toward Texas.

Pretty simple.

But the part about the phone calls? That part is Mama's idea. It was all I could do to stop her from calling Daddy right then and there in the hospital. I reminded her that we were kind of trying to be quick about getting out of there and getting home. I
didn't
tell her that if we waited much longer, Daddy was gonna do the getting home for us. I know Daddy's worried, I do. And he's probably halfway to Florida already. But I don't want to call. Neither does Paul. We were just getting used to keeping to ourselves, if you know what I mean. “Flying under the radar,” Paul calls it. And if I'm gonna be more than an idea girl, I need to stay under the radar and finish what we started.

But I can't see a way around making the calls eventually. Mama is worried Daddy may never forgive her. Those are the exact words she used, and she wants to start making things right as quick as she can. Which makes me worry all over again that Hallelujah Dave might have been some sort of boyfriend to Mama. A bad boyfriend, but still . . . Daddy can't be any too thrilled about that.

“So here's how I see things,” says Mama standing at the rental car counter waiting for the agent to find us a car. “We'll start driving this afternoon, but we won't make it
all the way home tonight. With God as my witness, I plan to deliver you both to Loomer in one solid piece, not a scratch on you. Falling asleep at the wheel won't do at all.”

“Yep. Understood, Mrs. Green,” says Paul. He stands right beside Mama, holding her suitcase upright. There's something about the way it's packed that makes it want to tip over, so Mama's given Paul the job of keeping it propped up.

“Safe and sound, that's what I promise you both. But that means we'll need to stop for the night somewhere along the way. At least we can get a motel room. Anything should be better than that bus y'all rode down on, right?” She taps her credit card against the counter as she talks, like she's nervous. Maybe because she and Daddy try to save it for emergencies, so I guess this is kind of an emergency.