There Will Be Lies (5 page)

Mom and Dr Maklowitz take a step away from me and lower their heads to have a conversation, so I don’t catch all of it. But I follow some. To start, Mom is timid, facing the ground, as usual. And the doctor is tough, assertive. His words fly flat at her, like projectiles, like baseballs; hers fall at his feet, like a mouse being offered in tribute by a cat.

But as they keep talking, Mom’s head slowly comes up, as if there’s a string attached to it and someone is pulling on it. She’s still hunched, still nervous, but she’s pissed and she’s not backing down.

Interesting
, I think.

Mom:
[    ]

Dr Maklowitz:
We can’t discharge her immediately after the operation
.

Mom:
But they said at the desk that [    ]

Dr Maklowitz:
Yes, that’s right. The law requires [    ]

Mom:
[    ] So we’re paying for everything at this point? I mean, for tonight, and the next operation?

Dr Maklowitz:
We stabilise patients in the ER, regardless of insurance status. Everything after that has to be paid for. If the patient is uninsured, then they or their legal guardian must pay
.

Mom (head fully up now and pulling severe angry face):
She’s hardly stable, she’s got furniture on her
–

Dr Maklowitz:
She’s stable in the sense that she’s no longer dying. That’s what it means. Even after the operation, even after she has her CAM Walker, we’re going to need to
–

Then Mom makes another face at him and pulls him to the other end of the room, which is totally out of character, and they turn away from me, which makes the rest of the conversation just [    ]. I can tell from Dr Maklowitz’s body language though that he is uncomfortable dealing with someone like Mom, who has to push two hundred pounds and can be a real badass when she wants to be.

But from what has already been said, I gather that:

I am not insured, which is news to me, because I figured I was on Mom’s work insurance.

Mom is going to have to pay for the rest of my treatment, however long that takes.

Mom is behaving really weirdly, facing up to people and dragging them around rooms and stuff, being all amped up and unlike herself.

Dr Maklowitz leaves the room, looking stressed, and Mom comes back to the head of the bed.

How can I not be insured?
I ask.

It’s complicated
, says Mom. She seems tense, and I guess she must be worrying about the money.

But this will be thousands of dollars
, I say.

Mom smiles, only I can tell she’s doing it just for me. Then a nurse comes in, with a tray.
Dinner
, she says.
It’s mac and cheese
.

Oh good. I hate mac and cheese. It’s like eating barf. I leave it on the nightstand. Mom starts trying to talk about the food but I’m not letting her off the hook.

The money, Mom
, I say.
What are we going to do?

Don’t worry
, she says,
you know we have something saved away for a rainy day
.

It never rains in Arizona
, I say.

Exactly
, Mom replies.

The rest of the day is boring as hell and I would be happy, actually, to never spend another hour in a hospital, ever.

Mom does figure out how to get the TV working, using her credit card, which is all forty-nine flavours of awesome, though. Then she opens the blind and because we’re in Phoenix General we’re actually up in the air and you can see the city, and the mountains beyond. It’s almost like when I climb up in the desert, and look at the land all around. When I can make Mom drag herself up a hill with me anyway. It’s not like she would let me go hiking on my own.

They also bring me some food, and even though it’s gross it’s welcome, because I realise suddenly that I’m starving.

I eat mechanically, not thinking about anything.

Then I go cold all over.

Mom
, I say.
My bat. What happened to
–

She smiles and reaches under the bed and pulls out the DeMarini and I’m so happy I totally die right then and there. So this is my ghost writing now – hey, how are you? Me, I’m good, thanks, because I’ve got my five-hundred-dollar bat back and nobody cut off any of my limbs, even if I am a ghost and –

They had to dispose of your bag
, Mom says, in a tone that makes me stop stroking my bat like some kind of freak.
It had blood on it
.

I should be more careful with that stuff
, I say.
Shouldn’t go spilling it everywhere
.

Mom laughs but then a tear is all of a sudden in her eye and she brushes it away, and I feel ashamed. She reaches down and picks something up – something flat and oblong.

Oh no –
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
.

You know anything about this?
she says.

I stare at it, keeping my expression flat.
No
, I say.
Why?

It was lying near you, on the sidewalk
.

I was outside the library
, I say.
I guess someone dropped it
.

Hmm
, she says.

There’s a moment of very UNcomfortable silence. Mom stares at me icily. She is really bringing her A-game to this chilly make-your-daughter-feel-bad thing. I need to get her off this topic.

Mom
… I say.
Is it really expensive?

The hospital?

Yes, the hospital
.

I don’t know … ten thousand dollars
.

Oh, I think. I mean, I knew it would be thousands, but ten thousand? That, as junkies would say, is mad bank. I don’t even really know what to say. Oops, I cost you ten grand?

We watch TV for a while –
America’s Next Top Model
. Mom puts the closed captions on, of course, so we can fully appreciate the inane comments of the models.

All this time, I’ve been waiting for her to ask again, about what I was doing out of the library, and eventually she does.

Why did you go outside early?
she says.
I TOLD you eight o’clock, like always
.

I stare at her.
I was there, like, four minutes early. I was just
–

You should just do what I told you. You’re still a child. You do what your mother says. And I say you wait for me at eight o’clock EXACTLY. Do you think I say these things for fun? No. I say them because
–

I’m not a child
.

What?

You said I was a child. I’m not. I’m seventeen
.

You’re a child under the law
, she says.

I glower at her.

She closes her eyes for a long moment.
I’m sorry. I know the car came up on the sidewalk. But … that’s why you have to be careful, Shelby
.

I didn’t want the car to hit me!

No
, she says.
No, of course not. But someone else might have seen it in time, or heard it, you know. You’re special, Shelby. You’re in your own world. That’s why you need to be careful. That’s why you need me
.

I know
, I say.

A pause.

Is it a boy?
she says, suddenly.

What?
I say, wrongfooted.

The book. It’s not a library book. I’m still wondering where you got it
.

No!
I say, all horrified. And I’m not totally lying. I mean, there is a boy, of course. But he works for the library. So in a way, it kind of is a library book.

She looks at me, hard, like: Spill.

OK, there’s a boy
, I say.

She raises her eyebrows, like: Spill more.

He works at the library
, I say.
His name is Mark. He’s nice
.

Now Mom is almost shaking with fear and anger. Boys and men – those are the things you have to watch out for the most. In her version of the world, they’re like wolves and we’re like sheep; they’re circling us all the time, looking for weakness.

He’s NICE? Everything I’ve ever taught you and you tell me he’s – Wait
.

Mom is fixing me with this very odd look, her brow furrowed, like she doesn’t understand something.

What?
I ask.
What is it?

When you came out of the ER
… she says.
I
…
I wanted to understand what had happened. I went down to the library. The police were asking questions
.

Oh, right
, I say.
So you met him. What is it, the tattoo?

Now she’s looking at me as if she’s sorry for me, or as if she thinks I’m crazy, which I guess amounts to the same thing.

What?
I say, more insistently now.

Shelby, honey
, she says.
There was no man at the library when I went down there
.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to sleep in a hospital bed, but it’s pretty much impossible. There’s always someone coming in to check on you, or people walking up and down in the corridor – or running, sometimes, which is more worrying. You get those shadows of moving feet in the crack of light under the door, flickering, like a movie projector, except the pattern draws your eye without meaning anything.

There’s a meditation trick Mom taught me where you focus on your breathing, try to subtract everything else from your consciousness, and I try that for a while until I realise I’m thinking about Mark, and how Mom says he doesn’t exist. Which is, to say the least, a disquieting development.

A nurse comes and takes my blood pressure.

I press the button to feed more painkillers into my IV but I guess I must have already done it recently, because nothing happens. I don’t remember though.

The moon shines into the room. I told them not to close the curtains – I like seeing the world out there. It makes me feel less like the next flood has come, and this hospital room is the only thing saved; just floating on its own through dark water.

I try to think about the crash, and the coyote, but the images slip away from me, fish in a pond, flitting under cover when your shadow creeps over them.

Instead, the picture that keeps coming to me is of a park, one dusty summer when I’m, I guess, ten, maybe just turned eleven. Mom and I are walking to a clear patch in the middle, the grass brown and dying. There aren’t many people – it’s a weekday, presumably, and Mom isn’t working right then. I can see a couple of men ambling around, one of them with a dog on a lead. I don’t look at them – I know these men will bundle me into a van if I’m not careful, chop me up into dog meat, or worse. Mom is never specific about what actually happens in the van, which only makes it more scary.

So: I keep my head down, and I don’t meet those men’s eyes. Ever. Mom is holding my hand but you can never be too safe, that’s a thing I know; a thing I have been told, over and over.

Just once, I see something that makes me feel sad, instead of scared. It’s a family, all out together; I think they’re going to have a picnic. The dad has the younger child, a girl, on his shoulders, and she’s laughing. The other kid, a boy, is walking along kicking a soccer ball, chatting to the mom, who is smiling like there’s a light inside her and she has to let it out. In fact, all of them are smiling, and this is what gets me, squeezes my heart –

I think, I would like that – a brother, a dad.

But instead I’m on the outside, and even though it’s so hot, the feeling is a cold one, the feeling of looking into a brightly lit room that you’re locked out of.

I shiver, and I look away from the family.

There’s a shimmering haze at the edge of the park and the sun is white above us, in a cloudless sky. Mom is sweating in the heat – her
hand is clammy around mine, slippery but strong, like being held by a squid. I know she doesn’t want to be doing this and I feel guilty and warm inside, at the same time.

When we get to the empty part, Mom puts down the bag she’s carrying and takes out the ball and the bat. I don’t know if this is the first time I play – it’s my first memory of it, anyway. But I must have got the idea of batting from somewhere, so maybe it isn’t the first time.

Anyway.

So Mom hands me the bat and then she walks a couple of dozen paces away. It’s a softball and Mom is overweight, not athletic at all, so when she throws it, the ball falls short and she shrugs her shoulders at me, moves closer. Seeing her try to pitch to me, the effort she’s putting into it, makes me feel again that strange mixture of pleasure and shame.

Closer up, she does better – the ball comes at me flat and I swat at it, miss. The next one I hit – it lofts into the gauzy summer air, arcs over Mom’s head, and bounces on the dried-out grass; twice, three times.

Mom shuffles off to get it. She’s not quick, but she doesn’t complain, and when she comes back she just throws again, and I swing.

That all you got?
she says with a smile when she brings the ball back.

I smile too, and the next one, I hit harder, almost to the edge of the park, where the low suburban homes start. The air is so dry that it’s like breathing in sand. Mom’s hair is dark with sweat when she brings the ball back, yet again.

But she keeps going: the ball flying, a slow parabola in the shining
summer sky; and Mom going to get it, as fast as she can manage, despite her size.

And my heart? My heart swells till it feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest. Because there’s my mom, my unfit, sports-hating mom, chasing after the balls I’m hitting, throwing to me over and over, the perspiration running down her in rivulets.

I’m only a kid, and I guess when you’re a kid you just think about yourself most of the time, you don’t think about your parents or how much they love you, but on that day, in that memory, I know it – I see it blazing out of my mom’s every moment, this fierce love.

I don’t know how long we kept that up, the batting. I know that in my memory, it doesn’t end, and that makes me think we were there for hours, but it could have been a half-hour. I don’t know – I don’t remember leaving the park, I just remember the joy of the bat meeting the ball, the perfect, mathematically precise track of the ball through the sky, and my mom bringing it back, again and again.