“You call what he’s doing partying?” He stares into my eyes. “I thought partying was supposed to be about fun. He doesn’t look like he’s having fun to me. He looks like he’s trying to drown something out. That’s exactly what happens with a lot of people who have post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“You make it sound like he’s running away from something. I can tell you right now Bobby never ran from anything in his life.”
“What are you so angry about? I’m not the enemy here.”
“I’m not angry. I’m just sticking up for my brother.”
“Of course you’re angry. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve had a chip on your shoulder about half the time, and it’s getting old. I know your brother got a screwed-up deal, getting shipped off to war the way he did, but you can’t be mad at everything. That isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“Really? Maybe I should just lie down and die, huh? Let people walk over me like a worm in the dirt. Is that what you’d do?”
He shakes his head. “This is exactly why I held off talking to you about this. I knew you’d overreact.”
“You think I’m overreacting?” I pop out of the chair and look down on him. “How about this? How about I just walk out of here and leave you to your stupid Web site and your stupid books. And if that seems like an overreaction, then you don’t have to bother talking to me again.”
“Come on,” he says. “Sit down. Just read what this Web site has to say.”
But I’m not about to do that. Without another word, I stomp out of the office and through the front door of the bowling alley. In the parking lot, I drop my phone twice before I finally get a call through to Brianna.
“How’s it going?” she asks. “Did he pop the question?”
“It’s not going,” I say. “Everything’s shot to pieces. One hundred percent.”
33
Okay, no more of this Padgett business. That’s what I tell myself. He’s back to being Mr. White again—from here on out. I was so stupid, walking into that bowling alley thinking he was going to ask me to be his girlfriend. But that’s not really the point. The point is no one’s going to brand my brother as crazy. I’ve seen how people treat the captain around here, and I won’t stand for anyone treating Bobby like that.
That’s my thought process as I walk into my house that night. I’m so wrapped up in it I just vaguely hear Dad call my name. The second time, he makes sure I hear him.
“Ceejay, come in here. I want to talk to you.”
I walk into the living room, where he’s standing in front of his favorite chair. He tells me to sit down on the couch. Of course, at first I’m thinking I’m in trouble as usual, but as soon as we both sit down and I get a good look at his face, I know it’s something else.
“Is it Bobby?” I ask. “Did something happen to him?”
Dad shakes his head. “It’s your grandmother.”
I know it’s creepy, but when I hear that I’m relieved. Not that I actually want something bad to happen to Grandma, but she hasn’t really been first on my list of worries.
Dad goes on, “She’s taken a turn for the worse. Your sister came home and found her collapsed in the backyard.”
“Is she—”
“She’s still alive but I’ll be honest—it doesn’t look good. Lacy couldn’t get her to wake up and had to call an ambulance. It was a stroke. She’s in intensive care. I imagine all the treatments she’s been going through took their toll on her. We just found out about it a half hour ago. Your mother’s heading up tonight and we’ll go tomorrow.”
I hate to sound like a self-centered idiot, but I can’t help thinking this isn’t a good time to leave town. Me and Uncle Jimmy and Jerry are just starting a job for the school board, a big one. They need me. But more important than that, I don’t want to leave Bobby alone with the captain right now. I’m afraid they’ll just bum each other out. And I sure don’t want Mr. White showing up and spouting off his PTSD nonsense.
But there’s no use in arguing. Even with all the reasons I have to stay, nothing trumps dying.
After Dad finishes explaining our plans for tomorrow, I head upstairs to tell Mom I’m sorry about Grandma and all that kind of thing. A couple of her bags sit open on the bed, mostly packed, and she’s standing across the room digging something out of her dresser. At least that’s what I think she’s doing at first. But she’s not moving. Her shoulders are slumped, and her hands grip either side of the top drawer as if she needs to keep herself from falling. In the mirror on the wall, I see her face—eyes clamped shut, her bottom lip bowing tightly against the top one. Deep lines crease her forehead. Tears on her face.
This is the mother I thought could smile through anything. The whole time Grandma’s been sick, Mom’s acted like better times are bound to come back around, like Christmas or your birthday. But not now. There’s no fooling anyone, least of all herself.
I don’t know what to do. I mean, obviously, in a situation like this, you’re supposed to go over and hug your mom and come up with some kind of words of comfort, something all concerned and Hallmark-cardy, but I’m not the hugging type. More than anything, I just want to hurry down to my room, maybe come back later when the crying spell is over, but she catches a glimpse of me in the mirror.
Immediately, her hands flit to her face to wipe off the tears, and she turns around. The smile is back, a sad, sheepish one, as if she wants me to know she’s just being silly.
“Ceejay,” she says. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Yeah, um, I just got home a minute ago.”
She goes over to the bed, picks up a blouse to pack into one of the open bags. Her hands are shaking. “I guess your dad talked to you about what’s going on.” She’s trying to look busy, avoiding eye contact.
“You mean about Grandma?” I say. Like it could be anything else.
“I want to get up there as soon as I can,” she says. “Lacy has been doing what she can, but …” Her voice trails off. The blouse she’s been trying to fold isn’t cooperating, and finally she lets it drop to the bed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she says. “These old hands just won’t do right.” She tries a little laugh, but it doesn’t work either, and she sits on the bed and begins crying again.
“Here, let me help you get that stuff packed,” I tell her. I guess I could sit on the bed beside her, but it’s more natural for me to go to work on something instead.
As I finish packing the bags, she stares down, nervously twisting her wedding ring. “It’s funny,” she says. “You don’t know how you’ll feel about something like this till it’s staring you in the face. Mama and I haven’t always seen eye to eye over the years, but it wasn’t always that way. Things were so different when I was a little girl, and now I feel about like I’ve turned right back into that little girl, and I don’t want her to leave me.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, and immediately I feel stupid for saying it. But that’s what people always say—it’s okay—when nothing could be further from the truth.
“I used to think she could do no wrong. I thought the worst criminal in the world could show up at our front door, and it wouldn’t matter. My mother would keep me safe. Then Dad died. I was just the same age you are now, Ceejay. He died and everything changed.”
Somehow I never thought of it like that—my mom being my same age when her dad got killed in that car wreck. Jesus. What that must have been like to go through. The strength it must’ve taken. Since I was twelve or thirteen, I thought of Mom as nothing but sugary sweet and cheery to a fault, but now I can’t help wondering if maybe I underestimated her.
“Maybe it’s selfish of me to wish we had more time,” she says. “After all, these last couple of months have been so miserable for her. I don’t know how she had the courage to get through it like she did. One afternoon when I was driving her home after one of those awful treatments, she told me she knew the end would have to come, but she was going to do eve
rything she could to make her life count, what there was left of it. A lot of other people might have given up, but not her.”
“And I’m sure she’s not ready to give up now either,” I say.
She looks up at me. “That’s right,” she says. She stands, walks over, and wraps me up in a hug. “The women in this family don’t give up easy, do we, Ceejay?”
“We sure don’t.” I hug her back, and it’s weird—for once I actually feel like I am a part of a long line of women in this family. Like I’m tied to them somehow instead of whirling around off to the side on my own.
34
The next day Dad has to go to work for a couple hours in the morning, so it’s after ten o’clock before we’re ready to load up and get on the road to Grandma’s. Drew’s holed up in his room with the Xbox, so I have to holler several times for him to get his butt downstairs. Finally, I barge into his room to haul him out by force if I have to.
“Five more minutes,” he says without even looking at me.
“Five minutes nothing.” I rip the controls out of his hands. “You’re coming right now.”
“Why do I have to go?” he whines. “It’s not like I can’t take care of myself around here.”
“You’re coming because you have to support Mom. Don’t you get it? Her mother’s dying. So Dad’s going and I’m going and you’re going and we’re going to support Mom one hundred percent.”
“Oh, all right,” he says. “But I won’t like it.”
“That’s okay. You don’t always have to like everything.”
On the drive to Davenport, it’s Dad and my big sister Colleen in the front seat and me and Drew in the back. Colleen starts going on about how her husband Jason’s grandpa had a stroke, and he’s doing just fine now.
“People get over strokes all the time,” she says.
“That’s right,” Dad says. “All the time.” But he doesn’t sound so certain.
“They probably didn’t have a stroke and cancer both,” I say, and Colleen’s like, “Now don’t be negative, Ceejay. We need to keep Grandma in our prayers, and everything will work out.”
I start to argue about the prayer deal, but decide maybe it’s not such a bad idea. I could at least try one for Mom’s sake. So in my head I’m like, God, I know maybe I’m not the best person to do the asking, but could you get things to turn out all right with Grandma? Plus, since we’re talking, could you look after Bobby while I’m gone? He needs it.
I open my eyes and look out the side window—fences, rolling hills, cows. If God was listening, he doesn’t show any sign of it.
When we finally reach the hospital after the long drive, the parking lot is scorching hot. It’s been over a hundred degrees for five days straight. The sky is as frayed and faded as ragged denim, and the sunlight explodes off the windows of the parked cars. I’m thinking it should be dreary and raining for the kind of business we have here, but somehow this seems even more depressing.
Inside, we wind through the halls till we come to the intensive care unit, where Grandma’s supposed to be. There are two rows of people in their beds, some with drapes pulled around them and some right out in the open with all sorts of hoses hooked up to them. They’re dying, I guess. This is the first time I’ve been around something like this. When my step-grandpa died, we just went up for the funeral and came home. There was nothing to it. But now death is hanging around like some kind of big, fat cop who doesn’t know anything but rules.
Drew’s like, “This place is weird,” and I pop him on the back of the head.
“Grow some manners,” I tell him.
Grandma, Mom, and Lacy are nowhere in sight, and I can tell by the look on Dad’s face he’s thinking the same thing I am—we got here too late. Dad asks a nurse where Grandma is, and it turns out she’s been moved to a room on the third floor.
“Well, that must be good,” I say. “She must be better.”
The nurse mumbles a long uhhhh, and looks at Dad.
“Oh, I see,” he says.
As we walk away, I’m like, “What is it? I mean, if they moved her to another room, she must be better, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Dad says.
“Why else would they move her?”
He stops and looks me in the face. “Because there’s nothing else they can do for her here.”
When we walk into Grandma’s room, Mom and Lacy look up from their chairs on either side of the bed. They’re obviously drained. Mom’s hair is actually a little bit messed up, and Lacy looks like she hasn’t slept in about a month. Grandma’s unconscious, has been since yesterday, and looks even more shrunken than the last time I saw her. Tubes run from hanging bags down to her arms. More tubes help her breathe. This doesn’t look like anything you come back from.
When Mom starts to get up, Dad tells her to stay there—he knows she’s tired—but Lacy pops up, comes straight over, and hugs me.
“I’m glad you’re here, Ceejay.”
I’m thinking, Jesus, first Mom and now Lacy. Will the hugs never end? But the weird thing is that it really isn’t so weird. It actually feels natural to hug her back. Like all the distance that usually wedges itself between us has collapsed. She needs a jolt of strength from someone, and I’m her sister, so it’s only right to give it to her.
Colleen goes into her story about her husband’s grandpa again, and Mom’s like, “That’s right. People do come back from strokes.” But she’s like Dad—it sounds as if she doesn’t really believe it will happen this time.
The room is small and really crowded with all of us in there, so Dad persuades Mom and Lacy to go to the cafeteria for a break. Drew goes with them, leaving me and Dad and Colleen behind. At first I can’t help but wonder what the deal is—why do people gather around and watch someone who doesn’t even know you’re there? But as Colleen and Dad do their small-talk thing, I watch Grandma and start thinking maybe on some level she is aware of us. I mean, even with all our differences, we are family and that counts for something, right?
With her bony arms and hollowed face, she doesn’t look like the same plump, angry woman who took my skates away from me and wouldn’t give them back. The cancer and the stroke have stripped that away, and now she’s just a person. Maybe way down inside, she’s still fighting for her life, and I can’t help wondering what that’s about. There’s no hope left, really. None. So what is that thing inside that keeps people hanging on even when everything seems so impossible?
For a long moment, Grandma’s breathing stops, and I’m thinking this is it—she’s gone—but then her lungs seem to catch, and the strained breathing starts up again. The fight continues.
That’s the way it goes all afternoon. We stay by her in shifts. Finally, at dinnertime, we go out to eat, everybody but Mom. When we return, Mom is standing in the hall outside Grandma’s room. She looks stunned, lost.
“I just went out of the room for a second,” she says, her voice shaking. “I needed a drink. When I came back …” And that’s all she can get out before the tears overtake her and she falls into Dad’s arms.
“What happened?” Drew says. No one answers right away, so he asks again and I tell him Grandma’s gone.
“Gone?” he says. “Gone where? I didn’t think she could walk.”
I glare at him and shake my head. The truth dawns on him. “Oh, that kind of gone.”
Mom’s sobbing in Dad’s arms. “I should’ve been with her. I didn’t want her to go alone like that.”
Dad strokes her back. “Maybe she felt like she couldn’t move on with us standing around her,” he says. “She might’ve just been hanging on for us.”
Lacy collapses into a chair against the wall. She’s not crying. She’s just staring ahead, and I swear she looks way older than the day she left Knowles to come up here and care for Grandma. She might even look older than me. I’m no expert about these things, but there’s been so much hugging going on lately, I figure I can’t go wrong if I sit beside her and wrap my arm aro
und her shoulder. She leans her head against me and grabs hold of my free hand. I’m not sure how long something like this is supposed to last, but I guess I’ll keep it up as long as she needs it.
35
The funeral is scheduled for three days later. Mom and Lacy stay in Davenport to take care of the arrangements and look after the house. It’s Dad’s job to call people in Knowles to let them know what happened. All sorts of food—cakes, pies, even hams—come in from various church people. I figure Miss Big Tits Diane Simmons is bound to show up with a casserole and a giant helping of cleavage, but when I tell Uncle Jimmy that, he says not to worry—Dad doesn’t want anything to do with her.
I’m like, “What do you mean? You’re the one who told me he’s not too old for temptation and all that.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I was just really thinking about myself when I said that.”
“But I’ve been watching him,” I say. “It’s like she has a spell on him. Last time she was over I caught them at the kitchen table, and she was poking a carrot stick in his mouth, all flirty and everything. And he just grinned like a fool. I almost stayed home. It was like I thought I should stay there and be their chaperone.”
Uncle Jimmy looked thoughtful for a second. “I wasn’t going to tell you this. Your dad told me not to tell anyone, but you need to know it. The thing is Diane Simmons won’t be bringing food over at all.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“It’s a fact. Your dad told her not to.”
“Why would he do that?”
Uncle Jimmy scratches his chin, weighing whether he should go on, before he does. “Because that last time she came over—the carrot-stick time—she ended up laying a big, wet kiss on your dad when he wasn’t expecting it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
He shakes his head. “And not only that, she jammed her hand right down between his legs. He said it felt like she was giving him a physical. He jumped up so fast, he about knocked the table over.”