“Um, James.”
“Oh yeah! Hey, remember me? From the park?”
This was Jared—Jenny’s beau. The realization jolted me and put me on guard.
“Oh! Sure! I’m sorry … do you live here?”
He snorted and chuckled. “Do I look like I live here? Actually, I’m just visiting. Hey, what’s with the uni? You animal control?”
“Nah. Mosquito abatement.”
“Abatement, huh? That’s a fancy word for bug spraying.”
“I’m not spraying. I’m just … dumping fish in pools.”
“Fish in pools! Hoho! Buster’s gonna love getting him some fish. He doesn’t seem to go for French fries.”
“The gator? You’ve been feeding him?”
“Kinda. Not burgers, though. He ain’t getting my burgers. So, you ain’t here to take him away?”
“Well, technically I’m supposed to remove the little ones when I see them. I tried once. It didn’t go well.”
“Oh yeah? Why, what happened?”
“Took me half an hour to get the noose around its head. Once I got it cinched, the damn thing near exploded. It was like wrestling a fucking demon.”
“So you’re not even gonna try?”
“Nope.”
“Aw, too bad. That would have been fun to watch.” He came over and looked in my bucket. “Holy cow. You ain’t kidding. You’ve got a bunch of fishies in there. Look at them swim!” He giggled all high-pitched and giddy, like a little girl. There had to be more than beer in him, the way he was acting.
I took the bucket and dumped the whole load into the deep end—more than I was supposed to for this size pool, but I figured the extra would make up for whatever Buster ate.
“Hoho! Will you look at that! We got ourselves a fucking ecosystem.”
I looked down at the scummy water. A slew of MacDonald’s cups and wrappers and soggy, bloated French fries smeared with ketchup floated on the surface. The little gator was already going after the guppies.
“I’d better be on my way,” I said. “Good seeing you.”
He grabbed my arm and his face went all serious. “Uh, one thing, James buddy. Forget that ‘good seeing you’ shit. Okay? You didn’t see me here. Got it? And I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t come around here no more, bro. I don’t care what your job says. There’s stuff going down here that you don’t want to get involved in. I’m just saying.”
“Cool,” I said. “Not a problem.” I slipped away, slinking back through the jungle and back to the truck where I was supposed to meet up with Charlie, the senior field tech.
The encounter left a taint in my psyche. It ruffled my brain, like a squall disturbing a previously glassy sea. I wondered what Jenny had seen in such a loser.
Chapter 10: Default Notice
Wayne, my supervisor, was already waiting for me back at the truck. He was an enormous dude in every dimension, but surprisingly nimble when it came to hopping fences and squeezing through underbrush.
He made me think of an orangutan ballet dancer. He certainly had enough red hair on his back and arms.
Wayne was a pain in the butt to work with, always complaining about how I did things and ranting about politics I couldn’t care any less about. Thankfully, the only time we spent together was riding to and from job sites.
“What the fuck took you? You only had five pools to do.”
“Yeah, well … just moving slow today.”
No way was I telling him about Jared or the gator. Wayne was licensed to carry and had a penchant for plugging reptiles with his Glock. I shuddered to think what Jared might be packing.
I set my bucket into the rubber-lined tank in the bed of the truck. The extra guppies were cowering on the shady side. Wayne peeked over my shoulder. “Christ, that water’s low. Let’s get ‘em back before they fry.”
***
I biked home on the ten-speed Trek mom and dad got me for my twelfth birthday. To save on gas, I only took dad’s pickup out on rainy days. The rest of the time, I kept it parked in the garage, loaded with up lawn equipment for the odd jobs I still pulled some evenings. The mosquito control facility was only about ten miles away, back roads pretty much all the way.
Mom’s sun-scoured Camry was parked in the driveway as I rounded the corner onto our street. Odd. She usually worked till six.
I found her sitting on the porch, on the rattan chair. She had a torn envelope in her lap and a letter in her hand.
This was one of those days I could see glimpses of the old woman she was to become, starting to take over her face. Shadows collected in the pits of her eyes and cheeks. An inch of grey showed in the roots of her part.
I parked the bike on the front walk and went up to the bottom of the stoop. “Hey, mom,” I said. “What you doing home so early?”
Her lips widened into a thin smile. “Oh … I had an appointment with Dr. Reddy and ... it was already three ... so I decided to take the afternoon off.”
Mom had just seen Dr. Reddy last Friday. A little flutter of worry shivered through me. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh sure. Least I think so. They did some tests and uh … well, we’ll see.”
“What you got there?” I said, nodding at the letter.
“Oh, it’s just a notice from the bank. We were late on the last payment or two … so this is just kind of a reminder.”
“Let me see.” I plucked it her fingers and looked at it. It was a form with a patch of boiler plate text at the bottom. “Reminder? Holy shit, mom. This is a default notice.”
“Yeah, but … it’s really just a warning.”
“Mom, it says right here: ‘Notice of Default.’ Have you not been paying the mortgage?”
“No. I have. Not always right on time. We’ve got all these other bills to worry about, you know. I‘ve been staggering them; paying some this week, some the next. Sometimes they get in a little late.”
“Mom. You can’t pull that shit. Maybe with the electric or the cable. Not with the mortgage. These banks are just itching for reasons to kick people out. You drive down these streets. Don’t you see all these foreclosed houses?”
“No worries,” she said. “We’ll catch up. Maybe not this week, but the next. I just had to pay off an emergency room bill.”
“Say what? When did you go to the emergency room?” A queasiness spread its roots deep into my innards.
“Oh, a couple weeks ago at work, I had this weak spell. I … couldn’t get up from my desk. They insisted on calling an ambulance.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, and anyhow, it turned out to be nothing. They didn’t find anything wrong, just that … I’m a little anemic. They sent me home.”
“If it was nothing, why’d you go back to see Dr. Reddy? Twice.”
“Oh, it’s just follow-up. You know them, they like to be thorough. I wish I hadn’t bothered now. These office visits are so expensive. And he only sees me five minutes at a time. He wants me to come back for more tests on Friday. I have half a mind to cancel.”
“Mom, if he thinks you need tests. You’d better go. It’s important.”
“Yeah. I will. Maybe after we catch up with the mortgage.”
“How much are we behind?”
“Well … it’s probably about … four thousand now, counting this month.”
“Three months? We’re three months overdue?”
Mom’s eyes fluttered the way they always do when she’s embarrassed. “I thought we could catch up last month but … you know how time flies when you’re busy.”
“Jesus, mom! You should have told me. I could have helped more with the bills. I’ve been putting away a little extra money here and there. But if I had known—”
“No. That’s your money. You’ll need that for college.”
“What college? I’m not going to college.”
“Not now, but … you should keep that option open. No?”
“What g
ood is college if we don’t have a freaking house?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not going to foreclose.”
“How about we go ahead and sell dad’s truck?”
Mom sighed and cradled her chin in her palm. “Well, okay. I’m not sure we have to, but … whatever you think is best.”
“I’ll make some posters. We can park it out front. Put a sign in the window.”
“Yeah. You do that.” She got up slowly from the wicker chair. A quick wince deepened her crow’s feet.
Another jolt went through me. “You okay, mom?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired. I think I’d better go and lie down.”
I watched her retreat into the house, my heart drowning in a rising sea of doom. Something twined around my ankles. I threw a suspicious glance at the gnarled roots of the old magnolia tree behind me, but they just sat there inert, like any well-behaved tree, as roots from some farther world latched onto my spine and crept up my vertebrae like an inchworm.
Chapter 11: Complications
Sleeping in a rented storage unit in mid-July in Central Florida isn’t half as bad as you think. The drone of the expressway at night could be quite mesmerizing. Some folks paid hundreds for those white noise generators. I got to have it for free. I had my favorite pillow and my own mattress between me and the concrete floor. With my Bob Marley poster stuck to the ceiling, it almost seemed like home.
My biggest problem was the heat. The thick concrete walls buffered the temperature somewhat, but it got real stuffy the second I closed the overhead door.
So I duct-taped together a pair of screens and propped them under the door to let in a breeze but keep out mosquitoes. That helped a bit. I never really felt cool, but after midnight, it almost got comfortable.
At least I only had to be there six hours out of every twenty-four. The rest of the time I went to work or hung out in air-conditioned spaces like the mall or the hospital, where mom was recuperating from pancreas surgery.
The diagnosis shocked me at first, but by this point, cancer no longer scared me. We met plenty of folks at the hospital who had lived with it and seemed to get along just fine.
Mom had been lucky. They caught the cancer early and the tumor was operable. And the type of chemotherapy she would need wasn’t the kind that made your hair fall out.
At least she didn’t need to skimp on doctor’s visits anymore to save money. After losing the house and having to quit her job at the library, we now qualified for Medicaid.
She was better off staying in that hospital for now. I hadn’t had much luck finding us an affordable apartment. She planned to stay with a friend when she got released. In the meantime, I would keep on sleeping at the storage shed until I could save up some money for rent.
Gideon, the balding Cuban who managed this Handi-Stor, wasn’t supposed to allow squatters. But he was a family man with a big heart, so he made a deal with me and a couple others who had been lurking around the place. So long as we stayed off the facility until 11 p.m., didn’t pee in the alleys and were gone by 7 a.m., he would tell security not to hassle us. That way, the big boss and the regular clientele never had to know we were there.
The other squatters were, like me, decent folks dealing with a little bad luck. But those storage units also attracted an alarming amount of vice. This Handi-Stor was apparently a staging area for some major cocaine trafficking up and down the east coast of Florida. I doubt Gideon would have let us stay had he known. His night watchman apparently got paid to keep mum.
I would lower the shed door and keep quiet whenever I heard these drug deals going down. It got pretty stifling awful quick, but it beat letting those degenerates know I was here.
One night a squatter named Jojo came back late and walked into the middle of a transaction. He got beaten up so badly he had to have surgery on his face. The poor guy never slept there again.
A couple hours sweltering in that concrete cave, listening to the freaks outside, brought on some serious blues. I would start thinking about mom in the hospital, missing the old house, Jenny and Marianne. All those things would buzz around my brain like a swarm of bees.
Night seemed to amplify all of my worries and fears. Only when the strip of dawn light came seeping around the edge of the door would my heart and head calm down. Some nights I hardly slept at all.
***
We were out on a job west of town, getting ready to do a neighborhood, a place that looked post-apocalyptic with broken windows everywhere and hip-high weeds growing out of sidewalks.
Wayne’s phone blasted the Monday Night Football theme. He answered and handed it over. “It’s for you.”
“James?” It was Dr. Morrie, mom’s oncologist. “You’d better come down to the hospital. Your mother’s experiencing some complications.”
“Right now? But I’m at work.”
“I’d recommend you get her as soon as possible. It’s pretty serious.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m talking kidney failure. Internal bleeding. Hypotension.”
“Whoa! Uh. Okay. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“You’d better get here soon. She doesn’t have much time.”
“Time? What do you mean? Time for … what?”
“She’s dying, James.”
I stood there staring at the pavement in the glaring sun, a bucket of guppies in one hand, Wayne’s phone in the other.
“Everything okay?” said Wayne.
I just stared at him, speechless. The news went against all the sunny optimism I’d been getting from all of those nurses and residents. My mom’s tumor had been operable—low grade, stage two, no metastasis, 87% odds of five-year survival
Mom joked about her malingering to hang on to the free meals and cable TV. She said I should get myself admitted so I too could have a nice air-conditioned room and all the chicken soup and jello I could eat.
“This about your mother?” said Wayne.
I managed a nod.
“Give me that bucket. You take the truck and go to the hospital.”
“How you gonna get back?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll manage. Just go.” He handed me the keys. I took them, and looked at Wayne with a newfound respect. Who knew that this coarse and bigoted redneck would be such a mensch in a crisis?
***
I parked the project truck in the shade and ran across the lot to the back entrance of the hospital, heart pummeling my ribs. I still couldn’t believe what was happening. I had been with mom the night before and she seemed fine.
I bypassed the elevator and ran up the stairs to her ward. I freaked to find an empty bed and drawn curtains in her triple room. The other patients, a couple of geezers, had no idea who or where she was.
A nurse came over and took tapped shoulder.
“She’s in the ICU.”
“The what?”
“Intensive Care Unit. Upstairs.”
I ran up another flight and found Dr. Morrie in the hall.
“She’s just out of cardiac arrest. Follow me.”
“Huh? Her heart … stopped?” This was so surreal.
He led me into this room with all sorts of extra machinery, but she wasn’t hooked up to anything but an IV and some monitors.
“Her living will asked for no extraordinary measures.” He patted my shoulder. “Go on, spend some time with her. She’s comfortable. And she’s conscious every once in a while.”
I went in and pulled a seat close to her bed and took her hand. She was still breathing. Her skin had this greyish-yellow tinge that seemed all wrong, but her face was relaxed. Between that and all the weight she had lost, it made her seem younger, reminding me of those old pictures of her in our family albums.
I took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m here, momma.”
Her eyes flickered open to slits, narrow but clear. “Baby boy? You home from work?”
“We’re still at the hospital mom. How you feeling?”
r /> “I’m not … I don’t … feel anything.”
“Well … that’s good. I suppose. Better than to be hurting.”
“Don’t go there. Stay away. There’s nothing there for you. Nothing good. Only bad things.” Her voice was all slurred, like it did when she came home from one of her weekend benders.
“I ain’t going anywhere, mom. I’m staying right by your side.”
Her chest heaved. “I mean … later. It’s gonna come and want to take you. Stay away from it. Don’t go there.”
“Nobody’s taking me anywhere, mom. They said I could stay.”
“Not the nurses, stupid. The Reapers! Don’t let ‘em take you.”
“You’re not making any sense, mom. Why don’t you just lie back and relax? Get some sleep. You thirsty? Do you want a sip of that apple juice?”
“I want you to take your daddy’s truck and drive to Uncle Ed’s.”
“But I thought you wanted us to sell it.”
“Go see Uncle Ed. He’s your Godfather. Now that I’m gonna be gone. He’ll take you in. He’ll take care of you. He promised. Like I said, he’s your Godfather.”
“I don’t need anybody take care of me. Besides, you’re gonna be okay.”
She sighed with exasperation. “Didn’t Dr. Morrie tell you anything?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“I haven’t been straight with you, James. Things are worse than what I put on. A year ago they told me I had six months.”
“But mom—”
She clenched her eyes and winced. “It was worth it. To have you not fret about me. To see you go about life like everything was normal.”
“Normal. Things haven’t been normal … for years.”
“Listen. I’m sorry we lost the house. But now you’ll get my life insurance. I have some … I think. If not … there’s my social security. That should help you get established … in Ohio.”
My eyes began to swell and well with tears. My throat tightened inside. I tried to fight it, but there was no way to stop it. “I’m not going to Ohio, momma. I’m staying right here in Florida … with you.”
She sighed again. “You doofus. You just don’t get it, do you? I’m not gonna be here, hon. I’m moving on.” Her head settled back into the pillow.
“Don’t say that. You look fine.” I tossed a worried glance at the heart monitor. “Your heartbeat’s strong.”