Late in the afternoon, when Jenny was sleeping, I called Marg. She rushed right over.
Marg, she bent her head and put it against mine. We cried like that, with our foreheads together, hanging on to each other’s heads. Marg’s felt cool on mine.
“How does merciful God sit there in heaven and look at what happens on this earth?”
I could feel Marg shaking her head. We sat on the two chairs there at the foot of Jenny’s bed, and Marg put her arm around me.
I looked at the pattern in the hospital floor. Hate terrazzo floors. All I’d been working for, trying to learn and grow and help Jenny, had come to this. There was no way to help her.
“This will make a mental case out of her!”
Marg says, “No. You’ll help her. You and Dave and his folks. And us all. She’ll get through it. Same as we done ourselves.”
I let out a moan.
Marg says, “No. Okay. Not the same as us. Better than us. Way better. We come through it alone. She’s got people to help her. That’s going to make all the difference. You’ll see. It will, Rose.”
Jenny whimpered in her sleep.
Dave got there after supper. He was beside himself. I took him out in the hall to try to talk to him.
I was just laying my hand on his arm when the elevator opens and out walks Sandra. The bride, in her jeans, carrying a tray of food. Her hair’s all glued up fancy. Must’ve been at the beauty parlour this morning.
Of course, there hasn’t been no wedding. The groom’s over town in a cell.
Dave stares at her with his eyes bugging out. Vein jumping in the side of his head. She walks past us into the room where Jenny is. Dave right behind her. He says, like he’s choking, “You left her alone with him?”
Jenny moans and turns over in her sleep. She don’t quite close her lips. Dave, he stifles himself.
Sandra holds the cheese things out to Marg.
“Well,” Marg says, in the dead silence, “don’t those look nice.”
Dave’s hands clench. He wants to send that food to the roof. He don’t want to wake Jenny, though, so he holds on.
Sandra set the tray on the night stand. She looked at Marg and glanced sideways at me. She wouldn’t look at Dave.
She hadn’t even looked at the little soul laying there hooked to the IV bag with her hair spread out on the pillow. Jenny’s hair is fine as fine. Josie used to tell her it’s what the elfs knit their sweaters with, light little threads of gold and air. “You wear your air in pigtails,” Josie used to say.
Dave’s staring at Sandra like she’s something which the health inspector had gave the thumbs down. If Dave had saw Ian right now, there’d have been bloodshed. And, to his way of thinking, Sandra’s pretty near as much to blame. The muscles twitch across his shoulders and in his big hands.
I’m thinking, that’s all we need is Dave to deck my sister. I put my hand on his shoulder.
Jenny opens her eyes. We jump over to her.
I says to her, “Jenny. Mommy’s here.”
Jenny looks past Sandra. She says, “Dave!” Dave, he leaned over her. She fell back asleep with him stroking her head.
I watched his working-man’s hand smoothing them threads of air hair. I could’ve bawled just from how much I loved that man right then. Even if I didn’t have a half dozen better reasons than that for bawling.
Jenny kept sleeping.
That night went on and on. We hung around. Tension in the room was working up to explosion level.
Dave, he kept glaring at Sandra.
She wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at me neither. Letting on she was reading some magazine.
Thank God for Marg sitting there like a concrete lion!
Sandra was holding up the magazine tight, looking over it at her shoes. Dave was twitching and pacing. Fiddling with the string on the window blind. Sitting down. Standing up. I didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to be there in that room with Sandra.
How could she let this happen? What was she? Mental? Was she evil? Did she not give a fart about her own child? I could see him dying to just shake it out of her. The jerk was a proved pervert! How could she leave him with Jenny? How could she even stand the sight of him? Marry him? What kind of sick, shithead notion? Where was her brain? What the fuck was the matter with her?
Dave started rubbing his right fist in his left hand.
I asked Sandra if she could use a coffee.
There weren’t many people in the hospital cafeteria at that hour. We took a table in the back corner. First words out of Sandra’s mouth, before I had even sat down, was, “You think it’s my fault.”
I took my time sitting down. Had a swallow of the coffee. Bitter and too hot. Tried putting some more sugar in it and stirred it around more than what it needed. Then I started in.
I give my sister the long version of what I think about fault. Let her have my whole frigging rockslide theory. We sat there till midnight, and I told Sandra more than she ever wanted to know about whose fault was what, in my opinion.
Sandra kept trying to interrupt me. But I wouldn’t shut up for nothing.
I made pictures on a napkin. Circles for the generations. Arrows for trouble. Arrows from circle to circle. Down the generations. Circle for Grandma and Grandpa’s day. Arrows raining down from them on to Dad and Mom in their day. I wrote Sandra in the next circle down. I showed arrows shooting down on her. I made Jenny in the next circle down and showed the same shit arrows shooting down on her.
I grabbed another napkin. “Take cows, for instance…”
I’m there, doing my damnedest, trying to draw cows. They take their right turns, in their day, standing watch over their little ones, faithful, while the earth rolls on from age to age.
Sandra’s fed up. “What are you talking about? Are you calling me a cow?”
“No,” I says. I pound my fist on the cow picture. “The cow watches what the frig is going on with her baby! The cow gives a care!”
I should have never said that. But Jesus Christ you’d think she never heard one word I said!
“I’ve did my best to be a good mother!” she says.
“You have not!”
“You don’t have a clue what it’s like being a mother.”
“And our father and mother? I guess you think they done their best for us?”
“Don’t keep dragging them into it! Poor Mom was a saint, and you’re awful hard on Dad. He always kept a roof over our head.” Sandra dug down in her purse for a Kleenex. “I was supposed to get married today, in case you forgot! Jenny was going to be our flower girl. I got the smartest little dress for her, and she didn’t even want to wear it.”
“What planet are you on, Sandra? Mrs. B. told you. You knew Jenny wasn’t even supposed to be at the wedding because she is not safe anywheres near that frigging creep you want to marry!”
Sandra cried, and I sat and looked at her. She was crying over her ruined wedding day, a dress that never got put on, a garbage can full of cheese things and pickles. Herself, in other words. Not Jenny.
“Why did you leave Jenny with Ian?”
“I never thought she’d do that to me on my wedding day.”
I says, “So, according to you, what happened today was not Ian’s fault or your own fault? It was a child’s fault? She’s the one in charge?”
“She likes it.”
“She likes getting tore open, gagged and threw, naked, into the mouse shit in a filthy attic?”
“She goes looking for Ian to touch her dirty. She’ll slide right up to him and stand there, pushing against him. But I thought that, on my wedding day—”
“Ian is old enough to know what’s right and wrong. Jenny ain’t.”
“So you are saying it’s my fault!”
“I never said nothing about you at all.
”
“That’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking about you!”
Sandra can’t get that. She says, “But you think it’s my fault.”
I shoved my chair back and stood up. “Alls I know is: grown people have to look after kids.”
What was the use of trying to talk to her? I went to take my cup back. I wasn’t going to drink that lousy coffee. Cold now anyways.
Sandra follows me. She says, “I’m not letting a kid run my life!”
I just look at her.
She says, “I got a chance to get a husband.”
“And you don’t give a fart what kind of a human being he is?”
“If it wasn’t for her, he’d be perfect. He’s fun. He’s good-looking. He loves me…. You don’t care about me, Rose. Alls you care about is her.”
I says, “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I says, “The day you decide to work on your own life, that’s the day you’re going to know what I mean.”
“You want me to go to one of them whiners’ groups and tell some shrink my life story.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What the hell for?”
“So you won’t be so frigging screwed up! I can’t explain it. They build you up inside, so you’re not so needy.”
“You talk so weird now.”
“I’ve got some new words. It makes me so I can figure this kind of stuff out better.”
Sandra says, “I’m going to the hall to take down the bells and streamers. Will you come and give me a hand?”
I said I was going to stay here.
“She’s got Dave and Marg both sitting there. Jeeze, it’s just a few stitches.”
I said I was staying here.
Sandra stomped off. Mad because she was going to have to take down the white paper bells by herself. She was having such a bad day. I wasn’t supporting her.
31.
THE NEXT FEW MONTHS there, after Jenny got hurt, it’s like everything changed gears. The days and nights we spent watching with her, after she got her fever….
Okay, let me slow down long enough to tell yous. Jenny got an infection. They couldn’t get it to settle down. Fever went sky high.
Marg and Tammy took turns sitting with her in the daytime. I hardly ever went home. Right after work, I’d grab a bun or something from the grocery store on the way to the hospital. Dave was there every minute he could be. Twice, he drove down after work, sat up with her all night and drove all the way back to Strone in time to go to work in the morning. His cousin-in-law, Tom, who Dave works for, he found out about that. Said for Chrissake. And give him some days off with pay.
Jenny lay in the white sheets there. Her skin was dry and burning. She wasn’t herself. Talked crazy. Kept saying something about a zipper between her legs. Begging me to do up her zipper.
I told the girls not to say nothing about it to Josie. No good upsetting her. But of course Josie don’t need telling.
One day Marg went to see Josie and she said, “Talk about the lake.”
Took Marg a while, trying to talk to Josie about the lake and Josie shaking her head.
Josie finally said, “For the fever.”
So we done that. We talked to Jenny about ripples washing along the edges of Lost Gold Lake. Marg would tell her how clear and cool it is, how good to jump into. I told her about the fresh, watery smell of the breeze, the splashing sounds of the water by the shore. We like washed her hot skin with them thoughts, and she’d go limp and listen. “Are you seeing it, honey? Can you see like bright ripples in water?”
I wished the old Josie was there. She was so good at getting people to picture things. I tried to talk like her, the way she used to, putting in about the bands of bright and shadow rippling over the sand. I told Jenny to picture the deep green, the blue, the sparkle, and the shine, the fish moving through the green shadows of the trees.
Jenny opened her cracked lips. She whispered, “Underwater birds.” So I knew she was right there.
Sally, of course, she was praying up a storm. She come down with Dave the second weekend.
I said, “The north climate there must suit you, Sal.” She was looking just great.
Dave says her and his dad have got a vegetable patch planted, enough for an army. Sally says she’s going to can and pickle, save them money next winter.
“Oh and Dave’s dad has picked out the site for our hotel,” she tells me.
“Has he picked out who’s going to give us the money?”
“One thing at a time,” Sally says. “Al’s found a real good aquifer. He’s got a marker drove in right where we should dig the well. Up on Macaulay’s Point.”
Me and Dave had to smile.
“It’s too bad you can’t pickle some of that attitude of yours,” I says.
“Hope and faith by the jar,” Dave says.
“So you got Dave’s dad daydreaming about the hotel.”
“Not but what Macaulay’s Point would make a fine site for a lodge or something like that, if old man Macaulay would ever sell, which he won’t,” Dave says. “It’s a beautiful place up there, ain’t it, Sally Ann?”
“Oh, gorgeous! Water on three sides.” Sally, she leaned forward in the hospital room chair, while Jenny was sleeping, and told us in this low voice (but eager, like a kid) all about what her and Dave’s dad have been doing towards the hotel.
They’re not fooling. They really think they’re going to make it happen. See, Sally’d been buying beds and dressers at yard sales, for the hotel. Dave’s dad got a new tractor, and he wanted Sally’s trash furniture collection out of his barn. Dave’s cousin Jan took a look at the stuff one day and got all excited. Said it was right in style. “Shabby chic,” she said. Worth something. “Old junkers” is what Al called the paint-missing bits and pieces. Said they should have a bonfire. But anyhow, Jan got hold of some city lady, and Sally sold the stuff to her. Cleaned up. Opened a separate bank account for the money. Calls it the hotel account.
And then, when the Walmart site flooded, there, the way Al said it would, it was good for Al’s water-witching business. He was putting the proceeds of that in the hotel account.
Now they’re working on Dave’s cousins. People are starting to chip in, Sally says.
Dave told me private, later, that they’re thinking of it more as tipping Sally for looking after their Uncle Al. She’s making it so he can stay on at home and they don’t have to worry. But they say, “Here’s a bit for your hotel, Sally.”
That give me a shock.
“All them people know about the hotel?”
“Why not?”
“It was a secret.”
“Can’t get no place keeping it a secret,” Dave says. “Tom’s interested in the idea. He might even back it. A lodge, like. Somewheres by the lake. Tom’s doing good, eh. If he decides to go for it, yous will get your hotel, all right.”
“What?”
I woke Jenny up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart. Something’s good. I’m happy.”
“Oh.” She drifted back off with a smile.
“If Tom comes in on it, it’ll really happen?” I says.
“Can’t see why not,” Dave says. “He could likely round up the money.”
“Does he seem real interested?”
“Can’t never tell with Tom. He’s got the poker face and he’ll think things over careful, look at all the ins and outs before he says much. But my guess is, yeah, he’s real interested.”
So, anyways, we changed gears. Soon as Jenny’s fever broke and the doctor said she was going to be fine, we went into action.
What happened to Jenny was a wake-up call. Shook some sense into me and Dave.
We felt like we had to get our act together. Fix things for Jenny. It was plain to see nobody else was going to do it.
We told the Children’s Aid that we wanted to adopt her.
They said they were prepared to start the process. There would be interviews and assessments. We said fine.
First weekend Jenny was good enough to travel, I took her back north. Dave met our bus.
He says to Jenny, when we’re walking to the truck, he says, “Here’s one for you to try on Grandpa Al. Ask him how the letter A can help a deaf lady.”
Jenny’s bobbing along beside Dave. She grins up at him, waiting on the answer.
Dave writes in the dust on the truck. Shows Jenny how the letter A can make her hear.
Riding in the truck, I was thinking too bad there wasn’t no kind of a magic like that where my sister was concerned, no way to make her hear.
It was a business trip this time. Me and Dave were looking for a house, and I was looking for a job.
I hadn’t been up there in a long time. I drove by the fountain where I made my wishes last year. Thought of Al’s picture of the spiral staircase. Here we were coming around to the same place, but boy, was it different from last time!
The town was a real town, this time around. Mind you, it still had just enough of Josie’s daydream in the air that I wasn’t too surprised to see a Help Wanted sign in the window of the plumbing place.
“You’re the one goes with Al’s boy!”
That, and my experience and a good reference from work, was how I got the job.
Sally and Jenny had lunch going, when I come dancing back. They were making a picnic to eat on the dock.
Me and Dave looked at eight different houses that weekend.
“The third one there wasn’t bad, with the workshop,” Dave said when we were laying in bed under an old quilt at his dad’s place that night. I always think of the cottage smell of that house when I look back on them days. It was sort of a damp smell, old wood and old fires in the fireplace.
That place didn’t feel like it, though. It sat, bare naked, up on a hill. I didn’t care for that. Looked lonesome and cold.
Dave grunted, but he didn’t argue.
Paper Stones Page 27
