by Lisa Wingate
My throat went tight, and I just nodded.
Russ headed for the door. “I won’t be home till late again. Pass that on to the old lady, if you see her. Looks like that trip to Oklahoma’s gonna work out, too. Gotta leave Friday morning, so she better get her houses cleaned ahead.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.” I hung around the living room, waiting for him to get his trailer hooked up and pull out of the driveway. By the time he left and I caught the bus over to J. Norm’s house, I was worried. I hoped there weren’t any more hidden keys to J. Norm’s car, or he’d be gone by now.
J. Norm didn’t answer when I rang the doorbell, so I got the key out of the hiding spot and let myself in. The house was dark, but the TV was blaring. In the living room, J. Norm’s chair was empty, and for a minute I was afraid he’d taken off, but then I heard him thumping around in the kitchen. When I turned the corner, I slipped on the wrapper off a stick of butter. There was trash everywhere.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, and J. Norm nearly jumped out of his skin.
He stumbled back from the pantry, trash still in his hands. He was sweating, and his face was red. “You are supposed to be in school.”
I kicked some of the mess out of the way. “If you’re going to McKinney, I’m going to McKinney. You need someone who can drive, for one thing. Somebody who can go over twenty-five and not hit a curb.”
He whipped a suspicious look my way. “What have you done with my car key?” Grabbing a kitchen towel, he wiped the sweat off his face. He looked seriously mad. “Did you hide it?”
Right then, I had the sinking feeling I’d really screwed up. “No, but . . . ummm . . . it ended up in my pocket . . . uhhh . . . last night.”
“And what about the paper with the nursing home address on it? Where is that?” His mouth squeezed together into a hard line with no lips.
“It’s in the end table with the stereo controls. I hid it so Deborah wouldn’t see it, if she came around.” Actually, I hid the paper for the same reason I took the key.
“Ffff! Deborah!” he snapped. “She’d be thrilled to find me looking up addresses for nursing homes. She’s newly determined to boot me out of my house. She wrote a deposit check for the Villas. From my account! Without so much as a word to me. Once the money was spent, she thought I’d give in. She’s got another think coming. All she wants is my money and to be rid of the trouble I am. And do you know what excuse she used? Do you know what she said?”
I shook my head. My mind was whirling. If Deborah moved J. Norm away, everything would change. I’d lose my job. J. Norm would have to leave all his stuff—the rockets upstairs, Roy’s room, the things in the attic that reminded him of Annalee. I’d never get enough money together to leave Dallas and go find my daddy’s family. Deborah could ruin everything.
“She can’t do that,” I whispered. No matter how much Deborah didn’t get along with her dad, you couldn’t tell a grown-up where to live—not like you could with kids.
He made a soft sound—something between a laugh and a snort. “She thinks she can do it without my permission. Do you know what she said to me? ‘I hoped you wouldn’t make me seek a guardianship’; that’s what she said. She’d like to have me declared mentally unfit so that she can take over my life. She’s consulted a lawyer, of all things! I told her not to come back here. She isn’t welcome in my house any longer.”
I backed off a step, not knowing what to say. “Well . . . but . . . she can’t make you leave, can she? I mean, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not like you’re mental or something.”
He mopped his forehead with the towel again. “According to her, I’m a danger to myself. She’s been plotting this all along. Even before she brought you here to work, she was plotting this. You were only a stopgap measure, something to distract me. Did you know what she was up to? Did she tell you?” Throwing the towel down on the counter, he braced a hand on the sink and gave me a mean look. “Have you been spying on me?”
I shook my head, my mouth falling open. “Of course not.” The palms of my hands turned clammy and hot, and I wiped them on my jeans. “She never told me anything like that. If she goes to court, I’d come testify for you. I’d do it in a heartbeat.” Mama’d been through enough divorces, three altogether, for me to know what court was like.
J. Norm stared at me like he was trying to cut a hole all the way inside, so he could see what was there.
“I’m not lying.” Tears popped into my eyes. I didn’t know until right then how much coming here mattered to me. It mattered that I was the only one J. Norm liked, the only one he trusted, the one he counted on. The only other person that’d ever been that way with me was Mrs. Lora. I couldn’t lose J. Norm the way I’d lost her. “You and me . . . we’re like a team, J. Norm. Like that show you watch so much, Hogan’s Heroes. I’ll tell Deborah that. I’ll tell a judge that. I’ll tell Deborah she’s crazy for wanting to get rid of this house. I mean, Roy’s room is here, and all your wife’s hats, and the stuff in the attic, and your rockets. You can’t just . . . throw that away. Shoot, I’ll go tell Deborah right now, if you want me to.”
His eyes went moist, the water fanning out into the little creases around the edges. He didn’t answer for a minute, and then finally he lifted a hand, his arm shaking. “Get our things ready. We’re going to McKinney.” He crossed the room in slow steps, shuffling from side to side, finally reaching for a kitchen chair and lowering himself into it.
I watched him for a minute. He didn’t look good. His face was chalky pale and covered with beads of sweat. “We could wait and go tomorrow, if you’re tired now. I could call into school again. Russ won’t care. Or you could just call in for me and say you’re Russ.”
“No, Epiphany.” His voice was so soft I could barely hear it, just words with hardly any breath to float them into the air. “We’ll go today. I have a feeling our time is running out.”
Something inside me sank. I wanted to tell him not to talk that way, but I didn’t. He’d feel better once we cleaned up this mess and got on the road.
An hour later, J. Norm and me were headed to McKinney. I had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, and J. Norm was about to rip the armrest off the door, hanging on. Every time we came within twenty feet of another car, he’d stomp an invisible brake pedal through the floor, his hand shooting out like he was bracing for impact. If I heard “Watch out!” or “Be careful to . . .” one more time, I was gonna bail out of the car going sixty down the interstate and take my chances. Be careful to leave plenty of space, be careful not to tailgate, check the other lane, check the rearview, turn on the blinker, watch the speed. . . .
“Cut it out!” I hollered finally. “You’re making me so nervous, I can’t drive.” Crossing Dallas was a lot different from tooling around Mrs. Lora’s quiet little town or taking J. Norm down to the barbecue joint.
By the time we got to McKinney and found the nursing home, which was hooked to the back side of a big hospital, I was so wiped out, I just pulled into a parking space, turned off the engine, and fell back against the seat. I felt like I hadn’t breathed since we’d backed out of J. Norm’s garage.
“We made it,” I whispered.
“Praise all ye heavenly hosts.” J. Norm let go of the armrest.
“Thanks a lot.” We looked at each other, and the next thing I knew a laugh bubbled up my throat. “Guess I know how to drive on the highway now.”
J. Norm blinked at me. “Meaning you didn’t before? I thought you had your learner’s permit.”
“All they do is make you take the written test to get your learner’s permit. Your parents have to help you practice. Russ says he’ll take me to get my license, but he won’t.”
J. Norm nodded slowly, his lips pouching out like he was tasting a thought. “Well, we’ll just have to work on all that, won’t we?” He reached for the door handle and opened the door. “Before today’s drive would have been a better time to reveal this information, but now that we’ve
arrived in one piece, let’s go inside and see what we can find out.”
“Cool.” I couldn’t help smiling as I got out. Guess I’d found myself a driving teacher.
Inside the nursing home, it took us a while to get Frances Wilson’s room number and find our way to the right hall. By then J. Norm was walking slower and slower. My heart was up in my neck, the way it used to be when I’d step into Mrs. Lora’s house, and she’d call out, Epiphany, I have a surprise for you. . . . Something great was always waiting in the kitchen when she said that—some clothes or a book she thought I’d like, or maybe cookies she’d baked, or something that’d grown in the garden we worked on together. One time, there was a little baby kitten she’d found under the porch. We named him Tigger—not too original, but it fit. I didn’t even know where Tigger was now. I couldn’t take him when I left Mrs. Lora’s.
Walking down that hallway in the nursing home felt like getting ready to run through that kitchen door and see what was on the other side. The nursing home didn’t smell sweet and good like Mrs. Lora’s house, though. When we moved past the doorways, I could see furniture painted bright colors, like it was meant to cheer up the people curled in metal beds, their bodies so thin and sunk down into the mattresses that it was like the beds and the people were fused together. I was glad Mrs. Lora hadn’t ended up in a place like this. How could Deborah even think about putting J. Norm in one? The only thing he’d do here would be curl up and die.
Behind me, he stopped and grabbed hold of the handrail along the wall, leaning on it and catching his breath.
“You know, you need get out and exercise more,” I said, frustrated. We were at room B-32, and Frances Wilson’s was B-43. Right down the hall. “When we get home, we’re gonna start exercising, taking walks, get outside and stuff.” I’d have him in such good shape, there wouldn’t be anyway Deborah could talk some judge into sending him to a nursing home.
He swatted at me the way you’d shoo a fly. “Go on and find her room. I’ll be right there.”
I spun around and ran-walked the rest of the way to B-43. The door was hanging open just enough that I could see the corner of a bright blue dresser and the foot of the bed. “Hello?” I whispered, leaning close to the opening. “Mrs. Wilson? Frances Wilson?”
“She’s not in there.” A voice from behind made me jump just about out of my skin. A nurse was in a doorway across the hall, looking at me. “Are you a family member?”
“Just . . . ummm . . . a friend . . . and . . . Where is she?”
The nurse gave me a sad look. “She’s been transferred to the hospital. Her room is scheduled to be cleaned out. I’m sorry.”
J. Norm caught up and turned to the nurse. “Is she able to see visitors?” He leaned on the rail, looking worried. We both knew what it meant when they transferred you to the hospital and cleaned out your room.
“Hard to say,” she answered. “I was by to check on her yesterday, and she wasn’t doing well. It’s not expected to be long. I’m sorry. She’s a sweet lady. She was always one of my favorites.”
J. Norm got the room number and some directions about how to find our way, and we headed toward the hospital to see if we could learn Frances Wilson’s secrets before she took them with her.
“What’re you gonna say if we get to see her?” I asked while we were working our way over there. J. Norm was so slow, I wanted to hijack a wheelchair and push him in it.
“Going to. That’s two words—going to.” Leave it to him to rag on me about grammar when the answer to the biggest mystery of his life might be right around the corner. “I’m not certain I know what I’m going to say.”
“You scared?”
“Anxious,” he admitted.
“I bet we find out something great.” I wanted that to be true.
J. Norm patted my hand, then held on to my elbow while we walked the rest of the way.
When we got to the room, the door was cracked open. No one answered when we knocked, so I peeked inside. The lady in the bed was asleep as far as I could tell. She looked about a hundred years old.
“Is that her?” I whispered to J. Norm, as I pushed the door open farther.
He shuffled into the room, staring down at the woman like he was trying to find anything he recognized. “I believe it could be.”
The two of us leaned over the bed from either side. The woman didn’t move. I was afraid to touch her. She looked breakable, her skin as thin as paper, dotted with brown spots and veins and purple pools of blood just under the surface.
A sneaker squeaked in the doorway, and both J. Norm and me jerked upright. A girl who wasn’t much older than me walked in. She wasn’t wearing a uniform—just jeans and a T-shirt, but she didn’t look like a relative, either. She was Asian or something. “Can I help you?” she asked.
J. Norm vapor-locked, so I answered. “We . . . ummm . . . The nursing home told us she was here. My . . .” I didn’t have a clue what to call J. Norm. “He wanted to visit. Mrs. Wilson’s his cousin, but they haven’t seen each other in a long time. Right, J. Norman?”
The girl gave J. Norm a surprised look, almost like she knew him. “Are you Norman? My grandmother has been asking and asking about you.” She moved closer to the bed then. “Let me see if I can wake her. She’s in and out, but I know she’ll want to see you if she can.” Leaning over the bed, she rubbed her hands up and down the old woman’s arms. “Grammie? Gram? It’s Kelly. Can you hear me? Norman’s here. He came to see you. Do you think you can wake up and talk to him? Gram? Norman’s here.”
The woman’s eyelids fluttered, creeping upward like old roller shades with the springs worn out. Her granddaughter kept talking and rubbing, shaking her awake. Finally, some life came into her eyes. “Sweet . . . heart,” she whispered, her voice raspy and faint.
Taking a water cup from the bedside table, Kelly tried to give her a drink, but the old woman turned her head to one side.
“Just fine,” she whispered, and smiled a little. “Don’t . . . worry.”
Kelly leaned close and kissed her forehead, then smoothed the gray hairs that were tangled against the pillow. She motioned for Norman to come closer. “Grammie, Norman’s here. You remember Norman? You were asking about him today.”
“Oh . . . Nor-mee . . .”
J. Norm leaned over the bed, and Mrs. Wilson slowly rolled her head to the other side, squinting like she was trying to see him. She lifted a hand. “What . . . happened to your . . . red hair?”
J. Norm laughed softly, taking her hand. “I’ve gotten old and exchanged it for silver, but I couldn’t afford more than a dusting of it.”
Mrs. Wilson laughed, then coughed like she was choking on air. Her granddaughter took a tissue and wiped her chin. “Gram, did you want to tell Norman something?”
“Not old.” Smiling again, Mrs. Wilson let her eyes fall closed. “Just a spring . . . chick . . . chicken.”
Holding her hand between both of his, J. Norm pressed her fingers against his chest. “I need to ask a question of you. About my mother. About what happened.”
“Of course . . .” Mrs. Wilson let out a long, slow sigh, her body seeming to dissolve into the sheets.
From across the bed, Kelly gave a sad look and shook her head. I knew her grandma was fading again.
Norman leaned closer to the bed, his chin almost on the railing. “What was my mother hiding from me?”
“I give you . . . some . . . thing?” Mrs. Wilson whispered, the words growing softer and softer, fading along with her. “. . . from the bl . . . blue . . .” She took another breath, her fingers slack in Norman’s hand. One more word came when she breathed out the air. “. . . dresser?”
She closed her eyes and Kelly gave us a sad frown, then mouthed, I’m sorry. She said we could wait if we wanted, but she doubted that her grandma would wake up again that afternoon, and maybe not at all. J. Norm brought Frances’s hand to his lips and kissed it, then lowered it gently to the bed. He stood looking at her a minute longer
before we left, remembering the past, I guessed.
We didn’t talk until we were back in the car, and J. Norm was looking at the map, trying to figure out how to get us out of McKinney and back on the highway.
“Turn left,” he said when we got to the street. Easy for him to say. Left was across three lanes of traffic. I’d never turned across three lanes of traffic in my life.
I held my breath and hit the gas and hoped I didn’t take anybody’s bumper off. The car lurched out of the parking lot, and J. Norm’s head snapped. “Slowly!” he barked.
“I can’t go slow! There’s cars everywhere!” All of a sudden there was traffic all around, everybody whizzing along faster than we were, turning off in all directions.
J. Norm pointed his finger toward the window and swung it sideways. “Right at the next corner. Right. Right!”
I looked over my shoulder at all those cars coming a million miles an hour, and sweat started dripping down my back. “I’m not turning right. It’s too hard.”
He pointed again, his hand wagging like one of those dashboard dogs on a spring. “That way to the highway entrance. That way!”
“I don’t want to go that way.” Breathe, breathe, just keep breathing. The left lane has to go someplace.
“You’re taking us into town!”
Every muscle in my body went stiff, and my stomach wriggled and twisted. A gap opened up to the right of us, and I whipped across two lanes, into the parking lot of a used-furniture store. I hit the brakes so fast that both of us swung forward, then back. “Do you want to drive, because I . . .”
J. Norm wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at some junky scratched-up furniture in the store window. Someone’d painted it bright red and electric blue and glued Power Ranger pictures all over it. J. Norm’s head tipped to one side, and he rolled down his window to get a closer look.
“What’re you doing?” I leaned across the console to see if there was anything interesting in that window.
