The girl chatters nonstop, talking a blue streak, and Rose has to bite her lip to keep from shushing her.
“Hold on, sugah,” Opal repeats over and over. “We’re almost there.” She pronounces it “thaya.” Once or twice she takes a hand off the wheel, reaches over, squeezes his knee. “It’s gonna be okay, Zack.”
As soon as they get to Mercy, Rose plans on calling a taxi.
OUTSIDE THE DOUBLE DOORS OF THE EMERGENCY WING entrance, Opal rolls to a stop, switches off the engine, and runs ahead, calling for Rose to follow. There is nothing for it but to carry the boy inside.
The nurse on duty at the desk takes their name and directs them to the waiting room. The waiting room. The room for waiting. The room where she and Ned waited.
Everything is exactly the same, is if days have passed, not years. Gray tweed industrial carpeting. Interlocking chairs with blue plastic seats and chrome arms. Round clock. Magazine rack affixed to the wall. Square laminate-topped table littered with—even this early in the day—empty Styrofoam cups, most holding cold coffee. A No Smoking sign. A notice reading, Please have your insurance information ready. Off to the left, an alcove with vending machines for coffee and hot chocolate and cold drinks. Five years and not one single thing has been altered. Rose is faint with memory. She wills herself not to run.
WHEN THEY TOLD HER TODD WAS DEAD, SHE WOULDN’T believe it. She wanted to see him, asked to see him. Not now, Rosie. Ned said. Your husband’s right, the doctor agreed. It would be better if you don’t. She should have insisted. Ned should have insisted.
She fainted in the middle of the emergency room, the only time in her life she has ever passed out. They hustled her away in a wheelchair, swooped her off to a small room, made her lie down, whisked the curtains closed. So much activity. Such urgency. For what?
Overly solicitous nurses bustled around bringing water, a pleated paper cup that contained a pill. Left alone at last, she sat right up. Through the curtain she heard voices: the doctor talking to Ned, telling him that Todd had suffered so much brain damage that had he lived he would have been no better than a vegetable. A vegetable.
For days the words echoed in her head, giving her no rest, buzzing round and round like a fly trapped between glass and screen. After the funeral, Ned’s sister Ethel put her arm around her and said, “It’s terrible, Rose, but what with head injuries like that it’s a blessing he went. Truly it is.” As if that was supposed to console her. Truth is, she would have taken Todd if he’d been able to do nothing but drool. No more capable than a cucumber. Taken him and been glad for it. At least he would still be with her. At least she could have cared for him, tended to his needs. Kissed him. Smelled his hair. At least then she would have had a place to pour her love. If Rose knows anything it is this: To stay alive love needs a place to go.
A WORKMAN SITS ACROSS FROM THEM, CUPPING A HAND wrapped in a towel. Blood has already seeped through the folded terrycloth. A child with feverish eyes and flushed cheeks sleeps in his mother’s lap. The woman’s shoes are unevenly worn and misshapen. Cheap shoes. It pays to take care of your feet, Rose thinks. Your feet and your teeth are no place to save money.
The double doors glide open with a pneumatic whoosh, and a young man dressed in athletic shorts and a U Mass jersey hobbles in on crutches, gives the receptionist his name and insurance card, is instructed to join the others in the waiting room. He gives Opal the eye.
The clock reads 7:30. It doesn’t seem possible that only a half hour has passed since Ned left for the station. It feels like weeks.
FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN THEY LEFT THE HOSPITAL—LEFT Todd—she made Ned drive her directly to the intersection at High and Church. He made a fuss about it, but she wouldn’t back down. The pavement was still wet from the fire hoses. Near the curb, small fragments of glass caught the sun, mocking her with their resemblance to jewels.
A week later, the fresh scar on the elm—a spot of bare bark about the size of a dishpan—was the only evidence of what had occurred there. Rose had ripped down the plastic roses and crude crosses Todd’s classmates had tied to the tree.
Day after day, she returned to the site, needing to stand at the last place her son had lived, had breathed. When Ned put his foot down and refused to take her there, she walked. More than once she went in the evening, staying until it was dark, staring up at the stars like an animal until she could stand to make her way home.
She was not surprised by the persistence of her grief. What surprised her was the idea that anyone could get over it. People thought grief was like the flu, something you got over. It wasn’t. Oh, it ebbed for a moment—like a new moon tide flowing out—but then it rushed in and swept you away again. What surprised her was that the sky stayed blue.
Weeks after he died, she walked into the woods beyond the cul-de-sac and began to cry. Wrenching sobs, horrid, keening sounds you might make if you were wounded, your flesh pierced. If she had had a knife with her, she would have cut herself. You should be able to chop off a finger—something to express your grief—but they don’t let you.
IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY MOMENTS HAVE PASSED, BUT WHEN Rose surfaces, it is 8:15. Although she is not aware of them having left, both the man with the injured hand and the feverish boy and his mother have disappeared.
Eventually, they come for Zack. He is rolled off in a wheelchair by a nurse who is all efficiency. Opal goes with them, murmuring reassurances to her son. Rose watches them disappear behind swinging doors.
A NURSE HANDED HER A PLASTIC BAG WITH TODD’S CLOTHES when they finally left the hospital. Ned assumed she threw them out, but she kept them. The blue jeans and plaid shirt, the navy T-shirt, his jockey shorts, each item torn and stained with what you could think was rust if you didn’t know better. Fingering each article, she would mentally recite the autopsy report, which she knew by heart. Fractures of wrists and arms and ribs, brain ripped—pons from medulla—aorta ripped. Ripped. The single word summing up all the violence done to her son.
At home, she found his windbreaker hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. It smelled of him. She rolled it up tight and sealed it in a Ziploc freezer bag. Despite the bag, when she took it out months later his smell was gone.
Ned had wanted to cremate Todd’s body, but she balked. It was unbearable to think of more damage done to him. Later she wished she had agreed. Then she would have his ashes. She could have sifted them through her hands, tasted them. Ingested them.
Taken him back into her.
“MRS. NELSON?”
Opal plops down next to her.
“How is he?” Rose asks.
“Who the hell knows?” There is a hard edge to Opal’s voice. She is near her limit. “They think it’s a fracture, but they won’t know until they’ve taken X rays. In the meantime, they’ve got us sitting and waiting in some other goddamned hall.”
Nearby, other patients look over. Opal is attracting the attention of the admissions staff. Rose wants to tell her to lower her voice. She is aware of Opal’s too-short skirt, her bare legs. At least she’s wearing shoes. She supposes that’s something.
“Christ,” Opal continues. “This is the most inefficient place I’ve ever been in. A fuckin’ vet could do a better job.”
Rose remembers how careful she had been. How quiet. How she had swallowed her own anger, nearly choked on her cries. Be careful, she wants to say. Don’t make them mad. The spot on her stomach begins to itch again.
“Perhaps you should call someone? Your . . . your husband?”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
Opal looks straight at her. “Would if I could, but there ain’t no such creature. I’m not married.”
Lord, Rose thinks, what have I gotten myself into?
“Mrs. Gates?” A doctor approaches, looks from Rose to Opal.
“Miss Gates,” Opal corrects.
“We’ve had a chance to read the X rays. Your son has a buckle fracture of the right wrist.”
“Oh, God,” Opal
breathes. “Can I see him?”
“In a few minutes. Right now, we’re putting a cast on. Normally we’d use a splint, but at his age, a fiberglass cast is the better choice.” He pauses, looks down at his clipboard. “We need more information.” He motions toward the alcove with the vending machines.
Opal holds her ground. “I want to see Zack.”
“In a minute.”
That’s right, Rose thinks. You insist. Don’t let them keep you apart. It would be better if you don’t.
“They’re putting the cast on. Then we’re taking a few more X rays. While they’re finishing up with that, I have a couple of questions.”
“More X rays? Why?”
“Routine.” He doesn’t meet her eyes.
“It’s his arm. That’s all. You’ve already X rayed that. Why do you need more X rays?”
Again he motions toward the alcove. “I just have a few questions.”
“So ask.”
“How did it happen?”
Opal’s gaze shifts. “What?”
“Your son’s injury. What caused it?”
There is a slight hesitation. “He slipped. In the tub.”
Rose can’t read the doctor’s expression, but even a blind man could see that’s a bald-faced lie.
“In the tub?”
“Yes,” Opal says, her voice more confident.
“There is a bruise on his upper thigh. Can you explain that?”
“Explain it?”
“Yes. A rather significant bruise on his left thigh. How did it happen?”
The college boy on crutches and an older couple are openly staring at Opal.
“How the hell should I know? He’s a boy. He plays at the playground. Sometimes he falls down.”
Boys bounce. In spite of herself, Rose feels a flash of satisfaction.
“Why the fuck are you asking me these things?”
“It’s just routine. We have to fill out forms. Mandatory reports from the emergency physician, cases like this.”
“Cases like this? What the hell does that mean?”
Rose can see from the doctor’s expression that Opal’s belligerence is not helping.
“Shit,” Opal says. “What? You think I hurt my son? You think I’d do anything to hurt Zack? Are you crazy? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Relax, Miss Gates.”
“He’s my son. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”
“Calm down.”
Calm down. That’s what the nurse told Rose when she asked if she couldn’t see Todd. Calm down. They are in charge. You are at their mercy.
“No one’s accusing you of anything. We’re required to ask these questions. It’s simply procedure we have to follow in cases like this.”
“Like what? Why do you keep saying that?”
“Were you alone with your son when he fell?”
“Alone?”
“Yes. When Zack fell, was anyone else there?”
Opal sinks back into the chair. “This is crazy. You can’t believe I’d hurt Zack. He’s all I have. I love him.”
“Were you alone?” he asks again. “Did anyone witness the accident?”
Opal doesn’t speak.
“You have to answer these questions, Miss Gates.” He scribbles something on the margin of his report. “Would you like me to call our social worker? All right, then. Were you alone when the accident occurred? Did anyone else see it?”
“I did.”
Both faces turn to Rose.
“And you are?”
Having uttered two words—words that still seem to hang, to echo in the air—Rose is incapable of further speech.
“Your name?” The doctor waits, pen poised over clipboard.
“Rose Nelson.” Opal takes over without missing a beat. “Mrs. Nelson is my neighbor.”
Rose could just bite her tongue. What in the world had she been thinking?
“And you were there when it happened?”
“She just stopped by for coffee,” Opal continues. “I had just finished giving Zack his bath and while I was answering the door, he got back in to get his boat. He must have slipped, because he started crying.”
Rose is appalled at how easily Opal lies, how innocently she faces the doctor while lies just trip out of her mouth.
“Is that true?” he asks Rose.
What can she say now? I wasn’t there. She doesn’t know how to retract the words. She nods.
The doctor finishes jotting his notes, then closes the folder.
“I want to see him now,” Opal says. “I want to see Zack.”
Rose stares at her feet, unable to look anyone in the eye, as if she is the guilty one. Lord, she thinks again. What have I gotten myself into?
CHAPTER 10
OPAL
THE TOTAL FOR THE X RAYS, DOCTOR’S FEE, AND emergency room fee comes to nearly four hundred dollars. Opal hands over her Visa. Lord knows how she’ll pay it off. Naturally they’ve charged her for the additional X rays, pictures she didn’t want and that revealed no other breaks or fractures, something Opal could have told them if they’d only asked. Like they’d believe her. Policy, they said. Well, fuck policy.
Earlier the doctor gave Zack something for pain and he’s listless. Vulnerable. The sooner they’re out of here, the happier she’ll be. When she returns to the waiting room, Rose is nowhere to be seen. The ladies’ room, Opal thinks. She could sure use Rose for moral support. The woman is as plain as a slice of bread, but there is something solid about her, something dependable that Opal needs right now.
“Mrs. Nelson called a taxi,” the admitting nurse informs her.
Opal is disappointed. She wants to thank her for backing up her story with the doctor. Couldn’t you just have flattened her with a poleax when Rose spoke up and said she had been there when Zack got hurt.
Opal knows for sure her own mama wouldn’t have lied for her. Melva preaches honesty like it’s her own special religion.
She doesn’t want to be thinking of her mama just now. She can imagine what Melva will have to say about Zack’s arm. Her mama would get her pinched-lip look and act like this is exactly what she would expect to happen. Like it was Opal’s fault he fell. Like Opal isn’t to be trusted with having a child. Just another thing she can’t do right. She hates to think of what Melva would say if she found out she’d left Zack alone when he broke his arm. That would be something she would hold over Opal’s head for the rest of her life. Like her pregnancy. Like her refusal to marry Billy. Another subject her mama just can’t seem to get off of.
Don’t you love Billy? Melva would ask.
How could she tell her mama that what she felt for Billy was lust, pure and simple. Can’t her mama see love isn’t supposed to be like what she and Billy had? Love isn’t about accusations, about feeling less than. Opal is holding out for something more.
Right then, as she and Zack are leaving the hospital, Opal understands she can’t go back to New Zion. Even if she wanted to, which she decidedly doesn’t. In September when she threw that Monopoly die and headed north, she was choosing something else for her and Zack, even if she wasn’t exactly clear on what it was. And that changed everything. There are lines in life that, once a person crosses over them, there’s no going back to the other side. Trouble is you don’t always know there’s a line you’re stepping over until you’re already halfway across. That’s why keeping an eye out for signs is so important. It helps prepare you.
She surely does not have the least idea of what kind of life waits for her here in Normal or in the next place she lands. She only knows she can’t go back to the way things were in New Zion. This lack of resolution could be depressing, but she tries to think of it as hopeful. Even today, with Zack’s broken arm, she believes in the possible. Anything can happen. Any wonderful thing.
Of course, this is another thing she and Billy disagree on. He expects the worst. The bumper sticker on his pickup reads, Shit Happens . She wouldn’t have something like tha
t on her car in a million years. Talk about asking for trouble.
All Opal knows is that she was led to Normal. She’s traveling on faith here.
As they cross the parking lot to the Buick, the sky darkens. “Looks like a storm coming on, bud,” she says to Zack.
“I have a cractured arm,” he says, using this information as leverage to break the backseat rule and sit up front with her.
They haven’t even gone a mile when his lower lip begins to tremble. “I don’t want a cractured arm.”
Opal could sure use some help here. Unbidden, Melva’s voice takes up residence. You made your bed, girl, you lie in it. Another of her mama’s cherished philosophies. Opal reaches over and pulls Zack across the bench seat, closer to her.
“Do you know what that means, bud? It means the bone got hurt.
That’s all. Like when I cut my hand on the broken glass at Melvama’s.” She takes her hand from the steering wheel and turns it palm up so he can see the thin scar. “Remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, your arm got hurt, but it’ll get better; it’ll heal exactly like my hand did.”
“It will?”
“It surely will.”
“Why do I have to have a cast?”
“Oh, that’s just a big old bandage. That’s all it is.”
“Okay,” Zack says. He lays a moist hand on her thigh and huddles closer.
They barely drive two blocks when the rain begins to come down full strength, striking the windshield with the sharpness of hail. Opal circles past the library and continues down Main, her attention divided between the road and Zack. A familiar edginess strikes her, what Billy calls her “can’t-hit-a-moving-target” mood. No way she feels like going home now.
She pulls into the Creamery’s parking lot. “Want something to eat, bud?”
“Actually, the doctor said I’m not supposed to get my cast wet.”
Lately he’d been starting every other sentence with that word: Actually, I’m not tired. Actually, I want a Coke. Opal doesn’t know where he picked up the word, but she loves the way it makes him sound. Like a little professor.
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