by Lisa Wingate
I checked the living room again, then grabbed my purse and car keys. Hopefully, my father would sleep until I got back. If not, there would be trouble. When he awoke in the early evenings, he was always confused, his paranoia heightened. If I, Marilyn, wasn’t there to redirect his attention with some supper and then more TV, he started wandering the house, looking for those people, and hiding various items in secret places.
Please, God, please, please, I muttered under my breath, hurrying to my car. The plea, the prayer in my head surprised me, but at the moment there was no one else to ask. Please keep him quiet until I get home. Please let Teddy be all right.
The muscles in my neck and arms stretched tight as I started down the block, gripping and ungripping the steering wheel. From the driveway of a neighboring garage house that was probably a rental, a dark-haired man with a ponytail watched me. Glancing toward my father’s house, he took an art portfolio and a briefcase from his car and turned away.
I pulled to the curb, rolled down the window, and called out, “Excuse me. Have you seen a man walk by? He’s tall, salt-and-pepper hair? He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and jeans.”
The neighbor swiveled his head in my direction, keeping his body pointed toward the garage door, showing a silent reluctance to get involved. “Just got home,” he said, then hesitated a moment, checking up and down the street. “Sorry.”
“Do you know anyone else who might have been around today— any of the neighbors I could call?” I pressed.
He shifted a step closer, seeming to consider the request, then pushed the car door shut. “I just moved in a couple weeks ago. You might ask at the shops down on the corner of Vista.” Satisfied to have pointed me in another direction, he tucked the portfolio under his arm. “If I see him go by, I’ll tell him you’re looking,” he added, then disappeared into the garage.
I wondered if he was the one who’d called the police about Teddy and my father.
I continued down the street, rounded the block, turned onto Vista again, drove past the shops at the corner of Vista and Greenville. I asked about Teddy at the convenience store, where the clerk claimed to have seen him in the past but not today. I continued winding through the neighborhood streets, past quiet houses, past a creek and an overgrown park with playground equipment rusty from disuse, down a few blocks to the border of Blue Sky Hill, where small, bungalow-style houses lined the edges of neighborhoods my mother would have referred to as unsavory, or off-hill, which meant pretty much the same thing. In front of a flamingo pink Prairie-style house, two women who looked out of place in the low-rent district were locking up after an estate sale. I pulled over and asked them about Teddy. They said he’d walked by earlier and stopped to take some empty foam cups from the trash pile out front.
“He didn’t hurt anything,” one of the women added as she watched me from behind the old woven-wire yard fence. “He just took the cups and went on down the block.”
I thanked her for the information, then sat trapped in a moment of uncertainty before finally turning toward home. Maybe Teddy had come back by now, and in any case, I didn’t dare leave my father alone any longer.
At the condominium construction site on Vista, workers were packing up their tools for the day. I pulled to the curb as they loaded equipment into a pickup truck. “Have you seen a man pass by here?”
One of the construction workers, a short muscular man with long corn-rowed hair and cinnamon-brown skin, leaned close to the car and grinned, displaying a row of gold-capped front teeth. “You lookin’ for any man, or someone in particular?”
I ignored the obvious undertone. “Tall, salt-and-pepper hair, big shoulders, kind of overweight. He had on jeans and a yellow T-shirt, probably green tennis shoes.”
The construction worker laughed, shrugged, unscrewed the top of his thermos and poured the contents onto the ground. “Lotsa people pass by here.”
A second worker, a redheaded guy who looked no more than eighteen years old, ambled toward the car, rolling up an extension cord.
“He walks kind of …” I tried to think of how to describe Teddy’s lumbering gait, his mannerisms. Over the years, my mother had turned “mentally challenged” into a curse word. I couldn’t apply that term to Teddy anymore. “He has … health problems. He’s not supposed to be out alone.”
The redheaded man slapped his coworker on the shoulder. “She’s talkin’ about the dude that gets the scrap lumber—the dumb guy.” Turning to me, he pointed down the block. “Last week, he come by here wanting to trade a plant in a McDonald’s cup for my san’wich. I seen him hangin’ out by the school after that. I figured maybe he was lookin’ for scraps there.” Dusting off his hands, he frowned. “I ain’t ever seen him cause nobody no trouble. He’s just kinda slow—you know, like retarded and stuff.”
His partner jabbed him playfully in the arm. “Yeah, he ain’t the only one, Rusty.”
“Shut up, Boomer,” Rusty answered, then turned back to me. “You a social worker or somethin’?”
“No, he’s my …” Stepbrother still wouldn’t roll off my tongue. Old habits die hard. “I’m taking care of him. He left the house without telling me.”
Boomer blinked, his mouth dropping open. “Dang, I figured he lived under a box or somethin’. There’s lots of them street people down by the bridge.”
There’s lots of them street people… . I pictured Teddy wandering lost among the homeless. My emotions swung violently, and a prickly, tear-filled lump formed in my throat. “I don’t know if he can … find his way home. I’m not sure …” Of anything. Even though it was completely unlike me to get emotional in front of strangers, my voice trembled. I let my head fall back against the seat. What now? What next?
“Hey, lady, chill out.” Boomer touched the window frame, then pulled his hand away. “The dude goes by here all the time. He’ll come back. He …” Pausing, he looked down the street, shading his eyes. “That him?”
Slapping the car into Park, I leaned out the window. The figure materializing in the distance was, unmistakably, Teddy. He was walking carefully, carrying something in his arms, cradling it like a baby. As he came closer, I made out the torn remnants of a Wal-Mart sack strung around a collection of dirty foam cups, empty aluminum cans, and fast-food containers. On top of the pile, he was balancing a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, holding them with his chin.
When I stepped onto the curb, he called, “Hiiieee, A-becka!” To the construction workers, he added, “Hiiieee!” He almost lost his cargo, then clumsily wrapped his arms and body around it, bending lower and lower, until he was limping along with his legs pressed together, his collection trapped between his arms, chest, and thighs. “Hiiieee!” he said again, smiling crookedly upward when he reached us.
“Guess ya found him,” Rusty observed.
Boomer bent down, resting his hands on his knees and squinting at Teddy’s cache. “What’cha got there, dude?” Glancing back at Rusty, he grinned wryly. “You got some good paper cups and stuff?”
Teddy nodded with enthusiasm. “Yeah, I got cups. ’N pea-nit butter. It’s good.”
Boomer caught the peanut butter jar as it rolled off the stack. He stood up, and Teddy’s brows knotted as he craned to keep the jar in sight.
“You gonna make you a sandwich?” Holding up the jar of peanut butter, Boomer grinned at Rusty, then examined the generic label.
“Yeah, a sam-ich,” Teddy answered. “Good sam-ich.”
“I bet that is go-o-ood sam-ich,” Boomer mocked with a sarcasm to which Teddy was completely oblivious. “You gonna make me one?”
Teddy, still struggling to contain his bundle of trash, hesitated, then answered, “Oh-kay.” He prepared to set down his treasures and fish out the bread, so he could make sandwiches on the sidewalk.
Rusty chuckled, then glanced at me, and noted the rising fury in my cheeks. He snatched the peanut butter jar from Boomer and handed it to me. Taking in Teddy’s confused expression, he leaned close to Teddy
and added, “He don’t want a sandwich. He’s just … kiddin’ with ya, dude.”
“ ’Kay,” Teddy replied pleasantly, then looked sideways at me, and said, “He kiddin’, A-becca. He just kiddin’.”
The familiar sense of humiliation—the one I’d felt standing on the curb at twelve, hoping my friends couldn’t see Teddy running across the yard—swallowed me whole, and all I could say was, “Get in the car, Teddy.” Without waiting for an answer, I opened the back door, threw in the peanut butter jar, and waited while Teddy wrestled through with his bundle. His shirt was covered with soda stains, his hair stiff and sticky, having dried with soda in it.
The door reverberated as I slammed it shut. “Thanks,” I spat to the construction workers as I yanked open my door and got in. How many times had Teddy passed by here, and how many times had they teased him like this? Who’d given Teddy the bread and peanut butter, and what did he have to do to get it? The question was sickening.
Rusty leaned toward the door, thumbing over his shoulder toward Boomer, who had returned to cleaning up their equipment. “He don’t mean nothin’.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I put the car in Drive and left the condominiums behind. We’d gone down the block and turned onto Blue Sky Hill Court before I could talk. At the end of the street, my father’s house, nearly hidden behind thick hedges and the high iron fence, seemed quiet. Hopefully, my father was still sleeping inside. “Teddy, you can’t wander off without telling me.” It felt strange to be talking to an adult, someone two years older than myself, in the mommy voice I used with Macey.
“ ’Kay.” Teddy began gathering his things in the backseat, blissfully unaware of the storm still rising within me. Drawing in a cleansing breath, I pulled into the driveway, parked the car and turned around. If it had been Macey in the backseat, the next line would have been the one that reminded me of my mother and began with Young lady … “Teddy, I mean it. You can’t go out of the yard without telling me.”
“Hooo-kay,” he singsonged, while scooping cups and used food containers into the broken Wal-Mart sack. “I gone put dirt in the pots.” He fingered the cups, his concentration focusing there. “In the pots.”
I wondered if he’d heard what I’d said, if he’d understood it. “When you need things, you have to let me know, and we’ll go buy them at the grocery store. No more wandering around the neighborhood picking up trash.”
“My pots,” he muttered without looking up.
“Pots,” I ground out. “No more going out for pots, or food. We’ll buy that stuff at the grocery store. If you need bread or peanut butter, you tell me, and we’ll go buy it.”
Teddy pulled the bread into his lap, suddenly aware that I was upset. His mouth trembled, and his fingers twisted into the bread wrapper. “The lady gimme it. The lady did.”
I wondered who the lady was, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “I understand that,” I said, swallowing my swirling anxiety, trying to remain calm. I took a deep breath, counted to ten. “I’m not mad, Teddy. I’m not mad at you, okay? We just need to have a … a promise between us, okay? You don’t go away without telling me. Ever. Not for any reason.” Surely Hanna Beth didn’t allow him to wander the streets at will.
“Ohh-kay.” Nodding solemnly, Teddy frowned at the smashed bread and began trying to fluff it up again.
Leaning my cheek against the headrest, I considered the next mountain to climb. “Teddy, do you and Hanna … ummm … your mom ever take Daddy Ed to the doctor? I need to take Daddy Ed to the doctor tomorrow, so we can get his medications straightened out.”
“Kay-Kay take Daddy Ed.” His answer came amid the squeak of foam and the crinkling of paper as his trash bundle collapsed, and he gathered it again. “Kay-Kay take Daddy Ed in the car.”
Kay-Kay again. It figured. The mysterious Kay-Kay, who had apparently bailed out on Teddy and my father, leaving them to starve, or worse.
In the backseat, Teddy was silent, his attention focused out the window. “A-becca?” His voice broke the silence as I reached for the keys to turn off the engine.
“Yes, Teddy?”
“Don’t go way wit-out telling me. Ever.” It was one of the clearest sentences I’d ever heard Teddy put together—a deliberate, concerted repetition of my words.
“That’s right, Teddy. I don’t want you to leave the yard without telling me, all right?”
“A-becca?” Teddy leaned forward, laid his hand on the seat, his pile of cups falling to the floor, unnoticed. “You don’t go way wit-out telling me.”
His gaze met mine, and suddenly I realized Teddy wasn’t the one who’d failed to understand—I was. His eyes searched me, read me, waited for an answer. All at once, I understood. He wasn’t making a promise, but seeking one.
“I won’t go away without telling you, Teddy,” I whispered, then laid my hand over his on the seat. Something inside me pulled and tugged, broke free and stretched. I felt a connection to my stepbrother that was deeper, more tender, than anything I’d imagined possible. “I won’t. I promise.”
We remained a moment longer, the two of us held together by a bond I hadn’t prepared for and couldn’t file neatly into the framework of my life. Teddy’s hand turned and enclosed mine, a warm, tender circle holding me fast as the sun drifted low behind the towering trees of Blue Sky Hill.
Finally, he pulled away, turned around, and looked behind us in the driveway. “Got comp’ny,” he said, and I glanced back as a rust-spotted minivan pulled in. It stopped, and a woman in a blue sweater and a long denim skirt got out, looked tentatively at the house.
Teddy opened his door, waving and saying hello as he scrambled to gather his treasures in the backseat. I turned off the engine and exited, hurrying to catch her before Teddy could. Social Services ran through my mind. Had the man next door called someone?
The visitor came closer, and I knew I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t pin down the location. The airport, maybe? The bank? The electric company office? My time in Dallas was a collage of frantic activity, everything running together in a watercolor of impression and emotion that felt like it had lasted weeks rather than days. The last time I’d talked to Macey—last night? this morning?—it felt as if I’d been away from her, detached from her daily routines, forever. Kyle had called about negotiations with a potential new partner for the firm—was that yesterday—and I couldn’t believe the negotiations were still ongoing. Kyle had laughed and reminded me that I’d only been gone a short time.
The woman in the driveway smiled timidly, smoothed her hands over the front of her skirt, then pulled her sweater modestly over her thin hips. Her gaze darted uncertainly toward Teddy’s clumsy exit from the car, then back to me. She seemed embarrassed, apologetic, sorry to be bothering me. “I don’t know if you remember me …” She paused, her eyebrows arching upward over timid green eyes, then lowering again when I didn’t answer. “I’m Mrs. Parker’s CNA. We met the other day when you came to visit her?”
A thunderbolt of anxiety boomed inside me, emanating from something instinctive and moving outward, slowing until I was conscious of a sudden breeze rustling the iris beds, a bird calling overhead, a frog croaking in the ditch. My mouth went dry, my pulse thready. “Is she …” I glanced over my shoulder. Teddy had dropped the peanut butter jar and was trying to fish it out from under the car. “Did something happen… ? Is she all right?” I couldn’t imagine any reason for the nursing center to have sent someone here other than to deliver bad news. What would I tell Teddy? What would I say to my father?
“No, no, she’s fine.” The woman reached toward me apologetically, her name tag peeking from under the sweater as the front fell open. Mary. I remembered her now. We had talked in the hallway. She had two little boys. The man in the wheelchair was going to tell them a story about trains… .
She put her hand on my arm as if she thought I might teeter off my feet, and she would catch me. She hardly seemed strong enough to catch anyone. Her fingers were thin and small,
her wrist pale and fragile-looking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Mrs. Parker’s doing really well. They’ve reduced her meds, and she’s making great progress with her therapy.” Releasing my arm, she pulled the front of her sweater closed again and stood holding it together. She glanced toward her van, seeming concerned as Teddy walked down the driveway to investigate her vehicle. “I would have called, but the number listed on Mrs. Parker’s form was disconnected, and there wasn’t another number in her file—just the address.” She continued watching the van as if she were afraid Teddy might jump in and drive off with it. “I didn’t want to show up here without calling, but Mrs. Parker asked me to come. She insisted on it, actually.” Teddy circled her vehicle, and she craned to see around the other side.
“The utilities were disconnected when I got here,” I explained. “No one’s been paying the bills.” It felt good to tell someone that, to vent, even a little. “My father has Alzheimer’s, and Teddy’s not … capable.” I nodded toward Teddy, who was studying the inside of her van like a zoo patron looking into an exhibit. What in the world was in there? “They had a caretaker here, apparently. Someone named Kay-Kay. I think she may have lived in the apartment over the garage, but when I arrived there was no one here. Do you know anything about her? I’ve searched the house and the garage apartment, and I can’t find any contact information.”
Mary caught a few wispy light reddish-brown hairs and tucked them into her thick bun. “A woman came to see her a couple times—kind of heavyset, black hair, maybe about fifty? I thought she was a relative, but then Ifeoma, the second-shift nurse, told me the woman said she was a maid, and Mrs. Parker’s husband had asked her to check on things at the nursing center, because he was housebound and couldn’t come visit. When the maid stopped showing up, the speech therapist tried to see if Mrs. Parker could give us the woman’s name or phone number by using an alphabet board, but she couldn’t do it. After a couple of tries, it was too upsetting for her, so they left it alone. It’s pretty normal for stroke patients to get stressed over things they can’t remember or can’t sort out, especially early on. I’ve only been at the nursing center for a couple months, so I didn’t ask too many questions. I figured Mrs. Parker didn’t have anyone other than her husband and the housekeeper—until the administrator said you were coming. Then I found out about the police, and that she had a son living here also. Some of the workers were talking about it at lunch. By then, nobody had come to visit Mrs. Parker in a while.”
