“You look like a raccoon,” Tru said, trying to keep Uncle Tiny occupied. Tiny laughed, but it was a weak shaky laugh, and he still looked ashen.
Dr. Perkins insisted on giving Lutie a tranquilizer. He also handed sodas to Tru and me and gave directions on the best route to the hospital. We would drive there, and Dr. Perkins would phone Rubin to pass the news along to Nova. I tried to ignore the tired soreness in my back and how much I wished someone else was there to be strong.
Someone like Rubin, I thought, although I was still upset with him about Nova. Maybe it was silly, but suddenly, I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted to be held and told everything would be okay. Gripping the steering wheel, looking out into faraway clouds and late afternoon shadows, my eyes ached to cry, but I couldn’t. Lutie had fallen asleep next to me, but Tru was still awake and singing, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” The way things were going, it made more sense to laugh.
10
The hospital only kept Tiny one night, and the rest of us slept in the waiting room on cracked green-vinyl furniture. Lutie snored, and I watched the clock, wondering why I hadn’t asked for knock-out pills too. Tru was too tired to stay awake. I thought he looked angelic where he lay crumpled on a small padded bench, a lamp backlighting his hair. At some point, I must have dozed off.
“Are you Mrs. Antonio Ramirez?” The clerk who had shaken me awake wore a shell pink sweater draped around her shoulders, and she smelled of lavender.
“No, I’m Mrs. Ramirez's niece,” I said. I sat up. I could imagine how I looked by now but reminded myself that hospital personnel must see disheveled people all the time. We’d dropped everything when the crisis occurred and wore the same clothes we were wearing when we’d mopped up from the rain. Lutie's was one of those polyester outfits with pants and a top that matched: three different shades of blue in a wild geometric pattern.
Aromas only found in these places—a sickening mixture of hurt and healing—made my nose water, the way extra spicy foods can. My stomach felt queasy.
“You can see him now.” The clerk's crepe-soled shoes squeaked as she walked away.
We all used the facilities. I dragged a brush through my hair, found some mints at the bottom of my purse, and popped them in my mouth. Lutie washed her face in the ladies’ room sink. Then she sat down on the small restroom chair and opened her Bible.
“Aren’t you anxious to see him?” I couldn’t believe she wanted to hold her devotions at a time like this.
She looked up. “We have an agreement, the Lord and me,” she said, smoothing the tissue-thin pages of her Word, as she called it. “I start my day with my spiritual food, and he takes care of the rest.”
“Breakfast of Champions?” I laughed and opened the restroom door to make sure Tru was all right.
“Gives me all the pep I need.” She closed the book. I might have heard her mutter, “Amen.”
I got a stab of longing for the faith I’d laid aside long ago, before Chaz and children and some bitterness of my own had shriveled it for lack of tending. One of the only Bible verses I knew echoed in my head: The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and give you peace. And give you peace. The singing, in a man's raspy voice, could’ve been someone I once knew.
Tiny was sitting up in bed, his skinny legs poking out of the hospital gown. In the other beds lay two older men who argued over the TV.
The patient in the next bed couldn’t seem to remember how the TV remote worked. Drainage tubes stuck out from beneath the man's sheets. I got the idea he was trying to raise or lower the foot or the head of the bed, but all he did was cut away from an infomercial to an old western. The man laid his head back on the pillow and pulled up his legs so they tented the covers, which partially blocked the second man's view.
That guy, maybe a few years younger, might have been a stroke patient, the way his mouth hung in a permanent scowl on one side of his face. He had the personality to match his predicament, and he glared at his roommate each time the channel switched. Neither of them spoke as they channel surfed and then stared at each other in a silent war.
“Man, am I ever starved,” was the first thing Tiny said.
“Me too,” Tru said, his eyes still foggy with sleep. “Starved.”
“They put you on a special diet,” Lutie said. She sat on the bed next to him. She laid her head against Tiny's shoulder, as if to say, Whew, how close was that?
“Probably nothing I can eat except rabbit food,” Tiny grumbled. “I hate rabbit food.” He looked down at the top of his wife's head and kissed it lightly. “Sorry.”
An enormous metal cart appeared in the hallway, with trays stacked several layers high. A young man with a moustache and those clear plastic gloves food servers wear attended the cart. After checking the attached card, he brought in Tiny's breakfast tray.
Tiny lifted the stainless steel lid and said, “This it?” He looked like a kid opening up the prize from a cereal box, only to discover how small the toy is compared to the picture.
“You got it.” This guy probably heard a similar complaint about every five minutes. You could tell by the way he plopped the tray in front of Tiny.
“Wheat toast, poached egg, oatmeal, an orange. Smells good,” I volunteered. I felt twinges of hunger, too, along with a headache. I needed some coffee soon.
“When we visited Grandpa in Portland that time, they had a McDonald's right in the hospital,” Tru said. He was referring to Benjamin's latest medical problem with angina. I hated it when he called Benjamin Grandpa, but there was no way around it. My stepfather bought the kids lavish presents and took them to fancy restaurants, but he didn’t have the foggiest notion of what his grandchildren liked. He didn’t care, either, in my opinion.
“I don’t think this place has Mickey D's,” I said. Tru looked crestfallen. “You’ll have to settle for whatever they have.”
“Well, I’m not eating anything gross like oatmeal,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Amen, buddy. I could go for some bacon and hash browns,” Tiny said. He sighed loudly but then dug in. We watched him bolt his food. When the aide came back, Tiny asked for seconds, but the man shook his head no. Before leaving, the guy, who was a bit of a smart aleck, if you ask me, said my uncle was being discharged.
The patient with the drainage tubes sticking out from under the thin covers waved his arms at the aide. His body had slid so far down in the bed that his feet pressed against the foot rail. “Can you help me?” he croaked. But the door had already swung shut.
Lutie took charge. She turned on the call button and adjusted the motorized bed as best she could. The man smiled and thanked her and called her an angel.
A flurry of voices in the hall got Lutie's attention, and she called out, “Praise the Lord, the prayer warriors are here. Tell the ladies to come on in, Frieda.” Lutie moved all three chairs against the wall to make room for the group. Six or seven women from Red Rock Tabernacle stood in a semicircle around Tiny's bed. The irascible guy next to him scowled even harder and drooled a little in the process.
I felt like scowling too. Did my aunt really need to make a circus out of this? No wonder Christians got bad reputations. They claimed to be interested in prayer, but I thought they were just plain nosy. Frieda Long would be wagging her tongue, telling all of Murkee about Tiny's emergency. I wasn’t eager for Tru to see them in action for fear he’d be influenced and turn into some kind of religious nut.
Lutie held her hands up for silence. “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “The good Lord's already working. As you can see, my Tiny's already on the mend.”
Tiny smiled and looked a little embarrassed.
Lutie continued, “Let's send up a prayer of thanksgiving.”
“Prayer is such a powerful weapon,” Gladys Mason chimed in. “Lord, we praise you and we thank you. Thank you, Jesus.”
The scowling man cleared his throat and waved his arms around. He tried to
get up, but the tangle of wires and tubes kept him tethered to the bed. He was clearly unhappy, but he didn’t seem able to speak. His eyes held a mix of terror and rage, and a guttural yell emerged from his throat.
I grabbed Tru and held him close. The man looked as if he might attack. The ladies stopped in mid-prayer and were silent for several seconds. Then, softly at first, a rush of musical whispers filled the room. The ladies lifted their hands and closed their eyes and sang words I’d never heard. The singing in a strange language grew louder and more beautiful with each passing moment.
The angry man who couldn’t talk stopped yelling; his face relaxed. He sank back against the pillow and attempted what could have been a smile. Nurses and staff arrived to see what was going on. Before the music died away, the room was packed.
I let go my death grip on my son and remembered the faraway voice I’d heard in my mind. “And give you peace” rang out again, and I had to admit I hadn’t felt so calm in a very long time.
The Red Rock ladies filed out as suddenly as they’d come in. What would make them want to drive for an hour just to pray for Tiny? I didn’t know the answer, but I wasn’t as put off about their Christian zeal. I only knew there was a small opening in my heart that hadn’t been there before.
The grouchy aide returned after the call button light had been on for about twenty minutes. Somebody could expire in here, and he’d be off roaming the halls. He yanked the poor guy up in the bed without a drop of visible compassion. But I was being crabby. In the library it's the same thing: all the patrons expect you to be in about a hundred places at once. People look at you as if you’ve been sitting there doing your nails when you were really running all over the building, trying to find some out-of-print title or calming down an irate parent who thinks great literature is pornography. I remembered the beautiful singing and decided to cut the aide a little slack.
We waited in the hall while they got Tiny ready to leave. After he was settled in a wheelchair we stopped by the hospital cafeteria before leaving. Tru wanted to push the chair even though Tiny barely fit in it. With Tiny's big feet on those metal flaps, his knees hunched up.
Tru guided Tiny's wheelchair down the slick, waxed corridor. Spectral voices paged doctors; the overpowering odors of antiseptic made me dizzy. I’d rather be any place else. These nurses were lucky I’d never been interested in pursuing a medical profession.
We reached the cafeteria and wheeled Tiny up to a table. The smells here were almost as bad: some kind of boiled winter vegetable. But they did have those little boxes of cereal, juice, and thankfully, plenty of strong, brewed coffee. Tiny gazed at the pastry selection. Keeping him on a diet wasn’t going to be easy.
“Get used to it, Hon,” Aunt Lutie said. I’d never heard her speak so tenderly to her husband. “Guess we’ll all need to get used to it.”
Fatigue caught up then, and we all appeared comatose for a few moments. I felt much better after the Special K and about three cups of straight black coffee, although I would have given a lot for a Starbucks double mocha today. The cafeteria had filled with nurses and other personnel on an early lunch break. I longed to be where I could stretch out and take a very long nap.
After a while Tiny and Tru chatted. Lutie seemed lost in thought, but her chin trembled.
“What's wrong, my Pearl?” he asked, reaching out to touch her hand.
She looked small and tired now, her cheekbones bonier than ever. She closed her eyes briefly, as if to decide what to say. “It's Joseph,” she said. “All this brings everything back.” She stared at me then, with a sympathetic yet weary look. “Everything.”
“I guess I haven’t asked enough questions about Dad's illness,” I said. Not that I hadn’t wanted to ask, not that I hadn’t been aching to know. I just didn’t know quite how to ask, and I wasn’t sure how to handle the answers.”
“We’ve all been busy,” she said. “I didn’t know if you’d want to hear about it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Lutie gathered herself up a bit. Her shoulders reminded me of a shirt hung over a broomstick. “We knew he was dying,” she said, eyeing Tru. I knew that meant I might not want him to hear, but I thought he was old enough to hear the facts.
I nodded and she continued. “Liver disease is a terrible way to go. Terrible pain … horrible. Kills you off bit by bit.” She paused, and Tiny squeezed her hand.
“And I got here too late,” I murmured.
“We thought he had a few more months,” she said. “We knew it was close, but Doc Perkins said he might have a month or two. That's why I wrote to you about the property and all.”
“If only I could’ve got here in time.”
Lutie shook her head. “He caught all of us off guard. One day he was walking around; the next he was on morphine.”
Aunt Lutie stopped, and then her face contorted, as if she had inherited his pain. “They said he got enough drugs to kill an elephant.”
“Couldn’t the doctors do anything?” I was stunned and angry, full of sorrow, wanting to turn back the clock and at the same time rend my clothing and mourn.
“By the time we got him to the hospital, it was too late,” she said quietly. “Yesterday I was so scared it would happen all over again.” She looked past our heads into the air.
I was afraid too, afraid of how Tru might have reacted if Tiny hadn’t made it. Afraid of which of my father's genes might be lurking there to devour my son and my daughter. Plain afraid. “The liver disease,” I said, “was caused by alcoholism?”
Tiny spoke up. “Joseph Pond was a good man, Muri,” he said. “I knew him probably ten years. He took care of your aunt here, and when I came along he took care of me too. He had a problem with the bottle, but he fought it as well as he could. I don’t know why he couldn’t kick the habit. I do know he loved the Lord. And he sure loved you.”
That was the truth, although in spite I might have wished it had been my stepfather Benjamin whose alcoholism had caught up with him. Then it hit me: all this time I’d assigned perfection to a man I’d never known. I’d judged my stepfather as evil and discounted the fact that he had provided for me. Sure, we clashed; and I wasn’t fond of his methods, but would Joseph Pond have done better?
That headache I’d been fighting off threatened again. Being philosophical after a night sleeping on a vinyl chair suddenly seemed like a poor idea. I joined Lutie in staring off into the distance, and then we returned to the room.
The aide rushed in, toting a box full of the stuff Tiny would need now to control his own excesses. The supplies interested Tru, and he rummaged through them while we went out to the discharge counter to sign Tiny out.
“Thank the Lord for Medicare,” Lutie said.
My own thoughts still ran more toward the whys of life: why Benjamin survived his abuses of alcohol; while my real father—the one I never met—had lost the battle. Now my headache was full-blown. Instead of dwelling upon life's apparent injustices, I studied the back of the cocky aide's head as he walked us out of the hospital. I hoped I never saw him agan.
11
Uncle Tiny was able to get into the van unassisted for the trip home. He carried a cardboard box filled with everything he’d need: a starter kit of insulin, test strips, a stack of brochures and pamphlets outlining the routine he’d have to follow from now on, packages of gauze pads and Betadine for the sore on his leg, and hypoallergenic paper tape because he was allergic to adhesives. Lutie also made sure he brought home the hospital-issued plastic water pitcher, spit pan, and even the urinal because, she said, “We’re paying for this stuff.”
Truman had fun with that one. He’d already plotted to sterilize and then try to serve apple juice from it. After I glared back at him, he eventually enticed his uncle into a game of counting road signs. I kept the van pointed home as best I could, praying Nova and the pigs were all right and daydreaming about a long soak in a hot tub.
“Hoo boy,” Tiny said, riffling through the stack of Americ
an Diabetes Association literature. “It's all so danged complicated. How am I supposed to remember to do all this?”
“That one nurse made us all listen to her speech three times,” Tru said. “It didn’t seem hard.” He pointed at a billboard on the side of the road. “Viva Las Vegas. That's number nineteen for me.”
“Maybe not hard for you,” Uncle Tiny said. “She sure did have a lot to say, that nurse.” He shook his head. “At least Doc Perkins slows down and uses words I’ve heard once or twice.” Tiny picked up the stack of papers and tossed them in the box. He still looked wan and tired and only halfheartedly pointed out signs on the highway.
“Why don’t we stop by the clinic on our way home?” I said. My muscles screamed. “The nurse said we ought to get in to see Dr. Perkins anyway. Maybe we’d all rest easier.” Lutie smiled at me, and Tiny perked up a bit, ultimately beating Tru in the sign game.
I passed the time by drilling Aunt Lutie with questions about Dad. Suddenly, it seemed as if the door had been opened for me to be curious. I was careful, though; I didn’t want to see her cry again. It might start a chain reaction.
“How many years was he sick?” was the first question on my list.
Lutie folded her hands in her lap and squinched her eyes. “Now let me think on that,” she said, “maybe only five years altogether. Could have been longer, only you can’t always tell these things. Joseph was never a complainer.”
“I see.”
“Funny thing was he always had a smile on his face. Bet none of us would have known how sick he was if it hadn’t been for Doc Perkins. Your daddy always laughed up a storm.” Her face clouded over, and tears welled in her eyes. “Now he's up there laughing with the heavenly hosts.”
“I sure hope so.” I’d always been a little shaky on my theology, having grown up unchurched, as Lutie would say.
“If anyone makes it to heaven, it’ll be your daddy,” she said, slapping her hand across her knee, laughing the way she had when we first saw her. Her expression grew serious again. “Joseph died with the Lord's Prayer on his lips.”
The Fence My Father Built Page 10
