S.D. Youngren - Rowena 5 - Rowena Moves Closer.txt

by Rowena Moves Closer

  He shook his head forcefully, as if to dislodge something. "I don't want to be like my dad! I don't want to be like my dad!"

  Rowena caught her breath. "You're not like your dad. You're not. You're not like him at all."

  "Bastard," Sammy said, his voice thick. "Self-centered, hypocritical bastard."

  "You're not like that," Rowena said. "Sammy--"

  "I just can't--oh, God," Sammy said. "I have to go again. Damn. Damn."

  "Okay." Rowena shifted out of his way and stood up, Sammy still clutching her hand. "It's okay; you can tell me about it afterwards."

  "Don't go," he said. "Stay with me. Stay here."

  "I'll stay," Rowena said. She bundled the cat out of his lap and helped him up. "Don't worry. I won't leave."

  She got him on his way, then sank back down again. She put her head in her hands and sighed, as quietly as she could.

  Rowena was only half awake at 5:14 the next morning when Sammy left once again for the bathroom. She had not slept well, between Sammy's illness, Caesar's attempts to help, and her own worry. She pulled the blanket higher; it was too cool a morning for bare flesh. She lay with her eyes closed, waiting to fall asleep.

  "Rowena?" He sounded confused, and perhaps alarmed.

  "Coming." Rowena scrambled up and got unsteadily to her feet. In the dim light she couldn't see anything she could throw on for warmth so she went as she was. She blinked a few times before venturing into the brightly-lit bathroom where Sammy stood, quite still. One hand was braced on the wall and he was looking into the toilet, his pajama bottoms around his ankles.

  "Sammy?" He answered only with a brief, uncertain movement of his free hand. She went to him and looked where he was looking.

  Green.

  A vivid, insistent green.

  Rowena closed her eyes. Her hand found Sammy's shoulder blade. "You're going to the doctor," she told him. She kept her voice as steady as she could. "I'm taking you to the doctor. Today."

  He shifted his weight to lean on her, just a little.

  Sammy's HMO kept Rowena on hold for a long, long time. Finally, though, she got through to a live person. "Yes, I'd like to make an appointment for this morning." It was still quite early.

  "I can't give you a same-day appointment," the woman said.

  Rowena forgot, for a moment, to be polite. "Why not?"

  "I can't give you a same-day appointment. Just come in to Urgent Care and they'll take care of you there. Urgent Care is located--"

  Rowena knew what this involved: a wait of several hours in a small and sometimes crowded waiting room. "He's too sick for that! He's dizzy, he's doubled up in pain--and you'd better have a bathroom right off that waiting room of yours or there's gonna be a real--"

  "How about eleven o'clock?" the woman asked. Rowena slumped in relief.

  "If you get a prescription, I'll pick it up for you," Rowena said. "At least, I'll do whatever standing around there is. So don't worry about that, either." She glanced at Sammy, tipped back beside her in her car. She'd done her best to make him comfortable. And when they got there she discreetly helped him out of the car and walked beside him into the building.

  "Bathroom," he said. She went with him to the door of the nearest Men's Room and waited yet again. She checked her watch, not for the first time since they'd left. No problem there. She'd made sure they left early.

  She checked her watch again, several times, in the waiting room. Six minutes to eleven. One minute till. Ten minutes after eleven; twelve minutes; fifteen . . . She tried not to let Sammy see her impatience, tried to look as if she was actually interested in the magazine on her lap, but she tensed hopefully each time the door leading to the examining rooms opened. Sammy sat quietly with The Phantom Tollbooth, though one hand occasionally pressed at his stomach; Rowena kept looking over at the illustrations in the book and at Sammy's face as he read. He seemed to be enjoying it as much as could be expected, under the circumstances.

  Finally she heard the nurse in the doorway call Sammy's name. And then he squeezed her hand and stood up and gave her The Phantom Tollbooth and walked carefully to his appointment, and she watched until the door closed behind him.

  When he returned, he looked tired. In his hand Rowena noticed not just a little prescription slip but at least one full-sized sheet of paper. She went to meet him.

  "Well?"

  He looked at her and smiled--smiled a little wearily, a little oddly, but with tenderness. He put his hand on her arm. "Salmonella," he said, in low tones.

  "What!"

  "It's okay." He gestured at the little window behind which the records nurses sat. "I have to take care of something here," he said.

  She went to the window with him so she could stay near him and so she could look at him some more.

  "I can't believe it," Rowena said for the third or fourth time. She looked from the diet sheet Sammy had been given over to Sammy himself. "The milkshake I brought you, and the yogurt and the pudding and the hot chocolate--and the butter--"

  "It was nice," Sammy said. He was back home in his bed, resting up from the trip, a glass of plain water within reach. "It made me feel better, for a minute or two."

  "It was the worst thing I could have done! The very worst!" She stared again at the sheet. "Even the soup and the orange juice," she moaned. "Who'd have thought that orange juice--"

  "Darling," Sammy said, "the worst thing you could have done would have been to leave me alone." He reached for her, and she took his hand and held it tightly.

  "I wish I'd been helpful," she said.

  "Rowena. You got me to the doctor." He rocked their clasped hands back and forth. "I wish I'd gone when you first asked me to."

  Rowena smiled at him. "Does this mean I get to take care of you after all?"

  "Please," Sammy said. "Please do."

  She gave him a hug. "I should go get you some stuff, then," she said. He didn't let go. Rowena snuggled closer.

  "All right," he said at last, and released her. Rowena picked up the diet sheet.

  "Anything I can do for you first?"

  Sammy considered. "Set the phone down here so I can call my boss," he said. "Tell him what I've got and what I think of the stupid restaurant he picked out and their lousy chicken salad."

  Rowena lifted the phone from the bedstand and set it beside him. "Gonna make a Federal case out of it?"

  Sammy laughed. "Can't you leave all that at my office?" he asked. Caesar leaped gracefully onto the bed and sniffed at his hand.

  "I guess it's time to leave, then," Rowena said. "You know, give Caesar a chance to look after you."

  "I feel like saying, `don't be gone long,'" Sammy said. He lifted his hand and began stroking his cat. "What nerve, huh, Caesar?"

  "I ought to check up on Linus, if you don't mind," Rowena said, "or my landlady will think I've abandoned him. But I'll be back before long." She bent carefully over him, over him and his cat. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll be back."

  Rowena Pays A Call

  Fiction by S. D. Youngren

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Rowena led Sammy down the hallway towards her Aunt Glad's room. "I just hope . . ." she began, and trailed off. Sammy touched her hand. The first time she'd brought him to Aunt Glad's nursing home, Aunt Glad had not managed to recognize her.

  But Rowena felt she had to introduce her aunt to Sammy before it was too late--before all of the old lady's days were "bad" days; before her memory left her entirely. This time she'd brought her photo album, to amuse Aunt Glad and possibly--if necessary--possibly to jog her memory. She wasn't sure this would work, but she'd brought it. She'd brought her camera, too; it contained six unexposed frames, which she would use if everything went well, if Aunt Glad remembered.

  Room 26. Rowena stopped. She handed the album to Sammy and watched him settle it carefully where the camera wouldn't scrape it. She smiled at him, shifted the flowers she'd brought into her other hand
, paused a moment and knocked lightly. She stepped into the room; Sammy followed a moment later.

  Rowena skirted the bed occupied by her aunt's roommate, Mrs. Glover, careful to look at her aunt instead. "Aunt Glad--"

  "Rowena! How good to see you!" Rowena approached, relieved.

  "It's good to see you," she said, with truth. She put the flowers down and gave her aunt a hug.

  "And this patient and polite young man would be . . . ?"

  "Sammy," Rowena picked the flowers back up and pointed them at him. "My boyfriend."

  "Pleased to meet you," Sammy said, approaching. Aunt Glad put out her hand for him to shake.

  "You don't mind being dragged over here to be shown off to a little old lady?"

  "I was under the impression that she was showing you off," Sammy said. Aunt Glad laughed.

  "Planning a career in politics, young man?"

  Sammy looked over at Rowena and laughed. "Not exactly, Mrs. Ness."

  "Call me Aunt Glad."

  "Would you like to see my photo album, Aunt Glad?" Rowena held her hand out to Sammy, who passed the album to her.

  "Your photo album?" asked Aunt Glad, as if it hadn't occurred to her that anybody Rowena's age might have one. "Yes, I would." She picked her reading glasses off her nightstand and put them on.

  Rowena set the album before her aunt and opened it. Aunt Glad gave a small, startled cry; on the first album page Rowena had placed a number of photographs that had been taken long before she was born, back when Aunt Glad's generation was young.

  "Where did you get those?"

  "I had my mom and my grandma make some copies for me. But Grandma couldn't tell me--let's see--she couldn't tell me who this is, the second from the left there. Do you know?"

  Aunt Glad adjusted her glasses and peered closely at the picture. Sammy watched from his chair, not interfering. "That one there?" Aunt Glad asked, and laughed. "That's--what was his name--that's Rupert, Rupert . . . Birney. He was sweet on your Aunt Charlotte--your Great-Aunt Charlotte, my little sister--but your Grandma Edith kept trying to flirt with him."

  Rowena looked over at Sammy. "Oh, no," she said.

  "It was the funniest thing, actually; he was such a serious young man. He'd just stand there looking as if he wished he were somewhere else. Mama'd try to get Edith to stop, but you might as well try to stop a train." Aunt Glad laughed again. "There was no stopping that Edith."

  "What happened?" Rowena asked. "I mean, to Rupert?"

  "Rupert?" The old lady gazed off into the distance, remembering. "Rupert died, of--of tuberculosis, I believe."

  "Oh, no," Rowena said. Aunt Glad patted her hand.

  "It was tragic, of course; it always is, a young person like that. But Charlotte never loved him as she loved Howard." She glanced briefly at Sammy, then looked back at her niece. "If you want to pity your poor Aunt Charlotte, God rest her soul, don't pity her for Rupert."

  Rowena was silent, thinking of Aunt Charlotte nursing Uncle Howard for years after his accident, even after Charlotte herself was diagnosed with cancer. She continued to do everything she could until the day she came home from yet another chemotherapy treatment, ill with chemicals and more bad news, and found her husband dead.

  "They're at peace now," Aunt Glad said gently. "All three of them."

  "I know . . ."

  Aunt Glad patted her hand again. "Let's see some more pictures," she said, and bent back to the album.

  "Would you like any of these copied, Aunt Glad?"

  Rowena's aunt hesitated, and then began paging through the album. "Are you sure it wouldn't be too much trouble?"

  "No trouble at all," Rowena said. Her aunt selected some pictures, and paused again at a photo taken at the park, of herself pushing little Rowena and Rowena's sister Marilyn on the swings. Rowena looked at the picture also, at the delight on all three faces.

  "Remember that park, Rowena?" Aunt Glad asked again. "Remember the fun we used to have there?"

  "I remember," Rowena said. "How could I forget?" She almost said, "I'll never forget," but remembering Aunt Glad's vagueness, she simply couldn't. She looked at the picture, a happy moment captured but somehow escaped.

  "Would you like to go back there?" Sammy asked. "Today?"

  Rowena and her aunt looked at him. Then they looked at each other.

  "Oh," Rowena said.

  Aunt Glad laughed and clasped her hands together.

  Rowena insisted on sitting in the back seat next to Aunt Glad, who tried only halfheartedly to dissuade her. "You girls be good back there," Sammy said, and he did not sound condescending.

  "Mind your own business," Rowena retorted.

  "What a way to speak to your young man," said Aunt Glad, but she was laughing.

  "She's never said that to me before," Sammy said. "She's usually a lot older than this." Rowena stuck her tongue out at him and Aunt Glad laughed again.

  "Your mother always said I'd be a bad influence," she said.

  "My mother? Said that?"

  Aunt Glad's eyes twinkled. "She brought you girls to visit once--I think your sister had just been born--and my bird said a bad word." Rowena burst out laughing. "She said if I could corrupt an innocent animal, just imagine what I'd do to her poor children."

  Rowena laughed and laughed. She barely noticed when Sammy pulled up alongside the park.

  "Okay, girls," he said. They climbed out and looked around, then began the trek over the lawn to the play area, walking slowly together at the old lady's pace. Rowena looked with sudden dread at the deep, treacherous-looking sand that covered the playground, and hoped her aunt could walk on it. But when they got there she found that at their deliberate pace it proved less difficult than she had feared. Aunt Glad walked with her to the swingset, to the nearest swing; once there she grasped a support chain, turned herself around, grasped the opposite chain, and sat carefully down. Rowena handed Sammy her camera, then settled herself into the swing next to her aunt's. Sammy stepped back, focussed, and snapped their picture.

  "I want to swing," Aunt Glad said. Rowena hesitated, thinking of her aunt falling and breaking her hip, breaking any number of bones. "I want to swing," Aunt Glad repeated, a little wistfully. Rowena got up and went behind her.

  "Hold on tight," she said. And began very slowly to push. She could see Sammy turning her camera for a vertical shot; she looked at her aunt's knuckles, knobby and vulnerable-looking. Really the swing hardly moved. Rowena looked to the camera and smiled. This couldn't be what her aunt had in mind, but--

  "Thank you," Aunt Glad said. "That's enough. Your aunt's an old lady now; she can't take too much excitement."

  "Aunt Glad--"

  "I want to see you swing. I wish I could push you again."

  "You don't have to push me," Rowena said. She sat back down on her swing.

  "How about this?" Sammy suggested, approaching. "I can push her and you can take pictures."

  "A sensible young man," Aunt Glad said. He helped her up and handed her the camera, helped her lower the strap over her head.

  "It should still be focussed for where I was standing," Sammy said, and pointed out his footprints. He walked back with her, then returned to slip behind Rowena. She felt self-conscious, not for being on a swing but for allowing herself to be treated as if she couldn't get the thing moving by herself.

  She remembered feeling the same way as a girl, as a not-too-little girl.

  Sammy took hold of her seat, moved her back. He gave her a push forward and she smiled at her aunt. She swung back and he tickled her briefly at the waist before catching her and pushing her again. She swung higher. Aunt Glad lowered the camera and smiled at her; she looked as if she might cry. For a moment Rowena forgot she was on a swing; for a moment she didn't seem to be moving at all. Then she swooped down and back, rose again, and watched a little girl approach her Aunt Glad and say something in a high soft child's voice. And Aunt Glad looked down at the girl, smiled, carefully bent and, taking something the girl handed her,
smoothed her hair, gathered it up, and made it into a ponytail. The girl, pleased, thanked her; Aunt Glad responded, and the little girl pointed over at the swingset. Aunt Glad smiled, shook her head, and said something else. The little girl ran over to the swing Aunt Glad had occupied, and plopped herself into it. Rowena rose forward past her, but as she came back she heard the girl ask Sammy for a push, saw Sammy come close to set her in motion and then hurry back to where he could catch Rowena again . . .

  Rowena looked back at her Aunt Glad, watching all this, smiling, raising her hand to wave at them and then lowering it to take hold of the camera and bring it back to her eye.