I let my face sink back into the pillow and wondered at what a genius Meri was when she had the time to stop and think.
I sat on the edge of the hospital bed while Meri finished packing my bag. There wasn’t much to it, just pajama bottoms, slippers, a toothbrush and some books. I could’ve packed it myself, but between the baby and the smoke, I had about zero energy. My back was much better. It was still tender in some places, but just itchy in all the others. I wasn’t supposed to wear anything over it, except today they let me put a shirt on if I promised to take it off as soon as I got home. Meri promised the doctor with a gleam in her eyes that she’d make sure I did. She brought me one of her father’s old sweatshirts that had a feed store logo with a picture of a bull on the front and room enough for two. It was more appropriate than she knew.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said. My voice was still rough and maybe always would be, but I didn’t mind because Meri thought it was sexy.
She grabbed her cane and limped over to sit next to me on the bed. The hospital discharged Meri a few days before, but they couldn’t make her go home. She said there wasn’t anything to go home to since Sergeant wasn’t there. He disappeared the night of the fire and couldn’t be found “for love nor money,” as Taylor put it. Three days later, one of the cousins came across him wandering around in the east orchard, bloated, colicky and stumbling drunk from eating too many fallen and somewhat fermented apples. He was still at the vet’s where, rumor had it, he was not being a model patient. We figured that meant he was feeling better and would probably pull through just fine.
Here at the hospital, Meri spent most of her time playing gin rummy with me, or, when I was sleeping, playing poker with the nurses until she cleaned them out of all their cashews and they didn’t want to play anymore. After that, she would have me read poetry to her in my new sexy voice, the potential of which she was anxious to explore more fully once we got home.
“What’s taking them so long with the wheelchair?” Meri asked, drumming one of her heels against the floor. Her other foot was still swathed in gauze from the surgery she had to keep her toes from fusing together.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they’re having trouble finding one.”
Meri snickered. A few nights ago, she wandered into pediatrics and got all the kids together for a wheelchair social. They had a great time of it until someone discovered that the more ambulatory kids had borrowed their wheelchairs from the emergency room. And there was another side of Meri that I hadn’t known about. She liked kids and was good with them. It was fortunate that one of us was, I supposed.
“Do you have the instruction sheet that the doctor gave you?” I asked her.
“Yep, it’s in your bag. You’re going to have to wash my feet, you know.”
“And you’re going to have to wash my back.”
Meri grinned. “I intend to wash your whole self, every inch, slowly and carefully.”
I gave her my most lecherous wiggly-eyebrow look. “I’ll change your bandages if you change mine.”
“Now, who could resist an offer like that?” she said with a laugh and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. Her lips lingered over my skin. “I sure wish they’d hurry with that chair,” she whispered. “Why do you need one anyway? Why can’t we just leave?”
“The hospital doesn’t think it’s dignified for patients to walk out on their own two feet.”
Meri harrumphed. “Well, I’m glad we’re getting out of here. One more hospital meal and I would’ve given up eating forever. Maybe we could swing by a pizza place on the way home.”
“How are we getting home?”
Meri rolled her eyes. “Taylor wanted to come get us in the Duesenberg, but he hasn’t painted it yet. He said it would look stupid to show up in something all rusty, but I can’t imagine who he thinks would care. Plus it only has two seats and Aunt Beatrice wanted to come with him. I don’t mind you sitting on my lap, but I draw the line at Auntie Bea.”
The picture of Aunt Beatrice sitting on Meri’s lap made me laugh, which started her to giggling, which made me laugh even harder and then that got her going, too. Meri snorted loudly and we near about fell on the floor. I held onto my ribs trying keep my back from jiggling around too much. Meri held onto her head with both hands. We sat there on the edge of the hospital bed and laughed until we both got the hiccups. It wasn’t all that funny, but it sure felt good.
Meri shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Really, though, I don’t understand why Auntie and Taylor are making such a big production out of this. Just because your father’s got a schmancy car doesn’t mean we have to have one too.”
That sobered me and I felt the laughter fade. Meri didn’t have the first clue about what was waiting for us just outside the hospital doors, and I hadn’t yet found a way to tell her that she took seriously. I looked up at the television set that hung on the wall. It never occurred to Meri to turn hers on. She didn’t know that the very second they wheeled me out of this room, both our lives would get considerably more complicated. As smart as she was, she could be so innocent about anything larger than Laurelvalley. She had no idea that we, she and I both, had gone national.
A doctor came into the room with a wheelchair, only it wasn’t a doctor, but the woman with the smoky voice who turned out to be the hospital’s administrator, and she wasn’t alone. A whole gaggle of nurses, doctors and technicians lined the hallway to give us an escort to the lobby, or they would have, but there was a little bit of a scuffle in front of the elevator over who would get to ride in it with us. The administrator rolled my chair into the elevator herself and stood behind it with the nurses that had taken care of me fanned out around her. Meri stood at my side looking bemused as we rode down, not sure what all the fuss was about and thinking it unnecessary anyway. She wore an expression of friendly condescension right up until the time the doors slid open.
Flashbulbs popped. People were shouting, microphones waving, a whole flock of video cameras pointed in our direction. The entire lobby had people packed from one wall to the other. As the doors opened fully, the crowd surged forward and the noise level grew into a deafening din. This level of attention was new to me, but not very surprising, given the circumstances. I had expected something like it, but Meri stood frozen in the elevator, her mouth hanging open, eyes wide and staring. I don’t think she was breathing. A phalanx of cousins, many I recognized as our best apple pickers, elbowed their way through the crowd and cleared a space for us. My chair began inching forward into the mob. I reached out and grabbed Meri’s hand, pulling her stumbling along with me.
The cousins cleared a slow path to the door, but it was still like running the gauntlet. Meri, silent and stiff, limped with her cane beside my wheelchair. I smiled at everyone as politely as I could, saying, “We’ve no comment at this time,” to a garble of questions that I wasn’t really hearing. Meri, still in her turban of bandages, forearms swathed in gauze, looked like a spooked horse, eyes rolling, flanks shivering. A barrage of bulbs went off right in our faces, and Meri jumped. Someone screamed a question at her and stuck a microphone into her face. She ducked to avoid it, stumbled and fell. Her hands grabbed for the arm of the wheelchair, and it tipped over onto one wheel. I reached out to keep from falling, my hands clutching at her shoulders, and she reached for me. We met in an awkward half hug over the arm of the wheelchair, her hands gripping my arms tight. We both froze, our noses just an inch apart, and then she smiled at me sheepishly. I smiled back at her, slipped an arm around her neck and lifted a hand to touch her cheek. Flashbulbs popped in a hail of light. I didn’t do it on purpose. It was just a natural gesture for me, but I knew it would make a great picture, one we could frame and hang on the stair wall.
Taylor and Aunt Beatrice were waiting for us at the curb in her ancient tan Buick sedan. I thought it made a nice contrast to my father’s limousine. Plain versus fancy, modest versus extravagant. He left town
just the day before in a frenzied hurricane of rage that had all his butt-kissers ducking and running for cover. None of his plans or threats had worked out. He couldn’t get me released into his custody. He couldn’t get his own imported doctor to attest to my mental frailty. He hadn’t been able to stop the press conference. And he had not liked what the news outlets were saying about it all.
Meri was a hero, a shy knight in blue jeans who went riding into the flames on her noble steed to rescue me, the princess who didn’t want to be a princess anymore. Not everything they said was true, of course. Nobody in their right mind would call Sergeant a noble steed, and the tabloids exaggerated the story quite a bit, especially the one that suggested it was really Meri who got me pregnant. But all the news outlets painted basically the same picture. I was the victim and my father the villain. Suddenly, in spite of his long incumbency and his efforts to galvanize the right wing hatemongers, my father’s reelection campaign wasn’t doing so well in the polls and his presidential bid was in a shambles. Aunt Beatrice was tickled pink, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. My father never spared a thought for my dreams, and I found that I no longer cared about his. In the end, it didn’t matter to me what people said about us, as long as they eventually left us alone. Meri, on the other hand, was just mystified by it all.
Meri burst into the kitchen, plastic grocery bags dangling from her arms. She dumped the bags onto the counter and banged a garishly colored newspaper down onto the kitchen table, making my teacup rattle in its saucer. “Bea, you’ve just got to read this one,” she said, thumping the paper with a forefinger.
A sausage rolled across my plate and into the pancake syrup. I flicked the sausage out of the syrup, licked my finger and looked at the paper. There was a picture of a man with four arms on the front.
I wiped my finger on a napkin and picked up the paper to study the man’s extra arms. They seemed to be growing out from his hips. It looked like he had lobster claws instead of hands, and I thought how useful that would be for opening champagne bottles and stiff cellophane packages.
“I’m glad to see we’re finally off the front page.” I put the paper down on the table.
Meri blushed a furious red. “I can’t believe they published that picture,” she said indignantly.
I lifted an eyebrow at her. “That coming from a woman who wanted to print a picture of me with pie all over my face and a cherry stuck up my nose?”
She put her hands on her hips. “That was different. It was funny. The picture these papers printed was nearly pornographic.”
“Yes, well,” I said, forking my sausage and scraping the syrup off against the side of the plate. “I distinctly remember asking you on that occasion if the blinds were closed.”
“I thought they were.” She sat down opposite from me at the table. “We’re almost half a mile from the road. I can’t imagine a telephoto lens capturing that much detail from that far away.” She frowned and touched her head. “I didn’t even have the wig on. No wonder they thought you were making love to an alien.”
I studied her closely. Her blond gold wig was a pale imitation of her real hair. I thought it made her eyes seem all washed out. “I think you need to stop wearing that thing,” I said. “Your hair is growing back just fine. It’s just short and a little thin on one side.”
“Yeah and that just happens to be the side someone took a picture of from all the way out on the road.”
“He might not have been that far, Meri.” I bit one end of the sausage and made a face. I couldn’t stand the taste of sweet on savory. I put it down. “Remember Taylor catching that one guy lurking in the bushes outside the kitchen window?” “Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“And do you remember the guy skulking around in the pasture? The one that Sergeant nipped in the butt and then stamped on his camera?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a smile. “I remember that one. Isn’t he suing us?”
“No, he was trespassing so he can’t sue us,” I said. “He’s suing Sergeant.”
“Poor Sergeant.” Meri plucked the sausage off my fork and began to nibble at it.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said, sipping my tea. “He’s retained a very good lawyer.”
Meri laughed. “I wonder how the lawyer feels about representing a horse.”
“She’s representing Sergeant, the noble steed and companion of Meri Donovan, hero of the hour. She’s pleased as punch.”
Meri reached across the table to snag one of my pancakes. Her eyes fell on the paper still lying there. “Oh, the article!” She picked up the paper and flipped through its pages. “Bea, you’ve just got to read it.” Her eyes darted from page to page.
“Meri, you know I don’t care what’s in there.”
“No, no. This isn’t about us. Here it is.” She folded the paper into quarters. “It’s about your father. It says there’s a rumor that he and your mother are getting divorced.”
“What?” My teacup hit the table with a thud. “Give me that.” I snatched the paper out her hand.
I read the article. It was short both in length and in details, but it was the first news of my father that we’d had since not long after he left the hospital in such a huff. I’d been expecting him to launch a counter media attack, something to paint himself as the grieving father, me as the wayward child and Meri as demon spawn from hell, but for the past month, he’d kept a very low profile and hadn’t said a word to anyone about anything. It was such odd behavior for him that I was almost worried. I read the article through again and hoped that my mother wasn’t bearing the brunt of his anger. I felt my cheeks grow hot. I hadn’t even thought of her until now.
“Fuckin’ A,” I muttered.
“Bea!” Meri shook her head in disgust. “Taylor is such a bad influence on you. I wish you’d watch your language. The baby might hear you.”
“Oh, please.” I glared at her over the top of the paper. “The baby’s still the size of my thumb, and I don’t think she’s bothered to grow ears yet.”
“She’s been in there for four months now, and that’s plenty of time to grow ears.” Meri began eyeing my pancakes again. “Besides, she or he is a lot bigger than your thumb. I think she’s about the size of your whole hand.”
“You’ve been reading too many books.” I slid my plate over to her.
“One of us has to.” She picked up a pancake and rolled it into a tube.
“Why? Women were having babies long before books about them were ever invented.”
“Bea,” she said seriously, “you’re avoiding two issues here.” Meri jabbed the rolled pancake in my direction. “First, it would be good for you to understand what’s happening to your body, and second, I want to know how you feel about your parents getting divorced.”
I put down the paper. “Okay, then. I understand that the baby’s about the size of my hand and probably has ears. I also understand that I have to pee all the time, my boobs hurt when you squeeze them, and I can’t button my jeans all the way. And furthermore, I think that my parents getting a divorce is by far the weirdest thing in this paper.”
Meri dropped the pancake onto the plate. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Which part? The pee, the boobs or the jeans?”
“The boob part. Why didn’t you tell me that your boobs hurt when I squeeze them?”
“Because I like when you do it, and I didn’t want you to stop doing it. You’ve already stopped kissing them. The poor things are starting to feel lonely and neglected.”
She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. “They’re bigger than they use to be. I’m not sure what to do with them anymore.”
“You don’t have to do anything different. They’re the same boobs. There are just a bit more of them.”
“But it feels strange. Almost like you’re nursing me.”
“Trust me, Meri. I don’t have any maternal feelings toward you.”
“As far as I can tell, you don’t
have any maternal feelings at all.”
She waited for me to answer, but I wasn’t about to touch that one and spoil my whole morning. It was an argument we’d just recently started having after I told her what I’d planned to do about the baby while I was on the run. It shocked and offended her deeply. She said that she wouldn’t have let me go if she’d known I was just going to throw it away. I didn’t see it like that, and we hadn’t yet found a point of compromise. I couldn’t help what feelings I did or didn’t have. I was acting in a mature and responsible way, taking good care of myself, which meant I was taking care of the baby, too. That was the best I could do. It wasn’t fair for her to pile her expectations on me. She wasn’t the one who had an alien life form growing inside her body.
Meri leaned forward and tapped the paper. “How come your parents getting a divorce is so weird?”
“Are you changing the subject?”
“Since you’re avoiding one.”
“Right,” I said, scooting the paper closer to her. It was hard avoiding any subject that Meri thought was being avoided, but if she was willing to let it go then I wasn’t going to argue. “I think the divorce is weird because my father owns my mother. He controls her so completely that I can’t imagine him trading her off for someone he can’t control quite as well.”
“Maybe it’s your mother who wants a divorce.”
I picked up my tea, but it was stone cold, so I put it back down again. “My mother is a little mouse of a woman. I can’t remember her ever saying anything more than ‘yes, dear’ to my father. I just can’t picture her saying, ‘Yes, dear, I read in the paper that our daughter’s pregnant and having carnal relations with another woman. I think you handled the whole thing rather poorly, and by the way, I want a divorce.’” I shrugged. “I just don’t see it.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Meri said.
As Far As Far Enough Page 16
