by Betty Webb
“Good.” Then I asked him the question I hated to ask. “My vinyl record albums. How are they?” Especially the album on which my long-dead father played back-up guitar for John Lee Hooker, I wanted to say. But since that would open a subject I was too tired to deal with, I didn’t.
Unaware of the album’s value to me, he answered, “Most will be okay, but a few, well, let’s just say you’ll have to replace them. Nice blues collection, though. And they say vinyl’s coming back.”
My heart hurt, so I returned to a safer subject. “My Navajo things. How long before I get them back?”
“Another week. But they’re worth it, right? At least the Two Gray Hills rug is. Gorgeous.”
“No kidding.” I knew the weaver. Anna Begay, from Shiprock. Young, but she belonged to the new wave of Navajo traditionalists whose work was currently displayed at the Heard Museum.
Decisions made about the living room, we moved onto the bedroom, which looked even worse. No new drywall here yet, either, and the closet door had been ripped from its hinges, exposing a row of empty clothes hangers. The bed was stripped down to the frame.
“We couldn’t save the mattress,” Cal said.
As Gertrude Stein once said, a mattress is a mattress is a mattress. “Replace it.”
He smiled. “Same color, same style, right?”
“Right.”
“I like your style, Lena. No muss, no fuss.”
I started to smile back, then remembered. “Oh. My Lone Ranger bedspread, is that okay or…”
“It’s fine. Cute. You into fifties collectables?”
“Something like that.”
The rest of the tour went quickly. Kitchen, fine. Bedroom, fine. New drywall up in both. The only casualties from the kitchen were the packets of ramen that had to be junked, no big deal because you can find ramen anywhere at any time. As for the bathroom, it needed a new shower curtain, toothbrush, bottle of Excedrin Extra-Strength gel tabs, a loofah, and some Yardley’s lemon verbena soap. Oh, and shampoo, whatever was on sale. As the man said, I wasn’t fussy, except when it came to bath soap.
“How long before I can move back in?” I asked.
Cal looked at his clipboard. “According to my calculations, the place will be good to go by, say, next week. Maybe even Monday or Tuesday. That’s if we can get the carpet guys out by then, but I don’t foresee a problem there. For obvious reasons, there’s not a lot of redecorating going on in July. But just in case, are you willing to approve overtime? That’s what weekend work costs.”
Desperate to get back into my apartment, I nodded.
“Then sign on the dotted line.”
When he passed me the clipboard, I saw that Scottsdale Restore charged double for overtime. Still worth it. I signed.
“That’s it, then!” Big smile. “Say, I didn’t see you at Fight Pro yesterday. Still recuperating from your dust-up with Terry?”
“You heard about that?”
He gave me an Are-You-Serious look.
I wished people would drop their obsession with my health. “Doc says I need to take it easy for a while.” For another week, actually, but I refused to wait that long.
“Word’s going around Terry’s membership’s been cancelled.”
Gyms are like small towns; everyone knows everything. “A wise move.”
“Absolutely. Say, how about I take you to dinner tonight? If you’re up to it, that is.”
I almost said yes, but for now I had too much on my plate. “Ask me again next week. After I’ve moved back in here.” And out of Jimmy’s trailer.
Downstairs, reconstruction continued. Out with the old and burned and water-damaged, in with the new. Like the Phoenix bird, Desert Investigations was rising from the ashes. After a brief conversation with the foreman, my après-beating fatigue caught up with me, and I headed back to Jimmy’s trailer. I needed more Excedrin and a nap.
***
I slept until four and awoke feeling nauseated. When I staggered into the kitchen area of the trailer, Jimmy had a big frown on his face. “You need to see the doctor.”
“It’s just a headache. Nothing to worry about.” I didn’t mention my nausea.
“How many Excedrins did you just take?”
“Only four.” I’d stopped counting at six.
“Are you seeing double?”
“No, Doctor, I’m not. Just one nosy Pima. Give it up, already. I’m fine, just fine.”
“Don’t lie. I heard you barfing in the bathroom.”
“An auditory hallucination on your part.”
“Hmm. While you were out roaming around this morning, did you stop anywhere for lunch?”
Finally. A question I didn’t have to lie my way through. “Nope. Too busy.”
“Then you must be hungry. How’s some more Pima stew sound? It’s easy on the stomach. Takes only seconds to heat up.”
“Bring it on, Chef.”
A few minutes later I was eating stew and warm Parmesan bread rolls, thinking that they would help settle my stomach if I could just get enough down. I waved a roll at him. “Did you make these?”
“Trader Joe made them.” He sat at the table, watching me with an intensity that made me nervous. Or maybe it was all the Excedrin I’d taken. The stuff was loaded with caffeine.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“Checking your reflexes.” Without warning, he slapped the Parmesan roll out of my hand. It flew across the room and bounced off a cabinet.
I stared at him. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“To see how quickly you’d react. And you didn’t react at all.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have the best reflexes of anyone I know, including you.” He began to blur around the edges, and I was having trouble seeing where he left off and the cabinet began. How could that be possible?
As I fought for balance, he leaned over me. “One of your pupils is dilated, the other isn’t. I’m calling Valerie.”
“Your cousin the nurse?”
“I only have one cousin named Valerie, and yes, she’s a nurse.”
“Well, then, she works summers…” Did I just say ‘summers’ when I meant days? “Uh, days, and she sure as hell isn’t going to leave work cactus, uh, leave work early just because you’re playing the piano, uh, I mean overreacting.” I blinked rapidly, trying to bring him into focus again. My tongue wouldn’t behave, either.
“Today’s Friday, her day off.” Before I could stop him, he was on his cell phone, telling Valerie she’d better get over here right away, that he didn’t like the way I was acting.
“Pay no attention to rattles, uh, to Jimmy, Valerie,” I yelled, hoping she’d hear me. “I’m Chinese! I mean, I’m fine! Fine!”
When Jimmy ignored me and kept talking, I stood up and tried to snatch the phone away. He blurred some more, and because I couldn’t see where the phone was in relation to his hand, I missed.
Then the floor hit me in the face.
Chapter Thirty-one
“He means it, Helen. We need to get out of here while we still can.”
I was half-asleep in the back of our tent, but not so much that I didn’t understand that my father and mother were having another argument. They whispered, but I could hear. Four-year-olds have good ears.
“It was just talk,” she said. “Abraham’s always quoting the Bible.”
“Not like this. Listen, we’ll be in Flagstaff in another couple of hours, and he’ll have to stop for gas. That’s our chance to get away. I still have some money left, enough for bus tickets back home and enough for food until we get there. Then all I need is to play a few gigs at that tonk down the road, and Nashville, here we come. Just like we originally planned.”
“But I don’t want to get away. These people are our friends. And she’s happy here.
It would break her heart if we left. She’d especially miss Abraham’s son. She adores him.”
No I don’t, I thought. I just pretended to like Golden Boy so he won’t know how much he scared me. “You should never let anyone know they scare you, because that would give them the advantage.” Whatever ‘advantage’ meant. Who’d said that? Grandma? But she said that a long, long time ago, before Mom and Dad met the man with the big white bus. Abraham. I was scared of him, too. Even more scared of him than I was of Golden Boy.
“Helen, I’m telling you we have to get away before something bad happens.”
“Oh, you silly. Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s just that wild imagination of yours, which is what I get for taking up with you.” When she laughed, it sounded like Christmas bells, but it wasn’t Christmas now. “You bluesmen, you always look on the dark side, but that’s why you’re so good, isn’t it? All those songs about doom and gloom. Even John Lee said you were right up there with the best.”
Listen to Daddy, I wanted to scream. Wherever Flagstaff was, I wanted to run away there, get away from Abraham and his Golden Boy. I didn’t want to do what they want me to do and I’d told my mother but she wouldn’t believe me and it was coming closer every day and Daddy was right and we had to get out before…
***
“I see you’re finally awake.”
The room was so bright I had to squint to see a dark blob against the glaring white. “How are you feeling?” A woman. Her voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t place her.
I closed my eyes against the glare. “Headache. Light doesn’t help.”
“You have a subdural hematoma. They had to drill a burr hole in your skull to relieve the pressure.”
I opened my eyes again. “Hole in my head?”
The dark blob leaned closer, came into focus. Black hair, amber eyes, faint scent of turpentine. Madeline.
“Just a small one, Lena. Don’t worry, your prognosis is good. Excellent, even, if you behave yourself. It’s a good thing you were at Jimmy’s. He scraped you off the floor and drove you straight to the ER, then called me.”
“Don’t remember.”
“Well, you were unconscious at the time.”
“Where is he?”
“In the cafeteria getting breakfast. He slept here last night. Night before, too, same as me. You had us scared for a while.” She sat in one of two plastic chairs next to my bedside. The painting smock she wore looked crumpled.
“I’ve been here two days?”
“Three. It’s Monday.”
“I was supposed to be someplace, I think.”
I tried to sit up, but the IVs attached to my arms made it too complicated, so I lay back down. At least my eyes worked better. What I had first experienced as a surrounding whiteness turned out to be pale peach walls lit by a high-wattage overhead light. A framed print hung on the wall next to the bathroom. Almost Disneyesque, it portrayed three deer standing in a yellow-tinted forest glade. Papa deer, Mama deer, Baby deer. They shimmered and glowed so much they looked drenched in butter. Thomas Kincade. There was no escape from him.
Madeline noticed me staring at it. “Piece of crap, huh?”
Thomas Kincade. Why did he remind me of someone? I thought hard. Dolphins, for some reason. And a mermaid. Then I remembered Ali’s uncle walking past the art galleries on Main Street.
Ali.
“I need to see someone.” Despite the IVs, I struggled to a sitting position.
Madeline pushed me back down.
“Lie still, Sweetie. You’ll have to put up with this for a couple more days to make sure you don’t develop an infection. Then you’re going home with me. At least you’ll be surrounded by better art.”
I looked around the room, noticed the bathroom, the lack of a neighboring bed. “I can’t afford a private room for five days.”
“You didn’t start off in one, but all the screaming kept waking your roommate up.”
“I was screaming?”
“Something about a gold boy and a white bus. Anyway, don’t worry about the cost. Turns out you’ve got great hospitalization insurance.”
“That must have been Jimmy. He takes care of the business side of things.”
“He’s…Speak of the devil, here he comes.” But she was smiling as Jimmy came through the door and took the seat next to her.
“Look who’s awake,” he said.
“I need to see Ali. And Juliana. I made an appointment.”
“You’re three days late. When you didn’t show at Juliana’s house Wednesday, she called and left a message on the office phone. I got back to her and told her what happened. Ali wants to see you, but I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Oh, and here’s some advice. Don’t look in the mirror.”
“Here’s some advice for you, buddy. Don’t tell me what not to do.” There had to be a mirror in the bathroom, so I struggled up again. This time it was Jimmy who pushed me back down. “Vanity, thy name is Lena. If you really have to know, your face is the size and color of a pumpkin and just as scary. You’ve got an even bigger bald spot on the back of your head than before, not that it matters. You’re supposed to be resting, not fussing about your looks.”
He didn’t understand. “I need to get back on my feet and take care of business.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Madeline interjected. “Jimmy, explain to her what a subdural hematoma is. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
“Lena doesn’t listen to anyone,” he growled, then proceeded to tell me that Monster Woman’s blow to my head caused bleeding in my brain, blah, blah, blah, and the consequences could have been life-threatening, blah, blah, blah, especially since I’d ignored my first doctor’s orders and continued running around town, blah, blah, blah, and all that movement resulted in complications, blah, blah, blah, and I was old enough to know better, and blah, blah, blah…
“Cut the lecture,” I snapped. “It’s making my head hurt.”
“Blame it on me, why don’t you?”
“Would you two stop bickering?” This, from Madeline. “You sound like some old married couple.”
That shut us up.
With a smile of triumph, she continued. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Lena. The minute your doctors discharge you, you’re coming home with me, and you’ll stay in bed until I say you can get up. We don’t need any more emergency trips back to the hospital, now, do we?”
Annoyed by her hospital-ese use of the royal “we,” I pointed out the flaw in her plan. “No, we don’t. But if something happens, we don’t need to be way out there in the Boonies, do we? We’ll be better off if we stay right here in Scottsdale where we’ll be right down the street from a hospital.”
“There’s a perfectly good hospital right down the road from my studio. Florence General. Excellent ratings. Jimmy checked it out.”
Jimmy added his own unwelcome opinion to the mix. “Furthermore, if you’re out there in the Boonies, as you so delicately call the Florence area, you won’t be so quick to hop in your Jeep and go back to work. And just to make sure, I’m keeping your Jeep at my place. You won’t get the keys back until the doctor clears you to drive.”
“That’s car theft. Now just you listen to me, I’m going to…”
The nurse picked that moment to come in, carrying a hypodermic on a tray.
I didn’t like the looks of it. “What’s that?”
“It’s our sleepy-bye shot,” she said, and jabbed me.
Before I could protest, we went sleepy-bye.
Chapter Thirty-two
The clouds were pretty, the desert was pretty, but other than sitting around admiring all the prettiness, there was nothing to do at Madeline’s. I had been cooped up in her two-story studio for almost a week, bored out of my mind. My Jeep was at Jimmy’s, along with my cell phone and laptop, yet Madeline—overpro
tective to a fault—wouldn’t let me cook, clean, or even read, declaring that given my fragile condition, reading might give me a headache. As for entertainment, forget it. Madeline didn’t own a television, and as for music, she was into New Age Ambient, better known as “mood music.” She played it over the studio’s sound system until I threatened to one day hunt Yanni down and set fire to his piano. Phoning anyone was out, too, because Madeline had no landline and kept her cell phone in her handbag. The only thing left to do was stare out the window and watch the wind move dust around.
Once, in a seemingly lenient mood, she allowed me to sit in on one of the art classes she conducted in her downstairs studio, but as it turned out, she correctly guessed it would bore me so much I’d go back upstairs and stare out the window some more. Now that the pain from my sore head had diminished, I was restless but had no outlet for it.
Madeline’s converted barn/home/studio sat on an unpopulated area off SR-79. Her nearest neighbors to the east consisted of several thousand white-faced cattle; to the west, thousands of acres of assorted cacti; to the north, the Superstition Mountains. The only hint of human habitation I could see from the upstairs window was the dome-shaped top of a water tower at the Arizona State Prison complex two miles south.
Not much action there, either.
Every now and then a jackrabbit would hop by, sometimes a coyote. Then there were the buzzards. I don’t have anything against buzzards—they keep the desert clean—but they made for depressing viewing. They only swooped down when something was dead or about to be dead, which brought back memories of the times they’d dropped in on me. Once, when I was a runaway child; the other, when a murderer tried to add me to his list of victims.
I was safe now.
And bored out of my sore skull.
Knowing that painting always put Madeline in a good mood, I clumped down the stairs and threw myself on my imprisoner’s mercy. “If I don’t get some exercise I’m going to go nuts. You want that on your conscience?”
She stood at her easel, adding finishing touches to whatever-it-was, a brown blob sporting a purple halo. It looked like something Mark Rothko might have painted if he’d been half-blind and shooting heroin.
