16 Things I Thought Were True

by Janet Gurtler

  We’re both quiet. I can’t look up. I don’t want him to know the whole truth. I don’t want anyone to know.

  “Some friend,” Adam says. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me,” I say softly and go after another surface with my cloth.

  “Maybe you do. Need people, I mean,” he says softly.

  I look him in the eye then. “Every person I know has seen me in my underwear.”

  “I’m sure that’s not such a bad thing,” he says gently, as if he’s trying to tease me.

  “Morgan?”

  I turn to see Amy standing in the door of the gift shop. She has on a pair of fingerless gloves and a long-sleeve striped shirt under her Tinkerpark T-shirt. I have an urge to run over and hug her for ending this conversation. “Are you two talking about your video?”

  “Not anymore,” I say quickly.

  Adam smiles. “Hey, Amy.”

  “Hi!” She grins. “Are you being nice to me now?”

  “Of course he is,” I say. “Adam was telling me how bad he felt about yelling at you.” I have the secret knowledge now that he’s not as mean as he pretends to be.

  He narrows his eyes but doesn’t bust me.

  “I was hoping we could be friends.” Amy totally misses the nonverbal conversation between Adam and me. “I feel really bad about eating that popcorn. Maybe we could hang out sometime? If you want? If you’re not still mad?” She glances at me and then back at Adam. “All three of us!” Amy takes a breath. “So did you want to? Hang out, I mean?”

  “Adam has a girlfriend, Amy,” I say to spare her feelings.

  I glance at Adam, and his cheeks are red.

  “He does? I mean, you do?” She tilts her head and studies him. “I didn’t mean it like a date. I’m over that. I never thought tiny women and tall men belonged together. It looks awkward. And I hate heels.” She turns to me. “Where did you take off to yesterday? You were in such a hurry and then both of you disappeared. I was worried, but no one knew anything.” She pauses for a teeny second to breathe.

  “Everything’s fine,” I tell her to cut her babbling short. “And Adam’s not mad.”

  The look on his face makes me laugh out loud—like he’s constipated or something. It’s obvious he’s trying not to get angry, and for that I give him silent props. I feel closer to him than I’ve felt to anyone in a while. He was so great handling the emergency with my mom.

  Adam glances at his watch. “You should probably go start your shift. I have to get back to the office. Theresa’s going to kill me.”

  “I know.” Amy waves and wanders back toward the snack shop.

  “Wow,” Adam says. “I think she just broke up with me.”

  I laugh. “Sorry to interfere. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Yeah. Way to undermine my authority.” He laughs though. He doesn’t sound so uptight anymore. I’m grateful to Amy for spinning in and lightening the moment with her whirlwind of energy.

  “She’s harmless,” I say.

  “A little. But it might be better if she came with a mute button.” He glances at his watch again and rolls his shoulders back. “Okay. I really should get to the office.” His cheeks turn slightly pink. “I wanted to make sure, you know, your mom is okay.” He glances around the gift shop, avoiding my eyes.

  “Thanks.”

  “And to let you know I’m stalking you on Twitter.”

  My turn for my cheeks to warm up. And then he grins and walks out, whistling to himself. It’s very off-key. And it’s a Taylor Swift song. I grin, but the notes disappear as the sounds of the amusement park opening up for the day swallow them up.

  I’m tempted to check my Twitter feed, but I feel like I owe it to Adam not to since I’m technically now on duty. I replay our conversation in my head, and that’s enough to get me past the urge.

  ***

  A steady flow of customers keeps me busy for the next hour, and when there’s a lull, I take a moment to sit on the stool behind the cash register to catch my breath. When I look up at a ruckus by the door, Adam is rushing inside and Theresa is with him.

  I jump off the stool. Judging by the looks on their faces, I’m in trouble. “I just finished ringing through a bunch of customers. I’m going to fill up the gum machine in a sec,” I say.

  “Your brother called the office,” Adam says, cutting me off. “Jake. There was a cancellation at the hospital and they’re doing your mom’s angiogram in an hour and a half. Your brother wants you to get right there.”

  Theresa is already behind the counter, and she pats my arm as she slides past me. “Go on,” she says.

  I don’t move. I blink, trying to concentrate. I don’t have a car. The bus will take at least an hour to get back to town and then I’ll have to transfer to the hospital. I don’t know what to do.

  “Come on,” Adam says. He’s standing on the other side of the counter. “I’m taking you. Theresa’s lending me her car.”

  My hands start to shake. Theresa puts her hand on my back and gently pushes me toward the exit. A customer walks in the store then, an old woman wearing a layered dress and an orange cardigan. Adam grabs my hand as I come around the counter and pulls me along, out of the gift shop.

  “I’ll get you there as fast as I can. You got this, Morgan. You can handle it.”

  chapter five

  The elevator door opens and I stride through the now-familiar hospital corridor toward my mom’s room. Josh is standing outside in the hallway, stroking his mustache between two fingers.

  “You made it here fast,” he says.

  “Adam broke some speed limits.”

  “Is he here?” The ways Josh says it, he almost sounds hopeful, as if he wants Adam to explain things or take control.

  “No, he was borrowing Theresa’s car and had to get back to the park.” Only his calm reassurances on the way over kept me from freaking out. “What’s wrong?” I ask Josh. “Why’re you out here?”

  A nurse hurries past us with a stack of towels. “Mom wanted to be alone for a minute. Jake’s in the chapel.” He stands up straighter, stretches his arms into the air. “Mom asked for you to go see her as soon as you got here.” He glances at the clock in the middle of the stark white wall across from him.

  Mom wanted to be alone? Jake’s in the chapel? This has “not normal” stamped on it on so many levels. I’m itching to run inside to her, but Josh looks absolutely miserable, so I put my hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “I suck at this. I freaking hate hospitals,” he says. He brushes my hand off. “Go,” he says.

  “It’s okay, Josh,” I say, shuffling my feet, wishing I knew what to say to help him. “Lots of people aren’t good at hospitals.”

  “Go,” he says again, so I turn and go inside Mom’s room.

  One of the old men is gone, but the man with gas is still there. He’s sleeping. Mom’s privacy curtain isn’t pulled around the bed. The bed is raised so that she’s almost sitting up. She’s staring into space and looks pale and fragile under the baby-blue hospital bedding. It would wash out anyone, but without her makeup on, she looks especially vulnerable. When I approach her bed, she glances at me, the corners of her mouth turn up, and her eyes brighten. She hasn’t looked at me like that in a while.

  “You made it,” she says.

  “Of course. You’re my favorite mom.” I step beside the bed and take her hand. It’s seems lighter and bonier.

  “I’m your only mom,” she says and then sighs.

  I stare down at her and, for a fleeting moment, get the sensation that our roles have been temporarily switched. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching body-switching movies. They freak me out. This does too.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she asks and turns toward the window. The blind is pulled down. The redbrick wall is hidden f
rom sight.

  “No. You’re still number one.”

  She glances toward the door. “They’re coming to get me soon. I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Mom.” I squeeze her hand. “You’re going to be fine. Okay? You’ll have plenty of time after the surgery to do whatever you want. Except smoke.” The old man snores loudly, which I prefer to farting. “The angiogram will find it if something’s wrong, and they’ll get you all fixed up.”

  “I have a bad feeling. A dream.”

  “Mom…” I start to say.

  She takes her hand from mine and waves her fingers at me in the air. “Let me talk. It’s not about the dream.”

  I press my lips shut.

  “I’m sorry.” She blinks fast. Her eyes are bright and serious, and I see fear in them. She turns back to the blinds.

  “The boys need you. They’re going to rely on you to pull the family together. That’s what women do. But first, you need to accept yourself for who you are.” She sounds as if a death warrant in her name has already been written.

  “Mom. You’re not going to die. You’re coming home in a few days. You’re just going to have to make some changes to your lifestyle, that’s all.”

  She doesn’t answer me. She just sighs dramatically with her head turned toward the window.

  “You need to know who you are first. I know that now. I wanted to protect you, Morgan.” She sniffles. “That’s why I never told you about your dad.”

  I look around and outside the door, see Josh still lingering around in the hallway. He’s not looking inside. Tears plop down my cheeks. They roll one after another, after another. I want to keep my emotions under control, shoved down, but I can’t. “Maybe you wanted to protect yourself,” I say softly, knowing it’s wrong to do this to her now. “That’s why you never told me.”

  “You have no idea what it was like,” she whimpers.

  “So tell me,” I plead. I want to know why she always made me feel horrible for wanting to know who my dad was.

  There’s a long pause, and she sniffles and gulps in air. Guilt pumps around my body, traveling through my veins. I open my mouth to apologize.

  “The answers you might be looking for…who he is…”

  I stop breathing. My heart pounds. The machines in the room whir and beep. The old man snorts and mumbles in his sleep. I push off the bed, get to my feet, stumbling a little as if I’m dizzy from low blood sugar or something. I fainted once in the hallway at school when I had too many Tylenol for cramps. It felt like this.

  I reach out and touch the end of the bed to steady myself. “What?” I can’t think of anything else to say, so I walk to the closed window and stand in front of it, my arms crossed, my back to her.

  “I don’t want to go to my grave knowing you never got a chance to find the truth. I’d feel guilty the rest of my life. Well—the rest of my death, I suppose.” She attempts a laugh, but it fades as soon as it leaves her mouth. “I’d have to hang around the hospital as a ghost or something, unable to move on to the light.”

  There’s a clatter from the hallway. Sounds like someone dropped a bedpan. I don’t bother to look.

  “Tell me,” I whisper.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  My hands shake and I make fists at my side. I limp to the chair that’s at the end of her bed and sit. Anger mashes with numbness. It feels cold.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I raise my head to look at her. She’s staring at me and she clears her throat. I’d given up knowing long ago. I look away and study the picture on the wall above the bed. A cottage scene. Pastels. Boring. Tranquil. Exactly opposite to what’s going on inside me. It’s almost worse that she’s only telling me because she thinks she’s going to die. But I can’t provoke her now. I have to keep her calm before surgery.

  “You’re not allowed to die to get out of this,” I tell her. “You’re not allowed to. We’ll talk about this later.”

  She will have a later, and I’ll save my anger for then. She’s not allowed to die.

  There’s noise outside the room, and then a couple of nurses enter the room. One waves her hand in a shooing motion, telling me to get out of the way. She’s young. Blond. Probably in her twenties. Pretty.

  “You must be the daughter. Good. You made it. Now off you go. We’re prepping her for her surgery. Go wait with Josh.” I don’t miss that the nurse knows my brother by name. She must like mustaches. The other nurse, an older one, starts unplugging and moving things around. It’s a dance they’ve done a thousand times before with a thousand different patients.

  “Wait,” I say, and something in my voice must be extra desperate because both nurses pause. I step around the young nurse and lean forward so my mom’s face is in line with mine. I take a deep breath. “I love you, Mom,” I whisper, and honestly I don’t remember the last time I told her that.

  She smiles, and the fine wrinkles around her mouth crease up even though I know she secretly gets Botox injections when she can afford to. Thank you, she mouths and then closes her eyes. “If you want the truth. Look at home. In my jewelry box. The answers are there if you want them.”

  The nurses are instantly moving again. I stand straight and move against the wall, out of the way, and before I know it, they’re out the door, wheeling my mom down the hallway. There’s so much in my head, and I can’t process any of it right now.

  “Take care of my mom,” I whisper. I’m not sure who I’m talking to, but I think it might be God again. I hope He still listens, even if we haven’t talked this much in forever.

  The old man sighs in his sleep and then farts loudly again. I roll my eyes at him and leave the room. Josh is still standing in the hallway, staring off where Mom disappeared to. He calls my name, but I ignore him and keep going. I walk until I’m outside and then march straight to a cab waiting by the hospital exit. I give him our home address and then lean back against the seat.

  Is this what I want? To find the guy who walked away from me? Do I want to rip off the scabs to those wounds? I feel fear throb inside me. What if I am left all alone? What if I need him? Will he even be willing to see me? Can I handle it if he won’t?

  Suddenly, I’m not sure I’m ready to find out who he is after all.

  chapter six

  Josh is leaning against the wall of the hospital room. He looks as if he’s been punched in the stomach. Jake is sitting, but his eyes are closed. I’m standing beside my mom and staring down at her, memories swirling around my brain—times I was in bed sick, when she’d bring me soup and ginger ale.

  The doctor spoke to us while Mom was in recovery, assuring us she’d be out of the hospital shortly, within a day or two, and back to her regular routine in a week or so. “She has to make some changes, but she should be fine,” she says. They found an artery with 90 percent blockage and put a stent in.

  The nurses brought her back to the room after they monitored her heart and blood pressure in the recovery room and removed her catheter tube. They told us her puncture site has been dressed and the bleeding stopped. My stomach rolled, but I thought of Adam and how he’d explain it in a way I would understand.

  Her eyes flutter and then open and focus in on me first.

  “Hey. What do you know, you’re alive,” I say softly and then smile.

  Jake jumps to his feet and whacks me on the back of the head. Luckily he whacks me lightly.

  “Funny, Morgan,” she croaks. “Always funny.” Her voice is raspy and low. She’d make a good late night DJ on one of those call-in shows for lonely people, the way she sounds.

  “How do you feel, Mom?” Jake asks, putting a hand on her forehead as if she’s a child with a fever.

  “Good. I mean…okay.” She peers over at Josh. He straightens up, and his lips turn up in a shaky smile. “Hey, Mom,” he says.

  She squints, peering d
eeply at him. “I have a stent in my heart,” she tells him. He pushes himself off the wall and moves closer.

  She gazes at each of us and then down at her chest. “I had to stay awake. I guess I fell asleep after. I don’t remember.”

  Jake takes his hand away from her forehead. “We know, Mom. It’s all good. That stent will keep you going for a long time, like the Energizer Bunny.”

  “You okay, Josh?” she asks.

  He nods but looks far from okay. He pulls on a corner of his mustache. Everything is droopy and lacks his usual swagger.

  “I’m fine, Mom. This is about you.”

  “You should sit,” I tell him and point at the chair.

  Without argument, he pulls it up to the side of the bed and sits.

  “The good news is I’m going to make it.” Mom glances at me. “At least I hope it’s good news.” Her thoughts are almost visible as they bounce around her head. I hear her regret.

  “You boys would have a hard time without me.” She nods at me. “You too, Morgan?”

  “Of course.”

  Jake frowns at me as if I’ve done something wrong.

  She turns to Josh. “Would you mind going to see if I can get some ice to chew on?”

  He nods and stands. “Sure.” He hurries out of the hospital room as if he’s grateful to have something to do.

  “Poor Josh,” she says when he’s out the door. “This is hard for him. He doesn’t like hospitals. You never know how you’re going to react to stuff like this.” She smiles. “Like you, Jake. You’re handling this so well. I always said still waters run deeper.”

  He stares out after his twin. “Josh doesn’t like the smells and…”

  “The sick people?” I add.

  “It’s okay. George, your dad, is the same way,” she says to Jake. “He almost fainted when I gave birth.” Mom looks right at him. “Why don’t you go help Josh? Give me a minute with your sister.”