Grandma goes back to turning cards over, but much slower now, and I can almost hear her thinking. She keeps her eyes on the cards. She’s piled up a whole lot of red cards on black cards when she finally says, “It’s weird that you say that. I’ve been thinking hard about that same thing, Richard. Your mother would kill me, I know it. But I—well, I’ve been considering.”
My heart goes real still in my chest. “So, you do know?”
She puts down another card: black four on red five. “I do. I always have. Or at least I’m pretty damn sure.” She looks up at me, and her black-smudged eyes are, I don’t know exactly, full of pissed-off sadness. “Your mom doesn’t know I know. Oh, she suspects, and once or twice I told her she was crazy for not getting the child support she’s entitled to, for not nailing the guy’s skin to a tree and getting some help, for Christ sake. But not her. No. She struggled to take care of you and herself, and I swear sometimes you two damn near starved. But never once did she disturb that man’s cozy little oh-so-happy life.”
I fold my hands on my lap so they’ll stop shaking. “So, he has a happy life?”
She shrugs and starts up with the cards again. Red three on black four. “How the hell do I know? Who the hell really knows anything about anybody’s life?” She slaps the ace of hearts up above the rows of cards. “All right. I’ll admit that I looked the guy up online a couple times and the pictures looked happy. But whose don’t?”
“So, does he still live around here?”
She adds the two of hearts to the ace and then takes the red three she just put on the black four and moves it up there, too. Her game is going really well. “Nope. Not anymore. He moved away the summer before you were born. Convenient, huh?”
This sort of feels like an arrow in my chest. “Did he know? That I was coming? That why he left?”
She shakes her head. “Aha—got you, ace of clubs!” She puts that one up above the other cards. Damned if she isn’t going to win this game. “I very much doubt it. Close-mouthed girl like your mom, what do you think?”
I think that never in a million years would my mom have told the guy if she thought he didn’t want her and the baby, if he didn’t have room in his life for us. Never in a billion years. “Yeah. He didn’t know. Right. Not his fault, I guess.”
She slams a palm down on the table. “Not his fault? Baloney. She was sixteen, Richard, when she got knocked up. Sixteen years old, quiet, shy, gentle as a lamb. And he was one of her teachers at Hudson High School. A married man. English teacher. Read poems to her, put stars in her eyes. I remember how she looked all that winter. Like she was floating in the clouds. New books in her backpack every day. All she talked about, day and night, was poetry and ‘she walks in beauty like the night’ and all of that crap. Oh, yeah, that man was some teacher. He certainly did educate that child, didn’t he? And, oopsie, put a bun in her belly, free of charge. And that’s not his fault? Charm the kid by spouting verse and then stick it to her? God al-fucking-mighty.” She stands up and the cards fly all over the bed, some slipping to the floor. She’s shaking. “And now he’s a big shot down in Westchester. School superintendent, some shit like that. Bastard.” She turns and walks out of the room.
I lean back on the pillows and think. I mean, I don’t feel anything, not really, but my head’s all super-clear and I can think. Think hard. My mom is going to be real lonely, I figure, sometime soon. And she’s going to need all kinds of help. Money, that’s always a help. I mean, it’s not everything, not even half of what she deserves. But it’s a help. When Grandma comes back in, carrying my supper tray, I sit up and say, “Listen, Grandma. You can do it. You can get yourself a lawyer and you can just ask: hey, could we find this guy and make him pay up? Little DNA test, whatever. And if it’s him, whammo. I mean, like, eighteen years of back child support, from a guy with a good job, that’s a whole lot, right? That would set Mom up for life. Could you do that?”
She puts the tray down. “Oh, Richard, I don’t know. She would be so angry.”
I reach over and grab Grandma’s hand. “For a while, maybe, she’d be pissed, yeah. But I’m giving you my permission, all right? I mean, I have some say in all of this. And I want to think she’ll be okay. Okay? I mean, that’s real, real important to me. I got to think she’ll be okay.” I can feel that my voice is getting shaky and I can see that she’s about to bawl, too. “Just do it, okay?”
She pulls the silver cover off the food. “God, is this what they call food?” She picks up a fork and takes a taste of the meat. “Lord.” She takes another bite. Then she sets the fork down, real gentle. She squeezes my hand. “I’ll think about it, Richie. But no promises. I’ll ponder, on my own. It’s not like she likes me all that much right now, right? Like she isn’t mad at me all the time anyhow. But don’t bug me anymore. Do not say one more word about it. Anyhoo . . .” she tosses her hair back and laughs. I can tell it’s costing her something, that laugh, but she’s a tough lady. You got to give that to the women in my family: they are both hugely tough in their different ways. Not so different, maybe, after all.
“Deal,” I say. “Thanks.”
She waves a hand in the air, dismissing the whole subject. She hands me a cup of coffee and digs into the potatoes. “What? Don’t make that face,” she says. “Sure, the food stinks, but it’s free. I don’t turn down free food, no way.” There’s a few minutes of quiet while I sip and she chews. Then she looks at me and her eyes are shiny and sort of sparkly, and I can see that something wicked and entertaining is about to happen. “And, Richard, here’s something else I’ve been thinking about, much more fun. I had a brainstorm. Well, the idea came from that smart little Miss Sylvie, really. Something she came up with while I was getting her back into bed. She’s a pisser, that one. You want to hear it?”
I smile. “Sure. What’s Sylvie’s idea?”
Grandma grins like a kid. “Well, Sylvie thought that maybe I could, let us say, distract her father for a while this evening. She says that he needs a drink, goes out almost every evening for a bit once she’s asleep. She thinks that I might ask to accompany the man, might keep him out a wee bit longer than usual. So that you two can have, let us say, some free time together? And some privacy?” She winks. “What do you think?”
I close my eyes. “What I think is that I have the best grandma on earth,” I say.
“Don’t I know it. Let’s just call it an early birthday gift, kiddo.”
13
I DECIDE TO TAKE a shower. I mean, personal hygiene is right up there in terms of studliness for women, right? Don’t want to offend. Women like their partners—this is the word the health teachers use, partners—to smell good, I’ve heard. They are, in fact, ridiculously picky about this sort of thing. Thus, a shower is in order. This is easier decided than done, however. Edward isn’t on duty, and there really isn’t anyone else I can ask for help. Nobody showers at night, and any nurse I ask to help is going to wonder why I’m so hot for cleanliness at this precise moment. It’s a dilemma. I am not going to resort to Grandma, and anyway, she’s off down the hall, chatting up Sylvie’s father, I assume, making friends. Probably flirting like hell, it occurs to me. She’s not so much older than him and she’s still kind of a looker—I mean, for a grandma. That is so weird and disturbing a thought that I go back to working on how to accomplish a shower.
What the hell, I think. I can do it myself. I mean, a man has to do what a man has to do, right? I roll around the room, gathering up towel, clean T-shirt and sweatpants, bar of soap. I pile all of that stuff on my lap and roll off down the hall to the shower room. At the door, I have my first problem: the door isn’t automatic. I mean, you have to pull it open. This is okay when a nurse like Edward is in charge; he just throws your chair into reverse, reaches behind to open the door and hauls you in backward. Easy as pie.
Now it’s like some bizarre trick problem in physics. A high school course I passed with a spectacular and hard-fought D, I must report, due entirely to the tutor I h
ad in the NYC hospital. Luckily, the hall is quiet, people settled down, supper long over, most visitors gone home. From the chair, I can pull on the handle and get the door to open partway, but then I can’t roll in. If I stand up and get behind the chair, I can hold on to the handles and push, but can’t reach the door handle. It is totally crazy that this is so difficult. I know there’s a way. There’s got to be a way. So what I decide to do is this: I stand up in front of the chair and get the door partly open. Then I try to pull the chair behind me, wedging it into the doorway. This does not go well. Screw it, I decide. I push the chair out of the doorway, letting the door swing shut behind me. I grab my stuff from the chair, abandon it and begin to shuffle, arms full, toward the door. I have got to say that I now absolutely hate this door. I loathe it to its heavy wooden core. Like this one stupid door is the barrier to losing my virginity and achieving manhood. Like it’s some quest thing, a challenge issued by the king in a story, the impossible thing the hero has to do in order to get the fair maiden to fall into his arms. Okay. If I’m the frigging hero, there’s got to be a way, and I haven’t got all night. Fine. I kind of talk to myself, nice and calm: Just pull the door open, Richard, and step inside. Once in the relative privacy of the shower room, doesn’t matter if you have to crawl. Just do it, man.
But it is not easy. I keep dropping something, and bending over makes my head spin, and the little paper-wrapped bar of soap slithers off down the hallway. I’m ready to cry. Some hero.
“Do you need help, Richard?” The voice is right behind me.
I close my eyes and rest against the door frame. It’s Br’er Bertrand. Wouldn’t you just know it would be him? “No, thanks,” I say. “I got it.”
The man’s hand pokes my arm.
I open my eyes and he’s holding the bar of soap. If I let go of the door frame to take hold of it, I’ll slip to the floor, I know it. So I just sort of stare at the bar of soap, Ivory, in its little white wrapper. I mean, it’s a goddamn bar of Ivory, man, that’s all it is. And yet grabbing it is an unachievable goal. I sigh. “Well, actually. If you could just open the door and push the chair inside, that would be great. Just toss the soap on the seat.”
He snorts. “Sit down, Richard. In the chair. I will take you and your things in there.” He puts his fat fingers on my elbow and holds on while I sit down. Once I’m seated, he piles my clothes and the soap on my lap. He swings the chair around, pulls the door open, holds it propped on his hip and drags me through. He’s not, it seems, entirely unfamiliar with wheelchair maneuvers. “Although,” he’s muttering, “I can’t really see why you need a shower at eight o’clock in the evening, anyway.”
We’re inside the shower room, all white-tiled and smelling like bleach. I wave a hand. “Got a hot date, Br’er.”
His pink face gets pinker.
I smile, my sweetest smile. “Not really, man. Really”— I lean forward and speak in a whisper—“I had an accident. Little, um, leakage. You know—shit happens. Got to clean up.”
He pulls back and his nostrils twitch, like he really can smell leakage. “Surely one of the nurses—”
“They’re so busy. I don’t want to bother them. You understand—independence is important to adolescents. I’m sure you’ve read that in one of your counseling books, right?”
He grits his teeth and his orange hair seems to straighten up. “Fine. Let’s give the nurses a break. I’ll be glad to help.” He lifts the clean clothes and towel from my lap and puts them on a plastic chair. He takes the soap, unwraps it, and steps into the big shower stall and turns on the water. “Now, shall I help you get out of those clothes?”
His face is now as red as a cherry. I cannot, I just cannot stand the thought of that man’s hot dog fingers on my skin. “Nah,” I say. I pull off my T-shirt. “I mean, think about it, bro. You guys”—I wave at his dog collar—“you got a bit of trouble going on, as I understand it, with, you know, boys.” I leer at him and wink. “Best for your reputation if you aren’t found in here, you know, rubbing soap on a seventeen-year-old.” I start to pull down my sweatpants. “Whew, it is getting steamy in here, isn’t it?”
The color runs out of his face and it looks all sweaty. Or maybe it really is the steam. He says, “I have other patients to minister to, Richard. There’s a call button if you need help.” And he books on out the door.
And I’m laughing so hard that, somehow, I get a burst of energy and I manage to stand in the shower, leaning on the wall, with no problems. I lather up my own parts, just like I described to him, and when I’m doing that I think of Sylvie and I have to rinse off quick so I don’t blow my wad too soon. And when I’m drying off, I get really, really nervous and shaky and have to sit on a chair to pull on my clean clothes. And then I got to face that fucking door again, but this time it should be easier because it opens out. So I’m hanging on to the wheelchair handles and backing up, pushing the door open with my butt, when it swings open so fast that I nearly fall backward. And end up butt to butt with Jeannette, who is steering another wheelchair into the doorway. And in that chair, like a little princess, is Sylvie, with her clothes and bar of soap and shampoo and lotion and all sorts of girly stuff piled on her lap.
And there’s one of those interesting awkward moments—I once heard one of my tutors call them “fraught” —when Sylvie and I shuffle around and sort ourselves out and don’t make eye contact.
Jeannette rolls her eyes, gives me a fast once-over look and says, “Fancy meeting you here, young Richard.” She squints at both Sylvie and me. “Why are you two both so into cleanliness this evening?”
And Sylvie, of course, recovers before me and she smiles like the sweetest angel on earth. “Because it’s next to godliness, of course.”
Jeannette humphs and shakes her head. “I know nothing about nothing, that’s what. I just work here. Come on, girl.”
“Guess what, Richie?” Sylvie says, as Jeannette is pulling her through the door. “It’s the cutest thing. Your grandma and my dad went out together. Like, they were best friends. So cute!”
I hear Jeannette grunt. “Yeah, adorable.” Then the door swings shut behind them. I swing myself into my chair and roll myself back into my room. I brush my teeth over the sink and rinse my mouth from the little minibottle of Listerine that’s sitting there. And I’m pretty proud of myself, actually. I did it. I’m clean—in fact, I smell like a two-year-old, all Ivory fresh. I’m ready.
And then I sit there, for, like, ever, not knowing when I’m supposed to go to Sylvie’s room and getting more and more scared. Finally, the phone rings and I grab it.
“Hey, sweetie,” my mom says. “You putting up with Grandma okay?”
I swallow hard. “Hey,” I say. “You sound a little better, Mom. And yeah, Grandma’s been great.”
Her voice is just a bit skeptical. “I’m sure she is. So, what are you doing this evening?”
I think about everything I could tell her. But, really, there’s nothing I can tell her, right? I mean, nothing a mother needs to know. And I keep thinking that Sylvie’s calling, trying to reach me and getting pissed that she can’t and that she’s getting ready to call the whole thing off. So I’m having a hard time making conversation here. “Nada. Same old, same old.”
“Huh. What’s Grandma doing?”
“Same. Nada. Sitting around. Watching TV. Playing cards.” My eye starts twitching, like it always does— always has—when I lie to my mom. Remain calm, I tell myself, she can’t see you, Richard. You’re doing fine.
There’s a silence long enough to make me suspect that by some telepathic mother sense, she can see my jumping eye. Then she says, “Right. Can I talk to my mother, Richard? Put her on, okay?”
“Um. She’s not here. She went downstairs to get me a root beer. And some ice cream. We’re going to make floats. I’ve decided to eat a little bit again.” Maybe that will distract her. It better, because my eyelid is about to go into permanent spasm.
Another silence. “Really? You�
��re eating? Oh, sweetie. That’s great.”
Her voice is so happy that I feel like the worst human being on earth. But then I realize that that is the absolute truth and I babble on. “Yeah. Started to get a little hungry and thought, what the hey, let’s gas up the old engine.” That sounds so stupid that now I feel like the dumbest human being on earth.
“Hungry? You’re actually hungry? Oh, Richie, that’s wonderful.”
She’s, like, starting to cry, she’s so pleased. Before I have to fall to my knees and confess everything, I say, “Listen, Ma, I’ll have Grandma call when she gets back. Okay?”
“Sure, okay. I love you, baby.”
“Love you, too.” I go to put down the phone and it slides out of my hand, my palm is so sweaty. It falls off the bed to the floor and I have to fish it up, holding on to the cord. Good thing hospital phones aren’t cordless or I’d be crawling under my bed on my belly like the reptile I am. Two seconds after I get the thing back in its cradle, the phone rings again. I’m afraid to pick it up, but I have to.
“Have I been jilted?” Sylvie says. “Has that little Hudson High ho called and made you a better offer?”
“No, no. I just—”
She laughs, a wicked little laugh. “Just get your ass over here, Richard. And I mean now.”
***
And so it happens. Before my eighteenth birthday, even, I, Richard Casey, become a man. And I’ll tell you this right now—I’m not giving details. Not the physical stuff, anyway. This is not some locker room conquest story. This is a love story.
And I will swear on every star in the sky and every fish in the river that this was the sweetest event of my life.
A few highlights: Sylvie’s room is dark, except for the big old moon outside her window and—how she got hold of these, I don’t know—two little candles lit on her bed table. As soon as I roll into the room, I smell nothing but sweetness, like roses and honeysuckle and stuff, in the air and on her skin. I shut her door behind me and push my wheelchair up against it, closest thing to a lock in the whole place. And, for once, I have no trouble walking. Like my feet have wings. (I realize that this part gets sappy—deal with it.) I pull the curtains shut around the bed and we’re inside our own little cave. And I have no trouble whatsoever slipping off my clothes and climbing into Sylvie’s bed.
Somebody Up There Hates You Page 11
