Wheels (Tabor Heights Year Two)

by Michelle Levigne

  When he turned back from getting his order and went to the door, Chuck waved one of those sheets at him and headed for the car, parked across the street.

  "So, what's that for?" he demanded as he slid into his seat in the car. He took a long pull of the espresso triple shot mocha while he waited for Chuck to climb in on the driver's side.

  "Bunch of do-gooders out terrorizing the town into making freak parking spots and building ramps for them." Chuck snatched up the iced coffee and chugged half of it in a few loud gulps. "But the good news is, where the guy in the chair is, Franky won't be far away."

  "And just how is that good news?" Simon glared as Chuck handed him the flyer. "I'm getting kind of sick of seeing this guy's face," he added, tapping the caricature of Tommy's smiling face at the bottom of the flyer.

  "He's doing a show tonight after the freaks and do-gooders finish up."

  "Uh huh. Is that so?" Simon allowed a smug smile before settling back to enjoy his drink in peace. It didn't do anything for the throbbing headache that had erupted through his brain in the last half hour, but he had learned to ignore pain. For a while, at least.

  *****

  By one, Natalie and Tommy had lost their companions, who had chosen to go down some of the side streets they passed. It was a rule that they could not go anywhere alone, and every group that had a disabled person in it had to have at least one able-bodied, and vice versa. Right that moment, they were alone. She wouldn't have minded, except that meant if she wanted voices to cover the sound of her increasingly labored breathing, she had to provide them herself, which would just be self-defeating. Tommy just wasn't as talkative as she would have thought he would be with a captive audience.

  By this time they had gone several miles west on Sackley, heading for the Falls, passing the Metroparks entrance where it crossed Sackley, and going uphill -- her arms were going to make her pay for that in the morning -- toward a small shopping center. At one of the entrances with a stoplight there was a small fast food restaurant. It didn't look like it was part of a chain. Natalie couldn't resist looking inside the long expanse of plate glass window as the two of them rolled past.

  The lunch crowd was gone and the dinner hour was still hours away. Tommy looked inside and grinned, that particular grin she knew by now meant mischief.

  "How about a break?" he asked, half-turning his chair in a smooth move she envied, but knew better than to try to imitate.

  "Which vertebrae?" She was proud to note that she didn't sound as breathless-sweaty-hot as she felt.

  "Hey, that's my line!" He scowled at her, but couldn't hold back the big, crooked grin that took over his face a moment later. He backed up and wheeled down the short sidewalk to the front door. "Come on, I'm buying," he said, reaching for the door handle.

  "That's a deal I can't pass up."

  Despite being so tired -- which didn't make sense on the surface, because she had spent the last hour sitting -- Natalie could see in about five seconds that this entryway was not designed with wheelchairs in mind. The outer door was relatively easy to manage, and Tommy held it open for her to wheel through. When she got into the little foyer between inner and outer door, she had to maneuver to pull the door open while backing up her wheelchair. She couldn't figure out at first how to hold it open while wheeling through the opening. If she sat there and held it for Tommy, he couldn't get past her in his wheelchair because the doorway and foyer were both too narrow. The worst part was that he just sat there, arms crossed, fighting a smirk while she fumbled and pushed and nudged the wheelchair sideways and back and forth, until she figured out how to hold the door open with her elbow while she pushed with both hands to get through. Her arms were going to be covered in bruises before the end of the day. Along with other parts of her anatomy.

  At least there were no witnesses to her struggle, other than Tommy. She seriously considered doing him some physical damage to keep his mouth shut.

  On the other hand, there were no witnesses, meaning no one whatsoever in the restaurant or passing on the street during the entire ten-minute battle of engineering and some slipshod application of elementary physics. It was like the entire town had suddenly decided to take a vacation or a nap, so that no one had to volunteer to help.

  Is this what handicapped people have to put up with all the time?

  Natalie remembered a friend who participated in an outdoor booksigning fair early in her publishing career. The bookstore hosting the signing chose the annual day of a historic tour of the town, guaranteeing lots of foot traffic. Tables sat on either side of the sidewalk that all the traffic was to pass down. Not a single person that entire hot day sold a book. Natalie's friend remarked that now she understood how the beggars downtown in her city felt, because the people who had to pass the bookstore either detoured into the street, or they picked up their pace and kept their gaze on the sidewalk, avoiding all eye contact with the hopeful authors trying to sell and sign their books.

  "They just want to have a fair shake, not handouts, not free rides they didn't do anything to deserve," Natalie murmured now. There was a difference between the people the Mission was trying to help, and the panhandlers and the scam artists who pretended to be destitute, and then got into Cadillacs at the end of the day and drove to their homes in the suburbs to watch satellite TV and eat fast food.

  "What's that?" Tommy asked, easily sliding past her, once she got out of the doorway.

  "Epiphany time."

  "Uh huh." He glanced over his shoulder at her, and for once he didn't look like he was coming up with a dozen witty comebacks. "Next step." With a tip of his head, he led the way to the counter.

  Naturally, this fast food restaurant had a high counter for placing orders. Natalie wondered if they had a sign prohibiting anyone under four feet tall from patronizing their business. Tommy was tall in his wheelchair, and the top of the counter hit him just about at the bridge of his nose. He pushed up on his locked wheels to raise himself a few inches taller. Natalie wheeled up behind him and to the right, reasoning maybe whoever came to the counter would see her better if she was set back a little distance from it.

  "Yo, anybody there? We be hungry out here!"

  Natalie muffled a squeak of surprise. True, she had seen Tommy display a lot of attitude in the last few days, but always appropriate to the situation. This belligerence was totally out of character for him. Unless…

  A young man with the beginnings of a beard, a paper cap on his thick black curls, and a light brown uniform shirt with "Greg" embroidered on the pocket, hurried out from the back room, carrying a tray of plastic boxes of salad. Definitely replenishing after the lunchtime rush. He looked around, his gaze momentarily at the height of an able-bodied person standing at the counter, she noted. Then his gaze dropped and he took a step backwards when he saw Tommy.

  "You back again?" Greg drawled. "Don't they feed you at the city jail?"

  "Hey, be nice. There's a lady here."

  "Well if she's willing to hang around with you," he said, his gaze flicking over Natalie for a moment before turning back to Tommy, "I doubt--" He looked at Natalie again, the teasing gruffness totally vanishing from his expression, making her wonder what he had seen in Tommy's face. "Well… Okay, folks, what'll it be?"

  *****

  Chuck spotted a van pulling into the long driveway next to the two-screen cinema off Main Street and followed it.

  "We don't want witnesses when we scare Franky," Simon muttered, watching all the people walking the sidewalks, shopping or participating in the awareness walk, or just enjoying the warm, bright weather. The driveway between the buildings turned into a parking lot surrounded by trees on one side and buildings on the other three.

  "Hey, I'm a professional," he said, as he turned down the first aisle, watching the van instead of the cars all around them. "Franky'll see me, and he'll know what I want, but nobody will know what's going on except us."

  Simon's only response was a snort.

  The van pulled
into a handicapped parking spot and a moment later a young Asian woman hopped out of the passenger door and slid the side door open. Four little girls in visible stair-steps of ages slid out and jumped up and down, excited about something.

  "You know," Simon said, "I really don't think that's Franky and the freak."

  Before Chuck could retort, a woman in a fluorescent yellow handicap awareness tee-shirt approached the woman and pointed at the handicapped parking sign. An Asian man came around from the driver's side, and from halfway across the parking lot, his shouts and cursing came to the two men in the car. They grinned at each other, and grinned even more when his wife slapped him on the arm, pointed at the van, and started packing the little girls back into the van. From her gestures, it looked like she was apologizing. Several more people in the brightly colored walk tee-shirts joined the first woman, watching in a cluster until the van and family drove away. Chuck snickered when the van totally left the parking lot, instead of taking a slot only four spaces down from the handicap spot.

  *****

  In the fast food restaurant, Tommy balanced a full tray on his lap while wheeling with alternating hands from the order/pickup area to the dining area. Natalie studied him carefully to see how he did it as she waited for her tray. Too soon, Greg handed her the tray with her order. She supposed she was lucky she had chosen a fish sandwich and a diet soda, with a lid on the cup. How badly could she mess up if the tray slipped or even flipped off her lap?

  The foot pedals keeping her legs elevated created a slight incline down into her lap, and despite moving carefully, by the time she got to the threshold of the dining room her drink was resting against her chest. Natalie watched the little criss-cross opening in the center of the lid, where liquid pressed and threatened to well up and leak out. What would she have done without a cup with a lid? Besides having to risk going thirsty and losing half her drink on her shirt?

  When she caught up with Tommy, she looked past him and saw the next obstacle. This fast food shop had tables with built-in chairs that swiveled on horizontal bars. That made it impossible to sit at any of the tables except at the ends, which meant blocking the aisle. There had to be an answer to this -- why else would Tommy have brought her in here? Judging from Greg's reception, Tommy ate here regularly, so there had to be a place where they could sit in comfort and eat.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught movement at the doorway. Tommy groaned, and she looked at him. He watched a woman -- the epitome of "little old lady" -- mince through the door. Despite the warmth of the day, she wore a long-sleeved, navy blue dress with a low hemline and high collar, white gloves and a wide-brimmed navy hat with a dotted veil. Her purse was bigger than Tommy's backpack. She swept the restaurant with her glance as she headed for the counter. Natalie cringed when the woman's gaze landed on her and her eyes widened in what could only be described as shock. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tommy zip away, to the far side of the dining area. Before she could move, the little old lady scurried up to her.

  "Here, dearie, let me help you." She snatched at the tray, almost knocking the cup off it.

  Dearie? Who called anyone dearie -- especially a total stranger -- in this day and age?

  "Thanks, but no. I'm fine." Natalie grabbed as tight a grip as she could on the plastic tray. Why did it only have a half-inch-deep rim? She couldn't get a good grip. And how did someone who looked like she was all skin and bones develop such a strong grip? "Got it now."

  "Just tell me what table you're at and I'll carry it over." She kept pulling at the tray. The fish sandwich slid to the right, threatening to slide off into the gap between Natalie's leg and the side of the chair.

  "Thanks, but I have to do it myself. Those are the rules." She muffled a growl when she heard Tommy snickering, somewhere out of her line of sight.

  He was going to pay for that.

  "My, but I just love fortitude," the little old lady said. She had to let go of the tray to clasp her hands to her chest and give what could only be described as an admiring look, complete with fluttering lashes.

  Natalie wondered if she had learned that pose and expression from old-time movies.

  "Tell me," her nemesis continued, "how long did it take to learn how to get around like that?" Her voice took on a coo, like someone talking to a very small child or the mentally challenged.

  "Not long..."

  "Your life must be such a trial -- and you're such a pretty little thing. Life just isn't fair, is it?"

  "No, it certainly isn't." She made a list of people she could recruit to help her make Tommy's life -- or at least the rest of the day -- a living nightmare. He sounded like he was choking, definitely fighting laughter. And even as she realized that, Natalie fought not to laugh herself.

  "Which home do you live at?"

  "Home?"

  "Yes. One of those half-way houses. You wouldn't try to live on your own, would you? It would be too hard. People like you shouldn't live alone, anyway."

  "You'd be surprised what I can do." Holding the tray with one hand and giving a hard push on one wheel with the other, she managed to turn the chair to the side and slid halfway past the little old lady. Just in time, because she dropped her hands-clasped pose and tried to grab at the tray again. "Thanks, but I think I can manage this by myself now."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, I'm very sure. Now, please, I'd like to be alone."

  "Really?" A definite whimper crept into her voice.

  "Yes, really." She glanced over her shoulder. "Hey, Greg! You got a customer out here!" Forcing a grin, she gestured at the counter.

  With a sniff and a shake of her head, the woman turned sharply on one high heel and stomped up to the counter with little clicks of her old-fashioned-looking shoes. Natalie pushed as hard as she could down the aisle between the tables, determined to get far away as fast as she could. If she had to go through that plate glass window, she would. Even if this woman was one of the town "characters," she suspected there were literally millions just like her out in the world, equating one disabled limb or sense with an entirely disabled body and mind, and appointing themselves to be guardians and caretakers for the "dearies."

  In one corner by the front window was a normal table, with folding chairs and the ubiquitous blue and white wheelchair placard. Tommy had moved two chairs out of the way, one on either side of the table. He sat with his back to the window, leaving the closer spot for her. As she slid up to the table, he lost his red-faced battle with laughter and roared.

  Natalie set her tray on the table and fussed with cup and straw, and then took a long drink while he calmed down. Her hands shook and she honestly couldn't decide if she fought laughter or fury or embarrassment. Maybe all three.

  "That was perfect!" he spluttered.

  "Did you enjoy that?" She focused on unwrapping her sandwich, carefully, to avoid looking at his face just then.

  "You were fantastic. You handled it better than I would have."

  "I wanted to pop her one." She concentrated on folding the wrapper down enough to let her eat and still keep the sandwich wrapped. Too late, she realized she needed to wash her hands, but no way was she going to risk another encounter with "dearie" and navigating the bathroom.

  "Oh, but playing with their minds is so much more fun! Though, looking at that specimen, there isn't much to play with, if you know what I mean."

  "Tommy!" That settled it -- she wasn't going to ask him how he got his hands clean.

  "What? What did I say?" When she finally looked at him, he saluted her with his cup. "I have to admit, I've taken advantage of people like that."

  "Uh huh. Is this real, or just part of your routine?" She took a big bite of her sandwich and groaned in ecstasy. Nothing like being achy-tired-hungry to really enjoy food.

  "Cross my heart. There was this guy who used to live down the hall from us, after the accident, right after I got out of rehab. Mom and Claire and I decided an apartment was better for the wheelchair than the hous
e we used to have." For a moment, somberness took the sparkle from his eyes.

  Natalie inhaled sharply, feeling an actual physical ache at the memory of the big, beautiful house his mother had taken such pleasure in decorating. Her family had gone to many parties throughout the years at the Donnelly house. How could his family have stood the pain, moving from that big house into an apartment? Amid all the other sorrow and pain they had endured -- Tommy's accident, the desertion of their father and the destruction of their mother's marriage?

  "He used to give me quarters to buy ice cream cones," Tommy continued after a moment, the sparkle returning, "even in the winter."

  "So, what's the joke?"

  "I didn't have the heart to tell him ice cream cones cost fifty cents."

  Natalie groaned and tossed the bit of wadded up straw wrapper at him. Then they laughed.

  *****

  At the intersection of Horizon and Stephen, Toby led a pack of wheelchairs and walkers across the street as soon as the light changed. Chuck's car squealed brakes and tore around the corner from Horizon onto Stephen, turning right on the new red light. Toby did a back-flip in the chair as the car's fender hit his footrests. He somersaulted onto the pavement as the car kept going. Traffic slammed to a stand-still and horns blew. Several of the able-bodied in the chairs leaped to their feet and pushed through the pack to reach him. Toby pulled himself to his feet and tottered around for a few steps, alternately checking his prosthetic leg and pressing his hand to the back of his head where he had landed. He looked around and seemed to notice the staring onlookers for the first time. A crooked grin lit his face, and he spread his arms wide, even as he winced.

  "It's a miracle! I can walk!"

  He took another step and his false leg buckled. People let out applause or groans or shouted comments as two friends supported him to the curb where he sat down. Someone else righted his wheelchair and pulled it out of the street. The pack re-gathered on the sidewalk while someone looked at the back of his head.