A Month of Summer (18 page)

On the heels of that thought, there was always the guilty question—how could I wish for something other than what was, when I loved Teddy so much?

Ouita Mae sighed, as if she sensed my sudden melancholy. Resting her chin on her hand, she let the glasses dangle off her finger. Her regard wandered far away, found the window, took in the stars.

It occurred to me that Mary hadn’t returned to tell me about her visit to my house yet. She’d promised she would. I’d lost track of the time while Ouita Mae was reading.

“It’s funny the things you wish you could go back and do different.”

I almost didn’t hear Ouita Mae at first. My mind was elsewhere.

“It’s little things sometimes, you know?”

“Mmmm,” I agreed. Little things. Like a second, third, fourth letter you could have written. A swallowing of pride that might have changed everything.

“I think about those things.” Ouita Mae sighed again, her face suddenly solemn, contemplative, a little sad.

“Mmmm.”

She laughed softly in her throat. “There was a boy once. I don’t know why that came to mind just now. I don’t know why that boy still comes to mind at all. It’s not like I haven’t had a good life, a good marriage. We had our son, and then when we lost him, we had Phillip to raise. I wouldn’t trade him for anythin’ different. . . .” She glanced my way. Our eyes met, and I knew. I understood that feeling of regret, the sense that there was a moment when the paths divided and you chose one over the other.

Ouita Mae went on with her musings. “I guess readin’ about Gavin and Marcella made me think about it. The day I laid eyes on that boy was the first time I ever did believe in love at first sight. I was sixteen. I was helping take the cattle to the Tom Green County Livestock Auction for sale day. My daddy’d made me a special saddle, so I could ride just like anybody else. When I was riding, my mama would let me wear pants, of course. I sure did love those sale days, because I could ride into town on that big paint horse, and strangers in for the cattle auction wouldn’t even know I wore braces. It felt good, you know, being like everybody else.” She laughed again, shaking her head, then turned back to the window, her thoughts focusing on the past. “There was a new boy there one day—a tall boy, and, lands, he was something to look at. He’d brought some livestock in for the sale. All the girls wanted to catch his eye, but he was looking at me.” Tossing her chin up, she laughed. “Oh, Lord, I felt like Cinderella at the ball. I felt like the luckiest girl in Tom Green County. That boy had the bluest eyes. He smiled at me, and we laughed, and joked, and flirted. We sneaked out behind the barn, sat there in the shade with the horses shoulder to shoulder. He leaned over and gave me my first kiss, and I was sure I’d just fell in love.”

A sigh wound through me. When I saw Edward in Highland Park that day, I fell in love so hard that nothing else mattered.

“You know, and it’s a funny thing,” Ouita Mae went on. “I sat on my horse all day, even after my skin was raw, because I figured if I got off, that boy would see me hobbling around on my braces, and wouldn’t look at me the same way anymore. Toward evenin’, we girls went down to the swimmin’ hole, and oh, mercy, I was glad to get off the horse and take those braces loose. I remember, I was sitting by the edge of the pool. I’d tossed my braces over by a tree, and I was just letting the sun cover my skin. I heard a horse nicker, and I looked up, and that boy was riding past on the road. He glanced my way, and all I could think was to turn around and hide my legs in the water until he went on by.”

Her lips made a soft
tsk-tsk-tsk
as she turned her wheelchair and started out of the room. “I found out later that boy was staying with family in town and helping his daddy sell off some livestock because, back home, his sister had the polio.” She paused, looked over her shoulder at me, the creases fanning out around her eyes. “He ran off and joined the service a few days later, and I never saw him again. Ever since that day, I’ve wondered what might of happened if I hadn’t hid my crippled legs in the pool.” Her voice trailed off, barely a breath exhaled, as if the story were yet unfinished. As she disappeared into the alcove, she added, “I always thought, if that boy died in the war, maybe it was my fault.”

She disappeared out the door and left me musing over the story of the girl at the pool, whose split-second decision could have changed everything. The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.

I was looking out the window, contemplating the idea, when I heard Mary and her boys outside in the hall. She was trying to shush them.

“Mrs. Parker?” she whispered, opening the door slightly. “It’s Mary, are you sleep—’’ She didn’t have time to finish before the door pushed wider and her little one slipped through. He ran in carrying a seedling in a Dixie cup—a geranium just growing its first mature leaves, the ones that would distinguish it from other seedlings.

“Wook! I got p-want. Wittle baby p-want!” he babbled, as he skidded around the corner of my bed and held up his treasure.

I was swept to the brink of happy tears in the space of an instant. I knew they’d been to my house. The Dixie cup had an awkward scribble on it. Teddy’s marking for
geranium
.

I sank against the pillow, overwhelmed with emotion, flooded with relief. At home, Teddy was planting flowers, just as always.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker.” Mary tried to snatch up the little boy, but he stiffened in protest, still struggling to climb the rails and show me the plant. His brother grabbed his shirt to pull him down. “Brandon! ” Mary scolded in a hush. “Brady, ssshhh! Get down.”

“Nnno,” I protested, motioning toward the plant. “Sssee.” I wanted to see the cup, to touch Teddy’s creation, feel his hands on the seed, on the soil. How many times over the years had we done that together?

Mary lifted Brady up, and he leaned toward the bed, stretching out his arms like a child waiting to be held.

“Ere.” I moved my hand beside me, glanced at the empty spot on the mattress, then back at Mary. “Here.” The word, usually an impossible jumble, came quickly in my excitement.

Brady lifted his legs over the rail, then folded them underneath as Mary set him beside me. “I got p-want,” he repeated, holding the cup close to my face. I could smell the rich, damp soil, the bit of fertilizer Teddy would have sprinkled on top, the water he’d delivered faithfully, carefully. Teddy always understood that tiny plants were tender, that they had to be nurtured and protected.

Brady’s chubby finger stroked the emerging leaves. I knew Teddy had shown him how to do that. “J-mam-y-yum,” he said.

“G-rain-yum,” his big brother corrected.

“Geranium.” Mary pronounced the word slowly, so the boys could hear all the sounds.

“Teddy gimme,” Brady said, holding the plant close to me again.

Mary repositioned his hand. “Don’t put it right in her face, sweetheart. She can see it. Mrs. Parker is Teddy’s mom. Did you know that?”

Brady’s brows twisted together as he tried to make sense of the idea that even grown boys had mothers. “Him big.” His eyes narrowed skeptically.

“He’s all grown up, Brady,” Brandon chimed in, resting a hand on the rail and yawning, then looking toward the door as if he were ready for something more entertaining. “Even big boys have mommies.”

Brady turned back to me with a new level of admiration, now that I was Teddy’s mommy. Little children always loved Teddy. In stores, he talked to the babies and made the crying toddlers smile. At the park by the creek years ago, he’d helped the landscaping crew tend the flowers, letting the children plant with him and watch the seeds come up. I’d never seen him so excited to get up and go somewhere each day. Someone complained anonymously, because Teddy wasn’t a certified city employee, and that was that. Shortly afterward, the park was fenced off and locked up, undoubtedly slated to eventually become part of a condominium complex.

Brady’s shoe pressed the remote as he wiggled closer to me. The television came on, and both boys turned to it.

“Mom, they got my channel here.” Twining an arm through the rail, Brandon leaned against the bed and focused on the TV. “Hey, it’s Zaboo Mafoo!”

“Boo Foo!” Brady cheered, wiggling closer to me so he could see the screen.

Mary laid a hand on Brandon’s head. “Boys, we have to go. We just came to tell Mrs. Parker we went by her house and everything was all right.” The last words were hesitant, and she hooded her eyes, as if there were more she wasn’t telling me.

“Mom, pleeease,” Brandon whined, his head falling sideways against his shoulder. “I love this one.”

On television, a long-armed puppet made to look like some sort of monkey caught a tiny green snake, carried on a conversation with it, then kissed it on the head.

“Eeewww!” Brady squealed, scooting closer to me. “Teddy catch w-izard.”

“Lizard,” Brandon corrected.

“Come on, boys.” Mary moved her hands to Brandon’s shoulders to turn him toward the door.

“I like this part,” Brandon protested, shrugging her away.

“We need to go.”

“I don’t wanna get back in the car.” Brandon teetered on the edge of a temper fit.

“Brandon . . .” Mary’s voice was firm. She glanced at me with a mixture of apology and embarrassment. I knew how she felt. I could remember being in exactly her position, disagreeing in public with a whiny, tired child, hoping things didn’t descend into anarchy.

“Nnnooo!” The word was out of my mouth, and I was waving toward the TV before I had time to consider that old women shouldn’t interfere in young women’s parenting. “Www-ach. Tay . . . sss-tay.”

Brandon looked from his mom to me, hopefully, his hand still on the rail, his attention drifting toward his show.

I turned to Mary apologetically. I didn’t want her to be angry with me. No doubt she needed to get her boys home to bed, but I wanted her to stay, to tell me everything that had happened when she’d gone to my house. I wanted her to describe every minute, so it would be as if I were there again. I wanted Brady to snuggle his little body under my arm, warm and wiggly, just the way a little boy should be.

Mary’s face grew sympathetic, a look I knew so well these days and normally hated, but if sympathy would prompt her to stay, then so be it. She let go of Brandon, then sat on the edge of the chair and tucked her hands under her legs, as if she didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t working. “This
is
a good one.” She glanced toward the TV, and Brandon grinned.

“Yesss!” he cheered. He grabbed the other chair, scooted it over by the bed, and sat down, never taking his eyes off the TV. Suddenly an electronic zombie, he tucked up his legs, crisscross.

“Myeee hhhow?” I said, and stretched my hand toward Mary. The hand, crossing my line of vision, distracted me for a moment. I didn’t know I could move it that well. “Myeee howt?” I said again.

Mary took Brady’s plant and set it on the nightstand. Brady snuggled against my arm, having forgotten there was anything in the room but the TV.

“Rebecca told me to let you know she’s taking care of things. She didn’t want you to worry,” Mary said finally. “She said she would come by as soon as she could. We stayed a while and the boys played in the yard. You have a beautiful yard. Teddy showed the boys some bird nests and things. They really had fun, and—”

“Well, look at who all’s in here.” Claude Fisher’s voice boomed from the doorway. “Land’s sakes, Birdie, you havin’ a party again and didn’t invite me?”

The door smacked against the wall as he rolled his wheelchair over the threshold.

I guessed I was having a party after all.

CHAPTER 11

Dr. Amadi decided to put my father in the hospital for tests and observation. He was shocked by the amount of weight loss since the appointment a year ago, and equally taken aback by the severity of the dementia. Twelve months before, my father had been lucid enough to carry on a conversation, discuss his medication options, understand that the progression of Alzheimer’s disease was a very individual thing. He was concerned about his disease laying further burdens on Hanna Beth. He was worried about Teddy’s understanding of what was happening. He was pragmatic, determined to control his diet, sell his golf cart, and start walking the course, on the theory that a healthy body would prevent decay of the mind.

“This was a
year
ago?” I asked, as Dr. Amadi and I stood in the hall talking, while my father waited inside the examination room with a nurse. Somehow, my father had decided he was in for broken ribs, an injury he’d sustained after a load of oil field pipe fell from a transport trailer when we were living in Saudi.

I could hear him on the other side of the door telling the nurse about the accident as if it had just happened. She was patiently playing along as she tried to convince him to put on his clothes.

Dr. Amadi checked his file again. “Yes. It has been . . . thirteen months. We have not seen him since that time,” he answered in the rhythmic cadence of a thick Indian accent. He was a small man with a dark birthmark on his left cheek, and brusque, matter-of-fact mannerisms my mother would have hated. She never liked doctors who kept everything on a clinical level, who couldn’t find time to chitchat about her emotional state, her various dreams, intuitions, herbs, and visualizations that had always, she was certain, forced her lupus into remission.

“Do you know why he hasn’t been in since then?” I asked, thinking,
Why was this man, diagnosed with a progressive disease, allowed to slip off the radar?
According to the records, Dr. Amadi had been my father’s and Hanna Beth’s doctor for several years.

He gave me a cool look, perceiving criticism, perhaps. “One would assume they had chosen to consult a geriatric specialist.”

Without his files?
I tamped down the question. The fact was that, right now, I desperately needed Dr. Amadi’s cooperation. “They’ve had some kind of home care provider. Most of his recent prescriptions were filled online.”