A Month of Summer (37 page)

“No one was there?”

Teddy shook his head. I checked the clock on the dash as we pulled into our driveway. It was after five on a Thursday. Not much chance anyone would be there tonight, but tomorrow, I knew where I’d be first thing in the morning.

CHAPTER 22

There was a new sense of urgency in me, a feeling that something wasn’t right. It stirred me in the dark hours of the morning, whispered,
Get up, get out of bed, Hanna Beth Parker. You’re needed.

I struggled to decipher it, wondering if it was my imagination or a whiff of premonition. The sensation was uncomfortable, tight and tense like a muscle about to be knotted by a spasm. Had I dreamed something? Or perhaps there was a storm on the way, and I was only feeling the changes in barometric pressure.

Using the pull bar, I turned to the empty wheelchair, just a shadow in the dim hallway light. I wanted to rise up and wheel around in the darkness, check on things the way people do when startled from sleep by an unexpected sound—look in the corners, open the closets, make certain nothing was hiding there.

I felt as if I could do it. Yesterday had been a good day. After a session in the therapy room, Gretchen pushed me down to the commons area rather than returning me to my room.

“Might as well leave you here,” she said gruffly, but the corners of her mouth twitched, cracking her salty mask. “No sense going all the way back down the hall.”

It was wonderful to be out among people again, watching visitors and nurses come and go. Claude found me, and we played a one-sided game of chess in which Claude positioned most of my pieces for me, then we watched the
Oprah
show and the news. Mary came a bit later, and I took my supper with the ambulatory patients. My plate was liquid and mush, but I felt like a human being again, even though I still required help with the spoon. Mary’s boys came in from the van, and they sat with us, little Brady watching with consternation the spectacle of an adult being spoon-fed like a little child. He couldn’t understand that this felt like a triumph.

Mary chatted on about the construction at my house. Perhaps she was trying to explain why Rebecca hadn’t come today, but I understood. Rebecca had her plate full, and now that I could see a day ahead when I would be going home, these long, slow hours weren’t so unbearable.

“Teddy got car,” Brady offered, crinkling a brow as he tracked the slow progress of the spoon from the tray to my mouth. “He got wotsa car. Got blue car, red car . . .”

“Hey, one car, two car, red car, blue car,” Brandon observed. Mary laughed and ruffled his hair. It was good to see Brandon brightened up and feeling better, coming out of his shell a bit. He was still silent and sullen much of the time, like a little boy with too much on his mind, but the hollows were gone from beneath his eyes and his cheeks had a healthy glow. He laughed once in a while. Living on Blue Sky Hill with a yard to play in and a warm bed at night was good for him.

Mary looked better, too. Her hair was freshly washed, and she’d gained a little weight, not quite the sallow rag doll she’d been. Dr. Barnhill seemed to notice her when he passed our table. He smiled at Mary, and she fluttered her gaze away, folding her hands in her lap.

“Wee-da?” I asked, just to make conversation. I knew that Ouita Mae had left with a cousin two days ago to travel to Houston and make arrangements for having her things packed up and moved to Claude’s house. I missed my daily visits with Ouita Mae. Claude tried reading my book to me, but everything reminded him of some old story, so it wasn’t a very successful endeavor.

“She’ll be back tomorrow,” Dr. Barnhill answered. Then he and Claude began talking about preparations at Claude’s house.

After a while, I asked Mary to take me to my room, and she obliged. She and the boys sat with me for a while, watching
Wheel of Fortune
. Little Brady even curled up in the bed with me, and I rested my chin on his head, drank in the little boy smells of sweat, and sand, and hand soap from the washroom.

It had been a good day yesterday, a good evening. Claude and I had watched the moon rise outside the window. He’d quoted an old poem I hadn’t heard in years.

He’d laughed and said he hadn’t remembered that verse since he was a boy, before he went off to the war.

I imagined that he was thinking of the pretty girl on her pinto horse. When he left, I fell asleep feeling boneless and weary, but content.

So why was I lying here in the darkness now, doom pressing down on me like the heavy lead cloak the dentists use? Why did I feel smothered, trapped, as if disaster were speeding around the corner and I was powerless to stop it?

I listened for Claude in his room next door, but there was no sound. I wished, for once, that the screaming woman would start into one of her tirades and wake him. I didn’t want to be alone, but I wasn’t sure why.

I pushed the nurse’s call for Ifeoma. She came a few minutes later. “Why do you lie awake now, missus?” she asked, checking me over.

“My houwse?” I didn’t have the words to express my vague unease. Even if I could have put together a full sentence, I couldn’t have expressed it properly.

“The house is good, but you must rest.” Ifeoma wasn’t one for nonsense. She was always efficient, seldom indulgent. “You must sleep now, missus. Shall I bring a medication to help you rest?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t want to be groggy when Mary came in the morning. She always stopped by to give me the morning report on Edward, and the ongoing house renovations. Sometimes she brought tiny plants or pictures that Teddy and the boys had drawn for me. Teddy’s were never anything you could make out, but he always labeled them with the letters and symbols he used to mark his flower-pots, so I knew he was thinking about the garden. When I imagined myself home, that was the place I always envisioned. When I was finally ready for an actual visit, I wanted to go there first, to sit and take in the scent and the feel and the sounds of the garden.

“Do you need to be aided to the bathroom, missus?” Ifeoma asked.

“No,” I answered, though after weeks of protective undergarments and bedpans, going to the bathroom largely on cue was a particular thrill.

Ifeoma wagged a finger at me. “Then you should sleep.”

“I wors . . . wor . . .” “Worry” was a word the speech therapist didn’t help you practice. It wasn’t on any of the neatly-printed cards. “Wor-ree.”

Ifeoma’s lips parted, her teeth glowing white as she made a quiet
tsk-tsk-tsk
. “Ah, to worry is a useless thing, missus. The man who would worry is lacking confidence in his God. Sleep now,” she said, and smoothed a hand over my hair. “Good things come in the morning.”

“I’m nnnot . . .”

“Ssshhh,” she said. “Quiet now. You will wake the old rooster, and then we will listen to him crow all night.” Pressing her lips together, she cut a glance toward Claude’s room.

I felt a bit better. If anything were really wrong, Ifeoma wouldn’t be poking fun at Claude. Ifeoma was seldom so lighthearted.

“Sleep,” she whispered. “Tomorrow is on God’s hands.”

She turned and left the room, pulling the door shut to keep out the night noises in the hallway. I closed my eyes, but the anxiety was still with me. Down the hall, the screaming woman began to moan as if she felt it, too. Her voice crept around the edges of the door like a faint red light, disturbing the darkness, pushing back the moon glow, leaving no peace.

In the morning, Claude was up early. I heard him moving around his room, getting into the wheelchair, and then his voice came through the vent. “You up in there, Birdie?”

“Yes,” I answered.

A moment later, he was at my door. “You takin’ visitors?” Now that I was capable of answering, he’d started asking permission to come in.

“Yes,” I replied. “Com-minnn.”

Claude wheeled himself into the room, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Don’t know how anyone could be sleepin’.” He glanced toward the screaming woman. “She ain’t quieted a bit for hours.”

“No.” I lifted my hands, moving them clumsily toward my ears, and Claude gave a guilty laugh. We both knew, at some level, that it could be either of us in the bed down the hall, moaning incoherently all hours of the day and night. “Ssstorm.” I motioned to the window. Outside, a towering line of thunderheads had blotted out the sunrise. The moaning woman always became restless when the weather was changing.

“Hope it blows on over before tomorrow. Ouita Mae’s supposed to come back, and we’re all goin’ out to my house to talk about what stuff to have the movers pack up and what to leave. Doc wants the old piano. I didn’t know he played, but he does.” Drawing a breath, Claude looked out the window, as if he could see his house there among the parked cars. “Lots of memories in that old piano. Emelda gave lessons on it for years.” Claude seldom talked about his wife, an Italian woman he’d met and married while he was overseas in the army. She’d passed away from cancer some years ago, but that was about as much as I could gather. “It’ll be good to pay a visit to the old place.”

“Your ubbbook.” For days, I’d been trying to prompt Claude to show Ouita Mae the memory book he kept in his room. If she saw the photo of the young man on the yellow horse, perhaps she would finally recognize him, and they would discover the secret I had been unable to make known.

Claude nodded. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll want my books moved out of there. Doubt Doc’s interested in reading about them old war planes, and tanks, and trains and such. You know, I half thought about askin’ Doc, could I just move my stuff out to the woodshop out back, and maybe, if Doc and Ouita Mae get settled into the house and like it there . . .” His voice trailed off. “Oh, well, it’s probably a silly idea. I just thought, maybe sometimes I could get my neighbor girl to take me out to home, and I could stay in my shop house for the day, read my books and help the kids play baseball and such. Probably Doc and Ouita Mae wouldn’t want that, though. It’s gonna be their place now.”

I huffed, frustrated with the things I couldn’t communicate to Claude. “Shhh-ow Ouita uuubbbook!”

Claude frowned over his shoulder. “Doubt if Ouita Mae’s interested in them old war machine books, either. Say, did I ever tell you I drove them trains in Europe after the war?”

“Yes,” I answered, but Claude didn’t seem to hear me.

“My daddy was sure upset with me for goin’ over there. Seemed like he got old in a hurry, after Birdie took sick and I ran off. He got down with pneumonia, and by the time I brung Emelda home to meet him, he was an old man. I never did try to make my daddy understand why I left for the army the way I did. I just thought, because he loved me, he should let it go, and if he couldn’t, well then, he didn’t love me like I thought. Young folks get love and understandin’ backward, don’t they? Love don’t come galloping across fresh pastures like a fine white horse with understandin’ riding soft and easy on its back. Understandin’ plods in like an old plow mule, breaking sod. It shades the earth with its body, and waters it with sweat. Love grows up in the furrow that’s left behind. It takes some patience. I was an impatient young man. I took Emelda, and we moved down to the Piney Woods, and I didn’t look back.

“I didn’t talk to my daddy for almost ten years after that. I reckon we were too much alike—stubborn, proud, bullheaded. I hated those things about him. But ain’t it always the way, Birdie, that the easiest faults to find in other people are the ones you got yourself? I didn’t see my daddy again until my mama called to tell me the doctor’d said my daddy’s heart was bad, and I’d better come. I packed a suitcase and I drove all night until early mornin’. When I got to the house, I turned out the headlights and coasted up the lane real quiet, thinking I’d sleep in my truck ’til daybreak, but I’d no sooner rolled ’er to a stop than the door swung open wide, and there was my daddy. He didn’t say a word, just lit the lamp and put on the coffee, and I knew I was welcome home.”

Letting his eyes fall closed, Claude took a deep breath, as if he could smell the coffee and the damp morning air even now. “We had five good years after that. Turns out doctors don’t know everythin’. I was with my daddy at the end of his life. He apologized for dyin’ and leavin’ me with a crop in the field, then he said, ‘You been a dandy, Johnny Claude. I expect I been more trouble to you than you ever been to me.’ After that, he died, and I sure wished I could of had them ten years back. Birdie, wouldn’t it be nice if the eyes in the back of yer head weren’t so much sharper than the ones in the front? Seems like most the important things in life come to me in hindsight.”

Claude fell silent, and the two of us sat for a long time. Outside, the storm rolled in, and I felt a chill slip over me. The clouds blew over in a fury of wind and rain, then passed quickly, giving way to muted rays of morning sun that pressed through the window and lighted the shadowy corners of the room.

In his wheelchair, Claude dozed off, and outside the window, a cardinal began to sing among the last of the yellow blooms.

Despite the warm, dawning sun and the spectacle of color and sound, I couldn’t shake the chill that hung in the air, or the sense that another storm was coming.

CHAPTER 23

A thunderstorm struck early Friday morning, putting on a lightning show and rumbling over the house. I watched jagged streaks of electrical current crackle across the line of thunderheads as I sat with my laptop and sorted e-mail. Bree would be surprised when she arrived at work and found that I’d already checked the files she’d e-mailed late yesterday evening. Poring over the applications and supporting documents, I temporarily forgot I wasn’t back at the office.