House of Wonder (5 page)

Acting on impulse, I yelled, “You stupid jerk!” and marched toward Seth and his friends.

“Hey!” called Mrs. Potchkit from the blacktop, alerted to the kerfuffle; Mrs. Potchkit was the lunch aide who everyone said rubbed Scope under her armpits.

I pointed at Seth. “He tripped my brother!” Warren was now on his feet and looking at me as if he wanted only for me to stop.

Seth scowled coolly at both of us. All I knew about Seth was that his mother worked at the local bar and his father lived in California and sent him postcards that he'd carry around until the white of the edges was soft and thick. “He fell,” he said.

Mrs. Potchkit glanced from face to face. “If I have any more trouble with the three of you,” she said, “you'll all be in the principal's office.” Without acknowledging Mrs. Potchkit, Seth turned back to his friends. “Freak,” he muttered, just loud enough so that Warren would hear, just quiet enough so that Mrs. Potchkit would not.

That was the first time I realized that the scale by which normal was judged changed as you grew older. That behavior that was quirky at seven would become odd at eleven. And that it wouldn't go unpunished.

There were a few more such incidents over the years.
Hey, Warren! Look! Maglons!
kids would shout in the hallways of our school. But by then, I had learned to pretend I didn't hear.

•   •   •

The silence in the car grew more complete as we approached the hospital. I turned smoothly into the entrance past an unchanging green light and across an empty street. The blacktop was freshly paved, the white lines in the parking lot crisp and new. I took a spot, then got out of the car, feeling awakened by the night air.

The hospital glowed bright through its sliding glass doors and I stared at the entrance as I waited for Warren to get out. But Warren just sat there, looking down at his knees. I felt my mother's eyes on me, so I leaned down. “War,” I said, and that was all it took.

He unbuckled his seat belt. “I'm coming,” he said, his lips barely moving.

Mom spoke for Warren as the tired-looking woman at a small wooden desk questioned him about his injuries. “He had an accident,” she said. “We don't know the details.” The woman continued to look at Warren, then pulled out a laminated chart with a series of cartoon faces in various degrees of distress.

“Point to the picture that shows how much you hurt,” she said, her raspy New Jersey accent thick and unsympathetic.

Warren looked at her, then at the chart. He pointed to one of the faces in the middle. “Number four,” he mumbled.

“All right,” said the intake nurse. “Please have a seat. We'll call you.”

•   •   •

When Warren's name echoed through the waiting room, we were brought to a curtained corral in the back of the emergency
department. There was a chair beside the bed and on either side hung a thin cloth divider with pastel geometric shapes that I assumed were supposed to be soothing and stain resistant. There were two facing rows of beds in our area, and across from us, an elderly woman was moaning and delusional, saying that the doctors had taken her babies, that she wanted them back.

My mother looked deliberately away. “This is a horrible place,” she whispered. My mother hated hospitals. She hated their brightness, their enormity. She hated that people went into them and didn't come out. Tonight, I could see why. I had been to the ER once with Rose when she was an infant and woke up with a cough so terrible, she wheezed and struggled for every breath. Then, we were taken directly to a private room. Here, we were in a stall.

A nurse rushed by. “Bed six,” she said to someone I couldn't see. I heard a hushed, indiscernible conversation. Then a figure in a pair of scrubs that looked like a snatch of sky walked quickly toward the bed of the old woman across the aisle, lifted a clipboard from a hanger, and, after briefly consulting it, said calmly and kindly, “Mrs. Leroy, I'm Dr. Vanni.”

Relief flooded my mother's face to meet the dread in mine. She looked from Warren to me and back again.
It's Bobby!
She was clearly relieved to have a doctor to whom our family would be familiar. Far more selfish, I sought the comfort of anonymity. I looked back at Warren, who was eyeing Bobby from below his brow, the rag still held to his nose.

After several minutes, Bobby turned away from the woman, whom he had calmed, and to the Parsons family—my mother, Warren, and me. His body stilled with recognition. “Amy,” he called to a nurse, and gestured in our direction. She made a
reply that we couldn't hear; then Bobby nodded. Giving a cordial but somber smile, he walked over to Warren's bed.

“Hi, Bobby,” said my mother, with a sad smile. “Warren's . . . well, he's had an accident.”

Bobby's eyes were already assessing my brother's wounds. “Warren,” he said, almost to himself. “What happened to you?” Taking a pair of silicone gloves from a dispenser next to the bed, Bobby pulled them on. “Tell me if anything is too tender,” he instructed, as he carefully led the hand that had been holding the dishrag away from Warren's face and lifted his chin.

Warren winced as Bobby's fingers lightly gripped the bridge of his nose. “We'll do an X-ray to make sure,” Bobby said softly, “but that's broken.”

“His nose?” gasped my mother.

“I don't think it needs to be reset,” continued Bobby, ignoring my mother's interruption, not rudely but with professional focus.

Still not taking his eyes off Warren, he moved to the gash that intersected his eyebrow, competently probing it. After a few seconds he stopped, and I heard him exhale, then rub his rough chin with the back of his gloved hand. “You're going to need some stitches, Warren,” he said. “All right?”

Warren met Bobby's eye and nodded. “Okay.”

“We'll numb it up,” said Bobby. “It won't hurt.” He looked at my mother and me. “I'll be back in a few minutes to do the sutures.” Then he disappeared past the cloth curtain.

No more than five minutes later, a nurse rolled up a metal tray. “You're lucky you got Dr. Vanni,” she said, with the sort of admiration I imagined all the nurses felt for the handsome doctor. “He's the
best
.”

When Bobby returned, he silently set to it, his face inches from Warren's as he made small, careful stitches. “When this heals, you'll hardly have a scar.” My mother stood by the head of the bed near Bobby as he worked. I sat in a chair near Warren's feet. “Last one,” I heard Bobby say, with a snap of the scissors. They made a small clatter as he placed them back on the metal tray, on which blood-soaked wads of gauze were scattered. Once his tools were back in place, he returned his attention to my brother. “Warren,” he began, his voice low and calm. “Are you going to want to file a police report for this?”

Warren's brow immediately creased, as if the question were dangerous.

“Can he think about it?” I asked quickly, wanting to relieve my brother.

Bobby looked at me and nodded. “But with assault,” he said, “it's best to involve the police as soon as possible.”

My mother closed her eyes. I extended my hand. “Thank you, Bobby,” I said, full of gratitude, and humbled by it. “Thank you so much.”

Bobby clasped my hand, then brought his other up to meet it, so that my hand was between his two. Here, in the place of his work, what I might once have read as arrogance seemed like maturity. Perhaps the sort that was hard-won. “If you need anything, Jenna, just let me know.”

•   •   •

We were given instructions about icing, painkillers, and potential problems against which to be vigilant. But really, Warren's injuries were not severe compared with many that the ER saw. It was their implication that was upsetting.

On the way out, Warren stopped to use the men's room and my mother and I hovered outside. With my hands stuck in my jacket pockets, I had that jet-lag-like sensation of not knowing to which time zone I belonged. At two o'clock in the morning, the interior of the hospital was as bright as day and my mind felt as though it were on a treadmill, with thoughts and memories coming unbidden.

I was sure that before tonight, Warren hadn't set foot in a hospital since Rose was born. Duncan had already been in Japan then; he didn't see Rose until she was three months old. But Warren came with my mother the very next day, in his Bill Cosby sweater and pleated khaki pants, ready to meet his niece.

Rose was swaddled tightly in a white, pink, and blue blanket. I was holding her in my arms, feeling how light she was, feeling that somehow in her, life had been distilled and concentrated down to its purest form.
What am I going to call you?
I whispered. Duncan and I hadn't settled on a name before he left, and his absence was as palpable as his presence might have been.
Huh, baby girl?
I rubbed my finger gently over the mark on her cheek and smiled. I didn't want her to see any tears so early in her life.
What's your name going to be?
It was then that I heard the squeak of Warren's sneakers on the brightly waxed floor of the hallway.

“I think it's right here,” came my mother's voice from behind the shut door. There was a brief knock and the door opened before I could have voiced any protest, had I wanted to. My mother was holding Warren's upper arm and Warren was very still, looking at Rose from a distance with a guarded anticipation.

“Oh my goodness,” gushed my mother. “Let me
see
her.”
Warren hung back as Mom rushed the bed, her eyes immediately settling on Rose's birthmark. “Oh, it's not bad,” she said, smiling softly. I had warned her on the phone about the birthmark.
It's called a hemangioma,
I had said, my lower lip quivering.
It's totally benign.

“And I'm sure they can remove it if they need to,” added Mom.

“They said it's small enough that it'll probably go away on its own.” I smoothed a small lock of hair against her forehead. “But it might get a little bit bigger first.”

It was then that Warren took a tentative step forward, leaning in to look at my baby's face while the lower half of his body remained a good three feet away. When he saw her, he seemed proud and pleased. “Hey,” he laughed quietly, “she looks like a little rose.”

A laugh sputtered from my lips. It was the first time I'd laughed since giving birth, and it loosened something in me, set something ajar, allowing emotions I had been trying to keep at bay to force their way up. I threw the crook of my elbow over my eyes and that laugh became a sob.

“Oh, Jenna,” said my mother.

With my eyes still hidden, I shook my head, waiting until I could open my mouth without another cry escaping. “Maybe that'll be her name,” I said, dropping my arm to look at my daughter. “Rose.” It was the first of many decisions I would make without Duncan.

Warren's chest seemed to swell. “Rose,” he repeated, as if the word felt strange but pleasant on his tongue. Then he stepped closer and leaned over her, his nose inches from hers. She made a face and moved her tongue against the roof of her mouth and Warren let out another quiet but expansive laugh.
“Hi, baby,” he said, tapping his hand on the blanket above her belly. Then his face changed, softened slightly, as if he had to bravely break to his niece some difficult news. “You live in the world now,” he said.

•   •   •

“Jenna,” I heard my mother say softly, pulling me from my memory as we waited for Warren outside the men's room. Her eyes were fixed on an inconsequential point in the distance. “If you lived on Royal Court,” she began, “and you didn't know us . . .” The question was coming slowly, like a twisty old creak. “What would you think of Warren and me?” She turned to look at me, her face full of knowing reluctance.

The house flashed into my mind, with its chipping trim and crumbling concrete steps; with the adult son who played with airplanes and was still living at home; with the mother who kept filling the house with more things.

“Oh, Mom,” I said.

Doll

1954

I
t was the first cold night of the winter and Priscilla lay in her bed listening to the gentle clanging of the radiator. Her eyes were shut tight, but sleep wouldn't come. Mrs. Lloyd always told her to talk to Jesus when she couldn't sleep.
Just tell him your troubles,
she would say. That evening before she left, Mrs. Lloyd had sat with her on her bed and sang “In the Sweet By and By.” And Silla had sung with her. She had a pretty little voice.

Silla tried to talk to Jesus that night, but she couldn't think of what to say. She didn't know what was scaring her. She couldn't identify that it was some unnamed stirring in the world of adults that had upset her, only that things didn't seem right. The feeling was instinctual, like the way birds always
seemed to know a storm was coming, the way they seemed to disappear from the sky half an hour or so before it grew dark with clouds. In the amorphous thing that was time to a four-year-old, Silla couldn't attach spans to the events of the past few weeks. She knew that her parents had gone away and come back, and gone away and come back again. She knew that her father had been spending more time at the house, pouring tall glasses of whiskey and sitting out on the front porch. She knew that her mother had seemed nervous, burning food and spilling things and staying in the bathroom for hours at a time. And that day, she had been walking around the house in circles. Just around and around the outside of the house.

Priscilla heard her door open. “Silla?” her mother whispered.

Priscilla opened her eyes to see her mother's face in the crack of the door, the hallway behind her as dark as the bedroom.

“Can Mama come in?”

Silla nodded and her mother, who was in her nightgown, came and curled up next to her on the bed, resting her head on her daughter's small stomach.

“Silla, they're going to try and fix me tomorrow.”

Silla thought about this for a moment. “Are you broken?”

She heard her mother's soft breath. “I think so.”

“Where?” asked Silla, looking down at her mother's hair, at her soft body. When things were broken, there were cracks and chips and fissures. Her mother looked perfect.

“I'm scared,” said her mother.

Silla thought for a moment, twisting her fingers in one of her mother's curls. “Mrs. Lloyd says to talk to Jesus when you're scared.”

Priscilla's mother pushed up with one hand, then the next, and looked at her daughter. “I don't want to go,” she said, looking at Silla as if Silla might save her.

That unnamed fear surged up in Silla's stomach. “Are you coming back?”

Her mother nodded. And Silla felt the fear ebb. “Well,” she said, reaching around for the doll that sat next to her on her nightstand. Her father had given it to her for her fourth birthday. She had round eyes with thick lashes, rosebud lips, and bright red hair.
She looks just like you,
he had said.

“Take Suzy,” she said now, looking at the doll for a moment before holding it out for her mother. “She'll make you feel better.”