In a Heartbeat (5 page)

10

Amelia

I woke up with a dry mouth, like I’d spent a week in the desert without water. I tried to speak. No sound came out. There was something in my throat; a tube connected to a machine snaked down inside me.

I wanted to grab the tube, but my arms didn’t move. I turned my head. The tube turned too. My arms felt heavy, as if they were tied down.

A nurse in a blue smock was checking a beeping machine right next to me. I wanted her to look at me. I willed her to look at me.

She didn’t turn. I tried again to move my arms. So heavy. My throat was uncomfortable. Tears ran down my face, past my nose, and into the corners of my mouth.

The ventilator had a strong smell, like antiseptic air. No matter what I’d read beforehand, I wasn’t prepared for the tube down my throat or my inability to swallow. My stomach felt queasy. Where were Mom and Dad?

I blinked in the bright light above me, trying to adjust my eyes. Was the operation over? What was happening? Why did I feel so odd? I tried to focus on the back of the nurse’s smock, but the blue blended into the walls and she turned fuzzy.

There was something strange about me. Something besides all the tubes and wires that snaked from my body as if from an overused outlet.

I screamed but nothing came out. I was trapped in a nightmare. Yes, that’s what was happening. I had to go back to sleep so I could wake up in my own bed. That was easy enough. My eyes were so heavy. I wasn’t even surprised when the nurse turned into a horse, Dusty, the same mare I’d ridden before in my dream.

I was on top of the horse, riding higher and faster than I’d ever thought possible. The horse came to a white fence and jumped over, turning in the air as he jumped. We hit the frozen ground. I hung on, dizzy and afraid that I’d fall and puke at the same time. I bumped my head on the horse’s mane. Pain shot through me but I didn’t let go. I clutched his ears and mane, holding on for dear life. It felt as if my weak heart would give out before my arms did, and I’d pass out or let go if the horse ran much longer. If I fell, I was sure I would be trampled by his hooves as he ran past.

Then suddenly everything felt calm. I was still on top of the horse, still galloping at full speed through a grassy pasture, but now a surge of strength seemed to fill me from inside out. I felt free. I took a deep breath, a wonderful pain-free breath of fresh air. The ground streaked by, but I wasn’t scared anymore. The horse felt secure beneath me, and my body fell into his rhythm.

I was one with this horse now, riding fast and free. A fluid motion of inner strength and balance traveled from the horse’s back and neck up into me, filling me with a powerful energy. We were fearless.

Energy. Power. Freedom. I could breathe, I could shout. I felt so alive.

Was I dead? Was this how death felt? More alive than when I
was
alive?

“Go, Dusty,” I yelled, and I put my hands in the air because I knew that now I didn’t have to hold on. I wouldn’t fall.

The horse turned his head in midstride, and his voice drifted back on the prairie wind. “My name isn’t Dusty. Call me Dynamo.” The voice seemed to come from both the horse and from inside me. It sounded higher than my voice.

“Dynamo.” I repeated the name because I wanted to remember it. “Dynamo, Dynamo, Dynamo.”

Then I opened my eyes again. The tube was gone, and those were the first words that came out of my mouth.

11

EAGAN

Now that the fog isn’t so dense, I can see farther out. An ocean of gray stretches as far as I can see. It seems the longer I’m here, the more I feel part of the fog, as though I’m made out of gray nothingness.

The fog lifted when I relived the good memories. So I decide to concentrate on those. I’ve got to get out of this awful place. I have to be more than nothing. More than air. More than grayness.

I go back to a few months ago, before everything changed.

“Don’t put it on too thick,” Grandpa warned for the fourth time.

“I’m not, old man. I’m doing it just right.”

“Our first joint project may be our last, young lady.”

I used a tiny brush to apply a thin layer of varnish to the rocking chair. Grandpa had done the structural work; his hands seemed to know what to do on their own. I sanded the wood, brushed it with steel wool, and applied a tung oil and resin finish, working in his open garage to avoid the fumes.

“You can dish it out, Grandpa, but you can’t take it.”

He sat on an overturned trash can wearing a checkered flannel shirt that had white paint stains across the sleeves. He’d rolled up the sleeves as the afternoon sun warmed the garage. Every so often he picked up a broom and pushed out the red and gold leaves that blew in close to the chair. The paper-thin skin of his arms jiggled as he swept. His bifocals rested at the end of a stubby nose but he never pushed them up.

“You shouldn’t be such a smart aleck. When I’m teaching you how to do something, you should listen to me.”

“I am listening. But you act like it’s torture for you to watch me do this. You want to do it yourself?”

He shook his head. “You’re doing fine. Just keep it consistent.”

“I’ll keep it consistent, all right.”

“And don’t talk back.” Grandpa tried not to smile but I saw one brewing beneath his white mustache. He liked that I sassed him back, but he’d never admit it.

Grandpa stuck out a finger. “Look. It’s dripping down the side.” He reached for the brush, but pulled back his hand. It was killing him to watch someone else struggle at what came so easily for him.

“Got it.” I caught the drip with the edge of the brush.

Grandpa grunted. The brush was like a magnet drawing him toward it.

“I’m going to make you go in the house if you don’t stop,” I warned him.

He grabbed the broom and turned away from me, mumbling something about kids.

“I heard that,” I said. Grandpa didn’t reply. He pushed the broom across an oil stain in the center of the garage and allowed me to work. I glanced over at him, at his bent-over body. He looked so frail.

This chair had required such intricate work. My back hurt from bending over while I brushed on the varnish. How had Grandpa managed?

“I’m not sure Mom is the rocking type,” I said as I dipped the brush into the old margarine tub now filled with golden liquid.

Grandpa placed the broom between two shovels. “A good rocker relaxes a person. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” When he wasn’t tinkering around in his basement or garage, Grandpa spent his evenings on his front porch rocking chair.

“Mom sure needs relaxing. She’s the most uptight person I know.”

“It isn’t easy working and raising a teenager. Not in today’s world.”

“She works part-time, Grandpa. How hard can showing houses be? I think she just enjoys ripping apart other people’s houses, telling them what they need to do to make them showable.”

“So she’s high-strung. Your father knew that when he married her. But she’s a good woman.”

It bothered me that Grandpa always defended her. I stopped to rest my arm. “I wonder where she’ll put it.”

“In the spare bedroom,” Grandpa said without hesitation.

“Why would she put the chair there? We don’t even use that room.”

“Grandpa wisdom,” he said. That’s what Grandpa always said when he didn’t want to explain his reasoning.

Did Grandpa mention the spare bedroom because he didn’t think Mom would want a handmade rocking chair in her living room? She
was
that picky about her furniture.

“You realize that Mom replaces the furniture in our house every three years,” I warned him. “All this work might end up at the Goodwill.”

“Maybe she’ll pass the chair on to you when she doesn’t need it any longer,” Grandpa said.

“I hope so. This chair is great.” I stood back to admire my work.

Grandpa had selected Oregon black walnut, which he had specially shipped to Milwaukee. He’d carved the letter
L
for Lindeman, our last name, into the top and had taken extra care to make sure the grain followed the curves of the chair. Then he’d made me sand it. Five times! Each time I had to use finer and finer sandpaper.

Grandpa whistled. “Look at that sheen. See why I had you sand it five times?”

“Yeah, so my arm would fall off.” I had to admit I’d never seen a more beautiful rocking chair.

But something nagged at me. Rockers didn’t fit Mom’s taste in furniture. Last summer she’d bought a white Italian leather sofa for the living room. Even though our house was old, it had been remodeled so that the inside looked brand new.

I sighed and sat the brush on the edge of the margarine tub. My fingertips stuck to each other. After this coat dried, I had to apply another one. I was hot and tired. The ends of my ponytail stuck to the back of my sweaty neck. Would Mom even appreciate all our work? I doubted it. As Grandpa said, this chair might end up in the spare bedroom where nobody would see it.

“If Dad knew that Mom was like that, why did he marry her? She’s so high maintenance.”

Grandpa shrugged. “Same reason he’s still married to her. She has a lot of good qualities: she’s determined, loyal, hardworking.”

“Sounds like a dog.”

“Sounds kind of like you.”

“Don’t ever say that. Don’t compare me to
her
.”

“I know you two butt heads. That’s part of you growing up. But don’t be so quick to judge. Wait until you know her better.”

“I’m her daughter. How much better can I know her?”

“There’s knowing her now and knowing her ten years from now.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t know everything yet.”

“Like what?”

Grandpa shook his head. “You have to clean out that brush before it dries.”

“No, really. What don’t I know?”

“It’s not my place. Time to call it a day.”

Grandpa wouldn’t budge. I put the lid on the margarine tub and stuck the brush in a can of turpentine.

Maybe I didn’t know everything about Mom, but I knew her well enough. And I knew one thing Grandpa didn’t know: that his idea to make a homemade rocking chair for her was a waste of time. She wouldn’t like it. Nothing Grandpa thought he knew could convince me otherwise.