Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (22 page)

“Give him air,” one of the EMT’s, and
there are two now and a nurse on the floor around Merle, is on his cell with
the ambulance, I assume. He’s saying they can’t get a pulse.

They keep working. “Is he going to
breathe?” Pearlie asks Spencer.
Leeanne
has gotten
hold of herself and she goes to Pearlie. I am behind her and Spencer is helping
her to stand.

“C’mon, Miss Pearlie.
Let’s get outside so we can follow the ambulance.”

One of the EMT’s digs Merle’s keys out
of his pocket and gives them to Spencer. “I’ll follow the ambulance, Sarah.
Leeanne
can go with us to help Pearlie and you and
Cyro
can follow in the truck?” Spencer asks.

“Go with them,”
Cyro
says to me. “I’ll get the truck home.”

I want to protest, but if he can do it,
it would help. The dogs need someone to look out for them or I wouldn’t worry
about it at all.

So we work our ways to the front of the
restaurant and the guys from the ambulance are coming in with the bed as we’re
going out.

Pearlie is quiet and overwhelmed and Spencer
is practically carrying her outside while
Leeanne
hangs on and I follow. We get Pearlie in the car and
Leeanne
and I pile in the back and Spencer starts Merle’s car as we watch them bring
him out and load him in. We follow the ambulance then.

“Poor Merle,” Pearlie finally says as we
follow the ambulance at a good pace.

Leeanne
has her hand on Pearlie’s shoulder.
Leeanne’s
face is
wrecked. She looks at me, and we quickly clasp hands. Yeah. This is bad.

I picture death like this—someone
crosses the River Jordan, the dark waters closing over their head and they keep
walking on the river’s bottom until they can surface again. Now the good thing,
they’ve been pulled the whole way, whether it’s a hand holding on to them or
just a forceful current, they’ve been unable, maybe unwilling to resist the
pull of this water. So they finally get to the place where the water overhead is
diminishing enough they can see, they can feel the light coming back, and after
some steps their head surfaces, but they don’t take a breath.

They don’t need one.

And they’re looking forward at all
this…beauty. And they walk right out of that river into this marvelous light
and in that light, those they’ve loved and longed for start to emerge, arms
out-stretched, hands reaching. Pets are there too.
All of
them.
See, that’s what dries the tears. They are home.

No matter how much it hurts to stand at
the casket, to make sure Pearlie has a chair while Pastor Stanley speaks in a
velvet voice about Jesus and heaven, to have your arm around her as she touches
that same box for the last time, to drive away from Merle’s remains laying in
that box like a precious piece of jewelry…no matter how much…you wouldn’t call
him back from that place to go through it all again.

Not once he’s made his journey.

Donna is taking Pearlie home.
Leeanne
is going along until Pearlie is settled. She tells
me the night of the burial when I’m walking. I can’t believe her courage. I
know how it is for shut-ins. A small victory, one most people don’t even think
twice about, a shut-in will just gloat over forever, like God has spoken from
Mount Sinai and written some new law into stone, something that says, “You are
not a loser after all.”

Leeanne
is so fixated on
Pearlie,
she’s forgotten to be afraid
of the rest of the world. She’s shutting this place up, boarding her pets with
Barb and taking off for Florida with Pearlie and Donna.

I’m jealous, I’m threatened, I’m happy,
I’m filled with admiration. Mostly I’m relieved Pearlie will have someone who
loves her enough to put herself second. The way Merle always did.

Then there’s
Cyro
,
proud of himself for having gone in the diner on Sunday.
Proud
of himself for going to Merle’s funeral on Wednesday.
He’s Mr. Man-About-Town
now. He went to Big-Mart with me and Spencer on Monday. He wanted to pick out
some things for Dusty and get a new shirt for the funeral. I flick my light at
the crack in those new drapes, and he flicks his light back the way Merle used
to. See that’s why we do it, to remember Merle.

That’s when it hits me and I don’t see
it coming. I’m thinking I’ve got it under control, but what do I really
control? That’s when I leave off the back half of my walk and run to Spencer’s.
I don’t knock, I don’t have to. I pretty well stay here now. He’s in the
kitchen finishing the dishes and he’s holding a box of Saran Wrap we just
bought on our trip to Big-Mart with
Cyro
and he
throws that down as I throw down my light. He grabs onto me because I’ve
slammed into him.

I’m just crying. He’s held me for three
nights now, and he’ll hold me for three nights more, three nights at a time all
the way into the future I hope. I don’t want to be anywhere else but where I am
now in these arms.

“I’ve…got to…tell you something,” I say,
crying and breathing and wet and snot coming.

He doesn’t have a thing to say. He grabs
the nearest thing, a paper towel and wipes my face and I grab it and scrub and
throw it aside. “Spencer…I love you.
From my soul.”

I can breathe a little now. I’m just
staring at him and I quiet some but I’ve got hic-cups.

His hands on my clammy face, we are
looking at one another.

I do and I will.

A soft kiss.

He pulls me in and I lay my cheek on the
wet spot I’ve made on his shirt. He has walked me into the bedroom, well we’d
been moving, and I’d barely noticed. But he’s undressing me in there, and then
he leads me to the bed.

He undresses himself and I am watching
him.

It’s all I want, all my eyes want,
all my
mind wants.

He climbs in beside me and he puts the
covers over me and pulls me to himself and his leg over me even, wraps me in
him like he’s my mummy-clothes, my burrito shell, my second skin.

He hugs me hard the way I need it. I whisper,
“Harder,” because I can’t get enough.

This is how we become one. And after a
while, we both know it’s time.

There’s not a lot of preparation, just
our whole time together, this third week, our crash-course in one another.

He is careful as he pushes into me, and
it hurts for just a minute, not so bad, but when he tries to pull out of me, I
won’t let him.

It’s only pain, and I know pain, but
this is the kind of hurt that leads to something more, something so good I see
the light too, for just a flash.

His face, his head drops. He tells me he
loves me, loves me.

I know
it’s
okay…for Merle…it’s okay. I can let him be…let him go. I have love.

I’m loved.

And I love. I love. I love.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Thirty-Three

Many things are true at the same
time—good-bad, sense and madness, love and contempt, safety-peril. Many things
are true at the same time. We have, we are, we lose, we ache, we fight,
we
freeze. It can all be true and all at once.

We want it narrowed down. We want it in
the simplest form. We want one thing. If it’s good, it can’t be bad. If it
makes sense, it can’t be crazy. If we love it, we can’t also hate it. But many
things are true, all at once. I know this. I am real. I am a ghost. I am here.

There is the one thing you see, the
fifty things you don’t, the hundred things you can never see with the human
eye—like somebody’s heart.

You can’t see it.
Or
motives.
You can’t see motives. You can’t read minds.

Only Spencer can do that, and then only
with me. You can’t know someone’s pain, how deep.

You can’t weigh the damage.

We don’t even have the lights on. We are
just so small.

“I was always here,” I whisper to him
that night as we lay wrapped together. “This was my home,” I say. My safe place
I do not add, for that hasn’t changed.

“She worried I had Autism. She knew
there was something…different. But Frieda told her I just needed more time. And
love. But it wasn’t something Mom could trust.”

“Like a wives’ tale?” Spencer asked,
lazily stroking up and down my arm.

“I’m going to say this…whisper it.” I
taste my lips, the comfort of him there, baptismal salt. “She…needed something
to be wrong with me.” Oh there it
is,
one piece, one
piece, one jagged piece.

I can’t say more. I can’t tell it. I
worked so hard to make us something…normal. But she needed something to be
wrong…with me.

His hand is on my back. “It’s alright, Sarah,”
he says.

I don’t know. I want it to be. But I
have pictures in my head, snapshots of her. I told you I’d opened doors. But
not everything has had the courage to come out…because I don’t know.

“She cried a lot. She left me with Frieda
during the day. She took classes…for a long time. It was the only way out for
her. She loved art…my art. She never understood me, but the art…she liked that.
I think it was the one thing she believed came from her. Other than that…I was
his alien who’d grown in her body and came out to deliver his guilt…forever.”

“Sarah,” Spencer whispers. He’s holding
me and his arms create the right environment…a new environment…for the ghost
girl inside me.

“I knew I couldn’t take her place…the
damsel…in the tower. I knew I had to grow up another way. I had to take it
away….”

“Take what?”

“Being…desirable.
To
men.
I couldn’t…take that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You shouldn’t. No one should understand
this,” I say.

Silence.
Dog toenails on the wooden floor, the sound of bones caving to lie on the soft
honeyed wood.

“My father was there…but the good
times…she would dress up and they’d take themselves away and I’d be glad and
think it would be better. But it was never better. The next morning when I went
home, furniture might be overturned, evidence of bad weather in some of the
rooms, and the silence of them sleeping in, but often not in the same bed…same
room.

“She didn’t talk, she wailed. She talked
in this plea, or this angry shrill
sound,
and he
didn’t talk, he endured and then he blew up. When he went for her, I ran. I
always ran.
For Frieda.
She wouldn’t ask. This is
where I came.”

“Not
Cyro’s
?”

“Not the same thing.
Cyro
had…a sick wife. Jason.”

“Was he different from your dad?”

“They were both cops…but
Cyro
had less anger. Sometimes, I went for him. She’d say,
‘get
Cyro
,’ and I would. I would run to their house, Jason
would see me, ‘Dad,’ he’d call, ‘
it’s
Sarah.’ And
sometimes he’d say it so tiredly. He knew I was taking his dad.

“So
Cyro
was
our hero…and his wife was always sick. And one time…it had been brewing…and I
was staying at Frieda’s…with
Leeanne
.
Pajama party.
Friday night. It had been so bad between
them…and Frieda was giving us this…school was out.

“And he came home early, too early for
Friday night. But he was here…at Frieda’s…crossed the border
cause
Frieda’s was mine. He was wild, came right in without knocking…
Leeanne
in the corner with her dolls and I was playing with
mine…on the couch…I knelt there and…she was dancing…my doll…and angry boots on
the porch and in he came. His gun was in his hand.

He screamed for Mom and Frieda came from
the kitchen…and he shot her. He just…he shot her.”

“Why?” Spencer whispered, his arms
pulling me so tight against him. “Sarah….”

“I am ten years old. I hear this sound
from
Leeanne
…and he’s blinking and he comes over to
me, his fingers on my shoulder, he lifts me like that and I’m walking, wide
steps on my toes….”

“Babe,” Spencer says. “
Babe,”
and he kisses my hair.

“He drags me outside…not that I
resisted. I am so light and little, I know I can get picked up by the wind, and
I want it to be over…just
over…just
over. I feel…in
his hand…he doesn’t love me. He doesn’t love, but he picks me up with one arm around
my back, my chest pressed against his, my hands and feet hanging, he holds me
without a care, but I see his lips up close as they speak, the spit flying, and
the red in his eyes.

“
Cyro
is in
the street. A gun…and a gun…and the sounds of their voices the desperate
pleas…and the love…
is
in
Cyro
.
My hero.
I know this. But I don’t want saved. I have
already died.”

Spencer holds me as tight as he does
when he holds me as tight as he does.

“The scar?”
Spencer says, and I feel his dread.

“Beyond
Cyro
,
there is Mom, standing on
Cyro’s
porch, the afghan
from
Cyro’s
chair wrapped around her. Her shirt is
off. I see this so clearly, her bare shoulder and the strap from her bra. She
screams his name.
Cyro’s
name.”

“
Cyro’s
name,”
Spencer repeats.

“Fred shoots.
Cyro
goes down but he fires. When Fred falls he takes me down and I am over him. His
arm loosens and falls away and I know that we are leaving. I roll off of him
and over me is this shape, and I
wait
for the big
angel to take me. I am not afraid…I’m relieved. I can be dead now.”

More silence.
Screaming
then, and noise and sirens.
And the angel bends closer...but it’s Frieda,
her face, and she touches me, over my heart….

The one who’s around me then, the one
who speaks to me, reaches me…is
Cyro
. I think…it was
Cyro
all along, but his leg is shattered.
Cyro
crawled to me.

“I saw Frieda,” I say.

Spencer doesn’t speak. But I do not
disappear in his arms. The ghost is wearing flesh and blood. The ghost has
found her words.