The Goodbye Summer (25 page)

“Is she in the hospital?”

“The medics came,” Bernie said, “and took her on a stretcher in the ambulance. Brenda took Bea and Magill in her car, and Mrs. Brill went in the ambulance with Edgie.”

“Mrs. Brill?”

“Calm as a cucumber. Very efficient. Good in a crisis, turns out.”

“Should we go, too?” Caddie asked Thea. Shouldn’t they do
something
?

“Not yet, we’d just be in the way.” Thea moved between the two men and lowered herself to the sofa with a muted grunt. “There’s nothing for us to do, and Bea’s got Brenda and Henry. And Mrs. Brill.”

“Poor Edgie,” said Caddie, looking from face-to-face. “What will happen?”

Bernie cleared his throat. “Depends on how bad a stroke it is. Sometimes it’s the end of everything and they’re never the same, sometimes they get right over it. Just depends.”

“On what part of the brain it hits,” Cornel explained.

Thea nodded slowly.

They knew all about strokes, these three, Caddie thought. Getting old made you an expert in all sorts of things you never wanted to know about.

“Magill’s s’pose to call as soon as there’s anything to report,” Cornel said, taking the seat beside Thea, lowering his backside creakily.

Bernie dragged a chair close and collapsed on it.

“I’d like to wait with you,” Caddie said. Thea started to move over, make room for her on the sofa. “But I think I should go up and wait with Nana. Because she’ll be…” She didn’t know what Nana would be. But maybe frightened and upset, and if so, Caddie should be with her. “Let me know if you hear anything?” she asked, and Cornel said sure, of course they would.

“Thank you,” Thea called softly. “Thank you, Caddie.”

She turned back in the doorway. “For what?”

“For the
loveliest
day.”

“It was great—we’ll do it again soon.”

Thea covered a sad smile by blowing her a kiss. “I hope so!”

Bea was the only one allowed to see Edgie for the first couple of days. The first time Caddie went, Edgie was asleep, and the second time she was out having physical therapy. Finally, a whole week after the stroke, Caddie found her in her room and wide awake.

They’d given her a triple, but nobody was in either of the other two beds right now. She didn’t see Caddie at first—Bea, perched on the edge of her bed, blocked her view—but Magill did. He’d been slouching on the heater-air-conditioner unit under the windowsill; he stood up carefully, holding the sill with one hand and sleeking his hair back with the other. “Hey.” He greeted her with his shy-sly smile. “Look who’s here, Edgie.”

Bea stood up, too. “Why, it’s Caddie—look, Edgie, Caddie’s come to see you.”

Bea looked exhausted; in one week, she’d aged ten years. Caddie set her jelly jar of petunias down on the cluttered bedside table and hugged her. Bea was as tall as she was, and strong for her age; despite all her infirmities, she’d always seemed powerful, like a farm woman, a pioneer, somebody who took care of business with her tough, capable hands. But her sister’s stroke had cut her down and changed everything. She looked ready to surrender.

Edgie made a sound like “Ehhmm” from the bed. She was listing a little to the side, one arm tucked under the sheet, but she lifted the other and held it out in welcome. “
You,
” she said.
“Fine-ly.”

“I know.” Caddie kissed her cool cheek and took her one strong hand, and got a good squeeze in return. “You look wonderful,” she said in relief, and it was nearly true. Edgie looked pale and tired, but the old impish twinkle in her eye was the same, and the same glad smile when she saw Caddie lit up her face.

“I fixed her hair.” Bea sat down on the other side of the bed from Caddie. “The nurses were doing it all wrong.”

“Oh, it’s pretty.” Like soft yellow cotton. “I hear you’re coming home soon.”

Edgie’s smile was off-center, but pure joy. “I hear.”

“Boy, we’ve missed you. It’s not the same with you gone.”

She said something Caddie couldn’t make out.

“Says she can’t wait,” Bea said.

“This place,” Edgie said clearly, then made a face, including sticking out her pink tongue.

Caddie had to remind herself not to speak too slowly or loudly; Edgie wasn’t deaf and there was nothing wrong with her mind. “Well, it won’t be long now, you’ll be out on the front porch in your green rocker.” The green rocker was Edgie’s, the blue one next to it Bea’s. Unofficially.

Edgie put her right hand to her lips, as if praying.

“Talk,” Bea urged, “don’t pantomime. She gets so tired, but she’s got to talk.”

Her sister sighed, grunted. “I talk,” she said with effort.

“And to think I used to
wish
she’d shut up once in a while.” Bea laughed with watering eyes, and Edgie gave her hip a push with her good hand.

“She’s doing great,” Magill spoke up from the foot of the bed. “She’s the queen of rehab. You should’ve seen her on the parallel bars today, Caddie. Sheena of the jungle.”

Edgie snickered. “ ’Cuz of her,” she said, patting her sister’s knee. Then something garbled. She scowled, frustrated, and tried again. Caddie still didn’t catch it; it sounded like
timer rain.

“Time is brain,” Bea explained. “That’s what Dr. Cao says, the neurologist. They got her to the hospital fast and gave her clot busters. The faster the better.”

“It could’ve been much worse,” Magill said. “If you hadn’t called 911 as quick as you did.”

Caddie already knew that, everybody at Wake House knew it, but it was good of him to say it again in front of Bea. It was the only thing that consoled her, the only bright spot in this whole disaster: that she had done right, acted properly.

Caddie had been warned to keep her visit short. They talked for a little longer, then she stood and said she’d better go.

“I’ll walk out with you,” Bea said quickly.

Caddie leaned over and put her cheek next to Edgie’s. “I’ll come see you again.”

“You better,” she said clearly.

“You get strong, you hear, and come home soon. Because we really miss you.”

“Miss you.” She draped her arm around Caddie’s neck and hugged her hard. “Take care o’
her.
”

“I will. I will.” They kissed again, and Caddie straightened up quickly—how awful it would be to cry in front of Edgie. “Bye, see you. Need a ride?” she asked Magill. “I was going over to see my grandmother now.”

“Guess I’ll stick around a little longer,” he said, taking her place on the edge of the bed. “Thanks anyway.”

Bea was already out in the hall. “Let’s go in here,” she said, guiding Caddie into a tiny, too-bright waiting room. Full of people; there were only two empty seats left together, and they were underneath a blaring TV set. “No, let’s—” She pivoted, and they went back out in the hall. “There’s a place down here.” A bench under a bulletin board at the other end of the corridor. “Can you sit for a minute, Caddie, do you have time?”

It was Sunday, she had all the time in the world. They sat on a vinyl-covered bench with a water fountain on one side and the red-lighted emergency exit door on the other. No real privacy, but the dead-end hall was relatively secluded. Good thing, Caddie thought, when Bea put her hands over her eyes and burst into tears.

She’d brought her handbag, a square black carryall with a silver clasp. When she opened it, Caddie caught the mint-and-cellophane scent of Nana’s purse and wondered if all old ladies’ pocketbooks smelled the same. “I’m a wreck,” Bea mumbled into her wrinkled handkerchief. “Can’t keep this up.”

“You’re not getting enough rest. Edgie’s in better shape than you are.” She’d never seen Bea cry before. She could hardly stand it.

Wiry strands of pewter-gray hair had come down from her careful coronets; she swiped at them with the back of her hand. “I’m not holding up well at all. I feel ashamed to be this frightened.”

“But Edgie’s going to recover, I’m sure of it. And mostly because of you, Bea. And once she gets home, she’ll
feel
a lot better.”

“She’s not coming home.” Bea raised her wet face from the sodden handkerchief; fresh tears trickled down the deep furrows in her cheeks. “She can’t come home, Brenda can’t take her.”

“What?
Why?
”

“She thinks she is and I can’t tell her otherwise. I’m afraid it’d kill her.”

“Why can’t she come home?”

Bea dug the hard heels of her hands into her eye sockets, as if she could push the tears back in. “She needs special therapy right now or it won’t do any good, speech therapy, physical, occupational…Medicaid won’t pay for home care, and every bit of our savings is already going to Wake House. I’m not even sure the insurance can pay for therapy here, not all of it. Brenda wants to take her back, but there’s some rule against it if she’s bedridden. I don’t know what to do. We’ve never been separated before, and I don’t know what to do. Why couldn’t it have been me? That’s what I keep praying to God to tell me. It was always supposed to be me, not Edgie.”

Caddie put her arms around her. “Well, I don’t agree,” she said in a voice as steady as she could make it. “If it had to be either one of you, it’s better that it’s Edgie.”

“No.”

“I think so. Poor thing, she couldn’t handle this happening to
you,
Bea. She’d feel overwhelmed, because she’s never been the older one. That’s
your
job.”

“I can’t do it. Oh, Lordy.”

“You have a lot of friends to help you.”

She inhaled a deep sniff and sat up straight. “That’s the one good thing about being the oldest woman on earth. Everybody else is younger.” After she blew her nose, she mashed it back and forth with her handkerchief. “It’s not true that we’ve never been separated. When Daddy first found out his heart was bad, they sent him for tests over at Johns Hopkins. I drove him, and we stayed two nights in a motel and Edgie stayed home to keep things going. The first night she went wild—had a glass of sherry all by herself in the parlor and turned on a dance program on the radio.
Loud
—she told me that so proud, Caddie, you’d’ve thought she shot heroin in her arm. She stayed up till eleven-thirty and didn’t even listen to the news. Racy! Next night, all the fun was out of her, though. She called up on the phone and wailed about how lonesome she was, would we please hurry and come home.” She laughed, smearing one last tear out of her eye.

“I don’t know how healthy it’s been, us two being so close. You don’t see it in sisters so much nowadays, everybody’s so independent. Girls with jobs, and keeping their names when they get married. Well, it can’t be helped, we are what we are by now, and if she goes before me, I swear—” She put her head back against the wall and shut her eyes tight. “It’ll be like cutting off my leg. Both legs.”

Caddie didn’t know what to say. Except, “I think she’s going to get better. And Brenda will work something out, I’m positive.”

Bea made a try at a smile. “I hate to say it, but I think sometimes things really are as bad as they seem. Sometimes there’s not going to be a happy ending. And if that’s the kind of wisdom old age gets you, I can do without it.”

Magill found them a few minutes later, leaning against each other, holding hands. “Um,” he said, and they straightened up, sending him shaky, reassuring smiles. “Edgie fell asleep, so I…”

“Well, that’s good,” Bea said in her hearty voice, getting to her feet with a grunt, “now you can go on home with Caddie. You’ve been here since morning, you look terrible.”

“You’ve got that backwards, Miss Bea, except for the looking terrible part, of course.” He had a funny, courtly way of talking to the old ladies at Wake House that they loved. “You go with Caddie now, and I’ll stay just a little longer.”

“Nope. Brenda’s coming over to pick me up, we’ve got it all arranged. Go on, get.” She gave him a push. “Anyway, I’ve got a plan: I’m gonna sit down, put my feet up on Edgie’s bed, and take a snooze.”

Hugging Bea goodbye, Caddie whispered in her ear, “I
know
everything’s going to be all right.” But she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Out on the pavement, the heavy August heat smacked into them like a wet towel. Caddie took Magill’s arm when he wobbled, and he took hers, she guessed because she was pregnant, and they tacked across the wavy parking lot toward her broiling car.

“Hey, look at you, you’ve bulked up,” she noticed, squeezing his bare biceps under his short-sleeved shirt, and of course then he had to flex the muscle for her and she had to exclaim over it with even more enthusiasm. “Bulked up” was an exaggeration, but he did have a stronger, tougher feel to him. “Yeah, been working out,” he said in a deep-throated, mock-manly voice. She told him she’d been taking long walks in the mornings, for health and to work off some of Finney’s manic energy, but she really ought to do more. Teaching piano and violin all day didn’t exactly keep you in shape. Magill said she looked okay to him.

“Actually, I’m not teaching all day,” she confessed, trying to steer out of the lot without burning her hands on the wheel. She opened all the windows but Magill’s, which was stuck, but the car still felt like a sauna. “This time of year, I lose a lot of students because of vacations and what have you. My schedule’s about half what it should be.”

“No students, no income,” Magill realized. “That must make it rough.”

“Well, you know it’s coming, so you try to plan ahead in the good times.” It seemed worse this summer, though, or else she was just worrying more. Nana’s pension had been enough to get her through the first two
months at Wake House, but with the higher rates coming, they were going to have to dip into savings. Nana’s cast was off and she’d graduated from the wheelchair to the walker—she could come home if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to.

“It’s just the nature of my job,” Caddie said, “it’s seasonal. I’d planned to work part-time at the music store, I’ve done that before, but then, I don’t know, I just sort of punked out.” No, what happened was, she’d started going out with Christopher, and that had been so thrilling and unexpected, the idea of working in a store at night when she could be with him had come to seem wasteful and ridiculous. Another wrong choice in a summer of wrong choices.

“Oh, no, what is this? Oh, brother, a traffic jam. On
Sunday.
It must be an accident. Or else that construction on Lee Street…” Cars were inching along in her lane and not moving at all in the one beside her. “Good thing we’re not in a hurry,” she said, trying to be positive. But if the Pontiac idled too long on a hot day, the radiator boiled over. She looked over at Magill, who didn’t appear to be listening. He was drumming his fingers on the knees of his jeans, frowning at the dashboard. He turned toward her suddenly and cleared his throat. But then he didn’t say anything.

“It’s the traffic light, I think,” she said, squinting into the distance. “I can see a cop. Oh, boy, now we’re in trouble.”

“I, um.” He cleared his throat again. “I was going to wait for a better time, but I don’t know when that would be.”

“What?” She gave him her full attention. He looked as if he had a present for her, something chancy he wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d like. The sun through the window struck his face on one side, illuminating his beard stubble. Some men only shaved every few days for fashion; Magill did because for him shaving was a dangerous adventure.

“I was thinking about the situation, your situation, and I was thinking…” He grinned without looking at her, gazing past her out at the car stopped next to theirs. “What you said before about the second generation of Winger bastards, and it made me—”

“The what?”

“The second generation of bastard daughters. You said that, remember, or else Frances did, that time we—”

“Oh. Right.”

“Yeah, and so I thought maybe, possibly, I might be able to help you out. Since you’re sort of a…of a conservative person. Wouldn’t you say?”

She peered at him. The car in front moved a few feet; she put the Pontiac in gear and crept up behind it.