The Way Back to Happiness (7 page)

The thought stopped her cold. Diana
had
reached out to her. This letter probably represented not only her sister’s last will and testament, but also her last words, maybe her last thoughts. And they’d been of Alabama, the daughter she was leaving behind. Purposefully.

How could Diana have done that? How could she have been so selfish, so . . .

She rose on wobbling legs and staggered as far as the couch, where she curled up in a heap. How could this have happened? How had they traveled from those button-cute girls in matching scratchy Easter dresses to this?
I was her big sister, I should have taken care of her. Watched over her.

Too late now.

Now there was only Alabama. What had Diana said?
She’s all that’s left.
For weeks, Bev had felt a growing frustration that Gladys wouldn’t give up on the idea of taking care of Alabama herself. She hadn’t been able to figure out why this bothered her, much less put the uncomfortable feeling into words. She’d simply felt that it should have been her responsibility. Now she wondered if it hadn’t been her sister haunting her conscience.

The
brrrrrringggg
of the telephone whiplashed her upright. Her hand groped for the princess phone on the table, which she answered with a dazed “Hello?”

The snuffling over the line confused her at first. She’d been expecting Derek to call. They usually got together on the weekend.

“Who is this?” Bev asked.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice answered.

For a moment, Bev’s heart stopped.

“Alabama.” The name came out more like a croak, as if Alabama was on the verge of crying. And there were noises in the background. People talking in loud, urgent voices.

Bev’s nerves jumped in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Gladdie. They’re going to take her to the hospital. She—” Alabama broke off and silence stretched over the line.

“Alabama?” The handset shook in her trembling hand. “Hello?”

“Gladdie’s . . .” Alabama’s voice cracked again. “She . . . she’s having some kind of attack.”

A
labama rode in the back of the ambulance, perched on a narrow seat as an EMS guy hovered next to Gladdie, taking her vital signs. Now that she was strapped to a gurney, Gladdie questioned the seriousness of her condition. “I probably just have indigestion,” she said, before closing her eyes and shuddering as if a bulldozer of pain were rolling over her.

“Mm-hm,” the EMS guy said, unconvinced.

The driver hadn’t turned on the ambulance’s siren, but the vehicle made rattling noises Alabama didn’t understand until the emergency guy turned to her.

“Are you okay?”

She gulped. “Me?”

The rattling stopped momentarily and she realized where the sound had originated—from her own teeth clacking together like dice in a Yahtzee cup.

The rest of the way, she focused on maintaining an outward calm. Or at least not shaking visibly or audibly. It took a lot of effort, because her insides had jellied. Even holding herself upright required effort.

She was the angel of death.

An unspoken prayer tapped through her head like Morse code, over and over.
Please don’t let her die, please don’t let her die, please don’t let her die. I’ll do anything.

At the hospital, they rolled Gladdie away almost immediately. Vomiting in the emergency room got results, evidently. After that, a woman behind the admitting desk peppered Alabama with questions about Gladdie.
Address?
Alabama didn’t even know the street address of The Villas.
High blood pressure? Medications? Family doctor? Supplemental insurance?
The woman asked the information in a rushed manner, not paying attention to the fact that the person she was talking to was only fourteen.

“I don’t know anything,” Alabama finally said. “You’ll have to wait for my aunt. She’s on her way. She lives in a place called New Sparta? She’ll know.”

The thought of Aunt Bev’s arrival bumped her anxiety level up a notch, and yet she was impatient for her to get there because she felt so useless. So helpless.

The woman said they had taken Gladdie in for diagnostics and Alabama would have to wait, so Alabama hovered in a hall near the emergency admitting area. Worrying. Dreading.

This was all her fault. The whole moving scheme had been her brainchild. House hunting in the heat of the afternoon, which had obviously worn out Gladdie? Alabama’s idea had instigated it all. Then Woodrow, her grandmother’s ancient friend, had taken them out to a late lunch—Italian food, Alabama’s favorite—and Gladdie had appeared exhausted but had insisted they live it up and even have cheesecake for dessert, as a treat for Alabama.

I should have said I wanted to go back.
What if Gladdie died because of her?

Standing there in the emergency wing’s main hallway, white fluorescent tedium punctuated with tragedy, she lost track of time. She couldn’t say if it had been minutes or hours when she looked down the corridor and saw Aunt Bev bearing down on her. All other activity blurred—the nurses bustling past in scrubs, the people sitting in various postures of impatience or pain in the waiting room, the man attached to an IV shuffling down the hallway. Her vision zeroed in on Aunt Bev’s clench-jawed, mottled-red face . . . and also her outfit. Mostly the outfit. A white skirt and a belted oversized blue jean shirt with a big red ladybug appliqué on it. As the bug barreled closer, Alabama tried to speak . . . but nothing came out. Her mouth was sand. She braced herself for the blistering accusations she knew were coming. Bev had been against her and Gladdie’s plans from the beginning, and now look.

Her aunt steamed within a few feet of her without seeming to slow down. Did she intend to run her over, to crush her with anger?

Before impact, Alabama closed her eyes, and in the next second she was choking in a cloud of Youth Dew. Her aunt grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her noodly body into hers, and squeezed. A moment passed before Alabama realized that this was a sympathy hug, not a punishment.

“You poor thing!” Bev sobbed. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

In Bev’s boa constrictor embrace, it took effort to breathe, never mind figure out what Bev had to be sorry for. Alabama tried to back up a step, but the wall was right behind her. She was trapped. “The doctors are still trying to figure out what’s wrong,” she squeaked. “They’re running tests.”

Bev released her finally and dug through her big denim purse for a Kleenex. “You poor thing,” she repeated, honking into her tissue. “I feel so terrible. I should have been here for you. . . .”

Why?
Alabama wondered.
I’m not the one who’s sick.

Bev blew her nose again and stuffed the tissue into her skirt pocket as a doctor in a white lab coat approached them. He knew right away that Bev was the person to talk to.

“Mrs. Putterman is . . . ?”

“My mother,” Bev said.

“We’re taking your mother in for surgery now. She’s had a gallbladder attack. Rather severe—the sonogram shows stones and acute inflammation. After the surgery, we’ll keep her here for several days, but there will be a significant recovery period, even if all goes well.”

Bev’s face pinched in worry. “Oh dear. Well, perhaps I can take her home with me.”

The doctor was already edging away from them. “I’ll give you an update after the surgery.”

They trudged back to the waiting area and kept up a vigil there for hours, Bev drinking vending machine coffee and Alabama munching listlessly through a package of Bugles.

“Do people die from gallbladders?” Alabama asked.

Bev reacted as if she’d been poked in the back. “Die? Mama’s not going to die. She’s having surgery so she won’t die, or get sick again. She . . .” Her gaze met Alabama’s and all of a sudden she reached over and seized her. Bugles went flying and Bev clasped Alabama to her bosom so that Alabama found herself nose to nose with the ladybug. “Don’t worry,” she cooed tearfully. “Your Gladdie will be fine.”

Alabama wrestled herself free. “I was just asking.”

Bev sat back and watched her with an uncertain look.

“Really,” Alabama assured her. “
I’m
okay.”

Bev, on the other hand, looked like she was going to fall apart.

After that, the wait seemed even longer. Alabama took care to get up, stretch, and sit back down two seats away from Bev. The next time her aunt became overemotional and wanted to hug, she’d have to hurdle over a man with an oozing head wound to get to her.

Before midnight, a different doctor in green scrubs came out to tell them that the surgery had been a success. They were allowed to see Gladdie in the recovery area, but she was groggy and a nurse shooed them away after a few minutes.

They drove back to The Villas. Even though Alabama had lived there for weeks, without Gladdie there she felt like an intruder.

“You poor baby!” Bev said as Alabama dug through her suitcase to get the tee she used as a nightshirt. “What a day you’ve had—and tomorrow will be another long one.”

She enunciated those last words with such maudlin relish, they shot through Alabama like sonic doom.

“Why?”

“We need to get up early to start packing the car,” Bev explained. “So you’ll be ready to come back to New Sparta with me.”

This was her aunt’s plan: Alabama would go immediately to live with Bev in New Sparta, with Gladdie to follow as soon as the doctors released her from the hospital. Then, after she recovered, Gladdie would return to Dallas while Alabama remained. She would enroll in school there. Probably Bev hoped she would get stuck there and become her latest craft project.

Alabama had other ideas, but she had to be realistic. Staying in Dallas while Gladdie was hospitalized was a battle she couldn’t win. Maybe this was part of the bargain she’d made in the ER.
I’ll do anything,
she’d prayed. Welcome to anything.

But surely she could come back once Gladdie was released?

She hadn’t predicted how awful Gladdie would appear when they visited her. She was flat on her back in a bed that had bars like a stainless steel crib, with only a curtain between her and someone wheezing on the other side of it. An IV tube dripped into her arm—an arm that looked more slack and veiny than Alabama had noticed before. Her face was paler than it had seemed the previous night, even.

Gladdie’s reddish-blue eyelids fluttered uncertainly before she stared up at them leaning over her.

“How are you feeling?” Bev asked in a loud voice.

“They took out my gallbladder, not my eardrums.”

A geyser of nervous chuckles spewed out of Bev. “That’s the way, Mama—laughter is the best medicine.”

Gladdie’s lips tensed in a grim line. As her eyes met Alabama’s, her gaze conveyed so much—exhaustion, irritation, resignation. Her grandmother’s thin hand covered hers, giving it a feeble squeeze, and Alabama felt guilty for the depression and anger she’d been prey to all morning. Being taken away to New Sparta sucked, but Gladdie was way worse off.

“Done in by a cheesecake,” Gladdie said.

“We’ll get you out of here.”

“ ’Course we will,” Bev said. “In a week or so, you’ll be home with us.”

Weak Gladdie might have been, but Bev’s words seemed to clear the fog of morphine and give her a jolt of strength. “I’ll be returning to The Villas in a week or so.”

“But you’ll need someone to take care of you,” Bev argued.

“I can stay at the health center.”

Following her bout of pneumonia, the health center at The Villas was the place Gladdie had dreaded most. And now she was going there again willingly rather than stay with Bev.

New Sparta must be quite a town
.

“You said you hated the health center,” Bev said. “Let me look after you this time.”

“I’m not ready to live the rest of my life on a rocking chair on your front porch, Bev.” Before Bev could lodge her protest, she added, “Besides, that house of yours isn’t big enough for all three of us.” Gladdie looked at Alabama. “I’m sorry. Our plans will have to be . . . postponed.”

Alabama nodded quickly. “That’s okay.”
Postponed.
That word gave her hope, even if it was contradicted by the dull resignation in Gladdie’s eyes.

“When the wind’s not in our favor, we adjust our sails,” Bev said, a determined smile on her lips.

After that, the visit seemed to drag. No one really knew what more to say.

“Can we get you anything, Mama?” Bev asked as they were about to leave for lunch.

Gladdie swallowed and blinked. “No thank you.”

“Would you like us to turn on the television?”

“Good Lord, no.” From her tone, Alabama would have guessed she never watched TV. Television would have been better than listening to the wheezer, in her opinion.

“You can’t just lie there,” Bev argued.

“I can if I want,” Gladdie said petulantly.

Her aunt backed down. “Well . . . we’re heading out to The Villas to load up Alabama’s things. We’ll come back this afternoon on our way out of town.”

“You should go straight home,” Gladdie said. “You don’t want to get stuck in traffic.”

“It’s Sunday,” Bev reminded her. “We’ll be back.”

At The Villas they loaded up Bev’s tiny car with as much of Alabama’s stuff as possible. When Bev wasn’t paying attention, Alabama slipped down to the garage, to Gladdie’s rarely used Buick, and retrieved the shoe box containing her grandmother’s cassettes from the front seat.

She was on the way back up in the elevator when it stopped on the ground floor to let in a ghost.

At least, Wink startled her as much as a ghost would have. A ghost in light green pants and a pink plaid shirt. “Well, if it’s not my little lifesaver!” he said, beaming.

Not a ghost, then. Confusion flustered her. “I-I didn’t save you. The health center guys did.” There was a small bandage on his throat to testify to that fact.

But he was alive! She’d thought she would never see him again. Maybe she wasn’t the angel of death after all. She wanted to hug him, but that would have been too weird, so she smiled.

“They told me you called health center,” Wink said.

“Well, yeah . . . any moron could have done that.”

“But not just any moron did, did they?” Wink laughed and pressed the button for his floor, which was one above Gladdie’s. “How’s Gladys?”

She shrugged. “She had gallbladder surgery. I guess she’ll be all right.”

“Sure she will! That’s one of those things nobody really needs—tonsils, appendix, gallbladders. Better off without ’em.”

“But she’s stuck in the hospital, and my aunt’s taking me away to New Sparta. . . .” Her voice broke, leaving her feeling like an idiot.

Wink grabbed her shoulders and squeezed them. For once, the look in his eye was dead serious. “Don’t you worry. I’ll go visit your grandmother every day—every day, do you hear me?—and try to keep her spirits up. I’ll even bring my ukulele.”