Jeff Abbott: Only Good Yankee

I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. She straightened and forced a smile. “Hey. Your arm feeling better?” She’d been terrorizing the hospital staff into taking excellent care of me. And now that her shock over my close call had subsided, she’d turned to her usual pastime: teasing me. “If you were sleeping in your own bed, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” She yanked her white cook’s uniform straight and ran a hand through her thick blonde hair. She’s still one of the prettiest women in Mirabeau, with her high cheekbones and determined mouth, but she doesn’t seem interested in getting hooked up again. After the rotten way her husband abandoned her, I wasn’t surprised. “Good thing your hooter didn’t get blown off. ‘Course, small targets tend to survive.” “Very funny.” I enjoyed having Sister tease me again. She’d suffered a shock, weeks ago, when I’d had to tell her about Mama and Bob Don. I suppose that technically we were only half sister and half brother now, but when you’ve been raised together you don’t feel much different about each other. Plus, I wasn’t about to start calling her Half Sister. Just doesn’t sound right, you know. I quickly filled her in on what had happened with Lorna and Nina Hernandez. Sister’s lovely green eyes widened. She’d heard enough about Lorna when I lived up in Boston. “That’s what you get for dating a Yankee, Jordy,” she admonished me. “I beg your pardon?” Sister looked at me like I was the town idiot. “For God’s sakes, you were the one that complained Yankees were kind of brusque and rude and made fun of your accent That just shows how unpleasant they can be. Well, this Lorna YMCA-or-whatever-her-name-is gets hold of a nice Southern boy who’s been raised right and is more than presentable. I’m sure you treated her nicer than any of those Yankee fellers ever did. Why wouldn’t she track you down and tree you like a coon?” “Lorna’s not the tracking kind, Sister.” “She’s here, ain’t she?” With that, Sister sailed out of the room in triumph. “You and Clo can eat those chicken enchiladas for supper. Mark’s staying at his friend Randy’s tonight. I’ll be back at eleven.” The porch door slammed behind her. I pulled a cold bottle of Celis from the fridge and shook two Tylenol out of a bottle. Gulping them down, I sipped the beer. “You sure are stupid, taking those with alcohol,” a voice rumbled behind me. I put on my best smile and turned to face my own house’s gentle ogre. Clo Butterfield watched me, her beefy dark arms folded across her ample chest. Her black face was set in half stern disapproval, half amusement. Her salt-and-pepper hair was set in an improbable perm. I shook the little bottle of capsules at her. “It doesn’t say anything about that on the bottle,” I said defensively.

Clo snorted, deep and low like a bull scrutinizing an amateur matador.

“Ever-body knows you don’t take drugs with alcohol. Didn’t they teach you nothin’ at college?” I pointed with the bottom of my beer bottle at the oven. “Sister left some enchiladas cooking in there for our dinner.” “Thanks, but I got a nose. I can smell ‘em.” She frowned at my arm and my sling. “Can’t believe the foolishness in this town, some idiot blowing up mailboxes. Come on upstairs. Let me look at your bandage, see if it needs changing.” I followed our angel of mercy up the stairs, her white uniform tight across her heavy body. “How’s Mama?” I asked. “Fine. Same as when you left here.” If Clo disapproved of my nocturnal wanderings to Candace’s bed, she wasn’t going to say so outright. I followed her down to Mama’s room, and we both stood in the doorway, looking in on my mother, trapped inside her private, shrinking world. She sat in her bed, a colorful quilt made by her own mother tossed lightly across her legs. She didn’t seem to feel the July heat. Clo had just washed and combed Mama’s hair, and she looked like a small child, fresh from an afternoon swim in the creek. She stared, like a blind person would, at the small color television on her dresser. She couldn’t stand the volume turned up loud, so the Channel 36 news anchor whispered his late-breaking stories to her uncaring ears. Her hand moved repetitively across the quilt, caught in a loop of echoes she could not break. My throat doesn’t tighten anymore when I see Mama like this. I’ve learned to play the waiting game of Alzheimer’s, reluctantly acknowledging that she will never recover and waiting for the day when she breathes her last. I sometimes hope for it so I can have more memories of her as she was, rather than have them supplanted by memories of the shell she is now.

In the past Mama would have been on her feet in a moment, demanding to know why my arm was in a sling, comforting me far beyond my need for it, doctoring me herself, making me laugh at her worry, smothering her little boy with a nearly irritating level of attention. Now she stared at me, through me, no more seeing the sling on my arm and her nurse standing next to me than she did air itself. Clo spoke to her in a far gentler tone than she’d ever used with me or Sister. “Anne, Jordy’s come home for supper.” Mama didn’t even nod. She glanced at me as though I were a bothersome stranger and turned her attention to the television. My throat tensed. Mama’s not even talking as much as she used to, when her babblings were annoying and I’d have to hold my patience to keep from pulling my ears off. Now the silence she offered was worse, like the quiet of a grave. I went over to her and gently squeezed her hand. She kept watching the screen. Clo was undeterred.

“I’ll feed you your supper in a minute, Anne. I’m gonna take a look at Jordy. He hurt his arm out fighting organized crime.” I smiled, but Mama did not. Today she was uninterested in my adventures. With Clo following, I went to my own room. Her ministrations did not take long.

She examined my stitches critically, made a noise in her throat, cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe from her nurse’s bag, and put on a fresh bandage. “This damn world. Some say folks like your mama are crazy, but someone who blows up mailboxes, they the loony ones.” She pressed the bandage onto my skin. “Weren’t you scared?” “I was too surprised. Now, today, that was scary.” I told Clo about Lorna’s reappearance in my life, Candace’s disapproval, and my rocky meeting with Miss Twyla and Nina Hernandez. “Dating Yankees. Don’t you know better than that?” she finally opined. “You don’t think I was celibate all that time up there, do you?” I eased my arm into a fresh shirt. “I think what you need, boy, is a little celibacy. Do you some good. Then you don’t have womenfolk arguing over you. Celibacy never killed a man.” “Well, I have a feeling that if Candace has her way, I’ll be home alone for weeks to come.” “Builds character,” Clo rumbled. She patted my good shoulder and moved toward the door. “I’ll go get Anne’s dinner.” “Speaking of Yankees,” I ventured, “my old girlfriend’s coming over tonight. Apparently she has a business proposition for me.” “I’ll just bet she does.” Clo nodded. “Monkey business, most likely.” “I think I’ll invite her to dinner. Sister made enough enchiladas for us all.” Clo didn’t argue. “Let me know if your shoulder bothers you any. You staying here tonight?” I pondered the possibilities. “Yeah, I am.” I didn’t imagine Candace was particularly aching to have me climb into her bed. Plus I needed some time to think. The doorbell rang. I hate it when your past catches up with you.

Lorna stood behind a big bouquet of brightly colored flowers-a gift for Mama. The introductions were quick and to the point. Clo sized up Lorna and the flowers, made polite noises, and excused herself to go feed dinner to Mama up in her room. Lorna still wore her business suit (and looked as uncomfortable as anyone in a suit in the dead of Texas summer would be). She stood in the middle of the living room, shifting from foot to foot, casting her eyes over the white wicker furniture, the mural of family photos that covered one wall, and the antique coffee table that seemed to hold a patina of dust as part of its finish. I offered her a beer and she accepted.