David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

I said there was no sense in taking two cars this morning — I wasn’t sure what that pill would do to me — so Dave drove us in the Caravan. We dropped the boy back in North Madison for the day, then went on to the hospital.

When the nurse on duty saw us walk into the intensive care, she brightened up. “Hi,” she said. “They’re moving her right now.”

“Oh, shit,” Dave said. “ Now what the hell happened?”

“Oh, they didn’t tell you?” She was still smiling, they must train them to breeze over any bad words from people under stress. “She was awake and talking this morning, and Dr. Chambers thought she’d improved enough to go into a semi-private. And they might try to get her up for a few minutes this afternoon.”

“Hell no, they didn’t tell us.” Dave Senior shook his head. “That’s about par for this place. If she isn’t here, where the Christ is she?”

The nurse stopped smiling.

I took a big breath and let it out. “Thank God. Thank God. You know, they probably called the house when we were on our way here. Jesus, isn’t that wonderful.” It was like the weight of everything lifted up off of me — my arms actually felt light, like there was air under them. And then, just like that, it hit me that this little time, with all of us together, was rushing to an end.

The nurse ran her fingernail up and down a clipboard gracefully, searching. It seemed to take longer than normal. “She’s being moved to five-seventeen B. That’s in the other wing, fifth floor. You can take the elevator by the waiting room.” Dave Senior turned around and tromped out without so much as a thank-you. Sylvia stared at him. I told the nurse thanks for everything, that she’d been a wonderful person to us, then Sylvia and I followed Dave out. He’d been under all that stress for so long, you see, that having it suddenly let up — I don’t know, you can understand how it must have discombobulated him.

The waiting room, where I’d spent so much time the last couple of days, looked strange to me, like some place you haven’t seen in years — it could’ve been that pill starting to take hold. I hadn’t noticed before that it was all shades of green in here: green walls, green carpeting, green couch and chairs. To calm people down. I thought, With all this green around, plus a Valium pill, you ought to be ready for anything they throw at you. Dave Senior was over at the elevators; he touched his finger to the UP arrow, and it lit up green. The colored couple was there on the green couch — I was pretty sure it was the same couple — and I was going to nod at them except I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. And what for? We were in different boats now: them still here and me just passing through one last time, really a million miles from it.

When Sylvia and I got over to the elevators, Dave Senior pounded the lit-up arrow with the side of his fist. “Let’s go. Son of a bitch.”

Sylvia laid a hand on his arm. “It’s all right. She’s going to be okay — thank God. ”

“Fine. You thank God. God’ll shit his pants when he hears from you. ” He shook loose of her hand and pounded the arrow again.

She took a step back. “What’s the trouble? I should think you—”

“What’s the trouble? That’s beautiful. That’s a classic. That should be the family motto. What’s the trouble. You whored around on him ”—jerking a thumb in my direction—“your daughter whores around on me, and you—”

“No, now you’re out of line now,” I said. The colored fellow was looking over at us, trying to make believe he wasn’t. “I can understand if—”

“What brought this on?” Sylvia said.

Dave Senior looked at me. “What, you didn’t tell her? That would figure. That’s about par.”

“What didn’t you tell me?” Sylvia said.

“The great peacemaker,” said Dave Senior, shaking his head. “The great cover-up artist. Okay, what happened to your daughter, Syl, she got creamed when she came barrel-assing out of the motel where she was shacked up with somebody else’s husband. This shit’s been going on for—”

“Don’t listen to this,” I told Sylvia. “He’s all hipped on this thing because he’s upset. As near as I can make out, she just went in there to use the telephone.”

“Where do you get that crap?” said Dave Senior. “She had her car phone, for Christ’s sake.”

Ding, and the elevator doors came open and we had to step aside for a gurney with an old, old lady flat on her back, asleep or in a coma maybe. All there was to her, poor soul, was just ragged white hair and poor thin, wrinkled skin over her skull; her closed eyes stuck up in their sockets like knuckles. I had a foolish thought — probably due to that pill, because I could feel it coming over me pretty strong now. I thought that she’d lived a good long life and for that reason she’d been chosen to take Bonnie’s place. I stole a look at Sylvia on the million-to-one chance she might be thinking the same fool thing. But Sylvia was looking at her watch, and I could tell just as if she was saying it out loud what she was really thinking: if Bonnie was truly out of the woods now, what’s the soonest you could get a plane to Phoenix? They wheeled the old lady off toward the intensive care, and we stepped into the elevator. My ears were humming and my legs felt like they had no bones. I fingered the coins in my pocket: okay, if this one’s a quarter, then this one has to be a nickel. So I couldn’t be too far out there yet. Dave Senior pounded the 5 button with his fist, the metal doors slid shut on everything that had happened until now, and up we went.

He says, “I’m entitled, am I not?”

I say, “Whatever helps.”

The bartender sets a Johnny Walker in front of Tobias and a Diet Coke in front of me; he takes away Tobias’s old glass, drained to the ice cubes. My Diet Coke’s got a slice of lemon, for festiveness and sophistication, like they stick a Maraschino cherry in your ginger ale when you’re a little girl. I am so much not in the mood.

It’s Friday and I’d been looking forward to just going straight home and popping into the tub. But Tobias called me at Helping Hands and said could I meet him at the Little Finland when I got off work, and I just quickly said okay fine since I didn’t have time to get into a big thing with him. He called right in the middle of the preschoolers putting on The Three Little Pigs for the toddlers, and Margaret wasn’t thrilled with his timing. Neither was I. But I thought, Well, he’s had a hard couple of days, apparently. Something happened yesterday at the march on city hall, from what I could gather over the phone; last night he didn’t get in until after I was asleep, and he was still asleep when I left this morning. So I just thought, Okay, obviously he needs to talk. Plus the Little Finland was a place we used to go.

I want to tell him about The Three Little Pigs, though this clearly isn’t the time and anyway Tobias makes me feel — well, no, that’s not fair— I feel like my stories go on too long for him. The play just sort of evolved in the course of the day; one good thing about Helping Hands is, it’s the kind of place that allows for this. At Morning Story we were reading this junk Disney book of The Three Little Pigs that Josh had brought in, and Gwendolyn (who else?) said, “Can we put on a play of it? I have to be the wolf — no, Max has to be the wolf, and I have to be Fiddler Pig.” Nothing seems to drag Gwendolyn down: not the Laura Ashley dresses, not the waist-length hair that’s been trimmed but never really cut, not the moon-child name. Depressing that even Gwendolyn, at four years old, has already gotten it that bigness and badness are male things, but it was brilliant what she did playing Fiddler Pig: absolutely reveling in how stupid it was to build your house out of straw. She just completely upstaged poor little Max, who did his I’ll huff and I’ll puff in a naggy singsong, and when he blew the house in it came out spitty. I mean, no balls at all. Gwendolyn had decorated her paper-bag pig mask with tiger stripes and glitter glue around the nostrils. (Margaret vetoed strap-on snouts because they’d be too frustrating to make; Gwendolyn argued and got a time-out.) She danced around playing air fiddle as she sang, to the tune of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”: