Tom Mendicino - Probation

Are you there? Please, are you there?

Gina’s voice is tiny, tinny, muffled by the thick carpet.

I’m all right…all right, I want to tell her, but I can’t speak now, can’t waste the effort. It takes every bit of strength I have to breathe. I can only look at the phone and gasp and heave. My throat is collapsing; my lungs are screaming for oxygen. I want to tell her bye, bye, kiddo, sweet dreams, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

Go ahead and close your eyes, I think. Sleep tight. Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m scared, but not as much as I should be. Some part of me believes this is only a dream and I’ll wake before I stop breathing.

Fuck Jesus!

I feel strong arms pick me up and carry me down the stairs.

Call 911!

I hear another voice at the far end of the tunnel.

What you say?

Call fucking 911! This man ain’t breathing so good!

What?

911! Call now, motherfucker! This man gonna die!

But I don’t.

Hours later, I’m lying in an observation bed in the emergency department. The nurse says two gentlemen would like to visit. Jerome and Nate, Bekins Moving and Hauling, stand over me, smiling, basking in the warm glow of playing God. Their names are embroidered above their shirt pockets. Nate. Nathaniel.

Merry Christmas, Nathaniel. Was Santa good to you?

I try to thank them, but it’s too painful to speak. The breathing tube bruised my throat. My hands and thighs are tethered by lines and needles. Benadryl and steroids and adrenaline have worked their miracle and brought me back to life.

Take it easy, little buddy, Nate says, thought we’d lost you.

I shake my head and doze off, comforted by his voice.

“You’re a very lucky fellow,” the nurse says as she hands me my discharge instructions. I don’t disagree even though it’s been a long time since I would have chosen that word to describe myself.

So I check into a hotel, seeking room service and clean sheets until Nate and Ben can deliver my mother’s bed to Magnolia Towne Courte. I decline the key to the minibar, not completely trusting my ability to resist temptation. I call my sister, then Matt. I give them my room number and assure them I’m fine, that I just need to get some sleep.

Which is what I do for three days. Real sleep without pills or booze, relying only on my own circadian rhythm. I order cheeseburgers and fries and chocolate milk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When you’re paying top dollar, the staff accommodates your every need. I stare at the television between bouts of sleep. I start to feel better, stronger, almost content.

Anaphylactic shock didn’t transform me. Maybe it’s just that I’d sunk as low as I could go. Not that my little tale of woe was anything special, nothing for the record books. I’ll never experience the horrors and epiphanies of true addiction. A little heavy drinking and a few sour sexual liaisons and a chance encounter with an antibiotic with a four to five percent cross-reaction with penicillin are the sum and substance of the drama of my life.

I wish I could say that I’m seeking redemption through meditation and prayer. But the reality is I’m lying on the bed burping ground beef and onions and dozing while my Psychic Friends promise Great Revelations on the television screen.

Your loved ones are waiting to speak to you…

The Celebrity Spokesperson, all bright and shiny with red lacquer lips and shoe polish hair, speaks directly to the camera, sending a not-so-subliminal message to call the number crawling across the bottom of the screen. Apparently, my mother is beating down the fourth wall separating those who have passed and those of us still encumbered by mortal flesh and blood. And she has a message for me! All for the small investment of two dollars and fifty cents a minute.

Curiosity killed the cat and, after validating my card, a lazy voice thanks me for calling the Zodiac Hotline. The Celebrity Spokesperson, of course, is too busy with her sales pitch to channel my mother’s spirit herself. My minimum-wage clairvoyant sounds barely out of high school. Her questions are peppered with teenage slang.

So, um, like, your mom…like, when did she pass?

After twenty dollars of preparatory interrogation, my mother is ready to make her Grand Entrance. The message is simple and, though delivered in an unfamiliar voice, can only have come from her.

Get out of bed. Shower. Check out. Move on.

Good boy that I am, I obey.

She hadn’t needed Nancy Drew to track me down. She’d dialed my mother’s number and an automated voice provided the forwarding number, repeating it twice in case she didn’t have a pencil in hand. What’s surprising isn’t that she’s found me, but that she’s come looking.

Bobby’s wife sounds shy and awkward when I answer the telephone, introducing herself as if she were a stranger, as if I couldn’t possibly have any recollection of having spent the past Easter in her home. She apologizes for intruding; she feels terrible about bothering me. She’s calling from the Pride of Carolina Motor Lodge on the strip highway outside Chapel Hill. Her voice is tired and raspy. She says Bobby refused to come down from Watauga County; his son is dead as far as he’s concerned. The doctors told her the cuts were deep and plastic surgery might not hide the scars. She’s worried JR will have to wear long sleeves, even in the heat of summer. The television bleats in the background, noise to keep her company.

“JR asked me to call you,” she says, assuming, incorrectly, the boy and I have struck a special friendship, that I’d been sought after and my advice solicited as his only flesh-and-blood relative who’d been to college. She has it all wrong. Robert, not JR, has asked her to call. That much I know. What I don’t know is how Robert knew to ask for me. Did he figure it out on his own? How? Had someone told him? I ask what she wants me to do. Can you come to the hospital? she asks. I’ll meet you in the lobby tomorrow at two, I say.

The hospital is like every other, with walls painted neutral colors and spit-polished floors. The simplest question-room, please, of Robert Calhoun-seems to overwhelm the red-smocked old woman volunteering at the reception desk. The computer denied access to any information, referring her to confidentiality protocols. Flustered, she excuses herself and dashes off to find help.

“Andy.”

I spin on my heels and stand face-to-face with my cousin Bobby’s wife. She’s aged since my mother’s funeral. She’s missed her appointment with Lady Clairol and hasn’t slapped on any makeup to brighten her dull pallor. She’s not making any efforts to put a best face on things. Meeting is even more awkward than the phone conversation. She asks if I’ve eaten. I lie and say yes since hospital food still haunts my dreams. We walk to the locked unit. She introduces me to the unit clerk, then excuses herself. She’ll meet me in the lobby after visiting hours, knowing we “boys” want to talk. I listen for subtext, insinuation, innuendo, in her comment, and hear none. All she cares about is that her damaged son has asked for me and I have come.

Robert is embarrassed by his circumstances, but happy, genuinely happy, to see me. He doesn’t seem so different from the boy I shared a bed with last spring. He hardly looks to be a danger to himself, bandaged wrists notwithstanding, and no one would ever believe he’s a threat to others. He doesn’t seem to belong here, locked away with the agitated, the obsessed, the haunted, the irredeemable. After hello, I grope for words, appalled by the question that finally tumbles off my lips.

“What have you been up to?” I ask.

“Oh, not a lot,” he answers.