Outside Beauty

  “Are you okay? You look terrible,” Marilyn said. “Don’t worry. Mom’s a strong person.”

  Her eyes were also red, but Marilyn was so beautiful that even when she cried, she looked good.

  “When are Maddie and Lakey coming?” I said.

  “We’re going to go meet Lakey’s plane now. Maddie’s lands in another hour.”

  Mack shook Jiro’s hand. “I admire the Japanese,” Mack said, apropos of nothing. Jiro nodded, looking a little confused.

  I turned to Marilyn. “What happened to Mom? On Tuesday you said she was okay.”

  “I don’t know. She was okay. She was complaining about not being able to wear any makeup during surgery. And then the doctor called this morning and said for us to come as soon as possible.”

  “Can she really die?” I said, a tremor in my voice.

  “That’s what Dr. Jefferson said. They’ve been removing dead tissue every few days or so, and there was one area that just wasn’t healing. So they did yet another skin graft, but the skin died and the open wound got infected.”

  Wow, that sounded horrible: an open, infected wound. That’s not how I imagined her injury at all. Kevin Kelly, a boy in my class, broke his arm one time and he never had an open wound. I knew because we sat next to each other at school and he told me what it was like to have a broken arm. But my mother didn’t do anything like other people. She didn’t even have a broken arm like a normal person.

  “Is it the doctor’s fault? Should we take her to a different hospital?”

  “No, it’s nobody’s fault,” Marilyn said.

  We went to Lakey’s gate, and when she arrived, we did a group hug, leaning on one another so that if one of us moved, we’d all fall over. We walked arm in arm to Maddie’s gate, speaking our secret language so our fathers wouldn’t know what we were saying.

  “Iihthegis Mihthegistuhthegir Bruhthegonsthegon stuhthegill spuhtheganktheging Muhthegadduhthegie?” Lakey asked. It took me a second to get that one: Is Mr. Bronson still spanking Maddie?

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You don’t have to call him ‘mthegisttheger.’” I didn’t tell her that I always called him “mister.” I lowered my voice even more, and we slowed down until the fathers were several feet in front of us. “He isn’t like our fathers at all.” My eyes got teary again. “Maddie will be . . . she’ll be the worst off if Mom . . . if she . . . if it’s not okay . . .”

  Marilyn’s face grew grim. “Her letters are getting so weird, don’t you think?”

  “I think Mr. Bronson is dictating them,” I said.

  Our fathers stopped walking until we caught up, and we all clustered at Maddie’s gate. Mack muttered to himself with an unlit cigarette hanging off his lips. Jiro was chewing a piece of gum thoughtfully, as if he might be testing it. Larry drank from a can of soda.

  As we waited I put my weight on one foot and then the other, one and then the other, swaying back and forth nervously. It’d been two entire weeks since Maddie had last spoken to me. What if she still wouldn’t, now?

  Finally, Maddie’s plane arrived. We spied Mr. Bronson first, then Maddie walking a few steps behind him. He looked even larger than I remembered. Jiro, Mack, and Larry shook hands with him.

  “Hi, Maddie,” I said, hurrying over to her.

  “Hi,” she said coolly.

  I could feel Mr. Bronson’s eyes on us.

  “How are you?” I said.

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  I bit my lip, trying not to cry, and leaned over to try to hug her. She just stood there as I wrapped my arms around her.

  “Maddie. Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  I said much more softly, “Are you mad at me?” She nodded her head yes.

  Mack said, “I’ll take Larry and Lakey along with Marilyn, and the rest of you can take a taxi.”

  “No!” Marilyn, Lakey, and I cried. Marilyn pulled at her father’s arm, “We want to ride together.”

  “Let them ride together,” Mr. Bronson said authoritatively.

  So Mack took us girls and the other three fathers took a taxi. Mack drove like the entire world was in a conspiracy against him. As soon as he got onto the road, he cried out, “What?! First he turns on his left signal and then he goes right! Why did he do that to me?” Then, when somebody turned on their signal and tried to get in front of Mack, he accelerated and said, “Oh, no you don’t.”

  My sisters and I were eerily quiet on the drive from the airport. I’d never been with my sisters when we were so quiet. And it was weird, but they looked slightly different than I remembered them. Marilyn changed from parting her hair in the middle to the side. Maddie’s hair was longer and matted down. Lakey’s hair was shorter and her face seemed thinner. I guess the month we’d been separated changed us all. I could have made small talk, but that would have seemed even weirder than our silence. We must have been changing a little bit every day, and all the little changes added up so that now we were different. It was as if I didn’t know them 100 percent anymore. I knew them only 95 percent now.

  We’d already missed afternoon visiting hours at the ICU, and evening visiting hours didn’t start again until eight p.m., so we were going to the apartment to drop off our bags first. When we got there, the other fathers had already arrived. Mack said to Marilyn, “See? They got here first because we ran into all the worst drivers on the road.”

  The apartment I’d grown up in felt odd to me too. It looked different, just like my sisters did. It felt kind of like the ghost town that one of my mother’s boyfriends took us to once. We girls threw our bags into our bedroom and then went into the living room to see—well, we weren’t sure what we would see.

  In the living room Mack was scribbling something on a notepad. “He’s writing his feelings down,” Marilyn whispered to me. “It’s for his shrink.”

  The other fathers were standing quietly. Over time our fathers had grown more what they were. In other words, Mr. Bronson had grown more stiff, my father had grown both more Japanese and more Southern, Mack more emotional, and Larry more wonderful, handsomer, stronger. For the first time ever, all the dads stood together in our living room. They didn’t do much except politely offer one another the best seat—the fake-leather recliner—and then even more politely offer one another the bowl of cashews that Marilyn had scrounged out of the cupboard. There was the couch, which was where we girls sat, three chairs we’d brought in from the dining room, and the recliner.

  Mr. Bronson lowered himself majestically into the recliner as if it were his throne. He talked about the future and the way of the world while we girls dutifully listened. “I’ve raised three children and consider myself an expert in child-rearing. And I can tell you that a dose of reality is all a part of growing up.” As he went on and on, I noticed that Maddie wouldn’t look at her father’s face. The gist of Mr. Bronson’s talk seemed to be that we girls were about to visit our mom, and this would help us learn the way of the world. I felt a twisting in my gut. I wondered whether Mr. Bronson was right the way he always thought he was. I didn’t know for sure what the way of the world was. Maddie and I looked at each other, but she didn’t change her grim expression. The area between her eyebrows was all squished up with worry. Then she turned away, still grim.

  “Now that we’re all together,” Mack said. “I can tell you all what’s going on. When we get to the hospital, they’re going to let us see Helen two at a time. They’ve tried a variety of antibiotics on the infection, but they haven’t found one that will kill the staph.” His voice broke and his eyes grew wet. “I’m usually very manly,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a drug-resistant kind of infection, and it seems to have spread from her arm to her blood. We should get going.” It was after seven by now. Mack continued, “I’ll drive the girls over, and you gentlemen can grab a taxi to Cook County Memorial Hospital.”

  “All right,” said Larry. “Let’s go, then.”

  We hurried after Mack to his car.

  “Before this m
orning I had never even heard of a staph infection,” I said.

  “Me neither,” Marilyn said.

  “I’m feeling worried about your mother,” Mack said. “I have to write more about that later. The doctor thinks I might still be in love with her without owning it.” None of us spoke. “Hello? Am I talking to myself?”

  “Dad, of course we’re all listening,” Marilyn said. She turned around from the passenger seat, looked at us girls in back. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lakey and I said.

  Maddie just looked out the window, her face pale and sad. I didn’t know how far away she was, or how far I would need to pull her back before she was ours again.

  chapter fourteen

  AT THE HOSPITAL WE FOLLOWED Mack to the waiting room outside of intensive care. While he talked to the nurse, the other fathers showed up looking grim. I didn’t know if they were grim because of my mother’s condition or because of something that had been said in the taxi.

  Mack turned to us girls and said, “Okay, which two of you want to see her first? How about Shelby and Maddie?”

  Mr. Bronson said, “I’ll make all decisions regarding Madeline.” He paused. “All right, you may go, Madeline.”

  Mack walked up to the nurse with us and said, “These two are going first. She’s their mother.”

  The nurse walked us down a short corridor and into a brightly lit room where our mother lay in the center on a narrow bed. I ran to the bed, but the nurse reprimanded me. “Be gentle.”

  It took a lot of self-control not to gasp when I saw my mom. She was attached to an IV; she’d lost a lot of weight; her cheeks and forehead and free hand were covered with a rash and open sores; stitches lined the left side of her face; and her right arm hung in traction, the cast covered by a white sock, with only three fingertips peeking out. For a moment I just gaped at her. She seemed like someone who resembled our mother but wasn’t really her.

  Our mother smiled sleepily at us. “Oh, I’ve missed you girls. Maddie, my baby. And Shelby. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I can’t wait to get out of here. I miss you girls!”

  Maddie stood back as if she didn’t know how she’d gotten here and wasn’t sure where she was. A nurse came in with rubber gloves and gave me a pair. I put them on and held my mother’s left hand. I tried not to stare at her face. But I didn’t do a very good job because Mom said, “It’s the infection. It caused a rash. Shelby, look at you. In one month you’ve changed. More grown up.” She shook her head and blinked back tears.

  She looked so thin and wan that I couldn’t think of anything positive to say. All I could come up with was, “Mom, you look, I mean I hope, well, I know you’ll get better.”

  “They’re pumping me with antibiotics.” She paused. “But if I don’t . . .”

  “But you will,” I said. “Jiro says you’re healthy as a horse.”

  “He said I look like a ‘horse’?”

  “No, Mom. He meant you were really healthy.”

  “But he said ‘horse’?”

  “Mom, never mind. He didn’t say anything.”

  “You girls need to listen for a minute. If worse comes to worst, I want you girls to know that whatever anyone says, I’ve done my best with you. And I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

  “Mom, stop it,” I said.

  “But the most important thing I want to say is that I know in my heart that your fathers will take care of you. Jiro is a dear man, and Harvey Bronson, while not dear, is a responsible, respected man.”

  “Mom, we all have to be together again. We were happy that way.”

  “It was fun, wasn’t it?” my mother said. Her eyelids fluttered—sleepily.

  I was at a loss for words. Then I decided that if she was going to die, this was my last chance to save Maddie. “Mom, couldn’t you just let Maddie and me live with Jiro? Couldn’t you just tell that to Mr. Bronson? He’s here, you could tell him now. You won’t have to fight him. You could just tell him.”

  “Shelby, you have no idea how much trouble that man can cause. I will get better, and then after you girls are back with me, I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

  “But he’s destroying Maddie,” I said.

  “Of course he’s not destroying her.”

  Tears dribbled down Maddie’s face, but still she didn’t say a word.

  “I miss you girls more than you can imagine. Don’t make me worry, Shelby. I wanted to see you girls to make me feel at peace, not to worry me.”

  I had temporarily run out of steam. “Yes,” was all I could say.

  She said, “We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?”

  “Mom, when you get better, which you will, we’ll still have fun. You just have to go to a parallel universe. You were in the universe where beauty was the most important thing, and now you can go to the universe where it isn’t.”

  “Ain’t no such universe,” my mother said. “God, I’m tired.”

  “There is so. I’m in that universe! You’ll still be beautiful, just not perfect. Shouldn’t you be in the same universe we’re all in? Then we can all be together.”

  She started crying. “I had so much fun.”

  The nurse came in. “Are you upsetting her?”

  “No!” I exclaimed.

  “I think we better send your sisters in,” the nurse said anyway.

  Rats, rats, rats. I left as my mother was wiping away tears. I had said everything wrong and made her cry. I was an idiot.

  But the nurse put her arm around me and said, “Time to go, sweetie.”

  I squeezed my mother’s hand. “I didn’t want to upset you,” I said.

  “I’ll be fine, and then everything will be back to normal.” That wasn’t like my mother at all. Usually she came up with a good cliché, like “Keep a stiff upper lip.”

  Next Marilyn and Lakey went inside. Mack had his usual unlit cigarette between his lips as he paced back and forth in the waiting area. Larry and Jiro were talking about the beautiful oaks that were getting cut down in Arkansas. Mr. Bronson sat with his arms crossed on his chest. He looked angry, but then, he always looked angry. Maddie separated herself from us and stood alone a few feet from the chairs. She rocked back and forth, her face a total blank. I knew that if my mother died, we would never win Maddie back.

  Finally, Mr. Bronson snapped, “I never heard of taking a child your age to see someone in intensive care.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Maddie said meekly.

  I wanted to shout at her, You don’t have to call him “sir”! Instead, I just looked at Maddie.

  “Did you make your mother cry?” Mr. Bronson said crisply to me.

  “We had a private conversation.”

  “Here’s the thing, Shelby. You are the least psychologically developed adolescent I’ve ever met.”

  My father sighed, as if he might now be drawn into the argument. “My daughter good girl,” he said. “Very advanced.”

  “She needs some discipline,” Mr. Bronson said.

  “She my daughter, I raise her my way.”

  “I could help you with that. Maddie is my fourth.”

  “No need help,” Jiro said curtly, so curtly that he even managed to shut up Mr. Bronson.

  A few moments later, the nurse came back with Marilyn and Lakey. “When can we visit Helen?” Larry asked her.

  “I think she’s a little too agitated now for more visitors,” the nurse said. “Hopefully tomorrow. I’m sorry, but she needs to rest.”

  “Oh, I can’t stand this,” Marilyn cried. “I need to get some air.” Maddie, Lakey, and I hurried after her down the hall. Once outside, I looked up at the moon and tried to let that beautiful glow inside my heart, but it wouldn’t fit. I noticed a couple of other people gazing up at the sky to see what I was looking at. And then I looked at my hands, at my feet, and at the moon again. It was hard to believe I was real. It was hard to believe any of this could be real. I wonder if my mother felt the same way.

  At home Marilyn didn’
t call one of our powwows. When I asked her to, she said no. It was the strangest thing. For a month all we’d wanted was to get back together, and now that we were, we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know how to be together anymore. Or maybe what we needed to talk about was too big to talk about.

  Maddie picked up her pajamas and said, “I’ll change in the facilities.” She walked out of the room.

  “The ‘facilities’?” I echoed.

  “I think she means the bathroom,” said Lakey.

  “I know that. I mean, who goes to the facilities to put on their jammies?” I said.

  “She’s acting really weird,” Lakey whispered.

  “We have to get her away from Bronson somehow,” I said.

  “Shhh,” Marilyn hissed.

  We heard a door close, and Maddie walked in wearing her pajamas, the pair with the pink feet that made her look like an imp. She wore those jammies all the time, even when it was summer. For a second I thought she was back to normal.

  I took her hands and led her to her bed. “Maddie,” I said, “the day I didn’t show up to get you, I did try to run away, but I got caught. Jiro was so mad at me! But I really did try. I went out in the middle of the night to the bus stop. I really, really tried.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.” Then she said in a monotone, “Good night, everybody. Pleasant dreams.” Now that was what she always said, except not in a monotone. Usually when she said good night, she said it in such a chipper voice that I thought she was wide awake. But as soon as she hit the pillow, she was always out.

  But as we lay in our beds quietly, I could feel Maddie awake while Marilyn and Lakey slept. “Maddie?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you okay?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  So I closed my eyes and saw my mother in the hospital. It was almost as if I could even see things I hadn’t noticed when I was actually there. Like I could see not only how awful Mom looked, but also how far away Maddie stood from me and how her face was a total blank. Now I heard Maddie’s breathing settle, and I knew I was the last one awake.