Girl Unmoored

  45

  Nemo hic adest illius nominis.

  There is no one here by that name.

  I ran so fast to Maine Medical Center that standing in the hallway in front of the check-in receptionist I thought a fly was crawling down my arm, but it turned out to be a drip of sweat instead.

  “Chad,” I panted.

  “Chad who, honey?” the fat lady behind the counter asked. She didn’t remember me. In all the times I’d been here for my mom.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Chad, somebody. He’s really sick.”

  “That’s not all that unique around here, doll. What’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Weller, I think.”

  The lady said, “Hmmmm,” the whole time her eyes searched the list.

  “Sorry, I can’t find a Chad Weller anywhere. I can’t help you.”

  My eyes burned. “He’s got AIDS.”

  The noise around me stopped and the fat lady said, “Hold on,” and picked up her phone. Next to me, a man and a woman stood staring.

  “Fifth floor,” she said, hanging up. “But you’re not going to be allowed inside. He’s in quarantine.”

  I was already inside the elevator before she finished talking. A nurse with a food tray walked in after me and smiled. I studied her until I was sure she wasn’t a friend of M’s, then I looked down. She got off on the fourth floor, the sick kid floor, which was why I had never seen her before.

  When the elevator doors opened again, there was another set of doors staring back at me. I stepped out and pulled them open.

  Inside was so quiet you could hear the rug growing. No one was anywhere. Even the nurse station was empty. I walked by it and headed left, toward the No Admittance – Contagious Area sign. I came to another set of doors, but these were locked. Everywhere you went in this place, there were doors and floors keeping you away from the people you loved.

  I stepped back and leaned against the wall, and when I did, the doors swung open. I ran through them and slammed into a nurse.

  “Whoa, can I help you?” she asked, her hair was hidden inside a blue paper hat and a mask was down around her neck.

  “Chad,” I said. “He has AIDS. Is he here?”

  “All right,” she said taking me by the shoulder and leading me out the door again.

  She sat me down in a chair across from the nurse desk and pulled up another one for herself. “Are you related to Chad?” I could tell she had brown hair under there somewhere, the same color as her eyebrows, and she had blue eyes, but not blueberry ones like Mike.

  “No,” I said nodding.

  “No or yes?”

  “No, I’m not, but I’m really good friends with him. And Mike. Is he okay?”

  Her face stayed the same. “You can’t go in there, um, what’s your name?”

  “Apron,” I said.

  “Apron?”

  I nodded once and clamped my lips together. No way was I going to start on that.

  “Okay, Apron,” she said. “I can get Mike for you, if you want.”

  “Yes, please.”

  I followed her back to the doors, where she stopped and said, “No. You have to stay here.” So I watched her disappear.

  After a century, those doors pushed open and Mike walked out, blinking and looking around like he forgot where he was. I stood and we met half way. He hugged me hard, but I hugged him harder. “Hey,” he said. He smelled like plastic tubes.

  “Hey,” I said. We both stepped back a little. “Is he okay?”

  Mike shook his head. “He had a seizure. I thought he was just coughing.”

  I was about to say something when the elevator dinged and the door opened. Toby wheeled himself out with two men walking next to him on either side. Both of them looked like Chad used to: bald and bouncy.

  “Hey, little lady,” Toby said wheeling over and reaching up to me for a hug.

  I leaned down into him. “Hi.”

  The man with blonder hair said, “Any change?” And Mike shook his head.

  “Apron,” Mike said. “This is Marcus and Chris, good friends of ours.”

  I shook their hands and told them it was nice to meet them.

  “Can we go in?” Marcus asked. His voice was high and light.

  “I think so,” Mike said. “Hold on.” He walked back to the door and pushed the button I had leaned up against. When it opened, he disappeared inside.

  “So guys,” Toby said, smiling up at me. “This is the little lady I was telling you about. The one that watches over the shop now.” He winked at me and the other two nodded. “Right,” Chris said. He had a deeper voice, but his eyes didn’t stop on me for long. Finally, Mike and the nurse walked out together.

  “Let’s go,” the nurse said waving us in. I waited for Toby to go first, then followed Chris and Marcus. But the nurse stepped in front of me. “You have to be eighteen,” she said, not looking sorry about it this time.

  I turned back to Mike. For a second it looked like he was going to leave me and head in through the doors anyway. But then he nodded at the nurse and stayed. “Listen, Apron,” he said. “She’s not kidding. It’s a rule. I’ll call you later. I promise, okay?”

  “But,” I said, “But, what if he—”

  Mike shook his head and stepped closer to me. “We’re going to wait until he’s out of pain, and then take him home,” he said quietly. “He doesn’t want to die in here. I promise. I’ll call you.” Then he hugged me again and disappeared through the doors.

  I ran to the elevator and pushed the button over and over until a man and a boy were standing in front of me. The man was wearing a blue Maineiac hat and the little boy was holding his hand. They would never remember me from the night my dad told me M was pregnant. They had walked by me then, outside on the stairs waiting for my dad and M, watching the burning sunset crash into the hospital, before I knew about Mike and Chad. Before I knew about a lot of things.

  I stepped inside with them and turned around quickly. I had to get home and find a picture for Chad before it was too late.

  46

  Potes currere sed te occulere non potes.

  You can run, but you can’t hide.

  My dad’s car wasn’t there, but M was in the kitchen; you could hear her talking. I shut the screen door without letting it click and listened.

  “Yes,” I heard her say, frustrated. “That’s what I said.”

  With everything else that was changing, you could always count on M and her bad mood now. I stood there, my tongue begging me to get some lemonade. I had waited at the bus stop for twenty minutes before the next Falmouth bus came.

  M was becoming even more bothered. “Yes, I said that. Do you speak English?”

  I started toward the kitchen. When I got there, M was leaning over the counter with her back to me, the phone squeezed into her neck.

  I went to the icebox and opened the door. “Yes, that is all,” she said. I grabbed the lemonade and turned around. She was staring at me with her hand on her bump. I knew she was going to warn me not to drink out of the container, but she didn’t. She just flipped her face onto happy. “Hello, Aprons.”

  “Hi,” I answered. My tongue was so dry I could barely get the word out. And her bump was so big now she had to stand crooked.

  “This was my friend on the phone,” she said.

  “Okay.” I undid the lid. There wasn’t much left in it anyway.

  She stretched her mouth into a straight smile. “Yes, and then how are Mike and his boyfriend today?”

  My stomach tugged at me. She had never asked me that before. “Fine.” I swished the lemonade around gently to mix it up.

  “You know what I think,” M asked evenly.

  I brought the bottle to my lips.

  “I think you are such sad ugly girl you can only have gay boys for friends.”

  A yellow wave flew out and onto my T-shirt. Then I heard my dad’s voice. It was loud and furious, the name that he yelled. But it wasn’
t mine. “Don’t you talk to my daughter like that,” he said. “Ever.”

  For a second it looked like M might faint. “Dennis,” she said. “I didn’t see—”

  “Neither did I,” my dad said from the doorway, looking at me before looking back at M. I could feel the cold lemonade on my neck.

  “Apron,” my dad said still looking at M. “Get in the car. Your grandmother’s turned it into an afternoon pool party. We’re late.”

  I left the lemonade by the stove and heard my dad say, “You’re coming too, Margie, let’s go.” M said something back, but my dad said, “From now on, you’ll do what I say.”

  But she didn’t. I waited in the back of the car for so long that my T-shirt started cracking from the dried sugar. Finally, my dad came down the porch stairs and got into the car. “It’s better anyway,” he said. “Just let her cool off for a while.”

  I didn’t say anything. When my dad’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror, he sighed and said, “She didn’t mean it, Apron. It’s just her hormones talking.”

  Mr. John was at the pool party too, in his blue swim trunks. He liked to do cannon balls, they were his specialty, even though they weren’t very good—too wide and messy.

  Grandma Bramhall had a red sarong with little mirrors on the bottom wrapped around her. I tried to find my reflection in there when she sat down next to me on the lounge chair and said, “Why don’t you go in with Mr. John? Show him your backflip.”

  But I shook my head and then another spray of water hit my ankles. When Mr. John popped his flattened hair up again, he said, “What was that?’

  “A seven,” I told him.

  Mr. John punched the air with his fist and climbed up the ladder, blue trunks and gray hair clinging to him everywhere.

  “Come on,” Grandma Bramhall said nudging me with her elbow. “This could be the last time I ever see you do one.”

  I rolled my eyes, but smiled too, and then so did she.

  “Grandma Bramhall?” I asked her quietly, the two of us watching Mr. John bounce on the diving board, getting ready. “Do you think that one day, like when I’m older, I might not be so ugly?”

  “What?” she turned her shake to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Me,” I said looking down at the blue veins crashing into each other on the back of her hand. “Me and my ugly freckles.”

  “Apron,” she said. “You watch. Someday you’re going to love those freckles.”

  “No I’m not.”

  Mr. John leapt through the air after that, feet flailing and his back arched too far away from his knees: his worst one yet.

  After both of our ankles got splashed again, Grandma Bramhall picked up my chin and said, “You are as beautiful as your mom was,” and then kissed my cheek with hers.

  I looked down at the mirrors in her sarong again, tiny little pieces of blue sky in them. “Thanks,” I said quietly.

  “You’re welcome,” Grandma Bramhall said squeezing my hand.

  “How was that?” Mr. John yelled, popping up and dog paddling toward us.

  I snuck a look at Grandma Bramhall. “A ten,” I said.

  “Yes!” Mr. John yelled, raising both fists this time and sinking back into the water.

  Grandma Bramhall and I had to suck in our cheeks not to laugh. “See how beautiful you are, Apron?”

  It was like me telling Grandma Bramhall that her shake was beautiful. Except right then, smiling like that, she and her shake really were beautiful.

  I looked back down at Mr. John, swimming toward us again. “An amateur ten,” I said, unwrapping my towel and standing up. “Now let me show you how the pros do it.”

  During dinner, when steamed clams were everywhere except on my plate, which only had Tater Tots—I was pretty sure clams had parents—I got up twice to call Scent Appeal. No answer either time, which meant they were still at the hospital.

  “What’s going on?” my dad asked the first time he found me in Grandma Bramhall’s kitchen with her phone in my ear.

  “Chad,” I said like a fact.

  “Oh,” my dad nodded, reaching into Grandma Bramhall’s icebox and pulling out another beer. “Did something happen?”

  So I told him. I wanted to tell him in the car on the way over, but he didn’t want to talk, you could tell. But now, my dad leaned against the icebox and listened with worried eyes the whole time I told him about Chad and the hospital and his seizure. I made sure to leave out the part about nobody being at Scent Appeal this morning.

  “You know, though,” my dad said, twisting open his beer but not drinking it yet. “They’re right, Apron. Minors can’t go into quarantine areas. Unless they’re family.”

  I looked down.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry for Chad. But you didn’t think he was going to make it, did you?”

  I looked up at him.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s not like what your mom had, kiddo. No one ever makes it through what Chad’s got. At least not yet, anyway.”

  He started toward me, but I turned away and picked up the phone again. “Let me know if they need anything, okay?” he said walking to the door, but then stopping. “Hey, has she seen any little people in here lately?”

  I shrugged, even though right before dinner Grandma Bramhall told me she had seen one of them mopping her floor last night when she came down for milk. And she showed me the mop leaning against the back door to prove it.

  I still hadn’t talked to Mike or Chad by the time we were in the car saying good-bye for the seven hundredth time already. My dad was counting. There were things to remember though, in case the unthinkable happened. There were cousins who lived in Detroit and old furniture being lent out that was “quite valuable, you know.”

  When we finally pulled into our garage, my dad went straight upstairs to see M. And I went straight into the kitchen. Still, no one answered at Scent Appeal. My dad walked in, his face looking bad again. “Is she in here?” he asked, opening the pantry door and looking around before heading toward the back porch. M must not have been out there either, though. “Where the hell did she go this time?” I heard him say.

  In the kitchen again, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the phone. “Off to bed now, Apron.”

  “But Dad, if the phone rings, and it’s Mike, will you please get me? Please? Even if it’s the middle of the night?”

  He said all right.

  “Thanks,” I said. Then, without even thinking about it, I took a few steps toward him. I never kissed him goodnight anymore, but suddenly I forgot that. Before I got to him though, he spun around on his heels and headed over to the icebox, his forehead pinched in worry.

  In the living room, I stopped at the bookshelf and slipped the frame into my backpack.

  I had to be ready at any given notice.

  47

  Frater, ave atque vale.

  Brother, hello and good-bye.

  The air smelled like worms. I thought I had heard Suzanna’s car crunching down the dirt road sometime in the middle of the night. But now I remembered it was just the rain, sometimes pounding hard and sometimes tapping light.

  It was already eight o’clock. I flipped over my covers and ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. I looked for a note that said Mike had called, but there wasn’t one. Not on my lobster, or on my cereal box or anywhere else. So I picked up the phone. They didn’t have an answering machine anymore. Just when I was about to hang up, Mike said, “Hello?”

  “Mike, it’s me, Apron. Are you back?”

  “Hi, Apron,” Mike said way too slowly, “I was waiting to call you.”

  My stomach slipped out of me. “You promised,” I said, leaning into the wall.

  “Apron,” Mike cut me off. “He’s here. Chad’s here, but he—it’s going to be his last day today.”

  “How do you know?”

  Mike laughed, so quick and sharp it could have been a hiccup. “It’s the Fourth of July. He wants to go out with a bang.”

>   “I’m coming right now,” I told him. Then before I hung up, I said, “Tell him to wait for me okay? I have something to give him.”

  “I’ll tell him, Apron. He’s been asking for you.”

  I ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs and straight into my dad in the hallway. He looked yellow, he was so tired, and his red hair was flat on one side and sticking out on the other. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you were Margie.”

  “Dad. I talked to Mike. I have to go see Chad.”

  My dad still wasn’t listening, though. He peeked his head into the little whatever’s room and said, “Is she downstairs?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slipping by him and going into the bathroom. I whipped my toothbrush around and fluffed up my red layers. Then I ran back into my room and got dressed: jean shorts and a turquoise Indian shirt. After that, I grabbed my raincoat and slid into my flip-flops, only slowing down to put on my backpack.

  Downstairs, my dad was still standing around like he was lost, this time in the middle of the kitchen. He opened the back door and peered down the staircase. “She didn’t come home,” he said, like I couldn’t believe it either.

  “Dad, I really—”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  He shut the door and turned around again, thinking. I tried to look worried while I tapped my feet and glanced at the clock on the oven. I might still be able to make the early bus if I left right now. “She probably stayed at Suzanna’s,” I said. And then I remembered: the buses weren’t running. It was the Fourth of July.

  “Dad! There aren’t any buses today. Can you take me? Please?”

  My dad turned his zombie face to me and shook it. “She didn’t come back last night, Apron. I have to wait here. What if she tries to call?”

  “Dad?” I said, my jaw so tight it could break. “You said to let you know if they needed anything. They need me. Chad’s been asking for me.”

  But my dad just turned his red head back to the phone and picked it up. Someone slapped me in the heart. I stood there watching him get ready to dial, then stop. “I don’t know it,” he said spinning around and staring at me with the same lost look. “I don’t even know Suzanna’s number.”