My boys say I should move into an apartment. They tell me the house, small as it is, is too much for me to look after, now that May is gone.
Sometimes I find myself looking around, trying to remember how she used to do everything. I hear echoes of her voice in the rooms. I walk in, half expecting to see her.
Maybe I should move.
Not because looking after the place is too hard, though. And not even because May haunts each and every room. I can get used to that. But because every damn night the girl across the street comes home at some ungodly hour and her boyfriend's souped-up car wakes me.
My bedroom is right over the road. I could move into the other one, the boys' old room, but I won't. Habit.
Last week it was at twelve that they woke me. Usually I turn over, pound the pillow and try to get back to sleep. At my age you can't turn sleep off and on too easily, though. It's hard to come by, once you're wakened.
Anyway, something sounded not right out there. when I got up to look out the window I saw them out in front of her house, the girl sitting in the car. A warm night, the windows open, I could hear her giggling. The boyfriend was rolling on the roadway in front of the car.
I was ready to go back to bed. I felt disgusted. A new kind of game they were playing. Then I noticed his flashlight illuminating the road in a broad beam. The car hood was up.
I pulled on a pair of trousers, a shirt, and went downstairs. When I called from the doorway, "something wrong?" she replied, "No, everything is fine." He was still on the ground, rolled in a ball, his arms cradling his head.
When he heard me call, he crawled over to his car, got into the driver's seat sideways and sat there, hands across his face. She stood beside the car at this point, still doing nothing. Just standing there. I walked across to the car.
"Let me have a look", I said. After a moment he took his hands away so I could see his face. Swelling, the skin an angry red colour. He'd twisted the radiator cap, she chittered in my ear. "The thing just blew up, stupid thing", she said. I turned from him to face her, a pretty blond thing, and said "call your mother. She's a nurse, isn't she?" "Can't", she whispered, "she's sleeping".
Whispering, after all that noise.
I could have left them there.
I went into the house, wrapped ice cubes in a towel and took it out, told him to hold the towel against his face. To reduce the swelling, alleviate the pain, I told him. I felt that was the right thing to do, temporarily. I'd once taken a St.John Ambulance course. When our boys were small, and I was a scout leader. Then I told them to get into my car. I'd drive them to the Emergency of the Civic Hospital.
I'm not usually out that late on the highway and I was surprised at all the traffic. In the back seat, he was moaning in a tight-sounding way as though he wanted to hold it back but couldn't help himself. The sound unnerved me, made me drive faster than I wanted to, but then I wanted to get him to the hospital, fast.
As we helped him out of the car he murmured, "call my mother". Through his swollen lips the words came out slurred. I could hardly understand at first what he meant, but once it penetrated I told her. She looked at him with a puzzled expression. Throughout the drive she had said nothing, had chosen to sit in the front seat rather than with him.
When I explained the situation at the front desk the receptionist buzzed for a nurse. We waited a short while near the desk. The girl gave the receptionist the information she wanted about the boy's name, address, next of kin.
He stood there, trembling. He refused to sit down. He shuffled his feet in a strange dance of pain, then stamped one foot with a bang on the floor, like a child throwing a tantrum. A muffled expletive made its way through the towel he still held against his face.
We hadn't waited too long before a nurse swung through the doors leading off the waiting room, pulling a wheelchair behind her. She had him sit down, adjusted the foot stirrups, then pulled the towel and his hands away from his face. She scrutinized him briefly, then without a word wheeled him away. The girl and I took seats. I reminded her about his request and she went to a pay phone to call his mother.
As it transpired, the mother was out. She called his father's place, which was where the boy lived, and not with his mother as I'd thought from his request. His father was out. Separated, the girl told me, living apart. She called again intermittently all the time we were there. Three hours, altogether. No answer.
I couldn't leave him there without anyone responsible to look after his interests. So I stayed.
We watched a slow but regular flow of people come into the Emergency Department. A fat woman accompanying a man with a cut hand. A harried young couple carrying a screaming child, two others hanging on behind. A jocular trio of young men, one of whom was waiting to hear news of his wife. A first child, they told anyone who might be interested. Few were. We watched them bang the Coke machine. It was stuck and they wanted their money back. One of them, the prospective father, I think it was, lifted a small framed watercolour off the wall and slid it into his jacket. A souvenir of this momentous occasion in his life.
"I found this baby robin like and fed it and everything and used to take it outside to fly around when it got feathers you know and when it got big enough I figured I would let it go for good but it kept coming back" she chattered at me. Harmless enough. Good natured. How can you fault someone who cares enough to try to help a fledgling? How reconcile that with the same person's inability to give succour to a friend?
"And I decided this one day to just nevermind it and let it spend the night out-of-doors 'cause I figured like it had to learn to look after itself. And I never thought it wouldn't. Like all I found in the morning was feathers scattered all over the place. So I figured some cat got it. Dumb bird."
Yes, well.
After several hours of waiting the receptionist motioned to me to come over. She informed me I could go in now and see the patient. I called the girl but she said she'd wait out there. I entered the Emergency Ward where a nurse sitting at a desk beside the door directed me to one of the curtained-off cubicles. When I hesitated, she got up and drew the curtain aside. "Here he is", she said brightly. "We've put an anaesthetizing cream on his face. He's not in as much pain now. Go on", she urged. "He's awake."
She left, to sit back at the desk, and I walked over beside the bed to stand looking down at the boy. His face was puffy, but no longer as red as it had been. The swollen look of his face reminded me of May's when she had been taking large doses of cortisone and her face had swelled like that and she hadn't wanted me to see her. "I look dreadful", she'd wailed and although I thought she did, I told her she looked fine.
There were voices coming from the next cubicle. A doctor interrogating a patient. "Now, ah ... Mr. Leger, is it? What day is this? Year? How old are you? What have you been drinking?" A muffled, unintelligible response.
A fleeting smile drifted across the boy's face. He squinted his eyes open, saw me and closed them again. He looked young and helpless. Made me think of our boys when they were young. Something inside me went out to the boy. I felt I had misjudged him because of that car, his waking me. He was just a victim of circumstances. Didn't know how to behave any better. Like so many other kids of this day. Because he had been neglected. Again he tried to open his eyes and finally regarded me through narrow slits. "Thanks", he slurred. "Thanks a lot."
I'd have to wheel him down to Ophthalmology, the nurse told me. "We've called someone in to have a look at his eyes", she said, pulling his socks back on, handing him his shoes, tying them up. "Where's your shirt?" she asked, looking about. "Oh, I forgot, we threw it out." She turned to me. "Full of grease, filthy! We were afraid if he put it back on, the burn area might become infected."
"Can you get him a hospital shift or something to cover himself with?" I asked. "The corridors are cool, he might catch cold." She shrugged, said she'd look for something for my son. "He's not my son", I shouted after her, but she was gone.
Another wait, this time for the eye doctor. And when a young man came in wearing jeans I didn't expect him to introduce himself as Dr. McPherson. He turned to the boy and asked me, "Is this your son?"
He examined the boy in a darkened room, using all the electronic equipment the small room bristled with. "I just want to satisfy myself that there's no serious damage", the doctor explained. "He's fortunate. The damage appears to be superficial. But I want to see him again in a few days, just to make sure. Can you bring him in on Monday? I'll give you an appointment." Again I explained he was not my son. The doctor made out an appointment card, slipped it in an envelope and gave it to me to temporarily end his part in the matter.
"S' all right", the boy mumbled. "My father'll take me." Before he left, the doctor squeezed another kind of anaesthetizing ointment on the boy's eyelids and his eyes and the boy winced in pain. "That'll help the pain a bit", the doctor said. "But it'll only last a few hours. You won't get much sleep tonight", he observed, almost cheerfully.
Finally, I drove the boy home. He insisted he would be fine. His father would soon be home. Then I drove the girl home. She prattled on about school, how she hated it, punctuating every statement with "Like you know, a drag". At 3:30 a.m. I crawled into bed myself. I should have been sleepy. I felt tired. But it seemed like hours had passed before I finally slept.
Next morning her father, getting his boat and trailer out of his garage woke me at seven.
That afternoon the girl's mother telephoned to say "Thanks very much for looking after my daughter's friend". I said nothing. She asked "Hello, are you there? Did you hear me?"
"I heard you" I said, and hung up.
The car sat there for a week. Some time later I saw him, the boy, looking at his car, fooling around under the hood. I waited inside the front door, knew he could see me through the screen. I thought he might come over, perhaps say something to me. But, no.
I take pride in my place. Always did. May and I have always been particular people.
They've taken to throwing their empty cigarette packages on the lawn. Last night I heard that car turn into the drive, back out and go on down the street, muffler throbbing.
Before I cut the grass today, I'll have to pick up those shattered beer bottles.
Scum.
c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
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