All Over Creation (53 page)

“Thanks,” Yummy said, handing him over. “He's sick of me carrying him, but I can't let him loose around here.” She turned toward her father, and her shoulders slumped.

“How's he doing?” Cass asked.

“He's stable now, but his heart was fibrillating again last night. He's delusional. The doctor said his brain isn't getting enough oxygen. He keeps moaning on about seeds, how he's got to save them, but I don't know whether he's talking about his and Momoko's seeds or Melvin and the others. He knows they're in jail.” Her voice was flat and monotonous. “The doctor's moving him to the cardiology unit. I guess they'll just monitor him and see what happens.”

They stood side by side at the entrance to the cubicle and watched Lloyd breathe. His body looked so frail beneath the sheet. His gown had fallen open, and they could see the electrodes that were taped to his papery skin. Even those looked painful.

“The doctor says his heart has been severely compromised,” she said. “It makes it sound like it's someone's fault, doesn't it? Maybe mine. . . .”

“No,” said Cass. “It's not your fault.”

“A compromised heart,” she said. “Kind of poetic, isn't it?”

 

 

That night Cass started to clear out the spare room. It had been her room as a child, and when she and Will moved into her parents' bedroom, she had started getting it ready for a baby. She had painted the walls yellow, a cheerful color that would do for a girl or a boy, and made new curtains for the windows and even refinished the dresser. But over the years the empty room got tired of waiting. The walls dulled, and slowly things began to accumulate: canning jars, a broken toaster oven, a box of clothes for the Salvation Army, Will's college textbooks, back issues of
Spudman,
empty computer boxes with their molded foam inserts. At one point they had talked of converting the room into the office, but Cass couldn't bear it, so they built the addition instead. Somewhere along the line they'd stopped calling it the baby's room and started calling it the spare room instead.

Now she hauled all the old junk out to the car and brought it to the dump. Once the area was cleared, she saw that the walls were stained, so she went out and chose some new paint, a pale violet this time, and when the walls were done, she bought curtains and a bedspread and a rug to cover the cracked linoleum. She even bought a crib. It was sturdy and plain but would convert to a junior-size bed as the baby grew. She knew she was being stupid. The bed would never fit into the Winnebago.

Will didn't say a word. He didn't offer to help either.

“She's coming to stay with us,” she had told him, standing in the doorway to the office. He just nodded. He'd been opening the mail, slitting the envelopes with his penknife.

“I stopped in on Lloyd,” she said. “They're moving him out of Intensive Care, but he's not looking good.”

“It's a shame,” he said, glancing over a glossy fertilizer pamphlet before chucking it into the trash. “Those people really took advantage—”

“No. Lloyd knew what he was doing. Yummy says he's worried sick over them.”

He swiveled his chair around toward the computer. She felt her face redden as she addressed his back. “Don't go pretending you care about him, Will. If you did, you'd drop the charges and get them out of jail.”

 

 

She stopped by the hospital every day to check up on Charmey, afraid that the sheriff would steal her away, but the girl was there and feeling better.

“Oooh,” she said when Cass came in at lunchtime. “Look at it! They call this food!
Ce n'est pas possible!
I cannot feed my baby this crap!”

The lunch tray contained a bowl of tomato soup, a package of saltines, and a processed-turkey sandwich on white bread. Charmey pushed it away. She was refusing the sleeping pills and the steroids, too, but her pregnancy had stabilized, and the doctor said he would release her by the end of the week.

“And Frankie must be released quickly, too,” Charmey said. “Don't you think? There are so many things we must do to prepare for the baby.”

Up in Cardiology, Lloyd was refusing food as well, but his condition was not improving. Yummy was cooking his favorite dishes at home, trying to tempt him, but he wouldn't eat.

“Ugh,” he said, screwing up his face after a spoonful of her applesauce. “It's awful!”

Her split-pea soup was too thick and salty. Her oatmeal tasted like paste. Yummy left the room, and Cass found her in the courtyard smoking.

“He's impossible!” Yummy said. Her hand shook as she held the cigarette, and her eyes were bloodshot. The glare of the sunlight reflected off the concrete walls, and when she exhaled and squinted, Cass saw fine wrinkles lining the skin. “He's got water in his lungs. They drain it, but it keeps filling up again. They say only a small fraction of his heart is still alive, but I don't understand that. What does that mean?”

Cass shook her head.

“I wish they'd be specific,” Yummy said, stubbing out the butt. “A quarter? An eighth? How much heart does a person need?”

“There's no escape,” Y said, inhaling deeply through his nose. “The physical body is a prison.”

“They can't do this!” Frankie said, bouncing off the bars. “I mean,
terrorism?
What the fuck!”

“They're afraid we'll jump bail. Split the state.” Y closed his eyes. “The only true freedom is in your mind.”

Terrorism, pornography, obscenity, interstate trafficking, sedition. “Fucking right I'll jump if they charge us with all that.” Frankie struck his forehead against the cinder-block wall. He wheeled around. “Oh, shit, do they have firing squads in Idaho?”

“Release the thought,” Y said, exhaling. “They're just messing with your mind.”

But Frankie was sensitive to lockups. Closed-in places made him tense—closets, classrooms, wards, and cells. He had a problem with authority, and when he was confronted with it, a shitty little sneer rose up inside him like sap in a young tree in springtime. It curled his lip like a leaf and narrowed his eyes. A long line of foster fathers had failed to wipe it off his face. He knew he had a bad attitude, but he couldn't control it.

 

 

“What are you laughing at?”

Frank redirected his gaze at the concrete floor. Just him and three guards in a long, empty hallway.

“What's your name, boy?” said the guard who was doing the talking.

Frankie stared at the scuffed cinder-block wall. He tried to remember Charmey's coaching.
Think calm thoughts,
she said.
Think of funny things. When you laugh, they cannot make you angry. Breathe.

“Speak up,” the guard said. “I can't hear you.” He rocked back on his heels, prodding the air with his lower jaw. The skin on his cheeks looked like a fat plucked broiler. When he elbowed his friends, his arms were like chicken wings flapping.

“Frank,” Frankie said.

“Frank what?” He had wattles that wriggled. The other two were chuck-ling behind him, and it sounded like the clucking of excited fowl, filling the empty concrete spaces. “What's your last name, boy?”

“Perdue,” Frank said, and now the clucking was getting louder. The long corridor echoed like a ghostly battery.

“What's that?” the guard squawked. “I didn't hear you!”

“
Frank Perdue!
” Frankie said, real loud and clear, but by now the three guards were crowing. They knew his name. They didn't need to hear it. They hooked their thumbs in their armpits and flapped their wings. They were having a good time.

Frank sighed, massaging his wrists, which were cuffed behind him. In his mind he was already launching himself headfirst into the bulging gut of the nearest guard, and he could almost feel the release that the pain would bring as the guard's fist made contact with his nose. He could see himself lying there in his own blood, gazing up at the bright, caged ceiling fixtures, debeaked and bathed in swimming lights.

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

His body tensed like a rocket yearning for takeoff, but he didn't move. Didn't head-butt the guard. Didn't even talk back. Instead he took a deep breath and got very still inside and allowed the three men to crow and flap and shove him around.

“What's wrong, boy? Are you
chicken?
”

Then, when the big guard collared him, he allowed his body to go limp. His cheek came into contact with the edge of the man's boot, but still he didn't resist, didn't even sneer. He just lay on the cold concrete, keeping his eyes closed and his mind focused inward on Charmey and the baby, and made the first of the compromises required of a father—that he be relatively intact, present, and alive.

“It's all your fault!” Ocean yelled, throwing down her fork. She hadn't touched her food, and it was getting cold.

“It's true!” Phoenix said. “Nobody else wanted him here. If you hadn't invited him, he wouldn't have come, and Tutu Lloyd wouldn't have had a heart attack, and the Seeds wouldn't be in jail either!”

“That's ridiculous.” I gave Poo another macaroni to chew on. Macaroni and cheese, and the cheese was congealing. “Geek said they wanted journalists and people from the press, so I—”

“Well, he
wasn't
a journalist, was he?” Phoenix said, driving his fork into a clump of noodles. “He lied to you, and you believed him. So that makes you an idiot
and
a traitor—”

“I was trying to help.”

“—
and
a whore.” He knew he had gone too far, but he couldn't stop. “The kids at school were right. All you care about is getting laid.”

I didn't hit him hard. It felt like my body was obeying some hidden set of instructions and rose of its own accord, and my arm reached out and slapped him across the face. It wasn't hard enough to do much more than redden his cheek, but it was harder than I'd ever hit anyone. Phoenix sat back in his chair. Stunned, he looked at me, then quickly turned away, the way you might turn if you caught sight of a stranger doing something disgusting.

Ocean, on the other hand, just stared. “You hit him!” she said.

Poo tossed his macaroni onto the floor and started to cry.

Phoenix didn't say a word. He just pushed away from the table and walked out the door.

“Wait!” Ocean cried. “I'm coming, too!” She leveled a furious gaze at me. “We hate you!” she said, and took off after her brother.

I sat there for a while, watching Poo wail and hurl his noodles as the cheese continued to harden on my older children's plates, and then I went to the door. I saw them in the distance, walking down the road toward Cassie's house. Phoenix had a stick, and he was whipping the ground with it. I phoned Cass.

“Just intercept them, will you? Maybe you can let them play computer games for a while. They'd probably feel a lot better if they could blow something up.”

“Sure thing, Yummy. What's going on?”

“Nothing.” I thought about that. It didn't sound quite right. “Phoenix made a very mean crack, so I hit him.” A long silence followed. “I've never hit him before,” I added. There was more silence. I realized she could probably hear Poo, who was wailing behind me. “For God's sake, Cass. I'm not like your father. I don't beat my children as a matter of course. Phoenix was really rude. It just happened. Once.”

Finally she spoke. “I know.”

“I shouldn't have. I feel terrible. I'm just exhausted is all. It's no excuse.”

“Listen, I see them outside. I've got to go.”