Going to Bend (27 page)

The nurse swept by Petie and stood at Marge’s side. “Why don’t you get off the ward for a few minutes, Mrs. Hopkins? I have some nursing things to do for your husband. Your friend is here now, and it would do you good to walk a little. We’ll page you if anything changes.”

“It’s a good idea, Marge,” Petie said. “Come downstairs with me and let me find you something to eat. Larry would never forgive me if I let you go hungry.”

Marge turned her ruined face to Petie and nodded. “All right, honey,” she said. “All right.” She allowed Petie to steer her downstairs to the tiny cafeteria and buy a club sandwich that she doctored with mayonnaise and abandoned. They were back on the ward in ten minutes flat, and that only because Petie had done her best to stall.

DeeDee, Larry and Marge’s daughter, swept onto the ward half an hour later, while Marge was at Larry’s bedside. Petie recognized her instantly. She was bosomy and moon-faced and loud, and Petie had only met her once before, when she brought her husband and two kids up from Tempe and they all got food poisoning at the Snack Shack. That had been two years ago, and in Petie’s opinion DeeDee looked even worse now than she had after vomiting for twenty-four hours.

“Oh Lord,” she said to Petie in greeting, “I cannot believe what’s happening. I get a call at work from some man I’ve never heard of, and the next thing I know I’ve stuck my kids with the neighbor and I’m sobbing on a damn airplane. I’m surprised I didn’t drive into a tree on the
way down here from Portland. Look at my eyes! They’re going to be swollen completely shut by morning.”

“They might have Murine down at the gift shop,” Petie said.

DeeDee waved away the problem. “Tell me first about Mother. Is she all right?”

“No, but they’ve given her a mild tranquilizer and she’s managing. It’ll be easier for her now that you’re here.”

“And Daddy?”

“Look, DeeDee, I don’t do these things well, so I’ll just say it. He’s in a coma. His kidneys are shutting down. The nurse on duty told me that it’s the way a lot of doctors want to die, because it doesn’t hurt. You just slip away.”

“Does Mother know that?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“With Larry.” Petie led her to Larry’s bedside, where Marge and DeeDee clung together in something between a bear hug and mutual collapse. Finally Marge held her daughter at arm’s length and looked her over.

“Oh, your poor eyes! Baby, they’ll be swollen shut by morning. We’ll have to get you some Murine. They probably have things like that in the gift shop downstairs.”

DeeDee smiled wanly and nodded in Petie’s direction. “That’s exactly what she said.”

“She’s allergic to her own tears,” Marge explained to Petie. “Always has been, poor thing.” To DeeDee she said, “You remember Petie, honey, who helps Daddy and me out sometimes at the motel?”

DeeDee nodded, but her thoughts had clearly moved on. “Isn’t there something else they can do? I have to say, Mother, that he’d be much better off in Portland at a real hospital.”

“There wasn’t any time, honey. And now it’s too late.” Marge drew a shaky breath. “You know Daddy’s only holding on to say goodbye to you all.”

“I don’t believe this,” DeeDee said.

“Do you know when your brothers will get here?” Petie asked her.

“Sometime this evening. They were catching the same flight out of San Francisco.”

Petie touched Marge’s arm. “Now that DeeDee’s here and the others are on the way, it’s time for me to go home. I’d like to say goodbye to Larry before I go, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course, honey, he’d never forgive you if you didn’t. You go on ahead. DeeDee and me will just be down the hall.”

When Petie approached Larry’s bed it seemed to her that Larry had diminished, was actually, measurably, smaller than he’d been just a few hours ago—as though by morning he might dwindle away completely, not so much in death as through evaporation. She laid her hand on his lightly, outside the covers, and his eyes moved under the lids for a minute. She turned and walked away without saying a word. Her back was straight, her gaze steady, and she remained dry-eyed all the way to Hubbard. She hadn’t wept for either Paula Tyler or Old Man, and she didn’t intend to weep now. Instead, without having planned it, she pulled into the Wayside, bellied up to the bar and ordered a beer. To her relief, the place was empty except for a young couple she didn’t recognize and Dooley Burden sitting in the corner doing a crosstik. Roy was bartending.

“Hey, Petie,” he said in greeting. “We heard about Larry.”

“Yeah,” Petie said.

“Any chance of him pulling out of it?”

“No.”

Roy shook his head and polished up a glass. “So how’s Marge?”

Petie shrugged. “Better than she’s going to be in a few days. Her kids are coming in, though.”

“Shit,” Roy said sympathetically.

“Yeah. Has Schiff been in?”

Roy’s eyebrows went up but he kept his expression neutral. “Haven’t seen him.”

Petie ran her thumb over the old bar, all the cuts and nicks and fork bites Hubbard’s finest had been laying down in that oak slab for more
than thirty years. Old Man, alone, had been responsible for a set of knife cuts twelve inches long and nearly half an inch deep at a stretch of the bar he’d held up from the time he was old enough to order his first beer to the day he died.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Roy said to Petie, and lifted his chin in their direction as Schiff and Carla walked through the Wayside door. Carla was dressed in a tarty dress with little
X
’s and
O
’s all over it and had the long jaw and beaky nose of a born nag. She glared at Petie and chose a corner table as far from her as she could get. Schiff came and stood by Petie’s barstool with his back to Carla, though it may not have been intentional.

“I called the hospital a few minutes ago but they wouldn’t tell me anything,” he said. “How’s Larry?”

Petie ran her hand over her face to quiet her heart. God, but it had been a long day. She felt suddenly like her skin had been peeled away. “No change. DeeDee got there about an hour ago. The other two are due in this evening.”

“And Marge?”

Petie looked at Schiff. When she spoke, it came out as a sob. “She told him”—she faltered, and drew a deep breath—“she told him if the Lord was calling him home, it was okay for him to go.”

“Jesus,” he said, but Carla was waiting and the Wayside was all ears. “Look, Petie. You take care.”

And he turned and walked away.

Later they heard that the whole family had assembled at Larry’s bedside by mid-evening. They stayed with him until he died peacefully at five forty-five the next afternoon—recalled, as Marge would tell it, to the gracious table of our Lord.

E
ULA COOLBAUGH
always said there was something happy about lemons, their cheerful color and their firm, tidy shape. Petie had never seen a lemon close up until she moved to Eula’s house, where there were always lemons in a wire basket hanging over the sink.
Honey, to me a lemon is like a pretty girl who believes she’s plain
, she used to say to Petie.
The lemon doesn’t make a lot of fuss the way a mango or a papaya does, flashing all those cheap bright colors around for everyone to see. But when you gussy her up with a little sugar, why you realize she’s a beauty. You and that lemon, honey, you have an awful lot in common
.

Even so many years later, Petie could remember word for word the conversation between the hospital administrator and Eula Coolbaugh that morning at Sawyer Samaritan after Old Man had his stroke. The hospital administrator had dialed the phone, briefly introduced herself and described Petie’s situation. It was only seven o’clock in the morning, but Eula Coolbaugh gave no indication that she was taken aback either by the early hour or the astonishing nature of the call. The administrator handed the phone to Petie.

“Hi, Petie,” Eula had said, as though they spoke all the time instead of just once, years before. “I was hoping I’d have a reason to come to Sawyer today. Now I do. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, hon. Is that okay with you?”

To her eternal mortification, Petie started to cry, nodding as though Eula could see her over the telephone.

“Hon? Look, you just sit right there in the lobby. I’ve got my car keys in my hand. You watch for me, and before you know it I’ll be there.” And she had been. Like an avenging angel she had descended on Sawyer Samaritan Hospital, folded Petie in her substantial wings and lifted her up to heaven.

A room of her own, with clean linens and a handmade quilt.

A closet.

A bathroom with running water.

“Why don’t we go pick up your things, hon, once you’ve had some breakfast,” Eula had said while Petie sat at her kitchen table for the first time, wolfing cereal.

“I don’t have any things.”

“You must have clothes.”

“A few. My friend Rose’s mother lets me keep them in the closet at her house.”

“Hairbrush, toothbrush?”

“I keep them in my backpack.” Petie could feel Eula Coolbaugh watching her as she drank the dregs of cereal milk from her bowl.

“More?” Eula asked her.

“Yes. Yes, please.”

Eula had set the cereal box and jug of milk in front of Petie and stroked her hair, just once, as though it wasn’t skunk-colored, poorly cut and not quite clean; softly, the way Paula had once done. Petie had forgotten about that. She hoped Eula would do it again, but Eula had gone back to the sink and was washing dishes. Then Petie heard footsteps on the stairs.

“That’ll be Eddie,” Eula said. “Running late like he always does.”

Eddie came into the room tucking in his shirt, apparently unsurprised to find Petie Tyler sitting at his kitchen table. “Morning, sweetie,” Eula said to him. “Petie Tyler’s going to be staying with us for a while. Her dad is sick.”

Eddie nodded, but his attention was entirely on his breakfast.

“Hon,” she said to Petie, “I’m assuming you won’t want to go to school today, since you were up most of the night with your dad and all.”

“Oh, I always go to school.” Petie hadn’t missed a day of school in three years, mainly because it was warm and dry at school, and there was food at lunchtime—Rose’s extras, if she’d brought enough, cafeteria leftovers if not, scavenged for her by Dooley Burden, who was the school custodian then and who knew Old Man from way back when they were growing up together.

“Well, you go if you want to, hon,” Eula said, surprised. “But I think it would do you good to stay home.”

“Home?”

“Here.”

“Oh.” And so she had, staying warm and dry in Eula Coolbaugh’s kitchen for the next four years. Now she sat at Eula’s table in her own kitchen, looking hard at a basket holding six lemons, two limes and a tangerine. At Gordon’s suggestion she was trying pen and ink with a watercolor wash, a technique that was as new to her as it was unforgiving. On the floor beneath her chair were five discarded attempts, soon to be joined by a sixth as, with a small roar, she lost control of her brush again. At the same moment Eddie Coolbaugh threw open the kitchen door and blew inside on the shoulders of the wind.

“Jesus!” he said, slapping his Pepsi cap against his hand to knock off the rain. “Coast Guard’s put up storm warnings again.”

Petie pushed her watercolors and paper aside. “They closing the bar?” she said. A sandbar at the mouth of the bay made passing into the open ocean dangerous even on a good day. On a bad one, it could sink a fishing boat in minutes.

“Not yet. I heard there’s another front coming in after this one, too.” Eddie slouched against the doorjamb between the kitchen and living room, listing slightly with the uneven pitch of the floor. “How many of those things do you still have to do?” he said, nodding towards her still life.

“I don’t know. Seven maybe, maybe more, depending on whether I can get it right or not. I’ve only got eight that are keepers, maybe six others I could live with if Gordon can.”

“The money’s good, though.”

“Yeah.”

“You hear anything from Marge?”

“No, not yet.” Marge had been down in Tempe with DeeDee ever since the day after they held a memorial service for Larry at the First Church of God. Marge and Larry’s children had wanted to have the service in the Valley, but Marge said Hubbard was their home and the people there were like family, so three weeks ago more than two hundred people had crammed into the little church to say goodbye. Marge had held up pretty well, all in all. Afterwards she’d whispered to Petie,
Honey, I’d be screaming right now if it wasn’t for the drugs they’re giving me
. The motel was closed indefinitely. It didn’t make any money in winter, anyway.

“So I talked to Schiff today,” Eddie said.

“Did you?”

“I laid it out for him, about how I could be a real good assistant manager if he’d train me. I told him I wanted to move up in the company, you know, and I’d do whatever he thought it would take.”

“So what did he say?”

“He was interested. He said that right now it would mean keeping me out of Sawyer and Hubbard more, so I could learn all the territory, not just up north. I might go to Portland, too, to regional meetings in Schiff’s place sometimes. I’m telling you, it was like he’d already thought about some of this stuff, I mean without my having brought it up.”

“You know Schiff,” Petie said. “He’s always looking for the angles.”

“Well, and he likes me, I know he does. He trusts me to not fuck up, you know? Sales on my route are up twenty percent since I started, did I tell you that? No shit. Twenty percent.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Damn right. I tell you, I’ve got a future with this company. I could be big—hell, bigger than Schiff, maybe. I mean, you know how he pisses people off. I get along with everyone; I know how to make people comfortable—well, you know how I do. I’m no fuckup.”

“Good thing, too, because I’m going to be unemployed again as soon as I finish these drawings. I don’t see Marge ever coming back here, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Without Larry? Come on.”

Eddie shrugged. “Well sure, she’d need someone to handle the maintenance part, but she could probably hire Dooley cheap.”