Harry Sue (10 page)

So instead I stared at Homer's hand, lying still on the cover, as stiff and still as the wooden hand on Mr. Blue-midnight-art-teacher's desk. That's when I decided on my punishment for accidentally saving Violet's life.

I couldn't stroke Homer's hand today, no matter that it would be like touching a tree. Today, even touching trees was off-limits.

Suddenly Homer turned to look at me in surprise, and I realized that the winch holding the rope was creaking. Just a second later, the trap door popped open and the skinny arm and head of a lady with short orange hair and hands the size of Ping-Pong paddles appeared in Homer's private space.

She stared at me with surprise but didn't say anything, just hauled herself up and took a look around. She stood there, glaring down at Homer, her long fingers twitching on his bedcover.

“Where's Beau?” Homer asked.

“Where do you think? Cooling his heels in the Cook County Correctional Facility for drawing with a knife.”

There was a long silence.

“On people,” she added, as if we didn't already get it.

There was a look on her face. I couldn't read it, but it bothered me. It made me push myself up so that I stood against the wall, ready, in case Homer needed me. She stood completely still, except for the twitching fingers on the bedcover.

She was wearing a turtleneck and over that a thin shapeless dress, like a sundress for a fat lady. But even all that flimsy cloth couldn't hide that she was small and tight, like she'd been twisted out of metal coat hangers.

A long slow smile spread across her face. She looked like she wanted to eat Homer.

Pulling a slip of paper out of one of the bulging front pockets of her dress, she read: “Christopher Dinkins, aka Homer Price. Quad with contingent psycho-social factors …”

She paused. Looked around.

“I assume that's why we're up in this tree?”

“Because I'm a quad or because I have psycho-social factors?” Homer asked, his head turned to the opposite wall.

The woman rubbed her fingers along her chin in an exaggerated way.

“I have seen quads do amazing things, but climb trees? No, that I have never seen. So it must be because you're a bit of a nut.

“A nut in a tree. I like that. A nut in a tree. That's good.”

I could see she was having a bad effect on Homer, and I searched through all my tricks to think of something to throw her off balance.

“Now, if you'd be so kind as to move over, Homer. I'd like to experience the world from your point of view.”

Without waiting for permission, her hands disappeared under the cover and she slid Homer to the side of the bed.

He turned to look at me, but I stayed where I was. I wanted to know what she was playing at. It wasn't safe to take her down in the tree house, anyway. Not with the bed taking up half the room.

Then her little body was under the cover with her arms down at her sides, just like Homer's. She smiled and closed her eyes.

“Just like Matisse,” she said. And then she stopped talking.

We waited for her to make her point. Just like Matisse … because …
what?!

When I thought I couldn't stand still another second, she propped her head on her hand and said to Homer: “Did you know that at the end of his life, the great painter Matisse was confined to his bed? Instead of lying there all wasted, he taped a piece of chalk to a stick and drew shapes on the ceiling.”

“Then this isn't
just
like Matisse, is it?” Homer asked sharply. “Because I can't draw.”

She had the nerve to move a lock of Homer's hair off his face. He looked like he might bite her for that.

“Ah, but the technology exists for you to be Matisse.”

She hopped out of bed. “My name is Anna Sorenson. I have a degree in art education, am licensed in therapeutic massage, and am currently finishing up my course work at the Borne-Benson School of Chiropractic.

“But right now,” she said, smiling happily, “I need to check you for bedsores.”

For the second time she slid her fingers under the bedcover.

“What are you doing here?” I asked from my place against the wall.

Anna covered her mouth with her hands and backed away from the bed, her eyes wide in surprise, mocking me.

“Well, hello there,” she said after a minute. “You must be the other fugitive from this game we call life. The one. The only. Harry Sue Clotkin.” She stuck out her hand, real friendly.

I looked at the ground. I wasn't about to shake hands with her.

“When will Beau be back?” I asked.

“Not today. Of that we can be certain.”

And as if that settled everything, Anna continued to probe Homer's body, her hands moving beneath the cover like some kind of alien. Both Homer and I stared at them with disgust.

I mean, think about it. Sure, he couldn't feel a thing, but wouldn't you be disgusted if some crazy lady you never met started running her hands south of your belly button?

Anna didn't seem to notice us at all. She looked like she was playing an instrument, her face had such a look of fierce concentration.

After a minute, she said, “What do we got to work with here, Homer, my boy?”

Homer didn't answer. His look said:
Let me do my own time.

“Is he always this uncooperative?” Anna asked me.

I straightened and made two fists, though I kept my arms at my sides.

“I think you better go, Anna Sorenson,” I said, taking a step forward. “Homer doesn't want you here.”

“I think you better help,” Anna said, tossing me what looked like a tube of toothpaste from the pocket of her dress. “Your friend here has skin like tissue paper. It has to be protected.

“Now, Homer, I'm not going anywhere until you answer my question. What still works?”

Homer looked right back at Anna Sorenson. He
drilled her with his eyes. Then he delivered the classic quadriplegic gesture of disrespect.

He stuck out his tongue.

What happened next is a little hard to describe. Anna Sorenson proceeded to use the metal rail on the bed like a step stool. Before we knew it, she had leapt from the top of the rail to hang from the crossbeam in the ceiling. She stuck out her tongue and wagged it back and forth. She whipped her legs around like an eggbeater. We could see right up her dress to her underwear. It was loose and white with little frilly stuff around the leg holes, like old ladies wear. Stuff was flying from her pockets: roles of adhesive, tweezers, a stethoscope, a little
Sesame Street
watch.

I was frozen in panic, sure she would fall right on top of Homer. But she didn't. She dropped to the floor and stood there, staring at us and panting. After she caught her breath, she stood up straight, put her hand on her heart, and said, just like a TV announcer:

“A tongue is a terrible thing to waste.”

I knew I had to help Homer. But the bed was between us. She would see my move coming from a long way off.

“And now, Homer, for something completely different …” She pulled off the bedcover with a snap. “I'm gonna teach your girlfriend about flexion.”

I tensed. She wasn't going to teach me anything.

“C'mon, Harold,” she said, patting the bed. “Over here.”

“Give me one good reason,” I said.

Anna looked up at me and sighed. I was giving her my “somewhere, somehow, when you least expect it, I will exact my punishment” look, only instead of taking her breath away, like it did Violet's, she yawned.

“You two are a piece of work, you know that? Okay, how about this?”

She began talking very slowly, just the way I did when I wanted the crumb snatchers to pick something up.

“Your friend here has to stimulate his skin. Normally, at his age, he might be trying to grab a girl's behind, pinch a pack of gum, change the trucks on his skateboard, but as you can see”—she held out her big paddle hands, gesturing toward Homer's still body—“it ain't likely.

“So if we don't help along his circulation with flexing and pointing …”

She picked up one of Homer's arms and fell to concentrating again. There was something about the way she moved his arm, bending and stretching, bending then stretching, gentle and fluid, never exactly stopping, that made me take notice. Something was telling me that Anna Sorenson was good at what she did.

Very good.

“Without stimulation, his skin will start tearing like a bunch of your granny's old silk panty hose. Maybe it's me, but I figured that while the two of you are hiding out from the world up here, you could at least do your part to keep our Homer from tearing at the seams.”

Her speech was over, but I didn't move. I wasn't at all sure what to do. I knew Homer had to be moved around so he didn't get bedsores. Think about it. He couldn't move on his own. Ever. At all. So he had to be turned like a piece of meat in a marinade or a potted plant that needs all sides to face the sun. I knew his skin had to have air.

She put me in a bad place, you know? Homer was my road dog. I couldn't let anything bad happen to him.

“When Beau came, he turned him to his side,” I told her, mumbling my words to show I wasn't giving her respect.

Anna Sorenson cupped her hand behind her ear and listened to me. She looked again at Homer's body and bent real close, her nose almost touching his thigh.

“Sorry to say this, but your friend Beau is a hack.”

Homer threw me a quick look. What was that supposed to mean? Hacks were guards as far as we knew. Enemies. Beau had taught us the ropes,
the joint jive, the convict's code. Beau was
not
the enemy.

“Harry Sue, I'm willing to bet you're the kind of woman for whom seeing is believing,” she went on. “So come and take a gander.”

I looked at Homer and he nodded. I walked over to her side of the bed.

“Sure, he needs exposure to air. Skin needs that. But look at this color here.”

I forced myself to look at Homer's thin legs. Atrophy. That's what it's called. When you don't use the muscles, they just fade away. His legs looked like a couple of plastic plumbing pipes lying there. Anna was pointing to a spot on his thigh that looked like a big bruise.

“That's mottling,” she said. “That means there's not enough oxygen on either side, for the skin or the blood. When that happens, the skin gets stale and it dies.”

Anna Sorenson replaced the cover gently and looked me up and down.

“You're strong enough, that's for certain. Otherwise you couldn't haul your skinny rear up that rope. If you weren't so crooked, you might aspire to the fine career of a home health aide yourself. But even the Hunchback of Notre Dame could push Homer here around in a wheelchair, don't you think? He can't weigh much more than a scarecrow.”

Anna sat down on the bed, swinging her legs back and forth.

“I'm coming back, you know,” she said. “Day after tomorrow.”

She scooped her belongings together and stuffed them back into her bulging front pockets.

“And we
will
practice flexion.”

With one foot, Anna Sorenson kicked open the hatch. She sat on the edge, her legs dangling in space.

“In the meantime, Homer,” she said, “I got a crazy idea.”

Right before she dropped to the rope, she smiled that crooked smile again and put it out there:

“Live.”

After the hatch smacked shut, Homer and I stared at each other in silence. There was that grinding noise again and I peeked out to see a beat-up orange Volvo spinning out on the gravel driveway, spitting up dirt and dust and rocks on Mrs. Dinkins's little strip of flower garden.

“I thought she got here on a broom,” I said quietly, resting my hands on the metal rail. “You okay?”

To my surprise, Homer smiled. “There's only one name for her,” he said, his eyes wide.

I nodded in agreement. In the joint, she'd be classified a category J: crazy as a loon.

“J-Cat,” we said together. I took his hand and stroked it.

“Sorry about letting her disrespect you,” I said. “I didn't know how to start something up here. Maybe I can get your mom to call the agency and fire her.”

“Don't say anything yet.”

“Why? She's a buster, Homes.”

Homer pressed his head against the pillow and rubbed at an itch.

“She's so crazy, Harry Sue, she just might be able to find my rock.”

When he mentioned the rock, my heart sank like those two things had been tied together. The idea had snagged him and if it took hold, if he swallowed it the way a fish does a steel hook, he would be caught fast.

You can't hold out hope, dangle it in front of his nose like that, and then yank it away without serious consequences. I know this from the past.

“Don't look like that,” he said. “I know I can't take back … what happened. I'm just curious is all. About what happens when things collide and how energy can flow …” Homer broke off there and pressed his lips together, willing himself not to cry.

It was the picture he had of himself at the bottom of Lake Michigan, Fish—that we both had—of the energy seeping out of him forever that made him so sad.

Should I believe what he said? Just curiosity? My instincts told me no. I still remember the days at
the hospital after they stabilized him. And the tests they put him through.

“Concentrate, Christopher. Give it your best shot.”

There was an army of them in pastel pantsuits and khakis. Everybody had a different way to unlock his motivation. They acted like he could
will
himself to move again.

There was the pretty one with the soft southern accent. “I think you can try a little harder, Mr. Dinkins. Just try? For me?”

And the bodybuilder who barked out commands to the sound track of
Fame.

And the retired schoolteacher who made up a different acronym for Homer, depending on how he performed.

“I think we'll call you IAN today, which, of course, stands for ‘inactivity achieves nothing,’ Mr. Dinkins.”

Homer was all over the map. He believed them. He cursed them. He wanted me to take 'em down. In the end, he just couldn't let them in anymore. He had to put up a big old wall around his broken self.