Hurt Go Happy (14 page)

Though Ruth, in her way, had clearly gotten attached to Sukari over the summer, she drew the line at spending “hard-earned money” on a present for a chimpanzee. Joey was just happy she had agreed to go, since she still bore a grudge against Charlie. Though Ray had gone over a number of times to watch baseball or golf, her mother had rejected every invitation he'd extended, nor had she let Joey take Luke.

After showing Luke Sukari's room and her tortoise, Joey left them to put one of Luke's old ten-piece puzzles of a German shepherd together. It was the “gift” her mother brought wrapped in an old Harvest Market grocery bag, which advertised the annual Fourth of July salmon barbecue.

Though Charlie had been set to dislike Lynn's husband, it turned out to be impossible. He, like Lynn, was a doctor, a cardiologist, with a big wide grin like Sukari's. His name was Jack, which he knelt and fingerspelled slowly for Sukari after he noticed her trudging along at his heels signing, NAME YOU MAN? over and over.

“I only married him for your benefit,” Lynn told Charlie. “We needed somebody in the family who can keep you and your old ticker in line.”

“Hmph,” was Charlie's reply.

After she and Sukari blew out the candles—fourteen on Joey's half and four on Sukari's—and finished having carrot cake and ice cream, Joey went to sit on the deck with the adults mostly as company for her mother, who she knew felt uncomfortable. She had come to the party only because it was Joey's birthday, but she sat separately from the others, gazing off into the woods and speaking only when spoken to. Joey was trying to track the conversation when her mother suddenly jumped up and ran into the house. Everyone rushed after her.

Luke was crying and Sukari was standing on the couch throwing magazines and crayons at the puzzle.

“What's the matter with you,” Charlie snapped at Sukari.

“Did she bite you?” Ruth asked Luke, which, by her face, she instantly regretted asking. They'd played together all summer and not bitten each other.

Sukari scrambled into Charlie's arms, where she continued to scream and point at the puzzle.

“Oh, that's it.” Charlie covered the puzzle with a cushion. “She's afraid of dogs.” He patted her back. “Since I've had her, she's never seen a dog, so I think that must be how they treed and killed her mother.”

Sukari stuck her lips out and signed, BAD, BITE SUKARI. Her forehead crinkled and her eyes widened.

After asking Joey if she minded, Lynn tore two pages from the coloring book and made Sukari and Luke sit together and draw. Luke scribbled for a few minutes, then ran to Ruth with his picture. Joey saw Sukari look up and watch as Ruth held it for everyone to admire, then hugged and kissed him. Sukari scribbled another minute, then came out onto the deck, dragging her picture.

Joey expected she'd take it to Charlie or herself, but she carried it straight to Ruth.

Throughout the summer, Sukari had kept her distance from Ruth, so her mother tensed a bit when Sukari laid it on her lap and poked her picture with a finger. GOOD GIRL ME, she signed. HUG.

When Joey interpreted, Ruth smiled. She leaned over. “This is the best one,” she said close to Sukari's ear, and, just as she had done for Luke, she held it for everyone to see, then patted Sukari's head.

Sukari waited a moment, then signed, HUG.

“She wants a hug, Mom,” Joey said. “Like Luke got.”

“Oh … well … I don't know.” Ruth glanced around. Everyone was watching and smiling. “She's a little person, isn't she?”

HUG, Sukari signed again, then held her arms up.

Ruth reached over, put her hands under Sukari's arms, and lifted her into her lap. She hugged the little chimp and kissed the top of her head.

Joey glanced at Ray, who winked at her and smiled.

 

CHAPTER NINE

On an uncommonly warm night in April, Joey awoke from a dream of being adrift at sea in a small boat to find herself gripping the sides of her bed, which heaved and bucked beneath her. She sat bolt upright.
Earthquake.
She grinned. The framed poster that Charlie had given her for her birthday of Koko, the sign-language-using gorilla, and her kitten, All Ball, swung on its nail. Her little vibrating alarm clock, which was on the nightstand, duck-walked to the edge and fell off.
This is so cool,
she thought for a second before her ceiling fan came loose. Joey pulled her legs up and covered her head, but the fan fell only the length of its cord, then swung in wide, slow circles just inches above the bed. The redwood limbs, just visible in the gray light of morning, swayed here and there, up and down. Then, as suddenly as it had started, her bed stopped moving.

Joey jumped up. The chest in the hall had fallen against her door and she hit her shin on it. She lifted it back up against the wall and cut through the bathroom to Luke's room where she spotted his two little legs sticking out from beneath his bed. Her heart leapt. “Are you okay?” She grabbed his ankles and pulled him out.

He was crying and she hugged him. “It's okay, honey. We had an earthquake. It's over now,” she said.

“Mommy,” he wailed when he saw the flashlight beam swaying down the dark staircase from Ruth and Ray's room.

Ray had a lump above his left eye, which was already darkening.

Ruth squeezed around him. “Are you two all right?”

“We're fine,” Joey said.

They were all smiling and laughing with relief when the house began to shake again.

“Aftershock,” Ruth said calmly, but she grabbed Ray's arm.

The kitchen was a wreck. The bottom cupboards had had child-proof latches on them from the time Luke started to crawl, but the upper cabinets had flown open and nearly all the dishes, glasses, spices, herbs, and canned goods were on the floor. There was broken glass everywhere, splattered with Newman's Own spaghetti sauce, which made the mess look bloody.

Joey knelt to hold a garbage bag open while Ray shoveled the broken glass into it. When he suddenly dropped the dustpan and went to the front door, the hair on the back of Joey's neck prickled. She scrambled to her feet and ran after him.

Only the top half of their door was glass, so it looked as if no one was there, but Ray unlocked and jerked it open as if the house were on fire. It was Sukari.

She screamed, flailed her arms, and spun in circles. The instant Ray opened the screen door, she charged into the room and into Joey's arms.

“What are you doing here?” Joey said, looking out at the driveway. “Where's Turtle?” She looked at her mother, then at Ray. “No,” she cried when she saw the expressions on their faces.

With Sukari slung on her hip, Joey ran down the trail. A hundred yards from the house, a tree had fallen, blocking her way.

Sukari weighed twenty-three pounds last time Joey had put her on the scale, but she felt heavier. Joey stopped for a second to gasp for air, shifted Sukari to the other hip, and climbed up through the trees. When she got to Charlie's, Ray and her mother and Luke were pulling into the driveway. Ray ran and pounded on the front door. There was no answer and the door was locked.

Joey ran down the side of the house and up the back steps. Sukari's jungle gym had fallen through a pane of the sliding glass door. Joey stepped inside and crossed through the broken glass. When she put Sukari down, the little chimp darted down the hall and disappeared into a rear bedroom.

Charlie was on the floor beside his bed, his right hand clutching the front of his pajama top. Joey screamed for her mother and Ray, then turned to find them in the doorway. Ray knelt and pressed his fingers to the side of Charlie's throat, turned, and said something to Ruth.

“Is he dead?” Joey cried.

Ray shook his head, no.

Sukari had crawled between Charlie and the bed and was touching his eyelids softly with one finger and signing to him with the other hand.

Ruth grabbed the phone and punched 911. “The ambulance is coming,” she said and hung up. “What's she doing?” she asked Joey, trying to shoo Sukari away from Charlie. “Why is she grinning like that?”

Joey was hunkered at Charlie's feet, rocking on her heels. She looked at Sukari and realized she was signing, J-Y HERE, J-Y HERE, and trying to pick his eyes open.

“She's scared and trying to tell him I'm here.” Tears rolled down Joey's cheeks. “I am here, Charlie.”

After a moment, Charlie's eyes blinked open. He smiled weakly. “So you are,” he said, then cupped Sukari's face in his palm. “You're a good girl.”

“An ambulance is on the way, Charlie,” Ruth said. “You hang on.”

“Too late,” he said and closed his eyes.

Sukari signed, TURTLE SLEEP, then lay beside him and closed her eyes for a second before lifting her head to peek at him.

Joey squeezed his foot. “Charlie, don't say that. Sukari needs you. I need you.”

Only his fingers moved. He lifted the index finger of the fist at his chest and pointed to Sukari, then pointed his open hand to Joey. “Take care of her.”

“I will 'til you're better. I promise.”

His lips moved. “I love my girls.”

Joey looked from her mother to Ray. “Why are you sitting there?” she cried. “Can't you help him?”

Ruth knelt and put an arm around Joey. “There's nothing we can do, honey.”

“There must be something. CPR, or something.”

Joey grabbed his hand. “Charlie, please wait.”

Charlie folded his fingers around her hand. A single tear appeared in the corner of his right eye and slid free with his last breath.

“Charlie,” Joey cried, tugging his hand. “Oh, Charlie. Please.”

Ruth tried to pull her away. “It's over, honey,” she said.

“No.” She looked pleadingly from one to the other. “Ray?”

When tears filled her stepfather's eyes, Joey slumped against the side of the bed and pulled Sukari into her arms. “What will I do without him?” she sobbed against the coarse hair of her thin shoulder.

*   *   *

Ruth walked Luke home while Ray waited on the front steps with his head in his hands for the ambulance to take Charlie's body to the hospital. Joey sat with Sukari in her lap and held Charlie's hand. Every couple of minutes, Sukari would tug gently on Charlie's pajama sleeve until finally she leaned over with Joey's arms around her waist for support and stared intently at his face. She brushed his eyelashes with a finger, then turned and signed, TURTLE SLEEP. Joey could only nod.

When Ray came to the bedroom door, Joey knew the ambulance had arrived.

WANT BATH? she asked Sukari, who hooted with joy and ran down the hall, stripping off her pajama top and diaper as she went.

Joey had no idea how long she'd been sitting with Sukari and Hidey, both napping among the litter of toys, books, and dolls that Sukari had dragged up to surround them on the sofa, but when her mother's hand on her shoulder startled her, the sun had moved to cast long shadows on the deck.

“I thought I'd call Lynn,” she said. “Do you know her number?”

Joey shook her head. “Did you look on his desk?”

“It's a mess in there.”

“Her last name is Mansell, too, and she lives in Fresno.” She started to get up, but Sukari screamed when she moved.

“Stay there,” Ruth said.

Joey hugged Sukari. “I won't leave you.”

Charlie's moth-eaten old sweater was slung across the back of the couch. Joey picked it up and buried her nose in it. It smelled so strongly of him that it was hard to believe he wasn't there. Tears came again. She wiped her arm across her eyes and put the sweater around Sukari's shoulders.

Her mother came and sat in Charlie's recliner and twirled a strand of her hair around her index finger. She often did that while watching television, sometimes inspecting the tips and pinching off the split ends. Joey wondered how everything could continue to look and smell the same.

Her mother waved for her attention. “Lynn will be here Friday.”

“Why so long?”

“One of her patients is due.”

“Who?”

“Not who, due. A baby is coming.”

Joey nodded.

“She was awfully upset.”

“Charlie was like a father to her.”

Her mother slid forward in the chair. “I've called Animal Control.”

Joey stiffened and watched her mother's mouth more closely. “What's that?”

“People to take Sukari until Lynn…”

“No.”

“She can't stay here.”

“Why not? I'll stay with her.”

“Alone? No way.”

“Why?”

“You're deaf, Joey. If you're not standing right under it, you can't even hear a smoke alarm.” She pointed to the unit attached to the ceiling.

Joey opened her mouth to protest, but her mother held up her hand. “You can't hear the phone.”

“So? I can call out.” She thought of what Charlie had written in her sign language book. Tears pooled in her eyes. “I'm deaf, not helpless, Mom.”

Her mother looked past her toward the front door, then got up. “I said no. That's final.”

A young woman in a beige uniform left a large carry-cage just outside the door before stepping into the foyer. She smiled at Joey. “I've never picked up a monkey before.”

“She's deaf,” her mother said.

“Oops, sorry,” said the woman.

Joey had seen her say “monkey.” “She's not a monkey.”

The woman glanced back and forth between Joey and her mother.

“She reads lips.”

“Oh, of course. Will she bite?” the woman asked Joey, making each word big.

Sukari moved in tight to Joey's legs, hair bristling as if she, too, had taken an instant dislike to this woman. SUKARI BITE, she signed.

Joey almost smiled. “Yes, she'll bite.”

“Has she ever bitten anyone?” The woman spoke quickly. “We have a policy. If she's bitten anyone, we'll have to destroy her.”