Like Family (29 page)

“It’s a miracle he’s still with us,” Granny said when she called us at the Lindberghs’ to give us the news. Her voice sounded
lispy and strange, the
s
’s rushed together wetly. I thought it was because she had been crying, but when I asked, Granny had said no, it was because
of the stroke she’d had the month before.
A stroke?
I barely had time to process this when Granny started in about Keith. He’d been in critical condition for several days, but
was out of the ICU now and could have a few visitors. It would mean a lot to him, she said, if we girls would go down there.

When I got off the phone, Penny and I sat at the kitchen table for a while, feeling stunned and ashamed. How was it that Granny
could be so sick without our even knowing it? When was the last time we’d seen her? Or Keith and Tanya? If we were fifteen
and sixteen, Tanya must be thirteen already — could that be? — and Keith nineteen. The last time I remembered going over to
Vera’s with Granny, Keith had just started eighth grade at Cooper Intermediate. While Granny and Vera did some catching up
over weak coffee, we went outside with Tanya’s Chinese jump rope and started playing in the driveway. Keith didn’t join us
in the game, of course — he was way too cool for that — but he sat with us, sprawled on the lawn, tugging at tufts of grass.
As I waited for my turn, I plopped down next to Keith and started attacking the grass too, building up a little pile of cuttings
between my feet. It wasn’t until Keith went to scatter my pile, teasing me, that I noticed his hands. The knuckles were raw
and purplish, with nicks and one long scrape on his right ring finger.

“What’s that from?” I reached over, happy for an excuse to touch him.

“Fight.” He didn’t pull away.

“A fight? Someone beat you up?”

“Maybe I did the beating up. Did you ever think of that?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head quickly. “You wouldn’t. You’re too good.” I went back to my grass nest, raking up the strays.

“Good, huh?” The smirk was in his voice as well as on his face. I looked up to see his blue eyes narrowing as he studied me
like some two-headed thing in a jar.

My blush was tidal, blood moving from my neck to the tips of my ears and back. I couldn’t even look at Keith and so pretended
to be very interested, suddenly, in the Chinese jump rope game. Tanya was at the part where she had to leap up and come down
on both sides of the elastic, pinning them down, but she missed. “Dang,” she yelped. “Do-overs.”

“No way,” Teresa said, stepping out from her side. “My jumps.”

Keith stood silently and wandered inside, and we left shortly after that. He came out to the porch with Vera and Tanya, and
they all waved us down the street. As we passed the abandoned airport, its runway cracked like an eggshell, every third window
of its blue control tower blown out, I thought about that Easter morning when we learned of Deedee’s death, how only moments
before, we had been singing in Granny’s car and Keith the loudest, the best — his voice all angels and atmosphere.

W
HEN
T
ERESA
GOT HOME
from track practice, Penny and I went into her room together to tell her about Keith. She was still in her running shorts
and a gray T-shirt with the neck cut out that said
Wild Woman.
“What?” she said from the floor where she sat cradling her albums in her lap. She owned only five and was as possessive of
them as a dog with half a bone, putting them in order, going through them over and over for signs of our tampering.

We told her the part about Granny first, about her lispy voice and how she had said she couldn’t drive anymore, that ladies
from the Gospel Lighthouse were doing her grocery shopping and coming to pick her up for meetings.

“When did that happen?”

“A few months ago,” I said. “July.” In July, Teresa had been up at Gloria’s resort. That was her excuse, but what about Penny
and me? We’d been doing our usual summer thing, spending most of our time over at the Swensons’, forgetting the Lindberghs
for as long as they would let us. Sometimes Bub would call over there and say, “Come home. Can’t you see you’ve outstayed
your welcome?” But that was only once a week or so. In between, we were free, free, free.

Although we hadn’t been forgetting Granny for the same reasons, she’d been forgotten nonetheless, pressed into a scrapbook
like a newspaper clipping. We didn’t think ill of her; we just didn’t think of her at all. When I put my mind to it, I could
easily picture Granny in her kitchen, whistling as she battered chicken for frying, could see her dark shoes and old-lady
stockings and smell her White Shoulders. But these memories were as old as I was. I didn’t have any new ones for her, didn’t
have a context for her in
this
life, which was whizzing forward with crushes and pizza parties and long looks in the mirror to see just what could be done
about my hair.

“That’s sad,” Teresa said, petting the album on top: Rod Stewart in a black leather jumpsuit and boots, his hair looking,
well,
electrocuted.

Penny fidgeted as she described Keith’s accident, unclipping and reclipping her silver barrette. “We should go to see him,
don’t you think?” The question was for both of us, but she was looking at Teresa. “Granny said he would like it.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Teresa shrugged. “You guys can go if you want. I’m busy.” “You’re busy when?” I asked. “We haven’t told you when we’re going.”

“I’m always busy.” She tipped Leather Rod to the side and the album slid out. Holding it gingerly, she blew on it several
times, then placed it on the turntable. Lowered the needle. “Tonight’s the Night” started up, clearly our sign to leave, but
Penny and I couldn’t stop looking at her incredulously.

“What?” she finally barked. “What?” She put her hands on her knees and set her chin. “Listen, I just don’t want to go. You
guys can make up your own minds, but leave me out of it.”

P
ENNY
DRIED HER FACE
on her sweater as we left the elevator after our spastic laugh attack. “Do I look normal?” she said, turning her attention
to her stick-straight hair.

“No. Do I?”

“Nope.”

The sixth floor was tiled in white and a yellow-orange Penny said was technically called “baby shit,” you know, in decorator’s
terms. We wandered around lost for a while, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I needed the time to prepare myself for Keith’s injuries.
Granny had warned us that he looked bad, and though I tried to call up versions of
bad,
the only thing coming in clearly was Keith at eight, feet wide, hands on hips, calling out, “To the Batmobile, Robin!”

Our Hall of Justice was a tangle of rusted car parts and sheet metal in one corner of Granny’s backyard.
Now you kids stay away from there,
Granny would warn, shaking a finger.
You’ll get lockjaw! Okay, okay,
we sang back in unison, and headed right for it. In those days, Keith was always Batman and would select a Robin to keep
me and my sisters from drawing blood trying to settle it ourselves. Sometimes he picked a number or did Eeny Meeny Miney Moe,
but usually he lined us up against the fence, held his chin for a moment, as if deep in thought, then pointed. I preferred
this method because it had nothing to do with luck; he was choosing, and when he chose me, the sun seemed to shoot off like
a bottle rocket.

Somehow, Penny and I got all the way around to the bank of elevators again before a nurse spotted us and led us to Keith’s
room. Through the door was a single bed spewing tubes, banked by machines that blinked and hummed. There was no one else in
the room, so it had to be him, the exploded thing above the sheet. His head was at least twice its size, a black basketball,
burned and hairless.

“Look who’s here,” said the basketball. “Granny said you might come. Get over here where I can see you.” It didn’t sound like
my Keith, my Batman, but it wouldn’t: Keith was a grownup now.

We sidled nearer, Penny half a step behind me. From where we had stood at the door, it had looked like all of Keith’s beautiful
white-blond hair was gone, but no. There were still frizzles of it over his ears and in spots along his forehead and the back
of his neck, like tufts remaining after a carpet has been ripped out.

Keith watched us expectantly as we approached the bed, and the eyes were his own, wide and sky blue inside the char of his
face.

“Hey you,” I said, and found myself talking through a wad of my own hair. Without thinking, I had pulled a section around
in front of my mouth. I laughed nervously and dropped my hands. “How’s it going?”

“Sucky. How does it look like it’s going?” The words were hard, but his voice wasn’t. “Where’s Terry?”

“Teresa,” I corrected him. “No one has called her Terry since we were kids.”

“She’s too good now, huh? Miss Prissy Pants.” One heavily bandaged arm pawed the sheet.

“No, that’s not it. She just doesn’t like Terry.” I walked over to the window, where the view was all parking lot. It looked
like a board game, one where you could roll dice and maybe end up on the free space.

“Uh-huh. Where is she?”

“At home, studying,” Penny piped up, speaking for the first time. “She wanted to come but had this really big test.”

“Yeah,” I added, “big,” but I was thinking,
Who knew Penny was such a great liar?

“She planning to go to college?” The machine to his left chirped twice and quieted. “I didn’t go to college. Guess I wasn’t
smart enough.”

Part of me wanted to say, “Of course you’re smart enough. You can do anything.” Part of me was having trouble breathing. Under
the hospital sheet, Keith’s feet were split and shot, the color of charcoal.
(I’m a trampin , trampin ,
we sang in Granny’s car. Would they take him to heaven now, or anywhere, those feet?)

Penny and I stayed for twenty minutes or so, long enough to tell him how we were doing in school, about our dogs and the big
sailboat in the backyard. It must have sounded to Keith like we were doing okay, better than okay, because he broke in, saying,
“Swimming pools. Movie stars.”

“What?”

“You know, the
Beverly Hillbillies.
From the theme song.”

“It’s not like that at all,” I said, my hands in my hair again.

“Yeah, right.”

I spent the next few minutes sputtering, my face hot, trying to tell Keith he’d gotten it all wrong, that we weren’t rich
or brainiacs or anything, but it didn’t matter. He was convinced that we thought we were better than our family. That we didn’t
have room for them in our new life.

The thing is, he was right.

We said good-bye, patted what seemed to be a safe part of the sheet and got back on the elevator. I pushed Lobby and looked
up. We sank like a dirigible.

“Hey,” Penny said, remembering the stupid gurney guy, “did you see how the top of the cart was all smudged, like he’d just
gotten rid of a body or something?”

“Yeah. That was weird.”

We clicked through the slide show of gross possibilities in our separate heads, happy to be thinking of anything but our sorry-ass
selves and what was left of our Batman up on the sixth floor.

“Yeah. Weird.”