Instead of explaining himself, he looks down at her tray. “You got one for me?”
“Of course,” Alma says, pleased to pass herself off as a good cook, which she supposes she is, a big frog as long as she sticks to her little pond of six, seven recipes. She sets the tray down, and when she goes to pull open the fridge to get the flan, there on the door, stuck on with a magnet, staring back at her is a picture of a boy, Mickey, unmistakable, the eyes, the grin. He's holding up some certificate that he's obviously proud of, too young for it to be a high school degree. Maybe some scout thing, who knows? It's a picture Alma has seen hundreds of times before, Helen has had it here for a while, from before she went totally blind, Alma assumes, because why else stick a photo on your fridge if you can't see it. How odd to be in the presence of the man who was once this boy, the kind of perspective she seldom has with people.
“I won that calf.”
Alma smiles. “How'd you do that?”
“A 4-H contest. Had to write five hundred words on the four Hs: head, hands, heart ⦔
He can't remember the fourth
H.
Alma tries to help him out. What other major body part starts with an
H
? She gives up.
She bends to look more closely at the photo, and sure enough she
can make out the long, makeshift buildings, the grandstand, the stalls for animals, the usual fairgrounds paraphernalia. A Ferris wheel is vaguely visible in the background. Strange that for years Alma didn't see it back there, didn't see the boy's smile of pride, the flank of the prize calf, the rope in his hand, a luminous moment that will be there whenever she looks at the grown man from now on.
“Helen took that picture. Just before my father left us. Last good day in a long time.”
Alma has brought the flan over to the table, and she starts assembling another dish and spoon, keeping busy, feeling surprised and a little flattered that he's confiding in her but also uncomfortable lest he make it a habit.
“Is your father around? I mean, maybe he should be notified? Maybe he's someone Helen might want to see?”
“He's not welcome here,” Mickey says, the quickest reply Alma has ever gotten back from him.
She waits a moment, not knowing if Mickey wants to say more. Finally, she murmurs, “I'm sorry,” sensing that she has bumped up against a wound that still hurts to be touched.
After a moment, Mickey nods. End of conversation. Back to being Paul Bunyan. But now he's also a boy who won a calf and lost a father.
A man who is losing his mother, Alma thinks, as she dishes him up an extra big serving.
T
HEY SIT IN THE
parlor, Mickey, Tera, Helen, and Alma, eating flan and running the topic of the cold weather to the ground. Alma and Helen and Tera would have no problem coming up with any number of things to talk about. But Mickey seems to tense up the room, the way he sits back, watching their chitchat as if conversation were a spectator sport.
Tera breaks the rather thin ice with a pick. “Helen, I hear you've elected not to undergo treatments?”
Alma has confided this to Tera, not knowing if she is supposed to. She glares at her friend, hoping to stop Tera from continuing.
But Helen seems unfazed by the comment. “That's right, dear. It's pretty near spread into everything, like dandelions. There's not much the doctors can do. It's my time to go.” She says this so matter-of-factly, like the oven beeper just went off and the flan is done.
“Doctors'd just nuke her to death,” Mickey interjects clunkily.
“You said it,” Tera says, and Alma can almost feel the easing of tension in the room. Two potential foes have found a common enemy: the medical profession.
“As long as it's what you want, Helen,” Alma puts in. Is she the only one here who isn't 100 percent sure? If she is, she should keep her mouth shut. “I know how you are about not wanting to be a bother,” Alma reminds her.
“It'd be a big bother to
me
to be in the hospital, hooked up to a lot of machines.” Helen shakes her head at this bleak vision of her last days. As frail and blind as Helen is, it is surprising how seldom she visits doctors, so unlike Papote and Mamasita and most old people Alma knows. No doubt this is why Helen's cancer spread all over without some earlier diagnosis. “It's what I want,” Helen says, quietly, firmly, and Alma knows she can trust the sureness in Helen's voice.
“Sometimes they do a lot of procedures where they know it's no use just so they can collect the insurance,” Mickey elaborates.
“I read about that case.” Tera is nodding eagerly. “The guy in Florida with total metastasis, liver, lung, everything involved, and they did this whole stem-cell treatment, hundreds upon hundreds of dollars.”
“Thousands,” Mickey corrects. “They cooked that poor guy.”
Excuse me, Alma feels like snapping at them. You
are
talking in front of a terminally ill person! She tries to catch Tera's eye, but her friend is too busy stockpiling evidence with Mickey to notice Alma beaming a big red stop sign.
“Don't get me started on the health system,” she says, shaking her head.
“Good idea,” Alma says pointedly, which stops Tera momentarily. But Mickey goes on undaunted. “I've seen those fellows up close. They're operators all right. Know what the MD stands for? Money dealers.”
Soon he's launched into the ills of the health system in this country, and Tera is launched right alongside him. A half-dozen
I hear you
s and
you said it
s later, and the two have hit their stride, comrades. Only when Mickey stands up and says he's going out to bring in some wood and Tera stands up and says she has something she has to get in the car does Alma realize that Tera hasn't just been mouthing off, she has been preparing the ground to hand over her pamphlets.
Alma is relieved to see them go. And glad that Helen is the first to laugh. “Those two, my word.” Helen is shaking her head.
“Makes me mad. Honestly, they're so clueless. I'm sorry, Helen.” Mickey is not her fault, but Alma did bring Tera over.
“What for? No, no, no,” Helen adds, refusing to let Alma feel bad about the conversation. “I'm sure I agree with what they say. But all that angry talk. It's just like that book you read me.”
She must mean
Paradise Lost,
all those devils arguing, but it's funny how for Helen, all books seem to melt into one book, which is sometimes
Paradise Lost
and sometimes
The Bluest Eye
and sometimes the
Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Alma takes Helen's hand. “So you're okay with your decision?” All week, one way or another, Alma has been asking Helen this question.
“Yes,” Helen says, almost shyly, like she didn't know she'd elected an option that would get her this much attention. “When I heard what all they had to do just to buy me a few more months, it just wasn't worth it.”
“I can understand that,” Alma tells her, knowing she probably would have chosen the opposite, believing as she does in plots she can revise, endings she can rewrite. Unless, of course, the story is over, the expedition completed, Balmis's mission accomplished, Isabel's name misremembered, and the child carriers all but forgotten, their names briefly noted in some dusty tome in the library. “Anything you need, you let me know,” Alma squeezes Helen's hand. She's thinking about Helen's Paxil. The way Mickey talks, he probably won't buy his mother anything that makes money for the drug companies.
“I will,” Helen squeezes back.
“Anyone you want me to call ⦔ Alma hints. She doesn't want to bring up any sad memories. And Helen will know what Alma is offering. She has always read between Alma's lines. Why it's always been hard for Alma to believe that Helen is really blind.
“I think Claudine's got the phone calling all covered.” Helen laughs again.
“Nothing you're worried about?” Why does she keep insisting? Alma should shut up. But she has known Helen long enough to read between her lines, and Alma thinks she has spotted some fine print.
Helen hesitates. “Only thing I suppose I worry about is ⦠well, Mickey. He's just had some hard times. I hope he's going to be all right.” She sounds not sure, as if she needs a second opinion.
“Is he in trouble?” Alma asks.
“Yes and no,” Helen confides. “His wife's been ill, you know. Mental disease. And sometimes she's brought him down with her.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe he can get some help?”
Helen sighs and shakes her head. “You just heard what he thinks of doctors. And he's not mental, I'm not saying that. Just gets some strange ideas. When I try to talk sense into him, he goes off. Always comes back, though, always with a present in his hands.” She smiles, remembering those homecomings. The brass and rosewood flatware, the little Dutch clogs, the fan with the painted butterflies.
“It hurt him, losing his father,” she goes on. “Up and left us just like that. Mickey took it hard. And I wasn't much help. Had to put Mickey in foster care while I got myself together. But like the song says, amazing grace. I don't know where I'd have ended up without it. But Mickey never did forgive me. Said I wasn't a mother to him. At school, I can't say he got in with the wrong crowd, as he was the troublemaker. Dropped out.”
Alma stares at her old friend point-blank. Incredible to think that her strong-as-a-rock Helen was once a bad single mom. But then sweet Jesus came and put her back together again. No such luck for her son.
“Next I knew, Mickey'd joined up. I thought the Marines would be
good for him, give him the discipline he needed. But I guess there, too, he went places and saw things that hurt him some more, never was the same again.”
Helen seems suddenly bereft, as if she just got the really bad news, a cancer that can destroy her peace of mind: her son will not fare well in the world she is leaving behind.
“I'm sorry you've had this worry, Helen.” Alma wishes her old friend had confided in her before. What would Alma have done? Introduced Mickey to Tera, she supposes. Maybe Mickey would have learned from Tera how to marshal personal hurt into purposeful action.
“I hope I'm not fooling myself,” Helen pauses to catch her breath. All this sad talk must be tiring. “But I think he's okay now.” It's really a question. She wants Alma's reassurance. Alma doesn't want to lie to Helen, but she wants her friend to be at peace in the time left her.
“I don't know Mickey well enough to say,” Alma hedges. Helen waits. Her face is a mask of worry she wants Alma to take off. Alma hesitates. “He seems fine to me, Helen, he really does.”
“You think so?” Helen's face tilts up, even though they are sitting side by side, holding hands. It is the face of a child gazing up at an adult with a look of total trust.
Alma takes a deep breath. “Yes, I do.” And then, lest Helen's keen vision see through Alma's bluff, she adds, “He told me about winning that calf.”
Helen laughs. “Oh yes. My oh my, was that boy ever proud.”
“He said he won it with something he wrote about the four
H
s. Heart, head, hands, but he couldn't remember the fourth
H.
”
“Health,” Helen says right off. “Head, heart, hands, and health.”
That's not an organ or a part of the body, Alma is thinking. But it's not surprising that it's the one
H
that Mickey would forget, given the kind of life he has led and the difficult days that lie ahead.
O
N THEIR WAY OUT,
Tera needs to use the bathroom. Alma is waiting in the entryway when Mickey approaches from the kitchen, flan plate in hand.
“Guess I didn't like it,” Mickey says, nodding at the empty plate.
There was over half a flan left after Alma spooned out his serving! “You ate the whole thing?”
He grins, watching her. He seems to get a kick out of shocking her. “I put what was left over on one of Helen's plates,” he admits finally. Alma has noticed how prompt Mickey is about returning her plates and platters, as if he's trying to prove his honesty, the showy scrupulosity of the shoplifter, paying for the gum after stuffing his pockets with candy bars. “That was some goodâwhat'd you call it?”
“Flan, a kind of custard.” Alma braces herself for his usual question. Last few times, he has asked if the recipe is from her native land.
It's odd how he never mentions Alma's country by name, as if he's not real sure where she comes from, some foreign place where the Marines have landed, no doubt, though probably not during his watch or surely he'd remember the name. But since quite a few of Helen's gifts have come from places like Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Alma imagines Mickey did most of his invading in the Far East, probably served in Vietnam, he's that vintage.
Each time he asked, Alma was glad to prove him wrong. The polenta was Italian. “Actually, it's sort of like cornmeal mush.” The potato salad, pure Indiana. “From my husband's family.” She wanted him to know there was a man with a clan in her life. Alma hoped Mickey would imagine a big, beefy Midwestern guy such as he knew in the Marines, instead of her pale, lanky Richard who's half blind without his glasses. She doesn't know why Mickey's question should make her feel defensive, when the guy's probably just being curious about her background. She supposes it's resentment that Mickey doesn't even know the name of her country, wariness that she is about to be trapped by a label that leaves out a big part of who she is.
The last time before the flan, the polenta time, Mickey hadn't even registered what Alma had said about the dish. He'd gone off on one of his non sequiturs, same vein as his co-rant with Tera this afternoon. “I bet lots of people in your country don't get much to eat. They get sick, they die. Life is cheap.” Alma had bristled at the implication that
she was some corrupt, exiled native because here she was, not only eating well but doling it out to neighbors, while “her people” were dying off like flies. But as he went on talking, Alma realized that Mickey was trying to voice some deep unease. He and his wifeâhis first mention, Alma notedâhad been working to wake people up, to face the facts. “Until she got sick.” In fact, Mickey was apologizing for inequitiesâmisguidedly to her. He wasn't some gung-ho former Marine; he was a maverick in his politics as he was in his personality, a man who'd been transformed by what he'd seen. Had he been a more coherent fellow, Alma would have pursued the topic. But instead she'd just nodded and taken back her dish.