Seasons Under Heaven (4 page)

The pediatrician’s office was packed to capacity with sick children and babies waiting for their monthly checkups. As they waited to be worked in, Brenda could only imagine the disappointment that Joseph must feel at having to miss the birthday party he’d spent weeks talking about. Her own heart was deflated, and she couldn’t put aside the fright she’d experienced watching her child pass out before her eyes.

Maybe it
was
his blood sugar, as Daniel had suggested. Maybe the cinnamon rolls she’d made for breakfast had been a mistake, but she’d wanted to make something special for his birthday. Maybe he still wasn’t a hundred percent after his virus a few weeks ago. Maybe it was just too hot for him.

As badly as she wanted to believe these simple and nonthreatening explanations, her heart found no comfort in them. Something was wrong with Joseph. Something was terribly wrong.

He laid his head back in the chair, his little body almost limp. His face still lacked color, and his hair was mussed from drying without being combed first.

She racked her brain trying to think of something to help him pass the time. She had promised him no school today, so she didn’t want to practice his multiplication tables or drill him on his spelling words. No, she would keep her word. Today would only be for fun. Even if they did have to have it in a doctor’s office.

She reached into her big purse that carried all sorts of childoccupying paraphernalia and pulled out a miniature legal pad. She got a green marker from the ziplock bag of markers and crayons in the bottom of her purse. Joseph looked as if he expected her to hand it to him, but instead she dropped the bag back into her purse and began to draw with the green marker.

“Whatcha drawing?” he asked.

“Never you mind. Just wait.”

“Is it for me?”

She grinned and covered her paper so he couldn’t see. “Just a minute. You’ll see.”

She finished drawing, then tore out the page and brandished it.

“What is it?” he asked.

She wrote a one and then six zeros in the center of the page. “It’s a million dollar bill,” she said proudly.

“A million dollar bill?” he asked. “They make those?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “But I was just thinking a kid like you on his ninth birthday probably deserves nothing less than a million dollar bill. So I wanted you to have it.” She handed it to him.

He grinned. “Gee, thanks, Mama.”

“And now you have to spend it.”

He looked skeptically up at her. “Spend it? How?”

She reached back in her purse for a pen, and handed him the legal pad. “You have to write down everything you’d spend your million dollars to buy, and you have to spend every cent.”

His smile turned to a suspicious frown. “Are you tricking me into doing math?”

It would have been a good trick, but she’d had no such intentions. “No, it’s just a game.”

His eyebrows arched as his grin crept back.

“Let’s just see if you can. A million dollars is a lot of money, you know.”

He smiled down at the bill, as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune. “Okay.”

“What’s the first thing you would buy?”

He leaned his head back on the chair and closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. When he opened them, she saw the twinkle there. The excitement. Already he was feeling better. “I know,” he said. “A truckload of toilet paper so we could roll everybody’s yard in our whole neighborhood, and up and down the streets, all the way down the mountain.”

She gave him a disgusted look. “You’ve got a million bucks and you’d use it to buy toilet paper?”

“Well, it was fun.”

“Okay, then. Write it down.”

“How much is that?”

“Depends on where you get them. At Sam’s Club, I guess it’d be about ten, fifteen bucks. What else?”

He thought for a while. “How much does a swimming pool cost?”

“Depends,” she said. “One of those little inflatable jobs? Or an Olympic-sized pool with marble sides and lily pads floating on the top?”

“Yeah, one of those.”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, but thirty thousand dollars ought to be safe. What else?”

He subtracted the thirty thousand. “I’ve still got a lot left over. How about a convertible?”

“A convertible what?”

“A convertible…” She imagined him flipping through his mind’s database of minivans and used pickups.

Finally, he surprised her. “A convertible Jaguar!”

Television, she thought. There was a whole database he got from the hour a day she allowed him to watch.

“Okay, what color?”

“Red.” He started to write it down, and she began to think about what a car like that might cost.

“Put a hundred thousand dollars. No telling what a car like that costs, but it’s probably in the ballpark. How much left?”

“Too much,” he said. “I’ll never spend it all.” He spent some time thinking, then looked up at her with wide eyes. “How about a big nice house for you? Like something that cost forty thousand or something like that.”

She didn’t want to burst his bubble with the real value of real estate, or break it to him that the house they lived in, which they scraped to pay for, was worth far more than that. “Thank you
very
much. What else?”

“The Bryans’ new horse?” Joseph asked. “You know, the baby.”

“You’d want to buy that horse?” she asked.

“If I had a million dollars I would.”

“Okay, put it down.”

She let him make up the price. “What else?”

“Rude lessons for Leah, since she’s so worried about it all the time.”

“You mean etiquette lessons?”

“Whatever. She’s so afraid she’ll do something wrong. We need to send her to good manners school so she can learn all the right things to do.”

“She’d appreciate that.”

“And…golf lessons for Daddy and Daniel. And clubs. Daddy works too hard.”

“Good idea. I agree.”

“And for Rachel,” he added, “some new dresses. She’s obsessed with her looks.”

Brenda grinned.
Obsess
had been one of this week’s vocabulary words, and she was proud to see him use it. “What else?”

His eyes drifted off as he considered the possibilities. For a moment, he seemed to watch the chattering children in the waiting room running to and fro, playing with the toys in the corner, but she knew he was still thinking. “A video camera,” he said more softly. “So I could tape my birthday parties when I’m not there.”

The amusement left her eyes, and she gazed down at him. “I know you’re disappointed.”

“It’s okay,” he said, grinning. “It was really fun rolling the trees and all. How’d you think of that, anyway?”

“It just came to me.” Necessity
was
the mother of invention. Most of her creative ideas came from being broke. “We never have money to throw around. Just toilet paper.”

Joseph giggled. “Do you think Daddy’ll pull the toilet paper down before we get home?”

She thought that over. It would be just like David to do that, in an effort to spare her the work. “Tell you what,” she said. “Before we leave here we’ll call him and ask him to leave it up.”

“But what if it rains tonight? Then it’ll get mushy and fall in the yard.”

“Stop worrying. It was a beautiful day today and it’s going to be beautiful tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll take it down. But today is your birthday for the whole day, and that toilet paper stays up.”

He smiled up at her as his eyes grew distant again. “What about the cake?”

“They’re saving you some,” she said. “They promised. And the presents will still be there when we get back.”

“Okay,” he said. He went back to his list and was still trying to think of other ways to spend his million dollars when, finally, a nurse came to the door.

“Joseph Dodd?”

Brenda stood up quickly and nodded to the nurse, and Joseph handed the legal pad back to his mother, then followed the nurse into the examining room.

The doctor put on his stethoscope and listened carefully to Joseph’s heart. As he listened, Brenda could see that something troubled him.

At last, he finished and pulled the boy’s shirt back down. “Brenda, I think we need to have some tests run on Joseph.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Oh, several things,” he said evasively. “We just want to take every precaution, make sure we don’t overlook anything. Can you take him over to St. Francis Hospital?” Though his voice was calm, the question conveyed urgency.

She frowned. “Right now?”

“Yeah, I’d really like to get the results of these tests. It’s not normal for kids as strapping as Joseph to go around fainting on their birthdays. Is it, son?” He patted Joseph gently on the back. “I’ll have my nurse call and set up the tests. You may be there a while.”

She nodded silently and tried to push out of her mind the thought of the bills that would mount as a result of these tests. She wondered briefly whether they were all necessary, but then she shook off the thought. Joseph’s health was at stake, and if the doctor thought Joseph needed the tests, then he would have them.

When Joseph was out in the front room picking through the reward bucket for the perfect scratch-‘n’-sniff sticker, she stopped the doctor in the hall. “Doctor, could this be something serious?” she asked softly.

He had trouble looking her in the eye. “I can’t say, Brenda. He’s probably just fine. Just got a little too hot, a little too excited. But I’d like to be sure.” He busied himself jotting on his chart as he tried to walk off.

But Brenda stopped him again. “What are you looking for?”

The doctor still didn’t look at her. “Nothing specific. It’s just that the tests will go a long way toward helping us diagnose him, if there’s a diagnosis to be made.”

Anger sparked in her heart, and she wanted to grab him by the throat and force him to look at her. But that wasn’t her way. Feeling disheartened, she went to pay the bill, knowing they’d have to stretch their grocery budget a lot further now. But she was willing to give up food entirely if it meant helping her son.

She fought the tears threatening her eyes as she led Joseph back to the car.

Cathy turned into Cedar Circle and saw the toilet paper draped on the trees in the lot between the Dodds’ and Sullivans’ houses. What on earth was that about? She thought only homes of teenagers had stunts like that pulled on them. Twelve-year-old Daniel was probably getting old enough to have prankplaying friends. But in broad daylight?

Too preoccupied to worry about it, she pulled into her driveway just as the school bus drew up to the neck of the culde-sac. She got out of the car and waited as her dog, who’d been heading for her, changed his direction and loped toward the bus.

Mark got off of the bus and rubbed the dog’s ears before ambling up the driveway. “Hey, Mom. Check out Daniel’s yard. Cool. Why are you home so early?”

“I needed to talk to your brother.” She kissed him on the forehead, but he recoiled, as if afraid someone might see. She accepted the rebuff without taking offense. “How was your day?”

“Okay.” He headed into the house, and she followed.

He dropped his backpack just inside the door, and she grabbed his shirt before he could get away and turned him back around. “Take it to your room, kiddo.”

“But I have homework.”

“You planning to do it right here on the kitchen floor?”

“Well, no, but—”

“To your room, Mark.”

He moaned and jerked the backpack up. She heard a car pulling into the garage and looked out the door. Rick and Annie were obviously embroiled in some kind of argument. She sighed. She had wondered about the wisdom of letting them ride to and from school together when they barely tolerated each other at home. On the other hand, she wasn’t willing to let Annie ride home with Mario Andretti wanna-bes with more tickets than miles under their belts.

Rick got out and slammed the car door.

“You’re such a jerk!” Annie shrieked as she got out and slammed hers harder.

“Make her get off my case, Mom!” Rick said. “I’m sick of it!”

They both tornadoed into the house. “Okay, what’s going on?” Cathy demanded.

“He’s just such a jerk,” Annie repeated, slapping her long brown hair off of her shoulder. “I asked him to take one of my friends home, and he said no, right to her face. It was so embarrassing.”

For two teens who were so at odds, their choreography remained identical. Simultaneously, they dropped their backpacks at the door and headed for the refrigerator. “It’s not my job to run your friends all over town,” Rick said, shouldering her out of his way.

Annie elbowed him like a Roller Derby queen.

“She doesn’t live ‘all over town.’ Just a mile down the mountain. It was on the way. It wouldn’t have hurt you a bit.”

“When you get your car, you can drive it anywhere you want. I’m not a taxi service for you and your friends.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like I’m getting one since you’re Mom’s golden boy and I’m the middle child. I’m the one who always does without.”

“Maybe if your attitude changed she’d get you—”

“Hey!” Cathy shouted. “
Hey!
” On the second yell, they both swung around, as if united in their resentment of her intrusion.

Cathy picked up the two-ton backpacks. “Put them in your rooms,” she ordered.

“What are you doing home, anyway?” Rick asked, as if she had no business here.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “Now take these backpacks out of here!”

They both grabbed them, and Rick muttered, “Great. Can’t get a minute’s peace around here, what with Annie screaming in one ear and you yelling in the other. I hate this place!”

Though a more fragile mother might have been hurt, Cathy took it with a grain of salt. Rick did have a flare for the dramatic, and since he spoke with equal affection of school, his job, and his father’s house, she didn’t take it personally. She simply determined not to let his anger distract her from her course.

All afternoon she had worked herself into a lather thinking about that condom in her pocket. Now she couldn’t decide whether to confront Rick in front of the other two, or to follow him into his room. She decided to follow him.

He didn’t realize she was behind him until he dropped the backpack on the pile of dirty laundry on his bedroom floor. He turned around and saw her in the doorway. “Are you following me?” he accused.

“Yes, I’m following you.” She came into the room and closed the door behind her, vowing not to ask the origin of the rancid smell wafting on the air. “We’ve got to talk.”

He kicked some of his clothes out of the way and dropped onto his bed. “I work hard at school all day, get chewed out all the way home, and now this.”

She thought of reassuring him that “this” wouldn’t be so bad, but then she felt that foil square in her pocket again, and decided
that it would be even worse than he thought. She felt her knees shaking and decided she had to sit down, so she knocked the clothes from a chair into a new pile on the floor, and sat. “Rick, I found something when I was doing the laundry.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, unworried. “Did I leave money in my pockets again?”

She fixed her eyes on him, wondering if he was playing innocent. “No, Rick. It wasn’t money.”

“What then?” Suddenly, his face changed, as if it hit him what she was talking about, and he caught his breath. “Oh! You found the…” He let his voice trail off, as if he didn’t dare say the word.

“Yeah, it was the condom,” she said. She felt her face turning red and knew that she was going to launch into a high-octave sermon that would draw the other kids from their rooms and send Rick into a defensive rage. She didn’t want anything so futile and destructive to happen, so she set her elbows on her jean-clad knees and tried to think. “Rick, I want you to tell me why you had it.”

He stared at her, frowning as his mouth hung open, and she braced herself for his accusation that she’d invaded his privacy. “You think I got that for
myself?
”

It wasn’t the response she’d expected. “Rick, I’m not stupid.”

“Neither am I! I don’t believe this. I’m in trouble for something I didn’t even—”

“Rick, it was in
your
pocket.”

“I don’t care where it was. Just because I’m carrying around a condom doesn’t mean I went out and bought it and planned to use it.”

“Then why did you have it?”

“Every guy at school has one.”

She closed her eyes, fuming, and ground her molars together. “Rick, I don’t
care
if every boy in school takes a dive off the cliff at Bright Mountain. I don’t want
my
son—”

“No, you don’t get it!” he cut in. “Mom, they gave them to us at school. In a class.”

She opened her eyes and gaped at him. She couldn’t have heard right. Had he said…? “They
gave
them to you?”

“Yeah. It was ‘Condom Awareness Day,’ if you can believe that. It’s the biggest joke of the school year, every year from seventh grade on up. They get you in the room and start lecturing you about safe sex and stuff.”

He said it matter-of-factly, as if she would naturally know and understand.
Oh, yes, of course. Condom Awareness Day.
But she didn’t.

Her heart began to rampage, and she stood up, facing him at eye level. “Are you seriously telling me that they gave condoms out at school?”

“Yeah,” he said. He was grinning now, enjoying her shock.

“Rick, I know that sometimes I can be naive, but I didn’t just ride in on a hay truck.”

“Mom, I’m telling you the truth. Call the school and ask them.”

It was rare for him to suggest she call the school for any reason. For him to do so now clued her that he was probably telling the truth.

“When did this happen?”

“Last Friday,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a deal, Mom. Besides, it’s weird talking to my mom about condoms.”

“Why didn’t you just throw it away?”

“I meant to, but I forgot. Besides, if you’d found it in the trash you would have gone just as ballistic. Mom, get real. Who would I use it with? I don’t even have a girlfriend.”

She deflated and wilted back in the chair. “I know. That’s why I was so confused.”

“I mean, it’s not like I couldn’t get a girlfriend if I wanted one. I could and everything. I’ve got a date to the prom.”

She didn’t want to know. “Oh, yeah? Who?” she forced herself to ask.

“Jeanie Bradford.”

An image of the girl came to mind. She had been in Annie’s dance class for years, and she had a nodding acquaintance with her mother. “Cute girl.”

“Yeah, real cute.” Pink blotches colored his cheeks, exposing his embarrassment. He turned away. “It’s not like I’m in love or anything. This’ll probably be our only date. But it is my junior year and I felt like I ought to go.”

He was off on the prom, not even interested in the condom anymore, but Cathy couldn’t get her mind off of it. “So I’ll just throw this away. Because there’s no point in your holding onto it.”

“Fine. Mom, just because I’m taking some girl to the prom doesn’t mean I need
that.
You brought me up right, okay?”

“Right,” she said. She thought of telling him that he couldn’t go to the prom, couldn’t date a girl
ever
, not until he was married. But that seemed a little radical. “I can’t believe you got it at school.”

“Well, didn’t you have sex classes when you were in school?”

She tried to think back twenty-five years. It seemed like three eternities ago. “Seems like we saw a movie called
Splendor in the Grass
, about a girl who got pregnant. But I think that was about the extent of it.” She got up and stepped over the clothes on her way out of the room. The telephone rang, and before she could make it to the stairs, Annie cried, “Mom, for you!”

She went to the door of Annie’s room. “Who is it, Annie?”

“Some guy,” Annie said, holding her hand over the receiver. “I’m like, ‘Can I tell her who’s calling?’ and he’s like, ‘Her favorite patient,’ so I go, ‘Oh, the rottweiler?’ and he’s like, ‘Are you calling me a dog?’ Real big flirt, whoever he is, Mom.”

“Glad you could hold your own with him,” Cathy muttered. She made it down the stairs and answered the extension in the living room. “Hello?”

“Cathy, hey, it’s me. John. I meant that my cat is your favorite patient, and I am
not
a flirt.”

She managed to laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t know you could hear that.”

“Forgiven. Just wanted to see what time you wanted me to pick you up tonight.”

She frowned. Tonight? Had she forgotten? Her hesitation spoke volumes, and he moaned. “You said you’d let me take you out to dinner tonight, finally. Come on, Cathy, you aren’t backin’ out now, are you? I’ve been chasin’ you for weeks, and it’s ruinin’ my self-esteem.”

“John, it’s just that I’m kind of having a bad day.”

“Cathy, you promised.”

“I know I did, but—”

“Come on, we’ll have fun, you’ll see. You deserve a break today.”

She thought of the McDonald’s jingle, and wondered if that’s where he planned to take her. John, who brought his Himalayan cat in periodically, was an attractive man. She supposed she should be flattered that he was interested. And if truth be known, she did need some adult companionship. As she held the phone to her ear, she reached up and pulled her hair out of its ponytail. “Well, okay. I guess I can get away.”

“Can you work up a little bit more enthusiasm?”

She smiled. “I told you. Bad day.”

“Then gimme a chance to turn it around.”

There was something charming about his deep cowboy drawl, she thought. She tousled her hair and wondered how long it would take for her to get ready. Too long, but she supposed it would be worth it. “Okay, pick me up at seven.”

“Will do. Don’t back out, okay? I’ve heard all the stories. Grandmothers dyin’, workin’ late, dog havin’ puppies…”

She grinned and doubted that was true.

After she had cooked supper for the kids, she started to go upstairs and get ready for her date.

“See you later, Mom! I’m outa here,” Rick called up.

She went halfway back down the stairs and looked over the rail. “Where are you going?”

“To work,” he said. Rick worked weekdays bagging groceries at the local Kroger, when he wasn’t helping at the animal clinic.

“You didn’t tell me you had to work.”

“It wasn’t on the schedule. I had to trade with somebody so I’d have prom night off.”

“Oh.” She came the rest of the way down. “Well, okay, I’m going out, so I guess Annie can stay with Mark.”

“No!” From upstairs, she heard her daughter protesting. Annie came bouncing down the stairs. “Mom, I’ve got a date tonight!”

“A date? On Tuesday night? You’re not allowed to date on weeknights.”

“But Mom, I’m fifteen, and Dad lets me go.”

She didn’t want to talk about Jerry. “You’re never with him on weeknights. We have rules in this house, Annie.”

“Mom, I asked you last week if I could go to the school’s baseball game tonight, and you said yes.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going with a boy.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. Please, Mom. It’s Allen Spreway. I’ve liked him for months and months, and he finally asked me out. I want to go!”

“Well, what am I going to do with Mark?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not my job to raise Mark. You’re the mother.”

Mark came in from the kitchen, his hand buried in a bag of potato chips. “I’m not a kid, you know. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

“Then cancel your date.”

She thought of calling John and canceling, but she hated to put him off again. He might not give her another chance. It occurred to her that she could simply invite him in when he came, feed him here, and they could watch a movie together. But it didn’t usually work well to have men around her children. It usually took only one visit for them to decide she wasn’t their type.

Funny how single mothers with smart-aleck kids weren’t anyone’s type.

“Mark, I’d rather not cancel my date, but I don’t want to leave you here alone. Is there somebody you could spend the night with?”