twenty

The waiting room at Good Sam boasted chairs that looked like they had been thrown out of a corporate lobby in 1979 and a digital clock that flashed 12:00 on a table, despite the wall clock’s insistence upon 2 a.m. Carol meditated in the corner, while Thelma rested her head on Dick’s shoulder. Charlie, having put together a slapdash curative garnish of eucalyptus leaves purloined from the floral display at the hospital entrance and hairs from Verity’s scalp, chanted a string of gibberish healing incantations. Cramped and not drunk, not even woozy from the drugs, Verity slumped in a chair next to him.

“I don’t even know who this Kronos is,” Thelma said. “Diana told me she was riding her bike to a friend’s house.”

Verity said, “He is her friend.”

“I assumed she meant a girlfriend.”

“Diana doesn’t have any girlfriends, Mom. You’d know that if you paid any attention to her.” She assured her mother that Diana was in good hands at the Kickels’ house for the night.

Carol opened one eye and peeked out at those around her. As a vampire lifestylist, she found that nothing much surprised her anymore, but meeting the fully alive urn resident in the waiting room of Good Samaritan Hospital had surprised her very much indeed.

“You thought I was dead,” Thelma said.

“Well,” Carol began—how to be diplomatic to a corpse that is not a corpse? “I think he wanted to tell me the truth because the last thing he said before he fell on the floor was ‘No one is really dead if we remember them.’ ”

They spoke then of the urn and all that it had been through, the ceremonies and swinger parties, and Thelma said it was not Tex’s fault that he dealt with disappointment the way he did.

Verity half-listened to this, her mind all the while pulsing images of flatline and crash cart. She could not shake the smell of Lysol and fluorocarbons and latex and illness from her nose, and rose to pace the room.

The clock erroneously flashed 12:30, and she felt responsible for what had happened. Cleaning out the damn urn had not been enough; she should have raised him from his melancholy and forced him into the present. Now he was lying in a bed, tubes in him, his heart fibrillating—or was it defibrillating?—all over the place, his eyes closed and unaware. An ambulance had come for him. Her dad in an ambulance. God, how hard it must be to be a patient, to leave your life in the hands of bad drivers, watching your heart thumpthumpthumping on the little monitor. The drivers thought he lived in Clarendon Hills despite Carol’s instructions and came ten minutes late; he could have been dead on the floor of Victory’s room, his heart flat.

She filled a cup of water from the cooler, 12:41, except in real life it was more like 2:30, except nothing resembled real life on this formerly typical August night. August 4. “Oh, it’s my birthday,” she said suddenly.

“Happy birthday, honey,” Thelma said sleepily.

Her stepfather wished her many happy returns. “I mean of the birthday, I didn’t mean of this particular scene—”

“I know, Dick. Thanks,” Verity said.

“I have a present at home,” Charlie said. He refrained from revealing that he had forgone gum surgery to buy her something.

Thelma said, “When Verity was born, she was red as a beet and bald as an onion. She was beautiful.”

“Still is,” said Charlie.

Thelma yawned. “But not red and bald anymore,” she said, then conked out on Dick’s shoulder.

All the Prestis loved to tell the story of Victory’s birth, when she had been brought home from the hospital and Verity had asked if they could put her back and get her a brother instead. Everyone always laughed at that story, even Victory had laughed, but Verity had felt guilty about this unremembered event and wished she could tell her sister that she really did love her.

It was November 1990 when she had last paced in this same waiting room with Tex and the Rasmussens, the night that no one had brought them any good news. She sat down and picked the lint balls out of the seat cushion fabric. These were the same chairs. Every year, every fall was hard.

“He’s stable.” A nurse came into the room. “You can see him now, one at a time.” Thelma snored and Verity leaped up.

In his room, the monitor was steady. No lines fluctuated, no obvious sense of panic ebbed from the doctor in the hall or the nurse on duty. Verity pointed to the edge of the heart monitor. “What’s this?”

“It’s just a loose wire, nothing to worry about,” the nurse said. The clock outside must have been flashing 1:00 by now. Who knows what time it was in the real world? The monitor blipped. Verity noticed every little irregularity and asked the nurse each time what was going on, as though she understood how to interpret an EKG.

His pulse, inconsistently 80, 67, 120—Verity asked about that. According to the nurse, movement confused the machine. That’s great. When the machines are confused, we are all lost, she thought. The nurse was not concerned. With Tex’s every breath, little pink lungs appeared on the monitor, with every heartbeat, a little red heart throbbed.

Isn’t that an air bubble there? Don’t they cause embolisms? She watched her father’s head roll back and asked, “Is there an air bubble in his IV?” Why is a crucifix on the wall? What if we were Hindu? What if we are bad Catholics? The nurse seemed unconcerned.

Verity drew closer and laid her hand on her father’s. He wore a loose hospital gown that gaped open all around his shoulders and chest to accommodate the tubes and tape and saline drip. The pulse monitor read 77, 90, 160. “That just can’t be right.”

“It’s okay.” The nurse glanced at the monitor.

“Nothing in this hospital works right! The clock out in the waiting room says it’s one in the morning.”

The nurse checked her watch. “It’s just after three.”

Under the tape, peeking from beneath the gown, Verity spied a splotch of red. Red was no good, what was red? She bent down, gently lifted the edge of the garment. Tex’s eyes fluttered open.

“Dad,” she said, tears running down. “You got a tattoo.”

On the left side of his chest was a molar on fire.

He said, “My heart is a bleeding tooth turned upside down.”

         

Diana lay awake in the Kickels’ guest room. Kronos’s mom and dad had been really nice to her, explaining what had happened to Tex and that her parents would come collect her in the morning, and asking her if she needed anything. They weren’t even mad that she had come over uninvited—at least, she told them Kronos had not invited her, that she just stopped in on her way home from the pet store to drop off some sheet music.

“What do you play in the band?” his dad asked.

“Clarinet.”

“Ah, the ol’ licorice stick.”

She asked how her sister was doing, and the parents exchanged glances, which told her everything she needed to know. She called Charlie on his cell.

Charlie had handed off the phone to Verity, but she just babbled incoherently. Diana asked how Tex was, how they all were, but Verity kept going on and on about how some clock was blinking 12:00. Diana did not know how to go further in this conversation, or how to end it. Thelma had not raised her daughters to hug, kiss, emote, or be truthful.

“Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she finished lamely.

She turned over in bed. Her parents had never called. Hey, someone would have to let Gin out in the morning. Had anyone thought of that? She had to work tomorrow, but she could stop at Tex’s on her way, since Thelma had a key. Diana would make her do it. She closed her eyes.

Oh, fuck it, she couldn’t sleep. What was the matter with her family anyway? Why were they all so closed up and weird? Well, okay, she knew why, but still she questioned it. She crept out of bed and stole across the hall to Kronos’s room.

“Shove over,” she whispered.

Kronos drew the blanket up to his chest, a gesture of modesty even though he was fully covered in plaid pajamas. He did as instructed. Diana’s warm body took up more than her share.

He felt it only fair to warn her. “I don’t have any protection. Any, you know, devices.” His face flamed, and he was grateful for the dark. He had never felt less like Rick James in his life.

“This isn’t that kind of thing,” she said. Thinking twice on that, hoping to soften the blow of rejection or rudeness, she said, “Not that under different circumstances there couldn’t be whatever. But I’m sad and worried now, okay?”

Kronos shifted to give her more room. Diana said it: possibly one day there could be whatever! He was a patient boy; he could wait a long time.

She said, “My family is screwed up so tightly, I don’t know if anyone could ever unscrew them. That’s why I feel so shitty right now. Your parents are cool, in spite of liking smooth jazz and Gene Krupa, so you probably don’t understand.”

In Greek mythology, “Kronos” emerged from primordial chaos, a Titan. The myth held that Kronos had castrated his father with a sickle given him by his mother. The father lived, only to be overthrown by Kronos at a later date. The boy often thought about this mythological Kronos, who became ruler of the world—nice—yet eventually was dethroned by his own son, Zeus. It depressed him to realize that screwups ran in families, that they passed down inherited anguish as if it were any other faulty gene. He said, “Some of us screw up our parents by just being born.”

Diana lay back on the pillow, her arms under her head. Yeah, Kronos might have something there, but still, no parent could be as screwed up as one who has lost a child. “You know,” she said suddenly, “nobody ever actually told me that Victory died—not then, when it happened. They had this brilliant idea that it would be easier having me just watch my mother lie in bed weeping, without knowing why. But of course, I really did know why. Death was surprisingly easy for me to grasp.” She considered this. “Maybe that’s why I always liked Edward Gorey drawings and scary books.”

Kronos said, “There are people who believe that stories for children should not have darkness in them.”

Diana knew that was true. And there were people who believed that children knew nothing of darkness, period. But she offered up her own childhood heart, full of treachery and deceit and love and longing, as proof to the contrary.

         

Tex opened his eyes early in the morning and saw his family all around.

“What happened?” he asked.

Carol told him he was in the hospital.

Tex asked, “Is it brain cancer from using your cell phone?”

She explained his arrhythmia and atrial fibrillation as best as she could until the doctor showed up.

Tex turned his head from Carol, who looked tired but relieved; he saw Verity, he saw Charlie and his dead tooth and gumboil. Thelma and Dick in the corner, smiling. Thelma. He looked only at her, caught in a stare. No one had seen him meet the gaze of his ex-wife in almost twenty years.

His voice came out thin and reedy. “Thelma,” he said. Her eyes widened and she moved forward, touched his toes through the sheet. Though technically a question, he forced it into a statement: “You’re not coming back, are you.”

He did not mean “coming back to the house for lunch” or “coming back during the next round of visiting hours.” She knew what he meant and said, “No, Tex.”

He nodded and closed his eyes, exhausted and sore. Rest was important because he knew he needed to get his strength back. He held hands with whoever reached for them.

         

With difficulty, Dick managed to cram Diana’s bike into the back of his SUV. He had planned to ask his daughter just what she meant by sneaking out to a boy’s house, and where was the six-pack of beer that had been in the basement bar fridge? But he couldn’t bring himself to do it now.

“Is Tex all right?”

“Yes,” said Thelma, “he’s going to be fine.”

“Good. Hey, don’t you think we ought to stop by his house and let his dog out?”

“Verity and Charlie are already going. You better just think about yourself right now and what you did last night, because we’re going to have a talk when we get home.”

“But I have to work today. My shift starts in twenty minutes. I thought you were driving me to Petland.”

Her parents said nothing and stared out the windshield.

“Mom. I have to go. I have a job.”

Thelma snorted. “Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Thelma turned around in her seat. “I told you I didn’t approve of the way that store gets its dogs. I told you I didn’t want you to have a job, not with school starting up so soon and—”

Diana put her hand on the door handle. “I swear to God, if you don’t drive me there right now, I’ll jump out at the next light and hitchhike.”

Abruptly, Dick turned the car toward the mall instead of home, as they had originally discussed. His wife threw her hands up and looked out her window, defeated. Dick said, “I’m tired, Thel. I want to go home and sleep.”

         

In the front window of Petland, the one that held a bay of wiggling pups, was a large cardboard sign reading SALE! STORE CLOSING. Puppies had peed on the back of it in protest.

Diana walked up to her manager with a “What gives?” attitude.

“Another lawsuit from the Pet Store Resistance,” he said. “The owner says it’s more cost-effective to close this branch. I’m going to the Woodbridge store. That, I can handle. Pet Store Resistance complaints from my own employees’ mothers? That I can’t handle. This is gonna be your last day.”

Stunned, Diana walked into the barkers’ kennel and hooked her fingertips through Taco Bell’s cage. Her mother? Her mother did this to her? The animal smiled in her usual way, waiting for her paper to be changed and for the daily cuddle.

When Diana regained her composure, she cleaned out all the kennels. Later, a customer asked if she could see Taco Bell and play with her a little. The woman had read the sign about the store closing and asked Diana what she was going to do.

“School starts in a couple weeks, so I guess I should stop working anyhow,” she answered. The woman looked sympathetic, and Diana felt the shortage of that feeling in her family keenly. She motioned toward the dogs and said, “I’m more concerned about these guys. I don’t know where they’re going to go, or who’ll be taking care of them.” The woman asked Diana her name and said she would pray for her.

One puppy had been sold by the end of the day, Gyro Hut. The others settled down in their cages, quiet stealing over them. They always knew when the store was closing down for the night, when their people, such as they were, were getting ready to leave them.

Diana went into the back room to gather her stuff together so she could go home. She and the cat guy Sharpied graffiti and cartoons all over the supply boxes.

“Why the hell shouldn’t we? What are they gonna do?” Diana asked. “Fire us?”

At five o’clock, she made it to the parking lot before she burst into tears. She jabbed Charlie’s number on her cell phone. “Can I talk to my sister?”

Verity showed up minutes later and pushed open the passenger door. Diana slid in, wiped her nose, rubbed her eyes.

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

“No problem. Charlie let me take his car. He’s just hanging out at my dad’s, eating everything in the refrigerator.”

Diana told her the story of the Pet Store Resistance, of Thelma’s role in her job loss.

Verity said, “There’s something you have to understand about our mother. She’s not a good one. Maybe she can’t help it. Not everyone is cut out for motherhood.”

“The thing is, I don’t care about not having a job or not having money. I care about not having something to look forward to. I liked working at Petland; it made me feel like a better person. I played with animals all day, and I made them happy without lowering my moral standards,” she said. Tears brimmed her eyes. “There’s something really cool about walking into the store and seeing twenty puppies wag their tails. Cleaning up dog shit is rewarding.”

“Maybe you could find another pet store to work at. There’s one in Westmont.”

“You mean Pet Warehouse? They make Petland look like animal heaven. They stick two dogs to a kennel there and don’t vaccinate them against anything. Our store almost took a beagle mix from them, but it died of distemper before they sent it. Distemper, that’s fucking easy to vaccinate against, and some family lost their chance at having a really great dog,” she said.

Verity took her to Tex’s. He was coming home tomorrow, and she enlisted Diana’s help in cleaning the house and preparing some meals for him. Charlie roamed the rooms with a bundle of dried rosemary, reciting blessings and plugging Glade air fresheners into the outlets. Then he moved outside to chant and convulse in his ladies’ bathrobe, a health-and-happiness jig that resembled an advanced case of Saint Vitus’ dance.

“What is he doing, anyway?” Diana asked.

“Distributing health vibes for my dad and freaking out the neighbors.”

Diana watched her cut up a chicken. Next year at this time, she’d be packing for Oberlin. She guessed it would be eleven months, two weeks, and one day before she could leave. She looked around Tex’s kitchen, remembering the pizza-blotting incident from earlier this summer, and a hard lump grew in her throat. Why did she have to blot his rancid pizza? He was always nice to her. Why couldn’t she have just eaten it, unblotted?

Her sister said, “You want to stay with me in the city until Mom calms down about you sneaking off to Kronos’s house?”

Diana blinked in surprise. “Me? Oh . . . no, no, that’s okay. Mom will have to get over it, the bitch. And I guess I will, too. Plus I don’t want to leave Dad; I think he needs me.”

“Any time you need to get out of there for a while, you can call me,” Verity said, putting down the knife and looking her sister in the eye. “I want you to.”

Diana reached for the celery and began slicing it up. She said, “Downers Grove may suck, but it’s almost like home to me.”