How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [67]
Of course, she already knows about Jonas’s fall and says that the kids are in the fellowship hall making cards for him, and not to worry.
“Are you there alone with them?” I ask. Being alone with those eight kids is a challenge no human should ever have to endure. Even if you do own a pair of green tennis shoes.
“Robert and Rhonda are here. I called them to come over since I knew Zack would be at the hospital. They got here just a few minutes ago.”
Jonas is important to me, but I also have a responsibility to The Center and to Miriam. “I’ll be there soon,” I say.
“No,” says Miriam. Firmly she adds, “You need to stay there.”
“I do?”
“Zack needs someone.” Then she says she has to go. The kids have run out of red construction paper. “They all want to make red cards since red is Jonas’s favorite color.”
“It is?” I ask, but she has already hung up.
Red? I never knew.
thirty-one
The kids from The Center come to see Jonas, one by one, escorted by Miriam and Robert into Jonas’s room. They are allowed only to enter his room, drop off their card, and then exit. This could be a disaster, I think, but the kids are well-behaved. Lisa gives Zack a hug, and Dougy says that he is sure Jonas is going to be back fixing leaks by tomorrow.
Jonas sleeps through their visit, which is a shame. He would have reveled in the attention. The cards the children made rest on the window ledge, a row of bright red. Miriam says she found a few more sheets of Jonas’s favorite color stored at the bottom of a cabinet in one of the preschool rooms.
Next, Simon Gibbons, the pastor of the church, steps in for a visit. He tells Zack that Jonas is “a breath of fresh air.” Just before he leaves, Jonas’s neighbor arrives. A mousy woman with a French manicure, she says that Jonas is the best neighbor anyone could ever have. “He takes good care of my plumbing,” she says as she places a vase of pink lilies and yellow snapdragons on the window sill.
When the visitors are gone, the room’s only noise is the soft murmur of the machines.
Zack looks at the clock on the wall and says that we could go to the lobby and get something to eat. It’s five after seven.
I sit on a cushy chair while Zack gets us coffee and sandwiches from a vending machine. The hospital has no cafeteria. The Atlanta Medical Center it is not.
I press my fingers to my temples, trying to come to grips with Jonas’s fall. What was he doing on the roof of the church? He looks so much older lying in the hospital bed. How old is he? Forty? How old is Zack? I feel about ninety right now, and tired.
Beyond where I sit, there is a painting on the wall of a cluster of fruit displayed on a wooden table. I see a bunch of yellow bananas, Muscatine grapes, three Granny Smith apples, four figs, and over to the edge, a lemon. The lemon reminds me that Aunt Regena Lorraine still owes me the story behind the lemon in the fridge.
When Zack sets the Styrofoam cups of coffee and the sandwiches on the small table in front of us, I note his worried eyes.
I peel the cellophane away from the ham sandwich. My hands feel too heavy to lift the bread to my mouth. “I’m not hungry.”
Zack adds sugar to his coffee. He pauses and looks at me. “You know? I don’t think I am either.”
Just for something to say, I toss out, “Jonas told you a lot about me.”
“Apparently he told you about me, too. The clever thing is he never mentioned our names to each other.”
“Were you engaged to Abby?” I surprise myself by asking this.
Zack looks at his shoes, then up at me. “No. We weren’t at that stage yet.”
I can tell there is still pain piercing his heart when he thinks of her. She was lucky to have known him, I think, lucky to have held his heart in her hands.
Zack says, “We were both in grad school. Both twenty-four.” He sips his coffee. Looks into it. “She died a month before graduation. She had leukemia. That was eight years