Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [34]
Dear Beth,
I’ve been meaning to visit for the past three weeks but things have been really hectic at the hospital. Remember your old room 13a, the nicest private room? A new patient is in there. T—— has two broken legs—nothing compared to you, I know—and sadly, his father is facing charges for having thrown him off the roof of their apartment building. T——s mother doesn’t speak English and we have not yet found an Eritrean interpreter but Dr. Silverman—I know you remember him—seems to think that if I act out each of his phrases carefully, T——s mother will understand what’s going on….
Frances’s handwriting hadn’t changed since the sixth grade. It was the round, hopeful handwriting of girls who wrote things like: So glad we sat together in Econ! You rock. Let’s B BFF. You are so awesome. Don’t ever stop being who U R! over the pictures of CLASS CUT-UPS and the YOUTH EFFECTIVENESS SEMINAR; things that she, Frances, had never actually written to anyone. Frances’s friends were the disfigured and the disabled, one way or another, and Beth Shenker would have been one of the pretty, giggling girls who looked right through them as they limped and staggered down the hall.
Dear Beth,
I’ve spoken to your parents several times and told them of my plan to visit you. They couldn’t care less, so I am coming this Saturday morning, with cider and doughnuts. Just like old times …
Kentucky Fried Chicken. (“Terrible stuff,” Mr. Cairn said. “Awful,” Frances said, and she passed the cole slaw and the biscuits they loved, a triple order every time, and the creamed spinach. It was a relief to eat hot food that neither of them had to cook, and they had done this every Friday night since Frances moved out to go to social-work school.)
“I’m raking tomorrow,” Mr. Cairn said. “Want to help out your old man?”
“I can’t. I’m following up with a patient. The girl who contracted necrotizing fasciitis.”
Mr. Cairn loved to hear about the dreadful things that befell Frances’s people and to hear about the things that she did to help them bear their various crosses. He might have gone into social work himself, instead of hardware, if anyone had encouraged him. Mr. Cairn shook his head sympathetically. “I can’t imagine.” He finished his second biscuit. “The one with one foot and the father who’s a ladies’ man?” and Frances nodded. One night, instead of going back to her apartment after work, she’d driven over to watch Law & Order with her father, and she told him all about flesh-eating bacteria and the Shenkers.
“Is this an all-day visit?” Mr. Cairn said. “Because I don’t like the sound of this household.”
“I won’t be there for more than an hour.”
Mr. Cairn pushed his chicken around on his plate.
“I could drive you,” he said.
“Daddy, you have to get a life.” Frances smiled when she said it.
Mr. Cairn put his fork and knife on his plate and he took Frances’s hand.
“There’s someone special I’d like you to meet,” he said.
When Frances’s mother died, her father staggered from room to room, crying. Frances and Sherri would walk into the garage for their bikes and find their father sprawled on the hood of the car, face buried in his chamois cloths. One Sunday morning, Sherri dumped a basket of wet clothes in the middle of the living room. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I mean, I actually cannot do laundry. Daddy’s crying in front of the dryer.”
The first day of first grade, Frances had to walk next door and ask Mrs. Cohen to fix her hair because her father was crying so hard, he couldn’t do her braids. Mrs. Cohen did them and did them again the next day, and on the third