Annie Oakley's Girl Read online

  When the elevator opens I run. But when I see the guys in white taking things from the room in plastic bags, I stop. The man at the nurses’ station looks up.

  “Your parents are in the waiting room.”

  “My what?”

  “Your parents.”

  Then I remember how that first night, a million years ago, when Dr. Allen had told me she couldn’t tell me about Jim unless I was in his family, I had told the story of being his sister.

  “Oh Christ.”

  “They told me to send you in when you came.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  They’ve left the waiting room door open a crack. I look in. His father is wearing an overcoat. His hands lay loose around the rim of the hat in his lap. His mother is touching her husband’s arm. Neither of them is talking.

  I knock on the door very lightly.

  They look up.

  “You must be Jim’s friend. Come in.”

  I push the door open. They both stand up and put out their hands. I shake their hands.

  “Mary Carlson.”

  “Jim Carlson.”

  I introduce myself.

  “The young man at the desk told us that, before she went into surgery, Dr. Allen called our daughter and that she was on her way. But we don’t have a daughter.”

  “I’m sorry, But I — the first night Jim was here I told Dr. Allen — ”

  Mr. Carlson is still shaking my hand. He squeezes it hard.

  “You have nothing to apologize for. Jim told us what a good friend you’d been to him. Both after Scotty, and more recently.

  “Jim was a good friend too. I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”

  “We know he asked you not to. We had a few good days with him. I think he wanted to get better before he saw us,” says Mrs. Carlson. “He didn’t want us to have to see him and have to wait the way he had to wait with Scotty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know Scotty?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a lovely young man.”

  “He was good to Jim,” says Mr. Carlson. “There were things about Jim it took us a long time to understand, but he was a good son.” He says this slowly. “He was a good man.”

  “Yes.”

  “We loved him.” Mr. Carlson’s mouth is open like he’s going to say more, but then there’s this sound in his throat and he drops his face into his hands. “Dear God,” he says, “Oh dear God.”

  Mrs. Carlson pulls her husband’s head to her breast. His hat falls to the floor.

  I pick the hat up off the floor and put it on the table. I leave the room. When I close the door, I hear his father crying.

  Ange and Jean and Bob and Dale are standing at the nurses’ station. The boys are in pj’s and overcoats and house-slippers. They look at me. I look at them. We all look at each other. Nobody says anything.

  Dale walks over to the wall and puts his forehead against the wall. His shoulders shake. Bob goes over and puts his hand on Dale’s back. Nobody says anything.

  We get in the truck to go back to Bob and Dale’s. We all insist Bob sits up front with Jean and Ange. Dale and I sit in the open back. We haul the dog-smelling woolly blanket over our knees and huddle up next to each other. I can feel the cool ribbed metal of the bottom of the truck through my jeans. Jeannie pulls us away from the bright lights of the hospital onto Madison.

  It’s dark but there’re enough breaks in the clouds that we can see a star or two. The lights are off at Rex’s, the streets are empty. Jean drives so slow and cautiously, full stops at the signs and lights, and pauses at the intersections. There’s not another car on the road, but I think she hopes if she does everything very carefully, things might not break apart.

  Jean stops at the light on Broadway. Dale and I look into the back window of the pickup and see their three heads—Jeannie’s punky hairdo sticking up, Ange’s halo of wild fuzz, Bob’s shiny smooth round scalp. The collar of Bob’s pj’s is crooked above his housecoat. He’s usually so neatly groomed, but now he looks like a rumpled, sleepy child.

  Dale begins to tremble. I put my hand on his knee.

  “Jim was a great guy, the greatest, but now it’s like he was never here. What did he ever do that’s gonna last? It’s like his life was nothing.”

  “Jim was a good man,” I say.

  Dale nods.

  “And he loved a good man. He loved Scotty well.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “It’s good,” I say, “It’s true.”

  Dale takes my hand. He holds it hard. It’s the first time I notice he wears a ring.

  He takes a breath. “Bob . . . you know Bob . . . I’m afraid maybe . . . I think Bob . . .”

  He can’t say it. I see his eyelashes trembling, the muscles in his jaw as he tries to keep from crying. He swallows and closes his eyes.

  “Bob is a good man,” says Dale.

  “Yeah Dale, I know. Bob is a good man, too.”

  So we all go back to Bob and Dale’s. I call the Carlson’s hotel to leave Bob and Dale’s phone number. We drink tea and sit around in the living room until someone says we ought to get some sleep.

  “Well, there’s plenty of pj’s,” says Bob. “We can have a pajama paaaaaaar-tay.”

  He says it before he realizes it’s a Jim word. Ange and Jeannie and I try to laugh. Dale closes his eyes.

  Bob and Dale get pj’s for us. They wash the teacups as Ange and Jean and I change. We all look really silly in the guys’ flannel pj’s. When the boys come out of the kitchen and see us, they laugh. It’s a real laugh. It sounds good.

  Ange and Jean are going to stay in the guest room. Ange says to me, “You wanna stay with us, babe?”

  Dale says, “Or you can sleep on the couch in our room.”

  “Thanks guys.” I plop down on the living room couch. “This is fine with me.”

  Dale goes to the linen closet to get some sheets and blankets.

  If I lie next to someone I will break apart.

  I wake up first. I put the water on to boil. When Jean and Ange come out of the guest room, I say “The Katzen-jammer twins.”

  They look at my pj’s. “Triplets,” Jeannie says.

  “Quads,” says Ange when Dale comes into the kitchen.

  He gives us each a scratchy, unshaven kiss on the cheek.

  “Good morning lovelies.”

  Jeannie nods towards the guys’ room. “Our fifth?”

  “Bob’s asleep now. He was sweaty last night. I don’t think we’ll go to Jim’s.”

  He goes to phone the bank and Janet, Bob’s business partner. Jean and Ange and I look at each other.

  “You want me to stay with you?” asks Jean when Dale gets off the phone.

  “Naaaah,” he smiles like nothing’s wrong. “Bob’ll be alright. You guys go help the Carlsons.”

  We take turns in the shower while we listen for the phone. We hear Bob coughing in the bedroom.

  The Carlsons call. They want to meet at Jim’s about ten to clean out the apartment. We say OK, and plan to get there a half an hour early in case there’s anything we need to “straighten up.” Not that we expect to find anything shocking, but if we were to run across something, even a magazine or a poster, it might be nicer if the Carlsons didn’t see it.

  We leave Dale sitting at the kitchen table, his hands around his coffee mug. He looks lost. He looks the way he’s going to look after Bob is gone.

  We take the truck and stop by the grocery store to get a bunch of cartons. I’ve got the keys to Jim’s place. When we walk up the steps I think of Jim standing there when I came by to drive him to the hospital. We climb the gray-mustard colored carpet of the stairs. The hallways smell like food. Living people still live here.

  When I open the door to the apartment everything looks different. We set the empty boxes on the living room floor and begin to look in closets and drawers, intruding in a way we never would if Jim was around. There’s nothing in Jim’s drawers but socks and T
-shirts and underwear, nothing beneath the bed but dust, stray pennies, a couple of crusty paintbrushes.

  The Carlsons get there before we can go through all the rooms.

  The Carlsons don’t think there’ll be anything they’ll want from the living room, so I start packing the books and records, wrapping the TV in towels before I put it in a box.

  Jeannie and Mrs. Carlson start in the kitchen. I hear Mrs. Carlson telling Jeannie about the first time Jim made scrambled eggs, about her trying to teach “my Jims,” as she calls her husband and son, to cook. She laughs as she remembers the story of the eggs. It’s good to hear her laugh. In Jim’s room Mr. Carlson and Ange are packing shirts into cardboard cartons. I glance in. Mr. Carlson looks so small, like a schoolboy being sent away from home. He’s very slow and careful as he fastens buttons and smooths collars and folds sleeves. He creases the shirts into neat, tidy rectangles. Ange says a couple of things but Mr. Carlson doesn’t answer much. So after a while she leaves him to sort through his son’s ties and loafers, his jackets and suits, his baseball things, alone.

  “This must have been Scotty’s room,” says Mrs. Carlson.

  I’d been in there when Scotty was around. But after Scotty, the door was never open.

  The handle of the door is colored silver. Mrs. Carlson puts her hand on it. It clicks. She pushes it open. The curtain is drawn, the room is dark. But we can see around Mrs. Carlson, in front of us, that the bed and dresser and the night-table are gone. The only piece of furniture is the long desk by the window. The desk is crowded with clutter. There are pale gray-white rectangles on the walls. Ange flips on the light.

  And all around is Scotty. Scotty in his red-checked lumber jacket. Scotty smiling with a three-days’ growth of beard. Scotty sitting cross-legged on a mat. Scotty with long hair, a tie-dyed shirt, and sandals. Scotty in his ridiculous bright orange bermuda shorts. His firm brown stomach, his compact upper arms, him holding up a Stonewall fist and grinning. His fine hands holding something blue. His profile when he was a boy. Him resting his chin in his palms and looking sleepy. His baseball hat on backwards. His pretty shoulders, his tender sex, his hands.

  In every one, his skin is tan, his body is whole, his eyes are blue and bright. We recognize some poses from old photographs, and some from Scotty as we remember him. But some are of a Scotty that we never saw; Jim’s Scotty. Painted alive again by Jim.

  “Dear Scotty,” Mrs. Carlson says, “my Jim’s beloved.”

  We take some stuff to a center that is starting up. We leave most of it in both their names. The TV in Scotty’s. The hundred dollar bill in Jim’s.

  A few days later everything is over. The Carlsons are flying back to Texas. They don’t want a ride to the airport but they invite us all down for coffee at their hotel. They tell us if we ever get to Texas to come see them. We all thank each other for everything and say if there’s ever anything we can do. The Carlsons take some paintings to share with Scotty’s family. When the airporter arrives we put their suitcases in the storage place beneath the bus. Mr. Carlson carries the paintings rolled up into tubes. When the bus pulls out Mrs. Carlson waves to us for both of them. Mr. Carlson won’t let go of the tubes.

  We go back to Bob and Dale’s and drink more coffee. We all get pretty buzzy. Then Jean says they shouldn’t put it off anymore, they need to get back to Olympia. I mumble something about starting up temping again.

  Jean says, uncharacteristically, “Oh, fuck temping.”

  Bob laughs. “Listen to that potty mouth.”

  Ange reminds me that I have to go back to Olympia to get my car, and I ought to help them finish the remodeling. Both of which are true, but it’s also true they know what I can’t say: how much I need to be with them.

  So we say “See you ’round” to Bob and Dale and get in the truck to drive back down to Oly. Ange makes me sit in the middle, between the two of them.

  “Wha-chew-wont, baby I got it!!” Ange howls as she shoves Aretha into the tape deck. Aretha takes a second to catch up with Ange, but then it’s the two of them singing. Ange cranks the tunes up as Jean pulls the truck out onto 15th. We turn at Pine. Jean slows the truck as we pass the Rose in case anyone cute is casually lounging around outside; no one ever is. There’s a moment of stillness at the red light on Broadway, a moment of stillness between the tracks, then “Chain of Fools.” Ange cranks it up even more as we turn left onto Broadway, then turn right again onto Madison and right into a traffic jam.

  Ange rolls down the window as if she needs the extra room to sing. She loves the chain-chain-chaaaaaain, chainchain-chaaaaaain parts and always does this ridiculously unsexy jerk of her shoulders and hips when she sings it. She gets especially crazy at the cha-ya-ya-ya-ya-in part near the end. She squints and tries to look very mean, meaner with each ya-ya-ya. Jeannie is good at the hoo-hoo’s, which she accompanies with some extremely precise nods of her chin, and some extremely cool finger points. I sit between them and laugh.

  But as the song is nearing the end and we haven’t moved more than ten yards, I growl, “What is this traffic shit?”

  Ange pops the cassette out of the tape deck.

  “What?”

  “I said, what is this traffic shit.”

  “Quarter of four,” says Jean, “I thought we’d miss it.”

  “The old ’burg ain’t what it used to be baby. New folks movin’ in all the time. And they all have six cars and they all love traffic jams. Reminds them of good ol’ LA.”

  “Where they can all go back to in a goddamn handtruck, thank you very much.”

  We inch along a few minutes then come to a complete stop in front of Rex’s. Pedestrians on the sidewalk look around for cops then start walking in between the cars. Someone squeezing by in front of the truck does a knock-knock on the hood and grins in at us.

  “Smug asshole bastard,” I snarl.

  Cars start honking.

  “Jesus this traffic sucks,” I say louder.

  Ange looks at me.

  The car behind us is laying on the horn.

  “Fuck the traffic,” I shout.

  “Hey, babe, take it easy,” says Ange, “We’ll get outta here soon.”

  I ignore her. “Fuck the traffic,” I cry. I put my hands over my ears. “Fuck the traffic.”

  Then I hear Jim screaming, “Fuck the traffic! Don’t they realize they’re holding up a wheelchair full of dying faggot!” Then I hear him yelling, “So what am I supposed to do, fly?” Then he looks at me, “Tonto, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna die.”

  Then my head is against the back of the seat. I’m rigid. Ange’s hand is on my arm.

  “Baby?”

  Jean grinds the truck into reverse, backs up a couple inches, whacks it back into first and climbs over the sidewalk into the Seattle First National Bank parking lot. She cuts the engine.

  “Baby.” Ange says it hard.

  She yanks me away from the back of the seat and throws her arms, her whole huge body around me. Jeannie grabs me from behind. I’m stiff. I’m like a statue. My body can’t bend and I can’t see. They sandwich me in between them. Spit and snot are on my face.

  “Let it go, baby, let it go.”

  I can’t say anything. My jaws are tight.

  “Let it go, babe.”

  Ange pulls away from me enough to kiss my forehead. I break. She squeezes herself around me tight. Then they’re both around me, holding me.

  And then, dear Jim, held close between the bodies of our friends, I see you.

  I roll you and your wheelchair out to the sidewalk. I’m worried because in the few minutes it’s taken us to get from your room to here, the sky has turned gray. I tell you we ought to get back inside, but you wave that idea away. I stand above you at the pedestrian crossing and look down at the top of your cap, the back of your neck, your shoulders.

  There’s a traffic jam. The cars are pressed so close not even pedestrians can squeeze through. A wind is picking up. People are opening umbrellas. Cars are honking, d
rivers are laying on their horns. I start to say again, that we really ought to go back in, but you find my hand on the wheelchair grip and cover it with your own. You sigh like a tolerant, tired parent. You shake your head. You pat my hand then squeeze it.

  “The traffic’ll break in a minute, Jim.”

  But you aren’t listening to me. You slip your hand from mine, and before I can stop you, you’ve unhooked the tooth of the drip-feed from your arm.

  “Jim, the IV.”

  “Ssssh.” You put your finger to your lips like you are finally going to tell the truth about a story you’ve been telling for so long.

  You slip the blanket off your knees. You stand up alone, not needing to lean on anyone. You’re tall as you used to be. You stretch your arms out to your sides and take a deep breath. I see your chest expand. You stretch your neck up and look at the sky. You throw your arm around my shoulder and pull me to you. I feel the firmness of your body and smell the good clean smell of your healthy skin the way it was the summer we climbed Mt. Si. You pull my face in front of you. You hold my face between your hands and look at me. You look inside where I can’t see, where I can’t look away from you. Beneath the fear the covered love, you see me, Jim. Then, like a blessing that forgives me, and a healing benediction that will seal a promise true, you kiss my forehead.

  You tell me, “Tonto, girl, I’m going for a ride.”

  You fling your Right-On Sister Stonewall fist up in the air then open your hand in a Hi-Yo Silver wave. I watch your hand as it stretches above you high, impossibly high. Your feet lift off the sidewalk and you rise. Above the crowded street, the hospital, above us all, you fly.

  The rain begins. Cold drops hit my face when I look up at you. But you fly high above it, Jim. Your firm taut body catches glints of light from a sun that no one here below can see.

  I raise a Right-On fist to answer you, but then my fist is opened, just like yours, and I am waving, Jim.

  Good friend, true brother Jim, goodbye.

  GRIEF

  We’re all at the airport to see our friend off to a foreign country none of us has been to before. Tonight there are hundreds of us. We all pitched in to buy the ticket. We bought her travel guides and sent her to Berlitz school. We traded evenings reading to her from phrase books and flash cards. We bought her luggage and clothes. We got letters of reference from well-connected people at home. We booked reservations for her in reliable hotels. We showed her our support. Though we’re all reluctant to admit it, we live vicariously through her.