Annie Oakley's Girl Read online

  He hobbles off the porch, his free hand grabbing the railing. I reach to take the paper bag, but he clutches it tight.

  We drive to Swedish hospital and park near the Emergency Room. I lean over to hug him before we get out of the car. He’s wearing four layers — T-shirt, long underwear, sweatshirt, his jacket. But when I touch his back I feel the sweat through all his clothes.

  “I put these on just before you came.” He sounds embarrassed.

  I put an arm around him to help him inside. When he’s standing at the check-in desk, I see the mark the sweat makes on his jacket.

  Jim hands me the paper bag. I take his arm as we walk to the examination room to wait for a doctor. We walk slowly. Jim shuffles and I almost expect him to make his standard crack about the two of us growing old together in the ancient homos home for the prematurely senile, pinching all the candy stripers’ butts, but he doesn’t.

  He sits down on the bed in the exam room. After he catches his breath he says, “Nice drapes.”

  There aren’t any drapes. The room is sterile and white. Jim leans back in the chair and breathes out hard. The only other sound is the fluorescent light. He coughs.

  “Say something, Tonto. Tell me story.”

  “ — I . . . uh . . .”

  I pick up a packet of tongue depressers. “Hey, look at all these. How many you think they go through in a week?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I take an instrument off a tray. “How ’bout this?” I turn to show him but his eyes are closed. I put it back down. When I close my mouth, the room is so quiet.

  I can’t tell stories the way Jim can.

  A doctor comes in. She introduces herself as Dr. Allen and asks Jim the same questions he’s just answered at the front desk — his fevers, his sweats, his appetite, his breath. She speaks softly, touching his arm as she listens to his answers. Then she pats his arm and says she’ll be back in a minute.

  In a few seconds a nurse comes in and starts poking Jim’s arm to hook him up to an IV. Jim is so dehydrated she can’t find the vein. She pokes him three times before one finally takes. Jim’s arm is white and red. He lies there with his eyes closed, flinching.

  Then Dr. Allen comes back with an other doctor who asks Jim the same questions again. The doctors ask me to wait in the private waiting room because they want to do some tests on Jim. I kiss his forehead before I leave. “I’m down the hall, Jim.”

  Jim waves, but doesn’t say anything. They close the door.

  Half an hour later, Dr. Allen comes to the waiting room. She’s holding a box of Kleenex.

  “Are you his sister?”

  I start to answer, but she puts her hand on my arm to stop me.

  “I want you to know that hospital administration does not look favorably upon our giving detailed medical information about patients out to non-family members. And they tend to look the other way if family members want to stay past regular visiting hours.”

  “So,” I say, “I’m his sister.”

  “Good. Right. OK, we need to do some more tests on Jim and give him another IV, so he needs to stay the night.” She pauses. “He doesn’t want to. I think he needs to talk to you.”

  She hands me the box of Kleenex.

  Jim is lying on his back, his free elbow resting over his eyes. I walk up to him and put my hand on his leg.

  “Hi.”

  He looks up at me, then up at the IV.

  “I have to have another one of these tonight so I need to stay.”

  I nod.

  “It’s not the flu. It’s pneumonia.”

  I nod again, and keep nodding as if he were still talking. I hear the whirr of the electric clock, the squeak of nurses’ shoes in the hall.

  “I haven’t asked what kind.”

  “No.”

  He looks at me. I take his sweaty hand in mine.

  “I don’t mind going,” he says, “Or being gone. But I don’t want to suffer long. I don’t want to take a long time going.”

  I try to say something to him, but I can’t. I want to tell him a story, but I can’t say anything.

  Because I’ve got this picture in my head of Jim’s buddy Scotty, who he grew up with in Fort Worth. And I’m seeing the three of us watching “Dynasty,” celebrating the new color box Jim bought for Scotty to watch at home, and I’m seeing us getting loaded on cheap champagne, and the way Scotty laughed and coughed from under the covers and had to ask me or Jim to refill his glass or light his Benson & Hedges because he was too weak to do it himself. Then I’m seeing Jim and me having a drink the day after Scotty went, and how Jim’s hands shook when he opened the first pack of cigarettes we ever shared, and how a week later Jim clammed up, just clammed right up in the middle of telling me about cleaning out Scotty’s room. And I think, from the way Jim isn’t talking, from the way his hand is shaking in mine, that he is seeing Scotty too.

  Scotty took a long time going.

  Jim stays the night at Swedish. The next night. The next.

  He asks me to let some people know — his office, a few friends. Not his parents. He doesn’t want to worry them. He asks me to bring him stuff from his apartment — clothes, books. I ask him if he wants his watercolors. He says no.

  I go to see him every day. I bring him the Times, the Blade, Newsweek. It’s easy for me to take off work. I only work as a temporary and I hate my jobs anyway, so I just don’t call in. Jim likes having people visit, and lots of people come. Chubby Bob with his pink, bald head. Dale in his banker’s suit. Mike the bouncer in his bomber jacket. Cindy and Bill on their way back out to Vashon. A bunch of guys from the baseball team. Denise and her man Chaz. Ange and Jeannie call him from Olympia.

  We play a lot of cards. Gin rummy. Hearts when there are enough of us. Spades. Poker. We use cut-up tongue depressors for chips. I offer to bring real ones, but Jim gets a kick out of coloring them red and blue and telling us he is a very, very, very wealthy Sugar Daddy. He also gets a big kick out of cheating.

  We watch a lot of tube. I sit on the big green plastic chair by the bed. Or Dale sits on the big green chair, me on his lap, and Bob on the extra folding metal chair: We watch reruns, sitcoms, Close Encounters. Ancient, awful Abbot and Costellos. Miniseries set between the wars. But Jim’s new favorites are hospital soaps. He becomes an instant expert on everything — all the characters’ affairs, the tawdry turns of plots, the long-lost illegitimate kids. He sits up on his pillows and rants about how stupid the dialogue is, how unrealistic the gore:

  “Oh come on. I could do a better gun-shot wound with a paint-by-numbers set!

  “Is that supposed to be a bruise?! Yo mama, pass me the hammer now. Now!

  “If that’s the procedure for a suture, I am Betty Grable’s legs.”

  He narrates softly in his stage aside: “Enter tough-as-nails head nurse. Exit sensitive young intern. Enter political appointment in admin, a shady fellow not inspired by a noble urge to help his fellow human. Enter surgeon with a secret. Exit secretly addicted pharmacist.”

  Then during commercials he tells us gossip about the staff here at Swedish which is far juicier than anything on TV. We howl at his trashy tales until he shushes us when the show comes back on. We never ask if what he says is true. And even if we did, Jim wouldn’t tell us.

  But most of the time, because I’m allowed to stay after hours as his sister, it’s Jim and me alone. We stare up at the big color box, and it stares down at us like the eye of God. Sometimes Jim’s commentary drifts, and sometimes he is silent. Sometimes when I look over and his eyes are closed, I get up to switch off the set, but he blinks and says, “I’m not asleep. Don’t turn it off. Don’t go.” Because he doesn’t want to be alone.

  Then, more and more, he sleeps and I look up alone at the plots that end in nothing, at the almost true-to-life colored shapes, at the hazy ghosts that trail behind the bodies when they move.

  Jim and I met through the temporary agency. I’d lost my teaching job and he’d decided to quit bart
ending because he and Scotty were becoming fanatics about their baseball team and consequently living really clean. This was good for me because I was trying, well, I was thinking I really ought to try, to clean it up a bit myself. Anyway, Jim and I had lots of awful jobs together — filing, answering phones, xeroxing, taking coffee around to arrogant fat-cat lawyers, stuffing envelopes, sticking number labels on pages and pages of incredibly stupid documents, then destroying those same documents by feeding them through the shredder. The latter was the only of these jobs I liked; I liked the idea of it. I like being paid five bucks an hour to turn everything that someone else had done into pulp.

  After a while, Jim got a real, permanent job, with benefits, at one of these places. But I couldn’t quite stomach the thought of making that kind of commitment.

  We stayed in touch though. Sometimes I’d work late xeroxing and Jim would come entertain me and play on the new color copier. He came up with some wild things — erasing bits, then painting over them, changing the color combos, double copying. All this from a machine that was my sworn enemy for eight hours a day. We’d have coffee or go out to a show or back to their place so Scotty could try out one of his experiments in international cuisine on us before he took it to the restaurant. Also, Jim helped me move out of my old apartment.

  But Jim and I really started hanging out together a lot after Scotty. Jim had a bunch of friends, but I think he wanted not to be around where he and Scotty had been together so much: the dinner parties and dance bars, the clubs, the baseball team. So he chose to run around with me. To go out drinking.

  We met for a drink the day after Scotty. Then a week later, we did again. Over the third round Jim started to tell me about cleaning out Scotty’s room. But all the sudden he clammed up, he just clammed right up and left. He wouldn’t let me walk home with him. I tried calling him but he wouldn’t answer.

  Then a couple weeks later he called me and said, “Wanna go for a drink?” like nothing had happened.

  We met at Lucky’s. I didn’t say anything about what he had started to talk about the last time we’d met, and he sure didn’t mention it. Well, actually, maybe he did. We always split our tab, and this round was going to be mine. But when I reached for my wallet, he stopped me.

  “This one’s on me, Tonto.”

  “Tonto?”

  “The Lone Ranger.” He pointed to himself. “Rides again.”

  He clinked his glass to mine. “So saddle up, Tonto. We’re going for a ride.”

  We had a standing date for Friday, six o’clock, the Lucky. With the understanding that if either of us got a better offer, we just wouldn’t show up and the other would know to stop waiting about 6:30 or so. However, neither of us ever got a better offer. But we had a great time talking predator. We’d park ourselves in a corner behind our drinks and eye the merchandise. Me scouting guys for him; him looking at women for me.

  “He’s cute. Why don’t we ask him to join us.”

  “Not my type . . . but mmm-mmm-mmm I think somebody likes you. “

  “Who?”

  “That one.”

  “Jim, I’ve never see her before in my life.”

  “I think she likes you.”

  “I think she looks like a donkey. But hey, he looks really sweet. Go on, go buy him a drink.”

  A few times I showed up at six and saw Jim already ensconced in our corner charming some innocent, unsuspecting woman he was planning to spring on me. I usually did an abrupt about-face out of Lucky’s. But one time he actually dragged me to the table to meet whoever she was. Fortunately that evening was such a disaster he didn’t try that tactic again.

  After a while our standing joke began to wear a little thin. I cooled it on eyeballing guys for him, but he kept teasing me, making up these incredible stories about my wild times with every woman west of the Mississippi. It bugged me for a while, but I didn’t say anything. For starters, Jim wasn’t the kind of guy you said shut-up to. And then, after a longer while, I realized he wasn’t talking just to entertain us. His talk, his ploys to find someone for me, were his attempts to make the story of a good romance come true. Jim had come to the conclusion that neither he, nor many of his brotherhood, could any longer hope to live the good romance. He told me late one bleary, double-whiskey night, “Us boys are looking at the ugly end of the Great Experiment, Tonto. I sure hope you girls don’t get in a mess like us. Ya’ll will be OK, won’t you? Won’t ya’ll girls be OK?”

  Because Jim still desired, despite what he’d been through with Scott, despite how his dear brotherhood was crumbling, that some of his sibling outlaws would find good love and live in that love openly, and for a good long time, a longer time than he and Scott had had. He wanted this for everyone who marched 3rd Avenue each June, for everyone that he considered family.

  He’s sitting up against his pillows. I toss him the new Texas Monthly and kiss him hello on the forehead. He slaps his hands down on the magazine and in his sing-song voice says, “I think someone likes you!”

  I roll my eyes.

  He gives me his bad-cat grin. “Don’t you want to know who?”

  “I bet you’ll tell me anyway.”

  “Dr. Allen.”

  “Oh come on, Jim, she’s straight.”

  “And how do you know, Miss Lock-Up-Your-Daughters? Just because she doesn’t wear overalls and a workshirt.”

  “Jim, you’re worse than a Republican.”

  “I am, I am a wicked wicked boy. I must not disparage the Sisterhood.” He flings his skinny hand up in a fist. “Right On Sister!”

  I try not to laugh.

  “Still, what if Dr. Allen is a breeder? I’m sure she’d be very interested in having you impart to her The Love Secrets of the Ancient Amazons.”

  “Jim, I’m not interested . . .”

  “Honey, I been watching you. I seen you scratching. I know you be itchin’ fer some bitchin’.”

  He makes it hard not to laugh.

  “Jim, if you don’t zip it up, I’ll have to shove a bedpan down your throat.”

  “In that case I’m even more glad it’s about time for Dr. Allen’s rounds. She’ll be able to extract it from me with her maaaar-velous hands.”

  And in sails Dr. Allen, a couple of interns in tow.

  I get up to leave.

  “Oh, you don’t have to leave.” She smiles at me. “This is just a little check-in with Jim.”

  Jim winks at me behind her back.

  I sit down in the folding metal chair by the window and look at downtown, at Elliott Bay, the slate gray water, the thick white sky. But I also keep looking back as Dr. Allen feels Jim’s pulse, his forehead, listens to his chest. She asks him to open his mouth. She asks him how it’s going today.

  “Terrific. My lovely sister always cheers me up. She’s such a terrific woman, you know.”

  I stare out the window as hard as I can.

  Dr. Allen says how nice it is that Jim has such nice visitors, then tells him she’ll see him later.

  “See you,” she says to me as she leaves.

  “Yeah, see you.”

  The second she’s out the door, Jim says, more loudly than he usually talks, “That cute Dr. Allen is such a terrific woman!”

  “Jim!!” I shush him.

  “And so good with her hands,” he grins. “Don’t you think she’s cute? I think she’s cute. Almost as cute as you are when you blush.”

  I turn away and stare out the window again. Sure I’m blushing. And sure, I’m thinking about Dr. Allen. But what I’m thinking is why, when she was looking at him, she didn’t say, “You’re looking good today, Jim.” Or, “You’re coming right along, Jim.” Or “We’re gonna have to let you out of here soon, Jim, you’re getting too healthy for us.”

  Why won’t she tell him something like that?

  There’s a wheelchair in his room. Shiny stainless steel frame, padded leather seat. Its arms look like an electric chair.

  He’s so excited he won’t let me kiss him hello.<
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  “That’s Silver. Your dear friend Dr. Allen says I can go out for some fresh air today.”

  “Really?” I’m skeptical. He’s hooked to an IV again.

  “Gotta take advantage of the sun. Saddle up, Tonto.”

  He presses the buzzer. In a couple of minutes an aide comes in to transfer the IV from his bed to the pole sticking up from the back of the chair. The drip bag hangs like a toy. I help Jim into his jacket and cap, put a cover across his lap and slide his hospital slippers up over his woolly socks.

  “Are you sure you feel up to this?”

  “Sure I’m sure. And if I don’t get a cup of non-hospital coffee, I am going to lynch someone.”

  “OK, OK, I’ll be back in a minute. I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  I go to the nurses’ station.

  “Can Jim really go out today?”

  The guy at the desk looks up.

  “Dr. A says it’s fine. You guys can go across the street to Rex’s or something. A lot of patients do. They uh . . . don’t have the same rules as the hospital.” He puckers his lips and puts two fingers up to mime smoking.

  “Uh-huh. Got it.”

  Back in the room I take the black plastic handles of the chair and start to push.

  Jim flings his hand in the air, “Hi-Yo Silver!”

  I wheel him into the hall, past doctors and aides in clean white coats, past metal trays full of plastic buckets and rubber gloves and neat white stacks of linens. Past skinny guys shuffling along in housecoats and slippers.

  The elevator is huge, wide enough to carry a couple of stretchers. Jim and I are the only ones in it. I feel like we’re the only people in a submarine, sinking down to some dense, cold otherworld where we won’t be able to breathe. Jim watches the elevator numbers. I watch the orange reflection of the lights against his eyes.

  When the elevator opens to the bustling main entrance foyer, his eyes widen. It isn’t as white and quiet as he’s gotten used to. In his attempt to tell himself he isn’t so bad off, he’s made himself forget what health looks like. I see him stare, wide-eyed and silent, as a man runs across the foyer to hug a friend, as a woman bends down to pick up a kid. I push him slowly across the foyer in case he wants to change his mind.