Eating Heaven (20 page)

“Then let me ask you this, Miss Roosevelt: Have
you
eaten?”

“I was asleep.”

“I mean, today?”

“Oh, Ben,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “Let’s just worry about you, okay?”

“I’m sick of worrying about me,” he says. “You’re the one who needs worrying over.”

I sigh. “Why are we having this conversation?”

“Search me,” he says. “I just answered the phone.”

I stare out the sewing room window at the surprisingly sultry afternoon, stunned to realize June’s nearly over. Sunlight washes the color
from the grass, the trees, and I wish I could go to the coast where it’s cool, or to my favorite old spot along the Clackamas River where there’s a strip of beach beneath tall poplars and slow-moving currents just perfect for kicking around in an inner tube.

Do nearly forty-year-old women do that? It’s been so long, I can’t remember if there were only kids in the water or not. How old was my mother when we went swimming there? Thirty? Thirty-five? She wore a black-and-white polka-dot bathing suit, and her hair in a white swim cap with pom-poms. I haven’t been game to wear a bathing suit in a couple of decades, but I’m starting to think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. My girth is diminishing, although my flabbiness is just getting worse. Maybe I should be one of those people who go to the gym.

Benny shuffles behind me in the hall, holding the walls and doorframes instead of his walker.

“If you fall, Ruthann will kill me,” I call.

“Better you than me,” he says, and I smile. Benny’s feeling better. No more vomiting, although I suspect he’s having problems at the other end. He uses inordinate amounts of air freshener and has taken to hand washing his underwear in the bathroom sink. I take the don’t ask, don’t tell approach when it comes to anything in that department, which I’m certain is entirely inappropriate for a primary caretaker, but I know Benny is happier this way, too. His color is better, and I heard him in the shower the other day. He shaved this morning, humming tunelessly as he scraped white foam from his cheeks and neck. If I didn’t know his prognosis, I’d say maybe he was on the upswing. Who knows? You hear about cancer miracles all the time. Or maybe he finally adjusted to all that medication.

“Hey, Benny,” I say, and turn to see him standing in the doorway, a couple of books in hand. So that’s why he’s not using the walker—maybe we could tie a basket to the front, like on our old bikes. “What would you think about me going away for the weekend, just tomorrow and Sunday? Ruthann says it would be okay if we had a home health person come in. She said your insurance would pay for it.”

“Well, sure, Ellie. You go on and have some fun.”

“I’d be back in time for dinner Sunday.”

“Take your time. I’ll give Ruthann a call and drum up somebody to come by.”

“Actually, I think I know someone,” I say, glad I never threw her phone number away. “And I’ll go get your prescriptions refilled today. You’re almost out.”

“No, honey, Ruthann said she’d run by the pharmacy. You just go on.”

“Well, okay,” I say, unsure of how happy I should appear in front of him. “If you’re sure.”

He waves me off and turns to continue his shuffle to his bedroom, where I hear him plop heavily onto the mattress. It’s the only place he reads, in bed. Until three months ago, I never knew this about him. I never knew he preferred red grapes over green, green apples over red, or that he used VO5 to keep his hair slicked in place. I like knowing these things. I even like being here, most of the time. I just need some time to myself. Going home, even briefly, has become all I can think about.

Later, I dial the number on the scrap of paper, and Alice answers in her frighteningly cheerful way: “Helloooo, this is Alice.”

“Hi, Alice, I’m not sure if you remember me, but this is Eleanor Samuels and—”

“Of course I remember you! Oh, I am so glad you called! You never did give me your phone number. I’ve been worried to death about that cat. I stopped by your place a few times, but did you move or something?”

“The cat’s fine. I still have her, and we’re great friends. It all worked out fine.”

“Oh, thank God. I’ve worried so much since that day. You just don’t know.”

I think I do. Which is why she’s perfect. “Listen, I was calling for another reason. What are you doing this weekend?”

After we hang up, I go to Benny’s room, rap lightly on the door frame. “Hey, we’re all set.”

“Oh?” He looks up from his book, Steinbeck’s
Travels with Charley,
glasses perched at the tip of his nose. The other is one of his photo albums, a slim white binder.

“Remember me telling you about the woman who hit Buddy? How she was some kind of health worker? Turns out she’s a fully licensed RN, she specializes in home care, and she’s coming over tomorrow. She’s free to help you all weekend, whatever you need. Even if you want her to sleep over, she can stay in my room.”

“Is she cute?” he asks, winking, then pushes his glasses back to the bridge of his nose, his eyes growing as big as half dollars behind them. “We’ll just see if she spends the night or not.”

“You’re terrible, Uncle Benny,” I say, shaking my head, smiling. I don’t know whether to be glad Alice brought Buddy into my life, or the other way around.

“Hey, how do you feel about Burgerville for dinner?” I ask, and Benny grins. Oregonians love their Burgerville.

“I never say no to french fries,” he says.

I can’t sleep. It’s ridiculous, but now that I know I will soon be in my own bed, if only for a night or two, I just can’t relax enough to fall asleep on what I’ve come to call the monkey bars. I feel like I should be climbing this stupid thing, not trying to rest on it. It could also be the double Tillamook cheeseburger, marionberry shake, and fries I consumed for dinner—more food in one sitting than I’ve had in months, and perhaps not the best choice for my touchy stomach.

I get up and pull on my robe, wander into the living room. Benny’s sleeping on the couch tonight, TV flickering silently, Buddy curled in the blanket between his feet. I pick up the remote from the floor beneath his lank hand and click off the set. The room goes dark. Benny’s breathing is even and strong. There will be a time when it isn’t, I know, but I still can’t imagine it.

I mosey to the bookshelves to find something to read. Maybe
Little Women
or
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
—something happy from my childhood. The titles are faint, gray on gray in the dark, but I skim them with my fingers like I’m reading braille. On the second-to-top shelf I find
Valley of the Dolls
and snort. It must have been Yolanda’s. I pull it down, then stand looking at Benny’s photo albums.

I take the slimmest volume, the white binder, slide it under Jacqueline Susann, and tiptoe back to my room. I sit on the bed and pull the album into my lap, flip open the cover to the first page. From behind yellowing acetate, a young girl’s face looks back at me, twisted and distorted so that the lower half looks separate from the upper. Her teeth are too big for her mouth and stick out in a cartoonish way, and her eyes look like mine. Like my mother’s.

Gut tensing, I turn the page, and the girl is tiny in a monstrous wheelchair, her body contorted, her hands clawing at air. The wheelchair is on a sidewalk in front of a blond brick building, and she sits surrounded by smiling women, kind women who love her, I can tell. They are wearing what nurses wore in the sixties, white dresses, some with caps, and the girl’s wheelchair is festooned with crepe paper streamers. In another picture from that day, a young, thin Benny kneels beside her chair, holding a floppy-eared stuffed dog. He smiles, but it is only a false smile for the camera. His eyes are sad.

The rest of the book holds similar photos from different years, the girl growing slightly, the nurses changing, Benny aging, until they abruptly stop only midway into the book. Then a yellowed newspaper clipping, a death notice from Bybee Funeral Home: Rosemary Elsa Sloan, born April 11, 1960, died March 4, 1971. Survived by her father, Benjamin H. Sloan. A small private service at the funeral home.

With unsteady hands, I close the book, slide out of bed to sneak it back into its place. My entire body is tingling, stomach roiling, my head another person’s, floating down the hall into the living room. There, Benny is sitting up on the couch, blanket tucked around his legs, Buddy curled peacefully in his lap.

“I was wondering where that went,” he says, looking at the photo album in my hands. He clears his throat. “I suppose you’re curious about the girl.”

I nod, devoid of words, and hand him the book. He treats it gently, as if fragile. His eyes glisten.

“Her name was Rosemary, for her mother’s mother, but we called her
Rosie. Well, me and the nurses at Moreland Home. Her mother, well . . .” His voice fades and he swallows. He looks at his feet, then at the ceiling. Then at me, head listing in defeat. “Her mother, my first wife, she . . . she had a hard time of it, and the baby was so sick, and they couldn’t do anything to help either one of them.”

I nod, dumbstruck. His first wife. My mother? But my grandmother’s name was Katherine.

He sighs, stroking Buddy now, and she settles deeper into sleep, one paw hanging off his leg, opening, closing, kneading nothing but air.

Finally, I ask: “What happened, to your . . . wife?”

He squeezes his eyes in a grimace, the corners of his mouth trembling against the answer.

“I lost her in childbirth,” he whispers, and hangs his head to cry.

It doesn’t matter what he says. I know the truth, from a place so old and familiar I could double over with it: Nobody adopted my sister. Because she was not perfect, my mother gave her away.

When I’ve helped Benny to bed, pulled his door closed against the hall light, I go to the bathroom and kneel next to the toilet. My stomach convulses, and in one fluid motion the contents of my stomach surge up and out like a shot, breaking free of my body, of the corporeal plane, leaving me empty and huddled on the floor, shaking and sobbing a strange sound over and over. The timbre of it is eerie; I’m horrified to realize it’s the word “Mom.”

I remember this from some hazy, off-kilter dream I used to have, the stench of vomit, the sense of everything being horribly skewed in a way that was irreparable. I remember calling for my mother. And as I lie here on the floor, I remember that it is not a dream.

After I’d thrown up all over myself and the couch that day, I called for my mother in my fever delirium. Crying, trying to escape the smell, I pulled myself up and walked unsteadily to the front door, leaning on the knob as I opened it. I blinked in the stark, hot sunlight, everything, even the grass, stripped of color. Mom’s station wagon was still in the driveway, so I called for her again. I walked outside, afraid the neighbors would see me covered in bile, feeling my
pajama bottoms stick to my legs. “Mom!” I called, standing in the front yard, then wandered unsteadily to the street, hot sidewalk burning my bare feet.

Up a half block or so I saw Benny’s old sky blue Valiant, the car he had before he met Yolanda and bought a decent one. I walked toward it, not wanting to. As I drew closer, I saw them, wound so tightly together that they didn’t see me until I was beside them.

Benny saw me first and pulled his arms away from Mom as if he’d suddenly realized he was touching poison. Mom didn’t seem to understand until Benny nodded in my direction, just outside the passenger’s-side window. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

“Honey,” Mom said, voice thick and strange, “what are you doing?”

“I got sick,” I said as she quickly extracted herself from the car.

“Oh, no, Ellie, what have you done?” She looked me over, then leaned back into the car and grabbed a bag.

“Look what Uncle Benny brought you,” she said, pulling out a green bottle. “Ginger ale! Wasn’t that sweet of him? Now let’s get you back in that house and cleaned up. Say good-bye to Uncle Benny.”

Benny’s car sputtered away. My mother didn’t touch me as we walked back to the house, even though I weaved drunkenly on my feet, feeling as though I might faint. I was too much of a mess. She just kept saying how nice it was that Benny had come by to help me, how she’d given him a big hug to thank him for me. She stopped just outside the front door and turned to me, her eyes hard, her expression stern. “If you ever tell anyone about this, Eleanor, it will just kill your father. You’re a big enough girl now for me to tell you this. Dad’s not like us. He wouldn’t understand.” She looked at me another moment more, then asked, “Okay?”

I nodded, swallowing her secrets, her lies, vowing never to throw up again.

She was especially nice to me the rest of the day, helping me clean up, finding me fresh pajamas, soothing my head with a cool washcloth. When my sisters got home from school, and later, when Dad arrived
from work, she told them, “Ellie’s had such a bad time of it today. Her fever got so high she was imagining things. Weren’t you, honey?”