her throat, might have been good enough for making a record. My mother used to always call her a mess. “Oh, Betty, you’re such a mess!” she’d say, which supposedly was a compliment.
My mother has all these funny sayings from having grown up in Alabama. (She’s passed them on to me, too, and I’m not too sure I’m glad of that. Sometimes my friends, Northerners who’ve moved down here to get away from snow, can’t understand what I’m saying, like when I tell them I’m fixin’ to go fishing, and they say, “Why don’t you just say go?” To me and my mom, it wouldn’t be the same. There’s a whole lot that goes into going somewhere, and, in that sense, fixin’ makes sense.) One time soon after my dad moved out, Mrs. MacHenry paid me to baby-sit because, as she said, she was fixin’ to drive my mother up the highway for some fun, which turned out to be The Flesh Paradise. They had male strippers there. Mom never did mention it. Only reason I ever knew that’s where Mrs. MacHenry took her was that Mom’d insisted on leaving me a number where I could reach her. And then George threw up, and when I dialed the number, some deepthroated dude had answered, “Flesh Paradise.” So I hung up. Told George Mom said it was just a two-hour virus, and he had only five more minutes before time was up. Which seemed to work, because George just sat down and watched ‘’The Flintstones” on TV, ate a package of Cajun spiced potato chips, and fell asleep.
Now Mrs. MacHenry was coaching George on how to breathe. “Through your mouth, George. That’s right. In. Out. Up. Down.” And Mandy had picked up the movie star magazines and was sitting on the floor, reading them, or at least flipping through the pages.
Meanwhile, everybody in the waiting room was looking at George. It was as if any minute he could just keel over and die, like an old person barely hanging on. He sure was sucking that sucker like there was no tomorrow.
I didn’t have a place to sit down, so I stood, leaning against the wall beside George. Then Mrs. Conner, my first grade teacher, came in. I hadn’t seen her in a while. She didn’t look good. She didn’t look around, just walked straight up to Mrs. MacHenry’s desk. “Is the doctor in?”
Since Mrs. MacHenry was standing with me, it was like Mrs. Conner was announcing the president or something. She just spoke her question out loud, and Mrs. MacHenry headed over.
Mrs. MacHenry’s white uniform brushed against her hose, which sounded to me a little like a katydid. (In the Florida heat, women don’t wear them often, but I’ve decided I really love the sound of stockings.) And all the while she was explaining: “Dr. Haley’s up the highway, giving flu shots at a nursing home.”
Mrs. Conner looked around. She’d always tried to come off as this sweet old lady, but she was the kind who’d give you pencils with no erasers and then make you stay in at recess for spitting on your paper and rubbing out mistakes. I could never understand why she had this thing about mistakes. She said we were supposed to not worry about them. But hell, even at six you know you make them, and want to fix them. In my book, that’s normal.
“I have to see Dr. Haley today,” she said, still looking around. “Do all these other people have appointments?”
Mrs. MacHenry sat down at her desk. “No. We do walk-ins. You just have to be willing to wait a while. Sometimes maybe even a long while. “
Mrs. Conner leaned over closer, but there was no way an old first grade teacher could talk low. “Betty, I got this sore on my nose, you see, and I’m afraid it’s cancer. I got to see him. I put a little of this medicine on it that I got from my sister. A little home remedy.” She laughed. “But it hadn’t gotten a bit better.” She lifted up her Band-Aid.
I’d never heard that before—home remedy. It must have been the name of something an old person would use. But instead it sounded like something we ought to get—me, Mandy, George the Second, and especially Mom. Mrs. MacHenry looked at Mrs. Conner’s nose. “Sure is some bump, Elaine. You better get it checked. I just don’t know when exactly Dr. Haley’ll get to you.”
“So you think this is a bad bump, too?”
“Could be nothing. Could be a mosquito bite. Could be a passion hickey. “ She laughed, flashing her teeth. “Could be, I guess, something more serious like a skin cancer, or a wart. Why don’t you just join in with the rest and wait.”
“Guess I’ll have to.” Mrs. Conner looked around the waiting room, then saw me. “Drew,” she said, coming over. “Just look at you—all tall and nearly grown.”
“Sort of.” I grinned. I could never get over trying to get on her good side.
“And you’re in your first year of high school?”
I grinned again. I knew she’d never thought I’d make it that far. And then it hit me: Mrs. Conner had this Band-Aid over her nose, and I could see this green medicine under it, oozing out. I guess it was her home remedy. And it smelled awful, all rotten and fishy. It made me think of something you’d get out of a swamp.
There was no place for either of us to sit down, so we were stuck standing beside each other. In a few minutes my mother came whizzing in, her face all red; and she’d been rushing like crazy, you could tell. She picked George up and set him on her lap and held his head real still against her.
Mrs. MacHenry came over, her white uniform crisp as a Ritz cracker. “I sent for Dr. Haley, Linda. He’s on his way. I told him it was an emergency.”
“God, thanks, Betty.” Mom glanced up. Then, “Don’t move, George.” She clamped his head between her palms.
Mrs. Conner stepped closer. “Is he sick?”
“He’s got a rock up his nose.” My mother was petting George’s cheek.
Mrs. MacHenry added: “Dr. Haley should be here any minute.”
My mom was close to frantic. I could tell because she was stiff, trying to look good like she wasn’t going to lose it and all, yet talking like her tongue had diarrhea. She does that when she gets nervous. It really bothers me to see her like that, and her voice climbing high: “I just wish I were closer; my job an hour away makes this so much harder. I worry, you know. Being that far. I need to get a job closer. Something that’ll let me be here, near home. Something that’ll . . .”
Mrs. MacHenry touched my mother’s hand. “Let you raise your kids like you want to?” She laughed. “In Palm Key that means if you don’t fish or oyster, then you got to stick to hairdressing, or punching a cash register, or waitressing till your feet are flat.”
“Or teaching school.” Mrs. Conner chimed in, leaning closer. Wow!Did she smell bad!
“Wasn’t anything for me either,” Mrs. MacHenry said, “till this clinic opened up. I’ve worn out the top layer of Highway 40 for over twenty years.”
“You’re gonna be fine, George.” My mother was still rubbing his head.
Mrs. Conner bent down. “Bet you won’t put anything up your nose after this.” Then she reached out and touched his knee. He had on these cut-off overalls; he did look cute. Suddenly his nose crinkled up, and as Mrs. Conner got her own nose closer, George sneezed. The rock flew out of his nose and hit Mrs. Conner on the cheek, then fell to the floor between her shoes. “Lord-amercy!” she said.
Good shot, I thought.
My mother stood up. Mrs. Conner stepped back. My mother was still holding George, his feet dangling like wet
