The Nakeds Page 6

  There was a fruit cup and a carton of milk on the tray in front of Hannah. A stale roll left over from lunch and a little ball of butter in a glass dish. She used her fingers to pick up a chunk of pineapple and ate it.

  Nina turned back to Hannah and let the curtain fall behind her. “Katy can’t say much just yet, but she was nodding. I imagine she’s still in pain. Poor her.”

  Poor me, Hannah thought.

  “Very nice girl, though—sweet as sugar,” she continued. “Billy down the hall had a terrible case of the flu—I met his mother in the elevator.”

  Hannah used her fingers again to pick up a slippery slice of peach.

  “Use your fork,” her mom said.

  Hannah ignored her. She wanted her mom to stop talking about the other sick kids and focus on her—she was the one who nearly died, not Katy with her sore throat or Billy with his flu.

  When a nurse brought Katy a wheelchair, Hannah leaned over and whispered in her mother’s ear. “Why does she need a wheelchair if she can walk on her own?”

  Nina explained that leaving in a wheelchair was hospital policy and that when Hannah was discharged she too would sit in a wheelchair and be pushed out to the parking lot. She looked at Hannah’s leg then, and Hannah followed her mother’s eyes and looked at her leg as well, and there it was, still in traction, still hanging there. They looked at the exposed toes that Hannah still couldn’t wiggle. Her mom gave her a weak smile that neither of them believed and then they sat in silence, listening to the sounds on the other side of the curtain. A drawer opened and closed. A suitcase snapped shut. Someone coughed. The nurse said, “Easy now, careful, sweetie. That’s right.” They heard Katy situate herself in the wheelchair she didn’t need, and the squeak one of the toys made as someone gathered it in his or her arms.

  Then they were leaving, all of them, the nurse pushing Katy, and her cheerful parents following, stuffed animals and dolls spilling from their folded arms.

  “Get well soon, Hannah,” the mother said.

  “Take care—both of you,” said the father, his eyes on Nina.

  And the toy, wherever it was, squeaked one last time.

  Although they hadn’t had time to bond or even talk to each other, Hannah felt abandoned. When Katy turned around at the door and waved good-bye, Hannah kept her hands under the blanket and barely mustered up a smile.

  “When do I get to go home?” she whined as soon as they were gone.

  “Dr. Seth needs to remove the tube first. You wouldn’t want to go home with that, would you?” Her mom looked over at the machine.

  Hannah said nothing. Of course she didn’t want to take the horrible thing home.

  They were quiet for several minutes until her mom said, “The kids at school were worried about you and they’re all so relieved you’re getting better. Oh, and I almost forgot,” she said, excited. “Everyone in your class signed another card.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a big envelope, handing it over.

  On the front of the card, monkeys swung from trees, and on the inside, it said Get Well Soon. We want you up and monkey-ing around. Hannah looked at the signatures and messages, spending an extra moment on Eddie Epstein’s words. He’d written I like you or I bite you, Hannah couldn’t be sure.

  When she was finished reading the card, she handed it back to her mom, who immediately pinned it to the board alongside the others.

  “Who brought you this?” Her mom picked up the snow globe and gave it a shake. “I love these things,” she said. “The snow reminds me of Philly. Where did this thing come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. And she didn’t know. The snow globe was like the paper dolls and the purple flowers—things that had appeared out of nowhere.

  “I think the nurses are secretly giving you presents. Or even the doctors. Everyone likes you so much. You’re such a brave girl.”

  “I’m not brave,” Hannah said.

  “What are you talking about?” her mother said, still shaking the snow globe. “Of course you’re brave.”

  Just then Dr. Seth arrived and startled Nina. She quickly placed the snow globe on the nightstand and stood to greet him. She stared up at his face, smiling, fixing her hair with her fingers again. “Good to see you, Dr. Seth,” she said, using a voice Hannah didn’t recognize.

  “Good to see you too. Good to see you both,” Dr. Seth said, but he was looking only at her mom and her mom was looking only at him and they were talking only to each other. Dr. Seth asked Nina how she was holding up, how she was doing on her own now, and Nina shot him a look that told him Hannah didn’t know her father had left yet. But she did—of course she did.

  “Oh, oh,” Dr. Seth said, wincing.

  “It’s OK. You saved Hannah’s life. You saved my baby,” Nina said, not looking at her baby at all, but into Dr. Seth’s eyes.

  “I’m happy I could help. Your daughter’s a gem,” he said.

  “We’re lucky. I was just telling Hannah how lucky we are.” And then her mom was again poofing her damn hair.

  Hannah couldn’t look at the two of them anymore. She looked at the silent television hanging from the ceiling and turned up the volume and switched channels, impatiently, madly, until her mom finally looked at her and asked what was wrong.

  “I want to go home,” Hannah said. “I want to see Dad.”

  “Soon, honey,” her mother said, sweetly now, attentive again.

  Dr. Seth moved closer to her bed then. “I certainly hope so,” he said. He checked under the sheets, making sure the tube was secure. He asked if anything specifically hurt Hannah, if she needed pain medicine, if she was able to sleep through the night. “That tube’s nearly done its job. She’s just about all cleaned out,” he said, smiling.

  “I want to see Dad,” Hannah said again.

  “Look at those pretty flowers. Look at that big card!” Dr. Seth said, walking over to the corkboard. “Who sent you these monkeys?”

  “Where is my dad?” she wanted to know.

  16

  FOR THE last week, Martin had preferred his parents’ den to his own apartment. Before hitting the couch, he’d go to their kitchen, where he’d lean into the refrigerator’s cold and pull something from a shelf or he’d stand in front of their well-stocked liquor cabinet, pouring vodka or gin into a coffee cup. The shag carpet in the den was bright orange. The TV was a box with rabbit ears. The couch was brown and plaid and gave way under his body, the springs underneath him squeaky and unforgiving.

  Sometimes he went to their new restaurant even though it wasn’t open yet and he only took up space, walking around the two rooms, staring at things: the six ovens all in a row, the soda machine, the knives lined up on the wall.

  Or he was at the hospital.

  Martin knew he should go upstairs to his studio and try to sleep in his own bed, instead of sitting in his dad’s recliner, listening to his sister chatter on, but he didn’t want to be alone. Alone—even stoned alone or drunk alone—meant alone with his thoughts and his thoughts inevitably turned to the girl.

  Sandy sat on the couch with her bare feet up on the coffee table, painting her nails. Even her fingers were skinny. She was focused, deliberate, and slow, as if those skinny fingers were the most important things in the world. It was four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, game day, and his sister was still in her stupid black and gold skirt and sweater, her pompoms on the coffee table next to her feet and an open, uneaten bag of pretzels, and what looked like a Slurpee. “You know the girl who was hit by a car?” she said.

  “I don’t know her,” he said, startled.

  “You know what I mean.” Sandy rolled her eyes.

  “What about her?”

  “Billy Judson says that she’ll never walk again. And that her leg is all deformed.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear. Billy Judson’s not a doctor.”

  “I’d rather die than be deformed,” she said.

  Martin decided that secretly drinking was a
lmost like drinking alone, especially in front of his idiot sister. He sat with a folded map of the United States in his lap, sipping his vodka and orange juice and trying to ignore her. She was oblivious, so self-involved, he thought, he could take out a needle and shoot some heroin and she probably wouldn’t even notice.

  “The kids at school say the girl’s going to be crippled. If she lives,” she said.

  Martin was glad his parents were working late and was looking forward to Sandy leaving soon for the game. He’d have the house to himself. He could drink, beat off, and sleep as much as he wanted to. He unfolded the map and smoothed it out.

  “Billy says that she’s crippled. I’d rather be dead than crippled,” Sandy said.

  Martin said nothing. He lifted his cup and took a big swallow. He set the cup down hard, smacking the glass table next to him, startling Sandy so that she slipped, the little brush she’d been aiming at her fingernail going off course.

  “Damn it,” she said. “Look what you made me do, Marty.” She held the finger up to him, a red line going from knuckle to nail.

  “Fuck you too,” he said.

  “Why don’t you go up to your own apartment and leave me alone? I don’t know why you moved up there. You’re always here.” She dipped the brush back into the polish and didn’t look at him.

  He hated the way nail polish smelled and wondered how girls could stand it.

  He hoped Sandy’s team lost tonight and that Billy dropped the fucking football.

  Perhaps she’d twist her ankle while doing a cheer.

  He wished his parents could see through her.

  He hoped they couldn’t see through him and that they believed he’d registered for classes.

  He wished he had registered.

  He wanted to talk to Penny again.

  He was sorry he was drinking his parents’ most expensive vodka and he wasn’t sorry he was drinking it.

  He thought it was strange that he could feel two opposing things at once. Maybe he was crazy—the injured girl always on his mind.

  He dreamt about her almost every night.

  In last night’s dream she was older than she was or he was younger than he was—and she was in love with him. She had an arm for a leg in the dream, but he didn’t care, he was in love with her too. It was just a dream, but it freaked him out when he thought about it—and he thought about it a lot. He didn’t know the girl and he certainly didn’t love her. He felt terrible that he hit her, sure, but he wasn’t in love with her. It was gross to even think about. She was a little kid and he was a grown guy. Thinking about the dream made him feel like a pervert, made him want to take another shower, and worse, much worse, gave him a boner. He adjusted himself, pushed his boner down, which he was able to do discreetly because of the map across his lap.

  “You’ve been acting even weirder than usual lately,” his sister said, working on her thumb with the little brush. “Are you even going to school? I bet you’re not. Shouldn’t you have bought books by now or school supplies or something?”

  “Shouldn’t you shove that pompom up your ass?”

  “They say her liver had to be removed. I’d rather die than live without my liver,” Sandy said, twisting the cap on the bottle of nail polish. “Wouldn’t you rather die?” she said.

  “And how long do you think someone can live without a liver, Sandy?” he said.

  She didn’t answer him. She leaned over, and without using her hands, without messing up her precious nail polish, took a loud sip from the straw. She sucked and sucked.

  Martin stared at her lips around the straw and decided that she was fucking Billy Judson, and probably giving him head too. “You’re a slut,” he said.

  “I’m not a slut,” she said, adamantly. “A slut fucks a lot of people—and I only, well, I only make love to one.”

  “Make love,” he mocked. “I might like you better if you were a slut.”

  She held her hands up on either side of her head, her fingers splayed out dramatically, waving like a lunatic. “Go home,” she said.

  He picked up the remote and turned on the television. The newscaster was talking about the nineteen mountain climbers who died on Mount Fuji in an avalanche. Martin was thinking that it was dangerous enough just getting up in the morning and walking to school, let alone climbing a fucking mountain.

  “They shouldn’t have been up there,” Sandy said. “You won’t catch me on a mountain.”

  Martin downed his drink and thought about making another one. More vodka this time, fewer ice cubes, less orange juice. He’d feel better. His sister could chatter on and he’d have no trouble closing his eyes and zoning out. He’d be able to look at his map and ignore her completely.

  Tony would be home by six o’clock and he’d call him then. He could tell him that Sandy was fucking Billy Judson. He could tell him that she was probably giving him head too, that she’d accept a mouth full of dick but wouldn’t eat food.

  “Mom and Dad think something’s wrong with you,” Sandy said suddenly.

  “Yeah, well,” he said.

  “They’re not even sure if they want you to work at the new restaurant.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” he said.

  “Well, Mom says your mood better improve if you’re going to be head waiter.”

  “My mood? What about you, Sandy? Skinny, fucking you. Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

  “Aren’t I what?”

  “I see you playing with your food, moving it around on your plate. Anything to keep it out of your mouth, huh?”

  “Something is wrong with you,” she said, emphatically. “No wonder they don’t want you around.”

  “I’m moving anyway,” he said, looking down at the map in his lap. There were so many places he could live, state after state after state. He ran a finger from Southern California to Nevada, and then scooted it all the way to New York.

  17

  HANNAH SAT up on the examination table, her bare leg at an angle in the doctor’s hand. He had just removed the first cast, in which she’d spent eight weeks, and was preparing to put on a second one.

  Hannah’s injured leg was whiter and thinner than her right leg and Nina wished the doctor would hurry up and get the second cast on so they wouldn’t have to look at it. She wanted the leg covered up, not only for her own eyes but for Hannah’s too. She didn’t want Hannah to ask the doctor questions about her leg’s appearance, and didn’t want to hear the answers.

  Dr. Bell was a large man with heavy jowls. He sat on a little stool at the foot of the examination table. His body spilled over the sides of the stool and although Nina thought he looked like an enormous mushroom, she found herself using that voice with him and giving him that smile. She told herself that if Dr. Bell were attracted to her, he’d work harder to fix her daughter’s problems.

  He took a little wheel with several dull spikes sticking out of it and rolled the wheel up and down Hannah’s calf and ankle, asking if she could feel it. He rolled the wheel on her foot, the bottom first, trying to tickle her, but got no response. Then he tried the top of her foot—again, nothing. He asked Hannah to wiggle her toes, which was something she couldn’t do the whole time she was in the hospital, but she could do it now, and she did.

  “Good girl,” Nina said, as if Hannah had done the dishes or made her bed without being asked.

  The doctor wore bifocals with thick black frames. He was jowly, his skin ruddy and wrinkled. The one oily strand of gray hair he had left was combed back over his bare scalp. “Can you move those toes up?” he said.

  Hannah tried.

  She tried again.

  When they wouldn’t move up, she moved them down.

  “Move them up, not down. ‘Up,’ I said.”

  Nina squeezed her daughter’s hand. She willed her daughter’s toes to move up, not down, and nothing. Hannah tried again and again. Nina could see it on her face, how Hannah concentrated and focused—and still, nothing, not the slightest quiver. The doctor might
as well have asked her to fly around the room or read his mind or bend a fork without touching it.

  Dr. Bell looked disappointed and Nina felt afraid, biting her bottom lip. “Try once more, baby,” she said.

  “I can’t. They won’t move. They’re stupid.”

  “Toes can’t be stupid. People can be stupid,” Dr. Bell said. “And you’re certainly not stupid, Hannah. You’ve been injured,” he said gently.

  Two new rolls of plaster were smoking in the sink behind his head.

  It was only Hannah’s second cast, but Nina already knew the steps: first the gauze, then the cotton, then the plaster—she wished he’d hurry up.

  Nina was mostly concerned with Hannah walking again, of course, and by not asking about aesthetics, what the leg would eventually look like, she could make her own prognosis. Certainly the atrophy was to be expected and was temporary. Of course Hannah’s leg would plump right up once the last cast was removed. Her ankle, though, alarmed Nina—it was sunken and the foot itself was twisted inward, like a pigeon’s.

  “The toes are stupid,” Hannah said again, her voice sharp. She was angry, not only at her mother and Dr. Bell, but at her toes, talking about them as if they weren’t quite hers. Her fingers and other limbs behaved, responded to her internal orders, and her left leg, by comparison, was becoming her bad leg, the leg that wouldn’t listen.

  It was a bum leg.

  It was a peg leg.

  It was something separate from the rest of her, yet very much attached.

  The three of them stared at her stubborn toes. “Move them up, not down,” he had said. It was there on Nina’s face, how important his request was, how everything depended on this one seemingly simple thing Hannah could not do.

  “You can’t move them up?” Nina’s voice cracked.

  Hannah shook her head, trying not to cry.

  “It’ll come back to you, I’m sure. These things take time. We just need to be patient.” Nina left her daughter’s side then and went to the corner of the room where she’d left her purse. She searched inside it for a minute with both hands, then popped something into her mouth. “An aspirin,” she told Dr. Bell, who was looking at her.