Replacing Dad. Shelley Fraser Mickle
me of the handlebars on a bike. I knew that in just a minute Mom was going to tell Dr. Haley the truth: that she’d gone to school to be an artist and didn’t even finish that. I didn’t even know she’d once had that nurse and doctor thing.
But instead she said, calm and quick, “Fine. Sounds wonderful. Give me two weeks.”
She put on George’s shirt, patted him on the back, made sure he had a close hold on his rock, thanked Dr. Haley again, and was standing in front of Mrs. MacHenry’s desk by the time Mandy and I caught up. “I can’t believe I did that,” she was saying to Mrs. MacHenry.
“I can,” Mrs. MacHenry laughed. “This is just the job you’ve needed all along. And don’t worry. I’ll help.”
My mother reached over and touched Mrs. MacHenry’s arm. “God, Betty. What would I do without you?”
Mrs. MacHenry grinned, “Not much. That’s for sure.” Her teeth parted her lips, reminding me a little of how my johnboat plows through the Gulf.
My mother laughed, “Betty, you’re such a mess,” she whispered, then added: “And by the way, send the bill to George the First.” “Damn tootin’,” Mrs. MacHenry said.
And we were out the door.
A second later. Mom stopped on the sidewalk, still holding George, looking stunned and just staring at the green Toyota parked at the curb. “Why did I do that? Am I losing my mind? What’s wrong with me?”
Neither me nor Mandy nor George answered. Hell! What were we supposed to know? Besides, it wasn’t our job. I didn’t know what to say to women. Even if it was my mother who was asking, I didn’t know what to say.
I watched her looking out across the street at nothing, her eyes glazed. “He didn’t say he definitely wanted a nurse. He just said medical assistant. Didn’t he say that first?” she glanced at us.
We were all nodding.
“Of course he did. I’m that. I can be a medical assistant. Betty’s right. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
She pressed George close to her again. “I had to do it,” she said. “I’ll be here, close. I bet it even pays more. Anything would.”
We were still standing, looking out into the street. Whenever Mom got stuck like that, we tried to just stay calm and wait it out. The sky was slate gray, almost dusk. The sun was hunkering down like an orange basketball, sweetly dunked and about to fall through the net of the Gulf. And then my mother opened the door to the Granny Apple and got in.
Mandy and George the Second got in the back, and I sat in front. “This is going to be fine. Really fine,” she was saying.
She was still talking as she put the gear in D, and we blasted off onto the main road of Palm Key. We sped along the coast road and out to the airport. She was giving us a little spin, like we’d often done after those first few days when Dad moved out. “Let’s get out of here for a while,” she’d say, even sometimes late at night when we’d all be up watching movies. And we’d all get in the car, sometimes George asleep, and she’d drive and drive and drive. We’d skirt the Gulf, hugging the gray water and curling around it wherever it touched land. George would be asleep in my lap, the smell of his pajamas coming up over me, clean, sweet, and sour all at the same time—his head jostling in my lap like a warm melon.
And now we were driving out to the airport, which was just a big strip of pavement between marsh and ocean. Only little things could land, tiny private planes that came in on weekends like metal mosquitoes touching down. Sometimes the people flying them just taxied them up into the yards of their weekend houses and parked them. Which I guess said a lot about the kind of people who took a liking to Palm Key.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” Mom parked beside the end of the runway. We looked out into the Gulf, where the sky at dusk reached the water in the same color.
The sun sat on the water for a long second, and we said goodbye to it as it slipped slowly down, then fell into the water and disappeared. The sky was now like gray cotton, thick and even, and swallowing the water, too.
Mom didn’t start the motor, or even move. We just sat awhile, the windows rolled up so the little no-see-um bugs couldn’t get in and eat us.
She was calmer now. Dressed up in the clothes she wore to work, she looked pretty fine—even though it’s hard to be sure about how your mother looks. But she seemed to look businesslike, at least. And not bad for someone so old. And I could tell as she sat beside me that she was scared. Just practically about to lose it good after she’d taken a job she had no business taking. Except that the business was us.
I knew we were the reason she was staying in Palm Key. Same house. Same car, till only recently. Every day we get to see Dad. Even when she grounds us, she says that doesn’t include Dad.
She’d do anything for us. Which, I guess, in the whole long run of things, is really probably the best of all things to know.
“Look.” She pointed up into the sky out over the Gulf where a tiny plane was coming in, its lights like a net of stars. We sat there, watching, still, not saying a thing, following the path of the lights out over the water, and holding our breath at the mystery of how it could land in the dark.
We needed to see that.
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