Love Me Tender (4 page)

Chapter 7

IT WAS getting dark when Kerrie made up her mind she couldn't take another minute in the car. Mel didn't cave, but said we ought to try for Knoxville before we stopped for the night.

I looked at the map. Knoxville would be about the halfway point, and maybe a reasonable goal for anybody who hadn't spent half their road time at rest stops.

“Climb into the backseat and keep her occupied,” Mel said.

“Occupied with what?”

“Play a game. Read signs or license plates or something.”

“I can do that from the front seat.”

“She's your little sister,” Mel said. “Just be nice to her. When you grow up, you'll be glad you did.”

“How glad are you?” I asked.

“It's not the same thing at all,” she said. “Climb over.”

The taller I got, the harder this was to do.

“Keep your feet away from my head.”

At the last place, while Mel got gas, I bought Kerrie a kind of glamour kit that looked like it might last longer than ten minutes. She hadn't taken an interest in it right away. The truth was, she was past restroom curiosity and distractions. She just wanted to know, “Are we there yet?”

Now she handed me the glamour kit. It came with glitster nail polish, roll-on body shine, fruit-flavored lip gloss, and rubbery false eyelashes. “They look like big spiders,” I told her.

But I would have loved false eyelashes when I was eight years old.

Of course, I didn't get stuff like this. Mel was too afraid I would look like an Elvisette. I used to wonder why. But when I was ten, a friend of mine told her mother that Daddy was the Elvis at parties. And her mother told me how sorry she was for me.

I told her Daddy wasn't really Elvis. He wasn't dead or anything. He just pretended. I said he was good at it. She laughed like I was really stupid. After that, I knew why Mel acted so standoffish with the other mothers. I got a little standoffish with most of them too.

Using the little plastic mirror that came with the kit, Kerrie applied lip gloss to much of the area under her nose. “Try to stay in the lines,” I told her.

“What lines?”

I shrugged. What did it matter?

She rolled the body shine up and down one arm experimentally. “I don't get it,” she said.

I didn't get it either, but my job was to entertain the child. “Maybe you could try writing your name with it,” I suggested. “On your leg.”

She tried that, and it was kind of cool. If a person didn't mind having sticky stuff on their leg. Then again, she had half a tube of sticky stuff under her nose and that wasn't bothering her.

“Want me to paint your nails?”

“I want the eyelashes,” Kerrie said.

I peeled the peel-off strip and pressed them into place on her eyelids. They were so heavy, she could only open her eyes halfway. “Now the nail polish,” she said.

I turned on the map light to work by. I'd only finished the first hand when Mel started up. “That smell is driving me crazy.”

“It won't be so bad once it dries,” I said.

“I can't wait till then. Roll down the window back there. Hold your fingers outside, Kerrie.”

The wind was so strong, it made wrinkles in the wet polish. But Kerrie couldn't tell. It was hard work to keep those eyelashes up; the rush of air made her shut her eyes.

I finished the other hand and promised to do her toes when we stopped for the night. She nodded, and those newly wet fingertips traded places with the others. She laid her head on the armrest to keep out of the wind.

In about ten minutes she fell asleep. I put a pillow be-hind her head and slid her off the armrest. I climbed back into the front seat, being careful not to bump Mel.

“Is she sleeping?” Mel asked.

“Yep.”

“One more minute of that nail polish and I was gonna hurl.”

You're welcome, I thought.

Mel got us a room in a motel with an indoor pool. We could all three sleep in the king-size bed—four, counting the Belly. It almost felt like we were just out here to have fun.

Mel headed for the bathroom first, still singing in that flat voice. I wanted to try to get into the pool, and they were going to shut the gate in half an hour. I dug through my duffel bag at top speed.

“I want to go to the pool too,” Kerrie said. She had curled up in a huge armchair. “Would you help me take off these eyelashes?”

“Just peel them off,” I said, shimmying into my suit.

“I can't.”

I couldn't either. Kerrie let loose with a loud whine.

“Are you helping?” Mel said from behind the bathroom door.

“I'm trying.” I flicked at the corners with a fingernail and they wouldn't lift. I pulled very gently and Kerrie's eye-lid lifted off her eyeball. That was convincing enough for me. I stopped pulling.

Mel came out of the bathroom, saying, “I think I left my toothbrush at home.”

I said, “That paper strip peeled right off. The glue didn't seem all that sticky.”

Mel looked at Kerrie, who peered back at her through rubber fringes. “Here, baby.”

Kerrie just leaned in her direction until she rested her chin on the Belly. Mel tried to rub the lashes off with her thumb. They didn't budge.

Kerrie started to cry.

“I may just shoot you,” Mel said to me.

I was not in the mood for my efforts to go unappreciated. I said, “I'm not the one who's suffering. I think you ought to shoot Kerrie.”

“You have a smart mouth, Elvira Marie,” Mel said. “That is not an attractive quality in a girl.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” I said. There might have been more of an argument, but Kerrie was now gripping Mel's maternity top and hanging from her, sobbing as if she was hanging from a cliff.

“Stand up, sweetie.” Mel held down Kerrie's eyelid with her thumb and tried to peel those eyelashes off. Kerrie started to shriek. Mel stopped tugging at the eyelashes and pulled her close, in a hug.

Into Mel's ear, I said, “Maybe you have to do it like a Band-Aid, except I was scared to try it.”

“Me too,” Mel said. “Come on, let's go into the bath-room.”

We stood Kerrie in the bathtub and held a dripping wet washcloth against her face. We tried warm water, we tried cold. We watched for the glue to change to a white color that meant it was softening up.

Kerrie sobbed the whole time.

We made her stand facing the warm water of the shower. Despite being a good swimmer, she didn't care to have water hit her in the face. She ratcheted up the sound.

I said, “Couldn't you stop crying and just talk to us?” I hated the way I sounded on the verge of hysteria myself.

When Kerrie's fingers and toes got wrinkled, we wrapped a towel around her and let her lie on the bed, a wet washcloth over her eyes. Mel said, “Does it sting, baby? Is that what's the matter?”

Kerrie didn't answer; maybe she was too worked up to hear.

Twice Mel had to get up to pee, leaving Kerrie to me. The second time she came back, I was saying to myself, over and over,
I just need ten minutes alone.

Mel said, “Don't crash on me now.” So I didn't.

The glue didn't turn white, and it didn't in any other way appear to be softening. Kerrie had altogether given up on trying to open her swollen eyes. In fact, she looked half asleep, even though Mel kept patting and jiggling and otherwise trying to comfort her. The crying was set on automatic.

“Get the other washcloth,” Mel said, handing me the one that had dripped water through Kerrie's hair and into the pillow. “Of all the bright ideas I wish you'd never had—”

It was like Mel pushed a button labeled HORRIBLE GUILT, which set off another marked TEMPER. I stomped off to get the washcloth. This big-sister business was just too much work for too little gratitude.

“Jeez, somebody's gonna call the police,” Mel said when I got back to her.

“You can tell them you found the missing child,” I said.

Mel stood up suddenly, knocking me onto the arm-chair. Not that she pushed me exactly. But the force of her movement brought the Belly square into the space I was occupying. The minute I hit the bed, I yelled, “Violence! Family violence!”

“Oh, shut up,” Mel muttered as she grabbed the phone and pushed 8 for the office. Over Kerrie's sobs, she said, “Can you give me directions to the nearest emergency room?”

Kerrie started to cry harder.

Mel nodded, nodded, scribbling on the edge of a menu for Chinese takeout, then slammed down the receiver and grabbed her pocketbook. “Let's go,” she yelled, taking Kerrie by the hand.

Kerrie had begun to ease up by the time we reached the hospital, mainly because we got lost twice finding the place. What kind of maniac puts an emergency room at the end of no less than three curvy country roads? Well, the kind that built this hospital, that's what kind.

We went through pretty much the same scenario of pull-and-soak with one doctor and then another. Kerrie's voice was by then so hoarse, she could have been mistaken for a donkey braying, but she pushed the volume up with each doctor.

Things were not looking good. Kerrie's hair was matted to her head with tears and sweat. Her face looked like she had the kind of sunburn that wanted to peel—an over-heated red with a sheer top layer of pale skin.

Mel was pretty frayed around the edges. Me too.

A third doctor was sent in, and there were actual tears standing in his eyes. I didn't know whether this meant he was real sympathetic or whether Kerrie was beyond hope. He suggested treating her with some chemical they use to remove superglue when people get their fingers stuck together.

“Are you saying they put superglue on a child's toy eye-lashes?” Mel yelled. She had hit nervous overload.

“I'm saying it's what I know to do,” the doctor said. Everyone had to shout to be heard over Kerrie.

“What kind of stuff is it, to melt superglue?” Mel asked.

“Basically, it's nail polish remover,” the doctor said.

“You want to put nail polish remover in my baby's eyes?” Mel came close to outreaching Kerrie for sound penetration.

“Listen, you can trust us to know what we're doing or you can take your child to another emergency room. It's only forty miles away.”

“Is that any way to talk to a stricken mother?” This was Mel.

“I'm sorry, but I had a migraine when I came in here,” the doctor yelled, shamefaced. “It's reaching a point now where
I
may have to be hospitalized.”

Mel received this apology with uncommon good grace. She could, now and again, pull “gracious” out of a deep, linty pocket and shake it like a wrinkled handkerchief, but the finer effect wouldn't last long.

I leaned in close to Kerrie and said, “No one is going to pull on those lashes. They have some stuff that will melt the glue.”

This got immediate results. She settled down to a dull roar.

One doctor used a Q-Tip to put the supermelter on. The one with a headache stood next to Mel, saying, “We don't really want her to stop crying just yet. The tears are protecting her eyes, washing the chemical away.”

He'd no sooner said this than the eyelashes fell off.

Meanwhile, the hard news had sunk in for me. No one wanted to say it in so many words, but they were afraid Kerrie would end up blind.

I had this sudden picture of my sister's bike in the attic under a veil of cobwebs. Not that we actually had an attic, or I would have turned it into a bedroom a long time ago. But this didn't dim the picture of Kerrie going around with a white-tipped cane, shoulders bowed in defeat. I wanted to do a little crying myself, but the room was al-ready at high tide.

Kerrie's eyes were so puffy, they looked like slits in a pillow. “Can you see your mother's face?” the doctor asked her.

She nodded.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

I let out a silent sigh of relief, one that I could see reflected in Mel's face. The doctor said, “She ought to see her pediatrician for a follow-up, but her eyesight appears to be all right.”

Mel started to cry. I splashed a few tears around myself. Not that anyone noticed. The one doctor immediately told the other, headachy one that he ought to lie back down, and then they were gone, leaving the nurse to see us off.

She had instructions, like what to watch for, blurred vision and allergic reactions. I paid attention. Mel was too busy hugging Kerrie like she'd been grabbed from in front of an oncoming train. Which was pretty much the case. I felt like the whole thing was all my fault. Like I should have tested the eyelashes myself. Something.

Back at the motel, Kerrie fell onto the bed and turned on the TV. I said I would take her for a swim if they'd open the gate for us. It wasn't much, but it was all I had to offer.

She blinked her puffy eyes. “I'm too tired for swimming.”

“Let's go,” Mel said on her way into the bathroom for a pre-drive pee. “I can't sleep now, and I can't sit here and watch TV.”

I started throwing our stuff back in the suitcases.

Kerrie worked up the indignant look that came before she set up a howl, but she really was too tired; she was having to dig deep. “Put it on hold,” I said. “Remember why we're doing this? Mel's mother is dying.”