Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (18 page)

“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” Mother said as she lifted her coffee cup and smiled. “And how’s Theresa?”

 

 

I SAT ALONE in the basement with my bedspread. Fresh out of other talents, I knew that only drastic action could save my parents from permanent humiliation. I feared that if Val and I didn’t come up with an alternative soon, Mother and Dad would have to quit our church in disgrace. We would be forever branded losers, forced to wear scarlet L’s and suffer the scorn of four-fifths of the Edwards clan for all time.

Silently, I asked God for something to even the score. Something simple. Something unique.

 

 

OVER THE NEXT YEAR, Frances and I began to discover that we had more and more in common and began to spend a lot of time together, always at the Edwardses’ home. Although our love for the arts was one of the interests that bonded Frances and me, the theatrical rages that Mother performed nightly were not the type of performances I felt would inform Frances’s craft.

Donny, although frequently at home, was busy attempting nuclear fission in the basement and couldn’t be bothered with IQs under 200. Theresa could usually be found rehearsing the
Gilligan’s Island
theme song in the den, and after several hundred reruns, was tantalizingly close to memorizing it.

Mrs. Edwards, on the other hand, enjoyed being on hand for the shows we regularly premiered in their living room. I played sensitive, muted trumpet as underscore to Frances’s interpretive readings from the likes of Sylvia Plath and Rizzo from
Grease
. We frequently had no idea what they meant, but we both scowled a lot to indicate the vast pools of emotional depth we were plumbing.

Always an enthusiastic supporter, Mrs. Edwards seemed to grow increasingly moved by these performances as our shows began to reflect ever more insightful (to us) observations of the human condition. As the months passed, she often began to look stricken halfway through the show, and by the finale would clap quietly, and then disappear into the bedroom, obviously to contemplate the profundity of what she had just seen.

My appreciation of her support, along with the fact that the year had passed relatively competition-free, had begun to change the dynamic between our families. Harvey, in particular, seemed to mellow a bit, his traditionally overbearing style replaced with a quieter demeanor that verged on pleasant. This pronounced change of character alternately confused and thrilled Val and me. Had we finally achieved a level of respect in Harvey’s eyes?

The answer seemed to come over dinner at our house, when Harvey premiered his kids’ latest achievements. Mrs. Edwards had stayed home with the flu, so when he quieted us all to make his latest announcement, we assumed it would come with a heaping helping of braggadocio.

“I guess I always hoped Donny would make the Ivy League,” Harvey began, suddenly sliding into a level of personal reflection we were highly unaccustomed to. “Make up for the fact that I went to such a crappy school.” I caught a quick glance between Mother and Dad, who were obviously surprised by this admission as well. “He got accepted to MIT.”

Val and I had no idea what MIT was or where it was located, but it sounded impressive and obviously was.

Normally, during an announcement this big, Harvey would be soaking up the attention like a pharaoh receiving his supplicants. But he just sat there, moving the peas around his plate and smiling an odd, distant smile as we all turned to congratulate Donny.

 

 

MRS. EDWARDS MISSED church three weeks in a row.

“What’s up with your mom?” I whispered to Frances as we sat together in the back pew.

“Her flu turned into pneumonia,” Frances replied.

“Yikes! Isn’t pneumonia something old people get?”

“Yeah. But she’s forty-two, that’s pretty old.”

That night, as we drove to church for round two of Sunday services, I dug for more information.

“What’s pneumonia?”

“Pneumonia?” Dad asked. “It’s a respiratory infection. Like a bad cold in your lungs. Remember, Grandma Ruth had it.” I didn’t remember. “Why?” he asked.

“ ’ Cause Mrs. Edwards has it.”

I saw Mother, who always rode with the passenger-side visor down (so she could evaluate herself in the vanity mirror that was clipped to it) shoot a glance at Dad. There was silence.

“How long before she’s better?” I asked.

More silence. I stared at Mother and Dad. Why was no one speaking?

“She doesn’t have pneumonia,” Mother said without turning around. “She has cancer.”

I felt as though I’d had the wind knocked out of me. CANCER. That was bad. People die from cancer.

“Is she gonna be all right?”

Another long pause. “We don’t know.” I stared at the visor mirror. Mother appeared to have tears in her eyes. She glanced back with the sudden realization that she was being watched, and flipped the visor up with a snap.

The Edwards clan was absent from church that night. I called Frances the minute we returned home.

“Your mom doesn’t have pneumonia, does she?”

“No,” Frances responded quietly. “But Dad doesn’t want us to tell people.” I heard her voice catch.

My mind reeled. What had I done? I had invoked my magical abilities to even the score, completely unaware of the potential consequences. Had I somehow brought this upon her?

Since my mother was closest to the situation, I decided she would have the most insight, painful as it would likely be to extract. Later that night, as she was ironing place mats in the laundry room, I crept in, fumbling with the doorknob so as to indicate my approach, since her sotto voce mumblings, a popular feature of her laundry room stints, included thoughts and opinions about my father, our relatives and her job that were not exactly candy to a young boy’s ears.

“I wish he were
dead
,” Mother muttered, shooting steam onto the place mat as though she held a handgun.

I cleared my throat as further indication that another, potentially impressionable human was present.

“One day, as God is my witness, I’m gonna poison that idiot.”

“Just came to get a magazine,” I said by way of apology as I began rifling through the stack of
Mad
magazines in my toy chest, hoping that she was referring to one of the mice that periodically took up residence in our basement.

“Did I hear the water in the kitchen?” she barked.

“No, uh-uh, it was the bathroom,” I replied quickly, knowing that had I gotten the kitchen sink wet, all bets were off.

“Well, hurry up.”

I pulled out one magazine, then another, sizing up the contents intently. Another shot of steam
psss
ed forth from the iron as Mother set her jaw, intent on making those wrinkles relent.

“That’s really sad,” I began, peering intently at the cover of
Mad
issue #802. I waited for a response. None came. “About Mrs. Edwards.”

More steam. “It’s a tragedy,” Mother replied.

“She’ll get better, right?” I said hopefully.

Mother didn’t look up. “It doesn’t look good. It’s spread to her lymph nodes.”

I didn’t know what lymph nodes were, but they sounded ominous. “How come she has cancer?” I asked in as offhand a voice as I could muster. “Did she get exposed to radiation or something?”

“Who knows? Why does anyone get cancer?” Mother replied. “It just happens. It’s God’s will.”

“Why?”

Mother sighed heavily. “Ask your father.”

Dad was upstairs in his corduroy La-Z-Boy, nodding off to
Starsky & Hutch
. I tapped his arm with the
Mad
magazine.

“It wasn’t on the list!” he mumbled defensively.

“Dad?”

His eyes opened. “What’s wrong?”

“Mother said to ask you why Mrs. Edwards has cancer.”

He shook himself awake and handed me a Slim Jim from his secret stash behind the fireplace tools. “Nobody knows,” he replied gently. “There are just some things we’re not meant to understand. It’s just a part of God’s plan.”

“But what if—”

“Eric, you can’t ‘what if.’ God knows better than we do.”

 

 

THE MONTHS DRAGGED ON, and as Mrs. Edwards slowly got worse, so did my panic. She had been in and out of the hospital five times. She had lost nearly sixty pounds and was confined to bed as the chemotherapy stripped her body not only of the cancer cells, but of all healthy ones as well.

Every afternoon now, I planted myself in the basement rocker and buried my face in the bedspread. I summoned all my powers to envision Mrs. Edwards rising out of her bed, plump and cherubic once again, to make raspberry pie and applaud our performance of the climactic scene from that week’s episode of
Good Times
.

For brief moments, it would appear to be working; Flo would attend church, weak but present, a brunette bouffant wig gracing her now bald head. Then word would come of a relapse. She would be back in the hospital. The cancer had spread yet again.

The final blow came when it infected her bones. Her body was now so ravaged that any hope of a miracle had long since been abandoned. Mother, Val, Dad and I stood with Harvey in the vestibule of our church as friends stopped to offer words of support and encouragement. Harvey just nodded, unable to respond.

As the last of the parishioners departed, he turned to Mother and Dad, quietly choking back tears. His expression said it all, and without a word, they each put a hand on his shoulder.

He glanced into their eyes and then quickly looked away, afraid that their expressions might open a floodgate in him. “I think this may be it.”

 

 

DAD AND I were grilling Spam on the barbecue for lunch. I turned to him.

“Are you guys gonna go see Mrs. Edwards again?”

“Yeah, probably tonight.”

“Can I go?”

Throughout Mrs. Edwards’s hospital stays, I had been too afraid to visit her, always begging off, and Mother and Dad had never pressed the issue. But I knew that if I was ever to confess my role in what had happened to her, it had to be now.

“Sure,” Dad replied. “But you can’t talk too much. She’s pretty sick.”

That evening, we made the trek to Barnes, a noted cancer hospital in the city. As a suburban kid, I should have been marveling at the exotic urban blight as we drove through the depressed downtown area of St. Louis—look, bullet holes! Wow, a body in a dumpster!—but I was busy envisioning a dramatic healing that I knew in my heart I didn’t have the power to pull off.

When we arrived, Harvey ushered us into the room. Mrs. Edwards smiled feebly as we entered. The vibrant woman I knew was gone. She was gaunt, and her thin, papery skin had a yellowish color. She seemed to have aged fifty years.

Mother made a slight whimpering sound, shocked at the change since her last visit. She rounded the bed and immediately took Flo’s hand. Flo said simply, “Elaine,” as if it were a precious, sacred word, and in that moment I realized the bond between the two women. Mother blinked back tears as she raised Flo’s hand to her face, then lightly kissed her fingers, one by one, a gesture of such warmth and intimacy that it shocked me.

I stood watching them as they whispered together, until an African-American nurse entered. Her name tag read Loretta.

“Can y’all give us a minute?” she said to the assembled group.

“We’ll be right back,” Mother said to Flo as she gently laid her hand on the bed and stepped away, allowing Loretta access. Harvey opened the door and ushered Mother and Dad out, closing it behind him, obviously forgetting I was present. The nurse made a move to shoo me out, but Flo whispered, “Let him stay.”

I crossed to the opposite side of the bed as the nurse changed a hanging plastic bag.

“It was very sweet of you to come,” Flo said haltingly, every word obviously an effort. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m so sorry!” I blurted out.

The corners of her mouth turned up in a faint smile. “Me too. You’re gonna be somebody. I wanted to be there to see it.”

“No,” I stopped her. “I’m sorry for—”

She suddenly gasped. “Oh, look!” She raised her arm slightly and pointed to the foot of her bed. “Daddy’s here.”

There was no man in the room. I glanced at the nurse, unsure what to make of this.

Without missing a beat, Loretta leaned down to whisper into Flo’s ear. “He’s here to take you to the Promised Land,” she said quietly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” Flo replied. She stared across the room, smiling for a long moment at nothing. Finally, Loretta patted Flo’s hand and opened the door for the others to return.

On the way home from the hospital, I related to Mother and Dad what had transpired while they were out of the room.

Mother clucked her tongue sadly. “Her father’s been dead for almost ten years. She’s hallucinating now. It must be the drugs.”

Dad nodded. “But at least she’s not in pain.”