Stories from my breezeway

The urgent care doctor said that my boys were having an allergic reaction to something and scribbled out a prescription for an antihistamine.  “Take them to your pediatrician on Monday if they don’t improve,” he said.  I grilled the kids about what they’d eaten and what they’d touched but couldn’t figure out what had made their faces so pink and puffy.  They’d never been allergic to anything before and it wasn’t chicken pox.

I was really worried about them but I was also really worried about something else.  Tomorrow was to be my first day at the decent full time job I’d finally landed.  “It’ll be better tomorrow,” I kept telling myself.  “It has to be.”

On Monday morning Ben’s eyes were tiny slits and his lips had blown up into raw bratwursts.  I could see every single pore in the skin on his face and each oozed with sticky yellow puss.  Even his ear lobes were seriously pink and inflamed.  Big brother Sam’s face looked like a slightly inflated pink balloon but was not anywhere near as distorted as Ben’s.

“Don’t worry,” I said, doing my best to stop the terror in my chest from exploding on my own face.  “We’re going to see the doctor right away.”

I left a shaky message for my new boss and waited until Dr. Patel’s office opened at eight.  I dialed the phone and in my most powerful voice declared that we were on the way.

Clearly not wanting Ben’s face to frighten the other patients, the receptionist showed us right into an examination room.  “What happened?!” asked Doctor Patel.  I explained the progression of the boys’ condition.

“You take this one to the hospital right now,” she said, pointing at Ben.  The three of us were ushered out the back door.

I had to figure out what to do with Sam.  I couldn’t bring him along to the hospital and he needed to be looked after too.  My Grandma Miller!  We found her in her back yard hanging mint green sheets on the line.

She parted the laundry and gasped.  “Who is that?” she said pointing at Ben.  “Was there a car accident?  Don’t worry, honey, plastic surgeons can do wonderful things.”  I pried Sam from my leg and dragged Benny by the hand back to the car.

At the hospital, brisk nurses wearing masks quickly ushered us into a quarantined room.  “Bring my school picture here so they know what I’m supposed to look like,” pleaded Ben.  I promised that I would and sat by his bed until he was comfortable and fed and almost asleep.  I got in the elevator to leave along with a two young nurses.  One said to the other, “Did you see that kid in 515?” My heart was breaking in big fat sobs.

Later that night, over a bed time peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Sam was full of questions.  “Can the doctor make Ben better?”  “Will he have to have plastic surgery?” “Will we ever see him again?”

Sam worked his mouth a little like he was chewing invisible gum and then it all spilled out.  “It’s my fault,” he blurted through a storm of tears.  “We were playing army by the railroad tracks and I told Ben to eat the berries!  Poison berries!”  Of course!  In spite of the ceaseless sibling fighting, Benny will do whatever Sam asks him to do– like jump off the top bunk or ride his bike into a wall or eat suspicious berries by the railroad tracks where they are forbidden to play.

On Tuesday, at the first light of day, I climbed the hill to the tracks and found the source of the misery–raspberry bushes growing in the midst of a dense patch of poison ivy.  I could just see them, crawling on their bellies through the vines like GI Joes.

I took Sam to the sitter and went to my new job and explained the situation to my sympathetic boss.  At lunch time, I went to the hospital to be with Ben leaving his school picture on the table beside his bed.  His eyes were open again and he was starting to improve but the doctor warned that a case of poison ivy this bad could take many more days of treatments.  I had to be careful with Sam too–smearing a battery of ointments on his face and changing his sheets every time he lay down so he wouldn’t get re-infected.

Later that night, I was washing another load of sheets  in the basement, a good place to cry in private, and wondering what I was going to do when Ben was released from the hospital, when my other grandmother, Grandma Maly, called.  She ordered me to bring the boys to her house in a nearby town and said that she would look after them until the weekend.  She didn’t want me to jeopardize my new job.

I finished my first week at the job as kind of an embarrassed celebrity (the poor new girl with the really sick kids—“probably cancer,” they whispered) and headed out to get the boys on Saturday morning.  Sam flew out the door to greet me.  Almost normal looking Ben was right behind him.  Grandma Maly watched as we all three embraced and tears of relief flowed from our eyes.

Note:  Ben was 7 when this story happened.  He’s 40 now and happens to have a horrible case of poison ivy on his legs right now.  Thank you Wendy W. for coming to the rescue and caring for him.

My idiot ex husband leaves a voice mail that says my old friend Renae died.  He thought I’d like to know.  It has been over 20 years since I’d last seen her.

I desperately call him back while scouring obituaries online and digging the last months-worth of newspapers out of the recycling bin.  I call a dozen times.  He doesn’t answer.  I remember that she was the one who brought me and my new born second son home from the hospital.  I was alone and afraid in the middle of a divorce.

Renae and I met because our husbands were friends.  We both married when we were 18 years old and pregnant.  Our babies were due on the same day.  We were in touch every day.  Counseling each other through our pregnancies—“I can’t believe what’s happening to my boobs!”—and motherhood—“How long do they have to wear diapers anyway?”—and coping with husbands who were more interested in hanging out in bars than being fathers—“Want to have a sleep over and play Scrabble?” It was like walking a tightrope but finding comfort in the fact that you could look out and see someone else out there along with you, far from the edge.

I take a chance and call the last phone number I had for her.  A number that I kept even when I updated my address book and discarded others.  Disconnected.  I search for her on FaceBook and LinkedIn.  I remember the time that we  took our little boys to State Fair.  She bent over to feed the baby animals and a little goat chewed the buttons off of her blouse.

Finally, the idiot calls back and says that he was mistaken.  She isn’t dead yet but has cancer and will be dead any day now.  “Do you have a phone number?  Does she still live in the same house?”  He doesn’t know.  I remember the night Renae and I called the police because we couldn’t find her son anywhere.  He’d been hiding in the clothes hamper the whole time.

I do the only thing I can do.  I write a letter to the old address.  I tell her that I miss sitting at her kitchen table with a blue mug of black coffee, with her two-year-old daughter perched on top of the table like a little eaves dropper.  I send it out into the universe and hope that it will find her before it’s too late.  I think about Renae’s potato salad recipe, the one with the chicken bouillon cube.  I’m sure I still have it crammed in that dusty old yellow recipe card box.

A week later I get a text.  “It’s good to hear from you.  I have stage four lung cancer.  Probably have less than a year to live.  I would love a visit.”  I remember how proud she was that I went to college after my divorce and that she insisted on giving me a manicure on graduation day.

I don’t know what I expected.  Maybe her lying in bed, gasping for air, weeping in anticipation of our grand reunion.  But the scene I arrive at teleports me back over two decades.  It’s exactly the same.  Her husband and her son pacing around the yard engaged in some vague chore.  Renae meets me at the back door with a cup of coffee.  Everything is the same except now she’s bald.  I remember that when Sam was a toddler with a penchant for wadding up paper and jamming it up his nose, she advised me to shake pepper into my hand and give him a whiff so that he’d sneeze it out.

We fall right back into step.  She shows me pictures of her seven grandchildren and complains about her husband.  We have several more visits.  I take her to lunch at a restaurant on her bucket list.  At a beer garden with our handsome sons who are both now fathers themselves, I have an IPA and she has a coffee.  She never liked beer.  I volunteer for a few trips to the hospital for chemo pushing her wheel chair through the vast hallways, always making a stop at the gift shop.

On the surface, I aim to be helpful but clearly being with her is feeding my own soul in a way that feels selfish.  She doesn’t really need me.  She has plenty of support from legions of friends and family members.  Yet, I get to be the long lost friend that resurfaces just in time to provide comfort.  And I’m paying my penance, assuaging my guilt for leaving her behind, for not taking her with me on the journey of life.

We talk about death.  She tells me that she believes in an after life.  She says that she has to.  She would like me to help her write letters to her children.  But she’s not ready.  I promise to do my best to stay in touch with them.

I wonder why we ever lost touch in the first place.  Would we ever have reconnected if she wasn’t dying?  Will I be able to stay in touch with her daughter Katie any better?  I decide that it doesn’t matter.  What counts for both of us is being together in this moment.  I guess my ex isn’t such an idiot after all.  He called because he knew Renae was important to me and I’m grateful.

Right before Christmas, when Renae can no longer get out of bed, I’m summoned.  She wants to see me.  It will be our last visit.  She has a gift for me.  It’s a bracelet with a “friends forever” charm.  I rub her legs to help ease her pain.  My last gift to her.