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“That’s awful.” A piece of loose tobacco was stuck on Bunny’s lower lip. I reached over to brush it off and startled her. Already, I could tell, we were losing that ease with each other that comes from living together.
“Anyway,” Bunny went on, “in the middle of this, Shorty comes out. He takes one look at what’s happened to his practice green, all that beautiful, soft grass torn up, and he throws himself at this Mel guy, who’d lost the contest but was still taking divots. Shorty just flew at him and knocked him right over. Started hitting him, too, though he’s about half Mel’s size. Mel was so drunk I don’t think he knew what was happening. Then everybody else jumped in and broke it up, but they were really mad at Shorty—you know, getting on him about doing that to a guest and everything. Now they’re gonna take it up with the executive committee.”
“Poor Shorty. What’d he do?”
Bunny shrugged. “You know Shorty. He just kind of growled and crawled back to his room. He was out there today trying to patch up the green. They had it all roped off.”
“That’s so sad. All he ever wants to do is make the grass grow better.”
“And then it usually dries out on him anyway,” said Bunny. “This is the greenest he’s had it in July in a long time.”
The folding chair was tippy and uncomfortable, so I plopped down in the grass. Stretching out, I caught sight of Dwayne, around the corner of the Vernons’ house. He was riding his bike along the sidewalk, staring back at Bunny and me. I waved and Bunny turned. “Oh, yeah, Dwayne was hanging around in front when I got here,” she said.
Bunny had changed clothes before coming over, and she was wearing a sleeveless yellow blouse with buttons down the front. Her arms were beautifully thin and white. She doesn’t care about tanning, and this summer she’d had even less sun than usual. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “We’re supposed to have a session with Mrs. O’Brien tomorrow,” she said wearily. “All of us together.”
“I know. She told me.”
“What more can we talk about? I’ve already given her the family history three times. Plus she’s collected all your records from school. And Tom’s, too. She knows all about him. She knows more about us than we do.”
I plucked at the grass. It had spurted up with the rain, and the lawn was looking a little shaggy. “Sometimes I think I bore Mrs. O’Brien,” I said.
“Congratulations,” said Bunny, without opening her eyes.
The social worker had visited that morning, but instead of staying to talk, she’d taken me out shopping. She was thinking about buying a new washing machine, so we looked at models around town. She was remarkably diligent about gathering information, asking question after question of the salesmen. At Fanzone’s, for examp
le, she kept one salesman so occupied that customers were lining up. The salesman was a bald, nervous little man, and he started sweating through his shirt. He was too polite to move her on, even after it was obvious that she wasn’t about to buy something. Later, Mrs. O’Brien told me she thought the man was “shifty.”
Bunny was quiet for a long time. Somewhere behind us, across the maze of yards and fences, children were laughing and yelling.
“I hear you’ve been talking to that minister from the Congo,” Bunny said. The “Congo” is what she calls the Congregational Church.
“He came to see me. How did you know?” I hadn’t mentioned him to Bunny, and, now that I thought about it, I wasn’t quite sure why. Ordinarily, I’m eager to tell her about someone new I’ve met.
“I’m your mother,” Bunny said. “I’m supposed to know those kinds of things.”
“He’s a nice man. He’s real smart.”
“I’m not sure I like all these people pushing religion on you. Like this one here.” Bunny nodded toward the Vernons’ house. “Who knows what goes on out at that awful church of hers. Probably a lot of chanting and hocus-pocus.”
“Reverend Vaughn isn’t like that at all.”
“Well, he’s got his own problems,” said Bunny.
Dwayne rode past in front of the house again. This time, he stopped. With his thin legs straddling the bicycle, he squinted at us, making a face.
Bunny stretched and moaned. “Ohhh, I’m so goddamned tired,” she said. “Goddamned tired all the time.” She slid down in the chair, folding her hands over her stomach, dropping her chin to her chest, stretching out her legs. There was something manly about sitting like that. She looked as if she were inviting someone to pick a fight.
“Remember when I had scarlet fever?” I said. “Seeing you sitting there reminds me. It seemed like I couldn’t move, and you were always there.” I was six at the time. Bunny was scared to leave me alone through the night, so she had someone carry the easy chair up to my bedroom. She practically lived in that chair. I used to wake up and roll over at night to see if she was still there. She’d be asleep, but with her legs stretched out in that same masculine way, as if death would have to climb over her before it could get to me.
“You were real sick,” said Bunny. “The sickest you’ve ever been. You had a fever of 104, and it wouldn’t go away. I remember one night you woke me up because you were talking nonsense—the fever had gone to your head.”
“What’d I say?”
“Oh, nothing—nothing that made any sense. Words and phrases. Alphabet soup. Stuff about Tom. You kept calling his name. That’s what woke me up. I was groggy myself, since I hadn’t got much sleep, and I gave you four aspirin, like I used to take when I had a bad headache. The next day, Dr. Baker said I was lucky I didn’t poison you.”
“Dr. Baker came a lot. I remember him being there all the time.” During the day, he seemed forever to be standing in the corner of the room, huddling with Bunny. They were always whispering, but his deep voice carried anyway. “Weak heart,” he kept saying. He was worried that the fever would damage my heart. “Weak heart,” I heard over and over, at least in my imagination. Tom picked it up, too. He started calling me “weakheart,” saying the words together quickly, like “sweetheart.” Weakheart. He still calls me that sometimes.
“Dr. Baker’s all right,” said Bunny. “He’s the best man in town.”
