Writings

The crisp air holds the scent of fall. Tommy sucks back his mucus, laughing at the gurgling sound it makes. Like a choreographed dance, his little brother Josh turns his misty blue eyes up towards Tommy, letting out a full-bodied laugh before toppling onto his knees. Together they stand in the driveway volleying laughs back and forth, catching and tossing them and being as free as the falling leaves that circle and sway around them.

Then the van arrives at the hospital across the street. Their laughter comes to an abrupt halt. They shield their eyes against the early-morning sun and the known probability of a potentially unsettling sight. Josh’s mouth falls agape and his eyes pop open wide, losing his pupils in a sea of blue iris. Tommy reaches for Josh’s hand. Tommy hopes that Josh doesn’t remember what they saw last week. The body came out of the ambulance covered in rivers of blood, haphazardly placed limbs everywhere. It looked like a creation by Dr. Frankenstien. The sight was scarier than Tommy’s scariest comic book in the enormous collection that spills out of his closet, covering a large section of his room floor. Josh climbed into Tommy’s bed every night for a week, bracing himself against yet another nightmare.

Tommy can make out the words “organ” and “van” from the side of the vehicle. He doesn’t know what “transplant” means. He decides to ask his mom, who is locking the front door in a rushed flurry, grabbing at falling bags and muttering in a voice so low all he can make out is that there is sound escaping, like air leaking out of a newly opened bag of chips. She’s wearing Dad’s worn baggy blue sweats like she does most days, a coffee stained, World’s Greatest Mom sweatshirt, and the fuzzy cream socks that Josh loves to snuggle. Her shoes dangle from two fingers like an accessorized afterthought leaving Tommy to wonder how it is that his Mom always seems to forget that she needs shoes to go outside.

***

“Is your brother with you?” Mary calls from the porch, pushing away a mass of unruly curls that have fallen into her eyes.

“Yes,” Tommy cries louder than necessary.

“Good. Keep him there.” She pulls on her second clog and clambers down the steps.

“What does transplant mean?” Tommy asks. Mary shoots him a look that screams, “Why are you bothering me with this right now?” Tommy tilts his head towards the hospital in reply.

“Oh.” Mary adjusts her tone. She scoops Josh into her arms and the child buries his face in her shoulder.

This isn’t the first time the neighboring hospital has sparked odd questions from her children. One afternoon the boys rushed to the living room window, beckoned to the pane of glass by the roar of a helicopter. Was it a teenage girl who was driving too fast for conditions, or an old man who shouldn’t have been driving at all? Maybe it was a lost hiker who was found by a mountain lion instead of a rescue squad. At one time or other it had been all of these tragedies – the ones that feel so detached when you read about them in the next day’s newspaper.

“Sometimes people who aren’t well need to have parts replaced,” Mary huffs the breathless sigh of ritual frustration heard throughout the world – the sigh of having to hold meaningful conversations before a morning cup of coffee.

“Like a car?” he continues to question, stretching his foot to reach the runner of the aging SUV.

“Yes, like a car.”

“What part are they getting replaced?” Tommy twists his body around trying to find the seat belt without removing his eyes from the van.

“Maybe a heart,” Mary tosses out. She lifts Josh into the truck, and places him in his car seat. He fusses as she pulls the straps tight around him, and unintentionally she pulls harder.

“Did you get a new heart when daddy left?” His question jolts through her like a shot of caffeine.

“Why did you ask that?”

“Because you said your heart was broken.” Tommy explains, drawing away from her.

“My heart wasn’t literally broken,” she slows both her pace and her tone, easing her way around the car and climbing into the driver’s seat.

“But if your heart was broken,” Tommy continued in an earnest need to understand, “and say you got a new one, wouldn’t the other person die because they need a heart to live?”

It was moments like these, she suddenly realized, that kept her going – the magical curiosity of children. These days though the moments came too often when she was frantic and hurried. Or perhaps she was just more frantic and hurried.

“Someone who has already died has given their heart,” she explains. Tommy and Josh make eye contact and shudder.

“I know. It’s kind of creepy, huh?”

Mary turns the key in the ignition, cranks up the heat and turns down the radio. She slams the vehicle into reverse, pressing the gas a little too hard trying to make up for lost time.

A booming sound echoes through the car. She has hit something – hopefully not someone, she thinks, stealing a glance towards the hospital. The boys freeze in terror. Mary slowly opens the driver door, shaking as she tries to keep back her tears.

She tip-toes cautiously towards the rear of the car, her heart beating faster and louder with each step. She doesn’t hear any sound; that’s a good sign, she tells herself. She peeks around the back of the vehicle and sees the garbage can, dented and lying on its side in the gutter like a dead animal. She lets out a laugh from deep in her belly, releasing all the tension clutching to her insides. She takes a deep breath as she picks up the can and walks back up the driveway.

“It was just the garbage can,” Mary laughs, holding the bent can above her head. The boys don’t relax. “It was just the garbage can,” she assures them before walking up the driveway and placing it by the side of their house. Returning back to the truck she leans in the driver’s side window. They still look terrified. But now she looks at them, really looks at them. The weight of being both mother and father to these little ones lays heavy upon her. Rather than looking at it as the burden she usually does, today she decides to just be.

“School can wait,” she says hopping into the car with a bright smile lying comfortably on her face. “Who wants to go for hot chocolate?”

***

Tommy’s eyes linger on the van. Thoughts swirl in his head. The van can bring parts to save people. The ambulance brings broken bodies, broken parts. The van brings parts to fix people. Before his Mom turns the corner Tommy steals one last glance at the van and wonders who’s being fixed today.

Tamara Palmer knew she was going to be a writer before she could even write. She would play elaborate dramas out with her Barbies for days,even weeks,on end. As she got older the stories made their way onto a typewriter and as the story goes… Tamara is actively seeking publishers for her two completed novels, Missing Tyler and Finding Lancelot. Her work has appeared in edifice WRECKED. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband. You can read more of her work at www.tamarapalmer.com

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