Farthest House

4

4

The bleeding stopped, but Willow needed longer to accept Papa wasn’t coming and she hadn’t been fixed. Finally, she stepped off the stool, shuffled back to her room, and dressed. When she returned to the main room with its sofa, television, and the desk where Papa wrote out checks and licked envelopes and stamps, he was waiting for her by the front door. He hadn’t made himself coffee or her a slice of melty peanut butter toast. The I Dream of Jeannie book bag she carried to school dangled from a strap in his hand. It looked puffy. Not book puffy, the school year had just ended. Clothes.

Now she knew why everything about the morning had been different. They were going someplace she wouldn’t like. To see another doctor? Was that why he packed clothes for her and wanted her dressed nice on a Saturday and thought she needed to learn to get along without him? She wanted to hear his thoughts again, but the thoughts in her own head shouted doctor, doctor, and hospital, hospital.

She ran for Doll.

Julian made the toy for Willow when she was two, balling together a couple of pairs of his socks and tying them into the center of one of her old baby blankets. The socks created a head, and with Willow beside him at the kitchen table, he’d drawn on eyes and red lips. The rest of the blanket hung soft and empty, and though Doll didn’t have shoulders, Willow could see arms and legs. She knew how to work a finger under the string around Doll’s neck so that they didn’t become separated at night. She also knew how Doll’s fading eyes cried real tears whenever Papa wanted them to see a new doctor.

With his longer strides, Julian followed, walking to her run, letting her reach her toy. He was thankful she remembered and would have the familiar object with her. He swung her and her doll into the air. “Come on, Little Bird. We’ll get through this.”

In his arms, she could almost quit worrying, except that he was worrying. “I need my sweater,” she cried.

He grabbed it, and because she loved to swing, he carried her slung under his arm like a bedroll, across the porch and down the steps. At the curb, he put her down and opened the passenger-side door of his black Ford. The odor of stale cigarette smoke rushed her nose, but she didn’t mind the stink; it meant him: a match. Still, she couldn’t relax. She remembered doctors and nurses in white clothes and smelling of soap and medicine pulling her out of his arms and carrying her down long hallways to cold rooms where machines, ceiling-high, whirled and hissed. Because she was afraid and kicked and screamed, they wrapped her in tight blankets and held her down. With her arms and legs bound, she screamed louder, her heart pounding in her chest. Both times, the doctors shook their heads at Julian. No brace would correct the shoulder, and shaving off the burl was impossible without weakening the bone too severely.

Climbing onto the seat of the car, Willow looked back at him. “You don’t have to take me to any more doctors. I’m starting to grow pretty.”

Lines etched between his brows, and he looked over the top of his car to the empty street. He sighed, “Willow.”

Her name sounded far away or spoken from inside a bottle holding too many other things. When he got into the car, she leaned her right shoulder forward, pressing both hands flat on the dashboard. “See, Papa, my arms are the same long. They match now. You don’t have to take me to any more doctors.”

“Quacks,” he said. “Every one of them.”

She believed she’d convinced him. She sank back against the seat, smiling. “They can’t make me pretty, can they?”

He reached, cupping her chin, touching his thumb to her cuts, and for the first time looking hard at them. Thankfully, she didn’t need a stitch or two. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “My mother, your grandmother, wants to see you.” He tapped the bottom of the pack against the heel of his hand and pulled a cigarette free. “I promised her. She’s right, too. Every time I see you with that little friend of yours, I know you deserve more family than just your old man. If something were to happen to me…my line of work…,” he didn’t finish.

The thought of a stranger, even a grandmother, made Willow put on her sweater, just in case. She hadn’t known she had a grandmother. There was a voice on the phone, and sometimes Papa instructed her to say, “Hello.” And from time to time, there’d been an old woman standing in the living room, a woman who even tried to hug her. But Papa never made the woman coffee, never asked her to sit awhile. “How come she isn’t dead?”

The sudden set of Julian’s mouth made her regret asking. His scapula was flat; his mother didn’t have to die.