“Who even knew there was such a law?” Uncle Dan said the next day. “There’s a two-inch exception but show more than that and you’re hit with community service and fined five hundred bucks.”
“Two inches? Did they measure?”
“They didn’t have to,” he said. “You could fit a truck through that crack.”
“Good thing there’s no parking on the beach.”
. . . . .
As a precaution they brought me to the Emergency Room, where I spent six hours before a doctor told me I was lucky and sent me home. While I waited, Nancy sat in the hard-backed chair beside my hospital bed humming what sounded like a tango. It was a double room, and the patient on the other side moaned behind the paper curtain while a woman comforted him with a string of Hail Mary’s in a dirty mix of English and Russian.
Nancy stared at the TV hanging over the bed, which was tuned to an infomercial for hair products, or maybe it was a George Foreman grill. There was nothing wrong with me, but my attention was scattered; I felt shot, beat, ready for ten hours of uninterrupted slumber, and I must have nodded in and out as I lay there on crisp white hospital sheets trying to remember what it had felt like to be dead.
I dreamt of Amy, one of those goofy erotic dreams in which no actual lovemaking occurs but everything is charged with sex. When I woke up the nurse told me that my wife had stopped by, seen me sleeping, and left. Amy, of course.
“Did the woman say she was my wife, or are you just assuming?” I asked.
“There are seventy-five patients on this wing,” she said. “I really don’t remember.”
“We made love last night, for the first time,” I said, because I had to tell someone.
The nurse smiled, then double-checked my chart for any notes on head injury.
I continued to drift in and out, the only constant being Nancy, parked beside the bed as if never planning to leave.
“This is a nice hospital,” she said, to herself, I think. When an orderly brought me a cup of canned peaches and a pair of dinner rolls, Nancy stared at them longingly until I muttered, “Help yourself.”
The peaches disappeared in two spoonfuls; she dunked the roll into the fruit syrup and bit off a chunk.
“That hospital in Kansas City, that was a bad place,” she said. “I did not like it, but Carl said they would help me. They didn’t help at all. Doctor Langhorne is a monster man. I sure hope he doesn’t work here.”
“Who’s Carl?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
“My husband,” she said. “Carl Adanaro, 14 Regency Court, Fairway, Missouri.”
The next day Uncle Dan confirmed that in her early thirties she’d been married for four years to a certified public accountant. “I met him a few times. Carl Adanaro. Not a bad guy, just in over his head. Every year for her birthday he sends her a VISA gift card and a box of chocolates. He’s remarried now. They met while she was working at Macy’s.”
“I didn’t realize she ever worked.”
“She’s had a life, Donnie. Did you think she’s been in a storage crate all these years?”
“No …” But maybe I did. I needed to start paying attention.
Suddenly freezing, I pulled the sheets up to my shoulders. The admitting nurse had warned that I’d probably get the chills. “Press this button if you need soup or hot tea,” she said. “And there’s an extra blanket on that shelf over there.”
Nancy grabbed the remote and aimed it at the television, surfing the channels until settling on the Food Network, a Chinese guy with a knife dissecting a stalk of bok choy. “When’s Danny coming back?” she asked.
I didn’t know. After they loaded me onto the ambulance and drove me from the beach, he’d gone home to pick up Nancy and then disappeared. I couldn’t call him—my phone was somewhere in the Atlantic, shark food by now.
“He’ll be back soon,” I told her. “But for now it’s just you and me.”
She nodded, and surfed some more channels, leaving the Chinese guy and his knives for the local weather, sunny skies and mid-seventies for the remainder of the week.
As my strength returned, the thoughts of Amy grew stronger. We had finally made love, but what did it mean? Was it the long-delayed consummation of our forever back and forth, the official seal deeming us a normal couple, or something that we’d look back and consider a mistake? Or was the significance only in my head?
I’d make a great thirteen-year-old, I thought. I needed to find Amy and get answers.
As if sensing my agitation, Nancy patted my thigh.
“I’m warm, but I think you’re cold,” she said, and she walked from her chair to the shelf against the wall, pulling down the spare blanket with her one good hand, spreading it over my legs and smoothing out the wrinkles.
“Thank you.”
“A mother’s work is never done; they say that on TV.”
She grabbed the second dinner roll and shoved it in her mouth. I needed to distract myself from Amy, so I started talking.
“Tell me about Carl,” I asked.
“He was Donna’s friend. He wore black sneakers, and sometimes a hat.”
Next to us the Russian woman switched from Hail Mary to the Lord’s Prayer as a second nurse arrived to check vitals. When it was my turn, Nancy didn’t miss a beat, telling me about a picnic in 1986—potato salad, watermelon, Carl stung by a bee!—while the nurse strapped on the blood pressure cuff and started pumping.
“Everything looks normal,” the nurse said. “The doctor should be here soon. In the meantime, we’ll get the discharge papers ready.”
Nancy belched twice, then patted my head.
“He didn’t know I had
