"He's not ready to face his life as it now is," she told Grandmother Emma.
"Few people are," Grandmother Emma responded. "Let's do the best we can and hope he improves."
Mrs. Clancy staved on, but she was very unhappy.
Grandmother Emma started to search for her replacement, anticipating that even the added money wouldn't hold her much longer.
I tried to help. I brought Daddy food. I offered to wheel him around and talk to him as much as I could. He resisted bathing and often looked very disheveled and dirty to me. All the time 1 was with him or saw him with his nurse or Grandmother. I never heard him once ask to be taken to see Mama. I finally asked him myself if he would like to do that.
"What for? Two cripples looking at each other? From what I hear, she's the one better off," he said. "At least she's in her own world."
"But don't you want her to come home, Daddy? Maybe if she heard your voice, she would wake up more."
"If she heard my voice, she would retreat more," he replied. "I was driving that night,
remember? I was rushing." He paused and looked at me. "What did your brother do with you?" he asked. He looked like he had just remembered everything.
"Nothing bad," I said quickly. "He made me his Sister Project and he was trying to help me get better and he wanted to write everything down so doctors and scientists would learn from him. It's in his journal, but I don't know where that is. Miss Harper took it."
"Miss Harper," he said, nodding. "There was a piece of work."
I hadn't known that he had known her, but I should have because her mother and Grandmother Emma were close friends. Or had been. I couldn't imagine them being friends now, because her daughter died in Grandmother Emma's house.
"Weird kid, your brother, weird kid. I tried to make him normal. Don't ask me whose side of the family he takes after. My side has some real winners in it, too." He looked at me closely. "Is the medicine working on you?"
"Yes, Daddy."
"I suppose that's good," he said.
I wanted to remind him about what he had told me the first night he had returned and I wanted to know what he meant, but I didn't. I was confident Ian would have the answers anyway when he wrote back to me.
It was very difficult for everyone in the house. Food Nancy had made for him so many times before he suddenly hated or said wasn't made well. The therapist resigned because Daddy was so
uncooperative and unpleasant, and Grandmother Emma had to find a new one. Mrs. Clancy complained about the nasty things he was saving, too. I overheard her tell Grandmother Emma that he had made obscene requests. She continually pressured Grandmother Emma to get him to psychotherapy.
And then one day things changed. I wouldn't say they changed for the better in the long run, but for the time being, they were good changes for Daddy.
He had a visitor. She was a visitor Grandmother Emma did not want him to have, but he had gone on the telephone and he had asked her to come see him. When Grandmother Emma heard about her impending arrival, she complained, of course. but Daddy said, "What difference does it make now? Why does it matter now?"
She couldn't prevent it, so she ignored it.
Daddy, on the other hand, cleaned himself up. He even asked me to bring him some of his clothing and help him decide what looked nicest on him. He had a hairdresser come to the house and a manicurist. And later that day, he wanted to be taken outside and to the pool, where he could work on his tan. I went swimming that afternoon. Mrs. Clancy was with us, sitting in the shade and reading. She was happy about his change of attitude and didn't care if he had made a deal with the devil or what as long as he was turning into a human being. At least, that was what she told Grandmother Emma, who replied, "You're not so far off. He did make a deal with the devil.'
I had no real idea what all this meant until days later when the woman arrived and I realized that she had been Daddy's old girlfriend, the one he had hired for the supermarket, the one who had upset Mama, and the one Grandmother Emma had sent away.
Her name was Kimberly Douglas and I was forced to admit to myself that she was very pretty. She had a dark, almost caramel complexion with lime green eyes shaped like almonds, a small nose, and a mouth with full lips. There was a slight cleft in her chin. Her dark brown hair was tossed in a style Grandmother Emma thought was simply messy, but I heard Mama once call it the "bedroom look" that was popular.
When Kimberly stepped into the mansion that day, she was wearing a tight yellow tank top and a light green skirt with thongs that showed her orange toenails and ankle bracelet. She wore a gold watch that had tiny diamonds around the fact. I found out later that it had been a present from Daddy.
Despite my desire to hate her as much as I could hate anyone, she burst into to the mansion with a smile that seemed to me to drag sunshine in behind it. Her eyes were twinkling with infectious excitement hard to resist. I think part of the reason for my reaction was
we had been living under such dark clouds and moving through so many thick shadows since Daddy's return. Everyone tiptoed about. Voices were kept low. The sound of laugher was so rare, it came as a surprise whenever it was heard, no matter what the reason.
"You must be Jordan. Hi," she cried, and before I could back away or put up any resistence, she hugged me. She smelled good too, and delicious flowery and fruity aromas were as rare as laughter. Instead, we had the smell of cleaning fluids and alcohols for Daddy's rubdowns. I thought the mansion reeked of it, because it could find its way upstairs, around corners, and even into closets. It just stuck to the inside of my nose. I guess.
I didn't say hi. I stared at her.
Daddy, who had anticipated her arrival, wheeled himself out of his room and called to her from the hallway. It was Mrs. Clancy's day off and she had gone to visit a sister, so he was in charge of taking care of himself. I saw that he had dressed in the shirt and pants outfit I said looked the nicest. He did look like his old self.