It was Josh’s idea. He felt like his mom had given up everything for him and his sister. He wanted to give her something big.
We were going to surprise her at Christmas. Wrap up a little plastic boat in a box.
But she found out. Josh’s sister Brittany let it slip at Easter. And Cindy had been telling the whole Shear Elegance about it ever since. Every Thursday. Her son was taking her on a cruise. A balcony cabin. She’d already bought two new swimsuits at the JCPenney in Springfield and a big floppy hat.
She’d been telling everybody at the reunion about it too. Right before she pushed my dad off the dock.
Chapter Four: The Back Steps
Sunday evening, I sat with Josh on our back steps.
We live in a little brick ranch house in Bolivar, about thirty minutes from Buffalo. Three bedrooms, a chain-link fence, a maple tree in the backyard with a tire swing Josh hung for the nieces and nephews.
It was hot and still. The fireflies were coming up out of the grass. Josh had two beers. He handed me one. I didn’t drink it.
I’d spent most of Sunday on the phone. And on my laptop. Doing what I do at work every day. Figuring out who pays for what.
“I called the audiologist,” I said. “In Springfield. The one who fitted Dad’s first pair.”
Josh nodded.
“The warranty’s gone. Expired in January. There’s nothing they can do on the old ones.” I took a breath. “A new pair of the same model is four thousand, three hundred. Prices went up.”
“Okay.”
“Medicare won’t pay. His supplement won’t pay. I called them both.”
Josh didn’t say anything. He looked out at the tire swing.
“I looked into one other thing,” I said. “Your mom’s homeowner’s insurance.”
Josh turned and looked at me.
“Most homeowner’s policies have personal liability coverage,” I said carefully. “If you damage somebody else’s property by accident, it pays. Like if you hit a baseball through the neighbor’s window. Or if you push somebody into a pond and ruin their hearing aids.”
“Kayla…”
“I’m not saying we should,” I said. “I’m just saying it exists. Somebody would have to file a claim against her policy. Dad would have to file it. Or she would.”
Josh was quiet for a long time.
“Dad would never,” I said. “You heard him. Don’t make trouble with her on my account.”
“And Mom would never admit she did anything wrong,” Josh said.
“No.”
We sat there with that for a while. A whip-poor-will started up somewhere down the road.
Then I said it.
“I want to spend it on Dad.”
Josh didn’t move.
“The cruise money,” I said. “I want to take it out tomorrow and buy him new hearing aids. I’ll take a personal day. I’ll drive him to Springfield myself.”
I waited.
“I know it’s your mom’s birthday present,” I said. “I know she’s been telling everybody. I know it’ll be a mess. But Josh, he can’t hear. He’s sitting in his house in Buffalo right now, alone, and he can’t hear the TV or the phone or anything. And he’s not going to ask anybody for help. He never has.”
Josh looked at the yard a long time.
He looked at the tire swing. At the maple tree. At the fireflies coming up out of the grass.
I thought he was going to say no. I thought he was going to say, it’s my mom, Kayla. It’s her birthday. We promised.
“It was ours to give,” he said finally. “Do it.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Then he said something else.
“And I’ll tell Mom myself.”
“Josh, you don’t have to…”
“Yes, I do,” he said. He set his beer down on the step. “She pushed your dad off a dock, Kayla. In front of forty people. A sixty-eight-year-old man who climbed poles with my dad.” His voice got tight. “And then she told him to lighten up.”
He stood up.
“I’m not going to let you be the one who tells her,” he said. “She’ll make it about you. She’ll make you the bad guy. I know how she works.” He looked down at me. “It’s my money too. It’s my mom. I’ll tell her.”
Chapter Five: Springfield
Monday morning I took a personal day and drove Dad to the audiologist in Springfield.
I called Dr. Heller at seven and told her I had a family emergency. She didn’t ask questions. She’s been my boss for nine years.
Then I drove to Buffalo and picked up Dad. He was waiting on his front porch in a clean shirt. A plaid one, not the blue. I think the blue one was still drying on the line out back.
He didn’t know where we were going. I’d just texted him: Picking you up at 8. Wear shoes.
He got in the car and looked at me.
“Where to, sis?” Too loud.
I held up the legal pad I’d brought. I’d written it on the first page in big black letters.
SPRINGFIELD. HEARING AIDS.
He read it. He looked at me.
“Kayla,” he said. “No.”
I flipped the page. I’d already written the next one.
ALREADY MADE THE APPOINTMENT.
“I can’t afford it,” he said. “You know I can’t. I’ll get the cheap ones. At the Walmart.”
I flipped the page.
AUDIOLOGIST SAID NO. TOO WEAK FOR YOU.
He looked out the windshield. His jaw worked.
“I’ll save up,” he said. “Like last time.”
I flipped the page. I didn’t have anything written on it. I grabbed the pen from the cup holder and wrote fast.
IT’LL TAKE 2 YEARS. YOU’LL BE ALONE IN THAT HOUSE FOR 2 YEARS.
He read it. He didn’t say anything else.
I put the car in drive.
The audiologist’s office was in a medical building on Battlefield Road. Ozarks Hearing Center. The same place as before.
Dr. Anjali Patel came out to the waiting room herself. She’s maybe forty, with dark hair in a bun and kind eyes. She remembered Dad.
“Mr. Pruitt,” she said, loud and slow, facing him so he could see her lips. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
Dad nodded. He looked embarrassed.
“Come on back,” she said.
She tested him again. Forty-five minutes in a little soundproof booth, with headphones on, pressing a button every time he heard a beep.
His hearing had gotten worse. Not a lot. But some. Dr. Patel showed me the chart afterward. A line that dipped down and down, like a ski slope.
“Severe to profound in the high frequencies,” she said. “Moderately severe in the lows. He needs power. The over-the-counter devices top out at mild to moderate loss. They’d be like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg.”
“So the same model?”
“The newer version,” she said. “Better feedback control. Bluetooth, so he can stream phone calls straight into his ears.” She paused. “And a rechargeable battery. No more little batteries to fiddle with. His hands were having a hard time with those last time.”
“How much?”
She looked at her computer.
“Four thousand, three hundred,” she said. “That includes the fitting, the follow-ups for three years, and a three-year loss and damage warranty.” She hesitated. “I’ll be honest, Mrs. Meeks. I’d recommend getting him a waterproof case and a clip. After this.”
I wrote the check at the front desk. Out of the account with the little tag that said MOM’S CRUISE.
Four thousand, three hundred dollars. That left two hundred in the account.
The receptionist gave me a receipt. I folded it and put it in my purse.
Dad was standing next to me at the counter. He watched me write the check. He didn’t say anything. His face was very red.
Out at the car, Dad was still shaking his head.
He stood by the passenger door in the hot parking lot with his hands in his pockets. He wouldn’t get in.
“That’s your money, Kayla,” he said. Too loud. A woman walking into the building turned around and looked at us. “That’s your and Josh’s money. I saw the account. I saw what it said on there.”
I didn’t know he’d seen it. I’d tried to hide the checkbook register.
“That’s Cindy’s cruise,” he said. “I can’t take Cindy’s cruise. Not after… not after all this. She’ll never forgive you. She’ll never forgive Josh.”
I opened my legal pad on the hood of the car. It was so hot I could feel it through the cardboard backing. I wrote slowly, in big letters, so he could read every word.
Then I held it up.
IT’S FAMILY MONEY. YOU’RE FAMILY.
He read it. His face did something. His chin started to shake.
I flipped to a new page and wrote one more line. I held it up.
AND JOSH SAID YES BEFORE I EVEN FINISHED ASKING.
Dad looked at that for a long time. Then he looked away. Out at the traffic on Battlefield Road.
“That boy,” he said quietly. Too loud still. But quieter.
He got in the car.
Chapter Six: The Mockingbird
They fitted them Thursday.
I took another half day. Dr. Heller just raised an eyebrow and said, “Go.”
The fitting took an hour. Dr. Patel put them in his ears and plugged them into her computer with a little cable and adjusted the settings. She’d say words to him. Baseball. Sidewalk. Hot dog. And he’d repeat them back. Every few minutes she’d turn something up or down on her screen.
At the end, she sat back in her chair.
“Mr. Pruitt,” she said. In a normal voice. Not loud. Not slow.
He turned his head. Fast. Like somebody had touched him.
“How does that sound?” she asked.
Dad didn’t answer right away. He just sat there in the chair with his mouth a little bit open.
“I can hear you,” he said. And he said it at a normal volume. For the first time since the reunion.
Dr. Patel gave him a little black case, the charging case, and showed him how to use it. And a waterproof clip with a lanyard, so he could pin them to his collar when he took them out. And a little card with her phone number on it, in case anything went wrong.
“If anybody pushes you in a pond again,” she said, “take them out first.”
Dad laughed. Then he looked at me.
I knew he was hearing his own laugh. I could see it on his face.
Out in the parking lot, he stopped under the trees.
There’s a row of pear trees along the edge of the lot at Ozarks Hearing Center. Bradford pears, the kind the city plants everywhere. It was hot and still, and the air smelled like asphalt and cut grass.
Dad stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. He tilted his head.
“What kind of bird is that?” he asked.
I listened. I hadn’t even noticed it.
A mockingbird. Up in one of the pear trees. Running through every song it knew. A cardinal. Then a blue jay. Then a robin. Then something that sounded like a car alarm, which mockingbirds in town do now. Then a whistle, three notes, up and down.
“It’s a mockingbird, Dad,” I said. “It’s copying other birds.”
He didn’t answer. He stood there under the pear tree with his head tilted up and his hands at his sides.
He stood there listening like it was the first bird God ever made.
I had to look at the pavement for a minute.
The thing is, I knew he’d heard birds before. He’d had hearing aids for three and a half years. He’d heard mockingbirds.
But I think, for five days, he thought he’d never hear one again. I think he’d sat alone in his house in Buffalo for five days, with the TV on mute, and decided this was the rest of his life.
And now here was a mockingbird in a pear tree in a parking lot in Springfield, singing like it was putting on a show just for him.
“Your mother used to say they sing all night in May,” Dad said. His voice was thick. “Kept her up. She’d poke me in the ribs. Leon, make it stop. And I’d say, what do you want me to do, climb up there and ask it nicely?”
Mom died six years ago. Pancreatic cancer. She was sixty-one.
I’d never heard that story before.
“She’d have liked this one,” Dad said. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “This one’s a real show-off.”
On the drive home, he talked the whole way. Forty-five minutes. He talked about the co-op. About Mom. About the ice storm in 2007, and the time he got stuck in a bucket truck for six hours in a blizzard outside Fair Grove. About the Cardinals’ bullpen.
He kept stopping in the middle of sentences. To listen to the turn signal clicking. To the tires on the road. To my radio, which I’d turned on low, playing a George Strait song.
