Chapter Thirty-Six #2
(The same goes for Sadie, my baby girl, but I don’t think there’s much chance you’ll ever see her again.
She never wanted to come here in the first place, and she won’t come back.
I wish I could fix it so bad, Scout, but what’s done is done.
Ricky never had kids and I don’t think he ever will, so Johnny is my only grandchild.
He’ll be the only piece of me left. Watch over him.
One day, I’ll want you to watch over his family.
His children. They’re all a part of me. I want you to love him the same as you love me.
And his children after that. Don’t you forget his scent, Scout, no matter how much time goes by.
Remember him. If you do that, we’re still here for each other forever, just like I wished.
I’ll try to come back and visit you too, but you may not recognize me right off because I’ll be a ghost. Who knows?
I may not look or smell the same. When I come back to visit, I’ll wear that red robe so you’ll know it’s me.)
Scout’s whiskers swept Mazelle’s tears from her face as soon as she shed them, his touch as light as a baby’s fingers.
(Now… I hate to say this last part. I’m not proud of it, and it breaks my heart.
But we both know how Ricky feels about you.
He adopted Grady’s attitudes, and it’s for the best that Grady left because we both know he might have tried to hurt you—or you would have hurt him.
Well, Ricky’s not going to leave like Grady.
This feels like home to him, and he’s my son, so I have no choice but to leave it to him.
But once I’m gone, Scout… he’s going to try to find you.
He’s going to be afraid you’ll hurt someone.
And he’s just plain scared of you, even more than he’s scared of me.
So he’ll come after you with his rifle… and when that happens…)
How could she say the next part even in her mind? Was she really this monstrous?
(When that happens… you need to do whatever it takes to survive.
You’re one of a kind, and you’ve never done anything except love me—which is more than I can say for him.
Maybe he thinks he loves me, but the only thing that boy loves is that big payday he’s about to hit when I’m gone.
That’s a harsh thing for a mother to say about her own child, but I was hard to love.
I admit it. So you keep hidden from Ricky as long as you can.
Don’t provoke him. But he’ll surely come for you.
If it’s between him or you, I want you to live, Scout.
I want you to live forever, just like my wish.
I want you to still be here when I come to visit you.)
A long hiss from the oxygen machine made Mazelle jump.
Scout ducked his head away from her, hiding.
Her door was easing slightly open, the creaky hinge barely audible above the hiss.
But she hadn’t heard the night nurse drive up yet, and Ricky and Sadie were still carrying on at the front of the house.
Was this…?
Mazelle closed her eyes and pretended to be sleeping.
Through slitted eyes, she saw the shadow of her grandson on her red Turkish rug from the hallway light.
Her heart surprised her with its rigorous pounding.
Why was she so nervous? This was the chance she had hoped for!
Now she could tell him about the money she had set aside for him.
She could apologize for taking his music and scratching his ear.
She could tell him how sorry she was about burning him.
“Johnny!” she said, an excited shout in her mind that was little more than a breath.
She had too little oxygen for the weight of the apologies she owed him.
She had ridiculed Lorenzo for his litany of apologies, but now she understood how the temporary madness unleashed by the world receded under Death’s gaze.
In that daylight of clarity, the past felt like the actions of a vicious stranger.
Her cancer had taught her that the man she and Scout had killed outside was not the same man who had harmed her.
She wished she had taken Johnny for a walk in the woods while she could still stand.
She wished she had fought harder to know him.
She wished Sadie hadn’t had so many good reasons to keep him away.
If she visited the Wishing Pool today—if she would dare—all her wishes would be for Johnny’s forgiveness.
He had never done anything wrong except to stumble across Lazy Mazy’s burial ground and summon her back to life.
Mazelle fought the codeine’s muzzle over her thoughts to try to find language for Johnny.
But Johnny spoke first—a whisper that shook the room.
“I hate you,” he said over her oxygen’s hissing. “I hope you die.”
Mazelle would have nine months left to steep in the pain of Johnny’s proclamation, from the mouth of a child she barely knew, more terrible because she had earned his scorn.
Worse, she could remember a time when she was young and would have shared in his loathing; she would have joined in throwing rocks at her car if she’d seen that old witch driving by.
She and Johnny could have loved each other, and he would have grieved her instead of celebrating.
Mazelle Washington would float in morphine-induced daydreams in Redding Medical Center at the very end, but her last lucid memory would be Johnny saying, I hate you.
But not yet.
That instant, all Mazelle could think about was Scout, who was making a racket as he scurried back to the window, nearly knocking over her reading chair, setting it to rocking.
Johnny stared toward the window in surprise, and Mazelle’s heart flurried. Her heartbeat strained the tired muscle so much that it was harder to draw breath. She inhaled the cool oxygen from her cannula in a panic.
Ricky had threatened to shoot Scout if he ever laid eyes on him. “An abomination,” Ricky called him, the same word Grady had used before he finally left her and moved back to Los Angeles ten years before. Ricky would be incensed if he found Scout in her sickroom.
From the window, Scout chittered at the boy as if it were a game of hide-and-seek. She had said to protect Johnny, not to play with him!
Mazelle couldn’t see Johnny’s face, but his shadow was stock-still in the doorway. She expected the boy to dash away at any moment to report what he’d seen. She could bear dying, but she couldn’t bear to see Ricky shoot her precious Scout.
Could she distract her grandson?
“Johnny?” Mazelle said, mustering her voice. “That you?”
She almost felt him stiffen where he stood. He hadn’t known she was awake when he said those awful things.
“Johnny?” she called again, pretending to sound fresh from sleep so he might imagine she hadn’t heard his curse. She could give him that grace, at least. “Come closer. Please. So… you can hear me.”
Johnny binged on the air in the stuffy room, breathing fast. The boy was scared.
“Don’t be… afraid. I’m…”
“I’m sorry,” he blurted, stealing her apology, so misplaced that it broke her heart.
And then he ran away, his tennis shoes squeaking down the hallway floorboards. Mazelle had never wished so much that she could rise from the mattress in this coffin and chase after him. She would lower herself to her knees and beg this child’s forgiveness.
Her foolish vow at the Wishing Pool that she would love Scout like “no one else” horrified her anew. Had those three words cost her two generations of love? Had a nameless entity made it impossible for her to love anyone else properly, or had she robbed herself?
Her voice was useless again, so Mazelle tried to talk to Johnny the way she talked to Scout—with only the power of her fevered thoughts.
(No. I’m the one who’s sorry, sweetheart.
It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know how much it would hurt me to see those memories propped up from a projector, like no time at all had gone by.
That anger wasn’t meant for you. But it wasn’t all anger, Johnny: It felt like I could climb back through that screen and all those people I knew would still be alive, my mother and daddy most of all.
It’s like if someone had died and you saw them buried and then they knocked on your door as if they never died.
It was a shock to me, Johnny. I’m sorry, child.
I wish you could have known me when I was still a little girl, before this world ruined me.
I wish we could have both played with Scout before I ruined him too.)
Mazelle visited with her grandson in her head for hours to help her forget her pain.