“When did your dad tell you about Grobian?” I asked April. “Monday morning?”
“He was making me lunch when we got back from the hospital.” April blinked back tears. “Tuna fish sandwiches. He cut the crust off the bread like he used to when I was a baby. He wrapped me in a blanket and tucked me in his recliner and fed me, me and Big Bear. He said not to worry, he was going to talk to Mr. Grobian, it would be all right. Then Billy came, and he said if I could wait eight years until he got his trust fund he’d pay for the surgery, but Daddy said we couldn’t take charity, even if we could wait so long, and he was going to see Mr. Grobian.”
Sandra slapped the tabletop so hard her weak tea slopped out of the mug. “That is so damn typical! Him talking to you and not his own wife!”
April’s lower lip quivered, and she hugged Big Bear tightly to herself. Patrick Grobian hadn’t exactly struck me as the warmhearted Santa of the South Side. If Bron had been going to see him, it must have been to put the bite on him in some way, but when I suggested this April sat up again.
“No! Why are you taking her side against Daddy? He said he had a document from Mr. Grobian, it was all businesslike, shipshape.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Sandra cried. “I could have asked Grobian when I saw him this morning.”
“Because you kept saying like you’re saying now, how his ideas were dumb and wouldn’t work.”
“So neither of you know whether he actually did talk to Grobian, or what this document might be? Sandra, when did you actually talk to Bron for the last time?”
Her response, stripped of all its emotional outbursts, boiled down to Monday morning, when they brought April home from the hospital. They’d borrowed a car from a neighbor—their own car had been totaled in a hit-and-run last month and they hadn’t had the money to get another yet (because, of course, Bron had let the insurance payments lapse, and the other driver hadn’t been insured, either). Bron had dropped Sandra off at work in the borrowed car and then gone home to stay with April until he had to leave for work.
“He’s on the four-to-midnight shift this week. I have to be at the store at eight-fifteen, so lots of weeks we don’t see each other much. He gets up, has a cup of coffee with me in the morning. When April leaves for school, he goes back to bed and I catch the bus, and that’s the story for the week. Only when we brought April home, we didn’t want her climbing those stairs, they’re so steep, the doctor said no major exertion right now, so she’s sleeping with me down here in the big bed. Bron, he’s upstairs, or he was, when he got off shift Monday night he was going to go up and sleep in her bed.
“Tuesday, I made April her breakfast, even if I don’t cut the crust off the bread I make her breakfast every morning, but I had to go to work; you never know how long you have to wait for the bus, I couldn’t hang around for Mr. High-and—” She broke off, remembering the object of her bitterness was dead. “I just thought he was sleeping late,” she finished quietly. “I didn’t think anything about it at all.”
What document could Grobian possibly have signed that would make Bron think that By-Smart would ante up a hundred thousand dollars for April’s medical care? Nothing made any sense to me, but when I tried to push April to see if she could remember anything else, any hint Bron might have dropped, Sandra erupted. Didn’t I see April was tired? What was I trying to do, kill her daughter? The doctors said April couldn’t have any stress and me barging in and harassing her was stress, stress, stress.
“Ma,” April shrieked. “Don’t talk to Coach like that. That’s way more stress than I want.”
I could see fertile new ground for mother and daughter to fight on here, but I left without trying to say anything else. Sandra stayed in the kitchen, staring at the kitchen table, but April followed me back to the living room where I’d left my parka. She was gray around the mouth, and I urged her to go to bed, but she lingered, nuzzling her head against Big Bear, until I asked her what she wanted.
“Coach, I’m sorry Ma is upset and everything, but—can I still come to practice, like you said earlier?”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Your mom is mad at me, and maybe for good reason, but that has nothing to do with my relations with you. Of course you can still come to practice. Now let’s get you to bed. Upstairs or down?”
“I’d like to go to my own bed,” she said, “only Ma thinks stairs will kill me. Is that right?”