“I think she’s going to be fine. Try not to worry,” Billy said, earnest now.
“Thanks for being with her,” Lisa said.
“Of course. Go on, I’ll call you again just as soon as I know more.”
Billy phoned his father then, picking at the words to cause the least alarm. He needn’t have worried. “Is that right?” his father said. “Well, be sure and call again when you know the results.”
“Right, yeah, okay.” Billy looked at his dead phone, disbelieving. He’d seen his father get more worked up over a calf having scours.
*
Over three hours after Billy’s mother returned from radiology, the doctor finally reappeared. He was smiling, his tan making his teeth look white-white. “Good news, the scan is clean.” Clean, Billy thought. Like illness and damage were dirty. The doctor suspected Billy’s mother had suffered dehydration, exertion, and something he called “age-appropriate vertigo.” In short, she’d overdone it.
Billy’s mother looked at him hard. “You hear that? That’s because you left me standing in front of the zoo for so long today.”
“Looks like she’s feeling better already,” the doctor said with a smirk, and disappeared behind the orange curtain.
Billy phoned his father. “Yeah, the doctor was just with her, she’s going to be grand.”
“Oh, very good,” his father said, still deadpan.
“Tell him the doctor said I overdid it,” Billy’s mother said.
“Yeah, we should be out of here within the hour,” Billy said into the phone.
“Tell him I’ve overdone it and I’ve a touch of that vertigo,” his mother said.
Billy tucked the phone below his chin. “You can tell him yourself when you get home.”
“I’ll see you whenever so,” Billy’s father said.
“Yeah, okay, ’bye.”
“I suppose he’s frantic now,” his mother said.
Billy was about to say something harsh, but stopped himself. His mother had tried to sound scornful, but he heard longing there, too. “He is of course frantic, but sure don’t you know him, he’d never let on.”
“He’s the worst,” she said, still with that attempt at disdain, but he could tell she was pleased. It had never occurred to him he wasn’t the only one in the family starved of the right kinds of attention.
Later that night, he and his mother finally left the hospital. They took a taxi back to the zoo and his mother’s car. On the drive home, Billy’s mother complained about the long hours on the bed. “They never gave me as much as a cup of tea.” She also decried the thick accents of the foreign nurses and doctors. “They’re impossible to understand.”
She sniffed. “You’re not to tell people about this. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’d taken a turn, have them talking about me, saying I’m getting on.”
Billy drove faster, imagining he could get ahead, could leave his mother and the other half of the Fiat sitting on the road, spewing their fumes into the night.
Twenty-three
Ivor wanted to jump off the diving board. Billy was adamant. “You need to wait until you learn to swim, it’s not safe yet.”
“But I can almost swim.”
“Almost isn’t close enough.” Guilt poked at Billy. Ivor would learn to swim much faster and better with proper lessons, but Billy wanted to be the one to teach him.
Ivor stretched out on his front in the water, supported by Billy. The boy went through his paces, all synchronized legs, arms, head, and breath. “That’s it, well done,” Billy said.
Later, Ivor messed about with a few boys in the shallow end while Billy completed his laps. All the practice Billy had put in, all the progress he’d made, and still he didn’t feel fit enough, didn’t feel he could ever catch enough breath or generate enough power. He pushed through his eighteenth lap, his chest tight and his breathing ragged. Dr. Shaw’s warnings nagged. Billy often experienced dizziness and pressure on his chest, and it wasn’t because of another panic attack, either.
He still had a long way to go with his weight loss, more than one hundred and fifteen pounds till he reached his goal. Maybe it was time he called in the professionals and stopped going it alone. Stopped making Denis carry the mother lode as his sole sponsor and lead champion. He wouldn’t please Shaw by going back to him, though. Instead, he would phone Shaw’s secretary and get a referral to a nutritionist at the hospital, see what they could do for him.
“Dad! Dad!” Ivor shouted. Billy scanned the pool. “Up here! Look!” Billy found Ivor at the diving board, on the top rung of the ladder.
“Get down out of there,” Billy shouted, trudging through the water.
Ivor rushed along the diving board. At its end, he stretched out his arms and tucked his head.
“No, Ivor, don’t!” Billy shouted.