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Chapter
16 As if the person outside knocking had read her thoughts, the voice assaulted Abby's ears with the answer, "Abby? Steve? It's mom! Are you home?" Panic! Abby felt like a squirrel caught in a trap. What was she going to do? Her first reaction was to flee. She tried to get herself up from the reclining chair but was immediately thwarted in her efforts by the body cast. Her casted right arm flailed about briefly but she quickly brought it under control. She had been sitting quietly in the reclining chair for the better part of the morning now--the same chair that had been her last place of freedom before being encased in her fiberglass prison. Steve had helped her get settled and turned on the television before he'd left. He'd even given her the remote control, but she'd dropped it several hours earlier and hadn't figured out how to retrieve it yet. Now that the local news broadcast had ended, Abby was stuck watching the Saturday morning cartoon lineup--mindless idiocy as far as she was concerned. She had been mentally drafting a letter to the parents of her students, imploring them to have their children read books or straighten their rooms or play outside or any other activity other than watching this garbage when the knocking on the front door broke into her musings. She was home alone…had been for over two hours. Steve was out picking up some groceries and other necessities that they would need for the weekend. Steve wanted to go out into the world and show off Abby in her casts, but Abby was having none of that. She never agreed to go out in public while casted. Admittedly, if she was going to wear the casts for more than the weekend, she would have to deal with the outside world, but she did have all of Saturday and Sunday to talk her way out of the mess she was in and until then, she didn't want to expose herself. Now her mother was on the front porch, pounding on the front door and Abby was less than twenty feet away. It may as well have been twenty thousand miles for all she could do about it. But what should she do? Should she answer her? Did she want her mother to see her in these casts? No, that probably wouldn't be good. If she stayed quiet, maybe her mother would go away. As a quick reality check, Abby looked at her right hand. There it was, her fingers protruding out of the bright pink fiberglass, her wrist cocked forward at an odd angle. She wiggled her fingers and they responded. She wiggled her wrist but the cast thwarted her effort. Her elbow…same thing. Back to the thumb…she could move her thumb. Reality check complete, the cast was real. No need to check the other casted limbs, they would respond the same way. She wasn't dreaming. KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! Mom wasn't going away. "Mom?" Abby finally called out. Her mother would certainly hear her. "Abby? Why don't you open the door?" "Mom, um, I can't come to the door right now." "Why not honey. Is everything okay?" "Well, yes. And no. I mean…I'm fine, it's just that…" she trailed off. ========================================================= Steve turned his car into the driveway and felt a wave of panic rush through him before he even knew why. The Buick parked in front of his house didn't register consciously as a threat until he saw his mother-in-law knocking on the front door. Several curses ran through Steve's mind as he tried to remember how to put his car in parking gear. He hadn't expected to have to deal with revealing Abby to anybody yet. And Anne was the last person he'd choose to be the recipient of the first look. But there she was and she wasn't going to go away. He could see her leaning into the door and speaking. Damn, she was already having a conversation with Abby. Steve emerged from the Honda and called out "Anne?" Anne turned back to Steve and waved in a friendly way. "Something's wrong with Abby, she won't open the door." "She can't open the door." "Well, why not, what's going on?" "It's kind of hard to explain. Let's go in together and you can see for yourself." "You two are acting very strange." She watched as Steve approached the front door and searched for the key to open it. "I have to warn you, we weren't expecting any visitors and you might be in for a shock." "Why? What's going on?" Steve didn't answer. He brushed past his Mother-in-law and slid the key into the lock. After turning the key and pushing the door, he allowed it to swing open into the room and he stepped aside for the onrushing woman to blow past him. ========================================================= Abby watched from her chair as her mother stormed through the front door and scanned the room from left to right until her gaze rested upon the casted princess. Her momentum slowed a little bit at a time until she came to a full stop halfway between the entryway and Abby. She stared. Her jaw slowly dropped and her eyes widened as it did. She continued to stare, speechless. Abby could imagine her mother's shock. She was only wearing a pair of shorts and one of Steve's t-shirts. She glanced down at her casted left leg. The shorts hid the top of the cast, but the rest of the cast was completely visible. It was this crazy color she had never seen before in a cast. Actually, it was crazy colors, sort of an odd mix of different pastel shades; blue, green, yellow; nothing like Abby had ever seen before. The pattern made her think of a class of third graders after having a fight with their finger paints. Her left arm, likewise, was sticking out of the T-shirt, but the shirt pretty much hid the body cast. That fact will most likely work in their favor as her mother takes in the picture. It must be bad enough without the added shock of seeing Abby in a body cast. This was so humiliating. Anne finally found her voice. "Baby, what happened?" Abby could see tears welling up in her mother's eyes. "Mom, relax, this isn't what it looks like." What a lame thing to say. Anne took a tentative step closer to Abby. "My God, when did this happen? Why wasn't I called?" Anne looked over at Steve who was still standing in the doorway. Steve was looking at Abby clearly trying to silently connect with her. What are we going to tell her was the unspoken question. Abby looked back at her mom. Her thoughts were racing. Should she make up a story? If these casts were real, what could have happened to Abby to make her need all these casts? What kind of accident? A car accident perhaps? Falling down the stairs? A mugging? Abby had vowed to herself that she wouldn't lie. Here was the very first challenge and the first thing she started thinking about was lying. She knew her mother. Mom wouldn't let up, she would push and push for details. Maybe this woman standing here was the very reason Abby had such an aversion to lying. Anne was like a master barrister. A Lawyer's lawyer. She could smell an untruth a mile away and put the perpetrator in an inescapable trap. Abby knew from experience that if she tried to make up a story now, her mother would have her cornered in minutes. Better to stick to the truth rather than make something up. Abby decided to try being cryptic, but knew it was just a matter of time that... "Abby? What happened to you?" Anne asked with her head cocked to one side and her eyes boring into Abby's. "This just happened last night mom." That was certainly true. "Oh my poor baby. How long do you have to be like this?" "Um, I don't really know. That's up to Steve." Abby pointed in Steve's direction with her chin. This'll teach him. Anne had been leaning over as she slowly approached Abby. She was gathering the courage to touch Abby and her hand had even started reaching out when Abby's pronouncement had caught her up short. She straightened up and cocked her head in Steve's direction. The rest of her body followed the motion until she could see him. "Steve? Why Steve? Are you a doctor now?" Steve's mouth moved to an open position but no words formed. "Did you do this to her? What did you do to my little girl?" "Nothing," Steve stuttered. "I, she, it's just, we..." Abby had to laugh. This was actually entertaining. Steve was speechless. Abby couldn't remember ever seeing Steve speechless before. "I'm waiting! What happened to Abby?" Anne was getting angry now. Steve found his voice and his courage, "Mom, Abby and I had this little disagreement and..." Those were the wrong words! Abby knew her mother. Anne was about to explode. She did. "WHAT! My God! You beat my daughter? You son of a... you get out of this house right now." With that, Anne lunged in Steve's direction. She actually began pushing him out the open front door, hitting him with every third push. Abby heard Steve protesting. He was yelling incoherent bursts of words like "...don't understand..." and "...mistake" and "...not what you think," his eyelids flickering open and closed, his hands unsuccessfully attempting to block the blows. Abby heard her own voice cut through the melee, "Mom! Stop. You don't understand. Steve didn't hurt me." "There, see?" she heard Steve say. Anne stopped pushing and hitting. She looked back at Abby. "Well then, how did you break both your arms and a your leg?" "Mom, come in, sit down, CALM down, and let us try to explain." Abby tried her best soothing tone of voice. Anne fixed her eyes on her daughter. She began crossing the twenty feet to Abby's side of the room. She glanced back at Steve, the back of her head to Abby, and, Abby was certain, gave Steve a suspicious, narrow eyed, dagger throwing look. When she reached Abby, she put her hand out and laid it on Abby's leg cast at the ankle. She moved her hand back and forth in a smoothing motion and Abby watch her mother's eyes fill with tears. "Mom don't," Abby felt really bad. Anne came closer still and reached up to grab Abby's left wrist. When she did, Abby could see in her eyes that it was at that moment that Anne realized there was more cast here than she had originally thought. Anne wrapped her fingers tightly around Abby's casted left arm and pushed and pulled slightly. When it didn't give at all, she clearly understood that the cast also immobilized Abby's shoulder. Anne cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes in an inquisitive look. She used the back of her wrist to wipe the moisture from her eyes. She reached her right hand up to just under Abby's neckline and wrapped her knuckles on the surface of the t-shirt. After feeling and hearing the knock, she repeated the action again and again, working her way down Abby's torso until she found the bottom of the cast, down around Abby's waistline. Anne was visibly shaking now. She pulled a chair from the table next to Abby and carefully lowered her heavy set frame into it. She stared at the floor for a moment, then looked up at Abby. "What's going on here?" she asked. Abby looked past her mother to her husband. She and Steve had never even discussed what they would do if they got caught with Abby casted. Abby recalled a few brief thoughts from weeks earlier to the effect that if she had to be casted for at least two weeks, she would certainly have to go out into the world and connect with people she knew. She hadn't really taken the thought process beyond that though. She always told herself that she wasn't going to lose the bet and therefore didn't need to consider the matter further. Now though, here she was, casted from neck to toe, her mother waiting for an answer and Abby with nothing but the truth floating around in her head. "Mom," she said, hesitating, hoping something better would pop into her mind before the words that were already there came out, "I kinda volunteered for this." Nope, nothing came and out went the words she had been avoiding. Did it sound too lame? What would Anne do with such a statement. Probably, she would take a moment to process them, find it impossible, and ask for clarification. Abby looked at her mom with the kind of expression that one would make after telling somebody they just crashed into their parked car. Anne just stared at Abby. Her facial expression changed at least four or five times as she tried to wrap her mind around Abby's words. "Huh?" was all she could come up with. Abby took a deep breath and began, "Mom, remember a few months ago when Steve had his broken leg?" Anne nodded dumbly. "Well, at one point during that time, Steve and I had this little disagreement about my ability to be punctual." Abby told Anne the whole story, right up to and including how Steve got her drunk and she woke up in a lot more cast than she expected too. Now it was Anne's turn to be speechless. She turned and stared at Steve, looking for confirmation of the story from him. She turned back toward Abby, her eyebrows furrowed, her eyes closed into little slits. "You mean there's nothing at all wrong with you?" she queried. "Other than the fact that I'm a chronically late person...no." "And you agreed to this crazy idea?" Abby hesitated, then shrugged (which wasn't easy inside the body cast), "yeah, I guess I did." Anne was still looking into Abby's eyes, but her look was distant none-the-less. The Saturday morning cartoon was providing absurd background music to fill the silence. After an eternity, she said "My daughter is crazy. I have a crazy person for a daughter. And she's married to a crazy man." Her gaze focused on Abby once again. "You need to go for counseling. Both of you. You both need to be analyzed." Abby relaxed and smiled. Her mother was back. This was the "mom" she knew. Anne was serious of course. She meant it from the bottom of her heart. But that was Abby's mom. Everyone needed to see a psychotherapist as far as she was concerned. Her mission in life was to catch somebody doing something that would give her an opening to recommend therapy. Now that she had found it in Abby, and in Steve, she would go happily on for months, regularly provided them with names of this analyst or that counselor. Badgering them incessantly until something else drew her attention away from Abby and Steve. Maybe Abby's brother would do something noteworthy and Anne would shift her attention in that direction. For now though, Anne had accepted their little casting game as best she could and they could go on from there. "So, how long are you going to keep my daughter a prisoner in this getup?" She asked Steve, her bubbly personality beginning to emerge. Steve began moving toward them as he answered, "I don't know. This is the setup we originally agreed on, but Abby wants out of the body cast, so we have to renegotiate. She has to stay in the rest of the casts longer if we make a change." "This is cruel you know." Anne said. "How long if she stays just like this?" "Two weeks." Anne's eyes went wide. "Two weeks?" she asked, incredulous. Steve nodded. "But what about her muscles? Won't they get all stiff and weak?" Steve shrugged, "the orthopedist said 'no'." "Even so, I don't like it. I want you to get her out of this right away." "I can't," Steve answered, "I have no way to do that." "Well, how do you plan to get her out when the time comes?" "The guy that helped us put her in them, I guess. We never discussed it." "You never discussed it? What's wrong with you two?" Anne stared daggers at him. Then she looked back at Abby. She stared at her daughter for a long moment. Then, as if she'd come to a decision and closed the topic, she got up, headed for the kitchen and asked "who's hungry?" Abby knew this was only a temporary reprieve from the discussion. Her mom decided to think about things. She would come back later with both barrels blazing and a whole new bunch of arguments. For now though, they could talk about something else. "Me, I'm starving!" Abby answered. "I bought all kinds of groceries. They're in the car. I'll go get them. With that, Steve was out the door, Anne's head was in the refrigerator and Abby was left to ponder her inability to move three quarters of her body. "Could somebody hand me the remote control please? If I have to watch one more minute of Pokemon, I'm going to scream."
Sorry this installment took so long. I hope it was worth the wait. I can't promise the next one will come any faster. I have great plans for this story. By my reckoning it's really only half over. I know how I'm going to end it too, but I just have to get there one chapter at a time. Many of you have been faithfully sending me e-mails to encourage me. I don't answer them all, but I really do enjoy the feedback and they do spur me on to write more. This last chapter was written in many installments, each one the result of an encouraging note from a reader. More than a dozen of you wrote something to the effect of "Abby's been in those casts for months now, when are you going to write more?" so keep the notes coming and Abby's atrophy won't be as bad as it could be (I'll get the story done faster). My e-mail address is "fgrules@hotmail.com" Hope to hear from you soon. FGR |