Before we left for the motor vehicle bureau, she prepared one of her drinks for him and had him go up to bed and rest. She had me do the driving to the bureau.
"As soon as you get your license. I'm going to have you do all our grocery shopping, Noble. I need to spend more time on my herbal supplements and remedies. Mr. Bogart is connecting me with another national health-food distributor and we'll have even more to do in the near future."
It all sounded good. I did look forward to my first experience alone in the shopping mails and stores. Despite all that I had been taught, seen, and heard. I couldn't help feeling like a prisoner about to begin a work-release program. The freedom was exciting and terrifying simultaneously, but that Mama was making it happen gave me confidence. I'd be all right. It would all be fine.
The driving license examiner was a short, balding man with round, glassy eyes and a soft, pudgy pair of dull red lips that seemed habitually in a pout. His name. Jerome Carter, was on his name tag, and he nodded at it when he introduced himself with a perfunctory, timid handshake, the handshake of someone afraid he might be contaminated by touching someone else. From the things he said to Mama, he gave me the impression he would like to eliminate everyone less than twenty-one and more than sixty from the driving population. We had brought Baby Celeste with us and he did lighten up when he saw how she smiled at him. Mama and she waited back in the motor vehicle bureau lobby while I went out on the test.
Mr. Carter said nothing except when he gave me directions and commands. While I drove, he scribbled on his notepad and clipboard. I thought he was quite unsatisfied with my performance. and I resigned myself to being failed and having to reschedule, but to my surprise and delight, he told I'vlama I appeared to be a very responsible young man.
She looked more pleased than I was. I couldn't wait to get home to tell Dave of my success. He wasn't up and about as I had hoped, however.
"Isn't he sleeping too much?" I asked Mama after she had gone up to the bedroom and reported he was asleep.
"When you are in a healing process, you sleep. Your body needs the rest," she said, but without the kind of conviction I was accustomed to hearing in her voice and words. It troubled me. but I said nothing. Later that evening, apparently at Dave's direction, she called his store manager and told him Dave would not be in to work for the remainder of the week. I heard her say he was weak from his illness and it would be better for him to get good rest.
Afterward, she looked at me so hard. I had to shift my eyes and pretend to be interested in something else. I didn't hear Dave get up at all that night and he didn't come down to breakfast in the morning. Finally, he rose in the afternoon, but he didn't dress. He wore his bathrobe and moved about in his slippers.
To me he looked dazed. Whenever I spoke to him, he didn't hear until I repeated it, and all he did when he rose was shuffle about the house, glance out the window, and then settle in that rocking chair, where he drifted in and out of short naps.
"He belongs in a hospital," I told Mama.
"What are you now, a doctor? The man is capable of deciding whether or not he needs to be in a hospital. Noble. He has had more medical training than the average person, hasn't he, and certainly more than you?"
What could I say to contradict that?
The following day my license arrived. Mama decided we should have a little celebration. Dave did seem to cheer up at the news, and she described her preparations of one of his favorite dinners, chicken Kiev. Naturally, she would make a rhubarb pie. Dave was so excited, he vowed he would shave and dress. He did look stronger. Perhaps this is the start of his real recovery, I thought. How fortunate that all these good things were happening simultaneously.
"Be careful. Noble." Dave called to me. No speeding tickets. okay?" "No," I said.
"As soon as up and about a little more. I'll take a ride with you. okay?"
"Okay. Dave," I said, and he beamed back a smile that lifted my spirits.
With my new driving license in hand. I was sent out to shop for the foods and ingredients Mama needed.
Although driving off my property by myself would seem like nothing to most people my age, it was the equivalent of being an astronaut for me. Full of excitement and adventure. I paused at the entrance to our driveway, took a deep breath, looked back at the house, then turned onto the road. I was sure no one was paying any special notice of me, yet it seemed to me that everyone I passed along the way, every person in every car that drove by or toward me, had shock and surprise on his or her face. It made me so nervous that I did almost run into the back of a pickup truck when the driver unexpectedly hit the brakes to make a right turn without any warning or signal lights. It brought me back to earth and I concentrated harder on what I was doing. What a disaster it would be to have an accident on my very first outing.
At the supermarket, no one took any particular note of my being there alone. Some of the employees recognized me from the times I had been there with Mama and Baby Celeste, They smiled or nodded. I filled the list Mama had given me and went to the checkout counter. The clerk was a rather chunky young woman with short, dark brown hair and small, dull brown eves that looked to be sinking in her marshmallow face. When she looked at me. I looked down quickly and began to unload my groceries from the cart.
"Hello. Noble," she said, which surprised me. I looked up and read her name tag: Roberta Beckman.
She stood there with her arms folded under her large bosom, lifting it. The memories rushed back. She was the blind date Elliot had arranged for me years ago. She was heavy then, but she looked to have gained another twenty-five or thirty pounds. I had had a frightening sexual experience with her and actually ran away. Mama found out I had been with her and Elliot and a girlfriend of his, all smoking pot. That was the first time she had had any contact with Dave. She had gone to complain and revealed that Elliot and his friends had been smoking marijuana. Elliot hated me after that. I suppose I couldn't blame him.
"Hello," I finally said.
"You look like you don't remember me."
I shook my head and kept unloading the groceries. She started to process them. "How have you been? I haven't seen you around anywhere," she said.
"I've been here."
"Oh. I just got this job. Lost my last job in a cut-back. I was working at the mall in the chicken place. What have you been doing with yourself?"
"Same things." Unfortunately, all the groceries were on the counter and I had to face her.
"Terrible about Elliot. I really liked him. He was lots of fun. Harmony was quite upset for quite a while afterward, you know. She went to college. I didn't have t
he grades to go. She's in college in the Midwest. You never wanted to go to college? I remember you were very smart."