Play On (Play On 1)

“So, Roddy and I were on the I-70, heading toward Route 66 in Illinois. From there we were going to drive the whole thing. We stopped for gas, and I saw a help-wanted ad on a bulletin board there. For a supermarket in Donovan.” He gave the lake a sheepish smile. “Fuckin’ stupid, I know…It…I felt like we needed tae come here.”

“That’s not stupid,” I reassured him.

Jim turned to give me another one of those searching looks of his. “No…I’m starting to think it wasn’t.”

I squirmed under his intensity, unable to hold his gaze because he overwhelmed me. As cool as he was, as much as I liked his accent and thought he was cute, I wasn’t prepared for Jim McAlister or the way he looked at me like he’d been struck by lightning.

“What was your dad like?”

“He was the funniest guy I knew.” Jim’s voice was filled with a mix of humor and grief that made my chest ache for him. “And he had time for nearly everybody. If someone needed help, it was never a problem, it was never too much. I was his best pal.”

His smile trembled, and a bright sheen appeared in his eyes. I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine, and it seemed to strengthen Jim, the sheen disappearing, his smile relaxing. “He taught me that family always comes first. That family is more important than how much money I make or fame or any of that shite. He made me feel like it was awright no’ tae be ambitious about career but tae be ambitious about life. About finding the right girl and startin’ a family.”

I had never heard a boy talk of those things before, or at least prioritize those things. I also noticed his accent thickening as he reminisced about his dad. Like he was relaxing with me. “He sounds like a good man.”

“Aye.” He nodded but something cooled in his expression. “But he wasnae perfect, and everyone seems to have swept that under the rug.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mum, specifically. Don’t get me wrong. He loved her but he was a bit of a selfish bastard when it came to her. He never took her anywhere or spent much time wi’ her. He always went out tae the pub wi’ his mates but left Mum at home. Then he got pissed off if she wasnae there when he got home. Like she wasnae supposed tae have a life without him …” He shot me a quiet look I didn’t understand until he spoke again. “And he cheated on her and from what I heard, it wasnae just sex. He fell in love wi’ someone else. My parents nearly split up. In the end he chose Mum, but I don’t think she ever really forgave him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But she acts now like he was a saint.” Anger had edged into his words. “I … just … I loved my dad, and I forgive him for no’ being perfect because none of us are … but I want tae remember my dad, no’ the glossed-over version of him, ye know?”

I nodded, squeezing his hand.

“Does that make me a bad person?”

“God, no.”

Jim exhaled slowly and looked back out at the water. I studied his profile, noting the tension had eased from his jaw, from his shoulders. As he watched a bird skirt low over the water and fly off into the trees, he said, “I’m glad I met ye, Nora O’Brien.”

“Yeah?”

He looked at me again and then gently removed his hand from between mine but only so he could slide it around my shoulder. “I’d like to stay a little longer, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, I still have a few hours before I need to get back for work.”

“No,” he laughed softly, shaking his head. “No, I meant … I’d like to stay in Donovan a little longer. Beyond today.”

Suddenly, I knew what he was asking, and despite feeling intimidated by the desire in Jim’s eyes, I was also intrigued by his foreignness. He came from a place so different from Donovan. I’d seen it on TV and in movies, but I still couldn’t imagine what life was like in the city he’d grown up in. Part of me didn’t even care. What I mostly cared about was that it was so far away from Indiana, so mysterious and tantalizing, like an adventure waiting to happen an ocean away from my plain little life. And Jim was a part of that.

I nodded, not quite ready to let go of him, either.

Since I was twelve years old, I’ve hated the antiseptic smell of hospitals.

It woke up the angry knots in my stomach.

Regardless, every month, without fail, I jumped on a bus and went through a ninety-minute journey to Indianapolis to the children’s hospital there. I’d been doing this for the past five years, not counting the year before when my mom let me visit more often.

It wasn’t often my mom gave me a break from life but the year I was twelve, she did.

Now I think she thinks I’m a lunatic. We’ve argued about my monthly visit, but I won’t back down on this one. She’s finally stopped trying to get me to.

“Hey, Nora.” Anne-Marie approached as I strode down the corridor toward the common room on the hospital’s third floor. “You get prettier every day, sweetheart.” She wrapped her arm around me and gave me a squeeze.

I smiled fondly up at the nurse I’d known since I was a kid. “So do you.”

She rolled her eyes at me but didn’t let go. “What did you bring with you today?”

I held up the book in my hand: The Witches by Roald Dahl. “Not too scary, right?”

“No,” she assured me.

Relieved, I grinned. The only thing that made me forget about those hard knots in my stomach was the knowledge that for a couple of hours, I was going to make the kids in that common room forget the tubes sticking into them, the respirators and oxygen tanks, and their total lack of energy.

I tried to choose books and plays that weren’t too adult for the younger kids but were funny enough I could make them entertaining even to the older ones.

Anne-Marie opened the door to the common room. “Hey, guys, look who’s here!”

I stepped into the room and was met by smiles, waves, and a collection of “Hey, Nora,” some exuberant, some tired but welcoming. Kids of all ages and illnesses stared up at me. Some in wheelchairs, some resting in chairs, some playing a computer game, others board games, some bald, some wan with dark circles under their eyes and a sickly tinge to their young skin, and some I was happy to see looking healthier than they had the last time I saw them.

“You ready to be scared?” I asked, grinning at them as Anne-Marie threw me a wink and left us to it.

What I loved about these kids was that unlike most their age, they stopped playing with their phones, or their iPads, or the computer console in the corner, and gave me their full attention. All because I wasn’t there to ask them how sick they were feeling today, or if they felt better, or if they were tired of being tired. I was just there to take them somewhere else for a while.

We settled in, and I stood in front of them, preparing to act out this entire book if we had time. I’d read the book a few times before coming to the hospital and decided how each character would sound. Some small. Some big. I transformed in front of the kids from reserved, exhausted Nora O’Brien into a character actor. I didn’t know if I was good. Or awful. All I knew was that these kids loved it. And it was freeing.

“The most important thing you should know about REAL WITCHES is this,” I said in a faux English accent that made them smile and lean closer. “Listen very carefully …”

Glancing at the clock, I realized our time was up, but I was almost finished. Finally, I acted out the last sentence and closed the book.

Silence reigned and then Jayla, a pretty eight-year-old girl with leukemia, started clapping. The others joined in, although Mikey, a fourteen-year-old with kidney disease, rolled his eyes. “It’s supposed to be scary.”

“It was scary,” Jayla insisted, scowling at him.

“Yeah, to babies like you.” Mikey curled his lip at me. “You’re too hot to be the witch.”

“The witch was beautiful,” Annie, a thirteen-year-old from Greer, a town a few miles from Donovan, argued.

“Yeah, until she was revealed to be a hag. It wasn’t real when she did that scene.” He gestured at me.