Inside Waiting

BETH’S mother took her arm for support. They walked slowly across the parking lot toward the portico entrance where azaleas blazed on both sides. “See,” her mother said, “you didn’t need to drive me right up to the front door. I can walk. God willing, I’ll be in my classroom again this fall. Look at these gorgeous blossoms!”

Beth couldn’t believe it had gotten to be April again.

The waiting room had a vaulted ceiling. Structural pillars created a number of small alcoves, an armchair in each, all taken. The receptionist sat behind a sliding glass window. Beth’s mom picked up the clipboard and signed in. A red bandanna covered her bald head; she was petite, had warm green eyes, high cheekbones, and a catchy smile. A silver crucifix hung from her neck. With six doctors in the practice the room was crowded, no two seats together. Her mother sat next to a young woman with a little blond-haired boy. Looking up at Beth, she whispered, “Isn’t he cute?”

It was another of her mother’s nudges at marriage and children, things which might have happened if Brendan hadn’t broken up with her over a year ago. Better now, he said, before a kid comes into the picture. Beth walked to the other side of the room, settling into a deep sofa next to a black man with a wrinkled face. He wore glasses and a Carolina baseball cap. He nodded and said, “Ma’am.” Beth watched the little blond kid get up and back away from his mother. His mother pointed to the seat, but he shook his head no. In the middle of the room was a tall wood-framed window with water running down both sides of the glass into a bed of smooth black and white river stones. Beth had read somewhere that the sound of trickling water calms the nervous system, and what could make one more nervous than a doctor’s waiting room? People on the other side of the glass were blurred figures. The little blond kid edged up to the water wall and took a stone from the bottom. His mother told him to return it, but he threw it in the air. The stone clacked on the tile and skidded across the floor. His mother picked up the stone and returned it to the pool. The boy began to pull leaves from a potted plant. “Don’t do that,” she said, trying to stop him, but he ran about the room until she caught him by the arm and dragged him, screaming out the door into the parking lot.

The black man looked at Beth. “I’da whupped his ass ten minutes ago.”

Beth said, “He might have ADD, attention deficit disorder. There are drugs for it.”

The black man shook his head. After a moment he said, “They ain’t no disorder but a good ass-whuppin’ cain’t fix.”

A nurse opened the door to the inner office and said, “Mr. Pudwell?”

A heavy man with a red face pried himself loose from a chair under a large seascape painting. He followed the nurse inside. Beth got up to look at the painting with a red bell buoy in the foreground. There was an emptiness of green-blue water and, in the depth of field to the right, a yellow sail, maybe a Hobie Cat. When Beth was in the eighth grade, before her father bought and became consumed with the sporting goods store, he taught her how to use a daysailer that often tipped over. He laughed and told her going into the water was part of the fun, the price of not learning how to read the wind and adjust the sail. A year later he bought a small Hobie Cat with a yellow and green sail that she loved. He encouraged and praised her as a quick learner. Before long she was able to enjoy the wide bay, the hum and flutter of sail all by herself. Whenever she thought of her father, she tried to see him when he...