More Than Enough by John Fulton

ones with the silliest words on them. I had another that said SLED DOG on it, which was really a strange thing for a shirt to say. Of course, my arm was in a sling and I held my heavy backpack and red parka in my good hand. Janet Spencer wore the red-and-gold Billmorette uniform, the little skirt of which came up to the middle of her muscular thighs. Her hair was the blond of lemon peel and her smile was incredibly white and large. She seemed to take me all in with that huge, terribly dishonest smile. “This is my brother,” Jenny said.
    â€œCool,” Janet Spencer said.
    â€œNice to meet you,” I said.
    â€œYeah,” she said, turning away and plunging into a huddle of red-and-gold drill team girls. My sister waved a hand at me and said, “See you in a couple hours.” I stood there for a while, alone in the middle of that court, holding my coat and heavy book bag and feeling how separate, how far away—a universe away—I felt from all those squealing girls who had just begun shouting out the first line of the Billmore fight song, which goes, “Billmore! Billmore! Billmore is bold!” I did that until my sister actually stuck her head out of the huddle and shouted silently—so that I could only see the word on her lips—“Go, go, go.” So I did. I turned and headed for the main exit, which was all the way on the other side of that basketball court and seemed to take forever to reach.
    *   *   *
    It was a strange day for the end of February—rainy and muggy—and I spent the bus ride up to The Richmond Clinics watching beads of water flit across the window next to me. In the examination room, the doctor prodded at my shoulder and moved my arm in different angles before telling me that I’d healed up, that the strained ligaments and torn muscle were better than ever, and that there was no need to put the sling back on. He was a young guy with an absolutely bald head that shone orange and smooth in the light. “You don’t seem too happy about it,” he said. I said I was, even though I couldn’t have felt less excited and I wanted to keep the sling, which he had been about to throw away. When I asked him if I could take it, he laughed and said, “It’s all yours.” Later, as I stood outside the entrance waiting for my mother to pick me up, my arm felt odd, skinny, naked without it. I stood just inside the awning, watching the rainwater run off the building. It put me in a trance—the water running down in strings and drumming against the sidewalk—so that I barely noticed the fact that I’d put the sling back on. My arm still hurt a little, or so it seemed to me, and I wondered if the doctor hadn’t been wrong, if maybe my arm could use a few more days in that sling. Besides, I liked the way it felt and wanted to wear it a little while longer, the way you want to wear an old, holey T-shirt because the fabric is worn fine, nearly as comfortable as your own skin.
    When I sat down in the car, my mother didn’t say anything and didn’t look over at me. She just pulled out of the parking lot and drove past the Fort Douglas Country Club and for some reason down the hill, which was the opposite direction we needed to be driving. She’d just gotten off work from Oak Groves and looked especially tired that day, her hair a little messed up where she’d worn the nurse’s cap, a white hat that she’d thrown into the backseat of the Buick and that looked like one of those paper boats kids make in grade school. Jenny was sitting in the backseat, wearing her new Billmorette uniform. I guessed that my mother and she had been arguing since Jenny was quiet and quickly gave me a look of caution, a look that said something’s wrong with Mom. When my mother looked over at me, I saw that her eyes were swollen and glossy red, that she’d been crying, and that something really was wrong.