“I thought so. Listen to me, Scarletta. Don’t live to please everyone else, or you’ll never be happy. Besides, you have higher standards now, my standards. Someday you’ll thank me. Do you understand? Do you?”
“Yes,” I said. I understood.
I understood my mother wanted everything done her way. She wanted me to grow up faster. The things she designed for me, the lessons she taught, were all more for a grown woman, I thought. I wasn’t going to have a chance to be a real teenager. Why wasn’t she able to see that? Why wasn’t she worried about my feelings now? Why didn’t she think it was important for me to have friends and be popular enough to be invited to parties? I wondered if she was ever really a teenager.
My eyes were glazed with tears; this time, they were warm tears of sorrow.
Mostly for myself.
I could even see myself lying where my grandmother was lying, my eyes as glassy, stunned that no one was really crying about me because I didn’t have any friends.
How many times do you die before you die? I wondered.
Pru
CHANDLER COULDN’T RETURN the weekend after he left for San Francisco. Things weren’t going as quickly and as smoothly as he had hoped, he said, and apologized. I had half expected this would happen. My father was fond of quoting Robert Burns: “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.” He taught me to anticipate disappointment. Nothing worried him more than my losing faith and hope.
“Take every promise with a grain of salt,” he advised. He recognized that the danger was to turn me into a cynic and pessimist. “It’s a delicate balance,” he said. “You spend most of your life trying to find it. I’m afraid that this applies to nothing more than it does to your relationships with men. We’re notorious liars but often not deliberate and often unaware of what we’re lying about ourselves. Complicated,” he said, smiling, “but we’re worth it. I’m just being honest, honey.”
Was he? Could it be true that men were more honest about themselves with their daughters than they were with their wives? Nothing seemed that complicated for my mother. She lived in a simpler world and usually ignored anything that made it more complex. It was always black or white, this or that, and if she couldn’t think that way, she would be silent. I suppose being that complacent made life more comfortable. I didn’t think it would for me, or for Chandler and me if we ever did marry. I was too opinionated. Perhaps that courage to say what I thought came from my training to be a nurse. If you didn’t show authority, patients would have less faith in you, even if they didn’t like being bossed.
I was on duty Saturday, and with only Sunday off, I thought it best to wait another week rather than fly up and back within twenty-four hours. Chandler was disappointed.
“Even one day with you tides me over. ‘It restoreth my soul,’ ” he joked.
Maybe it wasn’t such a joke. People in love came dangerously close to worshipping each other, but from how I saw it, this was true for women more than men. My mother once warned me, “Don’t be with a man who worships you, Pru. Once you do something that displeases him, it will be harder to get back to where you two were.”
“I’ll call you on Sunday every chance I get,” Chandler promised, perhaps because I was so silent.
“Okay. I’ll message you my schedule for the next two weeks so we can try to plan better.”
“As long as you hold to it and don’t trade shifts with someone for whom you feel sorry. I know you want to have more of the staff like you, Pru, but don’t let them take advantage of you.”
Like Scarletta? I thought.
“I don’t care if more of the staff likes me. I’m not in a popularity contest, Chandler.”
“Okay. You’re working toward that two-week vacation in June, right?”
“Right. But it won’t be much of a vacation if I go up to San Francisco to watch you work, Chandler.”
“Oh, I’ll be done by then, and we’ll go someplace where neither of us has any distractions,” he said. “Love you, Pru. Really.”
“I know. I miss you, too. That’s why I sound so angry at your being so ambitious,” I confessed.
He laughed. He liked that. “Don’t take it out on a patient,” he joked. “Hey. What did you do with those pearls?”
“I pawned them.”
“What?”
“Joke,” I said. “I’m working on it. As you suggested, donating to a charity, maybe. Just trying to think of the right one.”
I didn’t want to admit that every time I looked at them, I postponed doing something with them. As I had anticipated, Belinda had told everyone on the floor about the gift. Annie Sanders came at me with knives in her eyes once she heard.
“You’re really exploiting my mistake, aren’t you?” she accused. “Expensive gifts.”
“I didn’t want to take the pearls. I was just avoiding a scene. I’m working on the best place to donate them.”
“Oh, I bet you are,” she said. “Like to your jewelry box,” she added, and walked off.
I hated still having to defend myself for catching her medical error. I knew she had been questioned about it, and it might have gone into her file or something, but I wasn’t going to feel an iota of guilt. The bottom line was that the wrong medication could have been taken by a recuperating heart-bypass patient.
As I watched her stomp off, I thought she could very well be Scarletta. I didn’t know all that much about Annie Sanders. Fact was, I didn’t hear her talk much about herself at all. I dared not ask any questions now, of course. It would look like I had it in for her or something. No one would side with me. But I made a mental note to be more observant and listen to her other conversations whenever possible.
“Okay,” Chandler said. “Yes, a charity is probably the best alternative. Talk to you soon,” he promised.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I got up twice because I thought I heard my mobile ring, but it hadn’t. The second time I got up, I also thought I saw the answering machine blinking and rushed over to it, only to see it wasn’t. I chastised myself for being so uptight about it. You’re letting this get to you, Pru Dunning, I told myself. It will soon affect your health. Inform the police or Chandler, and get help. End it.
I returned to bed thinking that was exactly what I would do in the morning, but when I awoke, I felt stronger again and more determined than ever to solve the problem on my own. If there was any doubt that most of my coworkers at the hospital would take some delight in my problem, that doubt was gone now that they all knew about the pearls. Most of them wouldn’t know how to appreciate such a gift. It was truly “pearls before swine.” But they’d still resent me for having it.
Anyway, when I had no messages for three straight days, I thought to myself that this Scarletta or whatever she called herself was finally getting tired of the game. Without actually talking to me, what was she getting out of it anyway? How did she know she was annoying me? Was she watching me at work to see if it was hurting my performance? If it was Annie Sanders and that was her goal, she was sorely disappointed. None of the other nurses received as many compliments from doctors and the relatives of patients on his or her work as I did, especially during those three days.
But I had a bigger surprise in store for me the following Wednesday. That day, I had the late shift. Trying to work my way back into the favor of others on the floor despite how unconcerned I had pretended to be when Chandler mentioned it, I traded some time with Sue Cohen, who needed the day off for a family matter. I agreed to change to her morning shift even though I had worked the late shift the previous day. Claudia Eden took mine. Sue thanked me profusely for helping to work it out, and it quieted some of my critics. Since it was one of those rare all-day rains in Los Angeles, I decided I’d rather work anyway.
The rain became a misty drizzle on my way home. Inclement weather had the effect of putting me in a sexy mood. I wished Chandler were here. I’d make love to him in special ways. Some men might complain, but Chandler enjoyed being teased.
I hadn’t done it yet, but I fantasized about dressing in a fresh nurse’s uniform and pretending he was my patient.
“It’s time to take your temperature,” I’d say.
“Please do,” he surely would reply.
Is this who you really are? he’d surely wonder.
So would I, but sex finds another you within yourself sometimes.
I stopped to get some groceries, and at one point, I was suddenly thrown back to a world of memories in the aisle displaying cleaning fluids, powders, and equipment. My mother practically bought a new mop every week. She was neurotic about dirt. I didn’t know why I went down this aisle. I didn’t have to buy anything. I had so much left over from last month, but the visions I had of shopping with her and listening to her diatribes against germs were mesmerizing. I could feel her beside me now as I often did.
How ironic it was to think of her dying of cancer. All of it was an unending nightmare that trailed behind me, waiting for an opportunity to leap into the front of my thoughts and hold me hostage to fears of the unseen and the sadness of her being gone so abruptly. It was as if Death had snapped his fingers. This was the supermarket aisle of irony. It wasn’t hard to imagine there was something carcinogenic in one of those cleaning fluids. From time to time, the EPA took something off the market. In my memory, I saw a woman literally scrubbing herself into the hands of Death. Wasn’t that my mother chasing her own demons? It certainly wasn’t me. Maybe that was why I wasn’t America’s Little Housekeeper. Or maybe all this was a convenient rationalization to defend my laziness.
I took so long choosing between things, pondering the ingredients in soups and the percentages of vitamins, sugar, and salt in everything else, that I ended up buying some ready-made salad and salmon for dinner. Since starting a relationship with Chandler, I couldn’t get excited about dinners alone anymore. It seemed more like just another chore. Few activities emphasized how lonely you were more than eating by yourself. Everyone talked to himself or herself at one time or another, maybe most of the time, but it was never louder or more intense than when there was no one else there at dinner. You ate faster; you didn’t really taste the food.
After I parked my car in the underground garage, I headed up on the elevator because I was carrying two somewhat heavy bags. It was an extraordinarily slow elevator. All the tenants complained, some afraid it would have heart failure between the garage and their floor. Ordinarily, I avoided it. I favored the exercise, despite how much I walked in the hospital. When the doors opened on the second floor this time, I nearly dropped both bags of groceries.
Standing there in a dark blue pin-striped suit and a light blue tie was Douglas Thomas. He was holding a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne with a pink ribbon tied around the neck of it. His hair had been recently trimmed, and he looked much healthier than he had the day he was discharged. His cheeks were rosy, and there was far more brightness in his eyes. I thought he had even gained at least a half dozen pounds. He had obviously followed my and his doctor’s orders when it came to his eating habits.
All of that aside, I was upset. Such a thing as a surprise visit at my home challenged my professional status. It was a crack in the imaginary wall I knew we had to maintain to keep our authority. I was never snobby about it; I was merely correct. You don’t cross this line. It causes you to lose the magic, and a good nurse has to possess some magic.
“Mr. Thomas. Why are you here?”
“Hi there, Nurse Dunning. Maybe for today I can call you Pru?” he asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t. How did you . . . you found out where I lived?”
“Didn’t take Sherlock Holmes,” he said, smiling. “A little bird whispered it in my ear. There are more of them than you know flying around in that hospital. Gossip transfusions,” he added, smiling at how clever he thought he was.
“How did you get into the building?”
“Buzzed a few until someone answered, and I said, ‘Flower delivery.’ Saw it in a movie once. So much for security, I’m afraid.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, my voice still quite formal and sharp.
“I wanted to share this with you today,” he said, lifting the bottle of champagne. “I returned to work this morning following the schedule you and Dr. Simon outlined for me, but I made sure they understood it was for only a half day, each day for a week. My boss had no problem with that.”
“But—”
He rushed forward to take one of my grocery bags.
“Forgive me for permitting you to stand there like that so long. I’m just so excited to see you.”
I let him take the bag. Big mistakes begin with small failures of caution.
“They gave me this bottle this morning at the firm. It was too early to open it, and besides, I really didn’t want to share it with them.”
He stood there waiting for me to say something, do something.
“This is not—”
“Oh, let’s not refer to rules or regulations or anything ethical written in some book of codes,” he quickly interjected. “You did a wonderful thing for me, and I wanted to be sure to celebrate my restoration with you. That’s all. I’m not asking you to do anything more,” he said, smiling. He lifted the bottle again. “It’s a harmless little gesture, don’t you think?”
The irony we live with is that we do have pure animal instincts. Becoming civilized doesn’t kill them completely, but we rarely listen to them. At the moment, mine were telling me to put a quick end to this. A voice inside me was saying that I should thank him for the thought but point out that I had a personal life outside of my work and the hospital. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, yet I wanted to make it clear to him that I had feelings to consider as well.
“I think you should have asked me about this first, Mr. Thomas.”
“They wouldn’t give me your number at the hospital, and you’re not listed,” he said. “I knew there was no way to get your mobile.” He lifted the bottle again. He was depending entirely on his prop for this scene. “It was just a harmless spontaneous idea. The last person in the world I’d want to upset is you, Nurse Dunning.”
He smiled that little-boy smile I had seen so often when he was recuperating.
“Please don’t be upset with me,” he pleaded. “I’ll never forgive myself if you’re distressed with something I do.”
He did look helplessly sincere. It just wasn’t in my nature to be cruel. I sighed and nodded.
“Thank you,” he said.
“My apartment is a mess,” I warned him. “I was going to attend to it this afternoon.”
“A couple of clean glasses is all we need,” he said.
I moved forward to insert my key. He stood beside me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. I imagined him holding that little-boy smile, but now perhaps it was becoming something more. I felt I should make it perfectly clear to him that I was seeing someone, that I was in a serious relationship. But I also thought I might be assuming too much. He was so excited by this simple little gesture, he’d be surprised I had read anything else into it. I’d feel like a fool, too.
As soon as I opened the door, I looked at the small table and saw there were no messages on my answering machine. He didn’t see me breathe a sigh of relief.
“Looks comfortable,” he said, referring to my apartment.
“No matter what you say, I’m sure you keep your place nicer and neater than this,” I said.
“Oh, no, Nurse Dunning. I’m no one to criticize anyone else. Mine might be condemned by the health department.”
“Somehow I doubt that, Mr. Thomas,” I said.
At least I hadn’t left any dirty dishes on the coffee table, and there were no magazines on the floor. The kitchen was a whole other scene, however. Everything from breakfast was still on the table. Fortunately, there was room for my grocery bags on the counter.
“Just put it here, thanks,” I said.
He did so. I started to unload my groceries and put away what
needed to be kept cold before I went for some glasses. I actually had champagne glasses, something Chandler had bought for me when he wanted to celebrate our first date’s monthly anniversary. Douglas stepped back to watch me rinse them out and then clear some dishes and the box of cereal off the table.
“We really should chill this champagne a little,” he suggested. “It was cold at the office, of course, but by the time I got here and you arrived . . . I didn’t know you had gone shopping after work, of course.”
“You waited out there for more than an hour?”
“I knew you’d be back soon.”
“But standing out there that long . . .”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Accountants by their nature have lots of patience. Should we put the champagne in your freezer for ten minutes?”
“It’s all right as it is. Let’s open it here and have a glass in the living room,” I said. Why prolong this? I was suddenly his nurse again, practically prescribing when he should breathe. He heard the authoritative tone in my voice.
“Whatever you say.”
The living room was closer to the front door, I thought. I wanted to get rid of him as quickly as I could. His surprising appearance at my front door was still making me uncomfortable.
He worked on uncorking the champagne with obvious delight and determination. He really did look like a little boy. I felt guilty for being so severe.
“Have you been feeling all right, taking your medicine and getting good rest?” I asked him to change my tone.
“Oh, yes. Following your wishes right to the T,” he said.
“It’s the doctor who gives the orders, Mr. Thomas. When do you see him again?”
“Soon,” he said, and the cork popped.
Some of the champagne ran over. He began to apologize profusely.
“I really don’t do this too often,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
I grabbed a washcloth to soak it up, and then he poured us each a glass. When he handed me mine, I stepped toward the living room. He followed with his glass and the bottle of champagne.
The Silhouette Girl Page 7
