Making Angels Laugh

by Woods, Karen

  “She’ll turn ninety this year. But yes, she’s still alive and still working full time in emergency medicine.”

  “Ninety,” Kathy said, shaking her head. “And still functioning at full capacity.”

  “She didn’t want to retire?” Kevin asked.

  “Not a chance. She is adamant about wanting to remain active as long as possible. She still directs the choir at Church. And she still works full time.”

  “She was always a beautiful woman. She was younger than we are when your father died,” Kevin remarked. “She never remarried?”

  “No. She’s been alone since he died. Papa was way too young to die,” Rita replied, her voice tight and pained.

  “He died saving lives,” Jim asserted.

  “His heart failed while attempting to save people from a collapsed shaft in Greg’s father’s mine,” she reminded them, her voice pained and low. “A mine that closed shortly after that cave-in, throwing many families in the area out of work. Of course, many of the families were out of work anyway, because their men died in the cave-in. Have you been out to Russian Hill? It was once a thriving community. Now, it’s desolate, overgrown. Houses have fallen in on themselves.”

  Kevin said, “Yeah. Greg’s family defaulted on the taxes, years ago, and the county has been unable to move the property. The EPA has declared that whole area to have excess amounts of hazardous materials in the ground water. So, no one wants the clean-up bill. The county can’t afford to clean it up and no one wants to buy the land knowing that there will be a huge environmental abatement work required. And the Feds haven’t pushed the issue. That’s why it is so desolate out there. The county keeps the roads patched. That’s about it.”

  Rita sighed. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I know the mine bought out a bunch of families of former employees after the cave-in, after the Church burned. We had sold the house to the mining company before the cave-in and were paying rent until I graduated from college. I’d been accepted to several medical schools; Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Baylor, and a few more. Papa had been offered a tenure track teaching position at Stanford, and Mama had been offered a staff position at nearby hospital. We’d been ready to move on with our lives before the disaster.”

  “Sounds like a wise move to me, to sell the house,” Marian said. “It’s never a good idea to have two housing payments in different parts of the country.”

  “Irina Danielova always was a beautiful, and practical, woman. You remind me of her,” Kevin said.

  Jim added, “You do look very much like I remember her.”

  “I only hope I age as well as she has,” Rita dismissed. “She’s still a beautiful woman.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Jim replied.

  She sipped from her bottle of water. “Believe it or not, I never talk about my life here. I never think about any of it. I put it behind me.”

  Em nodded. “You have had good reason. No one blames you for not coming back before now. I’m just surprised that you actually came tonight.”

  Rita changed the subject. “Em, you might as well leave your car with Kevin and ride down with me to the airport in my rental. There’s no sense of paying to park a car long term at the airport.”

  “Thank you. That is kind of you. I accept the offer of the ride. What time are you leaving?”

  “Seven a.m.”

  “Good. Can you drop by Kevin’s and pick me up?”

  Kevin said, “Em’s staying with us.”

  “I understand needing a change, Em. After my husband was murdered, I couldn’t stand our place. Too many memories and too little future. I literally couldn’t stand it.”

  “Yeah, I know that feeling,” Em said on a sigh. “So, what did you do?”

  “Made a break and sold almost everything we owned. The clinic now sits on a farm I’d bought as an investment when I was pregnant with Kiril. It was the only piece of real property I didn’t sell.”

  “Interesting investment,” Kevin said.

  “I wanted to grow good food for my family. I bought the farm originally to have grass fed meat, free range eggs, and organically grown vegetables for my family. Now, we have those things for the clinic, grown on the grounds. The culinary and agricultural staff maintains good greenhouses which start the plants for the regular growing seasons and which provide fresh vegetables in the winter. And the staff raises meat animals, dairy animals, and we have our own eggs. The ponds provide fresh fish. We are largely self-sufficient, as animal manure is digested into methane to run the generators that provide our electricity and then the digested manure is used to fertilize the acreage for crops.”

  “You take your food seriously, then?”

  “For my family and my patients, you bet.”

  “You were telling about setting up the clinic after your husband died?” Marian prompted.

  “I took the money from the liquation of assets and started the clinic, in partnership with Janet, and her husband, Patrick, who has a doctorate in Physical Therapy. While the boys were still in school, I lived in the old farm house, which is now used to house the agricultural workers. I moved into my little cottage after the boys were all on their own.”

  Marian asked, “How big is your cottage?”

  “About eight hundred square feet.”

  “My dining room is bigger than that,” Marian replied, clearly dismayed.

  “I don’t need a lot of room for just me. I don’t entertain. The cottage is basically a place to sleep, unwind, do some writing, and keep a few personal items. I have a second bedroom for one of the kids or my mother when they rarely come to visit me. But, truthfully, that room is largely where I write.” She shrugged. “Basically, my life is a matter of work, eat, and sleep.”

  Kathy nodded. “I think that’s all of our lives.”

  Rita smiled at her friend’s widow. She had couple of general practice jobs open at the clinic. Rita sighed.

  “That was a heavy sigh,” Em observed.

  “I don’t want you to feel obligated, in any way. Or to think that I’m forcing an issue. You have your own life to lead. And if you feel called to a monastic life, that’s precisely what you have to pursue.”

  “Okay,” Em said, clearly puzzled. “What would I feel obligated or that you’re forcing an issue about?”

  “I’ve been reviewing CVs for a couple of general practice openings at the clinic.”

  Em obviously forced a smile. “Yeah? Are you offering me a job?”

  “No. I’m telling you that it’s available if you want to put in for it. I have been looking for over a year trying to the perfect people for the jobs. There is a job open if you want to submit your CV. I’m not promising you anything. We’d both have to do due diligence. You’d have to get your license to practice endorsed by the New York State Board for Medicine, which shouldn’t be a problem, not with your degree from Harvard and the residency at Rush. And the insurance company would have to sign off on covering you for professional liability. My practice partner would have to approve of adding you to the staff. Most importantly, you’d have to decide this is something that you want to do after you take a look at the clinic and our case load. It’s a round the clock job as we have a residential clinic. You won’t have seen hours like this since your residency.”

  Em smiled. “I can’t think of much I would rather do than to work with you, if the abbess doesn’t ask me to stay.”

  “You might change your mind. I’ve been described as a ‘ball buster’,” she warned.

  “I can believe that,” Em said with a more genuine smile. “As for the job, I will keep the option open. Maybe, my call is to be a medical nun in a clinic like yours? Perhaps that would be a good thing for a couple of widowed doctors to do, to form a community of medical service?”

  “I thought about, dreamed, hoped and planned to become a nun long ago, before I married, and the doors were closed to me,” Rita admitted.

  “Doors have ways of reopening,” Em offered.

&nbs
p; Chapter Nine

  “Hey, Losers!” Peter Quinn said as he came to a halt just behind Em’s chair.

  That voice was unmistakable. Rita felt a wave of fear threaten to engulf her, and ruthlessly forced that down. She looked at Peter and sighed.

  Peter had a half-empty tumbler of scotch on the rocks in his hand. It had quite obviously not been his first of the evening. This was all she needed, to have to interact with a half-looped Peter. The man, as a boy, had been difficult enough to deal with. She didn’t need to deal with a drunken Peter, whatever inhibitions and judgment he possessed inhibited by alcohol.

  Most Holy Theotokos, save us, she prayed mentally.

  She forced herself to assess him. The lean muscle mass Peter had sported in high school was still mostly with him. He no longer had the twenty-four inch waist, but his belt size couldn’t have been more than thirty-four. His shoulders were still broad, although there was, to her medical eye, a slight unevenness there, the right being marginally smaller. Injuries could do that. She’d been in the stadium once when Peter had been carried from the field as a prelude to his spending the rest of the season on the disabled list with a torn up shoulder and back. All that notwithstanding, he still clearly cared about his body. He was a big man: six foot four inches, about two hundred pounds of big muscular man. He remained formidable.

  Between body mass and vicious personality, he wasn’t anyone whom a sane person would have wanted to meet in a darkened alleyway. Then again, Rita really didn’t care to meet him under any circumstances, even in this fairly well lighted Legion Hall, with lots of witnesses around.

  “Who’s the fox? Don’t you know that this is supposed to be members of our class and spouses only? And here you bring in this sexy chick? Don’t you have any respect for the rules of the party? I was told I couldn’t bring a date. Why did you get to bring someone not in our class? What makes you special?” Peter asked, his voice becoming more belligerent as went on. “So, introduce me to this pretty woman. Surely, she has better taste than to hang out with you losers when she could be in the company of better looking winners.”

  Rita sighed and sipped from her bottle of water. “Go away, Peter. None of us wants to have anything to do with you. We never did. Just move along now before things get even more unpleasant than you’ve already made them.”

  “Do I know you?” he asked, clearly puzzled.

  “No, you don’t know me. You never made the effort to know me. And you never will know me, because you burned your bridges quite thoroughly, long ago. But you used to try to bully and intimidate me,” Rita said. “I have no desire to renew our acquaintance.”

  Instead of going away, Peter pulled up a chair so that the back of the chair was resting against the table next to Rita. He sat on that chair, straddled, with his muscular arms crossed before him and resting on the back of the chair. His leg brushed hers.

  She rose and moved her chair about eighteen inches away from him. It was the furthest she could move, without unduly crowding anyone. She was still within reach of Peter, but she had a bit of room between them.

  He looked at her curiously when she sat down again. “Don’t be that way, pretty lady. I’m harmless.”

  “You are many things, Peter Allen Quinn, but I know you too well to believe you to be harmless,” Rita replied, trying, and failing, to keep her voice soft.

  Now, he was really puzzled. “Sweetheart, I’ve never seen you in all my life. I would have remembered a foxy babe like you. I guarantee that.”

  “Don’t you dare call me ‘sweetheart’,” Rita replied, her voice much sharper. Then she forced her tone to be gentler. “And like your other guarantees, this one is worth less than the spoken words. I have no desire to speak to you, Peter. Go away. Or I will. I want nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with you.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out how you know me. I’m sure that I’ve never laid eyes on you before in my life,” Pete said. “You weren’t in our class.”

  “My maiden name was Melnikova.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment then he shook his head negatively. “Nope. The only Melnikov I remember from class was that fat, smart-assed, bitch Piggy. And sweet thing, you’re nothing like that ugly old tub of lard. She left high school after only two years. Everyone always said she was so smart, but she didn’t even finish high school. I heard she was brain damaged after Bonehead Brewster beat her to a pulp the last day of our sophomore year.”

  Peter, as always, was continuing his tirade against Rita’s younger self, absolutely oblivious to the mounting tension at the table, “That gal was bone ugly and clumsy. So what if she was smart, if she had been a bone, a dog wouldn’t have chewed on her. I never knew an uglier person.”

  “I guess you never bothered to contemplate your own soul, then,” Rita offered, her voice soft. “I always thought that must be a dark and evil place. And I pity you.”

  “What did you say?” Peter demanded, in a tone that said he was unused to people talking back to him.

  Em urged, “Go away, Peter.”

  Kevin added, “Make yourself scarce.”

  Jim said, “You aren’t welcome at this table.”

  Yet, Peter just kept on, “I heard that bitch Piggy dropped dead of a heart attack after she left here. There’s only so much stress a heart can take, you know. She always was fatter than a hog going to market.”

  Rita laughed, choosing to dismiss him with humor, “Not quite. Market weight for pork used to be about two hundred twenty-five pounds. The most I ever weighed was about one hundred twenty pounds. Which really didn’t make me all that heavy. Look around this room. Most of the people here are heavier than I was then, including yourself. I am Margarita Aleksandrova Melnikova Zornova, M.D., Ph.D., by the way. And I’m quite alive as you can see. You used to call me ‘Piggy’, among other grossly insulting names.”

  His jaw dropped open. “You can’t be Old Butter Butt. You’re absolutely gorgeous.”

  “Thank you,” Rita said, keeping her voice calm, even though she wanted to be anything but calm. “That’s clearly the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Now, why don’t you go away before this particular conversation turns as ugly the insults you’ve made?”

  “You have massive plastic surgery on your face, or something?” he demanded.

  “The only surgery I had on my face was after our sophomore year. I had procedures to repair my jaw and nose, after you instigated poor Matthew Brewster into beating me half to death.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Peter asked in disbelief. “You’re putting me on. You really aren’t Piggy.”

  “Trust me, I wouldn’t ‘put you on’. I wouldn’t want to be that close to you… I am not, and never have been, ‘Piggy’.”

  “See, I knew you were teasing me,” Peter replied, relief in his voice.

  Rita continued, “I never was ‘Piggy’; that was just one of the loathsome labels you and your buddies hung on me. However, I’m no longer someone you can bully and abuse mercilessly without fear of serious retribution. So, do us both a favor. Go away and leave me alone.”

  “Or else what?” he taunted. “You’re going to cry? Scream? Beg for mercy?”

  “I’ve never given you the satisfaction of doing any of those things in reaction to your bullying; not even on the day that you put a live rattlesnake in my desk. I didn’t scream when you incited Matthew to beat me half to death. I didn’t beg or cry on the day you and your buddies burned down Saint Konstantin’s two weeks after the mining accident that killed my father and many other people.”

  Rita heard the surprised intakes of breath around the table.

  She continued, “Now, leave me alone or you’ll find you have more trouble than you want to deal with. I guarantee that. I’m not the meek child I was when you knew me.”

  “Greg will want to see you. He won’t believe this is you anymore than I did. You know, the three of us ought to go have a private party. Just to get to know one another better. You were way too young
and too fat in high school to interest any of us…”

  “Praise God for His tender mercies,” Rita replied, her voice prayerful. She sighed as she looked at him. “You need to leave, now, Peter. Right now. You’ve outstayed your non-existent welcome.”

  It was as though he hadn’t heard her. “But it’s different, now. A hot looking babe like you hasn’t lived the life of a nun. I’ll bet you could even teach me a trick or three. Come on, we’ll blow this boring excuse for a party, and have a private party. I can’t wait to see what you look like naked. And I know Greg will want to see you.” He stood and held out his hand to her.

  “I will not go anywhere with you. Leave me alone, Peter.”

  Then Peter grabbed her by the arm and forcibly yanked her to her feet. Her chair fell backwards with a thud as it hit the floor. The music in the hall stopped suddenly. And the conversations ceased. The silence was expectant.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw, a couple of guys across the room, men she registered as being Don Jones and Roger Clark, rise to their feet. Certainly, both men wore an air of authority common to police officers. Both men clearly wore holstered side arms under their sports jackets. Even at a glance, that was obvious to Rita. She hoped she could diffuse this without involving the law. But it was good to know that they were here, in case they were needed.

  Jack’s cousins stood, ready to fight. This was going get ugly, real fast, she knew, unless she diffused it right now.

  Peter laughed. “Ah, Piggy’s only friends in the world are willing to fight for her. How sweet.”

  “Leave her alone, Pete!” Jim said.

  Peter stated, “You can’t do anything to stop me from doing anything I want to do. If you haven’t learned that by now, I guess you aren’t as smart as people always said you were. Now are you?”

  “Don’t do this, Peter. Don’t make me hurt, or kill, you,” Rita said, her voice cold and very controlled.

  “You couldn’t hurt a fly. We’re going to get out of here, just you, me, and Greg, for our own long overdue private reunion party,” Peter said.