The Trouble with Joe

by Emilie Richards

  Dumb, dumb, dumb, she told herself now.

  “She’s going to be so scared.”

  “More scared than she was living on the street?” He snorted, as if she were being ridiculous. After a pause, he conceded, “It’ll be an adjustment.”

  Her face felt stiff; her voice came out wooden. “Why didn’t you just have her transported in an ambulance? Or a helicopter? And saved yourself the trip?”

  He moved his shoulders. “I, uh, liked the idea of us riding the ferry together. I thought...she might be excited.”

  For a moment her heart quivered. The man she’d fallen in love with was still in there. But then she imagined the hat lady in a room at an assisted-living facility where the doors were undoubtedly locked. She would have no freedom at all.

  “The place has a garden.” Adrian sounded tentative. “Her room looks out on some roses.”

  Lucy swallowed a lump in her throat. “Can she go out? Maybe take walks?”

  She saw the answer on his face. Sucking in a breath, she told him, “I said goodbye to your mom already. I just waited to—”

  “Tell me what you thought?”

  She gave a twisted smile. “Something like that.”

  He reached a hand out to her, his voice gruff, urgent. “Lucy... I know I said we’d talk, but I can’t get back until next weekend. Friday night—”

  She backed away, not meeting his eyes. “Don’t bother.”

  He flinched. “So in the end this is about my mother.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head and took one last, agonizing look at his lean face and the turmoil in his eyes. In a choked voice, she said, “It’s about you.” Then she turned and fled.

  Through the haze of tears, she had no idea whether people were staring as she hurried out of the elevator and crossed the lobby then the parking lot. She knew only that Adrian didn’t follow.

  * * *

  ALL ABOUT HIM? Adrian thought incredulously. Who was she kidding?

  His fingers flexed on the steering wheel as he followed the line of weekend traffic. In the end, it was really all about her. Or maybe it was about his mother. Was Lucy making the point that, while he might be Elizabeth Rutledge’s son, she still knew her best?

  Feeling sick, he thought, It’s true. But what in hell did she think he should do? Walk Mom to the hospital door and wave cheerily as she pushed her shopping cart toward the highway then God knows where? She was fifty-six years old. She had multiple personalities. Letting her continue to live on the street wasn’t an option.

  “I don’t know this place.” Beside him, Elizabeth’s voice quavered. She gripped the armrest so hard, her knuckles shone white. “Where are we going?”

  They hadn’t even reached the Hood Canal Bridge, and he’d already repeated himself twenty or so times. But he smiled reassuringly anyway and said, “Remember? We’re going to ride on the ferry.”

  “And then you’re taking me home. Right?”

  “Don’t you want to ride on the ferry? Remember when we used to do that? We’d walk on, and go outside so the wind blew on our faces. Well, this time we’re driving the car on.”

  She stiffened. “That doesn’t look like a ferry.”

  The highway emerged from a long curve to reveal the bridge ahead, the broad canal sparkling beneath.

  He explained that they still had an hour’s drive.

  “When will we be home?”

  What, in her mind, was home? Adrian wondered. The hospital? One of her hideouts? The church? Middleton in general?

  “Remember, I talked to you about the new place you’ll be living.”

  “I don’t want a new place.” She was definite about that. “I don’t think I want to ride on the ferry, not if you won’t take me home.”

  “Remember the accident? You still need extra care. You’re not very strong yet, Mom.”

  “Father Joseph always lets me stay in my room at the church. I can do that. Or Lucy. Lucy would let me stay.”

  Goddamn it. She probably would. But Adrian couldn’t foist his problems on Lucy. Not now, when it was clear she didn’t love him. Not really, not the way he’d believed when he had been riding on a powerful wave of hope.

  And it wasn’t as if she’d ever offered, he realized, his thoughts crystalline and sharp-edged. The anger he clung to was keeping the agony at bay, but it was there, barely hiding around the corner. He focused on the anger, shutting out the grief. Until he got his mother settled, he couldn’t afford to break down.

  Yeah, Lucy wanted him to find a solution, but she’d never suggested an alternative. Apparently he was supposed to have figured out a perfect answer—which, of course, she already knew, but hadn’t shared with him. Maybe it had been a test, one he’d failed. Well, to hell with her, he thought, teeth clenched, and knew he didn’t mean it.

  “I don’t know where we are,” his mother repeated. Her frightened gaze swung from the landscape to him. “I want to go back now!”

  Gripping the steering wheel so hard he swore the plastic groaned, Adrian explained again. And again. And again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  STILL CLENCHING THE steering wheel, Adrian tried to count his blessings. At least his mother was herself today, not Queen Elizabeth or the poet. She was definitely in the here and now. Adrian tried to be glad.

  Lucy had packed his mother’s pitiful store of belongings into a couple of suitcases, which he suspected she’d bought for the occasion. His mother had already been dressed when he arrived at the hospital, wearing a pretty flowered dress with a wide belt, comfortable shoes and a hat, one of those small oval ones that perched rakishly atop her head, edged by net that dipped over her forehead. It made him think of Audrey Hepburn.

  He grimaced. No, if she glanced in a mirror she’d see Elizabeth Taylor, he supposed.

  With only another dozen repetitions of the same conversation, they made it to Poulsbo, then onto Bainbridge Island, and finally to the ferry landing. She fell silent briefly when they drove on, the ramp rattling beneath the tires, and the ferry workers directed him to park on one side. Adrian set the brake and turned off the engine, then closed his eyes briefly. His neck and shoulders were so tight, he wasn’t sure he could unbend enough to unlatch the door or get out.

  After a minute, he said, “Shall we go up? I always liked watching the ferry pull away from the dock.”

  “We won’t get off, will we? We’ll ride it over and back, the way we always did. That might be fun.”

  He unfastened her seat belt and his own, and got out of the car. Panic was building in his chest. What happened when they got to the other side? Would she fight him? How the hell could he leave her at the assisted-living place if she was terrified or crying?

  He heard Lucy’s voice in his head. Did you ask her what she wants?

  He didn’t have to. He knew. She wanted to return to her familiar small-town streets, her familiar routine. Garage sales on Friday and Saturday mornings, the church day care on Sundays, the library, the hair salon, Safeway and the Pancake Haus and Lucy’s café.

  Grimy, pushing her stolen shopping cart, inviting pity and charity.

  Adrian held open the heavy door for his mother. She climbed the steps slowly, holding up everyone else. Once on the passenger deck, she had to sit immediately, looking pale and alarmingly fragile.

  Would she be happier at the Middleton assisted-living facility, even if she’d be confined there, too, and he couldn’t see her very often?

  But Lucy would be there. Not with him in Seattle the way he’d dreamed. Believed she would be.

  He realized, as his mother shakily rose and leaned on his arm so they could proceed slowly toward the back of the ferry and the outdoor deck that looked down on the still loading cars and the dock, that he was as bewildered as she was.

  He’d caught
one of the first ferries that morning, eager to arrive. Of course he’d only see Lucy briefly, but he could kiss her, talk to her, make plans. He’d go back next weekend.

  But the minute he saw her, he knew something was wrong. She’d looked at him as if he were a stranger. When he tried to remember all the things she’d said, they blurred.

  He did remember one accusation. “I thought you were getting to know her. But you never saw her as a person, did you? Only as she related to you.”

  His mother wrapped her hands around the railing and leaned against it, her head lifted for a minute, her eyes closed, as a breeze toyed with her white curls. She breathed in as though the salty air tasted like fine wine. For that brief instant, apparently oblivious to the chattering family who had joined them out here, she looked at peace.

  She had always been fragile. As long as Adrian could remember, he had wanted to shield her from the world. Was that so bad?

  “That summer I went to visit Maman and Grandpère in Nova Scotia, where did you go?” he asked.

  Her eyes opened and she turned her head. After a minute, she said in a voice so soft he had to bend closer to hear, “It was a hospital. I think. He said I’d get better.”

  “Did you?”

  “They made me feel so cloudy.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “I wasn’t me. I don’t know who I was. I don’t like hospitals.”

  “Where did you go after you left the hospital?”

  Her forehead crinkled in puzzlement. “I tried to go home, but I couldn’t find it.”

  “Home to me in Edmonds, or to your parents?”

  The ferry horn sounded, making them both jump. The gulls cried and swooped overhead the way he remembered from when he was a boy. She looked away, watching the water churn between them and the dock. “I don’t know. There was someplace I thought I should go. But I couldn’t.”

  He felt sick, imagining her homeless, frightened, unable to remember even how to call her own mother.

  “I missed you,” he said quietly, past the lump in his throat.

  “I thought you were still a little boy. I’m not sure how you can be my Adrian.”

  “I am.” He smiled at her, although the effort hurt. “I still love to ride the ferry.”

  “I think I have to sit down,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t.”

  He found them a seat inside by the window, and watched her gaze hungrily out at the sailboats chasing each other, the barge moving slowly to the south, the water a bright blue with the sun almost directly overhead.

  He could take her on outings. To restaurants and parks and to the beach. When she was stronger, they could fly to Nova Scotia. He wondered if she might even want to stay there, at least for now. Except Maman was a very old woman now, not able to care for her.

  But the people in Middleton had. He thought they might be happy to continue to do so, except for the grumpy few who had always disdained her, their one-and-only homeless person.

  She wouldn’t have to be homeless. He could certainly afford to rent her a room, or even buy her a house if she wanted one.

  Yes, but could she be trusted to live alone? What if she left a burner or curling iron or God knew what on, or a faucet running? What if she locked herself out on a cold night, or forgot where she lived, or...?

  As if Lucy were sitting there beside him, he heard her say, “She’s not senile, you know. Do you think that parents would trust her with their children if she were? Or that she could enjoy reading the way she does, and discussing the themes? That she could keep appointments? She’s remarkably well-organized, actually. And she has such a good memory for the names of authors whose books she’s loved, and perennials and old roses, and historical figures.”

  Had she said that, when she was trying to persuade him to make a different plan? Adrian wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly he felt sick. Had he made the right decision? Had it ever been the right one for his mother?

  He felt a yawning emptiness inside and identified it. He didn’t want to lose her again, and he thought he would if he gave her back to Middleton. But the truth was, she wasn’t the mom he remembered anyway. Oh, she was still that, in flickers of memory, but those were overlaid by the life she’d chosen since. One that hadn’t been so bad.

  Would Lucy have him back if he took his mom home to Middleton? The tearing pain in his gut told him no. It was too late. He’d done something wrong. Or maybe it was just who he was. Nobody since his mother had ever loved him. Why had he believed Lucy could?

  But maybe, just maybe, he could make things right for the hat lady.

  It seemed symbolic that they were seated to be looking back rather than forward, at the approaching cityscape. Turning his face away from the window, telling himself his eyes burned from the bright reflection of the sun on the water and not from emotion, Adrian thought, I want to go back, too. I want to be part of a family, part of a town.

  He had responsibilities. Clients.

  Did he give a damn about a one of them?

  I can’t move to Middleton if Lucy doesn’t want me.

  No, but he could change his life. He could accept the lessons she and his mother had taught.

  And...it wouldn’t hurt to explore possibilities, would it? In case he hadn’t been wrong about Lucy?

  Still hurting but also feeling a fragile renewal of the precious hope Lucy had given him, he said, “Mom, I’m sorry I dragged you on this trip.”

  She smiled sunnily at him. “I’m fine, Adrian. You were right. This was fun. Although I am looking forward to going home.”

  He smiled at her wryly. “I know.”

  Crazy or not, his mother was on to something. Middleton did feel like home, in a way his expensive Seattle condominium and the city he knew best never had.

  Lucy, please find me worthy.

  * * *

  LUCY PEERED AT herself in the mirror from between only slightly puffy lids. The cold washcloth had done its job. Chances were good that no one would notice she looked any different than usual, especially once she got bustling in the kitchen over hot burners.

  She’d considered not going in. Shea could have filled in for her, or even Samantha in a pinch. But giving herself something to do was a good thing, and anyway, this was her life. Bleakly Lucy thought, I chose it.

  She still couldn’t quite believe she’d thrown away everything she had ever believed she wanted: a gorgeous man who loved her, the possibility of adventure in the wider world, the chance to escape her overabundant family while still being near enough to see them sometimes. Even the impetus she needed to try out her culinary skills for the benefit of more sophisticated diners.

  What kind of fool was she?

  But in her heart, she knew she couldn’t have made a different choice. Adrian’s decision to institutionalize his mother without even exploring alternatives made a mockery of all the times they’d talked about the mother he remembered, a woman who had shaped the man he was despite her absence from so much of his life. That man, Lucy had imagined, could be playful, protective, soft-hearted, impulsive. He would be the perfect father. She’d seen him in her mind’s eye, out on the lawn spinning a little boy in circles, both of them laughing, his smiling mother looking on.

  Dumb, idealized dreams. Because, obviously, he wasn’t that man.

  She blinked fiercely to keep tears from flooding her eyes again. It was three o’clock and she needed to get going if she was to be ready for the dinner crowd.

  She had started down the stairs when her doorbell rang. Lucy’s step checked and she frowned. That was odd. Who would be stopping by at this time of day? Besides her family, of course, who had the annoying habit of letting themselves in without bothering with any nonsense—as her aunt Beth put it—like ringing the doorbell.

 
Puzzled, Lucy opened the door.

  Like a mirage, Adrian and the hat lady stood on her front porch, Adrian tall and so formidably handsome she was cast back to the first time she saw him.

  Her throat closed. She was imagining them. Wasn’t she?

  He cleared his throat. “I’m glad we caught you at home. I was afraid you’d be at the café.”

  “I...was about to leave.”

  Expression wary, he was looking at her entirely too closely. He would notice the puffy eyes.

  Well, so what! she thought with defiance. He was the one who’d disappointed her. She wouldn’t apologize for loving him, or for grieving for what might have been.

  “Um...can we come in?”

  The hat lady, whose carriage was very erect, even regal, beamed at Lucy. In a very upper-crust British accent, she said, “Your flower beds are lovely! What a talented young lady you are.”

  “Why, thank you.” Lucy smiled at her. “Please. Do come in. May I offer you a cup of tea?”

  “That would be nice, but I wonder...” She glanced at the man at her side, then met Lucy’s eyes again, some embarrassment in hers. “I dislike asking for a favor, but...I do believe I need to lie down for a bit. My son suggested I might take advantage of your hospitality.”

  “Of course you can.” Lucy resisted the impulse to hug the frail woman. Because, after all, you weren’t supposed to touch Her Majesty without permission. “Let me show you upstairs.”

  The progress was slow. Adrian, watchful, waited at the bottom. The hat lady was worn out by her day. Lucy showed her into the guest room.

  “May I?” she asked, and, given permission, unpinned the hat. She helped her guest take off her shoes and lie down, then spread an afghan over her. “Shall I close the curtains?”

  “No.” Her friend, the Queen of England, smiled, her eyes closing. “I like the sunlight on my face.”

  Lucy tiptoed out, pulling the door almost closed. For a moment she paused there, afraid to go down and face Adrian.

  Afraid to find out she was wrong about why he’d turned around and driven his mother back to Middleton. But putting it off wouldn’t change anything, would it? Lucy drew a deep breath and made herself start down the stairs.