by Pamela Morsi
Tom’s eyebrows momentarily shot up at her words. Then he deliberately concentrated on the ice in his glass.
“So you’re fixing up that old car of hers?”
“Yes, ma’am. I had it towed into my shop a week ago.”
“That is so silly! Why in the world would she spend good money on that old rattletrap junker?” Miss Warner giggled. “She used to drive me and Mama around sometimes, but she hasn’t gone farther than the grocery store in years.”
“It’s a very valuable car,” Tom explained.
Miss Warner, a pudgy woman with a face framed in graying ringlets, giggled. “Well, I wouldn’t have it myself. I don’t drive, of course, but if I did I’d have a sturdy sedan. A convertible, in the sun we have in South Texas? It’s just silly and showy.”
Tom uncomfortably listened to several more complaints about the woman that Miss Warner called “her friend” be fore he finally managed to get the information he needed out of her.
“She’s in Christus Santa Rosa,” Miss Warner told him. “I haven’t talked to her, but as far as I know, she must still be there.”
Tom thanked the woman for the lemonade and got away as quickly as he could politely manage. He had liked Mrs. Gilfred the day that he met her. His empathy for the woman had now increased considerably. With friends like Miss Warner, the old lady wouldn’t need enemies.
As he walked back to his truck, he checked his watch. Maybe he should run by and see her. Find out if she still wanted him to work on the Buick. He pulled out his phone and called the shop to let the guys know that he might be longer than he’d thought.
Gus answered.
“Hi, Gus. I’m just checking in. Everything going okay around there?”
“Uh…yeah, I think so.”
The uncertainty in his voice was not particularly encouraging.
“So what are you doing?” Tom asked.
“Oh…I’ve been talking to Sparky. He’s still thinking about pulling the engine.”
Tom rolled his eyes. Sparky was a nice old man who’d been talking about that for years. And he could talk about it for hours. And Gus would likely let him, rather than accomplish anything concrete.
“What else is going on?”
“Oh, Hector has Murphy’s Chevy step-side up on the lift. He’s doing the brakes and lubing, I think.”
“What about Cliff?”
“Cliff’s gone.”
“What?”
“That Stacy woman, you know the one at the parts store,” Gus said. “She came by and said that they’d gotten in some pulled parts and she needed Cliff to come take a look.”
“He left with Stacy?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Oh…I dunno, maybe a couple of hours ago. Right after you left really.”
Tom offered a silent curse.
“Okay, I’m on my way back there,” he told Gus. “Send Sparky home to his wife and get busy! I want to see that you accomplish something today.”
Tom was shaking his head as he pulled his truck away from the curb. Cliff’s “Saturday thing” was seeping into Tuesday and Tom didn’t like it a bit. It was not his business if his employee cheated on his wife. But it was definitely his business if his employee spent time cheating while he was on the clock.
He thought about Mrs. Gilfred up at the hospital. Maybe he could get away this afternoon to go see her.
Erica sprinkled her bowl of lettuce and tomatoes with just the very fewest of bacon bits as Melody Garwin stepped up beside her at the salad bar.
“They’re not even real,” she said.
“Huh?”
“The bacon bits, they’re not real, so it’s not like it’s eating real bacon.” The pudgy young woman punctuated her pronouncement by ladling a hefty quantity of the crunchy brown condiment onto her own salad.
“Actually I think they are made of bacon,” Erica said. “Dried-out bacon, I guess, but they do say real bacon bits.”
Melody stared at her plate as if it had turned into a snake. “How many calories do you think that is?”
Erica felt a surge of sympathy for her. “I…I don’t know. I guess most of the calories would be in the fat and the fat’s gone.”
Melody nodded slowly. “Right, the fat’s gone. That’s got to be good.”
She was smiling again as the two walked to their usual table. Most of the crowd from their department were already seated. Erica took her usual chair on the end opposite Callie Torreno. Melody sat catty-corner to her, next to Lena.
Erica had barely gotten her napkin unrolled when Darla Ingalls rushed up, scooting in next to Rayliss.
“I’ve got the scoop on Dr. Carnegy,” she said in an excited whisper.
“I thought we already had the scoop,” Callie said. “He cheated.”
Darla nodded. “But there’s more and I have it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Which horse?” Rayliss asked her, clearly eager for details.
“I talked to Celia Rey, she’s an R.N. on Five-South and the woman who babysits her kids has a sister who works in Dr. Carnegy’s office. You know the office staff always know everything.”
They all nodded in agreement.
“So tell us, tell us,” Lena urged excitedly.
“Well, according to Celia’s babysitter, Mrs. Carnegy has a certain squeamishness about some of the doctor’s favorite bedroom games. So he’s been quietly buying those services from professionals for years.”
“Prostitutes?” Rayliss exclaimed in a whisper.
“Celia didn’t think they were like streetwalkers or something like that,” Darla said. “It’s much more likely that they were expensive call-girl types.”
“Still, that’s pretty gross,” Lena said.
“It’s not clear whether Mrs. Carnegy knew about it all this time,” Darla continued. “But now he’s fallen for some one-stop full-service sweetheart still in her twenties.”
“Yikes! Dr. Carnegy must be fifty if he’s a day,” Rayliss said.
“More like sixty,” Callie piped in.
“Anyway, he’s in love and he’s the one who asked for the divorce.”
“So he’s divorcing her?”
“Well, not now, not officially. He’s wanted a no-fault split. But when she found out about the twentysomething, she and her lawyer decided to go after him for adultery.”
“That pays better than an amicable split any day,” Callie said. “So good for her.”
It didn’t sound to Erica that it was actually good for anyone, but she kept that opinion to herself. She had been down the divorce road so many times with her own mother, she felt like an expert on the subject. But it was not a mastery that she enjoyed sharing. And she knew that no amount of financial settlement could make up for the anger, disappointment and basic disruption of a marriage falling apart.
“Still,” Rayliss said after a moment, “the woman brought it on herself.”
“The twentysomething?” Melody asked.
“No, silly,” Rayliss answered. “The wife.”
“The wife?” Melody sounded as surprised as Erica felt. “How is it the wife’s fault?”
“Because she should have let him.”
“She should have let him…what?”
“Whatever it is that he wanted,” Rayliss said.
Callie nodded agreement. “If a wife has any chance of keeping her husband at home, she’d better never say no.”
“She won’t if she’s smart,” Darla agreed.
“If she does, she gets what she deserves,” Rayliss said.
Lena giggled. “I’m lucky that Aiden has a short attention span. When he comes up with something I’m not crazy about, I try to distract him.”
“Well, don’t count on that always working,” Rayliss said. “Men can be easygoing about a lot of things, but not about sex.”
Erica saw Melody shaking her head. She was tempted to warn her to stay out of it. But she decided it was better just to stay out of it herself.
“That’s not right,” Melody declared. “Sex is for mutual pleasure. Two people who love each other want to please each other. If there’s something that somebody doesn’t like, then find something that you both enjoy. That’s not such a tough challenge. Gabe would never ask me to do anything that I’m not comfortable with.”
Erica agreed with the sentiment. However, Melody’s condescending tone and superior attitude certainly didn’t encourage anyone to agree with her.
“So you never do anything you don’t want to do?”
“I give my husband the kind of respect that he’s due. So he always treats me with courtesy. Everything we do in bed is…is nice.”
“Courtesy?” Darla repeated.
“It’s nice!” Rayliss put an emphasis on the word that was incredulous.
Lena giggled. “I’d say our bedroom was more naughty than nice.”
Laughter filled the table. Even Erica couldn’t stifle a giggle. Only Melody remained unamused.
“Perhaps if you showed more respect for your husbands, they would show more respect to you.”
“I respect my husband,” Lena said. “But I don’t worship him.”
“She’s got that right,” Rayliss agreed. “It’s better to have equality in the rest of the house than to demand it in the bedroom.”
The insinuation that Melody’s marriage might not be ideal pushed her even further.
“If you were better wives and held your husbands in higher esteem, perhaps they wouldn’t always be the butt of every joke.”
“Since he hit forty, what’s left of my husband’s butt is a joke,” Darla said.
That statement brought more laughter.
“Just a word to the wise,” Callie told Melody. “There are no perfect men. If you keep treating Gabe like one, he’s going to start believing it. And you’ve got nothing but trouble from then on.”
All the women nodded sagely.
“Keep your eyes open,” Rayliss said. “You’ve made him think he’s God’s gift to women. So if he’s not looking else where already, then he certainly will be when he hits that midlife thing.”
“Gabe loves me,” she said with certainty.
“Of course he does,” Callie conceded. “But it’s not about love, it’s about sex. When it comes to men, sex and love are two different things.”
“If he loses interest in you, says he’s too tired, that’s one of the first signs.” Rayliss, the single female who was an expert on marriage, made her statement utilizing a fork as a pointer.
“Or he may want more sex,” Darla suggested. “And changing it up in new ways, ways he’s picking up from some body else.”
“I’ve heard that watching the money is the thing to do,” Lena said. “If he takes out a new credit card on his own or opens some kind of account without asking you, then he’s spending money on restaurants and hotel rooms.”
Around the table the women nodded in agreement.
“Gabe doesn’t do any of that,” Melody insisted.
“He doesn’t do any of it…yet,” Callie said, by way of correction.
“The biggest clue is the shower,” Rayliss said, speaking as if she had eons of experience. “You’ve got to pay attention if he starts taking a shower at the gym. If a husband showers at the gym then you know there’s someone else.”
“He plays racquetball,” Melody defended. The only response she got were knowing nods.
“I’m not going to listen to this,” she stated adamantly. Melody got to her feet and stormed off.
“Well, crap,” Darla said. “I didn’t mean to make her mad. I guess we shouldn’t have done that.”
Erica thought she was undoubtedly right.
“It’s for her own good,” Lena said. “I’m crazy about my husband, too, but I don’t think he’s some all-powerful superhero. Marriage is for people, not gods and goddesses.”
“Melody’s too sensitive by half,” Callie said. “And the way she’s got that man of hers up on a pedestal, it’s about time somebody gave her some straight talk.”
Chapter 6
TOM WAS MAD FOR most of the day. Just after ten that morning, Cliff had disappeared and left the rest of them to pick up the slack. As Tom silently seethed, he felt as if he couldn’t say anything to anyone. The boss cannot complain about one employee to another. And he couldn’t even vent his frustrations to his wife. He’d agreed to keep Cliff’s infidelity a secret. And there was no explaining what was going on without revealing that piece of information.
Cliff had been cagey enough to return while Tom was gone to pick up Quint. By the time Tom confronted Cliff, he was busily engaged in pulling the engine on a 1985 Trans Am. Tom wanted nothing better than to chew his employee up one side and down the other, but with an 800-pound engine swaying slightly on a hoist, he decided it was the better part of valor to bite his tongue and let the work proceed as necessary.
He decided to go to the hospital and told Cliff that he was leaving and for him to keep an eye on Quint until Erica got there. At least the responsibility of babysitting would keep his friend on the job.
“I’m going to go visit a lady in the hospital,” Tom told his son. “She’s sick and I need to talk to her about her car.”
“Are you going to take her flowers?”
“Flowers?”
“Mom says that when people are in the hospital, you take them flowers,” Quint told him.
Tom grinned at his son. “That’s a very nice idea, Quint,” he said. “Maybe I’ll stop down at the grocery store and get her one of those little bouquets they have.”
Quint nodded sagely. “I think bouquets are just like flowers,” he told his father. “Or they mostly are.”
Tom chuckled and ruffled his son’s hair lovingly. “While I’m gone, you behave like you always do. If you need something, call the guys on the intercom, but stay here in the office.”
The boy nodded solemnly.
“Your mom will be here in a half hour, forty-five minutes, tops.”
“Okay.”
Even after assuring himself that everything would be fine, Tom was a little hesitant to go. Still, if he waited for Erica, he’d miss visiting hours.
He got in his truck and drove to the hospital, stopping only for a two-dollar bunch of posies as his son had suggested. He was glad that he had then when he got to Christus Santa Rosa. Somehow it seemed better to be standing at the information desk with flowers than not.
Mrs. Gilfred was a bit tricky to locate. Tom was told that she’d just been moved out of ICU, but when he got to her room, she had yet to arrive.
“Are you a family member?” a woman in pink scrubs asked him.
“No, no I’m…I’m just a friend.” He knew he was being presumptuous, but he didn’t want to go into explanations about his shop and her car and her hearing problems. The nurse left him to wait in the empty room. He paced unhappily.
What on earth am I doing here? he asked himself.
He was ready to bolt when the nurse returned and handed him a green plastic pitcher. Tom stared at it questioningly.
“We sometimes use these discarded ones for vases,” she said, pointing at the flowers he still held. “I just got the call, Mrs. Gilfred should be in the elevator on her way up.”
Tom nodded as the woman left. He looked at the pitcher and shrugged. Flower arranging was not something with which he had any experience, but at least it was something purposeful to do while waiting.
He filled the pitcher at the sink. He tried just stuffing all the flowers in at once and found that it didn’t work so well. Tom set the pitcher on the windowsill and placed the blossoms in it one by one, as if he were attaching connector assemblies to an ignition coil. When he was finished, he surveyed his work solemnly. It didn’t look great, but it looked friendly. That’s what it should look like, he decided. In the cold hospital room the flowers were actually welcoming.
Although he’d been waiting for Mrs. Gilfred to arrive, the sudden opening of the door startled hi
m a little. They wheeled the bed already in the room out into the hallway and then replaced it with the one in which a gray, pale-looking Mrs. Gilfred lay.
“You’ve got someone here to greet you, Gladys,” the nurse in the pink scrubs called out loudly.
“Nobody has called me Gladys since my Uncle Walter,” the woman answered more strongly than her frail appearance would have suggested possible.
“What do they call you?” the nurse persisted.
“My friends call me Guffy,” she answered. “As I am famous for not taking guff off anyone. You, young lady, may call me Mrs. Gilfred.”
Tom hid a smile.
There were several minutes of getting everything in order, including taking her vital signs and making notations about the IV fluids. Tom tried to make himself as unintrusive as possible. He wondered seriously why someone didn’t suggest he leave the room. After all, he was just the woman’s car mechanic. He surely shouldn’t be present when the nurse was asking questions like Do you know where you are? And Can you remember the year you were born?
To the latter, Mrs. Gilfred replied with heavy sarcasm, “I don’t recall that first year too clearly, but Mother always said I spent most of my time sleeping.”
Tom didn’t even attempt to hide his humor at that statement. He grinned broadly at the woman, which apparently sparked her attention for the first time.
“Oh, it’s you!” Mrs. Gilfred said, sounding delighted. “I thought you were another one of those long-faced young doctors. How is my dear Clara? Are you taking good care of her?”
“I’m certainly trying, Mrs. Gilfred. That’s why I came…uh, to see how you’re doing and to talk to you about Clara.”
“Good. That will be infinitely more interesting than the typical conversation in this place. Try not to get old. When you do, all anyone wants to discuss with you is the medications you’re taking. And all they ever ask about is your last bowel movement.”
