“We filled every vase we could find,” Drew volunteered, and Momo clasped her hands in pleasure.
“We figured if you can’t go out in your garden for at least a few weeks, we’d bring the garden to you,” Melina added, green stains on her T-shirt and mud on her jeans from gathering the flowers that morning.
She pointed to a hummingbird feeder hanging from a curly filbert tree outside of one window. A birdbath and a second feeder were visible from the other window.
Momo was delighted. At the hospital, she’d complained bitterly about being cooped up and the “fake food” they served.
“Momo, I want you to know that I’ll come anytime you call and help you with whatever you need, so I don’t want you to try to do everything yourself,” Squirt said seriously. “You’re not a spring chicken anymore.”
The doctor, two nurses and an occupational therapist each had pulled Squirt and Melina aside to insist that she could no longer live alone.
Momo chuckled. “Look, you can get away with telling me I’m old when I’m eighty. But at ninety-four, don’t you think I’ve earned the right to do what I want?”
Squirt nodded. “Yes, you can do what you want, and you always have. But I want you to think about coming to live with my family. Just think about it. I know you’ve got a home care nurse for a few months, but she can’t stay with you forever.”
“I’ll be here, too,” Melina volunteered. “You can call me and I’m just a few steps away. I’ll help you.”
“We’ll all help you,” Joshua added. “But please think about what Squirt is saying. I would absolutely hate to leave my home, but I never want you to be stuck like that again.”
Momo involuntarily trembled at the memory of lying in pain on her kitchen floor for hours.
“OK, so now that you’ve seen your room, we have to show you the studio,” Joshua announced, leading the way. He grabbed the doorknob, ready to open it.
“Oh, no, dear, I don’t—”
Before she could finish her protest, Joshua opened the studio door, revealing a tall-ceilinged room flooded with light.
Momo’s hands, spiderwebbed by veins and marked by age spots, covered her face. She couldn’t look.
“Look what we found!” Drew said, rushing forward, pointing to a framed painting on an easel, just below an almost identical painting on the wall.
Slowly Momo took her hands down from her face. Her family surrounded her, grinning, looking at the two paintings. She knew the one on her wall; it had hung there for decades.
“That’s my painting,” Joshua said, pointing to the easel. “I mean, your painting. I bought it last year when I moved into my apartment, from an estate store. It’s the first real art I ever owned.”
“It’s beautiful,” Melina added.
Momo’s eyes rimmed with tears. “It’s all so overwhelming. Especially since I can’t paint anymore.” She trailed off as Melina squeezed her hand.
This was a mistake, thought Joshua, suddenly eager to bustle Momo out of the room and remove her from memories that probably tore at her heart. But Momo stilled his hand as he prepared to wheel her out of the studio.
“Wait. It’s all right,” she said and dabbed the corners of her eyes. “I’m all right. Nothing lasts forever, and what’s good and what’s beautiful isn’t any less so, just because we only had it for a while.”
***
Joshua and Melina’s feet crunched gravel as they crossed the driveway from Momo’s house back to Melina’s apartment.
Melina climbed the stairs ahead of Joshua, squealing and climbing faster as he took advantage of the situation and squeezed her butt.
“You brat!” she chided, swatting his hand away.
“You like it,” Joshua grinned. “Admit it.”
“I will not. Now just cool your jets and let me get fixed before we go out.” Melina deliberately closed her bedroom door, leaving Joshua on the sitting room side while she took a shower.
Joshua exhaled in frustration. Another shut-out. Melina seemed to push him away whenever she was getting ready. He decided this time would be different.
Melina had her sweaty T-shirt halfway over her head when Joshua opened the door.
“Hey! I’m not ready yet.”
“That’s OK. I thought maybe I could help,” Joshua spun Melina around and unhooked the back of her bra. “Don’t you need a back-scrubber? Or a hair-washer?”
Melina’s face scrunched. “Joshua, not now. Don’t look at me. I’m disgusting and sweaty and stinky. Stay away.” She fled to the bathroom but Joshua followed her.
Joshua closed the bathroom door and leaned against it, blocking her escape. Melina turned on the hot water and then faced him, folding her hands across her bare chest in a poor attempt to conceal the dirt that streaked her forearms and collected under her fingernails.
Joshua moved closer. “What are you afraid of? Afraid I’ll see you naked?” His fingers glided down her belly to open her jeans, his eyes locking on hers as he slid them down her hips.
“Of course not,” Melina shook her head, still with her arms crossed.
“Resistance is futile, you know,” Joshua cracked a grin but the Star Trek reference was lost on Melina. “So why can’t I watch you get ready? What’s the big deal?”
Joshua pulled off his T-shirt but his gaze wouldn’t let the subject drop. He reached for his jeans next, but stilled, waiting for her answer.
“It’s like magic,” Melina explained. Joshua moved closer, listening. “Guys don’t get it. You just look how you are. But girls can transform—hair and makeup and jewelry and perfume and clothes, and suddenly you’re a whole different person.”
Joshua dropped his head to kiss her shoulder. She tasted of salt and sweat. “I saw a whole different person today,” he said, hooking his fingers in the sides of her panties. “And I liked her. You were dirty and sweaty, but you looked delicious.”
Melina sucked in a breath as Joshua removed her last scrap of clothing. He urged her into the streaming shower and then joined her.
“Why would you want to be a different person?” Joshua asked. He squeezed shampoo into his hands and gently lathered it into her hair.
Melina’s eyes shot to the door, trapped. “You wouldn’t understand. In my business—in life—image is everything. You have to make yourself how you want to be seen, to get the kind of life you want.”
“So what was today?” Joshua tilted back her head, massaging the bubbles from her scalp. He felt Melina relaxing into him. “All this dirt can’t be good for your image.”
“Today was different. It was—an exception.”
“I’ll tell you why today was different,” Joshua lathered Melina’s body with soap, making good on his promise to be a back-scrubber. “Today was about love. It was about getting over what you feel like you have to be and just doing what you need to do. For Momo. Because you love her.”
Melina nodded, admitting that Joshua was right.
“And this is about us, too,” Joshua said, his skin slick with soap as he pressed his body against hers. His hands massaged her back, her shoulders, her limbs and reached for more intimate places. “You don’t have to be a different person for me. I like who you are when you’re dirty and sweaty, and I like who you are when you’re polished.”
Melina moaned as his hands moved in small circles, driving her closer and closer to crazy. “You like?”
“I love,” Joshua said, and his fingers flicked the switch that had Melina gasping, grasping, clinging to Joshua’s shoulders to keep from falling. “And I want. And I need. There’s no doubt you are beautiful, Melina, but what I crave is when you’re real.”
Joshua’s touch reached a crescendo, short-circuiting Melina’s brain as her body responded in spasms of pleasure. Her teeth found his shoulder and she bit down, sending a shockwave through Joshua to bring them together, hard and fast.
The water pounded Joshua’s shoulders and he felt Melina cling to him, urging him closer and deeper. He drove the
m together, up and up, and finally to the explosion, a wracking sensation that almost buckled his knees.
He steadied himself against the shower walls, Melina draped on him, spent. He lowered the water temperature a few degrees and stepped out of the shower, grabbing one of Melina’s enormous, fluffy towels and holding it open to her.
“Now do you believe me? I’ll take you any way I can get you,” Joshua said, rubbing Melina’s hair and limbs to dry them. “You don’t have to be perfect for me. Just be you.”
TWENTY-NINE
“What!” Melina barked.
“There’s a call for you, and it can’t hold,” the receptionist said.
“Hold it anyway.”
Melina, Holly, Eric and three others were locked in heated debate over which way to go with a client campaign, each making their case as the volume increased. The late morning sun heated the conference room well past their comfort zone, and the receptionist’s interruption pushed the tension to boiling.
“Melina, she said you’d say that. And she said to tell you it’s April, and it’s about your dad.”
My sister? Melina froze. Whatever April wants, it can’t be good. She pushed past the receptionist and hustled to her office, closing the door and punching the blinking light on her phone.
“April?”
“Mel. Hey. I’m sorry to call you like this,” she said, her disembodied voice echoing through Melina’s office on speakerphone.
“Um, yeah, it’s not a good time, but it never is,” Melina said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. “What’s going on with Dad?”
“Melina. Stop for a sec, OK? Dad’s in the hospital.”
Melina sat down on her chair. Hard.
“He had a stroke. Don’t freak out. The doctors said it was a mild stroke, and he’ll probably regain all of his abilities, but right now he’s not doing great,” April’s voice sucked all of the air out of the room.
“Sis, you gotta come home.”
“Seattle is my home,” she said.
“Melina, you know what I mean. Come back to Indy, go see Mom and Dad, give him a hug and tell him he’ll get through this, OK?”
“Oh, so, what? I’ve got to do that, and you’re just going to stay with your perfect little family in your perfect little house in Florida? Why do I have to go? It’s not like he’s come to visit me.” Melina ached from the rift that deepened each year.
“Mel. Stop, OK? Stop before you say something worse,” April’s toned steadied, ignoring Melina’s jibe. “I’ve been here for a week already. I’m going home today.”
“A week?” Melina shrieked. “Dad’s been in the hospital for a week?”
“Eight days,” April admitted. “We didn’t want to call you until we knew whether it was … significant.”
“I’ll be the one to decide whether my father having a stroke is significant,” Melina hissed. “I’m on my way.”
***
Melina grabbed her mobile and her handbag and raced out of Pursuit Marketing with no word to her colleagues. Let them fight it out. It’s not important anyway.
She broke a dozen traffic laws from her office to her house, steering with one hand while the other booked the next possible flight to Indianapolis on her mobile. She’d be cutting it close; if she hit a traffic jam, she’d be forced to wait hours for a later flight.
Melina threw clothes in a bag: jeans, T-shirts, underwear, flats. Her stomach lurched. This would be the first time she’d visited her parents in three years. She was coming home as a success—shouldn’t she pack something that looked more … successful?
Forget it. It’s not like they’re killing the fatted calf for me.
Melina raced down her stairs and back to her car, weaving dangerously in traffic to the airport. She ditched her car at the valet stand and rushed toward an electronic kiosk to print her boarding pass.
Security was a nightmare, with three lines for coach-class passengers snaking halfway across the terminal. Some people sat on the floor, bags resting beside them.
Still in motion, Melina popped open an extra button on her blouse and pulled oversized sunglasses out of her Giustiniano bag. She swiped her lips with the brightest lipstick in her purse and presented her boarding pass to the guard in front of the short first class line.
Please. Please don’t send me to the coach line.
“Miss, would you mind removing your glasses?” the guard asked kindly, slowly. “That’s good.” He checked her ticket and ID and sent her through.
Melina raced to her gate, jogging up in her skirt and heels just as the gate agent prepared to shut the door.
“Ms. Avgerakis?”
“That’s me,” she said, panting.
“Well, don’t stop there. Get in. Let’s get this plane moving.”
***
Melina never called her mother to say what flight she’d catch or when she’d arrive. When she opened the front door without knocking, Lorene called out, “April?”
“No, it’s your other daughter. You have another daughter, remember?”
Lorene turned, tension and sleepless nights crumpling the skin around her eyes. She was thinner than Melina remembered, shriveled, as if she were slowly drying up.
“Melina. You’re here.”
Not I’m so glad you’re here. Not we’ve missed you so much. Just a simple statement. Lorene stubbed out her cigarette but didn’t turn down the volume on the late news. Her hair looked greasy.
Melina dropped her bag and handbag in the hall and sat at the kitchen table opposite her mother, who hadn’t gotten up to greet her. Melina made no move for an embrace. She was here. That was all the warmth she could offer.
***
Nearly asleep in the single bed in her brother’s old bedroom, the familiar ring of her mobile phone jolted Melina awake.
“What.” She was too exhausted to be nice, too emotionally wrung out. Anxiety pinched her shoulders and pounded behind her temples.
“Melina? Are you all right?” Joshua sounded anxious.
Groggily, Melina rewound her frantic, cross-country race and the sketchy details she knew about her father’s condition.
“Babe? It’s going to be OK. You did the right thing, going to see him. He’s going to be fine, and you can get through this.”
Melina felt Joshua’s words of comfort not only for her father’s hospitalization, but also for the confrontation with her family. She drew a halting breath, all out of tears.
“I hope so.”
THIRTY
The next morning, Melina descended the stairs in jeans and a faded T-shirt, following her nose to the kitchen.
“There’s coffee,” Lorene said by way of greeting, inclining her head toward the coffee pot dripping a weak brew. An extra-large bottle of flavored creamer stood next to it. Melina thought of Momo, how she would rant about the dozens of fake ingredients in it, and how frail and tiny she looked in her hospital bed.
Melina wasn’t ready to go back to a hospital again.
Lorene finished her cigarette and lit another. She was reading the newspaper’s classified section, circling ads. Melina drained a bitter cup of coffee and fidgeted, alternately peeking at her watch and paging through the rest of the paper.
Finally, Lorene stood up. “Visiting hours start at nine. We can go now if you’re ready.”
Melina nodded. The less said between them, the better.
***
Melina followed her mother through hospital corridors to her father’s room, stopping short at the door. Just outside, sitting on a chair and holding a bouquet of flowers, was Joshua.
“Josh! What are you doing here?” Melina’s voice mixed surprise and relief.
“I took a red-eye,” he said. He stood and extended a hand to Lorene. “Mrs. Avgerakis, I’m Joshua Danford, I’m pleased to meet you, and sorry about these circumstances. The nurse said your husband is up and awake, but I haven’t gone in yet. I thought I’d let Melina introduce me.”
Lorene’s mouth hu
ng open. Here was Joshua—earnest, polite, an Indian summer tan and a jaw full of stubble. Health shone from him, completely out of place in the hospital.
“Who are you?” Lorene’s voice echoed Melina’s, but with a lower, gravelly rasp. She turned to her daughter for an explanation, but Melina was silent, rooted to the spot.
“I’m her boyfriend.”
“A boyfriend? You didn’t tell us you have a boyfriend,” Lorene accused. “You don’t tell us anything.”
“You didn’t tell me about Dad,” Melina spat.
“There’s lots to catch up on,” Joshua interrupted, defusing the argument. “Why don’t we go in and say hello?” He took Melina’s hand and gently pulled her closer for a peck.
“You came,” she whispered. “How did you get here? How did you find us?”
“Avgerakis isn’t a common name, so I started calling hospitals in Indianapolis. It didn’t take long to narrow it down.” Joshua smiled at her and lightly tapped on the door, announcing visitors.
***
Although he looked pale and haggard with a half-grown beard, Melina’s dad didn’t look much different from the last time she’d seen him—until he smiled.
A lopsided grin revealed part of his face was paralyzed by the stroke. Melina pushed forward to put her arms around him.
“Dad. Daddy, I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me.”
“It’s all right, kitten,” he said, slurring slightly. “I know you’re busy out there in Seattle. I didn’t want to bug you.”
“I’m not too busy for this.”
“Well, then, I guess a little stroke is a good thing.” He forced a smile. “I’m supposed to get out of here tomorrow and then we can catch up. I’m getting cabin fever.”
The knot of tension twisting Melina’s gut started to relax. He’s OK. Really OK. He needed physical therapy and speech therapy and doctors and medicine, but he was still her dad.
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