by Judy Baer
I’ve got to give it to the man, he’s persistent. He stormed up and down the long row of parking places for nearly five minutes before spinning on his heel and marching back toward the building.
When he arrived, we were ready for him.
We greeted him when the office door banged open. “April Fool!”
Harry folded like sails collapsing from a dearth of wind.
“You! You? You…” Then he grinned. “Man, that was good!”
Like sportscasters recapping the game’s best plays, we rehashed every moment from Harry arriving at the Hummer to him returning to the office.
And the day only went up—or maybe it was down—from there. Mitzi put a thin layer of Icy Hot on the toilet seat in the ladies’ room and nearly drove Betty wild. Bryan, with a piece of thin fabric on his lap, waited until I bent over and then ripped it in half. I immediately clutched my backside and headed for the back room to check out the damage. I also vowed to lose five pounds before his laughter stopped me. I’d been had.
There was a fake spider on Mitzi’s keyboard, which stopped all progress in the office for twenty minutes while we talked her down from her chair, and a bloody gash on Kim’s knee, which turned out to be ketchup.
I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I went home and fell asleep on the couch and Chase had to carry me to bed.
No fooling.
Friday, April 2
Mitzi was two hours late for work today and came in white as a sheet. Her hair, a never-a-strand-out-of-place do, looked as though she’d combed it with an eggbeater, her jacket was missing a button, and she had a run in her stockings.
“Are you okay?” I hurried to her as she stood propped against the reception desk. “Did you fall?”
She looked at me hazily, as if she recognized my voice but couldn’t remember my name. “I’ve had the most terrible morning.”
Kim and I helped her to her desk while Bryan ran for water and Betty fluttered helplessly around us.
When her color started to return, Kim demanded, “What happened to you, anyway?”
“Shh. She probably came from the doctor. She said she had to have some tests this week.”
“No tests,” Mitzi bleated. “I had my teeth cleaned. The stress was enormous.”
The stress of having her teeth cleaned had caused this? I hope I’m nowhere near the delivery room when Mitzi goes into labor.
Chapter Eight
Saturday, April 3
“Do we have to go to this party?” Kim bleated as we neared Mitzi and Arch’s neighborhood, an upper-crust outpost where traffic doesn’t make noise, children are born with silver spoons in their mouths and crabgrass never grows.
“Do you want a little cheese with your whine?” I asked sweetly. “Or do you want us to drop you off here and let you walk home?”
“You’re a hard woman, Whitney.”
“You’re the one who made me promise that I’d get you here, no matter how often you protested or how many excuses you had.”
“I left my vulnerable, defenseless child with a babysitter I hardly know, and you made me come anyway!”
“Wesley is as defenseless as a munitions factory, and the babysitter is the girl next door.”
Kim grinned slightly. “That’s true. Wesley has been a challenge lately. But he’s growing so fast and learning so much. I don’t want to miss anything….”
“Kim, he’s learned to burp at will. That is not a good reason to stay home and videotape him. Besides, you said yourself that we’re here to support Mitzi because she’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
Kim quieted at that. We at Innova have formed an unspoken club, one that centers on making sure that whoever is having a bad day gets extra support. Even Harry has noticed Mitzi’s uncharacteristically weak moments, and once told her to “Go make yourself a cup of tea or something.” Meanwhile, Betty Noble, whose sister adopted two children, is showing real tenderness toward Kim.
Bryan, however, is absent from the office more and more, especially from the rooms Mitzi inhabits. I’ve weighed the idea of setting up a mini workstation in the men’s room, so that when he’s hiding, he doesn’t fall behind in his work. I’ve also been waiting for the right moment to approach him about his behavior, but so far he’s managed to elude me. I’ve considered calling his girlfriend to see if something is seriously wrong with him. Unfortunately, she can be as vague as he. Talking to Jennilee is like having a conversation with the Cheshire cat as he fades in and out.
I was pleased to see Bryan and Jennilee pull into the driveway of Mitzi’s house just ahead us. The house is a huge white wedding cake of a mansion with a colonnade over the walkway that spans the entire front. The portico is huge, with oversized wooden doors that drifted open silently to reveal a tall, gray-haired butler looking down his nose at us as we huddled together like Tin Man, Dorothy, Lion and Scarecrow on their first visit to the Wizard of Oz.
“I didn’t know Mitzi had a butler!” Kim hissed into my ear.
“She doesn’t. She hired him for the occasion.”
“Rent-a-Jeeves? Really? Cool!”
Chase and Kurt, blissfully unaware of anything other than the fact that there was bound to be great food inside, hurried us past the intimidating butler and into the house. Mitzi drifted across the foyer in a vision of teal chiffon that made her skin look like porcelain and her eyes like jewels.
Sometimes it’s difficult to remember this elegant side of Mitzi when she’s setting up a security camera in the break room to see who has been stealing her imported designer water out of the refrigerator or calling every office supply store in town to find a pen fat enough so that her fake nails don’t click together when she writes.
“You came!” For a moment, Mitzi looked truly delighted. Then she burst that bubble. “I thought you’d never get here. They’re replaying a face-lift and tummy tuck in the living room and a gall bladder horror story in the den. Worse yet, Arch and his friends are debating bunion treatments in the living room.” She pushed at Chase and Kurt. “Go ask them about the Super Bowl or something. Find out if they think the Yankees or the Red Sox will win.”
I patted Chase’s arm. “Go on, dear, ask that. I’m sure the answers will be interesting.”
He rolled his eyes as he and Kurt walked off, first to the buffet table and then to the big-screen television in the entertainment room, where, no doubt, Mitzi thought someone from the National Hockey League was facing off with the Gophers basketball team. Such is sports in Mitzi’s world.
“Nice party.”
Mitzi gazed around absently. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
Kim took her by the arm. “Now, if you’ll just show me where the chocolate is, nobody will get hurt.”
“You can’t say I’ve never done anything for you,” Mitzi said obliquely, and pointed toward the dining room.
There, Kim and I found the sort of treasure we might have expected at the end of the rainbow. A chocolate fountain, running with the thickest, sweetest chocolate this side of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Around it were piles of fresh fruits, tiny cakes, pretzels, handmade marshmallows, cookies and anything else that could be dipped in chocolate.
Kim rushed right in to spear a bit of pound cake and thrust it into the dark, sweet waves.
“Just pick me up when the party’s over,” she instructed. “I’ll be right here. I don’t plan to move for hours.”
“I still don’t understand what you people see in that stuff.” Mitzi spoke as if chocoholics everywhere were a species to be pitied. “Oh, by the way, there’s Black Forest Cake, German Chocolate cake and a double Dutch fudge cake on the buffet table.”
Kim’s eyes glazed over with bliss.
“What’s this about, Mitzi?” I hissed. “Chocolate everywhere?”
“What else could I do? I don’t want to be tempted to eat the leftovers.”
By midparty, Harry and Betty and their spouses had also arrived, making us a little island of software geeks in a world of medi
cine. We were in Mitzi’s vast dining room, packing food into our mouths like chipmunks and debating the merits of key lime pie over chocolate pecan turtle cheesecake, when Mitzi’s husband, Arch, strolled in.
Now, Arch, although the kind of man you know is just itching to wash his hands every fifteen minutes, the kind who alphabetizes his socks—Angora, Black, Cashmere, etc.—is a really nice guy. He’d have to be—or else stone deaf—to put up with Mitzi. In fact, he adores her and finds her as entertaining as late-night television. What’s more, he has cultivated a blind spot for her foibles and eccentricities, much as we at Innova have had to do. Mitzi is just, well, Mitzi. She employs stealth technology, much like the cloaking device used to hide starships on Star Trek reruns, to charm people. Then she blows them out of the sky.
“Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. When those guys start talking ingrown toenails, it can go on for hours.” He grinned his toothpasty smile. “Chase, there’s a group in the other room talking treatments for football injuries. And one of the docs used to be a physician for World Wrestling Entertainment. Thought you and Kurt might be interested.”
For a moment, I’d actually forgotten that my husband, too, was a doctor. I am so grateful he doesn’t bring his work home with him. An appendectomy retrospective over dinner is not my idea of a relaxing meal. Of course, Kurt, a WWE fan, led the way out of the room. Then Arch turned to Betty and Harry. “Maybe you’d like to see the new twenty-seven-inch computer screen I purchased for my office.” Arch looked—dare I say it?—archly at Betty. “It’s great for shopping on eBay.”
Before they left the room, he turned to Kim and me. “By the way, Mitzi told me to tell you to meet her by the front stairs. She wants to show you something.”
As we made our way past the scowling Jeeves, the string quartet and the cluster of women who were going to need chiropractic treatments after they took the multicarat diamond-crusted jewelry off their necks, Kim whispered. “How did Mitzi get a gem like him?”
“She’s pretty and funny and he doesn’t have to work in the same office with her?”
“Well, there is that…”
Mitzi swooped down upon us, grabbed my arm and towed me up the curved staircase without explanation. Her flight of stairs hinted not only at antebellum Southern plantations, but also, oddly, at Andy Warhol. The wall along the sweeping white steps is decorated with somebody’s ancestors, strangers Mitzi picked up in an antique store, and large bright acrylic paintings of Mitzi and Arch. I don’t know how, but the look actually works, even though I keep expecting to see Marilyn Monroe or a large Campbell’s soup can in the mix.
The hallways are carpeted a soft yellow, perfect with the white-painted woodwork and florals and landscapes in many shades of green. In each piece is a hint of the same maize color as the walls, like the soft yellow light of the sun. Discreetly placed speakers enveloped us with rain forest music.
“This is beautiful, Mitzi.” Kim stared up at the architectural details on the ceiling. “Did you decorate it yourself?”
“With help. That’s why I wanted you to come upstairs. I need some decorating advice.”
As Mitzi tripped on ahead, Kim and I stared at each other. Mitzi asking us for advice? Had the world tilted on its axis when we weren’t looking? Were we being thrown into an alternate universe where everything was upside down and backward?
Mitzi is the giver of advice, not the taker—advice about clothing, diets, behavior, grooming, nail art, body polishing and any other subject matter she deems worthwhile. No matter how many times we’d tried to stop her, Mitzi is the gift that keeps on giving.
She halted in front of a door so quickly that Kim and I nearly fell on top of her.
“This is it.” Drawing a breath as if to steel herself, she opened it and stepped inside.
The only way I can manage to describe what we saw was Toys “R” Us meets Ralph Lauren meets stuffed-animal factory. The walls were streaked with various test colors—pale pinks, blues, yellows, peaches, greens and creams. There were more animals than Noah had on the ark, overflowing a bright red-and-blue playpen. Three cribs lined one wall. The round one with the jungle-print mattress and bumpers and the lion-tiger-and-elephant mobile was my immediate favorite.
“What are you doing? Starting a new business? There’s more stuff in here than in Kmart!”
Mitzi’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I wanted to decorate a room for my baby, and all I’ve got here is a big mess. No theme, no color palette, no…”
“No baby?” Kim said gently.
Mitzi sat down on a big yellow ball like the one I use at the gym. “I thought it might encourage me while I’m going through all these tests. I’m beginning to feel like a pincushion and not a person.” Her voice trailed away, and she stared in the direction of one of the cribs. “It just reminds me that perhaps I’ll never have a baby and this room will be a monument to my failure.”
“Failure? Mitzi, don’t feel that way.”
“How should I feel? Isn’t that what women are designed to do? Have babies?” Her eyes glittered. “I know you all think I’m a big goof-off at work, that I’m just there because I’d be bored staying home, but that’s not true. I actually…”
I waited for her to say she loved us.
“…am used to you now and it’s not so awful.”
How do we keep our heads from swelling?
“But my body isn’t cooperating. Can you even begin to understand how that feels?”
Kim took Mitzi’s hand. “I know my issues aren’t the same as yours, but my body hasn’t always cooperated, either. Depression and breast cancer—I didn’t ask for either, but there it is. That doesn’t mean that I am only a cancer survivor or a depression-prone female, anymore than you are only an infertile woman. That’s a small part of who we are as people, not the sum total of our lives.”
Mitzi looked at her doubtfully. “I suppose so.” I could see her gaze had cleared. Little lasers were emanating from her eyes. “It’s like Whitney before she found Chase. She wasn’t a total loser, but it was kind of hard to remember that.”
“Wait a minute,” I protested, “I—”
But Kim stopped me. “Yeah, just like that. She was never a loser. Not for a minute. And neither are you.”
Well, thanks for that. I think.
“Maybe you jumped the gun by trying to set up a nursery when you’re still working with the doctors.”
A cunning look flickered on Mitzi’s face. “I suppose I did, but it usually helps to be ahead of the pack.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“Now if you want a nursery as nice as ours, you’ll have to copy me, not the other way around.”
“You mean this is all about being first?” I took her by the shoulders. “Mitzi, I can assure you that there is no way that you will ever be less than cutting-edge in the style department, so just relax. Get pregnant first, then do the nursery. It will be easier, I’m sure.”
I could see her blue mood lifting. “Good idea.” Then her eyes began to sparkle. “But I have picked out baby names, and I’m never going to tell you what they are. You’d probably want to copy me.”
“No doubt.”
As if I had a tendency to run out and do whatever it is Mitzi does. If that were true, right now I’d have blue nail polish on my toenails, enough gloss on my lips to wax the floor at Grand Central Station and an ego the size of South America.
Chapter Nine
Three hours later, Bryan and Jennilee had already left and Betty, Harry and their spouses were saying their goodbyes to Arch. Chase and Kurt were standing in the foyer doing that back-slapping see-ya-later-good-buddy thing that guys sometimes do. Kim’s eyebrows rose as she watched this newfound camaraderie Kurt shared with Arch and his friends. Kurt, though outgoing and gregarious around Chase and me, is not always happy in social settings. As Chase says, driving a truck and studying to be an accountant aren’t the two most sociable occupations on earth.
Kim coul
d hardly contain herself until we got into the car. “You guys looked like a bunch of fraternity brothers planning your next big get-together. Did I hear someone say they were looking forward to seeing you next weekend?”
“Arch has some really nice friends,” Kurt commented blandly.
“Podiatrists? Well, I’m sure they’re nice, but…”
“You aren’t prejudiced against podiatrists are you?” Chase teased. “How do you feel about internists?”
Kurt ignored the banter. “Several of Arch’s friends have a housing repair project planned. They’ve hired people to do repair work on the homes of single mothers and elderly patients. Now they’re preparing to take a weekend, and rather than hire others to do the jobs, they’re going to do the work themselves. They not only want to finance the project, they want to experience it.”
“So,” Chase added, “Kurt, in a fit of goodwill, volunteered our services, too. What are we doing on the weekend of April seventeenth, Whitney?”
“Plumbing and shingling, apparently,” I said with a sigh.
“What are we supposed to do while you guys are off having fun with hammers and nails?” Kim inquired.
“That’s the best part!” Kurt brightened. “They need women to work, too. I volunteered you and Whitney to be with me and Chase. Isn’t that a great idea?”
Chase angled himself on the seat so that I could catch his eyes, which he rolled helplessly, and I knew immediately that he had succumbed to Kurt’s enthusiasm with some reservations.
“You volunteered me and Whitney?” Kim squawked. “Without asking us? What are we supposed to do—knit curtains?”
“Arch said there would be plenty of stuff—wallpapering, staining woodwork, that sort of thing. Don’t worry, he volunteered Mitzi, too.”
A deadly silence fell as we processed that bit of information. Arch is a man with a death wish. Why else would he volunteer Mitzi to help rehabilitate run-down houses in the city?
Kurt added quickly, “He believes it will be good for her. She’s become fixated on getting pregnant, and he thinks getting her mind off it might just do the trick.”
