by Julia London
She gave him a dubious look. “Are you certain? Because this has the potential to make you reconsider all of our benefits and maybe try to take some back.”
Harry laughed. “I’m certain about everything I do, baby.” He winked. “Let’s go see about your mother.”
The nurse at the front station directed them to the Intensive Care Unit on the third floor. Just off the elevator was a waiting room full of people. And the moment Lola walked into the waiting room, all of them stood up. Harry was startled—apparently all of these people belonged to Lola.
“Lola!” cried one young woman. “I thought you’d never get here!”
“Is it that serious?”
“It looks bad,” a man said, and looked at Harry. “Who is that?”
“He is my friend.” Lola grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled him forward. “He gave me a ride. Harry, this is my brother Ben and his wife, Tasha,” she said.
Ben, tall and handsome with curly dark hair, eyed Harry suspiciously, but offered his hand. His wife was tall and slender, too, with big doe eyes.
“And this is my other brother Ty,” she said of the blond man, slightly shorter than his brother. “Where’s Jaycee?” Lola asked.
“Home with the kids.” He extended his hand. “Hey, man.”
“Hi,” Harry said, shaking his hand. “Harry Westbrook.”
“This is my sister Casey,” Lola said, pointing to a woman who resembled Lola the most with her blonde hair and big blue eyes. “And the youngest, Kennedy, and her boyfriend, Mario.”
Kennedy was cute, with hair the color of Ben’s and expressive green eyes. “Since when is he your friend?” she asked as Mario shook Harry’s hand.
“That is so rude, Kennedy,” Casey said, chastising her. “He’s her roommate.”
“Her roommate?” Kennedy said loudly and disbelievingly. “Since when do you have a roommate, Lola?”
“Since recently. Can we discuss it later?” Lola asked, and hugged Kennedy, who refused to uncross her arms, as if Lola had somehow offended her by failing to report a roommate. “I need to see Mom right now.”
“I’ll warn you, she’s in rare form,” Casey said, and smiled sympathetically at Harry. Casey was beautiful, and Harry suspected she knew it. “You might want to leave your roommate with me for safekeeping,” she added.
“Do you mind?” Lola asked Harry. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. They never let you stay long.”
“Not at all. Do what you need to do,” Harry urged her.
“She’s right there,” Casey said, pointing to a door across from them.
Lola walked to the room and cracked open the door, sticking her head in. “Mom?”
“Where the fuck have you been?” was the wet, raspy reply.
Lola stepped inside and closed the door.
Harry glanced uneasily at the others. The rest of the Dunne clan, or whatever their names were, stared at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets. This was one of the more awkward moments he’d endured in recent memory, and he tried to think of something to say. He made the mistake of glancing at Kennedy, who took the opportunity to lead the charge.
“So are you two dating?” she asked accusingly.
“Nope. Just friends,” Harry said, and ignored the tiny tingle of guilt in his chest.
“Do not start giving him the first degree,” Casey warned Kennedy. “All of you, quit staring at him like you’ve never seen a man before. He’s going to think we’re all idiots.”
“Half of us are idiots,” Ty said, shooting a look at Kennedy. “But I want to know if they are dating, too. Lola never said anything about a roommate.”
“Maybe because she knew you and Kennedy would act like this,” Casey said, pointing at the two of them.
“How long?” Ben asked, directing the question at Harry.
“Excuse me?”
“How long have you been roommates?” Ben asked, making invisible quotes with his fingers.
“Ben!” Casey sighed, clearly annoyed.
“Not long,” Harry said. “Close to a month.”
“And she’s bringing you to Mom’s bedside?” Ben asked. “She didn’t bring Will around until they’d been dating for like a year.”
“Maybe because she was dating Will and she’s not dating Harry,” his wife Tasha pointed out. “If you’re dating, you don’t want to spring this on your guy. No offense, Harry,” she said apologetically.
“None taken. Look, I gave her a ride. It seemed really serious and she was freaking out a little, so I—”
“Like, what do you do?” Kennedy interrupted.
“I build bridges.”
“Bridges!” Kennedy looked at Mario. “How are you her roommate? I thought she had a friend with a fancy house up at Lake Haven.”
Harry was beginning to understand why Lola thought he should stay in the truck. “We have the same friend,” he said. “He’s letting us both use the lake house.”
“He?” Ben said. “I thought it was a she.”
“Yeah, it was definitely a she,” Ty agreed, nodding. “Sara someone.”
They all stared at him, expecting him to explain that.
Harry decided his best course of action was to say nothing at all, and fortunately, Casey was there to help him.
“Can you guys please leave the poor man alone? He gave Lola a ride, for God’s sake. Jesus, we’re like a herd of vultures, ready to swoop in.”
“Actually,” said Mario, “it’s a venue.”
Now all the Dunne eyes turned toward that poor man with the collared shirt and rectangular glasses. “What?” Kennedy snapped, seemingly annoyed with him, too.
“A group of vultures is called a venue. Or, sometimes, a committee. Or, if they’re in flight, a kettle.”
“Mario, stop talking,” said Ty, throwing up his hand. “Venue, kettle, whatever, yeah, we are protective of Lola, because the last guy pretty much destroyed her,” he said, his voice accusing, as if somehow Harry had been in on that.
“Hey!” Casey interjected, throwing her arm up. “That’s Lola’s story to tell him, not yours, Ty!” She suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Harry’s arm. “Let’s go wait in the cafeteria,” she said, and shot a dark look at her siblings as she pulled him out of the waiting room.
“I’m coming, too!” Kennedy said.
“No you’re not! You need to sit with Mom when Lola comes out.”
“Seriously?” Kennedy said, and groaned toward the ceiling. “I already had to see her once!”
Harry gladly allowed Casey to pull him out of that room.
“I am so sorry,” she said, when they were out of earshot. “We really are super protective of Lola.”
“So I gathered.”
“It’s just that . . . well, it’s weird, but she was more of a mom to us than Mom ever was, you know?” She stopped at a vending machine and opened her purse and pulled out a dollar. “I’m sure she hasn’t told you about Mom, because Lola never tells anyone anything. Keeps it all very close to the vest. But Mom was never around, and when she was, she was up to no good. So Lola took care of us.” She fed the dollar into the bill slot, then punched a button. Nothing fell.
“And then Will dazzled her but turned out to be such a dick—” She gave the machine a shake. “Lola didn’t deserve that. She was so good to that asshole—” Casey kicked the machine. “What the hell? I want some M&M’S!” she said loudly.
Harry reached around her and punched the second button required for candy to drop. The packaged twirled forward and fell into the slot.
“Oh. Thanks,” she said. She picked up the candy and started walking again. “The thing about Lola is that she is super nice, and people take advantage of her. They just walk all over her because they know she won’t say anything, and she will accommodate whatever they want, and so yeah, we’re protective of her because she protected us.”
They continued on into the cafeteria, where Harry picked up two coffees for them. His tasted as if it had been sitting on the bur
ner for a week. Casey talked a lot. She talked about what brought her mother to the hospital—she couldn’t breathe, she said, and passed out, but as of yet, the doctors weren’t sure why.
She talked about her job as a journalist. She talked about her dream to become an editor at a periodical, and how promising that looked for her right now. She talked about how the man who had lived downstairs from Lola in Brooklyn didn’t look so well the last time she saw him.
Harry’s head was spinning by the time Lola found them, and frankly, Lola didn’t look much better.
“What’s going on?” Casey asked.
Lola frowned. “The doctor came in while I was there. He said they are going to keep her another few hours, then probably send her back. He said they couldn’t find any reason she might have passed out.”
Casey sighed. “Again?”
“Apparently.” Lola shrugged. “He said she’s not well, and these things are to be expected.”
“Oh, it’s expected all right,” Casey said.
“She’s getting worse, Casey.”
“Yeah, I know,” Casey said softly. She glanced at her watch. “How long do we have to stay? I’m supposed to meet Junie and Farouk for drinks tonight.”
That seemed a little callous to Harry, but he didn’t want to judge. This was obviously a frequent occurrence, and they’d obviously been through a lot with their mother.
“You guys go on,” Lola said. “I’ll stay with her and get her back to the home.”
“But how are you going to get back to Lake Haven?” Casey asked.
“I’ll take the train.”
“Are you sure?” Casey asked, but she was already standing, already looping her purse over her shoulder.
“I’m sure. Come on, let’s go tell the others.”
Harry followed along because he wasn’t sure what else he ought to do. They’d all forgotten about him when Lola announced she would stay and they were free to go. Just like Casey, they all asked if Lola was sure as they backed toward the door, all of them, down to a man, fleeing that hospital and leaving Lola to handle things.
“Nice meeting you, Harry,” Ben said as he ushered Tasha out.
“Come to Brooklyn sometime,” Ty added, the last one to crowd into the elevator.
The door slid shut. They could hear Kennedy say something, and a collective cry of disagreement went up as the elevator sank down.
Lola looked tired and worried. Privately, he was indignant for her. Not one of her siblings had offered to come and spot her, or even to bring her food. They’d left her to care for the woman no one wanted anymore.
When Lola noticed he was looking at her, she instantly forced a smile. “Thanks so much, Harry, but you should go, too. I’ll take the train from here. If it’s too late, I’ll crash at Casey’s.”
“I don’t want to leave you here alone,” he said flatly. He didn’t want to leave her here at all.
“It’s okay!” she assured him. “There is absolutely nothing to do but wait. Trust me, I’ve been through this a few times. Please, will you go? I would feel awful knowing you’re hanging around because of me.”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly. It was true that there were a million things he could be doing this afternoon. Still, he felt sorry for Lola. He had the sense that this scene, of Lola batting clean-up behind her siblings, was a common one.
“Really. Get out of here,” she said, and punched the down button.
“Okay, I’ll go,” Harry agreed. “But don’t leave me hanging, roomie. Let me know, okay? You have my cell.”
“Yep.” She punched the down button again.
When the elevator door opened, Harry stepped in, but as the doors were sliding shut, he braced his hands against them to keep them from closing. “Look, I’m going into the city to see my parents,” he said. “I’m going to text you their address, just in case. I’ll be there until about eight o’clock, all right? You can catch a ride with me if you make it back by then. Okay, Lola?”
Lola’s smile brightened. “That’s really nice, Harry. Thank you. I don’t know if I would be so nice if you’d forced me to drive you to Long Island.”
“It was worth it just to meet the other Dunne lunatics.”
Her smile deepened. “Thanks, Harry. Oh, by the way . . . I didn’t get the chance to tell you that the benefits last night were just . . .” She sighed toward the ceiling, but when she lowered her gaze, her eyes were shining. “Surreal.”
She said it with such soft earnestness that it touched him. Harry thought of himself sitting on the terrace, ready to tell her that this was nothing but casual sex. He was strangely glad that the call from her brother had interrupted his speech. He touched her face. “Better than surreal,” he said, and bent his head to kiss her.
Lola moaned softly, then pushed him, forcing him to let go of the elevator door. She waved as the door closed.
Dammit. Harry sighed. He ran his hands over his crown, linking his fingers behind his neck. She was getting to him.
Nineteen
“None of you kids care about me at all. I’m already a corpse to you.”
Lola and her mother were in the transport her care facility had sent to collect her. Lola stared out the window, trying to ignore her mother.
“After all I sacrificed for you kids, this is the way you all treat me. Like I’m nothing.” The force with which she spoke resulted in a spasm of wet, phlegmy coughing.
Lola closed her eyes and pretended her mother wasn’t there. She knew her mother’s attitude was due, in part, to her debilitating illness. But her mother had always been an unpleasant person. How had she produced five likable children? What had Dad seen in her? If Lola could have one day of her father’s life back, she would pose that question to him. A very simple, what the hell, Dad?
The coughing grew worse. Lola grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mom?”
Her mother’s eyes were closed, and she squeezed Lola’s hand, as if holding on for dear life. Her mother was only fifty-four, but she looked as if she were seventy-four. The coughing finally subsided, leaving her mother to wince in pain. “You were the only one who ever cared about me, Lola,” she said hoarsely. “How come you don’t come out and see me like you used to? That’s all I have to look forward to, seeing my kids.”
“I told you Mom. I’m taking a couple of months off to write a book, remember? I’m staying at Lake Haven and it’s hard to get here from there.”
“A book,” her mother said disdainfully. “Everyone thinks they can be a writer, don’t they. So you write a book, and then what? How are you going to feed yourself?”
“Well, I hope to sell it.”
“Don’t be naive, Lola,” her mother said. “I can’t believe you quit a good job to go off and do something stupid. And after Will went to the trouble to get you that job.”
Lola gaped at her. How old would she be before her mother’s words would stop wounding her? “Will didn’t get me the job,” she said tightly. “I transferred jobs to get away from him. Because he cheated on me, Mom. He was having an affair.”
“Please. He’s a muckety-muck in that firm. He arranged it so he could pork his girlfriend on your desk. That’s what I think.”
Her mother’s disloyalty and insensitivity were often staggering. No matter how many times Lola had been exposed to it, she never got used to it.
They arrived at the awful place where her mother was forced to live. The paint was peeling from the walls, and in the front salon, blinds were missing from one window. The furnishings were standard-issue institutional metal and plastic.
An attendant wheeled her mother into her room. A healthcare worker, tall and broad, shuffled in behind the attendant, reaching into her pocket to produce some pills. “Well, Lois, I guess you ain’t dead yet,” she said.
“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” Lola’s mother said, and laughed, then coughed. “I know you wish I had.”
“You have no idea,” the woman said, and tapped the pills into a little cup, which
she handed to Lola’s mother. She tossed the pills down her throat and swallowed them dry.
After the attendant had put her mother in her bed, Lola arranged her pillows behind her while her mother glared disdainfully at her roommate, Mrs. Porelli, an elderly woman with dementia.
“There she is, that empty old bucket.”
“Mom,” Lola said softly.
“She don’t know what I’m saying. She’s a zombie. She doesn’t do shit but watch Wheel of Fortune all fucking day.”
“Language, Lois,” the healthcare worker said.
“Shut up, Roberta. Lola, pull those covers up to my lap,” she said, and sank back into the pillows with a heavy sigh. “I’m exhausted,” she said, and closed her eyes. The healthcare worker went out of the room.
Lola started to gather her things, but she heard her mother chuckle and glanced around.
“They hire shit-for-brains here,” she said. She smiled, extended her hand, and opened her fist. In her palm were two blue tablets.
“What’s that?” Lola asked.
“Painkillers,” her mother said, and popped them in her mouth, swallowing them dry, too.
“Mom! Where did you get those?”
“Where do you think, genius? At the hospital.” She laughed that thick, wet laugh that was beginning to make Lola nauseous. “Don’t look at me like that,” her mother said, gesturing for some water. “You’d do the same if you had to live with the zombie in this dump.”
Lola probably would have killed herself by now. But tonight, she had to get out of here before she did something very wrong, like strangle her very ill mother. Visits with her always ended with Lola feeling miserable on so many levels. A rush of old, dusty emotions would come crawling up from the crypt to torment her. Fear and revulsion, resentment and uncertainty. Duty. Responsibility. The need to make sure everything appeared fine, just fine. “Are you comfortable?” she asked curtly.
“Hell no, I’m not comfortable. Look around you—I live in a shit hole.”
Lola put her hand on her mother’s arm. “You know what, Mom? When I finish my book, if I can sell it, I’m going to find you a new place.”
