by J. L. Salter
She nodded. “Helps me reach the target more often.”
Their coffees arrived. The smallish shop was a perfect marriage of coffee, tea, and fresh-baked croissants. It smelled heavenly.
“Amanda’s life is a mess right now.” Christine sprinkled sweetener, about half of a pink packet. “I’d like to do what I can to make it right.”
“It’s really between them.” Margaret took only cream. “And should’ve been to begin with.” She sipped her coffee reflectively. “However, I think there’s still hope for salvage. I have a strong hunch Amanda’s injuries have set the stage for this relationship to come back together, eventually.” Margaret dabbed a napkin to her lips. “Wounded pride is the biggest barrier. But a good outcome partly depends on how perceptive Jason is.”
“Not so much, from what I’ve seen.” Christine shrugged very slightly. “Since we’re talking straight and plain here.”
Margaret nodded agreement. “I used to think Jason’s crayon box didn’t have a built-in sharpener. But later, I concluded he was just too lazy to use it.”
“Too spoiled, maybe?” Christine continued stirring and didn’t meet Margaret’s eyes.
Most likely Margaret felt the barb but did not appear offended. “Perhaps… he was my youngest.” She took another sip. “So that’s an obstacle. Plus, whether Amanda’s love is stronger than her pride.”
“Another big factor might be whether she still has a job, come Monday.” Christine finally tasted her coffee and paused before continuing. “Is there anything I can do to help patch things up?”
Margaret traced her ring finger around the edge of the cup. “I’m pretty sure Jason doesn’t yet know about the wreck. Amanda said she hasn’t told him and doesn’t intend to. So, up ’til the time Jason finds out, it’s important for you to continue helping her. Especially for things like transportation.”
“What about after Jason finds out?”
“Once he learns about Amanda’s injuries, you need to exit the scene — back away, disappear completely. Let the two lovebirds reconnect without an audience. Couples need space to work out their problems. They don’t need friends or relatives — or bloggers — butting in and trying to sway them.”
“Uh, aren’t we butting in? I mean, we sit here plotting what to do about their relationship. And we’re trying to influence the outcome.”
“They’re young; they need a nudge. Besides, this is different. You’re Amanda’s best friend and I’m Jason’s mother. We both have an interest to protect.” Margaret’s smile was so tiny it seemed like most of it remained inside. “But we’ve both got to vanish as soon as Jason finds out about the wreck and Amanda’s injuries.”
Christine closed her eyes while thinking. “So we do the advance work — set the stage. Then we’re invisible.”
“Stage play is a good analogy. You know when the crew in black outfits changes the sets between acts? Think of us as the women in black outfits. They need us to move around the furniture and maybe even adjust a few walls.”
Christine remembered looking very good in tight black outfits, so she smiled slyly. “But Jason and Amanda won’t know the walls have moved until they bump into a few.”
“And stumble over the chair we moved from here to there.” Margaret pointed vaguely to the adjacent table.
“Pretty devious.” Christine grinned. “Wish I’d thought of it.”
Margaret sipped more coffee. “You went straight to high-tech with your previous involvement. To get them back together, my approach is low-tech. From talking with Amanda last evening, I’m pretty sure she’s since tried to reach Jason to reopen dialog. Right now I believe it’s up to him.”
“You think he’ll take the cue?”
“He might need a little direct prompting.”
Christine leaned a bit closer. “What have you got in mind?”
“I’m leaving here with his trousers, so I’ll summon him. When Jason comes over for his pants, I’m going to help him make up his mind that he and Amanda need each other.”
Christine was quiet for a moment. “So you’re going to tell him about Amanda’s accident?”
“Not to begin with. I’ll save that for the final hand. I want to see his cards first.”
“I liked the stage play metaphors better.”
“Me, too, but I couldn’t think of one to keep it going.” Margaret shrugged. “Here’s the bottom line: Amanda’s injuries are a blessing in disguise. This will get them back in that apartment together and either their relationship will mend… or end.”
* * * *
Amanda was miserable. With a plank-soled boot, short crutches, and a hurt wrist, she felt like a prisoner in a dreary, noisy, and cluttered jail. So far, she’d served roughly 48 hours on her post-injury sentence. It was about midday Friday and she couldn’t think of anything to eat besides soup. All she’d had for breakfast was stale toast and a single serving of instant coffee which she’d saved from a motel in Vicksburg, Mississippi two years before.
Jason still had not returned her call from Wednesday evening.
She checked her mailbox again. Amanda could tell from the electronic receipt that Jason had received and opened her e-mail from the previous night. But no reply. Nothing new from Jason since his break-up message.
She’d made two attempts to meet Jason halfway and he had not responded to either. Her brief window of willingness to accept him back had not been open very wide to begin with, and now it was barely a crack. If Jason did not reply very soon, Amanda figured that window might slam the rest of the way down and she’d turn the latch.
Maybe this was the way it was meant to be. In the crucible of this ordeal Amanda finally got to see Jason’s true colors: he was a selfish and inconsiderate wuss, and a momma’s boy (too long at the teat). Christine was right all along.
Amanda was embarrassed and also proud — a burdensome combination. All the attention and ridicule from bloggers had provided added pressure to stand her ground.
If Jason made no contact by suppertime, a two-day window, it was goodbye and good riddance. The confused flicker of love remaining in Amanda’s heart seemed overwhelmed by the one-sided, incredibly high maintenance Jason evidently required.
———
Amanda couldn’t handle soup for lunch. Maybe some tasteless rice cake crackers would keep her from grinding her teeth. Those crackers had such insignificant flavor, she couldn’t tell if they were fresh or stale.
She turned on the television and watched a tear-jerker movie in progress. During the afternoon she napped some and cried a bit. She also took another pain pill. Kahh.
* * * *
Margaret phoned her son about midafternoon. There are invitations to visit and there are summonses to appear. This was the latter. She told Jason to be there around 6:30. “No meal.”
At 6:00 p.m., Margaret put a single frozen entree in her microwave.
By the time she’d finished her supper, rinsed and tossed the plastic tray into a recycling bin, Jason had arrived, three minutes late.
As he entered, Margaret pointed to his trousers hanging on the hall closet doorknob.
“Is that what I had to drop everything for?”
“I can’t have a man’s pants decorating my front door. What would the neighbors think?” She quickly realized he didn’t get the intended humor — just as dense as his daddy. “I wanted to see how you’re feeling now that your cold should have run its complete course.” Thank goodness he’d shaved and showered.
Jason tried to manufacture a cough, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “I’m better now. But I didn’t go in to work today because my stomach system is still so weird from ten days of no food.”
“And you didn’t want to go back on a Friday, anyway.” She smiled. “Well, that enforced diet was probably good for you. I think you slimmed down a bit.” Margaret patted his belly. “Good idea to keep it off.”
“Okay. You’ve inspected my stomach and I’ve got my britches.” He squeezed the pocket to chec
k for his keys and also located his credit cards. “Still not sure why I had to rush over here.”
Margaret needed some time to give him a course correction back to reality. “Sit for a minute and let me tell you about when your father got sick with a man-cold.”
“The stinking man-cold thing again! What’s so different about colds for men versus the ones for women? Same germs, or virus… whatever. Isn’t it?”
“Oh, I suppose the causes are about the same. The effects differ a lot, though.” She patted the sofa. “Sit down and I’ll explain.”
Jason sighed heavily and sat.
“Now, you know that I loved your father, deeply.”
He nodded.
“Well, my relationship with your father was ever so much better after he lost the dangerous illusion that a stuffy nose would get him a long vacation, being waited on hand and foot.”
“I don’t remember Dad ever being sick.”
“Precisely. I’d already cured him by the time you were in kindergarten. I couldn’t take care of the house and three boys and a sick husband.” Margaret paused to see if her son was on the same page. “Once or twice, when your dad was really ill, I was by his side almost all day and night. But it’s important to separate a rare true illness from frequent gold-bricking. The man-cold is about 10 per cent sick, maybe 40 per cent gold-bricking, and 50 per cent drama.”
“I never associated Dad with drama.”
“Okay, think of it this way: with a horse, you have to break him of excessive wildness before he can be useful. Similarly, some men have to be broken of certain excesses. Milking a man-cold is an excess and it needs to be broken.”
“What did you do to Dad?” Jason looked retroactively worried.
It was slightly embarrassing to do so, but Margaret told her son about the cold water cure she’d used on Henry.
“That’s why you always patted the water heater when you passed it in the utility room?”
Margaret nodded and smiled.
———
Jason sat back on the couch and took in all this new information. “So you’re telling me that milking a whatever-cold at Amanda’s expense was wrong.” Jason admitted, silently, that he’d already realized that. He understood, now, that he’d mainly been thinking of himself. “But, hey, it feels good to be coddled a bit, now and then.”
“Sure it does.” Margaret placed a motherly hand on his arm. “The key is in timing and motive.”
“Motive?”
“If your motive is sex…”
“Mom!” He couldn’t help lurching backward.
“Sorry, Jason. I’m speaking plainly for a reason.” She cleared her throat softly. “If you’re motive is sex, just bring Amanda some flowers, or take her out for dinner, or both. Try being romantic. But don’t use a pretend illness to get her into bed with you.”
“It wasn’t pretend. The doctor said I had a cold.”
“I know the cold was real. But you blew it into a full-scale tragedy. A cold is a cold. Drink juice, take vitamin C, rest as much as you can, and then get over it. Don’t use it as a bludgeon on somebody else’s life.”
“Okay.” He digested that, though it was not the least bit tasty.
“Now, when Amanda held you at her door that first evening and said she couldn’t handle company, that meant bad timing — not now. But more importantly, she was saying no. When you hear no, it means exactly that. It doesn’t mean maybe. Your charm can’t cancel the no. It was wrong to impose on Amanda when she clearly said no and even explained why.”
“Lots of times people say no but don’t really mean it.”
“Wrong — they still mean it. But some will nearly kill themselves trying to accommodate you anyway. You were being bullheaded. Jason, when a woman says no, that’s the end of the conversation… not the beginning of a debate.”
They talked for another ten minutes.
Jason softened, a little. His heart wasn’t in the breakup anyway, and he knew he truly did love Amanda, despite all of the recent neglect and abuse… which was how he viewed it.
Margaret broke a short silence. “Has Amanda tried to reach you yet?”
Jason nodded. “She left voicemail, uh, Wednesday night. E-mailed me yesterday.”
“How did you respond?”
“I didn’t answer.” He was surprised his mother would expect him to. “I’m not going to make the first move.”
“Jason, if she’s sent you e-mail and tried to call you, then she’s made the first moves. Now it’s your turn.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of all the horrible things she and Christine did to me while I was there.”
“I have a pretty good idea. You deserved some of it, you know.”
He was shocked to hear his mother agree with the wicked witches. “But they also published everything on that Internet site and now everybody knows all of it, including my freakin’ name.”
“I know. That’s probably the most unfortunate aspect of the whole debacle. There’s no privacy or confidentiality in cyberspace and anyone who uses it with that notion is just plain stupid.”
“Including Christine.”
“Including her, yes. She was trying to help Amanda, but Christine botched things badly by involving the Internet. She should have privately offered coping suggestions to Amanda and then bowed out.”
“Did you hear what they did to that giant pumpkin thing?”
Margaret chuckled. “Yes, I know about the cushaw. I’m sure it was a frightening experience for you to overhear, but it actually was a pretty clever ploy. I’ll give that one to Christine.”
“She’s a witch, you know.”
Margaret thought for a moment. “Almost all women are witches… a little, I think. The important thing is, what are we like the other 90 per cent of the time?”
Jason was antsy to leave.
Margaret touched his arm again. “What do you plan to do… about everything?”
“Look, I know you like Amanda and apparently you wish we were back together. But Mom, I just don’t think there’s enough left between us to put back together.” Jason’s head fell forward as he sighed. “A woman who really loved me couldn’t treat me like that.”
“A man who really loved Amanda wouldn’t barge in on her after she told him no.”
Jason shook his head. The equation didn’t quite match up for him.
———
Margaret gave her son a moment. Then she realized it was time to play her trump card. “If you’d been injured in a bad wreck, even though you two were still broken up, would you want Amanda to come see you?”
“Of course!” No hesitation. “Wrecks even out things. The argument or whatever has to be on hold when somebody’s hurt bad.”
Margaret nodded wisely and added a dramatic pause. “Would you feel that same way if the wreck happened to Amanda?”
“Same thing, exactly.” Then it registered. “What happened? Is Amanda okay?” He looked around his mother’s living room. “Where is she?”
Margaret explained about Amanda’s courthouse wreck and injuries. She revised the diagnosis considerably, however. In this retelling, Amanda had suffered a major concussion and fractured ribs; a wrist was terribly sprained and one entire foot was shattered. Of course, by the time Jason sorted out those discrepancies, the degree of Amanda’s injuries would no longer be the main issue.
She watched her son closely. No one could fake the worry on his face or the fear in his eyes. Jason still adored Amanda… no doubt about it.
———
Jason was stunned like he’d banged his head on a low beam.
Besides worry and fear, he felt distinctly guilty over the simplified cause-and-effect: if he hadn’t invaded her apartment, Amanda wouldn’t be injured. More specifically, if she hadn’t helped him with the Ace bandage that morning, Amanda probably would have arrived before the parking lot became so crowded.
All that guilt aside, Jason wanted to rush to Amanda — he was drawn to her. Whe
n somebody’s injured, all the arguments are on hold.
“Amanda’s at home?” Jason pictured all those injuries cited. “Not in the hospital?”
“Overcrowded. Had to send her home, despite her terrible condition.”
He rose abruptly, kissed his mother’s cheek loudly, and said goodbye.
Jason was already on the road before he remembered he’d left his pants, cards, and extra keys.
Chapter 20
On Jason’s hurried drive to her apartment, he tried calling Amanda, but she didn’t answer her phone. He envisioned her in traction on an adjustable bed with thick white wrappings around her head and tubes in her arms. Maybe she can’t even reach the phone. He drove faster.
It was only about three miles from Margaret’s house to Amanda’s apartment, but it seemed like thirty. On top of everything else, he was stopped by a slow-moving Tennessee train apparently looking for a picnic spot.
In this medical emergency, Jason realized how much he adored Amanda, despite the awful things she’d put him through. He was still baffled why she’d treated him so badly, but since Christine was assuredly a witch, maybe Amanda had been under a nefarious spell. He put that out of his mind, however, because he knew Amanda needed him now and Jason was positive she’d be eager to see him. He tried calling again but still got no answer.
When he reached her complex’s parking lot, he halfway expected to see medical teams bustling in and out of her doorway.
Nope. All was quiet, except for No-Neck flinging his tennis ball against the bricks and Mrs. Yodel diligently practicing.
He knocked eagerly. Jason didn’t expect to see Amanda, of course. Most likely an attending nurse would manage the door.
Nobody answered.
Jason knocked again. The kid stopped flinging his ball and came over to watch.
After a few moments, a curtain moved at Amanda’s front window. Still no answer at the door.
“Amanda! It’s Jason. I’ve come to help.”
“Jason who?” Through the door.
He turned to No-Neck. “She’s just kidding. She knows me.” Jason hated feeling that he owed that kid an explanation.
