by Lyn Cote
Beside him, Gracie spoke into his phone. “We’re here, Sandy.”
“Great. I’m really…feeling bad.”
The lock released and Jack shoved open the door. “Mom!” He raced down the steep steps to the basement.
“Jack.” His mother lay crumpled on the throw rug at the bottom of the stairs. Her face, so pale in the scant light, jolted him.
“I think…I need…to go to…the hospital—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of the siren.
Thank God. Jack knelt beside her. “We called 9-1-1 on our way out of the office. The ambulance is really close.”
“I’ll go up and let them in.” Gracie turned and ran back up the steps. “I can’t believe they didn’t beat us here.”
“Where does it hurt?” Jack gently touched his mom’s shoulder, angry with himself for not knowing what else to do for her.
“I may have cracked…some ribs.” She paused, her breathing labored. “I can’t…get up. I feel everything…but—”
Two EMTs charged down the steps. Jack fell back, giving them room in the area at the base of the stairs.
The men in uniform rattled off questions as they took her pulse and checked her limbs.
“Is it serious?” Jack asked.
“We’ll get her to hospital for X-rays. You are her…?”
“Son.”
They nodded. Soon the men had his mom on a rigid stretcher and were carrying her upstairs and out to the ambulance. He and Gracie got back in his small sedan and drove behind them to the hospital.
“I need to call my dad.” Gracie opened his cell phone.
“You should have gone home. I shouldn’t have let you come along.”
“I couldn’t have just gone home,” she said with a sharpness in her voice he rarely heard. “I’d have been worried sick.” She began talking into the phone, explaining to her dad what had happened.
Jack concentrated on following the red taillights of the ambulance. He tried to pray, but no words came to his worried mind. He’d known something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. He’d warned Mom about those stupid steps. But what good did that do now?
The arrival at the hospital made him crazy. Medical personnel pushed him aside and relegated him and Gracie to the hallway. He watched helplessly as his mom’s gurney was pushed from one location to another.
“Jack, come here.” Gracie took his arm, led him to a row of stiff plastic chairs and pushed him into one. She sat down beside him. He sprang up, unable to sit still.
His gaze lingering in the direction his mother had been taken, he said, “I’ll call you a cab and send you home.”
“No, I’ll stay. I told you I couldn’t just go home.”
A tall distinguished-looking doctor hurried down the hall toward them. “Jack? Why is your mother here?”
Irritation zigzagged through Jack. “You’re here? I didn’t know this was one of your hospitals.” He stared at his father and felt his jaw clench.
“I was called in on another emergency consult.” His father studied him, but went on with emotion. “An ER staffer paged me, thinking I might be a relative of Sandy Lassater. What happened?”
Jack bristled, wanting to send his father away. He couldn’t forget the past sins that lay between them. But he only said, “She fell down the basement stairs.”
“Is she in X-ray?”
Jack nodded, pressing his lips together, holding back cutting words. Mom wouldn’t want him arguing with his father here.
His dad frowned. “I’ll go check on her.”
Jack fumed in silence. What choice did he have? Maybe his father being a doctor would get his mother special attention, but the thought galled Jack.
His father glanced over at Grace. “This is…?”
“I’m Gracie, Dr. Lassater.” She rose and offered him her hand. “I recognized your voice from your call earlier this evening.”
Dr. Lassater shook her hand. “Right, the call. I do need to discuss business with LIT. But now I’ll go see if I can help Sandy out.”
The words grated on Jack. After all his father had done to hurt his mother, Jack wanted to snap, We don’t want you help. But he couldn’t. Mom just might need him. Dear Lord, help her. I’m powerless here.
Chapter Two
Much later, after Jack sent a reluctant Gracie home in a taxi, he drove his mother home. The June night’s unusual heat and humidity hadn’t abated—not even after midnight—and it added to his aggravation.
As soon as Jack climbed out of his air-conditioned car, sweat beaded his forehead. He hurried to the house and unlocked his mother’s back door. Then he returned to the passenger side of the car.
“I still think they should have kept you overnight.”
“I wasn’t injured badly enough to be hospitalized.” His mom turned on her seat and stiffly held her arms toward him. “I just took a fall. And you know how I feel about hospitals.”
He didn’t like the way she inhaled so carefully, like every breath hurt her. “Two cracked ribs, a sprained right ankle and a chipped right kneecap—”
“—isn’t serious enough for me to be kept overnight.”
“I bet—” Jack assisted his slender mother to her feet and helped her prop herself against the open door “—if you were still Dr. Cliff Lassater’s wife, they’d have insisted you stay overnight.”
“Jack, you shouldn’t be so bitter.” She waited while he got her crutches out of the back seat and then she positioned them under her arms. “Your father didn’t divorce me to hurt you.”
Jack ignored her comment. “I can carry you—”
“I can walk with crutches. I’ll just take it slow.” She began to limp toward the back door, pausing after each step.
Jack slammed the car door, hit the automatic lock on the key ring and hurried ahead to hold the door open for her.
Inside, she insisted he let her “hop” up the three steps to the kitchen, holding on to the reinforced railing he’d put in two years ago. Then she limped through the kitchen to the front hall staircase and paused, panting.
That’s enough. “Mom, it’s late. I’m carrying you up to your bedroom.”
She turned to him. “All right,” she conceded in a pained, weakened voice, “but just this once. I have to be able to do this on my own—”
“Don’t worry!” He couldn’t keep the frustration out of his tone. “Tomorrow I’ll make you go jogging with me!”
She chuckled and then froze as if that too pained her. “Jogging? Now—” she forced out each word, one by one “—you’re…frightening…me.”
He propped her crutches against the banister and then lifted her into his arms—a light burden. He climbed the worn stairs and deposited her on her bed. Then he hustled down for her crutches.
“Thank you, Jack.” Sighing cautiously, she motioned him to rest the crutches on a chair beside her bed. “Now I’ll be able to manage. You go home and get some sleep.”
He’d already thought ahead to this moment. “I think I’ll spend the night in my old room—”
“Jack—”
“It’s late, and it will give me more time to sleep,” he alibied with a straight face.
His mom shook her head at him. “All right. I’m too tired to argue with you. And you’re always welcome here anyway.”
He looked around her small bedroom. He couldn’t stop himself. “I wish you’d let me help you buy something newer—a ranch-style with everything on one level and larger—”
“Not that again!” she scolded. “I like this house. I love this neighborhood where I know everyone and—”
“—and it has a corner store and a rapid transit station within walking distance.” He recited the litany of reasons she’d given over the years for not moving.
“Exactly. If I’d wanted to move, I would have. I didn’t and I don’t.”
“But those basement steps—”
“Don’t fuss over me!” Irritation finally leaked into her tone.
“Go get some sleep. I’ll be fine. This isn’t my first time using crutches.” In spite of her brave words, she was wilting visibly. She drew in a shallow breath. “I know what I’m doing.”
Sorry he’d provoked this outburst, he held up both hands in surrender. “Okay, good night, Mom.” He bent and kissed her cheek.
She patted his. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay.” He made himself walk across the hall to his old bedroom. The air-conditioning at the hospital had been much more effective than his mom’s old unit. Breathing in the stuffy air of the unused bedroom, he switched on a box fan on the floor. Then he flung back the navy-blue comforter on the twin bed he’d slept on in high school. Kicking off his shoes and shrugging out of his knit shirt and slacks, he flopped down on the bed.
His body ached. But it wasn’t waiting at the hospital on uncomfortable plastic chairs that had knotted his neck muscles. What’s going on? I don’t see my father for how long? And then in one evening, he calls and I run into him at the hospital?
Jack turned over onto his stomach. Seeing his dad stirred up thoughts he rarely allowed to intrude—like his dad’s trophy wife, a very young red-haired trophy wife. Or rather, ex-trophy wife.
Feelings buzzed around inside him like angry bees. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the soothing whir of the fan and its cooling breeze drifting over him. But his mind refused to be lulled to sleep.
“I need to discuss business with LIT”—that’s what his father had said. “Well, I’m not the only game in town, Dad,” Jack grumbled sideways into his pillow. “You’re not going to draw me into your life again with this lame ploy.”
Once again, an image of his father driving out of the hospital parking lot in his new Mercedes came to mind. It isn’t fair, Lord. Mom should have what she needs. He has so much and she has so little. It isn’t fair.
But Jack would make up the difference. His mother would never want for anything if he could help it—and fortunately, he could.
At the chrome red and white kitchen table around ten o’clock the next morning, Gracie sipped her dad’s strong morning coffee. She was wearing faded cutoffs and a tattered white T-shirt—her painting clothes. The outfit suited her grumpy and “at odds” mood. Her dad, Mike Petrov—lean and wiry with salt-and-pepper hair—was similarly dressed in a spattered khaki work shirt and jeans. He looked relaxed, but why was he eyeing her so strangely?
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep in,” Gracie complained, while swallowing a self-incriminating yawn. “I wanted to get this painting started early so we’re done before the afternoon heat.”
“You didn’t get in until long after midnight,” her dad explained in his easygoing voice, ignoring her crankiness.
These words stated so calmly alerted Gracie. “Okay. What do you want to know, Dad?”
He grinned at her. “Why did you stay so late at the hospital with your boss? You could have come home.”
Gracie sipped her coffee, hiding her mouth behind her cup. Jack was the last person she wanted to talk about. She pictured Jack waiting with her for a taxi at the curb in front of the hospital. Jack was a maddening mix of unexpected solicitude and vague neglect. Gracie took a bite of buttery blackberry-jammed toast.
“So, what’s going on with you and Mr. Brain Lassater?”
“Going on?” Suddenly, her recurring daydream of Jack sweeping her into his arms flitted through her unruly mind. She felt her cheeks warm. “Nothing’s going on.” She pleated the soft, well-worn cotton tablecloth between her fingers. Thanks to Jack, nothing is going on, and apparently it never will.
Childish footsteps pounded down the back staircase of the two-flat. The back door flew open, banging the wall behind it.
Gracie flinched, then smiled.
Her twin four-year-old nephews—Austin and Andy—threw themselves at her. “Aunt Gracie! Aunt Gracie! We get to help you and Grampa paint this morning!”
“What?” Though glad of the interruption, Gracie held her coffee mug high above their boisterous hugs. Then she turned a quizzical expression to her dad sitting across from her. “Nobody told me.”
Her dad shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”
“I hope you won’t mind.” Annie, Gracie’s younger sister, petite and dark-haired just like Gracie, stood apart from them in the kitchen door. “Troy has to work today at the job site and I need to take care of…some things.”
Annie sounded funny, as if she were covering up for something. Gracie scrutinized her sister. Did these “things” have anything to do with the raised voices over the past few weeks and doors slamming upstairs very late last night? Gracie swallowed that question, recalling the first law of living near relatives—don’t pry.
Annie avoided Gracie’s eyes. “I won’t be gone long.” Then she glanced at her sister.
Gracie stilled at the defiant look in Annie’s eyes. “But—”
“Gotta go!” Annie backed toward the door. “I can’t change plans now.” She paused at the door and then came back. She hugged each of her blond, blue-eyed sons, miniatures of their father, and kissed them. “Be good until Mommy comes back, okay?”
“Okay!” the boys chorused.
Then Annie escaped out the door.
Gracie and her dad exchanged glances. Hers asked, What’s with Annie, and how are we going to paint a room with the help of two four-year-old boys?
His unspoken reply: I don’t have a clue. I guess we’ll manage.
“Okay, boys,” her dad said, “let’s strip you down to your briefs. We’re moving everything out of cousin Patience’s room so we can paint it for her before she comes home next week.” Her dad yanked off the boys’ shirts and shorts, tossing them on a kitchen chair.
In Spider-Man briefs, the twins danced around them, chanting, “Will we really get to paint? Huh? Really? Huh?”
Gracie nodded. Still, the defiant expression on her sister’s face kept coming back to her.
God, speak to Annie today. Make her aware of how blessed she is with a loving husband and two adorable boys. Please!
Around ten on Saturday, the morning after the rush to the hospital, Jack rolled over, yawning. Then he was awake, looking up at the ceiling in his old room at Mom’s and then over at the bedside clock. He sat up and rubbed his face with his hands. Before he could give in to temptation and roll back over to sleep, he stood up and pulled on his slacks.
“Mom!” he called as he opened his door and looked across the hall.
His mom’s bed was already neatly made. She was not in her room.
“Mom!” He shuffled down the stairs at a fast clip. “You should have got me up! You shouldn’t have gone downstairs by yourself! What if you’d fallen?”
At the bottom of the staircase, he listened for her. He heard nothing. “Mom!” He headed toward the kitchen. She wouldn’t go back down those basement steps again, would she? Worry picked up his pace.
After passing through the kitchen, he flipped on the light switch in the basement stairwell and listened for movement below. Then he heard his mom’s voice—outside. She shouldn’t be hopping up and down, in and out!
Jack jerked open the back door and leaned out. The heat from the asphalt drive wafted up into his face. The large round thermometer on the garage already read ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit. At the fence on the other side of the driveway, his mom was talking to her next-door neighbor.
“Mom?”
Leaning on her crutches, Sandy turned back. “Finally woke up?”
“Hey!” Mr. Pulaski, the grizzled retired police sergeant who lived next door, greeted him. “How’re ya doin’, Jack? Invented anything lately?”
Jack swallowed the lecture about being more careful that he’d intended to give his mother. Instead, he waved at Mr. Pulaski, who had no sons or grandsons and who had come to all of Jack’s high school football games. “Nothing special.”
“I’ll come in and make you some breakfast.” Using her crutches, Sandy began her slow limping toward Jack.
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br /> “I told yer ma she should do her laundry at the Laundromat. Then she wouldn’t have to go down those stairs. They ain’t safe for a lady who’s got the arthritis so bad. If it weren’t for this bum leg, I’d take it for her.”
“I’m with you a hundred percent. And don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Jack ushered his mother inside and closed the door behind them. “Mom—”
“Now, don’t fuss, Jack. I’m a little sore this morning, but my pain pills are doing their job, okay?”
He tamped down the string of cautions he had prepared. She won’t listen to me anyway. “If you say so. Now sit down while I get myself some breakfast.”
She lowered herself with care into one of the kitchen chairs at the round oak table.
From the cupboard, Jack got a box of cereal, and from the fridge, a half gallon of milk, and he set them both down on the table. “Mom, I was thinking. Why don’t you move into my apartment until you’re off crutches?”
“No, I want to be in my own home.”
“But, Mom, with the only bath upstairs, you have to go up and down stairs all day—”
“I’m staying right here.”
“Mom, why not take it easy for just a day—”
“No, dear, I’m fine right here.”
He frowned. “You don’t make this easy—”
There was a knock at the back door. It opened before either of them could answer it. “Sandy? It’s me, Cliff.”
His dad had nerve. Jack nearly growled, Go ahead, just walk right in like you still own it, Doctor.
Sandy shook her head at Jack. “Come on in, Cliff.”
He hated the way people always catered to his dad, the doctor. Watching his dad out of the corner of his eye, Jack kept busy pouring cereal into his bowl and adding milk and sugar.
Cliff walked into the kitchen. From his dad’s crisp tan chinos and blue knit short-sleeved shirt, Jack surmised that he was on his way to play golf.
“I can’t stay long, Sandy. I’m on my way to the links. I just wanted to see how you were doing this morning.”
Jack kept his focus on his breakfast.
“I’m a little more achy than usual, Cliff,” his mom replied. “But I’m going to be okay. I’m sure Jack will hover over me for the rest of the weekend.”
