Things Remembered

by Georgia Bockoven

  She laughed. “Don’t let it bother you. I like you even better now that I know you’re not perfect.”

  Mark glanced at the dashboard clock as he turned onto Taylor Road and headed for the clinic. He’d promised the sitter he’d be home by midnight which gave him forty-five minutes to check on the Irish setter he’d operated on that afternoon and finish the supply order he’d started two days ago.

  The setter was a stray that had been hit and left by the side of the road. A teenage boy had picked it up and delivered it to the clinic. The kid offered to work at the clinic until the bill was paid, but Mark told him they’d get it from the owner, knowing full well it wouldn’t happen.

  Since Mark was the only one with an opening in his schedule, he took the surgery, doing what he could to repair a severe diaphragmatic hernia. The dog was barely breathing. An X-ray showed the intestines, the liver, and the stomach had protruded through a rupture in the diaphragm and depressed the lungs. He went in, repaired the rupture, and shoved everything back into place. After he closed, he sutured several lacerations over the shoulder and hips.

  It was the kind of case Mark loved—the lost cause, the one where the spirit of the animal was as important as the skill of the veterinarian. He was attracted to that spirit in animals and humans alike.

  Which was undoubtedly the reason he’d been attracted to Karla. She might be the walking billboard of emotional scars Susan had hinted at, but she was also a survivor. He’d sensed in the conversations he and Karla had had about Anna that there was more to Karla’s coming home than she realized herself. Karla seemed confused about her and Anna’s relationship, talking about her in an almost businesslike manner one minute and then the next with the warmth and caring of a doting child.

  He’d asked her out because Cindy liked her so much and Cindy was never wrong about people. Of course it hadn’t hurt that Karla had cheekbones you could ski off, possessed a smile to make a dentist proud, and was built the way he liked a woman built, with some flesh on her bones. The really thin ones scared him. There was no way he wanted Cindy around a woman who hyperventilated at the sight of a piece of candy. She would get enough of that kind of thinking at school—she sure as hell didn’t need it at home.

  But Cindy had nothing to do with the reason he’d asked Karla out the second time. He wanted to see her again for purely selfish reasons. He liked the way she made him feel when she laughed at his jokes and the way she looked at him when they were talking. She was quick and bright and, best of all, not put off by his admittedly dumb idea of a first date. Halfway through ordering their hamburgers it had occurred to Mark that what he’d thought of as clever could just as easily be thought of as cheap. The more he thought about it, the more he wished he’d run the idea past Susan first.

  But plainly Karla hadn’t been as put off as he’d feared. At least she’d agreed to see him again.

  Mark parked at the front of the clinic and rang the bell to get in. Ray, the on-duty emergency vet for the night, opened the door. “How’s the setter doing?”

  “Hanging on. Her vitals are stable, but her breathing is still labored. I rechecked chest X-rays and they looked okay.”

  “What about her membrane color?”

  “It’s good—pink—and capillary refill is normal.”

  “Maybe she’s still in pain. Let’s give her a hydromorphine injection and see how she does.”

  “I’ll start her on it right away. Unless you want to do it.”

  “No, go ahead.” Mark glanced at the emergency log. So far it had been a quiet night.

  “By the way, Linda called right after you left tonight. She said she was coming in sometime after ten and that if she got to the house before you did, she would take care of the sitter.”

  “They were supposed to be playing Las Vegas this weekend. Did she say what happened?”

  “Seems the drummer and bass guitarist got into a fight with a couple of undercover policemen and got the crap beat out of them. They couldn’t get two other guys up from L.A. in time to take their place so the manager had to cancel the gig.”

  Ray had worked his way through school as backup guitarist for a rock band that went on to have several platinum albums and then all died in a private plane crash on the way to the Grammy awards. Mark had always suspected that the stories Ray told Linda about his band’s glory days on the road were tantamount to dangling a carrot in front of her. But Mark never tried to stop Ray or to keep Linda from purposely seeking him out for yet more stories.

  “I hope she comes up with something better than that to tell Cindy.”

  “Fights come with the territory,” Ray said. “If Linda sticks with the business, Cindy is going to hear a lot worse.”

  “Oh, she’ll stick with it.” When Linda had left to join Aderonax, she’d tried to make him understand why she was going by telling him that she felt sorry for Ray, for all that he had missed. In her mind, the band members who’d died in the crash were the ones to be envied. They’d reached the top and died there. Nothing she could have said would have convinced him more that she was never coming back.

  “But they may not stick with her. Rock bands at that level come together and break up faster than dogs in heat. It’s okay for the guys to get old, but no one in that circle wants to see wrinkles on a chick.”

  “Why are we talking about this?” Mark went inside the nursing ward to see the setter. Ray followed.

  “I guess it’s just a feeling I got when I was talking to Linda. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t experiencing some of that ageism stuff already.”

  “Hell—she’s not even thirty.”

  Ray shrugged. “Could be I’m wrong. I hope so—for your and Cindy’s sakes.”

  He and Ray had been friends since their first year of veterinary school at the University of California Davis. They’d been in each other’s weddings and were two of the five partners in the clinic. He was the one Mark had talked to when he saw his and Linda’s marriage beginning to disintegrate.

  Through it all, Ray had never interfered or given unwanted advice. “If you’re going to hope for something, hope for a hit record.”

  Chapter

  11

  Karla licked her finger and flipped through a stack of checks making sure they were in numerical order. In all the years since Frank died, Anna had carefully filed all the canceled checks but never once balanced her checkbook. She’d worked out her own system for keeping track of her money, and for the most part, it had worked. With the exception of $1,826.59 that the bank said she had that Anna insisted she didn’t. She’d first noticed the mistake four years ago and called the bank to tell them about it, but they said there was no error, that the money was hers. She’d carried the balance all that time, convinced the bank would figure out where they’d gone wrong one day and ask for the money back.

  After three hours of sorting checks, Karla was finally ready to start looking for the eighteen hundred and change. As she marked off each check against the statement and the register, she was surprised to see Grace’s name appear. She noticed it again and again until, slowly, a pattern began to emerge. None of the checks were outrageous, all of them between two and four hundred dollars; still, for Anna, it was a large part of her monthly budget. Karla looked at the dates and tried to remember what was going on in Grace’s life at that time. She was out of school, working part-time as a page for CBS, going to auditions and landing an occasional non-acting job.

  Karla remembered it well. She’d paid Grace’s rent for two years thinking her sister was living alone. She might never have known any different had she not shown up unannounced to surprise Grace for her birthday and discovered two roommates. Grace had pulled off the deception by keeping a private phone and never meeting Karla at home, and then she’d tried to explain it by saying she was worried Karla would think her a failure and make her give up her dream if she knew how little she was actually earning.

  Judging by Anna’s canceled checks, Grace had been giving her the
same line. Had Heather fallen for it, too?

  Karla didn’t know whether she was more angry or disappointed. What had been going on in Grace’s life that had made her so desperate she’d felt she had to lie to both of them to get money? Drugs were an obvious answer, but it just didn’t fit. There were no other signs, and Karla had seen plenty of them in her friends when she lived in L.A. If Grace had a drug of choice, it was shopping. She would take money from Karla to feed her habit, but Anna? Of the three of them, Grace had lived with Anna the longest. In every way that counted, Anna had become Grace’s mother.

  If Karla wanted an answer, she was going to have to ask. All she had to do was decide whether to approach Grace or Anna or neither of them. But what went on between Grace and Anna was really none of Karla’s business. What right did she have to get involved, especially now?

  Karla shook off her wandering thoughts and got back to the checkbook. When Anna woke up Karla wanted to be able to tell her she’d found the money. After all, she was supposed to be the expert.

  A half hour later the one thing she had discovered was that the money appeared the same year Anna started receiving a direct deposit every month from a company called GBI. This, in addition to her Social Security check, appeared to give her enough money to get by every month with a little left over—which, many of those months, had gone to Grace.

  Karla glanced up as Anna came into the kitchen. She looked as tired as she had before she’d gone in to take a nap.

  “How are you coming?” Anna asked. “Did you find their mistake yet?”

  Karla got up and stretched. “Not yet. I’m going to fix a cup of tea. You want some?”

  “That sounds lovely. I’ll get the cookies Susan brought to go with it.”

  “Too late,” Karla admitted sheepishly. “I ate the last of them while I was working.”

  “They wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.” Anna sat down and let Karla get the tea. “I can’t remember the last time I made a batch of cookies, or baked anything for that matter. I used to make cookies all the time. Frank loved to take them in his lunch box. Did your mother ever make persimmon cookies for you? They were her particular favorite.”

  “Not that I can remember. But maybe she did and I just didn’t like them.”

  “I never liked them myself, but I must have made enough over the years to feed an army. As soon as the trees started turning color, your mother and grandfather would start in on me. Which means there should be persimmons in the store by now.”

  “That wouldn’t be a hint, would it?”

  “I don’t know why, but I woke up thinking about persimmon cookies. Even not liking them, I can appreciate how the smell of spices, pecans, and raisins fills the house when they’re baking.”

  “And persimmons, I assume.”

  “Oh, of course, although I think they add more moisture than flavor or aroma.”

  “All right, you’ve convinced me. Tell me what we need, and I’ll pick it up when I go out later.”

  “If you’re sure it’s not a bother.”

  Karla laughed. “Of course it’s a bother, but you’ve convinced me I can’t go another day without adding a persimmon cookie to each hip.”

  Anna acknowledged the neatly aligned stacks of checks spread out over the table. “Have you been working on my checkbook all afternoon?”

  “Just about.”

  “I had no idea it would take this long, or I never would have asked for your help. I just don’t want to die and leave the problem to you girls to handle when I’m not here to explain everything to you.”

  Karla dropped tea bags into two mugs and poured boiling water over them. She suddenly wished she’d given Anna’s account a quick once-over and made up some mistake to account for the money instead of looking through what amounted to a financial diary. Finding the checks to Grace was like opening the door to a room she didn’t want to know existed. Heather would tell her to close the door and walk away, but Karla could no more do that than she could walk by a flower stand and not buy a bouquet.

  “Anna, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help looking at the checks as I was going through them. I noticed there were several written to Grace. Would you mind telling me what they were for?”

  The question clearly made her uncomfortable. “I promised Grace it would be between us, that I would never tell you or Heather.” Her face reflected her turmoil. “But now that you’ve seen them yourself, it seems foolish not to tell you about them.”

  She’d been given a way out. All she had to do was tell Anna not to break the confidence. She wouldn’t have to confront Grace and would save herself what was sure to be a nasty argument between them. “If you’d rather not, I understand.”

  “They were to help her with her rent. She was embarrassed that she wasn’t doing as well as she’d led you and Heather to believe and afraid you would tell her she had to give up her dream and get a real job.”

  Karla could hardly blame her for falling for a line she’d fallen for herself. The worst part was seeing how completely Anna had bought into Grace’s story and realizing how devastated she would be to know she’d been taken for a ride by her own granddaughter. Somehow it didn’t seem so bad that Grace had done the same thing to her. Sisters had a lot of years to work things out between them; they could afford to make mistakes. The kindest thing Grace could do was to let Anna die without trying some last-minute confession.

  “She was right,” Karla said. “At least about the job part. But then there are a lot of actors waiting to be discovered who manage to work and still get auditions.”

  “Do you think Grace will make it?”

  Karla had been asking herself the same question a lot lately. Grace had the talent, but lately it seemed as if she were more interested in behaving as if she’d already arrived than doing the work to get there. “I don’t know. I used to think so, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “It’s a difficult business. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Not one I’d want to be involved with.”

  Anna smiled. “That wouldn’t be like you at all.”

  Despite their truce, Karla felt a familiar stab of resentment that Anna presumed to know what she was like and who she was inside. “And what—in your opinion, of course—would be like me?”

  “You were meant to be a mother. I’ve begun to worry that it might never happen, and that makes me sad. Some people should never have children, you should have a dozen.”

  Karla couldn’t have been more surprised if Anna had told her she was meant to be an alien but had been born human by accident. “I don’t like kids.”

  “What about Cindy?”

  “She’s different.”

  “And Jamie and Jason?”

  “They’re my nephews.”

  “Surely you must see how children are drawn to you.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Karla—you used to live here. Did you think I didn’t notice?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Anna reacted as if she’d been struck. “Did you really feel that way then, or is it something you feel now?”

  “Why did you make me sleep upstairs away from you and Heather and Grace?” The question found its own voice, spoken without conscious thought.

  “Because it was the one room in this house where I thought you might find your mother. And I wanted you to feel special, to know that I thought you were special. How could you not have felt that?”

  “I only felt lonely.”

  “I’m sorry. If you had told me I could have—”

  “I did tell you.”

  “I didn’t hear what you were saying,” Anna said sadly.

  Karla was beginning to understand there were ways to listen that she hadn’t recognized then. She had heard Anna’s words, but they didn’t always say what was in her heart. In Anna’s mind she had told her granddaughters she loved them a dozen times a day. Karla had only heard silence, needing the words that Anna left unspoken. She didn’t recognize
what being given the special room meant, or that a special meal had been cooked just for her, or how much thought had gone into a carefully chosen sweater given with the tag still attached so it could be returned without asking where it had been purchased.

  “Why is it so hard for our family to say I love you?” Karla asked.

  “Not only hard to say, but hard to recognize,” Anna told her.

  “Why?”

  “We never have.”

  “Why?” Karla persisted.

  “I don’t know . . . it just wasn’t done when Frank and I were growing up. We learned to say things like that in different ways. Ways we all understood.”

  “Did you ever wonder if the language was being lost from generation to generation?”

  “Did your mother not understand?” Anna asked. “Did she not know how to tell you she loved you?”

  “She told me she loved me every night, and every morning when I left for school.”

  “I read your mother a story every night even after she learned to read for herself. And when she went to school, I never made her lunch the night before. I always got up to do it in the morning. Are you telling me she didn’t understand why I did this?”

  “She understood,” Karla said. “I didn’t.” Why was she telling Anna this now when it was too late to make a difference and would only distress her?

  Anna seemed to shrink into herself. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

  Karla wasn’t surprised. Words, or the lack of them, had always been a problem between them. And, albeit reluctantly, she was beginning to recognize that she was as much to blame as Anna. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It wasn’t what I intended.”

  “Maybe this is what they mean when they say grandparents make poor parents.”