Best Medicine, The

by Brogan, Tracy

  But I had fallen in love with this town the first time I’d come to visit with Hilary and her family. Something about the beach and the dunes and smell of the water. It was all so peaceful and serene. Bell Harbor had a tranquility to it so unlike my crazy, hectic day-to-day life as a resident. I’d thought living here would be like a vacation. Of course, I hadn’t fully comprehended the impact of moving to such a small community. I was still getting used to the well-intentioned busybodies and their fascination with my personal life.

  “The hospital is a level-one trauma center,” I added tersely.

  In spite of my steely resolve, and the fact that one of them must be dying, I felt the need to defend my choice, which irked me. I was thirty-five years old, after all. Just barely. But still, too old to have to explain my actions to my parents.

  My father nodded. “Well, it’s your choice, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes, it’s what I want.” And it was. I was happy here. Very happy. I’d prove that to them even if it killed me.

  My mother cleared her throat. “And how are things with your practice? Is everyone pleasant?”

  Pleasant? Pleasant was a word for a Sunday afternoon drive or a midwinter’s nap, neither of which were things our family indulged in. It wasn’t a word I associated with my mother in any way. Skilled. Determined. Competitive. Even brilliant. Those were words that suited her. But not pleasant.

  “Yes, they’re very pleasant.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, darling.” She toyed with the edge of the paper napkin resting under her wineglass and wiped at another smudge. “Are all of your partners married?”

  “Married?” Was my chair tippy? Because I felt a little dizzy all of a sudden. “Um, most of them are married. One has a partner.”

  At least I think Chloe had a partner. There wasn’t a lot of time for chitchat while we were seeing patients in the office or spending time in the operating room. All I really knew of her was that she was a good surgeon, loved to travel, hated golf, and tolerated staff meetings by playing video poker on her iPhone.

  “Are they men or women?” my mother asked.

  I crossed my arms and wondered if Tyler Connelly was having a better time right now than I was. It seemed we were both up for interrogation.

  “Three men and three women. Why?” This awkward banter was making me twitchy, like when you think sandwich meat has gone bad but you smell it just to make sure. The truth was, the Rhoades family was not prone to tiptoeing around an issue. And even though my parents probably loved me in their own restrained, dysfunctional ways, we were not a nurturing, chitchatty bunch. We didn’t mind sticking our fists into someone’s open gut, but exploring another person’s emotional state was far too risky. And this line of questioning was bordering on personal.

  My mother pressed her lips together for a moment, then finally blurted out, “Here’s the thing, Evelyn. Your father and I are a little worried you might get . . . bored. Bell Harbor is so small, and you’ve always been so driven and competitive. Things around here might get monotonous for you.”

  That’s what this was about? The lack of professional challenges available in this town? My spinal titanium swelled again. When would they start giving me some credit?

  “I’ll find plenty of variety here, Mom. Aside from having lots of patients to see, there are other aspects of the practice that are incredibly rewarding. In fact, we’ve just partnered with an organization that arranges clinics in third world countries, doing cleft palate surgery, and one of my partners invited me to help with his research on melanoma in the local geriatric community. I won’t be bored. Far from it.”

  She nodded, but a crease had formed along her forehead. She plucked at the napkin some more. “That’s good. Of course. That all sounds wonderful. But I wasn’t just thinking of your work, necessarily. I was thinking of, you know . . . the social aspect.”

  My mother leaned closer, her gaze intense.

  I leaned back. I imagine my gaze was equally intense. I had no idea where this conversation was going. “The social aspect?”

  She glanced at my father.

  He looked down at his menu.

  Mother gave a little huff, as if frustrated I couldn’t intuit her meaning.

  “Yes, Evie. You’re thirty-five now. There can’t be many men for you to date in a town this size.”

  “Men?” She may as well have said hippopotamuses. Or ostriches. Or aliens.

  It was bad enough talking about this kind of thing with Hilary, but my mother and I hadn’t discussed men since I was fifteen and we’d had The Talk, which basically consisted of her warning me to avoid penises at all costs. Then she’d handed me a box of condoms, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Good luck.” It was as close to a bonding moment as we’d ever had.

  For the most part, I had heeded her advice. I’d had a few boyfriends over the years. I’d enjoyed the benefits of a well-utilized penis now and again, and even the occasional foda pena. But I’d learned from her that love and professional achievement didn’t blend well. That for the most part, men were self-absorbed, maturity challenged, and not worth the trouble. Like Tyler Connelly, most of them were just one Jim Beam and Coke away from stealing a Jet Ski.

  “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Mom.”

  She looked at my father again, and for the first time in twenty years, I felt as if they were united, and I was the one on the outside. He cleared his throat and lifted his menu so I couldn’t see his face. I found myself wishing I had a case of monkey pox.

  My mother turned back to me. “Your father and I think we may have done you a disservice. That perhaps our animosity toward each other may have caused you to avoid forming a healthy relationship with someone special.”

  “Someone special?” Fly ball. Left field. Clunk in the cranium. I smoothed my napkin in my lap. “I haven’t avoided relationships, Mom. I’m just very selective. And I haven’t had time.”

  “Well, you should make time.” My mother reached out to pat my hand, and a flash of lightning caught my eye.

  No.

  Hang on a second.

  That wasn’t lightning. It was the high-powered wattage of a giant diamond ring flashing from her finger. The glare was like the beam from a lighthouse.

  “Wow!” A huff of surprised laughter escaped me, followed by the swirling sensation that life as I knew it was twirling off its axis. “That looks like an engagement ring, Mom.”

  She squeezed my wrist and leaned closer still. “It is an engagement ring.”

  Bungee jumping in the Grand Canyon could not have created a greater plummet in my gut.

  “You’re engaged?” When did my mother have time to date, much less fall in love? I glanced over at my father. He must be as shocked as I was.

  But he wasn’t. She must have told him on the drive. That’s why they rode together. He set down the menu and took a sip of scotch, as cool as Clint Eastwood had been before Clint Eastwood got old and curmudgeonly.

  “Engaged to whom?” I asked. Was it that nice widower who lived next door to her in Ann Arbor? He’d always had a thing for her. Or was it her colleague, Dr. Bettner? That thin-lipped guy with the bad comb-over? Ack, I hated that guy. I hoped it wasn’t him. Or maybe it was someone brand-new? Someone I’d never even heard of.

  My mother sat back, pulling her five-alarm rock with her. “This is where it gets a little unusual.”

  Unusual? Really? Because my day had turned unusual right about the time I got confetti chucked into my face and then had my patient arrested right before my very eyes. And now this momentous news? I couldn’t imagine what she could say to make it more unusual.

  “It’s your father,” she said.

  Except for that.

  The bungee cord snapped. “What?”

  “Your father and I are getting remarried.”

  My parent
s were not practical jokers, and if they were trying to be funny right here, right now, they were doing a piss-poor job of it. This wasn’t funny. And they weren’t laughing. What the hell? My father reached his arm around and draped it along the back of my mother’s chair.

  “I’m sure this is a bit of a surprise, Evelyn, but it’s something Debra and I have been discussing for a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” My voice squeaked as if I’d been sucking on helium. Vodka, vodka, vodka. Where was the vodka? “Dad, it took two years for you to pick out a new car, but this? This you decide in a matter of days?”

  I pressed my palms down on the table, trying to steady a world gone out of control. Could this be some kind of midlife crisis for them gone horribly awry? Or a dual break with reality? Once again, that alternate universe theory of mine started picking up steam.

  “Well, it’s not as if we don’t already know each other. Isn’t that right, Garrett?” My mother’s voice was mellow as she turned and gazed toward my father’s lean face.

  His hair was completely silver; not gray or white, but a crisp silver. And although my mother often commented on how she was aging so much better than him, the truth was, my father had only improved with time.

  But all that was irrelevant at the moment, because I needed to fix this. I needed to set things back where they belonged. Sure, it had been a relentless horror listening to them bicker all these years, but at least in that scenario, I knew where I fit in. This was marshy, treacherous new territory.

  “Yes, you know each other,” I said as calmly as I was able, given the fact that I could neither breathe nor blink. “You know each other, and you hate each other.”

  “That’s not true.” My mother looked back at me and had the nerve to sound surprised. “I never hated your father. I just hated some of his terrible decisions.”

  I let that statement dangle out there, but no, no, I was pretty sure she’d hated him. For two decades she’d called him Ferret instead of Garrett. And she once commented that his subsequent wives were nothing more than talking blow-up dolls, only dumber.

  But my father’s nod was solemn. “Evelyn, I was careless, and short-sighted, and selfish, but the fact remains your mother is the only woman I’ve ever truly loved. All those countless others meant nothing.”

  A telltale muscle twitched at the corner of my mother’s eye. I sank deeper into my chair as if someone had cranked up the gravity.

  “Is one of you dying? Is that what this is really about?”

  My mother chuckled. “Of course not. What would even make you ask that?”

  “Because this is insanity. The last I heard, you two weren’t even on speaking terms. What the hell happened?”

  They looked at each other like hormone-addled teenagers. My mother fluttered her lashes, and for the first time in my life, I saw my father blush. A serious case of the queasies mushroomed in my stomach. Apparently there is no age limit at which a child ceases to be nauseated by the gross reality of her parents being intimate.

  “We ran into each other at a conference in La Jolla a few weeks ago,” my mother said. “And there was a little wine tasting, and, well, one thing just led to another, I guess.”

  One drunken night of booze-soaked sex and my mother set aside twenty-plus years of resentment? This didn’t add up. “Fine, so you had a fling, but how did that get to this?” I pointed at the ring.

  “It wasn’t a fling, Evelyn.” My father still had the stones to admonish me. “You know your mother is the only woman who has ever challenged me, personally or professionally. She’s the only one who has ever been my intellectual equal, and I’ve finally grown to realize that. The fact that she’s still stunning after all these years is just a bonus.”

  It was my mother’s turn to blush.

  I needed a Dramamine. This ride was spinning too fast.

  “We’re getting married on our original anniversary,” my mother added, fully not appreciating how the roaring in my ears made it nearly impossible to hear her. “I’d like you to be my maid of honor, Evie.”

  She squeezed my hand again.

  “Maid of honor?” I choked out.

  “Yes. The wedding will be a modest but tasteful event in Bloomfield Hills.”

  “Bloomfield Hills?”

  “Yes. There’s a lovely little bed-and-breakfast place there that does weddings. Your father and I have been spending our weekends in that area. We may even buy a house.”

  “A house?” I couldn’t seem to stop repeating her words, like a foreigner trying to master a new language. But I could not wrap my head around any of this. I’d spent most of my life mediating communications between my parents, trying to keep that boat from rocking too violently, and suddenly here we all were, on a honeymooners’ sunset cruise. I put my head into my hands, resisting the urge to cover my ears.

  Fortunately, they fell silent, letting me process these words like a meat grinder processed sausage. My emotions were getting all chopped up and mixed together until I couldn’t recognize any of them. My parents, remarried?

  Finally, I looked up.

  They peered back.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know what to say to you guys. Except . . . why do you always do this kind of shit on my birthday?”

  Chapter 3

  “SO, LET ME GET THIS straight,” Gabby said as she poked her fork into a piece of spinach salad. “Your parents have been divorced for twenty-three years, and now they’re getting back together?”

  We were having lunch at a new place that had recently opened near the hospital. I didn’t normally take a break during my office hours, but I needed to talk to someone about this absurd turn of events. I’d fretted over my parents’ announcement all night, and today, with Hilary in surgery, Gabby was the only other trustworthy person I knew.

  Well, actually, I wasn’t sure I could trust her, but I needed to discuss this with an impartial third party since trying to talk sense into my parents had proven fruitless. All my father kept saying was “Trust us.” And all my mother kept saying was “It’s really time you found someone special.”

  Found someone special? After a lifetime of her drilling me about the importance of independence, now she wanted me to find someone special? I had whiplash from last night’s dinner conversation. And I was beyond confused. I rested my spoon against the edge of my bowl. I should have ordered something less spicy than tortilla soup. Like a shot of Mylanta.

  “Yes. They’re getting remarried,” I said. “At some little bed-and-breakfast they’ve been spending time at over in Bloomfield Hills.”

  “A bed-and-breakfast?” For a grown woman, Gabby’s sigh was princess sweet. “That’s so adorable. Mike says if we ever get married, he wants his reception at the bowling alley. It’s the only reason I haven’t dragged him down the aisle yet. But a bed-and-breakfast is so romantic.”

  “No. No. No. It isn’t romantic. It’s ridiculous. My mother has lost her mind.” My palm thumped on the table, making all the silverware rattle.

  A diner at the table next to us turned to stare in our direction. I smiled apologetically. Sometimes I get a little shrill. People notice.

  “Why do you think it’s ridiculous? I think it’s sweet. Imagine rediscovering love after all those years.” Gabby took another casual bite of salad, eating as if this were just some random, insignificant discussion about something random and insignificant.

  “Ever since the day my parents split up, all I’ve heard from my mother is what an egotistical douche bag my father is. He’s been married three other times, you know.” I counted on my fingers. “One, two, three other times! So including my mother, this will be his fifth wedding. Fifth!” I pushed my splayed hand toward her face for emphasis.

  Gabby dodged my hand, and a few more diners turned to gawk. Maybe we should have gone someplace with fewer people.

  She s
hook her head again. “But didn’t he say he’d finally realized she was his . . . what was it? His alma gêmea?”

  “Really? Portuguese? Is that necessary?” Impatience stretched my vocal cords.

  Gabby smiled, unfazed by my distress. “His soul mate,” she answered.

  I gave an unladylike snort. “He said she was his intellectual equal.” I finger quoted in midair . . . with my middle finger. “But that’s bull. He’s just getting too old to attract younger women, so he figures being with my mom is the easiest way to still get laid.”

  A woman from the booth next to ours glared at me, and I finally noticed her three little kids staring at me with big, round Cindy Lou Who eyes as if I were the foul-mouthed Grinch.

  Shit.

  I mean . . . phooey.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It’s bad enough my mother’s offering him a little Frito penis now and then, but does she have to marry him?”

  Gabby smiled. “Foda pena.”

  “Whatever.” I picked up my spoon. Then dropped it back into the bowl again. “I just don’t understand how she’s had this complete reversal of opinion. She couldn’t tolerate him before, so why now? What’s changed? It just makes me so worried for her.”

  “Your mom sounds like a pretty smart woman,” Gabby said. “Maybe she’s just decided he’s what she wants. Warts and all.”

  I looked out the window into the glorious sunshine. People were strolling down the brick-paved sidewalk, enjoying their day. I wanted to be one of them. Carefree. Unburdened. But I knew better. I knew how relationships could turn sour, how following your emotions could lead to disaster.

  “That’s the part I really don’t understand, Gabby. She’s got love goggles on. It’s like she’s forgotten all the rotten things he did. She was no saint, either, of course, but all of a sudden she’s full of forgiveness. Maybe it’s a menopause thing. Like a hormonal imbalance.”