“I want a smoke.” Sheila said it like a dying wish.
“Coffee. Cream, no sugar,” Carl said. He used his free hand to loosen his black bow tie.
“Save my seat,” I said, knowing it was probably futile. I left the couple again in search of coffee. I knew the courtesy coffee tasted like burnt chalk and the gourmet coffee cart was closed, so I went to L&D and filched a huge mug of rich French roast from the nurses’ own private stock of java.
Back at the ER, Sheila was still waiting to be seen, a surprise considering her companion was the new head honcho of the hospital. But I guess protocol was protocol. Cardiac arrests and brain hemorrhages beat out crushed hands in triage every time. An angry administrator was better to deal with than relatives of dead guys who shouldn’t be dead.
My chair had been taken by a guy holding his elbow with his other hand. So I just stood and wondered what I was supposed to do.
“I have to pee,” Sheila said after a time. Carl helped her stand, but she was shaky. Probably as much from the pain as from the booze.
“You’ll have to go with her,” Carl told me.
I walked with Sheila to the restroom and stood with a moment of indecision once we were inside. I didn’t know if she wanted me to help her into a stall or wait or leave or what.
“What can…I do to help?”
“I don’t know. Will you stick around in case I need you?” Now her lip was the one quivering.
“Sure.”
She went into the largest stall and worked for a moment to get the door closed. After a few moments of rustling, I heard her start to cry.
“You need help?”
I think the noise she made through her tears was a yes.
I pushed the door open. She stood there with rivers streaming down her cheeks washing down black rivulets of mascara from her eyes to her jaw bone. She looked like a sad clown. Or a zebra.
“I can’t even pull my dress up,” she slurred.
“Want me to?”
She nodded.
I latched the door and helped her get her sparkly clothes out of the way so she could sit on the toilet. It was nothing I hadn’t done a thousand times as a nurse, but only for strangers who were my patients. They didn’t wear red-glitter skin-tight gowns. Or black leather thongs. This was different.
“Want me to leave now?”
“No.” The tears continued to flow. This had to be humiliating for her, what with hating me and all, and having to depend on me to help her use the toilet.
“I’m done.”
Hmm.
“Want me to wipe you off?”
“I guess.” She cried audibly now.
We got her cleaned up and her dress back down without a word. Just the sound of her quiet whimpering.
While I washed my hands quickly so we could get her back to a chair, I saw her pale in the mirror to a whiter shade of green-gray than she’d been before. And it wasn’t just the reflection of my dress on her skin.
“I’m going to be sick,” she muttered.
She vaulted back into the stall and leaned over the pot and retched. Since her mangled hand was still cradled in her other hand, I held her hair back for her. The hairspray in her ’do wasn’t enough to keep her hair away from her face on its own. Standing over her as she puked, I stared down at the zipper trailing along her bony spine. No longer did her sparkly dress look like Dorothy’s shoes. It was just dyed red fabric covered in rows and rows of tiny red plastic circles.
It took her a while to get her stomach emptied. I tried not to gag. By picturing myself on a beach somewhere, I was just able to keep my gorge down. She just kept heaving. And I stayed there with her as she lost every chance of keeping any shred of pride or dignity.
When she finished and stood up, I brought over a wet paper towel and washed off her mouth.
“I want a smoke.”
“Let’s go see if they’re ready for you yet. If not, I’ll take you for a cigarette.”
Like an unstable zombie, she left the bathroom and teetered back to where Carl waited.
“You all right, Babe?”
“No, I’m not all right. My hand is crushed, no one will take care of me, I just puked my guts up, and I want a smoke!”
I guess that part about no one taking care of her meant the ER people. Not me.
“Any word?” I asked.
“No,” Carl growled.
“Then I’ll take her for a cigarette.”
“I can do that,” Carl said.
“Kate will.” Sheila said that.
“Want a wheelchair?” I asked.
She cursed me and my suggestion. Then she tried to stand up again and did a Tower of Pisa imitation. She relented. “Okay.”
We wheeled out onto a concrete patio with a wooden picnic table. Scorch marks and ashes marred the concrete and the table had been used more than once to extinguish a burning cigarette. Several cold butts of various brands lay scattered around our feet.
“You’ll have to light it for me.”
“I don’t know…I’ve never…”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re probably a virgin too.”
I didn’t answer. She was just upset. I knew she truly appreciated me.
“Stick it in my mouth for me and hold a flame to the end.”
I wrestled her pack for a bit to get a cigarette out. I had to dig down inside the opening. It was too small for my fingers.
“God, don’t shred the thing. Tap it out. Tap it, yeah. Tap it. There you go.”
I almost dropped it before I got it to her lips.
“Backwards. Backwards,” she scolded as she pulled her head away like a toddler refusing a spoon filled with pureed spinach.
“Sorry.”
“What’s with you? I didn’t know you were this lame.”
“Just never saw a need to smoke, that’s all.” I didn’t need to explain someone I hated from my past smoked and so there was no way I was going to.
“Your loss.”
“I guess.”
“Lighter’s in my purse. You do know how to use a lighter?”
I stuck the right end between her lips, fished out her Bic and flipped it on to show her how smart I really was. She seemed very impressed. I put it to the end of her cigarette.
She puffed it to life. I was sure she’d calm down now.
She spit it right out (once again spewing her unique string of profanity).
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“That thing’s useless. I might as well light up a rolled-up Kleenex for all the good it does.”
I didn’t get it.
“It’s an Ultra Light. It’s worthless.”
“What are you doing with that?” I asked astonished. “Get your pack mixed up with an old lady or something?”
“If you must know, I’ve been trying to quit.”
“No kidding.”
“But not tonight.” A bunch more nasty words popped out of her mouth before she told me to go find her some real cigarettes. “That 7-Eleven across the street has some. Go over there and get me a real pack.”
“Me? Buy you cigarettes?”
“Yes. Hurry up. I might have to go in soon. God, don’t worry. I’ll pay you back.”
I looked inside my purse. I had a five and two ones, plus some nickels and pennies.
“How much will they cost?”
“Seven or eight bucks.”
So I went to buy my first pack of cigarettes. In my ball gown.
Inside the convenience store, displays of cigarettes covered nearly every square inch of the wall behind the cashier. I walked up to the counter, trying not to look nervous. She’d probably think I was buying for some underage kid if I seemed too much on edge. I needed to act like I knew what I was doing.
“Night out on the town?” she asked.
I nodded. “I’d like a pack of Marlboros, please.”
“What kind?”
“There’s more than one?”
By the look on her face, I t
hink I screwed up the plan to appear as if I knew what I was doing.
“What are my choices?”
“Well,” she said, with a chuckle, “we’ve got lights, milds, mediums, ultra lights, 100s, menthols, menthol lights, and most of those come in either a soft pack or hard pack.”
“Those are all Marlboros?” I asked bewildered, no longer trying to appear educated in cigarette commerce.
“You betcha.”
I let out a long sigh.
“If you want to start, I’d recommend starting with something light or ultra light.”
“They’re not for me. I’m buying for someone at the hospital.”
She gave a relieved nod.
“She has ultra light. Says they’re worthless.” I thought a minute, looking over the display case like a kid in an ice cream store trying to decide on a flavor. “What’s the strongest you’ve got? Got anything that says something like Surgeon General’s Warning: Don’t even think about it?”
“Camel Wides.”
“Those good?” I felt strange calling them good.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Great. I’ll take one of those.”
“You have to buy the whole pack.”
I gave her an I’m-not-that-dumb look and pulled the money from my purse. I felt really sophisticated counting out my pennies and nickels.
When I got back to Sheila and showed her the pack, first she scowled.
“Not my usual, but they’ll do.”
The cellophane came off fast enough that she didn’t have to scold me. Within seconds, I got one out, between her lips, and a flame up to the end of it.
The rapture on her face. She closed her eyes and took the deepest drag off the thing that I’d ever seen. She made it look better than chocolate. She was happy.
“God, that’s good.” She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
I just sat there trying not to care when the breeze shifted and put me down wind of her. I could at least give her that.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Sure.” We sat in silence for a few more puffs.
“Um, I’m curious. Why not have Carl do this? I mean, with you hating me and all.”
She kept her eyes shut and took another profound draw on her cancer stick. She looked so serene, I wondered if I’d misjudged to have never tried the stuff myself.
After a couple of columns of gray smoke streamed out of her nostrils, she blew the rest out one side of her mouth.
“I didn’t need any more humiliation. You’re enough.”
Oh.
“I’d rather not have him see me puke. Or even not be able to light up my own smoke.”
“In the movies, it’s sexy to let them do it.”
“This ain’t the movies. Not tonight.”
That was all the conversation. I let her relish her habit in peace and pretty soon Carl showed up.
“They have a bed available. And the hand surgeon’s arrived. I’ll take her from here.”
By now, it was two in the morning and I knew for sure the bus wouldn’t be by. I didn’t have enough money for a cab and I wasn’t about to walk home alone, not with people like the scary, hairy guy out there.
I stood a moment watching Carl.
“Thanks. We’ll be okay now,” he said.
I chewed my bottom lip.
“Do we have a problem?”
We didn’t. But I sure did.
“I don’t have a way home.”
Carl pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
I felt like a nuisance. “Sorry.”
He mumbled something against Mack.
I pulled his keys out of my purse and held them up.
“Ah, no,” he said, snatching away his car keys from me. He pulled his wallet from the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “Here. Take a cab.” He handed me a twenty.
“Thanks. I’ll try to pay you back Monday.”
“Forget it.”
Then he forgot me and put all his attention on Sheila.
“How’s it feeling?” he said.
Her answer was interspersed with expletives, clearly conveying how much her hand hurt. The duo disappeared through the door leading inside and Sheila’s voice cut out when the heavy glass door swished shut.
I was dismissed.
Now I had to get home. At least Carl had the decency to give me a way to do that.
Twenty minutes passed before an empty cab happened by. I flagged it down, hopped in, and headed for home. Once again alone. I was too tired to think very much about it and get depressed, so when I pushed into my apartment, I told Ollie not to ask me anything.
He shrugged and said he hadn’t intended to. He was just glad to see I got in safely and hadn’t brought anybody upstairs with me who would disrupt the rest of his night.
After throwing my high heels across the room and peeling off my dress, the two of us curled up together in my bed and fell to sleep quicker than a cat could say consistency.
Chapter 30
When I awoke Sunday morning, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Ollie was bathing in a dim square of light below the window, licking his paw then swiping it over his head to wash behind his ears. With only a week left before October, the air either had frequent bursts of cold rain, or just hung around thick, obliterating the sunlight. Ollie had significantly fewer sun puddles to linger in.
I lounged a few minutes in the tangle of cozy covers. I didn’t want my mind to go anywhere. It was better to remain blank.
Then I remembered I was meeting Anna and Charlotte for brunch. It was our tradition, getting together every few weeks on Sunday mornings to spend time. And now it was giving me a chance to get to know Charlotte too. It was delightful to watch Anna care for her. She did such a wonderful job, making the work seem easy and natural. Maybe I’d been wrong about mothering.
Last visit, she’d had me over to her house, instead of us going out. It had been Labor Day weekend, the same weekend Mack and I had gone to the coffee house, and then the Italian place. Charlotte had only been with them a couple of months at that point, and Anna preferred to stay close to home as they settled into their routine.
When I’d arrived at Anna’s house that time, the aroma of hot bacon and bubbling omelets, along with a smile from Snoopy, the beagle, met me when I slid open the back glass door leading into the kitchen. I remembered the day so fondly. Anna looked up from where she had been sitting at the butcher-block table, cradling Charlotte with the most serene countenance I’d ever seen.
“Hey, Anna Banana. How you doing?” I’d said.
“Hi,” she whispered. Charlotte was awake, but the atmosphere was too harmonious to break with loud chatter.
I clamped my hand over my mouth, realizing I was too loud. Then, after I got a hold of myself, I glanced around at the surroundings.
The table was spread beautifully, rivaling any display at Crate and Barrel. Anna was dressed and preened to perfection, like an ad for Parenting magazine. And the house was spotless enough to be a show home. Leave it to my cousin to make mothering look like a fairytale. Or an enviable advertisement. Even the bacon was flawlessly laid out, not a globule of grease splattered anywhere on the stove or counter and each strip evenly cooked and flat. I think she cooked them with her iron.
She handed Charlotte to me and then served up the tastiest food I’d encountered in my life. She put me to shame. That was easy enough, but she even put Rachael Ray to shame.
I couldn’t wait to see them again. Just every few weeks wasn’t going to be enough for me. The two were bursts of sunrays in my overcast, dreary life.
We planned to meet at the restaurant at 10:30. That gave me time to go to the nine o’clock service at Howard’s church again. I had liked seeing those old, friendly eyes smile at me.
The service had already started when I got there. I sank into my back pew and settled in to relax and try to recapture some of the comfort from before. The pastor must have been working with a theme because he was still talking about forgiveness
.
That made me wonder. I thought about something I never let into my mind. I guess a quiet place like the back pew of a church can make a girl ponder things she usually keeps off-limits. I let my thoughts wander. What about a certain someone who was dead and never bothered to own up to things before he died? Could I possibly still forgive him? Would that give me the freedom the pastor talked about last week?
Actually, I wasn’t sure I even needed the freedom. I did pretty well handling this old situation anyway. I just stuffed it way down and blocked it from my consciousness. I was very good at suppression. Maybe I didn’t need to worry about forgiving him. And anyway, he would never have been sorry, even if he’d lived long enough. So maybe I shouldn’t. Why should I let him off the hook?
When the sermon was over, not only did I lack answers, but now there were even more questions than before he started.
Great.
They all sang another song and then we broke up for the day and I headed for Ann Sather’s to meet Anna and Charlotte.
Once I got a table and had waited a while and they still weren’t there, I went ahead and ordered one of Ann’s giant cinnamon rolls. I picked through it slowly, making it last longer than anything that delicious had a right to sit on my plate, but I was just certain Anna and Charlotte would show any second and I didn’t want to be finished before they arrived. I watched the couple at the table next to me order, receive, and finish their Eggs Benedict and Steak and Eggs and still no Anna. There was no way she’d have forgotten. She didn’t forget things. I waited for over an hour and they never came. I finally gave up my table, an invaluable commodity on a Sunday morning at a place absolutely crammed with hungry people waiting to be seated.
She must have had car trouble or Charlotte got sick. With no cell phone, I couldn’t be called. I figured I better get home so she could call me there.
Once home, I tried calling Anna but there was no answer. She hadn’t left me a message either. Weird. After calling again and leaving a message on her home machine, I sat down to read my neighbor’s Sunday paper. It helped me pass the next half-hour or so, with attempts to reach Anna every five minutes. Maybe she forgot to charge her cell phone, though I couldn’t really believe that. I’d accept total mechanical failure of every device in the universe before I believed she would forget something.
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