“Where’s Buddy?”
“He’s with Bo, talking to him, trying to get him to move. But something’s wrong.” Molly’s tears continued streaming, her fears mounting, her stomach clenching. Something was seriously wrong with Bo.
She watched Buddy try to move him slightly on his side, but Bo cried out. That scared Buddy enough. He went and found a blanket and said, direct and calm, “Molly, I need you to go next door and ask Mrs. Holiday if she can come sit with Gabby. We need to take Bo to the Vet. Right now.”
Molly told her mother what was going on, and Julie hung up the phone, grabbed her purse from the church kitchen, and left the Glenn Miller tunes blaring behind her in all their glory.
Mrs. Holiday walked into the front door, her eyes wild with concern. Buddy and Molly carefully rolled Bo on the blanket, the old boy yelping out in pain. Buddy picked him up, cradling him in his arms. Molly held open the door to the backseat of the car and crawled inside with her old pal. As Buddy drove off, she buckled her seatbelt and bent over him, fresh tears falling onto his puffy golden head, petting his ears, and whispering, “I love you Bo. I love you, old boy. Don’t leave us.”
Julie pulled into the parking lot and jogged inside the Vet Emergency reception area. She found Molly sitting silently, her shoulders slumped over, all alone. No one else was in the reception area. Lucky us, she thought to herself. Soon, the Vet, a crisp, petite, platinum blond doctor named Dr. Leesa Leatherstike, came out from behind double doors and asked Julie and Molly to come back to a room. As they walked in, they saw Buddy sitting motionless with Bo’s head resting up on his lap. His face said it all.
“It’s called stomach bloat,” Dr. Leatherstike explained. “It happens sometimes and comes on very quickly with no warning. But unfortunately, in Bo’s case, his stomach has twisted as well. That adds an extra complication. Mostly due to his age.”
“What does that mean?” Julie asked.
“It means that the only way to fix it is through surgery. And Bo here is already passed what we expect dogs of his mix and size to live. We can do the surgery, but it is likely that he won’t survive it. Or if he does, the recovery period would be difficult enough to make his quality of life so bad that he’d be suffering.”
Julie looked down at Buddy, who had his forehead up against Bo’s head. Bo laid there, still and clearly in distress. The kindhearted but world-weary criminal defense lawyer looked up at Julie with sad and desperate tears glazing over his eyes. She and Molly watched, for the first time, this grown man they both adored, cry a real cry.
“I will do whatever you want me to do,” Dr. Leatherstike added. “But remember, regardless of your decision…Bo has had a great, long life. And that’s because of all of you and the love and home you gave to him.” She stopped and sighed. “Our pets do not live long enough. And when it’s their time, they take a piece of our hearts with them.”
“What do you want to do?” Buddy asked Julie, his face full of angst. He was stuck in that curious kind of moment when you know what has to be done but not wanting to follow through with it, or not being sure you can. “I’m not euthanizing this dog without your say so. You have to agree.”
Molly cried out, “What does that mean?”
“I’ll leave you all alone for a bit to let you talk among yourselves,” the Vet said and excused herself, her blond ponytail bobbing along the back of her lab coat as she walked away.
Molly’s sobs grew louder. “What does that mean?” she asked again. But she knew the answer.
Julie pulled her brokenhearted daughter into her side and held her closely. She rubbed her hair with the tips of her fingers. “It means it’s Bo’s time. We’re going to have to say ‘goodbye’ to him. He’s suffering and it’s not likely that he’ll ever get well again.”
Molly pulled away from her mom and bent down over Bo, putting her head along the middle of his furry body. She hugged him. Bo groaned. All three of them cried.
Several minutes later, Dr. Leatherstike came in with a syringe, and as big, loveable Bo shut his eyes one final time, Molly and Buddy held his head close to them and whispered to him that they loved him, that he had been the best boy, and to wait for them at the Rainbow Bridge.
Julie looked at her wrist watch. It was 4:23 PM on Saturday, February 10th, 2001.
Life, Interrupted
The rain swelled in true “April Showers Bring May Flowers” fashion. Julie Cordova gazed out the window of her kitchen while wearing her favorite black and neon green running outfit, the one Buddy bought her for their first anniversary. There were pink and white blossoms, wet but cheerful, sitting on the trees in her front yard. They looked like they just had a good cry after a sappy Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on a Saturday night.
Julie had been training all Fall and Winter long for a full marathon – her first one – and next Saturday was the big day up in Raleigh. Buddy, Molly, Gabby, and even Loretta and Joe would be there to cheer her on. Thankfully, Buddy and Molly did not have a soccer game to contend with until Sunday, all the way in Wilmington. But this was something Julie needed to do for herself. Sometimes a mom needs to remind herself that she is still allowed to follow her own dreams from time to time. She felt it was important that her daughters saw that for themselves.
Her well-worn running shoes were aching for a break in the rain so she could get in a smooth eight miles. Buddy took Molly and Gabby to a neighbor friend’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese – Dear God, that man deserved a medal for that! - so she could do her training in relative peace.
Soon, the rain stopped and Julie headed out. Eight miles. That was it. As Julie took stride, with some early Nineties Garth Brooks crooning into her ears, she hit each step with perfectly timed momentum, creeping along the side streets, eventually making her way down to Triton Hills, just as she did for years. Only Gabe didn’t run with her anymore. He let her run alone now.
He kept a piece of her heart beating by filling in the creases along all the scar tissue with his love and his memory, now a regular part of her every breath. Now, she ran with her wife and mother thoughts and the new life she had been able to build without him…with Buddy. And it was a good one. A great one. One to be proud of, one to sink her soul into, and one to grow old with. Gabe would’ve been both happy for her and proud of her for moving on…for living…really living.
As Garth’s twang rang out through her ears, and he belted out one of her favorites from 1992, Julie’s feet kept hold in a solid pace and form, her eyes fixed just in front of her on the wet paved road. She never heard the swerving gray Buick driven by the eighty-year-old retired Army officer who had just left his granddaughter’s house nearby. She never felt the impact of the car as it struck her. She never knew that the brief flash of sunlight that darted through the parting clouds would illuminate the last waking breath she took on Earth.
Officer Dan Smelcher was a rookie with the Fayetteville Police Department, after having served in the Army for six years as an MP. He approached the Chuck E. Cheese, which was bursting, as usual, with rowdy kids on a typical Saturday afternoon. Birthday parties, exhausted parents, divorced fathers not knowing what to do with their kids on their every other weekend visitation schedule, and a few teenagers who had put together a Skee-ball tournament, all joined the chorus of youthful voices carrying the pizzas and cakes to long, packed tables.
The neighbor who saw Julie get hit by the Buick told Officer Smelcher that her husband and two children went to Chuck E. Cheese for a neighbor girl’s birthday party. She was distraught and requested to ride along in the ambulance with Julie. But the paramedics told Officer Smelcher that Julie was probably bleeding internally, and they weren’t sure if she was going to make it. She was unconscious, had to be revived once already, and they needed to get her to the hospital immediately, just in case there was any chance of saving her. It was best if the neighbor helped the police find Mr. Cordova and get him to the hospital
instead.
As Buddy stood outside of the ball pit, where Gabby was attempting to climb out, he saw the party host point a policeman toward him and his heart about fell out of his chest. He knew that something bad had happened. Something real bad. The worst kind of bad.
Something had happened to his Julie.
Molly was in the arcade playing Ms. Pacman, and she had no idea about the scene unfolding near the ball pit.
“Mr. Cordova?” Officer Smelcher asked.
Buddy stood paralyzed with fear. Just say it. Just fucking say what you have to say, he thought to himself.
“Sir, your wife, Julie. Um, you need to come to Harper Hospital. She’s been in an accident,” he explained.
As if on cue, some invisible being must have come into his body, taking charge of his ability to function like an adult man. Buddy moved toward his toddler girl Gabby, herself a rotund ball of blond hair and fat cheeks, and picked her up out of the ball pit. His mind in a fog, his body robotic, he walked slowly over to the arcade, put his hand on Molly’s bony back, and they walked out of the restaurant to their minivan, following Officer Smelcher to a place where his wife – his beautiful, loving, kind, perfect wife – lay dying in an operating room.
Awkward Introductions
With the worst pit in his stomach he had ever endured, Buddy picked up the phone and dialed a San Antonio, Texas area code. It rang three times. A woman’s voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Uh. Hello. Is this Mrs. McVicar?” he asked, an almost insurmountable lump lodged in his throat.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Hi. My name is Jonathan Cordova, and I’m your daughter’s husband,” he started.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, something much larger than a pregnant pause. Buddy could feel the resentment, the unresolved pain and frustration that happens sometimes between two stubborn women…especially a mother and a daughter.
The estrangement between Julie and her parents was real. It was probably more between her and her mother than her and her father, but from what Julie told him, her father was one of those husbands who just did whatever his wife wanted him to do. Even if it included not talking to their own daughter. Buddy reckoned that her father was just a coward who had made his bed a long time ago, and now thought he was too old to do much about it without losing all his money and the life he worked for. So, he just did what his wife said and behaved however she wanted. It was easier that way.
Buddy saw lots of men like that in his law practice – men who took the easy way out by caving into their difficult women. Or, maybe these men just loved their women, plain and simple, and thought they were just making them happy. That was true, sometimes, too. They chose their battles and decided that most weren’t worth fighting over. But your daughter?
Buddy understood that Julie and her mother were always at odds, especially when she hit her teenaged years. Julie had her own mind, her own goals, her own dreams, and they didn’t include the ones that her mother had plotted out on a map and planned for her. Julie did not want to become a doctor, no matter how good she was at chemistry and biology. She did not want to apply to an Ivy League school. She did not want to compete in pageants, even though she had the right figure and the right hair color. She did not want to go out with the most eligible bachelor in San Antonio, the very one who pursued her as a seventeen-year-old in high school, no matter how good looking or how wealthy he was. Instead, Julie did what she wanted, and she was disgusted with her mother’s head games and guilt trips and manipulative nature.
Against her mother’s wishes, she enrolled at Texas A&M, and because her mother refused to help put her through college as payback for her defiance, or as her mother called it – “natural consequences” – Julie earned a partial academic scholarship and took out student loans all on her own.
And then really against her mother’s wishes, she left Texas A&M half way through her Sophomore year because she met – and then married in a whirlwind weekend – a young enlisted soldier on leave visiting a friend in College Station. His name was Gabe Saint.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Julie remarried,” Mrs. McVicar responded.
Buddy drew in a deep breath. “Mrs. McVicar, I am calling because I need to tell you something. Is Mr. McVicar with you?”
He could hear the air go out of the phone lines between them.
“Tell me,” she said, directly, her voice taking on a different tone, the kind that explained to Buddy exactly what Julie was talking about when she referred to her mother as “Queen Bitch.” But Buddy also sensed there was more to her tone than that. Mrs. McVicar probably knew that something horrible had happened to Julie. Just because a mother hasn’t spoken to her daughter in several years, doesn’t mean that the natural bond put there by God Himself was gone, too. It doesn’t mean that she had lost hope that their relationship could be restored someday.
Buddy’s voice wavered, and the lump in his throat almost took over his ability to speak entirely. “Julie. She, um.” He stopped.
His voice became hoarse and he was overcome with emotion. “She was in an accident. Yesterday. She passed away. She didn’t make it.” When Buddy spoke those last few words, he started to cry, his voice unforgiving. She didn’t make it. The tears which he had managed to hold back while performing all these death-related tasks so far, escaped his eyes and down the sides of his nose. He caught them with the back of his hand.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and Buddy knew that no matter what bad blood had been between Julie and her mother for the last twenty years, every mother loves her daughter and every mother expects her daughter to outlive her. Mothers don’t expect their children to die without ever having had made their peace. There is always tomorrow, right?
Until there isn’t.
When Buddy got off the phone with Mrs. McVicar, he felt like he checked off one more horrible box on his To-Do List From Hell. He told Molly, check. He told his mother and Joe, check. He told Julie’s parents, check.
He had a lot more phone calls to make and things to do, all things he never imagined even during the darkest of random thoughts that passed through his mind from time to time. Julie dying just before her thirty-third birthday was not something that was supposed to happen. They were supposed to raise their girls together, grow old together.
The next day, Connors Funeral Home sent over the funeral director to go over the arrangements with Buddy. Julie would be buried in Memorial Gardens, near downtown. Since Gabe was buried in Arlington, that removed the otherwise strange conflict Buddy would have about where to bury Julie. Since she considered Fayetteville home now, and he did as well, this would be where her final resting place would be. Not in Texas, no matter what her mother demanded. And he was prepared for that fight if it happened.
Because Julie was so young, she did not have a Will or even a Power of Attorney. She didn’t even have a document that specified the care of Molly or designated Molly’s guardianship should she die or be incapacitated. Young people simply did not think about stuff like that. Buddy planned to adopt Molly, but they just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. There was always time, right?
Until there isn’t.
Buddy wasn’t a family law attorney, but he knew enough to know that legally, Molly was now an orphan. So, the first thing he needed to do, as soon as the first part of this soul-crushing experience was done, was head to the Cumberland County Courthouse to petition for custody of Molly. He needed to be able to have legal standing for all aspects of her care, and the last thing he wanted was for some social worker to step in and make a mess for them all.
Tammy Jo McVicar
Julie’s wake and funeral were desperately sad affairs. Other than perhaps the death of a small child, the untimely and accidental death of a young mother in the prime of her life is the very definition of a true tragedy. While B
uddy knew that life was not fair…for anyone, really…and that suffering does not discriminate among “good” people and “bad” people, that piece of rational knowledge did not mitigate his own pain and grief whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if you were young, beautiful, a mother, a teacher, a kind and loving soul, a good and caring person who worked hard for her entire life. Death comes for everyone and it is never pretty, never fair, and never quite expected.
Tammy Jo and Jed McVicar were a well-to-do couple from San Antonio, Texas. Jed had a successful career in real estate development and recently retired to work on his golf handicap and exercise his left arm with a glass of draft beer at the clubhouse after each round. Tammy Jo was a big personality with her own successful real estate brokerage firm. The two of them together were quite the power couple, although Jed came across as the quiet and stoic type, who was known to answer tough questions with appropriate-length grunts.
As soon as Buddy met Tammy Jo, he could see why Julie felt like she needed to break away and be her own woman, somewhere else…far away. It would be difficult to be the daughter of a woman who was clearly used to being the center of attention, was always demanding things of others to fit however she wanted it to work out for her, and came across like she believed she owned everything by virtue of the fact that she worked hard for it and wanted it. It was as if “Girl Power” and the “American Dream” were on steroids and all packaged into one high maintenance woman…Tammy Jo McVicar.
There was a simmering anger under her appearance, almost a big chip on her shoulder, like she felt that she should be the one running this awful macabre show. Buddy was not one for family confrontations, so he remained polite and cordial all times, not wanting to make any waves, especially when all he really wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry like a baby.
“Dear Molly, darlin’, I’m so happy to finally see you again. It’s been so long. The last time I saw you, you had about two whole words in your vocabulary! I’m so sorry that our reunion has be like this,” she cried, pulling Molly into her bosom like any grandmother would do even under the best of circumstances.
Good Buddy Page 20
