by G M Eppers
I gave him an unimpressed nod and went over to the big window to address Dad. “What are you eating?” I said loudly.
“Cheese sandwich. Want some?” He picked up the half from his plate and offered it to me as if the window weren’t even there. “It’s very good. This new cheese is really something. You should try it.”
He put the sandwich back on the plate, and took another bite out of what he had in his hand. “Dad, you do know cheese is a binder, don’t you? You’re plugged up. You shouldn’t be eating that.” I turned to the doctor. “How could you allow him to eat that?” It was like giving sauerkraut to a patient with chronic diarrhea.
The doctor waggled his finger, beckoning me to come closer. I did, hoping for a really good explanation. He waited until Mom had turned to the window, looking at her husband as if he was a cake in a bakery and she was a homeless child peering in at it, and leaned in confidentially. “You know as well as I do what’s going on here. Why not let the man eat what he wants and enjoy the time he has left?”
“You’re fired.” I was furious, naturally. The doctor wasn’t even going to try to help Dad. He’d already given up and was just going through the motions.
“You don’t have the authority. Mr. Gumphy is awake and coherent and can make his own decisions. If he is ever deemed otherwise, the decisions will fall to Mrs. Gumphy, not you.” Dr. Wood addressed Dad. “Mr. Gumphy, are you hungry?”
“Darn tootin’. Can I keep my sandwich?” Dad was smiling. This whole thing made him appear to be simple minded, but he really wasn’t. Dad had a vocabulary. We discussed history and politics. He read Shakespeare and Dickens for fun. What the hell had happened?
“Dr. Wood,” I asked. “How much pain killer is he on? He’s completely loopy!”
“He hasn’t asked for any.”
“He didn’t ask for any? Mom, what brought you here? Wasn’t he in pain?” I just wanted to understand what was happening. None of it made sense to me. The last time I spoke to Dad was less than a week ago, and he was telling me about Nicolas Nickleby.
Mom thought a minute. “Not particularly. He had some cramping, but,…oh, yes, his legs gave out and he couldn’t get up. So I called an ambulance. They did a CAT scan and wham bang here we are! You know, it happened just this way with Shirley’s Uncle Philip, except he was on the stairs when it happened. He broke a leg in the fall, but when they examined him they found rigidity in his abdomen and wham bang. Just like this. Poor fellow.”
While Mom was talking, Dad picked up the second half of his sandwich with glee and took another bite. “Mom!” I said, shocked. “Make them take that away from him!” Instead, Dr. Wood slipped out the door and vanished.
“Why do you want to starve your father, Helena? After all he’s done for you!” She wiped a tear from one eye. In hindsight, Dr. Wood and my mother may have been right. The damage was done. Aside from attaching his bowels to a garden hose and turning on the water permanently, it was only a matter of time. And yet, it simply didn’t feel right to sit around waiting for it, either. That wasn’t what doctors were supposed to do. I wasn’t going to ask how long he had. I refused to ask how long he had. And Mom, being my mother, could tell. She came away from the window, turning her back on Dad briefly. “Go home and get Butte and Billings, dear. I’m sure they’ll want to see him.”
My mouth hung open a little. My jaw worked, but nothing came out at first “They have to operate, Mom. What are you doing? They have to operate and take out the obstruction. That’s all. Easy.”
Her hand stroked my cheek. “You know that won’t work. They’d have to remove most of his bowel and even then it’ll come back in hours. It’s major surgery and there’s no point to it. Your father and I have discussed this. It’s time.”
“Time?”
“Yes, dear.” She seemed so in control. Speaking in full sentences, being reasonable. But I pulled my eyes away from the middle distance where they had settled and looked right at her. She wasn’t in control at all. I could see it in her eyes. They sparkled like diamonds, filled with tears that she wouldn’t let fall. Her breathing was jumpy and her voice was thick and raspy. And I realized she really wanted me to leave. She needed me to leave. She needed time alone with Dad, the only person with whom she felt able to share that much sorrow.
I took a deep, quavering breath. “Okay, Mom. I’ll be back.” I gave her a hug and watched her return to the window. “Please don’t eat the cheese, Mom. Promise me.” No matter what the CDC was saying, I didn’t trust the new cheese. I didn’t particularly trust the old cheese, either. How could cheese and obstruction not be connected? What was taking the CDC so long to find the source?
“Of course, dear. It’s your father’s sandwich. Not mine. I’ll bring the rest of it here tomorrow.”
“The rest of it?”
“It’s from a 5 pound wheel that Butte gave us last month. He’s such a lovely son-in-law. He knew your father liked cheese and wanted him to try the new recipe, and he just loves it! I’ve never seen him take such an interest in food before. It’s done wonders for his appetite.” It’s true that Dad had never been a big eater. Some days, if he was involved in a particularly good book, he barely ate at all. But it had never seemed to be a bad thing. He was a healthy weight, and his occasional bloodwork always came back clean. High HDL, low LDL, mid-range BP, healthy blood sugar, no risk factors for heart problems or strokes. I thought he’d outlive me.
If it weren’t for my anger, I probably would have crashed on the way home. The anger stopped me from crying, and kept my eyes and mind clear enough to see the road. When I got home, Butte and Billings were in the kitchen. Billings was sitting at the table tying his shoes while Butte held his jacket. “Your Mom called. I’m so sorry, Helena,” said Butte, and he hugged me with Billings’ jacket. It was only then that I started shaking.
“Mom, may I have some cheese? I’m hungry.”
“Cheese? Why cheese? Can’t anyone eat a God damned apple anymore?” I blurted. “No, Billings, you may not have cheese. It makes you sick. You know that.”
“Is that what’s making Grandpa sick? Grandma said he eats lots of cheese. Maybe if he stops eating the cheese he’ll get better. Maybe he’s lamppost intolerant like me.” Normally, I would have corrected his pronunciation, but today I didn’t particularly care. He was struggling with his shoes. He was ten and struggling with his shoes for the first time in six years.
I squatted down to help him. “No, that’s not it, Billings. Grandpa has Offensive Obstruction. Remember, we talked about that. It’s not the same as what you have.”
“I remember. It’s bad.” His bottom lip quivered. “It’s really bad.”
“Yes, Billings. It’s really bad. Now put your jacket on. We’re going to go see him.” Billings stood up and took his jacket from Butte. “Zip up. It’s windy.”
As I got Billings to the door, I noticed that Butte hadn’t moved. “Are you coming, Butte?”
He hesitated. He had to think about it. He actually had to think about accompanying his wife and son to his father-in-law’s deathbed. The anger I felt about the whole thing intensified, but I didn’t want to explode in front of Billings. “Get in the car and buckle up. I’ll be right there.”
Once Billings was out of earshot, I turned to Butte. “Well?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll follow you.” He made it sound like an odious obligation.
Follow? I made a semi-formal decision right then. This was the man I’d seen shoulder past an elderly man so he could run up an escalator. I’d seen him change lanes without signaling frequently, and stop inside a crosswalk forcing a pedestrian to skirt around the hood of his car. In recent months, he’d missed two of Billings’ football practices simply to watch a pro game on TV, and for my last birthday he got me a knock off bottle of perfume I’d seen at Walgreens for less than $10 a bottle. On the other hand, he didn’t smoke, he barely drank, and I’d never seen him be anything but kind to animals. The first hand was quickly outweighing the sec
ond hand. I was wishing he would just be unfaithful and be done with it. No one had a problem with a marriage breaking up if there was infidelity at work. It would be much harder to stand around enumerating all the ways that Butte was uncaring and insincere. Had I known then that it was Butte’s gift of cheese that had led to Dad’s death, I might have strangled him right there. Elsewhere, young Banana Harris was sitting in her bedroom in front of three mouse cages taking notes. But it would still be months before she published her findings.
I stood in the doorway, blocking Butte’s way out. “We’re done, Butte.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I want you out of my house as soon as physically possible.” It didn’t make any difference to me that the house was in both names, and he didn’t argue. I’ll give him credit there. He never argued about the house.
Dad died three days later with a cheese sandwich in one hand and a smile on his face. I cried for him at the funeral. I also cried for my marriage and for the future I would now never see. I don’t remember the details of the funeral. Those events were a nightmarish blur matched by my blurred teary vision that lasted for weeks. And when the school year was over in the Spring, by which time the news of OOPS and the existence of Uber have been revealed, I packed up Billings, moved to DC and signed up for CURDS training.
Chapter Two
Dinny woke us up about an hour early so we could get a bite to eat and freshen up before landing. She served everyone the same this time: submarine sandwiches, just her way of making it feel like lunchtime. It might be a bad idea to skip breakfast, but it was more important to try to prevent jetlag.
We landed at Orly on time and exited through the locker room as usual, where I limited everyone to just one fully loaded pistol and a stun gun. It was only one gunman, and even if he was an Uber-addicted crazy person, there was really no need for more. Aside from that, the Paris Police Nationale would undoubtedly have forces there as well. We also put on vests, but I made helmets optional. Besides, mine still had horsefly on it. I had neglected to clean it. Optional helmets, as usual, meant no helmets, since none of us really enjoyed wearing them. Once we were geared up, I did a visual confirmation that everyone had their passport ready and we headed out the door, shouting a “see you later!” to Nitro and the twins. We all got through security easily enough. Between valid passports and CURDS ID, we could probably get into the Vatican if we had to. Then we tried to find an open rental car booth.
They were all closed. An airport worker saw our confusion and told us in stilted English that there was a transport strike on, which meant the Metro was also off the table. He directed us to the Velib station. Our only option for getting us around Paris, as it turned out, was to rent bicycles. Now plenty of people in Paris ride bikes to get places. The streets and drivers are very bike friendly. However, we were not. We used our credit cards to pay for a full day’s rental, however, and each of us got a bike. It seemed convenient now that Agnes and Avis had to stay on the plane. I didn’t see any bikes designed for conjoined twins, but I imagined they could devise a way to ride regardless. It also didn’t help that we had to steer around some sizable puddles, the evidence of a recent rain.
As it turns out, riding a bicycle is not like riding a bicycle. We wobbled through the streets of Paris with all the skill of General Custer at Little Bighorn, in a wide formation that would be a traffic hazard almost anywhere else.
Roxy had changed into a silvery sequined gown with an A-line skirt and low bodice. The five-inch heels kept the hem off the wet ground, but somewhat hindered her bike riding. I tried to figure out where she had packed it all. We went on the plane with tiny go bags. Most of our personal stuff stayed at HQ, and we all had carry-ons with a smaller version of our stuff. According to the George Carlin Algorithm for Stuff Decumulation, she should have been down to a Chapstick, a nail clipper, and a partially unwrapped throat lozenge. Somewhere in that tiny go bag she had to have a portable steamer as well because the gowns were always wrinkle free. Who knows? Maybe she’d gotten Ginger Grant’s trunk from Gilligan’s Island on eBay or something.
I watched Sir Haughty and Badger take off first, having gotten their wheel legs a little faster than the rest of us. Billings, seeing how wobbly I was, stayed near me. Roxy was even wobblier, however, probably due to her stiletto heels, and I think Sylvia hung near her for the same reason. Noticing that she was behind everyone, she took a moment to move her eyepatch to the right, winking at me before lowering the patch. It wasn’t often I got a glimpse of both of her eyes at once. The shade of green was simply stunning with her skin tone. She had taken Nitro’s crash course and had his kit bag, which contained only the testing equipment and a few Band-Aids, slung over her shoulder. It kept banging against her left thigh and throwing off her balance, but she didn’t complain and got better at compensating for the weight with every minute.
I was the first one to crash. I wobbled into the iron railing around a street café, scraping my knuckles. I sucked on them for a moment, then heard, “You never could ride worth a damn,” in a horrifyingly familiar voice. My head whirled around, until I found him, sitting at the table right next to me, my freaking ex-husband, Butte Montana. And I knew his comment actually had nothing to do with my bike riding.
“What in the name of all that is holy are YOU doing here?” I blurted, suddenly furious. And I don’t think the inconvenience of the bike or the mashed knuckles were causing it. It was just an instantaneous reaction to seeing him unexpectedly, even though I pretty much had the same reaction when I did expect to see him.
“Eating lunch.” He motioned with his head toward a cup of red wine and two plates, one with some kind of sandwich on a baguette and another with a large salad. He sat there as if he had all the time in the world. He was kind of a slightly shorter, older version of Billings. They both had jet black hair, though Butte’s was starting to show grey at the temples, and dark eyes with small irises so you could see the whites all the way around. It was possibly only my bias talking when I decided that Butte’s eyes held all the depth of a moist towelette, and that he possessed the intelligence of a clump of kohlrabi.
“You can’t afford Paris. Where did WHEY get the funds to send you guys way over here?” WHEY, or Worldwide Handlers of Energized Yeast, was the organization that Butte worked for. I didn’t understand it, either. There was no such thing as energized yeast, but people wouldn’t support an organization that supported Uber Rennet, so they called it something else. Energized yeast SOUNDED like a good thing. And far too many people fell for it. We did our best, but it can be really hard to combat deliberate misinformation. They were a domestic organization, or at least they were supposed to be, with a very limited budget and a relatively microscopic membership base.
“We found a backer. Ever heard of the Krochedy Brothers?”
“Oh shit!” Everyone has heard of the Krochedy Brothers. They own a nationwide chain of department stores, cleverly called Krochedy Brothers Department Stores, and are poised to create a net worth of over a trillion dollars any day now. They were known activists with ties to several groups such as the B.A. Triple T (Billionaires Against Top Tier Taxation), and Filthy Rich Americans Choose Krochedy, or FRACK. With that kind of backing, WHEY was going to grow and expand like that foam they use to fill cracks in a house’s foundation. I was tempted to ask him why he would affiliate himself with men like that, but he was a man like that, so it made sense. He was smiling evilly at my dismay as he sipped his wine. “How many of you are here, Butte?” I asked.
“At the moment, about fifty. You’ll see them soon enough. Hi, Billings.”
“Is this guy bothering you?” Billings asked as he came up behind me. I saw him glance at the scrapes on my knuckles, but he didn’t make a thing of it.
“No,” I said without hesitation as I straightened out my bike. “We have work to do.” This was no time for Butte and Billings to go at each other. Or for me and Butte to go at each other. There was a madman holding people at
gunpoint a short distance away. I didn’t have time for a personal life right now.
Butte pshawed me. “The nut at the grocery, you mean? The guy’s a lunatic. It’s nothing but crazy talk. There’s not that much cheddar in this whole country let alone the Uber version. He’s as crazy as an Escher painting.”
“Then why aren’t you leaving?”
“I’m on vacation.” He took a bite of the sandwich and chewed ridiculously slowly. What he didn’t say was that he was milking the generosity of the Krochedy Brothers by enjoying as much time as possible in Paris. I almost approved of that. Almost.
“Fine. Enjoy yourself,” I said, and launched my bike trying extra hard not to wobble, but not succeeding very well. Billings glared at Butte and followed me.
We’d gone about a block further when I caught up with Sylvia. She had her feet on the ground with her bike between her legs, evidently waiting for me. In her arms, she was cradling a black ball of fluff. “A cat? Sylvia, we can’t take every stray we find.”
“I know, but I can’t just leave it here,” she said worriedly. I . . . I ran over its tail!” She was stroking it gently with her other hand to keep it calm.
“Oh for…” I sputtered. “You think you can find a vet?” I was pretty sure what little French she knew wasn’t useful in this situation. ‘Hands up’ and ‘stop or I’ll shoot’ were not going to help her find a veterinarian.
“I’d like to try. I have to try.” Gently, she moved the tail out into the open and the cat yowled. When it lifted its head I could see a white streak at the front of its chest that looked like a damn necktie. No, no, no, I thought. Not a tuxedo. Dinny’s favorite kind of cat. The tail was badly bent and looked unnaturally nasty, like a pipe cleaner after two minutes with a toddler. “I can just show them this and they’ll know what I mean, won’t they? Please? I’ll come right back. I promise!”
I sighed, but it seemed like the right thing to do. It wasn’t in the rule book, but abandoning an injured feline seemed against our code of ethics as well. “I can’t spare anyone else, Sylvia.” As beneficial as Badger would be to help her communicate, I had to have him at the grocery.