Suburban Renewal (That Business Between Us Book 3)

by Pamela Morsi

  Doc looked old and frail as he lay there. He was always so neatly groomed and dressed. Now he was tied into a rumpled hospital gown, his thin hair was mussed, revealing a lot of previously hidden balding and without his glasses, his face looked sharp and bony.

  His eyes were open.

  “Hi, Doc, how you doing?" I asked him.

  “Sam?"

  I could clearly make out that word. And the surprise in his tone.

  “I know you didn't think you were going to see me until Christmas," I told him. "But I just finished up and came home early."

  He took that statement in, examining it for a long time before responding.

  "I'm going to die, then? They sent for you because I'm going to die?"

  It took me a minute to understand what he was saying. His words were slow and slightly slurred, but I listened carefully and finally understood him.

  "No, no," I assured him. "I came home because the family needed me."

  If it had been my mother-in-law lying there, or Corrie, I probably would have left it at that. But my time with Mike had convinced me that men prefer the truth. Once we've got a handle on that, we can deal with whatever it's going to mean.

  "The doctors don't know yet if you're going to be alright," I told him. "So far, so good. They say twenty percent don't make it through this part. That means eighty percent do."

  He gave me a weird, slightly off-center grin.

  "When I talk to them," I said, "I'll tell them to be straight with you."

  "Thanks."

  He closed his eyes as if the conversation had exhausted him. There was a small metal chair on one side of the bed, near the privacy curtain that could be drawn across the glass. I walked over there and seated myself.

  "You tired?" The question came from the bed.

  "No, Doc," I answered. "It's been a long day but, amazingly, I'm feeling pretty good. Must be getting my second wind."

  He struggled to respond and finally got the words out. "Wish I'd get mine," he said.

  I chuckled.

  We sat there together in the silence. His eyes were closed.

  "You find those pills?" he asked.

  I sat up straight in my chair. Even in the middle of the hospital with medications coming and going every minute, I didn't have to ask him what pills he meant. I knew immediately.

  "I didn't find the pills," I told him. "But I found out what happened to them."

  From beneath the sheet, his good arm came out and his hand beckoned me closer.

  "Tell me," he said.

  I scooted closer and took his hand in mine.

  "Not tonight, Doc," I told him. "When you get stronger, I promise, I'll tell you everything."

  His expression was hurt and disappointed.

  "Tell me tonight," he said.

  I hesitated. The whole thing was speculation. I didn't know anything for sure. Except what seemed to be the obvious conclusion. I had never voiced it aloud. Never let myself put the pieces together. There was too much pain and regret to express.

  But Doc was in pain. From the stroke and from the loss of his son. Doc was still grieving. If voicing my suspicions gave him a reason to stay here on earth and find out the truth, then that was reason enough to speak out.

  I sat down beside him and shared what I knew and what I suspected.

  His eyes widened and he drew a gasp of indrawn breath.

  "You think she killed him?" he asked me. "With Mike's help? You think Mike set it up?"

  "There's no way to know," I told him. "Unless she tells us, and why would she?"

  Doc was smiling. It was a crooked smile, a damaged smile, but he was smiling.

  "Isn't that something?" he said. "Poor Cherry Dale. Not a man in this town willing to defend her. And our Mike comes to her rescue from the grave."

  23

  Corrie

  1995

  The New Year began with things going very well. My father was in physical therapy and recovering slowly. Mom was transporting him to and from the rehab center twice a week. She'd wanted Sam to drive them, just as he had for all of Mike's appointments, but Doc flatly refused.

  “If you can't drive me, then I'll get the senior citizens transport," he threatened, knowing Mom would be humiliated to go in the big gold bus with all the “really old people." "Sam's too busy to fool with my troubles. And somebody's got to watch the drugstore."

  The drugstore didn't truly require that much watching, but Dad wanted to keep it open. We hired a part-time pharmacist. She came over every afternoon to fill the day's prescriptions. She was a cute young girl in her twenties. She was Korean-American, which I thought really added a nice bit of diversity to Lumkee's old Main Street.

  I pushed Lauren to manage the store after school. We needed the help, of course, but more than that. I wanted her to get close to Hye Won. A bright, hardworking woman was just exactly the kind of role model I wanted for my daughter. And if Lauren got interested in pharmacology, that would just be icing on the cake. What she mostly did was visit with her friends at the soda counter and read all the fashion magazines on the sale rack.

  A new big home-improvement store opened, and Sam was hired. It was a good job with decent pay and stock shares. And, most important, it was ten minutes from the house. He worked the four-to-midnight shift, Friday through Tuesday, which freed him up to spend most of his days working at the drugstore.

  It also made him eligible for an employee discount, which we really needed. Since Nate's introduction to drywall repair, he had suddenly become our personal house restorer. Carpentry work was all new to him and he found he had a knack for it. And it kept him close to home. Paint and lumber were not cheap, but Sam gave his son a reasonably free hand in doing what he could to get the house in shape. The work seemed to give him a sense of accomplishment and spur his creativity. He was good at it and, surprisingly, methodical and meticulous. The kid who could never bother to iron a shirt would painstakingly plane a board to a one-thirty-secondth tolerance and sand putty until all imperfection virtually disappeared.

  "This is wonderful," I told Sam one night, crowded together in our little narrow bed on the sunporch. "He likes construction and it is obviously an outlet for his artistic side. He could be an architect or a..."

  Sam put a finger over my lips.

  "Don't even start thinking it," he admonished. "The worst thing that we can do is try to push Nate in any direction. He's so determined to be contrary that he'll go against us no matter what it is."

  I don't know when or how Sam had become so wise a parent, but I'd learned to trust him on it. I was the one taking all the psychology" courses, but he was the one who always seemed to know just the right thing to say to the children. Even Dr. Muldrew described Sam as the nurturer.

  Mike's friend, and my former doctor, called me one day to ask how I was doing, how things were going. I told him that we'd never been able to get Nate to talk to a counselor.

  "He found something wrong with everybody I suggested," I explained. "He just wouldn't go. He's doing better now. But I still worry about what goes on inside him."

  "Well, there's still plenty of time to find out," Dr. Muldrew said. "Why don't you try family therapy."

  "Family therapy?"

  "The whole family is in the room together," he said. "That way no one feels really singled out. In that kind of environment, Nate might be prompted to share at least some of what is going on inside him."

  I talked to Sam. He liked the idea, but he wondered how we would pay for it. With both of us working full-time we were fortunate to have health insurance, but neither his company's plan nor the school system offered any mental-health coverage beyond hospitalization. With our financial situation as precarious as it continued to be, there was no way we could make a long-term therapy commitment.

  "Why don't we ask Dr. Muldrew if he could take us for a few sessions," Sam said. "We can see how this family therapy works and maybe he can teach us how to hold them ourselves."

  That's ex
actly what we did. We set three one-hour appointments for family therapy with Dr. Muldrew.

  He tried to teach us how to focus on what one another was saying. How to get past any initial feelings of anger that might crop up. And how to negotiate together for a reasonable solution to problems.

  We didn't focus on Nate. In fact, in the sessions with Dr. Muldrew, the time was almost completely dominated by conflicts over who should be cleaning the house. I was teaching all day, taking graduate courses and studying in the evening. So, I felt that my time was better utilized in things other than vacuuming and scrubbing toilets. Lauren was going to class all day and working in the drugstore afternoons. Sam was working the drugstore all day and his real job all night. Nate was in high school and did work around the house.

  "And besides," he admitted, "I don't know anything about housekeeping and don't want to learn."

  What Dr. Muldrew had us do was figure out how we could manage it fairly together. We drew up a list of all the tasks and then had everybody pick until they were all taken.

  By session three, Dr. Muldrew was just sitting and watching us.

  "You have to make a commitment to do this," he told us. "If you don't schedule meetings and have them every week and have everybody in attendance, you'll be back to where you started."

  We decided Wednesday night was the best. Everybody agreed they would be there. The first night I arrived late and got quite a surprise. The house smelled of spicy cooked meat. Nate and Lauren were already at the kitchen table, laughing in high spirits.

  I walked in and Sam, wearing his cook's apron, walked over to give me a kiss.

  "I thought if we had something to do with our hands," he said, "the talk might go easier."

  "Plus, everybody in town is hungry for tamales," Lauren said.

  I shook my head, but I could hardly fault him.

  "I could eat a couple myself," I admitted.

  The evening session went great. Lots of worries were vented. Plenty of grievances were aired. And dozens of hojas were smeared with masa.

  Later, as Sam and I lay in bed together, I told him what a good idea it was.

  "Let's do it every time," he said.

  I grinned at him, though I knew he couldn't see it in the darkness.

  "Are we back to tamale day, Mr. Braydon?"

  Indeed we were. Sam no longer delivered. If you wanted tamales, you came down to the drugstore to get them, because we couldn't afford to feed the whole town on Thursday night. Sam began charging two dollars a dozen. Nobody seemed to mind paying. Our life was good.

  On a beautiful sunny morning in April, I'd just gotten my class through their morning meeting where we greeted one another and shared the legislatively mandated moment of silence. The children started doing their "jobs," such as getting news, choosing a poem to read, or filling in a crossword puzzle on their table. Just then, Mrs. Wiley, the assistant principal, unexpectedly came to my classroom.

  "Could I speak to you for a moment?"

  Just from the tone of her voice I knew something terrible was wrong. My heart in my throat, the faces of my family flashed before my eyes.

  "What's happened?" I asked immediately as the door dosed behind me.

  "Somebody has bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City," she said. "It's...it's terrible."

  Her description had been far from adequate. Our school was locked down for the rest of the day. We tried to shelter the students from what was going on. But we couldn't hide behind our doors forever.

  The next few weeks were a complete blur of angry tears, horrifying revelations and grief. The town, the community, the whole state was mobilized to do something to help.

  We went to the Red Cross to give blood. Nate lied about being sixteen and he was tall enough that they didn't card him. We cleaned out the pharmacy of extra supplies and donated them.

  The Lumkee firefighters were part of the rescue. The local guardsmen were all called up to help. We wanted to help, too. Our budget was too close to the edge to make much of a donation. But at the next family meeting it was unanimous that we tighten our belts to help as much as possible.

  The terrible tragedy, so close to home, affected us all. But none more deeply than my Lauren. The images somehow burned into her brain: the senior citizens visiting the social security office, the tellers working at the credit union, the children, the sweet young children, in the daycare center and their mothers and fathers throughout the building. And the injustice of it galled her innocent soul.

  I suppose it was the first time that Lauren had come face-to-face with the senseless evil that could be done in the name of honor or patriotism or religion. Like any parent, I had wanted to shelter my children from that.

  Now it was on Lauren's radar scope, front and center. My bubbly, outgoing cheerleader was suddenly infused with deeper, more profound needs and the empathy that inspires.

  "Mom, I want to start going to Gram's church again," she told me.

  For the last several years she and I had been attending Sunday service with my parents at the Methodist Church.

  "Okay," I said. "I think that would be okay."

  "I want Daddy and Nate to come, too," she insisted.

  I shook my head. "I don't know about that, Lauren. Your father doesn't like to go," I told her. "It makes him miss Gram too much. And you know Nate, he'll only do what he wants to do. Nobody can really make him do anything."

  She nodded thoughtfully and I thought that ended the discussion, but she brought it up again during our Wednesday tamale session.

  "I want our family to go to church together," she announced. "I want us to go together to Gram's church."

  Sam glanced up at her, momentarily surprised.

  "No way," Nate stated flatly.

  Sam shook his head. "Sugar, I haven't darkened the door in years," he said.

  "Please, Daddy," she begged him. "Would you do it for me?"

  Sam was clearly taken aback by her entreaty. Lauren was our easy child. She never asked for anything and stayed as far away from conflict and trouble as any teenager could.

  "Is this really important to you?" he asked her.

  She nodded. "I want our family to go together," she said. "I want our family to be together and sit together. It's very important to me. I want us to be safe, Daddy."

  Safe.

  Sam looked at her strangely and then glanced over at me. The world had become a very scary place. We couldn't make it less so. But if our daughter thought she could feel safe one morning a week in the Ninety and Nine Baptist church, it didn't seem like that much of a sacrifice.

  "Okay, Lauren," he said. "If it will make you feel better, we'll all go."

  "Not me," Nate said.

  Lauren turned to him. Her tone was not pleading, but matter-of-fact. "I'll do all your house chores from now on if you'll come," she said.

  Sam's jaw dropped open and I'm sure I must have looked just as shocked.

  "Praise the Lord, my prayers are answered!" Nate shouted blasphemously. "You've got a deal, sis."

  So began the family's commitment to the congregation that I will always think of as Gram's church.

  We were not the only lost sheep or new lambs who had come into the fold. Attendance was way up there, and at the other religious services in town. The tragedy had made a lot of us look more deeply at our spiritual values.

  As time passed, we were less stalwart. Nate found numerous excuses to miss. And Sam and I occasionally groaned in dread as the alarm went off early on Sunday morning, but Lauren never wavered. In fact, quite the opposite. As she began her senior year in high school, her concern about her social clique and own popularity waned as she began to choose youth discipleship meetings over pep rallies. It was unexpected, but we couldn't regard it as negative.

  Things began to change at the drugstore, as well. The Thursday tamales became so popular that people were showing up as soon as the doors opened to make sure they got their share. Because they were there, anyway, they bought merchandise
and had their prescriptions filled. By the time my father was back to working part-time, the drugstore was beginning to show a profit again.

  “So the business is going well," I said to Sam.

  He nodded, but was still concerned.

  “The pharmacy can only improve so much," he told me. "Most of the big insurers and HMOs have contracts with the big chain drugstores. Only the people who pay out of pocket or are uninsured can afford to patronize us these days."

  "Well, that's not fair," I said.

  Sam playfully pinched my nose. "Since when did somebody promise you that life was going to be fair?"

  I could hardly argue with that.

  "Things are going great for us, Corrie," he said. "We're both healthy and working, our kids are doing fine. Your parents are hanging in there. We've got it so good, it would be greedy to even wish for more."

  But that didn't stop me from wishing.

  Nate decided over the summer that we should enlarge the house. He drew up some rough plans for a new addition with a family room, a third bedroom and a bath. He even added a little deck area and sketched out the location of where he'd eventually like to put a swimming pool.

  When he presented his little booklet of efforts Sam and I were stunned. He'd even costed out the plumbing and electrical work.

  "This is so totally cool," Lauren told him, excited. "I can't believe my baby brother actually put this together. Can you really do all this yourself?"

  "Well, not everything," Nate admitted modestly. "But I can do most of it myself. If Dad can help me with some of the two-man work, I think I can manage. We really need the room."

  Sam looked it all over carefully.

  "This is really impressive, Nate," he told him. "It's well thought out. The materials list and the codes included. I don't think we could hire a remodeler who could have presented a clearer, more thorough estimate. I wish we could do it. But, you know we don't have eight thousand dollars."

  Nate was immediately on the defensive.

  "It would easily cost you thirty if I wasn't doing the work myself," he pointed out.