Double Trouble

by Deborah Cooke

  “Of course not.” I leaned forward. “Corpses are silent.” I clicked my tongue. “Bloody hell, but you make a lot of ruckus. You’re going to give me a headache, and that before I’ve had my breakfast.”

  He snorted, pleased though he tried to hide it.

  “Not only that, dead people are easy to push around. God knows you don’t have that problem.”

  He actually smiled before shaking a finger at me. “I’ll be late just because I’ve had to entertain you.”

  “Then let’s go right now.”

  “Ha! You don’t trust me to take care of myself. I knew it, I did.”

  “Hardly. But, now that I’m here, I might as well go along to protect the doctor.”

  Nosehairs bristled at that. “What?”

  “If you terrify him, he may need trauma counseling. It’s my family obligation to ensure he gets it quickly.” I wagged a finger at him. “And you always said I wasn’t the responsible one. Try not to be too disappointed. Is there more tea in that pot?”

  “It’s no wonder I’m suspicious then. Why the sudden concern for a doctor you don’t even know?”

  I sighed and cast my eyes heavenward. “I’m trying to reform my wicked ways before I go to meet my Maker.”

  “Your Maker lives the other way, Mary Elizabeth O’Reilly,” he said with great delight. “And don’t you try to tell me different.”

  I laughed, then looked pointedly around the kitchen. “I distinctly remember being bribed with a promise of breakfast. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten so old that you forgot how I like my eggs?”

  He snorted again, then pushed to his feet. “Don’t begin to think it. I forget nothing, nothing, you hear!” He tapped his temple. “Everything I ever saw, everything ever heard, everything I ever thought, is as clear as crystal and don’t you be thinking otherwise.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I can’t remember anything and if I had to remember all your stuff as well as all of mine, we’d be in serious trouble.”

  “Cheek. Nothing but cheek,” he muttered. He pulled a carton of eggs from the fridge and popped some bread into the toaster, moving with the swift economy I remembered. My father never wasted energy getting anything done - he might bitch through Tuesday about it, but usually the job itself took a lot less time than his complaints beforehand.

  “Suppose it’s my job to be feeding you, as a parent and all,” he growled as he cracked two eggs into the skillet. “Have you eaten since the last time you were here?”

  “Just caviar and champagne.”

  He scowled at me over his shoulder. “Don’t be giving me that. You’re too skinny, Mary Elizabeth, and that’s the God honest truth of it. You should be more like your sister, a woman with a few curves.” He turned his back on me and I knew what was coming. “A man likes a bit to hold onto. If you weren’t so thin and you didn’t look as though you’d had a fright, you might not be scraping by on your own.”

  “Wow, breakfast and counseling, too.” I poured myself another cup of tea. “I thought advice to the lovelorn was my department.”

  “And that’s another thing.” He kept a careful eye on the eggs. I’ve never had eggs cooked more perfectly than my father’s. He even manages to get the yolk almost exactly in the center of the white every time. “If you had a real job, you might meet a decent man.”

  “I have a real job, Dad.”

  That won me a boffo snort. He said nothing more, certain all that needed saying had been said. He slid the plate in front of me a moment later, and I refilled his tea, noting that there was only the one plate on the table. “What about you?”

  “You took so bloody long that I already ate.”

  I dunked a piece of toast in the yolk and cast a glance at the clock. I had to say it. “If I had a real job, I wouldn’t be able to have breakfast with you at ten on a Tuesday morning.”

  “And there would be a loss,” he snapped. “There I’d be, an old man, knowing that his daughter has enough to eat, that she’s happy and healthy and raising a family while she lives in relative comfort. I can have my breakfast alone, thank you nicely.”

  He turned his cup in the circular mark it made on the linoleum table top. He watched me eat for a minute, his lips pursed, his eyes still that robin’s egg blue. “You’re not going to tell the doctor that I can’t live alone anymore, are you?”

  “God, no!” I rolled my eyes. “Then you’d have to move in with me. I couldn’t put up with you all the time. And if I ate breakfast like this every day, my arteries would choke up with cholesterol. I’d be a dead woman in no time flat and I’ve got contracts to deliver.” I pointed my toast at him. “If anything, I’m here to insist that they let you stay loose in the world.”

  He chuckled to himself then, well and contented to sip his tea and watch me eat.

  “It’s good, Dad,” I said as I practically licked the plate clean. “Thanks.”

  We shared a smile and he got to his feet, hunched over like the old man he wanted so desperately not to be. He hunted down his other glasses and his cardigan, then his better shoes and his cane “just in case”. I finished my tea and put the dishes in the sink, then gave them a rinse.

  Thing is, he is getting older. He’s not so quick as he used to be and not so observant. And I like having him around. Conceptually at least. He was not walking even two blocks in this city’s mad traffic without me and that was that. He was right - I do come over and examine his calendar once in a while to make sure that he isn’t holding out on me. He’s stuck with my escort service, like it or lump it.

  My sister, you know, could never have been so casual about this. If she had ever bothered to accompany my dad, she would have hovered and fussed and made him completely paranoid about walking out the door. He was already worried enough about how much the world had changed without her assistance. I was sure that my own no-big-deal approach was better.

  Even if I had some major doubts about his independence. He was getting older and more frail despite his tough talk and yes - don’t miss this rare soft moment - I do worry about him.

  What if he fell? My nightmare is of that commercial, with my dad in the starring role. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Oh boy. Hang on a second here, my gut just had a convulsion.

  Because no one would know that had even happened, because he would never even have one of those alarm beepers in his house. And he gets mad if I call or drop by “too often”.

  On the other hand (OTOH in netspeak) losing his independence would kill him even more quickly. Break his spirit. Since I didn’t know what to do for the long term, I kept doing what I was doing in the short.

  “Too bad it’s not Marcia who came,” he said so innocently that a casual observer wouldn’t have guessed it was a jab aimed right for my heart. A practiced one at that.

  I sauntered, indifferent as only a biker chick in a leather jacket can be. You’d think I’d be used to this crap by now. I flicked my silken tresses over my shoulder, insouciance squared. “Why’s that?”

  “Ah, she’s the one with the lovely manners, always was. You were the one with the devil in your eye, right from the day you were born. I told your mother that you would be nothing but trouble, and she didn’t believe me until you began to talk.” He shook a finger at me. “Nothing but sauce from you. Like those two princesses, remember that book I used to read to you? One who had pearls fall from her mouth when she talked and one who spewed frogs.”

  “Frogs are cool.”

  “There’s no hope for you, then, and never will there be.” He sighed then shuffled out on to the porch. I took his keys, locking the door behind him.

  “I didn’t hear the deadbolt,” he complained. “Do it again.”

  “I heard the deadbolt.”

  “Well, I didn’t and you’ll be doing it again and not giving me any trouble about it for once in your life.”

  I unlocked the door, opened it, shut it and turned the key once more. The deadbolt shot home audibly and I gave him a look. “Got to
make sure no one steals that television.”

  He squared his shoulders. “It’s a perfectly good television.”

  “It’s the only thing in that house of any value, and that’s only because it’s old enough to be antique.”

  His chin set. “I’ll not have some young hooligans in my home.”

  I looked at those single pane basement windows, and knew that it was only ten thousand coats of paint holding the frames together. Anyone armed with so much as a butter knife could break into that house in nothing flat.

  But there was no point in arguing about it. If he believed in the power of a single deadbolt to defend his fortress against the wickedness of the world, well, so be it. I’d tried and failed at all other arguments. Everything was “perfectly good”, including those windows. A person could only hope that any would-be thieves would case the place, see how little there was to take, and shop elsewhere.

  We started down the sidewalk and I surreptitiously matched my pace to his slower one. “Oh yes, it was Marcia who always spoke so lovely and polite,” he said, getting even with me for challenging him. “It’s Marcia who knows the right thing to say and to do, Marcia with two handsome sons and a successful husband. It’s Marcia I’ve no need to worry about.”

  “Marcia who has the morals of an alleycat,” I muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You said something, I heard it.”

  “Then why are you asking me to repeat it? I thought your hearing was perfectly good?”

  “Cheek!” he accused, then lunged forward. A good rant would propel him halfway to the doctor’s, so I let him have at it. “It was always cheek from you, no matter how many tastes of the soap you had. Marcia, now, Marcia might have been born with a gilded tongue.”

  “Dear sainted Marcia,” I muttered, sorely tempted to blow my sister’s cover.

  Dad spun. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You said something and I demand to hear it.”

  “I said that Marcia was such a dear.”

  “You did not!” He scowled at me skeptically and I shrugged.

  “You’ll never know.”

  That ticked him off. He rapped his cane noisily, making sure he walked a step ahead of me, shouting loud enough that people in Hawaii would hear him. “You’ll not be telling me that I need a hearing aid, no you won’t. And you’ll not be tricking me into getting one, no you won’t.”

  He shook the cane at me when he paused at the intersection, proving he didn’t really need it and nearly decapitating me in the process. “I won’t have one!” he roared. “I don’t need one!”

  He marched across the street, oblivious to the traffic and I nearly put my hands over my eyes. But he strode with such confidence that two cars squealed to a halt.

  He was apparently unaware of them, though even I didn’t believe that. I shrugged to the two cursing drivers and darted after my father.

  Just as I suspected, there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. My own demented leprechaun.

  “Damn fool drivers. It’s time enough they learned to keep a slow pace near a school.”

  “Self-sacrificing as always.”

  His twinkle disappeared. “How many times have I told you that it’s not polite to mock your elders? You shouldn’t be trying to trick me by lowering your voice so.”

  “Who me?” I mouthed the words, making no sound at all, and thought for a moment he would slug me.

  Then he laughed, a real witch’s cackle. “Wicked, wicked girl! You’ll not fool me, no you won’t.”

  I might have thought that was the end of it, because he practically bounced up the steps to the doctor’s office, but he spun on the top step with unexpected agility. “When are you going to get married again?”

  “I’m never ever making that mistake again. Don’t hold your breath.”

  He shook his head and smiled a sly smile. “Ah, then you have found a man. You make sure you invite me to the wedding.” He darted away with all the agility of Fred Astaire.

  What?

  I was hot on his heels through the glass doors, ignoring the people who paused to stare. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  He was as delighted as a child with a new toy. “You usually say that you’re not the marrying kind.”

  I paused and realized it was true. “Well, so what? I’ve changed my line. No big deal.”

  “Ha! I knew your mother was going to marry me when she said she never ever would.” He fired me a sharp glance, enjoying my discomfort a little too much. He jabbed his finger at me. “Mind you get married before I’m dead, you hear?”

  I propped my hands on my hips, not caring that we were entertaining the locals. “I thought you were so young and virile that you were going to live for another fifty years or so. I’ve got time. Lots of time. Maybe even time to figure out you’re talking about.”

  “Ha!”

  He bounced into the elevator and I nearly abandoned him right then and there. Instead I followed, then slumped against the back wall and watched the numbers light up, considering that if my father could see what I was thinking, then I was in trouble.

  God damn that dimple.

  “He’s a she,” my father reported as the doors slid open.

  I had no idea what he meant. “What? Who?”

  “The doctor. He’s a she, so mind your manners for a change.”

  * * *

  Dr. Wendy Moss greeted my father with a bemused smile. She was about fifty and looked sufficiently no-nonsense to fend for herself. To my relief, she was a general practitioner, not some kind of specialist whose involvement I had heard nothing about. My father was in reasonably good shape for his age, a vigorous seventy-nine.

  “What happened to Dr. Havermann?”

  “Retired,” my father said with dismissive scorn. “He’s old.”

  “Or maybe he’d rather play golf than deal with the likes of you. It has a certain appeal, and you know how I feel about golf.”

  “Women are nothing but trouble,” my father announced to his new doc by way of greeting. He jerked a thumb in my direction. “She’s always following me around.”

  “Please, Dr. Moss, don’t suggest that he can’t live alone,” I begged, determined to get even. Eyes widened in the waiting room. “He’d have to bunk with me since he’s so destitute, we’d have to eat cat food and I just know that he would eat all the best kinds on me. One day I’d have to kill him to keep my sanity.” I sighed. “I’ll spend the rest of my life in jail, and for what? Let him get his own cat food.”

  His eyes were dancing now. “Nothing but lip, that’s what I get from this one.”

  Dr. Moss bit back a smile and beckoned to her patient. “Lovely to meet you, Mr. O’Reilly. Would you like to come in?”

  I sat down to peruse dog-eared magazines that had been pretty dull before they became office origami and weren’t much better now. The Economist. Oh joy.

  Where do they find this stuff? I have a mental image of doctors rabidly raiding dumpsters and recycling trucks, trying to find the most deadly dull discards for their waiting rooms. “Ha,” they must chortle to each other, “this will make them feel as though they’ve been waiting forever. This will make them understand what an incredibly important physician I am.”

  The only thing worse are the selections in dentist’s offices. Maybe it’s an insecurity thing. I mean, why would anyone become a dentist? Tough to think of it as a first choice. Imagine a lifetime of having your fingers in other people’s mouths. Imagine having to pretend that bicuspids are interesting. It’s got to be a fallback decision.

  Like running an Internet advice column instead of writing cutting edge code. Hmm. Bet dentists make better money. Oh yeah, there goes Aunt Mary with her untold millions of internet advertising revenue. Hahaha. Cruising to the Caymans without a care in the world.

  I don’t think so.

  My father wasn’t gone that long, but when he came out, he
was wearing one of those knowing expressions. You know, the smug kind that say ‘I won’t tell’ even more effectively than words.

  Those looks freak me out - they make me think evil words like ‘cancer’. Oh yes, that is an evil word.

  I wondered what he wasn’t telling me. “Well?”

  “Well, nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Something’s up. What did she say?”

  He walked onward, looking straight ahead. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I think it is.”

  “I think it’s not.”

  “Too bad, I win.” I stepped in front of him and he came to a stop. He stepped left, then right, but I was there before him, blocking his path. Like I said, he’s slower than me now and being reminded of it makes him mad. He swore at me, muttering the curse between his teeth so that it wouldn’t taint my virgin ears.

  “Trouble, from start to finish. Uppity, too.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Or we go no further?”

  “Something like that.” I looked left and right. “Sadly, no one is serving tea and I could use a cup. Let’s have the truth, then head home to put the kettle on.”

  He heaved a sigh of exasperation. “If you must know, she wanted to touch my balls.” He leaned closer to whisper a confidence, his eyes doing that merry mischief thing. “They all do, you know.”

  “They?”

  “Women. Women doctors especially. Oh, they make some excuse but I know what they really want. It wouldn’t bother me if she just did it, but these modern women, they’re all talk.” To my shock and dismay, he began to fumble with his fly.

  “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “I know it bothers you to miss out on anything…”

  “I am not going to touch your balls!”

  I yelled without meaning to, my father’s triumphant glance telling me that I had stepped right into his trap. “What kind of a man do you think I am?” he crowed triumphantly.