The Reverse Commute

by Sheila Blanchette

“It scared me how much I was thinking about you. It’s kind of why I went up north, because if I hadn’t I might have called you every day and made a total ass of myself. Right now, all I want to do is pull you onto this bed and make love to you.”

  She was wearing a blue cotton sweater that she lifted over her head, throwing it on the floor behind her. He moaned softly as he reached around her back to unsnap her bra. She reached down and unbuttoned his pants. Gently pushing him onto the bed, she untied his boots and pulled them off. She never stopped looking into his blue, blue eyes as she unbuttoned her jeans, stepping out of them. His hands on her hips, he pulled her onto the bed. He twisted one of her little braids around his finger. “I like your hair like this.”

  * * *

  They were in the small galley kitchen cooking dinner. More accurately, he was cooking dinner. She was drinking her cosmopolitan and occasionally helping. He added ziti to a pot of boiling water and cooked breaded chicken in a frying pan. Three bowls were lined up on the counter with flour, eggs and breadcrumbs in them. She was dipping the chicken in each bowl and putting them on a platter on the stove.

  He gently tapped her on the hand with a wooden spoon, laughing. “Hey it goes flour, egg, then bread crumbs. I put them in order left to right. You’re going backwards.”

  “Oops. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I told you I couldn’t cook.” She dipped the piece again, going back the right way this time. He raised an eyebrow and smiled, shaking his head. “That’s gonna be your piece.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. He grabbed her chin and kissed her while she pushed him against the fridge. They started kissing and groping each other. The pot of water boiled over.

  “Okay, you’re distracting the chef.” He lowered the flame under the pot of ziti. “I’ve got it covered in here, it’s almost ready. Why don’t you go in the other room and pick a playlist or something on my IPod? You’re the birthday girl, you shouldn’t be cooking anyway.” He laughed. “To be honest, you’re not much help.” He tapped her on the butt and lightly pushed her towards the door.

  “Okay.” She took a kitchen towel and snapped him in the butt with it as she left the room.

  He set the table and brought out the platter of ziti with chicken parmesan, a salad, and garlic bread. Searching the pockets of the long gym shorts he changed into, he said, “Oh right, I was wearing the other pants.” He went over to the work khakis lying on the floor by his bed and got four votive candles out of his pockets. After dimming the overhead light, he centered the votive candles in a circle on the table and lit them. “Got these from my aunt.”

  So he did get something when he ran next door. He pulled out a chair for her, and as she sat down, he leaned over and kissed her neck. He poured them each a glass of Chianti and toasted. “Happy twenty fifth birthday.” He let out a long whistle. “Welcome to a quarter century. I'm four months older than you, my birthday's November sixth.”

  “Thanks for making dinner. This is really nice.” She took a bite of chicken. “Ummmm, delish. This piece is fine.”

  “The piece you dipped twice? That’s under here.” He lifted a piece from the platter in the middle of the table. It was over breaded and soggy looking. He winked.

  During dinner, he asked about her family and growing up in Vermont. She told him about her three older sisters and the two hundred year old farmhouse they grew up in. They had a barn, two golden retrievers and four cats, one for each girl. Her cat’s name was Jennie. All the pets were females too.

  “My poor Dad. We called him the crazy old professor. He was older than most other kids’ dads and it’s no wonder he was slightly crazy. All those hormones in the house, it must have been impossible for him. He always had a book in his hand. He would walk around the house, reading and bumping into furniture, tripping over things. I think it was his way of removing himself from the drama that was always swirling around him. But although he couldn’t stand the drama, he somehow had a knack for inserting himself right into the middle of it.”

  “What kind of drama?”

  “Teenage girl drama. It went on for years but it reached its peak around the time I was in eighth grade. The twins, Monica and Sara, were in tenth grade and Maria was a senior. It was nuts. At any given time, one of us would be in love with some boy, while someone else had just had her heart broken.”

  “So how did your Dad deal with all these teenage boys his daughters were falling in and out of love with?”

  They finished eating and she was helping him clear the table while she continued talking. She followed him into the kitchen as he started to fill one side of the double sink with soapy water while rinsing the plates in the other sink with the garbage disposal. He handed her a dishtowel. “Here, you can dry.”

  “How was he? He was awful. You’d think he would’ve wanted male companionship. But apparently not if the male was a teenager dating one of his daughters. He was always telling us about the dangers related to these alien creatures known as the teenage boy. How they drove too fast and always, always wanted only one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, come on. You know. S-E-X.”

  “Sex? No?” He was laughing, pretending to be shocked.

  “He would always say ‘I know this because I was a teenage boy once.’ Eww, the thought of that made me cringe. My gray haired father with the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose? Having sex? I mean I kind of knew he did it at least three times, right? But I preferred to pretend we were adopted or maybe the stork brought us. I would always think, why is he telling me this?”

  He was laughing. “Maybe he was trying to scare you. If I had four daughters I would probably do the same thing, because he’s right about teenage boys.”

  She gasped. “No? Not you?” She leaned over and kissed him. “Teenage girls want it too you know.”

  “I thought girls wanted a boyfriend and love and commitment.”

  “Not always. Maybe love. After all, girls are brought up on stories of Cinderella and Prince Charming, but commitment? I don’t know about that. Based on my behavior in past relationships, I seem to run from commitment. Good solid boys with successful futures bore me. I always seemed to like the boys my Dad called Trouble. As in, he would never remember their names and say things like here comes Trouble, as my date pulled in the driveway.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Hmmm, interesting.” He started to put leftovers in the fridge and the pans in the soapy water. “Where was your mother in all of this?”

  “She was always managing everything and reminding us of how she paid the bills, called the teachers and made the doctor’s appointments. All the day-to-day stuff my dad had no clue about. She had her own decorating business, making slipcovers and curtains. She called them window treatments. I think because she could charge more. She was very organized and a little detached. She didn’t sweat the small stuff.

  "For instance, in tenth grade I was always wearing what my father considered to be obscenely short skirts. One night I was going out with friends in a skirt that may actually have been a tad obscene. As I was getting ready to leave, he ran to the front door, spreading his arms like this.” She leaned against the doorjamb to the kitchen and spread her arms wide. “He was blocking the door and yelling, ‘you are not leaving this house in that postage stamp of a skirt. Get upstairs right now and change young lady or you are grounded.”

  “Did you change?”

  “Well, being the youngest I learned a lot from my sisters’ mistakes. One of the biggest lessons was, do not start an argument with him. I was really good at flying under the radar. I ran upstairs and down the hall where there was another staircase that led to the kitchen in the back of the house. I ran down those stairs and out the back door. When he saw me sauntering down the driveway towards my friend’s car, he ran out the front door hollering at me, ‘Get back here you little whippersnapper.’ I remember thinking what the hell is a whippersnapper?” She laughed. “I told you he was older, right? He would
use weird expressions like that sometimes.

  "Anyway, my Mom followed him out and I could hear her yelling at him, "Pick your battles Bill. When will you ever learn to pick your battles? At least she hasn’t come home pregnant.’ And he was yelling ‘Well in that skirt it’s only a matter of time.’ But my mother had us covered in that department. We were all on the pill by sixteen whether we needed to be or not. She’d say it was for acne and my dad never suspected, although not one of us had acne.”

  The Cure began playing in the other room. She grabbed his hand. “I love this song, dance with me.” Dancing backwards, she held his hand and acting out the song as she went, she sang, “I dreamed of different ways to go.”

  He was laughing. “That’s not the lyric. It’s I dreamed of different ways to make you glow.”

  “Really? Hmm. I like your line better.”

  “Because it’s right.” He started spinning her around, picked her up and swung her legs to his side as they tumbled onto the sectional sofa. They were laughing and kissing as she tried to pull his T-shirt off, but he was underneath her.

  “Hold on,” he said. “I have to run next door for a minute.”

  He rolled out from under her, got up and ran down stairs. The storm door slammed shut. While lying on her side thinking, “What is he getting now?”, she looked at the shelf under the coffee table where big sheets of drawing paper with colorful illustrations were neatly stacked. She pulled the top one out. It was a picture of a pretty little girl with curly blond hair, lifting up her shoe. Floating out from underneath the shoe came another little girl who looked like the curly blond girl, but with a mischievous face. She heard the door open and quickly put the illustration back. He shouted up the stairs, “Close your eyes.”

  “Okay, they’re closed.”

  “Keep them closed until I tell you to open them.” He put something down on the coffee table. Catching a whiff of sulfur, she heard him strike a match. “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

  On the coffee table was a plate with six cupcakes arranged in a circle, each with a lit candle in the center. The cupcakes had a big swirl of blue frosting on them. He started singing Happy Birthday. “Wow, thank you.” She kissed him before blowing out the candles.

  “When I went to get the candles, I asked my aunt to make these. I wasn’t sure what you liked so I asked for chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate, right? Helen took a cake decorating class. That’s why the frosting looks so good.”

  “This is so sweet, and you guessed right, chocolate is my favorite.”

  “Ummm.” He was biting into a cupcake. He had a big glob of blue frosting on his lip. She licked it off. Laughing as he reached for another cupcake, she said, “Hey, you can have more later. Weren’t we in the middle of something before you left?”

  “Right.” They both quickly took their clothes off. He laid her back down on the couch. “You remembered to make a wish when you blew out your candles, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I can’t tell you what it was or it won’t come true.”

  I THOUGHT IT WAS THE FLU

  Driving in heavy traffic through Boston, Sophie was on her way to the hospital in Providence to visit her father. She didn’t have many details about the heart attack. She hoped everything was okay. Entering the Big Dig tunnel running through the center of the city, the radio faded to static. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, moving very slowly. She turned the volume down and started to daydream.

  * * *

  She was making the bed in a guest room at an inn nestled in the center of a town along the route from Arcos to Ronda in Spanish Andalusia. It was a pueblo blanco in one of the many villages of white stucco buildings with red roof tiles that clung to the side of the hills and had a commanding view of the Mediterranean off in the distance. The roads were narrow and steep with very few cars in the town.

  As she shook the sheet across the double bed, she glanced out the window at a courtyard with a large tree dripping with bright yellow lemons. Small wrought iron tables were scattered across the brick patio. Several guests were outside and Ray was serving coffee, tea and lemon cake she made earlier that morning.

  When she finished making the bed, she went into the bathroom of the guest room and began to clean the toilet, sink and tub. The floor was made of hand painted blue and yellow Spanish tiles. She mopped her way out of the room.

  Finished cleaning, she stepped outside into the bright midday sun, stopping to pick up the watering can by the door, watering pots of flowers that were hanging on the side of the building at the entrance to her inn. She walked into town with a spring in her step to buy olives, serrano ham and manchego cheese for the happy hour she and Ray would be serving their guests later that evening.

  * * *

  An hour later Sophie was still driving, just entering Rhode Island, moving along at a good speed. Getting off at the first Providence exit, she checked her directions to the hospital, which led her through a working class neighborhood not far from Brown University.

  The door of the elevator opened and Sophie stepped out into the hallway. She passed several rooms with patients in their beds, nurses and visiting families shuffling around the rooms.

  The bed next to her father's was empty. He was sleeping on his side with his back to her, looking very small and thin lying there in his hospital johnny. She tiptoed back out to the hall to make a call. “I’m upstairs at Dad’s room, but he’s sleeping. I didn’t want to wake him. Where are you guys?... Okay, I’ll be right down.”

  It was an unusually warm day for early November. Several people in hospital scrubs sat outside, drinking coffee. Sophie spotted her mother and sister at one of the tables. She walked over and hugged the both of them. Her mom was a very tiny, frail woman with short hair that looked like she cut it herself and wide, frightened eyes. She looked disoriented. Two years younger than Sophie, her sister Annie was taller than her and had a very casual, relaxed look about her.

  “Mom, how are you doing? Are you okay?” Sophie asked.

  Her Mom shook her head. “I can’t believe this happened. We always thought it would be me who would have the heart attack, with my high blood pressure and all. I just can’t get over it.”

  Sophie sat down and took her mother’s hand. “So Annie, what are the doctors saying?”

  “It looks good. They put two stents in yesterday and that seems to have gone well. He was laughing and joking when he came out of it, asking the doctors when he could run a road race again.”

  Their Mom waved her hand at them. “Oh, I don’t know about that. But if he can’t run again he’s not going to be happy. You know how depressed he gets when he can’t run.” She looked perplexed. “He won’t be happy about it.”

  Annie held her hand. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Mom. He’ll be fine and if he can’t run, he can go for long walks. Don’t worry about that right now.”

  “He’s not gonna want to go for long walks.” She waved her hand, dismissing Annie’s comment. “I knew something was wrong, but he thought he had the flu. We got the flu shots the day before. He always thinks the shot gives him the flu.”

  “Then why does he get the shot?” Sophie gave Annie a bemused look and turned to her mother. “Well, he’ll get used to it Mom, not running that is, and maybe he can run again, just not like he used to.”

  “Oh, he definitely thought he’d never have a heart attack. He thought the running would prevent a heart attack. He was always worried about me. He thought I would have the heart attack. I can’t believe this happened.”

  Annie got up and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom, he’s going to be okay. The doctors are optimistic. Let’s go up and see if he’s awake.”

  Sophie stood up and whispered over her mother’s head to Annie, “Is she getting worse? She seems worse? She keeps repeating herself?” Annie nodded as she helped her mother up.

  “Why exactly did we just find out about this today when it happened yesterday?” Sophie asked.


  “He didn’t want to bother anyone. You kids have lives and jobs and kids of your own.”

  “But Mom, he had a heart attack. He’s our father, and you were here all alone?”

  “Well, he didn’t think it was a heart attack at first. He thought it was the flu, then everything got so busy.”

  They walked back into the hospital and got on the elevator with an older woman and her middle-aged son. Sophie’s mom looked up at them and said, “My husband had a heart attack. I can’t believe this happened.” She laughed nervously.

  The woman and her son just nodded as the elevator door opened. Sophie held her mother’s arm as they exited and helped her down the hall to her father’s room. He was sitting up with a bed tray in front of him eating oatmeal and scrambled eggs.

  “Look at all this food they give you. I can’t eat all this food, oatmeal and eggs. Who needs both? The oatmeal is terrible. Sophie, what are you doing here? I can’t believe you drove all the way down here.”

  “Of course I drove down. I can’t believe someone didn’t call yesterday.” Her father waved his hand like he was batting away a fly.

  Annie put her hand on his shoulder and leaned over to hug him. “Dad I just came back to say goodbye. I’ve got to go home and Sophie’s here to help Mom. You take it easy.” She kissed him and whispered to Sophie as she left, “I’ll call you.”

  Sophie helped her Mom to a chair. “How are you feeling Dad? Is there any pain?”

  “No, not too bad. I feel pretty good considering, just tired. When I showed up at the walk-in clinic and they told me they thought I had a heart attack they wanted me to go to Rhode Island Hospital. I told them no way, you have to pay for parking.”

  “You drove to a walk-in clinic while you were having a heart attack?”

  “I thought I had the flu.”

  Sophie shook her head in disbelief. “But didn’t they send you here by ambulance? So why worry about the parking?”

  “It’s the principal of the thing. Charging for parking, the nerve of them. This hospital has just as good a cardiac unit. The nurses did tell me there was a murder a few blocks from here the other night, but it’s the same at the other place and these guys don’t charge for parking. Don’t come to visit after dark though, it’s not safe at night here anymore. Did you know your mother and I lived here when you were a baby?”