Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father)

by Macdonald, Janice

  “I’m here to see Dr. Cameron,” Sarah said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Sarah smiled. Her palms were sweating. She knew that if she dodged into a restroom to check her teeth for lipstick or her eyelids for rivulets of the Tender Taupe shadow she’d bought on sale at Gottschalks along with the tube of Black Velvet mascara, she would find damp patches at the armpits of the beige Ann Taylor blazer, also bought in the same sale. All purchased on an impulsive and, she realized now, misguided thought that if she looked businesslike as she presented her plan it would seem less like one of the old Sarah’s wild-eyed schemes and more worthy of Matthew’s professional consideration.

  “Matthew and I are old friends,” she told the receptionist. She’d considered calling for an appointment, but…come on, she’d known Matthew since they played in the nursery-school sandbox together. When he was forever trying to pour sand down her top. “Could you just let him know I’m here? Sarah. Benedict.” She cleared her throat. “Dr. Benedict, that would be.”

  The receptionist smiled. “Unfortunately, Dr. Cameron is doing an emergency surgery. I’m not sure how long he’ll be. Can I leave him a message?”

  “I’ll just give him a call,” she said. “No, wait…” She delved into her purse, found a grocery receipt and scribbled a message on the back. Not very elegant, but it put the ball in his court, which she preferred. “If you could just stick this on his desk.”

  Outside, walking down the corridor again, she listened to the click of her heels on the linoleum. Two nurses in blue scrubs walked by. One of them, tall and blond, smiled uncertainly as though Sarah was someone she might know. Port Hamilton was small enough and isolated enough, sitting at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, that pretty much everyone knew everyone. But this Sarah with her makeup and power suit was not the bohemian Birkenstock Sarah who had skulked off to Central America after being scorned by her—

  “Sarah.” The nurse stopped in her tracks. “Wow. When did you get back?”

  “Betsy.” Her archenemy in high school. She was a good fifty pounds heavier than Sarah remembered. “Hi.”

  Betsy’s smile faded. “I’m sorry about your husband. I read about it in the paper, and then I saw your mother and she told me. What a tragedy, huh?”

  “Thanks.” Frozen, feeling awkward by the sympathy she saw in Betsy’s eyes, Sarah struggled for the right thing to say. “Anyway, I’m… I have to go so—”

  “Well, hey, it’s great to see you again.” She hugged Sarah, then pulled back to look at her. “Listen, I know it’s got to be tough. If you ever need to talk to someone, call me. I’m in the phone book. My last name’s Becker now. I married Vinny. Remember him?”

  I will be okay, Sarah thought as she politely said goodbye to Betsy and continued on. Once she was working again, seeing patients, getting back into the swing of things. She would find a place to live, no matter how much Rose begged her to move back home. She would feel strong and whole again, discover a place where the sympathy and pity, no matter how well intended, would no longer make her want to crawl into a hole and hide.

  MATTHEW WAS BACK in his office when his administrative assistant put a call through from his daughter reminding him that the school play was at seven and if he didn’t want her to hate him for the rest of her life, he’d better be there.

  One elbow on the desk, chin propped in his hand, Matthew studied the framed picture of her—one of many that filled his office—and grinned. Lucy was fourteen, a budding actress and, although she was always listing ways in which he wasn’t the perfect father she felt entitled to, he loved her as much as any father possibly could. The prospect of having more free time to spend with her was one of the more compelling reasons to join CMS.

  “I’m supposed to have tarot cards,” Lucy said. “Mom said she’d pick some up, but she forgot. Could you get some for me? Please?” she added in her wheedling voice. “I really, really need them.”

  Remembering she was a fortune teller in the play, he asked, “Something to do with fortune-telling?”

  “They tell you stuff that happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You spread them out in a cross and then you read them. Listen, I’ve got to go. Don’t forget them, okay?”

  “I won’t,” Matthew said. After he hung up, the receptionist—she was very new, very young, and he could never remember her name—stuck her head around the door.

  “This lady came in to see you. She left a note, but—” she gestured to his desk, piled high with papers and journals and more than a few empty coffee cups “—I thought you might miss it. It’s on the back of that Safeway receipt right there.”

  “Thanks.” Matthew picked up the receipt and glanced at the back.

  He saw the familiar scrawl and laughed.

  The note read: “So where were you at four o’clock this afternoon anyway?”

  No signature. It wasn’t necessary.

  Sarah.

  BY THE TIME she left the hospital and walked back into town, it was not quite eleven, too early for lunch. With nothing more pressing to do, Sarah decided to stop by Curly Q. Maybe work up the nerve to get her hair all lopped off and learn a little more about Debbi and Curt’s magical medicinal garden.

  The blonde who checked her in wore heart-shaped earrings and a diamond in her left nostril. The entire shop was awash in red paper hearts. Up the walls, around mirrors and across the top of the reception desk, where they competed with a massive arrangement of red balloons bobbing amidst pink carnations.

  “Must be Saint Patrick’s Day,” Sarah joked.

  The girl gave her a long look. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  Sarah smiled. “I wondered if Debbi is available.”

  The blonde regarded Sarah doubtfully. “Are you a client of hers?”

  “Not yet.”

  Moments later she was escorted to a chair at the far end of the room and seated before a mirror. A towel was draped around her shoulders. Debbi would be with her in a few minutes, she was told. A blond stylist to Sarah’s left, in red jeans and a fluffy white sweater, was telling a customer that Valentine’s Day was the sole reason more babies were born in November than in any other month. To her right, the topic was those clueless types who walk into restaurants on Valentine’s Day without reservations expecting to get a table. “That’s my husband,” someone said. “We’re going to end up eating pizza tonight, just like we did last year.”

  Sarah had the strange sensation that she’d landed from some distant planet. Was an aversion to beauty shops genetic or learned, she wondered. Maybe both. Her mother had once calculated the time and money saved over a ten-year span by wearing her own long, untrimmed hair in a knot at the nape of her neck and allowing it to turn iron-gray.

  Debbi smiled when she saw Sarah. “I didn’t think you’d really come by. I thought you were just being polite.” In the mirror, her face above Sarah’s was round and doll-like, smooth pink skin framed by a dark shiny bob. Her own face looked angular, Sarah thought, her skin tanned but on the verge of leathery. She felt a tug of guilt for neglecting it. Maybe Debbi had something for rejuvenating forty-two-year-old faces.

  “Wow, how long did this take to grow?” Debbi asked, lifting the heavy braid.

  “Forever. I keep thinking I want to do something different, but I don’t like messing around with it. “

  Debbi’s lip jutted thoughtfully as she unbraided Sarah’s hair. “I could cut some layers into it. Maybe put in some highlights to give it body.” She made a few exploratory moves with the comb. “And you’ve got some gray.”

  “Cut it all off and dye it…fuchsia,” Sarah said, only half joking, then lost her nerve. “You know what? Just trim the ends.”

  “You don’t want me to cut a little more? Shoulder length would look good on you.”

  �
��A trim’s fine for now.” After Debbi had finished shampooing and escorted her back to the chair, Sarah spotted the row of pictures in Lucite frames on the narrow shelf beneath the mirror. Most were of a dark-eyed toddler with a mass of black curls. “Your little girl?”

  “Yeah.” Debbi smiled as she went to work with the scissors. “Alli. She’s two. The terrible twos they say.”

  “How is she?” Sarah asked, recalling Curt’s comment about an intestinal problem.

  “Pretty good. She gets a lot of tummy aches, but Curt said it’s because I feed her too much processed food. He’s so smart. He wanted to be a doctor, but he doesn’t have the patience to sit in a classroom all day. Plus he’s totally turned off to the way most doctors think.”

  “I got that impression,” Sarah said wryly.

  “He’s a really good dad. I mean, he loves Alli to death. But he’s got this idea that he can treat anything that comes up and sometimes it kind of worries me. It’s his way or the highway.” Debbi snipped the ends, then, brandishing a purple hair dryer, directed a blast of hot air at Sarah’s scalp. “There’s no in-between.”

  “That’s what I want to do,” Sarah said. “Provide the in-between. Conventional medicine doesn’t have all the answers, but alternative medicine can’t do everything, either. I want to have a practice that uses both approaches.”

  “Cool.” Debbi smiled. “When can I sign up?”

  “I’ve still got some things to work out. There’s another doctor, a pediatrician who’s a good friend of mine. We grew up together. He’d be perfect.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Sarah hesitated. “Well, I haven’t discussed it with him yet. We used to talk about this kind of thing years ago, but—”

  “There aren’t that many pediatricians in Port Hamilton anymore,” Debbie said. “It’s got to either be Dr. Cameron—”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s fantastic. I used to take Alli to see him. Until I met Curt.”

  Sarah felt a vague sense of misgiving.

  She watched Debbi try to turn a lock of wiry, recalcitrant hair into something resembling a curl and wanted suddenly to be somewhere else. “Hey, listen, that’s fine. Really.”

  Debbi looked doubtful. “You’re sure? Want me to spray it?”

  “No.” Sarah stood. Her shoulders felt damp. She followed Debbi to the front of the shop. What did a haircut cost these days? She had no idea. She dug three twenties out of her purse, set them on the counter....

  “You need some good conditioner.” Debbi took two of the twenties to the cash register, and returned a ten and a five to Sarah. “The next time you come in, I’ll do a hot-oil treatment.”

  “Probably a good idea.” Sarah left the twenty and the five on the counter. “Good luck with your daughter,” she said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “CHOCOLATE CHIPS.” Lucy snapped her fingers, a surgeon demanding an instrument. “Butter. Two sticks.”

  “Coming up.” Matthew held out a bag of chips, semisweet, as she’d requested when she made the shopping list for him. He watched as she carefully measured flour into a bowl. Her long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dusted with flour. More flour had fallen like snow around her feet; a dusting of white covered the granite counter tiles.

  He couldn’t have been happier.

  “Want some music?” he asked.

  “Your kind or mine?”

  “Since I don’t think of that stuff you listen to as music, it would have to be mine. And if you’d really listen to the words, you’d realize the Eagles—”

  “Oh, Dad, no. Please. Not the Eagles.”

  He grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quick hug. “Do you know how much I like having you here?”

  “No, but hum a few bars,” she said.

  “Old, old joke.”

  “I learned it from you.”

  “I guess that makes me an old, old guy then.” He pulled out one of the bentwood dining chairs, sat on it backward, his chin propped on the curved wood. “If I decide to go with the Seattle company that’s moving onto the peninsula,” he told her, “you could spend every Saturday with me.”

  “Do it,” she said.

  “Would you like that?”

  She beamed.

  He grinned back at her. Ultimately, it might not take much more persuasion than his daughter’s approval. “I’m thinking about it. It’s just…” The phone rang. “Hold on,” he told Lucy.

  “Pleeese, pleeeese, don’t let it be a boring old patient,” she muttered.

  He picked up the phone from its hook on the wall. “Hello.”

  “I have no pride,” a female voice said. “I leave you messages—”

  He burst out laughing. “Sarah!” No salutation, no polite preliminary chitchat. No acknowledgment that it had been fifteen years since they last spoke. “You haven’t changed.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” she said. “By forty the character’s pretty well established. So anyway, I stopped by to see you—”

  “I know. Well, I was pretty sure it was you. I’d heard you were back. But the receptionist said a lady came by to see me and the lady part threw me.”

  Sarah laughed. Same old raucous laugh, somewhere between an engine starting and a gaggle of geese.

  “I ran into your mother in the cafeteria last week,” he said. “Almost literally. You know Rose, a hundred miles a minute. She said you were coming back. She seemed surprised that I didn’t know, but I reminded her that keeping in touch was never one of your priorities.”

  “Yeah, well…you know.”

  “Listen, before anything else, I’m so sorry about—Ted…”

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  Something in her voice warned him to move on. “I want to see you,” he said. “Soon. Now. Oh, no, I can’t…when are you available? What are your plans?” He could see Lucy in his peripheral vision; the wooden spoon in one hand had gone very still. “My daughter’s here with me,” he said. “Lucy. Fourteen going on thirty and about to set the theater world on fire.” Lucy flashed him a look over her shoulder and he winked at her. “And you didn’t hear this from me,” he stage-whispered, “but she’s a dead ringer for a young Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “She looks like her mother then,” Sarah said.

  An almost imperceptible change in her voice reminded him of the last time they’d exchanged anything more than polite formalities and he found himself at a loss for words. “Very much.”

  “Don’t you owe me a Frugal burger?” Sarah asked.

  “Frugals.” Smiling now, he leaned back against the wall. “Haven’t eaten one of those in years. I’m of the age where I have to think about cholesterol.”

  “We both are,” Sarah said. “But you still owe me a Frugals.”

  “Hold on.” He glanced at the calendar above the phone. “How about…tonight?”

  “Dress rehearsal, Daddy,” Lucy said. “Remember? You promised.”

  “Okay, tonight won’t work.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but if we keep our fingers crossed that no one gets creamed on the 101 or mistakes their significant other for a shooting range, I could pay off my debt to you.”

  “Great,” Sarah said. “What time?”

  “Around six? I’ll pick you up.” He thought for a minute. “Guess I need to know where you’re staying. Your mother’s?”

  “Actually, I just rented an apartment,” Sarah said. “Yesterday. At the foot of Peabody, just above Front Street. The Seavu. I was walking back to my mother’s, saw the For Rent sign, called the landlord and moved right in. I’m still bringing boxes over from my mother’s.”

  He mentally located th
e place, a rambling multistory wooden building with fire escapes running up the sides and seagull droppings on the front steps.

  “You don’t mean the old hospital?”

  “Yep. I always wanted to live there. Especially after it became a place for shady ladies. Kind of appeals to the outcast in me.”

  He was still laughing when he hung up the phone.

  “That wasn’t very nice of you, Daddy,” Lucy said, her back to him.

  “What wasn’t very nice?”

  “What you said about people getting into accidents and getting shot at.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, still thinking about Sarah, “it was just a joke.”

  “People dying is just a joke?”

  “Give me a break, Lulu,” he said. “How’re the cookies coming?”

  “They’re not.” She carried the pan to the sink. “Who was that, anyway?”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE that out of all the places in Port Hamilton, you actually chose this,” Rose said when she dropped by to see the apartment. She stood in the middle of the tiny living room, gazing out through the window. “Nice view, though.”

  “Isn’t it?” Sarah stood beside her mother. Windows on this side looked out over the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the distant coast of British Columbia. From the bedroom, she could see the soaring Olympic Mountains, still covered with snow as they would be for much of the year. “Last night I watched the ferry until it disappeared out of sight.” She glanced at Rose. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sounds good,” Rose said. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”

  “Actually you could do it from where you’re standing,” Sarah said. “But go ahead.”

  She filled the coffeepot with water, took a package of muffins from a basket on top of the refrigerator, and stuck two of them in the toaster oven. On the battered three-burner stove was a blue enamel kettle. Above it, on a shelf she’d tacked up that morning, she’d filled a yellow jug with wooden spoons and whisks, a couple of candles and a wicker basket. Just looking at the arrangement pleased her. Amazing how much better she felt than this time yesterday. Hearing from Matthew was another part of it.