Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker

by Julie Wright

  There was only the two of Everett—three if you counted the family photo.

  There were pictures of the girls in caps and gowns, pictures of one in what looked like a medical clinic, surrounded by children; and that same girl at the top of Machu Picchu; pictures of another in a business suit standing in front of law offices; pictures of marathon races and the girls holding awards.

  I glanced back at Everett, but he only smiled and shrugged.

  She showed me to my room first and that was where they left me. Everett said, “I’ll drop off my bag and come back to check on you to make sure you have everything you need.”

  Grace bristled a little at this, though I couldn’t see why, but then the door was closed, and I plopped onto the bed and sighed in great relief.

  The tension between those two was thicker than concrete.

  No wonder Everett wanted an accomplice on this trip. No wonder he acted as though I’d thrown him a lifeline when I agreed to go.

  “And I thought my mother was crazy,” I said aloud to the room made up to be very French provincial. The satin covered headboard and cream satin bedspread over a frilly lace cream bed skirt, along with the chandelier with sparkling little crystals dangling from the lights meant to look like candles, were an obvious style choice.

  Grace didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who would stylize her house so traditionally. I expected more of a minimalist style, with big red square cushions and a single blanket over them, making up the bed; with maybe a boxy square desk and a boxy square chair, which just went to show that people cannot be second guessed.

  Everett was back in just a moment. He knocked lightly.

  “Come in,” I said.

  He did, and, gratefully, he entered the room alone.

  “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  He shrugged. That would, apparently, be all the answer I could expect for that question because he then asked. “Are you exhausted or would you be interested in going for a short walk before we tuck in for the night?”

  Oddly, even after a full day at the hospital, a five hour drive, and a grueling five minutes with his mother, I was anything but tired. “A walk sounds great.”

  We vacated our rooms and took a set of back stairs that led to the kitchen and out a back door. From there, the moonlight reflected a bright silver swath over the water, greeting us with a view of the ocean.

  “This is your backyard?” Did my voice sound jealous? Because I certainly felt jealous.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned at it, obviously very pleased with his backyard. “It’s the only real perk to enduring my family, but it’s always worth it.”

  He guided me around patio furniture and to a stone path. In an obvious attempt to avoid the topic of his mother, he asked, “I heard Dr. Jensen let you do the stitching during the surgery rotation.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, laughing.

  “Dr. Niles when we met up in the cafeteria. We were talking about the specialty fields our classmates would be going into. When I told him I wanted to be a heart surgeon, he mentioned how Dr. Jensen actually let you do the stitching, which we all know is unheard of because Dr. Jensen never lets med students do anything but watch his amazing expertise. ”

  “He’s not that bad,” I countered, feeling a blush of pride from knowing that Dr. Jensen was that bad. The guy never let med students do anything, and if they stood too close, he’d glare at them until they backed up a step or two. He did not want them in his space, interfering with his business. He was a difficult attending doctor.

  “He is that bad,” Everett said as if reading my own thoughts. “So for you to get stitch work is quite the compliment.”

  “I have to be honest, I was as surprised as anyone else when he stepped aside and invited me into his space. I thought it was a joke at first, or maybe a test of some kind, and worried a little that he’d reprimand me as soon as I moved over.”

  We left the stone path, our feet thumping on the wood planks of a pier that swayed slightly with our movement. “But you’ve got your own set of fans in the doctors.” I said once we’d reached the end. Everett meant it when he said short walk because he sat down at the end and dangled his feet over the side. He patted the spot next to him until I moved to settle in.

  “I do not have fans,” he declared.

  “Oh really? What about Dr. Niles, who never lets anyone answer questions except you because he insists he doesn’t have time for wrong answers?”

  “That’s an intimidation tactic. He doesn’t mean it.”

  Dr. Niles totally meant it, but I went on. “And what about Doctor Pearl, who has almost convinced me you should be sainted, knighted, and made administrator of the hospital.”

  He stiffened at Miss Pearl’s name. “What has she said to you?” he asked carefully.

  I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Nothing I don’t already know about you. You really are a brilliant doctor. You’re going to make the hospital of your choice very happy.”

  He held his breath and seemed to be waiting. When I didn’t expound further, he asked, “Does she mention you when she’s talking about me?” His voice cracked a little and he cleared his throat.

  I stiffened as well. She talked plenty about me when talking about him, always making little observations on how I might feel for him. I laughed. “Well, if you count that she acts like she’s some matchmaker working to make me fall in love with you, then yes. She mentions me a lot when talking about you.” I laughed again, trying to make it seem like a joke.

  He gave a thin smile but no laugh. My own laugh ended abruptly. We sat in the relative silence of the waves lapping gently into the bay.

  Needing a quick change of subject, I asked, “Where are we exactly? The signs into the town of Camden were clear enough, but where is this?” I waved my hand over the water.

  He leaned back on his elbows and said, “This is Penobscot Bay, home of the wealthy,” he pointed to his neighbor’s houses, “and the scrimped-and-saved-to-get-a-house-here.” He pointed behind us to his own home. “But Grace likes it, and Dad likes what Grace likes, so this is where they live . . . all year long, even in the winter when it's wicked cold and miserable.”

  “What’s your dad like?” I figured since Everett actually called his father dad, maybe there was a better relationship there.

  “He’s all right. Kind of a yes-man when it comes to my mom, but he’s not too bad. He helped me with getting my bachelor’s and didn’t complain at all.”

  He didn’t mention if anyone helped him with his medical schooling, and I decided not to ask. If his dad had helped him there, he likely would have mentioned it. We had a lot in common in that area. And even though our parents were polar opposites of each other, they were opposites in ways that affected Everett and me exactly the same.

  We sat there in an easy companionship of the silent creak of the pier as the waves flowed around the bearing piles.

  “I should let you get some sleep,” Everett said after straightening and checking the time on his phone. “Riley has likely already shown up and is settled, which means we won’t have to talk to her tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough. And we’ll both need sleep to handle her.”

  “Is Riley difficult?” I asked, thinking the daughter couldn’t be more difficult than the mother.

  “Riley is . . . interesting. Hazel is the only reason I care enough to keep any kind of contact with my family. You’ll like Hazel. And since the weekend is to celebrate her, it shouldn’t be too bad.” He stood and held out his hand to help me up. I took it and squeezed his fingers a little. I don’t know what I meant by the action, and I don’t know how he took it, but he squeezed mine back and then released my hand.

  He’s got a girlfriend, I thought. But he’s here with me, not her. That thought should have inspired some guilt, but it didn’t, which did inspire guilt, but not nearly enough. I remembered back in the beginning when Everett held my hand after I got reamed by the dean at Boston Universit
y, how he hadn’t let go and how that human connection had felt like it saved me somehow, that it tethered me to possibilities and hope.

  I looked down at my hands, wishing he’d held on this time. But I was here. I had the weekend with him. I had his friendship and his respect as a peer. That would be enough.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Heels?” Grace eyed my footwear as if I’d entered their family kitchen where breakfast was being served in shoes covered in dog droppings.

  “Tell me she isn’t!” This came from a woman I assumed to be Riley—someone who hadn’t even been properly introduced to me and yet who still felt okay about criticizing my shoes. Her eyes dropped to my feet. Everyone’s eyes dropped to my feet—even my own. “And scarlet?”

  “It’s the very symbol of female bondage.” Grace took a sip of her coffee with a shake of her head.

  Where was Everett during this shark feeding frenzy? “Really?” I asked. “Because I always thought that female bondage was what happened any time a woman chose to do something because of how other people judged her rather than how she judged herself. And since I like heels and absolutely adore these shoes, it would seem more like my free will and choice rather than bondage, don’t you think?”

  And that was the beginning of breakfast.

  They couldn’t possibly have expected that I would somehow shrivel under their scrutiny. My grams always taught me to stand tall in my own shoes, to value my own opinion of self-identity, and not to cave to others. If standing taller in my own shoes could be literal as well as metaphorical, then all the better. When Grace and Riley realized they couldn’t ruffle me, the subject was effectively dropped.

  Everett’s family was vegetarian and made a big pretentious show of being such, as if somehow I would be impressed or alarmed. I wasn’t quite sure which reaction they wanted more from me.

  Riley spread butter liberally over her toast. “We believe in eating pure in this household, so you won’t find any bacon or eggs on our table for breakfast. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but we’re all vegetarians here.” Riley said all of this as if she meant it to be an apology. But the words felt more like food supremacy than anything. Everett entered the kitchen just as she finished her little speech.

  He opened his mouth, likely to tell her to lay off or whatever, but I cut in. “Since my mom’s vegan, this vegetarian fare looks pretty amazing. You have a much greater variety here than I ever get at home. I mean, really, you actually have cheese, milk, and honey on the table. You even have butter.”

  Riley eyed me from under her blunt cut brown bangs, her eyes narrowed in a way that made her seem irritated with me for reasons I couldn’t understand. She went on the attack first. Did she think I couldn’t handle it? She’d inherited her mother’s ice blue eyes and could give someone hypothermia from those eyes just as well as her mother. How nice to have a family super power.

  Everett’s warm hazel eyes came from his father. He didn’t seem like an unpleasant person, but it was hard to tell since he hardly spoke during the meal.

  Everett hustled me out to his car as soon as he could and apologized when we were shut up inside.

  “Are they always like that?”

  “Usually worse,” he confessed. “They think picking on my houseguests is great sport, especially if those girls exhibit any traditionally feminine characteristics. I stopped bringing girls home a long time ago. I’m sure they went after you because of your shoes, which look very nice, by the way”

  “Thank you.” I looked at my feet and smiled at my heels. They really were fabulous. “Do you ever defend yourself, demand that they act like humans?” I asked after he’d turned onto the road.

  “I was about to, but you handled yourself so well back there that I figured I’d just let you take care of yourself. Bravo, by the way. You shut them down fairly quickly. I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”

  Leaving the terrible-breakfast for the new social-good store felt a little pretentious—even if it had sprung up from his favorite sister’s imagination. I’d felt more than surly toward the idea of a sibling who did social good when there was clearly so much familial good that needed to be done. If Hazel was anything like Riley, I was in for a messy day.

  “Everett, I mean this is the nicest way possible. I would never let Riley defend me in a court of law.”

  He laughed and didn’t stop laughing for several moments.

  “I’m actually a little terrified to meet your other sister.”

  He flashed me a grin, one that said he understood exactly. But he said, “I already told you she was better than the rest of them.”

  “Yes, well, the others didn’t exactly set the bar high, did they?”

  Everett laughed some more. I joined in. The morning had been interesting. If I’d known something as innocent as footwear would cause such a stir, I might have done something really daring and worn my skirt with the laces that looked like a corset. We arrived at his sister’s store, a place with balloons, food, and music from a local radio station. Hundreds of people crowded the parking lot.

  And in all those people, Everett’s other sister spotted us.

  “Everett!” Hazel Covington appeared genuinely happy to see her brother. She was the first person aside from myself to show any enthusiasm toward him at all. His father had acted preoccupied, Riley had scoffed at him as if he was a bit of sun-worn plastic bag clinging to a barbed wire fence, and his mother had been indifferent to him—almost as if he hadn’t sat at the breakfast table between her husband and me.

  After the morning that felt more Twilight Zone than Brady Bunch, the moment Hazel said Everett’s name with interest, I determined to like her and be her best friend. The little time spent with the rest of his family made me keenly protective of Everett. I wanted to drop-kick all his relations to the curb. His mom, I wanted to drop-kick twice, just out of principle.

  But Hazel wasn’t like the others.

  She hugged her brother when she saw him, cooed over how fabulous he was to make such a long drive just for her, and then swept me up in the momentum of her greeting and hugged me too.

  “He’s told me all about you,” she whispered in my ear. “You must be some kind of amazing, because he’s never talked about any girl before.”

  For a moment, the comment made me anxious.

  Did she think I was Liz—the girl he was really dating? What would she say when she found out Everett brought a stand-in girlfriend? Would she be embarrassed for me? I felt a little embarrassed for myself.

  “I think you might have mistaken me for someone else,” I countered quietly, not trying to draw attention to the issue for anyone else.

  Hazel laughed. “You are the doctor, aren’t you? Everett’s never mentioned anyone else, and I doubt he’d bring anyone else into the poorly done reality show that is our family.”

  I started at this news. I was the doctor. Not Liz. Liz was . . . I didn’t even know what Liz was, but the only thing she did at the hospital was wait around for Everett and irritate me with her sweet smile and nice greetings.

  “I’m Andra.” I spoke with caution, just in case.

  “Right,” Hazel confirmed. “Andrea without the E.”

  I broke into a grin that could not be helped. Everett had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t really like his family all that much—with the exception of Hazel. Mentioning me to the only sister he actually liked meant something important. He even told her the nickname he had for me.

  The nickname thing was another point of interest. The Covington family did not use nicknames, but Everett had begun our relationship with a nickname. Maybe that was something he craved . . . a casual situation where things like nicknames and squabbling over who got the last donut in the box were normal instead of strange.

  “Congratulations on your store,” I said, finally feeling like coming all the way to Maine was a good idea. If I got nothing more out of this weekend than the knowledge that the only girl Eve
rett ever spoke about was me, well then, mission accomplished.

  “Thanks!” Hazel gushed. “In this day and age, to be able to open a brick and mortar store and have any hope at success is kind of rare. But this is my second store, and I can’t tell you how excited I am!”

  She had every reason to be excited. Her company, Second Childhood, made a comfort toy for a child in a third world country for every toy sold to a regular consumer in the first world countries. Not only did the child in the third world country get a toy, but they also received a little picture book to begin an education.

  The picture books varied depending on the target age of the toy, but all of them included health information on topics such as washing hands and brushing teeth in such an off-the-cuff way, the reader was not likely to know they were being instructed. Shoppers were welcome to buy the books in the store and they were also welcome to simply donate monetarily to the cause. Hazel boasted that every actual penny donated went straight to the source and not to pay any fat and lazy CEO.

  Her store was charming, the kind any kid or kid-at-heart could get lost in. Even better, the prices were extremely reasonable, especially considering that when you bought something for your own kid, you were getting an identical item for a kid on the other side of the world. How did she keep such a business model afloat?

  The name of her business, Second Childhood was genius since every purchase bought a “childhood experience” for two kids, not just one.

  The press snapped pictures so often that I felt half-blinded by all the flashbulbs, even with the diffuser boxes on top of their cameras. I abandoned the crowd and tucked myself into a little nook with six child-sized chairs surrounding a child-sized table. I sat at the table with its fancy little porcelain tea set already arranged and smiled at the loveliness of it all.

  “Two sugars, please.” Everett smiled down at me and then sat.