The Antidote for Everything

by Kimmery Martin

  “He can’t deny it,” Jonah said, wearing a delighted grin, “because we’d record him. With drones!”

  No doubt he was picturing them skulking around in disguise as they activated a nest of insect-shaped recorders. “Ah,” she said. “Do we need to go that high-tech? How about a cell phone in a coat pocket?”

  “Oh,” he said. A tiny vertical line appeared between his eyebrows. “I suppose that could work too.”

  “He might be less suspicious of me than you.”

  “George,” he said, “Beezon thinks you’re as much of a monstrosity as me.” He considered this, grinning. “Bigger, even.”

  “Fine,” she conceded, pursing her lips in thought. “It would be better if it were someone he likes. What about Darby? I’m going to run with her at her house on Sunday.”

  “No way,” Jonah said. “Darby Gibbes is a sweetheart. I’m not dragging her into this.”

  “Well,” Georgia said, dismissive. “It’s a moot point. She would probably never agree to do it. But that’s the problem: we need a person who’d never be suspected of an ulterior motive. She’d bounce in there, talk to Beezon about her church or whatever, and you’re right, he’d be bound to say something godawful. We could hoist him with his own petard.”

  Jonah cocked his head, a shock of his hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it back with an aggrieved motion. “I know I’m going to be sorry for wondering, but what—”

  “‘Hoist him with his own petard’ is from Shakespeare. Hamlet, I think. A petard was a bomb or an explosive device, and in this case, it blows up its maker. Poetic justice.”

  “I knew I’d be sorry I asked.”

  “Forget the petard.” Georgia paused, thinking out loud. “What if the person goes in there and vehemently defends you? Beezon will argue.”

  He stared at her. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, becoming fired up as she considered this idea. “She’ll rhapsodize about how you were the highest-ranked resident in your family medicine program, how you killed your board scores, how many grateful letters you get from patients. She’ll talk about all the volunteer stuff you do. By the time she’s done, she might even convince Beezon you’re a saint.”

  “This is never gonna work, George, but damn, I am melting.”

  They walked the length of the park and turned off onto East Bay Street toward the Battery, and as the wind blew toward them Georgia caught another whiff of Jonah, who smelled like a brewery. Abruptly, she stopped walking. “I actually had another idea. Earlier. But I’ve been afraid to bring it up.”

  “The petard reminded you of this idea?”

  It floated in front of her; something about . . . Beezon and his computer. She tried to focus on it, but it eluded her; then, suddenly it coalesced.

  “Yes. I want to check with Mark’s IT guy, but I have an idea. Let me think about it, okay? Maybe we won’t need to record anybody.”

  “Okay,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “This better be good.”

  “Speaking of being good, behave while you’re off work, okay?”

  He bristled. “How about you behave? You’re not the most diplomatic human being. And I can’t always be with you to keep you in line.”

  “Exactly. So you cannot move away, Jones. I need you.”

  She could feel his eyes shifting toward her. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “You know I don’t want to move. But I have to be honest: I’m not sure how much I want to fight for the prize of going back to a place that scorns my people.”

  “But I’m here.”

  His hands rose, fingers fluttering, but he didn’t say anything. After a minute, she swayed to a stop, leaning against a pole so Jonah wouldn’t see her face.

  “Let’s do lots of brunch this weekend, okay?” he offered. “We can meet for breakfast at The Daily on Saturday and then Sunday we can go to Husk. We’ll talk more.”

  She forced an upbeat note into her voice. “I can do Saturday, but on Sunday I’m running with Darby at Isle of Palms.”

  “No problem. I could pick you up from Isle of Palms in the boat!” Jonah loved any excuse to hit the water on the weekends.

  “Sure. You can actually walk to Darby’s house from the marina if you want. I’ll text you the address.”

  “Look.” He walked a few feet away, staring across the shimmering expanse of water at a solitary boat, bobbing in the distance. Behind it, the lights had come on over the distinctive filaments of the Ravenel Bridge, glowing silver against the deepening sky. “You need to temper your expectations. I know I’m the one who suggested this, but I’m not sure we can rewrite history with an iPhone in our pockets. A clinic administrator saying he doesn’t approve of queer people probably isn’t going to move the needle much.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, Georgia.” As soon as the words left his mouth she braced herself; all the flippancy was gone from his tone.

  “I don’t want to go through hell for the privilege of working for a group who sees my patients as an atrocity. If they don’t take them back, then I’m going to move no matter what happens with my job.”

  She tried to interject but he locked his eyes on hers. “You’re the closest thing to family I have, and I know you want to help. I love you for it, but you’re never going to know what this is like.”

  Stung, she took a step backward.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he went on. “I know your job is at risk too. I know how much you care about your patients and I know how pissed you are about the freaking travesty of being told you can’t treat them. That’s all legit. But you’ll never be forced to endure the things they endure. Or the things I endure.”

  “I know, I—”

  “Still,” he said, in the same gentle tone, “I know you mean well.” He moved toward her and smiled, determined, apparently, to lessen the blow of his implied rebuke. “But I have to say . . . I’m a little bit afraid of the way your mind works. Try to tone down the crazy.”

  * * *

  —

  Saturday morning, Georgia met Jonah for breakfast and a vigorous discussion of his situation. After that, granted a rare respite from work, she spent most of the day in her backyard workshop, tinkering with the hidden compartment in a cabinet she was building. At sundown, she curled up in bed with a book, trying to curb her anxiety about what Jonah might be doing. She flicked the pages until midnight, when she found herself in a fitful daze, not quite asleep but not quite awake. Exhaustion hung over her, but she could not rest; some corner of her brain buzzed with worry. She set down the novel she’d been reading and picked up her Bible, reading until she fell into a restless sleep.

  The next morning, Sunday, she met Darby for an early run.

  After, she watched through a window of the back deck of Darby’s home as Darby went indoors and stretched. She looked up as Georgia came in and plopped down at the kitchen table. “So I can be more productive and more intentional with my time,” Darby said, jerking her head toward her phone, which she’d just tucked away in a drawer.

  “Excellent idea,” said Georgia, even though she’d sooner stab herself in the eyeball than separate from her phone. Hiding their phones was the sort of thing overscheduled married people did, along with employing phrases like more intentional with my time. “Jonah should be here before long to pick me up. Thanks again for the run.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Darby said. “Stick around for a little while. Jonah too. Last night I told the kids we’d have some company this morning, and they can’t wait. They love to have visitors.” As if to illustrate this, they heard an excited squeal and an answering adult voice in a distant part of the house. Matt and the girls were up.

  “We have about five minutes before they descend and eat us alive,” she said now, grinning at Georgia as if Georgia were doing her a favor. “Let
’s hide.”

  Before she could answer, Darby carried her cup of coffee outdoors onto the deck. After a moment, Georgia followed her outside, where bright tendrils of sunlight shot from beneath a cloud onto the glinting waters of the marsh.

  “You okay?” Darby leaned, stiff-armed, against the railing next to her.

  Before she could respond, two small blurs raced past her, doubled back, and exploded onto her lap. “Mommy!”

  Darby pulled her older two daughters into her arms. They looked like Darby: small and lithe with spindly limbs and big sleepy green eyes. No one would ever mistake them for anything other than her daughters.

  The younger child of the two turned to Georgia. “Hi,” she said. “Can I sit on your lap?”

  “Sure,” said Georgia, nonplussed. She sat down on a deck chair, and to her surprise, both girls piled into her lap, looking at her expectantly. Now what? “Hey there, varmints,” she said, after a moment’s pause, thumping her knees up and down so they bounced. “What’s shaking?”

  The little one giggled. “Fleur backfired on me this morning.” She pinched her nose and waved a small, dimpled hand around.

  From Fleur, in a scandalized whisper: “Backfires are private, Brin.”

  Darby attempted a diplomatic change of subject. “How did you sleep, Brinnie?”

  “I sleeped pretty good,” she said, and then considered further. “Except my nose drooled a lot.”

  A second later, Darby’s husband, Matt, bounded onto the porch, holding a baby in the crook of his elbow. “Morning, ladies,” he said, wrapping his free arm around Darby. He twisted a hip so the baby faced Georgia. “This is Clover.”

  Brin hopped off Georgia’s lap to tickle Clover’s foot. “Baby Clove, looky here,” she said. “It’s Sissy!” Clover laughed, flopping her small body toward her sister. “Dababababa,” she cried joyously. Georgia, feeling an unaccountable prick of warmth behind her eyes, redirected her gaze to the marsh.

  “Honey?” said Darby to Matt, her hand on the playroom door. “Do you mind if we hide on the porch while you get the kids dressed for church? Georgia’s friend is coming to pick her up and I thought we’d hang out on the patio for a bit.”

  Matt remained chipper. “I don’t mind one bit!”

  Right on cue the doorbell rang: Jonah, his face hidden behind an enormous basket of muffins. From a couple prior pit stops here after running, Georgia knew perfectly well Darby and Matt didn’t dig on junk food, especially for the children, but they both made sincere-sounding murmurs of appreciation as Matt accepted the basket. As Jonah lowered it, Georgia couldn’t suppress a gasp: his nose, normally straight and short, had ballooned to twice its size, and thin half-moon bruises had formed in the creases under his eyes, almost perfectly mirroring the arch of his black brows. From a distance it looked as if he were wearing dark round spectacles. He jerked his head at her in silent instruction: Don’t ask in front of them. “Gather round, young’uns! Muffins are here!” he bellowed, prompting an excited stampede of little feet down the hall.

  Although he was definitely the sort to rile them up to fever pitch before handing them off to someone else, and despite his bachelor status, Jonah had a way with kids. After a few galumphing shoulder rides and the doling out of sugary muffins, Jonah thanked Matt for letting him play with the girls, and Matt thanked Jonah, a bit too heartily, for the muffins; and then Matt whisked the overstimulated children back to the playroom.

  “We should get going,” said Georgia, anxious to talk with Jonah.

  “Oh!” said Darby, in a disappointed tone. “Why don’t you sit for a minute?”

  “We’d hate to impose,” said Georgia at the exact moment that Jonah said, “We’d love to, thanks.”

  They traipsed out to the deck, settling, side by side, on three fat-cushioned chaises overlooking the marsh. Georgia tried to catch Jonah’s eye but he ignored her, turning to Darby. “How was the run?”

  She responded softly. “It was fine, Jonah, how are you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m better than I look.”

  Hopefully this was true, because his face was an unmitigated catastrophe, his fine features marred by swelling, his voice distorted by the lack of airflow through his nose. What could have happened? When they’d met yesterday for breakfast, he’d appeared normal.

  She motioned toward his nose. “What . . .”

  Jonah cast a sideways glance at Darby, but apparently decided to proceed. “There was an unfortunate incident with my neighbor. I might have lost my temper and said something rash. It turns out he objects to my love life and so I objected to his being a slovenly, pea-brained warthog and then he said, ‘Oh yeah? Well, I object to your face.’”

  “Oh no! How did this happen?”

  “Somehow he got ahold of a newspaper and apparently he was able to sound out enough words to realize the subject of an article was his gay neighbor. So he did what any decent citizen would do and marched over to investigate whether or not there were any strange men lurking about.”

  “Which of course there weren’t.”

  Jonah shook his head. “Well, actually,” he said, “Jace and Tucker were over.”

  Tucker, an accountant, was a fitness junkie with an obsession with extreme endurance sports—ultramarathons or open-water swimming or something—and therefore paradoxically resembled death. Thirtyish and balding, he had a bony skull and sunken eyes and razor-sharp, emaciated limbs. Every time Georgia had ever seen him, he’d been decked out in a racing shirt and Lycra shorts so adherent they left nothing to the imagination. His partner, a sidesplittingly funny graphic designer named Jace, represented the opposite extreme: he personified the term couch potato. They lived down the street from Jonah.

  Appalled, she said, “The guy has an objection to you having friends?”

  “In his eyes, the only thing three gay men could possibly be doing together is some kind of unholy ménage à trois, and obviously he couldn’t let that shit go unchallenged. He punched me in the face and Tuck called the police.”

  Georgia glanced at Darby to see how she was handling all this. She sat, wide-eyed, between the two of them, her mouth frozen in a little O, reaching up for the dainty cross at her throat.

  So: Darby was literally clutching her pearls. She looked so uncomfortable Georgia would have laughed if her anger at the situation hadn’t already alchemized into something physical, burning her face in a red-hot flare. After a brief glance at her, Jonah buried his head in the crook of an elbow. “Talk about something else, please,” he said. “And look away. I’m hideous.”

  “You really are,” Georgia agreed in a thick voice. “I’m not sure we can be friends any longer.”

  Darby went with a different tactic, one doomed to fail. “Oh, honey. Nobody cares how you look.”

  “Everyone cares how I look. It’s the only thing people care about. There’s nothing else—”

  Georgia jumped in before the rest of the morning devolved into a discussion of Jonah’s physical beauty, or current lack thereof. He would feel better if they could distract him. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “Yes. With a bit of help from pharmaceuticals.”

  Darby looked up. “Have you tried melatonin?”

  “Melatonin is okay but bourbon works better.”

  “Oh, Jonah—”

  “Joke. I’m kidding! Actually, bourbon is crap compared to oxy.”

  Darby fanned herself.

  He shot her an evil grin. “Just kidding again. Let’s move on and dissect Georgia’s life for a while.”

  “I’m the boring one here.”

  “Please,” said Darby. “I’m the boring one. You and Jonah are so . . . vivid.”

  “Vivid being code for unwholesome,” Jonah said.

  “No,” Darby protested but her cheeks had gone pink.

  “Well, I’m certainly not unwholes
ome,” Georgia said.

  “Hmm,” said Jonah. He grinned. “How are things going with the Dutchman?”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “I’d say pretty well. We talk every day. And he’s definitely coming to visit.”

  “Yeah!” The glee in Jonah’s voice was unmistakable. “When?”

  “Next week.”

  She knew she was setting herself up for Jonah to have fun with this, but Darby changed the subject. “Hey, I’ve been wanting to ask you.” She shot a nervous glance at Georgia. “Have you seen any of those surgeons again? Or Donovan Wright?”

  Jonah stiffened. “What happened with Donovan Wright?”

  “Nothing,” Georgia said. “Some resident got all hostile with Darby for no reason.”

  “Somebody got all hostile with Darby?”

  Darby looked from Georgia to Jonah. “Donovan defended me. It was sweet.”

  “You know what?” Georgia said, before Jonah could react to Darby’s statement. “Darby, I’d love more coffee.”

  Darby jumped up. A breeze blew in over the marsh, rustling the palm fronds in a skeletal rattle as Georgia leveled a murderous glare at Jonah. He mimed an apology and she mimed an acceptance. This wordless communication over, she felt herself relax. She still had no desire to share the story with Darby or anyone else, but in recent days, the specter of Donovan Wright seemed to be losing its power over her.

  Jonah must have been thinking something along the same lines, because he leaned toward her, speaking in an exaggerated whisper that was almost louder than regular speech. “We have to talk.”

  “I know.” In hopes that he’d take the hint, she made her whisper nearly inaudible.

  He didn’t. “I did it,” he said, at normal volume. “I did the thing we planned. Last night.”

  She was torn between the urge to ask him to shush and the urge to pry information from him. “How did it g—”

  The glass door grated along its tracks and Darby reappeared with a fresh pot of coffee to refill their cups, her bangled wrists flashing crazy fireflies of morning sunlight onto the surface of the porch as she flitted around. Darby appeared not to notice the sudden tension in Georgia and Jonah, both of whom sipped their coffee, mute, as they stared out over the marsh.