“What are you ta …”
“I think I’d like to be alone,” I said. I’m terrified of being alone again. But that wasn’t what frightened me, and I knew it. Being alone is not the same as being apart from someone you love. What I should have said was I think you’re leaving, so I’ll just make sure of it.
Tom picked up all the trash except my cup and the plate with the remaining half Danish, the cardboard pastry now trapped in congealed goo. The clock on the cafeteria wall hadn’t moved since we came in, and it didn’t move after Tom walked away, so I have no idea how long I sat there wanting to punch someone.
Mostly myself.
My hot flash had been replaced by a chill, and a shiver shook me out of my paralysis. I got up. I would find Tom and we would find a quiet spot and I would apologize and then I would shut up and hear what he had to say. I scurried down the hall.
A nurse had just left Mom’s room, and she intercepted me. “She’s finally fallen asleep.”
“I won’t wake her,” I said. “Is anyone else in there?”
“No, just Mrs. Bruce,” she said, and bustled off.
I wouldn’t have answered my phone, but its ringing seemed obscene in the medicinal quiet of the early morning corridor. I thought
I had turned it off, but lately nothing I thought seemed to be right. I flipped it open and ducked into the stairwell, trying to keep my voice low.
It was Alberta. She wanted me to photograph the feral cats and the cat colony set up. I assumed this was a request for pro bono photography, since most rescue groups have no discretionary funds, but she said, “Okay if I give you the retainer when I see you? Or I can send it by, what’s that computer thing?”
I told her not to worry, she could pay me when I finished. I was happy not to be paid at all this time, but I couldn’t afford to turn down the money.
“Any chance you can come this afternoon or tomorrow? I mean, if your mother is okay?” It seemed like an afterthought. “It’s so nice out, I thought you could get …”
I filled her in. “But I don’t need to be here at the hospital all afternoon,” I said. “Tomorrow’s out. I’m going with Tom to look at a litter of puppies. At least that’s the plan, unless something happens.” We set a time and I walked back to Mom’s room, thinking Tom should be back by now.
He was not. I checked the waiting area where Doctor Krishna and I had spoken, but he wasn’t there either. He wasn’t in any of the other sitting areas on that floor. My pulse thundered in my ears. I went back to Mom’s room, thinking he might have left me a note. Maybe he had gone to the lounge downstairs.
He hadn’t, and his jacket was no longer draped over the chair where he had left it earlier. The tea and morsel of Danish I’d eaten turned to lead in my stomach, and then I saw something on the bureau. No note. Just my keys. What was it I had told him in the cafeteria? I think I’d like to be alone.
I had never felt so alone.
forty-two
Doing something with my dog and cat usually dulls whatever pain bedevils me, so I headed straight out the back door when I got home. Jay brought me his tennis ball, I threw it, and he took off with Leo right behind him. I broke the film of ice that capped the birdbath and threw the ball again, but the boys ignored me and shot around the side of the house. They reappeared a few seconds later, dancing around Goldie’s feet. She wore a bright-blue ski jacket and a Fair Isle cap in lollipop colors, and carried a covered baking pan.
“How’s your mom?” She obviously saw the surprise on my face and said, “I saw Tom get out of the taxi this morning. He told me.”
I filled her in, and said, “She was sleeping when I left. I’ll call in an hour or so for an update.”
“Tom must have had an early class,” said Goldie, bending to pick up Leo. He settled into her arms and I could hear his motor running from three feet away. She smiled at him and I swear he smiled back.
“You need a cat, my friend,” I said. I felt more comfortable talking about cats and dogs, or even my mother, than about Tom at the moment. Besides, Goldie had talked to Tom and probably already knew that all was not well.
Jay shoved his tennis ball into my knee. I started to tell him the game was over, but the anticipation blazed across his face stopped me. I took the sopping ball out of his mouth and told Goldie, “You might want to put Catman down before I throw this.”
“Good idea,” she said. Leo was finely focused on Jay, and he poured out of Goldie’s arms and tucked himself into a crouch that said, “Ready!”
I got three more tosses in before we reached the back door. Each time, Leo chased Jay and Jay chased the ball. They followed us into the house, both of them panting, and lay down together on Jay’s bed. Leo patted Jay’s muzzle with his paw, and was rewarded with a slurp across his neck and cheek.
Goldie pulled her cap off, releasing a tumble of silver waves that stood out in an electric halo. “Oh,” she said, shaking her head and crinkling her nose, “that static tickles my nose.” She set the pan on the table and peered over her glasses at me where I had collapsed into a kitchen chair. “Shall I get you a plate and put the kettle on for tea?”
“No, thanks, but help yourself,” I said, kicking my shoes off and crossing my feet on a chair. “I ate at the hospital.”
Goldie’s eyebrows rose.
“Cardboard pastry, but filling.”
She sat down across the table from me and asked for more details about my mother. Then she switched topics, as I knew she would. “What’s up with you and Tom?”
I didn’t answer. Goldie fished some hair pins from her pocket and began twisting and looping and pinning her hair, and I marveled at her ability to create an intricate up sweep without benefit of brush or mirror. I can barely manage to catch a clump of my hair in a giant jaw clip. She finished her do and sat watching me, her fingertip tapping the table.
As much as I didn’t want to talk about my so-called love life, the subject was gnawing at me. “What did Tom tell you?” I asked.
“That you needed to stay with your mom and he had places to go,” said Goldie.
I wasn’t surprised that Tom would keep our problems to himself, but I also wouldn’t have been surprised if he had told Goldie every stupid little detail of our conversation, if you could call what we’d had that morning a conversation.
“But he looked like he’d been run over by a truck,” said Goldie.
Maybe the same truck that ran over me when I overheard him asking about quarantines and vaccine requirements for dogs? “Probably tired.”
“Uh huh. I’m sure that was it.”
I really didn’t want to get into the disturbing trajectory of my relationship, so I said, “If all is well with Mom, I’m going to photograph Alberta’s feral cat colony in a bit. You want to come? We can visit the kittens, too.”
She said yes, she’d love to go. “Do you have any of that blackberry sage? A cup of tea sounds good.” I started to get up but she waved me to stay where I was and went about the tea making.
“Could you please grab me an egg from the bowl in the fridge?” I asked. “I think I need some protein.” I think I need a week in Tahiti.
My cell phone rang and I answered, thinking it might be the hospital. Or Tom. Let it be Tom. Of course, I knew by the ring that it wasn’t him.
“Janet, how are you doing?” It was Norm, and he didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m back at the hospital and thought I’d fill you in.”
Goldie set a mug in front of me and I inhaled the sweet fragrance. Blackberry sage tea never fails to calm and lift me all at once. I mouthed a thank you and she squeezed my shoulder and sat down.
“They wanted to run a bunch of tests but Mom is feisty this morning and she has declined,” said Norm. He lowered his voice a notch and continued. “Her boyfriend, Anthony, is here with his daughter. They’re so cute together I can’t stand it. Him and
Mom, I mean.
I had to smile at that. “I know.”
Norm went back to his normal voice. “Anyway, she doesn’t want more tests, so she’s going back to Shadetree any time now. We’re just waiting for the ambulance or transport vehicle or whatever they call it.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll leave in a few minutes.”
“No need. She’s really tired and will probably fall asleep the minute she’s in her own bed. I’ll follow them and stay until she’s settled. Then I’m off to pick Bill up. He caught an earlier flight and will be in at two-ten.”
“But I should …”
“Let’s do this in shifts, okay?” He chuckled. “Besides, Mom was pretty adamant that she wants some private time with Anthony, and doesn’t want us hanging around her as if we’re on a death watch. Her words.”
Yes, they would be, I thought. Terrible words. I felt myself spinning off into a deep space of loneliness, all my tethers suddenly torn loose. Then Norm’s chipper voice threw me a lifeline and I floated back into the moment.
“Be sure to keep your phone charged,” he said. I’m notorious for letting the battery run down. “And go do something fun. Go take some photos or play with the fur boys, or,” he filled his tone with innuendos, “that big handsome boy of yours.”
Have I mentioned how much I love Norm? He gives me all the brotherly affections that my biological brother, Bill, finds so difficult. If Bill hadn’t moved in with him, I’d have to adopt Norm myself.
I called Alberta to see if we could meet her in about ninety minutes. Fine with her. Goldie went home to change into suitable pants and boots, and I slipped into a quick shower. My peppermint essence steam trick worked its magic and I stepped out feeling slightly more able to function. On a scale of one to ten, with one being comatose and ten being gung ho, I moved up to about a three.
Leo was waiting for me on my bed, and he meowed and stretched when I entered the bedroom. “Hey, Catman.” I sat down and ran my hand over his long, sleek felineness. “We’ll practice this evening, okay, Leo mio?” He squinted at me and chirped. “I know, you don’t really need the practice.” Which was true. I was the most-likely-to-mess-up team member whenever I performed with my animals. I got up and pulled clean jeans and a sweatshirt out of the closet, and realized that Leo had bumped me up another notch on the functional scale.
And then I opened a drawer in my bureau. I was looking for socks, but I didn’t expect the ones that I saw to be Tom’s. It used to be my sock drawer, but I had cleared it to give Tom a place to park a few necessities. Apparently the stress of the past twenty-four hours had pitched me back into my old routine. Next to the brown fuzzy socks was an olive green T-shirt, the one that brought out the green flecks in the man’s brown eyes whenever he wore it. I picked it up and held it to my face, but it smelled of nothing more personal than dryer sheets. I laid it back in the drawer, smoothed it out with my palm, and gently pushed the drawer shut.
By the time I had my jeans and sweatshirt on, I was angry at myself for being such a wimp about asking straight out what Tom was planning. I even thought about calling him to apologize and to plead insanity at the thought of his leaving, even if it wasn’t forever. But that thought conjured the betrayal I had felt when I heard him on the phone. If he was planning to take Drake abroad with him, he had to be planning to be there a long time. From there my heart whirled back to old betrayals, years old but still thinly scabbed. I yanked the knot tight in my boot laces, feeling even angrier, but no longer at myself.
forty-three
“Are you sure you heard what you think you heard?” Goldie and I were headed for the feral cat colony managed by Alberta and her friends, and now that she had me captive in the car, Goldie had steered the conversation back to me and Tom.
“I know what I heard,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Goldie I glanced at her, but she had her eyes averted, as if there were anything interesting to see on this familiar stretch of downtown road.
“Look, if you know something I don’t but should, just cough it up, would you?”
Goldie shifted toward me as far as her seatbelt allowed and said, “You’re under a lot of stress, and it’s possible you’re overreacting. Things aren’t always what they seem.”
“And besides, it’s okay to keep big fat secrets from friends who love you, right?” Put a sock in it, Janet, whispered my guardian angel.
But Goldie had kept a big fat secret all summer, and although I understood, sort of, why she had chosen to do so, I wasn’t entirely over it.
Goldie sighed a little too dramatically and said, “That’s not fair. I really don’t think this is the same.” She paused before she said, “Besides, Tom isn’t Chet.” Meaning my jerk of an ex-husband. “I think you should tell Tom what you overheard and ask him outright what it’s all about.”
“He’s planning to rent out his house, Goldie. He’s obviously going somewhere.”
“Maybe not as far as you think.” I barely heard her.
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer. I might have pursued it, but my phone rang, so instead I said, “Could you get that? Might be about Mom.”
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“Who is it?” I asked.
Her hand fluttered at me. “Yes, I understand.” Pause. “We’re on our way there now … Yes, to Alberta’s place and then the cat colony …
Okay, yes, I’ll let her know.” She flipped my phone closed.
“What? Who is that?”
“Your policeman friend. Hutcherson, is it?”
“Hutchinson.”
“He said he’ll talk to you when you get there.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t really say.”
Which I didn’t believe for a second. “My friends sure have a lot of secrets,” I said.
I knew as we approached the entrance to Alberta’s subdivision that whatever was going on, that was the place.
“Oh, no, this is déjà vu all over again.” A police cruiser blocked the road between Alberta’s driveway and the bulldozer that was still sitting on a flatbed trailer by the pond. I caught a glimpse of something big and orange in front of the trailer, but lost sight of it when I turned into the driveway.
Hutchinson left Alberta standing on her front porch and came out to meet me. “What now?” I asked.
“Vandalism. Someone spray-painted the rocks,” said Hutchinson.
At first I thought he meant the boulders that Alberta had incorporated into her landscaping, but they looked normal. Then Goldie started to laugh. Her left hand pointed past the flatbed and her right fist was raised in the air. “Don’t let them pave paradise!” she shouted.
The pile of bland white rocks that the community association planned to dump along the edge of the pond to “improve it” looked from that distance like coals ready for a giant’s cookout. Then I realized what had happened, and smiled. Someone had spray painted the whole lot of them fluorescent orange.
“They have any clues?” I asked, hoping that whoever did it got away.
“Oh, yeah,” said Hutchinson. “Two college kids. Apparently the one they caught has had a couple of run-ins with the police before.”
I couldn’t think of any eco-terrorists in my immediate circle of friends, although I was sure Goldie wouldn’t mind wearing the label. The young women I had met on campus flashed into my mind. “You get a name?”
“I didn’t. Why?” Hutchinson frowned at me. “What do you know about this?”
“No! Nothing. I mean, I met some kids on campus, that’s all.”
Hutchinson gave me an odd look but didn’t say anything more. I heard voices and looked toward the far end of the pond, where a group of six or seven people were emerging from the woods. “What’s that all about?”
Alberta spoke for the first time. “They’re surveying the
woods and wetlands.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“A group of university students, a couple of volunteers from my birding group.”
I squinted at the group. “Is that Peg?” Peg was the office manager for my veterinarian.
“Oh, goodie,” said Goldie, elbowing me. “The gang’s all here!” Goldie and Peg had become friends after I got them together a few months earlier.
Alberta said Peg was a member of her birding group, and then said, “We also have a professor from Purdue.” She laughed. “I believe you know that one, Janet.”
As Alberta spoke, the group skirted the pond and emerged from the shadow of the woods, making my heart beat a little faster. I did indeed know the professor. I knew the light in his graying hair and beard, I knew his jacket, I knew the angle of his shoulders and the way he moved easily across open ground. I also knew the way he made me weak in the knees, and none of my feelings of the past twenty-four hours muffled that response.
Goldie gestured toward Tom with her head, as if I should go talk to him right then and there. I stepped away from her and turned toward Hutchinson.
“Were the women with that group? The one you’ve arrested and the other one ?”
“I didn’t arrest anyone. I’m off-duty today,” he said. “ But no, from what I gather the girls …” He looked at me and said, “Women?”
I suppressed a smile and nodded. Apparently my efforts at consciousness raising were having an effect.
“The young women came later. The neighbor called it in.” He looked away from the pond and pointed with his chin, and for the first time I noticed an elderly man standing on a porch, leaning into a walker. “He says he saw them pull up and start monkeying around near the trailer. He thought they were trying to sabotage the bulldozer. Says he had just come out for some air and didn’t even know the other group was here, so they don’t seem to be connected. At least not at first glance.”
That was a relief. Tom was possibly a murder suspect as it was. He didn’t need to be implicated in vandalism, too.
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