“You’re Seth Grissom’s family?” he said.
We gave him a chorus of yeses. Randi turned to me, eyes still searing, but Paul squeezed her shoulders and she looked away. I didn’t care what she did. I was staying.
“I’m Dr. O’Brien,” he said. “Seth’s stable, okay? You got to him soon enough. This was a benzodiazepene overdose, but we’ve prevented it from going into his blood.”
“So we can see him.” Randi was already pulling away from Paul and moving toward the doors.
“He’s still groggy. Pretty confused. We’ll keep him on the Flumazenil IV until he comes around completely.”
“We’ll be able to take him home then,” Paul said.
Dr. O’Brien looked slightly patronizing. “He’ll be in ICU with one-to-one precautions for a bit and then we’ll admit him to the psych ward for at least seventy-two hours.”
“He doesn’t need a psych ward,” Randi said, more to me than to the doctor.
“Your son—he’s your son?”
“Yes—”
“Your son tried to commit suicide, okay? We can’t let him go home until we can be relatively certain he’s not going to do it again, which means follow-up psychiatric treatment.” He nodded as if we were all agreeing with him. “I think the fact that he called—one of you—before he lost consciousness is an indication that he didn’t actually want to die. That’s a hopeful sign. A psychiatrist will give you a better picture of his prognosis—”
“My son does not need a psychiatrist either—”
“This is the law, Ms. Grissom, okay? Our hands are tied.”
“They should be.”
“Randi.”
Paul seldom used a tone that could even cut warm butter, but the one he took now would have sliced me open. It didn’t have that effect on Randi, but she did turn away from the doctor and yank her cell phone out of her purse. She poked numbers as she stomped out of our earshot.
“Who is she calling at two o’clock in the morning?” Mama murmured to me.
“It’s two a.m.?” I said.
“Past that,” Daddy said.
“Wow,” I said. “It’s my wedding day.”
ELEVEN
I wasn’t allowed to see Seth. Randi refused to put me on his limited visitors list, and I knew if he asked for me, she wouldn’t tell me.
As the wee hours crept their small way toward the light, I sat on the window seat in my room, clutching the tea Mama made me that had long since gone cold, and tried to form scenes in my head. But no scenario I could twist and mold and shape into something acceptable would come to me.
So I spent Saturday under the covers in my bed, drifting in and out of sleep. It was the only way to keep the spines of anxiety from stabbing through my chest and into all the other parts of me. Mama brought more tea and, later, cinnamon toast. Daddy came once and sat on the edge of the bed. Kellen didn’t, and I didn’t ask anyone why.
Sunday I climbed out at about ten a.m. I had to be at work at two, and although my first three shifts hadn’t brought me much closer to the efficient employee Wendy told me Ike wanted, I was eager to get to the Piebald and push the pain way back someplace where it couldn’t spear into me every time I opened my eyes.
I was so eager, in fact, that I got there at twelve and sat at the small bar whose stools were within a few feet of the food counter. From there I could watch the morning shift people take orders and serve pastries and talk to the customers. I absorbed a whole lot more than when I was in the middle of it trying to catch up with myself.
Every time the image of Seth’s eyes half-open and his hand dangling over the empty Xanax container tried to form in my mind, I smacked it out of the way and focused on how Zoo-Loo brewed a cup of Darjeeling or Ike coaxed a couple into adding two cranberry-walnut muffins to their coffee order. Smooth and cool and intentional. That was the way to be.
It was almost time for my shift when Ms. Helen appeared at the counter. She was the one with the salt-and-pepper bob and the round red-framed glasses whose sandwich order I’d botched. I hesitated on my way to grab my apron and watched her laugh with Ike as if she were delighted by his every word. And not just as if. I had only seen her twice, but I couldn’t imagine her doing anything that wasn’t genuine.
As she turned to take a steaming mug to a table, she caught me watching her and her hazel eyes brightened.
“How is it going, honey?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to ask Ike.”
Ms. Helen looked straight at him, and the pause made me sorry I’d asked. Ike didn’t do anything that wasn’t genuine either.
“I think she’s gonna be all right, Ms. Helen,” he said. “We’re starting her on coffee drinks today.”
“She’ll just be smashing,” she said.
Ike grinned at me when she’d gone down the ramp to her table. “Did she just use the word smashing?”
“She totally did.”
“I love that woman.”
I didn’t see how anybody wouldn’t.
Wendy was off that day and we weren’t slammed, so Ike took every spare moment to teach me how to make lattes—so that was how they did it—and cappuccinos and mochas. The instructions were posted above the steamers and espresso makers, but I set a goal of not having to look at them by two days from then. I kept telling myself it was helping me forget.
“Take a break,” Ike told me around four thirty. “The dinner crowd will be here in about thirty minutes, so now’s your chance. Although”—he did the one-finger thing to push back his fedora—“the Sunday before Christmas? I’m not sure it’ll actually be a crowd. You have big plans for the holidays?”
The shift was so subtle I almost didn’t catch it. When I did, I fumbled all over myself. Fortunately I wasn’t attempting to make a caffè americano at the time.
“No. I mean, I did, but then . . . it’s just going to be family.”
“No boyfriend?” he said.
“Not anymore.”
For the love of the land, why did I say that?
Ike pressed his lips into a line and then said, “Sorry to hear that.”
“Me too. But it’s okay . . . you know . . . I’ll be fine . . .”
“Yeah, but that’s tough at Christmastime.”
Something dinged. Literally saved by the bell, I pretty much ran to the toaster oven and pulled out the pear and Brie.
“That’s for Ms. Helen,” Ike said.
“I’ll take it to her,” I said.
“We don’t usually do table service, but in this case, yeah, that would be nice.”
When I delivered sandwich, chips, and napkin to Ms. Helen at the rickety-looking table in the corner next to the Christmas tree, she seemed to think it was more than nice.
“Well, bless your heart,” she said. “Aren’t you just the sweetest thing?”
“I’m not supposed to make a habit of it,” I said. “But I wanted to thank you.”
“I can’t imagine what for.” She patted the seat of the chair next to her. “Can you sit for a minute?”
“I’m on break,” I said. “I guess it’s okay. I don’t even know all the rules yet.”
“I think it’s fine. You might want to take off your apron. They usually do.”
I wasn’t sure who they were, but I pulled it off and slipped into the chair. It rocked unevenly on the floor.
“Now, I just can’t stand that,” Ms. Helen said. “Let me fix it.”
I sat there, eyes popping, as she reached into a rather large red-print quilted bag, pulled out a slim wooden wedge, and slid it under one leg of the chair.
“How’s that?” she said.
“Perfect,” I said. “You actually carry a shim in your purse?”
“Several of them. I love the Piebald, but honey, there isn’t an even-legged chair or table in the place and that is a fact.”
I really wanted to know what else was in that bag.
“Now, what did you want to thank me for?”
> “Oh. You’ve just been so encouraging since I started working here.” I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was sitting closer than three tables away. “I’m still a mess back there—”
“No, you are not. I’ve been watching you. You’re lovely with the customers.”
“Even when I give them the wrong sandwich?”
“Who could ever be upset with you? You’re just as darlin’ as you can be.”
The tears were in my eyes before I could stop them, and they threatened to brim over onto my face. Ms. Helen reached into the bag, pulled out a Kleenex, and tucked it into my hand.
“This time of year can be so hard,” she said, gazing briefly at the Christmas tree hung with art student ornaments. “That’s one of the reasons I moved here after my husband died. I spent the first year still in Charleston trying to keep up with all our traditions, and it just broke my heart. I decided in January I wasn’t doing that again, so in February I came here and just started over.” She folded sweatered arms lightly on the tabletop. “My friends told me I’d be home in six months, but, honey, I think this is home now. Savannah wraps its arms around you and says, ‘Why don’t you stay? You know you want to.’ ”
“I guess it does,” I said. “It’s always been home to me.”
I closed my eyes, but a few drops still escaped. The rest were caught in my throat.
“I’m so sorry,” Ms. Helen said. “I’m so sorry.”
There was no invitation to share more. We just sat in silence. A silence I could have bundled up in like a big quilt. Made by Ms. Helen.
That night I fell into a real sleep that didn’t take me into dreams as dark and twisted as a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I was so sleep deprived it was going to take several more nights like that for me to feel human again, but that one was enough to get me out of bed and off to work, again two hours early. Any downtime just brought back images of Seth hanging off the couch or Seth begging me to help him. Or me refusing.
So that was my rhythm for the next few days, Monday the twenty-second and Tuesday the twenty-third. I went to the coffee shop at noon and watched the morning shift, which was helping my performance tremendously according to Wendy, and worked my own shift and then stayed a little after to chat with Ms. Helen. Actually she did most of the chatting while I listened to her life story, in complete gratitude that she didn’t ask me any questions. It was nothing, really, and yet it felt like something.
I planned to do almost the same thing on Wednesday, Christmas Eve, but Mama put the kibosh on that.
“Okay,” I said to her deflated face. “We’re closing at five. I’ll be home in time for dinner and the service and everything.”
“Please do,” she said. Tears were about to splash into the piecrust she was crimping. “Or Daddy will be so disappointed.”
I knew Daddy wasn’t the only one who was feeling the stinginess of this Christmas. GrandMary didn’t come back after all. All the relatives who had planned to stay in town after the wedding had made other plans, probably to avoid the awkwardness that had become our life. It would just be the four of us, and it probably hadn’t escaped my parents that Kellen wasn’t talking to me.
“We’ll make it wonderful,” I said.
And then I sobbed all the way to the Piebald.
The snot-producing crying necessitated a trip to the bathroom to put myself back together. When I came out, Ike was standing there as if he’d been waiting for me. He was wearing a tie with a rather skinny Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cascading down it, and he had a sprig of holly in the band of his fedora. I hadn’t even thought about wearing anything festive.
“Can you start now?” he said. “One of my people didn’t show up.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’ll pay you time and a half.”
“You don’t have to.”
Ike looked at me curiously. “Have you ever actually had a job before, Tara?”
“Yes,” I said. “Kind of.”
“Okay, rule number one for being an employee: never turn down extra money.”
“Got it,” I said. And felt like I was five years old.
I tied on my apron and got to the counter just as a woman rushed up the ramp with her red-haired ponytail swinging and her startling brown eyes already pointed at the pastry case.
“Is that all you have left?” she said. Her voice was gravelly but not in a way that grated on me. It actually made me want to laugh.
I turned to let Ike handle it but he wasn’t there.
“Really—are those all the baked goods you have left?” she said.
I looked into the case at two lonely scones, three muffins, and a dozen Christmas tree cookies.
“Let me check,” I said. “Can you just wait right here?”
“Where else am I going to go? I’ve been to every bakery and coffee shop that’s open and you’ve got more than any of them. Why does everybody stop baking at nine o’clock in the morning?”
I listened to all of that, nodding for no apparent reason, until she looked pointedly toward the kitchen.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Let me just go see.”
I turned around, took two steps, and ran into Ike.
“Do we have any more baked goods in the back?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “We have another batch of cookies that’ll be ready in about ten minutes.”
“Good. This lady wants them.”
“Okay. Tara.”
“What?”
“Why are we whispering?”
I let out a guffaw, and Ike grinned at me.
“You’re killin’ me, girl,” he said. “You’re killin’ me.”
I delivered the good news to the red-haired woman, who looked as if I’d told her that her German shepherd didn’t have to be put down after all. Surely she had a German shepherd. Maybe two.
“Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” I said. “I can make you a mean latte.”
“Make me a nice black coffee and you’re on,” she said.
As I poured her a cup of the Piebald House Blend I considered her voice some more. She had the Savannah dropping of g’s and elongating of vowels going on, but the accent sounded a little faded, as if some Yankee influence had come in and tried to steal it away. Something edged on aggressive about her. Assertive—that’s what she was.
I needed to get me some of that.
“Here you go,” I said. “Ike’s boxing up your goodies and you can pay him at the register.”
“You just saved my life,” she said. “If I showed up at my mother’s empty-handed I’d be in even worse with her than I am already.”
The woman had to be thirty-five. But then, your mother is your mother, no matter how old you are.
“I hear that,” I said.
She stuck her hand out across the counter. “Gray Murphy,” she said.
“Tara Faulkner,” I said.
“Any relation to William?”
“I hope not.”
“Girl after my own heart. What’s with the sentences that go on for three pages?”
“I know, right? You can never find the end of them and when you do, you forget what was at the beginning.”
“Thank you. People think he’s the father of Southern literature. Right. The alcoholic father.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “He was invited to speak to a group of aspiring authors at Harvard one time and he got there drunk, staggered out on the stage, and said—I guess slurred—‘You people want to write?’ They were all, ‘Yes!’ And he said, ‘Then go home and write.’ And then he, like, stumbled off the stage.”
Gray gave me a long, sober look. “Oh. My. Gosh. I love that so much. Love. It. Where did you hear that?”
“Grad school,” I said.
“Here you go,” Ike said behind me. “Tara, you want to ring this up?”
“Glad to,” I said.
“Listen,” Gray said, “I’m leaving you a good tip. This is the first decent conversation I’ve ha
d since I came back here.” She tapped the counter with her wallet. “I like you.”
I wanted to hug her.
Christmas was another montage, a series of scenes I acted my way through with a less than stellar performance while Elvis sang “Blue Christmas.” Our traditional Christmas Eve shrimp and crusty bread supper in front of the fireplace. Our family walk to the church on Johnson Square—one of Georgia’s white-pillared mother churches that had tried to die in the 1970s and had been resurrected by a young Paul Grissom a little over thirty years ago. The candlelight service blossoming with carols and poinsettias and scripture I could have recited right along with Daddy as he stood at the lectern and read the nativity story in his sonorous baritone. The return home to open one gift before we toppled into bed. The Christmas morning of torn paper and tearful thank-yous and a warm loaf of Mama’s banana bread.
We reenacted those scenes every year, yet this time each one was missing a piece and demanded a retake.
Kellen remained peevish over the Christmas Eve supper. When one out of four people around a coffee table isn’t talking, the conversation of the remaining three tends to be fairly stilted. I ate two shrimp.
En route to the church, when we usually followed Mama and Daddy and reminisced about Christmases past, Kellen did speak to me. He said, “I don’t blame you for Seth trying to take himself out. But you could’ve helped him. I told you he needed you to help him.” I stared at him in the light of the tree in the square just to make sure it was still my brother I was walking with. I didn’t respond.
None of the Grissoms were in church except, of course, Paul. Seth was supposed to get out of the hospital Tuesday. This was Wednesday. Randi must be afraid to leave him alone. Seth had never missed a Christmas Eve service, even the year he had strep throat and couldn’t croak out “Silent Night.”
Back home, sitting at the foot of the family room Christmas tree—one of three in the house—the gift I opened was from Mama. It was a white flannel nightgown. Perfect for a winter honeymoon in Ireland.
I didn’t crawl happily into bed and squeeze my eyes shut so I could fall asleep and make morning come fast. This was supposed to be my first Christmas married to Seth. I should be spooned against him under the snowy comforter and turning to him to make love. I didn’t want to close my eyes. I knew I would only see flashes of things that weren’t lovemaking at all.
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