by Jane Heller
“A catch,” my mother cooed.
Toni rolled her eyes. “There aren’t any catches in Middletown, Linda.”
“That’s not true,” said Mom. “I managed to find one.”
Toni’s nostrils flared. “Are you saying I could have found one if I’d had your impeccable taste?”
“Of course not,” said my mother. “I was only pointing out that Jim was a wonderful husband and he was from Middletown, so it’s possible that Ann will—”
“Right, but Mike was a piece of shit, and if Ann stays around here, she’s liable to end up with someone just like him.”
“Ann isn’t interested in marrying the owner of body shops, pardon your language. She deserves better.”
“Oh, and I didn’t? Is that what you’re saying?”
I forgot to mention that in addition to having panic attacks and phobias, my mother and her sister had arguments. On a regular basis. They bickered the way spouses bicker—unconsciously, reflexively.
“No, Toni,” said my mother. “You’re so defensive.”
“Okay, okay. That’s enough out of both of you girls.”
Our heads turned as Grandma Raysa entered the living room, wincing in pain. She was a wrinkled, silver-haired, seventy-eight-year-old version of my mother. Her recent hip-replacement surgery caused her to walk with a slight limp and had made her cranky.
“Hey, Gram,” I said as she plopped down in her favorite chair. Even from a few feet away, I could smell the Clorox on her. My guess was that she’d been forced to shake a stranger’s hand within the past hour. Whenever the Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking, for example, she’d let them speak their piece, then head straight for the laundry room and scrub herself raw. She had nothing against the “JWs,” as she referred to them. She was just terrified that people might bring plague and pestilence upon her house.
“Hey, yourself,” she said. “We were all wondering why you didn’t come home for dinner. Your mother made that chicken casserole you used to like. The one with the potatoes, the bisquits, and the cheese sauce.”
The low-carb craze hadn’t reached Middletown. Consequently, I’d gained a few pounds while I was trying to get my life together.
I explained about Richard and let the three of them debate his virtues versus his flaws, and eventually excused myself and went to bed.
As I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, with its flowered vinyl wallpaper and carpeted toilet-seat cover and can of Glade air freshener atop the vanity, I stared at myself in the mirror—peered at myself between all the little blue decals—and thought, Don’t panic. It’s only temporary.
Don’t panic. If only.
Chapter Ten
On Sunday night, the last Sunday in February, the Academy Awards were being presented at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. If I hadn’t been fired from Famous, it would have been my busiest day of the year. I would have been all over L.A., scrambling for stories about the nominees, writing them up and e-mailing them to Harvey at a feverish clip, and then covering all the hip and trendy parties into the wee hours. Instead, I was home with the girls.
My mother, aunt, and grandmother always watched the Oscars in the den, which, like the rest of the fifties, ranch-style house, was straight out of an old Ethan Allen catalog and was, therefore, the antithesis of hip and trendy. They had a ritual for the occasion, which began with tray tables in front of the TV, whose screen wasn’t much bigger than my computer monitor, and continued with my mother’s special “red-carpet dinner” (beef tenderloin slathered in béarnaise sauce, baked potatoes stuffed with cheddar cheese topped with bacon bits, and hearts of palm buried under Russian dressing), and ended with my grandmother demanding to know why everybody who won an award had to thank Jesus for it.
I tried to be thrilled to have the night off from work for the first time in five years—thrilled to be wearing jeans and a sweater instead of some designer knockoff that required holding in my stomach. But about an hour before the show, I got very fidgety. I kept thinking, What am I doing here when I should be there? More than ever, I felt as if I’d been drop-kicked right out of the splashiest event on earth, and before I knew it, I was focusing on Malcolm Goddard and his contribution to my fall from grace. All the humiliation and anger came thundering back, and I realized there was no way I could sit in my mother’s den and watch that pompous pain in the ass on television, watch him look all tortured-movie-star-ish in his tuxedo, watch him be pawed by Rebecca Truit while the best actor nominations were read, watch him walk up to the podium to receive—Nope. The very thought of hanging around for the spectacle made me ill.
So I spent that Sunday night at the Caffeine Scene, writing up my interview with Richard for the Crier and drowning my sorrows in bad coffee. My fingers were running along the keyboard of my laptop when the doctor himself suddenly materialized over my shoulder.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said cheerfully. Without waiting for an invitation, he eased himself down into the chair opposite mine and deposited his laptop on my table. When I’d last seen him at the hospital, he’d been all dressed up under his white lab coat, but he was in more casual attire this time. Well, casual for him. No bow tie, but a button-down shirt and pleated slacks with cuffs. I wondered if he even owned a pair of jeans.
“Fancy meeting you too,” I said, amused by the coincidence. “I was just typing up the piece about you.”
“I would have thought you’d be hosting an Oscars party,” he said as he plugged his computer into the Internet connection and booted up. “I pictured you doing something glamorous and exciting tonight.”
“Not this year.” I smiled ruefully, not bothering to add that there wasn’t anything glamorous or exciting to do in Middletown. “What about you? What brings you here?”
He nodded at his laptop. “Work. I have research to do for the hospital. Just trying to find solutions to problems. As assistant chief of staff, it’s up to me to deal with our lack of funds, our inability to hire doctors away from other hospitals, our nursing shortage, and our need to recruit more volunteers to pick up the slack for the nurses and offer an extra pair of hands. We’re a terrific facility—just rated in the top five percent in the nation for cardiac-interventional procedures—but we’re nonprofit. We rely heavily on donations, and if we don’t get more of them, we’ll go under, just like a lot of hospitals are going under these days. We’ve got to have more paying customers too. The growing number of uninsured patients is killing our bottom line.”
Almost without taking a breath or even blinking, he went on and on about his responsibilities at the hospital, and I found myself tuning out. And it wasn’t because I didn’t care deeply about the health care crisis in this country. It was because he’d already told me all of this stuff during our interview—in excruciating detail. He’d wanted me to understand what an important job he had, and I’d gotten it. I’d really gotten it.
“Oh, jeepers. I’m boring you, aren’t I?” he said at one point, hitting himself on the side of the head. “I bet you’d much rather talk about Jude Lawson.”
I didn’t correct him this time. So he wasn’t up on his Hollywood references. So what. “You’re not boring me at all,” I said. “As I told you, I’m very proud of what you’re doing with your life. It’s very admirable.”
“Thanks.” He looked around the café. It was pretty dead that night; only four other people hunched over their computers. “Maybe after we finish working, I could whisk you off to that new jazz club in Center Creek. Or, if jazz isn’t your thing, we could drop in at the Hole in the Wall and grab a late snack.”
The Hole in the Wall was a bar and grill of the type whose menu featured buffalo chicken wings prominently. It wasn’t my favorite spot, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t want to get Richard’s hopes up. He and I were not going to have a relationship, and that was that. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll just finish up your article and get a good night’s sleep.”
He sighed, frustrated. “Jeepers, I shoul
d have come up with something more enticing than the Hole in the Wall.” He brightened. “Wait. I just remembered. There’s a place that just opened over in Lakeville. A club. A real nightclub. It’s got a DJ and dancing and it’s supposed to be very cool. I heard all the best people go there. No celebrities, but quality people, you know?”
“Richard,” I said, wishing he would just calm down and stop trying so hard. “I’m—”
“Oh,” he said, cutting me off. “Maybe you don’t like to dance. Do you like to, Ann? Dance, I mean? If you don’t, we could skip the club and take a drive and—”
I stood up and patted his left forearm. “I’m going home after I finish up here,” I said gently. “But first I’m getting another decaf. Can I bring you anything?”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he said, clearly discouraged, the same way he’d been discouraged when we were in high school.
When I returned to the table with our coffees a few minutes later, I found him sitting in my seat, poring over my computer screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked, genuinely taken aback.
“Just making sure you wrote nice things about me,” he said with a chuckle.
THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY night, I was back at the Caffeine Scene, writing up an interview I’d done with a woman whose Ford Expedition had flipped over into a ravine and trapped her there for twenty-four hours. Unhurt but extremely hungry, she’d subsisted on the family pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups that she happened to have in her purse. She was a nice lady, but, God, did I want to go back to L.A.
“We meet again,” said a voice that turned out to be Richard’s.
“Oh,” I said, surprised to see him and even more surprised when he and his computer made themselves right at home at my table, just like the last time.
“I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said, fingering his bow tie. “Great minds think alike, that’s all. Besides, even if we’re not compatible, our computers are. Not everyone outside Hollywood has a PC; I’ve got a Mac too.”
“Right.” I nodded. We’d already had the Mac-versus-PC discussion on Sunday night, and I had no interest in having it again.
I was about to make polite but brief conversation with him, then go back to work on my story, when he leaned across the table and said in a dramatic whisper, “I have a secret and it’ll knock your socks off.”
“Can it wait until after I finish this?” I said, really trying to make the point that I was there to work, not to be dragged into yet another attempt by him to impress me.
He shook his head. “You’re going to flip when you hear. Jeepers, I nearly flipped myself.”
“Richard, I’m on deadline for the newspaper. I’d love to chat, but—”
“It’s completely out of bounds for me to tell you this,” he went on, continuing to lean in and speak very furtively, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I’ll lose my job if you repeat it. It’s that big, that incredible.”
I sat back in my chair and sighed. He wasn’t giving up. The man was incapable of giving up. I had no choice but to listen to whatever it was he was dying to get off his chest, act fascinated by it, and then go back to work. “Okay,” I said, forcing my eyes to widen with a curiosity I didn’t feel. “What is it?”
He cupped his hands around his mouth, to absolutely ensure that he wouldn’t be overheard or even lip-read. “A celebrity is coming to the hospital.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mean to be rude, but he was going way overboard in his attempt to ingratiate himself with me. “A celebrity?” I said, glancing down at my laptop and picturing the woman whose interview I’d been writing up. She was Middletown’s idea of a celebrity. So was the chimney sweep. So was Richard, for that matter. What was he getting all riled up about?
“That’s right,” he said, smiling and nodding now, like the proverbial cat who swallowed the canary. He had what he thought was a juicy piece of gossip, apparently, and he was bursting to share it with me. “We have a strict confidentiality policy at Heartland—we never give out information about a patient—but this is pretty amazing. I had to tell you, Ann. You of all people.”
“So who is he? Or she?” I said, trying to keep my skepticism in check. “Oh, wait. Let me guess. It’s the guy whose cousin in Boston was on Jeopardy! I’m supposed to interview him next week for the Crier, so I hope he’s not sick. Or is it the cousin who’s sick?”
“Neither,” said Richard, maintaining his air of hushed urgency, as if he were about to hand over classified CIA documents. “This is a major celebrity. A Hollywood celebrity.”
Now he was really stretching it. There were no Hollywood celebrities in Middletown. Not ever. Yes, Don Johnson grew up in Missouri. So did Brad Pitt, in fact. But they didn’t show up in my town. Why would they? “Why don’t you just tell me who it is and then we can both get on with our work,” I said as patiently as I knew how.
He leaned so far across the table that I thought his neck might snap. “It’s Malcolm Godman.”
I blinked. “Who?”
“Malcolm Godman,” he hissed, checking again for interlopers.
I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn’t be sure, not absolutely sure, to whom he was referring, given his butchering of movie-star names. Still, I felt my pulse quicken and my breathing speed up. It couldn’t be…No, of course not…Why would…And yet I had to ask. “You aren’t talking about Malcolm Goddard, are you?” I ventured.
“Shhhh.” He pressed his finger against his lips.
I swallowed, then whispered ever so softly and tentatively, “You can’t possibly mean Malcolm Goddard. Right, Richard? Right?”
He nodded, and I nearly died. Really. My tongue fell out of my mouth and drool started dribbling down my chin, and I was too stunned to wipe it off.
“I knew you’d be impressed,” he said, beaming now.
Impressed? I was blown away. Goddard coming to Middletown? To Heartland General? How? Why? He had just gone off to shoot a film in Canada! (He’d lost the best actor Oscar to Tom Hanks, by the way; I was thrilled.) He was scheduled to be out of the country for months! I’d read it in Famous, so it had to be true!
“We got a call from his cardiologist in L.A.,” said Richard, positively gleaming with pride because he’d not only been privy to this tidbit but had now deposited it at my feet, a doggie with a bone. “Seems Mr. Goddard developed a heart problem and needs further testing, diagnosis, and treatment. He doesn’t want the media finding out about his condition, for some reason, so he asked his physician to find him the best cardiac facility in the middle of the country, away from all the hubbub. Heartland fit the bill. He’s being flown in the day after tomorrow. Or maybe it’s the day after that. Okay, I’m not sure when he’s coming, but I do know that Jonathan White, our top heart man, will oversee his care when he does come. Oh, and we’ll be admitting him under an alias. How’s that for discretion?”
I kept staring at Richard, searching his face for a sign that he was only joking, that he was making up the whole story. But why would he pick Goddard to joke about or brag about? He had no knowledge of my resentment toward him, of the fact that I might still be working at Famous if it weren’t for that snake. Besides, fleeing media scrutiny was Goddard’s MO, and it was logical that he’d want to hide out. God forbid the parasites discovered that he wasn’t the virile, healthy star everybody thought he was and then unleashed the truth on his adoring public. As for the alias, my assumption was that he would most likely trot out the “Luke Sykes” cover, just as he had at Spago.
Spago. The mere thought of that night made me—
“Did you ever interview him?” Richard asked as I kept trying to process his bombshell. I must have looked like a deranged person the way my jaw hung open and my eyes bugged out. But I was floored, dumbstruck. His news was huge and who could have predicted it?
“No,” I managed. “Never.”
“Well, you’d probably fall
for him if you did.”
“Fall for him?” I said. “He’s—”
“I know, I know. Handsome and talented and rich,” said Richard with an envious sigh. “I keep telling myself I have a lot to offer you, but how can I compete with guys in his league?”
I started to respond, then stopped myself. If Richie Grossman hadn’t gotten the hint by now that he wasn’t and never had been in a competition for my affections, then he’d never get it. Not after all these years.
“Anyway, it’s all very exciting, even if nobody but you and I and Jonathan will be in on the secret. And it is a secret, as I said. He’ll be treated like just any patient.” He chuckled. “Except that he’ll have the money to pay for his care. And we do need paying customers.”
The irony. Malcolm Goddard was the last person I ever wanted to see again. The absolute last. And yet he was coming soon. To a hospital near me.
Or, to put it in more classic movie terms, of all the medical facilities in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.
Chapter Eleven
On the drive home, I reached into my purse for my cell phone to call Tuscany, my mind racing, my fingers trembling. I figured she’d still be at the magazine, given the time difference, and punched in her extension there. Her phone rang once and I clutched, then hung up before she answered.
It’s completely out of bounds for me to tell you this. That’s what Richard had said. I could lose my job. He’d said that too, citing the hospital’s strict patient-confidentiality policy. But if it was so strict, why was the assistant chief of staff shooting his mouth off to me about Goddard? Yes, yes, he was trying to impress me the way he always did, but he was the one who was breaking the rules, not me. He was the blabber and I was simply the blabbee. I wasn’t bound by any patient-confidentiality agreement, was I?
I dialed Tuscany’s number again. There was no way I couldn’t tell her.
But after one ring, I hung up a second time. I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. Richard was a decent person, just mildly annoying. I certainly didn’t want him to lose his job on my account.