Wendy tapped her chin and narrowed her eyes as if the answer to Nina’s question might materialize if she squinted hard enough. “You know. I’m not sure. I don’t remember Dr. Alvarez—”
“I was kidding, really,” Nina reassured her in case she left in search of the family tree.
“Oh, I figured you were,” she said and laughed like someone who just realized they’d missed the joke. She slid Manny’s folder on the examining room table. “Here, let me help you with him.” She gently tugged Manny from Nina. He fought valiantly and, though he ultimately lost, he snagged Nina’s sweater in four places and scratched her shoulder.
But Manny was not to be denied. He squirmed out of Wendy’s arms, landed on the floor, and tried to make a run for it. He almost succeeded, except a man wearing a white lab coat happened by, crouched down, and nabbed him just as he reached the doorway. “Well, you must be terribly excited to see me.” He picked up Manny who, in the arms of someone tall and broad-shouldered, looked small and somewhat fearful to be held at such a height.
“I’m so sorry, I was just trying to . . .” Wendy gestured toward Nina and Manny.
“I understand,” he said and actually sounded as if he meant it. “What’s . . .” he peered under Manny’s belly, “his name?”
“Manny. And she was helping in the tug-of-war he was playing with me,” Nina explained wanting to reassure both Wendy and Dr. Whomever of the knife-pleated khaki slacks and starched buttoned-down shirt that she wasn’t upset, even with four sizable pulls in her almost new, almost cashmere sweater. Make that Aretha’s sweater.
“I’m Dr. Hernandez, the relief veterinarian for Dr. Alvarez.” He handed a dutifully ashamed Manny to the assistant and asked her to keep him company on the examination table. “What a relief, right?”
Nina suspected he used that line often, but she smiled anyway as if it was the most charming statement she’d heard all day. He seemed so familiar, but, after years of interviews and going through photos, everyone looked like someone she knew. Or everyone she knew looked like someone. “Nina O’Malley. Manny’s mother. Of sorts.”
Dr. Hernandez shook Nina’s hand, but it was one of the most distracted handshakes she’d ever experienced. He might have been mentally reviewing his agenda for the day because he didn’t so much look at her as he did past her, and he seemed to run out of energy. A strange slow-motion handshake. But it did have the advantage of giving her time to notice that even with a polite smile, a dimple appeared in his chin. And directly underneath it, as if drawn for emphasis, was the thin line of a scar.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, but he spoke as if coming out of a brain fog.
He walked over to the table and started by checking Manny’s teeth and gums. Nina hoped he wasn’t going to suggest flossing because brushing his teeth required a Sumo-wrestler hold. Manny didn’t mind the vaccine, but he resented his blood being drawn for the heartworm test. Nina knew this because he made the same low rumble in his throat when she’d take his squeeze toys away. Dr. Hernandez handed the blood sample to Wendy, who left the room to pass it off to someone else, Nina assumed, because she returned before Manny had finished having his temperature taken. Mortified by the indignity of the thermometer, Manny curled himself into a circle on the table. Nina scratched his head, but he didn’t move. Probably giving me the silent treatment, Nina thought.
Dr. Hernandez checked Manny’s throat, and Nina waited to see if he’d model the open-mouthed “Ah” when he used the tongue depressor. He didn’t. “Dr. Alvarez noted he’s allergic to beef, so he’s on potato and duck food. How’s that working out for him?”
“For him, great. For me, not so much at over a dollar a can,” Nina said.
He asked Wendy if the clinic had samples of the food Manny ate while he appeared to be pummeling Manny’s chest and stomach.
Nina cringed. She hadn’t meant to sound as if she needed a subsidy. “Wendy, don’t worry about samples. I’m not struggling. Really. It’s fine. I’ve never owned a pet before, so I didn’t even know dogs had food allergies.”
“Wow. Your first pet,” Wendy said, politely not saying the “at your age” that was clear in her tone. “Were your parents allergic to them?”
No, they were allergic to emotional attachments. Nina shrugged. “I doubt it. My brother always wanted a Yellow Lab. He probably would’ve been a great vet.”
“Really? So what does he do instead?” Wendy held Manny still while Dr. Hernandez poked and prodded.
Nina hated this moment because she knew her words would smack people on the blindsides of their hearts.
“Um, nothing. He died ten years ago.” As she anticipated, Wendy and Dr. Hernandez exchanged those glances of shared awkwardness. She expected, when he started to speak to her that it would be the standard apology. She’d learned it helped to ease their discomfort if she preempted. So, she said, “It’s okay. You didn’t know. I understand.”
He looked confused, not appeased. “Wait. I thought I had seen you before or at least met you someplace, but I couldn’t get the memory to connect. You’re Thomas’s sister?”
Nina flinched. She hadn’t been called Thomas’s sister in over ten years. In fact, she barely knew or remembered any of his friends. “Yes. How did you know?”
“He worked with a friend of my father’s who owned a construction company, Rick Higgins. I didn’t know him, really, just knew he painted for Rick because they did some work around our house and the medical office.” Dr. Hernandez sat on the stool near the counter, scribbled in Manny’s chart, then looked at Nina as if she’d just walked in to the room. “And, I guess you don’t remember me from high school, though, until now I didn’t totally remember you either.”
“I’m going to check the inventory for those samples now,” Wendy said and darted out the door.
High school? The worst four years of her teens? Nina pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and wished paper fans were still popular. But she’d have to swallow it to cool off the flush she felt radiating from her self-consciousness. All she wanted was a simple trip to the veterinarian for Manny’s check-up, not a family reunion or any reunion, especially high school. She rifled through her high school yearbook in her brain, but she didn’t remember graduating with anyone with his last name. “No, I’m sorry. The best part of high school was graduating.”
He closed the manila file, slipped his pen in his top pocket, and rubbed the top of Manny’s head. “I was three years ahead of you. That day in the cafeteria near where my friends and I sat, we weren’t very nice—”
The memory exploded, sending images showering through her brain like shrapnel. “You’re right. You weren’t.” She forgot her lunch at home, so she ate in the cafeteria that day. She hated eating there because where you sat defined your social status, and she had nowhere to go but the corner of the room. Which meant passing everyone she was invisible to. She had walked fast, so fast that she didn’t see whatever was on the floor until she was on the floor with it. She had managed not to fall flat on her back, but the red divided tray dumped its entire contents into her lap. From the waist down, her jeans were splatter painted with mashed potatoes, gravy, meatloaf, and a smattering of corn. And she had just provided front row entertainment for the basketball team table.
And Greg Hernandez was their center.
7
As most significant events in Greg Hernandez’s life, this too began with a phone call. This one from his sister. And, like most phone calls from his bossy older sister, this one began with her attempting to make up his mind for him.
“You need to move to Houston.”
“Why? We’re fine where we are. Plus, I don’t have a job in Houston. I’m too young to retire and too old to live with my sister.” While he talked, Greg finished loading the dishwasher, turned off the kitchen light, and stretched out on the sofa.
“You’re incredibly stubborn. You must have inherited that from your father’s family,” Elise said.
Technically, Elise was
his half-sister. She was not yet five when her father died in an oil rig accident and almost eight when her mother Beth married Greg’s father, a pediatrician. Elise’s pediatrician. Between the settlement from the oil company and Sidney Hernandez’s income, they lived more than comfortably. Elise lived on the side of “more than,” while Greg stayed content in comfortable. When their parents died on American Airlines Flight 11, the plane flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Elise and Greg were forever changed. They came to realize that without one another and without the promises of a loving God, they might not have survived the tragedy themselves.
“No, I’m thinking it’s a maternal trait.” The sofa cushion seemed lumpier than usual. Greg reached underneath and rescued two cloth dolls, one of which was in dire need of clothes. “Look, you find me a job, and I’ll start packing.”
“Game on,” she said.
He should have known better than to challenge Elise. A slow economy and his resistance weren’t going to intimidate a woman who built a magazine from the ground up. He turned the volume back up on the television and, before he fell asleep, made a mental note to start looking for boxes.
“I’m not sure I can leave this house,” Greg said, his voice heavy as he stood in his bare family room. The only evidence of a life there was the indentations in the carpet from the legs of their couch and tables.
Amelia, his next-door neighbor, held his daughter’s hand and reached up with her other arm to hug him. She had been a mother to him and a grandmother to Jazarah, especially this last year. “I know, sweetie. But your memories go with you. And think how much love resonates in those walls that will bless whoever lives there.”
Six years of love seeped through the pores of these walls. The arguments, he hoped, fell through the cracks of the concrete floors. Last night he walked through every room before going next-door to spend the night at Dale and Amelia’s house. Lily, taking a cake out of the oven, her freckled face dewy and smiling. Lily, walking through the back door after weeding the garden, grass and dirt still visible on her bare knees. Lily, painting the nursery, her denim overalls and hair sprinkled with every color she rolled on the wall. Lily, on nights he’d work late, waiting for him, turning back the covers on his side of the bed and inviting him in with, “I missed you.”
Sometimes her scent would catch him by surprise, and he would turn to look for her, his heart racing at the thought of her softness in his arms. Nights that Jazarah awoke, her screams throbbing in his chest, he rocked and cried silent tears with her. Lily was never coming home.
The next morning, Greg buckled his daughter in her car seat, hugged Amelia and Dale one more time, and looked out his rearview mirror until their waves and his home became specks and disappeared. He stopped only once on the way out of New Orleans. When he did, he unbuckled Jazarah and handed her the bundle of lilies he’d cut from their garden. “Let’s go talk to Mommy,” he said and took his daughter’s hand.
Together they walked into Lakelawn Cemetery.
In the six months he’d been back in Houston, Greg had more requests for relief work than there were hours in the day to fill. At first, adjusting to different veterinary practices was challenging, but as his reputation grew, the doctors who hired him knew exactly what kind of service he could provide. He had the freedom to set his own schedule, be selective about the jobs he chose, and get a feel for where he might want to settle in at a practice one day.
Today he was headed to Tessa Alvarez’s clinic early, since it was his first time to work there. Houston traffic, he learned, had a life all its own, and until he could take its pulse, he didn’t want to risk being late.
Greg pulled into the parking lot with more than thirty minutes to spare, but since her clinic was at the front of a new residential community, he’d have time to check out the neighborhood.
He grabbed his briefcase, locked the car door, and walked around the outside of the clinic. The white-planked building with its dark green shutters and its wide wraparound porches reminded him of an Acadian home. Even the landscaping avoided the appearance of a commercial building, with curved walkways and bench areas. If the exterior of the practice was this meticulously groomed, then Greg felt sure the interior would be as well. Always reassuring because he’d worked in practices that truly had gone to the dogs.
He’d just taken a few steps when he heard the xylophone ring tone on his cell phone, which meant Paloma, the nanny was calling. Elise hired her to start the day Greg and Jazarah arrived in Houston. “She needs to be a part of your daughter’s life here from the beginning. Otherwise, that’s one more adjustment Jazarah needs to make.” She was right. Having Paloma’s help with all the logistics of moving made the transition so much smoother. Greg did tell Elise that she had to find a two-unit condo because he didn’t want Paloma living in the same house, setting up an awkward and potentially problematic arrangement.
It took a great effort to not stop breathing when Greg saw her number on his cell phone. He was so afraid that she would be calling with terrible news. It was never that. This morning she called to ask if she and Jazarah could go to the zoo and the Children’s Museum. “On one condition. You have to take pictures,” he answered, knowing Paloma already made every event a photo op.
“She asks if she can talk to you.”
“Sure. Put the princess on,” he said and smiled picturing his daughter’s little apple-round face, her corkscrew curls dancing when she nodded, and her bright eyes that seemed to hold their own laughter. Lily had insisted they keep her Ethiopian name, which meant “beloved princess” because, she’d said, “Isn’t that what she is to us already?” How could Greg argue with that?
“Da-de? I going to the zoo,” she said, her voice rising and falling with each syllable. “See what I wear?”
They’d have to start making face-to-face calls because she thought holding the phone in front of her outfit would be enough for him to see it. At first, he’d tried explaining to her that he couldn’t, but it only served to frustrate her. Incredibly, she did what most adults would do in the same situation. She repeated, “See!” louder and louder, until he would finally tell her she looked adorable.
“You are beautiful,” he told her, and he didn’t need to see her to know it was true.
“Tank you. Talk to P now. Bye!”
Greg heard Jazarah giggling as she handed the phone off to Paloma.
“Do you want I should feed J her supper?”
His daughter and her nanny were on a first initial basis since they met. He expected his name might change to D at any time. “Yes, go ahead and do that since the clinic doesn’t close until six. I’ll call as soon as I’m on my way in case I don’t make it home before her bedtime.”
“You have a good day. We will see you later.”
After every conversation with Paloma, Greg uttered a silent prayer of thanks for this young woman being in his daughter’s life. Over the past year, his prayers were not always of gratitude. Actually, some of his conversations with God were rants of anger and despair and pain. He learned, though, that he could find comfort in the arms of a God who knew grief. He didn’t subscribe to the theory that God took Lily away from them. A drunk driver, with two previous arrests, took Lily on her way home from shopping for Jazarah’s birthday party. God was giving her back to him, in memories, and his daughter, and the promise that he would see her again.
Manny, now on his leash, high-stepped out of the examination room with Nina following close behind. Neither one of them looked back. He wouldn’t have either in her shoes.
Thomas O’Malley’s sister. What a random collision in the universe of coincidence. Especially since she was the first person he’d seen from his high school since returning to Houston, and she was the last person he would have paid attention to when they were students. He had been a different Greg Hernandez then. Privileged and popular. He and his friends thought they ruled the school. They barely noticed girls like Nina. Girls who paid attention to the teacher and no
t them during class. Girls who did their homework and passed tests because they weren’t partying all weekend. Greg and his friends pitied their sad lives.
Nina had looked familiar in that way that a stranger appears, but your brain can’t access the file of recognition. Sometimes, days later the connection happens, sometimes, not at all. Had Nina not mentioned her brother’s name, Greg was certain the connection would have short-circuited before ever leading to her. He’d seen her only a few times in the hall before that day she landed on the floor and became a human food tray. Had there been a class superlative for Most Ordinary, Nina would have won. Her hair must have been long because she wore it pulled back from her round, clean-scrubbed face. She wore jeans and sweats, shirts that might have even been Thomas’s. Instead of disguising her figure, the baggy clothes just magnified it.
One of his friends remarked that she might not have fallen if she hadn’t been waddling so fast. That day and for days after, he and his friends would quack when they passed her in the hall. Greg knew her brother had died. He knew her family lived more than modestly. But why would he have told his friends that? They’d think he was soft. His friend Lance said she must really be a duck because all their torments seemed to roll right off her back. They grew bored and moved on.
Now, all these years later, Nina was no longer a lump of coal in a room full of diamonds. She had become a gem herself.
But Greg also knew that transformation happens only one way.
Under extreme pressure.
8
Shouldn’t Mr. Manny be the one barking and growling coming back from the veterinarian? Sounds like you should’ve had a shot yourself. Distemper, maybe?” When Manny spotted Aretha, blockaded on the sofa again, he dashed across the room and tried to jump through the wall of magazines. “Of course you’re glad to see me. What happened to Miss Grumpy, huh?” She set one of the stacks on the floor, so Manny would have just enough space to land on her lap.
Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series Page 4