by Kris Radish
“He couldn’t,” she tries to convince herself. “I know I haven’t been perfect, but he wouldn’t do that to me. Not now. Not when I’m trying so hard.”
Before she can get up again, Jane imagines that Ronald made a mistake. Derrick isn’t having lunch with Jane but with Jim or James or John. The names are similar. She can’t imagine Ronald writing down the word wife.
Then again, Ronald is totally devoted to Derrick. He would cover up for him, most likely lie for him. Was she supposed to have lunch with Derrick today? Did she even talk to him this morning?
Jane drops her head into her hands. She’s trying to remember the last time they even talked for more than a few minutes. Hello? Goodbye? Tuesday night when she woke him up after she’d shot Grace in the foot.
It’s too much to think about now. Look for clues, Jane. There’s got to be something. He did not ask you to have lunch with him today. Or did he?
There are so few places to look for anything. His golf bag? The drawer with his shaving gear? Suit-coat pockets?
“This is like a damn movie,” she says out loud. “Am I losing my mind?”
But she can’t stop looking.
Jane looks in Derrick’s shoes, in his underwear drawer, under the mattress, and under the lamp. This must be how Grace feels with her teenage daughters. How do people live like this?
She finally gets up and stomps down the stairs again, and starts looking all over the first floor. Jane starts in the living and then goes back to the kitchen, where the whole mess started, and decides to stop.
“I’m overreacting,” she tries to convince herself.
The kitchen is a total disaster, and Jane is absolutely exhausted from doing what? Running through the house? Acting like a damn fool? Get a grip!
She spends the next hour totally cleaning up the kitchen. She throws out all the food from the freezer, cleans off the counters, shoots the makings for a salad back into the refrigerator. Just as she decides to finish making the roast the doorbell rings.
She drops her pen, walks to the door, and is greeted by an adorable-looking messenger.
Another assignment from Dr. Bayer! Jane is actually excited as she rips open the envelope. She finishes reading it and is laughing so hard that the letter drops to the floor and she drops down, giggling like a little girl, right next to it.
29
The Blue Dot
Karen has been trying for three days to have a conversation with Grace that lasts more than three seconds. She’s worried about her best friend, and she also misses her very much.
Grace has been limping through her house as if she’s on a major deadline. She has taken an afternoon off to try and get her house and a small portion of her life organized and, truth be told, she’s trying hard to be more gentle with herself. It doesn’t help that she tripped at work and twisted the foot that was already injured. Thanks a lot, universe.
When Grace finally answers her cellphone, she does so because she needs to sit down and take a break. Her foot is swelling, there’s a river of sweat rolling off her face and back, and she can feel the damn headache about to start punching her in the side of the head.
“Baby!” she shouts as she pushes her phone’s on button.
“Don’t baby me, you jackass. I miss you! Can we talk for a while?”
“Excellent idea. Kelli has disappeared, and I’m trying to get some order in my life over here.”
“Good luck with that, Ms. Calamity.” Karen chuckles and immediately Grace’s spirits lift.
Grace imagines that the whole world sees her this way. A bumbling nurse who has two wild daughters, a front yard that looks as if it’s been blown up in the war, a car that needs a muffler, and a heart that needs so much TLC it’s a wonder she can smile.
“Gosh, Karen, I am one exhausted lady.”
“I wouldn’t call you a lady but you are a great woman, even if you don’t think so. Ladies wear nylons and stuff. They also use hair spray and place mats. You ain’t no lady.”
Grace laughs at her wicked friend. Where would she be without Karen? Karen with the eager smile who always seems to know exactly when to call, what she needs, how to lift her spirits. No man has ever made her feel this way. Maybe there’s something to this lesbian thing.
“Have I told you lately that I love you?” Grace says, still laughing.
“Absolutely not. You’re usually too busy spying on Kelli.”
“Your turn is coming.”
“Yes, it is. I can smell it in the air. Daughter number one got her first period.”
“Seriously?”
“Can’t you hear me sobbing all the way over there?”
“Did you have the party?”
The party is something Grace did with both of her daughters. When they started menstruating, Grace dropped everything. Unfortunately they both started their periods while they were at school and, fortunately, they both called Grace, who rushed to pick them up even though she was at work. Then they celebrated their entrance into womanhood by going out to eat, holding hands, talking about how glorious it is to be a woman. Those days seem like hundreds of years ago now. Hundreds and hundreds.
“That’s part of the reason why I’m calling. She wants you to celebrate with us.”
Grace sits up in her chair and drops her throbbing foot onto the floor.
“Me? I’m just an old lady. Are you serious?”
“Oh, Grace! My girls adore you. They can talk to you. Remember the night we sat on the couch and you showed them what their reproductive organs look like in your medical book? They still talk about that.”
Grace wonders if those girls would love her if they heard her scream at Kelli, or if they knew what a struggle it’s been for her to accept the sexuality of her older daughter, or if they knew she was attending anger-management class. Does anyone in the world but Karen know who she is and what she’s really like?
Inside of her terribly wide heart, Grace wants to be a better mother, nurse, friend. Forget the daughter part. She’s tired of trying to win that award. She adores Karen’s two girls, loves the way their lives are blended in with hers, and yet a part of her feels as if she doesn’t deserve their love and kindness.
“Grace?”
“I’m here, honey. Just tired. This headache.”
“Grace, have you checked your blood pressure lately?”
Grace opens her eyes as wide as small saucers. Oh, my God!
“I never thought of it. But I have the classic symptoms. Shit!”
“Grace, you are a nurse, for the love of God. You are in menopause and under tons of stress. Promise me that you will have someone check it tomorrow? Promise me that you will try and relax? And I’m counting on you to be here Sunday night with Kelli for the Menstrual Hut celebration.”
Karen hangs up before Grace has a chance to say anything. She wants to tell her yes, but that’s unnecessary. Karen is Karen, and she knows Grace will obey.
Grace sits very still. She places her hand over her heart and can actually feel the wild thumping, as if her heart is trying to pound itself right out of her chest. Sweet Jesus! High blood pressure is a huge silent killer of women. It’s dangerous, horrid, and something she should have thought about much sooner. She’ll have someone check it tomorrow. It’s unlikely she can get away without medication. Damn it. Just damn it.
She drops her head into her hands and sees her world as a top that has been spinning for a very long time. Something has to give, and apparently it’s her blood pressure. Maybe she’ll call her new singles pal, Val, and arrange a weekend at the cabin Val invited her to. The mere thought makes her heart slow.
Grace fights an urge to lie down on the couch and sleep for the next five hours. When was the last time she didn’t set her alarm? When was the last time she used vacation time for a real vacation?
When Megan was a junior in high school, Grace forced the girls to go with her to a cottage in Northern Wisconsin for five days. She used her income-tax refund to pay for the cottage
, gas, and food, and even though both girls whined like homesick puppies all the way to the cottage, they had a blast once they got there.
There was a boat to use, the weather was perfect, and there were zero arguments. There were also boys staying at the next cottage. Grace realizes now she should have figured out something was up when Megan kept talking about the sister of the boys and not the boys themselves. Duh!
Even now Grace believes that if she had not talked trash about their father, if the girls had had some kind of decent male role model, Megan would not have declared herself a lesbian. Kelli thinks her mother is an ass when she talks like that.
“I like boys, Mom,” she has said more than once. “Some people are just gay. Get over it. It’s no big deal. It wouldn’t have mattered if we had had a father who hung around. I have, like, six friends at school who are gay. Stop obsessing.”
If only she could. And part of the obsessing is worry over what her own mother will think, say, and do when she finds out. She’ll probably hire a firing squad.
Grace shakes her head to toss out any bad thoughts. Enough! She does a few deep-breathing exercises to try and slow her heart even more, and forces her mind go to someplace soft and sweet.
High blood pressure! What next? Grace struggles to get up and wonders for the tenth time where Kelli might be at this moment. Is she running around with her friends? Did I forget something? How nice it would be if Kelli were there to help her with some of the household chores.
Grace calls her while she’s thinking about it and, to her great surprise, Kelli picks up.
“Yo! Mama! What’s up?”
“Am I supposed to know where you are?”
Kelli’s sigh could knock over a large horse.
“Mom, go look on the kitchen table. Go on. I’ll wait.”
Grace hobbles over to the table. Tucked under the salt shaker is a small note from Kelli:
Helping out at the volleyball fund-raiser tonight. Will call.
“I didn’t see it,” Grace says, lowering her voice. “I’m sorry. What’s the fund-raiser for?”
Kelli sighs again.
“The art department. So we can do the museum tour.”
“Oh.”
“Mom, I know you have a lot going on. You need a break.”
Grace laughs. “No kidding, Kelli!”
Kelli says, “I love you, Mom,” and Grace is smiling like crazy.
Then she decides to go down the hall and start some wash. She stops in Kelli’s room on the way to look for stinky clothes and is shocked to see that the room has been picked up. The bed isn’t made and the blinds are down, but the room has had some serious attention. Grace feels ten pounds lighter. She walks around the side of the bed to pull up the shade when her one good leg hits something she hasn’t been able to see.
When she bends down, she realizes it’s a suitcase. She clicks it open and discovers that it’s packed. Is Kelli planning to run away? It can’t be! Maybe it’s left over from the boyfriend incident.
Grace decides to ignore the suitcase, and kicks it back under the bed just as the doorbell rings. She peeks out the window and sees a messenger-service car. What in the world?
She pulls open the door, takes the crisp white envelope, and knows right away it’s a new assignment from Dr. Bayer. Grace is absolutely not prepared for what she reads, and the moment she starts laughing her headache disappears and she forgets all about the packed suitcase.
30
The Third Assignment
It’s 2 P.M. on Saturday and Dr. Olivia Bayer is trying without success not to show up at the next assignment with her feisty little charges. Even though she’s trusting that everything is going to work out, she has decided to leash up Phyllis and stroll past the building where Leah, Kit, Grace, and Jane had better be right this second. In an unusual moment of self-doubt, the great Dr. Bayer is trying to decide whether she should bring Leah, Kit, Grace, and Jane back in for a meeting on Tuesday to talk about whatever might happen during what she is calling Bowling 101.
She sent each of the women the exact same note telling them where to meet, but they won’t know what’s happening until they show up:
Please show up at Digger’s Bowling Alley Saturday at 2 P.M.—2235 Center Street. I trust this will work with your schedule. Give your name at the shoe-rental counter. Then proceed to Lane No. 10. Bowl three games, more if you care to—and enjoy. Everything is paid for, so no worries there. Keep writing in your journals, and I trust you will have nothing but good news for me the next time I see you! You know how to contact me, but this should be pretty simple.
Sincerely,
Dr. B.
Leah’s note asked her to use the shelter’s van for transportation. Dr. Bayer wanted them all to be surprised when they got there.
And Olivia can’t stand the suspense.
“Phyllis, let’s take a stroll,” she says, as Phyllis leaps like a circus animal the moment she hears the leash chain dragging in the hall. “We’ll just peek, that’s all.”
The leash means they’re going for a long walk, and that also means there’s usually food involved somewhere along the way. Phyllis is so excited about this new development that she all but drags Olivia down the steps to the big tree.
While Phyllis takes care of her doggy duties and Olivia tries to still her beating heart that has been hammering away inside her chest with worry over this interesting assignment, the women start to arrive at the neighborhood bowling alley.
Grace, of course, arrives first and is putting on her shoes when Jane walks in, followed by Kit and then Leah.
“We should have known,” Grace says, laughing. “Or did we?”
“I thought she might do something like this,” Kit says, grabbing a pair of red-white-and-blue bowling shoes. “That woman is hilarious.”
Jane is quiet at first, but then she approaches Grace and asks if she’s okay. “Can you even bowl?”
“I hate bowling! But my foot is okay. Just a little sore. You didn’t bring your archery equipment, did you?”
Jane laughs off the question as she grabs her shoes, and the women all form a little procession on the way to their reserved alley, which is, thankfully, the last alley and next to a wall. To get there they have to walk behind seats, over a mess of kids, and past a bar that is doing a bang-up business selling beer, pizza, and bags of snacks.
Even Leah, who rarely drinks, is glad to see that there’s beer. All of them have apparently decided to ignore the arrow-in-the-foot fiasco for the time being.
They throw their purses around the table and then stand and look at each other until Kit says she thinks they should probably get balls if they’re going to bowl. “I know Dr. B. probably thinks we have balls, but I don’t think we can actually use those for bowling.”
“You are a comedian,” Jane says, hoping no one, especially Grace, will take offense.
No one says a word except Kit. “If you think that’s funny, wait until you see me drop a ball. Grace, keep your one good foot covered.”
And so it begins, and Dr. Bayer, who is approaching the bowling alley, is glad she doesn’t hear screaming around two-thirty, when she figures the women will be getting started. Phyllis feels like a tiger. She loves to hit the streets like this and is so distracted by the sights and sounds of the busy day that she doesn’t even realize they’ve stopped.
While Olivia starts pacing outside the bowling alley the women, who have spent twenty minutes picking out balls, are trying to remember how to keep score. They haven’t been bowling for so long that they don’t even know there’s an automatic scoring machine. The boy who comes to help them set up the scoring looks at them as if he’s frightened.
Maybe it’s because they’re being so silly. Bowling is serious for a lot of people, but these four women can’t seem to stop laughing. He sets everything up, hopes no one gets hurt, and then walks away as quickly as possible.
“Let the games begin!” Jane shouts as she grabs the first ball and tries to remem
ber what to do. She turns to see what the people in the next lane are doing, and then she holds the ball against her chest, lets it go, and her cute glittery red ball goes right into the gutter.
Jane puts her hands on her hips, turns around, and yells, “This sucks!”
It takes her bowling mates a few seconds to realize that she’s kidding, and almost a half hour for anyone else to knock down more than six pins. This Tuesday-night group of once angry women could be the worst bowlers in the world.
But the strangest thing happens during the next ninety minutes. The only thing they talk about is bowling. They don’t talk about the anger class or their private assignments or bows and arrows. They only talk about bowling. And with every ball they throw it’s as if they’re gaining strength. They may have been a bit reticent when they first realized the entire class was going to be there, but they’re all lousy bowlers and no one seems to care.
Meanwhile, Olivia has walked around the block and down through the alley three times. The bowling-alley manager notices her when he comes out for his second cigarette and smiles.
“You can bring your dog inside, you know,” he tells her, waving the stinky cigarette smoke away from his face. “That’s the cutest damn dog I’ve ever seen.”
Olivia is suddenly excited. “Are you serious?”
“Oh hell, yes,” he snorts. “I run this place, and my little dog is getting groomed today or she’d be here, too. People would love it if your baby came in here. Are you here to bowl?”
Olivia hesitates. What should she say? A group of women who are in big trouble are in there and I’m their clinical psychologist? She has to stifle a laugh.
“Some friends of mine are in there,” she manages to explain. “I’d love to go in.”
“Be my guest,” he says, stopping Olivia so he can pet Phyllis, who decides to lick his hands. Meat! Phyllis wants to keep licking. This man has touched meat!