by Kay Hadashi
“Your personal history with the Bureau is rather famous around here in the company. But being sneaky about it is the fun part. You know, I was just thinking about something.”
“Getting Secret Service involved as a distraction?” she asked.
“Exactly. It looks like Cassandra is still on your protection detail?”
“She’s the only one left on the island. I guess all my whining about being left alone by them has been listened to.”
“I doubt you’ll ever get rid of her. It’s too nice there for her to voluntarily walk away.”
“Can you also run a couple of names for me? They might be related to the thefts. The first is Kenneth Winston, AKA Kenny, of Arizona. The other is his mother, Adelaide Winston, AKA Addie, also of Arizona. The son had just moved here a few months ago, and might be involved in the original thefts from last week.”
“How deep do you want me to dig?”
“As much as you can without being noticed.”
“Will do. I’ll send you a preliminary intel packet later today, and a more extensive one once it’s prepared.”
“Speaking of it being nice here, when are you coming to see us? I’d like to put a face to the person I talk to every now and then,” she said.
“It’s so expensive to go there.”
“For the amount of money you’re being paid, you can afford Maui. Where exactly in the world are you?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
Melanie chuckled. “Maybe best I don’t.”
“How’s the family?”
As if on cue, Thérèse’s stack of toys fell from Melanie’s belly. “Energetic and due to grow by one more on Friday.”
After the call, Melanie made a prolonged visit to the bathroom before finding Thérèse in her room.
“Hey, little girl. Want someone to play with?”
“Momma, can you show me how to make these things go?”
Melanie went in and sat on the floor in the middle of nearly every toy the girl owned. Legos were scattered from one end of the room to the other, along with plastic dinosaurs and action figures from Japanese manga.
“What are you trying to do with them?”
“The dinos no can walk and akushon manu ga tobenai.”
“One language at a time, please.”
The girl gave it some thought. “Dino wa arukenai to akushon manu ga tobenai.”
“Okay, first, the dinos aren’t real, so they can’t walk. You have to use your imagination for that. And I think it’s the same for your Yoshi Action Man. That’s the fun of playing with toys, is that you get to pretend all kinds of fun things with them.”
Thérèse inspected the action figure closely as though it were broken. “He flyed before.”
“Flew. Was that the noise I heard a little while ago?”
“Uh-huh. He crashed into the Lego wall.”
“You can make anything fly if you throw it. But you can also break your toys if you throw them too hard.”
“Didn’t throw him. Watch.” She put the action figure of a little man in a 1960s space suit on the palm of her hand and held it aloft. “Yoshi, go!”
Nothing happened.
“I don’t think he’s going to fly, Sweetie.”
“Oh, wait. Japanese kind boy needs Japanese kind talk.” The girl held the toy aloft again. “Yoshi, itte!”
The toy wiggled before it seemed to jerk forward, falling from the girl’s fingertips.
“Not so good now,” Thérèse said, picking up Yoshi from the floor. “Maybe Yoshi got broke.”
Melanie’s curiosity was struck. Maybe the girl tipped her hand and Melanie didn’t notice, but something made the toy move. “Let me try.” She held it aloft the way her daughter had. “Okay, tell him again.”
The girl ceremoniously waved her hand in the air and pointed a finger at the toy. “Yoshi, itte!”
Melanie held her hand as still as possible. As if following the girl’s command, the toy leapt from it, traveling a foot through the air. The girl nabbed it from the floor before Melanie could.
“He can do better. Maybe he needs a nap.”
Melanie closed the bedroom door for privacy. “Tay, are you using magic again?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s our rule about that?”
“No can use magic or there’s big trouble.”
“Right. What else?”
“Magic is a secret.”
“A secret only you and I know about, right?”
The girl nodded.
“Does Daddy know you have magic?”
She shook her head. “Big secret.”
“Good girl. I want you to take a nap after putting your toys away, and without using magic. We’ll have lunch when you get up, okay?”
“Peanut sammich?”
“Double peanut, if you promise not to play with magic?”
The girl nodded and got to work putting her toys in what had been Melanie’s toy box many years before.
“Did I hear something about magic?” Josh asked, showing his face inside the door.
“Huh? No, we were just talking about peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. How’s your curriculum coming?”
They went to the kitchen where Melanie began making sandwiches and Josh poured glasses of juice. “Just about done with my two regular classes. Same thing as last year, just different exams. I learned my lesson a couple of years ago with that.”
“What’s the third class again?”
“They stuck me with Survey of Tropical Animal Sciences.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“I could do a lot with it if they’d given me more than a week to develop the curriculum.”
“Can you get the curriculum from the previous teacher?”
“She just emailed it to me today. All I have to do is learn everything this week she expects the students to know by the end of the course and I’ll be ready.”
She patted him on the back after putting three sandwiches on the table. “You can do it.”
“What was that about magic? I know I heard you say something about magic to the kid.”
“Oh, you know little girls and how they believe there is magic in everything. It’s all a part of the game.”
“No sisters, remember? Magic is that important to her? It seems like it’s involved in a lot of her games.”
Melanie was stuck for an answer on how to explain her daughter’s seeming ability to move things slightly. “I think it’s better she plays than for us to make her sit still. Do you have any questions about tomorrow?”
“We had our tonsils out when we were kids. I sort of remember having a sore throat for a day or two, but we got lots of popsicles. It was done around Halloween, and Mom even cheated us a few times by giving us icicles from the eaves of the house, telling us they were ghostsicles, and that was why they didn’t have any flavor.”
“We’re not cheating Tay and we certainly aren’t calling anything ghostsicles.” Melanie went to the freezer. “What happened to the box of them I put in here a few days ago?”
“We sort of raided it.”
“We?” Melanie asked.
“Addie, Thérèse, and me. We had one or two each.”
“There’s only two left. Can you please go to the store and get the jumbo-sized box? And they’re reserved for Tay, not you. Which reminds me. I need to get a decent meal into her at dinner so she’s not hungry and whiny tomorrow morning.”
“I gonna be whiny, Momma?”
When Thérèse sat at the table, Josh left for the store with a grocery list.
“Hey, little one. I hope not. Eat your sandwich. I want to talk to you about something.”
The girl was suddenly close to tears. “I sorry…”
Melanie sat in the chair next to her. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t mean to play magic.”
“Nobody’s mad at you, Sweetie. That’s not what I want to talk about.”
“Not in trouble?”
“Of course you’re not in trouble. Eat your sandwich while I talk.” She pushed the plate with the sandwich to in front of the girl. “Tomorrow, you go to the hospital, right?”
The girl nodded.
“You know why?”
“My turtles are dirty and make me snore a lot.”
Melanie smiled at the childish explanation. “Well, yes, that’s pretty much it. But there are a couple things for you to know ahead of time.”
“Gonna have a sore throat.”
“Right. How’d you know that?”
“Aunt Addie tol’ me. She tol’ me I get lotsa popsicles.”
“You get as many as you want. Even if you don’t want them, you have to suck on the popsicles, okay? That’ll make the sore throat go away faster. And when you get home, you get to stay in bed all day and play with your dino friends. And the next day, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
“Promise?”
“Yep. And the best thing is that Auntie Trinh will be your nurse tomorrow.”
“You no wanna be my nurfe?”
“They don’t let mommies in the operating room, but I’ll be waiting right outside the door.”
“You’ll be there when Auntie’s done taking out my turtles?”
“Yep, I promise. But there is something super duper important for you to remember.”
“What dat?”
“Well, after you go to bed tonight, you can’t eat or drink anything, okay?”
“Part of the game?” the girl asked.
“Not really a game, but yes, it’s a big rule that we all must follow until you’re done having your turtles taken out.” She watched her daughter chew the peanut butter, trying to swallow it down. She wasn’t convinced the kid was trustworthy to not drink water if she went to the bathroom on her own. “You know what would be fun? Why don’t you sleep with me tonight? Just me and you, and daddy can sleep in your room?”
“You mad at Daddy?”
“No, but I want you to sleep with me tonight. Just us girls, okay?”
“Daddy not gonna be scared of the ghost?”
“He doesn’t know there’s a ghost in your room, just like he doesn’t know there’s magic in there, and we’re never telling him, right?”
“Right,” the girl said, nodding her head once.
Josh was just coming back from the store with two bags. “Right what?” he asked.
“No ghosts in my room.”
“Ghosts?” Josh asked Melanie as he began putting things in the freezer.
“Nothing. Just talking about a game that we’re not going to play. But guess what? You’re on the couch tonight so Super Girl can sleep with me.”
After dropping her plastic plate in the sink, Thérèse peddled away on her tricycle, saying something about starting a new game with a dinosaur.
“How many secrets are the two of you keeping from me?” he asked, sitting at the table with her.
“No more than the usual ones mothers and daughters keep to themselves.”
“Okay, for my edification, what can go wrong with a tonsillectomy?” he asked.
“Bleeding, infection, airway obstruction, respiratory failure, death.”
“That sounds like one of those hospital forms everybody has to sign. And the likelihood of those happening to our daughter?”
“Well, she’s having surgery. That requires an incision, in fact, two incisions. That means there will be bleeding. But her doctor will use electrocautery to stop it. Every now and then, it starts again within a day or two of surgery, but with children, that’s very rare.”
“And if it does?”
“If it’s a lot, she goes back to the OR and has a few jolts of cautery to make it stop.”
“You don’t seem concerned about that,” he said.
“Not concerned? I’m panic-stricken! Believe me, I know what can go wrong, and that’s my little girl going in there tomorrow morning. How can I not be worried?”
“Should I worry too?”
“One of us needs to remain levelheaded, if only to keep the other under control.”
“Still…” he started.
“I take care of the county and you take care of me. That’s the deal we made and I’m not letting you weasel your way out of it.”
“What about those other things? What about infection, or the obstruction thing?”
“By virtue of taking them out, we’re preventing further infections. The obstruction comes if they happen to drop the tonsil before taking it out of her mouth. But she’ll have a tube in her throat along with a sponge packed in there, so it can’t go far, and there will be a large clamp on it anyway.”
“What about the death part?” he asked.
Melanie blotted a tear with a napkin. “Not gonna die.”
“It’s a simple thing to do, right? Does anybody ever die from a tonsillectomy?”
“A very small percentage, minute. With modern anesthetics, it’s even lower than it was decades ago, when they used to do it in people’s homes.”
“But how could somebody die?”
“Do we have to talk about this?” she asked, blotting again.
“I need to know.”
“Okay, the bleeding could potentially be serious if they incise too deeply. You know the carotid arteries in the neck? Those have branches that are right behind where the tonsils are. If a surgeon gets into those, the patient could bleed to death before they gain control of it. The vessels are too big to cauterize, and too difficult to repair. It rarely happens, as in nearly never, but it is a potential complication.”
Josh set aside the last portion of his sandwich. “And she really needs this operation?”
“The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.”
“As said by a surgeon.”
“She’ll get rid of the sore throats and most of the snoring will stop. It would have to be done eventually, and she’s at the optimal age for it. By the time she starts preschool on Monday morning, she’ll be completely recovered and will have forgotten all about it.”
“If she’s alive,” he said drolly.
She backhanded his arm. “Don’t say that, please. I’m upset about it enough already, without you adding more. I have a lot on my plate this week.”
“You’ve already transferred most of your mayor duties to Trinh. Once we get Thérèse home tomorrow, all that’s left is Friday.”
Melanie rubbed her face. “Yeah, Friday can’t get here soon enough.”
“To relieve your stress, maybe we could go in the bedroom and, you know.”
“Oh yeah, like I’m feeling real sexy these days.”
He flirted with her by touching her cheek. “Come on. Just because we couldn’t figure out the logistics a few days ago doesn’t mean we can’t try again.”
“Logistics?” she said. “It’s sex, not an invasion, which at this point in time is about the same thing.”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. Where we went wrong a few days ago was…”
She put her hand up. “Don’t want to hear about the details.” After struggling out of her chair, she took him by the hand.
“I win for once?” he asked.
“No, but I will let you rub my feet and ankles.”
Once she was positioned on the floor with her feet up on the couch, he sat between her legs and began to rub. “This is great. Are you enjoying this as much as me?” he asked.
“You have no idea how good that feels.”
“Good enough to put you in the mood?”
“Not yet, but keep rubbing.”
He started on the other foot and ankle.
“Maybe you should go check on the kid and close her door?” she said after a few minutes.
Josh almost leapt from the couch. “I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”
“I don’t think I can get up. It’ll have to be right here.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Here?”
“Not the first time we’ve done it on the living room floor.”
“She’s asleep,” he said when he came back.
Melanie was already positioned on her side, the only comfortable position she could still manage. “Better get the blanket off the couch.”
Ten minutes later, she giggled while he fumbled at unbuttoning her waistband.
“Are you able to suck in your tummy?” he asked, still working frantically.
“Ha! I wish!”
With one last tug at the button, it came undone and she was able to wiggle out of her shorts with Josh’s help.
“Don’t bounce me around. We can’t risk breaking my water.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
Melanie laid her head back and giggled again. “Yeah, you’re a real expert.”
The small lap blanket slipped off, exposing them. She reached for it but couldn’t quite get it.
“Never mind the blanket,” he whispered, kissing her neck.
“I’m just glad we don’t have a mirrored ceiling.”
She closed her eyes and tried her best to pretend she wasn’t pregnant. Just as she was allowing her mind to drift into a fantasy, the back screen door to the kitchen clattered open.
“Addie,” Josh whispered.
Footsteps softly padded across the kitchen’s linoleum floor.
Melanie swore. “Get the blanket over us,” she whispered, trying to grab it again.
It was Josh’s turn to laugh. He was just getting the small blanket over them when Addie came into the living room.
“Oh! Sorry! I’ll go for another walk.”
Her footsteps hurried this time, the back door quickly slamming closed when she left.
Melanie pulled up her shorts again while trying to sit up. “So embarrassing.”
“It would be if it wasn’t so funny,” he said.
“This was your stupid idea. Help me up!”
He pulled her up to a standing position. “Sorry. At least you got your feet rubbed.”
“Is that what it’s called these days?” She wrapped the blanket around her waist for the trip to the bedroom. “Just go get Addie and bring her home. And try to figure out an excuse she might believe.”
Not even getting her shorts buttoned, Melanie hurried down the hall to their bedroom and closed herself in.
***