Gabby laughed and tipped her head to the side, making her pink-tipped hair catch the sunlight. “Evie, my mother is in the clutches of menopause. The other day she threw a six-pound raw chicken at my father because he asked what was for dinner. So I’m thinking forgiveness is not a side effect of menopausal hormones.”
I looked out the window again. I knew she was right about that. I also knew it was unlikely I could explain to anyone the concern I felt over my mother’s journey back to the dark side of unholy matrimony with my father. Maybe she’d forgiven him, but the truth was, he’d left me too. Without so much as a backward glance. And started playing house with some other woman. And some other woman’s kids. I’d always found it the height of hypocrisy that a man who fixed broken hearts for a living could be so incredibly careless with mine.
Gabby sipped her iced tea. “You know, the fact that he actually married those other women does say something nice about him.”
“What? That he loves to pay alimony?” Other than my mother, who earned every bit as much as he did, his other wives had all been utterly dependent on his income for their daily expenditures. Being Mrs. Dr. Garrett Rhoades required a certain amount of upkeep.
“No,” said Gabby. “I think it means deep down he’s a romantic at heart. He believes in true love and happily ever after. And maybe so does your mother. Maybe all this time they’ve just been looking for their happily ever after and realized they can find it together.”
She was giving both of them way too much credit. My parents were not that self-actualized. “They cannot possibly be each other’s happily ever after. This isn’t some TV movie of the week where enemies become lovers. You don’t know what these two have done to each other.”
“Like what?”
I rarely shared these details. No one knew the level of passive-aggressive behavior my parents had displayed over the years. I guess I’d gotten used to it, but it was still embarrassing to talk about.
“Stupid stuff. Childish stuff. Like every time my mom finds a magazine subscription card, she fills it out with his address. I got his mail once. He had fifty-seven magazines. Even the mail carrier started complaining.”
Gabby giggled behind her hand. “That’s actually kind of funny. It doesn’t seem that mean. Except to the mailman.”
“OK then, how about the fact that she’d pick up his dry cleaning and donate the clothes to Goodwill?”
Gabby laughed harder, and I began to wonder if the rest of the world would see this as more funny than cruel. “OK, so somewhere in Ann Arbor is a homeless man wearing an Armani tuxedo.” I smiled and took my first spoonful of soup.
“What else?” Gabby prompted. She was enjoying this. “Did he retaliate?”
“Oh, absolutely.” I actually chuckled. Maybe it was kind of funny. “He sent a gorilla-gram to her office to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their divorce.”
“A gorilla-gram?”
“Yeah, you know. A guy dressed up like a gorilla who shows up and sings to you. She was furious. She had his car towed from the hospital parking for that one. My mother does not like to be humiliated.”
Gabby shook her head slowly. “No one does. But it seems to me that if they kept pulling these pranks on each other, they never really did let go. Love ends when you stop thinking about each other, not when you’re still trying to get a rise from one another.”
Hmm. Maybe there was a molecule of truth to that. Or half a molecule, but it seemed unlikely. “These are two very competitive people, Gabby. I think it’s more about getting in the last word.”
“Well, whatever the reason, they need each other. You may as well embrace it, because you can’t do anything about it.” She stuffed another bite of salad into her mouth.
Embrace it? This conversation had not gone as I intended. Gabby was supposed to nod, and agree, and validate my feelings of irritation. I guess I should have explained the rules. I mean, what good did it do me if her only advice was to embrace it?
I’d left my parents at Arno’s last night right after we’d finished our entrées. I’d said no thanks to dessert, claiming to be too full. But the real truth was that two hours of watching them canoodle had given me a stomachache. Too much sugar.
“Call me tomorrow, darling,” my mother had said as I got up to leave the table, but when I turned to wave good-bye, they were already locked in each other’s gazes as if I wasn’t even there. It was spooky.
“Oh,” Gabby said, pulling me back to the moment, “there’s Jasper.”
A tall, slender man in chef’s whites had been moving around the small dining room, stopping to chat with this patron and that patron, until he reached our table.
“Hey, Gabby. I thought that was you. Love the pink hair.” He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze.
“Hi, Jasper. Congratulations on your new restaurant. This place is adorável.” She gestured to the room in general.
“Adora what?” He cocked his head to the side.
Gabby nodded and spoke slowly. “Adorável. Minha salada é deliciosa. That’s Portuguese for this place is adorable and my salad is delicious.”
“Portuguese, huh? Interesting. I think my mom speaks a little of that.” He turned my way and smiled, extending his long arm. “Hi, I’m Jasper.”
I shook his hand.
“Jasper, meet Dr. Evelyn Rhoades,” Gabby said. “We work together.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Jasper. This is your restaurant?”
The place was adorável, just as Gabby said. It was cozy and quaint, with big windows and dark wood accents. Every table had a different-colored cloth on it, and all the chairs were strategically mismatched. It felt like the kind of restaurant that had been there forever, a place where the locals spent every Saturday night.
“It’s mine for now.” Jasper nodded. “If business stays good, I might even get to keep it.” His smile was as bright as the gold wedding ring gleaming from his finger. It was so shiny I guessed it was nearly as new as this restaurant.
“Business looks good.” Gabby looked around at all the tables. Nearly each one was occupied.
Jasper nodded. “It’s been really busy. I actually need to hire more waitresses soon.”
“Is Beth working here? I haven’t caught up with her in ages.” Gabby turned to me. “I went to high school with Jasper’s wife.”
Crimson splashed across his cheeks, and he looked over his shoulder as if someone might be eavesdropping. “She’s sort of helping, but the smell of food makes her queasy. She’s kind of a liability in the kitchen right now.”
Gabby’s eyes went wide. “Is she pregnant?”
Jasper looked around again, but his smile proclaimed his answer loud and clear. “I can neither confirm nor deny those rumors for at least another week. I’ve been forbidden.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to see her.” Gabby’s own cheeks flushed. “Tell her to call me, will you?”
Jasper nodded. “I will. I have to get back to the kitchen. I just wanted to say hi.”
He left us with a wave, and Gabby gave up a forlorn little sigh. “I want a baby. Right now. I want Mike to marry me first, but I really want the baby. I’m almost twenty-eight. My eggs are deteriorating exponentially, and Mike is dragging his feet.”
My ovaries waved at my uterus as if to say are you hearing this? If she was getting too old, what the hell did that make me?
“Babies are a lot of work,” I said, speaking as much to my reproductive organs as to Gabby.
She gazed back at me, her expression earnest. “Is that why you’re never having any?”
My hand paused, holding the spoon over my soup bowl. Never having any? Wasn’t I?
“Who said I was never having any?”
Her cheeks flushed cherry red and she began to stammer. “Um, well, no one. But you’re not interested in dating. And you’re thirty-five years old. I
just kind of assumed . . . I mean, no offense. I guess lots of single women have kids now and that’s great. I just . . . well . . . do you want to have any?”
That was a very thought-provoking question. One I’d never been asked, even by my own self. Did I want children?
Kind of.
Sort of.
Maybe. I sure liked Hilary’s kids, but truthfully I was a little afraid of babies. They were so tiny and fragile. Other than my pediatrics rotation, I had never been responsible for one. Maybe subconsciously I’d made that decision by postponing marriage until it was too late. I knew the statistics. Getting pregnant after thirty-five put me into the high-risk category. And without a man anywhere on the horizon, I wasn’t likely to be married and pregnant anytime soon.
The soup suddenly tasted bitter on my tongue, and I started wishing Gabby and I had skipped this lunch altogether. It was only making me feel worse.
“I’m not sure about kids,” I said. “I do kind of want them, or at least one, but I’d probably be a terrible mother.” It felt a little sickening to admit that, but it was true.
“Why would you say that?” Gabby’s tone held genuine concern.
“Because I wouldn’t have a clue in the world how to entertain a baby.”
Abrupt laughter dashed away any hint of sadness from her face. “That’s what you’re worried about? That your baby would get bored?”
“Bored and hungry. I never have any food in my apartment. And I’m hardly ever home. When would I ever even see it? If I don’t have time to date, I guess I don’t have time for a baby.” That felt oddly sickening to admit too. I’d never been one of those women who coochie-cooed every time I saw an infant, but the notion of never, ever having any of my own made me a little sad. I guess I should have thought about this sooner.
Gabby’s tone was gentle again. “You’re a doctor, Evie. You take care of all sorts of people. You can certainly learn to take care of a baby, if you wanted to.”
“My parents are brilliant surgeons, Gab. But they sucked as parents. Trust me on that one. Being a good doctor doesn’t equal good parenting.”
“But you’re not like them. And don’t you think you’ll get . . . lonely? I mean, eventually? That’s the nice thing about kids. Men might leave, but your kids are yours forever.”
Forever. That was a long time. And I had no response for her. I was still in knots over my parents reuniting. I couldn’t heap my indecision about another life-altering topic onto the pile right now.
“Are you done eating? I should get back to the office.”
Gabby’s cheeks flushed again. “Sure. Of course. But Evie, I think you’re wrong. I think you’d be a good mother, if you ever decided to be one. Your patients love you, and so do Hilary’s kids.”
My eyes felt inexplicably moist, and I made a production out of finding something in my purse instead of looking at her. “Yeah, maybe.”
The conversation veered to other topics as we paid our bill and left Jasper’s restaurant. But as we strolled back to the office, past the quaint storefront windows and big flowerpots full of freshly planted pansies and geraniums, I couldn’t help but notice we were surrounded by women with strollers. Had they all been out here before and I just hadn’t noticed? Tall women. Short women. Pudgy ones in oversized T-shirts, and other ones in sports bras with bodies so buff you could see the muscle definition under their skin. But regardless of their shape or size, they seemed to have one thing in common.
They were all smiling.
At each other. At their babies. At me. I was moving among them, but set apart. Like the hero in some mind-bending science fiction movie who suddenly realizes everyone around him is a cleverly disguised alien. My steps faltered. Was I the only one in all of Bell Harbor without the primordial instinct to breed? My ovaries rattled again, angry monkeys in the cage of my nonmaternal body. They were being very noisy today after a lifetime of silence.
A toddler with fluffy blond curls and a blue striped shirt stepped into my path. He was cute, in a soft, dimply way, and walked with an unsteady gait, as if he had something sticky on the bottoms of his shoes. He stopped when he saw me, and regarded me with dark chocolate-brown eyes. He lifted one chubby fist to wave a cluster of dandelions in my direction. His plump cheeks doubled in size when he smiled, and a little sparkle of drool escaped past his tiny white teeth.
My stoic heart turned to pudding. He was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.
His mother reached over and took a gentle hold of his wrist. “Stay with Mommy, honey,” she said. She smiled at me apologetically. “Pardon us. He’s such a flirt.”
“He’s adorável,” Gabby said, a wistful note of longing in her voice.
They moved around us as we watched them walk down the sunny sidewalk. The mom wore a neon pink tank top and exercise pants. Her blonde hair bounced from a high ponytail as she expertly guided a gizmo-loaded stroller with one hand and held on to the little boy’s with her other. A golden retriever trotted alongside them, his leash looped over the woman’s elbow. Away they went, probably to some house with a picket fence and a minivan in the garage.
That was her life, and she seemed pretty happy about it, but it all looked foreign to me. A place full of miniature beings and unfamiliar scenes. Navigating the streets of Bell Harbor with a baby, a stroller, and a dog would be like me trying to do surgery in the middle of a monsoon with nothing but a stethoscope and a pair of pliers. I’d be clueless, helpless, and lost.
Still, something deep inside me, something at a microscopic level, split open and began to swell.
Chapter 4
“MY HUSBAND ALWAYS DID SAY I have an impressive rack.”
In a long line of interesting patients I’d seen this week, Dody Baker was my most colorful. In the five minutes she’d been in my office, I’d learned more about her than I’d personally discussed with a priest, a bartender, a psychiatrist, or my own gynecologist. She was as unfiltered as river water but refreshing in a clumsy, unguarded way.
“Of course, they’re not as buoyant as they used to be,” she said, arching her back to lift her front. “But my nephew-in-law recommended you very highly. He says you’re probably the best plastic surgeon in Bell Harbor. And he’d know because he’s a doctor too. Dr. Desmond McKnight? You must know him.”
I nodded. “Yes, of course, from the emergency department.”
Everyone knew Des. The nurses practically swooned every time his name was mentioned. Not only was he attractive, smart, and nice, he was also madly in love with his wife. The ultimate Prince Charming. Now if I could find a man like him, this whole dating thing might be more appealing.
“Des says you can hoist my girls back up where they should be and even things out a bit. I had that lumperodectomy two years ago and I’ve been a little lopsided since then. See?”
She whipped open her hospital gown to expose her bare breasts, and I just barely contained my gasp of surprise. I wasn’t prepared for that spontaneous visual, but damn, she was right. She did have an impressive rack, especially for a woman of nearly seventy years old and with part of one breast missing.
Still, I took the edges of her gown and tugged the sides back together. “Let’s go through a little of your medical history before I do the exam, shall we?” I looked down at her chart to get my bearings on her case and began reading the notes from her primary care doctor. She had a history of ductal carcinoma but otherwise appeared to be in excellent health.
“They’re expecting any day now, you know. With twins, no less. Although it’s no wonder, the way they go at it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Des and my niece, Sadie. They’re like bunnies, those two. Although my husband, Walter, and I were the same way.” She squeezed her hands together, setting her dozen colorful bracelets to jangling. “Do you have children, Dr. Rhoades?”
There was the children question again. This seem
ed to be a theme among the Bell Harborites. It must have something to do with the small-town mentality. As if there wasn’t much else to do around here but find your mate, copulate, and procreate.
I shook my head but didn’t look up from the paperwork in my lap. The trick to dealing with overly social patients was to avoid eye contact.
“No, no children,” I said.
“Why? What’s the matter with you?”
Now I looked up. Even for a forthright old lady, that was a ballsy, brazen question.
“What’s the matter with me? There’s nothing the matter with me.”
“Are you married? A pretty thing like you must be married.”
I didn’t bother answering that. “Do you take any medications, Mrs. Baker?” I asked instead.
“A few. Here’s a list.” She fished around in her blue flowered purse before producing a laminated index card and handing it to me. “My niece made me that. She’s a professional organizer. Very fussy. So, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you married?”
“No.” I looked at the handy little card, which appeared to be color coded by frequency of dose. Nice. I wished all my patients had organized nieces. I jotted some notes on Mrs. Baker’s chart.
She crossed her legs, nearly kicking me with her foot. She wore flip-flop sandals with big pink flowers on them. “Well, in that case, let me tell you, I’ve discovered the most wonderful website, don’t you know? Bell Harbor singles dot com. Computerized matchmaking. Can you imagine? In my day we had to look for hanky-panky the old-fashioned way, at church socials. But now everything is arranged online. I met a simply delightful man on my computer. His name is Brock Lee, but he looks just like Wolf Blitzer. Do you suppose that’s his real name? Wolf?” She paused to examine her fingernail. “Who would name a child Wolf?” she said a moment later. “Unless . . . oh my. You don’t suppose he was raised by wolves, do you? Then it would make complete sense.”
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