From Bad to Wurst

by Maddy Hunter

  “We thought you were a goner for sure,” confessed Dick Teig from somewhere in front of me.

  “It was the most terrifying moment of my life,” sobbed Mom.

  “I wish you coulda seen George and your dad,” Nana chimed proudly. “When they looked back and seen you layin’ on the sidewalk, they leaped right into action.”

  “It wasn’t just me and your dad,” said George. “Osmond found your pulse. And Margi made a clean spot on your face.”

  “I used the very latest in the fall collection of unscented mini sanitizers,” gushed Margi. “It’s called Air.”

  “Wally tried to herd us farther down the street in case there was another explosion,” Alice reported. “The musicians followed his orders, but the fellas wouldn’t leave your side.”

  “Margi done triage for them workers in the street,” continued Nana, “and she done a real good job. She even sent them off to the hospital with complimentary bottles of sanitizer.”

  “We used Dick’s sock as a tourniquet for the backhoe driver,” announced Grace Stolee.

  “Happy to make a contribution to the cause,” boomed Dick. “It had a hole in the toe anyway.”

  “Them musicians sure hightailed it to safer ground real quick,” added Nana. “That’s on account of them expensive instruments they’re carryin’. They didn’t wanna wait around for no more blasts to blow the things sky high.”

  “I would have helped with the rescue efforts,” Mom apologized. “Really, Emily, I would have, but I was so overcome with fright when I saw you that I…I collapsed right there on the sidewalk.”

  “I woulda helped, too,” deadpanned Nana, “but I couldn’t go nowhere with your mother on top of me.”

  “Enough togetherness already,” groused Bernice. “Lemme out of here. I can’t breathe.”

  “Even Bernice did her part,” acknowledged Helen as they broke ranks, adding in an undertone, “unbelievable as that might sound.”

  A bomb exploding and hell freezing over on the same day? Wow. Talk about momentous.

  “What role did you play in the rescue effort, Ms. Zwerg?” Etienne inquired.

  “Photographic historian.” She elevated her chin at a haughty angle. “I got pictures of the whole disaster. Someone had to. Bob was so obsessed about holding Emily’s hand that he set his camcorder aside.” Her mouth slid into a sultry smile. “Did you know I used to be a magazine model?”

  Dad held my hand while I was unconscious? Aww.

  I spotted him on the periphery, calm and quiet amid all the chatter, peeking out from behind Dick Teig’s head, a shy smile on his lips. Catching his eye, I mouthed, “Thanks, Dad.”

  He gave a quick nod and flashed a happy face before Dick moved his head, hiding him from view.

  Dad was a man of few words. We weren’t sure what all the words were, but among his favorites were yup, sure, and uh-huh.

  Dad was nothing if not positive.

  Bernice paused in front of me, studying my face. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror yet?”

  “I haven’t quite mustered the courage.”

  She nodded sagely. “Smart.” Then, under her breath, “That was actually a compliment. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Wally’s voice echoed throughout the lobby as he hurried toward me. Banding his arms around me, he smothered me in a huge bear hug. “Don’t ever do that again. We all aged about ten years watching them load you into that ambulance today.”

  “I didn’t,” countered Bernice. “Unlike the disturbing number of milquetoast lefties on this trip, I’m not a bleeding heart.”

  Margi sniffed. “That’s because you don’t have one.”

  “Do so.”

  “Do not.”

  “Well, I sure added ten years to my life,” hooted Osmond. “Practically speaking, I should be dead.”

  “Seriously, Em.” Wally held me away from him and searched my face. “Are you all right?”

  I shrugged. “So far, so good. A little weepy, a little wobbly, but I’m hanging in there.”

  He glanced at Etienne. “Any recommendations from the hospital?”

  “Her scans came back negative, so she can resume normal activities as soon as she feels up to it, although the doctor discouraged her from dancing the polka at the festival tent tonight. I’m thinking a light schedule for the next couple of days might be in order.”

  “She should do nothing for the next few days,” Mom insisted as she hovered close by. “You boys have your hands full with the tour, so I’ll take over responsibility for Emily.” She waved off any objections. “No need to thank me. It’s no bother at all. I’ll stick to her like bark to a tree. Won’t that be fun, Em?”

  Oh, no.

  “Really, Mom, I’m not going to ruin your vacation by saddling you with guard duty. I’m perfectly fine. The doctor said so.”

  Nana shuffled up to us in her size 5 sneakers, her eyes twinkling with mischief behind her wire rims. “You better listen to your mother, Emily. If she’s got a notion to keep an eye on you, let her, on account of worry can cause strokes, and we don’t want your mother to suffer no stroke.”

  “That’s right,” said Mom, adding a little fist pump for emphasis. “I—” Pausing in sudden reflection, she cocked her head and arched a brow at Nana. “A stroke? Seriously?”

  Nana shrugged. “You’re creepin’ up there in age, Margaret, so who knows?”

  Omigod. Nana was using fear tactics to sic Mom on me.

  “I think it’d do your maternal instincts a whole world of good to watch over Emily for a few days,” Nana encouraged. “You don’t need to be dividin’ your attention between me and her, so I’m givin’ you my blessin’ to ditch me so’s you can focus on her. She’s the one what needs you right now.”

  Mom beamed with gratitude. “That’s so unselfish of you, Mother.”

  “You bet. It’d be downright criminal for me to hog all the attention. I’m fine. Emily’s not. Just lookit how peaked she looks.”

  Mom peered into my face, her head bobbing in agreement. “Your grandmother’s right, Emily. Under all your scabs, you do look peaked.”

  “That’s because they scrubbed all my makeup off at the hospital! I always look like this without foundation and blush.”

  “It’s all settled then.” Mom launched herself at me again, all arms and hugs and smothering kisses. “You have nothing to worry about from now on, Emily. Your mother’s going to take good care of you.”

  I fired an evil look at Nana, prompting her to slink away like the faithful dog who’d made an ill-advised feast of the new sofa cushions, the family bird, and everyone’s homework. I was her favorite granddaughter—her only granddaughter. How could she do this to me?

  “Can I have your attention, folks?” Wally’s voice silenced the chatter. “Now that we’ve had a chance to see for ourselves that Emily is okay, we need to address another issue. Our musicians are grieving the loss of one of their colleagues, so I’d like to have a group meeting to discuss what happens next. They might not feel up to keeping their performance schedule without Ms. Peterson, so we may have to consider changing our itinerary. Let’s get it all on the table, though. They’re waiting for us in the Prince Ludwig room.” He motioned to a corridor that angled around the front desk to the right. “I won’t keep you long, but I’d appreciate your extending a few words of sympathy to the other guests. Ms. Peterson was apparently an all-round nice person, well liked by everyone, so they’re taking her death really hard.”

  They followed behind Wally without jockeying for position or cutting each other off, which made me question why they couldn’t do that all the time. Mom locked her hand around my arm, excitement oozing from her every pore as she burdened herself with my well-being. “Can you manage baby steps, sweetheart, or should I request a wheelchair?”

&n
bsp; “If you’ll allow me, Margaret.” Etienne laid claim to my other arm. “I’ll be happy to relieve you of duty for the rest of the day.”

  “Nosiree,” said Mom, tightening her grip. “When I make a commitment, I follow through.”

  “I insist.” He smiled, favoring her with a dose of Old World charm that affected the average woman like catnip affects cats.

  “Nonsense. We’re good. Aren’t we, Em?”

  Mom had apparently developed an immunity to Old World charm.

  “I suspect Wally could make good use of your people skills in the Prince Ludwig room, Margaret.” Etienne gave my arm a gentle tug in his direction.

  Mom tugged me back toward her. “You’re much more diplomatic than I am—you go. I’ll stay with Emily.”

  “You have a better touch with grief-stricken people, Margaret.” Right, toward Etienne.

  “No, I don’t.” Left, toward Mom.

  Feeling like the proverbial wishbone from the Thanksgiving Day turkey, I decided to end the tug of war before someone yelled, “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

  Or was I confusing wishbones with birthday candles?

  Uh-oh. Maybe my brain was more addled than the CT scan had indicated.

  “Enough already!” I said, wrenching my arms free. “Geesh.” I glanced from one to the other. “Trust me. I’m not unappreciative, but there’s gotta be a better way. Can we compromise? Like, say, Etienne runs ahead to join the guests in the Prince Ludwig room, and Mom and I follow behind at a more leisurely pace?”

  Mom cleared her throat and snorted delicately. “Isn’t that what I just suggested?”

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Etienne asked me, sounding perplexed.

  “Yup. That’ll work. But before you head off, you need to refresh my memory about something. Do you remember how long the doctor said we should wait before we…you know”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“resume normal marital relations?”

  Stuck between an inhale and an exhale, Etienne broke out in a fit of wheezing that had him thumping his fist against his sternum to clear his air passages. Mom froze on the spot, speechless and red-faced, her eyes popping out of their sockets as if they’d been inflated with helium. “Alrighty then,” she tittered nervously, because if there was anything that could force Mom to run from a room, it was the thought of having to listen to another human being talk about that most forbidden of all subjects: S-E-X.

  “The two of you must think I’m so selfish,” she blurted, aiming herself in the direction of the Prince Ludwig room. “Now that I think about it, Wally’s people skills really are far inferior to mine, so I’ll just scoot down there to help out. Those poor grief-stricken souls deserve a huge outpouring of sympathy and support, and no one can dole it out better than I can.”

  Abdicating any further claim on my arm, she launched herself toward the meeting room as fast as her feet would fly. Etienne hazarded a smile. “She does make a habit of fleeing when the conversation turns to seemingly indelicate subjects, doesn’t she?”

  “Thank God. How would we ever deal with her if she wasn’t so predictable?”

  He studied my face for a long moment before trailing his finger down my cheek. “Tell me honestly, do you feel up to facing the masses or would you rather go back to the room?”

  “I’ll go back to the room after the meeting. We can’t abandon Wally. No matter how good he is at what he does, he might need reinforcements. My legs are still a little rubbery, but I’ll be okay if I can sit down.”

  Cupping his hand around my elbow, he guided me around the front desk and down the long corridor toward the Prince Ludwig room. “Since when has your grandmother resolved her issues with your mother by throwing you under the bus?”

  “You noticed the tire marks, did you?”

  He laughed. “For an octogenarian, your grandmother seems to enjoy living quite dangerously.”

  Maybe too dangerously. She never should have sicced Mom on me; that was a no-no. So she and I were going to have words, and my nonprofessional prediction was that she wasn’t going to like them.

  three

  The heartache in the Prince Ludwig room was palpable.

  Guests were clustered in small groups around the perimeter, speaking in hushed tones, tissues in hand, dabbing their eyes. Quiet weeping. Loud nose blowing. Earnest hand squeezing. I scanned the area in search of Zola, desperate to speak to her privately, but I caught sight of her red hair at the opposite end of the room, about as far away from me as she could possibly be.

  I was encouraged to see that my guys were making the rounds with Astrid’s friends, offering sympathy and remaining respectfully low-key. Even Bernice was displaying a level of decorum that was remarkable for Bernice. Not only did she seem disinclined to badger any of the bereaved guests into taking pictures of her, she was actually offering tissues to guests who needed them. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if this was a random act of kindness or an optical illusion.

  Mom was practicing her people skills by giving everyone in the room a big squishy hug. She could have limited it to band members only, but to her way of thinking, overkill was a much less grievous sin than discrimination.

  The only guest who wasn’t engaged in conversation or offering unsolicited hugs was Dad, who occupied a chair in the last row of seats at the back of the room, happily detached from everyone while he studied the floor.

  Wally hurried over to us, clipboard in hand. “I received a text from Astrid’s brother. He’s wondering if we could pack up Astrid’s belongings and carry them back to the States with us. I told him it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Etienne.

  “What about her accordion?” I looked from one man to the other. “Did it survive the blast in one piece?”

  Wally’s expression went blank. “I didn’t see an accordion—not that I had time to look. Was her instrument case the big rolling silver thing that looked like it was on the cutting edge of spaceship technology?”

  I nodded. “It’s the last thing I remember seeing before I blacked out.”

  He jotted a note on his clipboard. “I’ll track it down. I should think her family would want that back, too, if there’s anything left of it. So where’s the best place to start an inquiry about a missing instrument case? Local authorities?”

  Etienne quickly leaped into former police inspector mode. “Why don’t you let me handle the missing accordion? I might be able to navigate the police system a little easier than you.”

  Wally nodded. “No complaints from me there.”

  “In fact, while you’re calling your meeting to order, I think I’ll make a few inquiries at the front desk to get the ball rolling.” He gestured toward the orderly rows of folding chairs before us. “Can I offer you a seat, Mrs. Miceli?”

  Talk of Astrid’s accordion case caused a sluggish synapse to fire in my brain. “Where’s my shoulder bag?” I clutched my shoulder in search of the strap, startled that it had taken me this long to realize it was missing.

  “Your dad recovered it after you collapsed,” said Wally. “He gave it to your gramma for safekeeping.”

  “OhthankGod.” I blew out a long relieved breath. “My whole life is in that bag. Did you realize it was missing?” I asked Etienne.

  “I never gave your bag a passing thought, bella. I’m afraid worry overtook my awareness of fashion accessories.”

  Aww. I swallowed around the lump in my throat, forcing myself not to burst into tears again.

  Crisis averted, Etienne ushered me to the aisle seat in the front row, then headed out to the reception desk. Wally took up a position in the front of the room. “I apologize for the interruption, but would all of you be kind enough to find a seat?”

  Sniffling. Shuffling. Chair scraping. Mom claimed the chair beside me, beating Margi out by a nose, but Nana had obvi
ously decided to keep a low profile because she’d grabbed a chair at the far end of my row, a location so distant, if we were in Iowa, we’d refer to it as the “back forty.”

  Wally squared his shoulders, eyes somber, voice subdued. “Speaking on behalf of Emily, Etienne, and Destinations Travel, I’d like to express my deepest sympathy to all our musicians on the loss of your colleague. I know Ms. Peterson was an esteemed member of your group. I’ve heard you compare her musical ability to the accordion virtuoso on the old Lawrence Welk Show.”

  “Myron Floren,” said a woman with a nasally voice.

  “She was better than Myron Floren,” insisted a male guest. “Her fingers were so nimble, she could practically tie them in knots.”

  “It helped that she was double jointed,” snuffled a man behind me.

  “And not only that,” agreed another man, “her motor skills were so highly developed, she could work the bellows, play the keyboard, and hit the bass buttons with a blindfold tied around her eyes. Our audiences loved that routine. They always rewarded her with a standing ovation.”

  “And a tip jar full of five-dollar bills,” added the woman who talked through her nose.

  “I don’t know how our band can survive without her,” lamented a man whose voice trembled with emotion. “On so many levels, Astrid was one in a million.”

  More sniffling and nose blowing. I angled my chair around slightly so I could see the entire room.

  Wally regarded us, a questioning expression on his face. “Would the remaining members of her band like to join me up front to share a few of their favorite Astrid memories with those of us who never got to know her?”

  Whispers. Throat clearing. Chair creaking.

  “That’s mighty nice of you to ask,” said the man whose voice still shook with emotion. I glanced toward the center of the room as a big, burly guy with a white Santa Claus beard and apple cheeks stood up. “We’d like that.”

  He gestured to several others as he snaked his way across the row of folding chairs. Up popped three more people, two men and a woman, who followed him to the front of the room. They huddled together in an awkward clump, looking out at the rest of us with red noses and bloodshot eyes.