Attending Physician

by Vivienne Hartt Quinn

  “An ... attitude?” she asked She had an adorable, well-nigh hidden, dimple deep in her left cheek.

  “You think?” I queried. “It’s one of my pet peeves about Boston.”

  “What is?” “Educational pedigree-ism,” I snapped. “I came close to slapping him across the face with my degree from Smith.”

  “You’re a Smith girl?” she beamed at me.

  “I am,” I answered primly.

  “I went to Wellesley.”

  I waited. There’s no medical school at Wellesley.

  “And, um,” she cleared her throat, “Harvard Medical School.”

  I laughed. “Well, at least I won’t have to tell off two doctors from Harvard in one day!”

  “No?” she was amused.

  “No, you already know I won’t sleep with you tonight.”

  I blushed gangbusters that time. Because it wasn’t that I didn’t want to sleep with her. Oh, no. I definitely wanted that. In fact, I’d have skipped dinner for that, but it just wasn’t done. At least not by femmes like me.

  “Indeed I do, milady, and I wouldn’t dream of challenging you on that,” she avowed.

  “Well, newbie doc Martin Seligman from Harvard wouldn’t dream of not challenging me on every effing case. He’s been doing it since the top of the semester, and getting ruder and cruder each time, and I finally lost my temper at him today.”

  “Good for you, baby. Did he back down?”

  “Only sort of. I know as sure as my hair is red that he’ll go to the dean and complain that I humiliated him in front of his colleagues.”

  “Did you?”

  “Only if he thinks so,” I replied. “Instead, what I did was let him know that his behavior was disrupting the class for the entire group and that it needed to change because he needed to get conscious!

  “Truthfully, it makes me mad that M.D.s like him have to suffer through supervision when he’s not going to practice as a therapist. He wants to do psychopharm, which is fine, we need them, too, but he’s making everyone else miserable and I finally had had it today.”

  “Brava, baby,” she toasted me, tipping her wineglass in my direction. “I’ll bet you were magnificent.”

  This was dangerous territory for me.

  “Magnificent?” I raised my left eyebrow.

  “Absolutely. You’re beautiful normally, add passion—of any kind—to that, it has to equal magnificent.”

  “Good save,” I murmured.

  “Save?”

  “Yes, one of my ex’s worst habits was taking the wind out of the sails of my anger by telling me I was magnificent when I was angry. I felt robbed every time she did it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, taking my hand under the table.

  “I know,” I said. The flush on my cheeks wasn’t a blush this time; it was anger. “At some point, I need to tell you about that whole thing,” I went on.

  “But not tonight,” she soothed. “Let’s stick to the fun facts of the getting-to-know-you dance tonight.”

  I was amazed at how she read me so perfectly. I had a deep intuition that whiffed me. She too had a story that held pain. There would be time enough to tell both our stories organically.

  “Deal,” I agreed, thankful.

  “So what happened with Dr. Harvard?” she prompted.

  “He backed down.”

  “Did he apologize?” I gave her a Look with a capital L. “Um, sorry, milady. Of course he didn’t apologize. What was I thinking?”

  “Precisely,” said I as our beet and warm goat cheese salads arrived. “I love beets,” I added happily.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  “Let us pray.” I thought her eyes were going to fall out of her face. “Oh God, bless the cooks and the company,” I said lightly. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” she said wonderingly, grasping her fork. She skewered a particularly scrumptious-looking wedge of beet and offered it to me.

  I opened my mouth, and she handed off the beet. “Much easier than Lucy,” said Raven.

  “Who’s Lucy?” I asked after I’d swallowed.

  Which, thinking of swallowing in another context, made me blush furiously.

  She reached into her jacket pocket for her phone and put in her security code. Then she directed the phone screen to me.

  There, covered with blueberries—face, hair, bib, clothes, highchair tray was the most adorable blonde curly-haired poppet I had ever seen. Maybe two.

  “Ooooh, she’s adorable.”

  “Thank you,” said Raven. I detected uncertainty in her voice.

  “Raven?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Who is she to you?”

  “She’s my g ... daughter.”

  “What was the g for?”

  She gulped. “Wow. You have good ears.”

  “Excellent ears,” I agreed. “Eyes, not so much.”

  “Oh?” she tracked.

  “The g, Raven?”

  “I was going to say `goddaughter,’ and I suppose she still is, technically, but in fact, she’s my daughter. She’s been my daughter for almost a year.”

  Chapter 14

  “Almost a year?” I asked. Raven nodded. “You know I want to hear the story, but you have a choice, Raven. You can tell me now if you like or you can tell me another time.”

  She gazed at me for a long pause during which I sat completely still.

  “You’re a remarkable woman, Verity.”

  “Right back atcha, Raven,” I spoke, attempting to lighten the mood.

  Letting out a deep breath, she said, “Here’s the short form. Lucy was my best friend’s daughter and my goddaughter. Angie was a cop. She was killed in the line of duty a year ago Halloween.” Her eyes were luminous with unshed tears.

  I reached for her hand under the table. “Oh, darling,” I said. She has her own Halloween heartache, I thought. We’re well-matched there.

  She wiped her eyes with her napkin. “She lives with her grandmother next door in Newton. I got built-in childcare with the child.”

  “That’s fortunate.”

  “It is,” she agreed.

  “You must miss Angie.”

  “Every day.” Then she squared her shoulders and shifted her focus, “Lucy is sheer delight.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “What two year old isn’t?”

  “Point taken.” She added, “She’s three now.”

  “So we have a choice, darling,” I said. “We can continue this conversation, which is likely to get heavy, or we can change the subject.”

  “What if I want both?”

  “Are you a Gemini?” I asked, kidding.

  “I am,” she responded, surprised. “My birthday’s June 7th.”

  My opportunity to freeze. “Did you say June 7th?” She nodded. “Oh, Goddess,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Well, it seems we’re one for one. I told you a heart ouch. It feels like it’s your turn.”

  “My son was born on June 7th,” I said.

  “How old is he?” asked Raven.

  Here’s where it always gets tricky. “He would be twenty next year.”

  “Would ...,” she repeated, not asking the question.

  Here was my deep breath. “He died the day he was born,” I answered it despite her not asking.

  “Oh, Verity.”

  “I know,” I said. I thought her tears might spill over. My eyes were dry.

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “No, if it’s never happened to you, you can’t,” I agreed with her. “I wouldn’t want you to—imagine it or be able to. It’s a long story.”

  “Another one we’re tabling for tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “However, it’s obvious that we were meant to meet especially since you share my baby boy’s birthday.”

  “Makes sense,” she commented. “Tell me about that prayer before dinner.”

  “I pray before I eat.”

  “Always?”

  “Yes,
when I can. The upshot of my son’s death was a strong faith in God. The alternative was too painful to contemplate.”

  “Alternative?”

  “Bitter anger.”

  “I see,” she said sagely. “I suppose at some level I’m still making that call for myself.”

  “Is it any wonder She sent me to you?”

  “Um, she?”

  “The Mother.”

  “You mean like The Blessed Mother? The BVM?”

  “The phrase can mean that, but no, I referred to the Cosmic Mother, the Mother of All Life.”

  “Like a sort of consort to God the Father?” she scrunched her nose. Her theology was, shall we say, rusty.

  The poor darling. She was doing her best to slot my highly unorthodox belief system into her long ago catechism lessons.

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s properly the reverse.”

  “What? The reverse? Of what?”

  Raven wasn’t tracking this. She couldn’t conceive of it. Her confusion was adorable.

  “Raven, my beliefs don’t exactly go with what the nuns taught you, darling.”

  “I’ll say, but I want to know. What’s the reverse?”

  I thought for a minute. “Do you know the expression `ladies first’?”

  “It’s in the Butch Handbook.”

  “Is there one?” I asked, eyes dancing merrily.

  “There is, milady,” she assured me earnestly. “I do my best to follow its every precept.”

  “So these aren’t date manners for you, they’re everyday manners?”

  “That’s right, ma’am.”

  “Oooh, goody.”

  She laughed outright. “Verity. The reverse?”

  “Oh, right. Well, ladies first, right? So how is it possible that God the Father was alive before God the Mother? Fathers can’t have babies by themselves—godliness notwithstanding—they need a gestational ... venue, if you will. Only mothers can supply that.”

  “Right,” she said.

  We were on firmer ground here. She was an obstetrician after all.

  “So if you read the Bible in the original, you’ll discover a reference to God the Mother in the first verse. Long before God the Father shows his handsome face.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Raven shaking her head.

  “Blessed,” I corrected.

  “Blessed,” she copied me. “Can you show me where in the scriptures?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Then rare filet mignon arrived with roasted root vegetables, and we were happy, carnivorous women feeding one another the occasional bite, and enjoying that we liked our red meat the same way. Nothing like Argentinian steak, except for maybe Iowan.

  “Verity, when’s your birthday?” Raven asked.

  “In October.”

  “That makes you a ...?”

  “Libra,” I said. “A serious Libra—with four planets in Libra and a Gemini Moon.”

  “I know nothing astrology-wise. What’s a Gemini Moon?”

  “Do you read your horoscope?” I teased.

  “Every morning,” she said.

  “Gemini.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Darling, do you know your birth time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If you’re comfortable, I can run your chart and tell you more about yourself.”

  “I’ve always wanted have that done! You can do it?”

  “I can. I’ll need date, time, and place.”

  “June 7, 1960, 2:22 AM, Newton, Massachusetts.”

  “Odd,” I said.

  “What’s odd, baby?” She reached for my hand.

  “I was born at 2:22 PM.”

  “That is odd.”

  “I think we probably some strong astrological connections.”

  “I’m fascinated,” she watched carefully as I began the regulation Femme Ritual to repair my postprandial lipstick.

  “Perfect,” she said, her eyes on my mouth.

  “How could they be otherwise?” I asked. At her silent query, I explained, “They’re mine.”

  She laughed out loud. “Right you are, milady. They wouldn’t dare.”

  I watched her subtle signal for the check, musing to myself, she is fascinated, and not only by the astrology. Then she reached into her back pocket for her wallet and blew my skirt up over my face. A puddle. Again.

  She bundled me sweetly into my coat and led me outside. Carefully checking out my shoes, she asked, “Would you like to walk for a bit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Milady?” She offered me her arm, and tucked my small, cold hand into her large, warm one.

  I was distracted by my own thoughts. She was quiet and left me to them until we stood in front of a jewelry store display window.

  Chapter 15

  “Covetous?” she teased me.

  “Um,” I came slightly out of my mind, “maybe, of course, not really.”

  “That was definitive.”

  I rebounded fully. “I wasn’t completely here. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled down at me. “Wanna tell me where you were?”

  “In a cosmic wondering space, I suppose.”

  “Um?”

  “Just ... wondering at what made it so that you were on when Rosie was due when you weren’t supposed to be, and I was there, and we connected, and ... wow at the cosmos.”

  “Ah,” she said, “I see.”

  I stood on tiptoe and slipped my arms around her neck. “Doctor Raven,” I kissed her lips gently so as not to smudge my lipstick on me or on her, “take me home. I need to be alone with you.”

  The breath whooshed out of her. I’d surprised her. “Yes, ma’am,” she agreed wrapping her arm around my waist, spinning me around and heading for Chérie. “Your chariot awaits, ma’am.”

  “Tell me her story,” I invited knowing, I thought, what I was getting into. Ask a butch about her wheels and be prepared, femmes, there’s usually an oratorio that follows. Truth? I was breathless with desire, and I needed a distraction to come down a bit. Wheels work every time.

  She regarded me carefully over a small pause. Then she said, “This is a distraction, right?”

  “How did you know?” I asked astonished.

  “Because you don’t really want to know the story of Chérie’s engine or the restoration process or where we got the pristine bucket seats and had to take a road trip to get them, do you?”

  This was a butch who got femmes. “Nooo,” I admitted. “What I want to know is what Chérie means to you. And yes, I’ll cop to it, I meant it to be a distraction.”

  “From?”

  “Am I allowed not to tell you?” I asked seriously.

  “Allowed?” She cocked her head at me.

  “I take the Fifth.” I held my hand in the swearing position.

  She grabbed it and kissed it. “So be it, milady.” She kissed it again more lingeringly. I cleared my throat. “Right,” she said, “Chérie.

  “Chérie has a story, and it’s wrapped up in Angie. Well, not Angie per se, but our dads. They were best friends when we lived next door to one another as kids, you see, and one fine summer day, after our dads had mowed the lawns and were sharing a shirtless cigar and a beer, they discovered that they both were crazy for 1967 Mustangs.”

  “Sweet,” I said.

  “Yep,” she agreed. “That afternoon a gentlemen’s agreement was made—they would buy not one, but two, 1967 Mustang convertibles and restore them to pristine perfection for their two only children.”

  “Angie and you,” I supplied.

  “Yep,” she grinned. “They figured it would take some time to locate good ones worth restoring to mint condition, and we were practically five years from needing wheels, each of us, so it would be a project they did together, and maybe with us, with a non-pressure goal of giving us cars for our sixteenth birthdays. Angie’s was two days after mine,” she explained.

  “What a smart gift!” I enthused.

  “Uh-huh, and eve
ry Saturday morning for as long as I can remember, our dads spent four hours `working on the cars’ for their girls, and we got to help. At eleven, our attention spans weren’t great so we didn’t get to go to the auction in Worcester where they bought the pair, but we were there to welcome our conquering heroes home, and we were totally into them. In fact, we played Mustang as kids.”

  “Adorable,” I murmured. We’d reached Chérie, and she handed me into the car like I was a precious gem. My skin delighted at her tucking my raincoat in. I’d not had this kind of attention in so very long, I didn’t begin to know how much I’d missed it, but I had started to wrap my brain around the depth of the ache it had caused in me.

  “What did they pay for the cars? Do you know?”

  “Of course!” she exclaimed. “I have every receipt for every dime they spent on them.”

  “Wow.”

  “Well, it was a labor of love.”

  “It had to be, Raven. Come on, how much?”

  “Five hundred dollars,” she said proudly.

  “Each?” I asked.

  “For the pair!” She was scandalized.

  “Indubitably,” I soothed. “Go on.”

  “Well, I got totally into it with my dad. By the time I was twelve, I spent those four hours with him on Saturdays. When I got a job as a candy-striper one summer, my one condition was that I wouldn’t come in till after lunch on Saturdays because I had to help my dad. Eventually, I genuinely helped him, and he taught me everything I needed to know to keep her healthy.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said.

  “It is,” she agreed. “Eventually, after Angie got over being a party girl her freshman year, she got into it, too. So we’d spend time shopping at vintage car shows, and learning about our rides. We were the envy of our friends because we knew we were getting wheels the summer before our junior year, and so did everybody else.”

  “You’ve kept Chérie in pristine shape for years. Sixteen was a while ago.”

  “Yep, thirty years.”

  “Wow,” I said. “And you only drive Chérie?”

  “Mostly,” she said. “We have a minivan that Gretchen drives—that’s Angie’s mom—so there can be a car seat in it for Lucy. Sometimes, if we go somewhere together, I drive that, but I prefer Chérie, believe me.”