Attending Physician

by Vivienne Hartt Quinn

  While it cooked, I unearthed her lobstah pot (as they’re called in Boston) and put water on for the egg noodles. Then I commandeered her big saucepot and began to heat the tomato sauce, and doctor it in my own special (read: secret) way.

  “Stir the meat, darling, will you? So it doesn’t burn?”

  She was so glad to stand next to me, smell my perfume, able to reach over and touch me whenever she wanted that she gladly helped. I didn’t even have to ask. That’s the best kind of help in the world.

  We made quick work of mama’s Moose recipe together, and soon enough I was elbow-deep in egg noodles, sour cream and cream cheese laced with green onions, and layers of red sauce topped with, as if it didn’t already have enough cheese, shredded yellow cheddar. Truth was it represented a delicious sixties sort of recipe when no one had heard of cholesterol let alone the good kind or the bad kind.

  Two of the pans I covered with aluminum foil and rested in the refrigerator. The third we left on the stove covered, and ready to reheat for our dinner with Lucy and Gretchen. I’d had Raven make a salad for that night’s supper.

  “Baby, we have forty-five minutes till they’re awake.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said running my tongue over my upper lip. “Your point would be, sir?”

  “I need to show you the upstairs.”

  She was being subtle, but I didn’t want it subtle. I wanted her hot, sweet, hard, and inside me, and I didn’t want to see but one bedroom upstairs.

  “Raven, darling, I need you to fuck me hard.”

  I startled her into a grin she couldn’t help. Adorable. “I’d be glad to oblige, ma’am. This way please.”

  We crept up the stairs in the house that led from the kitchen right to the master suite. I kicked off my shoes, stepped out of my skirt, let my panties slide down my shapely legs to the floor, and said, “Now, soldier.”

  “Ma’am,” she responded and reached for my most intimate self. I was already wet with anticipation for her and it made her groan. “Baby.”

  “I thought I said, `Now, soldier,’ didn’t I? I wasn’t kidding.” I hopped onto the bed and spread my legs. Raven didn’t miss a beat. She shimmied out of her trousers in a nanosecond and was inside my pussy before I could speak again.

  “Hungry, baby?”

  “For you? Always.”

  Raven lifted one of my legs to give her deeper access and began to stroke in and out slowly, knowing it would be better for me to let my orgasm build this way. Soon enough, I was breathing hard; she matched me.

  “Come for me, Raven,” I urged. “Come with me, sweetheart. Now!” I tumbled over the edge of satisfaction with her. As our heartbeats restored to normal rhythms, Raven stayed inside me, which she knew I loved, and kissed me lazily and completely.

  “Milady, you are sheer delight.”

  “There’s more where that came from, milord,” I said saucily.

  She smacked my bottom, and my hips twitched as my interior muscles contracted. “Do you like to be spanked, baby?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. My reaction had surprised me.

  “That’s something to explore,” she said musingly as she pulled out of my body, kissing me to console me for the loss. “I’ll be back tonight, baby, I promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it, good sir,” I vowed.

  She checked her watch. “Six on the dot. Let’s go put the Moose in to reheat, and go over to Gretchen’s to invite our girls to dinner, shall we?”

  Gretchen and Lucy sat in the living room together; both were “reading”—Gretchen was reading a romance novel, one of those bodice-rippers, and Lucy mouthed the words to a book she knew by heart. I used to do that when I was her age; I’d never seen another kid do it.

  Raven and I walked in holding hands. Both Nana and daughter looked at us and smiled. Their smiles were near identical. It tickled me that I could see it.

  “Gretchen, Lucy, hungry?” asked Raven.

  “Starving!” from Lucy. She spoke in exclamation points almost all the time. I wondered at what age that changed.

  “Absolutely,” said Gretchen, “and looking forward to Verity’s mama’s recipe.”

  “We’ll have to take it on the road,” said Raven.

  “We’re going to Papa’s?” Lucy’s eyes were huge.

  “Is that bad, Luce?” I asked.

  “No, Lady, never.”

  “Her girlfriends haven’t cooked for her?”

  “What girlfriends?” asked Lucy.

  “Lucy, if we’re going to Raven’s you need a jacket, little one,” said Gretchen.

  “I’ll get it!” Lucy tore out of the room.

  “You’re the first girl Raven’s brought home in longer than memory, Verity,” said Gretchen.

  “Didn’t you know Jenny?”

  “I didn’t like Jenny. I didn’t trust Jenny, and I wouldn’t let Jenny near Lucy.”

  “Here, Nana,” said Lucy, handing her grandmother an over-sized Delft blue sweater that matched her eyes.

  We traipsed through the house to Gretchen’s kitchen, down her steps and up Raven’s to her kitchen. The Moose had been in the oven for thirty minutes. I’d taken the salad out of the fridge to warm up, and set the table before we’d left. Dinner was ready.

  “Lucy, want to help Lady?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Raven hung Gretchen’s sweater and Lucy’s jacket.

  “Gretchen, sit, and let us wait on you for once,” I bossed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she saluted me with a teasing tone.

  “Lucy help?” said Lucy.

  Can a three year old toss salad? Sure—across the kitchen if you’ll let her. I held her hands on the salad servers and we tossed dressing onto the salad together. When Raven came back, she, at my request, took the Moose out of the oven and put it on a trivet on the table. The plates were stacked at my place. Apparently, the cook did the serving in this household. When I was a kid, Mama cooked but because various stepfathers paid for it, they served. Strange what one clocks as significant.

  We bustled in the Spartan kitchen getting salad on the table, and little ones seated, and femmes seated, said grace, and I served. I was nervous over everyone’s reactions to my first cooking foray.

  “Yum!” announced Lucy.

  Gretchen was silent, but her fork was in motion.

  Raven was in heaven. “This is a slice of my childhood, Verity.”

  “Mine, too,” I said.

  Gretchen patted her mouth with her cloth napkin. I’d rescued them from the back of a drawer. “Heavenly,” she grinned. “So good.”

  “Oh my, I guess Moose is a hit.”

  “I’ll say,” said Raven helping herself to another serving. “We made two more pans of this for tomorrow.”

  Lucy said, “Yay!” Then she got very serious. “Mama says forgiveness at dinner.”

  Chapter 67

  Gretchen got a bit of a cranky on. Raven was surprised. But I agreed with Lucy. “Okay, Luce,” I said, “who do you need to forgive?”

  “Nana,” she said promptly.

  Gretchen was surprised. “Why, little one?”

  “You make me mad sometimes, and I stay mad,” she threw out candidly.

  “Can you tell your Nana you forgive her?” I prompted.

  “I forgive you, Nana.”

  “Thank you, Lucy,” said Gretchen gravely.

  “Who’s next?” asked Lucy.

  “I am,” said Raven, wiping her mouth. “I need to forgive Jenny, and myself for my choices around Jenny.”

  “Jenny’s not here though,” said an observant Lucy.

  “That doesn’t matter with forgiveness, Lucy,” I said. “The person doesn’t have to be here, the person has to be here.” I tapped my heart.

  “Ohhh,” said Lucy taking that in. “Then I forgive Mama, too.”

  “Good, baby girl,” I said. “Raven, do you want to tell Jenny you forgive her? Imagine she’s sitting with us.”

  “Jenny, I forgive you,” said Rav
en, “and I forgive myself for the mistakes I made before you, during you, and after you.”

  “How does that feel?” I asked.

  “Better,” she said, taking my hand and squeezing. “Your turn?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgive Shelby completely, and I forgive me for staying too long.”

  “Need to say more?” Raven asked.

  “Yes, I forgive the Blessed Mother for letting it happen,” I said.”

  “I’ll go,” said Gretchen.

  She was why we were doing this forgiveness work, or she was its original impetus.

  “I forgive Angie for leaving us,” she whispered as the tears overflowed her eyes. “I forgive myself for being so sad and so mad for so long.” Raven handed Gretchen her handkerchief. “And, I forgive God for needing her back.”

  The room had the quiet of the presence of God in it.

  Lucy broke it when she patted Gretchen’s hand, “Good, Nana. Very good. Mama happy.”

  Lucy addressed me, “Lady, Mama happy for you to be my new mama, too.”

  Gretchen blanched white.

  “Gretchen, you’re late to the party. Lucy already asked me.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not unless her papa and her nana give the full-hearted go-ahead, no, and, besides, not tomorrow. I’ll have to be a married lady before I can be a stepmama. I am not having a stepchild out of wedlock!”

  “Raven, is Verity hinting at you there?” asked Gretchen, light years behind.

  “No, Gretchen, I told her I wanted her to be my wife days ago.”

  “I am way behind, aren’t I?”

  “Don’t worry, Gretchen,” I said, “I won’t let you get too far out of the loop, and I can guarantee you that no one is eloping. Nuh-uh, there will be a lovely wedding wherein you will have a prominent part.”

  “Oh, femme of mine?” asked Raven.

  “Is there a problem, darling?” I began to bus the table. I continued to Gretchen, “Besides, you will always be Lucy’s primary; that will never change. None of us want that.”

  Placated, Gretchen had better color in her face. I asked the Blessed Mother to heal her of cancer if she carried any. She’d begun the forgiveness work necessary to start the healing, and to have a happier daily life which is what life is really all about. Yes, in the Hokey Pokey sense.

  After dinner Gretchen got a bit of the panics over the barbeque so I went off to her kitchen with her to assure her we had a workable plan. Everyone was expected at one, so we had the morning to set up, ice beer and other drinks, ascertain we didn’t need anything else, and fire up the grill.

  Raven, no surprises, was the grill sergeant. She’d probably trade off with Cord during the day. Gretchen finally calmed down and I sent her early to bed to read her book, volunteering to do Lucy’s bedtime ritual with Raven.

  “Thanks, Verity,” she said on her way up the stairs.

  “You’re welcome, Gretchen. Sweet dreams. I’ll tell the fairies and unicorns to look after you, too.”

  “Good,” she rejoined, “someone better.”

  As I descended Gretchen’s side of the house to join Raven and Lucy, my phone rang.

  Rosie and Jace wanted me to listen to their precious Nate sing himself to sleep. He was adorable. After he did, we visited for a bit. Rosie was healing well. They were both exhausted the way new parents are exhausted—babies live on a twenty-four-hour clock, you know. They don’t know from it’s lunchtime or it’s naptime. To them, it’s now and they’re hungry or sleepy.

  They’d also wanted to know how it had gone with the hot butch doctor so I explained that I was in her house even as we spoke. They catcalled and wolf-whistled me a good-bye.

  I arrived on the Raven side of the house blushing.

  “What up, baby?” said Raven, rising to hold me close.

  “Rosie and Jace, teasing me about you,” I said.

  “Papa, time for the box,” said Lucy from the sofa behind us. “Mama says.”

  “You are one hell of a little girl, Lucille Ophelia Andrews,” said Raven.

  Lucy’s eyes popped open, “Bad papa, naughty word. Mama says.”

  “Luce,” Raven laughed, “I’d tell your mama what I thought of that but it would involve a whole lot of other naughty words!”

  “Lucy,” I asked, “can you tell me how you talk to your Mama?”

  “Inside,” she knocked on her skull.

  “Does Mama talk to you in words?” I wanted to confirm my earlier intuition.

  “No,” she paused a moment, “pictures.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “Do you see her?”

  “You mean with my eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, she’s ... a feeling.”

  “What kind of feeling, Luce?” asked Raven.

  “A mama feeling, like Lady! You are a papa feeling.”

  “Well,” said Raven, smiling down at me, “that was clear.”

  “Actually, darling,” I said, “it was. Thanks for telling me, Lucy.”

  “You’re welcome, Lady.”

  She went back to Little Mermaid and the travesty of Ariel losing her voice. I turned to my Raven.

  “What box, darling?”

  “It’s quite a story, Verity.”

  “I’m all ears.” I steered Raven to a big recliner next to the sofa where Lucy was splayed out, and pushed her into it. Then I climbed into the chair with her and snuggled tight against her side. “Go.”

  “My best friend, Angie Andrews, was a real cheapskate. Oh, maybe that’s not fair. From the time she first started getting an allowance, she was determined to save a lot of money—a lot of money fast. So she was never indulgent or frivolous. If she could do without, she did. If she could make it last, she did. If she could repurpose something, she did.

  “I don’t know why she wanted to save a lot of money but I think because her parents struggled sometimes over the years, Angie was determined to have a cushion so big that she’d never have to.”

  “That’s a noble goal,” I said.

  “Yeah, it crossed over into crazy. When she got pregnant, she wanted to have enough money in the bank to send her kid to college before she was born.”

  “I’ve never understood parents who felt that way, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard this.”

  “I know,” Raven ran her hands through her curls—it made me want to do the same.

  “Careful, milord, don’t distract me,” I warned.

  “Distract you, milady?”

  I reached up, tangled my French-manicured nails in her curls, and tugged.

  “I had no idea, ma’am,” she claimed.

  “I bet you didn’t.”

  Oh, she so did.

  “The story, Raven?”

  Chapter 68

  “Well, when Angie died, I was the executor of her estate. Jamie had drawn up her will. Angie had written letters to each of us brothers.”

  “Oh, how sweet,” I said, tearing up. “I wish I’d met her.”

  “Me, too, baby.” Raven leaned down and kissed me. “In my letter, she told me that she’d had a safe deposit box in a downtown Boston bank since she was a child. I hadn’t known that. Her wish was that Terry and I go together to open it.

  “So it took a while because we had to coordinate a weekday off, because the bank was only open banker’s hours, and we had to wait for an official death certificate with a seal, but eventually Terry and I went downtown to this bank to get out of the safe deposit box whatever was in it.”

  “This is like a mystery,” I said.

  “More than you’ll ever know, baby,” she shook her head and looked over at Lucy who was mouthing the words to the movie. “So, we went, and discovered two letters and a legal document in the box. We closed it out, and dropped into a pub for lunch. We ordered stout, and burgers and fries, and sat together to read our letters.

  “This was where Angie laid out that her mother was to raise Lucy in a daily way. I was to provide, and Terry needed to d
ecide whether she wanted a part in Lucy’s life and what part that might be.”

  “She did,” I said, “Unca Terry.”

  “Yes, but she was also guiltily relieved at not having to raise her, and ultimately much more relieved than guilty. Angie had known what she was doing, and although we had to do a bit of work to admit it, once we did, things fell into place.

  “I had a house to sell and tenants to evict, but in the main, it worked out. Lucy had been staying with her nana because Terry had such odd hours as a detective. Well, we thought that was everything until Chérie got a flat tire.”

  “Wait, Angie couldn’t have known that Chérie would get a flat tire.”

  “Couldn’t she?” Raven asked sardonically. “I don’t know, baby. Listen to this. There is no wheel well for the spare in a ‘67 Mustang, it sits snug in the right rear of the trunk. She got the flat in the driveway, not on the road, thank God. One Saturday a month after Angie died when I was getting ready to leave, I saw it, and went outside to put on the spare.”

  I didn’t understand why Raven was telling me this level of detail over a flat tire.

  “Well, years and years ago, our dads used to leave each other pranks under the spare tires of each other’s car. Ang and I carried on the tradition, not usually pranks, but things that were important to us, or stuff we wanted to keep secret from our parents, you know, things like that. So that day, I opened the trunk and reached for the tire and saw a note from Angie. Like she’d left it that morning. I froze, you can imagine.”

  “Um, yeah, I can,” I said, my eyes big, trained on Raven’s face.

  “I leaned down to get it and thought of throwing it out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because by then I was exhausted. Moving, Lucy, Gretchen, losing Angie, executing her will, it was a lot. I’m so glad I didn’t though. “In the envelope was an index card that read:

  “Jesus and Mary,” I said. “What cigar box?”

  “When Angie and I were kids, our dads would buy cigars by the box, and they’d sit outside and smoke one as a treat every weekend. Our moms never let them in the house with those smelly things.”