by E M Kaplan
More serious now, Susan said, “I won’t argue with you then. But I don’t know what to say about Peter. I guess it’s not a total surprise to me. They're Boston royalty. Like the Kennedys. But on the other hand, maybe it was a fluke…Let’s not think about it. For today, just give it the movie star smile. Tuck in your chin. Show lots of teeth. Hide your whinin’ on the inside.”
“Please tell me we’re not having outdoor photos? I might as well dunk my head under a hose, if so. I’m already drenched.”
“Nope,” Susan said. “This place has a gorgeous garden, but we’d be in a crowd of gnats, bees, and mosquitoes. So, no head dunking for you. Though with this many people in the bridal party, no one will see you in the photos.”
She nearly side-swiped a pedestrian—a preteen girl in a tank top who was stepping off the curb. Josie winced and held up a hand in apology as they sped by. The girl flipped them a double bird.
Josie’s mind tracked back. “No one is going to see me in the photos? Did they ask you to digitally replace my face with Lisa’s?”
“Photoshop the photos?” Susan pondered the idea, which was absolutely within her skill set because she designed book jackets, both print and digital, CD labels, posters, and other graphically minded stuff. Her apartment was an organized chaos of computer parts, scanners, and printers, as testament to her creative genius—the inherent proclamation that while Susan lived a charmed life, she worked, too. “I could do it, you know.”
“I know you could,” Josie said. “And you will. It’ll be our gift to the bride and groom. For posterity.”
“By the way,” Susan said, shooting her a serious look, “What are you getting them for a present?”
Josie grimaced and pushed her hair off her sweaty face. Shit, shit, shitty-shit. A present. “After all this—the rehearsals, the dress, the shoes, for crying out loud. The last thing I want to do is shop at the mall. Those hoity-toity bridal assistants with their registry lists. How am I supposed to remember to get…” Then, after a moment of realization, she said, “I don’t know Susan, what present did I get for them?”
“You know, I’m glad you asked.” Susan hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the trunk space. “We all ponied up and got them the crystal martini pitcher off their registry. You owe us forty dollars, by the way.”
Josie sighed with relief. “Thanks.” Though she wasn’t sure where she was going to scrape up forty bucks any time soon, she also knew that Susan wouldn’t remind her about it again. And unfortunately, Josie would need to take advantage of her friend for just a while longer.
Susan took a sharp left into the church parking lot. The majority of the wedding party, minus the bride and groom, had already gathered on the front lawn. Susan flipped her keys into her teal handbag. “Okay. Are you ready for this? Stomach check?”
“It’s okay for now,” Josie said. “But when I see all of us in these dresses en masse…” She shuddered. Releasing her hem from the grip of the door, she assessed the wrinkles and line of black grease left behind. And, oops, a tiny rip in the hem.
Tripping behind her friend, she muttered, “All right, let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER 2
After an ugly bridesmaid’s dress, the next most useless thing in the world is a food critic who can’t eat.
Food was Josie’s life, from her mother’s restaurant to her newspaper column on restaurants and kitchens. But lately, she couldn’t even stand the smell of a watery cup of broth. Before, any problem in Josie’s world could be soothed by food or drink. Missed bus? Mango-orange smoothie. Mild doldrums? A piece of peppered beef jerky.
A couple days before the wedding, Josie, in a thin cotton shift, had been stretched out on the papered examining table at her favorite doctor’s office. Relatively stretched out—for a person with a stomach spasms. She poked at the paper-covered pillow on the table, trying to get comfortable. On the wall next to her hung a laminated poster of human cross-sections—a view she hoped never to see in real life. She’d been staring at a nasal cavity and bronchial passages for the last seven minutes.
Not a bad office, actually. High-rent area. The buildings were 25 or 30 years old but updated—the carpet smelled synthetic and new. In the waiting room, the framed artwork matched the color of the upholstery on the chairs. A maintenance service came once a week to water the potted plants and clip away dead leaves. Janice, the office manager, made sure the magazines on the tables were up to date—no Time magazines that announced George W. as Man of the Year.
Bright exam rooms had walls that were a mellow sage color. He’d redone the floors with wood laminate. She gazed around, approving of the modern stainless steel stool on wheels.
Drew—Dr. Cole, as his other patients called him, and how sexy was that?—entered the room with a laptop and studied her file.
“You’re still losing weight,” he said.
Both of them had been philosophy majors as freshman before switching to other programs. She always wondered about the social implication of being able to call her doctor by his first name…and of having held his head while he puked up his guts. This, after some incredibly irresponsible behavior that made her marvel at their teenage bodies’ insistence on recovering.
Susan was too uncomfortable with having Drew as her GP, but Josie couldn’t imagine going to any other doctor for her general medical stuff. Sharing a common past made so many explanations unnecessary. Besides, it wasn’t like he was her gynecologist. Geeze.
“I thought losing weight was a good thing,” she said. “Maybe I’ve discovered a new diet. Do you think I should market it?”
He ignored her, his professional guise not wavering at all. Sigh. So handsome. “You’re down five more pounds. Try not to let yourself get any lighter. True, you’re still in the range for your height—what are you, five-one?”
“Five-two and three quarters. And sensitive about it, thank you very much.”
“Lie back and let me listen to your stomach,” he said.
Josie experienced a peculiar pounding in her chest. She took a couple of deep breaths to calm down, wondering if he could hear how fast her heart was beating with his stethoscope on her abdomen. Duh. Of course he could. She arranged herself on the table, smoothing out the cotton shift. Her clothes lay in a folded pile on a nearby chair, a little part of her identity stripped away.
“Sorry for the cold hands,” he said and breathed on his stethoscope to warm it up. He pushed open her smock in the front, revealing her stomach under the harsh fluorescent lights. She felt his gentle hands, which were actually warm, pressing her belly and lower, moving around with the stethoscope while she lay there trying not to think too much. Her neck flushed, and moisture dampened the inside of her mouth. He pulled away and covered her back up.
“Your muscle tone still looks pretty good.”
“Too bad I’m not a horse, huh. Want to see my teeth?” He gave her a look, but she couldn't quite repress her inner smart-ass. “I’ve been using those weights you left at my place. Exercising keeps the dust off them. And me.” She flexed her arm and regretted it as her stomach gurgled, loud enough for both of them to hear it.
He raised an eyebrow—a glossy, photo-shoot look with his dark coloring and white lab coat. Very GQ though his uneven haircut demoted him to a Sears catalog. He should have been a vet, she thought. Pets were always grateful for whatever you did. Unlike people. She was rotten at expressing gratitude. Among other things…like pent-up, suppressed-for-years desire.
So naturally, she had changed the subject. “You’re sure you can’t go to this wedding with us? It’ll be for just a couple of hours. Totally painless, I swear.”
He took his stethoscope out of his ears and snorted. “Are you crazy? What kind of dream world are you living in? ‘A couple of hours’ and ‘totally painless’—let me tell you a few things about Catholics and their weddings. The mass alone could be ‘a couple of hours.’”
She’d already talked with him over the phone, so he knew about her
dress trauma. He was aware of her food anxiety, too. It was supposed to be a friendly, no-stress event if he agreed to come. But somehow, his flat-out refusal hurt. She wasn’t sure why, because if their positions had been reversed, she probably would have said no. Probably.
“You're not going to make me beg, are you? Because I won't do it.” She tried to keep her voice teasing, but probably hadn’t masked her disappointment. He was either obtuse or polite—and over the years, she'd witnessed him opening doors for pregnant ladies and pushing in his grandmother’s chair, but she'd never known him to miss a subtlety. That burned a bit. She squirmed with a teenaged-size dose of equal parts humiliation and sexual frustration, but she couldn't stop herself from wanting him…enough to keep him as her doctor if that was the only way she could have his hands on her. She pushed that thought away. Like, way away. Lame, Josie.
He shrugged. “Eh. You know how I feel about weddings. I only go to them if I have to. And with my huge family, that’s pretty frequently. Besides, you’ll have Benjy and Sue with you.” He was the only one allowed to refer to Susan as Sue. Somehow, when he said it, it fit her. Josie experienced yet another twinge of jealousy. How come he didn’t have a nickname for her?…Of course, Josie already was a nickname, short for Josette. Duh. Around Drew, her logic became more warped than usual. He had that effect on her brain.
Josie hoped she wasn’t pouting. She’d been to a couple of his family weddings, but not recently. He’d explained that if she went with him to more of them, his mother would start planning their wedding. And wouldn’t that be annoying. She sighed.
“Oh well,” she said and tried to make light of it, “I bet I can sneak out faster if I don’t bring anyone.”
“I bet you could,” he said. He looked uncomfortable for a split second, but then it passed. “So anyway, here’s what we’re going to do about that stomach of yours.”
“Please don’t say I have to drink more Barium,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows, trying to do the casual thing, as if all she needed were a bikini and some sunshine. “Who thinks of this stuff anyway? Oh, here’s a person with stomach problems and nausea, let’s make them drink some noxious shit.”
“I see this hasn’t affected your perennial good temper,” he said.
She always gave him a hard time, trying to break his professional manner. All it took to shatter the facade for her was one memory of a cigarillo smoked together. Or sitting on the lawn on a sunny day when class was held outside. Or remembering some of the rougher days she had helped him through when his father had died. At the time, she had already lost her own dad, so they had that in common. In his office now, she got irritated with herself and took it out on him.
“This is a load of bull crap. You’re putting me through all these tests to punish me—who knows why. Probably for something stupid I said. You’re a bully, you know. Just give me the bad news. Is it ulcers? Ulcerative colitis?” She sat up further, trying to read his expression. He wasn’t giving anything away. “I’m not stupid, you know, if there’s something really wrong with me, just tell me. If it’s all in my head, I need to know that, too.”
“Are you done yet?” he said, and she clamped her lips together in an exaggerated way to show that, yes, she’d shut up for a second or two. “What makes you think it’s ‘ulcers’ plural?” He held the ultrasound image behind his back and tilted his head at her. He wasn’t trying to be playful, she could tell. God, his somber, serious doctor look was hot, too.
She sighed and put up her hand in defeat. Might as well let him go through his spiel.
“Well, the good news is, you don’t have an ulcer,” he said. “The bad news is I don’t know what’s wrong with your stomach. I haven’t found anything. Gastroenteritis—miscellaneous stomach malady for now.”
She groaned. “You should really work on your delivery, doc. That whole good news, bad news shtick is pretty lame. I hope you don’t use that on people with cancer.”
“Wait a minute now. There are more things that we can try,” he said. “Not even tests. The simplest thing is an elimination diet.” Without a lab coat on and a little Just for Men to cover the gray at his temple, he could have been an undergrad.
“You mean like eliminate all diets?” she joked. “That would be great. A true breakthrough.”
He gave a token smile—just enough to let her know that yes, he was a person under his white coat. She plucked at the fabric of the cotton johnny she was wearing. It looked homemade, and she wondered who’d sewed it. His mother? A sister—maybe Donna, the older one? Maybe one of his multitude of female cousins. What about one of his nurses? He had one nurse who was young and single.
Josie had thought often about the woman he might marry. The slow and steady type. A wonderful cook. Conservative and old-world in her behavior—not someone who would fight him for time on the bench press. Probably some girl with a dark mustache and a fifty-pound weight gain within the next ten years—Josie’s jealous imagination added this part before she snapped back to the present.
He was saying, “We need you to stop eating certain foods for a while to see if your stomach problems clear up. You may have an allergy or intolerance.”
#
“Give up food?” She blinked.
When a person encountered a life-threatening situation, supposedly, her life could flash before her eyes. It was true, so true.
She had a vision of all the sips and morsels of food from the last year. Bites of shrimp toast. Dim sum. Pineapple ice cream. Cajun sausage and beans. Alfredo sauce. Crown roast. Falafel from that vendor by Fenway that one sunny day. Food was her life. Or had been. The sad part was, none of it sounded good now. An ice cube was the only thing she could imagine putting in her mouth. That depressed her more than his advice.
“Drew, you do realize what I do for a living?” Not much of a living at the moment, to be sure. Josie’s stomach gave a lurch, and she knew she was turning green. “I can’t just go into the Suis Chalet and ask for a specialty to write a review but say, and oh, by the way, please take out all of the….”
He looked at her chart, his hands looking large and dark on the white paper. “Milk products. For starters. Because of your mom—because she’s Thai.” He moved on, knowing that she didn’t like to talk much about her mother. “Many Asians have problems with milk. Notice there’s no pizza in Chinese food. I guess Marco Polo didn’t get that from China. No milk and cheese and butter, including dairy margarine. Start reading labels for ingredients. I’ll have a list of milk products for you before you go today.”
“Nope. You know I can’t do that.” She scooted off the end of the table, carefully clutching the short cotton shift so that it covered her rear end, though she didn’t have much of a butt. It wasn’t a Latina booty, and not like Drew’s imaginary future wife’s voluptuous Italian booty.
“Hey, slow down there. You’re always so damn skittish,” he said. “Something as simple as lactose intolerance could be the root of your troubles. Or, it could be a food allergy.”
“Don’t even think that. This is my job we’re talking about. Not just a job—a career. Leave it to me to find something I like to do and then discover it’s a physical impossibility.” She tried to gather her clothes in one arm without letting the johnny fall open. “So, what if we find out that’s the problem—I’m allergic to some food. Do I take a pill or get an allergy shot and it’ll go away?”
He pursed his lips. “Well, not really. But you may not be allergic to anything. It could be stress, in which case, we could try a different route. It could go away if you take care of what’s really bothering you.”
She squinted at him, finding it hard at that moment to remember how possessive she was of him, how he was the one who deserved affection. All she felt was an intense irritation, almost a revulsion. Her jealousy from before had evaporated like sweat on a snake. “You want me to see a shrink?”
He shrugged. “I’m just suggesting a lifestyle change. You’re the type of person who takes t
hings very seriously, no matter how much you joke around. Stress could be manifesting itself in your stomach. Come back over here and sit down for a minute.” He gave the table a gentle pat and coaxed her back with a mild grin that did funny things to her insides.
She sagged in defeat and returned to the table, shimmying to get back up, clutching her gown together. So attractive. Yeah, it was probably too late to make a good first impression on Drew.
He waited until she looked up, and his forehead was furrowed, which was how he frequently looked at her lately. She absorbed his aftershave with a deep inhale. God, she had it bad for him. “I’m not telling you to get counseling. What I’m saying is, if you have some vacation time—which you probably do—take it. Jesus, just take a break for once, Josie. Go to a spa or somewhere they can cater to special diets. I know a great place in Arizona. It’s the Castle Ranch resort in a little town called Puerta right outside Tucson—your aunt is near there, right? They can make food any way you ask for it and they cater to special diets. Just try. Relax while you’re at it. I’m sure it would do you some good.”
Her mind was racing, trying to think of a way to solve the problem. She’d neglected to mention to him that her aunt had Crohn’s Disease—a permanent and serious condition. Josie did, after all, get half her genes from that side of the family.
“Come on, Drew. I want a miracle of modern medicine,” she pleaded.
“Sorry, babe. We try to save those up for people with cancer.”
CHAPTER 3
Truly, a Catholic wedding in Boston was a wonder of the ancient world, Josie thought. The pageantry of velvet robes and incense. The standing, the sitting, and the standing some more. The Latin incantations reminded her of a horror movie—the main source of her knowledge of Latin: The Exorcist and The Omen, parts one and two.