Homecoming in November (The Calendar Girls Book 3) (13 page)

“And if they flash the big lights and buzz around her with cameras, shoving microphones in her face?”

“I’ll tell her we’re filming for a reality television show.” I rolled my eyes into my head like a trauma patient. “No, really. She’d be thrilled. She watches most of them. The dancing ones, the singing ones, the cooking ones. Even the pet psychic one.”

I frowned my disapproval and wrung my hands in front of me.

To my surprise, he knelt on my porch and gripped my hands between his. His expression lost its humor. “Jayne, please. You’ve never met my mother, but let me tell you she’s an extremely stubborn woman. I’ve been fighting with her for more than a week now, insisting she go to the doctor.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s got some kind of numb tingling in her arm.”

“Numb tingling?”

He sighed and shifted his weight, still on his knees. “I think that’s what she’s saying. She only speaks Polish, and it’s not as native a tongue for me. See what I mean about her? She’s lived here forty-five years, and still refuses to learn to speak English. I told you she was stubborn. She keeps complaining that her arm is ‘sleeping’ and when it wakes up, it tingles. And she’s slurring certain words. Our neighbor, Mrs. Kessler, just called to says Mom’s out on the front lawn, calling for the cat. She doesn’t own a cat. I’m afraid she may have dementia or something. But no matter how sick I think she is, she won’t see a doctor until she believes she has no other choice. You can convince her for me.”

“I don’t know, Iggy,” I said again. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“Please? You could quite possibly save her life tonight.”

Oh, great. Play the guilt card. How could I continue saying no? “Okay. But I’m going to be honest with her—and you. I won’t lie about what kind of doctor I am, and I’m not taking sides between you. If I think she needs a human doctor, I’ll say so. If I find you’re overreacting or playing some kind of game with me—”

“I swear I’m not.”

Uh-huh. Sure. We’d see. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

I grabbed my coat and we headed out for the drive to Mrs. Zemski’s house. In the good fortune department, no reporters followed us.

When we walked into the house, Lucky didn’t even raise his head from the dog bed in front of the natural stone fireplace where he curled into a cozy ball. I was left to face Mrs. Zemski without the help of a four-legged friend to break the ice.

Iggy’s mother was a petite, slender woman with snowy hair and sharp eyes that resembled her son’s, not the least bit intimidated by Iggy’s size or bluster. The two held a rapid and heated conversation in Polish. I didn’t know what was said between them until Iggy took my arm to draw me forward.
Ah, this must be my introduction
.

I ducked my head and smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Zemski. Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Herrera.”

Iggy translated, and the foreign words flew hot and fast again. Apparently, Mom didn’t appreciate him bringing home a doctor to examine her. Or maybe he did as I asked and confessed I was a veterinarian, and that was why her lips twisted in lemon-sucking fashion.

“What’s she saying?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before. Look at her. Does she look sick to you?”

How would I know? I was used to checking an animal’s general health by tail, eyes, and teeth. Checking Mrs. Zemski’s tail was out of the question, and I didn’t think she’d fancy my sticking my fingers in her mouth. I’d have to opt for eyes to start. I took her arm to draw her into the bright lights of the kitchen. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Zemski? Is anything bothering you?”

Iggy’s translation and his mother’s reply seemed to take longer than my simple questions required. The conversation rose in volume and emotion. Mrs. Zemski’s face turned florid, and her slight figure vibrated against me.

“Stop!” I said, stepping between them, and spreading my arms to create a barrier of peace. “Please. Iggy, go get your mother some water.”

While he stomped off, I took his mother’s hand and patted her the way I would comfort a frightened animal. I disliked thinking of her as a non-human, but since I couldn’t communicate with her verbally, I had to rely on the same senses I used to treat my regular patients. I kept my tone moderated, even, and soothing, and I slowly drew her into walking the short distance between the kitchen and dining room so I could assess her gait.

I almost hated to admit I agreed with Iggy. She seemed a bit off-balance, and the way she squinted and blinked suggested she might have some newly acquired vision problems. When he returned with the water, I asked, “Does your mom wear glasses?”

“No.”

Check one. “Does she normally have trouble walking or staying steady on her feet?”

“Her?” He jerked his head in his mother’s direction. “She’s a battleship. It would take a category four hurricane to knock her over.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. I think you need to get her to the hospital. She may have suffered a TIA.”

“A…what?”

“TIA. A mini-stroke, in layman’s terms. A clot of some kind inhibited blood flow to the brain for a short time.”

He swore under his breath. “I knew it. How bad?”

“I don’t know. A doctor is going to want to run some tests to be sure, and to assess the damage.”

“Can’t you do it?”

“Oh, sure. As long as she doesn’t mind spending the night in a crate at the vet’s office.”

His cheeks flushed beet red, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Right. I forgot. At least come with me to take her to the hospital. She likes you.”

I glanced at Mrs. Zemski, who glared daggers at me over the rim of the water glass. “Uh-huh. I can tell.”

“Are you kidding? That’s her ‘nice’ face.”

“Then I can see where you get your charm,” I remarked.

He grinned. “You haven’t seen us turn it on full-force. We’re deadly when we go into Super Charming mode.”

“I bet.”

“I need you, Jayne. Please. Don’t make me conquer the dragon lady on my own.”

I should say no. I should tell him to call me a cab while he took his mother to the hospital. He could be stuck in the hospital for hours.

With no one talk to. And whether he showed it or not, I could tell Iggy was worried about her.

No. Don’t let him toy with your sympathies.
I had no reason to go with the Zemskis. I wasn’t family. I didn’t belong there. I couldn’t even speak to the woman. Even so, the word was out of mouth while the denials still swooped around my brain.

“Okay.”

Terri

For the next forty-eight hours, I was the butt of a thousand jokes about how I’d almost catered a dog’s birthday party. I could understand if my mistake bothered Gary. Let’s face it. Having a
pâtissier
create gluten-free, dairy-free, canine treats was like hiring Michelangelo to paint a garage. But Gary didn’t take offense. Nope. From the moment my potential customer announced the birthday girl was, in fact, a birthday
dog
, he’d just gone back to work in the kitchen without a single criticism or word of chastisement. Instead, every time I was within earshot, he’d bark or growl at me. Worse, he got the staff to make dog noises at me, too. Even my aunt joined in. Then they’d all start laughing. The only benefit to their antics was the continuous woofing and howling kept my mind off the deliciousness of Gary’s kiss.

Wanna know the weird thing? Ever since he’d pulled me outside to bawl me out for bawling out Chelsea, I spent waaaaay too much time thinking about him.  Not just about the kiss, but the guy as a whole. I mean, I actually dreamed him about him one night. Not a sexy dream, thank God. No kissing or anything. Just…pleasant stuff. Us together on a couch, laughing and hanging out with his kid, which was so out of character for me. Worse than oil and water, kids and I were Crips and Bloods. But in my dream, we were pals, tossing popcorn at each other while watching some creepy movie on a big screen tv. Go figya. Maybe my fantasy friendship with Christian grew out of my blooming real friendship with his father.

Working with Gary here in the tea shop, I saw a side of him I’d never witnessed in his scary bartender persona. Drunk as I always was, I still could recall some of the names he used to toss my way when he worked the taps at The Lookout:
pathetic
,
mess
,
sot, loser
, and my personal favorite,
drunken tart
. Here, though, he never got angry with me, even when he had every right to—like with the whole Halston episode where I’d really mucked things up. I should’ve asked more questions before getting carried away with dreams and schemes about little girls in pretty pink dresses and floral-adorned hats. I made that mistake a lot, blowing things up in my imagination to proportions impossible to achieve. These days, I had to remind myself when I was overly ambitious I wasn’t the only one who had to pick up the pieces when it all fell apart.

So I swallowed my pride and put up with the teasing and doggy sound effects.

On Wednesday afternoon, Max called me for the first time since our evening at his producer’s house and, in a moment of weakness, I answered the phone.

“Where’ve you been?” he demanded in lieu of the standard phone greeting.

“Working,” I replied. “Some of us have a business to run.”

If he noticed the edge to my tone, he ignored it. “I’ve missed you. Think you can pull yourself away from that business of yours long enough to come to a meeting with me?”

I hesitated. Did I really want to play booze babysitter again? Then again, at a meeting, there’d be no booze to tempt him. So maybe he really did just want my company. Maybe he really did miss me. Besides, attending an extra meeting certainly wouldn’t hurt me. In fact, I often found the guest speakers’ stories hopeful. If they could tackle their demons, so could I. And by the same token, so could Max. Honestly, I should have been encouraging Max, not avoiding him. Wasn’t that what I signed up for when I agreed to be his sober buddy? While I hemmed and hawed, he sighed on the other end of the phone, the sound sharp and mournful.

“Please?” he wheedled. “I got some bad news today. I could really use your support.”

My hard shell exterior cracked, and Mother Hen emerged. Bad news? Oh, no. Was he sick? Hurt? Or was it someone he cared about, like his mom or his grandma, maybe? I glanced around the shop. The place was on the declining end of a brisk afternoon’s business with just a few groups of women dawdling over teacups and chatting before they had to leave to pick up their kids from the bus stop. At this stage, my staff could handle the shop for an hour or two ‘til closing.

“Okay,” I told him. “Where?”

“There’s a meeting at four at St. Lawrence Church. In the rectory basement. Can you be there?”

I stole a look at the grandfather clock in the corner of the shop. Thirty minutes.  Yeah, I could make it easy. “I’ll see you there.” I didn’t bother to return to the kitchen to tell Gary, figuring Siobhan could let him know for me. The idea of seeing Max again clouded my senses enough. The last thing I needed was another woof-fest to fluster me. I wanted to be solid, focused, when I reached the church. Max still hadn’t apologized for treating me like a leper last weekend. And sure, he was a world famous celebrity while I was a small town nobody. But Gary had made me realize something I hadn’t thought about before: I didn’t have to be defined by what my parents did or how others saw me. 

I no longer intended to consider myself a victim with a shady past, doomed to failure and misery. I deserved a life—a
real
life that included respect and love. The sooner the Maxes of the world learned I wasn’t lying down in the gutter for them to step over anymore, the better.

I gave Siobhan the heads-up, and she looked at me askance. “You’re not going out anywhere you shouldn’t, are you, Terri?”

I knew what she was trying not to say. Was I slipping out for booze? I shook my head. “Going to a meeting.”

Her frown flipped to a beaming smile. “That’s terrific. Keep up the good work!”

“Thanks.” Not that I needed Siobhan’s approval, but a tingle of pride ran through me just the same.

I grabbed my coat and headed to the church. Max was already there when I arrived.

“Terri!” He pulled me into a warm hug, even before I got my coat off. “How’ve you been? I’ve missed you.” His eyes were a little too bright, his pupils a bit more dilated than normal. And the words came out too rushed.

For a traitorous moment, I suspected he was high on something besides life, but I quickly banished the idea. If he was using drugs of any kind, would he come to an addict’s meeting? Most of us could smell the slightest drop on another user.

After pulling out of his embrace, I studied his glossy eyes and the odd grin on his face. My warning instincts screamed things were not what they seemed here. Something was off—really off. “Max, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing? I shrugged off my coat and slung it over my arm. “What’s the bad news?”

“I saw the doctor yesterday.”

I’d just hung up my coat, and I whirled to face him. “Ohmigod. What is it? What’s wrong?”
Please don’t let it be something terminal.
Max was still so young, so talented, and he was finally getting his life right, kicking all the drugs and booze, getting clean. I said a silent prayer he’d survive whatever he was about to face.

“He says I’m suffering from a severe deficiency,” Max replied, his head down, his posture slouched.

Oh. Well, that didn’t sound so bad. Maybe all he needed were some vitamins or supplements. I could help with that. I knew the owner of the local nutritional store. “What kind of deficiency?”

He grabbed me again and lifted me off the ground, and I squealed in reaction. Seriously, no one had picked me up since I’d been twelve. “I’m not getting enough fun these days.”

Disappointment fired up my veins, and I stumbled back, out of his reach. “You pulled me away from work for a joke?”

He had the nerve to cackle. “Oh, come on, Terri. You own a tea shop. It’s not like I pulled you away from something important, like brain surgery.”

“Or acting?” I retorted. How dare he minimize my career as if it somehow wasn’t worthy? “You know, I might not save the world with my jasmine tea recipe, but my simple shop could give a person a haven to relax after a stressful event, to connect with loved ones unseen for months, or to warm up some cold bones on a blustery day. And that’s enough for me.” No matter what Mr. Big Time TV Star thought.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Max said, his hands raised in surrender. “Don’t be mad. I’m joking. I missed you. You’re the one person who keeps me stable, you know? I’ve come to rely on you.” He took my arm, and his tone became wheedling again. “Come on. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee and a cookie before the meeting begins, okay? Truce?”

Once again, an alarm bell rang in my head. Something was definitely off with him, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. But until I could figure it out, I’d just have to stay alert. “Fine. Truce.”

I let him lead me to the refreshment table where the usual ginormous coffee urn sat, ready to pump out brown sludge to undiscerning palates numbed by years of too much alcohol, next to a couple of open boxes of silver-dollar-sized chocolate chip cookies. Spoiled now from Gary’s pastry delights, I had no trouble bypassing the sweets in favor of a bottled water from an old metal washtub crammed with ice cubes.

And then I did a double-take. Maybe my imagination had conjured him up, but I coulda sworn I saw Gary in the front of the room. I shook my head and took a healthy swig of icy water.

Ridiculous. He was at the shop. Anyway, I hadn’t told him I was coming here so he couldn’t possibly have followed me. I’d have to tell him he had a doppelganger, though. He’d probably get a kick out of it.

Max took my hand and squeezed. “Hey! Where are you? You keep spacing out on me.”

I shook myself to focus on him. “Sorry. I thought I saw someone I knew. It…threw me for a sec.”

“And was this someone you thought you knew a guy?”

“Uh-huh.” He couldn’t possibly be jealous, much as my feminine imagination wanted to think so. I put that dreamy part of me into neutral and offered him a lighthearted wave. “He’s just a friend, but, anyway, it wasn’t him. I must have been mistaken.”

“Well, don’t do that. Don’t look at other guys when you’re with me. I always have to be your leading man. If I’m not the center of attention, my fragile ego gets shattered.”

I gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “Toughen up, cupcake.”

“Ow.” He rubbed the area while frowning at me. “I’m serious. All actors are insecure noobs. You know why most of us go into this line of work? To escape. We either had a miserable childhood or survived some major trauma in our past. Why else would we prefer to live other lives over and over? Because pretending to be a prince or a schoolteacher or a homeless man is more appealing than remaining in our own skin.”

His impassioned speech reached inside my heart and squeezed tight. “Which one are you?” I could barely get the words out through my dry throat and glugged more water, not only to ease the ache, but to give me something to do before I acted on stupid instinct and pulled him into a bear hug.

“I played a schoolteacher in some paper towel commercial years ago. And I’m a Greek prince in ‘Lost in Urbanland,’” Max replied with a smirk. “I haven’t done the homeless man gig yet, but you never know. If the writers decide I should lose my throne and my fortune…” He shrugged.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” He took my arm and led me to a seat in the back of the room near the exit.

That alarm rang in my head once more, and I studied him carefully as he settled beside me. Did his gait seem a little unsteady, his hands a bit shaky? Or was I seeing things that weren’t really there?

Once the attendees all found chairs, the meeting began with the usual greetings and announcements before the guest speaker took the podium.

A tingle of familiarity jolted my nape as the man rose from the front row. And when he faced the crowd, my jaw dropped.

“Hi, I’m Gary. And I’m an alcoholic. I have eight years and nine months sober.”

♥♥♥♥

Jayne

Amid more fuss than the preparations for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, we managed to convince Mrs. Zemski she needed acute medical attention at Morrison General Hospital. But when Dr. Florentino ordered her admitted, the battle began anew. Dr. Florentino, though, wasn’t the angelic pushover she appeared to be. Don’t ask me how she did it—particularly with the language barrier, but something about the way the doctor conveyed the seriousness of the situation tore down Mrs. Zemski’s stubborn wall. Within an hour of our arrival, Mrs. Zemski was comfortably ensconced in a semi-private room, deep in slumber.

Assured his mom was in capable hands and would receive the best care, Iggy was ready to take me home again. Sometime close to midnight, he walked me to my door, where, still, no one loitered.

“Amazing,” I said as I scanned the bushes and fence line. “I don’t know what your friends did to chase the reporters away, but I’m stunned.”

“Don’t be. It’s a temporary lull. You and I both know it.”

“Yes, but I’ll take it. This is a welcome reprieve, no matter how long or short it is.”

His hand slid around my waist. “Glad we could help.”

I wanted to step out of his hold, but through sheer exhaustion I’d lost the will to fight. From her usual window seat, Midnight meowed a greeting. “That’s my cue.” I fumbled in my purse for my house key. “Goodnight.”

“Hold it. I’m coming in with you.”