41
Dazed, I walked out of Dr. Harper’s office as Stuart held the door for us. “Aforementioned?” he said with a smirk as Beverly passed him.
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” she asked.
“The Supreme Court thing was good, I’ll give you that. But Michael isn’t going to like you talking about his civil rights bill before it’s introduced.”
There was a twinkle in Beverly’s eye as she replied. “Who exactly do you think is tweaking the wording on that bill?”
Stuart shook his head. “I’m never going to be rid of you, am I?”
“No, darling,” she said, patting his arm. “And you wouldn’t want to be either.”
He chuckled, and Janet took my hand.
I looked at her. “I—why did you do this? How did you do this?”
She squeezed my hand. “I know you think you want to do everything on your own, but you can’t.”
“No one can,” Beverly said. “I couldn’t have left home to work on the campaign last year without my mother and my best friend.”
“And the nursing staff won’t work without you,” Donna said. “It’s that simple.”
I felt tears prickling at my eyes, but I willed them back down. “I don’t know what to say. Does that mean I can never decide to retire?”
“Not anytime soon,” Gloria said, smiling. “But there’s a big difference between you choosing to leave and Dr. Howe forcing you out.”
My heart sank at the mention of his name. “He’s going to hate me. I don’t know how much good I’ll be able to do anyone if he’s out to get me at every turn.”
“If he tries to retaliate against you in any way, you call me,” Beverly said firmly. “But my guess is that Dr. Harper makes him uncomfortable enough to leave. I don’t think he wants another meeting with us.”
“With you,” Stuart said. “I think I said ten words.”
“Yes, but your presence is menacing enough,” Beverly said.
They bickered like an old married couple.
If they were characters in the novel I was reading, they would be in love by the end of the book.
But this was real life, and if mom gossip was anything to go by—and it usually was—her affections lay elsewhere.
“Do you want to tell the nurses?” Donna asked me.
I shook my head. The idea of speaking into a megaphone in front of the crowd out front ... My eyes drifted through the front door of the hospital, and I saw cameras. “Is the press here?” I asked.
Mrs. Kline grinned. “I may have called a newsroom or four.”
“You did?” Ruth asked her.
“Well, I called them multiple times about my treatment at the hospital. This is just the first time they came.”
“Because it’s actually something this time,” Ruth said. Mrs. Kline put her hand through Ruth’s arm companionably—an act of friendship with someone of a different religion that could have knocked me over with a feather.
“Thank you,” I said to the pair of them. Then I turned to Donna. “I don’t want to speak to the press though.”
“I’ll handle the press,” Beverly said. “Nurse Swanson, would you like to inform the staff, and then I’ll give a statement to the press? Or would you like me to do both?”
“Call me Donna,” she said. “And I’ll tell my staff.”
“Wonderful,” Beverly said, bending to pick up the megaphone that had been left by the door.
“Mrs. Feldman and Janet, wait here with Barbara. Donna, take this, and go tell them. I’ll talk to the press immediately after you finish.
While I do that”—she turned back to me—“the three of you walk around the other side of the crowd to Barbara’s car.
I’ll be distraction enough to keep you out of the newspapers. ”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Stuart asked quietly.
“Do you think this is my first time speaking to the press?” she asked, straightening her undented pillbox hat.
“Lead the way,” he said, holding open the front door.
Donna squeezed my shoulder, then walked out first, smiling broadly to the assembled staff.
She raised the megaphone to her lips as she reached the front.
“We won,” she said as a whooping cheer went up.
“Mrs. Feldman returns to work on Tuesday. We return to work now.” There was a lot of chatter in the crowd. “Come on,” Donna said. “Chop-chop.”
Buzzing, the nurses filed back into the building, most stopping to embrace me as they passed.
“Showtime,” Beverly said.
“Beverly,” I said, stopping her. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said simply, as if she did this every day. Then again, maybe she did. “As my mother says, never underestimate what determined women can do.”
And then she was gone, walking confidently toward the photographers and reporters, Stuart on her heels.
“That’s our cue,” Janet said, linking arms with me. She glanced at her left wrist. “Besides, it’s almost time to get the kids.”
Gloria hugged me. “If anyone calls and tells me Ruth is in the hospital again, I’m not coming,” I said.
“Fair,” she said. “But would you have come if we told you the truth?”
“Absolutely not.”
She grinned. “That’s what I told Donna. I’ll see you Tuesday.”
Janet, Ruth, and I walked to our cars unmolested by the press, Mrs. Kline following behind us. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ve been thinking I want to do something like you did when Paula goes off to school,” Janet said. “Not at a hospital though. I don’t like blood. Or sick people.”
“Paula! Who’s watching her?”
Janet laughed. “She’s fine. I made George take the day off work.”
My jaw dropped. “George took the day off work to watch her?”
“Like I said, no one can do this alone. When I lost my mom, and then you lost Harry and I didn’t feel like I could ask you for help, I thought I had to. And it was overwhelming.”
“You always could ask me.”
“I know that now,” Janet said. “And that goes two ways.” She nodded toward Ruth, who was talking to Mrs. Kline. “Three, honestly. I know having someone in your house is a lot. Hell, I don’t want George there some days. But she’s not so bad, that one.”
“Even if she becomes your stepmother next?”
Janet pulled a cigarette from her purse, put it between her lips, and lit it. “Don’t you start with that,” she said. “Besides, that might mean my father moves in with you too.”
I laughed. “What’s it matter anymore? The more the merrier.”
“Better you than me,” Janet said, offering me the cigarette. I shook my head. “I’ll see you at school. Unless you want me to grab your kids too?”
“No, I’ll see you there.”
She wrapped me in a quick embrace, then got into her car. “Get out of here before you wind up in the Post .”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Louise drove me,” Ruth said. “Do you mind if I ride home with you?”
“Climb in.”
“I’ll call you this weekend,” Ruth said to Mrs. Kline.
“See that you do. Goodbye, Ruth. Goodbye, Barbara.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Kline,” I said, still shocked that she had shown up for me. “And thank you.”
Ruth closed her door, and I put the car in reverse to back out of the parking spot, checking in the rearview mirror that Beverly was still entertaining the press.
“This ...,” I said, shaking my head. “What just happened?”
“I do try to clean up my messes,” Ruth said.
“How about the wallpaper in my kitchen?”
“What about the wallpaper? It’s lovely.”
“It’s awful.”
“Well, I can’t help it if you just don’t have good taste,” Ruth said.
I started to laugh. “Do you want to go home or come with me to pick up the kids?”
She hesitated. “I’d love to come with you. If that’s all right.”
I reached over and put a hand on top of hers, where it rested on the bench seat. “It’s more than all right,” I said. “Maybe we’ll take them for ice cream too.”
“Before dinner?”
I grinned wickedly. “The night before you arrived? Ice cream was dinner.”
She made a tsk-tsk sound. “I see I came just in time, then.”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it if you just don’t have good taste.”
Ruth laughed. “I suppose I deserve that.”
That night, after the children were asleep, I went down to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of brandy, then I went to the back door, flipped on the patio light, and went outside with my drink. I settled myself on the chaise lounge and looked up at the stars.
“Did you send her?” I asked Harry, thinking about how Janet had said none of us could do this alone. Maybe he did, to teach me that lesson. But Ruth seemingly had done it all alone. And look where she was now. Still alone. Maybe Harry knew that and didn’t want it for either of us.
There was no answer, not that there ever really was.
But then—a star streaked across the sky, disappearing as it entered the atmosphere.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I said, raising my glass in an imaginary toast. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing you. But if this was you, aggravating as she is, thank you.”