Chapter 30
“This place is adorable.”
I must still have a fever, because I think I hear my mom’s voice outside on my patio as she asks, “You sure you don’t want to stay?”
Indistinct muffled male voice is all I hear, followed by the clatter of my mom’s kitten heels.
“No wonder you haven’t invited me over. You’ve wanted to keep that charming young man all to yourself, haven’t you?”
I feel a cool hand on my forehead and whimper. “Mom? Why are you here?”
“You texted me.”
“No, I didn’t… Did I?” My head is swimming.
“Of course you did. Just now. You’re lucky I was in the area. What hurts?” Mom runs her hand along my hair.
“Everything.”
I hear the beep of a thermometer. “All right, come on,” Mom says. “Time to go to the doctor.”
“I can’t even stand, let alone wait for hours at urgent care.”
“Don’t be silly. Pauline and Harry live just blocks away. Up you go. Now, are you going to throw up in the car? If that’s a yes, we’ll take yours.”
“I’m too tired to be nauseated.”
“Let’s go,” Mom says, pulling me out of bed. “I parked in the alley.”
“You can’t do that.” I want to argue, but it doesn’t change the fact that Molly McKinney does what she wants.
“Oh, what happened?” A genteel woman of my mother’s age says when we pull into a driveway ten minutes later.
“Bea, isn’t feeling well.”
“I can see that. Harry, get my bag, will you?” The bald, mustached gentleman on the porch heads into the house.
“Come around back, sweetie. I’ve got a nice sunny spot on the patio.”
I make it around the house but crumple into the fetal position on the closest chaise.
Her hands are cold, but they feel so good against my forehead. More cool hands on my neck. Pushing on my belly.
“Thanks for being willing to give her a once-over, Pauline. How are you, Harry?” Mom’s chatting like we’re at a garden party.
“Oh, fine. Fine.” Harry says, setting a medical bag next to Pauline.
“I’m glad you thought of me.” She pulls out a stethoscope. “Breathe in deep, Beatrice.”
I moan first, but I do.
“Lungs are clear. Say ah, dear.”
I comply, but barely.
“Oh, yes. Strep for sure, but we’ll run a test all the same.” I’m told to stick out my tongue again. Pauline sticks a cotton swab in my throat, and I gag.
“I’ll call in a script while this is running. CVS on Pearl?”
“Fine,” Mom says.
“Antibiotics for a couple of weeks should do it. Plenty of rest. Fluids.”
“Should I bring her home?” Mom asks.
“Home?” Pauline pauses.
“She means Del Mar,” I croak.
“Ah, I wouldn’t advise it. Not with your little grandson and Julie expecting. Best to convalesce at her own digs.” Pauline writes a note. “I’ll go make a call. Feel better, sweetie.”
“How far away is the pharmacy?” Mom asks when we get back in her car.
“Not far,” I rasp.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she says, pulling into the CVS parking lot.
“Mom, it’ll take hours. I want to go home. I want to be a cactus.”
“Five minutes,” Mom says.
She’s back in three with my prescription.
My throat burns too much to ask how she pulled that off. But I know Molly.
I asked nicely.
I said please.
I went to school with so-and-so or their best friend was my cousin’s maid of honor.
She’s unstoppable. She gets what she wants.
“Come on. Let’s get this in you before you fall asleep again.” She hands me a bottle of ginger ale and one of the orange pills.
I don’t argue. I just take the pill and fall asleep against the car window.
I wake up hours later in my bed. My dishwasher and dryer are whirring quietly. Mom is sitting on my expensive sofa with her feet on the coffee table, her toes curling, a book in her hand.
“You know, that little market on the corner is extraordinary,” she says. “Everything anyone could possibly want and in a store the size of a shoebox.”
“I smell bleach and oranges.”
“I cleaned up before I started baking.”
“You didn’t have to,” I groan.
“Oh, I know. But I wasn’t going to let you get sepsis on top of strep.”
“It wasn’t that dirty.”
“No, there was only gray fuzz on everything in your fridge.”
I want to protest, but I’m too sick.
“Chicken soup and another pill. Then you can go back to bed. I promise.”
“My throat hurts.”
“The soup will fix it.”
I manage three bites and down a glass of water with my pill before I fall back asleep.
“How long have you been here?” I ask with a moan when I wake up next.
“Since lunch yesterday.”
“Is it…” I squint at the sunshine streaming through my windows.
“Monday morning. I wish you had texted me.”
“I thought I did.”
“Sooner,” Mom adds.
“I was fine.”
“Raging fever and having not eaten anything for thirty-six hours is not fine.”
“You didn’t have to clean. I do that on Saturday.”
“It was no problem.”
“You slept on the couch?”
“I did.”
“It pulls out into a bed.”
“I figured it out.” Or did she have help? She must have, because I don’t remember how I got from her car to my bed. Mom dons her glasses. “Pauline says another dose of this, and you should be turning a corner.” She hands me an orange pill that looks too big to swallow.
“Take it. We’ll have you chase it with more soup and some orange rolls if you feel up to it.”
“You made orange rolls for me?”
“They’re your favorite.”
“You haven’t made me orange rolls in thirteen years.”
“That’s not true,” Mom says, plating a roll onto one of my thrifted antique plates and handing it to me.
“It feels true.” I take a bite of my mother’s orange roll. Like a cinnamon roll but made with orange zest and orange syrup and just a dash of cardamom. And for a moment, I almost remember being lifted by a pair of strong arms and carried into my cottage.
I shower after breakfast and change into a fresh pair of pj’s. I’m exhausted, but I join my mother on the couch. I’ve had enough of my bed for the time being “I know you want to.”
“What?”
“Ask me about Mike.”
“Malcolm from Macbeth? Benedick in Much Ado?”
“He’s one of Adam’s cosplayers.”
“And he’s your landlord. How did that happen?”
“His grandmother. She left it to him.”
“Skipped straight to her grandchild?”
“His mother passed away his senior year of high school.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.” Mom is too well mannered to ask for details. She’s also no slouch when it comes to research, so I’m sure it is only a matter of time before she knows more about Mike’s past than I do. “And his father?”
“Remarried with a baby on the way. What are you reading?”
“Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
“No!” I whimper, snatching the book from my mom.
“Mike’s, I take it?”
“He doesn’t know I have it.” I shove it into my nightstand. “Did you read all of them?”
“No. I stopped after Sonnet 18. Too many notes and scribbles.”
I feel weepy. I never cry, and crying is all I’ve been doing since Thursday night.
“Beatrice. What’s wrong?”
“He doesn’t love me.”
“You didn’t see his face when I told him I was here because you were sick.”
“What?”
“He texted me twice yesterday to ask if you or I need anything. And again this morning to ask how you’re doing.”
“You don’t get it. I’m crazy about him, but he thinks of me as nothing more than a…” I look at all the pretty cacti nestled among my books. “Joke.”
“I doubt that,” Mom says, rising to retrieve a second pan of orange rolls from my oven.
“It’s true.”
“Darling, jokes are one of life’s greatest joys. Laugh all you want, but a good joke is clever, memorable, and something you want to hold on to forever.”
Mom brings me another orange roll and a bottle of ginger ale. “I don’t for a moment believe you’ve got all the facts or are looking at this case with the impartiality it deserves. But what do I know?”
Mom hangs out until lunch and heads out before I crash for an afternoon nap.
I wake up as the sun is setting. I stumble outside because I move only in so far as I can find another place to lie down.
I flop like a cat on my Bali bed. It’s then, from my cocoon of blankets, that I see the flowers on my bistro table.
White calla lilies. A few fuchsia ones too.
Orange roses. Yellow ranunculus. Green bells of Ireland. It’s gorgeous.
There’s an envelope on the table, and when I open it two theater tickets flutter onto my Bali bed. “Mike.” His name spreads my lips into a smile. I lie down and stare at the flowers.
If I could hug them like a teddy bear, I would.
When I wake up, I carry the flowers inside with me. I move them to the coffee table when I finally feel awake enough to sit upright. They come with me into the bathroom when I take a shower. So what if I’m being ridiculous? They make me feel better.
One week and seven days of antibiotics later, I’m finally brave enough to do something about Mike’s tickets.
I dial my sister. “Hey, Julie.”
“Hey, Bea! Long time no anything. But I guess that is to be expected. Dogs don’t walk themselves. How are you?”
I’m having trouble keeping up, to be honest. “Great. Hey, um, any chance you’d like to go with me to a play? I scored tickets to this semester’s must-see—”
Eaton screams in the background. “I know, Bubbub, but Mama is on the phone. When is it?”
“This Saturday.”
“Sorry, Bea. I can’t, but let me ask Mom. Besides she’s totally the theater buff in the family.”
“No, it’s really okay—”
“Don’t be silly. She’s right here, Ma! Bea wants to take you to a play. Saturday. Awesome. I’ll tell her. She can’t wait. Text her the details.”
I grab my phone. “You want to see a play with me Saturday?” I text my mother.
My mom texts back, “Oh, thank heavens. She’s alive.”
Another text pops up from her. “That depends. Is it SDSU’s production of Much Ado About Nothing?”
“Mike gave me a couple of tickets.”
“When do I pick you up?”
“I’m surprised to see you in white.” Mom says when I slide into her Lexus that Saturday.
“I’m tired of black.” The truth is I’ll never wear it again. Too similar to the cosplay I wore the last time Mike saw me. The little white dress that I had in the back of my closet is the furthest thing I have from my black faux leather fiasco.
“It’s cute. Did I buy you that one?”