Chapter 12
Dear July,
I think of you every minute. I miss you so bad. I’m sorry I’m not there. I hope you’re okay.
Joe
Sink baths are only marginally more annoying than clawfoot tub baths.
Angus and I grunt at each other in passing as I hang my towel on the bedroom doorknob to dry and head out to July’s. Going to try the hiding-in-a-patio-corner idea for breakfast and see how that feels.
But when I get there, Rose is coming out the front door with two big paper bags and blood on her hands, looking more upset than I have ever seen her.
“Whoa, Rose, you okay?” I touch her arm.
She says, so low that I have to bend to hear her, “July’s on her way to the ER. She fell and whacked her head in the kitchen.”
“Shit, is she okay?” I’m mentally reviewing the town map in my head, trying to remember the quickest way to the hospital from here.
“I think so. She was talking okay. Just probably needs some stitches. I hope they screen her for concussion too, while she’s there.” Her voice trails off and then comes back stronger. “But that leaves the kitchen way understaffed, and they’ve been slammed lately with the patio open. I’m trying to figure out how to end my meetings early so I can come back to help out.”
Shit, what was I thinking, that anybody would want me to go hold July’s hand in the hospital? I’m the last person she’d pick. Still, if I’m here, might as well make myself useful. “I could help in the kitchen. It’s what I used to do.”
Rose’s brown eyes widen. Maybe even tear up. “That would be perfect, Joe! Go on through to the back and ask for Donna. Tell her I sent you because of your experience.”
I go in through the front door. Breakfast rush is underway, not an empty table in sight, a steady flow of people picking up carryout orders. The servers are moving quickly. They’re so professional that if I didn’t know something was wrong, I wouldn’t guess.
Back in the kitchen, one tall woman is cranking out orders from the overloaded order board. Her hands are blurs, she’s so fast, but her air is calm. “Who are you?” She barely glances up at me when she says it.
“Donna? Hi. I’m Joe. Rose sent me to help out.”
She pauses long enough to look me up and down. “Food-taster Joe?”
“Yup.”
She points me to the aprons and sets me to work.
Within five minutes, we’ve got a system. I make omelets, crepes, bacon, all the basics, and she does sauces and sides, and plates everything, giving it the July’s touch before sending orders out to the dining room.
I haven’t cooked in weeks, but it feels natural. Feels good. Donna reads my mind, or I read hers, and on her other side, a flirty, little woman named Tina I remember from my first day here is doing magical things with baked goods. At one point I catch us all swaying together to a great cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Mary Had a Little Lamb” piping through speakers to the dining room.
I’m not even embarrassed when Donna catches my eye and smirks. “Who is this? They’re great.”
“Local band. Blue Shoes. Friends of July’s.”
Of course they are.
This has got to be the most popular place in town. The breakfast rush barely tapers off before we’re into a booming lunch service. “You going home?” Donna asks Tina a little after eleven, and Tina says, “Rose said she’s coming back to help. I’ll stay till then.”
I’ve pieced together that Tina and Donna are partners who share a big place with some of the other servers and their kids. Somehow, despite working and living together, everyone still manages to get along.
Rose comes in, and when the lunch rush finally slows, Donna and I take staggered breaks.
“Servers are impressed with you.” Rose has taken over July-ifying my orders while Donna’s on break. “They didn’t think anybody’d be able to keep up July’s load. They were coming up with contingency plans to fix whatever you might fuck up.”
I snort, but I feel proud. Happy for the first time since the attempted sexorcism. Useful. Appreciated.
Donna comes back just in time to hear her. “You know you can’t use that language when Maisie and Sam get here, Rose.”
Rose’s turn to snort. “Donna, I learned that language from high schoolers.” She sighs. “But you’re right. I should rein it in. I think seeing July on the floor bleeding freaked me out.”
“You and me both.” Donna drops her dishes in the cleanup area and comes to take over for me, waving me on break. “Get yourself something to drink and tell me what you want me to send out to you.”
“Summer Chicken, please.” I down a glass of ice water and then fill it with tea before heading out to the booth the staff uses for breaks. What the hell is taking so long at the ER? My head is full of terrible images of July hurt now.
She seems so invincible. Indestructible. It’s pretty clear I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Last night’s softball weirdness makes more sense now. Her coughing fit was the only clue that anything was wrong. I thought she was just having a bad night. Everybody does now and then. She didn’t make a lot of errors; she just didn’t cover her usual amount of ground. And her throws to first didn’t have their usual zing. And when she fell going for that one line drive…I didn’t know what the hell that was about. But she kept hustling, kept trying, and when she couldn’t beat out the throw to first and she doubled over coughing, it was all I could do not to go to her. Wrap my arms around her. Rock her a little, feed her Andi’s water myself.
Which is a fucking ridiculous thing for me to have wanted.
Sonya brings out my Summer Chicken, and I inhale it and go back to work. The afternoon is just as busy as the morning. I’m already tired by three when July’s sister, Jen, comes into the kitchen.
Everybody stops what they’re doing to hear her report.
“She’s okay. They cleaned up her head, gave her those liquid stitches. X-rayed her, screened her for concussion. She checked out okay on those but when they heard her cough, they x-rayed her lungs, thinking she might have pneumonia. She doesn’t—just bronchitis and a double ear infection. They said the ear infection’s probably what made her fall. I got her settled upstairs. Made her promise to go straight to bed and not try to do anything else today. She’s got a couple of prescriptions she’s not supposed to take on an empty stomach. I told her I’d take up some food.”
“I’ll do it.” The words are out of my mouth before I know I’m speaking.
Donna, Tina, and Rose exchange a look I can’t read. Before I can ask, Jen says, “Joe! You’re here!” and throws herself at me.
I haven’t seen her since she was twelve. Now she’s, what, thirty-two and hugely pregnant, but I’d know her laugh and her sweet face anywhere.
It feels damn good to be hugged.
“If you don’t mind taking it up for me, that would be great. I’ve got some work to catch up on. Tell July I’ll check on her later and to text me if she needs anything.” She looks me up and down and hugs me again. “I want you to come over for dinner soon. You haven’t met my husband.”
“I’d like that.” It’s true. For a month of my life when I was sixteen, I’d felt like I had a little brother and sister too, by sharing July’s. I missed Jen and Brendan. Got a lot of catching up to do.
She leaves and I turn to fix something for July, but Donna’s beaten me to it. She hands me a tray with chicken soup, a steaming mug with a tea bag in it, a dish of fresh fruit, and one of Tina’s crusty sourdough rolls. “Make sure she’s really okay alone up there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And tell her not to show her face down here tomorrow either. Woman needs rest.”
I nod obediently.
I’ve never been up in July’s private apartment. Donna unlocks the door to the stairwell, and I start up into the fresh-air-and-clean-laundry-smelling space, balancing the tray, equal parts trepidation and…excitement?
I’m a dumbass. She’s not going to be happy to see me. I’m a dumbass.
***
July
I knew the ER visit would take forever. Jen and I don’t normally get to spend big chunks of time together, so I hate that I’m too out of it to be good company. Of course, when I mumble something about it, she says, “You’re right, July. It’s real bitchy of you to pay more attention to your head wound than to me. Selfish.” Girl always was a smart-ass.
When they’re finished with me, Jen drives me home. She helps me shower without getting the surgical adhesive wet. “Finally I’ve found advantages to not having your height or your blond hair!” she mutters, dabbing at my head with a clean washcloth.
“Yeah? What’s that?” I close my eyes, let the tile wall hold me up.
“Won’t land as hard, ’cause I don’t have so far to fall. And brown hair hides blood better.”
Before she heads downstairs to get me something to eat, she tosses me a nightgown Mom and Dad sent from Florida on my birthday. I lean against the wall to put it on, but it’s got some kind of itchy lace around the neck, so I yank it back off. I’ll put on a tank top or something. I go to step into the bright orange bikini panties she’s gotten out for me, but of course I lose my balance again. They warned me at the hospital not to make sudden moves. I catch one foot in the elastic, almost go down, stagger several feet into the bedroom trying to regain my balance, and fall face down onto the bed. Ow, ow, ow.
The stairwell door opens, and I hear careful footsteps coming up.
“Jen, I need help with one more thing, please.” My voice is muffled by the quilt.
The footsteps speed up. She’ll mock me, and then she’ll milk this story for all it’s worth at our next family gathering. I don’t care. I just want to crawl under these covers for a few minutes.
“What do you need? You okay?”
Well, that’s an unexpected voice from the doorway. Then dead silence.
Isn’t this just peachy? “I’d be okayer if you were Jen.” I can feel a blush creeping over my entire body, including my giant naked ass. Or maybe it’s just fever.
I hear his footsteps retreat fast, and then from the hall, Joe says, “July, I don’t know what, uh, to do right now.”
Shit. Does he think I somehow lured him up here for the excellent view of my butt? He’s seen it before. And I didn’t ask him to come up. “Do about what exactly?” Apparently, exhaustion makes me testy.
“No, I mean, I want to help, but I didn’t expect… I mean, what would you prefer I do at this moment?” He sounds flustered, which would be kind of cute if this weren’t such a mortifying situation. I haven’t seen him flustered since the first time he saw my boobs, when we were sixteen.
“I would like for you to go back downstairs and for us both to forget this ever happened.”
“But you need help with something.” He sounds worse off than I do, for god’s sake.
I groan and push myself upright. Too fast, of course. The room spins and I flop back down, coughing so hard I shake the bed frame. When I can breathe again, I scrabble at the quilt and manage to drag part of it to cover my rear end. “All right, you can come in without me mooning you.”
He comes back and steps past me to set a tray on my nightstand. “Okay. How can I help?”
“Well, if you were Jen , like I expected , I would have you grab a tank top from that drawer over there and help me sit up to put on my underwear.” I wave the orange bikinis I’m still clutching. “But you’re probably not comfortable with that. Where is Jen?”
“She had some work to catch up on.” He crosses behind me again to my dresser, pulls open the underwear drawer and shuts it fast, then opens the second drawer and takes out a pale blue tank. “Okay, stretch your arms above your head.”
When I do, he slides the tank past my hands and down my arms and very gently over my aching head. He fetches my robe from the back of my door and slides my arms into it too. “Now I’m gonna slip my arm underneath you and help you sit up, okay? I won’t look. I’ll just hold you steady so you can belt your robe. Then when you’re ready, I’ll keep you from falling while you put on your underwear. Real slow, okay? Don’t do anything fast.”
“Yes, doctor.”
The mattress dips at my waist, and I feel his hand slide under me, then his forearm, then the curve of his inner elbow. “When you’re ready, push up, okay? I’ll help.” His skin is warm and he smells…like my restaurant.
“Joe, why do you smell like the restaurant?”
“I…uh, came in to eat, and Rose told me you were hurt. I offered to bring the tray up. Donna fixed it for you.”
I tense against his arm. “Oh, no, I need to talk to Donna!”
“No, you don’t. She said to tell you not to show your face down there today or tomorrow. She’s already got you covered.”
I want to argue, but instead I have another coughing fit. Joe rests his other hand between my shoulder blades and rubs little circles there, through my robe. It almost distracts me, but not quite.
I opened the restaurant eight years ago, and I’ve never taken a full sick day, much less two in a row. I’ve also never felt this physically bad. And I’ve sure never had such balance problems. “Guess they don’t want me staggering around with a sharp knife.”
“Makes sense.” There’s a hint of a smile in his voice. “C’mon, let’s get you up. Ready? One…two…three…careful now.” He hauls me up and turns so that I’m sitting with my back pressed against his side, almost on his lap, his arms tight around my waist.
I can’t see him, but it’s oddly intimate. The heat of his body warms me. His breath in my hair tickles my neck. His roughened hands help me tug the tank down to cover my chest and ribs. There’s a hitch in his breathing, just for a second.
“Can you…do what you need to do?” His quiet voice in my ear sends me back to another time and place.
Oh. He means, Can I put on my underwear?
I hold it in front of me and press back against him as I raise one foot to the first leg hole. The room sways but Joe’s got me. Very slowly I repeat the process with the other foot. His biceps bunch against my sides. His hold doesn’t waver.
I drag the panties up to where they meet the bed. “I need to stand up for just a second.”
He stands with me, bracing me from behind, and I ease the undies the rest of the way up.
I’m giddy with accomplishment. Or with his nearness. One of the two. “Hallelujah! I never thought underwear would be such an ordeal!”
“Neither did I.” His voice is rough as he lets go with one arm and leans past me to pull the covers down. “In.” He holds my forearm as I maneuver myself onto the bed and between the sheets, my back against the headboard, which feels almost as solid as Joe did.
“Thanks.” My earlier irritation seems petty and ungrateful. This is really, really nice of him.
“Glad to help. We’re not done yet. Here, take a big drink of hot tea. You’ve got to get some of this food in you before you take your meds, Jen said.” He’s all business now, settling into my bedside chair, reaching for the pill bottles on the nightstand, reading the directions aloud to me as I break off a piece of sourdough and dunk it in the soup. I’m not really hungry, but I do remember the doctor saying that.
Besides, I need to get my strength back, not starve it out of me again. And the warm liquids are probably good for my chest. “I’m going to drink my soup, Joe. Don’t look.”
There’s definitely a little smile lurking around his lips now. He doesn’t look at me as I take the bowl in both hands and drink several swallows. After I’ve eaten some more of the roll and a few bites of fruit, he hands me my medicine doses, one by one.
“Nobody’s babied me like this since my mom.”
His eyes meet mine and I’m dizzy all over again. Some of the light is back in him. His irises seem to change color as I watch. And then he looks away. “Okay, got your phone? Set a timer. Four hours for this med and six for the other. Somebody will come check on you later.”
He goes into my little kitchen and comes back with my water bottle. Sets it on the nightstand beside the fruit and the rest of the roll. Then he watches until I’ve gotten in sleeping position. “Call me if you need anything, okay? I’ll be around.” His voice is rough again.
“Thanks, Joe.” I close my eyes. I can’t remember him leaving.