“I appreciate it.”
She squinted, eyeing me up and down, and I counted the seconds until she backed away.
“Time to watch Ryan and Kelly,” she said, turning from the kitchen and bounding toward the hall. “They’re in my… room, if you wanna… watch, too.”
It’s not your room, I thought, it’s mine!
But no—that was a lifetime ago. It was her room now.
‘I wouldn’t let him,” she repeated, to no one, to herself, and she ambled toward the bedroom, the hardwood floor creaking beneath her feet as she disappeared into the hallway, the same hallway I had walked, alone, so many times as a little boy. For a moment I had an urge to follow, to enter my room—her room now—but I snuffed it out, grabbing the coffee Uncle Dan had left on the counter, staring at the dark, steaming mug.
I stood in the kitchen and drank it all down, the coffee hot and black, without a drop of sugar, exactly as I hated it.
. . . . .
On the way to the hospital we stopped at the grocery store to pick up flowers and a card for Amy, the flowers being Kelly’s idea, her good-hearted instincts overcoming her reservations about staying at Amy’s house.
“Thank you for making this easy,” I said.
“Easy? When did you become an optimist?” She lowered her sunglasses and rubbed a smudge from the lens. “This isn’t easy, but your friend tried to kill herself, and that’s really sad, so we need to be supportive. Well, you need to be supportive, and since it was my idea to come along, I need to do the same. We’re a team, right?”
I nodded, uncertain of what we were, but confident I wanted her near.
“I did a lot of thinking last night, about us, about other things. There’s a reason we’re here, as a couple. It’s a great test of our relationship, don’t you think?”
“Can you make it a quiz instead?”
“Relax—I’m grading on a curve.”
“That could be trouble. I’m sure you hang with the smart kids.”
“The last guy I dated cheated on me with his sister-in-law. I think you’ve got this aced, Donnie.”
She waited in the car while I ran into the store to grab the flowers, but when I came back with a bouquet of lavender-colored roses and a package of Tic-Tacs she looked like I’d just stomped on the tail of her favorite cat.
“You bought roses?”
“You told me to get flowers. These were on sale—$8.99.”
“I said flowers, not roses. Did you pick up an engagement ring, too?”
“It was your idea. They’re not red roses…”
“Lavender means love at first sight.” She googled it on her phone and waved it in my face. “See?” She read from the screen. “Those who have been enraptured by feelings of love and adoration have used lavender roses to express their romantic feelings.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Your subconscious did.”
I tossed the roses out the window and started the car. “Is there a problem with the Tic-Tacs? They’re green.”
“Minty fresh. Just how you want it when she gives you that big thank you smooch.”
“I thought we were a team.”
She took a breath, counted to three, and unhooked her seatbelt. “You’re right—the flowers were my idea.”
“If you don’t like roses, I can pull some dead weeds from the side of the road.”
She adjusted her glasses, then opened the door, stepping out to retrieve the roses, fluffing them up and rearranging the baby’s breath before handing them back through the window.
“$8.99…that is a good price,” she said. “Forget it. Let’s go.”
She pecked my cheek and off we drove, neither of us saying much the rest of the way. I found a spot at the back of the hospital lot, the flowers wilting in the sun as we walked toward the entrance. No wonder they were only $8.99.
Amy’s daughter Jill waited by the Reception Desk as we entered, her feet fidgeting as she scanned her phone. Seeing us approach, she slipped the phone into her back pocket and hurried over, shaking my hand and thanking me for coming before introducing herself to Kelly in a cheerful but formal voice. Her resemblance to the teenaged Amy still freaked me out, and I wondered how much she knew about Sarah Carpenter, or if the name Mr. Ronan meant anything to her, or even how much Amy had told her about me.
“Such beautiful roses!” Jill said. “Very romantic!”
Kelly smirked, and we followed Jill down the hall toward Behavioral Health.
“Don’t worry about, like, trying to protect me,” Jill said. “I know my mom’s a nutcase, and she drinks too much wine, and we’re always down at Wal-Mart refilling her prescriptions. And she has really bad instincts about men.” She looked at me and smiled. “Not you, of course. I mean, she’s never said anything bad about you. But other guys…even my Dad… I love her, but Mom’s a mess. I’ve been raised by Blanche DuBois; you know—the character from Streetcar Named Desire?”
“I’ve seen it once or twice.”
She stepped back, turning her head momentarily before launching into a Southern drawl.
“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!” she said, her voice rising as she turned herself into a sixteen-year-old Jersey Shore Blanche. An orderly in green scrubs, an inked-up guy around my age, passed us in the hall pushing a mop. Jill jumped in front of him, clutching her chest in high drama.
“How about taking a swim, a moonlight swim in the old rock quarry?” she said, still fully Blanche, though the accent started to crack as she spouted lines from the play. “Is anyone sober enough to drive a car? Ha-ha! Best way in the world to stop your head buzzing.”
“Head’s not buzzing,” the orderly said, and hustled away, the mop dragging behind.
Kelly applauded, and Jill bowed, taking the roses from
