“Time to get started,” I warned them as Vonette splashed dessert sherry into her coffee.
“What we do here,” I began, “is talk, share, and give support.”
Trixie said, “I just don’t see how this can help.”
I said, “Then why don’t you go first? Tell us what’s bothering you.”
“I hate doctors,” she said evenly, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Aw, c’mon honey,” coaxed Vonette. “I don’t mind. And I’m married to one.” She took a healthy swig from her coffee cup.
Patty Sue said, “I’m feeling sick.”
“You see?” accused Trixie. “Somebody starts talking about doctors and right away, somebody feels sick. Why do we depend on them so much?”
“Chocolate’s more reliable,” said Marla, who was waddling out to the kitchen to replenish the brownie platter, which I had stupidly put within her reach.
Patty Sue said faintly, “I think we have to trust our doctors. Either that or the treatment doesn’t work.”
“Trix?” I said. “Do you want to talk or not?”
Trixie ground her teeth. “I did trust a doctor and look at where it got me.”
Marla plopped back down at her place. Patty Sue gave me her wide-eyed look.
I concentrated my gaze on Trixie and said, “You feel angry.”
“What do you think?”
“And so,” I went on, “you throw—”
Marla said, “Oh my God. You throw up? What a waste.”
“Please don’t talk about throwing up,” said Patty Sue as she stood to go out to the bathroom.
“This is great,” Marla commented. “We say we’re going to talk about men and all we talk about is food and barf.”
Vonette cleared her throat. “Well, girls,” she began, “I can talk about it without talking about food. You see, I know something about doctors. I can tell you—” She stopped to pour sherry directly into her cup, an action I felt I should stop, since she was already pretty sloshed.
I said, “Tell us, Vonette.”
But Trixie interrupted her. “If you’re angry too, Vonette, why don’t you do something? Talk, talk, talk! How about a little action?”
“Temper, temper,” said Marla. “Have a ginger snap.” To demonstrate, she had one herself.
A limp-looking Patty Sue sat down again. I turned back to Vonette.
“So what do you want to tell us, Vonette?”
She took another long sip from her cup. “Do you girls talk about sex in here?”
Everyone was immediately quiet.
“Sure,” said Marla.
“He’s impotent with me,” Vonette said finally, her voice dropping. “But not with everyone else. He says because I drink too much, our lack of a sex life is all my fault.”
Patty Sue said, “I wish we could change the subject.”
Marla rolled her eyes at me.
“Everybody thinks I don’t know what goes on,” Vonette was saying, “but I know. It’s just that … thinking about it gives me these awful headaches. Thirty-six years,” she muttered into her cup before draining it. “For what? Oh, my little Bebe.” She started to sniffle. “I miss you. Bebe, Bebe.”
“Do you think Laura had,” I said tentatively, “something on Fritz, that she was going to confront him—”
“Confront?” yelled Trixie. “Confront? Why do we have to listen to shrink talk all the time?”
“She had something,” said Vonette. “Of course she did. Oh, my.” She reached into her purse and pulled out what I knew was her Valium pillbox, then downed one of the green pills with her newly filled coffee cup of sherry.
“You see,” said Marla as she sliced a piece of the Burnt-Sugar Cake. “This is what happens when you abandon food for other palliatives.”
“What palliatives?” asked Patty Sue.
“Forget it,” said Marla, with her mouth full.
“This just makes me so angry,” said Trixie, her forehead wrinkled into a scowl. “Yak, yak, yak. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to come.”
“Trixie,” I said, “how else could you express your anger?”
“What’s that,” she said, “more shrink talk? How about having some of these doctors pay for the damage they inflict? I mean really pay?”
I said, “What would that look like?”
Trixie groaned and got up from the table, then flopped down on my living room couch with her arms folded across her chest.
“This is getting out of control,” I said under my breath to Marla.
“Don’t tell me,” she said after swallowing, “I learned all about control when I had to deal with the Jerk’s lawyer.”
“Laura,” came Vonette’s drunken voice. In her stupor at the end of the table, she had heard little of the previous conversation. “Laura had something. But not just on him, if you see what I mean.”
I said, “I’m not following you.”
“You don’t?” said Vonette with a confused look. “Don’t you see that stuff Bebe wrote to her teacher about her home life said something about me, too?” She finished what was in her cup. “At that moment, when my Bebe died, my life was over. Laura had something on us, all right. It’s not over, though. I’m going to get him. I’m going to go home and call him an impotent old ass. I’m going to tell him I’m going to turn him in to the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners. Ha! That man screwed anyone, even his own patients!”
Marla and I looked at each other.
Trixie screamed, “You see what I mean?”
Patty Sue had her usual reaction to acute stress. She fainted.
CHAPTER 25
Halloween.
A thick shroud of October fog clung to the ground as I drove back up to the mountains at five-thirty Halloween morning. Already Colorado was in costume—a shroud mourning the loss of Indian summer. Or perhaps the loss of innocence.
Patty Sue was in the hospital. The doctor had said she was about two months pregnant. After the women’s meeting she hadn’t felt any better, even when I brought her back to consciousness with a little ammonia on a paper towel. She was in pain; a couple of pills “to relieve periodic suffering” did no good. It was late anyway, so I’d sent everybody home. Vonette was still babbling on about getting Fritz, even after we’d stuffed her into Marla’s car.
About three A.M. Patty Sue’s cramping from what she’d thought was her period had become so intense that even I became frightened. There was more blood. I scuttled the idea of an ambulance, figuring I could get her down to a Denver hospital more quickly myself. After a quick call to the Emergency Room, we were on our way.
The on-call gynecologist was courteous, informative, and even sympathetic. Trixie should have been there to see a few stereotypes break down. He said they’d have to keep Patty Sue for a while. It looked as if there had been a small separation of the placenta. The fetus appeared healthy and had a good heartbeat. I was worried that the X-rays for Patty Sue’s broken arm might have harmed the fetus, but again the doc said not to worry. Poor Patty Sue.
In her room I swabbed her face with a wet cloth.
Her eyes, dulled by the loss of sleep, fixed on my face.
“I feel awful,” she said.
“First three months are the worst,” I said. “I should have figured it out … the way you’ve been sick.”
“Doctor Korman is the one—” she began, but tears started rolling down onto her pillow.
