She locks eyes with William and I imagine love being born over the mental image of a Petri dish. I’m thinking this dinner is going to be a huge success on all counts when Ethan enters the room.
“Aunt Mattie,” he says. “Check out my new pet.” He thrusts his arm out as he approaches and there sitting on his sleeve is a three-inch-long bug. “It’s a Madagascar hissing cockroach,” he says proudly. And as if on cue, the bug sits back on its haunches, waves its hairy antennae in the air, and hisses.
The hissing sound is closely followed by a high-pitched screech and a loud crash as William faints dead away, taking one of the bar stools down with him.
Chapter 32
Despite all the drama, the evening isn’t a total bust. When I couldn’t arouse William right away and the gash on his head refused to stop bleeding unless I put direct pressure on it, Desi called for an ambulance. There was some brief confusion when the ambulance arrived and saw a hearse already parked out front, but that was cleared up with a few explanations.
William is now awake but foggy, his comb-over safely contained inside a gauze turban, his body loaded on a cot rather than in a coffin. We follow the entourage outside to the driveway and watch as the EMS crew loads William into the ambulance. Mom insists on riding along with him and makes a big enough stink with the ambulance crew that they finally cave and allow her in the rig. As the ambulance pulls away, I can see my mother sitting next to William, stroking his arm and murmuring in his ear.
Lucien, who briefly appeared in the kitchen right after the incident, has been ensconced in his office ever since, searching his law books in case William decides to sue. Ethan is in his room, hopefully locking his pet roach back inside its cage.
As Desi and I watch the ambulance disappear down the street she says, “I do believe you made a love connection there.”
“Not exactly the way I hoped the night would go but hey, I’ll take it.”
“I’m sorry about Ethan,” she says. “I keep telling him he needs to be careful about showing his bug collection to other people, but he gets so excited he forgets. The kid loves bugs. He reads everything he can get his hands on: books, Internet sites, magazines . . . you name it.”
“It’s okay. In fact, I think it bonded Mom and William faster than any quiet dinner would have.”
“It could have been much worse, you know,” Desi says as we turn to head back into the house. “Ethan could have brought out one of his fly farms.”
I’m afraid to ask but do it anyway. “Fly farm?”
“It’s an enclosed terrarium type of thing filled with maggots and flies. Ethan has six different ones in his bedroom because he’s studying the reproductive cycles of various types of flies for a school science project.” Desi pauses and shudders. “He’s pretty much done with it at this point. All he has left is to organize his data and write a report. It can’t be soon enough for me. I don’t mind the flies so much but all those maggots give me the creeps.”
I can sympathize and the mere mention of maggots has me feeling them crawling on me all over again.
Desi lets me eat a plate of her wonderful dinner and after scarfing it down, I say my good-byes, shoo Erika and her friends out of the hearse, and head for the hospital to check on William.
Most of the people on duty in the ER at this time of day are night-shifters, and I don’t know them as well as I do the day folks. So rather than venturing into the ER proper, I head for the waiting room, where I find my mother sitting in one of the chairs, reading a magazine.
“Hey, Mom, how’s William doing?”
She sets her magazine aside and motions for me to sit next to her. “They stitched up his scalp wound, but only after William made the doctor clean everything five times. He’s down having a CT scan of his head now. The doctor said he’s pretty sure it will be negative.”
“That’s a relief,” I say.
“He’s an interesting guy, very clean. Are you dating him?”
I shake my head. “We went out on a blind date once, but it didn’t work out.”
“I see.”
“So he’s all yours.”
She gives me a sly look and says, “Is it that obvious?”
“Well, it is to me. After all, I’ve seen you court before. I know the signs.”
She flashes me a grim smile. “I haven’t had the best track record when it comes to husbands and beaux, have I? I’ve always been proud of you girls for marrying so well.”
Here we go.
“Well, it turns out I didn’t do as well as we originally thought,” I counter.
She gives me her classic pish-paw wave of dismissal. “You did fine. David made a little mistake. That’s all. I think you’re writing him off too easily. It’s every girl’s dream to marry a doctor. You shouldn’t be so eager to just throw all that away. It gives you social standing and credibility.” She pauses, then adds, “The cream always rises to the top, you know.”
So does pond scum, I think.
“Sorry to disillusion you, Mom, but that never was my dream. My dream is to be married to a man who loves me, a man who is faithful, a man who doesn’t risk my health and my life for the sake of a little sexual gratification.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere if he was getting what he needed at home,” she says with a sniff. “You know what I’ve always told you girls about keeping things interesting.”
I did. It was Rule #6 in Mother’s Rules for Wives: don’t be afraid to experiment in the bedroom. David and I did experiment some, but it was pretty chaste. Mostly it consisted of trying different positions and him asking me to wear sexy lingerie. I always went along until the day he came home with a Xena, Warrior Princess costume. I put it on but rather than looking sexy, I looked like the starring role in a Wagner opera. The only thing lacking was one of those Norsky Viking helmets, which would have been somewhat appropriate given my real name, though it also would have lent a whole new meaning to the term horny.
I’m groping for a way to get Mom off topic when a nurse comes out of the ER care area and approaches. It’s Lucy “Lupus” Julseth, someone I used to work with and one of the people whose names was on Luke Nelson’s patient list.
“Mattie!” she says, greeting me with a smile. “How the heck are you?”
“Good as can be expected,” I tell her.
Lucy looks to my mom and says, “He’s back from his CT so you can come and sit with him if you’d like.”
“I would,” she says. She looks over at me with a questioning expression and I wave her on.
“Go ahead. I have to get home but I’ll call you in a day or two.” As my mother heads for the care area of the ER, I say to Lucy, “So you’re working the night shift these days?”
“Not by choice. Mark and I split up so I needed to make other arrangements for childcare.” She sighs and looks longingly out the window toward the parking lot. That’s when I remember that Lucy is a smoker.
“Want to step out for a puff?” I ask her. She nods and looks relieved. We head outside to an area just off the hospital property and Lucy lights up. She takes a long drag and blows it out slowly, taking care to see that the smoke blows away from me.
“It’s hard to arrange childcare when you work these twelve-hour shifts,” she says, taking another drag. “But I need the money and the night shift differential helps. So for now, the kids are spending the nights at my parents’ house and I sleep during the day while they’re in school.”
“I’m sorry to hear about you and Mark. When did it happen?”