The Wedding Party
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And Dennis always said, “You must be right, because I have nothing to complain about. I just thought we could check and see if it could get more perfect.”
During their five years together, Charlene and Dennis had set a kind of schedule for their relationship, something that appealed to a woman as strictly organized as Charlene. One night a week they had dinner at her house and Dennis would usually stay over. One night a week they dined at his house, but she rarely stayed the night because she loved her little house in the suburbs. Saturday nights they went out, Sunday mornings they had brunch, and the rest of the time they checked in by phone. They had both togetherness and plenty of time to catch up on work, family, or fulfill other social obligations—he for the hospital, she for the legal community and professional women’s groups. Or, they simply spent time alone, something middle-aged professionals who lived demanding, hectic lives needed.
Dennis was, above all, a treasured friend…and when life threw a few curves at Charlene, he was the one for whom she reached.
Charlene was already feeling more secure just thinking about Dennis and their flawless relationship as she pulled into the St. Rose’s E.R. parking lot. She was soon distracted by evidence of a recent commotion. A Sacramento Fire Department engine was just departing and a paramedic van was still parked outside. A couple of firefighters in full turnout gear stood talking outside the E.R. doors, and the ambulance was backed up to the dock, doors open, a serious cleaning-up going on.
On a couple of occasions she had gone to the E.R. when Dennis was in the throes of triage, and she had been mesmerized by his commanding nature, his confidence and skill. He was impressive to watch.
But today it appeared the chaos was past. There were a few people in the lobby waiting to be seen, all the curtains were drawn around treatment cubicles and there was a grim hush that lay over the room. It seemed things were under control. She saw Dennis standing outside one of the exam rooms, chart in hand, listening raptly and scribbling quickly as a young doctor spoke to him. A young woman.
She seemed awfully young to be a doctor, Charlene observed, but she had to be if Dennis was writing orders; if she wasn’t an M.D., he’d be giving them. She looked about twenty-one and she was very tall. She could look Dennis right in the eye. Charlene, at five foot four, fought down the temptation to feel dumpy. She straightened her spine. She was petite…almost a foot shy of meeting Dennis’s gaze. But this one, with her long legs and long auburn hair…
Dennis stopped writing suddenly to make eye contact with the young woman. She looked down as if shaken by something. He put aside the chart and pen and reached out to touch her upper arm. He gave her a gentle squeeze. Charlene saw that Dennis spoke to her softly but intensely. The doctor leaned forward, rested her head on his shoulder. His arm encircled her, stroking her back, and he murmured to her all the while. Charlene could read his lips: “It’s okay, okay.” The young woman was draped against him, soaking up what Charlene had come for. She wasn’t sobbing or crying, but still obviously upset…and Charlene’s fiancé held her close and secure. For a long time. Charlene made a U-turn and migrated back to the front of the E.R. before Dennis let the young woman go.
Hmm, she thought. She had never before referred to him as her fiancé. Even mentally.
“Hi, Charlene,” Barbara Benn, the E.R. clerk, greeted. “Does Denny know you’re here?”
No, she thought, he didn’t see me because he was busy caressing a beautiful and obviously brilliant fifteen-year-old doctor. “Ah…I don’t think so. You have an exciting morning?”
Barbara leaned over the counter. “Bad accident,” she whispered. “We had a couple of fatalities. Very yucko ones.” Barbara, early twenties with a slight purple tinge to her overly black hair, cracked her gum and rolled her eyes for emphasis. “Denny worked on one for about forty-five minutes. Awful. Just a kid. I bet he’s completely bummed. He’ll be glad to see you. Maybe you can get him out of here for a while.”
At that precise moment, Dennis, who she never called Denny, was there, beside her. He dropped his arm casually around her shoulders, but his gaze drifted down the hall toward the departing frame of the young woman he’d just been holding. “Hi, honey,” he said absently. “I can’t get away. I’m sorry. It’s a zoo.” His lips fell to the top of her head in a perfunctory kiss before he let her go and followed the young doctor. Charlene was filled with a sense of emptiness that was underscored by her earlier conversation with Stephanie.
There will be an explanation later, she told herself. But as hard as she tried, she could not seem to get past the fact that he hadn’t asked her why she had come. Didn’t he wonder if something might be wrong? He was probably still very distracted by the fatality…or by the young doctor….
“Whew, it obviously sucks to be Denny right now,” Barbara said.
“Who’s the doctor? The young, beautiful one?”
She turned to look. “Oh, that’s Dr. Malone. She’s new. Pediatrician. She’s awesome. Everyone loves her. I guess you haven’t met her yet.”
“No, not yet,” Charlene said.
“You’ll like her,” she said. “She’s very cool for a doctor.”
No, I hate her, Charlene thought, then retracted the thought with shame. She had never had thoughts so jealous and immature where Dennis was concerned! Not even when she had witnessed goo-goo eyes directed at him while they were out together. From young nurses to legal colleagues, women took quick notice of Dennis’s classic good looks. Dennis was an absolute gem. And, she reminded herself, completely loyal.
Charlene got herself to the parking lot, into the car, and out of the vicinity before she succumbed to the needy impulse to rush to the hospital cafeteria, where she might catch them in the act of holding hands over the tuna surprise, gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes.
She drove to her favorite mediterranean café and parked. She sat in the car feeling alone and bereft, feelings that were completely alien to her. Suddenly she knew her life would be awful if she didn’t have Dennis in it. And she knew how much more awful it would be if some doctor young enough to be her daughter had him. “Okay, it’s an age thing,” she said aloud in self-analysis. “A little premenopausal panic. Well, I’ll be damned if I let myself turn into some wimpy dependent old woman who can’t even have lunch because—”
Her cell phone twittered inside her purse. She plucked it out and studied the caller ID—it was her office. She didn’t admit to herself that she felt enormous relief.
“Yes, Pam?”
“Char, you’ve had a disturbing and confusing call from Ron Fulbright, the manager at the Food Star Market in Fair Oaks. Something about your mother. I think you’d better go over there.”
“My mother?”
“Yes, something about her not being able to find her way home…”
“What? That’s ridiculous.”
“Well, that’s what I said. To which Mr. Fulbright said this wasn’t the first time. They’ve started having a bag boy keep an eye on her when she leaves the store, watching to see if it looks like she knows where she’s going.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. She drives to the market, right?”
“Apparently she walked.”
“But it’s drizzling. She wouldn’t walk there in the rain.”
“Mr. Fulbright has her in his office. You’d better go get her. I could hear Lois in the background. She’s…ah…unhappy.”
“Well, I imagine so,” Charlene said, indignant. “Call him back. Tell him I’m on my way.” She clicked off without saying goodbye, put the car in reverse and headed toward her mother’s neighborhood.
Lois must have been somehow misunderstood, Charlene thought, and the grocer interpreted this as her being lost and in need of her daughter’s rescue. But it was absurd! Lois had only just returned from a rather taxing trip to Bangkok. At seventy-eight, she was anything but lost. She was an independent traveler of the world. Widowed for over twenty years, she was a modern, youthful, brilliant woman who refused to be called Grandma.
Charlene beat down a powerful sense of foreboding, terrified by the prospect of her mother—her rock—falling apart.
Two
Charlene racked her brain for any incident in which her mother had seemed confused or disoriented, but could think of none. She lost her keys, but who didn’t? She forgot the occasional name, as did Charlene. Although there was that time, not so long ago, when she put the yogurt and cottage cheese away in the rolltop desk and then couldn’t locate the source of the foul odor…. But they had laughed about it later.
When she arrived at the grocery store, she was directed to Mr. Fulbright’s office in the back of the store. She heard her mother before she saw her. “May I have a drink of something, please?” Lois asked in a small voice. Charlene was brought up short. She hadn’t heard that kind of meekness from her mother since Lois’s gallbladder surgery sixteen years ago.
Charlene peeked into the partitioned room. Lois sat hunched on the hard chair beside Mr. Fulbright’s desk. Though Lois Pomeroy was petite, she was such a formidable personality, Charlene tended to think of her as larger than she was. And Lois always sat or stood straight, her head up. She was prideful and pigheaded. In fact, she was a bossy pain in the ass, who at the moment looked stooped and cowed and…frightened. It was very disturbing.
“Anything you like, Mrs. Pomeroy.”
“Just water, thank you.”
“Be right back,” Fulbright said. He nearly ran into Charlene as he exited his cubicle. “Oh, my heavens!” he said, laughing nervously. He grinned at Charlene in a big, perfect Cheshire smile. “Go ahead in,” he said.
Lois raised her bowed head and saw Charlene. “Oh. He said he called you. I told him not to.”
“Mom, what happened?”
“I just got a little turned around, that’s all. It happens to people my age from time to time.”
“And has it happened before?”
“Well, no, not really….”
“But Mr. Fulbright said they’ve been having bag boys keep an eye on you until it appears that you know where you’re going. What does that mean?”
Mr. Fulbright brought the water. Lois sipped before speaking. “Well, there was one time last year—”
“Last month,” Mr. Fulbright corrected.
“It wasn’t last month!” Lois shot back. “Sheesh,” she added impatiently.
“Yes, it was, Lois. Remember?” he asked too patiently, as though speaking to a child. “You were all turned around in the parking lot. Driving in circles. You went around and around, then back and forth past the store. One of the boys flagged you down and asked if you needed something. Remember?”
“Oh, that was last year!” A little strength was seeping into her voice under the mantle of anger.
Mr. Fulbright rolled his eyes in frustration. He then connected with Charlene’s eyes, smirked and shook his head. “Well, if you say so,” he relented, but he shook his head. “You have some groceries, Lois. Let me carry them to your daughter’s car, okay?”
“Don’t bother yourself, I can do it.”
“Yes, I know you can, but it’s my pleasure. I’m afraid if I don’t take good care of you, you’ll shop at another store.”
“I’m thinking about doing that anyway,” she said. “Been thinking about it, actually.”
Charlene got her mother settled in the front seat of the car, the groceries in the trunk, and stood behind the car with Mr. Fulbright.
“This is an old neighborhood, Ms. Dugan. It’s an unfortunate part of the job that we see some of our best customers go through aging crises. Lois got lost about a month ago and couldn’t get herself out of the parking lot, much less find her house. She kept coming back to the store, driving around and around the parking lot, until someone helped her. She knows it happened—she started walking instead of driving, and don’t let her tell you it was for the exercise.” He rolled his eyes skyward, where heavy, dark clouds loomed, just waiting to let go. “Who would take that kind of chance in unpredictable weather like this? A person could drown! It’s so she doesn’t get too far away from home before she realizes she doesn’t know where she is.”
Charlene was absolutely horrified. “This is impossible! She just returned from the Far East!” But in thinking about it, Charlene realized that that trip, a tour, had taken place over two years ago.
“Nevertheless…”
“What happened this morning?” Charlene asked. “Exactly.”
“I had one of the boys watch her walk down Rio Vista to make sure she turned toward her house, but she walked right by. She could have been going to visit someone, so Doug stayed with her just in case. She went another block, doubled back past her street again and finally sat on a retainer wall, in the rain, looking dazed. He asked her if he could help her and she started to cry.”
“Cry? My mother doesn’t cry! For God’s sake, this is crazy!”
Mr. Fulbright touched her arm and Charlene snatched it back as though burned. “She should see her doctor. It might be just a fluke, a medication screwup or—”
“She doesn’t take medication!”
“Well, maybe it’s something more serious. But Ms. Dugan, it’s something.”
The passenger door opened. “Are we going?” Lois wanted to know, that impatient edge back in her voice. “I could have been home by now!”
Mr. Fulbright crossed his arms. “Or in Seattle,” he muttered under his breath.
“Yes, Mom. Coming.” Then, feeling protective of Lois, she glared at the grocer for his cheek.
“Goodbye, Lois,” Mr. Fulbright said. “See you soon.”
“I doubt it,” she said, slamming the door.
“Well, thank you,” Charlene said. “Though I really think—”
“When you run a neighborhood market in an area with a large retired population,” he said, “there are some things you learn to watch for. They’re my charges. It won’t be that many years before I’ll benefit from having people watch after me now and again. Just as the postman keeps track if the mail stacks up, merchants keep an eye out for their regulars.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Get your mom to the doctor now. We don’t need a senseless tragedy just because it’s hard to think about Lois getting older.”
As Charlene fastened her seat belt, she muttered, “God, he’s annoying.”
“Tell me about it,” Lois said.
“I guess he knows what’s right for everyone, huh?”
“I never could stand that guy. He’s a hoverer, you know? Always looking over your shoulder when you pinch the grapes. Probably a pervert. I’m not shopping there anymore.”
“I can’t say I blame you, Mom. Especially if you’re going to find yourself held hostage in the back room.” Charlene shuddered, but not for thinking about Mr. Fulbright’s back-room office.
“The rhubarb stinks. Smells like fish and tastes like rubber.”
“Rhubarb?” Charlene couldn’t remember ever having rhubarb at her mother’s house.
“Let’s get moving. I think I have a hair appointment.”
“When did you start caring about rhubarb?”
“My mother always had a rhubarb cobbler on the Fourth of July. I wish I could remember if I made that hair appointment for today or next Tuesday. Damn!”
Charlene drove in silence for a moment. Then, with a sigh, she asked, “Why did you decide to walk to the market today of all days? It’s cold, and it’s drizzled on and off since morning.”
“I needed the exercise.”
“Really?”
“Why else would I walk?”
“Well…I don’t suppose a checkup would hurt,” Charlene suggested.
“I just had a checkup.”
“Well, another one won’t hurt.”
“I’m not going to the doctor and that’s the end of it.”
“Mom…”
“I said no.”
“Mom, I’m not going to argue with you—”
“Good! That will be a refreshing change.”
“I’m worried, that’s all.”
“Waste of energy. Worry about something you have some control over. This is out of your hands.”
She pulled up in front of Lois’s house, parked, killed the engine and turned to regard her mother. “Why are you acting like this?” she asked in a gentle voice.
“I’ve had a rough day,” Lois said, looking away from her daughter, out the window.
Haven’t we all, Charlene thought.
“I have things to do, Aida, so let me get my groceries and get busy.”
“Aida? Mom, you called me Aida. I think I’d better get you in the house and—”
Lois groaned as if in outraged frustration and threw open her car door. She pulled herself out with youthful agility and, once extracted, stomped her foot. “You’re starting to get on my last nerve! Get me my things and get out of my business!”
That’s when she knew. She wasn’t sure exactly what she knew, but she knew. The only Aida Charlene had ever known was an old cousin of Lois’s who’d been dead over thirty years. And while Lois was admittedly a frisky character, Charlene was unaccustomed to such anger and temper in her mother. Lois was going through some mental/medical crisis.
Trying to remain calm, she went to the trunk, pulled out two bags and handed one to Lois. She followed her mother up the walk to the front door. Lois got the door unlocked easily enough, and they went inside and put the groceries away without speaking. When the bags were folded and stowed on a pantry shelf, they stood and looked at each other across the butcher block.
“I’m very sorry,” Lois said. “I’m sorry you were bothered, sorry I was rude to you and sorry about what’s happening.”
“What is happening?” Charlene asked.
“Well, isn’t it perfectly clear? I’m losing it.”
Charlene went back to the office in something of a trance. Was it possible that even though she spent a great deal of time with Lois, she’d been too preoccupied to notice these changes?
She threw herself into the accumulated work on her desk, plowing through briefs, returning calls, writing memos and dictating letters. She also spent some time on the Internet, researching dementia in the elderly and Alzheimer’s disease.
It was getting late and she should have gone home long ago, but she wanted no spare time between work and evening—she wouldn’t know how to handle it. She could research Alzheimer’s, but she couldn’t think about her mother suffering from it. Tonight was dinner at her place with Dennis. And until she could talk to him, until she could take advantage of his cool-headed appraisal of her problem—not to mention his medical expertise—she couldn’t allow herself to focus on it. But when the intercom buzzed and she looked at her watch, she realized she wouldn’t even make it to her house ahead of Dennis, much less have time to cook him dinner. “It’s Dennis,” Pam intoned from the outer office.
If he cancels, Charlene thought, I will kill him and hide the body. She picked up. “Dennis, I lost all track of time. I can leave here in just a—”
“Listen, if you have to work late—”
“What? You aren’t going to cancel, are you?”
“No,” he said calmly. “I was just wondering if you’d like me to pick anything up.”
“Oh.” The perfect man. The most stable and reliable thing in her life. With Lois falling apart and Stephanie making her crazy, maybe the only stable and reliable thing in her life. “Did I just bark at you?” she asked him.
“Pretty much. Bad day?”
“Well, I would reply ‘the worst’ except that I stopped by the hospital and I know you had a terrible day yourself, one that included fatalities. So…”
“Yes, you were gone by the time I realized you had just made a rare unannounced appearance. I was so distracted at the time. So, what is this? Professional or personal?” he asked.
She thought about dodging the question, but then, after a pause, she slowly let it out. “Personal.” It might as well have been a dirty word.
“I should have guessed. I can hear the tension in your voice, and you’re working till the last possible minute. I know what that means.”
She leaned back in her leather chair. “You do? What does it mean?”
“That you’re upset, and you don’t want any time on your hands during which you might think too hard, because you’re afraid you might become distraught. You never have, but you’re still always afraid of that. Of losing control.”
Embarrassingly, unbelievably, she began to cry. The tears had been there all day, just below the surface, but this was the last straw. They suddenly welled up in her eyes, her nose began to tingle and her face reddened and flooded. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, but it did no good. She accidentally let out a wet, jagged breath. She couldn’t remember when she had last cried. Probably years ago; certainly pre-Dennis, but he seemed to know what was happening anyway because he said, “Hey, hey, hey. Charlene, honey, what’s the matter?”
Of course she couldn’t speak. She put the phone down on the desktop, grabbed a fistful of tissues and tried to mop her face quickly and efficiently. She did not want Pam to come upon her sobbing. She blew her nose and picked up the phone. “I can’t talk about this yet,” she whispered into the phone. “Will you…will you pick up something for me?”
“Yes, of course. What shall I pick up?”
“Dinner,” she said. And hung up.
Thank God she had her own private bathroom. She flushed her hot, red face with cold water, but it was a while before her tears subsided. The strange thing was that she wasn’t sure what brought on the flood. She couldn’t tell if it was the picture she had in her mind of Lois sitting hunched and frightened in the warehouse-like office, or if it was Dennis giving voice to her fear of losing control. Or could it be a mental image that she couldn’t let come into clear focus of Stephanie fetching her from the grocer’s back-room office?
When she was finally leaving, Pam was standing behind her desk, putting some things away and other things in the tote she carried to and from work.
“See you tomorrow,” Charlene said, ducking.
“Char?” Pam queried, leaning over her desk to get a closer look at Charlene. “Have you been crying?”
She stopped short but didn’t turn. “What makes you think I’ve been crying?”
“Your eyes are red, your nose is red, your eye makeup is making tracks down your cheeks, I heard a tugboat horn come from your office and—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. And she left quickly.
Charlene lived in a new home in a small, gated neighborhood just east of the city. It was under thirty minutes to her office or the courthouse if traffic was reasonable, and only a half mile from the freeway. This gave her quick access for convenience and no traffic noise for peaceful living. The length of drive was perfect for making cell-phone calls, thinking through a work problem or giving herself a stern talking-to.
Tonight’s self-talk was about keeping perspective. About staying cool. She was accustomed to giving herself pep talks—she was a hardworking single mother, after all. She took her issues one at a time, sorting them out calmly, logically.
First of all, the Samuelsons were a perfect example of the bad-divorcing couple. She decided to write them off as the cruel, ignorant people they were and place them in the chilled mental compartment in her mind that she had labeled icebox. She’d freeze out their influence over her mood.
Second, Stephanie was a wonderful girl, a jewel of a daughter, but she was a tad spoiled. It wasn’t her fault, exactly. Between Charlene, who always worried about doing a good enough job as a mom, her ex-husband, Jake, who was a very doting father, and Peaches, who was destined to have only the one granddaughter, Stephie was doomed to play the royal chick. So, she was spoiled. She liked having her way and having people cater to her. She wanted to graduate from princess to queen, and in order to do that she had to find a prince, marry him and turn him into her king. It looked as if she was going to succeed, too. Unless she drove the prince away with all her imperial demands.
Grant Chamberlain was a remarkably good choice for her daughter; Charlene wished she’d been that lucky twenty-five years ago. He was twenty-seven, a disciplined ex-army noncommissioned officer from the Special Forces, getting his degree on the GI Bill and supporting himself by tending bar. He was handsome and genuinely kind. Charlene admired him and approved of the way he treated her daughter, which was with respect and more patience than she usually deserved. Charlene was not totally unsympathetic. She could understand some of Stephanie’s problem, what with their conflicting work schedules. Stephanie got up early to teach English to surly eighth-graders while Grant slept in. When she got home, he had already gone to work, where he stayed until the wee hours. Grant took his days off during the week, which he filled with classes and study groups while Stephanie worked. When Stephanie was off on the weekends, Grant worked his longest hours…and made his best tip money. So this was hard. Work in the adult world was hard. There you have it. Who among us, she thought, isn’t working hard? Long hours?