Postcards From Last Summer (43 page)

As I spiraled into a dream, I breathed deeply in relief. Single again. At least there was a modicum of peace in closure.

T
he next day Elle stayed in her pajamas until noon, when Lindsay suggested a game of Scrabble on the porch with Mrs. Mick.

“Perfect!” Elle said, recalling the many summer days when they'd taken over the porch, staging Scrabble tournaments and Monopoly marathons. What better way to plod through the “I've just lost my guy” blues?

Mary Grace was kicking their butts, having just scored an extra fifty points by using all seven letters for the word
monkeys
. She replaced her tiles, then stared above their heads at the side yard. “Good Lord!” Mary Grace gasped. “I swear to God, the undertaker's come for me early.”

“Ma, are you hallucinating now,” Lindsay said, her head tilted over the Scrabble board, “or just trying to distract me from finding a way to use the triple word space?”

Elle scrambled to the door in her pink Joe Boxer shorts and red T-shirt, amazed to see a black limousine parking in the driveway. As the driver's side door opened, she recognized Judd's driver. “Judd's limo,” she said aloud. “Shit!” She hated being caught, even though she wasn't really doing anything that wrong.

Lindsay padded to the screen door in bare feet and swung her denim hip against it as she leaned out. “Hi, Judd,” she called, adding for those inside the room, “it's about time.”

Judd unfolded himself from the limousine, looking taller in the McCorkles' side yard. “Is she in there?”

With a squeal, Elle ducked behind Lindsay. “Tell him no!” she giggled, pressing her face to the back of Lindsay's T-shirt.

She didn't hear an answer, but she suspected that her friend gave her up, as Judd's shoes scraped up the steps. A moment later, his booming voice filled the room.

“Cute, Elle. Here, I think you've been mugged or something and you're out here playing Scrabble in your pj's?”

Elle straightened, determined not to be bullied by him. “How the hell did you find me here?” she asked, her hands balled in fists on her narrow hips.

“You forget, I was a lawyer first, a district attorney second. I know a few things about investigation, missy.”

Missy?
Elle wanted to laugh. Was that the tough language he used to use when interrogating the really bad guys?

“When you weren't at your apartment, where you were
supposed to be sick,”
Judd glared at her for emphasis, “I called Darcy.”

“She doesn't know I'm here.”

“She figured you came out east. I talked her into auditioning for the new pilot, then got my driver to bring me out here. When there was no answer at your place, I knew I'd have to shake down the neighborhood.” He swung around to face Mary Grace. “Sorry to intrude, Mrs. McCorkle.”

With the help of the hand mirror and comb, Mary Grace had quickly plumped her short curls into an acceptable hairdo. “Not a problem, Judd. You just go on and take care of business and don't mind me. I'd skedaddle but I'm not very mobile these days.”

And this confrontation was very likely one of the juiciest Mary Grace had been privy to for the past six months, Elle thought as she watched Judd turn on the charm. The smooth operator.

“I wouldn't dream of putting you out,” Judd said, pressing a hand to his chest in a dramatic gesture of sincerity. His left hand clutched a brown paper bag, soggy on the bottom.

“What is that?” Elle asked, wrinkling her nose at the bag.

He held it up. “This, my dear, is chicken matzo-ball soup, Jewish penicillin for a young lady who called in
sick.”
He frowned down at the bag. “Must be cold by now. Would've tasted great, if you were
sick
at home in your apartment. Where
sick
people are supposed to be.”

“I'll take that off your hands.” Lindsay grabbed the bag and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Sick people who don't even bother to call in sick the second day,” Judd went on. “For all I know, you could have passed out in the shower or fallen down the stairs.”

“I don't have stairs in my apartment,” Elle pointed out, her anger giving way to amusement over Judd's histrionics. To think that he'd actually blown off his schedule to drive all the way out here . . . well, that meant something.

“As your boss, I'm appalled by your unprofessional behavior,” Judd said gruffly, folding his arms. Behind him, Mary Grace's eyes went wide and she wagged a knowing finger at Elle. “You're taking advantage of the sick-leave policy,” Judd added.

“The first time I ever used it in more than two years,” Elle argued, determined not to cave in.

“And as your boyfriend, I'm really pissed. You could've called.”

“I left a message with your assistant,” Elle said. “Besides, you could've called me, if you really cared.”

“I came all the way out here with chicken soup!”

“A day later.” She folded her arms and turned away from him. “Do you even know what made me sick? The reason I couldn't drag myself in to work yesterday?”

He pulled in a deep breath, then sighed. “The argument? What do you want, an apology?”

“No. Not good enough.” She spun around to face him. “I want to know that you're committed to our relationship, Judd. I want to make it official and start a family.”

He sank down onto a chair at the foot of the hospital bed. “I'd like a family,” he said quietly. “But you know how I struggle with the marriage deal.” He shot a look up at Mary Grace, explaining, “The old ball and chain.”

“If you'll pardon my two cents, some of us get very used to having that other person attached,” Mary Grace said. “I miss my old ball and chain.”

“I'm just not sure.” Judd shook his head. “Don't know if I can do it.”

“Well, I know that I'm not going to settle for anything less,” Elle said, feeling her hands ball into fists again. He could be so frustrating. If she didn't love him, she'd kill him. “What
do
you know, Judd?”

He pointed toward the door. “I know that I'm not getting into that limo without you. I know that I miss having you at work, poking your nose into my business and bothering me on the set.”

“I do
not
bother you.”

“I know that my brownstone feels like an empty museum without you there.” He reached into his pocket and held up a shiny gold key dangling from a ring. “I had this made for you so that you could move your stuff in. Make it your home, too.”

Elle felt her knees soften at the mention of home. It was her weak spot, the need to build a nest and feather it for a family. She stared at the shiny key, saying, “What does this really mean?”

“That I want you in my life,” he said. “That I want to wake up with you in the morning and go to sleep with you at night.”

“Sounds like the old ball and chain to me,” Mary Grace said cheerfully.

Elle took the key ring from him, slid it on her ring finger and jiggled her hand. “It's a little big,” she complained. “Not to be pushy, but I'd like a solitaire diamond. Tiffany's would do.”

“You are pushy.”

“Yeah, I am, and I'm not going to settle here, Judd. I want to marry you. I want to be married to you, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I've got a spectacular rose arbor at that house down the road. Would you give me a chance to use it?”

“It does make for lovely photos,” Mary Grace chimed in.

“I wish I had your confidence,” he said. “Look, can we live together for a while first?”

“A few months?” she said.

“I was thinking years,” he admitted.

“How about a one-year trial period?” Mrs. Mick suggested. “Like a purchase with a one-year warranty. A lease with an option to buy. I got that on my last car, and I was quite pleased with it.”

Elle looked up into Judd's dark eyes and said, “I'll take it,” as he nodded. She threw her arms around him in a hug that lifted her off her bare feet. Judd, her big bull of a man. She loved him way too much to settle for anything less than forever.

“Lovely,” Mary Grace said, pushing away the table with the Scrabble board. “With that resolved, it's lunchtime, and I hear we have some delicious chicken soup. Any takers?”

F
or me, the month of August came to be measured by progress in reading my manuscript to Ma. Forty pages was a good day, sixty sensational. Twenty had to suffice on a day when Ma needed pain meds, an increasing event now that the tumor had grown. “It's very likely the tumor has created a blockage in the bowels,” said Willow, a pear-shaped rented nurse who seemed to match her name with her wooden clogs and wiry gold hair down to her waist. “That's going to be causing you a lot of pain. Dr. Garber says I can increase your pain medication, if you like.”

“Day by day,” Ma had answered, pressing her eyes closed as Willow helped her shift positions in the bed. There was to be no more surgery, no talk of stents or chemotherapy. Even the drug trial was over for Mary Grace McCorkle. “I want to go with dignity, at home,” she told anyone who cared to listen. “I'll not linger on, a bag of bones in some cold hospital.” I understood my mother's decision and, though I respected it, watching the inevitable unfold wasn't easy.

By the third week in August, we were a mere fifty pages from the end of my manuscript. I went to bed that night with a promise to read more in the morning, and Ma flipped from Jay to Dave and back, looking for some comic relief in the night. “Are you okay, Ma?” I asked the question I seemed to repeat a million times a day. “Are you okay? Are you hot? Are you cold? Do you need juice? Are you hungry? Do you need the bedpan?”

“I'm fine, dear,” Ma said, pushing a smile. “You sleep well.”

But up in the dark attic, I fell into a deep sleep that led to a nightmare I couldn't escape. Despite the dream's surreal quality, its choppy sense of reality, I was unable to pull myself out of it, unable to run fast enough from the towering tidal wave that loomed over me, unable to dig fast enough in the mound of sand that had covered the people on the beach.

I bolted up with a screech, unable to shake the image of the impossible mound of sand despite the watery moonlight of my bedroom. My brain seemed to throb in my head as I threw back the covers and padded downstairs to the porch, where black-and-white images of soldiers in WWII tanks flashed on the television. Ma's eyes were closed, her breathing steady. I clicked off the television and turned to leave.

“You can leave it on,” my mother said. “I was just resting my eyes.”

It was an old family joke, something my grandfather had started when he fell asleep reading the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons. “Just resting my eyes . . .”

“I had a bad dream,” I admitted, my hands still trembling. “A whopping nightmare.”

“Come here, lovey.” Ma curled to one side of the bed and patted the mattress beside her.

“It was awful,” I said, lowering myself to the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed.

“What happened in the dream?” Ma asked, running her hand over my arm soothingly.

“I dreamed there was a huge, towering tidal wave coming. You and I were on the beach together, and we just stood there, frozen in a panic as this monster wave arched over us. People were screaming, and I got toppled by the water. And when the wave receded, there was just this mound of sand beside me, and I knew you were under there, and I just kept digging,
but . . .
but . . .”

“Shh.” Ma stroked my hair, pressing my face into the white sheets as I sobbed. “It was just a dream.”

“I was in such a panic,” I said, remembering the sensation of tearing into the sand with my bare fingers. The panic and fear, the helplessness.

“It's okay, lovey. Let your problems fall away, sand through your fingers.”

My mother had used the sifting sand metaphor many times before, but tonight it brought back the horror of the dream again, the digging and scraping to unearth her. In the dream I needed to save my mother from death, and yet my conscious mind reminded me that her last days were inevitably near.

“Ma?” I swiped at my tears and lifted my head. Ma's skin was pale, with dark half moons under watery brown eyes that once had burned with such energy. “Are you scared?”

“What would I be afraid of? An end to the pain? Eternal rest? An all-expense-paid trip to heaven?” Mary Grace drew in a tired breath. “I'm so exhausted, weary to the bone, any kind of rest would be a blessing. I've had a good life, Lindsay. Thank the Lord, I'm not leaving anyone in the lurch if I exit the planet soon. I wouldn't mind doing more, but my body is simply not cooperating, so I guess that will all have to be saved for my sequel in heaven.”

Ma made it all sound so lyrical, like an old Irish poem.

“Do we need to have a night nurse for you?” I asked, latching onto the only tangible thing I could control. “Is the pain getting worse?”

“The nights are long, but I don't want to go all loopy with the drugs. It's tolerable for now. But since we're both not likely to find sleep anytime soon, why don't you read some more for me? If you don't mind. When you read it to me, I find it's an effective diversion. A lovely distraction.”

“How's that for a cover quote . . .” I slid out of bed and pressed the shoulder of my T-shirt to my damp eyes. “Critics call it ‘a lovely distraction!' ”

“I'm no critic,” Ma chirped. “I'm your mother, and I've always known you'd be a writer some day. I'm very proud, lovey.”

“Thanks, Ma.” Trying not to blush, I took a deep breath as I removed the rubber band from the manuscript and flipped ahead. Just two and a half chapters left. We might just finish, after all.