The Four Seasons (2 page)

Birdie knew that those words were spoken in the white-hot fire of teenage anger and flung at her to burn—and burn they did. A mother never hears the words “I hate you” without cringing and feeling like a hopeless failure.

She followed Hannah back into the house with a heavy
tread. Closed doors were a way of life between them now. Why did push always come to shove between them? And when had she started to feel the need to win these senseless battles? Not so long ago, she'd let trivial arguments slide by because all the parenting articles she'd read had a unified rallying cry:
choose your battles!
With teenagers, however,
everything
was a battle.

She walked to the small desk in the kitchen and worked away her frustration by cleaning up the day's disorder. When all was spotless and organized, she reached for a stack of patient messages awaiting her. Clearing her mind of personal problems, she picked up the first one and dialed.

An hour later, she was just finishing up her last call when her husband walked in from the garage. She turned her head to see Dennis shake off a covering of powdery snow from his lambskin jacket. He was five foot ten, just an inch taller than she was, but his build was slight in line and breadth of bone. With his long, thoughtful face, his dark brown eyes behind round, tortoiseshell glasses, his blond hair worn shaggy to the collar and his rumpled corduroy trousers worn with a sweater rather than a jacket, he looked every inch the university professor that he was.

He kicked the snow from his shoes. When he looked up, she noted that his face was pale and pinched from fatigue. He used to smile and call out a cheery “I'm home!” Lately, however, he entered the house in silence. Birdie frowned with concern, then turned her focus back to the patient on the phone.

“No, Mrs. Sandler, Tommy doesn't need an antibiotic. Yes, I'm sure. He doesn't have a bacterial infection. It's a virus, though a nasty one. No, an antibiotic won't help. In fact, it would weaken his natural resistance.” Birdie caught Dennis's eye and held up her finger for him to wait a minute. Dennis nodded, flung his coat over the edge of the kitchen chair, then reached into the fridge for a beer.

“Keep a close eye on him, and if he takes a turn for the worse or spikes another fever, then call my office. Dr. Martin is covering for me. What? Ninety-eight point six is normal.” She rolled her eyes and reached out for Dennis's beer. “Yes, very good. Bye now.”

Birdie sighed with relief, placed the receiver back on the hook, then tossed back her head and took a long swig of the beer. “Diagnosis—worried parent,” she muttered.

“Tough day?”

“The worst. It started off with the dog being sick. He's so damn neurotic every time he has to go to the kennel. Hannah's been her usual petulant self. Then the patients started in.” She lifted the thick stack of yellow messages.

“I thought you arranged coverage.”

“I did, but you know there are always those patients who panic when I leave town. It's just easier for everyone if I call them.”

“You don't have to go that extra mile. No one else's patients expect such service. I don't know why you have to push yourself so hard. You're already better than most docs out there.”

“I'm better because I'm compulsive about such things. It's who I am. Anyway, the point's moot because I'm all done. That was the last of the calls, thank God.” She tossed the yellow slips into the trash.

“So, you're free.”

She smirked. “Free to go home and run a funeral.” Dennis set his beer down on the counter and lifted his hands to her shoulders, a familiar gesture that Birdie welcomed. She sighed and leaned into him, slumping in relief the moment his hands began massaging. He had wonderful hands, long-fingered and strong; he could knead knots out of her shoulders like no one else. They'd started dating in college when she was a champion swimmer for the team. He used to massage her shoulders after her swim meets. She still teased him that she married him for his hands.

“God, that feels good,” she groaned.

“You're all knotted up. You need to relax.” He leaned closer and said in a seductive tone by her ear, “I know what will loosen you up. When do we have to leave?”

Birdie cringed and moved out from under his hands. The last thing she was interested in right then was sex and she was irked that Dennis would even think she would be. “For God's sake, Dennis, we have to leave in forty minutes.”

Dennis held his hands in the air for a moment, then let them drop to his sides with resignation. When he spoke, his voice was lackluster. “I thought we weren't leaving till four.”

“Did you forget we're supposed to pick up Jilly from O'Hare?” Her exasperation rang in her voice. He could remember the dates of every foreign war the United States was ever in, but he never seemed capable of remembering one family date on the calendar. “If this front becomes the storm the weathermen predict, traffic will be snarled up all along the interstate and Jilly's flight will be delayed, if not canceled. Who knows what time she'll get in? It's crazy for us to pick her up. We could sit there for hours.”

“So why doesn't Rose pick her up?”

Birdie snorted and shook her head. “I'm not even sure Rose knows how to get to the airport. She never leaves Evanston, and as far as I can tell she rarely leaves the house! She doesn't much care for talking on the phone, either. She screens calls on the answering machine before picking up. Who does she think is going to call her, anyway? She doesn't have any friends. Rose is a dear heart but I swear she's becoming more and more isolated every year.”

Birdie rubbed the stiffness in her neck. After the funeral was over and the family house was sold, she'd have to have a serious talk with her sister about her future. Rose had to face up to
leaving the house, and she'd have to get a full-time job, one that would support her. At least she had her computer skills. But Rose was such a stay-at-home she'd have a hard time making new friends and a new life. It wasn't good that she had locked herself away as caretaker for Merry all those years.

“Tell Jilly to take a cab.”

“What? Oh yeah…well, I suggested that to her on the phone but she complained and reminded me how long it'd been since she'd been home and told me how much luggage she had and so on and so on. Get this. She wanted to be picked up by a family member—at the gate!”

His shook his head. “And you relented….”

“Who doesn't with Jilly?”

“Well, even you can't order a blizzard around.”

Birdie chuckled then pursed her lips, considering her options. Her first priority was to get to Evanston and make certain the funeral arrangements she'd spent hours—days—on the phone making were going smoothly. She rested her hands on the counter and leaned against them. “God, this is going to be a nightmare. Who knows what to expect from her? Do you remember the scene Jillian made at Mother's funeral?”

He shrugged. “Jillian lives to make a scene. I don't see what the commotion is about. She'll arrive in a state, stay long enough to make another scene, then leave and we won't see her for another ten years. God willing.”

“I don't see why you dislike her so. She's never done anything to you.”

“She doesn't have to. It's what she does to you that makes me dislike her.”

“What do you mean?” Birdie replied, genuinely surprised. Dennis never made any pretense over the fact that he didn't like her more glamorous sister.

“She puts you on edge,” he replied, looking Birdie directly in the eye. “She makes you feel somehow less.” He lowered his gaze. “You're not the same whenever she's around.”

Birdie wanted to tell him that was because
he
was never the same when she was around. Dennis had dated Jilly for a brief period in high school, something Birdie never felt comfortable about. Neither of them ever mentioned it, but sometimes, when he didn't think anyone was looking, she caught him gazing at Jilly with an odd expression on his face. She'd wondered if the gaze was merely speculative, or, and she shuddered to think this, if it was lust she saw under his heavy, hooded eyes.

“If she makes me feel less,” she replied, loading ice blocks into the cooler, “it's only in the arena of beauty. Let's face it. Jilly is gorgeous.”

“So are you.”

“No, I'm not.” She wasn't being coy. Birdie knew that age and the additional twenty pounds that crept on over the past decade had not improved her already large frame. In the looks department, nothing she had could compare to Jilly. Birdie's eyes were pale blue, not a vivid green like Jilly's. All she had of the famous red Season hair were a few red highlights in the dull brown. Worst of all, she had her father's nose. He told her to be proud of the aristocratic though slightly askew family inheritance, and in fact, she was. But it did nothing to enhance her beauty.

“You are to me.”

When he said things like that Birdie's heart did a quick flip and she felt a sudden gush of love for him. She turned and busied her hands rinsing a few cups in the sink, flustered. “That's sweet. But really, Dennis, I'm over forty years old and a success in my own right. I don't need to pretend I'm beautiful for my self-esteem.”

Dennis just shook his head sadly.

She turned off the water and made a snap decision. “We'll skip the airport. I'll call Rose and see what else can be arranged. But we'll still have to leave early in this storm. Where were you, anyway?” she asked, turning to face Dennis. “You said you'd be home by twelve.”

“What time is it now?”

“It's almost three.”

He shrugged and raised his brows in a gesture of innocence. “I had a lot to do to leave town for several days. Midterm grades need to be averaged before spring break. Then there was an emergency meeting with the chairman.”

He loosened his tie and tugged it off with a frustrated yank. “I got out as quickly as I could.”

“Didn't it occur to you that I've got a lot to do, too? While you were arranging your schedule, I was doing the same
plus
shopping for the trip, packing up and taking the dog to the kennel.”

He turned his back to her and grabbed the beer bottle from the counter along with the stack of mail. “Well, we can't all be as efficient as you.”

She felt the sting of his words as she watched him lean casually against the counter and sift through the mail as though he had all the time in the world. He could be oblivious to everyone's needs but his own, she thought. Hannah may not have inherited his lean physique, but she had certainly inherited his temperament.

“Where's Hannah?” he asked, as though reading her mind.

“She'd better be upstairs packing. Would you go up and check on her? I've asked her to pack for two days and she hasn't done it. Now we've run out of time and if she's not done I guess I'll have to do it.”

“No you don't,” he replied, looking up from his mail. “If she leaves something out, then she'll have to live with it.”

“Oh, Dennis, don't be ridiculous. If I don't get after her who knows what she'll wear?”

“Then she'll be embarrassed. You're the one who's always preaching about natural consequences.”

Birdie fumed. She knew he was right, but she just couldn't bring herself to allow her daughter to be poorly turned out for her sister's funeral. “Whenever someone sees a poorly dressed child, or walks into a messy house, they never blame the father. It's always the mother who's thought of as a slacker.”

“Who cares what anyone thinks?”

“I care!”

“You might as well relax and let her be. She's fifteen. She's not going to listen to anything you say, anyway.”

She put her hands up in an arresting position, cutting him off. “We're
not
going to get into this right now. I've simply too much to do. Could you
please
just go upstairs and finish your own packing without this big discussion? I already packed your dark blue suit for the funeral. Just pick out some casual clothes. That's
all
you have to do.”

“You never like what I pick out, anyway, so why not finish it yourself?” he muttered, but he shuffled up the stairs, anyway.

She bit back a retort and turned on her heel to head for the phone. If she didn't get some space between them quickly the fuse they'd lit would explode. Lately, anytime they were in a room together it was like putting a match near a powder keg. The tension had really started heating up again in the past few days. Ever since Merry's death.

Birdie paused to think,
Was it only four days ago that Merry had died?

It was a night much like any other night. There had been
no premonition of trouble to come. Birdie had always thought she would somehow
sense
when a loved one was dying, especially someone as close as a sister. She was a physician, after all. She expected that she'd develop some intuition as to when death was imminent. Apparently not, she thought, chagrined. She hadn't suspected a thing as she crept under the sheets, yawned and murmured good-night to her husband before falling into a deep, undisturbed sleep.