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