Chapter 4

Lee

I’d walked to the park down from the nursing home a hundred times, probably more, for a quick lunchtime breather or giving a resident an outing. I’d never quite felt this mix of reluctance and anticipation.

Griffin sat on a sunny bench at the far end, well away from the playground with its cluster of moms and toddlers, and opposite the gazebo where a pair of old ladies dozed in the shade. I didn’t see anything in his hands but hopefully he’d eaten, because a cracked suction-pump connector had already cut into my lunchtime. I’d have to eat and run. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Diving right into my food would be a good buffer for my nerves.

I headed toward Griffin, lunch bag in hand, and he watched me approach. He wore that beret I’d yet to see him without this week and I wondered if he was losing some hair up top. He looked damned good, either way. The close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and mustache framed his generous mouth and the fine creases at the corners of his eyes suited him, making him seem like a man who’d smiled far more than he’d frowned. He wasn’t smiling now, though.

This conversation would be easier if I didn’t have to stare right at him, so I sat on the bench beside him, a careful two feet of space between us, and opened my lunch bag on my knees.

“Hi.” He sounded tentative. Well, I guess my semi-ignoring him was a reasonable excuse for that. “How’ve you been? You look good.”

He’d said that before and, although I restrained my automatic snort, he plunged on. “I mean it. Like you grew into who you were meant to be.”

“‘Grew’ being the operative word.” I’d been a gangling twink when he knew me and hit my peak around thirty. The decade since then had been marked by too much stress, too much junk food, and too little exercise. My recent growing had all been sideways.

“In a good way. And I like the beard. It works for you. You could even go longer and thicker.”

“Not and wear a mask when I need to.”

“Oh. Right.” He hesitated. “How’s Alice?”

“Dead.” I didn’t look at him or soften the word. I realized I wanted to hurt him. And how twisted was that? The only reason her loss would hurt him was because it devastated me, and I knew he would still care.

“Oh, Lee, I’m so sorry.”

The roughness of his tone made me relent enough to say, “Six years ago. A long time.” It didn’t feel like a long time. My little sister had almost made thirty, a triumph for her condition but a painfully short life for those of us who loved her.

“Still. She was so important to you.”

“Yes. Thanks.” I pulled out a sandwich and took a big bite. Griffin was silent as I choked the food down. To get the attention off me, I said, “You made it pretty big, music man. Made Griffin Marsh a household name, like you swore you would.” Back in the day, I’d been torn between hoping he’d fail and come crawling back, and hoping he’d succeed and make all the pain worth it. “You played with some huge names.” I couldn’t help asking, “Was it worth it? Was it everything you hoped?”

“Yes and no?” He shifted on the bench, turning more toward me, but I kept my attention on my lunch. “I had some moments I’ll remember till the day I die. I played Madison Square Garden. Played in front of a hundred thousand people at Lollapalooza in Chicago. I jammed with some of my heroes, and I got to mentor a couple of young bands that are tearing up the music scene now. I can’t regret all that.”

“I’m glad,” I said and realized I meant it. Twenty years was a long time to hold a grudge, and surely I could let it go now. He didn’t ditch me for nothing.

“Wasn’t all roses. It’s a lonely life. Well, you’d understand that better than most. There’s not much room for healthy relationships. Lots of booze, lots of drugs. I saw talented people crash and burn.” He bowed his head, staring at the ground.

“Ouch,” I murmured after he’d been silent a while. I wondered if there was someone in particular he was thinking of.

“Yeah. And the money’s a lot more shitty than people realize, especially now. When I was starting out, you could sell a bunch of albums, maybe make some money that way if your label wasn’t too crooked. But by the time I hit my stride, album sales were already fading. Now it’s about the live shows and the merch, and fighting for a decent cut of that money. I filled big stadiums, but I never had a million bucks on hand.”

“No Lamborghini?” I teased, remembering he’d once gone off on a drunken ode to his symbol of striking it rich.

“No. Fuck, no. I have an SUV and it’s in storage.”

Because he can’t drive for a year. And yes, maybe I’d Googled more details of Griffin’s trial than were really my business. But I wanted to know where we stood. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his mouth twist. “Neither was I. Obviously.”

I balled up the plastic wrap off my sandwich and took a slug of soda. Checking my phone, I saw half my pump-limited lunch break had flown by. I could stick to more superficial questions. Now we’d broken the ice, we could talk again another time. But I decided to bite the bullet.

I took one last hit of sugar and caffeine, capped the bottle, and turned to Griffin. “It really hurt when you left.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t meet my gaze.

“And that’s it?” I guess I hadn’t completely lost the grudge. “Sorry?”

He raised his eyes to mine then. “What do you want me to say? I had an invitation to tour with HeartTrap, nine months, international and U.S., opening for a big band in places that’d never heard my name. A once in a lifetime break, because Jordan happened to catch my show and liked what he heard. Walking away would’ve been saying my entire career didn’t matter.”

“Didn’t matter more than me, you mean. Alice was in the hospital for the first long stay, and we’d just found out her diagnosis. I needed you.” My throat tightened, remembering those days.

“I stayed as long as I could. There was nothing I could really do to help. I said you could call me, any time. I tried…”

“I didn’t need a voice at the other end of a phone.” I broke on the last word and didn’t say the rest out loud. I needed your arms around me.

“If I could’ve torn myself in two, I’d have done it then.” The midday sun caught the shine in Griffin’s eyes. “I thought about you all the time. I tried to call you.”

Unless he was coming home, I hadn’t wanted to hear from him. And he hadn’t been coming home. Looking back, I could see what an impossible choice that’d been for Griffin. We’d only been together three months. No matter how certain I’d been that Griff was the one, he’d been a musician in his thirties with one shot at the rockstar gold ring, and I’d just been the twink he was dating. Didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt.

“I was too busy to think about you that much,” I lied. “Alice’s first stroke meant a lot of accommodations at home, and I had exams, and job hunting. I was super busy. And I’m still busy.” I pushed to my feet, stuffed the remains of my lunch back into the bag, and dusted off the seat of my scrubs. “Good talk, though. I figure now we can work side by side in Wellhaven and not have issues.”

“Uh-huh.” Griffin squinted up at me, the sun in his eyes, but didn’t stand. “As friends?”

“Don’t push your luck.” I turned toward the sidewalk.

“You know?” His voice came from behind me. “When I thought about you, which I did a lot, I figured I’d lost my chance. Wonderful guy like you, kind, caring, smart, sexy? You’d find someone else in a heartbeat. I figured if I ever came back here, you’d be married with two-point-four children and a golden retriever. You deserve to be happy.”

I paused but didn’t turn back. I hadn’t been beating golden retriever owners off with a stick, the last twenty years. Not that I’d looked too hard. I’d been busy. “Alice deserved to be happy. We don’t all get what we fucking deserve.”

Striding toward the nursing home, I ran that conversation back through my mind. I hadn’t exactly come off as cool, competent, and mature like I’d wanted to. But maybe I’d said the important words that had lingered like a splinter under my skin through all those years. It really hurt when you left. A truth I’d wondered if he realized. I said it out loud. Now what?

Now what was me doing my job and Griffin volunteering, and our paths crossing now and then in Wellhaven. Then in six months or two years or whatever, he’d go back to touring and I’d still be here, working. I didn’t have Alice to focus on, but there was still Mom—

Speaking of, as I sat at my desk, my phone rang with her dial tone. I answered. “Hi, Mom, what’s up?”

Her tone came across high-pitched with anxiety. “The water’s leaking! I can’t stop it!”

Six years ago, that might’ve ratcheted my heart rate up. Today, I just felt tired. “Slow down. What’s leaking?”

“The hose to the washer thingy. It’s spraying water.”

“Go on Facetime and show me.”

“Can’t you just come home?”

Technically, fixing the suction pump should’ve been work time. I could get Phoebe to adjust my hours, reclaim my missing lunch break and maybe make it home and back. I didn’t want to. “Show me the problem first.”

“Well, all right.” I heard fumbling, then we connected on video and I saw Mom’s worried face, her hair a mess of graying curls. “Are you there? Oh, there you are, baby.”

“I’m here. Now turn the phone around and show me the leak.”

“It’s in the basement.” A swooping view of the kitchen and cellar stairs was accompanied by Mom’s slow footsteps and a few muttered words. Then we reached the basement and she aimed the phone at the sink. Sure enough, a pinpoint leak in one of the hoses to the washer sent a thin jet of spray through the air.

“You need to turn the water off, Mom. That round valve handle there on the pipe. Close that. I’ll replace the hose on the weekend.”

“I have to put down the phone.” I got a closeup of white enamel, then blackness. Fumbling sounds, then Mom picked up again. “I can’t turn the handle. It’s too stiff. Needs a man’s touch, I guess.”

“You could ask Oliver.” I secretly thought our neighbor was sweet on Mom. He was a decade older, but he might be capable of turning a valve handle, and would no doubt be happy to help.

“I don’t think he’s home. I hate to disturb him. The water’s getting everywhere!” Her voice climbed again.

“Shh. It’s okay.” I thought about explaining how to put a stick through the handle for leverage, but ran out of spoons. “There’s another different valve. It’ll cut off all the water to the house but it’s much easier.” I directed her to the main water line and had her pull down the knife switch. “Did that work?”

“I guess so? It’s not spraying.” I got a dizzying whirl of line-of-sight, then a view of the hose, which had stopped leaking.

“Okay, good. Just remember, you don’t have water anywhere right now. So you won’t be able to wash dishes or flush the toilet.”

“No toilets?”

“You can use them but not flush. When I get home, I’ll shut off the washer valve and we can turn the main valve back on. Or you could ask Oliver. That would be quicker.”

“Oh, well, I guess I can wait till you get home. Can you leave early?”

I ran my hand down my face. Maybe I should run home quick and deal with it. But then one of the aides stuck her head through my doorway. “That suction pump connector you rigged up is working loose.”

Waving to her, I mouthed, “I’ll be right there.” Then I said to Mom, “I’ll be home the usual time. I’ll try not to be late.” That might mean leaving some charting for the next morning, but I’d do my best. “You could call in an emergency plumber, I suppose.” The cost would be worth it, to get Mom’s water back without taking me away from Wellhaven.

“Oh, no. I think I’ll take a nap. I’ll see you later.”

“Sure. Now don’t start cooking when you have no water, remember.”

“You’re a good boy, Lee.” Mom’s voice had gone a little floaty. “I’ll see you later.”

“You have a good nap.” When the call went dead, I put my forehead on the desk for a moment. In the aftermath of losing Alice, Mom had collapsed from grief and the end of two decades of chronic care. I’d thought she was getting better, but here we were, six years later, and this kind of crap kept happening.

“Call from your Mom?” Kashira said from my doorway.

I straightened. “Am I that predictable?”

“Well, you don’t date or have annoying exes who are still around. And you don’t usually let Wellhaven problems get to you. So, yeah.”

I have one ex who’s still around. Annoying isn’t quite the right word. But in this case, she was right. I didn’t want to talk about Mom, though. “I have to go fix Vicki’s antique suction pump again.” I pushed to my feet.

“Wish her insurance would spring for a new one. Maybe if you didn’t manage to fix it?”

“Catch-22. If I don’t fix it, she’d get a new one but not before her trach tube clogs up and chokes her. If I fix it, she’s breathing fine but they say it’s working and won’t replace it. I love our health insurance system.”

“Preach.” We bumped fists as I passed her in the doorway.

Between knowing Mom was home with no water and my aborted conversation with Griffin lingering in my brain, I couldn’t say I gave Wellhaven my best that afternoon. Usually I hung around late, finishing the work that more than filled my allotted hours, but instead I ditched the place right at four.

On the drive home, my mind kept doing a tired kind of jumbling, then the damned radio served me up a Griffin Marsh song. Against my will, I had a flash of Griffin sitting on that park bench, the sunlight on his silvering beard and broad shoulders. He wasn’t the thirty-six-year-old singer I’d crushed on, but despite whatever life had done to him in the last twenty years, he’d looked good.

Too bad he’d be finishing his community service hours and moving on with his career. Again.

Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen, twisting her hands in her lap as I came in from the garage. “There’s still no water.”

“Give me two seconds and I’ll fix that.”

She caught the hem of my scrub top as I passed. “Welcome home. I didn’t mean to complain.”

“Of course not. Water’s important. Now, here, clean your hands.” I passed her the bottle of sanitizer we kept out. I wasn’t as obsessive about hygiene as I used to be, but a nursing home was a great place to pick up bugs, and Mom wasn’t getting any younger.

While Mom fumbled with getting the sanitizer pump to work, I hustled down to the basement. That washer shut-off valve was tight, but I convinced it to turn. By the time Mom came down the stairs, I was turning the household supply back on. She eyed the washer hose. “It’s dripping.”

“Yeah, that shut-off valve is old. Might get it replaced sometime. For now, put a bucket under there until I can buy new washer hoses.”

“You’re sure it’ll be all right?” Mom stared at the slow drip falling from the leak.

“Positive.” I found a bucket and set it in place. The plink… plink of falling drops was reassuringly slow.

“I don’t know.” Mom squatted to look down into the bucket, her eyes narrowed.

“Come on.” I gestured to coax her to her feet. “I promise, I’ll keep an eye on it. Right now, I need a shower.”

She stood stiffly, her hand on the washer for leverage. “I guess so. At least I can flush the toilet again.”

“Right. Basic essentials you don’t miss till you don’t have them.” I led the way back up to the kitchen.

“I have an important question to ask you,” she said at the top of the stairs.

“Can it wait ten minutes? I really want to get cleaned up.”

“I suppose so.”

Mom trailed along behind me as I headed for my room to swap out scrubs for clean clothes and shower. “Ten minutes,” I repeated at the door of the bathroom. She nodded but leaned on the wall to wait. I stifled a sigh as I closed the door between us.

In the shower, I ran my hands over my chest, soaping up, cleaning my pits and then down my hairy stomach. Griffin had said he liked what he saw, despite how much I’d changed. Of course, I hadn’t been naked but a scrub top wasn’t much concealment. There’d been genuine warmth in his eyes.

I couldn’t remember the last time I went out to try to hook up. Months, at least, and a forgettable guy in a dingy apartment who’d hustled me out as soon as we’d both come.

Jonah had been my last boyfriend, eight years back. He’d ditched me for always putting him last after Alice and my job and Mom. He’d been right, too. With my sister needing more care every year and money tight, I hadn’t been a fun date. But he’d been enthusiastic with me in bed and the thirty pounds I’d added since then hadn’t changed me that much. Maybe I should try dating again. Do something just for me for a change—

“Lee? Are you all right in there?” Mom’s voice came through the bathroom door.

I didn’t think I’d spaced out all that long, but I called, “Out in a minute,” and ducked under the spray.

When I’d pulled on sweats and tossed the dirty scrubs in my room, Mom gave me a tentative smile. “Did you have a good day?”

“Good” was not the adjective I’d have used, but I nodded. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well. Uh. I don’t think I should go to my class reunion tomorrow.” She twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers.

I held back a sigh. “Why not, Mom? Don’t worry about the buses. I’ll drop you off and pick you up after.” I knew that wasn’t the issue, but I was low on spoons to deal with Mom’s anxiety.

“Well, I haven’t worked as a nurse in a dozen years. When they all talk about their jobs, I won’t have a thing to add.”

“First off, most of your class is in their sixties. Good bet you won’t be the only one not actively practicing nursing anymore.” The job tended to fuck up your back and feet, and heart. “And you were working when you took care of Alice at home, even if you weren’t making money. It hasn’t been that long since you placed an IV catheter or checked a blood glucose.” Even the last two years when Alice was at Wellhaven, Mom had been there every day. Six years wasn’t that long. Felt like just yesterday.

“I don’t know. It seems like a lot of effort, and probably most of them won’t remember me.”

I kept my voice low and warm. “You said Kara was going, and Andrea. But if you don’t feel up to it, you don’t have to. Except, Mom? If you can’t get out of the house to this, then you have to let me prescribe anxiety meds for you and promise to take them. Escitalopram for a month, maybe six weeks to try it out. Because you can’t stay in this house and hide forever, and pretend everything’s okay.”

Mom’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s like blackmail.”

Fuck. But I’d backed down too many times in the last few years. I ran a hand over my head. My hair was getting long. Needed to take time to get a trim. Needed time for too many things. “Yeah, I guess it is. Deal?”

She jerked her chin up. “I might go to the reunion after all. And you can make your own dinner.” Whirling on her heel, she stalked down to her bedroom and slammed the door.

Double fuck.

After Alice died, Mom imploded. No surprise, and it wasn’t just grief. Mom’s existence had revolved around Alice’s health for the last ten years of my sister’s life. Over the subsequent months, Mom slowly got better. Some. And then plateaued. She didn’t go out much, didn’t see the friends who’d mostly fallen by the wayside in those last two rough years. I’d figured she’d improve gradually, but lately I felt like she did less, went out less. Like she was sliding back into the hole.

Kashira said I should get her to therapy and have the therapist prescribe meds. Except catch-22 again. Her anxiety was bad enough she totally refused the idea of speaking to a stranger, which she’d have to do to get the meds she needed to be calm enough to speak to a stranger.

I wasn’t supposed to prescribe for family members but it wasn’t illegal. I’d added the MSN degree to my name for that very reason, prescribing for Alice when her array of docs were too busy or too arrogant to get her what she needed. I’d do it for Mom too, if she’d let me. These days, I caught myself fantasizing about slipping her the meds in her morning orange juice. I wouldn’t. She was still sharp, and I would never treat her without her consent. But damn, it was hard to stand back and respect that choice.

Punching the wall would be a fool’s game. I didn’t need the broken hand or the drywall repairs. Instead, I thwacked my forehead on the doorframe a few times till my thoughts quit circling.

Let Mom make her own choice. Make dinner. Eat. Sleep. I was home early for once, and off tomorrow. Eight full hours in bed would be awesome. I kind of wished I had a joint to smoke, to wind down enough to take advantage and actually sleep. It’d been years since I’d smoked, but seeing Griffin brought that wistful desire back. Nights out on the balcony of his apartment, passing a joint back and forth, the musty funk of weed hanging in the still air, my senses slowing, stress floating into the air with the smoke.

I wondered momentarily if he might still have weed around. I hadn’t smoked in two decades. When Alice and Mom depended on me, I couldn’t risk being busted. It was still illegal, and still a terrible idea even if Griffin had any.

Don’t ask him. You’re keeping your distance, remember? Anyhow, I wasn’t sure if my nostalgia was for the memories of the mellow high, or the man I shared it with, and either one was asking for trouble.

Make dinner. Eat. Sleep. I could do that much, and tomorrow would be what it was.