I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around (23 page)

With both hands, she raked her fingers through her hair and the silver bracelet she wore yanked at a section above her temple. To untangle it, she undid the clasp and slid it free.
If I could tell you.
She ran her thumb over the engraving.

“My dad sure loved my mom,” she told Thatcher. “I have to admit, Thatcher, it's kind of nice to be in the house with just you. No fear of Mom leaving in the middle of the night, no screaming Clementine, no fights about marriage or divorce or anything else.”

Restless, Tig turned on the television, skated around the channels. She stopped briefly at a show where real people talked about their addictions and how it ruined their families. A woman with pitted skin and very few teeth cried while she tried to find her crack pipe.

“See, Thatcher. We're not that bad. I know right where my crack pipe is.” Thatcher yawned. “You'd have laughed if you were Pete. The Pete before the Hawaiian girl.” She picked up her phone and held it for a long moment, dropped it, shut off her television, and stared at the overfilled envelope Jean had given her. Upending the entire lot of printed e-mails and a few letters onto her bed, she spread them out and selected one written on thick card stock in Tiffany-box blue. The penmanship was straight-A material.

Tig tilted her head. “Wow, Thatcher. This one likes me.” She selected another note, this one written on yellow legal-pad paper.

Tig raised her eyebrows and reached for a stack of what appeared to be printed e-mails clipped together with a black metal clip.

Tig sifted the papers through her fingers, feeling the hum and crackle of support. Near the bottom of the pile she found a handmade card decorated with a frog with an expandable ribbon tongue and what may have been a hand-tied fly. Written across the front, in an especially frilly hand, was the phrase,
Time's fun when you're having flies.
Tig opened the card and read:
My husband doesn't take his ring off anymore. Now, how do I fix the rest? What next?

Thatcher snored.
What's next?
Tig stood, intending to brush her teeth and lock up for the night. She stopped as headlights swept through the room and died on the back wall. She peeked through the beveled glass window in her front door. Alec's face appeared, fragmented. His features rearranged and softened as she opened the door.

“Hi.” She tightened her robe.

“I know it's a ridiculous time, but sometimes, Erin Ann wakes in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. For some reason, driving around helps. She's sound asleep in the back seat. We brought you something to bring to your mother tomorrow.”

“I'm up. I think I'm on Hope House's medication schedule.” She gestured Alec inside.

“I thought this might help.” Alec pulled a baby doll out of a wrinkled brown paper bag.

She laughed. “Where did you get that? And help with what?”

“Erin Ann is too old for it now, and I thought maybe your mother might like to hold something now that Wendy is back.”

“Oh.”

The doll was the heavy, loose-limbed type. Her face was daintily painted in pastel blushes of peach, sea blue, and shell pink. Her lips were permanently pursed to accept a bottle. She blinked demurely at Tig.

“She's got that one lazy eye, but I don't think we should hold that against her.” Alec pressed an invisible switch hidden in the doll's pajamas. The baby began to vibrate slightly and coo.

The sight of Alec's careful face and the baby doll's heft brought stinging tears to Tig's eyes. Noticing her discomfort, Alec said, “I can't take credit for this. It was Erin's idea. She said she saw another resident at Hope House with a doll.”

Tig sat heavily on the arm of the couch and stroked the doll's hands. “She's lovely. Thank you. I'll bring it with me tomorrow when I visit. I can't promise I won't sleep with her tonight.”

“Lots happened today. I'll let you get some rest.” Alec turned.

“Did you get new glasses?”

“Yes. Erin said I looked like Harry Potter, and that wasn't a compliment.”

“Would you like a cup of tea, or maybe a hug?”

Alec sucked on his lower lip. “I don't think I've ever been offered those together like that before.”

“I'm a little unorganized.”

“It's hard to be the one left behind, isn't it?”

“I'm frankly disgusted with myself. Losing your wife, now, that's a loss that deserves checking out for a while.”

“So, in your world, Tig, you only get to grieve if someone dies?”

Tig didn't speak because she found she really couldn't.

Alec said, “I'm going to take that hug and go home. Erin wants us to paint toenails and do hair in the morning.” Taking her in his arms, he said, “Chicks. Such high maintenance.” Tig rested her head on his chest. With one arm holding her, he rhythmically stroked the back of her head with the other hand. After a moment he began a hum that turned to words she could only just make out: “My dog is an awesome dog . . . .”

Unrelenting drapes of rain crashed onto to the blacktop and streamed into the gutters. Tig shook herself in the entryway of her old clinic and made her way over to the reception desk. Macie waited for her, smiling, resembling Thatcher's barely contained enthusiasm.

“I saw you on the schedule to see Julie.” Macie pulled gently on her eyebrow ring. “It's so good to see you.”

“It's good to see you, too, but you hardly look yourself.”

Macie poked her head forward and lowered her voice. “Things are changing around here. I got the vibe that they'd prefer a more conservative look.” Macie made quotation marks in the air over the word
conservative
. She had cut and dyed her hair into a sharp blond pageboy and wore a vintage housedress with lacy collar. “The goth look is so yesterday anyway. I'm wearing camo underwear just to keep my edge. Are you here to get your old job back? They'd give it to you in a minute. People discovered this was your clinic and they call for appointments all the time.”

Tig shook her head. “No, I don't think so.”

Macie sat at attention. “Does this mean you're going back to radio? I only ask because Jean's mad, but not so mad she wouldn't put you back on the schedule.”

“I don't know what I'm doing yet. Is Julie available now?”

“Yeah. Go down the hall to the right, second d . . . oops, you know where she is.” Macie laughed uncomfortably.

Just before Tig turned the corner, Macie called out. “Dr. Monahan, it's an honor working with you. I just wanted to say that.”

Tig waved, knocked once, and walked into her mentor's office.

“Thanks for coming in.” Julie came over and gave Tig a quick hug. “You look well. Too thin, but a little more rested.” Julie gestured to the chair in front of her desk.

Tig said, “The place looks the same.”

“Did you expect it to look different?”

“I wanted it to. So I could feel differently, maybe feel like I want to be here.”

“You don't?”

Tig said, “I'm not sure. I'm going to Hawaii for a while. I don't know for how long.” She crossed her legs. “The radio show didn't go well.”

“That's not what I heard.”

“Macie.”

“No, it wasn't just Macie who told me about the show. My patients listen, too.”

“They're not exactly qualified.”

“You don't think so?” Julie leaned forward. “I tuned in. You're a good therapist, Tig.” Julie rolled her chair close. “That's why I was prepared to offer you a portion of your job back. A job share. But I'm glad to hear you're taking some time to find your feet.”

Tig dropped her shoulders. “I think Pete leaving me set something in motion that might otherwise have stayed dormant forever.”

“Possibly. But I think issues are selfish little itches. They want attention and they don't exactly wait around for a good time to ask for it. Have you considered what role you played in ending that relationship?”

“He moved . . . to Hawaii. What could I possibly have done about that? He appears to have a girlfriend there.” Tig scowled at the memory. “It was a sham. All of it. My mom was just starting to deteriorate. He couldn't take the heat, so he left. The question is how I missed such a gigantic flaw.” Tig stood and walked to the window, staring out at the rain. “I'm getting out of this dreary place for a while.”

“I wonder if Pete had a similar impulse.”

“I can't tell which is more offensive: you suggesting I'm impulsive, or you saying if I'd been sunnier, I'd have kept my man.”

“I'm not going to fight with you, Tig. And you know I am not saying either one of those things.”

“Then what, Julie? Just say it!”

“Did you read in the newspaper about that fifty-year-old nurse who killed an intruder in her home? He had a hammer, but she wrestled him down and apparently strangled him with her bare hands. Her neighbors said she didn't even need to be comforted afterward. She was an emergency room nurse.”

Frustrated, Tig said, “I feel like I'm in a made-for-TV movie where the karate master gives advice to the grasshopper. Could you be anymore obtuse?”

Julie stood. “It's hard for people to get close to you because you're so busy wrestling intruders. One crisis after another keeps you so busy, a quiet cup of tea with conversation never can happen. Relationships need some sit-down time.”

“Why is it that every time I'm in this office I want to have a temper tantrum?”

“Let's make another appointment and then you can tell me.”

“That's why I can't do this anymore,” Tig said, touching Julie's nameplate on her desk. “I can't wait to let people figure things out on their own. I'm not like you anymore. I want to slap people.”

“Not every therapist has the same technique. With experience, successes, and failures, you adjust your therapy style. I think you are adjusting.”

“I've gotta go. I didn't come here for therapy.”

“What did you come for?”

“I don't actually know. Maybe I came for permission. Permission to go to Hawaii. Permission to leave and figure out if this relationship door is opened or closed, and do it where there is sun.”

“You don't need anyone's permission.”

“I think I've been waiting for someone to say, ‘Go to Hawaii and figure this thing out with Pete.' I don't think I've entertained the idea of going there until right this minute. But I've got to go and look Pete in the eye and see how both of us are feeling while in the same zip code, Hawaiian girl or no.”

Tig stood and looked at Julie who said, “I'm not going to say it, Tig. You have to give yourself the permission to go.”

Tig nodded, collected her purse and raincoat.

“Before you go, I have something for you from Mrs. Biddle.” Mrs. Biddle, from what seemed to Tig a lifetime ago. The woman who lost her daughter to cancer and couldn't even manage a load of laundry.

“She wanted me to tell you something.” Julie shuffled through a small stack of pink memos on her desk and read: “‘Dr. Monahan, I made chicken almondine and my new dog's name is Mug. He's a pug.'”

In the hallway, head down, hands in the pockets of her raincoat, Tig fingered Mrs. Biddle's note. It felt like a diminutive cheer.
Goooooo, Tig!
Engrossed in her thoughts, Tig would have walked right by Jean Harmeyer, who stood at the front desk, if Macie hadn't said, “I called her.”

“Come back to the show, Tig.”

“No. It's not right.”

“What if we make it right?”

“How?”

“I don't know. Let's take what we started and make it into your dream job.”

Tig jerked her coat open. “I don't know what my dream job is. Or my dream man, or my dream sister. I can't keep doing this.”

“What do you mean, doing what? Living, Tig? This is living.”

“It feels miserable.”

Impatiently, Jean placed her sunglasses on top of her head. “Um, yeah, Tig that is living. Did you think the definition of living ended with a smiley face and a series of exclamation points? We're not a teen's notebook here.” She slipped her computer bag over her shoulder. “Your problem, Dr. Monahan, is that you don't know what you want.”

“You're wrong. I do know what I want.” Tig clenched her teeth and for the second time in thirty minutes she had an epiphany of certainty and action. “If you want me back, then call the woman whose husband killed himself. I want to do the show, but I need to talk to her first.”

“Well, this is out of the blue.”

Tig nodded. “I just now realized that's what I need.”

Jean shook her head, “I can't legally do that.”

“Call her, Jean. I can't move forward until I talk to her.”