Janet (8 page)

Belinda

From: Clemmie

To: Janet, Belinda, Bea, Molly, Joanna,
Catherine

Re: Cookies

There’s nothing wrong with baking. I’ve
attached a good recipe for peanut butter cookies, a favorite among
my boarders. Janet, baking would be a great way for you to forget
about that hospital. You work too hard. Just kick off your shoes,
get in the kitchen and forget about everything except having a good
warm cookie with a glass of milk.

Clemmie

From: Catherine

To: Janet, Clemmie, Belinda, Bea, Molly,
Joanna

Re: Delicious

Sounds DELICIOUS! Both the cookie recipe and
the man! Oh, Janet, honey, don’t let this one get away!

Catherine

From: Bea

To: Janet, Clemmie, Belinda, Catherine,
Molly, Joanna

Re: Having It All

Now, you listen here, Janet. You are an
independent woman
through and through. And don’t you
forget it! But the thing that sets the Dixie Virgins apart is that
we
know
we’re good enough, smart enough and courageous
enough to
have it all!
Now, go save the world at the
hospital, then put some nice rose scented oil on Virginia and save
it for Dan Albany!

Bea

From: Janet

To: Bea, Molly, Joanna, Clemmie, Joanna,
Catherine

Re: Good lord!

I don’t have any rose scented oil.

Janet

She was smiling when she closed her laptop.
Furthermore, she was wondering where she might buy some oil. Not
rose. She preferred jasmine.

Dan always enjoyed Sundays. There was
something wonderfully uplifting about the faces of a churchgoing
crowd. From his vantage point in the choir loft, he looked out over
the audience. The sanctuary was nearly full. He grinned at his
sister and her family. They took up an entire pew—Betty June, her
husband Ron, seven-year-old Peter, six-year-old Merry and the
three-year-old twins, Butch and Samuel. And Betty June was pregnant
again. She’d always said she planned to have her own basketball
team, and from the looks of things, she was well on her way.

He gave her a big wink, then turned his
attention back to the service. The organ music started, and the
choir director took up his baton.
Amazing Grace
was his
favorite song. And he sang louder than anybody, exuberantly
off-key. Sometimes he hit a note and sometimes he didn’t. But
nobody seemed to mind. He was grateful to be in a group of people
who loved him just the way he was.

Right in the middle of “how sweet the sound”
he began to ponder the concept of love. The love of friends. That
was easy to figure out. Friends seemed to always be around when you
needed them, much like candy bars when you were hungry for
chocolate. Romantic love. Now that was a different thing. He
supposed it was anyway. He didn’t have any experience. At least not
yet.

Janet popped into his mind. He could see her
as clearly as if she were sitting on the front pew, exactly the way
she had looked last night, her hair pulled back, her skin glowing,
her face rapt as she listened to the music. What was she doing
right this minute? Was she in church somewhere singing this very
same song? Or did she sing at all? He hoped so. Even if she didn’t
sing, he hoped she hummed. There was something about a woman who
hummed that simply got next to a man. Not that he wanted her to get
next to him. Except temporarily, of course. Long enough to prove
his point.

Grinning broadly, he picked up the singing
where he had left off. It was not until he’d completed a robust
rendition of “When we’ve been there ten thousand years,” that he
realized everybody else was singing “Thro’ many dangers, toils and
snares.”

Betty June lifted her eyebrows at him.

o0o

A few blocks away, Janet was having trouble
following the sermon. She turned her attention to her surroundings.
There was no more beautiful sanctuary in town, than that of the
church on Jefferson Street. Of course, that little touch of blue in
the stained-glass window reminded her of Dan Albany’s eyes. And
she’d never before noticed the minister’s hair. It was wild and
untamed, different from Dan’s only in color.

Where was he right now? Was he in some great
old church sitting in the front pew? She instinctively knew that he
would never sit in the back. That wasn’t his style.

Suddenly she felt a nudge on her
shoulder.

Mr. Jed, who always sat on her right, leaned
over and whispered to her, “Janet.”

She jerked her attention back to the service.
Good grief. Everybody in church was standing for the benediction.
The service was practically over, and she’d hardly even noticed the
beginning. Feeling a little chagrined, she stood up for the end. It
was the least she could do.

o0o

Dan had barely shucked himself out of his
sport coat and Sunday tie when he heard a clamor at his front door.
From the volume of the racket it had to be either an invasion of
Halloween trick-or-treaters lost since last October, or the arrival
of Betty June and her brood.

It was Betty June. She came bustling through
the door before Dan could get it completely open, talking every
breath.

“You might as well not hem and haw around the
bush. I saw the way you were acting at church today—Butch, get off
that hall tree before you fall and kill yourself. Like somebody who
had a seatful of firecrackers and didn’t know where to find the
water bucket—Merry, if you jerk on my skirt one more time you’re
going to pull it plumb in two.” She swept through his hallway like
the leader of a parade, trailing husband and children and mixing
metaphors for all she was worth.

Dan plucked Butch off the hall tree, swung
him onto his shoulders for a piggyback ride and took little Samuel
by the hand. “It’s ‘beat around the bush,’ Betty June.”

The correction was lost on his sister; she
had already gone on to bigger and better things. “Ron, honey, would
you get me a glass of water? Thank you, sweetheart.” She settled
into the rocking chair right on top of Janet Hall’s green silk
scarf. “I declare, a woman in my condition feels just like a
rolling stone that grass won’t grow under—Peter, if you turn that
bookcase over on yourself, I won’t be responsible. I declare—” She
stopped talking suddenly, noticing the green silk scarf that was
trailing down the side of the chair. Lifting one hip, she pulled it
out and rubbed it between her fingers.

Even from his chair on the opposite side of
the fireplace, Dan caught a lingering whiff of jasmine.

“Dan, when did you start wearing silk scarves
and perfume?”

He chuckled. “The scarf belongs to Janet
Hall.”

“Dr.
Janet Hall?”

“Yes.”

Smiling, Betty June folded the scarf neatly
into a small square and laid it on the table beside her chair. “I
had to take Peter to the Emergency Room – when was that, hon?” She
didn’t even wait her son to reply. “Anyway, Dr. Hall was the one
who saw her. My lord, she a fine pediatrician. Beautiful, too.
Well, my goodness...” She gave Dan a big grin. “I’m just as happy
as a jaybird about all this.”

“About what?”

“You know... you and Dr. Hall... I wonder if
I’ll still have to call her
Dr.
Hall.”

Dan leaned back in his chair and laughed.
Betty June could take six eggs and make an omelet big enough to
feed everybody in town.

“Betty June, when we get ready for the
wedding we’ll let you plan it.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“What do you think?”

“Oh dear, I guess I’ve jumped over the gun
again.”

“That’s ‘jumped the gun’—or ‘jumped over the
haystack.’“

“Why would anybody want to jump over a
haystack?”

Ron came back with the glass of water in time
to hear the last snatch of Betty June’s sentence. “What’s this
about a haystack? Has one of our children set it on fire?”

“No. We’re just discussing my brother and his
new girlfriend—Dr. Hall.”

“Our Dr. Hall?”

“One and the same.”

“Well, congratulations, old man.” Ron sat
down beside the fireplace, stretched out his long legs and began to
rock. “There’s nothing like a good woman to keep a man happy. I
should know.”

“Congratulations are premature. The only
thing Dr. Hall and I have in common is a big stray dog.”

Betty June nodded and smiled in a maternal
sort of way. “Ron, honey, why don’t you run downtown and get us a
couple of large pizzas for lunch? And do you mind taking the kids?
Dan and I have things to do.”

After Ron and the children had gone, Dan
turned to his sister. “What was that all about?”

“Can I help it if I want to be alone with my
brother once in a while?”

“As you so often say, I smell a skunk in
Denmark.”

Betty June stood up and smoothed her skirt
over her voluminous stomach. “Put a good, slow dance tune in the
tape deck, Dan. I’m going to give you a dance lesson.”

“You know I despise dancing.”

“Nevertheless, you’re going to learn how. You
never know when you might get the urge to ask a certain beautiful
lady doctor out dancing.”

Dan laughed. “Mama didn’t teach any of us
subtlety, did she?”

He selected a tape of haunting Gershwin
tunes; then, with all the enthusiasm of a man being led to his
execution, he held out his arms to his sister.

o0o

After Janet finished studying, she tried to
decide how to spend the rest of her Sunday afternoon. There were
several current fiction bestsellers she hadn’t yet had time to
read. And there was a Sunday afternoon concert by the high-school
chamber choir that would be wonderful. Then there was an excellent
documentary on ETV—”DNA: Changing Life’s Genetic Blueprint.”

Suddenly, she found herself at her computer
pulling up Clemmie’s recipe. She rationalized her behavior by
telling herself that she would invite Mr. Jed over for home-baked
cookies. Then in order to make her rationale work, she had to whip
her iPhone phone out of her pocket and call him to come over.

Within fifteen minutes he was seated in one
of her kitchen chairs watching her assemble the ingredients for
cookies.

“This is a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know
you could bake cookies, Janet.”

“This is a first for me,” she admitted,
starting to measure the flour. “An experiment, so to speak.”

“I hope I come out better than some of those
laboratory rats the doctors use.”

Janet chuckled. “You don’t have to worry
about a thing, Mr. Jed. The worst that can happen is that you’ll
get a case of indigestion.” She cracked eggs, measured sugar and
greased the cookie tin with a vengeance. Making cookies was going
to be a breeze. She’d show that Dan Albany. Any old body could make
cookies.

While she and Mr. Jed talked, she got her
first batch made and into the oven. When the buzzer went off
fifteen minutes later, she took the cookies out. They were golden
brown, perfectly round, perfectly beautiful cookies. She was proud
of herself.

She got two plates and two glasses of milk.
“Nothing like home-baked cookies and a big glass of milk for a
Sunday afternoon snack,” she chattered as Mr. Jed bit into one.
“Eat up, Mr. Jed. There are plenty more where that one came
from.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

Janet knew that Mr. Jed was plain spoken, but
that was a little blunt, even coming from him. She took a bite of
her own cookie and promptly had a choking fit. When she had herself
back under control, she stood up, whisked their plates away and
dumped the cookies into the garbage can.

“I obviously omitted a vital ingredient. But
one setback does not constitute failure. Right, Mr. Jed?”

“I’m having the time of my life, Janet. I’ll
stay here and be your guinea pig as long as you want to bake.”

The second batch stuck to the cookie tin and
came out in crumbs hardly big enough for the birds, and the third
batch came out black as a pair of tuxedo pants and just about as
tasty.

Mr. Jed studied Janet as she started mixing
the fourth batch.

“I’ve never seen you this fired up about
domestic chores. Any particular reason?”

Flour drifted to the floor as Janet turned to
face him. “There’s a man who thinks I’m not his type, and I’m bound
and determined to prove him wrong.”

“The proof is in the baking, is it?”

Janet thought about that for a while; then
she raked the raw cookie dough off her fingers and crossed toward
the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Of course the proof was not in
the baking. All the things Dan thought he wanted in a woman were
superficial. One could buy perfectly delicious cookies at any
bakery. And hand-knit sweaters could be purchased by the dozen from
flea markets and craft shops. What made a woman the right type for
a particular man was something much more subtle, much less easily
defined. For want of a better word, she called it sparks.

Smiling, she turned to Mr. Jed. “How did you
know?”

“It’s the wisdom of age, my dear.”

“I think I just have time to run down to
Kroger’s deli for cookies before I have to leave for hospital
rounds.”

“I’ll be waiting right here.”

By the time Janet had changed her clothes,
gotten the cookies, shared a small snack with Mr. Jed and finished
her hospital rounds, the sun had faded from the sky and a light
drizzle was falling. She glanced at her watch. It was still early,
and if she hurried she might catch the veterinary clinic open.

Ducking her head against the drizzle, she
dashed for her car.

o0o

It was raining in earnest by the time Janet
arrived at the clinic. Through the haze of rain she could see
several vehicles. That meant the clinic was open.

She parked as close to the door as she could
and stepped out into the rain. If she had paid more attention to
the weather report and less to burning cookies, she might have
known to wear a raincoat and carry an umbrella.