Lovesick (31 page)

Ruth runs over to check on her grandson.

“Your concoction is boiling!” Lara screams.

Lara’s right. The Lemon Lolly brew is bubbling over.

I lift the pot slightly, take the large wooden mixing spoon, and scoop up a small taste, cautiously touching it to my lips.
Needs more sorbitol.
I also add the lemon and vanilla extracts, the food coloring, and all that tasty tetracycline. I’m probably stirring too much, but I’m worried about Laney Monroe licking herself into an overdose. What I don’t understand:
How did Gregory manage to distribute the medication so evenly?

Belinda rings Ruth up. Then she brings her grandson by to say good-bye. That’s when Arnie notices Corey on the wall—Gregory’s singing bass.

“I want,” he says.

Ruth gently asks me whether it’s all right. I tell her it’s fine if Arnie plays with Corey as long as he’s careful. Handing Arnie the mounted bass, I privately mourn Corey’s imminent death.

Sensing Arnie’s presence, the fish bends his head toward him and begins singing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

Petrified at first, Arnie suddenly squeals with laughter.

I stop stirring the lollipop concoction when Cookie calls me a “murderer.” She is furiously limping down Aisle Five, teeming with vitriol and disgust. Technically she doesn’t just call me a “murderer,” she calls me a “murdering wussy loser.” I know this because she says it twice, for everyone to hear. The “murdering” part I get. Even “loser” isn’t a stretch. But “wussy”? What sort of wussy murders people?

Actually I don’t think Ruth heard Cookie threaten my life over Corey’s blasted singing, otherwise Ruth wouldn’t have greeted Cookie so warmly.

“Zip it, Ms. Manners,” Cookie hollers, tossing Ruth a vicious glare.

Ruth recoils in horror.

Cookie is wearing the same maroon-colored jogging suit that she was wearing last night at the hospital. I’d be surprised if she’s slept a wink.

“You killed him!” Cookie screams, pointing at me with her cane.

I can barely breathe. “Sid’s dead?” I manage.

“He’s alive, but no thanks to you. You’re a danger to society—a complete and utter fraud,” she screams.

“But not a murderer,” I confirm.

Now everyone’s looking, even Lara’s horse-faced friend, Sea-biscuit.

“You want to explain what the hell’s going on here?” Lara whispers to me.

I’m not sure I could if I wanted to.

“You think that just because you stand behind that counter, you wear his jacket, and you dole out his pills, that somehow you’re him?” Cookie yells. “Trust me, you’re
no
Gregory.”

“No,” I mumble, unbuttoning Gregory’s white lab coat lickety-split.

“All I know is that something you gave my husband put him in the intensive care unit,” Cookie announces to the room.

“You filled their prescriptions?” Lara reprimands me.

I turn to Lara and cock my head in disbelief.

“Just so I’m clear,” I ask Lara, “I wasn’t supposed to fill Sid’s prescriptions because, (a), they owe us money, or (b), I’m unqualified to do so?”

Arnie wants an encore performance. Tripping off the sensor, he persuades Corey to sing: “Great Balls of Fire.”

“And you’re another one,” Cookie says, jamming the rubber tip of her cane inches from Lara’s face. “The prodigal child returns!”

Belinda steps closer to get a better view. Seabiscuit, too.

“Even as a little girl this one thought she was too good for us,” Cookie tells her audience like a sideshow barker.

The syrup is hardening. The candy thermometer says 310 degrees. I switch off the burner and frantically flip back and forth between the pages of Gregory’s notebook for my next instruction.

I have neither a bin nor cold water.

“Can you please help me?” I beg Lara.

Lara nods, happy to deflect the crowd’s stares.

“In the cabinet behind you, on the second shelf, there’s a plastic blue container. Fill it halfway with cold water from the bathroom sink.”

Lara finds it quickly and casually holds it up.

“Quick!” I cry, stirring with all my might. “It’s crystallizing!”

She bolts into the bathroom.

“Cookie, you have to chill,” I whisper, still wrestling with my mixing spoon.

“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing,” Cookie yells back.

Lara races out from the washroom. Unable to steady the bin, water sloshes everywhere. She sets it down in front of me and I carefully submerge the pot partially underwater.

“You’re going straight to jail!” Cookie informs me. Then she turns to Lara: “And
you …
I’m suing you for malpractice.”

Corey is finishing up the final verse. Arnie cackles and screeches with delight every time the singing bass wags his tail.

“Can
someone
get this toddler a dose of Ritalin?” Cookie yells, pointing at Arnie with her cane. “I can’t hear myself think!”

In the instant before what happens next, I’m reminded of Ernest “Atom Smasher” Lawrence—the namesake of where I was supposed to get married—and his subatomic particle accelerator, the cyclotron. In the split second right after protons collide, Lawrence described a massive inrush of air—what he referred to as “the quiet implosion” just short of the nuclear blast.

Ruth Mulrooney is sponsoring today’s implosion. She promptly sucks the air out of the room and unfurls, triggering a catastrophic magnitude 9.0 earthquake.

She turns to Cookie and screams at the top of her lungs: “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”

Cookie freezes, still pointing her cane in Arnie’s direction. Ruth smacks the walking stick down and gets right up in Cookie’s face, knocking Cookie off-balance and into a shelf of vitamins.

“You are such a bully!” Ruth tells her, jamming her finger in Cookie’s face. “You’ve always been a bully. You think you’re the only one who’s ever experienced pain? Or suffering? Or loss?”

The Lemon Lollies are solidifying. I desperately page through Gregory’s notebook in search of any tips on reversing the process, but find nothing.

Ruth points to Lara, and then me: “This family has taken care of you and yours for
decades
, and this is how you repay them? By
threatening lawsuits? By promising prison? You’re so pathetic, Clarice! Really.”

Corey times his finale with the end of Grandma Ruth Mulrooney’s rant. But now Arnie is too quiet. His mouth is wide open and it’s his turn to suck the air out of the room. Apparently Ruth has triggered a second, even stronger implosion.
Run for your lives!

It is that split second—before Arnie explodes and after the sludge has solidified—that I’m struck with a cyclotron of my own. My invention might not be as Nobel Prize-worthy as Ernest O. Lawrence’s, but it’s not half-bad, either.

The scream that follows is ear piercing. Lara covers her ears as Arnie cries hysterically. That’s when I reach underneath the cash register, grab one of Gregory’s last remaining Red Rocket candy rings, and pop it in Arnie’s mouth.

Silence!

Arnie enthusiastically sucks the candy ring at a ferocious rate.

Cookie’s already out of here. Seabiscuit has had enough, too. He waves good-bye to Lara and exits quickly. Ruth gently takes the singing bass from her grandson, collects her bags, and briskly escorts Arnie out.

Lara is frozen in time: she never let go of the blue bin of water, but the dish is ruined. I haven’t made Lemon Lollies—I’ve made a Lemon Lolly. The yellow syrup has completely congealed. The wooden spoon easily separates from the pot along with its entire contents.

I hold the gargantuan pot-shaped lollipop up to her face.

“Now you’re going to want to pace yourself with this one,” I instruct Lara.

Lara studies it and, after a startled moment, bursts into laughter. This is the first time I’ve seen her laugh like this, and she laughs and cries until tears run down her face.

I rub her back softly.

“It’s going to be okay,” I promise her. “Please don’t cry.”

Lara manages a meek smile.

“It’s going to be okay. I have an idea,” I tell her.

THE shrubbery lining the Brewster driveway camouflages my presence. Through Gregory’s binoculars, I have a clear shot inside the Days’ living room. Glimpses reveal a harried woman. This is how Paige looks when she’s running late.

That’s when I hear him. Tyler Rich and his Mercedes veggie mobile. You can make out Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s diesel engine from a mile away.

Just as Tyler Rich pulls into Gregory’s driveway Paige runs out with a garment bag over her shoulder. He goes to help her, but she dismissively waves him off. Paige is dressed in that velour, powder blue sweat suit that I hate so much—the one that
I
purchased for her and
we
promised to burn together.

Right before getting in his car, she turns to me and waves good-bye.

This has got to be the height of humiliation. I can’t even manage to stalk her properly. We haven’t spoken since she stormed out of my car all Sandra Dee-like. But I don’t want to be rude, so I reach out through the bushes and sheepishly wave back.

Only then do I realize that she isn’t greeting me at all. The binoculars have distorted my perspective. I drop them around my neck and realize that Paige is waving to the woman thirty feet to my left. Cookie goes food shopping every day at 2:30
P.M.
sharp, but like Paige, she, too, is running behind schedule. Ever since Sid was admitted to the hospital, we’re all out of sorts.

Paige and her new beau zoom off with Cookie right behind them. I step out onto the driveway and brush myself off. I haven’t got much time.

Both the front and back doors of the Brewster home are locked, but the window to the dining room is wide open—the most common form of air-conditioning in the Bay Area. Bending the aluminum
frame of the screen beyond repair, I pop it off its track and slither my way through the kitchen window.

Loki cocks her head to one side, trying to make sense of the burglary in progress. What looks and feels like a quiet “dog implosion” is a false alarm. Lying there on the floor, I reach over and gently pet the pup on her head.

Without a peep, Loki offers to show me around. We start in the master bedroom. On Sid’s bed stand is a stack of rejection letters from some of the largest manufacturers in the world, all of them addressed to “Euraka Productions.” Sid’s been shielding me from the harsh truth: Ford, Timex, Lowe’s, Chevrolet, Estée Lauder, Converse, Petco, Blue Nile, Nine West, Johnson & Johnson—not a single company has an encouraging word to say about our blade-less windshield wipers, tripod ladders, dog umbrellas, adjustable heels, pill rings, makeup applicators, or side-access sneakers. I lay the letters back on his bed stand and continue my search.

First Sid’s dresser. Then Cookie’s bureau and bed stand. Before long, Loki and I are rifling through the Brewster closets and breaking into boxes. Nothing.

The large cherry cedar hope chest at the foot of the bed calls out to be searched. I tip the lid open and the large mirror on the reverse side makes me jump. My reflection reminds me:
You shouldn’t be doing this.
Organized neatly inside the ancient ark are old photographs, child immunization records, birth certificates, diplomas, a wedding veil, a silk baby pillow, cotton blanket, baby shoes, and even a terrifying clear plastic baggie of baby teeth and hair—it’s hard to estimate how many children are represented in this Zip loc.

It is inside the hope chest that I find the original Western Union Sid sent Cookie at 10:10
A.M.
on September 27, 1945. In the London telegram, Sid asks Cookie whether she’d like to have dinner with him in New York City later that week. Clarice Schwartz and Sidney Brewster’s marriage certificate is rubber-banded to a thick stack of letters. The water-stained one on top is postmarked March 4, 1943, and is stamped Tripoli, Libya. The answer to my question may very well lie in these letters, but I won’t dig through
them: breaking into their house and rummaging through their most personal belongings is enough; I can’t bring myself to read their private, most intimate exchanges.

Just short of declaring this hope chest hopeless, I find what I’m looking for: a small square manila envelope addressed to Sidney Brewster from an Air Force base in Bolling Field, Maryland. The envelope contains a brown plastic index card with “Army of the United States” printed across the top in white lettering. Underneath the military seal it reads:

The discharge papers are dated December 5, 1945, and signed by Colonel Theodore M. Singleton. On the back side is all of Sid’s personal information, including a Brooklyn address, where he went to school (Lincoln High School), physical description (green eyes, dark complexion, notation of a half-inch scar on his left ring finger and a blemish on the anterior of his right shoulder), service locations in Africa and Europe, and his monthly salary when discharged: $96.00. The location designated for his thumbprint is blank, as are the travel allowance section and the area reserved for “Decorations, medals, and badges.”

“‘Other than honorable conditions,’” I tell Loki, rereading it.

Loki is as puzzled as I am. But then, in not so many words, she suggests we move on and get something to eat. I’m hungry, too, and Cookie will be home soon.

I carefully place everything back in the hope chest exactly the way I found it and we go to the kitchen. Loki’s treats are in the cabinet above the sink and I help myself to a salami and Swiss cheese sandwich using Cookie’s last two slices of white bread and some soggy lettuce.

The Brewster kitchen might as well be a mini Day’s Pharmacy. Lined along the counter are dozens of medications. Cookie and Sid use blue and pink plastic pillboxes marked with the day of the week to remind them of what to take when.