Time Flies (22 page)

“Dah-dah-dah-duuuuh,” B.J. sang.

I’d taken off my T-shirt and Veronica had given me a beach towel to wrap around me. Veronica and B.J. each held one end of my Band-Aid and pulled it off slowly.

“How’s it look?” I said.

“I’ve had one on my ankle since college,” Veronica said. “It’ll be pretty puffy and angry looking for the first few weeks or so, but once the scab falls off—”

“Scab?” I said.

“Puffy and angry?” B.J. said. “Really? Mine, too?”

I turned around to look at B.J. “How could you not know that?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” B.J. said. “You didn’t know it, either.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting a tattoo. You were the mastermind behind the whole thing.”

“Oh, please, I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do. Ha, my first boyfriend used to say that. Okay, wait a minute.” She reached over and pulled a sheet of paper out of her purse. “Can either of you read this thing without glasses?”

Veronica and I shook our heads.

“Shit,” B.J. said. “Where the hell did I put my reading glasses?”

Veronica got up and found a pair in one of her kitchen drawers. She handed them to B.J.

“
Your New Tattoo and You
,” B.J. read.

“Catchy,” I said.

B.J. cleared her throat. “ ‘Two hours after your new tattoo is complete, remove the bandage.’ ”

“Oops,” I said. “We’re a little late.”

“Shh,” B.J. said. “ ‘Wash gently with lukewarm water and a mild antibacterial soap.’ ”

“Got it,” Veronica said. I followed her over to the sink, and she went to work on my tattoo.

“ ‘Pat dry,’ ” B.J. continued, “ ‘being extremely careful not to rub. Then work a thin coat of antibacterial ointment into the skin.
Make sure you don’t use too much or it might remove some of the color from the tattoo.’ ”

“Great,” I said. “Just what I need—an angry, scabby, polka-dotted broken heart on the outside to match the one on the inside.”

“Almost there,” Veronica said behind me. The antibacterial ointment was soothing, and she had a mom’s gentle touch.

“Noooo,” B.J. said.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” B.J. folded the paper in half and stuffed it back in her purse. “I think that’s pretty much it.”

I crossed the room in three big steps and yanked the paper out of B.J.’s purse. I grabbed Veronica’s glasses from her.

I hiked up my beach towel and scanned the list. “ ‘Avoid soaking the tattoo in water or letting the shower spray pound directly on it. Avoid the sun.’ ”

“Too much water dries out your skin anyway,” B.J. said. “And we both have more than our share of sun damage.”

“Speak for yourself. ‘Avoid swimming in both pools and in the sea.’ Gee, thanks. I finally see the ocean again—”

“It’s not like you even went in when we were at the beach earlier today.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “The point is that I
could
have. Okay, ‘Use ice packs to minimize redness and swelling.’ Eww, ‘Refrain from picking at scabs.’ ”

B.J. reached for the paper. “See, it’s all pretty much common sense.” I turned and blocked her with my good shoulder.

I let out a gasp. “ ‘They will fall off on their own as the tattoo heals, usually in two. To three. Weeks.’ ”

“I forget,” Veronica said. “When
is
the reunion anyway?”

I looked over Veronica’s reading glasses at B.J. “Tell her.”

B.J. shrugged. “Pretty soon.”

I shook my head. “Try the day after tomorrow. You might want to call Macy’s and take the hold off those sexy little peasant blouses. Maybe they have some surgical wrap we can wear instead.”

“Or,” B.J. said, “we could bank on the fact that we’re both quick healers.”

The only good news I could think of was that it was my turn to take off B.J.’s bandage. I pulled a little bit harder than I had to.

“Ouch,” B.J. said.

“Guess what,” I said to Veronica as she dabbed on the antibiotic ointment. “B.J. and I have been discussing phobias. She’s terrified of nee—”

“Don’t say it,” B.J. said.

“Needles, needles, needles,” I said.

“Highways, highways, highways,” she said.

“Oh, grow up.”

“You grow up.”

Veronica shivered. “Sn . . . uh . . . akes. I can’t go near them at the zoo. Or the nature center. I can’t look at a picture of one. I even check under the bed for them when I’m traveling.” She shivered again. “There is nothing else in the world I am afraid of like that. If you told me there was a snake outside, I would never leave this house for the rest of my natural life. I hate, hate,
hate
sn—”

There was a loud thud in the next room.

We all jumped.

B.J. and I looked at Veronica. She took a step toward the doorway.

We heard a long hiss, low to the ground.

Fawn wiggled into the kitchen on her stomach and hissed again.

CHAPTER 23

“
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
,” B.J. said.

Fawn looked up from her Frosted Mini-Wheats and rolled her eyes.

“She probably had that one down before she could crawl,” I said. “Didn’t you, honey?”

“Come on, Fawn,” B.J. said. “I double-dog-dare you.”

Fawn put her spoon down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus,” she said.

“Good job, sweetie,” I said. I wasn’t sure if reinforcing this behavior was the way to go, but if there was one thing I’d learned as a parent it was that your kids needed you to tell them how wonderful they are. And if you did, they would rise to the occasion.

Fawn jumped up from the table, put her cereal bowl next to
the sink, and walked backward out of the kitchen. I took a bite of my own Frosted Mini-Wheats.

“I wish these were french fries.” B.J. grabbed the Mini-Wheats and started eating them out of the box. “God, I just remembered I had a nightmare about that trucker. He was chasing me around at the reunion and it turned out I went to the prom with him. Terrifying.”

“Ha,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about him showing up. After all, you’re going to report him to the big wheel truckers’ association.”

She reached for another handful. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Big Wheels are those toddler cars. Remember? Trevor and Troy had a whole convoy of them.”

B.J. stretched. “Well, whatever. We called the cops on him, so they can figure out which association to turn him over to. Do you want the next shower or can I have it?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

From the depths of my shoulder bag, my cell phone rang. I took my time walking over to the kitchen counter to get it. Kurt was nothing if not persistent. Even if I’d actually managed to block him after all, he could be calling from his work number, or even from
Crissy
’s phone. Maybe I should talk to him, at least to get the credit card thing squared away. But, really, why should I? I mean, I was on vacation, after all, the first vacation I’d had in forever. Not that he knew that, but still, he had absolutely no right to interrupt it. I hadn’t seen my old friends in ages, and while I couldn’t technically blame him for that, it was my life now and he certainly didn’t have the right to intrude on it anymore. Enough was enough.

I found the phone and pushed
ACCEPT
. “
What?
” I said.

“And a top o’ the mornin’ to you, too,” Ted Brody’s voice boomed.

I took a moment to wrap my brain around non-Kurt’s voice.

“Me, too,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, you, too.” My caffeine kicked in and fueled a major blush, or possibly a hot flash, or maybe even a hybrid. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

B.J. was watching me with interest. Great. The last thing I needed was for her to find out about Ted Brody and make too big a deal of it. “Let me just step outside so I can hear you,” I said a little louder than necessary. “Cell service and beach towns, well, you know.”

I pushed the kitchen door open and stepped out onto a wooden deck. Across the backyard, a squirrel perched on the bird feeder was chowing down, and two mourning doves were ground feeding on the seeds it dropped to the pine needles below. Hostas and ferns and daylilies clumped in the shady corners of the yard. Hydrangeas, heavy with blue snowball-size blooms, edged the deck. A Slip’n Slide with a garden hose attached almost knocked me over with nostalgia.

“Hello?”

I looked at the phone in my hand and then put it to my ear.

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry, I just walked outside and there was this Slip’n Slide in the yard. My kids used to live on theirs in the summer. I think we must have gone through half a dozen of them—they just wore them right out.”

There was dead silence on the other end.

I laughed an odd little laugh. “That’s probably not what you called to talk about, huh?”

“I was conjuring up an image of the one we used to have. I think it had car-wash features and the girls would drive through it in their Barbie vehicles, their whole posse of dolls riding shotgun.”

“Mine tried pulling a wagon full of their stuffed animals over one of theirs to give them a bath. Which seemed like a good idea until the mildew set in.”

“So, before you hang up on me again.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry about that.” The mourning doves flew off together and then the squirrel scampered across the lawn and up the side of an oak tree. The air was cool and breezy and a little bit salty, or maybe I was just imagining that I could smell the ocean from here.

Ted Brody cleared his throat. “I know you’re in reunion mode so I won’t take up much of your time. I was wondering, now that you’ve seen the courtyard, what you think I should do to light up that sculpture of yours at night? I’ve got all these strands of white lights, but when I tried hanging them on the wall, it looked an awful lot like Christmas.”

“Hmm.” I took a moment to picture the space. “What if I made you some rusted metal fireflies that attached to the wall, and we strung the lights through those? I could turn them into blinking lights—all I’d have to do is replace the bulb on the end of the light string closest to the electrical outlet with a blinking bulb. They’ll blink on and off just like real fireflies and also light up the wall along with
Endless Loop
.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Or you could buy a spotlight at Home Depot,” I said.

He laughed. “No, it’s a great idea. I was just thinking how refreshing it is to talk to someone who’s doing her own thing and enjoying it.”

“Thanks. And, um, ditto.”

“When I decided to open Sprout, my then-wife thought I was single-handedly throwing away everything we’d worked so hard to build together. My way of seeing it was that I’d toed the line my whole life and didn’t want to end up rocking away on my front porch one day counting my regrets. I’d dreamed about owning a restaurant for years, and I’d imagined every single inch of the place.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I think those fireflies of yours will be just the thing.”

“That must have been a tough time for you,” I said.

“It became the Mason-Dixon line of our marriage, and ultimately we went our separate ways.”

The Mason-Dixon line of our marriage
. I loved that. I wanted to make it come alive in metal, maybe huge etched and spattered scrap metal profiles, male and female, facing away from each other, and a long jagged copper line separating the two. The line would be studded with bits and pieces of things—tiny sticks and stones and shards of sea glass—the detritus of their time together. A lifeline of their marriage.

“Have you both remarried?” I asked, because it seemed less personal than asking if
he’d
remarried, as if I just happened to be taking a general survey.

“She has. I haven’t. I guess the thing about restaurants is that they basically call the shots on your personal life. Romantic dinners can only happen on Monday nights, when we’re closed.”

“Romantic breakfasts are nice,” I heard myself say. The squirrel
was back on top of the bird feeder now, looking over at me as if I’d just said the most ridiculous thing it had ever heard.
Romantic breakfasts are nice
—what an idiot I was. Clearly this was a business call.

“Thank you for the optimism,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I said, for lack of a better idea.

“And your story, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My husband left me for someone named
Crissy
. For some reason that bothers me far more than if she were a Simone or a Giovanna. Or even a Ruth.”

“I can understand that. My ex-wife is married to a Dick.”

I burst out laughing.

“Laugh if you will, but it’s gotten me through some tough moments.”

“I bet. How long did it take you?”

“To what?”

“Get through your tough moments?”

“Hmm.” The mourning doves were back now, too, or maybe they were new ones. Ever since I’d found out that mourning doves mated for life, it bothered me whenever I saw one alone. What had happened to its mate? Did mourning doves have tough moments, too? Did one of them want to ground feed in the same yard every day, while the other wanted to move on? Was it my turn to talk, or was it his?