Family Practice (2 page)

Nadine's station wagon, bouncing along, coming this way, pulled aside to let the pickup pass and trundled up to the house. “What's happening?” Nadine asked as she slid from the car.

“Well, for one thing, you're fired.”

Nadine grinned. “You can't fire me. You haven't paid me in two months.” She'd squeezed her plump body into jeans—hers reached all the way to the knee—and a white T-shirt with the same glitzy lettering as Ellen's. Nadine, blond hair coiled into one thick cord and pinned in a circle on the top of her head, opened the rear car door and leaned in to collect three-month-old Bobby complete with carry cot. Slinging a diaper bag over her shoulder and propping the carry contraption on one hip, she kicked the door shut and trudged to the house.

“So what is it now?” She plopped Bobby and carrier on a wooden chair. He slept serenely on; he might have Nadine's round face, blue eyes, and pale coloring, but he also had his father's phlegmatic disposition. She pulled out another chair and slumped into it with her short legs stuck under the table.

“Bankruptcy,” Ellen said.

“Oh, boy, we better have some coffee.”

“I can make it, but you'll have to drink it all. I have no drainage.” She relayed the bad news.

“
Oh, no.
Ellen, what are you going to do?”

Ellen spooned grounds into the coffee maker and poured in bottled water. “Maybe I should just give up and sell out to Harlen Dietz.”

“Do you think he did it?”

“Made the sewer collapse?” Ellen laughed. “Not unless he paid that jerk to put in the wrong kind of pipes.”

“Well, I wouldn't put it past him. He wants this place and you won't sell. I still think you should have gone to the police. There have been weird things going on around here.”

When the coffee dripped through, Ellen poured two mugs and set them on the table.

“If I had it,” Nadine said tentatively, “you know I'd lend it to you.”

“I know. I couldn't have done any of it without you.”

Three years ago, when she'd decided to go into the business of raising decorative gourds, Nadine had been the only person who'd thought it was a good idea, and the only permanent employee. At harvest time, fifteen or so people were hired temporarily; the rest of the time, she and Nadine struggled with it all. Nadine worked like a plow horse, sometimes waiting months to get paid.

Ellen dropped into a chair, rested her elbows on the table, and blew out a breath. “Just when things were starting to go.”

“It'll be all right.”

“I feel much better for those words of comfort.”

“I'm being sensitive and understanding,” Nadine said. “Another loan?”

Ellen took a sip of coffee. “The last time I tried, the loan officer could hardly stand up for laughing.”

“Well, I'm not giving up. This is the only job I've got. If you think I'm going to find a tender for Bobby and expose myself to sexual harassment in some business office, you've got another think coming. We'll get through this. Somehow.”

“I'm trying to wallow in the depths of despair here. Do you have to be so upbeat?”

“Despair is useful.”

“I'm tired of this. I really am. I want to live like the rest of my family. Successful. Respected. Loan officers overflowing with obsequiousness. Flushing toilets,” Ellen added darkly.

“Oh, that's why you're so down? Something happen with your family?”

“My sister called.”

“Marlitta or Dorothy?”

“Dorothy.”

“What did she want?”

What had she wanted? A mind filled up with sewer lines didn't leave room for real sharp. Dorothy's usual brisk, I'm-in-control voice had held an odd note of uncertainty.

“Now you mention it, I don't know.” Something to do with the clinic? That wouldn't require
her
presence. With a little squiggle of uneasiness, she picked up the coffee mug.

“You think she might lend you the money?” Nadine asked.

“I suppose I'll have to ask. She disapproves, you know. Raising gourds is not at all a suitable occupation for a Barrington.”

“What about Marlitta? Or one of your brothers?”

“It's Dorothy who has money. The rest do very well, managing to live just beyond their means.”

“You have a really weird family, you know that?”

Ellen smiled. She truly did. Nadine came from a large, extended family of hearty, affectionate people who squabbled and hugged and genuinely liked to spend time together. She'd never understood the reserved, repressed Barringtons, who lived within a few miles of each other and barely spoke. They were all strangers. Ellen sometimes wondered if they even liked each other; other times the whole thing just seemed sad.

Nadine's family used to astound Ellen when she was a kid, the joking and teasing, the general feeling of people living together with interaction. Ellen's family might have resided in the same house, but they all lived separately.

She'd always thought she felt isolated because she was so much younger than the rest of them, but over the years she came to realize every one of them felt isolated. The really sad part was they probably wanted to like each other but didn't know how.

“I guess,” Ellen said, “you get to take a few days' vacation. At least until we have functioning pipes.”

“What will you do? You want to stay with us?”

“Thanks.” Nadine had a tiny one-bedroom apartment, a large husband, and a baby. “I'll stay with Dorothy. That'll give her something to be pleased about.”

No matter how hard she struggled, they always pulled her back. Home, money, family, security. Odd, even though she felt like a barely tolerated stranger in their midst, the thought of going home made her feel better.

Nadine fiddled with her spoon, swirled it through the coffee, then lifted a spoonful to her mouth and sucked it in. “Have you talked to Adam since he's been back?”

“No.” Ellen sat her cup down with a clunk. “Don't intend to, either.”

“You're bound to run into him, don't you think?”

“Not if I can help it.” Adam had been her own true love. Except it turned out he wasn't. The bastard. It was after Adam that she'd taken up with the jerk who couldn't even put in sewer pipes.

“I just wondered,” Nadine said, “whether Dorothy's snit has, you know, anything to do with Adam.”

“I don't see how. She never liked him. Made it clear to him if he married me, I'd never see any of the Barrington money.”

And, Ellen thought, Willis, Marlitta, and Carl wouldn't be called to attend for that. What could it be that was so important? Ah well, she'd find out soon enough. In the bosom of her family. Ha. If one of them put poison in Dorothy's sun tea, all Ellen's troubles would be over.

2

S
USAN
W
REN POURED
a glass of orange juice, dropped in two ice cubes—orange juice had to be good for a sick kid—and took it upstairs, where eleven-year-old Jen in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, looking small and miserable, lay in the big bed.

“How you feeling, Jen?” Susan put the glass on the side table and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I'm okay.” Jen jammed the extra pillow behind her head, scooted herself higher, and brought up her knees. The pajama legs slid along her thighs, exposing bony kneecaps.

“I can see that.” The kid's face was about the color of the rosy flowers on the pillowcase. Susan laid a hand on Jen's forehead. Hot. Very hot. Oh shit. Call Jen's mom?

It's only a fever. Kids have fevers. Nothing to worry about. Oh, yes? What did she know? Nothing about kids. Fevers could mean something serious. Her first thought was to call her own mother. Mothers know about this stuff. Oh, yeah, real helpful. Susan's mother lived halfway across the country in San Francisco.

Let us not panic here. I'm a cop. We're trained to handle crisis situations. She smoothed Jen's brown hair, usually braided tight into one long plait, now falling loose across the pillow, away from her flushed face. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

“No.”

Susan raised her eyebrows.

“Well—maybe I've kinda got a sore throat.”

Fever. Sore throat. What did that mean? Some kind of flu?

“I'm all right,” Jen insisted. Her beautiful yellow-green eyes were too bright.

Susan didn't even have a thermometer. Why not, for God's sake? Every well-ordered household had a thermometer. “It doesn't look like you're all right. It looks like you're sick. I think maybe we better get you to a doctor.” Saturday afternoon. Were they all out playing golf? Didn't matter. She'd pull one in.

“It's just a sore throat,” Jen said. “I've had that lots of times.”

At least I had sense enough to get the doctor's name, Susan thought, before Jen's mother went off on her blissful weekend. Should I call her? She'd been nervous about leaving her daughter anyway; this would really freak her.

Perissa, the kitten, climbed laboriously up the bedsheets and poked her chocolate-brown face in Jen's ear, then licked her cheek. Jen laughed—Susan could hear the rasp in her throat—and raised a shoulder to rub against her cheek. Perissa clambered over to Jen's stomach, crouched, and tucked brown paws under her beige chest.

“I'm really okay.” Jen scratched the kitten's head and Perissa purred loudly, blue eyes narrowed to slits.

“I'm sure you are, sweetie, but I'm new at this. You'll have to make allowances. To avoid frantic worry, let's just have a doctor take a look at you.”

Jen sighed, a forlorn sound.

Susan patted one bony knee and stood up. “Try to drink a little orange juice. I'll be right back.”

Downstairs in the small room off the living room that she used as a home office—being chief of police meant work spilled over into off-duty hours—she retrieved the note from under a glass paperweight. Dr. Barrington. Sliding open the bottom desk drawer, she pulled out the phone book and looked up physicians. Four Barringtons were listed under “Barrington Medical Group.” She punched in the number and gazed out the window as she listened to the ringing. The sky was menacing, like a movie shot just before a thunderclap and God started talking to Abraham. Somewhat to her surprise, the phone was answered by a receptionist who said Dr. Dorothy Barrington was in the office today and could see Jenifer Bryant at two.

All right. Susan looked at her watch—one-ten—and trotted back upstairs.

“I suppose I have to go,” Jen grumbled, and sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed.

“'Fraid so.” Susan found a yellow raincoat in the neatly packed duffel Jen had brought from home the evening before and held it out for Jen to slip her arms into.

Jen was aghast. “I can't go in my pajamas.”

Despite Susan's half-hearted murmurs, Jen was insistent, and she pulled on a pair of white shorts with an elastic waistband and buttoned up a shirt patterned in armor-bearing knights.

“I'm not helpless,” she said when Susan knelt to tie her Reeboks.

“Right.” She left Jen to her own laces and discarded her sloppy jeans and too-large man's shirt for blue linen pants and a tailored blue blouse.

*   *   *

In the waiting room, Jen listlessly paged through an ancient
National Geographic
and scuffed the toe of one shoe against the oatmeal-colored carpet. Outside, rain poured down, relentlessly pounding against the window. Except for Debra Cole behind a counter in the reception area, they were the only ones here, and the building had the empty feel of a Saturday afternoon. Pictures on the walls showed green meadows, leafy trees, and idyllic streams. In one corner stood a metal sculpture with myriad spillways, and water trickled through it in a never-ending cycle.

“She'll probably say I have to stay in bed,” Jen muttered.

Susan had to lean forward to hear through the crash and rumble of thunder. “Sick people are supposed to be in bed.”

Jen closed the magazine and dropped it on a stack on the table next to her chair. “We won't get to go to the ballet.”

Susan gave her a sympathetic smile. Disappointment came with thorns when you were eleven. Weeks ago, when Susan had asked her what she wanted to do this weekend, Jen, in a don't-dare-to-hope voice, had said what she really really wanted was to see a ballet. She'd never seen one. Somewhat surprised at her choice, Susan had readily agreed. They had a special day planned: drive to Kansas City, have dinner in the fanciest restaurant they could find, and then take in
The Sleeping Beauty.

“We will go,” Susan promised. “If we can't go this evening, we'll do the whole thing another time.”

Jen, wrapping herself in indifference, nodded. Her parents were divorced and much absorbed in creating new lives for themselves. Jen often got lost in the shuffle, and too many times promises weren't all they were cracked up to be. Slumping back in the chair, she closed her eyes.

Susan looked at her with worry. What was the holdup here? Shouldn't they be getting some attention? She was about to ask Debra how much longer they'd have to wait, when Dr. Barrington came through the door that led into a hallway. An angular woman with a high forehead and light hair that fell straight along her thin face and curved in just below her jawline, she wore a tan dress with navy piping and navy buttons.

She glanced briefly at the folder in her hands, then bent to smile at Jen. The smile softened the severity of her appearance. “Well, Miss Jenifer, what have you been doing to yourself? Let's take a look at you.” With a hand behind one shoulder, she guided Jen toward the door.

Susan stood up to follow.

“You can wait here,” the doctor said in a voice that left no room for argument. “I'll let you know what I find.”

Slowly, Susan lowered herself back onto the chair; she was seriously reluctant to let Jen out of her sight. She picked up an elderly
New Yorker
and perused the cartoons, dropped it and watched the water ripple endlessly through the metal sculpture, listened to the rain beating against the building, picked up another elderly magazine, and read an article on the artistic corruption of the coloring of old black-and-white films. Not a subject she'd ever felt hot about.