Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father) (10 page)

“Even in Port Hamilton,” Matthew said, “you should check before you open the door at night.”

With one hand, Sarah lifted the hair off her neck for a moment. He’d come straight from the hospital, a parka thrown over his scrubs. Blue eyes, heartbreakingly blue like water in sunlight. She swallowed. “Lucky for you I didn’t check.”

“Can I come in?”

She stepped aside, then closed the door behind him.

“I can’t stand being angry at you,” he said.

“I don’t like it much, either.” Her arms were folded across her chest. She unfolded them, stuck her hands into the pockets of her robe. “Being mad at you.”

“So—” he put his hands on her shoulders “—what are we going to do about it?”

“Don’t know.” She could hardly breathe. She felt the warmth of his hands through her robe. He was so close. “Maybe we need to talk?”

He smiled. “Talking seems to get us into trouble.”

She lifted her hands to cover his, to feel his skin against her own and then she moved toward him, or maybe it was the other way around, but they were holding each other and kissing. When she pulled away, she wanted to laugh but thought she might burst into tears instead.

“Why did this take so long?” Matthew, still wearing his parka, asked after they’d moved to the couch.

“I don’t know.” Feet curled up under her, Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off his face. It was the Matthew she’d always known, but an altogether different Matthew that she hardly knew. “It wouldn’t have if I’d had my way.”

He frowned.

“Matthew, I think I’ve always been nuts about you. I probably had a crush on you from when I was about ten—”

“You had a crush on me?”

She smiled. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I was a dumb kid.”

“Am I looking pleased with myself?”

“Very.”

“I didn’t realize that.” He adopted a theatrically solemn expression. “All I can say is that if you had a crush on me, you certainly hid it very well. Mostly, I had the feeling you just wanted to prove that you could do anything better than me.”

“And I could,” she shot back.

“No.” He shook his head. “I could arm wrestle you—”

“Well, there was that. You
were
two years older and on the football team.”

“But
you
mispronounced
paradigm,
” he said in a low voice.

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did. You pronounced it
paradijum.
”

“
You
didn’t even know what it meant.”

“Before I mention the time you said, without a shadow of doubt, that Tasmania was an island off the coast of England—”

“Maybe that’s what happened,” she said. “We’ve always had a competition going on. Like at the hospital. I feel this need to prove that my way is right and you—”

“No.” He shook his head. “Maybe when we were kids. But that stuff at the hospital had nothing to do with me wanting to prove something about Compassionate Medical Systems. It’s not what I’d be doing if…” He shook his head, his expression suddenly weary. “Let’s not get into all that again, Sarah. Okay?”

She nodded, reached over to stroke his hair. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve missed you. A lot.”

“How come you never… I mean, most women give off clues that they’re attracted, but you…” He leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “I always had the feeling that if I’d made a move you’d have hauled me off and hit me.”

Sarah ran her finger under the elasticized cuff of his parka. “Maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe I was scared you’d reject me.” He pulled her onto his lap and they kissed again.

Things were happening too fast, so she pulled away and scooted to the other end of the couch. Ironic, really, since they had taken a lifetime to progress to this point. Glancing at the small travel clock on top of the stereo, she saw that it was after midnight.

“Lucy’s in a play,” he said impulsively. “She’s a fortune-teller. Clare Voyant. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to go buy her some tarot cards.”

“I have some,” she said.

“You have tarot cards?”

“I have a superstitious streak that I don’t talk about.”

“Tomorrow’s opening night. Want to go with me?”

“Maybe she’d rather have you to herself.”

“Of course,” he said, feigning dismay. “How stupid of me. I wouldn’t have figured that out by myself. Okay, I take back the invitation.”

“Stop.”

“You want to go, or not?”

“I want to go.”

He smiled. “See how simple that was?”

CHAPTER TEN

B
UT
INVITING
S
ARAH
TO
THE
PLAY
hadn’t been such a great idea after all, Matthew realized. He was feeling beleaguered. First Elizabeth had given him a hard time for not consulting Lucy before extending the invitation—then Pearl, now Lucy herself. He’d picked her up from school and, as they were driving back to his condo, he’d casually mentioned it, confident that Lucy, unlike her mother and grandmother, wouldn’t consider him some sort of insensitive clod who didn’t understand the first thing about women.

Wrong.

“It’s
my
play.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, her eyes fixed on the windshield. “I think I should be allowed to say who can come or not.”

“So you personally invited everyone in the audience?” Matthew shot back, then immediately wanted to retract the words.
She’s a fourteen-year-old kid.
“Lucy, I don’t understand the big deal,” he said slowly. “Sarah’s just a friend—”

“
Girlfriend,
” she spit out. “Fine. Take her, I don’t care.”

He made an impromptu, conciliatory stop at the Buzz where Lucy loved the homemade blackberry ice cream. “Come on.” He caught her by the arm. “Let’s go get a cone.”

Inside, they sat at a small iron table in the window alcove and Lucy brightened a little. As he ate his ice cream, he attempted to sort things out in his own mind. Sarah was a friend, had always been a friend. He loved her as a friend. But was Lucy right in calling Sarah a girlfriend? Maybe not at the moment, but at some point?

Maybe.

“You’re always talking about stuff you used to do with her,” Lucy said after they’d sat in silence for a while. “Like in the car going to that dumb beach thing.
‘Oh, Sarah,’”
she mimicked his voice, “
‘Remember this? Oh. Matthew—
’” high pitched now “‘
—remember that. Oh, wasn’t it so fun?
’” She glared at him. “How d’you think that made me feel? Like I wasn’t even there.”

“Lucy, that’s…” Frustrated, he shook his head. He’d been about to dismiss it as silly, but it clearly wasn’t silly to his daughter who, he could see, was on the verge of tears again. “Look, sweetheart, I know this play is very important to you, so if it’s going to upset you for me to bring Sarah, I won’t.”

She eyed him through her tears. “But you asked her.”

“She’ll understand.”

She managed a tremulous smile. “She won’t be mad?”

“No.” Matthew felt his heart drop at the thought of breaking the news to Sarah. “She’ll understand,” he repeated.

S
ARAH
SPENT
the afternoon getting ready to go to Lucy’s play.

She took a bubble bath, considerably more relaxing than the one she’d taken the night before, played Bizet on the stereo. After drying herself, she even painted her toenails then tried on clothes for the better part of an hour.

Attractive but not trying too hard—that was the look she wanted. At the mirror over the bathroom cabinet—the only mirror in the apartment, in fact—she considered her hair. Released from the braid, it came all the way down her back and the truth was, she was sick of it. Maybe she would call Debbi. Make an appointment to cut it all off. But not today, she decided.

In the bedroom, she kicked off her jeans and began pulling clothes from the closet. Discarding combinations, hating everything. It was as though three other people sat on the bed delivering commentary.

Elizabeth shook her head. “That drains your color.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “What color you have.”

Lucy smirked. “That’s kind of old-fashioned.”

“That one should have stayed in the jungle.” Rose again.

“Not bad, but not with that skirt.” Elizabeth.

Sarah banished them all from the room. This was ridiculous. Not just that her wardrobe was limited, but that it mattered. She was a forty-two-year-old woman. A physician. Without a practice, without a patient, but a physician nevertheless. And she was getting ready to spend the evening with a man she’d known forever. Matthew. Her old friend Matthew.

Matthew, the father of a fourteen-year-old girl who hated her.

She sat on the bed and, without even thinking about what she was doing, picked up a pen from the bedside table. On the back of a grocery list, also on the table, she started a list of reasons she should halt this relationship before it went any further.

Number One, she wrote.

Not stepmother material.

She scratched out the words, crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash. Maybe she was projecting just a tad? In the kitchen, she got a soda from the fridge, drank some and carried it over to the computer and immediately forgot everything else. Google had turned up several more articles on physicians who made house calls, mostly in rural areas like Port Hamilton. When the doorbell rang, she glanced at her watch, thinking at first that the time had gotten away from her and it was Matthew. But he’d said six.

She opened the front door. Matthew stood there, an expression on his face she couldn’t quite read. “You’re a little early,” she said.

“I know.”

“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” She closed the door behind him and he followed her into the living room. He looked uncomfortable. Constrained somehow. “Have a seat.” She gestured at the couch. “What’s up?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I have to…disinvite you to the play,” he said, the words all coming out on a breath. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I was looking forward to this. It’s Lucy. I told her you were coming and she got bent out of shape. Maybe I shouldn’t have caved in to her, but it’s her play and…” He looked at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Hey.” She curled her feet up under her. Even if going to the play meant more than anything else in the world—and it didn’t—the look of sheer misery on Matthew’s face was enough to convince her that it wasn’t that important after all. “It’s okay, really.” He still seemed miserable and not entirely convinced so she scooted next to him and stuck her face under his. “Boo.”

He smiled. “You’re not angry?”

“Furious. Leave and never darken my door again.”

“I’m torn between being angry at Lucy and—”

“Don’t. She’s a kid.” She thought of the discarded outfits all over the bed and realized she was more relieved than disappointed. Having Matthew here with her now, rather than sharing him with Lucy later, was infinitely preferable. Although, she’d probably have to work on that—the concept of sharing Matthew. “I do remember what it was like being fourteen,” she said. “The smallest thing gets magnified into gigantic proportions.”

“I’m not going to start talking about the CMS thing again, but I just want to give you some context. When Lucy was born, I remember feeling so awed at the responsibility of being a parent. I didn’t take it lightly for one minute. I wanted her to have all the things I never had. Not just the material stuff, but a sense of security and the knowledge that she was really loved and wanted. Even after Elizabeth and I started having problems, I would have stayed with the marriage just so that Lucy had both parents. But then Elizabeth met this guy and I really had no other option but to move out.”

Sarah watched his face. He’d closed his eyes and his voice was soft and almost faraway, as though he were thinking aloud. Except for the time when he’d asked her about Ted, they hadn’t really talked about their other relationships. She’d spent so many years not letting herself think about Matthew and Elizabeth that, eventually, it required no effort. But now, she wondered. “Were you still in love with her?”

Matthew’s brow furrowed. “No,” he said after a moment. “Not for a long time.” He opened his eyes, grinned at her. “But I never stopped loving her mother. I was just telling Pearl the other day, that I think she was part of the reason I fell in love with Elizabeth in the beginning—”

“Not to mention that every guy in school had a crush on Elizabeth,” Sarah said. “Including you.”

He laughed. “Okay, I admit it. Including me. But it was more than that.”

“Pearl’s a good sort,” Sarah said, smiling. “I liked her because she liked me.”

“Same here. I missed out on having parents to confirm my self-worth, but Pearl always made me feel like the best thing that happened since sliced bread. It was addictive.”

“Did Elizabeth make you feel that way, too?”

“Yeah.”

Sarah picked at her fingernail. “And I was hard on you.”

“You were just…you. I mean, what would you have done if I’d said something…sappy?”

“Like?”

“Like, I don’t know. What if I’d said I loved you?”

“I’d have laughed.”

“My point exactly,” he said.

And then, in a replay of the previous night, he pulled her onto his lap and they blotted out the rest of the world with a single kiss.

“I’ve got to go. The play starts in ten minutes,” Matthew said.

At the door, he kissed her again.

“Go.” She placed her hands on his chest, feeling the wool of his sweater. “Have fun.”

“I’ll call you.” He reached for her hand, turned it over then took a pen from his jacket and wrote something on her palm. “Don’t look at it until I’ve gone.”

She waited until he’d driven off.

Keep the weekend free for me,
he’d written.

“W
HAT
HAPPENED
TO
YOU
?” Elizabeth asked as she slipped into the seat next to Matthew in the high-school auditorium. “You almost missed the start.”

“Sorry,” Matthew whispered as the lights dimmed.

Watching Lucy, he felt a complicated stew of emotions. Welling love and pride, mixing with a simmering irritation and disappointment. He would have liked Sarah to see for herself how Lucy was stealing the show and it bothered him that, even at fourteen, his daughter couldn’t rise above her jealousy, or whatever it was.

Afterward, Elizabeth held a small party. The cast of eight and a dozen or so friends and family. Pearl found him in the kitchen, making a dinner out of the appetizers Elizabeth had set out. He realized as he piled Swedish meatballs onto a paper plate that he hadn’t eaten since early that morning and he was devouring the food and only half listening to Pearl when he caught the word
manipulate.

“Sorry?” He speared a meatball. “What was that?”

“Lucy manipulates you. Elizabeth said she’s jealous of Sarah and giving you a hard time.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Matthew said, automatically coming to his daughter’s defense. “Anyway, there’s nothing…” He’d been about to tell Pearl there was nothing for Lucy to be jealous of. But he realized that was no longer true.

“You do more than enough for that girl,” Pearl said. “You have a right to your own life, you know that.”

Matthew watched Elizabeth and her new boyfriend, whose name he couldn’t recall, and wondered why being a father seemed at odds somehow with having a personal life. It wasn’t as though Lucy was completely sheltered from the facts of life. He realized Pearl was watching him.

“So?” She waggled her head. “You and Sarah got over your differences then? You told me she accused you of selling out.”

“She apologized,” Matthew said. “Not that she needed to.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. She’s going into practice for herself. Integrated medicine, she calls it. And house calls.”

Pearl smiled. “Like her great-grandfather used to do. There’s room for it.”

“Actually, she asked me to join her.”

“And?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Sarah talks about ideals and the kind of things we used to dream about. There’s nothing she liked better than to get behind a cause. And I think she’s found one that’s challenging enough to suit her. The thing is, I don’t know how realistic that is anymore. Money’s more of an issue for me than for Sarah. I’ve got a daughter to support, house payments to make.”

“Sell the house,” Pearl said.

He laughed as though the suggestion were beyond consideration.

“Lucy doesn’t need a swimming pool in the backyard,” Pearl said. “If she wants to swim she can go to the beach just like you used to.”

T
HAT
NIGHT
he hardly slept. The events of the day rattled around in his head, subsiding while he read, then springing to life again as soon as he turned off the lamp. Sarah was like a storm blowing and churning already turbulent waters. He’d lost his compass, unsure any more of the direction to take. Compassionate Medical Systems would provide financial stability. But with Sarah’s input, he might have the chance to practice the kind of medicine he’d once dreamed about.

The next day, already tired and irritable when he got to the hospital, he discovered a six-month-old girl had managed to extubate herself and was struggling to breathe. The physician on call—a moonlighter—was long gone by the time Matthew found her. He checked blood gas, found the carbon-dioxide level sky-high and put her back on the ventilator. Then he walked across the hall to the nursing director’s office and vented his anger and frustration.