The Beach House (17 page)

The mask moved and her eyes squinted. She was grinning. Her entire demeanor changed. “The Molly Effect. What else do we need? We’re home free. Push, Maria! Push!”

Char walked out of the clinic and pressed the speed dial key on her cell phone for Todd’s number. As it rang, she shoved aside cans and paper litter with her sandaled foot, clearing a sunny spot in which to stand without paper whipping about her ankles. The afternoon breeze seemed to be a daily thing, as was her friends’ needs to emote like adolescents.

Oh well. They were a hoot when not in the throes of angst. Char hadn’t laughed so much in ages. And now the sun was shining—albeit rather low in the sky for them having done nothing in the past six hours but visit medical facilities—and she had a perfect excuse to call Todd before midnight, central daylight time.

He answered. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Obviously he’d checked the caller ID.

“There was nothing else to do.”

“Charlaine.” He tsked. “Need I remind you that you are in San Diego? Of course there’s something else to do.”

“I beg to disagree. At the moment I’m stuck at this beastly urgent care clinic for low-income people who do not speak coherent English. The nearest tourist attraction is a group of gangbangers half a block away.” A fancy silver BMW pulled alongside the curb. “A car just stopped in front of them. Oh my goodness. Look at that! Wow!”

“What?”

“I don’t believe it. One guy pulled a bag out of his pocket and stuck it through the window. Now he’s stuffing his fist into his pocket. I bet he’s got a wad of hundred dollar bills in it.”

“Char!” Alarm erased his Andy Williams croon.

“Do you think that was a drug deal?”

“Char!”

She turned toward the building as the car slithered past her.“Sugar, don’t you worry. I’ll tell them I didn’t see a thing.”

“Char!” He nearly shouted her name.

“If they get nasty, I’ll execute my Tae-Bo kick on them. You know how well I can do that.” She had demonstrated her exercise routine for him once.

The loud release of suppressed breath filled the line. “You’re putting me on.”

“Yes, Todd.” She smiled.“Well, partially. The drug thing really happened.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“But your concern is so cute. I thought I’d prolong it.”

“You’re not playing fair.”

She chuckled. They were even now. He hadn’t played fair last night, talking in that sensual tone of his about how she was the glitter of the neighborhood and how he missed her.

“Charlaine, honest truth now. Are you safe?”

“Yes. They are paying no heed to me.” She circled back round and surveyed the scenery. “There’s a dollar-type store across the street. A taco stand next to that. Traffic is steady, and not all that many cars stop to purchase drugs from my friends.” She grinned at his second loud expulsion of breath. “People are coming and going out of the clinic. I’m less than three feet from its door.”

“What
are
you doing there? I thought this was supposed to be a birthday celebration. The doctor’s.”

“Right.” She scanned the stucco wall behind her and decided against leaning. Her coral knit top was not getting anywhere near that filth. “And that’s what I’m doing here. We promised each other to go along with whatever the birthday girl wants to do. No complaints allowed. And I’m not really complaining. I’m just a tiny bit bored. Jo was going to show us some boutiques and art galleries. Dinner was to be at a clubby, beachy sort of place. Though how clubby and beachy can be used to describe the same place, I have no clue. I think it’s safe to assume I am not going to find out tonight.”

“What happened?”

“We started out at her house and office. Both of them are absolutely gorgeous. Then Andie got all ooey-gooey over a display of baby photographs on Jo’s wall. It was precious, truly. Somehow Jo got to talking about how that girl’s death I told you about really shook her up. She can hardly work. Now she’s on sabbatical. I don’t know. She must have money from somewhere. Her parents were loaded, but I think they nearly wrote her out of the will when she took up with that Mexican.”

“So how did you get to this clinic?”

“Well, Andie asked Jo what she really wanted to do and she said she would show us. We grabbed deli sandwiches and here we are, in the armpit of San Diego. Now she’s in there taking care of a pregnant teenager. Andie’s with her. Molly’s working the waiting room like a salesman, moving from one sick person to the next, holding little kids on her lap. Who knows what germs they’ll all carry back to the beach house!”

“Why is Jo taking care of someone?”

“Because she has a heart of gold. She likes to pretend she doesn’t, but she does. I mean we simply
stopped by
, but she could not leave well enough alone and let the people who run things take care of this child, who should not be pregnant in the first place. Oh my word.”

“Now what? Is that a siren?”

The wails grew deafening. Char covered her ear with a hand and shouted into the phone.“Hold on.”

An ambulance screeched to a halt in the street, and the shrill noise wound down.

“Todd, you won’t believe it. There’s an ambulance right next to me. Medics are getting out.” She watched a uniformed man and woman scurry to the rear of the boxy vehicle. “Now they’re climbing into the back of it.”

“You’re not safe there. Why don’t you go back inside?”

“Now, now. I am fine. It’s just another big city. Chicago’s not exactly the safest place on earth.” Char watched the medics gather equipment. Out came a stretcher.

“But you
know
Chicago,” Todd protested.

“They’re coming—You’re going in here?” She spoke to the emergency workers approaching the clinic. “Let me get the door.” Char stepped to one of the double doors and pulled it open.

The young woman smiled as she passed. “Thanks.”

“What’s going on?” she asked them.

“A woman’s in labor,” the guy said. “Guess somebody missed the turn to the hospital.”

Char let the door fall shut behind them. “Todd, they said someone’s in labor. It must be Jo’s teenager. Imagine that!”

“Your vacation is growing stranger by the minute.”

“This is just life with the girls. I’ve told you some of the crazy stuff we used to do.”

“But you’re not kids anymore. This is supposed to be your fortieth birthday celebration too.”

She was touched by his tender tone. “I’ll have my turn.”

“September twenty-seventh.” He knew her birthday. Since he’d moved next door four years ago, he and his then wife had joined her, Cam, and other friends for dinner to mark the occasion. “Tomorrow. What did you decide to do?”

“We’re going to Los Angeles. I promised myself I would buy one genuine designer outfit on Rodeo Drive. And we’ll see Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with all the movie stars’ hand impressions on the sidewalk. We will make up for today’s lack of glamour, I guarantee it.”

“I’m sure you will, Miss Glitter. Why don’t you give me the beach house address? Just in case someone wants to know where to send flowers.”

The tickling sensation struck again. It was becoming downright habit forming.

Molly wondered if hearts could burst from an overload of empathy. Hers pounded with it as she sat in the clinic, a toddler on her lap, the woes of being poor and ill in America reverberating off the walls.

Char had stepped outside for some fresh air. Molly would have joined her, but she could not pry herself from the toddler she held. Jo and Andie remained behind closed doors. The cheaply made walls did little to muffle occasional gut-wrenching cries that Molly assumed came from the pregnant teen. She also assumed the cause of her distress was labor. The first indication had been when Jo touched the girl’s abdomen, coached her in a breathing technique, and checked her watch. The second hint came when the girl stood. Molly knew a baby that low would soon greet the world.

Thirdly, all the waiting room occupants visibly relaxed. Though many were friendly before, most now became animated. What was happening? Everyone offered an opinion, most of them expressed in a combination of Spanish and English. They agreed that whatever was going on involved the pregnant girl. They did not mind waiting longer for their turn now. A birthing mother took precedence over coughs, flu, chronic aches and pains, and inexplicable rashes.

Birthing
mother? Molly prayed. Jo seemed shaky and unsure of herself. The place was not a hospital. How could anyone give birth in it? Surely an ambulance was on its way.

The little girl on her lap took hold of Molly’s hand and raised questioning brown eyes to her. She was a beautiful child with long black curls and dimples now deepening as the corners of her tiny mouth curled upward. Her mother sat nearby, clutching a feverish infant to her breast.

Molly nodded to the girl. “It’s okay. Yes.”

With a giggle she dug further into Molly’s backpack, which she often carried instead of a purse. Fortunately she hadn’t completely cleaned it out before the trip, so it still contained an array of small toys, books, and packaged crackers, buried treasures for little ones.

Molly felt a stab of remorse as she cuddled the child. She and Scott were content with four. Little Hannah came along a year after a miscarriage, and they did not want more. Still, when her body began to dance its hormone haywire number and she suspected ovulation had ended, she ached at the finality of it all.

She groaned inwardly. First she felt pity for every stranger in that waiting room. Then apprehension over Jo. Now inconsolable sorrow about a perfectly natural change of life. Oh! How she longed for those days when she simply told herself and others to “get out from under the pile!” Life was life. Deal with it. Sentimentality was hooey, a waste of energy better used elsewhere. Even her encouragement to the down-and-out had always emphasized the pulling up of bootstraps.

Yes indeed. The fortieth had been synonymous with entering a hazard zone.

The sound of a siren drew her attention from the toddler. Moments later two emergency workers wheeled a stretcher from the door across a corner of the room. The receptionist held open the door leading to the exam rooms, a distinct frown on her face, a reprimand imminent on the pursed lips beginning to part. One of the medics said something about a delivery truck blocking the back entrance. The door shut behind them.

A collective, puzzled smile went round the room along with more speculation. Molly caught some of it, the words spoken in English. Help had arrived. Was the girl all right? Of course. Probably false labor. They would check her out. They had special equipment. They could get her to the hospital.

Molly kissed the little girl’s head, relieved that Jo had help, that all the sick people would now get their turn, and that she could pass the child back to her mother. She could get on with her loopy, menopausal life.

A tear trickled from the corner of her eye.

Good grief. She really needed to find a full-time teaching job.

“One more push, sweetheart.” Jo encouraged calmly but loud enough to make herself heard over Maria’s groans. “You can do it.”

Andie ignored the death grip Maria had on one of her hands and smoothed hair back from the girl’s damp forehead with the other. “You’re doing a wonderful job, hon.”

Maria gazed at Andie. Their eyes had been locked since the pushing began. In those few timeless minutes Andie had watched fear give way to the pain. Now sheer hard work showed in Maria’s grimace and resounded in her cry. She was a runner crossing the finish line.

“Yay!” Jo’s tone remained constant even in exclamation.“Here we go! It’s a girl, Maria. It’s a precious girl. Ten toes. Ten fingers. Beautiful color.”

Gertie said, “Way to go, Maria!”

Andie whooped and not all that quietly. She could not contain the joy.

The baby whimpered and Maria did likewise.

Andie spoke soothing words and wiped her face with a damp cloth.

Jo laid the newborn on Maria’s chest. “Baby needs her mama. It’s bonding time.”

Without hesitation Maria wrapped her arms around the child as Gertie wrapped a blanket around her. Andie noticed the attached umbilical cord and realized things were not yet over. Though she had worked with a few clients during their labor, she had not experienced an actual birth since Zach’s sixteen and a half years ago. That took place in a hospital with all the accoutrements and all the nurses and Paul holding her hand. The memory had blurred somewhat, but she distinctly remembered that neither of her sons had been placed in her arms until after a nurse had completed some routine procedures.

It’s bonding time
. Jo’s words echoed in her mind and tears pooled in her eyes. She missed her boys. She missed her husband. She missed what had been.

Maria smiled timidly.

Andie touched her cheek. “Congratulations, Mommy. May the Lord bless you and keep you from this day forth and forevermore.” Silently she added,
You are a child yourself, but you can take care of this child. You will fight tooth and nail for her well-being
.