Turn Up the Heat (9 page)

“Could you possibly be more organized?” But I was laughing.

“I’m just trying to make the move as easy as possible. I’m sorting through stuff I never use and trying to get rid of extra junk. There’s a box in my bedroom for you to go through. Take anything you want.” Adrianna swooped her hair back into a ponytail and then adjusted the waistband of her pants.

“Clothes getting tight?” I smiled.

“A little.”

“Oh, Ade, can you believe this? I still can’t believe you guys are having a baby!” I couldn’t stop myself from flinging my arms around her in a big hug. “I’m going to be an aunt! Sort of.” Adrianna had always felt like a sister to me, and over the past few years, Owen had become the brother I’d never had. The hitch was that if Adrianna was my sister and Owen was my brother, then they were siblings, so their being together was pretty grotesque. Obviously, they weren’t really siblings except in my mind. Owen, I decided, could be my brother-in-law. That felt better.

“Of course you’re going to be an aunt. You’re the designated aunt whether you like it or not.” She started taping another box shut. “Oh, the clothes I told you about are right here. They’re all yours for now.” Ade pointed to an overstuffed trash bag.

“So when do you think you guys might get married?” I hoped that I wasn’t nagging, but I wondered why Adrianna still didn’t have a ring and why they hadn’t set a date.

“I don’t know. This baby thing makes things more complicated, I guess, in terms of planning a wedding. I’m just not up for anything else major right now. I suppose next year sometime. Owen thinks that the fall might be a nice time…”

Much to my surprise, Adrianna burst into tears, and I don’t just mean soft crying, but huge, heaving sobs that left her in a state of near choking. Ade was not a crier. In all the years I’d known her, I’d seen her cry only a handful of times. One of those had been when she’d told me she was pregnant. Sure, the pregnancy had made her emotional, but she’d mainly taken her feelings out on Owen by being snippy and irritable. So far as I knew, she hadn’t been falling to pieces.

Her weeping threw me. Worse, it alarmed me. “Honey, what’s wrong?” I knelt down next to her on the floor, surrounded by boxes and items ready to be packed.

“I just…it’s just…God, I don’t know, Chloe! There’s so much going on right now. This is not what I planned at all. And Owen is so freaking excited and happy, and I’m just…” She paused, clearly embarrassed. “And I’m not.”

“You’re not excited about the baby? Or is it about marrying Owen?” I asked softly as I rubbed her back.

She looked down. “About this baby.” After more sobbing, she calmed down enough to speak again. “That sounds horrible, right? I’m an awful person for saying that, I know. But what the hell do I know about babies? Nothing, that’s what I know. I don’t even like kids. You know that. And now I’m having one?”

Unfortunately, it was true that Adrianna didn’t really like children. She certainly had no use for my niece, Lucy, and my nephew, Walker. Their noise, their messiness, and their crying irritated her, and she totally failed to see the cuteness I saw during Lucy’s and Walker’s moments of being adorable. I guess I’d assumed that she’d feel differently about her own child. Or child-to-be. When she’d discovered that she was pregnant, she’d been anything but enthusiastic. Owen’s unfaltering exhilaration at the prospect of becoming a father, however, had overshadowed Adrianna’s doubts, at least from my perspective. In fact, Owen had acted so wildly overjoyed that I now made a mental note to see whether his behavior fit the DSM’s definition of a manic episode. Still, I had no excuse for failing to pick up on how freaked Adrianna was.

“You must be so scared right now, huh?” I said gently.

She nodded.

“That’s okay. It’s okay to be scared and question how you feel about having a baby. That doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a bad mother.”

“Mother,” she said. “I’m going to be someone’s mother. That’s just unimaginable to me. Look at my mother! Do you think I learned anything from her?” She shook her head and managed a laugh. “Definitely not.” Ade grew up with a single mom who had tried to be her daughter’s best friend rather than a real parent or even a parental figure. Her father was out of the picture.

“You can learn, Adrianna. You don’t have to know everything about how to be a parent the second the baby is born. It’ll take time, and you’ll learn as you go along.” I wished my sister, Heather, were around, but she and her husband, Ben, and their two kids were doing the whole nauseating Disney World vacation this week. Somehow my poor parents had been conned into going along. As much as my sister drove me crazy most of the time, she was an excellent, devoted mother who’d have words of wisdom for Ade. I did have some day care experience under my belt, but I had no children, and Ade, the mother-to-be, needed help from another mother. “Why don’t you call Heather when she gets back from her trip? I know she’d love to talk to you. And as moms go, she’s pretty great.”

“See? ‘As moms go.’ How horrible is that? What that says is that most moms stink. And that’s going to be me. A stinky mom!”

Oh, good Lord, she’d gotten hysterical again. “Have you read any books or anything about babies?”

“No,” she whimpered. “I’m afraid they’ll just make me feel even more incompetent. I don’t even know how to change a diaper! And look what happened to Leandra!”

“I know that’s terrible, but what does her death have to do with your having a baby?’

“Chloe! It just proves again what a sick world this is! How am I going to keep some tiny baby alive with the millions of dangers out there? Tell me that!”

“Owen is going to be there to help you,” I reminded her. “This is something you guys will learn together.”

“Yes, but I’m supposed to be the mom!”

“You
will
be the mom.” I smiled. “And you’ll do a great job. You and Owen. I know he spent the first few weeks acting like a caveman announcing, ‘I am man! I make baby!’ but you know what a great guy he is. You can talk to him, Ade.”

My distraught friend fell apart again. “We’re not even married! I mean, why should I care these days, right? But what if someone calls our baby a bastard? How awful would that be? You know, ‘the bastard child across the street’!”

“Ade! No one is going to call your child a bastard! Sweetie, if it’s that important to you to get married before the baby is born, Owen won’t need much convincing. He was going to propose before he knew you were pregnant, so it’s not like he feels trapped into a relationship with you. He adores you.”

“I know he does. And I’m crazy about him, too. I’m just so overwhelmed right now, and I feel sick and disgusting all the time, and everything is mixed up and not what it’s supposed to be. And I’m tired. Chloe, I’m so tired all the time.”

I made Adrianna look at me. “Slow down, okay? You don’t have to figure this all out right now. Let me help you pack some more. And then, why don’t you call Owen? It sounds like you need to be with him now.” I prayed that Owen wasn’t locked up in some smelly prison cell downtown.

“Yeah,” she nodded and wiped her eyes. “I do.”

After we’d packed a few more boxes, I loaded my car with Ade’s clothes and a few things I’d taken from her reject box: picture frames, a half-dead plant I was determined to revive, a hurricane candleholder from Pier 1, and a ceramic serving platter in the shape of a chicken.

She eyed the chicken. “Birthday gift from my crazy cousin. It’s all yours,” she said as I headed out the door.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?” I hugged her good-bye.

“Hey, Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. I don’t know how I’d do this without you.”

“Hey.” I smiled at her. “You’d do the same for me. I love you.” I waved and left for home.

EIGHT

WHY
would anyone schedule a review class for
eight o’clock
in the morning? Was I never going to get any sleep? At 7:59 a.m. on Thursday, at least twenty-five other graduate students and I were crammed into a small meeting room on campus, all of us desperately clutching coffee cups that held our only hope of wakefulness. At least I wasn’t the only one who’d been up late the night before. Doug, however, looked as if he’d slept enough for all of us. He was more bright-eyed than I’d ever want to be at this hour. I knew that he’d been up since five and had already jogged three miles.

“Everyone, let’s get started. We have a lot to cover this morning if you want to pass your final exam in Mental Disorders and Diagnostic Skills. I’ve seen the test, and I want to suggest that you be overprepared. There are fifty multiple-choice questions, fifteen short-answer questions, and four essays. At least two of the essays are clinical descriptions of hypothetical clients. You will determine the appropriate diagnosis, back up your reasoning, and provide a treatment plan.” He gave us his best stern teaching-assistant look. Oh, crap.

We reviewed paranoid, antisocial, and borderline personality disorders. Then we moved on to dissociative fugues, social phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, conversion disorders, impulse-control disorders, and psychotic disorders; and to the complicated system we were supposed to use to categorize and label clients according to the rules of the DSM. At eleven thirty, we’d had only one fifteen-minute break, and my mind was wandering. I was going to see Josh tonight, and if I managed to stay awake after we’d gone out with his chef friends, I might actually get some quality alone time with him. The prospect of quality time occupied me for the next twenty minutes, at the end of which time I was beginning to think that I had a sexual compulsion: instead of memorizing the DSM categories, I was obsessing about getting naked and sweaty under the covers with my boyfriend.

Finally, Doug began to wrap things up. “Everyone, listen up!” he shouted over our restless chattering. “Something you may find helpful in remembering these diagnoses is to associate various disorders with specific clients you’ve worked with at your field placements, or even with characters from books and films. Do whatever you have to do to remember the symptoms, treatments, and prognoses for what we’ve talked about today.” I briefly wondered whether the DSM could offer a way to identify a murderer, but I decided to ponder the question later. “Good luck. You’ll all need it.” Doug looked at me and winked.

We walked out together. “So, my friend, Doug. You’ve seen the test, have you?” I nudged him conspiratorially. “I’m sure you have some helpful advice to pass on to your favorite student, right?”

“Not a word,” he grinned. “You’ll do fine, though, I’m sure.”

“Hey, I’m not asking for a copy of the exam, but you’re going to tell me there are no benefits to having befriended a TA?” Actually, Doug was the one who’d befriended me, but I didn’t say so, and neither did he.

“You’ve gained access to my charming sense of humor, my loyalty, my handsome face, my—”

I cut him off. “None of that is going to help me!” I pretended to pout. “I’ll just have to lock myself at home and remain in isolation until next week.”

“All right. One hint. Pay extra attention to anxiety disorders and personality disorders. And don’t worry too much about the code numbers. There’s only one question on that.”

I looked around to make sure none of my fellow students were watching and then kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you! You’re the best.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You still have a ton of work to do.”

“Yes, sir!” I gave him a military salute. “Oh, Doug. I haven’t told you what happened at Simmer.” After I’d filled him in, we talked for a few minutes about Leandra and about the dangers of living in a big city like Boston.

Doug reminded me to be extra careful when I went to visit Josh at the restaurant. “Make sure you get someone to walk you to your car, okay? And call me if you need to talk about any of this.”

“I promise. Do you need a ride?”

Doug shook his head. “Terry’s picking me up and taking me to lunch. I’ve got another review class later this afternoon, but we’ll have enough time to eat at a dark and romantic place he found in the North End.”

“I’m jealous! Have fun.”

When I got to Cleveland Circle, I double-parked and picked up a Pino’s pizza. I was ravenous, and nothing except a thin-crust delicious lunch would get me through the afternoon. It wasn’t what Josh served on Newbury Street, but a good pizza had a place in my heart. In fact, it seemed to me that Adrianna had almost been justified when she’d threatened to throttle Owen for forgetting a Pino’s pizza when she’d been in the throes of a craving.

When I reached my condo, I balanced the pizza on one hand and opened my back door with the other. I could hear the phone ringing as I worked the old lock with my rusty key. Even with caller ID, I hated missing calls, and it drove me crazy to have caller ID display Unknown Caller or, worse, nothing but Incoming Call with no number. When caller ID let me down, I always felt convinced that I’d lost an opportunity to scream at some telemarketer about the National Do Not Call Registry! Missing a call with an actual phone number on caller ID meant that I’d spend twenty minutes Googling in an attempt to trace the call. Was I suffering from an anxiety disorder? Paranoia?

I snatched the phone off its base and practically screamed into the phone. “Hello!”

“Chloe, this is Gavin Seymour.”

“Oh, Gavin. How are you doing?”

“Hanging in there. I’m actually calling to see if you’d do me a favor.”

“Anything,” I said honestly, although I couldn’t imagine what I could do to help. Unless he wanted to tap into my half-trained clinical skills?

“I’m organizing a memorial service for Leandra. She was an orphan. Is that the word I want? She didn’t have any family that I can locate. When her body is released, I’ll arrange for cremation, but for now I’d like to have a gathering at Simmer on Monday. For her friends to share their memories. And grieve.”

“Of course I’ll be there. Do you want me to call people and let them know?”

“No, I can handle that. But I think it would be nice to have a memory book. Would you be able to put one together? I know it’s already Thursday, but I’m sure that people from the restaurant would be more than willing to contribute to the book. Maybe the book is more for me than anyone else, but with no family around, I feel like I need to do something meaningful. Does that make sense to you?”