Authors: Joanna Campbell Slan
“Our guest went into allergic shock. Anaphylaxis. It happened so quickly.” I watched Sheila jabbing her trowel into a clump of grass. “Can I help?”
She bashed the green leaves with her tool. “Drat, drat, and double drat. I hate these moles. Mr. Sanchez would know what to do, but he’s in Mexico for his granddaughter’s Quinceañera.”
Sounded like a great escape plan to me. Sheila could be notoriously hard to please. I retrieved a screwdriver from my car, used a stack of old newspapers headed for recycling as a kneeling pad, and knelt down beside her. My tool formed a hole in the soil. I shoved mothballs down the dirt tube. Finally, I pressed the parted grass together to lock in the aromatic critter chaser.
“That’s right. Mothballs every foot or so ought to stink these nasty varmints out of house and home.” Sheila paused to wipe her brow with an embroidered linen handkerchief. “And that woman didn’t have one of those pens with her? The kind where you give yourself a shot? If she didn’t, she was a fool.”
“She did, but it was empty.” I turned my face to hide any wry twist of my mouth. Good old Sheila. She certainly didn’t bother to censor herself or think twice about sounding cruel. Despite the color all around us—or perhaps to counterbalance it—Sheila’s world was black and white. Fortunately, these days I was on her good side. I’d been on the other end of her sliding scale, and believe me, it wasn’t much fun.
“How stupid! People with severe allergies generally know what to avoid. For an anaphylactic reaction to occur, you must have been exposed in the past to the substance that causes the reaction, the antigen. The process is called sensitization.”
I didn’t know she was so knowledgeable about severe allergic reactions. In many ways, Sheila and I were just getting acquainted with each other even though I’d been married to her only child, George, for nearly twelve years before he died. “Right. That’s what the medic said. Yvonne carried a kit with a premeasured dose of epinephrine, to rapidly reverse the most serious symptoms—but the syringe was empty. She reached for it while she was flailing around. Managed to grab the Epi-Pen and inject herself, too, but it was empty. By the time help arrived, it was … too late.”
Sheila shook her head and waved away any compassion lingering in the air, “What an idiot. She was asking for it. What sort of extremely allergic dope would run around with an empty Epi kit?”
I sighed. I do that a lot. “Beats me.” I winced, “All I can say is … her death sure put a damper on our special event. It was awful. And afterward, we were questioned by the police—”
“The police!” Sheila punctuated her statement with a stomp, mashing down the hillock the moles had formed.
“It’s procedure. After all, the death was unexpected. The officers were pretty nice about the whole thing, really. You know, the cops weren’t much of a problem. The real crisis came as the scrapbookers realized their day had been ruined. Ellen Harmon made sure to complain long and loud. Not only had she lost her ‘star’ scrapbooker, but to hear her tell it, we were to blame for Yvonne’s death.”
Again Sheila waved away the problem. “That’s ridiculous. How could you be responsible for a woman dying unexpectedly? Honestly, some people don’t have the brains God gave a flea.” She paused to study me. “You can’t concern yourself about this. For goodness sake, even if one trouble-maker whines about this … this inconvenience … how could it possibly reflect poorly on you? Or on Dodie Goldfader?”
Inconvenience? Again, I turned away and counted mothballs. This time I bit my lip hard. A person going into spasms as she fought for oxygen was much more than … inconvenient.
“Kiki?” Sheila demanded an answer. “How could this reflect poorly on you?”
“It shouldn’t. You are right; we weren’t to blame. It’s just that the whole thing happened on our watch, at our event. It’s kind of like shooting the messenger,” I said. “The fact that these potential new customers will link our name with Yvonne’s death is … unfortunate. It’s exactly the opposite of what we’d planned to have happen. We wanted them to think of Time in a Bottle and remember what a great experience they’d had. Now … well, now I worry that our name will conjure up … uh … horrible images.”
Sheila’s turn to sigh. “People can be so petty.”
Oh golly. Coming from her, that was almost too much to take. Given her past behavior, Sheila was a great one to talk. Other people had prayer lists; Sheila had a grudge list.
But we were getting along now, I reminded myself. Now was all we had, wasn’t it? Like Mert said, “This is a present.” Being able to chat with Sheila was a new source of pleasure in my life, even if we didn’t agree, and even if she didn’t see herself the way I saw her, I was happy we were being cordial. While I often didn’t like what she said, I found her thought-provoking and interesting. Each time we conversed, I walked away a little smarter, a bit more educated, and much more worldly.
Still, I couldn’t let her remark go unchallenged. “I know what you mean about their attitude being petty, but Sheila, if you’d have seen it … it was really upsetting … I guess when we’re helpless, we want to blame someone. And in this case, Dodie, Bama, Mert, and I were in charge.”
I couldn’t even describe to Sheila the pandemonium that took place as the EMTs loaded Yvonne onto a stretcher. The technicians were working valiantly to bring her back, but the light faded from her eyes as if on a dimmer switch. A small, calm voice inside me decided, “She’s gone.” Even as I prayed for a miracle en route to the hospital, I didn’t hold out much hope.
Several police officers showed up quickly and took cursory statements.
“For heaven’s sake,” fumed Sheila. “We’re not talking about murder, after all.”
“Of course not. But the cops had to respond to the 911 call and whenever someone dies unexpectedly, they have to poke around a bit.”
Sheila considered this. “What do they think caused her reaction?”
“Hmm, maybe a bee or bug stung her and she didn’t notice. Who knows? Until the authorities talk to her doctor, they can’t generate an accurate list of possibilities. Or totally rule out foul play. You know they say in forensics, better to have and not need than to need and not have. So they took a videotape of the room, asked a few questions, took names, collected samples of the food and so on.”
The police worked quickly, but our group was understandably shook up. Not only had they missed out on the good time they’d been promised, but they’d had a ringside seat at the ugly death of a colleague. Thank goodness all of the women except our staff had chowed down before Yvonne died or we would have had a near riot of hungry, angry, and scared women.
“Yvonne’s death ruined our event.” Even as I said it, I cringed at how heartless I sounded. “We handwrote ‘rain check’ notes and passed them out. Most of the women were too shocked to do much besides tuck the notes in their Cropper Hoppers. Some of the ladies started crying. It was a real mess. It couldn’t get any worse.”
“Yes, it could,” says Sheila. “Things can always get worse.”
Yeah, I wiped my hands on my pants. She was right about that.
BEFORE I LEFT, SHEILA pressed a flat of flowers and a bag of potting soil on me. “Take these pots, too. I’ve changed my color scheme. Your front door could use a seasonal display to brighten it up.”
The large faux limestone pots were gorgeous and exactly the right size to fit on my stoop. I thanked her profusely, touching the hot pink striped petunias, blue salvia, and marigolds with one finger. Not a lily in the bunch! I was delighted. “And there’s a box of coral geraniums and vinca in the garage,” she said. “I’ll help you carry them to the car. I don’t know what possessed me to buy so many plants.” We both knew she hadn’t done any such thing. Sheila was allowing me to save face. Anya must have told her I’d been longing for flowers to brighten up our front walkway. My budget simply wouldn’t stretch to cover such frivolous extras. Now Sheila had given me exactly the plants I’d been coveting, and I was grateful for her thoughtfulness.
Anya and I drove straight home to let out Gracie, our harlequin Great Dane. She had all four paws crossed by the time she raced past us and into our fenced-in yard. Anya disappeared into her bedroom to chat on her cell phone with friends. My head was pounding from stress. The clothes I’d worn to the crop were soaked with nervous perspiration. All I wanted was to take a cool shower and go lie down. I stood under the meager stream of water and sniffed my lavender body wash for a long time. After I toweled off, I changed into a pair of loose drawstring gym shorts and an oversized T-shirt.
I was towel-drying my hair when the doorbell rang. Standing there was Chad Detweiler, the Ladue detective whom I’d met last fall when my husband died. Detweiler had become more than just a “friend.” He inhabited my fantasies, and he showed up at my doorstep on a pretty regular basis, usually with a cheese pizza in hand.
I kept waiting for him to kiss me, but he hadn’t. Mert and Dodie thought we’d moved along in our relationship, but I was too private a person to tell them he hadn’t even tried to get to first base. I kept coming up with all sorts of excuses—at first I was a suspect, and of course, he had to maintain a professional detachment. Then I was injured by the killer, and maybe he thought he’d be taking advantage of my post-injury trauma. Now five weeks had gone by, and I was starting to worry. Did I have a bad case of dreaded halitosis?
I had tried licking my forearm and sniffing it. (I’d read somewhere it was a surefire test, but all I got was a mouthful of body lotion.) Was he not attracted to me physically? His pupils widened as he stared at me—I took that as a sign he was attracted. And occasionally when he thought I wasn’t looking, I noticed him looking. So what was his problem? Was he worried about taking on a woman with a child? If so, why did he testify on my behalf at family court so I could regain custody of Anya?
I was both frustrated and stumped. Had I more courage, I would have simply asked him.
Here he stood, pizza in hand and goofy grin on his handsome face. If he didn’t like me, he certainly was a glutton for punishment. Or maybe my house was the only BYOP (Bring Your Own Pizza) place he knew.
“What is it with you?” he asked. “Did the grim reaper hire you as a personal assistant?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed—and felt guilty afterward. “Gee, and after that, I’m supposed to let you in?”
“Only if you want a piece of pizza. Otherwise I’ll stand on this side of your screen door, and we can talk through the wire mesh.”
“Hmm. Pizza or put-downs. Okay, you win.” How could I resist those gorgeous eyes?
“Huh. The mozzarella and tomato sauce wins. I’m just along for the ride.” His long legs stepped over the threshold. The cologne he wore—and wore lightly, he didn’t soak himself the way some men did—gave off a clean, spicy scent that smelled even better than the pizza.
No doubt about it. I was falling for him—hard. I was just too old-fashioned to make the first move. But if we kept up this physical détente much longer, I was going to give in and do something rash. Not that I knew what that would be. I just wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand the racing heart, sweaty palms, and onslaught of hormones that bombarded me each time he was around.
“Where’s Anya?”
I nodded toward my daughter’s bedroom. He took off down the hall and rapped sharply on her door. His voice floated back as he asked her, “Want a piece of pizza?” He returned with Anya in tow. I poured iced tea for all of us and added a tossed salad to our feast. Okay, I tried to wipe the big smile from my face, but I couldn’t. The easy way Detweiler rounded out our family made me glow with pleasure.
Even when Anya wasn’t interested in my company, she’d surface from her hidey hole to come out and say “Hi” to Detweiler. They chatted about the Cardinals, worried together over Albert Pujols’ pulled groin muscle, and made fun of Cubs fans. Anya still missed her father, but she seemed to accept Detweiler like she would a favorite teacher or older brother. Since her grandfather Harry, Sheila’s husband, died before she was born, and I had no brothers or living male relatives, I was glad for her to have an adult man as a role model. Detweiler shared her love of baseball, critters, sports cars, and music. Hearing the two of them go back and forth about whether
American Idol
contestant Taylor Hicks or Elliott Yamin had a better voice, filled me with a sense of wholeness.
Sure, I could—and would—raise my daughter myself, but having other people who cared about her couldn’t help but bolster her security and self-esteem. I never wanted her to feel awkward around men as I had.
On the other hand, if I’d known a little more about men and how they thought, she might not be here. Had I been smarter, had I understood how frat parties worked, if I’d known what went into Purple Passion, I might not have tumbled into bed with her father—the first man I’d made love with—and she might not have been born.
In the big scheme of life, who knows how things will turn out? What seems to be a disaster at the time can bring you joy you never dreamed of. What seems like the wrong road could be the right one. There are no right decisions, only decisions that seem to go more smoothly than others. There are no wrong turns, only unexpected potholes in the road. And at the end of the day, all you can do is keep moving forward even when it’s only an inch at a time.
At this moment, I was happy. I loved my tiny bungalow, my oversized dog, my turning-into-a-teen daughter, and I was beginning to feel all warm and mushy about the man who sat across from me at my kitchen table.
Anya left to watch TV, and Detweiler got down to business. “Tell me what happened this afternoon.”
“How about you help me plant flowers?” I gave a jerk of my head toward Anya’s room. “That way we can talk privately.”
I told him everything. He poked around in my memory as adeptly as he handled a shovel, asking a question, changing the subject, going back to the original question, and pausing to make notes. Since he’d questioned me when George died, I was familiar with his technique. Still, I marveled at Detweiler’s ability to pull minute details from the detritus of my mind, details I was positive I’d forgotten or didn’t exist. The process was gentle, unhurried. It felt like we were simply having an intense rehash of the disaster … until suddenly I realized he was too interested, too painstaking in his questioning.