“Oh, I was the ultimate dietitian geek. Stayed late every day, did daily meal rounds, ran down to the kitchen several times a day to get the patients whatever they wanted.”
“See, Heather the nerd. Who would’ve thought? Now look at you.” Victoria studied her reaction. Heather put down her spoon and examined Victoria’s expression in return. “What’s going on, Heather?”
Her eyes widened and then glanced at her Styrofoam bowl. She looked back at Victoria and her face changed.
“You met him, didn’t you?”
“Who?”
“That guy. Nicolo.”
Heather sank into her chair. “Nicolo?” She laughed. “No. I definitely did
not
see him.”
“Then what is it? Something’s up, you’re too happy.”
“I can’t be happy?”
“Heather, Jean almost mauled you this morning with insults and you just blinked and agreed to whatever she suggested.”
“I have to do that catering event with her Friday night, what do you want me to do?”
“Please. Now I know something’s up. You never miss a beat when it comes to slinging it back at her. Spill it.”
Heather peered over her shoulders and then bent in leaving only six inches between her and Victoria. She opened her mouth and then shut it. Victoria drew her eyebrows together and refused to let her evade the question.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she began.
“You’ve never kept anything from me in the five years we’ve worked together. And when have I ever repeated anything you’ve said?”
Heather flashed a smile. “Okay, but...” She lowered her voice further until barely a whisper crept out. “I slept with Dr. Silvatri over the weekend.” Heather plopped back in her chair and winced.
Victoria’s jaw plunged. The two of them studied each other. Victoria could not piece together the information. Sleeping with someone else? Cheating on Lance? Sure, she was miserable, sure he was an incredible ass, but she loved her daughters more than anything and to risk her marriage? For what? Some new doctor?
Heather grinned like a child admitting she pulled the fire alarm in the school hallway. Victoria continued her silence. Was she upset with Heather? Victoria assumed it was that, but disappointment was not what she felt. She was actually…intrigued. Curious.
“Are you going to give me the details or what?”
Heather filled Victoria in on Silvatri’s flirtatious visits over the past two months, ending with this weekend’s finale. Victoria’s pulse quickened. She dragged her chair closer to Heather and heeded every word. Heather spared no details and Victoria’s mouth moistened with the vision of fiery sex. Something that no longer existed in her life.
“How’d you feel during all of this?”
“You’re expecting me to say guilty, right?”
Victoria scrunched the napkin until her hand ached. “No, actually. Not at all. I was hoping to hear it was amazing, that he made you walk into walls.”
Red crept across Heather’s cheeks. The glow colored her face into puffs of cotton candy. She blinked and jiggled her head. Victoria did not budge, she waited for her reply.
A smirk edged up on Heathers face. “It was amazing, mind blowing. Zigzagging all over the hospital the rest of the day. Skipping through my house all night.”
“Really? Wow. What’s going to happen now?”
“Happen? Nothing.”
“I mean, are you going to see him again?”
“I saw him this morning. We snuck off into the patient’s lounge and wow, his kiss just leaves me breathless.
“I’m confused.”
“Me too. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not happy anymore though, that much I do know.”
“You were never happy.”
“True.” Heather inhaled a few deep breaths and then shook her head. “You know, we’re expected to make decisions on who we’ll marry before we even know ourselves. All this pressure to find a man and have a family. It’s a job, a responsibility on top of all the other responsibilities we have as women.”
Victoria nodded. “My mother told me you were expected to please your husband and make everything perfect. If you divorced, it was always the woman’s fault. She used to iron my father’s boxer shorts, can you believe that?”
“Yup.” Heather giggled. “No matter how much you did, it’s still your fault.”
“I’m sure pressed boxer shorts were on the top of his list.” Victoria chuckled.
“I mean you chose to listen to punk rock music when you’re eighteen, but when you get older you find yourself listening to jazz and that’s okay. Your taste changed, they say.
And at eighteen you have to decide what you want to do with your life. At eighteen. So you decide, go off to college, get a job and then fifteen years later you realize this wasn’t what you expected and you go back to school or get a new career and that’s okay, too. You’ve grown and matured and you are commended for your bravery and for following your dreams.
But when you choose your spouse at eighteen, you’re expected to stay with him until you die. Who made up this rule? At eighteen you make a decision and if you divorce you’re going to hell?”
“Both of us went to our proms with our husbands,” Victoria said.
“That’s what I mean. We were so young, Victoria, what the hell did we know?”
“Did I ever tell you why I chose Ed? I mean, to be my husband?”
Heather leaned back again and brushed the hair out of her face with both hands. “No, do tell.”
“We dated for three months and he asked me to the prom. I was thrilled. He was my first real boyfriend. I took my work money and bought this gorgeous pink fluffy gown. It was hot pink though. Other girls bought pastel colored gowns, but mine was extraordinary. Expensive, but I had to have it.
My three girlfriends arrived at my house for pictures and we waited for our dates. Ed was last to show and as each of their boyfriends entered, they gave my friends their corsages. Two were white carnations, plain, unimaginative. The third a pale pink carnation with these giant green balls and leaves, some weird fillers.”
Heather laughed at Victoria’s contorted facial expression.
“Ed finally arrives and he presents me with this beautiful white box with a gold lace design. Now he missed how the other three just shoved the corsages at their dates leaving them to open their own boxes and attempt to pin the corsage on themselves. Ed’s clueless. So, just as my poor father wrestles himself up from the couch and makes his way into the foyer, Ed kneels down in front of me and opens the box.”
“No, he didn’t. Did you think he was proposing or something?”
“No, but my father did. Nearly had a heart attack on top of all his other medical problems. Anyway, he takes the corsage out and it’s stunning. Giant hot pink Gerber daisies, two of them, surrounded by tiny pale pink roses and white stephanotis, my favorite flower. He gently pins it to my dress.”
“Wow, I can’t imagine that.”
“Then he tells us how he insisted that the florist make this corsage and the florist argued with him that no one does this. They all get carnations. Ed had to call the manager and they finally agreed to make it. He said he wanted something special for the most beautiful woman in the world.” Victoria closed her eyes and pressed them tight.
Heather grasped Victoria’s hand, gave a light squeeze and refused to let go. Victoria’s eyes welled up when she released her lids.
“A few months later, right before my father died, he asked if I was going to marry Ed one day. I said yes. He squeezed my hand like you just did and he said that made him very happy.”
“Where’d we go wrong Victoria? I don’t get it.”
“I think we thought we knew what we wanted back then. Maybe we did, but things change. We change.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out for myself.”
****
Victoria and Heather parted and Victoria headed back to the fifth floor. An oncologist stopped her before she made it to the nurse’s station.
“Victoria, I want to pick your brain.” He dropped his pen into his front pocket. “I have a patient, in 501a, not eating, planning to start tube feedings. He has diabetes but also in renal failure, may need dialysis and I wanted to know which tube feeding formula you’d recommend.”
“Which is worse, the diabetes or his kidneys?”
“Well, at this time I would say his kidney function. Barely putting out any urine now.”
“Then I would definitely suggest a renal formula. Let me check his height and weight and make a recommendation.” Victoria walked to the other side of the nursing station and found her calculator. She wrote down her estimate but before she presented it to him, Jean stampeded down the hall barreling towards her. The clip clop of her cheap shoes overpowered the rest of the floors clatter.
“Oh, Victoria, just the person I wanted to speak with.” Jean leaned over the desk partition but her large abdomen kept a two-foot wedge between them. “A scientist guy from Sand-something labs needs someone to give a lecture to his staff on nutrition and cancer and I suggested you. I told him next Friday would be good. Four p.m. I’ll let you leave early to do the presentation. The information is on your desk. Don’t disappoint me.”
Don’t disappoint me? You’ll let me leave early? Victoria hardened every muscle in her body to prevent herself from pitching the calculator down the hallway and striking Jean in the back of the head. She had no time to prepare a lecture. Her magazine article was due in two weeks and she failed to type one word yet.
Motivation lacking, imagination absent, words lost. She needed something, something equivalent to what Heather experienced over the weekend, but that was out of the question. Maybe if she imagined the two of them having sex in the office that would do it. No, no, no. That was disgusting. What was she even thinking?
Victoria left work but stopped at the mall on her way home. She headed for the lingerie department in Macy’s and lugged a dozen outfits into the dressing room. A sour taste filled her mouth with each slutty get-up she attempted to arrange onto her fifty-three-year-old body. She chucked them into a pile, refusing to hang them back up. She chose white-lace angelic pieces next, but they sickened her more.
She returned to the room one last time with a few plain negligees. Her last choice, a cranberry baby-doll in satin with a matching short robe, glistened on her. Lace embellished the top, which played up her less than perky breasts. She twirled around in the mirror and felt beautiful for the first time in years.
After dinner, when Sara left the house with her boyfriend, Victoria took a quick shower and slipped on the ensemble. She called Ed into the bedroom and then lounged across their bed.
“One second,” he called out.
Three minutes passed. Then five. She watched each number change on the digital clock. “Ed!”
“What is it?”
“Can you please come in here?”
“For Christ’s sake, woman.” Ed’s feet pounded the wood floors. Victoria repositioned herself on the mattress. Her chin pointed down, her eyelids fluttered. Ed entered the room and gawked at her, stone faced. “Well?” he said. “What is it?”
Victoria smiled, despite her heart hardening. She flung back the cranberry robe to allow him the full view of the outfit.
“Are you going to lay there like a mute or say something?” Ed raised both his hands, palms facing up. “Is this some kind of joke?”
It
was
a joke. Victoria reached back and clutched the edge of her robe. She trailed it back over her thigh and covered herself. What a fool. Sexy clothing could not enhance her aging body. Revolting. No wonder he didn’t notice. Perhaps he did and didn’t want to insult her.
Ed grumbled, finished the last of his Budweiser in one gulp and retreated to the couch. A cold shiver spread through her bones despite the warm temperatures outside.
Chapter 16
Heather
Heather dragged her ass into the hospital in her black pants with a white button-down shirt to look as waitressy as she could. She entered the kitchen and found Jean sashaying around in a blazing-red smock dress. This was going to suck.
She followed Jean to the conference room on the second floor and beheld the two-tiered circular tables arranged in precise locations throughout the room. She plopped the box of paper goods on the floor and pushed back against the wall with her foot. Jean strutted out.
“Hey, hey, we got Heather the waitress helping us out tonight!”
Heather rotated and found Tyrell towering over her. Her frown reversed. This would be an interesting night indeed. “Thank God you’re here,” she said. “We’ll be tortured together.”
“Tortured? I’ve been looking forward to working with Jean the Eating Machine for weeks.”
Heather dropped her face and stared at him, hands on her hips.
“No really, this is cool. Catering with Jean after working all day in the kitchen with her and then coming back tomorrow to do it all again.” His white teeth gleamed against his dark chestnut skin.
She shook her head, dumfounded, and drew her lips in to hide her smirk. She bent over and lifted the tablecloths out of the box. A flutter swept past her ear. “I picture having sex with her all the time,” Tyrell whispered.
Heather jerked up, his face positioned only inches away from hers. “You, are gross.” She poked him in his chest. Then she stepped back. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“What? What’s wrong with this? You don’t like?” He spun in his own rendition of James Brown, whirling and swaying back and forth on his toes.
“You’re too much.”
“Yeah, yeah, you like it. Admit it, I got style. Oh, yeah.”
“You got something alright. Maybe you should go talk to one of the doctors upstairs. Preferably on the seventh floor.”
“You saying I’m crazy or something? Okay, I see how it is. None of this for you.”
“Me? You
are
nuts, go flash someone else.”
“Come on baby, you want this. Six foot three, big biceps, stylish gear.” He continued to strut around the room.
“Okay, enough weirdo, you’re going to get us both fired. Get going before boss lady comes back.”
The guests arrived in swirls of dresses and suits. The Board of Directors exited their meeting and entered the presentation. Jean traipsed around like one of the ballerina-hippopotamuses in Disney’s
Fantasia
movie. Tyrell winked at Heather from across the room and she buried her head to hide the giggles.