Diane Davidson - Killer Pancake

“Okay. Thanks. Can I see her again now?”

“Not for long. Are there any other relatives I should know about?”

Without missing a beat, I replied, “Our nephew might be in. His name is Julian Teller.”

“Is this your son?”

“No, the son of … another sister. Julian is nineteen. Actually, he’s here in the hospital. I think.”

“Looking for his aunt?”

“No, being treated. Could you check for me? Please? It’s so much easier for a doctor to get information than the rest of us peons.”

Dr. Gordon disappeared for a few moments, then sat back heavily on the beige cushions. “Julian Teller was treated for shock and released about an hour ago. Shock brought on by hearing about his aunt Marla?”

“No, something else. Another family tragedy.”

The doctor gave me a strained, sympathetic smile. “Your family is having quite a day, Ms. Korman.” He shifted impatiently in the chair. Other patients are waiting? his movement said. “It would be good for your sister if you could visit as much as possible. Good vibes, touchy-feely, all that helps.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be here every day,” I wrote my phone number on a piece of paper. “Please call me if anything unusual develops with her situation. Will you be checking on her every day?”

He wrinkled his face in incredulity. “Of course.” He looked at me unblinkingly through his spectacles that were so thick they reminded me of old Coke bottle bottoms. “She may get very depressed. It’s a common response to heart attack. Even if we can bring her back to health, she’s going to need you to give her courage and support. Are you going to be able to help with that?”

It was my turn to give him an incredulous look. I pressed my lips together and nodded.

The second time I saw Marla that afternoon she slept through the whole ten minutes of my visit. Her chest rose and fell weakly inside the drab blue hospital gown that was nothing like her customary flamboyant outfits. I closed her hand lightly so as not to disturb her. Her lips, ordinarily lush with lipstick, were dry and cracked, and her breathing seemed uneven, I had seen a young woman dead that morning. Now more than anything I wanted to hold on to this friend who was closer to me than any sister could have been.

I resolved to call our church as soon as I got home. Marla was both popular and active at St. Luke’s. She chaired the annual Episcopal Church Women’s jewelry raffle and animated the monthly vestry meetings with her irrepressible brassiness and wit. If I didn’t let the parish know what was going on, I’d be the recipient of some very unchristian phone calls. I also needed to find out about arranging for a private nurse to come in as soon as the hospital discharged Marla.

I tried to make more mental lists but ended up driving home in a stupor. When the tires crunched over the gravel driveway, I was thankful to see that Tom had squeezed his Chrysler into our detached garage next to Julian’s Range Rover. Arch bounded in my direction as soon as I came through the security system. He was sporting the result of his afternoon of tie-dying: a T-shirt big enough for a quarterback and a pair of knee-length shorts streaked with vivid orange and purple splotches. I didn’t care what he looked like. I swept him into my arms and twirled him around in a circle. When, breathless, I let go of him, he stepped back, astonished.

“Hey, Mom! Get real! What’s going on? I mean, what’s happening?” He pushed his glasses up his nose and eyed me. From his puzzled but happy response, I guessed Tom had not yet told Arch about the events of the morning. “Where’ve you been?” he continued suspiciously. “Tom brought Julian home but he’s lying down. Everybody around here is out of it. But look.” He stepped back dramatically and held out his thin arms. “Is my outfit cool or what?” A proud smile broke out over Arch’s freckled face as he waited for my assessment. I was not about to tell this just-turned-thirteen-year-old that the spotted, too-large outfit hung from his bony shoulders and small torso like something salvaged from a large person’s clothesline.

“It is cool,” I agreed emphatically. “Really. You look absolutely, positively great.”

He turned his mouth down in an exaggerated frown. “Mom? You’re not tripped out or anything, are you?”

“Do you know what being tripped out means?”

Arch scratched his belly under the shirt. “Forgetful? That’s what they used to say, ‘I can’t remember anything, man, I was tripped out—’”

“Look, I’m fine. I’m only in my thirties, remember, and I was just a kid during the period you’re talking about. Where’s Tom?”

“Cooking. I told him to fix something groovy from the sixties and he said the only groovy food he knew was hash brownies. That’s disgusting! How can you put corned beef hash in brownies?”

It was going to be a tiresome hobby. When I entered the kitchen, Tom was bent so intently over a recipe that I repressed the greeting on my lips. The walls had been cleaned of the cocoa powder thrown by the Jerk, and lump crabmeat glistened invitingly on the countertop next to a tall green bottle of white wine. A seasoned crêpier waited next to a wide sauté pan, where butter for a sauce sizzled in a slow, circuitous melt. Tom relished cooking even more than gardening. I happily let him do both. I’d take crapes stuffed with crabmeat in white wine sauce any day. Especially when it was made by somebody else.

As I watched, Tom leaned over the crabmeat and methodically nabbed and tossed bits of shell and cartilage. I felt a surge of pleasure. It was not only that I now lived in a household where people vied to prepare the food. Nor was it, because of the day’s events, that I’d developed a sudden appreciation for life. This unsettling joy surfaced because I still didn’t know why I’d been so reluctant to marry the man who now stood in what used to be my domain and was now our kitchen.

I watched the butter dissolve into a golden pool. Of course, my hesitancy stemmed from all that bad history of my first marriage. After I’d left the Jerk I’d come to relish those years of single motherhood and solitude. Except for the celibacy, which I kept telling myself I’d get used to, being single constituted the perfect life for me, I’d decided. Until Tom.

Nevertheless, transition from my fiercely maintained aloneness to daily companionship did have its glitches. There had been the financial questions. Years ago, the divorce settlement from Dr. John Richard Korman had paid for the expensive retrofit of my kitchen for commercial food service, and I couldn’t leave it and still maintain my business. So Tom had moved in with Arch, Julian, and me, and found a renter for his cabin in a remote mountain area. He insisted on putting the rent money into a vacation fund for the four of us. Of course, as a self-employed woman with the only catering business in town, I’d forgotten what the word vacation meant.

These and other material aspects we’d been able to work out fairly well. Our biggest problem was anxiety. Tom worried about me and I returned the favor. Tom had seen some of the damage done by John Richard Korman before our split. He knew my left thumb didn’t bend properly because John Richard had broken it in three places with a hammer. Tom had examined the hutch glass I’d never replaced after John Richard had shattered it in one of his rampages, and the buffet permanently dented from the Jerk’s repeated kicking when I’d been hiding behind it. After Tom moved in, one of his first acts was to replace the hutch glass and sand and refinish the buffet’s dents.