Oil of Roses Ch. 26

"Okay, like what?"

"Well, I thought I could learn how to live from you, how to put my life first and my job second, then I could go back to Atlanta and do it. But I think I've figured out that I have to have a life to put first... and I don't, certainly not in Atlanta.

"Here I think I could have."

"I agree... you could have, if that's what you want."

She smiled shyly, ducking her head and looking away from his eyes. "So you wouldn't mind having me around?"

"Not at all... I'd love it... and I think the rest of the family would as well. So, when are you going to make up your mind?"

"You mind me moving into my old room for awhile?"

"Nope, was hoping you would. It's yours as long as you want it to be."

"What about Margo and the others?"

That part was easy. After asking Margo and phoning Carol and Kelly, it was clear no one objected.

"Then my mind's made up... I'll phone my editor tonight, call some movers, have them pack the apartment and ship it down here. Hmm, I imagine I'll need to look into a storage room until I find my own place."

"Sis, why don't you go back to Atlanta, see to the packing and such yourself?"

"Harry, even if I had to leave everything behind, you still couldn't convince me to go back to Atlanta... can you understand that?"

"No, but you can, and that's good enough for me."

* * * * *

After greeting the workmen and Janet, the woman Eddy had house-sitting for them, Carol and Kelly were making a pass through the house for the little things they hadn't thought of when they'd been home to grab stuff the night Nick took them out to supper.

"Sweetheart?" said Kelly.

"Yes love?" answered Carol.

"Have you ever thought that as often as we are stuck in a hotel somewhere that maybe we ought to just keep bags and a box of essentials, like a coffee machine and such packed and in a closet somewhere so all we have to do is grab them the next time we end up taking off for awhile?"

"Uh, no, no Kelly, I hadn't thought of that... besides, how often is something like this going to happen?"

She felt Kelly's stare and turned around to look at her bride. "Okay, it seems to have happened to us a little more often than some people might think usual," she said, somewhat defensively, "but come on, do you really think it's necessary to prepare ahead of time like that?"

"Maybe not... but if it happens one more time, my answer will become an automatic 'yes, it IS necessary'."

"Fine honey, but what are the odds, really?"

"With us? I doubt another three months will pass before we're doin' this shit again for some reason or other."

"Willing to put some deviant sexual behavior where your mouth is?"

"Fine, you're on... and if I win?"

"Well, what do you want if you win?"

She laughed. "Let me think on that... but consider the bet made, subject to your agreement to what I want from you as your part of the wager.""

"Fine."

The two of them kissed to seal the deal.

* * * * *

To anyone casually watching, the initial conversation between Harry, Eddy and Tamara never happened. And to someone watching very carefully, it still could have been easily missed.

A raised eyebrow from Harry as Eddy grasped his good hand, Eddy's eyes darting to Tamara, her very faintly whispering "Nick found them, Edward took care of them" as she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

But even though that conversation would probably have been missed by all but the most acute observer, no one could have missed Eddy holding on to his best friend's hand for the rest of their visit. No one could have missed the look of affection on Harry's face, or the tenderness in both their voices as they talked.

Eddy told Harry and Margo about Rachel, and with Tamara's help explained why he'd kept her a secret.

Margo looked at Eddy as she dried her eyes. "Eddy," she said, "you're one big silly sumbitch, aren't you?"

"Yeah he is," Harry said. "Honey, could you get this for me?"

Margo dried Harry's face with a wad of tissues.

"Hell, Harry, I woulda let you have your hand back," Eddy said, moving to release his grip.

Harry held on all the harder. "No you don't... that hand is fine right the fuck where it is... did you honestly think that an accident that happened when you were nine was going to change the way I feel about you?"

"Why not? It changed the way my father felt about me."

Margo said, "Eddy, your father is too wrapped up in his own pain, in his own sense of loss... he's never dealt with what 'is'... he just keeps focusing on what 'is not' anymore. It's cost him his two children, and I suspect his wife through a lot of their later years together. That he blames you is evident, but that doesn't make it right, or his viewpoint valid... it just makes him another victim of what happened that day. Although your sister will always be scarred by what happened that day, it doesn't sound like she's remained a victim of it.

"So it would seem to me, Eddy, you have two examples to choose from... your father, who's remained a victim for 22 years, or your sister, who hasn't. She's happy, he's not. She loves and laughs and gives, he doesn't. I know which of the two I want you to be like."

"She's right, sir. You can't undo all those years in a day, or a week, or a month... but you can start," Tamara said, holding onto his arm. "It's time you started forgiving yourself and letting yourself heal."

"And you know that all of us will be here for you, just like you've been here for us," Harry said.

The door opened and the senior nurse on duty walked in, sleek and lean like a jungle predator with wrinkles and a frown.

"Dr. Wohler... you should know better. Visiting hours were over quite some time ago... this patient needs his rest. You two, out," she said, pointing at Eddy and Tamara. "And as for you, Mr. Grimes, you're going to sleep now, whether you want to or not!"

"Would it help your mood any, Nurse Fletcher, if I said that the visitors I've had tonight have soothed my heart and mind more than I can explain? You won't need to dose me, I'll go to sleep like a good boy."

"Well you're going to take a sleeping pill anyway. And I'm half a heartbeat away from having you take one as well, Dr. Wohler."

"You don't need to, I'll be asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow."

Tamara and Eddy made their good-byes and after Harry took his sleeping pill Nurse Fletcher left as well.

"If I don't see you passing my desk on your way out in five minutes, Dr. Wohler," she said before closing the door, "Dr. Lowry will hear about it."

"Don't worry, you will," Margo said, smiling. "Honey, got to go or 'Nurse Ratched' will call out the hounds... Karen and Patricia will be in tomorrow, Tattie too and God knows who all else... sleep well. We love you."

"Love y'all too..."

Harry was asleep before she was out the door.

* * * * *

The big-titted blonde that had been aimed at Benjamin Sapperstein like a torpedo had done her job well. He'd been well and truly fucked, then slipped a little something. He was asleep and it would take a twenty-one-gun salute accompanied by a brass band to wake him up. The two men who circumvented the house's security system and came inside weren't going to be nearly that loud.

Wearing their dark over-the-shoes slippers, gloves, and hairnets, they first swept the house for electronic listening devices and cameras, then one of them spent a lot of the evening taking photos, while the other studied Benjamin's computer very carefully.

And when they were through, they removed practically all traces of their visit, electronic and otherwise. It would take far more effort than anyone was going to expend to find evidence that they'd been there at all.

* * * * *

"This is breakfast?" Harry asked, looking at his breakfast tray in dismay.

"Yes, Mr. Grimes, that's breakfast. Now, eat it all and I'll be back by for your tray in a bit."

The pleasant hospital employee pushed her rolling rack of distressed foodstuffs down the hall.

"I think I've figured out the stratagem of hospital food," Harry said to himself, "it's so bad that it urges you to heal more quickly just to get away from it."

"It's a widely held theory, but I've never been able to get any kind of confirmation from the kitchen staff. They just look at me with pleasant, smiling faces, repeat the 'it's nutritionally sound' mantra and walk away," said Dr. Lowry from the door. "But I think someone's been following me ever since I asked so I'm not going to dig too much deeper."

"Afraid you'll end up part of the menu?" Harry replied.

"No, nothing like that... I'm afraid what they'll do to my food should I ever be a patient here... or if the conspiracy is as big as I think, anywhere else. I'd hate to risk it. Go to the hospital a doctor with questions; come out a manual laborer with no questions, find out my wife and children don't recognize me anymore... scary thoughts."

"You realize you're quite insane," Harry said, moving the supposed scrambled eggs around on his plate.

"You call it insanity," Dr. Lowry replied as he checked Harry's chart, "I prefer to think of it as heightened sense of awareness. My wife calls it watching too much 'Twilight Zone' as a child. Now then, Mr. Grimes, looks like you had a quiet evening and a good night.

"Let's talk about how you're feeling now, aside from the nausea that always accompanies breakfast here..."

* * * * *

The house wasn't perfect, if Karen were to be truthful. The two secondary bedrooms were a bit too small, the kitchen needed to be expanded and redone, and the roof was going to need replacing in the next three to four years.

But Karen loved it, and Patricia felt the same. The greenhouse/conservatory/solarium that had been added on in the back was large and lovely. Patricia had organized the room in her mind. Shelves for plants and pots for plants and hooks for hanging planters, room for her a chair to read or knit in and room for Karen to work with her weights. The master bedroom was, if anything, a little larger than they required, but that was fine as Karen had been wanting to move up to a big screen plasma television and home theater system. If that went in the bedroom, as they wanted it to, the extra space would quickly get eaten up by attendant electronics and their collection of movies. What problems there were with the house were all reparable with money and money wasn't an issue... although after everything was said and done, it was going to take all of Karen's savings to buy the house and have the work done.

That was fine... she'd been saving it for something really special. And as the two of them went over with the realtor what had to be done before they could close on the house, Karen felt Patricia squeeze her hand and realized there was nothing she could think of that would be more special than this.

* * * * *

Tatiana Turov sat in the surprisingly comfortable chair in Harry's room and peered over her glasses at him.

"You, young man, got fucked up."

Harry chuckled and as the chuckle turned to laughter immediately regretted it.

"Ow! Goddamn it, Tattie, don't make me laugh... hurts too much."

A look of horror covered her face. "Oh shit Harry, I'm sorry," she said, "I wasn't thinkin'."

"It's okay, if I lived through the fight I can live through laughing," he said. "So, between you, me and the bedpost, how's everyone doing?"

"Well, your wives, fiancés, lovers... humpalicious honeys, whatever you call them-"

"Laughter, Tattie!"

"Sorry. They're doing fine. I was afraid I'd have to be den mother to a crew of emotional wrecks... instead I find myself without much to do... other than talk with Nicki. She doesn't really have a place in your group, she didn't have time to find one or make one before all this happened."

"Then I'm glad you're here... I hadn't really thought about that side of it... everybody clinging to each other, but no real place for her."

"I think we can excuse you for not thinking about your sister too much in the last few days, and I imagine she'll find a place soon enough, with her movin' down and all... but it's been a little lonely for her. I'm glad I've been here for her too."

"Well, I'm sure the family has enjoyed seeing more of you, even if they have been kind of clannish. Hope they haven't seemed rude but I imagine they've been a little distracted."

"Overall y'all've made this old woman feel right at home and I want you to know I truly do appreciate it... I'd rather be visitin' with y'all than listenin' to Peter lie to me." She looked out the window and Harry watched her attention focus on something he couldn't see. "It really fuckin' blows" she said "to be alone when there's someone right there with you..."

"You know you're welcome anytime, Tattie..."

"Yeah..." she replied, her attention still a million miles away, "I only see one small problem."

"What's that?"

"When the time comes to shuck clothes and get crazy," she said, peering over her glasses at him, "I'm a fifth wheel."

"Well, I guess you could play it by ear, or return to your hippie roots and not give a shit, get naked, take a hit off the pipe and relax, or leave when the party started getting a little too risqué for your tastes... whatever you're comfortable with is what you do, Tattie. You know that's the rule around us."

"Yeah, I know," the older woman said, smiling at him. "Just doesn't hurt to be reminded from time to time. So y'all wouldn't have a problem with me bein' there?"

"No, we'd worry about you feeling left out, and that might put a damper on things, but you've become family, you're always welcome."

Tatiana Turov sat back in the chair, looking at Harry with puzzlement plain upon her face.

"Why?"

"Why what?" Harry replied.

"Why have I become 'family'? This week I felt like I had and God knows I've been acting like I am... I'm just curious as to why."

"Tattie, every one of us would probably have our own answer to that, so I can only really speak for myself. As far as I was concerned, you became family the moment Carol's face lit up when she saw you the night of Tony's wake. When just the sight of you coming in the door could lift my Baby Girl's spirits that much, that night of all nights... you were family. You were obviously someone pretty damn special."

"And that's all it took?"

"Ahyup. But if you need more, consider this. What was the first thing you did when you heard we had trouble? You dropped everything and showed up here. That's family.

"Lemme tell ya a story. The best Christian I've ever known was my World History professor in college, Dr. Hoong Bak... although he professed to be a Zen Agnostic Pagan and all us students joked about nominating him as the first Zen Saint. We made jokes like 'what was the sound of his first miracle happening?' 'Johnson passed the final'. 'If Harry's grade point average falls, but he's not there to hear it because we've already killed him because he's so annoying, does it make a sound?' 'Every man faces three paths with each step he takes, the path of right thinking and right action, the path of wrong thinking and wrong action, and the road to World War II.' That was because of Dr. Bak's oft-voiced assertion that most of the 18th and all of the 19th and 20th centuries up to the outbreak of hostilities were inevitably leading to World War II.

"But we used to get into discussions in his class about everything, whether it was related directly to world history or not. And quite often, these discussions would be continued in the evening at he and his wife's house where there'd be a big pot of veggie something-or-other, , the wine was flowing, and somebody was probably firin' up a joint out back from time to time. And there was always someone there they were helping, giving them a place to sleep for awhile, helping them get back on their feet, hiding a mother and her children from her abusive husband. The house was always full to the brim with people. He said it was his and his wife Callie's obligation to themselves to help anyone who needed it.

"He always impressed me by walking the walk. I never heard of or observed someone asking for his help and not getting it. I asked him about it one night, how he could just blindly help people, based on nothing more than their word that they truly needed help, how he could bring them into his home, feed them, shelter them, clothe them. Didn't he worry about getting ripped off, or assaulted, or killed?

"He told me that they had been ripped off, and they had been assaulted. But what had been stolen from them were just objects, and the wounds were only physical. He and his wife wouldn't let the loss of 'things' or those wounds touch them any deeper, wouldn't let them scare them into stopping living their lives the way they felt they should. He said as long as they walked the world with love in their heart for all mankind, every person was innocent until proven guilty, and after being proven guilty was worthy of forgiveness and a second chance. And that if someday they were killed by someone they were trying to help, that the Universe taking back something it had only loaned them for a short time in the first place.

"I'm nowhere near that saintly, but I figured that I could look at the world with suspicion and fear and hate, or I could look at it with joy and wonder... and I know which makes me happier. Looking at you with joy and wonder showed me a new member of my family... who am I to fuck around with what works?"

"You, sir, are a goddamn fruitcake... and I'm glad you are. So what do you think your first miracle will be?"

Harry laughed and continued to laugh through his grimaces of pain.

"I already told you," he said, when he caught his breath, "I'm nowhere near that saintly... but our Carol? Her list of miracles is already long and impressive. She's clearly the family saint, not me."

* * * * *

"We're buying Mrs. Sattler's house."

Harry's cheer lacked some enthusiasm as his lower back was bothering him quite a bit on his left side, but Carol's and Kelly's made up for it.

"Harry, I was thinking," Karen said.

"Always dangerous," quipped Patricia.

"Keep it up, honey, and I'll choose the interior color scheme of the house..."

"Oh God, no... I'll be good!"

"Anyway, as I was saying before my love interrupted me, I was thinking we could start carpooling into work together, being as how we'll be living in shouting distance of each other... and not loud shouts at that."

"Makes sense to me," Harry said, wincing. "Of course, that'll expose me to your foul temper first damn thing in the day, but I imagine that if Patricia can survive it, I can too."

"Oh, after you get some coffee and food in her, Liz isn't that bad," Patricia said, a worried look on her face. "Harry, you seem to be having some pain, do I need to call a nurse or something?"

"That won't be necessary," Dr. Lowry said from the door. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you all to leave for a bit, give me some time with Harry."

* * * * *

Back at the hotel, Carol, Kelly, and Nicki sat around the suite Margo had rented and talked. Karen, Patricia and Tatiana were off looking at the house again. Patricia had asked Tatiana to help her with choosing a new interior color scheme. Margo was spending the morning at the clinic covering for one of the other physicians and had an appointment with her psychologist that afternoon.

"Any idea what could be going wrong with him?" Nicki asked.

"Well, he'd been complaining about his lower back, left side... where they shredded his kidney. I'm thinking maybe something to do with that, but that's just a guess based on what I've heard," Carol replied. "Dr. Lowry will call us as soon as he knows anything."