“How long have you known?” Petra asked, pacing her office. She didn’t have to worry about shouting, because she had no patients. Again. Joanie was out for lunch.
Petra’s sister cleared her throat. “They drove up on Monday and took me out to dinner at Nigiri.”
“You sold your approval for a fancy dinner?”
“Hamachi and yellowtail. It was delicious. Besides, I didn’t sell any approval. They don’t need our consent. Last time I checked, our mother was of age. What are you telling me? You held out for dinner and the down payment on a house?”
“They didn’t even stop to see me, really,” Petra said, aware that she was whining.
She sat down at her desk and sprang up again.
“Weren’t you working?” Ellie asked.
“I’m starting to think that Mom chose a time when I’d be busy.”
Although, given how she’d mentioned that she didn’t have many patients, maybe her mother had thought to find her alone. She did not share this information with her sister.
“It doesn’t matter,” Petra continued, aware that she was now sounding like she was five years old. She was glad there was no one about to witness it. “It was a short visit. They wanted to shop, presumably for more pastel suits for Mom. They’re going for the Secretary of State look, from what I can tell. She’s even transformed the way she talks for him.”
“Was it really going that well for her before she met Jim Morrison?”
“It was okay, Ellie.”
“How would you know?”
“What do you want me to do? Dance a hornpipe? Throw them a party? I’m supposed to tell her how I feel, aren’t I?”
“No, actually you don’t have to. She already knows. This is none of your business. It’s not like she has any money he can take away from her. It’s not like he can leave her knocked up. So he’s a little condescending. But she can handle him. Just try to trust her, the way you’re always asking her to do the same with you.”
“She could get hurt.”
“Argh, just stop it. Stop bossing people around, stop thinking you know better than anyone. You’re such a doctor.”
A pause.
“I should drive out to see them this weekend,” Petra resolved. “Can you meet me there? I’m not doing this alone.”
Ellie made a noise and hung up the phone. Apparently, Petra would have to do this alone.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard her sister’s message. A detached part of herself realized that she should leave her mother be. But that wasn’t how Petra operated. She had to scratch at it and worry it and roll it around her head.
She tried to think objectively about the whole thing. Evidence pointed to Jim Morrison being a jerk, especially his heavy-handed pissing contest with Petra yesterday. But it really wasn’t her business. Had her mother seemed at ease with Jim Morrison? Had Jim Morrison tried to make her feel better? Had they once shared any glimmers of the eye, had they made little signals to each other, little touches on the elbow? Had there been a caress down the back?
Were they the way she was with Ian?
Not that things were perfect with Ian.
All morning she had been prowling, ever since she’d woken up, in fact. She stood at her desk and paged through her computer. She had promised to call Kevin’s pediatrician to update her on Kevin’s progress. She had also made a note to talk to Moira Shane about seeing a gastroenterologist to investigate her persistent cough.
Petra sat in her desk chair. People were telling each other to trust their instincts. She believed in her ability to read symptoms and come up with possible diagnoses, but she always went with evidence first. Helen and Sarah claimed to be good judges of character. Petra had no idea what that meant. Her instincts only gave her information about sleep, food, and sex.
When they had sex, she had no doubts about her feelings for him. It was only after, when she had time to consider things, that she wondered what she was doing getting involved with someone when she had so many worries—when he was the catalyst of so many of her problems.
She shook her head. She didn’t resent him. It wasn’t his fault. But she did have to approach this with a brain unfogged by lust or tender affection.
Oh, shit, she thought. Tender affection? Where had that come from?
As if she had conjured him up, she heard her phone beep.
I missed you this morning.
She would not smile. There was no one to witness it, but she would not be weak.
She wrote back, You were sleeping so well.
It seemed best not to let him know that she had been freaking out and tearing around his room like a frenzied, naked (but quiet) hyena, eager to leave him and his firm deltoids and soft hair and sad, sleeping smile far behind. She had actually run from his apartment, albeit with her shoes off, so that she wouldn’t disturb him.
Sometimes, she really loved hiding behind texting.
Doing anything Sunday? he wrote. It’s a slower day. Thought we could be lazy together.
A pause. Another line. Take a drive somewhere?
Temptation coursed through her. That sounded fun. She hadn’t gotten around much since the ill-fated wedding. Invited myself to Astoria to visit my mom, she thumbed back reluctantly. She added, And Jim Morrison.
Would she ever be able to call him Jim, she wondered, without tacking on his last name? Even while texting, she felt compelled to add it.
Overnight? Ian wrote back.
Gah. No. Sis can’t make it. Will just rent a car and drive.
In the next minute, he called her.
“I could come with you,” he suggested. “We could take my car. This could be our outing.”
“Why would you want to do that? It won’t be fun. Besides, won’t you be busy? Aren’t weekends big for you?”
They weren’t big for her. She’d added Saturday hours in an effort to drum up business. So far, no takers.
“Lilah and Gerry can cover for me. Gerry wants to learn more about management. We could walk along the shore. I haven’t been to the shore in a long time.”
She felt herself sliding under the influence of his voice. But she really had to concentrate on surveillance of Jim Morrison and his nefarious plans. And she didn’t want to be worried that Ian would think she was being mean to her mother.
“We could go up on Saturday night,” Ian continued. “Spend the night in a bed and breakfast. I can get someone to recommend a place to me, or if your mom knows somewhere that would be great.”
It sounded so appealing. Of course, there was still marriage and the Jim Morrison issue to get over. And the fact that she would be introducing Ian to them.
They didn’t have to know how she and Ian met.
He was lovely. How could her mother disapprove of a kind, smiling man with deep brown eyes, who ran a successful business? There had to be something wrong with him, of course, but maybe his charm would lull Lisa into forgetting to find fault with him. Just like his charm had lulled Petra.
“Do you not want me to come?” he asked. “You don’t want me to meet your mother?”
“I just—”
Some of it was true. She did not want her mother finding anything wrong with Ian and asking Petra if she had time for relationships when her practice was in peril.
“I want you to come. It’s just not the best circumstances. I’m just afraid that you will see Jim Morrison and Lisa and run screaming. Or that you’ll see us fight or that she’ll try to tell me something about you that makes me sad. It’s one thing to tell you about my problems. It’s another for you to witness them.”
“What could she say about me that would make you sad?”
“I don’t know,” she lied.
Ian said, “I don’t think there’s anything that she could say about you that would make me run away. Why don’t I come and make this easier for you? I could make the whole trip different.”
“You would make the whole trip different,” she said, sincerely. “And maybe I don’t want to feel good, maybe I don’t want you along, making me feel better about everything, making everything seem so easy.” She laughed uncomfortably. “What I’m saying is, you won’t see me at my best.”
“Who says I have to?”