Chapter Thirty-Eight
Cough, cough.
That’s all I needed to hear.
“Tea, Puck. With honey and cinnamon.”
“Mom, noooo! Please, not with honey and cinnamon!”
It was Ireland out. A rain had fallen in the night. And the gray bands of sky slipping dark over yellow morning sun, left me thinking of that island across a treacherous dark ocean. By the time I had Puck’s tea and oatmeal ready, of course there hadn’t been a single cough. Instead, he made patterns of “arrows” and “trees” with the cinnamon floating the surface. Dry air, maybe. The Bear worked from his desk in the library, the cubicle-style desk that doesn’t match the antique bookcases on one wall, but sort of doesn’t match the cheap put-it-together-yourself shelves on the opposite wall either, with a little water damage from those times the basement always flooded when I was a kid, so we didn’t keep nice furniture down there so much for awhile… Song birds were out again, even in February, which is no great surprise. Crackers watched them from the living room windows, over the wild crocus, her shoulders hunched into fluffy arrangements as she crouched behind the glass. I made omelets early for lunch. The boys tried on the eyeglasses together. Puck found a teaspoon he liked in the knick-knack kitchen gadget drawer. He found out I had washed it…
“Does it still have the stains on it, though?!” he asked, a worried toothless gap staring back at me.
“Yes, it does.”
“Oh, good. Because that spoon is very precious to me.”
Crackers stared down a tabby roaming our yard in the damp mud, but she didn’t growl or hiss, surprisingly. I’m still not sure she entirely gets a cat’s life yet. So The Bear waved us off after lunch with a few hugs…
“You’re so short,” he chuckled at me.
Especially when he wears his French lumberjack boots, I feel particularly dwarfed. I guess the effect carries elsewhere. Apparently on Tuesday after Puck and I walked through the short tour of The Bear’s workplace, a lady had asked him later that afternoon in a company meeting…
“So were those your kids you had in today?”
“Well, the short one was my kid…”
I had a follow-up appointment for that lymph node fiasco from two weeks ago. The upper-respiratory-no-other-symptoms-antibiotic-prescribed-could-eventually-require-blood-work-and-remove-lymph-node consultation. I was not so pleased. I asked Mom along for moral support and the outside chance I needed a driver if they siphoned too much life-sustenance from my veins for my BMI. Which they have been known to do… I guess I wasn’t so pleased with the follow-up prescription of nasal spray and lists of cancerous symptoms that I didn’t have, and never did have, and other things that he only talked about because I think this guy just really likes to talk about morbid stuff. So I left in an irritable mood and made other arrangements. On the upside, a ride into Manchester with Mom is always nice. Some upkeep on family news. Martha was moving to Virginia to be close to Eriic, Amanda, and their little one, [who were incidentally coming to visit for an hour on Saturday afternoon]. She had been retired for a year now from working for the Symphony Music School, and it was time to be a full-time grandma. Nerissa was expecting again, now that the twins were four. And Rose was feeling better. It started raining right as we hit 40 on the drive back.
Linnea’s violet-sapphire mermaid-something gown was hanging on the shower curtain pole in the bathroom, a sure sign someone was thinking of attending that Valentine dance I saw penned on the calendar. Probably Francis was going, too. And Joe would be at the City Museum on Saturday. The half of the six who made themselves social. Mostly. Meanwhile, Puck was engulfed in the bunny tornado shelter with a huge bowl of popcorn relaxed on cushions watching the childhood tear-jerker “The Fox and the Hound”, a gift from Great-Grandma Combs. He did let the rain fall a little himself, which made Carrie happy. She likes to comfort teary kids…
“This is what I was waiting for,” she said gleefully.
But she didn’t have much time to spend on that. The ceiling lamp medallions had arrived for the kitchen. So after throwing the circuit breaker, she got busy clamping wires and digging around in the holes in the ceiling, or whatever. She was a little mad at the mess of colored rubber coatings and metal coils as we walked out the door. She’s not afraid to try new things. Somehow she always figures it out.
Rain still tapped our heads as Puck and I returned to the little brick and siding house and a scoop of coupon-heavy mail. The Bear had pulled a B- in January Greek. After all that intense-ness to pass. He was on a conference video chat for work when we got back. Puck requested “The Malted Milkball Falcon” Adventures in Odyssey episode while I got working on dinner. He still trailed the silver windshield cover on the floor around Crackers, just to tempt her I guess. Crackers, who had been given an espresso saucer of skim milk as an added treat on the day. The Bear ended all conference calls, including Curly consulting him on wedding invitations, for the evening, by making a six o’clock drive-off to south city for the usual group. I tried to hunt up my old tin of good drawing pencils while getting Puck ready for bed. The Bear discovered that they made the best kinds of highlighters for Greek. Joe had sent me a Spotify listing of the St. Louis Symphony’s recording of “The Planets”, which I switched on – beautiful things – while wandering the realms of many words and thoughts. When I skirted Mars to Neptune, I managed to find a Netflix title – “Secret of the Incas” – featuring a very young Charlton Heston [who incidentally was married on St. Patrick’s Day, 1944 – a complete 64 years until his death, and whose son actually played baby Moses in “The Ten Commandments”], resembling a surprising combination of Judah Rye and Jim Halpert from “The Office”. Including Mr. O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind” and a pretended couple from St. Louis.