She hears footsteps on the stairs, then Potter’s voice and a child’s voice. A child’s voice. This is real, Ava thinks. She’s about to meet Potter’s son.
She opens the door and stands on the landing wearing what she hopes is a carefree, welcoming smile. She notices tiny pinpricks of red on her white blouse—splatters from the tomato soup.
Oh well, Ava thinks. The blouse is a small sacrifice to make for this suddenly all-important dinner.
“Hi, guys!” Ava says as soon as the top of Potter’s head is visible.
Potter turns to give her a warning look. Ava realizes that Potter is pulling seven-year-old PJ up the stairs, and then Ava hears the sobbing. Potter makes it to the landing below Ava’s apartment with PJ in tow. When PJ looks up and sees Ava, he lets out an ear-piercing shriek.
Ava puts a finger to her lips. “The neighbors,” she says. “Mrs. Simonetta.” Mrs. Simonetta is sensitive to noise and has more than once complained about the volume at which Ava plays her Natalie Merchant. PJ’s scream will likely spur Mrs. Simonetta to phone in a SWAT team.
Potter picks PJ up, even though he is far too big. “You have to stop, PJ. Ava is nice. Ava is my friend and she wants to be your friend.”
PJ shrieks again.
The scene on the landing lasts another sixty seconds or so, with PJ shrieking every time Potter tells him Ava is nice and would PJ please climb the final set of stairs so they can eat supper. Mrs. Simonetta clearly isn’t home, because there is no way she would tolerate that kind of commotion outside her door.
Ava resorts immediately to bribery. “If you come upstairs, PJ, I’ll give you an ice pop. I have three flavors: cherry, grape, and orange.” In truth, the organic flavors are pomegranate, fig, and mango, but they can deal with Ava’s deception once they get the child up the stairs.
“I don’t want an ice pop!” PJ screams.
“I also have whoopie pies,” Ava says. She congratulates herself for “treading lightly.” Could Margaret Quinn herself be handling this any better?
“What about a whoopie pie, buddy? It’s chocolate cake with marshmallow filling.”
“No!” PJ screams. “No! No! No!” He looks up at Ava and says, “I hate you! I want my mom!”
Ava draws in a breath. She looks at Potter and sees the expression of helpless agony on his face. “I think he’s t-i-r-e-d from traveling,” Potter says.
“Okay,” Ava says. “Why don’t we try this again tomorrow?”
“But—,” Potter says.
“I am not tired!” PJ screams. “I’m screaming because I hate you! I hate you, lady!”
Ava channels her inner saint. She didn’t even know she had an inner saint, but apparently she does, because she smiles at Potter and says, “It’s fine. Call me later.”
“You win, buddy,” Potter says to PJ. “We’ll go home. But you and I are going to have a serious talk in the taxi.”
PJ races down the stairs. Potter mouths I love you to Ava, then chases after his son.
Ava closes the door of her apartment, flips the dead bolt, and stares at the table set for three, with the candles flickering and the red Gerber daisies showing their perky, optimistic faces. She inhales the scent of onions, tomato, and basil, and then she starts to cry.
KELLEY
He begged Mitzi to put off calling hospice until things got really bad.
Things are really bad.
Kelley had a seizure while watching a football game with Bart, and he lost the sight in his left eye. That sight is never coming back, Dr. Cherith said. And he may soon lose sight in his right eye. Then his hearing will go, his sense of smell, his ability to chew and swallow. He feels like the poor chump in the song “Moonshadow.”
Kelley is dying and there is nothing he can do to stop it. When Kelley was released from Mass. General after the seizure, he gave Mitzi the okay to call hospice and suspend operation of the inn.
The funny thing was that as soon as the hospice workers started showing up, Kelley felt better, stronger, healthier. He guesses he’s the healthiest person ever to use hospice. Today, the twenty-fourth of October, he has enough energy to use his walker all the way down the hall, through the living room, to the kitchen. He wants a cup of tea, and rather than ring his bell, he decides to go in search of the tea himself.
He says to Lara—Lara not Laura, she has corrected him three times, no concessions made for his pronunciation even though he has brain cancer—“Mitzi likes me to drink herbal tea, but would it be okay for me to have a cup of regular Lipton?”
Lara says, “I don’t think a cup of regular Lipton will hurt.”
Kelley decides to press his luck. He says, “What I’d really like is a teaspoon of white sugar in my regular Lipton tea. Not honey, not agave, not raw organic turbinado. Just good old white processed sugar.”
“Does Mrs. Quinn keep something as toxic as that in the house?” Lara asks.
“She does,” Kelley says. “We keep it on hand for the guests. There are packets of Domino in the breakfront. Might you grab me one… or two?”
Lara disappears into the guest dining room and emerges shortly thereafter shaking two sugar packets like castanets. Lara is a stickler about her name, but she is wonderfully lenient about other things, Kelley is happy to see.
The next day Kelley is in bed. He can no longer read or watch TV—it puts too much strain on his good eye—and so he listens to books on tape. He considered choosing some classics that he’d always wanted to read, but it turned out there were no classics he’d always wanted to read. He will go rebelliously to his grave never having slogged through Moby-Dick. Instead Kelley becomes addicted to the novels of Danielle Steel. Now, there’s a woman who knows about life: dying billionaires who cut their obnoxious children out of the will, unappreciated housewives who fall into the arms of the children’s sailing instructor. And Ms. Steel writes one heck of a sex scene. Today Kelley is listening to The Mistress. It’s his fourth Danielle Steel book in a row, and he fears he might be falling a little in love with her. But becoming attached to someone new at this stage of the game is probably not a good idea.
Lara comes into the room to do her hospice duties, and Kelley holds up a finger to let her know she should wait until the narrator reaches a break before she takes his lunch order, plumps his pillows, refills his meds, and rubs ointment on his feet.
He pauses his book and says, “Hello, Lara.”
She smiles. “Hello, Kelley. Are you ready for lunch?”
Kelley grimaces. He fears lunch is spinach soup made without any butter, cream, or salt. Basically, Mitzi boils raw spinach, purées it with some vegetable broth, heats it up, and calls it soup. She serves it with hard little seeded crackers that taste like something she stole from the bird feeder.
“I want a ham and pickle sandwich from the Nantucket Pharmacy,” Kelley says. “On rye bread. With a bag of regular Lay’s potato chips and a chocolate frappe.”
“That sounds ambitious,” Lara says.
It is ambitious. Kelley feels hungry in his mind, but when food is in front of him, he can normally manage only a few bites. But it occurs to him that this might be because he isn’t tempted by any of the offerings. If there were something he actually wanted to eat, he would devour it. Or eat more than usual. He has lost twenty-nine pounds since he stopped chemo in June.
“Please?” he says.
“I can run out and get it for you now,” Lara says.
Kelley’s functioning eye widens, and he tries to sit up a little straighter, although doing so hurts. He now has tumors on three of his vertebrae. “You can?”
“I’d like to see you eat,” Lara says. “And I’d like to see you happy. It’s amazing how indulging a little bit can boost the morale.”
“You know,” Kelley says. “I used to think Jocelyn was the nice hospice worker and you were the tough one. But you are rapidly gaining ground, Lara. Before you leave, may I inquire: Where is Mrs. Quinn?”
“She left a few minutes ago to meet with the caterers for Bart’s birthday party,” Lara says.
Yes! Kelley thinks. They have a window! Let the caper begin!