"Ow . . . It just slipped out, Amber . . . Ow . . ."
The day before the rainstorm, Betty had gone to the doctor with a bad cough. She hadn't wanted to, but when Annie got home from work and heard her, she had called the doctor and made the appointment without even asking Betty, treating her like a child, and Betty did not have the energy to argue.
"I don't like the way you sound," the doctor had said.
I don't like the way you sound, thought Betty. He was a young man and condescending. But at least he didn't call her dear and talk very slowly and loudly the way some of them did.
"But she just has a cold," Miranda said when the doctor insisted on putting Betty back in the hospital. No need to make a big deal out of it. And everyone knew that people got sicker in hospitals. Especially older people.
"Don't get sundowner's syndrome," she said that night when she and Annie left Betty to the ministrations of the harried nursing staff. "Wash your hands a lot."
"I already have a staph infection, darling."
"See?"
Betty had sent them off with a thrown kiss, a coughing fit, and a wave.
"American Idol," she'd gasped urgently, pointing at the TV.
They looked back at her when they reached the door. She was small and pale and wracked with coughs. Tubes ran into and out of her. She fished her wallet out of the bedside drawer. She dialed the phone, glancing up at the 800 number flashing on the television screen to get it right.
"Oh God, not again," Annie said.
A young man on the TV commercial mopped up a puddle of cola with a miraculously absorbent cloth. "Wowsham!" he said.
The next day, the day of the rainstorm, Betty was still in the hospital. Miranda had spent most of the day there, then taken a break to pull up weeds and breathe the uncontaminated air blowing off the Sound.
Now, as Roberts and Leanne enacted their unhappy pantomime behind the window, Miranda picked Annie up at the station and drove straight to the hospital. She said nothing about what she had seen in the rain. They spoke only of Betty.
"She was fine this morning," Miranda said. She heard how lame this sounded. "She ate some toast and applesauce."
When they arrived in Betty's hospital room, they hung up their wet coats, and their mother waved them closer, one on each side of the bed. "Sit here, and you here," she said. Then she held them close.
"I love you," she said softly, tears welling up. "I love you both so much."
Annie and Miranda caught each other's eye across their mother's back.
"We love you, too," they both murmured. But, what the hell is going on? said their tone.
"It's over," Betty said at last, after a considerable embrace and hushed sniffling. "It's over."
"What?" Annie asked, standing suddenly. "What's wrong? What did the doctor say?"
"The divorce. The divorce is over," Betty reassured her.
"You're not getting divorced?" Miranda asked, a stupid smile spreading across her face.
"Oh, darling, of course we're getting divorced. That's the point. Josie has to give me a divorce now. The forensic accountant figured everything out."
"What forensic accountant?" Annie asked. "What are you talking about?"
"His name is Mr. Mole. Isn't that perfect? I knew he'd help the minute Roberts told me his name."
"Roberts?"
"Roberts and Mr. Mole arranged everything. Josie has to give me our apartment. He has to give me some of our assets, he has to behave like a mensch. It's all settled. I knew he was a mensch. He always said so, after all. "
Annie sank back onto the bed. "Jesus," she said, letting out a sigh of relief. Then: "Some mensch. What Yiddish dictionary do you use?"
"We won!" Miranda said. "Finally. We really won?"
"I'm supposed to go into town tomorrow to sign the papers. But . . ."
"They'll let you come home tonight, and we can drive you in," Annie said.
Betty laughed. "You practically pronounced me dead, and now you want me to hop out of bed and go to meetings? Anyway, they will not let me out tonight . . ."
"But . . ."
Betty coughed, then pointed to her chest. ". . . Pneumonia or some such thing . . ."
Annie rushed out of the room in search of the doctor, who was nowhere to be found, of course. Pneumonia or some such thing? She had saved that minor piece of information for a parenthesis? Her mother was infuriating. Annie wanted to shake her and her pneumonia. She wanted to shake someone, anyway. The doctor would do. She listened to the page: Dr. Franken, Dr. Franken, please call in . . . Dr. Franken, Dr. Franken . . ." Her mother called him Dr. Frankenstein. He was not much older than Annie's son Charlie. Dr. Franken, Dr. Franken. Hospital pages always sounded so ominous. The blood was pounding in Annie's ears.
"You have power of attorney," her mother was saying when she went back into the room to wait for the doctor. "I want both of you to go in and sign the papers for me."