“Have you told the doctor?”
“The occasional bloody nose is not unusual. The bruises...”
“Was that an answer?” he asked.
“Of course I mentioned it to Jessie.”
“And you mentioned your two bloody noses in one day? And quite a few bruises?”
“She’s gone into the city today.”
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“There’s a clerk here,” she said. “Oh, hold on. This is getting ugly.” She put aside her laptop and grabbed more tissues and was mopping up her face, getting blood on her hands. Finally she headed for the bathroom and got a hand towel, pressing that over her face. With a bloodstained towel pressing over her nose, she headed for the kitchen. She found an ice pack and pressed it over the bridge of her nose.
Forgetting about the videoconference call on her computer, she went to the sofa and reclined. Her face was frozen before long, the ice was so cold. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, trying to stop the bleeding, when young Cameron came into the living room, took one look at her and screamed, “Holy shit, your honor!”
“It’s a bloody nose,” she said.
“It looks more like a bus accident!” He ran to the kitchen and loaded up on paper towels, wetting some of them. “Try pinching the bridge of your nose.”
“I have. It’ll stop soon.”
Together they concentrated on getting the bloody nose to stop but for the next fifteen minutes all they did was collect bloody towels, tossing them on the coffee table. Anna began to choke and cough, gagging on the blood that was running down the back of her throat.
The door from the garage opened and slammed shut and Jessie walked into the family room to find a young male clerk bent over Anna, a large pile of bloody paper towels on the coffee table beside them. She calmly walked over to them and said, “Oh, dear. Stay right here.”
Jessie opened her doctor’s bag on the kitchen counter. She pulled something out, cut it with her scissors and came back to the sofa. She stuffed some thick cotton up Anna’s nose.
“Lay back on these pillows and breathe through your mouth.”
“Did you just stuff tampons up my nose?” Anna asked.
“Sort of,” Jessie said. “I think your blood thinner needs to be adjusted.”
“We used tampons in wrestling,” Cameron said. “It works.”
Anna laid there for a while, the strings of two tampons trailing across her cheeks. “This is becoming concerning,” was all she could think of to say.
Though it took quite some time, with Jessie’s help, they finally managed to stop the nosebleed. Jessie cleaned up her mother’s face, discarded the wet towels and put in a call to Anna’s doctor. A changed prescription was called into the pharmacy.
“This is getting to be a lot of trouble,” Anna said.
“Patience,” Jessie advised. “We’re getting there.”
SIXTEEN
It was the night before Thanksgiving and Michael sat in his apartment alone, slowly nursing a beer. He had thought about going out with some of his buddies, but before he had even completed the thought, he lost interest. He could have gone to his mother’s house, but Jessie and Bess were both there, staying the night, helping with the preparations for Thanksgiving dinner. He just didn’t feel like all that fake happy-family bullshit. They weren’t a happy family anymore. He felt they’d lost it all when his father died and then lost it all again when they found out their father had betrayed them. Betrayed them all, when you got down to it.
His thoughts were distracted by the ringing of the phone and he smiled to see it was Jenn calling. If there was an upside to all the crap he’d been dealing with it was Jenn. He had called her to tell her his mother had had a stroke and that was all it took to get them talking again. She couldn’t tell him to go jump off a bridge when his mother could be dying.
He might’ve played up that stroke a bit, making it sound far worse than it had been for sympathy, and he felt no shame at all. Jenn, empathetic and kind, had been willing to chat, encourage him, offer any kind of assistance he might need. What he needed was Jenn. He didn’t deserve her but he needed her.
“Hello there!” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving, a little early.”
“Same to you! How is your mom doing?”
“Better, though there was some drama last week. Apparently she got a nosebleed that was really tough to stop. Once things calmed down and got under control there were a lot of laughs—I guess Jess walked in on her clerk trying to help Mom and Jessie stuffed a couple of tampons up her honor’s nose. She got a picture. It’s hilarious.”
“Poor Anna,” Jenn said, but she chuckled.
“I guess they’re going to wind down the blood thinners a little bit. This is not a good time for my mother to be in a car accident!”
“Like it’s ever a good time! Will you be having dinner there tomorrow?”
“Sure,” he said. “Where else? How about you?”
“Here, with my folks and sisters. Julie, Beau and the kids are already here. They flew in earlier today. Tommy and Susanne are driving from Sacramento and coming tomorrow morning but of course they’re staying over.”
Jenn was the youngest of three girls and the girls were close. Like best friends. “And you’ll stay over, too?” he asked.
“Actually, this is my home now,” she said. “I gave up my apartment. I’m going to live with my parents for a while and save some money. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to afford a small house. That’s my goal, anyway.”
He could now afford a small house. Thanks to his father. The liar and cheat. “Not a lot of privacy for you in that plan.”
“I don’t need a lot of privacy but I could sure use a more permanent investment and one that doesn’t look out at a brick wall or a parking lot. My fifth year in the school district is coming up, too. That’s a nice pay increase. And I’ve been thinking about taking on a part-time job.”
“You’re really serious about this savings program.”
“I am,” she said. “There’s a private school that provides after-hours care. They have after-school care till ten p.m. for working parents. They pay decently and you know me and kids. It would be like getting paid to play.”
“You aren’t going to have much time for yourself,” he said. “For, you know, grown-up fun.”
“I’ll manage,” she said. “Is your mom going to be able to go back to work any time soon?”
“She’s been working from home a lot, but she still gets wobbly and tired. She’s improving with physical therapy and I’ve noticed the walker isn’t being used anymore, but I also noticed she shuffles a little when she walks.”
“She might be a little nervous,” Jenn said. “Maybe she’s worried about falling.”
“Could be,” he said. “She does seem to be taking things slow. And then Jessie won’t let her do too much.”
“So, is it just the four of you for dinner tomorrow?”
“Bess has a boyfriend and he’s going to stop by for a little while. And our friend Joe is spending the day at his daughter’s house in Bodega Bay, so on his way back to his house, he’s stopping by. That’s it.”
“How about that new sibling?” she asked. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. But no, she’s not coming. Really, that wouldn’t be cool. I mean, it’s not my mom’s long-lost daughter. It’s my dad’s secret illegitimate daughter.”
“I really think it’s amazing that your mom has met her, befriended her, gotten to know her...”
“My mom’s really liberal.”
“I was thinking she’s very forgiving and loving.”
“She thinks the baby is cute,” he said. “But it’s not her grandchild, it’s my dad’s grandchild... Not cool.”
“Do you ever get tired of being so judgmental? Stuff like this has been happening for centuries! Kings and queens have been sired out of wedlock. Sometimes these scandals have started wars and sometimes they’ve created new dynasties.”
“This isn’t that.”
“But it isn’t your half sister’s fault. And it sure isn’t her new baby’s fault. Your niece, by the way.”
“And it’s not my fault,” he said.
“Don’t be juvenile, of course it’s not your fault. But you have a blood relative you’ve never met and you should meet her. Just meet her. You don’t have to support her or be best friends or anything. Just say hello. If you want to really be an above-average human being, you might ask her if there’s anything she’d like to know about her father.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you loved and admired your father,” she said patiently. “By all accounts he was a very neat guy. I barely knew him and I really liked him. You have great parents. And he was crazy proud of you! The fact that he slipped up has nothing to do with you.”