I speed just a bit, turning off 414 onto Rock Cabin Road just as we hit the edge of Watkins Glen, then continuing farther south to Montour Falls.
Fifteen minutes later, I screech into the parking lot of Dr. Whitcross’s office. We’re late, but hopefully they’ll still squeeze us in. I unload Nadine, and inside, a miserable-looking woman ushers us into an exam room. I think I went to high school with her; she strikes me as very familiar, but I can’t quite place her face. It’s not until she speaks that I realize who she is.
“Sorry about your sister, Ava,” Carrie Brown mumbles. She’s gained about forty-five pounds since high school, and her once-bony cheeks are rounded and puffy. Under her shapeless pink nurse’s garb are a swaying belly and heavy thighs. Her hair is the same bleached shade that it was our senior year, when it was rumored that she got knocked up with Tommy Webster’s baby. I can’t remember if she ended up graduating or not, or having the baby or not. I can hardly ask now.
“Thanks, uh, Carrie,” I say, deeply uncomfortable. I hate running into old classmates. We had nothing in common then, and even less now. “Will Dr. Whitcross be in soon? My mother can get a little temperamental….” Carrie’s expression has hardened at my immediate dismissal of her friendly overture.
“Oh, I know,” she says. It sounds like she really does. I wonder what Mom did the last time she was in here. “Okay,” she says after a long, uncomfortable pause. “See you around. Oh, yeah, he’ll be in in a second.” She glances at me as she walks out the door with an expression I just can’t read, as though she suspects me of being sneaky somehow, that she’s on to me. I waggle my fingers in farewell as she shuts the door.
Seated on a stool, I lean back against the wall and flip through the magazines very thoughtfully provided on the table.
“Hey, look, Mom! J. Lo has upper-arm jiggle.” I show her the gleefully captioned picture, a big red circle drawn around the purported area of wiggliness.
The door finally opens, but instead of the pink-faced old man who has been our family doctor since I was a girl, a young, somewhat attractive man walks into the room. Slightly built, he’s wearing thick-framed glasses and has a very twee haircut. He stops short as he looks up at us and promptly drops the files he was holding. He turns beet-colored and bends down to collect them. I’m tempted to help, but I don’t get up. Flustered, the young doctor sets the disordered stack of papers on the exam table.
“You must be Ava,” he says, offering his hand with visible discomfort.
“Ava Antipova. I’m sorry, I was expecting Dr. Whitcross….”
“I’m Dr. Whitcross. The second. I mean, not actually with roman numerals after my name. I’m Stu. Stuart Whitcross. My father is the other Dr. Whitcross. This is his practice.” The man stumbles over his words as he tries to explain.
“Okay,” I say, not especially interested. “So…you’re my mom’s doctor now?”
“I’ve been seeing her for several months. My father is mostly retired at this point, and I just moved back here from Potsdam.”
“That’s up in the Adirondacks, right? Basically Canada?”
He nods, some of the fuchsia receding from his face, leaving telltale blotches on his neck and jaw. I have no idea why he is so rattled.
“So, I’m just going to give her a basic checkup. Blood pressure, heart rate. And I’d like to get her weight; she’s had some weight loss in the past that we need to keep an eye on. How are we today, Nadine?” he says, shifting over to my mother, who is seated on the exam table. Nadine is still staring vacantly off at the wall, and she doesn’t answer.
“She’s had some good moments, but it really comes and goes.”
“The early-onset form can be tough like that. She’s probably been living with the disease much longer than we’ve been treating it—it’s just now getting unmanageable.”
“Zelda and I used to speculate about that,” I say with a snort. “She was never the most stable person.”
The younger Dr. Whitcross twitches at the mention of Zelda as he continues his examination. He guides a reluctant Nadine to the scale, an action that seems to make her skittish. I sympathize—no one likes to be weighed. Unsure what to do with myself, I fiddle with my phone. Nico has sent a text: Hope u r OK, I think about you ;). I stare at it guiltily and don’t write back.
“She’s been generally disoriented?” Stu says, interrupting my self-flagellation.
“She wanders off, gets confused about who is who. Although when you have twins, that seems fair. I think the whole Zelda thing has her thrown. You’ve heard…?”
He ignores my question. “You’re giving her her meds?”
“Whatever is in the pill dispenser. While I’m here, actually, you should probably give me a schedule of what she’s supposed to get. I’ve just been making her take whatever is set out in that plastic case, but it will only last to Monday.”
He nods again, making a note in the chart. “And alcohol?”
“I’d love some.” I grin. He doesn’t smile back.
“How much has she been drinking.” It’s not really spoken as a question.
“Too much. She gets uncooperative without it, and I figured these are exceptional circumstances.”
“She really shouldn’t be drinking at all,” he chides.
“Yes, Doctor,” I say, nodding along. He looks up, his head cocked to the side. “What?” I ask.
“It’s just…you’re very like your sister,” he says slowly, maintaining eye contact for too long.
“You knew Zelda—ooooh.” The pieces click into place: the way he’s been eyeing me, how strangely he’s behaving, the way he cringes whenever Zelda is mentioned. “You were fucking my sister. I should have guessed earlier.”
He looks stricken and glances uncomfortably at Nadine, but she seems not to have heard. “We were, uh, seeing each other, yes.”
“Isn’t that, like, unethical? Dating patients?”
“She wasn’t a patient. We did meet here, but she called me on my cell and asked if I wanted to get a drink with her. It was entirely aboveboard,” he sniffs defensively.
This guy does not seem like Zelda’s type. That Jason prick made sense to me, because of Zelda’s perverse desire for danger and mayhem, but Stu Whitcross is about as far from enticing as a man can be.
“Indeed,” I say unsympathetically. “Well, you must be very sad.”
“It’s been a bit of a shock, yes.”
I notice that there’s a drop of sweat on his upper lip and a patchy scruff below his chin where he missed a spot shaving. I can’t imagine Zelda sitting across from him at a table, sipping a glass of wine and making polite conversation with him. I didn’t really know her, I think suddenly. If she wasn’t always a stranger, she became one. The thought makes me unspeakably sad, and I am swamped with sudden despair, the kind that swoops in after a bout of drinking and settles over your neurochemicals like an impermeable sheath.
“Will there be a funeral?” Dr. Whitcross asks.