Love's Little Instruction Book (21 page)

“My mother used to tell if we were hot by putting her cheek against our foreheads,” he advised her.

“Yeah. Well. It’s February. My cheek was just outside too. I don’t think it would work.”

His shoulders sagged just a little.

“I brought you your chicken soup,” she said, trying not to appear anxious to just drop of the care package and fly off, like some beneficent foreign government reluctantly aiding a refugee village. She had made certain that she had picked up plastic spoons to go with the soup. Let the germy utensils be thrown into the incinerator or landfill or wherever they put the trash from here in outer suburbia. She didn’t want to contaminate the good silverware he used.

“Oh, God, you’re an angel,” he told her, slowly pivoting his vise-gripped head on his achy neck to look at the little white bag as though it held his salvation inside it. “Can you bring me a bowl?” he asked.

She reached to open the bag and extracted the clear plastic container. “You don’t need a bowl, it’s in one of these plastic jobbers.”

He looked up at her with puppy dog eyes. “Could you heat it up for me?”

Denise resisted her urge to sigh in resignation. He was sick, after all. She forced a faint, grim semblance of a smile. “Sure,” she said, as she pivoted on her heel and marched dutifully off into the kitchen.

• • •

Dave waited until he heard the microwave humming before calling her back to him. “Neesie?”

She stopped in the doorway. “Yeah?”

He hesitated. He wanted her to stay with him. To maybe hold her hand or even sooth his knotted belly by rubbing it in slow, warming circles. But that seemed like too intimate a thing to ask, even in his incapacitated state. He struggled to think what excuse he could give her for calling her back. “I didn’t change Cookie’s water today. Could you do it?”

“Sure,” she said, nodding. Then she disappeared again.

Dave lay back and listened to the hum of the microwave and the sound of Denise talking to Cookie as she took out the water dish. It sounded like she was taking the bird with her as she moved around the apartment, talking to the bird about what she was doing and telling her what a pretty bird she was. Dave lay back and closed his eyes. It was good to have her there. Just to listen to her was a comfort. He didn’t want to be alone, and with Denise there, he wasn’t.

He relaxed, still feeling ill but somehow more secure. The books were wrong. They all put the emphasis on the physical aspects of taking care of a sick loved one. It wasn’t about that — lusting and being lusted after was the last thing he felt like right now. It was about caring and being cared for, knowing that she was there when he needed her, and that he could count on her. He sighed contentedly, and wondered if maybe he could get her to read to him while he rested. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly at the idea of having Denise tuck him in and read to him. He wondered vaguely what she would read. It didn’t matter to him. He thought there might have been some poetry in one of his old college books. Yeah, that would do. Women loved poetry.

“You awake?” she asked softly as she entered the bedroom.

His eyes opened and he looked up at her helplessly. “I feel lousy,” he told her.

“So you’ve said,” she reminded him. “Here. I brought your soup.” She held out the plastic bowl toward him.

Dave took the plastic tub and eyed the yellowish brown liquid with suspicion. “What is it?”

“Mulligatawny,” she told him proudly. “It’s that curried chicken soup with vegetables and apple in it. I remembered how much you liked it, so I went all the way to Nadelman’s to get it for you.”

Dave knew he should have been gracious. He knew he should have thanked her and then found some tactful way of setting the soup aside, but he couldn’t do it. He was too busy trying to stop his stomach from churning as he looked at the vibrant curried broth with large chucks of fruit and vegetables afloat in it. The fragrant, hot spicy smell assailed his nostrils.
The hotter the better
, he had told her once. He discovered now that he had been wrong. He fought vainly to control the storm that was churning up inside him, but to no avail — the waves crashed, the wind screamed and the earth shook. He could no more stop the inevitable than he could hold back the tides or stop the earth from spinning. But still, he fought it, he fought it with every last ounce of strength and desperate determination that lingered in his ravaged body. He fought it until he could fight no more. He fought it until —

“Oh, yuck!” Denise yelled, jumping away from the bed.

He wanted to apologize. He wanted to take the whole hellacious moment back. He wanted to hang his head and cry with mortification. But most of all, he just wanted to stop heaving.

She was gone when it finally ended. He couldn’t blame her. He hung there, bent over the bowl, eyes closed as he shook and tried to draw in calm, steadying breaths. A sudden warm wetness trickled down against his leg and he jumped out of bed, narrowly missing upsetting the industrial sized metal bowl that he clasped in his arms. Looking down, he was somewhat relieved to see that it was merely the soup, apparently sloshed out of the tub when he had pushed it aside in an effort to get to the bowl. The thought made him heave again, although unproductively this time.

And suddenly she was there again, holding out a washcloth towards him. He looked up at her tiredly. “You okay?” she asked quietly.

He nodded, not because he was, but because he was finished, or at least he hoped so. He took the cloth from her and stared at it numbly. “You’d better wash you face,” she told him gently. “Here, are you done with the bowl?”

He nodded and she took it from his lap and left the room. He wiped his mouth hastily with the cloth and wearily pulled his battered body from the sodden sheets.

He heard her empty out the bowl’s contents into the toilet and flush them away, then listened as she hastily rinsed out the bowl in the bathroom sink. He sank into the computer chair, vaguely aware that he was clad only in his underpants, but feeling too awful to care. She came back to the room, pausing to survey the wreckage from the doorway. “I’ll strip the bed for you and put the sheets in the laundry. Where do you keep your clean sheets?”

“Bathroom closet,” he said shortly. She ventured back in and made short work of stripping the bed.

“The broth went all the way through the mattress pad,” she told him as she revealed his naked mattress. “You’d better bed down on the couch for a while to give it a chance to dry out.”

He nodded wearily, vaguely registering what she was telling him. “Just as well,” he said. “If there’s still the smell of curry there, it will probably do me in.”

She glanced up at him. “I thought you liked the mulligatawny,” she said in a faintly accusing way.

“I do … or I did, any way. But not when I’m sick. I just wanted chicken soup. Plain, simple chicken soup. You know, Jewish penicillin? I think the smell of the spices made me sick.” He looked up at her then. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like you planned it or anything.” She gathered up the sheets, blanket, pad, and all and tossed them into the laundry basket. “Come on, big guy,” she said, after making up the couch.

Dave followed her at a decrepit, shuffling pace, making small, pained noises just under his breath as he did so. She set the pillow down on the couch and flipped back the corner of the afghan. “In,” she ordered his succinctly.

As Denise disposed of the soup in the kitchen, Dave lay curled on the couch and listened to the whine of the disposal. He felt like something more than just the soup was being disposed of, but he didn’t want to think about what it was. He was mortified at having vomited in the face of her good deed. He felt angry with Denise for having not thought to bring ordinary chicken soup to start with, offering him instead this heavily spiced recipe for disaster. And he felt tired and drained and utterly embarrassed.

He wondered sadly what he could ask her to do for him next. He didn’t want her to leave him. She could help to take care of him, even in this god-forsaken state. He’d feel better if he wasn’t left alone. He’d have to make it up to her by finding a way to make her feel useful, to give her a chance to make up her blunder by caring for him successfully. That was it, she could baby him and nurture him and he’d be a model patient. No more breakfast revisited. She could help him get better this time. Yeah. That was it. Just so she wouldn’t feel too badly about making him throw up in the first place.

He heard her walk back into the bedroom and turn off the light. Then she went back into the bathroom and washed her hands for what seemed to him like a very long time. When she came back into the room, she was carrying a blanket. The chills that had followed his efforts were mostly gone now, but he appreciated her thoughtfulness in bringing him another blanket to lay over the afghan.

“You okay?” she asked from several feet away.

“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” he replied, rather gallantly, to his way of thinking.

“That’s good,” she replied.

“I don’t need another blanket,” he told her. “I’ll probably be too hot again in a few minutes.”

She glanced down at the blanket in her arms. “Oh, this wasn’t for you,” she said.

Dave was touched. If it wasn’t for him, that left just one person that it could possibly be for. He thought of her bundled on the floor by the couch, ready to be close at hand if he needed anything or, God forbid, took a turn for the worst. Maybe, once he felt a little better and his bed had had a chance to dry and air out, he could persuade her to lie with him. After all, an angel of mercy deserved whatever comfort he could give her. “You’re a good kid,” he told her hazily.

“Then you don’t mind if I take her?”

Her? He was confused. Had she been talking to him while she was in the other room? Maybe she meant
it
instead of
her
. After all, she was going to take the floor, wasn’t she? “I wish you didn’t have to,” he told her nobly.

“I think it will be better if I do,” she told him. And then she moved across the room and draped the heavy blanket all around Cookie’s cage.

He raised his head to stare at her, although it cost him mightily to do so. “You’re taking Cook?” he asked weakly.

She didn’t pause as she bundled the thick blanket around and around the cage. From inside, Cookie gave a muffled chirp. “I don’t think birds can get sick from people,” she acknowledged, “but I don’t think we should chance it. Besides,” she added, “you’re too sick to take care of her.”

He blinked at her in surprise as she stepped away from the birdcage and began to pull on her coat. “But what about me?” he asked pathetically.

“I’ll call you tomorrow to make sure you’re okay,” she promised. “And I’ll see if we have a thermometer at home — you can’t get sick by using someone else’s thermometer, can you?”

“I dunno.”

“Oh,” she added, going to scoop up Cookie’s cage in her arms and turning toward the door, “and I won’t bring you any more mulligatawny. I promise.”

And she closed the door behind her, leaving Dave alone to wallow in his misery. Typical, he thought. He felt like she had given him the bird instead of taking it.

• • •

Dave raised his head when he heard the front door open and somebody call his name the next morning. He had crawled back to his bare mattress in the bedroom in the wee hours, barely checking to make sure that it was dry before collapsing on top of it and pulling the afghan over himself. “Who’s there?” he croaked.

“It’s Judy Johnson,” she called from the living room. “Are you decent?”

Was he? A quick peek under the afghan showed that he was wearing his briefs underneath the afghan and nothing more. Was that decent enough? He wasn’t sure. “Come in, Judy.” he called.

She stopped short in the doorway. “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

He took that murmur as encouragement to tell her exactly what ailed him. “I feel so sick,” he told her. “My gut is hurling and my head throbs and everything just aches.”

Judy stepped forward and pressed her work worn hand against his forehead and frowned sympathetically. “Hmm,” she muttered. “You do feel warm. A bit clammy, too. How long have you been feeling this way?”

“I woke up like this yesterday. At least, I think it was yesterday. I can’t remember.” He looked up at her hopefully. “Is Denise with you?”

“No, but she asked me to come check in on you,” she told him kindly. “She was worried about you.”

“She was?” he asked hopefully.

“Mmm-hmm,” she told him. “What happened to your sheets?”

“I threw up. Denise stripped the bed for me. I think they’re in the bathroom hamper.”

“She left you lying here without any bedding?” Judy asked critically.

“She left me on the couch with the afghan. She took Cookie. Have you seen her? Cookie, I mean?”

“Cookie’s fine.”

“Denise thought Cookie might get sick and left, but I wish she hadn’t. It’s lonely without her here.”

“Can you get up long enough for me to put clean sheets on the bed?” she asked him.

Red spots appeared on his pale cheeks. “I can, but I’m only wearing my underpants under here.”

She smiled at his blush. “Keep the afghan wrapped around you, then. Are you sure you’re warm enough?”

He peered up at her wanly. “I think so.”

“Are there clean sheets in the bathroom?”

“In the closet directly across the hall from it,” he directed her.

“I’ll go get them. You’ll feel better lying on clean sheets.”

His heart lifted at the words “You’ll feel better.” He laid his head back against his arm and listened to her humming as she moved around his apartment. This was more like it. Someone to take care of him. Someone who didn’t mind if he lay there helpless in his underwear. Someone who would baby him for a change. He sighed contentedly. He didn’t want a girlfriend. All he really needed was her mother.

He paused and frowned. He knew that there was something wrong with that statement, but he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to delve into it.

Judy came back carrying fresh sheets and a clean mattress pad. “Can you make it into the bathroom by yourself?” she inquired. “I think I can have the bed all made up by the time you get back.”