The Sparrow Sisters (16 page)

“This is when the whole town gets in on the act.”

“Patience, no one has the slightest interest in us.”

But they did. First Ryder Redmond had to put a hand over her mouth to trap her squeal when she saw the two come in, then several smudgily familiar people stuttered as they stared and said good morning. They continued down the street, drinking coffee and sharing a cinnamon bun, Patience's squinty frown the only dark spot in Henry's life.

“This is just great,” Patience growled.

“Isn't it?” Henry grinned foolishly. “Utterly great! Let's do this a lot.”

“Be quiet, you overemotional oaf.”

“Oaf, what a terrific word,” Henry crowed. He was inexpressibly happy; Patience's hand was in the crook of his arm, her eyes had an unfocused, dreamy look that he chose to believe was happiness. He was on a stroll with his now public, nearly blind lover.

When they opened the door at Ivy House, Sorrel was standing in the hallway dangling Patience's glasses in her hand. They were tortoiseshell, old-fashioned, and thick enough that Henry understood Patience's need for help. What he didn't understand was how Sorrel knew to be waiting there.

“Oh, man,” he said as Patience slipped them on. “You are a complete goob.” Henry reached for her arm again, thinking that they'd crossed some kind of magical border and come out into a sunshiny state where his girlfriend was openly loving and grateful. He was wrong. Patience shook his hand off and escaped into the kitchen, leaving Henry and Sorrel in uncomfortable silence.

“Go to her,” Sorrel said finally. “She's embarrassed to be seen in those clunkers.”

“She's embarrassed by me,” Henry said in his low voice.

“She's only embarrassed to need you.” Sorrel gave Henry a little shove. “She doesn't mean to be a bully.”

Patience was in the garden. Henry came up behind her. She leaned into him before he even put his arms around her waist.

“I don't know what is the matter with me,” she said. “Now that I've spent a whole night with you, I am completely incapable of imagining one alone.”

“And this notion of being apart compels you to be rude and snappish?” Henry rested his head on top of Patience's. He sniffed, involuntarily.

“Catnip,” Patience said.

“Yes, you are,” Henry murmured.

“That's not what I meant.”

Henry turned Patience around. “I find myself heavily invested in . . .” He rubbed his forehead against hers, searching for a name for their collision. They weren't really dating, it wasn't an affair, but calling it love would absolutely send Patience over the edge. “This thing we're doing is extremely wonderful and important to me. I am unrecognizable to myself, in the best way,” Henry said. “But I really can't bear it when you get snarly and touchy. So what do you say we just move on to the hopelessly romantic part?”

And they did. They had two perfect weeks. The weather was fine, the Sisters fed and fussed over Henry, and he spent more nights at Ivy House than he did at his own. It was as if his admission had cleared not just his heart but also his whole being. He was funny and clever; his good looks were polished by his happiness. Patients and passersby were drawn to his wisdom. He seemed to have acquired a remarkably quick and deft hand at diagnosis and repair. Strangely, his leg was truly better; whether it was time, sun, and sea, or Patience, Henry didn't particularly care, although he did notice. But, of course, Patience knew exactly what had changed him.

Everything about Henry tilted into the light. His speech
was infused with delightful sounds and his heart with unexpected softness. He woke each morning as giddy as Patience was alarmed. Ridiculous impulses overtook him regularly, and he put in a daily order at Baker's Way Bakers so that there was always a plate of cookies in his waiting room. Sally Tabor was tempted to take her boss aside and feel his forehead for fever.

Sorrel created delicate floral tributes to Henry's good fortune, and her sister's, and delivered them to his office every few days. The scent of delphinium, stock, and phlox obliterated the antiseptic haze. His patients appeared endearing in their minor illnesses, and Henry even took greater care with his charts, earning him a jar of beach plum jelly from Sally. He had only one patient who required more than minimal attention and that brought him to tears, even though it was an elderly man who was clearly in the last stages of his life and needed only to be eased. The fact that Patience was already on the case and had not only given him remedies to see the man through but had made sure he was settled into hospice care made Henry thoroughly useless with love.

The only wavelet in this lovely tide of romance came when Henry fell unexpectedly ill. Even then, it was a weekend and as he lay feverish and faintly despairing, Patience nursed him with remarkable good humor, given her general impatience with ill men. Too often they became whiny boys, but with Henry she found her concern was a gentle, coddling thing. She offered him several of her own remedies, but Henry, in a voice that had moved from a low grumble to a raspy whisper, turned her
down. He allowed her to bathe him with cooling witch hazel when his temperature rose to 102 and to keep water and aspirin by his bed. She watched him as he slept fitfully and flinched when he murmured, “I'm so sorry” into the night. He never knew that the agrimony she tucked under his pillow finally sent him into a dreamless, healing sleep. By Sunday afternoon his fever had broken, and Patience took him to the Outer Beach to let him paddle in the unseasonably warm ocean water. She was of the opinion that there was very little that salt water couldn't cure. And she was right. As they climbed under clean sheets that night, Henry turned to her with a vigor that belied how sick he'd been, and she laughed as he held her against his chest. He awoke the next morning reborn, and Patience found she could barely remember how unsettled she'd been watching him suffer.

One Friday Ben Avellar brought Henry three huge lobsters, courtesy of his helpers. Henry took them to Ivy House, dragging Ben, a nervous wreck, beside him. Nettie hauled out a giant steamer and served the lobsters whole along with asparagus from the garden.

“Asparagus in July!” Henry marveled, earning him a dazzling smile from Sorrel and an eye roll from Patience.

Nettie insisted that Ben stay, and they all sat around the kitchen table until Ben began to yawn.

Every night Henry and Patience made love furiously, silently down the hall from the Sisters, or tumbled across the furniture in his apartment. Henry couldn't believe he was so very lucky.
Henry stared at his beloved beneath him and watched for signs that she felt as he did. He was becoming fairly sure of her; she hadn't pulled one of her attempts to make him change his mind since “the profiterole disaster,” as he came to think of it. Nor did she bring up his injury. When she touched him, it was everywhere, her hands leaving a trail of heat so satisfying that Henry groaned and Patience had to hush him.

Sometimes when they kissed he peeked to see if Patience had her eyes open. Henry was of the belief that if you did, then you weren't really in the moment, you didn't care enough. He was grateful that hers were shut tight. When she tilted her chin up, her lips parted, her head pressed into the pillow as Henry moved over her,
he
was unwilling even to blink.

For her part Patience felt as if she were holding a soap bubble in her hand. She glided through her day intent on keeping this shiny, temporary, beautiful, perfect thing intact. This in itself was unusual. Patience was adept at snatching misery from the tender jaws of joy. If Henry had metaphorically salted his wound to remind himself of his failure, Patience did the opposite. She refused to examine her luck too closely. She held herself as still as she could, intent on not popping the damn bubble.

Finally Patience decided that if she was ever to release that fragile thing and grab what was now clearly something worth holding on to, she needed to let Henry in as he'd demanded. So one evening she took him to the Nursery to let him see her chest of remedies. She hoped that once he was back in the
midst of her—honestly—very appealing world, he might be less likely to leave it. In that, she was so much like her sisters. Plus, Patience thought she might just slip him a little something to ensure that he couldn't forget her. As it happened, she didn't need to, and she never had the chance.

Henry was reminded that this was how their relationship had started, Patience showing him the instruments of her gift, and he felt it was an encouraging development. Ben came along with his new, if untested, inventory skills. It was the perfect opportunity for him to begin cataloguing just what it was that Patience kept in her stores. Together they sat at the counter and drank an inexplicably delicious tea: it was sweet, sour, bitter, and salty all at once and utterly irresistible. Both men took one sip and forgot why, exactly, they were there at all. Patience described what she made and how she used each remedy. There was no explaining how she knew what was really wrong underneath the symptoms. Ben took notes in handwriting that suffered from his broken thumb.

“Whatever it is I do, it's as natural to me as breathing,” Patience said as Henry sifted through the leaves and petals on the counter. He lifted the tiny vials to the light and marveled at their pure, clean colors.

“Now, Ben here.” Patience patted his big shoulder. “He's been holding onto love forever.”

Ben blushed so hard Henry thought he might explode like an overfilled tick.

“I wish you wouldn't do that,” Ben said.

“Then tell her, Ben. Don't wait until she's gone,” Patience scolded.

“Is Nettie leaving?” Ben sat up straight.

“So it
is
Nettie!” Patience crowed.

“Oh, for God's sake, I can't believe this!” Ben said and put his head in his hands. “Please just talk about someone else.”

“OK, let's take Matty,” Patience said as she picked up one of the bottles. She smiled at Henry, and he felt like they were a team, a feeling that made him smile back.

“Yes, tell me about Matty,” Henry said.

“He's autistic, on the milder spectrum. It's the anxiety that really gets to him; no ten-year-old should be such a mess. Anyway, his father hasn't been able to keep up since his wife died, so Matty doesn't get his meds regularly and he doesn't get the attention he needs.”

“That's dangerous,” Henry said and tore a piece of paper from Ben's pad. “Give me the dad's name and I'll call him. I can stop in now and then or get some neighbors to pitch in.”

“Well, that would work if Rob Short weren't a son of a bitch,” Patience said, irritated that such a simple solution was not available to Matty. “Even though I know he never got over his wife's death, I still blame him. Anyway, I can usually get Matty through the bad patches.”

Henry put his pen down and took a deep breath. He didn't want to challenge Patience, and certainly not in front of Ben, who was already shifting his stool away. It's true there was a gathering in the air, a slight vibration that Ben noticed and
Henry, unfortunately, did not. Confident that his love was palpable in the slant of his shoulders as he leaned toward Patience, sure that their budding relationship was still painted in the rosy glow of newness, Henry decided to be honest. He miscalculated.

“You can't just medicate this child at will, Patience,” he said. “And what's more, I've seen him. He's incredibly fragile. I don't think he's well on a number of levels. If he's on Dr. Higgins's books, I can intervene. Let me deal with this.”

And just like that, the hopelessly romantic part was over.

Ben watched Patience's face close down; he felt the chill settle in the air and looked out, expecting rain clouds. All he saw was the wisteria so greenly muscular that it threatened to snake straight through the windows. She gathered up her bottles, powders, plants, and pots and began shoving them back in the drawers in a rush. Henry looked at Ben and made a face.

“Patience, sweetheart,” he said. It was the first time he'd used any endearment. He was careful not to give her too much overt affection; she could be as skittish as Matty. It stopped Patience in her tracks.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I'm trying to help Matty and cut you off at the wig-out pass.” Henry attempted a smile; it was stillborn when he felt the cold leap off Patience like a blow.

“Well, you suck at it,” Patience said. “I am perilously close to a wig-out.” She'd snarled on the last words.

“Look, you don't expect me to stand back and let you treat
a potentially sick child without some kind of
conventional
”—Henry emphasized the word—“medical participation?”

“You know, I told you this already,” Patience said. “This town was just fine before you rolled up.”

“If that were true, we wouldn't be so worried about Matty right now,” Henry said softly.

Patience stared at him, opened her mouth, and shut it just as quickly. Henry thought maybe he saw affection flit across her face before she walked away.

“Okay, then,” Ben said and stood. “I should probably get a move on.”

“You can't leave without me,” Henry said. “I drove.”

“Right, right.” Ben sat back down.

Patience turned in the open door. “At this moment I am enormously angry at you, Henry Carlyle. Mostly, I'm afraid that you are right, that I've fucked up.” She took a deep breath, and Henry hoped she would come back to him and settle down. But she didn't.

“I need some time to reflect and drink and recover my bad attitude,” she said and left. The men heard her truck start up with a roar.

“You've really mellowed her,” Ben said. “She could have, like, cursed you with, you know, one of these.” He picked up a bundle of an unnamed spiky herb.

Henry put his head on the tall counter. The last two weeks had gone by in a lovely swoon, and now he felt the dizzyingly empty space where Patience had just been. His voice was
hollow when he said, “Ben, I am seized with love for that woman.”