Life is Sweet (28 page)

“I was just there to talk about Olivia. Bob's name didn't even come up.”

Erin folded her arms. “And what about the after-school thing? Did she tell you to take a hike?”

“No, she wrote Cal a check.”

Erin glowered at Becca's handbag, stowed below the register. “I can't believe Pam and Cal would take that creature's money.”

“Erin . . .”

“I can't help it,” Erin declared. “I resent her.”

“But it's for Olivia's sake. You said yourself that she was collateral damage in the whole affair, just like you.”

“I know. I shouldn't feel so petty. I feel like my soul is shriveling.”

Becca sipped her coffee, trying to understand.

Erin's lips turned down. “I keep waking up at two in the morning, in a swivet, completely pissed off at myself. I'll think, ‘I married him. I actually vowed to spend my life with that asshole, till death. What went wrong?' ” She laughed grudgingly. “As if anything could have gone right. If you're to the point that you think someone's an ass, it's best you get away from him, right?”

“You're better off without him.”

“Yeah, but for some reason, knowing that doesn't make it any easier right now.” She wiped crumbs off the counter next to the register. “I feel like one of those jilted Victorian ladies. Maybe I should renounce the world, move back into my place, and let it crumble around me. I could wear the same dress for the next fifty years.”

Said the woman whose closets bulged with clothes, some of which probably had the price tags still attached.

The bell over the door tinkled, and they both swiveled smiles in that direction. Walt and Matthew came in. Matthew looked directly into Becca's eyes, and suddenly she was back in that parking lot again. Heaven help her. There were so many reasons not to start a relationship with anyone right now. On the other side of the scale, though, stood Matthew. Those eyes and that mood-lifting smile tipped everything in his favor.

Walt approached her eagerly, an old shopping bag in his hands. “Me and Matthew hit an estate sale,” he said. “I found this.”

He produced a pink and lavender backpack. On the front grinned the cast of
Me Minus You,
including Becca at her tween zenith of awkward—ponytailed head tilted, hand on her jutting hip. She'd only seen one of these before, in the box of
Me Minus You
memorabilia she'd discovered in her mom's closet after Ronnie's funeral. Her mother had packed away mugs, magazines, a school binder, and the backpack. Why, Becca never knew. Was it supposed to be a time capsule, a keepsake for future generations? In her grief, Becca had dropped it all off at the local Salvation Army. She couldn't think why anyone would ever care about any of this stuff.

“Wow,” she said, staring at the thing. “Is that what you went shopping for?”

“Nah, I needed shirts,” Walt said. “But then I saw this and I knew I wanted it more.”

“How much does one of these go for?” she asked.

“I paid ten bucks, but it was in a box full of kids' books. We dropped those off at the library.”

She recoiled. Ten dollars! “Did you try to talk them down?”

Walt looked almost offended. “Why would I do that? It'll be worth way more than that after you sign it for me.”

She shook her head. It would be worth exactly fifty cents, she imagined. “Walt, what a waste of money.”

“I don't think so.” He held it up, admiring it again. “It makes me proud.”

Proud? The sight of herself in her off-the-shoulder T-shirt and her spastic ponytail made her cringe with embarrassment. It was exactly what she'd been fleeing from for the past decade or more.
I did that, and I didn't even make a success of it.
Maybe she understood Erin's desire to hide herself away, after all. Her psyche had been living in its own crumbling house.

“Sign it for me?” Walt asked, handing her a Magic Marker and the backpack.

A glob of something blocked Becca's throat, and she swallowed several times, trying to get past it. Here was a man who had battled demons she couldn't begin to imagine. He barely had any money to his name to last him who-knew-how-long, and he'd spent ten bucks on a beat-up polyester backpack of a long-cancelled sitcom. Why would someone do that?

She shook her head as she signed her name, not wanting to put a word to the answer. The look in his eyes as he stared at her signature on that hideous, cheesy backpack told her all she needed to know. He even looped it over his shoulder and struck a jaunty pose for everybody.

“Stylish!” Erin said. “Becca bought something this morning, too.” She nodded toward the case.

Everyone stared at the handled box blankly, except for Walt, who knew what it was at once. He went straight for it, entranced. Flipping the case open, he gasped. “A Top Hat and Cane,” he said reverently, even though the sax didn't look like much to Becca. Its age showed in its worn lacquer, which was dark, scratched up, and pitted in places.

“I rented it. I thought you might enjoy having something to keep you occupied during the day.”

“Oh yes, I would.” He smiled at Becca, and then, in an instant, she was pulled into a big bear hug. “Thank you.”

Tears prickled her eyes and she pulled away.
First hug from my father,
she thought,
and I'm falling to pieces.
Part of the reason she got the thing was to see if he even played at all. He'd barely mentioned saxophones since she'd met him.

He looked almost as choked up as she felt. Maybe he was that glad to have a sax again.

“Play something,” Matthew said.

Walt ran his hands over the pearled keys and then lifted a diffident glance. “Oh, I don't know . . . after all these years, I should work up some chops before I inflict a song on you folks.” He closed up the case, latched it, and looked over at Becca again. “But I sure do thank you.”

She nodded, feeling that lump again, and was glad for the distraction of a newly arrived customer. When Walt and Matthew left, loading the sax into Matthew's car, along with the purple backpack, she knew exactly what she needed to do next. She got out her phone and punched in the number for the transplant clinic.

Chapter 23

On her second visit to the transplant center, Becca arrived prepared. The tote bag she carried with her bulged with a day's worth of food and waiting room activities. She'd brought a book, a magazine, an extra magazine, lunch, and a bottle of juice to sip after the blood draw, in case she got woozy. She'd also packed a sweater, because the last time the hospital thermostat had been set to tooth chattering.

Her first stop of the day was a simple finger prick to determine blood type. No big deal—for anyone who wasn't a wimp at the sight of blood—but she dug out the juice, just in case. This was just the first step of a long medical journey, and she needed to adjust to having people poking needles into her.

She'd barely taken two swigs of vitality-restoring apple-grape juice when the nurse came back in and informed her that she needed to see Dr. Laverents.

Quick action. She liked it.

The surgeon waited patiently as she settled herself into a chair and steadied her overloaded tote bag at her feet.

“I'm sorry, but it looks like you're not a match,” he announced.

The words came so unexpectedly, Becca couldn't quite comprehend them at first.

“Your blood type is not compatible with Mr. Johnson's. You're AB. Mr. Johnson is type O.” He launched into an impromptu review of the requirements for blood donors and recipients, and even produced a chart of blood-type matching to make it all clearer.

The letters on the grid blurred in front of her. “How can we be incompatible? He's my father.”

Unless he really wasn't?

Dr. Laverents settled back in his chair. “Unfortunately, family members don't always share the same blood type. If they did, it would simplify our work here quite a bit, and make it much easier to find donors.”

“But . . .” Becca didn't know what else there was to say. She'd geared herself up to be a hero—to save Walt's life. Now that door was shut. “There's nothing else I can do?”

The surgeon threaded his fingers together and looked on her with understanding. “You can make sure Mr. Johnson keeps as healthy as possible for as long as possible. He still needs to have his diagnostics tended to and kept updated, right down to a clean bill of health from a dentist. These things are important.”

“Of course, but . . .”

She was just taking up the doctor's time, for no reason except that she was in shock. It hadn't been easy to decide to give up a part of herself, but to decide and then be told that she couldn't be a donor made her want to thrash around on the floor and weep, or chain herself to Dr. Laverents's desk. But this man couldn't change her blood type.

She stood up, and so did he. “I'm sorry.” The man's eyes brimmed with compassion, which helped. “I know this must be a disappointment.”

He knew it because he'd probably been through this hundreds of times. She guessed this man saw more tragedy in a week than she would in a lifetime.

She thanked him and headed for the door. Before reaching it, she stopped. “Does not sharing a blood type make it more likely that two people aren't related?”

“It's impossible to tell from blood type alone,” he answered. “Family testing involves comparing DNA. That's not exactly my line.”

“Mine, either.” A time machine would have been invaluable to her at this moment. She could travel back in time and pay more attention in biology class. “Thank you.”

Outside, in her car, she sat frozen, too keyed up with frustration to go back to the shop yet. What was she going to do now? She dug her lunch out of the tote bag and ate it there in the parking lot. As she chewed her sandwich, her thoughts replayed all the strange events of the past month and a half. What had become of her calm, slightly boring life? Walt had just appeared. She still didn't know who he was, really—but she'd been willing to give the man a kidney, even without a DNA test. Now that she couldn't, her emotions were going haywire.

Maybe he wasn't her father after all.

Not for the first time, anger at her mother surged through her. If only her mother had told her more. If she'd been too embarrassed to admit in person that she'd had sex with a heroin-addicted thief—understandable—couldn't she at least have left a posthumous note?
By the way, if a strange guy with a criminal record shows up wearing a funny hat, that's your dad.
How hard would that have been?

Then she felt another wave of anger for blaming her mom. Maybe Ronnie hadn't told her about Walt because he wasn't really her father at all. The guy might just be pulling off the con of a lifetime. He could have found out about Ronnie from someone else. Or maybe he could have dated Ronnie, but still not be her father. Just because he knew about strawberry cake and quoted her mom, she'd been ready to do anything for him. But Ronnie had probably made that cake for lots of people, and mentioned happiness on a plate to others, too.

She wadded up the napkin she had packed with her lunch and tossed it and the Tupperware container into the passenger seat. Purposefully, she turned the key in the ignition.

If Walt was nothing but an old faker, she was going to find out once and for all, before the next months of her life went down a rabbit hole of Medicaid bureaucrats, colonoscopy appointments, and God knows what else. All for the sake of some old con artist with sad eyes.

And now that she thought about it, what about his eyes? They were nothing like her own. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing in her face reminded her of Walt. When people found long-lost relatives in books and movies, they were supposed to look alike. You were just supposed to know. Like in
The Natural.
The kid at the end looks
just like
Robert Redford. But she couldn't name one trait she shared with Walt. Not one.

The only thing she'd known about her father was that his name was Johnny and that he played the saxophone. But Walt went by Walt—for whatever bogus reason—and when she'd given him a saxophone, he hadn't even taken it out of the case. She'd been too dizzy with sentimentality at that moment to notice that this reputed near-pro musician hadn't blown one single note, and had muttered instead about “his chops.” His chops. How emotionally screwed up had she been not to have registered how lame that sounded?

She'd wanted to believe in Walt so badly, she'd been ready to fall for anything.

Her skepticism returned with a fury. Her heart hammered against her chest and her hands began thumping angrily against the steering wheel. When she thought about how she'd dragged Matthew into this crazy situation, she broke out into a sweat. He had been urging caution from the start.

By the time she pulled into Matthew's driveway, she was so angry at herself and at Walt, she was ready to toss the man out on his ear without listening to another bogus explanation. She wanted to be free of this man. To have her life back. To not feel vulnerable and hopeless and raw.

She leapt out of the Subaru, barking her knee against the door as she slammed it shut. She bent over in pain, and that's when she heard it: the rich, plaintive wailing of a saxophone.

Walt hadn't had to work long to get his chops back, apparently, because the melodious tones of the old Top Hat and Cane projected loud and clear. Becca didn't really know the first things about saxophones, or jazz. Or music, period. She didn't have to. The song she heard was delivered with such skill, such feeling, it was as if the player were blessing the very air around her, displacing silence with full, robust sound.

She knew the melody. Knew it almost as if each note were stenciled on her heart. “Till There Was You.”

Anger left her so quickly, its absence left her boneless. Forgetting her scraped knee, she sagged against the Subaru. She couldn't move, couldn't do anything but listen, and remember. Her mom hadn't been a
Music Man
freak, or a Shirley Jones groupie. It wasn't The Beatles who had made her love this song. It had been Walt.

It was so true. That sound soared right to her heart. She was crying now.

She didn't know how long she stood there before Walt noticed the car in the driveway and came out, but suddenly she was leaning against him, sobbing.

“What's wrong?” he asked. “What happened?”

“That was . . .” She could barely gulp out words. “. . . Mom's favorite song.”

“Mine, too. I used to play it for her.” He swallowed. “I know this is hard to believe, because I wasn't any kind of a match for Ronnie. She was a diamond—everything I wasn't. But I loved her. I loved her so much it still hurts.”

That, Becca guessed, was what they had in common.

In the town house, he made her some coffee. “The real deal,” he said, “with caffeine. Just because I can't have it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.”

“Thank you.” She felt silly now for having such a breakdown, and for not making her own coffee. She was perfectly okay.

“You know who played that song best?” he asked. “Sonny Rollins. I'll lend you a CD of his. That's sweet music.”

She cupped her hands around the mug to warm them.

He studied her. “It wasn't just the song that upset you, was it?”

She shook her head. “I was at the hospital. I'd decided to be your donor. But I didn't even make it past the blood-type test. We're not a match.”

He frowned, and took his time answering. “I wish you hadn't gone through all that.”

“All that?”
Wasn't he listening? “I wasn't there thirty minutes.”

“I don't want you to be the donor. That wouldn't be right.”

“Why not?”

“It's not the way things should work. What if you have children of your own one day? What if one of them needed a kidney—and there'd you'd be stuck with just one.”

“That's a lot of ifs and hypothetical kids. Meanwhile, you need one now. No ifs about it.”

“You should hang on to all the body parts you can,” he insisted.

She raked a hand through her hair. God, he was frustrating. “The point is, I
can't
donate, no matter how much I want to. It's impossible. And I started to think, well, maybe since our blood doesn't match . . .”

He nodded. “I get it.”

“I'm so sorry. I kept having doubts.”

His eyebrows arched. “And you think that song proves anything?”

“Not just the song. Everything. I believe you.”

He thought this over for a moment. “We should do one of those tests. That would make sense, I guess. But it doesn't really matter whether you believe me or not. I got nothing to offer you, and I'm not looking for anything. In fact, I've accepted too much of your hospitality already.”

“No, you haven't. I stuck you in a storage room!” She still cringed at the memory. “My own father.”

He shook his head. “You've got this nice guy interested in you, and here I am, in the way.”

“Forget that. You're probably keeping us from being really stupid and jumping the gun.”

“You
should
jump,” he said. “While you're young. Look, I'm nobody to say how to live your life, but Matthew's a good one. Seriously. Great-paying job. Clean cut. I've been keeping my eyes open. I can spot a hinky type a mile off.”

That wasn't hard to believe. “I've already rushed into one marriage, which didn't work out so well. Next time, I want it to last more than six months.”

He scratched his stubbly chin. “Okay, but I still think you'd be better off without me in the way.”

“You're not in the way.” How many times did she have to say it? “And we'll get you on the lists and find a donor for you. Don't worry.”

“I do worry. For one thing, there's the money.”

“Once I get the insurance situation sorted out—”

“I still owe money. And there are always more costs,” he said. “Co-pays. Unexpected stuff. Dental. Plus my living expenses. I'm nearly flat, and you are, too.”

She drew back. “No, I'm not.”

He tilted a skeptical glance at her. “You didn't even have the money to fix your dishwasher.”

“I was just economizing,” she assured him.

He contemplated his hands for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “I appreciate all you've done, I really do, but I've got to make my own way, and—”

“Forget it,” she said. “We'll figure out the money thing. We will. And you'll be able to work again.
And
we'll find you a donor kidney, or . . .” Her words trailed off as the thought refused to find a way to complete itself.