she is allergic to.
Given that she was a frequent, repeat and valued customer—the ER immediately gave Hannah a forced rest with Prednisone, etc. Six hours later, the hospital admitted her for overnight observation of her angioedema and urticaria.
~~~~~~~~~~
With 3 empty spaces on my driveway, plus ample on-street parking available, Boogie pulled up the ramp and stopped behind the white Honda at approximately 1:30 p.m. I hadn’t actually heard or seen him drive up, but was alerted to his arrival by the darting brindle-blur of Rocket, my youngest son’s 55-pound English Bulldog.
≈ ‘But Dad, it’ll only be for a few months. Just until he is house-trained and then Leah and I can move into an apartment without worrying that he is destroying the place while we are at work,’ said Darin—That was 4 ½ years ago ≈
Next, I became immediately aware of a conflict about to erupt even before Boogie set foot in the house. Darin’s beautiful Filipino-American girlfriend was dressed for her part-time job. With a harried look, Leah complained out loud—I didn’t take it personally—how late she was, before yelling over her shoulder in frustration, “I can’t believe he blocked me in with all the other room to park!”
There wasn’t enough time to explain to her that Boogie couldn’t possibly know that she was working as a waitress in Bethesda, developing her own baking and cake-decorating business in our dining room and kitchen, while simultaneously student-teaching and going to graduate school for her certificate, which didn’t allow for a lot of sleep. So I went out and asked Boogie to please park on the street so that Leah could get to her waitress job on time. In her rush to leave, Leah almost reversed into his front fender before he had completely—and slowly—finished backing down the slope.
Turning back, I returned to the house to alert Hannah and my mother of Boogie’s arrival. I stopped short at our bedroom door when I remembered that Hannah was still at the ER. With no cell phone usage allowed, I hadn’t heard from Hannah since she woke me on her way out at 7 a.m. When I came down the steps to greet him, I noticed that although he had parked parallel to the house, he had placed most of his car on our grass and only some on the street, as I had requested.
≈ Well, he got half of it right. This will get Hannah agitated before Boogie even puts his bags down. Maybe I should have been more specific, like, ‘Park on the street, not on the grass.’ Thinking too much already! He’s not here 5 minutes and already I‘m playing What-If and trying to balance a houseful of personalities. ≈
I showed Boogie to his ‘room’ in the finished basement, inflated and helped him make up the air bed with the sheets and pillow case that Hannah had already piled on the coffee table sometime in the middle of the night or before she went off to the hospital. As I stood with one foot on the first step, holding the rail—before returning to the first floor and my book—I asked him to please use the shower and sink in the basement bathroom until after Nick, Cathy and Grandpa Waverly leave early Saturday morning and he ‘transferred’ from the basement into David’s old bedroom on the second floor.
I left Boogie to his own devices and decided, instead of reading any more Ray Bradbury, to go to my bedroom to get my digital recorder checked out and set up. Fifteen minutes later I left my room with my recording equipment and barely noticed the sound of water or the light coming from under the door of the second floor hall bathroom—next to Darin and Leah’s room.
Between Leah’s crazy—demanding and ever-changing—schedule, and Darin working out, making deliveries, shopping for merchandise, or going out with his friends, their shower and bathroom can be occupied at any time of day.
When I came down the steps, on my way to the kitchen, I passed the room where my youngest son conducted his burgeoning eBay business—our former computer room and library—and immediately noticed the invisible steam coming out of his ears. Even without the benefit of his eye contact, I was met head-on and blasted with, “I can’t believe him. Haven’t even seen him yet and he’s already pissing me off. I was the one who asked mom to keep him out of our bathroom!”
Completing the final two steps of my journey to the kitchen, I patiently tried to sort out the source of Darin’s anger from the minimal number of pronouns, verbs and general lack of specific information supplied. I also attempted to postpone my response and minimize facial ‘tells.’ My control was rewarded when my athletic, 27-year-old (Magna cum laude) psychology graduate spat out, “What is wrong with Boogie! Doesn’t he understand that girls prefer some privacy and wouldn’t want to share their shower let alone the toilet seat with a 60-year old man if they can help it.” The last sentence was tossed over his shoulder as he left the kitchen, thus saving me the need for asking specifically what was wrong and limiting the need for further discussion. I saw no point in speaking to his retreating back to tell him that I had received the message earlier, that ‘mom’ and I had already discussed the shower issue, and that I had dutifully and politely passed on the request to Boogie.
≈ I think Hannah went to the ER on purpose! ≈
When my phone rang soon after that last thought, I immediately looked outside to see if the sky was clouded over. Hannah’s ESP always works better when the sky is overcast; especially when I am either talking or thinking negatively about her. She has a perfect record if I am speaking to another woman, even 3000 miles away.
She called to tell me that because there were no hospital rooms available, she had been wheeled around to and parked in the pediatric wing of the ER. She gave me her QVC order.
At 4 p.m. Boogie drove me over to the hospital in his rental to deliver the underwear, deodorant, toothbrush and the latest Michael Connelly murder mystery—Oh yes … I also went there to retrieve my mother, spend some time with Hannah in the ER and bring our SUV back home—rather than leave it in the ER Visitors Lot, where it had been since 6:45 a.m. She was not happy about being seen disheveled and gowned and vulnerable; confined there by wires and IVs.
In retrospect, I guess I should have asked Boogie to wait in the triage room, but I sensed that he was uncomfortable around sick people and crying children. Later H told me that the smell of cigar smoke on his clothes was overwhelming in the normally disinfected environment.
I know it seems that I had been more considerate of Boogie than Hannah, but—as I later explained to H: “I could have asked him to wait outside, but that clearly would have been rude and he had just arrived and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to interview him. I could have asked him to go home and wait for me, but I didn’t want to hand him a key and I wasn’t positive that Darin would still be there to let him in—or more accurately, to keep an eye on him. I could have asked him to take my mother home, while I stayed with Hannah, but my mother is easily conned by most people and Boogie has been known to be a very capable and professional liar. Besides, I did not want to later accuse her of negligence by making Boogie her responsibility should anything turn up missing.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Old prejudices don’t die easily. But it was more like past experiences with Boogie and money and jewelry and drugs that made me take him with me instead of leaving him alone in the house. Once, while he and his parents were driving me to O’Hare—I can’t remember why I was there, except possibly to catch a return flight from a business-related educational conference and had taken the opportunity to see my aunt and uncle after many years—before their own car journey back to Miami—they had been visiting their oldest son, Lenny and his young family—Uncle Harry was fighting with Boogie over something
