Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976) (Dovetail Cove Series) Read online

  Doc pulled a grey car coat out of the trunk and also Bexy’s wool blanket. He returned to her side of the car and gestured for her to crank the window. He smiled at her. It was such a gentle, pleasant face he wore—the same one that had greeted hundreds, if not thousands of patients in his clinic and on his house calls over the years. “It’s nippy,” he said. “Keep warm.” He handed the bundled blanket through the open window. “D'ya have a purse?”

  “No,” Bexy said. The odd time she went out of the house, she took a small wallet and change pouch, never a purse. “Okidokee,” Doc said and made to head around to his side. As he did so, he put on his wrinkled coat.

  He got in, started the car and, pretty soon, the heater was blasting them. They drove to the clinic on Main and parked out front. It was nice and toasty under her blanket. Bexy almost didn’t want to get out.

  “You said you needed help,” she said, leading him.

  “Yuh,” he said, looking out at the frosted windows of the closed businesses. The sun was peeking out from behind clouds now and it was a bright, beautiful, late morning. He looked over at the rearview. Mary was still studiously working on her colouring book, head down and intensely scribbling over Bert and Ernie.

  “Mary’s been through a bunch, this last while,” Doc said. He confirmed that Mary wasn’t paying any attention, so he continued. He looked over at Bexy, incredibly small and still under her big wool blanket. “She inherited this big house up on the avenue, not sure if you knew—” Bexy shook a gentle no. “—and we set up a caregiver from the trust fund allowance she got when her parents died. Awful situation for the girl. Just awful. Now, we got ourselves in two pickles.” Doc stuck one finger up in the air, his first metaphorical pickle. “First is, she’s got this nurse. Annie. You know Annie? Used to work down here a ways at the Union office until they laid her off. But her little brother, he up and had himself a bad motorcycle wreck two weeks ago, now. And so Annie up and left. We got ourselves no one to look after Mary and...well...I can’t do it, not with Agnes. I found myself roped in here and I can’t just let the girl be by herself. I guess I care, is my problem.” Doc let out a chuckle at that. Bexy mirrored him. Caring is a curse, she thought. And, he did, always had. She’d always found she could rely on the Doc, right since her accident. He’d been her doctor and, though she’d never gotten the use of her legs again, the doc had been there to help with recovery and rehabilitation. He’d been a good friend.

  “Now,” the doc said. “Our second pickle is a bit bigger. I’d like to pay you to move in with Mary at her place on the Avenue. Mary here, she’s only at, maybe, a second-grade level of comprehension—at best. And she’s gone and found herself...expecting.”

  5.

  Bexy rolled her legs up under the raised table beside Mary and looked over at Doc, washing his hands vigorously at the deep steel sink in an examination room inside the clinic. They’d gone in using a key that Doc had brandished from his jangling ring and now they were in a dimly-lit room at the back of the empty clinic. Bexy remembered these rooms well, the light shade of blue paint, now peeling at chair height. The blue-grey formica countertops, worn where the new town doctor set his coffee mug and his file folders to write notes.

  But today was Sunday and the clinic was closed. After retiring, Doc had explained on their way in, he’d made a deal that he’d treat a few of his old patients at their request. He didn’t mind ceding the reigns of medicine in DC but he’d be damned if he’d leave some of his life-long friends and patients in the hands of that noob from the mainland. His words. Be damned. And noob from the mainland.

  Mary squeezed Bexy’s hand. “Missa Cloud?” Mary said. She was laid out on the exam table, also covered in a light shade of blue. This was a sheet of industrial vinyl, and the girl’s legs went up from that to where her ankles lay propped in the stirrups. She was naked but a light blanket covered her from her shoulders down to her spread knees. Presumably, Doc would roll it up when he needed to do his internal.

  “Yes, sweetheart?” Bexy said, giving a reassuring return squeeze.

  “This gonna hurt me? You know, my insides—my lady parts?”

  “Well,” Bexy said, eyeing Doc, who looked back over his shoulder at her as he dried his hands with paper towels that he promptly dropped in a stainless steel can. “I’ll be honest, honey. It might be a bit...uncomfortable, but you know what?”

  “What?” Mary said, tears welling in her eyes.

  “I have a daughter just a little younger than you—”

  “Really?”

  “Mm-hmm. And when she was little and scared, I would stay with her—just like I am with you—and I’d hold her hand. Like this, see? And when she got even just a little worried, she would squeeze my hand—can you do that—?”

  Mary squeezed and Bexy squeezed back.

  “And she knew I was here, squeezing her hand, and saying some rhymes for her and she didn’t feel so worried anymore. Can you try what she did?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mary said.

  Bexy started her rhyme, the first one she could think of. As soon as the first words of it escaped her mouth, she’d wished to high heaven she’d thought of another one first. But she hadn’t.

  “Monday’s child is fair of face,

  “Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

  “Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

  “Thursday’s child has far to go,

  “Friday’s child is loving and giving,

  “Saturday’s child works hard for his living,

  “And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

  “Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.”

  Mary lay in silence for a moment. She thought on the words, must have. And then she said, “I like that.”

  And then, in a moment, she added, “And I like you Missa Cloud—”

  Doc lowered his big mass down on top of the rolling stool and flicked on a big lamp. It blinded Bexy for a split-second and she blinked hard, throwing her head away from the light. Mary squinted and they both shut their eyes. “Sorry, sorry!” Doc said. “Bit rusty.”

  “—You so nice, Missa Cloud,” Mary finished.

  Bexy picked up Mary’s small hand again, having let it go when the flash startled her. Now the flash faded from behind her eyelids and the strobe effect lost its grip on her stunned retinas. She kissed the girl’s hand. She could feel how alone Mary was. Doc had filled her in on the high level details. Dead parents, and no one had ever told her. For Mary, her mommy and daddy were just…away. All her friends from her care-home gone this way and that, the care home shut down. And now her new private nurse was gone too, back to the mainland to care for a brother crushed under a motorcycle. Mary was in a bad spot, and damn that Doc, he knew that once Bexy McLeod had heard some of these details, she’d never be able to walk away. Or, roll away, as it was for Bexy now.

  Caring was her curse too.

  “You’re a helper,” Doc had said as he fumbled with his ring of keys outside on the wet sidewalk. “You can’t stop that. It’s in your nature. But your kids’ve all flown the coop and you got yerself no one to help. You’re a dying breed. You, my dear lady, are charitable.” He’d added that last part as she sat idle in her chair out in the cold, looking in at him as he’d stepped in through the clinic’s main door. And, he either knew everything about women—which was as unlikely as hell—or he knew just exactly the right thing to say to this lonely lady to get her hands out from under her wool blanket and onto the rails of her wheelchair. She’d wheeled herself in at that point, with a look of defeated exasperation. He was right. She was charitable. And, with no word of a lie, she believed she was more charitable than any other person in St. Dominic’s church this morning.

  And so here she was, comforting this retarded girl she’d just met. She looked off at the top of Doc’s balding head between the peaks of Mary’s raised knees and the blanket which had slipped down but not enough for immodesty.

  Doc got up and he went over to the wall. He wheeled
a set of oddly-shaped and conjoined grey boxes over on a steel cart and then found an outlet to plug the conglomerate in for electrical current. A TV screen came up with grey lines and dots on a black bubble-screen, a tiny version of the RCA Bexy stared at in her living room most afternoons and evenings after the dishes were done.

  A man of few words on this Sunday, Doc seemed like he was trying to move through a series of tests and examinations before Mary lost her nerve, or worse, freaked out. He wasn’t explaining anything, and in all honesty the room looked vastly different than any Bexy had been in twenty-odd years ago, the last time she’d had a bun in the oven.

  Out in the main room of the clinic, Mary had run ahead down the hall and Bexy had asked Doc, “So I’m here for what? Moral support?”

  And Doc had winked at her like older men do at younger gals. “For now,” he said.

  So now, Bexy gave Mary’s hand another squeeze while Doc fussed with this new machine. “What’s your favourite animal?” she asked the girl.

  “Uhm.” Mary thought. And then she thought a little harder, all the while, Doc Sawbones fiddled with diodes and switches and doodads on the faces of the grey boxes.

  “Crickets!” Mary said, showing her big smile filled with crooked, grey and yellow teeth.

  “Crickets,” Bexy echoed. “Well that’s a funny choice. How come you like crickets?”

  “They chirp and chirp and chirp,” Mary said, losing all realization that she lay naked on a vinyl table with her legs spread and a draft blowing up her hoo-haw. “They’s like birdies, Missa Cloud. But they ain’t. They little critters you can hold in your hand. And they can be your private little friend, only for you. Isn’t than neato?”

  “Oh, that’s neato, alrighty,” Bexy said, watching the doc, who now reached out and pulled the top of the privacy blanket down to Mary’s waist, exposing her breasts and her belly, which only showed a very minor roundness. Her belly button was an outie, a little tiny bulge of stretched skin. She definitely had swollen breasts—or, if she didn’t, she was quite well-endowed. Bexy blushed at this display and turned around. She found Mary’s blue dress and laid it across the girl’s chest. She looked at Doc who cocked a crooked smile, not one of lewdness, but one that said, That was a nice gesture, Bexy. I didn’t even think of it. It also said, That’s why I’m glad I brought you in. You’re charitable.

  The doc put a small device on Mary’s tummy, right above that poking belly button of hers. It was attached to a wide band and Doc reached across her to fasten it beneath her. “Up,” he said quietly and Mary absently raised her back off the vinyl with a squeaking noise of skin on the material. He pulled the band from under her and did it up snug. “Good,” he said.

  “You know what Missa Cloud?” Mary said, barely noticing what the doc was doing to her. She was comfortable with Bexy now and, it seemed, comfortable enough with the doc that he could see her nude and prod her insides without her freaking out. Bexy had a momentary thought: what if the girl would have been just fine getting her exam without her regular nurse? What if I’ve been had?

  She let that idea go. Needed to. The girl had asked her a question. She readjusted the bunched up dress to again cover swollen breasts, since it had slipped when Bexy arched her back for the band to be fastened. “What, dear?” Bexy asked the girl, looking intently into her excited face.

  “Last night, the toofairy came!”

  “The tooth fairy?” Bexy asked, like she was talking to a child and not a woman of at least thirty years. She feigned matching excitement and her eyebrows went up just like Mary’s did. “Really? The tooth fairy came to visit?”

  “Sure did,” Mary said. “And she left a present.”

  By now, Doc had a bottle overturned in his hand and he warned, “This might be a bit cold, Mary.” He squirted it and Mary cringed at the obviously frigid temperature. Green goo squirted onto her stomach, but she never broke eye contact with Bexy. She nodded fast. “A super-fun present,” she said, trying to ignore whatever it was Doc Sawbones was doing to her belly.

  “The Octoson,” Doc said. “It’s new. Been wanting to try it...”

  Bexy didn’t respond to him, only kept looking into Mary’s face. Then hers wrinkled. “Why’d the tooth fairy come, honey?”

  “Cuz I lost a toof,” she said and she raised her lip. She brought her other hand up and pointed at a big gap in the side at the top. Bexy craned her neck up to get a good look. “Oh I see,” she said. “You did lose a tooth.” She looked over at Doc and said, “Maybe need to get her to a dentist. Have a little check-me-up.”

  “Tell you ‘bout that in a minute,” Doc said absently. He put a long metal wand onto Bexy’s belly and started to push the cold, green goo around with it. He fiddled with a knob on the Octoson and the volume came up. It was a mechanical version of Bexy’s wheelchair rubber on the floor of the church: wow-wow-wow. It sounded like it was coming from under water, like maybe the microphone in that wand was listening to the engine on a submarine.

  The screen changed into a swirling, morphing kaleidoscope of grey, all shades of it, atop the remainder of jet black. It surged and retreated just like the wow-wow-wow sound that went with it.

  Bexy had never seen anything like it. Mary looked over at it, wrinkling her face.

  Absently, and still watching the screen, Bexy tried to regain the girl’s attention. “Did she leave you any money, sweetheart?”

  “Who?” Mary said.

  “Why, the tooth fairy, of course. When she came to take your lost tooth.”

  Bexy burst out in a giggle. Her toothy grin widened and a bit of spittle hit Bexy’s glasses. “No, silly! The toofairy isn’t a girl! He’s a boy! And he didn’t bring money.”

  “Oh, no?” Bexy asked, looking away from the swirling grey and black screen and then meeting Mary’s eyes again. “What did he bring?”

  Mary tittered. “Two purty stones. Shiny ones—!”

  And with that, a shout from Doc Sawbones stung Bexy’s ears and Mary’s too. It was a jag of sound from his throat, deep in his chest, as if he’d been stung by a wasp and startled into vocalizing it. Conjoined to his holler was a banging, jangled crash. Both women cringed, as if the ceiling would be a fraction of a second from falling on their heads. Bexy looked over the bed to the other side, easing as high up in her wheelchair as she could. Mary sat up like a bolt. The entire cart holding the Octoson machine had tipped over. On his ass beside it was Doc Sawbones with one leg draped over the base of the machine. A tendril of grey smoke blew from the punctured screen’s tube. Jagged lines traced an uneven maw deep into its wiry innards. Glass scattered the floor.

  “Doc!” Bexy shouted. “My God.” She let go of Mary’s hand and took control of her chair to wheel herself around the head of the stirrup bed and meet Doc where he lay on the tile floor. The green gel had exploded all over his grey suit pants and coat. His face was bright red and he coughed as though something was trapped in his throat.

  “What happened?” Bexy said, a catch of worry in her voice.

  “Uh—nothing, nothing. I just—uh—I saw something there and I—nothing to worry about—I just lost my balance there for a sec.”

  He smiled with embarrassment up at Bexy, then turned his red face away from both women. “’M no spring chicken anymore, that’s fer sure,” he said as he struggled to get to his feet. “I, uh, I prolly shouldn’t be using these new-fangled machines. I’m gonna catch hell for this on Monday morning, I’ll tell you that much.”

  And in a flush, Mary started to giggle. Her black eyes turned up at their corners. She covered her uneven mouth of teeth and lay back, not even worrying that she was uncovered from the waist up.

  Still troubled, Bexy reached out a hand for Doc. But he gently slapped it away and used rails on the side of Mary’s examination table to haul himself to his feet.

  “You...saw...something?” Bexy asked.

  Doc cleared his throat and loosened his dress shirt collar. “Nothing, it was nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He lo
oked at Mary. “I got all the measurements, deary,” he said to her. “Everything looks right as rain.”

  Mary’s giggles faded off and she gazed blankly at the ceiling. She said nothing, just breathed heavily, catching up from her laughter. Doc started to regain his breath too. He went to the sink and pulled a wad of brown paper towel from the dispenser then started wiping the green gel from his suit. “Agnes won’t much care for this turn,” he said and let out a huff of a laugh.

  “No, she won’t,” Bexy said. Then to Mary: “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you dressed. I assume you’re all finished here, Doc?”

  “Ah, yuh,” Doc said, not turning back to face the women. “I’ll step out and let you get...decent.”

  And with that, Doc Sawbones left the exam room. His shoes crunched in broken glass.

  A few minutes later, Bexy had the girl dressed and settled in front of the TV in the reception room out front. It was a re-run of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Presumably, it was last week’s episode, though Bexy hadn’t seen it. The new one would play tonight after dinner. Mary didn’t seem to know if it was an old one or a new one but the girl was quiet and enthralled, and for Bexy, that’s all that mattered.

  She wheeled herself back around the reception counter where Doc was sitting and writing some notes on paper he’d pilfered from somewhere.

  As quiet as she could, Bexy lost her cool. She didn’t exactly yell at the big man she now considered her friend, but it came out in a spittle-coated whisper-shout. “Now you listen here,” she barked, trying to modulate her voice. “You’re trying to rope me into something here and I need to know what it is before I take one more step in the direction of helping this young woman. If you think you need me to break the news that her baby is stillborn in there, then that’s just fine. But I need you to stand up and be a man and tell me what you need. Charity for charity’s sake is no good to anyone—”