I had finally begun to date—Teddy, a tall-drink-of-water editorial writer from theTrib;sportsaholic Mike, whom I met at a Cubs game; Corey, a blind date from the tenth circle of hell. I hated dating, but I needed to move on, right? I had a lot of good friends—couples, single women, a few guys who were just buddies. Really. Honest. I was doing okay, I told everybody, which was mostly crap, and my good friends knew it.
My best friends in the world, Kylie and Danny Borislow, were there for me again and again; I loved Kylie and Danny and I owe them so much.
So, anyhow, my deadline for that day’s incredible, awe-inspiring column in theTribunewas three hours away and I was in a jam. I’d already tossed three ideas into the recycle bin and was staring at a blank screen again. The really tricky thing about writing a “witty” newspaper column is that between Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Dorothy Parker, everything worth saying has already been said, and said better than I could ever say it.
So I pushed myself up from the sofa, put some Ella Fitzgerald on the Bose, and dialed up the air conditioner to high cool. I took a sip of coffee from my Uncommon Ground take-out cup. Found it sooo-ooo good. There is always hope in small things.
Then I paced around the living room in my writer’s outfit du jour: one of Danny’s Michigan U. jogging suits and my lucky red writing socks. I was dragging on a Newport Light, the latest in a string of bad habits I’d picked up lately. Mike Royko once said that you’re only as good as your last column, and that’s the truth that dogs me. That and my anorexic twenty-nine-year-old editor, Debbie, a former London tabloid reporter who wears Versace everything and Prada everything else with her Morgenthal Frederics glasses.
The point is, I really care about the column. I work hard to be original, make the words sing on occasion, and get the work in on time, without fail.
So I hadn’t answered the phone that had been ringing on and off for hours. Ihadcursed at it a couple of times, though.
It’s hard to be fresh three times a week, fifty weeks a year, but, of course, that’s the job theTribpays me to do. And in my case, the job is also pretty much my life.
Funny, then, how many readers write to say that my life is so glamorous, they’d like to swap places—wait, was that an idea?
The sudden crash behind my head was Sox, my year-old mostly tabby cat, knockingThe Devil in the White Citydown from a bookshelf. That startled Euphoria, who’d been snoozing on the very typewriter F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly wroteTender Is the Nighton. Or something like that. Maybe Zelda wroteSave Me the Last Waltzon it?
And when the phone rang again, I grabbed it.
When I realized who was on the line, a shock ran through me. I called up an old picture of John Farley, a family friend from Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. The minister’s voice cracked when he said hello and I had the strange sensation that he was crying.
“It’s Sam,” he said.
Two
I GRIPPEDthe phone receiver tightly with both hands. “What’s wrong?”
I heard him suck in a breath before he spoke again. “Ah, there’s no good way to tell you this, Jennifer. Your grandmother has taken a fall,” he told me. “It’s not good.”
“Oh, no!” I said, and sent my thoughts out to Lake Geneva, a resort community about an hour and a half north of Chicago. Lake Geneva was where I’d spent most of the summers of my childhood, some of the best times of my life.
“She was all alone in the house, so no one knows for sure what happened,” he continued. “Just that she’s in a coma. Can you come up to the lake, Jennifer?”
The news was a jolt. I’d just spoken to Sam two days before. We’d joked about my love life and she’d threatened to send me a box of anatomically approximate gingerbread men. Sam is a comedian, always has been.
It took me all of five minutes to change my clothes and throw a few things into a duffel bag. It took me a little longer than that to catch and cage Euphoria and Sox for an unexpected journey.
Then I was gunning the old Jag up Addison Street, heading toward I-94 North. The ’96 Jaguar Vanden Plas is a midnight blue sedan that was our pride and joy, Danny’s and mine. It’s a handsome thing with a quirky detail; the car has dual gas tanks.
I was trying to think about everythingbutSam. My grandmother was the only one I had left now, the only family.
Sam was my best friend after my mother died when I was twelve. Her own marriage to Grandpa Charles made me and everyone else want whatever it was that they had. My grandfather wasn’t the easiest guy to get to know, but once you broke through to him, he was great. Danny and I had toasted and roasted them at their fiftieth-anniversary gala at the Drake. Two hundred friends stood to applaud when my seventy-one-year-old grandfather dipped Sam low and kissed her passionately on the dance floor.
When Grandpa Charles retired from his legal practice, he and Sam stayed at Lake Geneva more than in Chicago. After a while, they didn’t get so many visitors. Even fewer came after my grandfather died four years ago and she moved to the lake full-time. When that happened, people said that Sam would die soon, too.
But she didn’t. She’d been doing fine—until now.
At about 8:15 I got on Route 50 West and took it to 12, a local two-laner that skirts Lake Geneva—the BPOE, “best place on earth.” After three miles, I turned off 12 onto Route NN. Lakeland Medical Center was just a couple of minutes away and I tried to prepare myself.
“We’re close, Sam,” I whispered.
Three
REALLY BAD THINGShappen in threes,I was thinking as I arrived at the Lakeland Medical Center. Then I tried to banish the thought from my mind.Don’t go there, Jennifer.
I got out of the car and started uphill to the main entrance. I remembered that many years before, I had been there to have a fishing hook removed from just above my eyebrow. I was seven at the time, and it was Sam who brought me.
