Oh, Kate’s ready. She’s not wearing glasses. And in a pink halter top sundress! I’m wearing my green and white one with my favorite straw hat! Let’s sail away!
Love,
Viv
Maggie had been in the ICU since seven-thirty on Tuesday morning, taking as many half-hour shifts next to Jo’s bed as they’d let her. She talked, she read Vivien’s diary, and she held it together while compiling a catalog of indignities being inflicted on her best friend.
The gown, for one. Gunmetal gray decorated with pink and pale teal triangles, like a kindergarten teacher’s painting smock. Of course, sweet Jo would call it “whimsical” and threaten to take it home and make a patchwork quilt out of it.
Her hair, too, was an issue. It had been slicked back around the bald spot into a small tight bun by some well-meaning night nurse who did not know that Jo Ellen had not worn a bun since 1968 because, as she had once explained to Maggie at a Tri-Delt formal, it made her face look like a thumb.
Maggie called her Thumbnail for the rest of the semester. And speaking of nails, Jo’s pretty “Bubble Bath” polish she’d picked for the wedding was chipping. Jo Ellen would die before?—
Maggie stopped.
Jo Ellen would notdie. Not today, not…over her nail polish.
“On my next shift, Jo,” Maggie said brightly, “I am going to take that polish off you and I do not care if some officious nurse tells me I can’t bring acetone remover into the hospital. I’ll smuggle it in along with that overpriced tea you love so much.”
She smiled at the inside joke about Jo Ellen’s weakness for fancy boxes and silly names and…oh, God, don’t let her die.
“And I am going to bring you a real gown,” she continued. “Maybe that flamingo thing you bought in Miami that I say I hate but secretly love. They can’t stop me.”
Nobody can stop you, Mags.
She could hear Jo Ellen’s dear voice in her head, but in real life? In this dreary ICU room? All she could hear was…medical stuff and that tube down her throat groaning and clicking and hissing.
Maggie picked up the diary Vivien had let her borrow, flipping to that entry she’d just read out loud. She’d brought the notebook on a whim, hoping some memories from the past would cheer up her comatose friend.
It was mostly drivel about Peter, who had only taken thirty-plus years to realize the greatest woman he’d ever meet was standing in front of him all those summers. But every once in a while, Maggie would read something about herself, or Jo Ellen, in Vivien’s girlish voice…and it gave her a jolt.
Like this last entry when Maggie had tried to exercise authority and Jo Ellen had, as always, helped her see the light. Because Jowasthe light. And she’d disciplined with love, not an iron fist.
“I mean, of course I said no,” Maggie muttered, defending herself against her own thoughts. “Vivien had already come home reeking of vodka one night and I didn’t know these boys from Adam! And where are they now, huh? This Wes and Drew? Never heard from again.”
Of course not. That was the night it all…ended.
“But it was sweet of you to intervene,” she conceded, vividly remembering that kitchen conversation. “I appreciate that, in front of Vivien, you supported me. But then you set me straight. And did Vivien really think I didn’t know she was out in the hall? Me? The woman with eyes ‘in places eyes shouldn’t be’?”
She chuckled, not because anything was funny, but because that would have cracked up Jo Ellen, who’d repeat it for days.
“But you were right, of course. You gave Vivien and Kate a chance to shine on their own because…you’re wise,” she said on a sigh, the realization just hitting her so hard. “I know I act like I know everything—which, usually, I do. And if I don’t, I make it up. But you actually understand people. You have a tender heart.”
Her voice cracked and through sheer willpower—something she had in abundance—she pushed the choking tears away.
“That’s what I love about you, Jo. One of many things. You’re so…tender. But underneath all that softness and silliness is a truly great woman. Please, Jo. Please, please,pleasecome back to me.”
She dropped her head and let it rest on the side of the hospital bed, her heart aching.
Forcing herself to pull it together and knowing that any minute another beast in blue scrubs would come in here and demand she leave, she fluttered the pages of the diary before putting it on the rolling table.
“You said it, Jo Ellen. It’s right there in Vivien’s diary. ‘Mags, when we’re eighty, I’m going to be helping you let go of control and you’re going to make sure I don’t stop laughing because you are funny.’” She took her friend’s hand and squeezed. “You’re nowhere near eighty. Okay, almost, but not there yet.”
She sighed, coming closer to whisper the rest. “Jo, you know what else was in that diary? The Maggie Lawson Karma Rule orwhatever Vivien called it. ‘Do bad things and bad things happen to you.’”
She swallowed, thinking of Gator Jack’s.
“I sure hope we’re not being punished.”
