A Dangerous Age Read Free Page B

remembered it now as I set out to take Winifred into my heart and help make her well. She will be a great doctor someday, and I’ll be able to feel I helped make it happen. What I forgot was that it was my empty nest that was really calling the shots. Not one I emptied, but one I never built or filled.
    So within a month, while I was waiting at our empty apartment for Beds Incorporated to deliver the two new beds with mattresses and springs that Uncle Spencer and Aunt Helen were giving us for a housewarming present, who should drive up and park his Jeep and come walking up the front path to our duplex door but Carl Kane, first cousin to the dead bridegroom and brother to Brian Kane, who was being patched up by a team of plastic surgeons at Walter Reed with Winifred standing by while she studied flash cards from the Kaplan course for the MCAT. Of course, every doctor she met was falling in love with her and offering to help her get into medical school. She had never gained back the weight she lost in order to wear the wedding dress, and at fighting weight she is a major contender in the upscale looks department. I mean, she is lovely, the kind of woman a man thinks would make him look good in the world.
    Carl stood at the end of the path, and I was standing in the doorway waiting for the delivery truck. I won’t forget that moment ever. He had on his marine uniform, but it wasn’t in veryspiffed-up condition. The jacket was unbuttoned, the tie was sticking out of a pocket, and the khaki shirt was unbuttoned to the chest bone. Fair-haired men don’t show much chest hair, but I could imagine it farther down. He’d been sweating, and he looked more like the antiestablishment guitar player he had been than the marine he was now.
    “I’m Carl Kane,” he said. “They sent me over to see if I could help. Winifred said to see what you needed.”
    “I could use some coffee,” I said. “And a newspaper. I’ve gotten addicted to news. So how are you all doing? Are they stitching on him today?”
    “They stitched yesterday. I think he’ll look okay. I’ve never seen such attention. Rumsfeld visited the hospital yesterday. We met him. It’s busy over there.”
    “And you’re on leave?”
    “For another month. Then I’m going over. I keep telling myself not to want revenge, but what the hell, you can’t help what you feel, can you?”
    He stood there looking like someone I wouldn’t want mad at me. Red-gold hair about half an inch long. Really nice hands. Six feet tall, intense, smart.
    “How old is Brian?” I asked. “And you?”
    “Twenty-four; well, we will be twenty-four soon.”
    Twenty-four from thirty-six is twelve. I must not think this way, I was thinking. Do not think that way, I thought.
    The van arrived with the beds, and Carl went inside with me. We watched as they assembled the contemporary ironbedsteads and then unwrapped the mattresses and springs and placed them on the stands. After they left I got out the vacuum and Carl helped me vacuum the floors of the two bedrooms, and then I opened a box and took out mattress covers and new pale blue sheets and we made up the beds and found the pillows in a closet and put pillowcases on them, and then we sat on one of the beds and didn’t talk much. I hate myself at times like this. Men think they get led around by their desires. Try a biological clock.
    “Let’s go find me some coffee,” I said. “And some eggs and toast if it’s not too late, or else some lunch.” I stood up.
    He moved near to me and took my arm. “I’m all yours,” he said. “They sent me to you.”
    L IKE WHO SENT HIM ? The clan, the family, the Fates? Who decided I needed a boyfriend more than I needed a job? Who remembered we hadn’t had a single baby in ten years in the whole Hand clan? And it wasn’t because we weren’t cut out to be fruitful.
    Had I taken a birth control pill in the past five days? Who knew? I’d been so busy saving Winifred, happy to be of use and not