Page 13 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“Okay, um, sure. I’ll remember that.”
“And don’t worry. I’m not trying to thirteenth-step you.”
“Wait. I thought there are only twelve steps?” Had they added a step? That was not good news.
“The thirteenth step is having sex with other people in the program.”
Oh. Well, if there was no sex I definitely didn’t want him to be my sponsor. Brilliantly, I said, “Yeah. Okay. Bye.”
When I got home, I took an Ativan. It would wear off by the time Emerald woke up and needed to be fed. I hoped.
The next morning,we had a visit with the pediatrician at nine-thirty. Our pediatrician was a woman named Tamara Sampson who liked to be called Dr. Tammy. She’d taken over Dr. Blinski’s office, most of the first floor of an old River Rock house on the edge of Masons Bay. She had not taken over his practice, that had gone to a medical group in Bellflower. You’d be surprised by how much time people devoted to complaining about driving twenty-five minutes to see a doctor rather than five.
Anyway, despite its being a five-minute drive from my Nana Cole’s farm, we were twenty minutes early, mainly because I over-estimated how long it would take to get a baby and a slightly disabled senior citizen into a Cadillac SUV. I was better at attaching the safety belt to the car seat than I gave myself credit for and giving my grandmother a boost into the passenger seat that she didn’t want was quicker when I simply ignored her protests.
In the waiting room, I said, “You should have brought that Michael Moore book to read.”
“You think you’re funny, but you’re not.”
I was funny but decided not to argue with her. Instead, I read through the parts of the Three Friends file I hadn’t looked at yet. Roberta had gone to the winery with two friends, Zoey Calder and Patty Gauthier. Each statement gave their addresses, phone numbers and where they worked, so I knew how to find them. Zoey’s statement made reference to how much fun Roberta was. It was apparently Patty’s fiftieth birthday that day, which was why they were there in the first place. She claimed they heard their friend screaming, but that Melanie had gotten to the ladies’ room first and wouldn’t let them in. She and Patty hovered near the door calling out encouragement until the ambulance got there. Patty’s statement was similar, though she complained that after the ambulance left Melanie brought their bill and Patty,the birthday girl, ended up paying it. The statement didn’t say whether she’d used cash or credit.
Finally, it was time for us to go in. The nurse led us back to the exam room. The room where Dr. Blinski was killed. The room where I fell on top of his corpse. It had been redecorated, of course. Now it was pink and blue with teddy bear wallpaper. Still, being there was just a tad creepy.
The nurse took Emerald’s vitals: her pulse by holding two fingers on her bicep, her temperature by aiming a contraption into her ear, blood pressure with a tiny cuff on her thigh. Finally, the nurse sat Emerald up and then left her there for a moment. She wobbled, then the nurse picked her up and was about to give her to my grandmother when I reached out and took her.
“Are you here for anything specific or just a routine check?” she asked my grandmother.
“Routine,” I answered.
“Okay then. The doctor will be in shortly.” Still not to me. Now I knew what women felt like at a car dealership.
After the door shut, Nana Cole said, “Don’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Why not? We’re not paying by the question. We might as well get our money’s worth.”
“I’ve done this before, you know. I can answer any questions you have.”
“You haven’t done it recently. Things change.”
“Change isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just change.”
The doctor came in. She was in her early forties with gray hair that curled like a Brillo pad. The door wasn’t closed behind her before she began to baby-talk at Emerald. I set the baby on the exam table in a sitting position. She maintained it for longer than she had with the nurse.
“Very good,” Dr. Tammy said. She picked up the baby and lay her on her stomach. We waited until Emerald had wiggledaround and finally rolled over. I nearly said, ‘Good girl.’ She been rolling over for several weeks, and given Dr. Tammy’s previous questions I knew it was something she was supposed to be doing.
“Are you feeding her solids?”
“We should have started months ago,” Nana Cole said. “He wouldn’t let me.”
I glared at her. She was trying to rat me out to the doctor.
“Well, she’s got good head and neck control, and she’s almost sitting on her own.” She’d picked the baby up and put her back in a sitting position, bracing her back with one hand. “Does she seem interested in your food?”
I had no idea. Typically, I fed them first and they were usually in the living room while I ate. I gave my grandmother a questioning look.
“Does that really matter?” she asked. “She’s supposed to eat when she’s supposed to eat.”
The doctor explained, “When I was a child, doctors recommended keeping babies on a strict schedule, they didn’t believe in babies doing things early or late. I believe you let the baby lead. Try putting her in the high chair and giving her some rice cereal or mashed banana. If she spits it out, don’t force it. Try again in a week. Or even a few days. Her weight is in the ninety-fifth percentile. There’s no reason to force food.”
