“No, honey, the sex is a nice perk. The coffee is just an extra.”
If she’d been drinking something she would have done a classic spit take. Instead, she just choked, Ed grinning madly at her. “Okay, that’s a little too much information, Ed, but uh… thank you for sharing.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “No pun intended.”
“Okay, Ed, so let’s stick to umm… finding your gift,” she stammered, trying to extract herself from a very uncomfortable conversation. “How about this one?” She pointed to a card for an ice cream shop.
He snatched it up. “Oh, I love Christina’s. Absolutely. I can take my girlfriend there for a cone.”
They walked back out to the waiting room, where Alex jumped up as if burned by their presence. “Josie,” he said.
“Alex,” she said, mocking him.
His mouth flatlined into an embarrassed frown. “How are things going?”
“We were just talking about our sex lives,” Ed answered.
A couple of people sitting in the waiting room tittered.
“Really?” Alex’s eyebrows shot up.
“Yes. Why don’t you share, Alex? There’s that new woman that you kissed recently. You were telling me all about her in the car ride over here.”
Alex froze.
Josie turned slowly and looked at him, imitating what he’d just said a few moments ago, her own eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. “Really?”
“Grandpa, I think you’re remembering that wrong,” Alex said slowly, slipping his hand around the old man’s shoulders. “Why don’t we just get going now? It’s time for—”
Ed interrupted him. “Josie, you done working yet?”
She reflexively looked at her wrist, checking the watch she hadn’t worn for years. “Actually, I can take a break for an hour, or so…an early lunch. You offering, Ed?”
“I don’t know, Josie, I’ve got a girlfriend. I can’t really take you up on…asking me out.” He waved his hand at her, as if saying “pshaw.” “No, I’m just asking”—he glanced pointedly at Alex, and then at her—“if you’d like to go out for coffee and a bite to eat. There’s a sweet thing I really adore over at Jeddy’s.”
Jeddy’s. God, she couldn’t get away from that place, could she? How did a hole-in-the wall diner like Jeddy’s suddenly become the center of her social life? Alex had a look on his face like he was struggling to remain neutral, to seem as if he didn’t care whether she said yes or no. The intensity of his eyes gave away what he was really feeling.
Ed’s expectant look, so friendly and simple, was what broke her. Awkwardness be damned; she wasn’t going to disappoint a very nice old man, who had just failed every part of the test that indicated any sort of progress, or even a holding pattern, in his disintegration through Alzheimer’s. A pang of sadness shot through her—for Ed, for Alex, for his entire family—as she began to suspect that Ed was either on a rapid decline or, more likely, might be in the control group and not in the group that was receiving the experimental medicine.
“Sure, Ed,” she said, reaching out to touch him tenderly on the shoulder, gazing firmly into his eyes, so he had her full attention. “I would love to enjoy a nice, sweet thing at Jeddy’s.”
They took two different cars, despite Ed’s not-so-subtle attempt at getting her into Alex’s old Honda, the kind of car you expected a six-figure-in-debt medical resident to be driving. Her own car was on par, a twelve-year-old Toyota Tercel that she held together with duct tape, gum, and a lot of atheistic praying. Her mechanics these days were Tom and Ray from Car Talk, but her car got her through the handful of thousands of miles she drove it every year, relying more on public transportation and her own two feet than on the combustion engine that putt-putted her to and fro in the metro Boston area.
Jeddy’s was just a few miles away, and she scored an awesome parking spot, which made this ridiculous bit of Kabuki theater almost worth it. Finding a good parking spot was a form of sport in Cambridge and Boston, and she wanted a ribbon for getting one directly in front of the restaurant. A pang of guilt hit her as she watched Alex circling the block repeatedly, finally letting Ed out at the entrance to Jeddy’s and then driving off, leaving her alone with the old man.
His warm, confident brown eyes were a bit clouded now, filled with a tentative fear, a look she had come to know all too well, professionally. He was confused, and in his confusion he reverted to the past. “Meribeth? Meribeth, what are we doing here?” he asked.
She remembered that one of his daughters was Meribeth. She wasn’t sure whether it was Alex’s mom or not, but right now it didn’t matter. A split-second decision made her choose to ground him as much as possible in the truth, reserving the right to shift if needed. “Ed.” She touched him again, making that connection, smiling, exuding as much warmth and familiarity as possible. “Ed, you just came from the medical building where you go every month with Alex. Remember, you came to my office and I asked you some questions? I’m Josie, Josie Mendham.” Maintaining eye contact, and speaking as simply as possible without condescension should do the trick. The fear dissipated, as if her words had marshaled an army that fought it back. Victory, she thought.
“Josie! Of course, I know you! How’s my gal?” he said. This was a technique that some of the sharper patients used. He was covering, and she knew it. He didn’t realize it…or did he?
She took a chance. “Ed, you don’t have to pretend you know me, I want you to really know me. I’m the girl Alex…kissed.”
His eyes shifted instantly, as if someone snapped their fingers, into complete focus. The man whiplashed back into himself, completely in the present. “Hot damn, I knew it! I knew you and Alex were a thing!”
“We’re a what?” a deep voice said from behind her.
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together in agony. This was not how helping Ed to ground himself was supposed to work. “Alex, you’re here!” she said, acknowledging him because it would have been far worse had she shown her humiliation or acknowledged what Ed had just said. Looping her right arm through Ed’s left, she marched him toward the entrance of Jeddy’s, sidestepping, for now, Alex’s expected question about why on earth Ed would have any idea that he and Josie were a thing.