The Christmas Crush

Chapter 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“Geez Louise, you gave me a fright. Pumpkin, you look awful.” Nana pressed the button to raise the hospital bed. She fumbled for her glasses, put them on, then gave him a full inspection. “Sheesh. Even worse with my glasses. What on earth is wrong with you, dear? Are they admitting you next?”

“I slept face first on my kitchen table, having nightmares about the worst mistake of my life.” He sat on the edge of the vinyl armchair next to Nana’s bed, still wearing yesterday’s gray sweatpants and ripped shirt. A night at the table and a morning spent cutting and hammering boards from the new steps had pushed his outfit into full-scale disheveled territory. He’d forgotten to shower for the second day in a row, making him downright pitiful to behold. Not that he cared what he looked like.

“My goodness, I am out of the picture for less than two days, and I wake up to my grandson looking like he’s been through the wringer. And you’ve made a terrible mistake to boot. This better not be about my stairs again, because I told you I could’ve called your dad myself. It was not your fault.”

“Accept I’ll never forgive myself for that one, Nana, and you can’t talk me out of it either. Bad as that was, I did something even stupider.” He fiddled with the bandage on his injured finger. The wound beneath stung. How could he begin to explain the situation to Nana?

“Well?” Nana asked.

“In the heat of the moment, thanks to a big misunderstanding, I flipped out on my … on Elena.”

Nana clucked, gestured to the pink plastic water cup on her tray. Lawrence sprang up, held the cup while she took a long drink from the bendy straw. “My mouth is as dry as if I’d spent the night drinking gin. Which would’ve been more fun.”

“Nana,” he chided, returning to his seat.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning. I have a very difficult time imagining you ‘flipping out’ at anyone, especially that lovely young lady. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. You do have a tendency to be hard on yourself, especially when it comes to relationships. I’ve never heard you so much as raise your voice.”

“No, this time I went ballistic. I don’t know what came over me. All these crushing, um, emotions all at once.” He proceeded to give her the full rundown of his blowup with Elena. Each word he spoke made him feel worse, the pit in his stomach deepening. He’d forced down plain toast for breakfast, but he felt like he’d swallowed a lead weight.

“This is a fine pickle!” Nana snapped the fingers of her good hand, shook her head, disgust plain on her face. “I thought you were exaggerating, but this is really awful. What can you have been thinking, Lawrence?”

“I don’t know. So many things were going on, and I was shocked, and I guess I kind of expected her to not really care about me, for it never to have been real to begin with. Oh, I don’t know; it made sense in the moment.”

“Goodness gracious, when I told you to trust your instincts and be yourself, I didn’t mean the worst version of yourself. Well, call her, you big dope! You kids are constantly on your phones.”

Lawrence’s eyes shifted to avoid Nana’s. He watched the fluid drip from the IV down the line to Nana’s arm. “I kind of can’t do that at the moment.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to be too proud. Call her, say you’re sorry, give her a chance to apologize for the things she said back. Not that anyone can blame her for taking you to task. It pains me to say this, pumpkin, but you were way out of line.”

“I know, Nana.”

“So call her. I’ll wait.” Nana made a move for a magazine on her tray.

“I was so upset, I … a little bit broke my phone.”

“Broke your phone? Lawrence Benjamin Higgins, have you forgotten all your home training? And what does a ‘little bit’ ”—here Nana made air quotes with her uncasted hand—“broken mean?”

“As in it’s completely ruined. It won’t even turn on or charge anymore. I can’t get her number off it to call from a different phone. I’ll have to go into the city to get a new one and hope they can transfer my contacts.”

“I missed everything during that stupid surgery.”

Lawrence didn’t know what to do short of calling to beg for forgiveness. Brilliant ideas eluded him. Nana hummed, which meant she was deep in thought. “Why don’t you go see her?”

“I considered that, but I know she’s working a ton right now leading up to her grand opening—”

“You better not have done anything to mess up the grand opening, young man. Especially after you roped all of New Hope into going.”

“I’m not a complete psycho. I came to my senses before I told anyone else what happened.”

“Finally, a good decision. I guess you can’t very well wait out in the cold for her to return home.” Nana pursed her lips.

“Plus, there’s something menacing about a guy my size loitering outside her place after she told me she never wanted to see me again.”

“And certainly you can’t go in your present condition.”

He combed his fingers through his hair. It felt gritty from the recent lack of showers. He suspected he didn’t smell too great either.

“She really said she didn’t ever want to see you again?”

Lawrence flinched. Nothing pained him more than the finality in Elena’s voice when she’d said that. Unable to speak, he nodded his head.

“That’s good,” Nana said.

“What? How?” he asked, sitting up straighter. It wasn’t like Nana to kick him when he was down, but maybe he deserved it.

A nurse in blue scrubs walked in, gave a perfunctory greeting, then began typing rapidly on a computer in the corner of Nana’s room. Seconds later he came to the bed to check Nana’s blood pressure. “One thirty over eighty five. Borderline high, but an improvement.”

The fact that Nana’s blood pressure was stabilizing alleviated some of Lawrence’s uneasiness. He waited while the nurse took Nana’s temperature—normal—and then asked Nana again what she meant as soon as he left.

“I must’ve told your grandfather I never wanted to see him again at least three times.”

“You told Pop Pop you never wanted to see him again? But you were in love. You were married fifty plus years.” The whole family had gathered at a banquet hall for Nana and Pop Pop’s golden anniversary a few years before he passed. Lawrence’s parents kept a picture from that night in the family room.

“And no one could get under my skin like that man. One time I said it was when I was in labor with your auntie Arlene. He fell asleep while I was writhing in agony. Can you believe that? Who cares if he’d been awake for thirty-six hours at that point?”

“When else did you say it?” Lawrence asked, fascinated.

“I know I said it early on, because after we’d been on two dates, I saw him walking down Main Street with Gladys Martin. Well, she was Gladys Campbell then.”

“Oof. Pop Pop. Bad move.” The tempest inside him calmed a fraction as Nana reminisced.

“I said it that time for the pleasure of watching him grovel his way back into my good graces. And grovel he did. Gladys Campbell-Martin never did hold a candle to me, if you don’t mind me being so vain as to mention it.”

“What did Pop Pop do to convince you to see him again?” Lawrence scooted further to the edge of his seat, his fatigue lifting slightly.

“Now this is a story. I can’t believe I’ve never told you this. Every night I came home from teacher school to find different specialty ingredients waiting for me on my parents’ front porch. You see, even back then, I loved to bake. Pop Pop knew that. He went to the city and got me all sorts of fancy things we didn’t have here at the local market. Marzipan, pink sugar for decorating, vanilla extract imported from France.”

“How long did this go on?”

“At least a week. It would’ve gone on longer, because I wanted to see how many wonderful things I would get, but my mother persuaded me to take pity on him and return his calls. I was twenty at the time, and she was very worried I’d end up an old maid.”

“And the other times? What did he do then?”

Nana sighed. She tried to rearrange her blanket one handed. When Lawrence noticed her struggling, he got up and tucked it around her.

“Isn’t that funny? I can’t remember anymore, all these years later.” She took Lawrence’s hand, her wrinkled skin soft and warm. “What I do remember is that I always forgave him. Do something special for your young lady. She’ll forgive you. After all, you didn’t even stoop to taking out that hussy Gladys Campbell.”

Lawrence laughed for the first time since his fight with Elena. “Nor will I.”

What to do for his Elena? He didn’t know her favorite flowers. There was no place outside her apartment building to leave her tokens like Pop Pop had done for Nana, that legend. An idea glimmered in the back of his mind. A creative idea, to show his creative sweetheart the depth of his regret. The height of his hope for their future.

He whispered the idea to Nana.

“Oh, pumpkin,” she said, “that will be perfect.”