Cookies and Care
by VATERGrrl
"Tom!" Emily Stevens' voice was high and surprised when she opened the door of my childhood home to find me slumped against the outside wall of the house, my face hidden in the shadows created by the hood of my sweatshirt. She must have known I was coming over, but maybe I looked even worse than I felt, judging by her reaction.
"Hey, Eb." I snuffled, pulled the cuff of my sweatshirt sleeve up over the heel of my hand and rubbed at my nose, grateful for that bit of stubbornness when, a second later, I had to cup the same hand to my face to avoid sneezing directly at my stepmother. "Hiiih- ishkkkk!"
"Bless you." Ever the pragmatic type, Emily pulled me into the house with one arm while simultaneously drawing a thin white dishtowel from around the waist tie of her kitchen apron. The dishtowel, as well as the apron, were smudged with flour, and I assumed she must have been baking something when my father had called from his car phone to let her know I was in tow.
"Thag you." I accepted the dishtowel from her and snuffled again, prompting my father, who'd come in behind me and closed the door, to cough discretely.
"Would you like anything to drink? Coffee, milk, juice?"
"Oh, do -ihhh - dough thags." I could feel another sneeze, this one much more forceful and insistent, building. It seemed to be dancing about in my nose, itching first here, then there, prompting my breath to hitch and release in a way I found maddening. "Huh-ihhh! Uhhhb." Just as I thought it was going to come out, the sneeze receded, taunting me again just as I allowed myself to relax. "Hiiih, ibguhhh..."
"You're okay?"
I responded to Emily with a quick, sharp nod, pulling the dish towel taut between my hands and crumpling the sides a bit with my fingers. "I jusd deed to sd- sdeeze. Id's sduuhhhh..." Before I could even finish the word "stuck," I was doubled over with a loud, strong "Huh-esshhhooof!" that landed directly in the thick cloth Emily had lent me.
"Bless you."
Her blessing just barely registered - my entire body seemed focused on the act of sneezing again, and I pressed the dish towel tight to my nose against what turned out to be, for me, anyway, a veritable fit. "Uh-shhh! Ishkeeeew! Hashoooo! Hept-shhhh!"
I gasped in another breath, blinking my watering eyes as it was released on another sneeze. "Uh-shiiihhh!"
Oy, gevalt." This time, my father took a turn in blessing me, though it was more an expression of "what a mess!" than a true blessing. "You done?"
I shook my head, feeling one more sneeze creeping up. "Ode -hih- ode bore, I thig." The last in the set was almost an afterthought, the sort that primes you for an 8.5 on the Richter scale but then turns out to be a seismic burp. "Hih, ehhh, huuuuh!" A pause for effect, then, quietly, "Chhh."
"Bless you."
"Thags." My nose was streaming into the dishtowel, and I took the risk of blowing right into the cloth, not knowing if it was proper but absolutely desperate to rid myself of the warmth and wetness. It took another two blows, and a repositioning of the cloth to find a dry patch, before I thought I could safely pull the towel away without risking humiliation.
"Ebily, I'b sorry." I crumpled up the dish towel and shook it weakly for emphasis. "I didud have a haggerchief or addy Kleedex, or I would have..."
"That's okay. If you could throw that in the laundry basket on top of the washer, I'll see that it gets clean. Would you like me to plate you up some cookies when you get back?"
I sniffed the air, hoping that some scent molecules would be able to penetrate my stuffy nose. "Whad kide of coogies?" With my cold, it was impossible to tell what she was cooking - she could have been drying work boots in the oven for all I could smell.
"Oatmeal Scotchies."
I moaned involuntarily. Cookies were my favorite treat, and I'd settle for a nice chocolate chip cookie any day, but what I really craved, the one cookie I most loved in all the world, was a scotchie. The combination of the oatmeal giving texture and crunch, with the butterscotch chips and brown sugar adding dark sweetness, was guaranteed to send my taste buds into high orbit.
"I'll take that as a yes." Emily winked at me, then shooed me off in the direction of the laundry room. True to her word, when I came back, a plate of warm cookies and hotter coffee were arranged on the coffee table in the living room, and there was even a small ceramic creamer in the shape of a cow set beside the cookie plate. I pinched the back of the cow's hips between my fingers, avoiding the fragile- looking tail which had been curved back into the body to function as a handle, and let milk stream out of the cow's open mouth into my mug.
The creamer seemed indicative of Emily's style: decorative but whimsical, attending to the small details without getting bogged down in them. Had Martha Stewart not already built her lifestyle empire, my father's second wife could have stepped in easily, though her taste ran toward simplicity, and simplicity itself didn't sell a lot of merchandise.
I took the opportunity to look around the room as I nibbled on a cookie. Emily had changed the décor I'd grown up with, the "rugged men-on-their-own" Craftsman style only a little, keeping the clean lines and minimal frills while adding small touches of femininity with a soft purple chenille thing draped over the back of the couch and a glassed-in curio cabinet which held tea cups. Each cup and saucer was different from all the others, and the collection was a riot of patterns and colors, yet it worked when you looked at the cabinet as a whole.
I assumed, and perhaps rightly so, that Emily had left the room mostly bare for her son, Brian, whose asthma could be easily triggered by an overabundance of dust. Indeed, the plush wall-to- wall carpeting I recalled from my youth, had been torn out and replaced with a light golden oak floor. It was the sort of surface which could be dry mopped easily and quickly every day, but the warmth of the oak saved it from feeling institutional.
"Jed tells me you're working on something big for the paper?" Emily's question ended my perusal of the living room, and I swallowed the bite of cookie I'd been chewing to answer.
"Yes, it's, uhm, a trial." I felt hesitant to state what kind of a trial it was, and took a sip of coffee to cover my discomfort.
"A trial. Of what sort? Criminal? Civil?" Aw, nuts, Emily had asked the question, and I felt obliged to answer her.
"It's a rape trial."
Emily blanched at my use of the word rape, and my father murmured sympathetically.
"I'm afraid that it's going to be all over the papers - the local news and what not. The accused rapist is some college football star, a bright prospect for the NFL." My research had yielded a lot of stonewalling from the athletic department, but I had found out that Scott Vester was universally considered the Penguins' golden hand, a shoe-in for a first- or second-round draft pick.
"Have you been able to talk with this woman, the one who was raped? Get her side of the story?"
I hesitated again, trying to determine the most diplomatic way to answer. "Uhm, yeah, I was able to interview her."
My father's face tightened as he appeared to recall something, then he scowled. "Today?"
I stared hard at the plate of cookies as I answered. "Yeah."
"Oh, god." My father's response was terse, yet it held such gravity it was almost as painful to hear as my own discovery had been.
"Yeh." My nose had begun to itch again, and I scrubbed at it with my knuckles, setting down my coffee mug so that I could pull a tissue from the box on the end table to my right. "'Scuse be." I sniffed, pulled another tissue from the box to put behind the first, then promptly sneezed right through both. "Hahh-ISHOOO!"
"Bless you!" Emily seemed a bit shocked to see me left holding white shreds of Kleenex, but my father had experienced it too many times before to be remotely fazed.
"I'll go get you another handkerchief." He patted my shoulder briefly as he crossed to the main hall, and I heard his footsteps on the stairs. While he was gone, I stripped another bunch of tissues from the box and cupped them to my nose, making sure I had at least four layers of tissue to sneeze into, though even those were approaching the tearing point when he returned.
"Here you go." I peered up over the damp wad of tissues to see my father holding out a red bandanna, but before I could pull the tissues more than an inch from my nose to make an exchange, I sneezed again, a messy "Ihskchew!" that decimated the clump once and for all.
"Uck." I swiped under my nose with the remnants I held and chucked the balled, slightly gummy clump into the small garbage can under the end table. "Sorry `boud thad."
"Not a problem." Dad waited until I'd plucked another three tissues from the box and exhaled a long, gurgly blow into them before placing the bandanna in my hand. "Salud."
"Berci." I coughed into the cloth, then sighed. I didn't know if it was my cold, or the minor strain of making small talk with Emily, but I was drained.
"Would the two of you bide if I go take a dap? I'b jusd wibed oud."
"We wouldn't mind at all, Tom." Emily rose to escort me to the stairs, noticing I was a bit wobbly on my feet. I accepted her arm around my waist with a weak smile, and together we clomped up the stairs to my bedroom.
"Now, I put clean sheets on the bed, and if you need another pillow, let me know." Emily turned back the blanket on my bed, and I sat down on the flannel fitted sheet in order to take my shoes off, prying the first one off by placing the sole of the other against the heel of the first and pushing as hard as I could. The other I just untied, not wanting to strain my sock-clad foot, and scooted into bed with my sweatpants and hooded shirt on. Normally, I stripped off every last bit of clothing before turning in, but I wasn't about to take off even my sweatshirt with Emily there, and the hood felt comforting pulled up and around my face.
"Here, let me do one thing before you nod off." Emily disappeared briefly into the bathroom, returning with a small gadget that looked like an otoscope. "I need to find out if you have a fever."
"With thad thig?" I examined it dubiously. All the thermometers I was used to got slid under your tongue, or worse.
"One of the reps gave it to your father, said it was the new thing. It measures your temperature via your ear canal."
"Hmph." I was skeptical, but I allowed Emily to push back the side of my hood, then tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and stick in the cone of the scope. Thirty seconds later, the gizmo beeped, and she pulled it back out, squinting at the little digital screen.
"Well, a slight fever, but I'd hold off on taking anything just yet." Em pulled the hood back to its original position and waited until I was lying down before placing the flannel top sheet and woolen Pendleton blanket over my chest. "Should I wake you up for dinner?"
I thought back over the day and realized that the only thing I'd eaten was the cookies she'd so generously offered me. Although I would have preferred to sleep right through until sunrise, I knew I needed more food. "Uhb, yeah. Please." I yawned, groggily lifting my hand to cover my mouth so that Emily wouldn't be left to gawk at my fillings.
"Get some rest." Emily's own hand touched my forehead lightly, gently, a gesture so full of maternal concern that I felt moisture behind my half-closed eyelids. When some slipped out, I closed my eyes tight and rolled over, hoping my step mother had not noticed. She just made a small clucking noise with her tongue and closed the door to my bedroom, allowing me to fall off the edge of the abyss into sleep.
I wanted to explore the stepmother-stepson dynamic and play with a few bunnies (a hooded sweatshirt and a dishtowel). Feedback would be wonderful.