"And . . . ?"

"I think we need to separate for a while."

Separate? I feel my body stiffen and my eyes widen in shock. "Why?" I blurt.

"Because you're not ready for me."

I stand and pace around the room. "Just because I told Bella where we'd be? I was committed to you. Didn't I fly for sixteen uncomfortable hours to run away with you? I was as upset as you were that we were . . . interrupted."

He stands, too, looking eager. "All right. I already have a packed suitcase. I'll just grab my pa.s.sport. Let's go back to your apartment and you pack a quick bag and leave a note. We'll go to the airport and hop onto the first flight going anywhere."

I automatically take a step away from him. "Wait. What's the hurry? We don't have to rush off."

"Why not? What if I say, we'll find the first judge, or a rabbi, if you insist, and get married."

"I don't understand. Why can't we tell our families and friends first?"

"We can inform them afterward, when we get back, and then we'll have a big party."

I don't know how to respond. My mind is running in a dozen directions.

"Glad. Do you see what you're doing? You keep stepping backward. Not forward. Not to me."

I stop in my tracks. I suddenly realize that I've moved halfway across the living room away from him. "You're confusing me. First you're angry and you are ready to leave without telling me where you're going. You don't call. I worry myself sick wondering where you are. Or if you'll ever talk to me again. Now I accidentally run into you, and you're racing me out the door to the nearest altar."

"And what's so bad about that?

"I need to think."

"About what?"

"I don't know. This is too fast.""What are you waiting for? When we get to be ninety?"

I find myself shouting. "I don't know!"

He's shouting, too. "Gladdy. What will it take for you to be ready? What will it take to make you sure? What do I have to do?"

I keep shaking my head as if to clear the cobwebs. Why can't he understand?

Now his voice gets lower. And he is shaking his head, too. "I'm sorry. I can't make us work. To paraphrase the poet, 'she who hesitates is lost.' "

He strides out the door and leaves me standing there.

A moment later, he sheepishly walks back in. "I forgot. I live here."

With that I race past him and slam the door behind me.

TWELVE.

RAIN AND PAIN.

I hurry back to Phase Two. I walk fast and I talk hurry back to Phase Two. I walk fast and I talk out loud to myself. I feel crazed. What did I do? I've lost Jack again. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with him? What was so terrible if I didn't want to run away with him and elope that very second? Wet, sloppy tears run down my face. Huge wet tears. Then I realize it's raining. That's rain pouring down my face. Big sloppy tears of rain. The rain is crying with me. It's a typical Florida instant downpour. It feels like tons of water drowning me. Drowning me and my sorrow. Why did I think I could ever find love again? It's too hard. It's too much . . . what? Pressure? Is that what I feel? Why can't Jack understand how much my girls mean to me? How much we've all needed one another and helped one another through the years? I just can't abandon them. He acts as if it's so simple. Let's just run off. But life is more complex than that.

A few people run past me hurrying for shelter. I don't want shelter. I want to drown standing up. I want to keep running in this downpour forever.

"That's it!" I scream to the skies. "I've had it! How dare he tell me I'm not ready? How dare he make me move to his time clock? And what about all those beautiful words he said to me that first night in the Greek restaurant? It doesn't matter how much time we have left. A year. A month. As long as we're together. What happened to those sentiments? He's dumped me again!"

Someone pa.s.ses me, looks at this crazy, drenched woman screaming to the skies. She pauses. Thinks maybe I need help, and then another cloud bursts and she runs to the nearest sheltered area.

"That's it, Jack Langford. Forget it. I'm done. Not one more tear will I shed for you. Not one more thought will I give this stupid relationship. I'm through! I'm going to get on with my life. I was fine before I met you, Jack Langford, and I'll do very well without you, again!"

The first thing I hear when I reach our club room is Tessie saying, "Let's kill all the doctors." Ida says, "That's supposed to be lawyers.""Them, too." Tessie sees me before the others do. "Look what the cat dragged in!"

I am totally soaked and my teeth are chattering.

The room is filled with women now staring at me. They are seated in a huge circle, sewing. Then I realize, it's the monthly Hada.s.sah meeting.

Lola jumps right on me. "You're too dumb to come in out of the rain?" She takes after her husband, Hy, quick with the unkind cuts.

I see my girls and instantly realize that Bella, Ida, and Sophie are sitting next to one another as usual, and Evvie is seated as far away from them as possible. I guess the feud is still going strong.

Evvie jumps up and runs over to me. She takes her sweater and wraps it around me.

"Florence Nightingale, she thinks she is," says Sophie snidely. Evvie shoots her a dirty look. The girls won't be quick to forgive Evvie for grabbing the plum role of being my partner when and if we go to Wilmington House. More aggravation. Just what I need.

Ida yells, "Someone turn the air down or she'll get pneumonia." n.o.body moves quickly enough, so she turns the thermostat up herself.

I am still shaking. But I don't know if it's from the rain or shock or just plain rage. I try to calm myself. Sophie hurries over and offers me some hot tea. She avoids looking at Evvie.

"We got caught in the rain, too," Irving says. He's with Millie in her wheelchair, seated near the door. Of course, Yolie is there with them, holding Millie's hand. All three look bedraggled. Irving waves to me.

"Come see how we're doing," Mary suggests, holding up the square she's working on. Their Hada.s.sah chapter's good works project is making quilts for underprivileged children. The colors are bright and the patterns cheerful. This was Ida's idea.

Someone pulls a chair over for me, and one of the members who had come in to the meeting directly from swimming offers me her towels to dry myself.

Sophie informs me that they were in the middle of an important discussion. Doctors. "Of course, I was bragging about my darling Dr. Friendly."

Ida shoots me a look of resignation. "As if we could shut her up."

I think dismally to myself, it was Sophie's "condition" that brought me to my current misery. But I can't blame sweet Sophie; I can only blame myself for causing it to happen. If only I could have . . . I stop myself. Woulda coulda shoulda . . . Sophie has a real problem and my feeling sorry for myself won't help her. I think about Sophie and her pills and wonder if Esther Ferguson took pills, too. Maybe too many? Or maybe Romeo fed her pills along with romance. But I can't think now. My brain feels too fuzzy.

"We were also sharing war stories. Of some of the terrible experiences people have had with doctors and hospitals," Mary informs me as she offers me a cookie. Mary used to be a nurse and she ought to know. "My poor cousin went to Mexico for a cure for her MS. I warned her not to go. They injected her with bee venom and charged her twenty thousand dollars. They almost killed her down there."

Tessie says, "I was telling them about my niece who went into the hospital for a knee replacement and they replaced the wrong one."

The women continue sewing while they talk. From what I can tell, they are already at the piecing process where they sew all their small cotton fabric patches together to create the pattern of the top half of the quilt.

I should take part in this discussion, but I don't want to. I let myself lean back against the wall and close my eyes and allow the pleasant hum of words to wash over me.

"Well," Chris Willems, from Phase One, comments, "I hear hospitals now write on the leg in ink saying 'cut this one.' "

"It's about time," adds Jean Davis from Phase Four.

"I had a doctor tell me I had something called fibro myalgia. Which I didn't have. And later on I found out he told all his patients the same thing. Maybe he owned stock in Celebrex." This from Tessie.

"Maybe he was just lazy," comments Bella.

"Well, things like that wouldn't happen with my

GP, Dr. Friendly. In fact, I think he's found a cure for Alzheimer's." Sophie announces this with great pride.

Ida reaches over and pokes her. "Don't talk stupid. No one has such a cure."

Sophie pokes Ida back, barely missing her with her embroidery scissors. "And how do you know he doesn't?"

Evvie glances over toward Irving, who's sitting with Millie, listening to this. She whispers to Sophie. "Miss Insensitive, be quiet."

"What are we supposed to do? We're old and helpless." Ellie Fisher, in her nineties, from Phase Three, says this in a small, frightened voice. "Our lives are in their hands." She puts down her sewing to dab at the tears in her weak eyes.

"Yeah, those mamzers come down here to bleed us seniors dry," Tessie adds.

"Not all doctors are here to cheat us. There are some fine ones, too." Mary is the voice of reason.

"You have to learn how to protect yourself," Ida comments.

"I'll drink to that." With that, Tessie downs the rest of her bottle of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray tonic.

"How?" Ellie squints as she tries to thread her needle. "What about that couple I read about? His wife died because she accidentally took his pills and the dosage was too high for her. They were both taking the same pills for the same illness. It could happen to any of us. Our pills change so often and the dosages change, too. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing."

They look to Mary for some advice from a professional. She thinks for a moment. "I've got an idea. We form a group and take care of one another. For example, how many of you can still see pretty good?"

A smattering of hands go up. "Okay. I do, too. So we now are the medications group. Especially call me and I'll help anyone who has trouble figuring out their pills."

"Good idea," adds Evvie, one of the wellsighted ones. "We can make charts in very big letters and with black felt pens so you know when to take what, and also write the names of each prescription in very large black letters on the bottles so you know which is which."

There is applause at that.

"You can call yourself the Pill Poppers," suggests Sophie, who always has to name everything.

I find myself thinking about Philip Smythe and Esther Ferguson again. Were they taking any pills? Is it really possible she was overdosed? I remind myself to look into this later.

"Where do we sign up?" asks Jean Davis. "I can barely see the writing on those little bottles. Every morning I pray that I take the right ones."

"I'm always scared I took them already, so sometimes I don't take them at all. I need help," Chris Willems adds.

"We can work out a system where you keep all the bottles in one basket or on one shelf and after you take one, you move the bottle into another basket or shelf and that way you can keep them straight," Mary suggests.

Ida instructs them, "Call me. I'll keep a list of who's available. And send someone up to help."

"And what about picking doctors? How do we know we're not getting a quack?" Chris asks.

Evvie answers excitedly. "We ask Barbi and Casey. They know how to find out anything on their computers. They can do a search for us and get recommendations. And also find out the doctors who get sued a lot."

"Who's Barbi and Casey?" asks Flo. "I never met them."

"They're the young ones who live in our building," Bella answers shyly.

I hold my breath waiting to hear one of my girls say more. But they don't. My eyelids are beginning to close. I am so tired. As they continue their plans I find myself dozing off. The stress has exhausted me.

I feel a hand shaking me. It's Evvie. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. The sewing bee has ended. All medical problems have been solved and the rain has stopped. Care to go home?"

THIRTEEN.

WILMINGTON HOUSE.

A s usual, Evvie is my copilot. Her lap is filled s usual, Evvie is my copilot. Her lap is filled with maps and whatever else she thought necessary to bring with us on the hour drive up north to Palm Beach, home of the posh Wilmington House. We've dressed up as best we could this morning with our limited "better" wardrobe. Torn between pantsuits and skirts, we ended up wearing dresses. The ones we usually save for weddings. Though we hated to have to wear stockings.