Page 9 of The Throwaway
A slow smile spreads across Elijah's handsome face. "Really?"
"Yes, really," Marigold says, nodding firmly as she starts a running mental list in her head of things she'll need to buy, arrange, and do while Cobb is in her care. "But I have some bad news for you." She looks at Elijah with a serious face and makes him wait for a long minute to hear what the bad news is. "Now that I'm going to be waiting on Cobb Hartley hand and foot, I'm afraid Sinterklaas is off the table. He's back in Holland.Hasta luego. See you next year."
It's Elijah's turn to laugh, and he looks relieved that it's notactualbad news. “Okay. Fair.”
"But if you behave," Marigold says over one shoulder as she heads for her bedroom to shower and dress for the trip, "then Santa might still drop by. We'll see."
* * *
The scene at the hospital is familiar, even if the interior is different: Marigold checks in at the nurse’s station, gets directions to Cobb’s room, and walks there with her heart in her throat, expecting the worst.
Instead, she’s greeted by his sister Kerry and an unusually tight bear hug.
“Goldie!” Kerry shouts, holding her close as she rocks back and forth. “Thank god you’re here!” Her British accent is right in Marigold’s ear and then she pulls back so that they can look at one an other. “You’re the only person he’ll listen to. No one else can talk sense into him.”
Marigold sighs. She already feels exhausted and she hasn’t even laid eyes on her ex-husband yet.
“His doctors want him to do nothing but rest for the next four to six weeks, Goldie, and you know I have my hands full.” Kerry is looking at her with eyes that are openly pleading.
A tenured professor at Princeton, Kerry Hartley has spent the past twenty-five years teaching British Literature to underclassmen while her husband runs an investment firm in Manhattan, to which he commutes to and from each day. Between the two of them, they manage the busy active lives of their teenagers, and Marigold can imagine that panic is setting in for both of them as they picture Kerry’s notoriously stubborn and famous brother camping out in their guest room from Christmas to Valentine’s Day.
“I know, Kerry,” Marigold says, reaching out and putting both hands on Kerry’s arms so that she’s holding onto Cobb’s sister reassuringly. “I’m here to take him home with me.”
Kerry looks like she might cry. “Thank you, Marigold…I know things have been weird between you two, and I can’t imagine that this is going to be comfortable, but you know he loves you—“
“Shhh,” Marigold says, tightening her grip on Kerry’s arms to make her stop talking. The last thing she needs right now is to dissect her relationship with Cobb or the love that he still has for her. It will be her undoing. “Let me see him and then we can talk details, okay?”
Kerry nods as she fishes a Kleenex from her purse, dabbing at her sniffling nose. Marigold watches her for a moment, with her sleekly frosted blonde hair, patrician nose and sharp cheekbones, and the gold Cartier tank watch that slides up her forearm as she digs through her Valentino purse. Kerry and her husband, Porter Howell, do just fine, and Marigold knows that they could probably easily hire a nurse to come into their home to care for Cobb, but she can also imagine the disruption that he’d cause. Taking him home with her is still the best choice for everyone.
Inside Cobb’s hospital room, Marigold finds him dozing with his face turned towards the window. For a moment, she flashes back to the very first time she’d rushed to his bedside in a hospital, only that had been a gray day in New York, and this was a sunny, blue December day in Miami. Outside the second floor window, palm trees wave lazily against an azure sky.
“Hey,” Marigold says softly, approaching his bed and reaching out to take her ex-husband’s rough hand in hers. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Cobb’s eyes fly open and he turns his head slowly on the pillow so that he’s looking straight at her. A smile that appears to take real effort creases his handsome face, and Marigold grins back at him. She could cry just looking at him, but instead she squeezes his hand.
“Goldie,” he says in a raspy voice. “You came.”
“Well.” She pauses and looks at him with hard eyes. “You sent our son to manipulate me into showing up here, so what else was I supposed to do?”
Cobb laughs but then immediately winces like it hurts. “Hey,” he says through a sandpapery throat, “I had to bring in the big guns.”
Marigold lets go of his hand and walks over to a table where there’s a water pitcher and a stack of paper cups. She pours some and jabs a straw into the drink so that she can hold it in place for Cobb. “You could have just called me, you know. It was wrong for you to come over here and have the surgery without even telling me. That is not okay.” She’s back at his bedside, holding the cup low and bending the straw so that she can put it between his dry lips. “Something could have gone seriously wrong, Cobb, and it would have taken me hours to get here. Did you even think of that?”
He sips the water gratefully, his blue-green eyes fixed on Marigold. When he lets the straw go, he smiles again. “There’s the potential for beautiful drama in that scenario, isn’t there? Cobb Hartley is unconscious—“
“Again,” Marigold interrupts dryly.
“Again,” he says. “And his beloved ex-wife has no idea what’s going on until she gets a call that she needs to rush to his bedside.”
“Jesus,” Marigold says, rolling her eyes. “It’s like you want us to pretend we’re still in our twenties. But we’re not, you know. We’re way too old for this, Cobb. You’re fifty-six years old.”
“I’m well aware.”
“And having a major surgery is not the time for you to set us up for a melodramatic reunion.” Marigold is scolding him and she knows it, but doesn’t care. In this, Kerry is correct: she’s the only one who can make him listen, who can give Cobb a full dressing-down, and she’s also the only person who can get him to understand how serious this is.
Cobb looks appropriately chagrined as he drops his gaze. “I know, boss,” he says. “I hear you. And I’m sorry. I just felt like it would all sound better coming from Elijah.”
“Yeah, and about that,” she says, feeling her blood pressure rise. “Buddy showed up on my doorstep purporting to want a special holiday with his mom, but in truth he just wanted to butter me up to take in dear old Dad.” She’s still feeling a little pissy about that fact, and she’s not ready to let it go.