A Doctor for Keeps Read online

  “I know you did. Mom finally told me.” Mom had felt fragile like Gerda the last few months of her life. Desi could only imagine how hard it must have been for a mother to lose her daughter when they’d been estranged all those years. As for why her mother had never returned, well, that mystery wasn’t likely to be resolved.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about coffee stunting my growth,” Desi said, deciding to change the subject. “I’m five foot nine.”

  Gerda offered a wan smile and Desi waited for her face to brighten, even if only a little, then she went back to making the coffee. Gerda sipped hot tea and ate a piece of toast with marmalade, putting the taste for toast and jam in her mind. Mom loved orange marmalade, too.

  Since Gerda seemed engrossed in the morning paper, and Desi wasn’t sure what to talk about anyway, she filled her coffee cup and wandered into the living room, to the gorgeous grand piano in the center of the room. She took a sip of coffee and carefully placed the cup on an adjacent TV tray containing a bowl of candy and a pile of colorful stickers.

  Lifting the keyboard cover, she explored the keys, enjoying the feel of the cool ivory beneath her fingers. She’d had to sell her mom’s piano when she’d sold the house in L.A. to pay for the medical costs. She’d put the remaining contents of that house of memories into storage, the piano and everything it represented in their lives being the biggest memory of all. Music, and her mother’s talent, had been their bread and butter, keeping them afloat through all the tough times. And there had been many.

  When Desi became old enough to work and was able to contribute toward house payments, they’d finally settled into their own home. Though she’d never been sure where the large down payment had come from, Desi had a sneaking suspicion her grandmother had something to do with it. Then her mother got sick. All those years in smoke-filled lounges had finally caught up with her. Four years of lung-cancer treatment and suffering for naught. Even after Mom had died, Desi was hit with huge medical bills.

  As she so often did when she felt sad or moody, like right now, Desi turned to music. Soon her fingers danced along the keys, as if having memories in their tips. Beethoven’s “Für Elise” filled the room with the rich tone of the grand piano. When she’d finished, she moved on to a Chopin nocturne. On and on she played, forgetting all her worries, losses and fears, until her fingers and hands were tired. She hadn’t played perfectly, far from it, but what could she expect for not having touched a piano in months, since she’d sold theirs? Still, it felt good. Invigorating.

  Desi sipped her tepid coffee then smiled, her mood elevated. She glanced up and found Gerda leaning against the kitchen door, tears brimming in her pale eyes.

  “Your mother taught you well,” Gerda said.

  Desi nodded. “She did. She loved music. All kinds. But you probably knew that.”

  “I taught her how to play, you know.” Gerda stood straighter. “She was such a natural.”

  The questions swimming in Desi’s head almost poured out of her mouth: Why did mom need to run away? Why did she rarely talk about you? Why did Mom insist it was just the two of us? What could have been so horrible for her mother to run away and sever all ties? But seeing her grandmother’s fragile state, the emotion she wore on the shabby midnight-blue bathrobe sleeve, Desi kept her questions silent.

  “Do you still play?” Desi asked.

  Gerda’s eyes brightened, and she proudly walked toward the piano. “I’ll have you know, besides being mayor pro tem of Heartlandia, I’m also the most sought-after piano teacher in town.” A mischievous smile stretched her sallow and lined cheeks as she sat on the other half of the bench. “For anyone under the age of twelve, that is.” That explained the candy and stickers.

  Gerda chuckled and it sent a chill down Desi’s center. Her mother had laughed exactly like that. Up close, though Gerda’s eyes were milky blue, they were shaped like her mother’s, and though Gerda’s hair was all white now, she could tell that it used to be blond, also like her mother’s. The two women fit together like misplaced puzzle pieces, and why wouldn’t they, since they were mother and daughter?

  Yet Mom had said very little about her family over the years. That was until her last days. All Desi knew growing up was the road and hotels and Mom. No strings. Just the two of them. Deep down Desi had always suspected it was because she was of mixed race that they’d kept to themselves. Though her mother had not once hinted at that being the reason. Being constantly on the road, with her mother working for a big Midwest hotel chain as the lounge entertainment, playing one month here, six weeks there, made it impossible to make friends or, evidently, keep in touch with relatives. Only on her mother’s deathbed had she asked for Gerda to come. And Desi had finally learned about the man named Victor Brown, the father she never knew.

  Gerda had started playing a song meant as a duet. Desi had been taught the same song by her mother when she was a kid. Without being asked, she jumped in and played her part in the higher octaves, and if that sparkle in Gerda’s glance meant anything, Grandma was pleased.

  They smiled tentatively at each other, then sat companionably for several minutes playing the piano together, and Desi was grateful that at least through music, they had a way to open up their communication. Otherwise, she felt like a stranger in a strange land in this place called Heartlandia.

  “So you’re the mayor?” she asked at the end of the piano piece.

  Gerda nodded. “Not by my choice, but the town likes to choose its mayor from people long invested in Heartlandia.” She looked straight ahead as she spoke. “I can trace my people almost back to the beginning. The only problem with that method is we get stuck in history, and these days we have a lot of new residents moving in because we have so much to offer families.”

  “Not keeping up with the times?”

  Gerda glanced at her. “Something like that. I’m only temporary, though, and we’ll have our general election next year. They promised the job wouldn’t be hard, but I’m clearly in over my head.”

  “And then I show up.”

  Gerda hung her head. “Desdemona, I wish we could have one huge do-over where you are concerned. Your mother ran away because she was ashamed of being pregnant. We found her when you were born, and I am deeply sorry to say Edvard and I were surprised when we saw you. Ester was such a touchy one. Always had been. I didn’t mean her to think what she did… You were my granddaughter. I loved you. But Edvard—”

  “—couldn’t accept that I was half-black?”

  “It’s not that simple, Desdemona. Please don’t think that.”

  What was she supposed to think?

  “I wanted to bring Ester and you home. She insisted she could take care of herself. I admit, I didn’t fight hard enough and gave in to Edvard.” Now Gerda connected head-on with Desi’s eyes. “I kept watch over the two of you as best I could, though from a long distance. And I sent money whenever Ester was especially hard up.”

  Her mom must have kept those times to herself because in Desi’s memory they lived hand to mouth most of their years on the road. But then, out of the blue five years ago when Ester first got sick, they were able to buy a small house. The home they’d always dreamed and talked about. The timing was perfect, since her mother couldn’t keep up with traveling and chemo. Had her mom been saving Gerda’s money, or had Gerda helped out, as she’d previously suspected?

  There was a reprieve from the cancer and Ester was able to take a few playing jobs here and there, but the cancer came back. Even then, Ester stayed away from Heartlandia.

  “Why didn’t we ever visit?” Desi asked. It was an honest question that her mom had always evaded.

  “It wasn’t because I didn’t invite you. Please know that. Your mother—” Gerda hung her head again. “She just didn’t want anything more to do with her home, I guess.”

  Desi’s heart tightened. It must have been hard for Gerda to be rejected time and again by her daughter. Deciding they’d shared enough heartache for one mo
rning, she went back to playing another simple song and soon Gerda, accepting the quiet reprieve, joined her.

  After a few more duets and small talk, they went their separate ways, Gerda to spend some time at city hall and Desi to shower and dress.

  She did some laundry and took a walk around the backyard, trying to figure out why her mother had been so stubborn, insisting on keeping her to herself despite the invitations to come home.

  An abundance of rosebushes in assorted colors filled the air with a strong fragrance. A huge white hibiscus bush in the far corner seemed no less than twelve feet high. The Victorian-style house hadn’t looked nearly as bright yellow in the dark of night. Trimmed in green, with a pitched roof and a third-story dormer with a fanlight window, the house looked like something out of an old movie. Desi circled the perimeter of the house and noticed a partially covered balcony at the front and a second balcony on the side. What a gorgeous place…the home her mother had run away from.

  Returning to the scene of the crime of last night—the gated side yard with overgrown bushes and shrubs—she glanced next door at another Victorian. It was painted completely white with a small bay window at the front, the only color in sight an aqua-blue door at the side entrance. Kent’s house almost looked medicinal. Churchlike. She wandered toward his house, noticing the artful subtleties of the architecture. But white? Really? It seemed such a waste.

  Soon growing bored with trying to figure out why the big guy had the blandest house on the block, Desi’s gaze drifted to the imposing Columbia River several blocks away, down by the railroad tracks and the docks. The water twinkled beneath the strengthening sun. In the distance, the longest bridge she’d ever seen arched from this side of Oregon far across to what she assumed must be Washington State.

  Though June, the brisk air brought gooseflesh to her arms even through her light sweater. She turned to go back inside. On the hillsides behind her stood dozens and dozens of more modest but brightly painted Victorians overlooking the jagged riverbank. Scattered among the Victorians were dwellings of half timber wood–half brick foundations with tall sloping roofs, reminding her of her Scandinavian heritage.

  Her surname, Rask, was Danish, but according to her mother, she’d come from a place filled with Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Icelanders along with the original Chinook peoples. When Ester rarely did talk about “home,” to Desi’s ears it sounded like a mythical place, perhaps a figment of her mother’s dreams, someplace she embellished to feed the imagination of her young daughter. This vista seemed to prove the point. It did almost look mythical.

  Her mother had run away from an idyllic, lost-in-time town called Heartlandia. Or Hjartalanda, as the welcome sign at the edge of town said. She’d scoffed when she’d read the slogan beneath: Find Your Home in Heartlandia.

  Was it possible? Could a quaint town fill up that huge hole inside her?

  She headed up the stairs to her room. Seeing her grandmother again was only half of the reason for this trip to Oregon. The other half was her father.

  A couple of hours later, after doing research on her laptop, Desi’s stomach growled. She wandered down to the kitchen, searching for food, but instead found Gerda home and fumbling with a rubber opener and a stubborn jar.

  “Let me get that for you,” she said.

  With a look of defeat in her eyes, Gerda handed over the jar. “My arthritis is giving me fits today.” She rubbed her hands and grimaced. “Guess I better start making phone calls and cancel tomorrow’s piano lessons.”

  “How many students do you have lined up?”

  “Four. I give lessons from two to six on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I do the part-time mayoral work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

  “All kids?”

  Gerda nodded while searching the cupboard, looking at medicine bottles one by one until she found what she wanted.

  “Any advanced students?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. They’re all beginners in book one or two.” She shook out a couple of pills into the palm of her hand. “The next generation of great talent, as I tell their parents.”

  “Why don’t you let me take over for you?”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, filling a small glass with water and popping the pills into her mouth.

  “I’m offering. It’s the least I can do since you’re letting me stay here as long as I want.”

  Gerda folded her arms, her eyes nearly twinkling. “That would be wonderful.”

  * * *

  At five o’clock the next afternoon, a timid tap at the front door let Desi know the last student had shown up. Gerda had been so impressed with Desi’s teaching style, she’d dropped out of sight after the beginning of the four-o’clock lesson. Desi suspected it was to take a nap, as she’d been yawning throughout most of the last lesson.

  Desi opened the door and found a towheaded boy with bright blue eyes, who was a little chunky around the middle. “Hi! Are you Steven?”

  He nodded hesitantly. “Is Mrs. Rask here? It’s time for my lesson.” He waved three piano primer books like a fan.

  “I’m substituting for Mrs. Rask today. She’s my grandmother.”

  His eyes grew to the size of quarters. “You are? Wow. You don’t look like her. You’re pretty.”

  She laughed. The boy was already a charmer. Looked as though that Kent guy needed to take a few lessons from his son.

  Last night Gerda had filled in Desi on all of the students. Steven was eight and showed potential, but he didn’t put in enough effort to make much progress. Her job would be to light a fire in him for the joy of music. Tall order for a substitute.

  The boy seemed tall for his age, and remembering his gigantic father, she understood why. Soon, when the growth spurts started, Steven would probably outgrow his chubbiness as she had when she was around that age.

  Desi walked Steven to the piano, pulled out the bench and placed one candy where the boy could see it. “That’s for after you show me your written theory homework.”

  He gulped. “Uh.” He screwed up his face, making a bundle of tiny lines crisscross over his tiny nose. “I think I forgot to do it.”

  She bit back her smile, not wanting to let his cuteness get him off the hook. She subtly moved the candy back to the bowl and opened his book. “Well, then we’ll work on it together, okay?”

  The fill-in questions for note names and the staffs to practice making treble and bass clefs went by quickly with her guidance, and he brightened up. She put two shiny stickers on the pages, and he grinned.

  Desi took the same piece of candy from the bowl and returned it to the prior spot. “Are you ready to play for me?”

  He nodded, opened his book and dug right in. Clunky and uneven, he banged out the simple notes, but Desi could tell he’d put a lot of effort into his playing. Even to the point of grunting and muttering “uh-oh” or “dang it, I keep messing up.”

  She loved looking down at his silky white-blond hair and thought for a boy he smelled pretty good, too. Gerda had been right—Steven showed potential, but he just needed to be nudged. She patiently worked with him, curving his fingers just so, straightening his wrists and gently prodding his spine so he’d sit straighter. When he repeated his slouched posture over and over again, Desi realized he must have liked the way it felt when she walked her fingertips up his spine to get him to sit straight.

  “That tickles,” he said after the third reminder, smiling up at her, and her strict teacher persona melted around the edges.

  When she explained some of the tricky parts of the song and showed him how to play it, she noticed his head had come to rest on her upper arm. The sweetie liked this attention. Maybe she could use that to make a piano player out of him.

  “Would you like to learn a different kind of song?”

  “Yeah, this one seems kinda dorky.”

  She played a simple basic blues song that used the bottom notes to make it sound snazzy. Steven sat right up, immediately interested in the p
iece. She found the page in the book so he could see the notes and showed him how to play the first few bars. He obviously liked the rhythm and soon his shoulders moved to the beat. She’d found it—his kind of song.

  “I tell you what,” she said. “You live next door, right?”

  He nodded, making a serious face, exaggerating his already-deep dimples.

  “If you want to come over here after school a couple days during the week, I’ll let you practice on this piano, okay?”

  “Will you be here?”

  “Sure. I’ll even help you practice if you want.”

  “Okay!”

  The moment she’d finished carefully writing out his homework, the doorbell rang, and she jumped up to open it. The Norseman stood on the other side, overbearing in stature, first drilling a glance through her then peering inside the house. She’d forgotten how big Kent was. In daylight, his finely carved features and cutting blue eyes almost took her breath away. Too bad he chose to look so serious all the time. He wore a navy blue polo shirt, but the sleeves barely fit around his arms. The standard jeans fit very, very well, indeed.

  She smiled a simple superficial greeting, while odd tingles threaded along her skin. “Come in,” she said. “We just finished.”

  “Hi, Dad!”

  “Hey, son.”

  Steven gathered his piano books and rushed toward his father. “Ms. Desi is a really cool teacher!” They hugged, and Desi could see the honest-to-goodness love they shared. It was the same kind of you and me against the world love that she and her mom used to have, and the display touched her deep inside. Maybe she’d cut the big guy some slack.

  “That’s great,” he said to his son, then looked at Desi with near alarm in his glance. “Are you taking over for Mrs. Rask?”

  “Just today. Her arthritis is flaring up.”

  “Won’t you be my teacher next week?” Disappointment poured out of Steven’s voice.

  “We’ll see how Gerda feels, okay?” She walked back to the piano and picked up the wrapped candy, then came back to Steven and handed it to him. “I promised to help you practice, remember?”