Cinnamon (Shooting Stars 1)

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Where is he?"

"He didn't leave a number." she said.

"It's an emergency," I continued.

"Let me see if he answers his page," she relented. Why hadn't she said that first? I wondered. I held on, my heart pounding a drum in my ears.

"I'm sorry," she said. "He's not responding."

"Keep trying and if you get him, tell him my mother is being taken to the hospital."

"The hospital? Oh. dear. Oh," she said. "Yes. I'll keep trying."

I hung up just as Grandmother Beverly came up the stairs, looking more her age.

"The doctor has called the ambulance," she said. She swallowed and continued. "It's no use. She has to return to the hospital. When I told him what she had done, he said he'd have her brought to the mental ward."

"Mental ward?"

"Of course. Look at her behavior. That's exactly where she belongs," she added with that damnable look of self-satisfaction I hated so much.

She put her hands over her ears, but Mommy's heart-wrenching scream drove Grandmother Beverly back down the stairs to wait.

I was hoping it would drive her out of our lives.

2 Escape to Dreams

Apparently. Daddy's secretary was unable to each him before the ambulance arrived. I returned to Mommy's bedroom and held her hand while she went through her imaginary labor pains. I guess I shouldn't say imaginary. The doctor would emphasize later that she actually felt the pain.

"Psychosomatic pain is not contrived," he explained to Daddy when Daddy and I met with him in the corridor of the hospital. "The patient feels it: it's just caused by something psychological as compared to something physical." He looked at me and added. "We shouldn't get angry at her."

"I'm not angry at her," I snapped back at him. "I'm upset."

I almost added. I'm frightened, too, but he got me so angry I didn't want to confide in him.

Afterward. Daddy and I sat in the hospital cafeteria having a cup of coffee. Daddy said he hadn't had a chance to eat anything so he nibbled on a Danish pastry.

"When my secretary reached me. I was on my way home." he told me. "I stopped at the train station and called and Grandmother answered and told me what was happening so I came back as quickly as I could and took a cab here. Lucky Grandmother was still in the house."

"It wasn't luck. Grandmother didn't want to come along. I drove myself and followed the ambulance. I'm sure she was afraid she might be seen by one of her society friends." I muttered.

"That's not fair. Cinnamon. Your grandmother was never very good in hospitals. It makes her sick."

"So? What better place to be sick if you have to be sick?" I countered,

One thing Daddy wouldn't ever get from me was sympathy for Grandmother Beverly. I never saw her shed a real tear, not even at Grandfather Carlson's funeral. although I have seen her cry at sad scenes in her favorite old movies. She has a lock on the television set in the family room, fixing it on her oldtime movie channel. She complains incessantly about today's movies, television, music and books, calling it all depraved and claiming the most degenerate minds are responsible.

Occasionally. I would sit and watch an old movie with her. Some of them are very good. like Rebecca. I especially liked the scene where the evil housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, tries to talk the second Mrs. de Winter into jumping to her death. The first time I saw it. I thought she was going to do it. Mrs. Danvers made it sound so inviting. I felt like jumping.

After I saw the movie. I began to think of Grandmother Beverly as our own Mrs. Danvers trying to talk Mommy into jumping off a cliff or at least helping drive her off the cliff of sanity into the bag of madness, where she now resided.

"That's not funny. Cinnamon," Daddy said. "Some people have less tolerance for unpleasant things."

"Grandmother Beverly? Weaker than other women? Please. Daddy," I said.

He blinked and nibbled on his Danish, quickly falling back to his relaxed demeanor. Daddy has a quiet elegance and charm. He is truly a handsome man with rich dark brown hair and the most striking hazel eyes I have seen on any man. He has those long eyelashes, too, and a perfect nose and firm mouth. He's almost square-jawed with high cheek bones and a forehead that's just wide enough to make him look very intelligent. He's an impeccable dresser and never goes any longer than three weeks without having his hair trimmed.