Mother Of Prevention. Lori Copeland

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СКАЧАТЬ get to see Maws and Paws every day if they wanted.

      Mentally sighing, I finished Rody’s trim, blew loose hair off her neck with the dryer, then drenched my fingers with repair serum and ran my hands through the blondish, reddish, ash-speckled, shorn locks. In thirteen short years, my worries would be over. No more listening for the phone to ring, no more fear or paralyzing siren wails in the night, no more worrying that my husband, the man who was my life, would not come home.

      I would be a woman of leisure—a mother and housewife whose only worry would be what to do with all that maple syrup.

      I left La Chic around three; sleet had turned to a cold rain, but I stopped at the cleaners before I picked up the girls. Frieda Louis was coming out when I was going in. Frieda lived a couple blocks away, and our kids played together occasionally.

      “Kate! How nice to see you.”

      “Frieda.” I paused. She always looked as if she’d stepped out of a magazine—every hair in place, flawlessly applied makeup. I felt like an unmade bed next to her.

      “Have any storm damage last night?”

      I shook my head. “A little wind. We took shelter in the Fowlers’ basement and were up most of the night. How about you?”

      “The wind took off an awning on the north side, but Jim had it back up by noon. Don’t you hate this freaky weather?”

      I hated it. Oklahoma had come by the name “tornado alley” legitimately. We exchanged various bits and pieces before I ducked into the cleaners. Tomorrow was travel day: I had to fly to South Carolina and teach a color class to graduating cosmetology students. Except for those awful flights, I enjoyed the brief trips. I handed the clerk my claim ticket and within minutes I was climbing back into the van. One glance at the dash clock, and I realized I still had time for a quick stop by the pharmacy to refill Kelli’s inhaler.

      I wheeled into Walgreens, braked, exited the car and dashed into the store. When I walked in I noticed a cluster of sales clerks grouped around an overhead television. A news bulletin blared. I caught sight of a billow of smoke, eerily reminiscent of a similar image from years earlier.

      I shuddered, recalling that day with a sense of horror. April 19, 1995, at about 9:03 a.m. on a clear spring morning, a bomb inside a moving truck exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Parents had dropped their children at the building’s day-care center and employees had just sat down at their desks to begin the workday when the blast obliterated half of the nine-story building, killing 168 people, many of them children. It was the most deadly terrorist attack to take place on American soil. Until September 11, 2001.

      Neil would have been involved in that tragedy, but we were on holiday. I had thanked God my husband had been spared that awful experience. Any time fire broke out, I panicked, even though right now I could see the fire wouldn’t involve Neil’s station. The pictures were of downtown Oklahoma City, yet a chill slid up my spine. Some other woman’s husband—some child’s father—was in turnout gear, dragging heavy hoses and racing up crowded stairwells.

      I walked to the back of the store and handed the pharmacist Kelli’s spare inhaler. “I need a refill, Mac.”

      “Sure thing, Mrs. Madison. I’ll only be a minute.”

      I turned, perusing the fall decorations. One counter over, Christmas trees blinked, and a revolving Santa was playing a guitar and singing Elvis’s “Blue Christmas.” I wondered when Fourth of July would collide with the harvest season. I hardly had time to take down decorations for one holiday and put up the next set, which made me think of chocolate chips. Kris needed three dozen chocolate chip cookies for a class party tomorrow, which meant that I had to light the temperamental oven, and the thought sent another chill up my spine.

      I left the counter, picked up the chips in the grocery section and returned to see a man kicking up a fuss about his medication.

      “I’m telling you,” he bellowed. “I’m running out of room to take my medication!”

      “Out of room? Mr. Withers, the dosage says to apply a new patch every morning.” The white-coated clerk held the carton at arm’s length, rereading the instructions out loud. “Says here, one new patch a day.”

      “I do that!”

      “Is the medication too strong?”

      “How should I know? I just do what I’m told, but I’m telling you I’m running out of room.”

      I smiled at the pharmacist, who seemed totally perplexed.

      “Look here.” The old man suddenly peeled out of his jacket, threw it on the counter, then unbuttoned his shirt and stripped out of it.

      A chuckle escaped me, and I covered my hand with my mouth when I saw the problem. The man had at least fifty patches stuck on him in various spots and positions.

      Indeed, he was running out of room.

      The pharmacist stared at the interstate of patches, and then calmly explained that the man was to remove the old patch and apply a new one.

      “Well, why didn’t they say so?” The man slipped the shirt back on and buttoned it. “Doctors won’t tell you a thing.”

      A few minutes later I’d paid for the medication and was on my way out of the store when I glanced at the overhead TV. A young store clerk was glued to the set.

      “That’s downtown, isn’t it?” I asked.

      The young man nodded. “A high-rise office complex is on fire.”

      I breathed easier. Station 16 was too far away to respond—unless the situation needed more men. I left the store, my mind back on cookies.

      I picked Kelli up at Mrs. Murphy’s, the woman we called Saint Helen. Retired, husband deceased fifteen years earlier, Helen was a godsend to us. She kept Kelli after kindergarten, and stayed with both girls the days I traveled. I never worried a minute when I was gone; my girls loved Mrs. Murphy as much as Paws and Maws, and Papa and Grandma, and looked forward to the brief visits.

      I picked up Kelli, then swung by the school. When Kris got in, her face was somber. “Mommy, my teacher says there’s a really bad fire downtown.”

      “I heard, sweetie. But Daddy’s station wouldn’t be involved.”

      “Are you sure?”

      I twisted in my seat and gave her leg a reassuring pat. She worried as much as I did about Neil’s safety. “Positive. He’ll call us at the usual time tonight.”

      When I pulled into the drive I punched the garage door button. Minutes later I carried the chocolate chips and Kelli’s medicine into the kitchen and deposited the bag on the small desk. No light blinked on the message machine.

      Stripping out of my coat, I called for the girls to straighten their room before we ate, and then returned to the car for the cleaning. Fish sticks. Fish sticks, macaroni and cheese—that’s what I’d fix for dinner. Since I’d forgotten to stop by for the chicken nuggets, I’d fix Kelli’s second-favorite meal. I grinned, thinking about Neil and how he was frying hamburger and onions right about now. Tonight was his night to cook, and he’d be making Spaghetti Red, a concoction of onion, hamburger, СКАЧАТЬ