Blue Stars by Emily Gray Tedrowe Page B

don’t keep a list, like for a handyman.”
    “All right. Then we need to—”
    “But the TV upstairs. I can’t figure out what’s happened.” The three of them trooped upstairs. Lacey let Otis take care of the TV remote situation—Lolo had pressed an input button and couldn’t get out of a black screen that said “Video 2”—while she popped into the bathroom to check the medicine cabinet.
    “Mom, you’re low on Prandin.” She shook the pharmacy bottle of diabetes pills. “You have to take these three times a day, before each meal.”
    “I have another in the kitchen,” Lolo called. “This one’s just if I forget. So I don’t have to go back down the stairs.”
    “Right, well, the idea is not to forget,” Lacey said to herself. She checked the bedroom—fine, tidy—and picked up the laundry basket. Above Lolo’s protestations, she started a load and then attended to other things on the list. Lolo had, in fact, made a list. However, Lacey point-blank refused the last item.
    “Lolo, I am not clipping any cat’s toenails. Disgusting.”
    “But it only takes a minute! He won’t hold still for me. You should see what the claws are doing to my bedspread! Here, Tego. Come here, Tego!”
    “Uh-uh. Negative. Let’s go, O.”
    In spite of her theatrical disappointment—you only just got here!—they gathered coats and hugged Lolo and said good-bye. Lacey could almost feel herself lighten, out on the street, unlocking the car.
    “You call me,” Lolo ordered from the doorway. “Any minute that you hear from him.”
    “Of course we will, Mom. Love you. See you next week.” Pulling away, Lacey glimpsed her mother-in-law in the window, curtain aside, watching them above her service flag.
    “Mom. Pleasepleaseplease . I am so hungry. I’m starving.”
    She glanced at him. He was a good kid. “All right, I’ll make you a deal. We can stop for dinner, but I’m not going to that seafood place, it gives me a headache.” And it was insanely expensive; eighteen dollars for a paper plate of fried clams. “Bring your backpack.”
    They went to the Snug, a recently renovated pub next door to the diner. The Yankees were on three TV screens, and only two or three people were sitting at the bar. Lacey led Otis to a table along the side of the room and went up to the bar for menus.
    “I got you,” the bartender said, waving her back to the table. He came over with menus, place settings, and two glasses of water.
    “What’s the score?”
    “Detroit’s up by two. Something to drink?”
    “He’ll have milk and—”
    “Sprite, please, Mom?”
    “One Sprite and I’ll have … what the hell is ‘City Island Beer’?” she said, squinting at the tap.
    One of the barflies called back over his shoulder, “It’s six-dollar Michelob with a fancy label.” Cackles.
    “I’ll take a Miller Lite.” Meanwhile, Lacey was unpacking Otis’s backpack and handing him his math workbook and reading folder. “No watching the game until I’ve checked these.”
    “Mom, Jeter’s up!”
    “Look, I’m working too.” Lacey pointed to her thick, stuffed binder: a combination agenda, scheduler, and file folder. She turned to the section labeled “FRG Group.” Each woman had filled out a sheet with some basic information as well as a space for what Lacey had called “Concerns and Life Stresses.” Anne had suggested that she have each person describe what her main problems were, and then take notes based on that. But Lacey had wanted the women to put it in their own words. Which, thank God, because the first meeting had not gone as expected.
    There had been six of them in a dingy room in the Yonkers Community Center. Two black women who were longtime friends and had husbands in the National Guard; one bitchy girl with a newlywed in the Marines; one freaked-out mom of an army PFC; and one woman who didn’t say a word the entire hour. Nervous, Lacey had been too energetic. She aimed for Anne’s funny enthusiasm