BigB Publications

Denise

 

 

Denise had always loved horses, and men, preferably together.

            Her father started her on the horses at the age of six. Living in Longwood, it was on the edge of farm country, and although the housing subdivisions took over more and more of the landscape, it was at that laid-back steady pace of the Mid-West. In between the complexes with such names as Knollwood and Briarwood one could still find tracts of farmland, and horse-farms, that catered to people with appreciation for the great outdoors and an easy trot or canter. Frank Leibovitz had taken Denise to Ecker’s farm on Sundays and holidays, and she had been comfortable on the ponies, and later the mares and the geldings long before she started her show-jumping career.      

  It was a short career. At the State Dressage Championship Denise spurred her new stallion Thunder to a slow canter, then attempted a low hurdle, then a tall hurdle, and lastly the six pole double hurdle, and the mount vaulted high, pulled his legs up, and cleared the hurdle as if it were no taller than a cone. Denise decided to go for one more circuit, this time at competition speed and urged Thunder on. She was standing on the stirrups, his mane was flying and the hurdle with the water-filled trench came up at terrifying speed and she felt the animal gather its hindquarters for the vault when he suddenly braked hard, hoofs splayed and head and neck down. Denise who was riding English-style had no recourse but to fly through the air over the trench and into the poles. She collided with a pole at midair and it twisted and she landed wrists first, and she could feel both her wrists crunching as she hunched her helmet-clad head  forward and rolled on the helmet, neck vertebrae and back. She lay there dazed while Thunder kicked the ground and started prancing around, unsure of what to do now that rider input was gone.

Denise suffered fracture of both wrists, ulna and radius, and had to wear casts on both fore-arms for three months and prolonged rehabilitation for a year. She did not bear any animosity toward the horse. Thunder was an animal, and animals, as much as humans, sometimes did stupid things without regard for the consequences, so she did continue to go to Ecker’s farm and pet him, and talk to him, and sometimes she believed that he felt ashamed of his behavior. It was time for her to get her grades and scores up for college.

 Aaron knew exactly what he was going to do with his life, he was already a computer maven and he was going to formalize it when the time came. Denise wasn’t so sure and she vacillated between Pre-Vet, or going human. Pre-Vet was not radically different from Pre-Med and so she had a lot of physiology, comparative anatomy, chemistry, physics, genetics and so forth. Her minor was in psychology.

 

 

The college required her to do some volunteer time and naturally she gravitated toward an equestrian-related field. The Equestrian Life Center fulfilled the need admirably. It was on the outskirts of the city, and its mission was to allow challenged riders to ride the horses. The operation was wholly dependent on volunteers, even the horses were gifts. Usually they were older horses whose running and galloping days were over, and whose tempers were suited for sedate riding. The riders themselves were a catalogue of human misery.  Young women with Multiple Sclerosis, middle-aged men with Huntington Chorea, children with Cerebral Palsy, or Down’s Syndrome, or Autism, and young men after thoracic spine trans-sections, suddenly reduced to wheel chairs. All of them got a measure of pleasure, and control, and exercised muscles that other-wise would waste away in the wheel-chairs. Each afflicted individual needed a side-walker or two with his mount, and the instructors taught each to ride the horses, according to their abilities. The parents of the afflicted children got to see their children derive some enjoyment in the fresh air, and all-together this was a self-less organization run for the good of the unfortunate. Denise, who was already an equestrian expert was closely adopted by Pat, who was the chief instructor, and over time began to regard her volunteering job as the main-stay of her life. She discussed the option of apprenticing and achieving recognition by NARHA, the association that oversaw the accreditation of the Riding Centers, with Pat.

“You can depend on one thing” Pat said as they were helping an Autistic child who was wearing that vacant expression and uttered screeches for sounds “it’s not a good way to make a living, the only way I can do it is by having married a rich man!” and she let off a rich peal of laughter. She showed the kid how to hold the reins, and narrowly prevented a savage pull at the reins that would have caused  the animal some pain.

“Gently Jimmy, gently, don’t pull so hard, push him up Denise, he is slipping to one side.”

 “Why don’t we get his feet into the stirrups?”

“His Achilles tendon is shortened, it’s very difficult to stretch it, see if you can.” Denise tried and the child screeched in protest. “They are not doing a good job at PT,  I’ll ask his mother about that.”

 

“What did she say?” Denise asked of Pat. Pat was in her mid- forties, slim, blond, her only son was also away at college, and Denise came to look to her as a surrogate mother in the university town, hundreds of miles from home, Frank and Marcy.

“They just don’t have the money, fifteen bucks a six week session here is one thing, but a forty dollar charge for Physical Therapy every time, partially covered by insurance, is another.

 

“How’s your back?” Pat asked Denise on the phone. Denise was in her room in the dorms, boning up on respiratory system physiology. Between her studies and the time she put into the Equestrian Life Center she did not have too much time for socializing. Anyway, her choices were not as wide open as other students. The need to stay tied to the Jewish faith was instilled into her very soul from day one. Marcy had made her promise a tearful solemn pledge, that she was not going to come home with a Goy boyfriend or, a husband, God forbid. That left her adequate time for the Life Center.

“Pretty strong, I guess” Denise replied, she had never had back problems.

“Wednesday we are having a couple of heavy-weight men, on wheel-chairs, and we need a sub, can you make it?”

Denise consulted her schedule “what time?”

       “Twelve forty five to two o’clock, with the usual fifteen minutes spread.”

“I’ll make it.”

“Thanks a million.”

 

Even from a distance Denise was quite sure she had seen the big one before. But where? He was very independent, as opposed to the other one. The car was a blue Buick Regal with a square looking white top cap. A muscular arm pushed the door out, and the mechanism opened the top to reveal a wheel chair. With an electric whirr the chair was lifted and described a half-moon arc through the air to land softly beside the open door. Denise made to walk out when Pat stopped her.

“Don’t” Pat said.

“Why not?” Denise asked.

“He hates being helped, he’ll make it in by himself.”

 

 

True to her word the man pulled the wheel-chair right up to the door jambs and leaned out and heaved himself into the wheel chair, his tremendous arms doing the job as if he weighed two pounds rather than one-eighty pounds. He transferred his useless legs to the foot-rests, slid in the metal arms rest that completed the chair, pushed himself away and heaved the car door shut with a resounding metallic clang. Then he rotated on a dime, as if in a circus, and launched the chair forward, toward the ramp leading into the facility. The other rider, a pale wan individual, came in a van, and did not move a muscle, because the mechanical side of access acquisition was all done automatically, the doors swinging out, the ramp hydraulics serving the occupied chair, and lowering it to the ground, and collecting itself back after the operation. The chair itself was mechanized and the man on it guided it with a small joystick, trailing the first. His arms were spindly and his  back bowed, and his belly bulged and filled the wheel-chair, a sorry sight.

     As the first one pushed aside the swing door to the reception hall Denise was certain she knew him from somewhere, and from the hesitant query on his face, she knew he shared the same feeling. Nevertheless he drove his chair toward Pat and stuck out a huge paw.

“Hi Pat.” Denise was absolutely positive she had heard that voice, and inflection, before.

“Hi Tom.”

“Who do I get today?”

“King.”

Tom laughed, good-naturedly “you mean the King’s Jester, don’t you, this King is a sorry excuse for a horse or palfrey.”

“If I give you a real stallion, which we don’t have” Pat smiled “You’ll start jumping the fences with it, that’s why you get King.” King was a twenty eight year old gelding who could be coaxed, with much effort and cajoling, into a mild, slow trot. But he was a big horse who could carry a bigger man.

“I see you have a new walker” Tom turned his attention to Denise. He had a leonine head of dark brown hair shot through with lighter locks, a dark handsome thin face, swarthy, with shocking-green eyes and fine eyebrows. Denise could only feel a stab of shame that she was standing up, on her own two feet, while this fine specimen of a man had to tilt his head up to look at her. Especially since she knew she had seen and heard him before.

“Just for today” Denise said.

“And once upon a time you were also a fourteen years old, and you could make horses jump through hoops.”

     “Tom Gordon” Denise breathed, her nostrils dilating as she inhaled deeply.

“You two know each other?” Pat was flabbergasted.

“Yup, but at that time I could walk, in fact I could also run and jump, and crawl and whatever else one can do with two intact lower limbs” Tom said it without any discernible self-pity, more as an ageing athlete might tell of his earlier achievements.

“I remember, you were always showing the kids what you had to do in the Army.”

“All right guys” Pat was exasperated “what’s going on?”

“Sorry Pat, Tom was an instructor in the summer camp I attended in Wisconsin, way back when, I showed off with the horses, and he showed off with the Army moves.”

“You were a pretty girl then and you are a beautiful woman now” Tom said candidly, like someone who has nothing to lose. Denise turned red as a beet, all the way up to her reddish-blond hair.

“Why don’t you two catch up on the old days after the session and let’s get on with it."

 

 Since she had been twelve, before and after her Bat Mitzva, Denise had spent her summer vacations in the Jewish Camps such as Young Judea in Wisconsin for periods of four to six weeks. There the girls and boys received a deeper Jewish national indoctrination, not just of being a faith, one of a myriad of faiths which proliferate in America, but the sense of a nation dispersed among the nations but with a  commitment to all of  its members. The kids were taught Jewish history, some Hebrew and their role-models were the older teen-agers and young army veterans from Israel, who exemplified the sense of Unity and Pride of the ancient nation in the process of struggling to regain its rightful place among the independent free nations of the free world. Free not only from tyranny and oppression but also free of disease, hunger, and war-like neighbors. Most American kids sympathized to a point but did not feel the need to participate in the struggle. Their own Jewish American identity was firm, and comfortable. The second purpose of the camp experience was to have the kids meet and maintain relations with peers, so that the isolation of the smaller Jewish communities did not lead to wholesale assimilation. Denise had loved those summers in the woods of Wisconsin or upstate New-York, not least because horse-riding was one of the sports offered, and she had met other Jewish girls and boys from all over the United States and Canada and even Mexico with the same equestrian interest. That was also the one item they could beat the Israeli instructors at. Horses were not nearly as big an item in Israel as in the States and it was comical to see how the beast could scare the men who had gone through the shooting war of the Middle East. As the young teen-agers matured, some became mentors to the next generation of campers, especially those with leadership skills and a keen sense of commitment. Denise had been one of the mentors, again, with her equestrian skills as an added benefit to the Young Judaea or Habonim chapters that were running the camps. Although girls and boys were segregated overnight, the inevitable happened many times, and romance flourished, sometimes to flower only much later, as the young men and women who had taken a fancy to each other met again in college or post-graduate years.

 

       Installing Tom on King’s back turned out to be a child’s play compared with the effort of placing Ryan Belmont on Bumper. Ryan, whose spinal cord had been transected in a road accident from the chest down was fully resigned to be a burden, and to make the world share his misery. He was heavy and slippery, and gave everyone a hard time. During that time Tom was walking his horse around the outdoor arena, calling him King’s Jester and jesting with the side-walkers who saw to it that his balance was not upset and that his torso stayed in the middle and that his useless legs stayed on either side, so that their bumping did not send the wrong message to the horse. When the May wind whipped up his hair and the sun was on his face he closed his eyes and let the horse take him, keeping his back as straight as possible and deriving the greatest possible benefit from the workout. His great hands were firmly on the reins and for a second one could imagine him riding the mount into the sunset, whole, and in full command of his limbs.

        At the dismount this illusion was quickly broken. Tom had to have the contra-lateral leg hoisted over the saddle, lay on his belly and slide back with the help of the groaning volunteers into the waiting wheel-chair. Once in the wheelchair he was back in control, great shoulders bunching and whipping it around almost in a wheelie. Denise was full of appreciation, and the odd little feeling he had left in her as a young girl, for at that time this man, sunburned and eloquent, with even a thicker shock of hair of youth had appeared to her like a biblical hero of old, a deep impression on her young psyche. She went back to help in the back-breaking task of returning Ryan to his chair, and rolling it down the ramp and up into the reception hall to the hands of his ageing mother.

By the time she was done, and had written a short report of the day in the apprentice logbook she kept, the Buick was gone, with the proverbial cloud of dust trailing it.

“That’s quite a man” Pat said at Denise when she noticed her gaze, “how well did you know him?”

“Not at all, really, he was one of the Madrichim, sorry, instructors they brought from Israel, and some of them were Army veterans, and they told us lots of tall tales. He wasn’t a big story teller, and anyway he wasn’t my instructor, but the others, they treated him with some special reverence. Like a mythical figure, you know, a Samson, or a Joshua, silly girl kinda stuff” and Denise shrugged off the silliness of adolescence.

“Did you have a crush on him?” Pat said smiling, Denise was exactly her son’s age and if it were up to her she would have placed them together before the altar, or the rabbi, or whoever.

“I guess we all did” Denise looked back with longing to those good ol' times  “but the Madrichim, especially the Israelis, they were so much older, so far removed, untouchable, olympian.”

“Just like you would be to a fourteen year old.”

“I guess so, may be this is what I should do this summer.”

“Hold on to your horses” Pat said “Mister Gordon requested that for the rest of the session you would be his walker, and wants to switch to whichever time slot you would find convenient” and she grinned lecherously.

 

 

“What happened to him, do you know?”  Denise was not totally surprised at the request, she knew she was one of the most popular volunteers/apprentices and a number of challenged riders or their parents and guardians had asked for her.

“Nope, but it can’t be congenital, so it must be accidental, anyway, let’s see if we can accommodate Mister Tom Gordon.”

“Tuesdays mornings or Wednesdays early afternoon is what I have generally.”

“Good. Let’s call him up.”

“How? He’s in his car!!”

“Radio-telephone my dear Denise” Denise was mightily surprised. Most of the riders were, as expected, from disadvantaged families, and if they were not, then the presence of a severely affected child with the incurred expenses made them disadvantaged. A Radio-phone was not a usual item for these parents or guardians. Pat saw the surprise.

“Not our usual downtrodden customer. He actually pays for the session, in advance, and then adds a zero at the end of the number.” She found the number and dialed it. Denise could hear the clear powerful voice as if it was at her own ear.

“Tuesdays are fine, thanks” he concluded, very business-like.

 

His face lit up when he came through the door, and there was no question about it, Tom was beaming, his green eyes crinkling with pleasure at the expectation fulfilled. Denise tried to remain impartial and professional, but she could not help it, she had to smile back, it was such a heart-warming smile that he emitted!! He stopped the wheel chair with a near-screech and held out his hand to her. His hand a warm, hot palm, was huge and it engulfed hers completely, gently, appreciative of the privilege.

“Thanks for being here” he said, voice clear and glad.

“The pleasure is all mine” she replied automatically, and in spite of herself she had to look at those legs, long useless appendages to a splendid body.  Pat came out with a camcorder and handed it to Susan, who was the office manager.

“Let’s get this show on the road, Denise, you are the instructor, the director, the chief honcho, today I am the walker.”

“But, but I’m not ready yet” Denise stammered.

”Yes you are, and I have already recommended they administer the formal exam, and it’s sitting on my desk right now, two nice diskettes with plenty of questions, let’s go.”

The next hour passed pleasantly enough, and in fact Tom’s walkers had precious little to do. His left hand tightly fisted on the Western saddle horn held him fast in position, filling in for the dangling legs, and under Denise’s tutelage, he learned to make the horse do his bidding, keeping him close, but not too close to the fence, stopping and turning. Ryan too shook off his lethargy, and began to emulate Tom. His arms were wasted in comparison, but he tried to sit up in the saddle, push his lordosis in, and draw in his big belly.

 

“That was excellent teaching, Denise” Pat said. Denise’s eyes were following the car which took the curve of the dirt road with abandon, wheels churning. Once it was on the road it was much more behaved though. “We will need one more session with the kids and you are done, the questions are all open book so you will have no problems.”.

“I guess” Denise sighed.

“You thinking about Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“What a waste” Pat shook her head.      

 

 

 

Again Denise found she could hardly wait for the next week, she drowned herself in her studies, and from time to time Tom’s smile would float to the  forefront of her mind, and then his dangling dead-weight legs, and she felt like weeping, because she had those flashbacks of Tom in the camp, running with the kids, playing basketball, not very expertly but with great vigor, his tight double-headed gastrocnemius driving him up to the hoop, the quadriceps muscles taut with power, glistening with sweat.  Tom Gordon showing the kids how to vault over a fence, army style, jumping at the fence, kicking up, catching the top, scrambling up and over, swinging the legs in an arc, landing on the balls of the feet and off and running again. She had watched those antics from afar, while riding those silly geldings that the camp rented for the summer from one of the nearby stables.  Tom distributing the leaflets of Israeli folk-songs, and singing with abandon. And now he was absolutely powerless to move without the technology, unable to mount a horse unless with the help of dedicated volunteers. She found herself shedding a tear and wiped it, and dove back into her books.

 

“Denise, phone for you” Michelle called, Denise was just wrapping up her Wednesday afternoon session, she was now running the show, and supervising the other volunteers. Now she was acting very much as a certified instructor. Denise’s tapes and completed diskettes had been sent to Colorado and soon she would be formally certified. She picked up the phone.

“This is Denise.”

“Hi Denise” It was Tom, and it sent her heart aquiver, she had no idea what to say next.

“Ah Denise, ah,,, eh,,, would you be, uh,  free,  sometime in the next day or two, or three?”

This was confusing, what did he mean by ‘free’?  “You mean for riding?” she queried.

“Well,,,that too, but I mean, for a night out, for a movie, or a show, or something.” He sounded so unsure of himself, as if he was asking for his legs to be restored, for an impossible miracle. Denise found herself nodding vigorously at the phone, saying nothing, as if he could see her. The phone was not that advanced yet.

“Denise? Are you there? Did I scare you? I don’t want to scare you off, you can just say no” he sounded like a kid again, reaching out, precariously balanced on a thin branch.

“I’m here, and yes, we can do it, Friday night, if that’s OK with you.”

“Friday night? Wonderful, great, do you have any idea what you want to do?”

Denise laughed, the release of tension in his voice was so palpable. “You made the call, you pick the place, want my home number?”

 

Denise had wanted to suggest her car, but it was obviously not the right thing, and it would create the extra hassle of fitting his chair into the back seat of the Century, and handling it, and most importantly, reducing him to dependence. Tom picked her up with the Regal and he headed on a warm August night, to the city center, and to the Repertoire Theater, to see a production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tom left his chair in the car, and instead used his knee-locker and an aluminum-framed walker to support his weight. It was slightly grotesque to see the big man, his upper body so well developed, dragging his legs into the C shape frame, then extending it forward, and dragging his legs again. After a while she got used to this form of locomotion and paid it no more attention. Denise did not suggest that she get a refreshment during the intermission. Tom made it through the proscenium, out to the refreshment stands, into the Men’s, and back into the theater. He laughed at the twists and turns of the plot, and Denise marveled how the man did not look sorry for himself even for one second.

 

They took a seat at the Mozart Café, and Tom asked for the thickest double Espresso they could make.  She twirled her spoon around the cup and met his eye.

“Why didn’t you ask me out on Tuesday?” she asked him directly.

 

“It’s hard to say no to a cripple to his face” he said, equally direct.

Denise mulled this over in her mind. “You are not exactly a cripple.”

“Think so?” and he indicated his pressed pants, resting over scare-crow thighs that she could not see but certainly divine, and the metal frame walker, standing like a third table-mate.

“Ryan is a cripple, you are not, in my language you are Challenged” she asserted.

“Challenged? Challenged?” He let go a rip-roaring laugh, and whooped a couple of times “that’s so American, so American, the facts don’t change if you give them a different name!!”

Denise waited for the outburst to die down, she felt very mature now, equivalent or more to the man who was facing her, for whom,  she admitted to herself, she had had an adolescent crush.

“The facts don’t change Tom, but the words do show how you relate to them, you have the presence of mind, the physical strength and the moral strength to make that transition from a crippling condition to a challenging condition. And in fact you have.” His face changed from the mirthful to solemn.

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“That’s why I do what I do.”

“But there are things for which words have no match.”

“What? Like the fact that you have to go to the bathroom with a catheter?”

His face turned to stone.

“Hey Tom, no offense, you have a challenge and you solve it, or take a solution someone has already devised for you, right?” Denise was very earnest.

Tom relaxed.  “How do you know so much?”

“I hit the books last night” Denise admitted sheepishly “But I have to know about my riders, if I am going to do them any good, and anyway, I took a lot of courses with the Pre-Med and they like to show off and explain things about humans.”

“Humans?” Tom was very amused.

“They are Pre-Med and I am Pre-Vet, fundamentally we are not much different.”

“Ever seen a horse in a wheel chair?” Tom challenged her.

“See, that’s exactly what I mean by the word Challenged. Humans can be challenged, animals have to be put down.”

“Shot, you mean.”

“That’s crude, but yes, sometimes.”

“In that case I don’t qualify” Tom said, suppressing a smirk.

“Don’t qualify as what?” Denise bunched her brows together, very prettily.

“As a human” Tom replied.

“Why not?” she could not place the smirk.

“I was put down.” Now she got it, and he was treating it with levity. Denise placed her cup gently in the saucer, her luminous eyes framing the question that her mouth did not utter

“My parents immigrated to Israel, and like all the others, I enlisted at eighteen, to the thirteenth flotilla, the Seals. On reserves I continued to serve in the same unit. I went on one mission too many in Lebanon. We were hit by a Claymore, it explodes pellets in a wide arc, triggered by a trip-wire. To this day I don’t know if they were waiting for us, but I think not, they had these mines all over the place. I was busy securing the hellos. I was the last one in, we were already airborne, and they got me with the last bullet, right into the spine, just below the Kevlar. One inch up, and I could have been knocked out, but not hurt. The Doctors took forever to pull the bullet out. Want to see it?”

“I don’t know, yes, I want to.”

Tom loosened his tie, and undid the top button, and tugged a chain out. There it was, an inconsequential chunk of metal, which had made him a cripple.

 

“I know it’s not much to look at” Tom said apologetically, placing it back inside his shirt.

“What did you do then?” Denise was caught up in the tale.

“I had to watch the funerals from the TV, I was too sick to make it, the guys were either dead or in mental rehab, shell-shocked, post-traumatic stress, you name it. Then a year of rehab, and I learned to use all of these aids, and drive with my hands. Then I went back to the Technion, that’s Israel’s MIT, I had two more years to go, and I got my engineering degree, and begun work for a start-up software company. They have just been bought out by an American outfit, and I got the job of training the people over here with this new software. You do realize it’s one thirty AM and that we are the only patrons left here!”

“I guess time flies” and she did not complete the rest of the sentence. “Where do you live?” she asked.

“The company rented an apartment for me in one of the high-rises, they had a few apartments especially for wheel chair bound. So it’s pretty comfortable.”

“Alone?”

“Alone, I have a maid service, and sometimes a visiting nurse.”

“But why?”Denise was openly incredulous.

“Denise, I am dead below the waist” Tom explained gently.

“I understand that, so what?”

“Not everybody understands, or maybe they do, all too well. I don’t go on blind dates, and anyway, I hate pity.”

“Me too, will I see you on Tuesday?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“Of course I do.”

“It’s the high-light of the week for me, I want you to know that” Tom said sincerely.

“Same for me” Denise couldn’t believe the words were coming out, but they did tumble out, and she changed color again to the deep red beet.

Tom regarded her, long and searching, and said nothing, words were inadequate, but the wide smile that spread on his handsome features said it all.

 

 

“Mom?”

“Hi baby” Marcy crooned.

“I am coming home this weekend.”

“Wonderful, are you done with your exams?”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll be coming with someone.”

“Uh-oh, you have been very quiet, for too long, I was beginning to suspect.”

“I’m not sure you are going to be happy about that.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s not what you think, he is an MOT.”

“That’s a relief, so what’s the problem?”

“You’ll see.”

 

Frank and Marcy stood together at the ornate door under the red-brick arch of the House in Longwood when the Regal bumped the low gutter and came up to a stop. Denise jumped out and ran to hug her mother, and Frank watched with a deep consternation as the mechanism deposited the wheel chair at the open door of the Regal. A cripple, my beautiful daughter has taken up with a cripple, he was about to go to the car when Denise gripped his forearm.

 

 

“Don’t go, he likes to do it himself” and soon Frank saw why, the man appeared to be a triangle of strength topped by a leonine head and a winning smile as he drove the wheel chair. And what a grip, frightening.

“Dad, Mom this is Tom Gordon, from Indianapolis.”

“Hi” said Tom, closely assessing the couple. It was a strange experience, Denise and he had dated for two months, and Denise had even stayed in his apartment one night when their talks had slipped into the wee hours, and suddenly she had announced that she really wanted him to meet her parents in West Bend, no ifs or buts about it, and although he had balked, finally he agreed. He had made it plain to Denis that she was his first and only date since the injury, and she was free to go whenever she pleased, without rancor. He managed to say his line only once, because then she shushed him with a kiss, and told him to keep his silly mouth zipped. Although his brain screamed at him to hold her, he gripped the armchair instead. And now the most harrowing experience, the one that set the nerves raw and jangling in well people, Meeting the Parents. But then, what the hell, his own parents had it much worse, agonizing on the long nights did they do their only son a horrible disservice by bringing him to the Holy Land. It was obvious that Frank wasn’t happy although he was trying to hide it. Marcy was much more accepting, and she bent to buss his cheek.

“Hi Tom, and welcome to our home, you will stay the weekend, wont you?”

“Of course he will, otherwise we might have to go to the Jamison House” Denise said, very decisive. Tom shrugged his big shoulders, and smiled. Even Frank was bowled over by that smile, and by the tender way Tom had looked at Denise.

 

Mother and daughter sat on the bench while the men played chess..

“So what do you think about him?” Denise asked, after a while.

“You really want to know?” Marcy replied with a question, arching her brows.

“Yes, I would really like to know.”

“If not for that wheel chair there is no one I would like better as a son-in-law” Marcy said with conviction.

Silence......

“But he is in that wheel-chair, and with time, when he is older, and you’re older, he will be a burden whether he wants it or not.”

“Mom, suppose God-forbid, knock-on-wood” and she knocked on the wood bench “Dad had an accident, and needed to be in a wheel chair, would you leave him?”

“Never!!”

“So, what’s the difference?” Denise asked plaintively.

“The difference is you have a choice, you are not committed, you don’t have twenty-five years of marriage behind you, but hopefully, ahead of you, and I am very selfish, I want to have grandchildren, from you.”

“That may not be a problem, Mom.”

“How come? He is paralyzed below the waist!!”

“Mom, I did some reading. Nothing is paralyzed, it’s just a communications problem. Suppose all the phone lines to the subdivision were cut, that does not mean that local life stops. It just means that the central switchboard has no idea what’s going on, but the autonomic functions are normal!”

“So he can sire a child, and know nothing about it?” Marcy was incredulous.

“No, it means he will know everything but feel nothing” Denise answered quietly.

“That’s terrible.”

“But not having a child at all is even worse, what’s a five-minute rapture versus a life-time of raising happy children?”

 

 

“Denise, I just can’t believe how you have grown in compassion and understanding in the last two years, nobody your age speaks like that, it’s Me, Me ,Me, and Myself” Marcy marveled. Denise just smiled, she could not hope for a better compliment from her mom.

Marcy heaved herself off the bench “I don’t have any good advice for you, Denise, in fact I don’t think I have any more wisdom to impart, you do what you need to do.”

 

Denise proved her theories by delivering Lauren, a four kilogram baby, after an uneventful pregnancy, one year into their marriage. Lauren filled the air with lusty cries, and Tom cried with her, as happy as he had ever been before the shooting.

It was Marcy’s idea that the young couple should take a few weeks off from their arduous schedule and have a good time. In reality she had some uterine contractions of late and needed baby Lauren to soothe them. Denise had never been to the Eastern Mediterranean, and so they decided on a cruise on one of the ships that plied the region.  The route would take them from Athens-Pireus through the Ionian Sea, Crete, Cyprus, Haifa and Alexandria, and back to Pireus, a two week cruise with all the trimmings and local travel included. The time was October, which was a mild time in the Mediterranean, after the big rush of summer, and they both looked forward to being together, and making lots of love.

Athens was their first taste of the near East, familiar to Tom, new and exciting to Denise, the Parthenon, the Plaka,  the cornucopia of things Ancient and Historical. The passengers were a mix of all nationalities, Italians, Greeks, Israelis, Germans, British, American, Japanese and Egyptians. The sea sparkled, the dolphins followed the luxurious Cassiopea, an Italian registration ship, and although Tom could not actually dance, he did try hard to emulate the Greek band on board with his wide-spread arms and shoulders. In Larnaca they left the ship to travel to Paphos and enjoy the fabulous beaches. They knew nothing about the swarthy individuals who were scanning the ship from the quay. The Cassiopea doubled as a ferry to the Isles and did take on a number of vehicles and discharged them at their destination. One of the vehicles that boarded in Larnaca was a stolen Mercedes Benz that was not really well searched, either due to Middle Eastern sloth, or more likely a sizeable baksheesh that changed hands and greased the boarding security inspection.

The Larnaca to Haifa leg is an overnight, and it was at three AM that the seven terrorists invaded the bridge and took it over from the Cypriot master and made him change his course away from Haifa and further south. At six A.M.  Tom and Denise came onto the deck to see Haifa rising from the East, and waited, and waited and the sea remained empty. Tom stopped one of the stewards but the man either knew no English, or pretended to know none. At seven A.M. Tom was becoming somewhat uneasy, because the rising sun was to the left of the bows, rather than head-on, which meant they were going south. South was Egypt, but southwest was more ominous, Libya. Then the news broke out, through the loudspeakers.

“Attention all passengers and crew” the announcement was in the Greek tipped English of the Captain “This is the Captain speaking. Due to circumstances beyond my power, we are unable to continue to Haifa, I am forced to give the microphone to the new Master of the ship, Muhamad Abu-El-Abbas.”

The throaty voice of Arabic English filled the loudspeakers, instructed all the passengers to come on deck, and warned them that the ship had been rigged with explosives and they were ready to die with her and the passengers, in the name of Allah and Al Kuds.  Denise watched Tom as his face became stone, and for the first time in her life she was truly afraid. From a distance she could discern now a number of  small warships approaching at speed. Looking up to the bridge she could see two armed men, with thick black beards and red head-gear brandishing weapons at the incredulous passengers. The next hour saw the missile-boats taking up positions on either side of the Cassiopea. An armed man burst dramatically through the door leading to the deck, herding a bunch of frightened passengers, and sent them to the front deck around the pool. He ordered everyone in guttural English to go on to the front deck, and Denise quickly pushed the wheel chair along the deck with the rest of the frightened humanity, while another man covered the movement of the herd from the bridge. Denise’s mind flew back to the old movies of Nazi Germany, but this was not a movie, it was the real thing and it was happening to her and her husband.

 

 

At least the deck they were on had an awning, so they were sheltered from the sun, others were not so lucky and became thirsty, especially the kids, but the gunman would not let anyone leave the deck. There was a little bar at the bulkhead, designed to serve the passengers enjoying the pool, and Denise, at a nod from Tom, opened the bar, and began distributing the soft drinks to the children and the older passengers, the gunman signaled her that he wanted one too, so despite her loathing she brought him a Fanta. He grinned at her lasciviously, and she quickly escaped to Tom’s wheelchair. The gunman followed her with his black, malevolent stare, and fingered his Kalachnikov’s trigger. The passengers were cowed, and cut off, and had no idea what was going on.

Presently another boat approached, and its decks were lined with a hundred cameras and reporters. The picture of the Cassiopea was projected to the whole world, so that the demands of the captors be spread far and wide. Again the passengers had no idea, but when one of them, a British gentleman blustered, and tried to demand that he should be allowed to  see the commander, the gunman raked his face with his sights, contemptuously, tearing the cheeks and loosening some teeth and spraying his timid wife with a shower of blood. All taken down by the cameras across the water.

It was early afternoon when Abu-El-Abbas  came down the rungs with a measured step. He was of medium build, lean, with the obligatory thick beard and moustache, with flashing black eyes and nostrils that dilated like a war horse. Most of his face was shielded from view by the Kaffieh that he wore. His Kalashnikov was hanging loosely at his side and his webbing was full of grenades. He addressed the passengers portentously via the PA system.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we are sorry for your bredicament but today we are making a stand, and we will not back off. We made a simple demand of the Israeli and American governments, a life for a life. A life of one of our Jihad prisoners for a life of one of you.”

“Why us?” The same British gentlemen shouted through his ruined mouth.

The terrorist appeared to be well disposed. He was in control, and the world was hanging at his word.

“You are all resbonsible for the blight of my Balestinian brothers, because you did nothing when the Zionists were evicting them from their land.”

“That’s horseshit” The irrepressible man screamed back “I demand that you let us go.”

The Terrorist’s brow grew even darker. He signaled his men and two of them grabbed the man and brought him forward. The leader pulled out a Makarov hand gun, placed it at the man’s knee and pulled the trigger. Tom jumped, as if with remembered pain. The gentleman screamed, and collapsed on the deck, the blood streaming from his leg, and the two gunmen hustled him to the side where the shocked ship’s doctor received him and took him down to the sickbay, carefully monitored by a gunman.

“I hobe I make myself clear. You will remain here while the camera crews take some bictures” a small boat detached itself from the Media ship. With a film crew, they approached the midship and hauled themselves up with a rope-ladder

“More hostages” the Terrorist grinned at Tom. Denise recoiled, Tom did not. He recognized the voice of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He had listened to his impassioned speeches on the radio and read the translations.  The man was the master-mind of many of the attacks for which the PLO did not need to take responsibility. The camera crew was led on board and set up their equipment and communications, carefully segregating themselves from the passengers, and trained themselves first on Abu-El-Abbas as he delivered his message.

“In one hour we will be in Egybtian waters, and the Israeli ships will be forced to withdraw. We will deal only with the Egybtian government.  If our demands are not met we will kill a bassenger every fifteen minutes until our brethren are free” he finished the announcement. The crowd flinched, and the world flinched.

 

An hour later, the Israeli warships were indeed withdrawing and two Egyptian destroyers took their place. Denise asked Mohamet Al Moloki for permission to take Tom to the bathroom for his catheterization, and Mohamet, not fearing a man in a wheel-chair, allowed her the privilege. In the mean time the terrorists collected the passports from the passengers and set about the old fashioned selection, to try and figure out which passengers was Jewish. They started with the American passengers of which there were twelve couples. The hours passed and night was falling and so far the terrorists had not carried out any death sentence.

The three hundred frightened passengers passed the night in the forward saloon, and Denise huddled against the wheelchair, and fretted about the development of pressure sores, and asked the guard, another hard faced youth, to take Tom to the bathroom. He did not like that at all, and said in his broken English that from his point of view Tom could drown in his own shit. Denise did not recoil from the threatening gun and finally the youth called on Abu-El-Abbas, who was very ornery at being called.

“What’s the broblem?” he barked.

“My husband has to be at the toilet at regular intervals because he is in a wheel-chair” Denise said bravely.

“What’s your name?”

“Gordon” she replied.

“Why doesn’t the man ever sbeak?” Abu-El-Abbas turned on Tom, balefully. Suddenly the kaffieh that swathed his face fell away, revealing it. He swatted it back impatiently. Again, only the eyes could be seen.

“Because he hates to ask for mercy, and all we need is to go to the toilet, for godssakes” Denise was getting angry, the guns and the fearsome terrorists notwithstanding.

Abu-El-Abbas eyed the couple and then said very quietly “You will be sorry for this, I bromise you that, Sa’id, let them go as often as they need.”

 

They herded them out to the deck the next day, the three hundred passengers harried, haggard and frightened, and the terrorists tense. The Egyptian warships kept their stations and now they were becalmed off the harbor town of Port Sa’id. The ship’s stewards distributed snacks to the hungry passengers, in lieu of prepared food. The Terrorists had closed down the massive galleys.

“The following bassengers will go over to the right” Abu-El- Abbas intoned, and started reading from a list “Weltman, Orlovsky, Goldfein...”

“It’s a selection, just like the Nazis, they are separating the Jews from the rest” Tom whispered to Denise.

“Gordon, Gilbert, Soncino, Nusbaum...” the named passengers began to move to the right, terrified, and the gunmen, who held their passports, formed a small cordon around them. Soon it became a group of ten couples. The cameras on board the Egyptian vessels rolled on, recording the selection process as carried out on the open deck. Tom and Denise were in the middle, and Tom knew that Death was at hand. One of the women, an elderly lady, whose carefully coiffured hair was now in severe disarray, and whose eyes were red and bleary was casting around wildly for a way out.

“Sir, sir” she called out to Abu-El-Abbas, who was leafing at the passports. Her husband was tugging at her am to shut her up, but she wouldn’t.

“What is it?” Abu-El-Abbas replied irritably. The coast line could be seen on the horizon, tantalizingly close, yet so far.

“You are making a mistake” she cried.

“What mistake?” He grinned wolfishly, although no one could see it behind the kaffieh.

“We don’t belong with these people, we are different” she continued, her husband was about to have a fit.

“How different?” he wanted her to spell it out.

“We are not Jewish, these are all Jewish people, we are not, Nusbaum is a German name” the passengers in the select group turned on her with horror. Abu-El-Abbas was enjoying it.

 

 

“Check my husband, he is not circumcised” she said in the hush that fell, only the waves lapped against the stationary ship. Tom shook his head, the cowards were everywhere, Denise looked daggers at the elderly woman. At a nod one of the goons came up to the mortified husband, a seventy year old bald man with a fringe of silver, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a golf shirt. Under the scornful, malevolent eyes of the gunman, he pushed down his shorts, and the under-garment, and revealed a bedraggled uncircumcised penis, his face was suffused with shame, and it reached his forehead and bald pate. The gun motioned up and he quickly pulled the garments up to cover his shame.

Abu-El Abbas grinned again “I agree, I did make a mistake, I suggest to change your name in the future to something less Jewish.”

“Get your own name” said the husband to his wife.

“You idiot, I just saved our necks” she filtered at him.

“Silence” roared Abu-El-Abbas  “The Israelis and Americans have been intransigent. In fifteen minutes, if I don’t get a favorable resbonse one of you will die.”

 

The fifteen minutes ticked over, slowly, agonizingly slowly, measured by seconds, by heartbeats. Abu-El-Abbas was utterly relaxed, and Denise’s hand on Tom’s chair was visibly quivering. Abu-El-Abbas began to shuffle through the short stack of passports, and he played with them, like a deck of cards. They were all the deep navy blue of the American passports and the Israeli passports. The PA system that would tell him of welcome news remained silent. The shuffling stopped. He called the goons over, and they looked at the photograph inside the covers.

“No” Denise screamed shrilly as the men came over. The other passengers drew back. The men were heading directly for them and she held fast to the chair. The goon trained his Kalashnikov into her eye.

“Denise, let go” Tom said, his voice was completely steady.

“No” she said throatily, her throat felt thick with fear and she could hardly breath. She crouched by the wheel-chair.

“Denise, if they mean to kill they will shoot you too, Lauren needs her mother” and he gazed into her eyes, willing her to release the death hold she had on the wheel-chair.

Denise would not let go, she held on fiercely to the arm rest, the terrorist was about to swing the weapon into her face when Tom stopped him, in Arabic.

“Baas” he said. He clicked the catch and lifted the arm-rest, to which Denise had attached herself like a limpet, and wheeled back. Denise to her horror was left with a piece of metal in her arms, and made to get up and run, but Tom just gazed at her, with endless love.

“Take care of Lauren for me, tell her daddy loves her” he said, then he wheeled around towards the implacable Abu-El-Abbas. He stopped just short of him and inclined his head up.

“One day we will rid the earth of your kind of scum” he said.

Abu-El-Abbas gave him the wolfish grin again, something Tom could discern but not see.

“Wrong, one day we will be legitimized, and you and your Zionist scum will be dead, now I want you to drive yourself over there” and he pointed over to the railing, and a small gate in it, clearly visible to the warships and the cameras on them.

Tom placed his hands on the wheels, and locked them. “You will have to do that yourself” he replied.

“You better, because the next one will be your lovely wife” Abu-El-Abbas’ invisible grin did not fail even for a second, and he was gratified by the defeat that washed over Tom’s features. Tom turned and wheeled himself along the railing. The ship was deathly quiet.

“Malik, Ta’al Hon (come here)” Abu-El-Abbas commanded in Arabic, and gave him the Makarov.

“You two, go with them” he indicated in English, the two ship stewards, the scrawny Portuguese, and the rotund Greek who had served the passengers their snacks. Tom cast one look back at Denise still holding on to the useless metal armrest, and Malik struck his nose bloody so that he had to look forward again.

Tom stopped at the gate, and lifted his eyes to the world, to the Egyptian warships, the Mediterranean sea he had loved, and from which bosom he had arisen a thousand times, a young warrior. It was time to return to the sea which had been his home.

Malik had no compunctions. He had killed before, it was no big deal. He cocked the Makarov, and aimed at the head from two meters away so the blood would not spray him, and pulled the trigger, three times, to make sure.

 

 

“Bush him” he commanded the two ashen faced stewards, and pointed his gun at them. They complied, and Tom, still in his wheel chair, fell over the side to disappear into the blue sea.

 

The blatant murder shook up the Egyptian president Hosny Mubarak, and he negotiated a deal of safe passage for Abu-El-Abbas and his gang, including Malik. The Egyptian airplane that flew them to Lybia was monitored by Israeli intelligence, and forced to change course by American F-14's from the Saratoga and land in Italy. The body washed up a week later on the Syrian beach, two hundred kilometers north. It was flown to an American Army base and the autopsy recovered two bullets. The four terrorists were apprehended, and convicted, in Italy, all the time denying any relationship to the hijacking. In time all four PFLP terrorists escaped jail, and Mohamet Malik absconded while on furlough for ‘good behaviour’. Italian Justice.

Abu-El-Abbas proved right. The PLO achieved statehood in all but name, and he himself settled in the Gaza strip, still at the head of the PFLP, and snubbed his nose at the Israelis, all of  five miles away.

 

Denise flew back to the States, still grimly holding on to the metal armrest, into the arms of Marcy and Frank, and Jacob and Fayina Gordon who had moved back to Indianapolis, disgusted by the indecisive way in which the Israelis had dealt with the Crisis. She took up a certified instructor position at the Reins of Life, taught riding and jumping at Laughin’ Stables, and in summer she went back to Rama Camp to supervise the equestrian activities. Lauren grew, and knew her father only from the pictures, he was a mythical figure, unreal and angelic, watching her from the heavens. From the horse-riding pictures one would never know that Tom had been wheel-chair bound.

It was a six hour drive from West Bend to Camp Rama, the first year, Marcy and Frank kept Lauren for the summer, and the second year Fayina and Jacob watched her. By the third year Lauren was a bubbly two and a half, walking about and toilet trained. Regardless of where Denise was, be it West Bend, Indianapolis, the camp, or a friend’s place, she would inevitably wake up every night to Tom’s gentle eyes, the enforced separation, the sound of the three gunshots, the blood-red burst, and the wheel-chair with its dead human cargo, tumbling end over end, the wheel spokes ricocheting the uncaring  morning sun, and the shriek that burst from her own lips throat and heart as the chair and Tom were swallowed by the green-blue sea. She cried over the body she had to identify, bloated and lifeless, the indomitable spirit all gone from the vessel which carried it. The plain wooden casket being lowered into the simple grave, the mournful Kadish uttered by the old rabbi. She never knew in her nightmare if the scream was uttered by the tumbling body, or by herself. Wide awake and in cold sweat she would then run to Lauren’s bed, to see that she was safe, she was all that’s left of Tom.

Two years later things the pain became less piercing, less focused, more of a constant ache of loneliness than the stabs of sharp agony which struck her when she was not looking, and made her burst into  spasms of tears. Working for the Tom Gordon Anti-Terrorist Foundation helped in blunting those stabs, but not much, and the Terror continued unabated, aircraft felled, schools raided, buses blown to smithereens. She couldn’t really handle it, it was a job for Jacob Gordon to go on crusade for. She concentrated on the children, both her own child and the children she was working for.  Healthy children riding the horses for pleasure, and impaired children whose only pleasure in life were the big animals.

 

 

 

Geraldine Metzenbaum who had been running Camp Rama for the last five years was not really thrilled at the prospect of a young child in Camp, but if that meant that she could get both Denise and Aaron to teach the campers then it was well worth the small risk. Anyway, this year they were having a real doctor on the camp premises, and they did not have to rely on medical care from Waupaca or Appleton which was a good fifty miles away. This year Denise looked a little more alive, as opposed to the Doctor who turned to have a professional but not a very friendly affect. What could you expect from a doctor from L.A. who was essentially a volunteer? She welcomed the staff, the instructors, aids, Israeli Madrichim, and welcomed the four weeks of hard work ahead of her.

Denise noted that the doctor, a young tall thin man with owlish glasses and a dark shock of hair was taking a close look at Lauren, and indeed she was not her usual self for the last two days, a little whimpery, runny nose and tired. Well, she was still a young child and children were sometimes unwell. Aaron and Denise staggered the teaching sessions so that one of them was with her all the time. Lauren loved Aaron as a doting uncle, and she had him around her little finger. The doctor made a funny face at Lauren, and she, uncharacteristically, ignored him and continued to be a pest, refusing to drink from her cup.

The unearthly shriek woke her up again in a sweat as it always did, she was alone in the uncomfortable cot, and Lauren was in the child-cot she had brought with her to the camp. The night was cool and pleasant, the moon-light came through the window and soon her cold sweat dried, and she stepped over to Lauren and placed her hand on the little body. She felt the heat flashing through the thin pajama, so hot it seemed to burn her hand. Denise became alarmed and tried to wake Lauren up. She would not. Fear gripped her heart, the same fear that had shot through her when the terrorist had leveled his gun at Tom and herself. She picked Lauren up and she was like a burning rag doll in her arms, but at least she moaned, the piteous moan of a wounded cat.

“Aaron” she shrieked. Aaron had the adjoining room in the mile-long log cabin. Aaron snapped on the light to see his sister sitting on the cot, moaning and rocking the toddler. Lauren’s face was pasty white, and so was Denise.  She tuned to him and her eyes were wild.

“Get the doctor, Lauren is sick.” Aaron turned and ran out of the cabin as if Abu-El-Abbas was after him. It seemed to Denise that it took hours, but in fact the doctor was there with a big old-fashioned satchel in less than two minutes, disheveled but alert. He whipped out his stethoscope and performed his routine, and then placed a hand under Lauren’s head and yanked. Lauren moaned piteously and her legs jerked in sudden pain.

“What’s wrong with her, Doctor?” Denise whispered with profound fear.

“Meningitis” Mitch said shortly “hospital now, stat, but I want to give her an antibiotic right now” and he made for the satchel and began to extract medical paraphernalia out and lay it on the cot.

“How do you know?” Aaron asked urgently.

“It’s my job to know, she jerked her legs when I flexed her neck, Meningeal irritation, hold the fluid bottle.” He set up the IV in a flash, sucked some fluid from the fluid bag and squirted it into a large vial with crystalline powder. “Rocephin” he spat the name briefly. “Mix it” he commanded Aaron, who followed the orders immediately and shook the vial. The doctor took Lauren’s limp wrist and inserted a tiny needle into a hair-thin vein. He sucked just a little blood into a small syringe and capped it, “culture” he spat again. He used a larger syringe to aspirate the antibiotic and squirted it into the open vein. “Now she’s covered” and placed a sticky tape to keep the IV in the vein. He peeled a Tylenol suppository and stuffed it into the child’s bottom.

“Alright, who’s driving?” he snapped.

“Me” Aaron said, suddenly respectful.

“Let’s go.” Mitch Goldberg glanced at his watch, seventeen minutes since he’s been rudely woken. This baby was sick as a dog. Denise hustled Lauren, still burning in her arms, into the old Regal with its useless white cap, and Mitch followed her closely while  holding the fluid bottle up and regulating the flow. Aaron started the car in the quiet of the night with a mighty roar and took off for Waupaca.

 

 

The rest of the night and the following morning continued the frenetic pace of a horrible nightmare, the Waupaca hospital, the ambulance to Neenah, the waiting doctors at the Intensive Care Unit, the lines which poked her poor Lauren, the Spinal Tap which another Goldberg performed, the interminable waiting for lab results and the scramble to make changes in the fluids and electrolytes and blood components to compensate for these lab values. Throughout Mitch stayed there for her, explaining, expounding, making sense of the bedlam, while his uncle, who had privileges in Theda ran the treatment program. Lauren remained pasty-faced and almost unresponsive, and Denise watched helplessly the things were being done, as she had watched helplessly Tom being taken and killed off like unwanted vermin.

 

“It’s a Pneumococcus” the elder Goldberg came back to tell them.

“Which means?” Aaron prompted, Denise was unable to speak.

“Which means that the Rocephin Mitch gave her was the right medication for her, and since her labs are getting better, I expect her to get better.”

“Do you really?” Denise lifted her bleary blood-shot eyes at him.

What a sad, sad face. “Yes, really, we’ll just wait and see, Mitch, I will be in my office across the street. Call me with any changes.”

“Sure will, Uncle Sid.”

“You did good Mitch” doctor Sidney Goldberg smiled at his young nephew.

 

Lauren woke up in the afternoon, bewildered but with the full light of consciousness in her beautiful eyes, Tom’s eyes, and the first face she encountered was male, a swarthy long face, eyes smiling behind owlish lenses, topped by a shock of unruly hair begging for a comb or a brush. Lauren liked Men so she smiled at the strange countenance because it radiated care and fondness.

“I think she likes you” Denise said.

“I like her too” Mitch said and tweaked the girl’s pointy nose.

They smiled at each other over the recovering child. Aaron was quite sure Tom would be happy to see Denise have another shot at Life.