Love On Call

“You and Glenn were talking about me,” Mari said carefully, hoping she sounded less uncomfortable than she felt. She wasn’t exactly sure how she felt being the topic of conversation between Glenn and another woman, but she was more surprised to discover Glenn and Carrie had been together last night. Glenn hadn’t mentioned it when they’d talked that morning. Mari gave herself a mental shake. Why should she expect Glenn to update her on what she’d done after she’d walked Mari home. Her personal, private time was just that—private.

“Don’t worry,” Carrie went on as if reading her mind, “there was no good gossip. Just the usual hospital stuff, you know how that is.”

“Oh, I certainly do,” Mari said dryly. It didn’t take her very long on her first clinical rotation to discover that hospitals were giant gossip mills, mostly due to the fact that everyone spent more time together there than they did with anyone else, including their families, and a lot of that time was stressful waiting when there wasn’t much else to do except talk, speculate, and pass on snippets of juicy news. Mari pushed the niggling annoyance away. “Okay—so you and Glenn were casually chatting and somehow you decided I was your cousin.”

Carrie laughed. “Not right away—by the way, it was totally professional, except of course, for the two of you having pizza together. That was news.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Glenn leaving the hospital before nine at night for any reason other than softball is newsworthy.”

Mari smiled. She liked knowing Glenn’s friendly overtures had been unusual. “She was kind enough to keep me from starving.”

“Uh-huh. Anyhow, when Glenn mentioned your name, I didn’t see how it could be a coincidence. You’re from the West Coast, right? LA?”

“That’s right. I’ve lived there all my life. What about you?”

“I grew up in San Francisco. Where our moms did.”

“My mother did grow up in Northern California, but she never talked about her family except to say they were all gone. I’m sorry, is your mother deceased?”

“My mom?” Carrie’s eyes glowed. “Not by a long shot. She’s a political organizer, and when she’s not doing that, she’s the head of a large community food service, a nonprofit that provides meals to homeless and underprivileged people. My dad is a philosophy professor at Berkeley.”

“Our families couldn’t be more different,” Mari said. “My mother and father own a small grocery store and, other than going to church, don’t do much else.”

“Mine are sort of next-generation hippies, like my grandmom, but I don’t think they’re called hippies anymore,” Carrie said.

Mari’s head was starting to spin. “Well, that can’t be right, then, about us being related. I don’t have any relatives on my mother’s side. She told me that, told all of us kids that, whenever we asked about our other grandparents.”

“Your mom’s name is Diane, right? And your father is Hermano Mateo?”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s all in my hospital paperwork—”

“Oh, I didn’t get it from there,” Carrie said quickly. “That’s private information. I know because my mother told me about her sister’s family, the ones she’s not supposed to have any contact with.”

“But why?” Mari asked, her confusion turning to hurt. Could this really be true? Could her mother have actually lied to her about something so important? Could she really know so little about her parents? She’d thought the foundation of her life couldn’t get any shakier, but now she wasn’t so sure. “Why would my mother pretend to have no one?”

“Well, this is the part that I hope doesn’t cause problems, but apparently your dad didn’t get along with my mother and father. They’re atheists and socialists, and like I said, modern-day hippies, I guess. And your dad is pretty…um, traditional.”

Mari snorted. “That would be putting it rather mildly. My dad is extremely conservative and both my parents are very religious. But I can’t believe my mother would just break off ties with her sister because my father didn’t get along with her.”

“Well, she didn’t, not really. They talk on the phone at least a couple times a year, and I think this past year they might have even FaceTimed. However they manage it, my mom knows the names of her sister’s children. That would be you and your brothers and sister. So when I heard your name, I just had to believe that it was you.”

“Oh my God,” Mari whispered. “I can’t believe there’s—are there more of you, more of my mother’s family?”

“There’s my baby sister, Kelly, and I have an uncle James, so he would be your mom’s older brother. Your uncle. He lives in the UK and I don’t see him very often. He’s gay, and he and his husband moved there, gosh, probably twenty years ago. I guess I don’t have to point out where the problem would be there.”

“No,” Mari said softly. “You don’t.”

“My mom thought it was important for me to know that there was more family, even though she said we’d probably never meet face-to-face. That’s how I knew about all of you. I called her last night.”