by Sandra Hill
He knocked lightly and was waved in.
“Salome, I need your help,” he said right off.
He sat down at the table opposite her, and after he’d explained the situation, she asked, “And it’s all right with your parents if Maggie and I go stay with them at their place?”
“It’s just a summer place they’re renting, and only my dad would be there. My mother is in the hospital.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it serious?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Her heart.”
“Oh, my goodness. Listen, dear, my face is cracking. I need to go wash this stuff off. Wait here. Have a soda or something. We don’t have any beer left, or alcohol of any kind.”
“That’s okay. I need to keep my brain sharp,” he said to her back, although he probably could use some caffeine. Maybe later. He couldn’t help but notice as Salome walked away that she was wearing some kind of sleep outfit that looked like it would fit in a harem. He wondered idly what Delilah would look like in one of those.
When she got back from the bathroom, her face scrubbed clean and showing every one of her sixty-some years, she said, “I could always stay at the Patterson house.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure that Maggie could be hidden there, and, besides, it would put them in a touchy legal situation if they lied about the child in the event authorities came for her.”
Salome put a hand to her chest. “Do you think it’s possible that they would actually do that? Take her from me, or her mother?”
“I do. And I’m certain that Maggie would be terrified with strangers.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
“The first ferry doesn’t leave until six a.m. We’ll leave here at five to give us extra time. Pack enough for several days. Make it appear like a fun, surprise trip so that Maggie won’t be scared.”
“Are you going to tell Delilah ahead of time?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
“Oh, boy!”
There was a tablet and pen on the table that Salome had been using to keep score of her games. While Salome was packing—she would wake Maggie at the last minute—he began to write the note he would leave for Delilah, assuming she was still asleep by the time he left for the ferry, please God!
Delilah, sweetheart:
I’ve taken your grandmother and Maggie to stay with my parents on Hatteras for a few days, just till we’ve ironed things out with the state. I’ve left a message with Matt Holden to meet with you later today to ensure your parole won’t be revoked. Don’t be mad that I didn’t consult you first. Trust me, we can work this all out. I’ll be back in time for the press conference at two. I’d like you to come, but I’ll understand if you want to lay low for a day or two. If you need anything, ask K-4. Trust me.
Love, Merrill
Even though she was awakened early so they could make the six a.m. ferry, Sal—that’s what Delilah’s grandmother asked him to call her—sat in the passenger seat next to him, smoking, rather, vaping away. Same thing, as far as he was concerned. Even if it was lemon-scented today. The woman was going to ruin his appetite for lemons.
Meanwhile, the Little Annie clone (yes, she was in full red dress orphan outfit today) sat in the high-backed booster seat in the rear of his pickup like it was a bloody throne. Her stuffed dog sat next to her like a royal subject.
The little girl didn’t stop talking for one minute. Everything merited comment. Usually no response was necessary. The sign at the edge of town, for example, announcing the Labor Day Lollypalooza. “Gramma is gonna dance with the Old Codgers Club in the talent contest,” she informed Merrill, which was news to him. First, that they’d given their group a name, or that Salome was a member of the group, or that they’d entered a talent contest.
Can life get any better than this?
“I’m gonna sleep over with three boys next week.”
Okaaay.
“I hafta pee.”
“Wait till we get on the ferry.”
“Do you live in a mansion like Daddy Warbucks?”
“No, but my parents do. For the summer anyhow.”
Salome’s eyes went wide at that and she mouthed at him, “Really?”
“Yeah. It even has a name. The Beach Manse.”
“Wow! I shoulda brought more Avon products. I could probably sell out my stock in that kind of neighborhood.”
Please don’t be doing your Avon Lady shtick there. But then he amended that thought to, Why the hell not? Go for it!
“Your Mommy’s in a horsepital?” Maggie asked. “Does she have a boo-boo? I could kiss it and make it better.”
I’d like to see that. She’d probably have another heart attack. My mother doesn’t do touchy-feely.
“Mommy was crying yesterday. Did you make her cry?”
Oh, Lord! “I hope not.”
“Did you see that bird? It pooped right on the rail.”
“That’s what birds do.”
“Bobby Dillon pooped his pants one time in nursery school. P-U! Teacher had to open the window to farm-a-gate the room.
“When I grow up I’m gonna be a dog groomer or an astronaut.”
“Good choices, kiddo. And diverse!”
“I know what divers are. They have them at the pool at the Atlantis Hotel.
“Are you gonna marry my Mommy?”
“I hope so.”
That got Salome’s attention, big-time. She turned slowly to look directly at him, after blowing more lemon vapor.
He winked at her. “I can only hope,” he said with a shrug.
“Do I gotta call you Daddy then?”
“Only if you want to.”
“Sometimes you’re a poopyhead.”
“I know. It’s a guy thing.”
“Mommy says that’s a bad word.”
“It is, for a little girl.”
“You mean, it’s okay for big people to use bad words?”
“Not really. You should probably use a substitute word. Find something else about the person you don’t like that isn’t so offensive.”
She probably didn’t understand a word he’d said, but she surprised him by saying, “Sometimes Gramma says I’m stubborn. Are you stubborn sometimes?”
“I am.”
“Stubb-head, that’s a better word then, right?”
“I suppose so.”
On and on she went till his head started to ache. He hadn’t slept yet, and it was catching up with him. Maybe in the car on the two ferry rides back to Bell Cove he could catch a catnap or two.
Salome handed Maggie her portable DVD player and told her to watch that for a while. From then on until they reached the hospital parking lot, he kept hearing, over and over, “It’s a Hard-Knock Life.” Sometimes Maggie sang along in her high-pitched, tone-deaf, kiddie voice, which was more like shouting than singing.
He was amused, the first two or three times he heard the song. After five or six, he was rolling his eyes at Salome. “Does she ever get tired of it?”
“Nope. Earplugs help sometimes.”
When they got to his mother’s hospital room on the third floor, his mother was sitting up in bed, looking much better, or at least she’d lost her on-death’s-door pallor. His father, who was reading the New York Times in a lounge chair at the foot of the bed, stood when they entered. He had to give them credit, their eyes only widened a bit on seeing the guests. Maggie in her bedhead hair (Someone forgot to comb her hair. Holy hell! Should it have been me? Is that what I’ve taken on here?) with her portable DVD player in one hand and dragging that huge, bedraggled dog in the other. And then there was Salome in white capri pants, a “Hot (Grand)Mama” T-shirt, wedgie sandals, and about a gallon of makeup, which she’d applied in the restroom on the last ferry ride.
He introduced everyone, and before he could stop her, Maggie dropped the dog, put her DVD player aside, and crawled up on the bed next to his mother, advising, “Scooch over.”
His mother, too stunned to protest, did as she was asked and
Maggie cuddled up next to her. He doubted anyone in her life had ever told his mother to “scooch.”
Maggie was fascinated by the cannula that came out of his mother’s nose and asked, “Does it take out all the snot?”
His mother actually let out a snort of laughter and said, “No, my dear. It brings oxygen . . . fresh air . . . into my body from that machine over there.”
“Oh. So you can breathe better?”
“Yes, dear.”
“You’re Mister Merrill’s mommy, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Are you gonna be my gramma when my mommy and Mister Merrill get married?”
All eyes shot to Mister Merrill then.
He just shrugged.
“I guess so,” his mother said.
“That’s good. I don’t have a gramma. Just a great-gramma, but I call her Gramma ’cause Great-gramma is too long to say.” She looked at Salome in case no one knew who she was talking about. “What should I call you? I can’t be calling two people Gramma, can I? Because two people would answer at the same time, and that would be confusing.” She giggled at her own words.
“You could call me Grandma Good, I suppose.”
“That would be silly.” Maggie giggled some more. “That would be like I have a good gramma and a bad gramma, and my great-gramma isn’t bad at all. Only when she swears at the slot machines. Swearing means bad words. Mister Merrill says I shouldn’t call him poopyhead anymore ’cause there’s a better word. Now I call him Stubb-head.”
“Stubb-head?” his mother sputtered.
Maggie nodded. “Sometimes he’s stubborn.”
“Tell me about it!” his mother remarked, looking pointedly at Merrill.
“Call her Nana,” Merrill’s father suggested. “That’s another name for grandmother. It’s what I called my grandmother.”
Really?
Time to put some brakes on this line of talk, but before he could speak, Salome came to the rescue. “Come down from there, Magpie. You’ve done enough talking for now.” Salome helped Maggie get off the bed and then addressed his mother. “Listen, Mrs. Good, we’re not going to be any trouble at all. It will only be for a few days. You won’t even know we’re around.”
That is doubtful.
Thankfully, Salome had left the e-cigarettes in his truck. They would have given his mother another heart attack, and his father his first one, no doubt.
“That’s all right. Merrill explained the situation to my husband, and we want to help in any way we can,” his mother said.
He hadn’t told his father everything, but enough to know that Maggie was in danger of being taken into foster care. He was relieved to know his mother would cooperate, too. Luckily, Ben had returned to Maryland to join Van. He wasn’t so sure they would have been so compliant, especially Van.
“Well, I’m gonna help you, too,” Salome said to his mother. “Don’t take any offense, sweetie, but you’ve got a line of snow on your roof that shouldn’t be there. I can take care of that, lickety-split, and without going to any fancy pancy beauty salon.” His mother glanced to him and his father for help, but Salome was already searching for something in her purse, which was about the size of a barge. Out of it, she pulled a small case of what looked like crayons. “Touch-up sticks,” she announced. “A woman’s guardian angel in times of beauty stress.”
Holding one after another of the sticks next to her mother’s head, she smiled and said, “Wall-ah!”
He assumed she meant “voilà!”
“See. A perfect match!” she told his mother, who was actually looking pleased, after looking at herself in a hand mirror that Salome also pulled out of her purse.
“In fact,” his mother said, “thank you. I’ve been so embarrassed. I had a hair appointment the day I had my heart attack, and my roots were showing even back then. I can’t believe you did it here in a hospital room.”
“I have other things to show you, too. Did I mention I’m an Avon Lady? Merrill told me you’re a college professor. Well, between you and me, it don’t matter what a woman does for a living, whether she’s a showgirl like I was one time, or a lawdy-dawdy, high-falutin’ egghead, she wants to look good.”
Oh, my Lord! Did she just call my mother a lawdy-dawdy, high-falutin’ egghead, uh, intellectual?
To his surprise, his mother smiled, and his father, behind him, snickered.
And Maggie, already engrossed in her DVD player, remarked idly, “I like eggs.”
Earth to aliens: Is this bizarro-land, or what?
He had to leave soon after that in order to get back to Bell Cove in time for the press conference. Maggie got suddenly teary-eyed near the end, clinging to his neck when he lifted her for a hug. “I doan wanna stay without you.”
Oh, crap! “Listen, Annie McFannie, did I mention that the house where you’re going to stay has a swimming pool?”
She raised her tear-streaked face. “It does?”
“Yes,” his father interjected, “and I believe there are some children next door who are looking for playmates.”
She perked up a little bit more but was not yet convinced to let go of her death grip on his neck.
“I’ll have your mommy call you this afternoon.”
“She will?”
“Yep.” He took a deep breath and tossed in the zinger. “And if you’re a good girl, when this is over, I will get you a dog.”
Bingo!
She raised her head, smiled, and struggled to get down.
A dog? Where did that come from? Delilah will kill me.
Then Maggie took his father’s hand and asked, “If she’s Nana, what are you?”
His father puzzled for a moment and then said, “Poppa.”
Yep, bizarro-land.
On the way out of town, he noticed a strip mall with a men’s store as its anchor. Going in, he told the guy, whose name badge read: Jerome Erlick, manager, “Listen, Jerome, I have a half hour tops in which to buy a suit, dress shirt, and tie. Price is no concern. I have black loafers that I can use, but better toss in a pair of black socks just in case.”
“But the tailoring that would need to be done . . .”
“No time for that. Get me something as close to my size as possible, ready to go.”
In fact, Jerome turned out to be a wonder man, in terms of style. Merrill couldn’t ask for a better choice or fit than the black Boss suit he was sold with a pristine white shirt and a tie with black stripes against a red background. When he was about to leave the store with the garment bag in hand, Jerome said, “It just occurred to me. Aren’t you the guy who discovered gold in a shipwreck off Bell Cove? I saw your picture on TV last night.”
“That would be me.”
“A former SEAL, huh? Thank you for your service.”
He nodded his acknowledgement of that common refrain, one that didn’t get old, even to hardened warriors.
“So, this is for the press conference today?”
“Nope.”
Jerome raised his eyebrows.
“I’m getting married today.”
Chapter 20
A surprise WHAT? . . .
At eight o’clock that morning, after waking from the sleep of the dead, Delilah read Merrill’s note once, and then two more times. Trust him, that’s what he asked of her. The guy who’d walked out on first hearing of her prison record because he needed space to think?
Trust him?
Never trust a man who needed space, for anything. That was her philosophy.
Besides, they hadn’t even talked about the details of her crime. Would he walk out again when he heard everything?
Trust him?
He’d taken her daughter somewhere without her permission.
Trust him.
And her grandmother, the traitor! How would his parents—intellectual snobs, that’s how he’d described them—react to the Glam Gram?
Trust him.
She sighed. What choice did she have?
But once ag
ain, he was interfering in her life. She wouldn’t be surprised to find another Elvis staring her in the face when she walked outside, one singing “Suspicious Minds,” or some such thing, to reinforce Merrill’s exhortation to trust him.
There was no Elvis when she left the motel unit and walked over to her apartment, just warm sunshine after yesterday’s rain. The storm had apparently ended early and veered in another direction, as later predicted.
The apartment was a wreck due to the apparently hasty departure. She spent an hour cleaning up and then called Harry to ask if she was supposed to be preparing any kind of food or drinks for the press conference.
“I actually don’t know. The mayor and her gang seem to have taken over with some god-awful pirate theme. You could give her a call but she’d probably talk you into some Anne Bonny outfit.”
Over my dead body!
“Why don’t you just get one of those cheese or fruit tray things at the supermarket with some bottled waters or sodas, just in case?”
I can do better than that. “Sure.”
“Lilah, I’m truly sorry for any trouble I’ve caused you. I have a big mouth.”
“No, Harry, it’s not your fault. It would have come out eventually.”
“Well, I feel real bad about it.”
“Don’t. I’ll see you at two then.” She looked up the number for Stella’s Wine and Cheese Bar that she’d noticed making a delivery to Kevin and Adam and their Victoria’s Secret babes, and called to place an order to be delivered to the Conti mansion by one, at the latest. Luckily, they weren’t busy this early in the day and were more than willing to take the order, and, yes, they could fill in the trays with crackers, fresh fruit, and other finger foods. She didn’t even wince when told the bill came to four hundred and twenty-five dollars. Merrill, or the company, would be paying for it.
What next?
She figured she could stop at the supermarket on the way to pick up some bags of ice and paper products, although she suspected that Doreen would have pirate, or Fourth of July, napkins and such.
