by Rita Lakin
Hicks and Dockson exchange glances. This is the most they ever heard out of their leader, Dix.
Hicks keeps picking at the sore, while Dockson listens nervously. In his mind, Dix is like a pit bull. You don’t poke at him. Or he bites. But Hicks pushes on. ‘I’m not hearing a reason for you leaving.’
For a moment, Dix does look ready to snarl, but he’s caught up in his own recollections. ‘My mother made plans to leave him; she was gonna take me with her. I was thrilled, because I was glad to be rid of dear daddy, who I thought was a loser, and who wasn’t exactly crazy about me. I even packed a suitcase and hid it under my bed. But one day I woke up and she was gone. Hey, Mom, I wanted to call after her; you forgot something. Me. I cried for days.’
‘What did you father say?’ asks Dockson.
‘What did he say when he realized she was gone? He looked at me in surprise, and asked, ‘You still here?’ From then on he treated me like I was wallpaper.
Dockson primed, as if ready to race out of the room if Dix blew a gasket.
But Dix was still in his past. ‘My dad decided that Mom had had a good idea and he took off, too. My signal to take off.’
Dockson looks surprised. In spite of his fear, he blurts, ‘You ran away at nine?’
A sly smile from Dix. ‘No, by then I was thirteen and I was as disgusted with him as he was with himself. That’s when I left and hitched my way across the country, as far away as I could get from him.’
The partners’ eyes fix on everywhere but at him. Waiting for Dix to fly into a rage.
Dix growls; he’s sorry he let them see him weak. None of their damn business. ‘Go on, get outta here and pick up the groceries. And be careful with Daddy’s car. It’s worth a small fortune.’
They run.
PART SEVEN
The Capture
THIRTY-TWO
The Mall – Shop Till You Drop
I expected this shopping excursion at Sawgrass Mills Mall would be unpleasant. I wanted to have buffers against Tori’s expected obnoxious behavior. I had hoped Evvie could join us. No luck; she and Joe had tickets to a play matinée. Bella and Sophie were off somewhere, being very mysterious about it. Only one person left to ask. My Jack. It won’t be easy, since I still haven’t told Jack about Ida’s ‘confession’. I keep waiting for the right time. However, this isn’t it. Why have I been stalling? I don’t know. But anyway, here goes.
I find him in our sun room. In shorts and a tee shirt. His bare feet are up high, leaning on the railing. A cold beer and sandwich are on the small patio table near him. He looks so comfortable. Too relaxed, not a good sign.
I put my arms around his neck from behind him and nuzzle his ear. ‘Comfy?’ I ask sweetly.
‘Sure am.’
‘You know where I’m going today?’
‘Heard some rumor about shopping with the girls. Ida is taking Tori to the mall because she needs a new outfit. Our Hy promises to take her out to the track, amazing as that sounds.’ He laughs. ‘The Yenta machine doles out local news bulletins daily. No fake news for them.’
‘You heard right.’
I take a deep breath before I plunge in. ‘Well, you know how it is between Ida and Tori. Chalk and cheese. So, I’m going with them to keep this little volcano from erupting.’ Why am I making light of it?
‘How brave of you.’
I am rubbing his neck. I hear a few happy moans in return.
A quick blurt, ‘So, I was thinking you might want to come along.’ I hold my breath. ‘And help out.’
‘You know I was planning to watch a Dolphins game on TV today with Morrie, at his place.’
‘Yes, but I was hoping …’
He turns around; my arms drop from his neck. He lifts up both of his hands; I assume he’s pretending they are scales. ‘Let me see, I’ll weigh my options here.’ He lifts one hand, as if lifting something light. ‘A happy time with my son, and other guys; his cop pals. Lots of beer and cheering or booing the game, as the case may be. Hearing cop jokes, trading stories and lots of laughing. Or …’ His other hand drops like a stone. ‘Spend my precious hours with a spoiled brat, bent on making everyone miserable.’ He keeps pretending to weigh his options. Up and down. Up and down. Hiding a smile; he’s enjoying toying with me.
‘Stop that,’ I say. Hiding my own smile. He’s so adorable. I know I’ve lost this battle, but he’s so much fun to watch.
‘I rest my case.’ Naturally, we kiss.
So, I am stuck with the job of referee between unhappy Grandma Ida and rebellious grandchild, Tori; not my favorite idea of spending an afternoon. And Jack is unaware of the severity of their situation. So, I am on my own. Oh, well, grin and bear it.
This is a pretty section of Bloomingdale’s outlet store. In one corner there is a black baby grand piano. A stately looking woman, her straight blonde hair in a chignon, dressed in severe black with a white collar at her throat, is seated there, playing Chopin études. The music is sweet and relaxing.
And adjoining her is a colorful rainbow fountain, with constantly lit flowing water pouring down from a small marble statue at its center; Eros, the god of Love, with bow-and-arrow poised.
We are nearby in the teen department of Bloomingdale’s, looking at skirts for Tori to wear for when (and if) she goes with Hy on the promised trip to Hialeah racetrack.
Ida holds up a skirt that is three inches below the knee. We’ve already given up on dresses. This is her eighth attempt at pleasing the princess. ‘It’s a flared skirt, something modern,’ touts Ida.
‘It’s a skirt for old ladies, like you. Pass.’
Another Ida selection. A charming floral pattern of daisies. Tori gives her opinion of that choice. She places her forefinger inside her throat, making a gagging motion, and turns away. Snarky at every turn.
Ida hangs it back up on the rack. ‘You have to pick something. And stop looking at dungarees!’
Tori practically spits. ‘They’re called jeans. They’re denims. They’re skinny jeans. They’re Wrangler’s. Or chinos. They’re designer jeans, or blue jeans. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing dungarees!’
I try to calm her. ‘Well, it came originally from the word dungeree in the year 1600 from the Hindi dungri meaning coarse cotton.’ Years of being a librarian filled my brain full of usually useless information like this. ‘In America, Levi Strauss, a miner—’
Tori swats at me to shut up. ‘Dungarees! Dung! Comes from shit!’
Ida lifts her hand to slap her, but stops herself. ‘If we were at home, I’d wash your mouth out with soap.’
Tori shoots her down with disdain. ‘Again, you and your soap-mouth washings. It’s not my home! Get a life!’
Ida backs up as if she’d been smacked. She moves away from us. If there was a corner to hide in, that’s where she’d be.
Tori ignores her and holds up a plain blue skirt for me to approve.
I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure they’d even accept anything in denim at the Turf Club gate.’ I am still sticking to the ‘dress code’ as if it were the rule throughout Hialeah. Jack had laughed when I told him about my little fib. He’d called it a downright lie, and what kind of woman was his wife becoming?
Ida looks like she might faint. I get her to sit down on a small couch. She does so, takes out a handkerchief to use as a fan. I indicate that she should rest and I’ll take over.
It takes a while until Tori finds something barely acceptable. It’s another flared skirt, but it’s knee-length. We find a cotton top that sort of matches, according to the fashion rules of Tori, and we are finally done.
At checkout, Tori takes money from her pouch. Ida pulls herself up from the couch and lifts out her wallet. ‘Let me buy this for you. Think of it as a birthday present.’
‘I can buy my own clothes.’ She glares at Ida, who tries to hold back her cries of despair. ‘I changed my mind. Yeah, you pay for it. Won’t make up for all the years of birthday presents I never got from you.’
&nbs
p; Another knife-stab to Ida’s heart.
I’ve had enough. While we wait for the packages to be wrapped, I face the two adversaries. ‘Isn’t it about time to make peace? What will it take to stop this needless, unending war?’
Ida jumps at the chance. ‘Yes, please. Tori I’m so sorry. Let me apologize. For everything.’
Tori says, ‘Not so fast, Grandma. You don’t get off so easy.’ Tori remains rigid, with arms locked tight.
She turns to me. ‘You want us to stop the war. Who asked you to stick your nose in my business? Stick to your own stupid business. Mrs Perfect: what do you know about pain and misery? You have a pretty-boy husband. You get to tell all your old lady friends what they should do, and when you say jump they jump.’
Ida says weakly, ‘Gladdy is my friend; she’s just trying to help.’
‘Well, let her go rescue some old biddy who fell in her bathtub. Tell her to stay out of my life.’
‘Stop it! You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Ida looks to me, chagrined. She knows my own heartbreak and she feels this child has no right to attack me.
‘It’s all right, Ida. Don’t worry about me.’ I turn to Tori. ‘Hate gets you nowhere.’
‘I’m good at hate. It’s what I do best.’
‘But you’re letting it define you.’ Soothing tone; I try to calm her down. ‘Everybody gets hurt sometime in their lives. I’m not belittling your pain, but how long do you need to hold on to this hate? When you hate someone, you are the one who suffers. It ruins your life. It stops you from ever being happy, or feeling joy, or having a healthy life.’
Tori covers her ears with her hands. ‘Bla-bla-bla,’ she says to shut me out.
I give up. I’m a failure at negotiating.
By now the people who have been walking by have stopped and are gaping at us. Even the pianist watches us act out our family drama as she continues to play. She switches to a funeral dirge – her musical comment on our situation. I wonder who else in the crowd gets it.
There is even one insensitive young guy who has been circling us, shooting a video with his iPhone. Perhaps he thinks it’s an incident that will get him many ‘likes’ on his Facebook page. ‘Get away, pest!’
He ignores me. When he points his phone at us, Ida and I automatically look away from him.
Not our Tori, not in-your-face Tori. ‘Hey, you, pig boy …’ she calls, heading toward him, blood in her eyes.
He startles, but only for a moment. Up close, he seems younger, maybe not even twenty. He grins as she approaches and quickly presses the snapshot button, taking rat-a-tat shot after shot of her.
‘Cut that out!’ demands tough Tori. ‘Or you’ll live to regret it!’
He circles around her, continuing to ‘shoot’. ‘You can’t stop me. It’s a free country.’
‘Oh, can’t I? What about my right to privacy!?’ She tries to grab at the phone, but he keeps the dancing around, holding the camera high. He laughs as he says, ‘This week, my subject is Mean Girls, and you are the meanest girl I’ve ever shot!’
The guy is way taller than Tori and she is getting nowhere, trying to reach his hand.
But what’s this? Is it a bird? Is it a plane! It’s Superwoman, come to save the day! (Or was that Mighty Mouse?) There’s Ida racing towards the two of them, as if she does have wings. She practically leaps into the camera guy, shoving him with all her old-lady strength. And with an impressive jab to his middle, he falls backward – into the fountain. Landing next to Eros, seeing his iPhone drown!
Ida shrieks, with fists ready to cause more damage. ‘Nobody gets to call my granddaughter “mean”!’
The guy wails, soaking wet, digging around the water desperately. ‘You ruined my phone … my camera!’
To my utter amazement, Tori grabs Ida and whirls her around, hugging her. ‘I love you, Grandma. I do!’
‘I love you, too, baby. Can you forgive me?’
The melting tough girl, ‘I forgive you. I do. I do.’
‘If I could take it all back … I did everything wrong. I never should have left you.’
‘You don’t have to explain. I understand. You did what you had to do. You had to take care of Grandpa Murray.’
Ida, sadly, ‘It didn’t help. He died anyway.’ She pauses, remembering. ‘I never wanted to leave you; you were the sweetest, most adorable baby. I just was so guilt-ridden about what I did to your mom. I ruined everybody’s lives. You have a right to hate me. I hate myself.’
‘I know. I know. You don’t have to hate yourself anymore.’
They walk toward me, arm in arm.
I am stunned. What’s just happened? They’re still at it, blubbering together.
‘I’m so sorry, that I left you to the Steiners. They never got over losing Fred.’
‘They weren’t so bad …’
‘Yes, they were.’
She grins. ‘Yes, they were, and she was such an awful cook.’
‘Remember those awful smoked beer sausages; she burnt them every time.’
They both laugh.
The guy in the fountain mutters, ‘Just lost the best shot of the day.’
Tori grabs the packages. ‘Let’s get the heck out of here.’
With a background of a crowd applauding us, we three take bows and, with what’s left of our dignity, we exit the store.
I have no idea what made this amazing shift in that girl, but I’ll pretend my little speech had something to do with it.
THIRTY-THREE
An Unexpected Stop
By the time we reach the exit of the mall, Tori and Ida are still holding hands and grinning happily at one another. Ida suddenly stops. ‘Wait. I need to go back. I have to use the rest room.’
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘we’ll wait right here for you.’
‘Don’t bother. The bathrooms are way back toward the center. It’ll take me a while. I’ll meet you back at the car.’
‘Okay, definitely back at the car.’
Once she hobbles off, I turn to Tori. ‘Do you want to make a quick stop for a soda? Or a snack? We can stall going out in the heat.’
‘No, it’s really stuffy in here. Let’s just get to the car. We can turn on the AC if we want. Right now, for a few minutes, I’d like some real air.’
‘All right.’
Tori swings the handles of her clothing packages in a jolly fashion.
I’m still walking on air with what just happened. I feel like Winston Churchill must have felt when his impassioned speeches helped Britain win the war against Germany.
Ida has conversations with herself as she hurries down the wide aisles of the massive mall. Why am I rushing? Because I want to get back to Tori. There’s so much more I want to say to her. I’m so happy. She doesn’t hate me anymore … oops, wait, I think I have to make a left.
I’m trying to find the Nike store. I remember from previous times, there was a bathroom in there. I also remember us always complaining that there were so few bathrooms in this huge place, and somebody should do something about it. There was some lady on Google wrote about it, that they were poorly marked and hard for seniors to find. No use thinking about that just now. Why couldn’t I just wait till we got home? Well, some things can’t be held back. I giggle. Was Nike near a Bed, Bath and Beyond? I don’t think so. But something tells me I’d better walk faster. Thank goodness, I see Nike way down at that end. I wish I had worn more comfortable shoes. My feet are killing me. Maybe I should buy a pair when I’m in Nike. Not that they’d carry the kind of shoes I would wear. It’s a store for kids. Or people with bad taste. Never mind, thank God, here’s the store.
I keep trying to find the bathroom. I have no idea where in the store it is. All I see are shoes and boots. But I do see lots of sneakers; they look nice … no, forget it, I have no time to shop. I try to find a sales clerk so I can ask where the bathroom is. Rots-a-ruck with that. Finding employees is like finding hens’ teeth. Impossible. Oh, goody, never mind, I see it down in that corner r
ight near a dressing room. I practically hop and skip getting there. I need to get there fast now.
What’s this? There’s some kind of mop in a sudsy bucket barring the door. Never mind, I can walk around it.
‘You can’t come in here!’ A harsh voice from inside calls out to me. I keep going and I turn and enter the bathroom itself.
‘I said, stay out!’ The voice is coming from a woman, who stands eight feet tall, huge-bellied with green and gray hair and sweeping up the floor. Eight feet – I know that’s an exaggeration, but that’s how I see her. She has a cigarette dangling from her lips. Isn’t there a law against smoking in the whole mall? Never mind that. Never mind how she looks. I have something more important to worry about. My bladder! My unhappy, complaining bladder!
‘I’m cleaning up in here. You have to wait outside till I’m through,’ the Amazon shouts.
‘But … but … I have to go!’ I’m about to rush past her and zoom into one of the cubicles, but I picture her breaking the door down and dragging me out by my hair. I really should stop watching late-night TV vampire movies.
The huge woman drops the broom and picks up a long-handled thick black brush and comes after me, shooing me out of the room. ‘Yeah – go to one of the other toilets in some other store.’
‘Which stores are they?’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know? What do you think I am, some social director?’
‘But you clean the bathrooms? You should know where they are.’ Why am I debating with a lunatic? I wanna smack her. But she’d probably kill me with one blow. Or throw Febreze in my face.
I’m wasting time. I have to find another bathroom. Fast.
I trot down the middle row looking every which way. I pass TJ Maxx. Somehow I doubt they have a bathroom. Too cheap to build one. How about that kiddy clothing store? Nah, the toilet seats are only for three-year olds.
