I.O.U

by Nancy Pickard

  “Jenny, I know what it says,” he objected.

  “You listen,” I commanded. “‘—died yesterday of a long illness. Mrs. Cain, formerly married to James Damon Cain III, former owner and president of Cain Clams, was the daughter of Frederick S. Thorne, who was a prominent local merchant in the first half of the century. Her maternal grandfather, Soren Threlkeld, immigrated to this country from Sweden with his parents in 1865, and became well known later in life as a prominent local farmer and politician.’ The next three paragraphs, Samuel, give more family history, even including a synopsis of the collapse of Cain Clams. Now listen to this, here’s how it ends—”

  “I am already familiar with it, Jenny!”

  “I know, Sam, but listen. ‘Mrs. Cain is survived by two daughters, Jennifer Lynn Cain, who is the executive director of the prominent Port Frederick Civic Foundation and whose husband is Police Lt. Geoffrey Bushfield, who is the eldest son of the Bush, Inc. plumbing and hardware supply family, and Sherry Cain Guthrie, whose husband, Lars Guthrie, owns and operates Lars Brand Labels, and two grandchildren, Heather Guthrie, 12, and Ian Guthrie, 10.”

  “So what’s wrong with that?” Sam asked, testily.

  “Where’s my mother in all of that?” I heard my voice rising, and knew people were staring, but I’d been storing up this fury for two days, and now I was rolling with it. “Where is all of the other information I gave the paper? About the grade school and high school she attended, and… and… how dare you define her by her former husband, for God’s sake. And her father and her grandfathers! And her daughters’ husbands! Christ, Sam! Who cares about all of these other people?

  Where is my mother? Who was she? What about her life? I told your reporter she had a wonderful imagination and she made up terrific stories to tell us at bedtime, and she made the best potato soup you ever tasted. Isn’t that important in life? What’s wrong with an obituary like that? Who was she when she wasn’t my father’s wife? Or my mother? Or Geof’s mother-in-law? Where is my mother in this… this… travesty?”

  The young publisher stood rigidly, staring down at me.

  “Well, Samuel?” I challenged. “What do you have to say?”

  “You’re being naive, Jenny,” was what he had to say, and then he added stiffly, “I’m sorry you’re so disappointed in our work. I thought we were being respectful of your family by not dwelling on the negative impact that the failure of Cain Clams had upon this community. We could have said so much more that you wouldn’t have liked at all. Frankly, I thought I did you a favor. Perhaps, with time, you’ll come to see it that way, too.”

  Sam Hayes turned on his heel and walked away from me.

  “Perhaps with time, you’ll come to be less of a pompous ass than your father was,” I muttered, “but I doubt it.”

  Over at the buffet table, my sister was flashing admonitory looks at me, but I ignored her. It had never been one of my aims in life to keep from embarrassing my little sister. In front of the chicken wings, Geof raised an eyebrow at me, as if to inquire: Are you sure you know what you’re doing? When I shrugged, he smiled slightly, and turned back to his conversation with two of his fellow police officers. I thought I’d found a pretty effective way to discourage companionship, but brave friends continued to venture to my bay window that noontime, and all the while I talked and talked and talked, and they smiled nervously and eventually found tactful ways to edge away from me.

  Finally, I was happily, deservedly, isolated.

  Until my stepmother plunked herself down at my side.

  “Jenny, dear,” she said brightly, as was her habit, both to call me “dear,” as if she were my senior, when in fact she was only a few years older than I, and to act unrelievedly “bright,” as in sunshine, not I.Q. I was usually a little nicer to her—God knows, I was grateful to her for taking Dad off our hands—but this day of my mother’s funeral brought back old, bitter memories of Randy’s adultery with my father. I thought I’d forgotten—even possibly forgiven—all that, but today it felt as fresh as it had when I was seventeen years old. As she sighed down onto the cushion beside me, I looked at her with disfavor. Randy had gained a little weight in the last few years, but it only served to make her look more voluptuous, which is not precisely the quality one seeks in a stepmother. Her dark hair curled sleekly around her pretty little heart-shaped face, and her navy silk dress fit her snugly in all of the places where my slim mother’s figure had failed her. For my mother’s sake, I resented Randy’s boobs most of all. She’d been at her infuriating worst all day, and now she chirped, “Isn’t this nice?”

  I leveled my hardest gaze at her, the one that imparts the silent message: Bug off. It had never worked with Randy before; actually, it had never worked with anybody, but I enjoyed using her for target practice now and then. Unfortunately, it didn’t work this time, either. She just frowned prettily, and inquired, “Do you have a headache, dear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me who everybody is again, Jenny. I can never remember anybody’s names, since we don’t get back here very often.”

  Although I heaved a martyred sigh, I quickly found myself feeling a warm, sentimental, teary glow at the pleasure of naming for her so many really distinguished people from my little old hometown. Randy may not have been impressed—she didn’t look it—but I discovered that I was impressed, both by the accomplishments of these nice people and by the fact that they cared enough about us to show up. Over there was the mayor and her preacher husband. There was the curator of Oriental art at the museum, talking to the manager of the repertory theater. There was the director of a home for battered women, and a couple of social worker friends of mine. And there, standing in a semicircle as if posed for a photograph for our next annual report, were all of my trustees at the Port Frederick Civic Foundation…

  “…left, that’s Edwin Ottilini, who’s an attorney, then Lucille Grant, a retired teacher. Next to her, there’s Roy Leland, runs United Grocers, Jack Fenton, chairman of First City Bank, and the one on the right’s my chairman, who’s also the chairman of Port Frederick Fisheries…

  “Pete Falwell,” Randy interrupted. “I haven’t forgotten him.”

  “Yes, that’s Pete,” I said. The contrast between Pete and the old man standing next to him was painful for me to see. The other man was Jack Fenton, my dear friend and advisor, who was nearly eighty now, and looking so stooped with age, and unwell. Pete, ten years his junior, still carried his height vigorously; like my dad, he was perpetually tanned, always managing to look as if he had just stepped off a tennis court, even in March, in New England.

  “Old family friends,” I murmured, feeling a swell of affection for all of them.

  “Some friend,” Randy said, “taking Jimmy’s business.”

  “Pete didn’t exactly steal it, Randy. Dad practically gave it away through mismanagement.”

  “I’ll never believe that.”

  I gritted my teeth. This was an old argument. She brooked no disparagement of “her Jimmy.” I tolerated no criticism of my trustees, particularly those four old men who had been on the board at the time I was hired. I owed them so much: They had employed me back when the Cain family name carried no weight, only controversy. “Jimmy says—”

  I wasn’t interested in what “Jimmy” said about Pete Falwell or Port Frederick Fisheries.

  “Where is Dad?”

  Randy looked miffed at having been interrupted. I wasn’t always as polite to my elders as I could be. “Where is he?”

  “Yes, Randy, where is Jimmy?”

  A tiny frown appeared between her brows. She usually kept better tabs on him than this, and God knows, she needed to. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t lost his eye for a pretty figure when he married her, but also that if you didn’t nail my father down, he’d drift away into some sort of trouble that somebody else would have to get him out of. Miranda earned her keep, I’d give her that; any woman did who lived with him.

  Like my mother…


  “Ahem,” my father said.

  Randy and I looked up.

  He was on the top step of the landing, gazing benignly down upon the rest of us who were gathered in Sherry’s vast living room. With his beautiful white hair, worn roguishly long, and with his impeccable Palm Springs tailoring (black suit of the coolest, finest wool, baby pink shirt with French cuffs and mother-of-pearl links, pink and cream and black tie, black tasseled dress loafers), he looked like visiting royalty from a minor principality, probably one with gambling casinos and a southern lattitude. His tanned, beautifully manicured hands were hidden in his trouser pockets. His weight was on his left leg and his right foot was thrust forward slightly, so that he appeared absolutely relaxed and confident, as if he were modeling for Gentleman’s Quarterly. Dad smiled in a benevolent way—the prince bestowing the grace of his presence upon what he supposed to be his adoring populace. Some of the female pulses in the crowd probably did beat faster. Mine did, too, but for an entirely different reason: fear. What in the world was he up to now?

  “I would like,” he said, “to take this opportunity to say a few words—”

  “Oh, shit!” I hissed, and peered frantically around the room for my sister. I caught a glimpse of her just as she fled into her kitchen, dragging Lars with her, in characteristic retreat. Coward! I glanced at Geof, who rolled his eyes up. Beside me, Randy stood up so fast she spilled her drink down the front of her dress. “Uh, Jimmy dear, don’t you think that perhaps—”

  But he waved her down. “You’ll enjoy this, too, Miranda.” Dad spread his arms expansively. “I want to thank you for coming out to pay your respects to my family today.”

  It was true that the Old Boy Network of Port Frederick was out in force, but what my father was incapable of grasping was that they were not here for him. It must have amused some of them—like Jack Fenton —and infuriated others—possibly Pete Falwell—to realize that my dad had never understood he was no longer one of them. When Cain Clams went under, he went out. Not only that, but I suspected that they’d always blamed him for my mother’s problems. Only he didn’t know it. He thought he was still one of The Boys.

  “—and I thought I’d just take a few moments to say a few words about the woman we all knew and loved, my dear first wife, Margaret Mary—”

  Randy made a choking sound.

  So this was why my father had been so quiet during the ride over: He’d been gathering his thoughts for this one supreme opportunity to make an utter fool of himself. I had always stepped in and protected him whenever I could. So did Randy, I’d give her that, too. Could we do it now?

  I looked at her.

  She stared beseechingly at me.

  I stood up and yelled: “Oh, my God! The kitchen’s on fire!”

  From within that same kitchen, my sister heard me and began bleating, “Help! Help! OK help!”

  The next thing that happened was that Sherry’s husband, Lars, came rushing out of the kitchen carrying a portable fire extinguisher bless his heart. He yelled “Everybody out! Follow Mr. Cain! Everybody out!”

  And that’s how my father came to feel like a hero, leading his family and his old friends to safety, on the day we buried my mother. Never let it be said that this family can’t act as one—and quickly—in a true emergency.

  Later, when the firemen arrived and discovered it was a false alarm, my craven sister denied all complicity. “I heard Jenny yell,” she told them, “and so I started screaming, and Lars grabbed the extinguisher and told everybody to get out of the house. I thought it was for real, I didn’t know!”

  Lars, of course, could hardly refute his wife’s story.

  So that left me hanging out there alone, feebly claiming, “Well, I thought I saw smoke.”

  The firemen accepted my story, but the few remaining guests looked at me even more strangely than they had earlier when I had bawled out The Port Frederick Times in the person of its publisher. If I wasn’t careful, I thought, I was going to develop a reputation.

  3

  AFTER EVERYBODY LEFT, RANDY TALKED DAD INTO DRIVING HER out to the country club for lunch, since she hadn’t imbibed anything more solid than vodka and orange juice since breakfast.

  I drew him aside in the hall to say, “Dad, will you tell me what you were going to say about Mom?”

  He gazed at a point somewhere north of my left shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about something important, Jennifer. I do wish you’d try to be better friends with your stepmother.”

  “Okay.” It was always better to agree immediately with whatever diversion he raised, and then try to get him right back on the track of the original conversation. “Dad, there were so many theories about what may have been wrong with Mom, and I’ve always wondered, what did you think?”

  “Miranda does her best to be pleasant to you girls.”

  “Yes. But how did you know Mom was sick, at first?”

  He patted me lightly on my upper arm, let his glance touch mine for an instant, and smiled with blue-eyed sincerity. “I want you to try a little harder, Jennifer, for your old Dad.”

  I surrendered. “I will. Have a nice lunch.”

  He was one wiggly fish, my dad.

  After he and Randy left for the club, Geof rounded up the kids to help him clean the kitchen. Nobody else in the family could have produced such cheerful acquiescence, but Ian idolized his cop uncle and Heather had a crush on Geof, so they practically whistled as they worked for him. It freed Sherry and Lars to go up to their bedroom to recover from their extraordinary funeral buffet.

  Before she disappeared, I tried to get my sister involved in talking about Mom, but I had even less luck with her than I’d had with Dad.

  “I don’t want to have this conversation, Jenny.”

  She stood on the steps to the second floor, frowning down at me. Lars had already gone up.

  “But Sherry, don’t you ever wonder—”

  “No, it makes me unhappy to think about it, and I just really don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, there’s something I want to tell you. Dad and Randy are driving me crazy. Can’t you and Geof take them into your house for the rest of their stay?”

  “We don’t have the guest room fixed up yet.”

  “Well, when will you?”

  I smiled at her, “Over Randy’s dead body?”

  She laughed, and said, “That’s an idea. And I’ll help you decorate the room.”

  I took advantage of her sudden good humor to chide her about deserting me. “Sherry, come on, you knew there wasn’t really a fire, didn’t you? I mean, you were standing in the kitchen! So why’d you tell the firemen you didn’t know, and leave me hanging out there by myself, looking foolish?”

  But she shut down on me again, even managing to look offended. “Of course I didn’t know.”

  I grinned encouragingly up at her, thinking: Please, have this moment with me. “Right.” Teasingly, I said, “But you’re grateful, aren’t you? What you ‘didn’t know’ sure didn’t hurt you.”

  “It certainly did, Jenny. Imagine what people are thinking.”

  So much for the moment I sighed, and let it go the way of all of the rest of them in our lives.

  “Sherry, can’t we just talk about—”

  “No, we can’t. Take a nap instead, Jenny. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  She continued on upstairs, leaving me frustrated, as usual.

  A nap! As if that was an answer to anything. She was a great one for taking naps every day, my sister was, while I could never fall asleep unless a full day of work hit me over the head and knocked me out at night. I was certainly too tired and too restless to sleep on this crazy afternoon. I offered to help with the dishes, but Geof shooed me away, echoing Sherry. “Take a nap, read a book, do something to take your mind off things.” I felt like a child who’s underfoot. The only way to escape the three of them as they picked up, swept up, and washed up was to wander down the hall to the family room, which also happened to be where She
rry had been sorting through a lot of Mother’s old things.

  Surrounded by boxes, I rifled through them, searching for memories. And, possibly, a few long-sought answers. I found the memories in photographs, some in albums and others lying loose. They reminded me that my mother was a beautiful woman. Not as tall as Sherry, but as slim as either one of us, and even blonder. And once, she was younger than we were now…

  “Oh—”

  I sank to the carpet, a photo in my hand.

  There she was, a child, all dressed up for Sunday Mass in ruffles and bows. It must have taken some strength of will, I mused, for three generations of women in her family to remain Catholic while all the men about them were Lutherans. But was it really their own will, or merely a religion-inspired fear of eternal damnation? My mother hadn’t ever displayed much of the former—certainly she hadn’t bucked the Cain tradition by raising Sherry and me in her church—so I suspected it was probably the latter.

  I dropped that one, and picked up another photo.

  Here she was as a teenager, sandwiched between my father—who looked dapper even then—and a gorgeous convertible, my father’s teen dream machine, his famous 1937 Duesenberg. “Last year they ever made them,” he had said often enough to cement the words into my memory. I wondered, was he more proud of the girl or the car? Silly question. Of course, it was the car.

  And here were pictures of her with Sherry, Dad, and me.

  Here was a professionally taken, color, eight-by-ten photograph of us when I was sixteen and Sherry was fourteen, the year before everything fell apart. Yes, there was a date scrawled on the back in my own childish handwriting. Sherry and I looked like thin blond twins; despite the two-year difference in our ages she was already the same height as I. Dad was black-haired and handsome as a matinee idol, and he sported just that kind of insipid smile, too. But my mother, otherwise pretty in her sleeveless blouse and full, belted skirt, appeared intense and worried; there was a crease between her eyes that made her appear to be trying by the sheer act of concentrating to help the photographer get us into focus. That would have been a trick all right: getting the Calamity Cains into focus. And how like my father, I thought, to hire somebody else to attempt it and how like my mother to take the burden of the effort—somebody else’s effort, at that—upon herself. And how like Sherry to pose like a beauty queen contestant, one hand on a hip, her shoulders back, her (then) flat chest stuck out, and a blinding smile revealing her breathtaking teenaged confidence along with her braces. And how like me to look so pleasant, so conventionally adolescent, so goddamned cooperative. Nice Jenny; stand, Jenny; smile, Jenny.