Easily Amused

by McQuestion, Karen

  “Wouldn’t it be more fun to teach high school kids?” I asked.

  “No way,” he said. “Elementary, my dear Lola, that’s where I belong.”

  “I give you a lot of credit. I couldn’t do it.”

  “How about you?” he asked. “You still like your job?”

  Hubert was the only one who ever expressed interest in my work. “Most of the time,” I said. “I get a lot of satisfaction in putting together the magazine from scratch every month. I try to balance it so there’s a good mix of information and entertaining articles. My boss wants the ads featured prominently, but I try to keep them from overriding the content.” I stabbed at a chunk of chicken with my fork; unlike Hubert, I’d never mastered chopsticks. I was too modest to tell him my favorite part of the job—the periodic e-mails of praise from readers. The general consensus seemed to be that the magazine had improved since I took over. One article I wrote on toxic toys even won an award. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”

  “So, life is good,” he said.

  “I guess so.” I didn’t have a husband or even a boyfriend, but I had my house, my health, my job, my friends. I couldn’t quibble. Much.

  By the time I pushed my plate away, I’d consumed more than I’d thought possible. “I can’t eat another bite.”

  “Oh, but you have to,” Hubert said. He reached into the bag, and I heard the crinkle of cellophane. “Fortune cookies!” He presented them on outstretched palms. “You pick first.”

  I chose one and waited while he opened his. His eyebrows furrowed. “Mine says, ‘Out with the old, in with the new.’ What kind of fortune is that?” He looked up, and I shrugged. “Now it’s your turn.”

  I tore the clear wrapper, split the cookie in two, and smoothed the piece of paper on the table. “You’ll find treasure where you least expect it.” I gave him a quizzical look. “That doesn’t tell me much. I don’t expect treasure anywhere. Ever.”

  “Except in your nightstand drawer,” Hubert said. He leaned back in his chair and balanced on the back legs for a few seconds, and then he came down with a thud. “Hey, that’s what we should do tonight. We should start going through your aunt’s stuff. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “Cleaning is never fun, Hubert.”

  “Don’t think of it as cleaning, think of it as exploring. Did anyone go through any of her stuff before you moved in?”

  I shook my head. “Her attorney gave me the key, and when I went through the house, everything was exactly as it was the day she died. She was having coffee with Brother Jasper on a Sunday afternoon when she felt some pains in her chest. He called 911, and the paramedics came right away. They said her heart gave out in the ambulance. They tried to revive her, but weren’t able to. She was old—in her late eighties, eighty-seven, I think.”

  “Wow,” Hubert said. “You never told me that story.”

  I resisted the urge to remind him that he hadn’t really been around much the last year or so. “The coffee cups and the sugar were still on the table when I first walked through the house.”

  “That’s kind of creepy.” He looked around the kitchen. “Did you ever find out why she left it to you? Instead of your folks or the other relatives?”

  There was that question again. “No. I barely knew her. I only saw her at family functions maybe once a year or so, and we didn’t talk much.” The memory made me feel guilty. I never used to know what to say to Aunt May. She was fairly pleasant to talk to, but her oldness made me feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, I wished I had taken an interest in her life. “But the neighbors said Aunt May talked about me all the time. She told them when I graduated from college and when I got the job at the magazine. Kind of weird to think about it now.”

  “Maybe she just admired you.”

  “Yes, of course. Because I’m smart and pretty and kind, with a good sense of humor.”

  Hubert grinned. “Don’t forget the part about how you’re such a good friend.”

  “I have so much going for me, it’s amazing more people aren’t leaving me houses.”

  “There’s the right attitude.” He looked amused. “So, do you want to go through the bedrooms first, or the downstairs?”

  “We really have to do this?”

  “Gosh yes, this is going to be fun.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was hoping we’d find more money, but the ninety-eight dollars and forty-seven cents Hubert found in his nightstand drawer seemed to be the extent of it. We didn’t find any antiques either, unless you count a few pieces of carnival glass and a half dozen ancient pewter mugs. Hubert thought the mugs were a find and offered to take them after I put them on the discard pile. “You’re getting rid of those?” He was incredulous. “But they’re so cool. I could put them in the freezer and use them for beer when I have the guys over for poker night.”

  “Sometimes old mugs like these are toxic. I wouldn’t take any chances,” I said, pulling a stack of plates out of the built-in china cabinet. “I wrote a piece for the magazine on lead poisoning. It’s not just from paint chips, like most people think.”

  “I remember that article.” He blew the dust off a serving platter and turned it over to read the back. “That was a really interesting one. I liked where you quoted the forensic guy. My mom has some ceramic dishes she got from an artist in Spain, and after I read your story, I told her to stop serving food in them. She had no idea.”

  “You read a parenting magazine? You don’t even have kids.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re my friend—I read all your stuff. Besides, I hope to have kids someday. I think I’d make a pretty good dad.”

  I looked up and watched him sitting cross-legged on my dining room floor, helping me clean my house on a Saturday night. “I think you’d be a most excellent dad.”

  He looked sheepish. “Really? Well, thanks. You too.” He paused as if processing his own words. “I meant a mom—you’ll be a great mom.”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  We continued the project on Sunday, going through the kitchen cupboards and the first-floor bathroom. Hubert was right. With every bag taken out to the garbage and every box dropped off at the Goodwill, I felt a psychological load lifted.

  “We can start on the upstairs next weekend,” Hubert said. “And after that the basement and the attic. Then we can paint.” He was as enthused as a television host for one of those home makeover programs.

  “Whoa there.” I crossed my fingers in front of me like warding off vampires. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the help, I really do, but we don’t need to tie up every weekend from now on. This is all stuff that can wait. Why don’t we spread it out a little? Start up again, say maybe, next fall?”

  “Next fall? Man, you weren’t kidding. You really do hate deep cleaning.” He snapped his fingers. “I have a thought. What if I do it myself? Take care of everything. All you’ll have to do is wander in from time to time and tell me what stays and what goes.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  “I’d be glad to, really.” His face had a sincere, wanting-to-please, puppy-dog look. “Think of it as my rent. As long as I’m staying here, I might as well do something to earn my keep.”

  Even as I told him that wasn’t really necessary, I did a bit of internal cheering. I hadn’t realized how much the crammed closets and drawers weighed me down emotionally. My life was a closed-up space, and Hubert was opening windows and letting in the light.

  On Monday when Mrs. Kinkaid asked me about my weekend, I had more to tell than usual. I rarely mentioned my personal life, but with Drew out with his pseudo-sickness, the atmosphere in the office was different. A just-us-girls kind of feeling, which made me uncharacteristically chatty. Within minutes, though, I regretted being so open.

  “So you have a man living with you now,” she exclaimed, leaning back in her chair. She was wearing the black cardigan today. As opposed to the white one. She wore cardi
gans year-round to ward off the bone-penetrating dampness, a side effect of working in a basement. I was never quite sure how the cardigan magic worked, but I didn’t question it. “Just the two of you, sharing a house.”

  “No. Well technically, yes. But he’s just an old friend who needed a place to stay because his girlfriend Kelly kicked him out.” Why did everyone want to assume there was a subtext to this story? “We’re not involved or anything.” Our office was one big room with Drew and Mrs. Kinkaid’s desks on one side and mine on the other. Usually I didn’t mind the shared space, but the look she gave me now reminded me why having my own office would be so much better.

  “Hmmm.” She peered over her Ben Franklin glasses. “This takes me back to my own days as a single young lady. Did I ever tell you that Mr. Kinkaid and I started out as friends?”

  When I shook my head, she started in on a very long, convoluted story about her husband, Jim, which basically boiled down to the fact that Mr. Kinkaid had actually been dating Mrs. Kinkaid’s best friend, Dottie, at the start. When Dottie cast him aside, Jim came to Mrs. Kinkaid seeking an explanation and some consolation. One thing led to another, she said, “And the next thing I knew, we were quite the cozy couple.” She clasped her hands together to illustrate cozy coupleness. No space between the fingers. “The best part of the story is,” she said, and then waited a few seconds for the suspense to build, “that I asked Dottie to be my maid of honor, which I thought was quite big of me, considering. But she refused to do it. Wouldn’t even come to the wedding, she was so mad. She’d changed her mind, you see, and wanted him back. But it was too late. By the time she figured out what she’d given up, he was all mine.” A satisfied smile spread across Mrs. Kinkaid’s face. “And Mr. Kinkaid and I were happy every day of our married life, right up until he died.”

  Yes, that would put a damper on things.

  “So maybe this girlfriend of Hubert’s will see the error of her ways, but by then it will be too late. He’ll be in love with you.”

  Now she was really spinning stories. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve known Hubert for seventeen years. If he hasn’t fallen in love with me yet, it’s not going to suddenly happen now.”

  “Miss Lola Watson,” she chided. “You just got through telling me he’s one of your very best friends. And what do you think a husband is, but a best friend? That’s the trouble with you girls nowadays. You’re so caught up thinking about what you want that you don’t even see what you have. Do you want to be married, or don’t you?”

  She had more to say on the subject, I had no doubt of that, but luckily for me the phone rang at that moment. It was Mrs. Kinkaid’s daughter calling with a child-related crisis. I listened as Mrs. K. changed lanes as easily as the lead car at the Indianapolis 500.

  The rest of the morning we were busy—me with putting together a magazine and Mrs. Kinkaid with taking care of her personal finances via her checkbook, a task she could justify since officially she was waiting for two different people to call her back.

  My strategy for replacing Drew’s missing articles included updating a similar story that had run last year and inserting a personal piece on the same topic. That was the joy of Parenting Today—we had our annual birthday party issue, summer vacation issue, back-to-school issue, et cetera, and so on. I’d taken to writing personal essays on these topics as backups in case I encountered a gap close to press time. Most of them were nostalgia pieces with a humorous bent. Sometimes I got positive feedback on these stories. Almost all the flattering comments came in the form of e-mails, which I printed and kept in a file folder for those days when I needed a boost.

  By late afternoon I’d made great headway on my work while Mrs. Kinkaid kept busy laboriously sharpening pencils at her desk using one of those plastic handheld jobbies commonly used by grade-schoolers. We had an electric sharpener, but that required a trip across the room. Plus, Mrs. K. found the noise it made grating.

  When the phone rang at four o’clock, she looked up. “Are you getting that?” she asked, continuing to rotate a pencil in even strokes. Even from my desk eight feet away I could smell the fresh wood shavings.

  “Certainly.” God forbid we interrupt the pencil project. “Parenting Today. Lola Watson speaking.”

  “Lola, hey, it’s Piper.”

  I scooted my chair so that my head would be partially obscured by my computer monitor, away from Mrs. Kinkaid’s curious gaze. “Hello, how can I help you?”

  “It’s Piper.”

  “If you wait, I can look that up.”

  She laughed. “What’s the deal? Is Mrs. Kinkaid listening?”

  “Yes, that is correct.” I wedged the phone between my ear and my shoulder and put my hands over my keyboard. “Would you mind repeating that information?” I tapped on a few keys.

  “Oh, Lola, please. Just tell her you’re talking to a friend. Who cares? You said she takes personal calls all the time. And you’re the one in charge. It’s not like she’s the boss.”

  I knew Piper was right, but there was a part of me that needed to maintain a show of professionalism. Just because Mrs. Kinkaid had the work ethic of Paris Hilton didn’t mean I needed to follow suit. “Could you spell that?”

  Piper sighed. “OK then, we’ll play it your way. I’ll just tell you the reason I called, and you can call me tonight from home if you have any questions.”

  “Yes?” I held my hands expectantly over my keyboard. I’d opened up a new document and was going to pretend to type whatever the caller said. That kind of thing bored Mrs. Kinkaid to distraction. With any luck she’d get up to fiddle with the radio station or water the plant. Once she started humming, I’d be able to talk freely.

  “Remember my plan?” Piper said. “The one for getting back at Mindy?”

  “Uh huh.” I dutifully typed, “Plan for getting back at Mindy.”

  “Well, Brandon and I had to stop at Mike’s office today to drop something off. Just a minute.” She put the phone down. “No, no, honey. Not in the mouth.” I heard the sounds of a skirmish and then Brandon’s wail.

  Across the room, Mrs. Kinkaid waved to get my attention and held up some change. She pointed to the door to indicate she was going out to the vending machine and mouthed, “Do you want anything?”

  I shook my head.

  Piper returned to the phone. “Here, have a graham cracker.” I assumed she meant Brandon, not me. “OK, I’m back.”

  “I can talk now,” I said. “Mrs. Kinkaid went for a candy bar.”

  “Good, and Brandon should be fine for a bit. Boy, has he been a stinker lately.” She exhaled loudly. “So where were we? Oh, I remember. So, I’m at Mike’s office waiting for him to be done with a client, and who walks into the reception area but this absolutely gorgeous guy. Tall, with dark wavy hair, and brown eyes you could drown in. I’m talking handsome, but not in a pretty-boy way, you know what I mean? And he was dressed smart casual. Not everybody can pull that off. So, I’m waiting and this guy sits down because he has an appointment to meet with Mike’s partner and he’s a little early and we start talking. And man, is he easy to talk to—charming and personable like you wouldn’t believe.”

  I had a sudden funny feeling. I hoped this wasn’t heading where it seemed to be heading.

  “Before long, Ryan and I—that’s his name, Ryan—are talking like old friends. He thought Brandon was really adorable, so I knew he was smart.” She laughed. “And get this: I told him about Mindy and the wedding and the cake and everything, and he’s totally on board for playing your fiancé.”

  “Oh, Piper,” I said. “No. Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Nope, I’m not kidding.” She sounded downright gleeful.

  “This is unbelievable.”

  “Oh, you better believe it.” She was just winding up now. “And it gets better. This guy is loaded. He’s a consultant for an international company and travels all over the world. And here’s the topper—he lives right in your neighborhood, so you can tel
l everyone that’s how you met.”

  My stomach lurched as if I were in the front seat of a roller coaster after it just made a sudden drop. “Piper, that plan was just talk. Like when we used to dream about hitchhiking to California and becoming movie stars? We both knew we were never going to go to Los Angeles. Planning it was as far as it was going to go.” How could she have thought I’d actually go through with this? It was like some cheesy movie of the week. “I can’t believe you asked some guy to do this.”

  “Lola, I know you’re not that adventurous, but just let me finish. This guy is so cool, and he was totally sympathetic to your situation.”

  “He probably thinks I’m the biggest loser in the world. I’m embarrassed to even think about it.”

  “No, no, no,” she said. “He understands. It turns out he has this older brother who started his own software company and is now a bajillionaire and owns his own jet. His parents think this brother is the second coming. No matter what Ryan does, he doesn’t measure up. Trust me, he feels your pain.”

  I did have pain, that was true enough. In fact, it was worse now that I was having this conversation. “I can’t go through with it,” I said. “You need to talk to him, Piper, and call the whole thing off.”

  “What would you have me tell him?”

  “Tell him it was a joke. Or say that you’re delusional and don’t actually have a friend. I don’t care what you tell him, just make it go away.”

  “So you’re OK with Mindy making a fool out of you at her wedding? You’re fine with that now?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But there has to be another way around it.” I tried to think of a solution that didn’t require subterfuge. “You know what? I’ll just talk to my parents and explain my feelings. I’ll have them ask her not to make a big to-do with the cake.” Mindy would listen to them. Maybe.