by Arlene James
She shook her head. “No, no. I’d better get home. Dad will be out looking for me if I don’t.”
“I’ll call—”
“No, really. I just want to go home.” She tossed aside the quilt she’d been sleeping under and got to her feet. “I’ll see you at a quarter to ten.”
“I don’t have to go in until after lunch,” he said. “Besides, if you’re sick you need to be resting. I’ll see if I can’t get somebody to cover for me tomorrow.”
She didn’t argue with him, just slid her feet into her sandals and pushed her hair out of her face. “I’ll call, let you know how I’m progressing.” She moved toward the kitchen. He stood and followed her.
“Mattie, don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“Let me—”
“Good night.” She snatched her bag from the counter and was gone before he could say more. He stood staring at the closed door in the half-light, wondering just how sick she was and why it felt all wrong. Eventually his own fatigue drove him back the way he’d come. He cut off the light in the living room and moved sluggishly into the hall. A few moments later, he fell atop his bed and rolled onto his back. Sleep descended before he could do more than regret letting Mattie get away without telling her all that was on his mind.
Orren rubbed the shammy over the side of the extended cab. Not too long ago he’d considered the late-model truck an adequate vehicle for his family, even though its cramped back seat and dual buckets didn’t leave a spare inch of room when they were all inside. Now, however, he saw serious shortcomings. What they really needed was room to grow, a double cab maybe or a van. Still, a truck like his always came in handy. He wondered if Mattie would be willing to trade in her coupe, or if it even belonged to her. He mentally added the topic to the growing list of subjects that he and Mattie needed to discuss.
He thought of trying to call her again. Her stepmother had said that she’d seemed “down” but that she hadn’t complained of feeling ill before she’d left the house. He wondered for the dozenth time why she hadn’t called as she’d said she would and where she’d gone. He’d assumed that she’d been on her way to see him and the kids, but hours had passed, and Mattie had not showed.
He finished drying the truck, squeezed out the shammy and went into the house. Chaz was sitting at the table, his chin resting atop his folded arms. “What’s up, guy?”
Chaz shrugged. Orren narrowed his eyes. The boy could be coming down with whatever was plaguing Mattie. He laid a palm across the boy’s forehead. It was cool to the touch. Still…
“Your throat bothering you, son?”
Chaz shrugged again. Orren pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.
“You’ve been kind of mopey this morning. Something bothering you?”
Chaz laid his cheek on his arm and stared at his father. “Dad, do you love Mattie?”
Orren blinked at the question, momentarily taken aback, but then he nodded. “Yes, Chaz, I do.”
“Then how come you called Mama to come back?”
Orren cocked his head. He should have expected this, he realized. “Your sister tell you that?”
Chaz nodded. “Jean Marie says you ain’t gonna marry Mattie ‘cause you’re takin’ Mama back.”
Orren dropped his head, shaking it side to side. “As usual, Jean Marie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Son, my trying to get in touch with your mother has nothing whatsoever to do with me and Mattie. Yancy’s just been feeling a little maudlin lately. She seems to think seeing your mother would make her feel better. That’s the only reason I even thought about trying to find Gracie. But I wouldn’t count on anything, if I was you. Nobody seems to know where she is.”
“Then she ain’t coming home?”
“Probably not even for a visit.”
Chaz’s relief was palpable. He went limp, closing his eyes and smiling. “Boy, wait’ll I tell Mattie.”
Orren chilled. “Mattie? Are you saying Mattie knows I was trying to get in touch with Grace?”
Chaz sat up straight in his chair. “Wasn’t she s’posed to?”
For an answer, Orren groaned. “Not until I had a chance to explain!” Holy cow! No wonder she wasn’t feeling well. He knew suddenly just who he had to thank for this latest fiasco. He got up from the table, roaring, “Red! Get in here!”
He was standing with his hands on his hips when a wide-eyed Jean Marie came to a stop in front of him. “What is it, Daddy?”
“Red, did I or did I not tell you to keep it to yourself that I was going to try to find your mother for Yancy?”
Her face went absolutely expressionless. “For a while, you said. How was I supposed to know how long you meant for?”
He wasn’t buying. “You deliberately told Mattie before I could explain.”
Her face scrunched up vehemently. “Chaz said you was going to marry her! I couldn’t let her think—”
“You spiteful thing! Mattie’s been good to you! She’s been good to all of us! Why would you want to make her think I was taking your mama back?”
“You might!” Red insisted. “If she came back, you’d see she’s a lot prettier’n Mattie!”
“Pretty is as pretty does, Red! And even if Grace was prettier than Mattie—and I don’t think she is!—Grace doesn’t want to be here! She went off and left us, Red. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it. She’s not here because she doesn’t want to be.”
Jean Marie’s eyes brimmed with tears, her chin wobbled, and her mouth turned down at the corners. Then something seemed to catch her eye, and she stepped to one side, looking past Orren and out the window over the kitchen sink. Her face registered shock and then recognition, followed swiftly by excitement. She jabbed a finger at the window. “Then what’s that?” she cried.
Orren spun around in time to see a copper-colored, midsize coupe with gold rims roll out of sight up the drive. For a moment he was frozen in place, trapped by shock. That couldn’t have been…He’d only gone to see Evelyn Flatte yesterday morning! But the crunch of tires on gravel just outside the carport told him that he wasn’t imagining things. God in heaven!
Before he could react, Red tore past him and ripped open the door. “Mama!” She ran down the steps and disappeared. Orren looked at Chaz.
“Mattie,” Chaz whispered worriedly.
Mattie. Orren closed his eyes, thanking God that Mattie was not around just then. Not that it mattered. Mattie would understand. He’d see to that. Right now he had to deal with Grace…and Red. He looked at Chaz. “You go in the back and stay with your sisters until I call you. And don’t worry about anything. It’ll come right, I promise. I’m not stupid enough to let Mattie get away.”
Chaz smiled. “Okay, Dad, an’ don’t worry about Red. She don’t know nothin’, but she’ll figure it out, I bet.”
That was a bet Orren wouldn’t back, but he smiled at his son. “Go on now. It won’t be long.”
Chaz went out one way, and Orren went out another. Gracie was standing beside her car, bent at the waist to look her eldest daughter in the face. She wore the skintight jeans and low-cut blouse that she favored, gold sandals with absurdly high heels on her feet. Her golden hair had grown longer, the back falling past her shoulders, the front and top pulled up and artfully arranged to tumble in disheveled strands around her face and in her eyes. Her mouth was as red as it could get, as red as her inch-long fingernails. Her bright blue eyes were shaded and shadowed and rimmed in black. If anything, her figure was even more voluptuous than it had been before, suspiciously so. She looked to him as if she were costumed for a play. She was unreal, a paper doll, as insubstantial as the staged and airbrushed photos in men’s magazines. He felt an odd sense of relief at the realization, as if some unacknowledged part of him had worried that he would still find her attractive. He walked toward mother and daughter.
“You have your mother’s eyes, anyway,” Grace was saying. “You may have gotten Grandma Ellis’s red hair, but that just means you’l
l be a red-hot honey one of these days. Ooh, yeah, I bet your daddy has to beat back the boys in a few years.”
Red laughed far more ebulliently than the observation warranted. “You came right quick, Mommy,” she said. “We just asked Daddy to call you night afore last.”
“We?”
“Yancy and me.”
“What about your brother?”
“He’s inside with the girls,” Orren said loudly. He looked at Jean Marie. “Red, you go on inside with the others.”
“But—”
“There’ll be plenty of time to visit with your mother later. Right now I want to talk to her.”
Jean Marie looked to her mother for support, but Gracie was smiling at Orren, a glint in her eyes that even a kid couldn’t miss. Jean Marie ducked her head and darted around her father. At the door she paused to call, “I’m glad you’re here, Mommy!”
Gracie didn’t answer. She was too busy posing for Orren. “You didn’t think I’d be lookin’ this good, did you, sugar?”
Orren smiled to himself. “Breast implants, Gracie?”
She flicked hair out of her eyes with her fingertips but didn’t bother to deny it. “Only good thing Sonny Flatte ever did for me.”
Orren couldn’t help chuckling. “What good thing did you do for him, Grace?”
She lifted her chin and folded her arms, emphasizing the cleavage exposed by the neckline of her blouse. “I left my family for him. I walked away from everything I loved—”
Orren laughed outright. “Honey, you ought to go on the stage.”
Outrage flashed in her eyes, but she muted it, saying, “Funny you should mention that. I met a Hollywood producer not too long ago, and he—”
Orren held up both hands. “Let me guess. You missed your babies so much you turned down the next Academy Award winner to rush right to them.”
Confusion, guilt and wariness mixed on her face, and suddenly Orren knew that just the opposite was true.
“Damnation. You’re on your way out there. I caught you coming through! Holy cow, Grace, weren’t you even going to stop and say hello to your children? You were going to drive right by, within two miles of the house, on your way to California after some pipe dream! What about Sonny? What does he think of this latest passion of yours?”
She narrowed her eyes hatefully. “Sonny Flatte was the biggest mistake I ever made. That last kid was a walk in the park compared to him.”
“Shut your mouth! Don’t you ever let me hear you say such a foul thing again.”
“They didn’t hear,” she said snidely. “Besides, I did it for you. I had her for you.”
“I’m well aware that you’d have preferred to abort her, but don’t pretend you carried her to term out of some act of love. I told you what I’d do if you didn’t.”
She walked forward, sliding one arm along the top of her low-slung car, the car he had bought her when she’d agreed to carry Candy Sue to term. “Orrie,” she said silkily. “Let’s not fight. Can’t we just be glad for what we had and enjoy this little visit? There’s nothing to keep us from it. I divorced Sonny months ago. And you’re still the best I ever had.”
Orren folded his arms and widened his stance, cocking his head to one side. “You know something, Gracie?” he said lightly. “I used to think, no matter what your faults, nobody could touch you in bed, nobody could ever do for me what you could. It took a gal with a heart of gold and more integrity than the Marine Corps to teach me otherwise.” He chuckled. “I’m a mite slow, but I do learn. So, no, Gracie, we can’t ‘enjoy’ this visit, however brief. Just the thought of it, frankly, turns my stomach. What you can do is go in there and pretend you’re glad to see your children, that you’ve thought of them, that you’ve missed them. Then you can get on your way to California, and we can all get on with our lives.”
She took rejection with more apparent aplomb than he’d imagined she would. Her eyes narrowed to black slits, but otherwise she maintained her too-sexy-for-my-own-good demeanor. “So you found some little drudge who shares your obsession with family.”
“Nope,” he said. “The truth is that a beautiful young lady with more capacity to love than I ever dreamed existed found me. Us.”
“You’re going to marry her,” she pouted.
“At first opportunity.”
She thinned her mouth in disgust. “God, you are so boringly predictable!”
“Good,” he said. “Then you shouldn’t have any problem guessing how I’ll react if you don’t watch what you say and do around here.”
She folded her arms, completely abandoning her sultry stance. “What have you told them about me?”
“Nothing. What could I tell them? No kid needs to hear that his or her mother dresses to seduce and has the selfish morality of an alley cat in heat. I haven’t told them a thing.”
She was glaring bullets at him. “That’s smart, because if you had, I’d have to tell them what a boring, self-righteous, unambitious clod their father is!”
“I’m not afraid of anything you could say, Gracie,” he told her calmly. “See, I’m the parent who didn’t abandon them.”
She couldn’t come up with a retort to that. The truth didn’t leave much room for invention. He turned toward the house, expecting her to follow.
“Remember what I said. They’ve been hurt enough by you, Grace.” He could feel her aiming killing looks at his back, but he couldn’t have cared less. All he cared about was Mattie and his kids. For the latter, he’d tolerate Grace. He had some making up to do with Mattie. Because of his dumb job, he’d put off telling her that he loved and wanted her with every fiber of his being, not that it wasn’t a good job and not that he wasn’t thankful for it. But if he’d had his priorities straight, she wouldn’t be out there somewhere wondering if he’d truly gotten Grace out of his system.
He opened the door and stepped up into the house, Gracie right behind him. Red was sitting on the living room sofa, hands clenched tensely in her lap. She leapt up when she saw Gracie, an almost painful eagerness on her face. Orren knew then that his baby girl was going to get her heart broken and that there was nothing he could do about it. He smiled at her, trying to telegraph her his love, while Gracie looked around her.
“Mommy,” Red said, fingers twisting together. “It ain’t changed much, ‘cept us girls’ room—we each got our own wall!—a-and Daddy’s room. Mat—uh, we done it up different, only it’s gonna be Chaz’s room soon, ‘cause Daddy’s just about finished the other one. Mat—er, I figure some of the money we got lately will go for making this part bigger. Maybe puttin’ in a fireplace.” She skimmed a nervous look at her father.
He smiled. So Mattie was thinking of enlarging the living room and putting in a fireplace, was she? She hadn’t said anything to him about it yet, but she’d hinted at it. Evidently Jean Marie didn’t think it was such a bad idea if she was using it to try to impress her mother. He thought it was a pretty good idea himself, and he’d tell Mattie so as soon as he got a chance.
Gracie turned up her nose, saying haughtily, “Sugar, I wish you could see the hotel I stayed in in Las Vegas. You’ve never seen anything like it. They put silk on the walls and gold on the toilet fixtures. We stayed there about two months.”
Red looked as though she’d been punched. Orren moved to her side and put his arm around her. “Sounds interesting,” he said to no one in particular. Then he targeted Grace with his gaze. “There’s no place like home, though.”
She snorted but wisely refrained from further comment. “Where’s your brother and sisters?”
“I’ll get them,” Orren said. “Have a seat.”
She was still standing when he came back in, a curious Candy Sue on his hip, a shy Yancy by one hand. Chaz followed reluctantly. Gracie ignored the other two and went straight for Candy Sue. “You little doll!” she exclaimed.
Candy Sue went to her readily enough, staring at her eyes as if fascinated, but Gracie didn’t hold her long. She was getting too big to ma
ke an easy bundle, though Mattie seemed to manage her well enough. Grace dropped down onto the edge of the armchair, her jeans cutting deep crevices into her thighs.
“You must be Yancy,” she said, reaching out a hand to her second daughter. Yancy nodded, stuck her thumb in her mouth and wrapped an arm around her father’s leg. “Are you shy, fancy Yancy?” Gracie cooed.
Yancy turned her face away, her arm practically cutting off Orren’s circulation. Red ran over to squat down next to her, whispering in her sister’s ear. Yancy yanked her thumb out of her mouth and pushed at Jean Marie, yelling, “No!”
“Yancy, that’s Mommy!” Red hissed urgently.
“That’s enough, Red,” Orren said, patting Yancy’s back. “She’ll come around.”
“She don’t even know her!” Chaz said sotto voce. Jean Marie doubled up her fist and smacked Chaz just above his left eyebrow. “Ow!”
Appalled and heartsick, Orren caught his daughter by the arm, shaking her lightly. “Stop it! This isn’t some fairy tale, Red, and the truth’s the truth. It doesn’t mean we can’t all sit down and have a nice visit.”
She jerked away from him, tears filling her eyes. “What’s the matter with y’all?” she bawled. “Mommy’s home! Aren’t you even glad?”
Orren shot a look at Gracie, who somehow possessed the sensitivity to appear uncomfortable. “Your mother isn’t home, Red,” Orren told her sorrowfully. “She’s here for a visit. She’s on her way to California.”
“I’m going to have a part in the movies,” Gracie said brightly.
Disbelief and horror spilled tears down Red’s cheeks. She bolted from the room.
“I’ll go—” Chaz began, but Orren stopped him with a hand laid on his shoulder.
“Give her some time, son. She’ll come around presently.”
Chaz nodded sagely, far too wise for his years. An awkward silence filled the room. Finally, Chaz stepped forward and politely addressed the woman who had abandoned him. “Are you really going to be in the movies?”
