by Lisa Wingate
By the time the boys woke up, I was so busy unpacking, I pretty much forgot to worry about the house. There was a mountain of empty boxes and paper in the living room, and the place looked like a tornado’d blown through. Once the boys found the mess, they went wild, tearing around, climbing in and out of boxes, shredding up paper and throwing it at each other. For a while, I just sank down in a chair and let them do it. My clothes were plastered to my skin with sweat, and my body felt like one of those pieces of deer meat Nana Jo used to beat to death with her spiky metal meat-tenderizing hammer.
My eyes tugged closed as Benji stuck his brother in a box and shut the lid. “Don’t hurt him.” Just about the time I got the words out, Benji tipped the box over and Tyler hit his head, and the game went from fun to dangerous. “All right, you guys, quit.” I checked the clock, hoping that by some miracle it would be time for Cody to come home, and he could play with the boys. But, of course, it was only three in the afternoon, which meant we had hours to go yet before Cody, or our pickup truck, got back.
Pulling myself out of the chair, I groaned and whimpered, rescued Tyler from the box, then stopped him from kicking his brother. “All right, we don’t kick,” I said, and Ty stomped his feet, crossed his arms, and poked his bottom lip out at me, his eyes squinting up, the dark centers disappearing behind round cheeks. Sometimes that kid looked and acted so much like Cody, it was unbelievable. “And we don’t give Mommy the pokey lip either,” I told him. “I’ll tell you guys what. Let’s see how fast we can put all the paper in the boxes, and then y’all can help Mommy carry this stuff out front, and then, when we get all that done, we’ll go out in the backyard and play awhile, okay?”
Of course, the only part the boys heard was, Go outside and play. They headed for the back door like someone’d shot them out of a gun barrel.
“Wait a minute!” I hollered, and they stopped in the doorway. “We have to clean up the stuff in the living room first.”
“You said we can play outside!” Benji argued, sticking out his chin. In the three months since we’d moved to Dallas, he’d really started to grow an attitude.
“I said, after we finish picking up all the trash in the living room and hauling out the empty boxes, then we can go out and play. Do you see trash in the living room? Because I do.”
Benjamin gave me the death-ray look, then locked his arms and sat down right there in the doorway.
“If Daddy was here, he’d bust your rear,” I told him, but Benji knew better. He knew that Cody’d probably be out in the backyard with them, while the boxes stayed in the living room, stacked floor to ceiling. “But since he’s not, you just go ahead and put on a big ol’ pout. I’m gonna sit here, and we’ll all just pout.” I didn’t wait for him to answer; I just got on with the pouting, like the child psychology lady on MommyTime said to.
Benji came out of the doorway first, and inched his way into the room. He leaned around the chair and checked out my pout lip. “Mommy?” His voice was quiet, like the whole thing sort of scared him.
“Don’t bug me. I’m busy pouting.” The corners of my lips twitched up, and I worked hard to pull them down.
Benji moved closer, and Ty was right behind him. “I no wanna pout.” Ty touched my knee to shake me out of it.
“I do,” I said. “Come on, let’s just sit here and pout, and not fill those boxes. Let’s see who can pout the best.”
Benji blinked, his eyes flying wide in a way that said, Mom’s lost her mind!
Ty stomped a foot. “I no wanna! I wanna put da papew box-es.” A spray of spit covered my leg as he worked hard on the last word.
“C’mon, Mom,” Benji added, one eyebrow squeezing down low over his eye.
I sighed and hauled myself out of the chair like they were waaaay too much trouble. “Well, oh-kay.”
Within minutes, we were all stuffing paper like Santa’s elves. Once we were done, we hauled the junk to the curb, and then we gave each other high fives. I wished all the people back home who thought I couldn’t handle my own kids could of seen it.
In the backyard, the boys found a little patch of dirt beside the storage shed by the fence, and they settled in to build cities and roads, while I explored the yard. In the bright afternoon light, it seemed bigger than last night. The old white picket fence across the back and the flower beds along the sides made the place a picture postcard. Overhead, the pecan branches swayed lazily, and dragonflies buzzed back and forth from the creek next door, where the edge of our property sloped downward. Near the middle of the yard, the tall, square flower bed of hollyhocks wasn’t really a flower bed, but the foundation from an old building—something small like a storage shed. I made an opening in the hollyhocks and stepped through, and it was like I was in a hidden room with a rock floor and living walls. There was a little iron table in the center, with three chairs. Just the right number. Sitting in one of the chairs, I looked around at the room. It felt like someone had just been there having a picnic.
When I came out, Benji was alone in the sandbox. I scanned the yard, and my heart skipped a beat. “Benjamin, where’s Tyler?” Benji was busy playing and didn’t answer at first. “Benjamin, where’s your brother?” I hurried around the shed, looked behind it and on the other side. Benji sat back on his heels, his head twisting while he checked bushes.
He lifted both shoulders.
My heart jumped in my throat like a jackrabbit. “Benji, that’s not funny. He was just here with you.”
Benji pushed against the ground and got to his feet. He followed as I ran around the side of the house by the driveway and checked the gate. Closed. There wasn’t any way Tyler could undo the latch by himself. I turned, half tripping over Benji, half pushing him out of the way.
“Tyler!” I hollered. “Ty-llller!”
I rounded the house again, and suddenly there he was, coming from the little slice of yard on the west end. His arm was stretched high in front, something blue dangling from his fingers. I felt it brush my shoulder as I slid to my knees and hugged him. “Don’t do that,” I breathed. “Ty, you have to stay with your brother. What were you doing over there?”
Stepping back, he smiled and held out his prize. He’d made a little fist over a loop of string with something blue swinging from the end. Lifting my hand, I held it still, leaned close, took in the tiny, carved bluebird in my palm. Its neck was stretched out, its wings raised, like it’d been frozen just before taking flight.
“Where’d you find this, baby?” The old owners must’ve left a few treasures behind, other than the garden table. “Where’d you get it?”
Dropping the bird into my hand, Tyler pointed toward the narrow strip of yard hidden on the other side of the house. “Da lady gimme.”
“Lady?” I repeated. “What lady?”
“Da green-pans lady.” He reached down and patted the knees of his pants. “Da green-pans lady.”
“Green pants? What lady?” I whispered, the hairs prickling on the back of my neck. Standing up, I moved a few steps to the side, looked around the corner of the house.
No one was there.
Chapter 7
Tam Lambert
They say that during the crash of 1929, prominent men who’d suffered sudden reversals of fortune climbed onto window ledges and plummeted to their deaths. My father’s version of jumping from a high-rise was booking a one-way ticket to Mexico. He fled the country just before the feds raided the corporate offices of Rosburten, where Dad had a posh corner office and the misleading title of chief operating officer. In reality, my father was the public face and pitch-man for Rosburten’s holdings, and the friend and international fishing companion of the company’s flamboyant CEO, Ross Burten. My father’s association with Rosburten Corp. had added a glow of celebrity and an air of likability to the company, which helped to bring in big investors for planned real estate projects involving revitalization of decaying neighborhoods, construction of low-income housing projects, and most recently, a sports megacomplex and t
heme park that, despite the company taking investors’ money, appeared to have existed largely on paper.
Ross had a reputation for being able to get his projects through city hall with amazing speed, and for winning low-income housing contracts and lucrative tax credits. The problem was that Ross’s magic came at a price. Apparently, he was greasing palms all the way through the process, including his own. Now Rosburten Corp. was under investigation, Ross Burten and his family had mysteriously left the country for a European vacation, and FBI investigators were having a field day, collecting files from the Rosburten building. Meanwhile, three city council members were busy denying having taken kickbacks in Ross’s real estate schemes, and Rosburten Corp.’s shiny marble facade was set to tumble like a house of cards.
I watched the drama on the five-o’clock news, as did Barbie and probably everyone else in town, including the nanny, who told us she’d found a new job and wouldn’t be showing up tomorrow. She didn’t want anything to do with un asunto de policía (a police matter). And by the way, would we destroy the sticky note by the phone with her name and address on it, and any other referencias (references) to her around the house?
Before she’d even made it out the door, the phone started ringing. Barbie and I stared at the television and let the phone roll to voice mail. The landscaper wanted to know if he should still come tomorrow, the pool boy was now operating on a cash-only basis, Barbie’s massage therapist, Fawn, assured Barb she didn’t believe a word of the news report, every member of Barbara’s coffee club wondered how she was doing, and the care pastor from church offered to come sit with us. The offer was halfhearted, and he was quick to hang up. He was probably busy watching the feds raid Rosburten’s offices. Meanwhile, an unconfirmed source stated that my father, well-known former Dallas quarterback Paul Lambert, had reportedly flown to Mexico that morning, beyond the reach of federal investigators.
Barbie pressed herself into the corner of the sofa, her face ashen, her foot twitching like a spider’s leg right after someone sprays it with a toxic chemical. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around Landon that his eyes were bugging out. The toe of her stiletto bounced Jewel’s baby seat in a rhythm so rapid that Jewel’s mewing babbles sounded like an engine cranking on a cold day. Barbie had watched the news report on three networks, then switched over to FOX to watch it again. Snatching the eviction notice from the coffee table, she pinched it between two French-manicured fingernails, as if she were trying to fit it into the scene on TV.
FOX News had made it all the way to the airport, tracking Dad’s sudden exit from the country. In an odd twist of fate, the cabdriver who’d brought him there had once been the owner of a Householders casita—right up until the mortgage adjusted, the payment skyrocketed, and his American dream ended in a nightmare he was still paying for. If he’d realized who he was taking to the airport, he said, my father would have been leaving for Mexico in a box.
I stumbled numbly backward and landed on a bar stool as the news reports echoed against the vaulted ceiling. The television coverage was like something from a bad prime-time drama. None of it seemed real.
How could any of this be real?
Around me, everything was happening in slow motion, as if I were watching it from the vantage of the lazily spinning ceiling fans. In the kitchen, Aunt Lute paced back and forth, holding a sack of carrots and a butcher knife. The twins careened down the hallway, carrying some sort of long, plastic rods that looked like they’d been taken from the miniblinds. Someone screamed, and a large object crashed in the playroom. Barbie jerked upright on the sofa and clutched Landon more tightly. Aunt Lute plunked a cutting board down on the kitchen counter and started carving carrots into long, thin strings. Barbie lifted the remote and tried another channel.
The phone rang again. I slapped the button to turn it off. My cell chimed in my pocket. I hit the mute without taking it out. It vibrated against my leg. “Barbara, we have to do something,” I said. Do what? What were we going to do? What could we do? “We can’t just sit here watching the news. They’re coming tomorrow to kick us out of our house.”
Apparently, somewhere during the financial downslide my father had hidden from us, he’d ceased to pay for almost everything we owned, including the seven-thousand-square-foot dream home that Barbie had lovingly furnished with gaudy decorator pieces of a French provincial nature. According to the eviction papers in Barbie’s hand and the information we’d been able to glean from frantic phone calls before the end of the business day, one department of the bank had proceeded with foreclosure, even while my father had been attempting to negotiate some sort of a reprieve with another department. Our home had been sold on the courthouse steps, and we were now squatters. The new owners wanted us out.
My father must have known this was a possibility. He must have felt it this morning when he was crying in the game room, yet he never said a word. How could he do this to us?
In the kitchen, Aunt Lute moved from carrots to broccoli and continued slicing, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
“Barbara,” I snapped. “We’ve got to do something.” There had to be someone we could call—someone who could straighten out this mess. My father’s accountant, his lawyer . . . anyone.
I didn’t even know who those people were. Other than laughing at his occasional TV commercials, I’d had no interest in my father’s business dealings. I’d gone blithely along with my life, trusting him to take care of us, to provide for us. Until now.
“Stop it!” Barbie hissed, swiveling toward the kitchen. “Stop that noise!” Flailing an arm at the offending sound, she pointed a finger to Aunt Lute’s butcher knife. “Stop doing that!”
Landon took advantage of the opportunity to squirm out of his mother’s grasp and bolt for the playroom down the hall.
Aunt Lute lifted a brow in Barbie’s direction, then picked up an apple and whacked it cleanly in half. Barbie jerked upright, her breath catching in a tiny gasp. Down the hall in the playroom, the twins were taking out the Sheetrock, by the sounds of it, but Barbie was oblivious to that.
Letting my head fall against the wall, I leaned across the bar into the kitchen. “Aunt Lute, please. We have to figure out what to do here. We have to think.”
Aunt Lute tipped her chin up haughtily, cored the apple slices, then swept everything into a crystal bowl. “In the meanwhile, someone must throw bread to the birds. The natives are restless.” Scooping up the bowl, she cupped it against her chest and shuffled across the kitchen without giving Barbie another look. The knife lay on the counter, glimmering atop a pile of dismembered fruit and vegetable parts, the juices running in a sticky stream along the seam in the granite, flowing downhill toward the floor. I grabbed a jelly-stained napkin and dropped it over the lazy river, stopping the flow as Aunt Lute disappeared down the hall, heading toward the mayhem in the playroom.
A moment later, the cacophony stopped, and finally everything was quiet. I turned back to Barbie. She was changing the TV channel again, as if by trying it enough times, she’d finally find one with different news on it.
“I called Paul,” she muttered, holding up her cell phone, like some kind of proof that she was doing all she could. “I’ve called and called, but he won’t answer. . . . He’ll call back. He’ll tell us what to do.”
“He’s in Mexico, Barbara.” Where I had harbored something between love and ambivalence for my father, now there was a burning anger, painful and bitter. But there was also disbelief. My father was Superman. This couldn’t happen to him. He wouldn’t do this. “He left us.”
“That’s just . . . it’s just something . . . something on TV,” Barbie murmured. Snatching the cat from under the coffee table, she stroked it in a frenetic rhythm that matched the bouncing of her foot against the baby carrier. “He told me . . . this morning, he said I might hear some things . . . he said . . . he said not to worry. He said . . . he said he’d have it worked out . . . by tonight. He was upset about the car wreck. He told me it wouldn’t
have happened if I hadn’t been down there getting rid of stuff the kids should still be wearing. We had a fight, but then he told me he’d take . . . he’d take care of it. . . . I shouldn’t worry. . . .” Her voice quavered to a stop, like a scrap of paper coming to rest in a blind alley.
He told me that, too. He lied. “Barbie, he’s gone. He left the country. Whatever’s going on, he’s in some serious trouble and so are we.” Barbie just didn’t get it, or she didn’t want to. “I think we should call Uncle Boone.” Uncle Boone wasn’t really my uncle, but he was my father’s oldest friend. Boone and Dad had been together since their football-playing days—as far back as I could remember. They starred in Householders commercials together, and my father had helped Boone’s construction company win various building contracts. Other than Aunt Lute, Boone was the closest thing to family we had. “If anyone knows what’s going on, Uncle Boone will. He can tell us what to do.”
“Paul’s going to call. We just have to . . .” Tears welled and glittered in Barbie’s eyes, ready to spill over. Her lips, perfect and plump and surprisingly still wet with gloss, trembled as she looked around the room, then put down the cat and scooped Jewel out of her carrier. “He’ll call.”
“We can’t wait,” I whispered. Didn’t she see that waiting for Dad to sweep in and save us was pointless? He had created this mess, and now he was powerless to fix it. For months, maybe even a year or two, or more, we must have been sinking further and further under, yet he’d never said a thing, never told Barbie to slow down on the spending, and never suggested to me that there wouldn’t be any new car arriving on my birthday. He’d come and gone as if everything were normal. Only two months ago, he’d let Barbie plan a massive superhero birthday bash for the twins, complete with over two hundred guests, a petting zoo, a bounce house, a water slide, and a make-a-movie studio in the playroom. My father even wore his Householders’ superhero suit for the event.
Was it really possible that, while he was hamming it up on the lawn, signing autographs for kids from preschool and playgroup, he knew that some banker was drawing up papers to kick us out of our house? Would he really have moved Aunt Lute in six months ago if he believed we might all end up on the street? Would he have kept paying for Barbie’s spa days, and my private golf lessons, and the country club membership, and the twins’ preschool, the nanny, and the endless supply of high-end kiddie clothes from the best boutiques in Highland Park?
