by A.W. Hartoin
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I TOOK OFF my shoes and walked home barefoot under an archway of oaks. Home to Mom and Dad’s house. If I’d turned left I would’ve ended up in my apartment and in peace, but I didn’t give it a thought. I went home. The bricks felt warm and soothed my sore feet. In a few weeks it’d be too hot to walk on, so I enjoyed the moment before the heat of a St. Louis summer came home to roost. The black iron street lamps flickered, their flames barely visible in the sunlight. I touched each lamppost, counting the number between the Bled mansion and home as I did when I was a child and managed to forget my troubles. I was ten again, not my mother’s daughter yet. Just a little girl with braids and big eyes.
My feet automatically found the front walk of my parents’ house. I looked up at it, my eyes examining the stonework, the ivy creeping over the façade and the open windows with their lace curtains blowing out. A song by the Eagles drifted in the breeze and drew me along. It felt like home and a place that never belonged to me at all.
My phone rang as I reached the front steps. No name on my screen, but a St. Louis number I didn’t recognize. Why wasn’t it blocked? I hesitated with my finger on the button to answer. I was sick of the hang-ups and the nasty messages. They didn’t scare me as much as they just plain made me tired. If somebody wanted to mess with me, I wished they’d just go ahead and do it.
“Hello.”
“Mercy. Thank goodness,” said Tricia from my service. “I’ve been calling your apartment.”
“How did you get this number?” I asked.
“Your Uncle Morty sent it to me. So you need to come in and handle some paperwork. And I have some shifts for you.”
“I can’t work right now,” I said.
“I know you’re having some kind of family thing, but we need you back,” Tricia said.
“Fine. What do you have?”
“Three South at St. Mary’s this week and Dr. Feinstein’s office in South County next week.
“Twelve-hour shifts?” I asked.
“What else?”
“How many days at St. Mary’s?”
“Three. Same with the office,” she said.
“Is he a pediatrician?”
“Yep, your favorite,” she said.
“I can’t start till Tuesday,” I said.
“No good. It has to be Monday.”
“I have a funeral.” I craned my head back and rubbed my neck.
“Let me talk to the charge nurse. I’ll work something out. You’re set for Feinstein’s, right?”
“I guess,” I said, feeling so tired I could’ve laid down on the front step and gone to sleep.
Tricia harassed me with more details, I grunted, and she decided to give up. I didn’t want to work though I needed to. I called Pete and left a message, leaning my head against Dad’s favorite stone pillar, the one with the peeing gargoyle. Pete didn’t call back. He was probably still in surgery, so he may as well have been on the moon.
“Mercy.” I turned around and Aunt Tenne stood in the doorway, a large carrot stick in her hand.
“What’s with the carrot?” I asked.
“I have to look my best for the cruise, don’t I?” She sat down beside me and I shifted my head to her shoulder.
“I forgot about the cruise,” I said.
“I’ll take care of everything.”
Music to my ears.
The carrot looked a little floppy. It takes a good while for carrots to get floppy, so I guess she’d been contemplating that veggie for some time.
“Are you going to eat it or admire it?” I asked.
“You want it?”
Carrot, yes. Floppy carrot, no.
“Pass,” I said.
Aunt Tenne reached up, cupping her hand over my cheekbone and pressed my head into her soft shoulder. We looked at the carrot and listened to the bluejays having it out in the hundred-year oak that sat at the edge of the lawn.
I felt my mom before I caught her scent. People say she has a presence, like me. She didn’t speak and we didn’t move. Then I smelled her perfume, White Linen same as mine, drift over and settle on us like a comfy blanket. Home. I loved home.
“Who wants lunch?” Mom said.
“Me,” we said together as we turned.
Mom leaned on the doorframe with arms crossed and a toe pointed towards me like a ballet dancer. Pretty as a picture, Dad would say. I wanted to be in that frame, in that perfection, and feel the strength that she exuded. People thought I was like her, maybe they even thought I was her from time to time. People don’t see the subtleties. Mom was Mom, looking perfect in a pin-striped shirtdress on a summer day. If somebody took a snapshot, people would say generations later, “God, what a great picture.”
“Let’s go out,” I said.
“I’ll see if Dixie wants to go,” Mom said.
Aunt Tenne gave me a look that said “Crap.”
“Since when do you call her Dixie?” I asked.
“Since she told me she likes it better.” Mom turned and walked back into the house.
Aunt Tenne groaned.
“What’s wrong? Is she bad again?”
“No. She’s so sad she depresses me. I’ll have to eat a whole cheesecake to recover.”
Somehow I thought a whole cheesecake was on the menu anyway. Mom returned with Dixie and we walked to Mom’s favorite little Italian place. They were out of cheesecake, darn the luck, but had plenty of carrots on salad, not that Aunt Tenne ordered one. She went for her usual, creamed asparagus soup (it has veggies, right?) and a grilled sandwich dripping with cheese. I, in one of my finer moments, had a salad. I’d been winded on the walk over, not a good sign, and Aunt Tenne sounded like she was having an attack of emphysema. Mom blessed us with silence on the matter and lunch was pleasant, if you didn’t count Emil Roberts, who I caught eyeing me over a partition. I ignored the urge to fling a tomato at him and reevaluated my earlier opinion.
What did I know about stalkers? You couldn’t really expect them to act in a rational manner, could you? I made a mental note to call Chuck and tell him about Roberts following me. I hated to do it, but I knew he’d take care of it since Dad wasn’t available. Roberts was getting to be downright annoying. Something had to be done and, if Chuck had written him off, he needed to take a second look.
After an hour of stuffing ourselves, we walked home, smelling the flowers and watching the world hurry by. Mom and Dixie hooked their arms together, walking in step and silence. Dixie hadn’t said a word the whole time, but she wasn’t tearing up either. A few steps behind them, I hooked my arm with Aunt Tenne’s. A man smiled at us from beside a stone pillar, but he didn’t move or pull out a camera, so I smiled back.
Mom glanced back over her shoulder at me. “So did you talk to The Girls, Mercy?” “Can we talk about it later? I don’t want to think about it,” I said.
“Of course,” Mom said. “They’re not going anywhere.”
Well…
I squeezed Aunt Tenne’s arm. “Have you booked the cruise yet?”
“Who’s going on a cruise?” Dixie said.
Nobody spoke for a moment. For my part, I was astonished and slightly embarrassed.
“Tenne and Mercy are. Have you booked, Tenne?” Mom said.
“No. I haven’t decided on the Virgins or the Bahamas yet.”
“I say we go to the Bahamas,” I said.
“It’s more expensive,” said Mom.
“I feel flush.”
“I’ve never been on a cruise. I always wanted to, but Gavin thought they looked boring,” said Dixie.
Silence again. I swear, even the birds stopped chirping.
“Do you want to go?” said Aunt Tenne.
We walked on. The concrete sidewalk turned into the brick of Hawthorne Avenue and the wind picked up, whipping our hair around and lifting our hems. Emil was probably getting an eyeful.
“Yes, I think I do,” Dixie said.
Mom unhooked her arm and squeezed Dixie’
s shoulders. “If you do, then I think I will, too.”
What just happened?
“Are we all going then?” I asked, a little hopeful, a little afraid.
“Looks like it,” said Dixie.
“And it’s the Bahamas?” said Aunt Tenne.
“It is,” said Dixie.
Nardo came around the corner and walked towards us with long, loose-limbed strides. I thought his appearance might just be a reminder of our future talk, but he walked straight up to me. “Ready to talk?”
“No,” I replied.
He grinned when I ushered Aunt Tenne past him.
“Who’s that?” Aunt Tenne asked.
“Nobody,” I said.
A camera clicked behind us and I wanted to nestle my head into Aunt Tenne’s shoulder and keep on walking. Instead, I dropped her arm, did an about-face, and marched back to him.
“Stop. Enough,” I said.
“It’s not enough. I’m getting a hundred requests for prints of you a day and there’s more of me coming. You got to learn to work it. You signed that release and there’s no going back.”
“I can’t get used to this,” I said.
Nardo leaned over and got in my face. “Listen to me.” A breeze of industrial-strength mouthwash blew back tendrils of my hair, but his toothpick remained balanced on the tip of his lip like it was mounted by superglue. “You’ve got to. It’s either me or them.” He pointed to the guy by the pillar and a couple more by the shops. Three cameras and at least fourteen eyes were on me.
“Shit. I didn’t even notice them,” I said.
“I thought not and more are coming.”
“So I suppose if you take my pictures, they’ll go away and leave my mom alone.”
“That’s the plan. It work for you?”
I glanced back at Mom who tapped her foot and glared at the photographers slowly moving in on us.
I turned back to Nardo. “And you can make them go away, really?”
“A picture to seal the deal?” asked Nardo.
“Make them go,” I said.
Nardo went around to each photographer and with a bit of haggling they left, one by one, then he pointed his camera at me. I smiled, flipped my hair back, and put my cast behind my back. Nardo took pictures from several angles, saluted me, and disappeared between two storefronts.
When I went back to Mom, she asked, “What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I said, but I think Mom knew and she was okay with it. Sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
“Don’t trust him,” said Aunt Tenne. “He looks like a slimeball.”
“Oh, he’s a slimeball all right, but he’s my slimeball,” I said.
“That does not make me feel better,” said Mom. “But look at that.”
Behind us Nardo had emerged again and was blocking Emil Roberts from following us.
“Looks like he might be good for something. Maybe he’ll put that other one in the hospital,” said Dixie.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Dad.”
“What about him?” Mom asked. “He says he’d rather go shopping or take me to the gynecologist before he’d go on another cruise.”
“No. We left Dad home. Alone.”
“Sounds like you’re afraid he’ll get into the cookies or burn down the house,” Dixie said with a little laugh that sounded part worn out and part sore throat.
“He might at that.” Mom laughed, soft and musical. No sore throat there.
“He’s sick, Mom. You left him alone.”
“He’s fine. Listen to you worry.”
“He won’t stay in bed. He might aspirate or something. Jeez, Mom.”
“He won’t aspirate. He hasn’t vomited since yesterday and he’s not unconscious. Stop being a mother hen.”
“I’m not being a mother hen,” I said.
Dixie stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Are, too.” She smiled at me. Gray hair peeked out at her roots, she wore no makeup and deep, dark circles were tattooed under her eyes, but I saw Dixie in them, the Dixie I once knew and would know again.
Once I installed Mom, Aunt Tenne, and Dixie at the house and made sure Dad was alive and not eating cookies, I went home to my apartment and bed. If I couldn’t have Pete, I could at least have a nap. Skanky slept on my pillow and he had missed me so much that he didn’t notice when I laid down, but continued to have cat dreams. I imagine they had something to do with catnip with all the noise he was making.
