by Laura Del
Cindy sighed, relieved. “Thank God. I told Richard it was a bad idea to have her in the wedding, but he insisted.”
“Well,” Andrew piped up, “when he sees what she did to his T.V., I don’t think he’s gonna be too happy.”
“How are we gonna get the poker out of the screen?” Tina asked, and Cindy shrugged. “Well, we gotta do somethin’.”
“I think I should at least clean up the vase shards,” I suggested and was about to get up when Tina pulled on my arm, and shook her head.
“You’re not gonna clean up anything, Patricia,” she was giving me her motherly voice. “You’re in no shape. I’ll do it.” She got up, quickly found the broom, and went to the other room to clean up as much of the glass as possible. Andrew followed her out with the trashcan and dustpan while Cindy and I sat in silence for a bit.
“What am I going to do?” Cindy asked herself, but I answered.
“About what?”
“About that other bridesmaid dress,” she replied, and I could see the tears forming in the sides of her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Cindy,” I comforted her, “we’ll figure something out.” I reached out to her from across the table and placed my hand on her forearm. “Besides, I think it would be better to have someone who didn’t want to kill you standing beside you.”
She laughed, wiping the tears away. “Well, at least this kind of drama happened before the wedding and not during. Could you image what your father would say?”
“Can you imagine what he’s going to say when he sees that television? That’s brand new, isn’t it?” I asked, and when she nodded, I sighed. “This is turning out to be one hell of a week.”
“You can say that again.”
We sat in silence until the doorbell rang. Tina shouted, “I’ll get it.” And when she opened it, I craned my neck to see Sandy walk through the door. She took one look into the living room, and the smile she was holding for Tina dropped right off her face.
“What in the actual hell happened in there?” she called down the hall to me while Tina went back into the living room to clean up a little more.
Sandy walked into the kitchen, throwing her coat on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “What happened?” she asked again. She was dressed for a storm. Sandy had on her heavy-duty boots, thick gray sweat pants, and a black hoodie. If she was dressed like that, we were in big trouble. She had a sixth sense about the weather; when Sandy dressed like there was snow coming, it was a guarantee.
“My sister is what happened,” I finally answered, and her eyes widened.
“What the hell has Jess been smoking?”
“My ex-husband,” I blurted before I could catch myself.
Her mouth dropped open. “Shut up!”
“I’m serious.”
She shook her head, sitting down. “What is wrong with her?”
“She’s a bitch,” Tina said as she and Andrew walked back into the kitchen with the broom and trashcan.
“Did you get it all up?” I asked, and she nodded. “What about the poker?”
Tina shook her head. “There is no way that thing’s comin’ out anytime soon.”
Cindy sighed. “What are we going to do when Richard gets home?”
“Shouldn’t you just tell him what happened?” Andrew chimed in.
“It’s an idea,” Sandy breathed.
“Not a very good one,” Tina muttered.
I held up my hands, which was hard with the temporary cast in my way. “I’ll tell him. It’s better if it comes from me anyway. Now,” I sighed, “who is going to stand up with Cindy and me at the wedding? There’s an extra bridesmaid dress, and we need someone to fill it.”
Looking over at Sandy, she shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m not wearing a dress. Sorry, Cindy, but dresses aren’t my thing, especially of the bridesmaid variety. Bedsides, I’m a little too tall to fit in Jessica’s dress.”
“Madison?” Cindy asked her, and Sandy grimaced. “Right, she can’t stand for a long time with her leg in the cast.”
All of us took a collective breath. Then I looked at Tina. She was a lot shorter than my sister, after all, Tina was only about two inches taller than me, and I’m five-four, but their figures were similar, and it was easier to shorten a dress than it was to lengthen it.
She must have caught me looking at her because her eyes widened, and she began shaking her head slowly. “Oh, no. I know that look, Patty. No.”
“Please,” I begged.
Cindy turned around to look at her. “Oh my God. You’re right, Pat, it would totally work.”
“Not you too,” Tina huffed.
“Please, Tina,” I repeated, giving her the big hazel eyes.
She grimaced, and we all looked. Even Andrew was pouting at her. “Oh, all right,” she gave in, folding her arms in front of her. “But if your father starts somethin’, I can’t guarantee that I’m not gonna, you know, kill him.” It was no secret that Tina was leery about Pops because of the whole him blaming me for my mother’s death, so this was a big thing for her to do.
I got up out of my chair and flung myself at her, giving her a great big hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“All right,” she giggled, hugging me back. “No need to go all gooey on me. It’s weird, Patty, just stop.”
I laughed, letting go of her, and she winked. Then she, Andrew, and I sat back down at the kitchen table. We sat in silence for a minute, and I started laughing again. They all looked at me as if I had lost it. I understood that, especially since I could finally feel the painkillers kick in again. But I was laughing for a reason.
“What are you gigglin’ about?” Tina asked, and I stopped for a moment.
“It reminds me of the time Sandy was playing in the house and she knocked over the lamp, and it fell into the T.V. screen,” I explained.
Sandy turned a deep shade of purple. “It was an accident,” she protested. “How was I supposed to know that kicking around a hackie sack was harder than it looked?”
“Do you remember Pops’ face when Moms told him?”
She nodded and laughed a little. “Yeah, he was so pissed. But Mrs. W. always knew how to soften the blow.”
Moms did too. She could always calm everyone down when tempers were high. All she had to do was give you a look and your body would relax. I never knew how she did it, and now, I never would.
“Do you remember the time she sold all your dad’s stuff in that garage sale?” Sandy’s voice broke me out of my stupor.
I giggled. “Yes. Oh my God, I almost forgot about that.”
“Sold your father’s stuff?” Cindy inquired, cocking a brow at me.
“They used to go on these vacations,” I explained, “and he would always come back with these horrible little trinkets. One time he got some sort of animal skull from New Mexico.”
“Oh,” Tina laughed, “I remember this story now. Your mother hated that skull. Wasn’t it like a dear or somethin’?”
“Nah,” Sandy answered. “It was a buffalo?”
I shook my head, thinking for a second. Then it came to me. “Cow skull.” They both nodded. “Anyway, he would bring back these awful looking figurines, salt and pepper shakers, and sometimes random bones. So, they were collecting in the garage and my moms had about enough of them. Especially that damn skull. He was insistent that it brought him luck.
“Well, one day when she was off from the hospital and Pops was working, my mother decided that she would sell all of these horrid little knickknacks. Let me tell you it required a degree of stealth that only Moms could pull off. She had us, Sandy, Madison… where is she by the way?” I asked, off topic for a second.
“At the store. I just came over to see how you were,” Sandy answered, waving me on. “Keep going. I love this story.”
“She had us,” I repeated,
“Sandy, Madison, Bobby, and I make up these fliers. Now, we were only ten years old at the time. Well, I was ten. Sandy and Madison were eleven, and Bobby was eight. And we had nothing to do on this hot, and I mean hot, July day. Anyway, Moms told us to make up these fliers for a garage sale that she was having, and we did as we were told.”
Sandy and Tina began to giggle, and I hushed them. “Later that afternoon, we had at least sixty people lined up outside our house to buy Pops’ stuff. Well, by around four o’clock we had sold almost everything, except that skull. It just wouldn’t die, as my mother put it. Suddenly, we see Pops’ truck pulling onto the street a whole hour early from work. Apparently, Jessica decided that she was going to tell him what we were up to.”
“Bitch,” Andrew blurted, interrupting me, and we all laughed. “Sorry. Continue.”
“She was always doing stuff like that. Getting everyone in trouble. And that day was no different. When he came home, he was livid. Pops got out of that truck looking like he was going to kill Moms. But she just stood up straight, looked him dead in the eyes, and when he was yelling at her about selling all his stuff without his permission, she said very calmly—”
“Do the voice,” Sandy insisted, and I nodded.
“‘Well, Richard,’” I said mocking my mother’s soft English accent, “‘if you didn’t want me to sell them, you should have said so when you bought them. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a skull to sell.’ And she went right on selling that stuff as if nothing happened. That night, when she had sold every bit of that junk, she calmly stated, ‘We made four hundred dollars today from your stuff, Richard, aren’t you so proud?’ He just looked at her and when she winked at him, he couldn’t help but smile. But that was my mother. No one could stay angry with her.”
Cindy shook her head and smiled so brightly that it made happy tears in her eyes. “He never told me that story before.”
I could feel my brows furrow. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He never seems to want to talk about your mother. For instance, every time I ask how they met, he gives me this look and changes the subject.” She paused for a second, and I knew what she was going to ask, but I let her do it anyway. “How did they meet?” She leaned her chin on her knuckles and waited for me to tell her.
I sighed and when I looked over at Tina, she was nodding vigorously. “All right,” I huffed, and Sandy clapped her hands.
“Tell it good,” she said, laying her head on the table as she looked up at me.
“It was a party at the University of Pennsylvania. At least, that’s how my moms told it. They met at a real big party that her friend was having. Moms was studying to be a nurse, and her friend convinced her that she needed to take a break before finals. She was nineteen. When she walked into the party, she saw this man leaning against the wall, and he winked at her, but as she made her way over to him, another boy slammed into her. He apologized profusely, blushing, and as she looked up at him, she said that the man against the wall meant nothing to her. Their eyes met, and that was it. Fireworks.
“This boy, as she called him, was the one for her and she knew it. Pops was twenty-two. He was on leave, and he was in his uniform. What woman could resist him? Not my moms, that’s for sure.
“Anyway,” I sighed remembering how her face would light up when she would tell this story, “they danced all night long, and he left. He never told her his name, and she never told him hers either. About a year or so later, my mother had become a registered nurse. She had gone through college as if it was no big deal and had gotten all A’s in everything. She finished early. But I think she just liked to brag a little.
“On this particular day, she was doing her rounds in the emergency room in one of the Philly hospitals. She would never tell me which one. Anyway, she saw this man in the waiting room who looked an awful lot like this boy she’d once danced with. Apparently, he had dropped something on his foot. The way Pops tells it, it was an entire car. Moms’ version differed a little.”
“Well,” Cindy said when I paused, “what was it?”
“A tire iron,” I answered, and they all laughed while I just smiled a little. “Laugh all you want, but I’m with Pops on this one, those things hurt when they fall on your foot.” I shook my head, remembering the time one fell on mine. I could still feel the pain of it when I scrunched the toes on my left foot.
“This is the part of the story that I love,” I went on. “She brought him back to be seen by the doctor, checked all of his vitals, and started an IV on him. And just before she went out of the room, he remembered her. She had to work, but every chance she got she would look in on him, and they would talk. Moms would tell us that he was one of those men who said everything by saying only the minimum. After a while, he told her all about his honorable discharge from the Marines, and the fact that he was a mechanic. She said by the time they bandaged up his foot, they knew everything there was to know about each other. And as she wheeled him out of the ER, he asked her out. The rest is history.”
“How did they come to live here?” Cindy asked, looking so happy that someone finally filled in the missing pieces to a mystery she had been on the edge of her seat to find out.
“Moms got out a map of Pennsylvania,” I answered.
“She told Mr. W. to give her his finger,” Sandy continued, sitting up with a smile.
“Why his finger?” Andrew asked, his golden eyes confused.
I looked at him for a second. Some clairvoyant he was if he couldn’t see the past. “Because it’s not polite to point with your own,” I told him, and he smiled. “They picked this place because of dumb luck.”
We all laughed and before any of us were prepared, the front door opened and Pops called out, “Cindy, I’m here to take you out to lun…” his voice trailed away, and the next thing he yelled from the hallway was, “What the hell happened to my T.V.?”
That was my father. He always did have the worst timing.
chapter
THIRTEEN
After Pops calmed down, I explained what happened and that I was sure Samuel would be willing to pay for it. But, of course, my father wouldn’t hear of it. So he enlisted Andrew to help him take down the ruined flat screen then he persuaded the psychic to go to the store pick out a new one. After all, he still had the warranty on the broken television, and he convinced himself that he wanted the bigger one anyway. Only Pops could make a horrible situation into a positive.
When everything finally settled down, Sandy left to go back to the store, leaving me, Tina, and Cindy alone together in the kitchen. Both of them insisted that I go upstairs to rest, and after some severe protest, they got me to do as I was told. Tina also insisted that she take Cindy on her errands, so I was left alone in the house all day with nothing to do. I mean, I couldn’t even watch T.V. Thanks a lot, Jessica.
It was as good a time as any to check my emails to see if my editor, Joey, in New York, had anything for me to do. And lo and behold, there were two emails from him. One was asking me where I was, and the other congratulated me on my father’s wedding. For a moment, I wondered when he had found out then I realized that Tina must have had mentioned it to him. She was always looking out for me. But just to be on the safe side, I texted her to ask if she told him. A moment later, I got a reply saying that she had, and I sighed in relief. Well, as long as it wasn’t Samuel, I was all right.
I emailed him back thanking him and explaining that if he needed me to do anything while I was in Danville, that I was up for it. About five minutes later he replied back saying, “Yeah, have fun. L.O.L.” I ignored the fact that a fifty some odd-year- old man actually typed the abbreviation for laugh out loud and sent him a response telling him I would.
So for the next couple of hours, I sat on my computer doing mundane stuff like watching cat videos and looking up things that really didn’t matter in life. By the time I was done it was getting dark, and
the clouds were looking very threatening. There was a knock on my door, and as I looked up from my computer, I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the darkness.
“Come in,” I said, shutting down my laptop as Mortimer walked in, smiling at me.
“How was yer day?” he asked, looking very handsome in his long-sleeved white shirt and black jeans.
I shrugged. “Boring. How’d you sleep?”
He shrugged. “All right. Why don’t ye come downstairs and I’ll fix ye some dinner.”
I looked at my phone, and the clock read almost five-thirty in the afternoon. Time sure did fly when you were on the Internet, which is why I didn’t like going on it. Too many distractions.
Stretching, I got out of bed slowly, feeling how utterly stiff every part of my body was from sitting in one position all day. Then I realized I had to use the bathroom and told Mortimer to go downstairs and wait for me. I grabbed the bag with the bandages in it, which also held my toiletries, and walked across the landing into the bathroom.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I had to admit, I’d looked better. But I pushed my outward appearance aside to deal with the massive wound on my chest. One handed. I took off my shirt and carefully undid the bandages. I must have cried out because there was a tap on the door.
“Ye all right?” Mortimer asked, and I could hear the concern in his voice.
I shook my head, but said, “Yeah, I’m okay. Just go downstairs. I’ll be right there.”
“Yer not all right,” he protested. “I can tell. Let me in.” I reluctantly opened the door, grimacing. He took one look at my chest, and his eyes widened. “Jesus H. Christ, Patricia. How long ‘ave ye been walkin’ round wit dat?”
“Couple days,” I answered, still trying to get the bandage off.
“‘Ere, let me help ye,” he insisted, walking over to me, grabbing the bandage from my good, now bruised, hand. As he pulled it off, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from screaming. “Dis is a mess. Who did dis ta ye?”
