When Kay returned to work, her thoughts were still churning over Matt’s visit. She stopped long enough to exchange pleasantries with the security guard downstairs, the maintenance man leaning on his mop, the woman working at the utility board office, and the three people standing in line to pay their water bills. Upstairs, she popped in to the city treasurer’s office, which was across the hall from hers, to let Lucille know she was back from lunch, and they enthused about the great weather.
She had left the door to her office open while she was out, and when she reached her desk, she found something curious on top of it. It was made from a long metal bolt with a wing nut screwed on at the top and a fat nut at the bottom. To that wing nut, someone had welded on two more wings. The wings had been dabbed with white paint and the flat top of the screw with yellow. The bolt itself was painted green and the nut was painted a terra cotta color.
It was a miniature daisy in a tiny flower pot.
Kay felt her face grow warm, and a flush of something like happiness spread throughout her. She had no doubt who had made the thing and placed it on the middle of her desk.
What a dear man.
‘But what am I going to do about it?’ she asked herself.
Matt was not going to be happy if she and Sonny got together, and the town gossip machine could run for months on the fuel that situation would provide. It could, in fact, have a negative effect on her campaign. How could she let Matt down gently, encourage Sonny, albeit slowly, and maintain peaceful relations with the whole Delvecchio family?
And who was to say Sonny had serious intentions? He hadn’t actually professed his undying love to her, and how could he, so early in their so recently developed close friendship? It could all go completely south, she could end up with neither man, and be humiliated in front of the entire town.
Kay felt hungry. She had just eaten a big lunch, but the urge to consume food was powerful. She knew there would be donuts on the coffee cart in the hallway, left there for staff and visitors. Without questioning her motives, Kay picked up her tea mug and walked briskly down the hallway to the small kitchen at the end. As she passed the coffee cart she noted muffins on a plate, but no donuts. On the kitchen counter sat the Fitzpatrick’s Bakery box, but it held only muffins, not donuts. She was craving a donut. A chocolate glazed ring, in particular. The muffins looked fine and were probably good, but they weren’t what she wanted.
Back in her office with her tea, she called Fitzpatrick’s Bakery.
Melissa answered.
“Good afternoon,” Kay said. “I notice we have muffins today. Did someone change our standing order?”
“Bonnie’s at the beach and I’m afraid of the deep fat fryer,” Melissa answered. “I got burnt once and I ain’t doing it again. Are the muffins bad?”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Kay said. “Not to worry; I was just curious.”
After she hung up, Kay looked at the stack of invoices on her desk that needed to be approved and passed on to the city treasurer. She also needed to review the minutes from the last City Council meeting in order to prepare an agenda for the next one. A light was blinking on her phone, notifying her of waiting voicemail messages. Her daily to-do list was paper-clipped to her desk blotter, with only half of the items crossed off.
She considered the flower Sonny had made for her, and then put it in her desk drawer.
She thought about donuts.
Donuts and cold milk.
On impulse, she picked up her handbag and walked across the hall.
“I have to drive to Pendleton,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.
“The courthouse will be a nightmare at this time of day,” Lucille said. “You probably won’t get back by closing time.”
“Maybe I’ll get lucky,” Kay said. “See you in a bit.”
She said good-bye to everyone downstairs, relating loudly that she had to go to the Pendleton courthouse, and then she walked up the hill to her house. She was out of breath by the time she reached her car, and had to lean on it for a minute to rest.
‘I’m the last person who needs to eat a donut,’ she thought.
Once she was in her car, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear view mirror.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want them.”
Twenty minutes later she was alone in her car in the parking lot outside the Pendleton Megamart, with six chocolate iced glazed donuts and a pint of cold whole milk. It was heavenly. By the time she returned to her office she felt full, overfull, actually, and sleepy, but most importantly, she wasn’t afraid or worried. She felt sated, comforted, and relaxed. Very relaxed. The rest of the afternoon passed in a pleasant haze, her thoughts insulated from anxiety by the sugary comforter wrapped around her nerves.
By four o’clock she had a headache, felt sick at her stomach, and had begun the next emotional stage of coming down from a fatty sugar high, which was reproach and disgust. This was followed by worrying Sonny would show up at her house in the evening, or that Matt would, or that they both would.
She called her friend Dottie at the library and arranged dinner out and a movie in Morgantown with her and Georgia. She would enjoy their company, but more importantly, she could avoid having to anticipate anything awkward happening, or having to deal with uncomfortable feelings.
Plus there’d be candy at the theater, and her friends didn’t judge or scold.
Claire was walking down Rose Hill Avenue when she saw the most peculiar thing: Knox Rodefeffer, dressed in his daily uniform of navy blazer and khaki pants, was standing on the grassy verge between Fitzpatrick’s Service Station and the Dairy Chef, picking up and throwing rocks at a large black sedan with darkly tinted windows and a Maryland license plate, that was idling at the curb.
People on the street had stopped and were staring. Across the street, her cousin Patrick was watching from the front stoop of the Rose and Thorn, and customers in the Dairy Chef were watching through the window.
“Leave me alone!” Knox screamed, as he threw a small rock that bounced off the car’s exterior. “Stop following me!”
As he picked up another rock, the front wheels of the car turned, and the car rolled up over the curb toward him. Knox screamed, turned, and ran away, between the Dairy Chef and the service station, to the alley behind it. Claire was amazed to see how fast the tall, ungainly man could move.
The car backed out onto the road, rolled forward, and took a right at the corner of Peony Street and Rose Hill Avenue. The driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and the slowness of the car’s pursuit of Knox was somehow more sinister than if the tires had screeched and they had sped away. It was as if the driver knew Knox couldn’t sustain his run all the way up the hill to his house, so there was no hurry.
Claire looked at Patrick, who was shaking his head as he went back inside the bar. Even though she disliked Knox with a fervor usually reserved for hairy-legged spiders and cat-calling construction workers, she was concerned for him.
And she was curious.
Her shoes precluded running, so she slipped them off and put them in her handbag. She started off at a trot, but when she got to the corner of Peony Street, she saw the car turn right onto Morning Glory Avenue at the top of the hill, where Knox lived, and started to run.
She decided to cut up through the alley behind Sunflower Street, where she thought she’d see Knox ahead of her. He was, however, nowhere in sight. Surely he couldn’t have made it home already. She watched as the sedan cruised by the end of the alley up on Morning Glory Avenue.
She slowed to a fast walk in order to look for where Knox must be hiding, somewhere along the alley. She found him behind some bushes near Lilac Avenue.
“What’s going on, Knox?” she asked him.
“Do you see a black car anywhere nearby?” he asked her.
He was trembling so hard the branches of the bush were trembling. His face was pale and he was sweating profusely.
“They’re cruising down Morning Glory A
venue, looking for you,” she said. “Do you owe somebody money, or something?”
Knox stood up and brushed himself off, trying to look important and indignant, which was hard to do with leaves in your hair, or what passed for hair in his toupee.
“What, are you spying on me?” Knox said. “Hoping to get some dirt to tell your federal agent friends?”
“You’re welcome,” Claire said. “I was concerned for your safety, but now, not so much.”
Just then, the sedan turned onto Lilac Avenue and rolled toward them. Before Claire knew what was happening, Knox had shoved her out into the street in front of the car and took off up the alley on the other side.
Luckily for Claire, the car was rolling so slowly that it was able to stop before it hit her. Claire removed her hands from the front of the hood and stepped out of its way, but not before she’d got a good look at the man in dark glasses behind the wheel. As the car sped away, Claire cursed Knox loud and long, using as many course adjectives as she could think of to modify the words “son of a bitch.”
In the midst of her rant, she heard someone nearby clear her throat, and turned to find Sister Mary Margrethe standing in a flower bed in front of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Sister M-squared, as she was called, shook her head and waggled her garden-gloved finger at Claire.
“Sorry,” Claire said, feeling her face heat up with mortification, mostly because it was not the first time she had been caught swearing by this particular nun.
When Claire arrived home at six o’clock, Laurie’s truck was parked in front of her house. In the living room, Laurie had the front cover off of the old upright piano, and was tuning it. Her father was sitting in his recliner, with her Boston terrier, Mackie Pea, and the black kitten she’d been calling “Junior” curled up on his lap.
“Hi,” Claire said.
“Hey there, Claire Bear,” her father, Ian, said. “Do you know Laurie? He’s Chief Purcell’s son. You know Larry Purcell. He’s the chief over to Familysburg.”
Claire gave her most sympathetic look to Laurie, and he smiled in response. His father had died a few years ago, from complications caused by his alcoholism. Laurie had been the chief for more than ten years by that time.
“I do know Laurie,” Claire said. “He’s having dinner with us tonight.”
“Well, that’s good,” Ian said to Claire. To Laurie he said, “Last time I saw you, you were headed to college. You went somewhere real smart. Where was it?”
“Yale,” Laurie said. “I had a scholarship.”
“What’d you study up there?”
“History,” Laurie said.
“Now, what can you do with a history degree besides teach it?” Ian asked him.
“Become a police officer,” Laurie said.
“Are you now?” Ian said. “Your old man must be very proud.”
“He is,” Laurie said. “I’ve just about got this old wreck tuned.”
“Where are you working?” her father asked.
“I start over in Pendleton on Monday,” Laurie said.
“You’ll be working for Shep, then. He’s a fine man; you’ll learn a lot from him.”
“I hope to,” Laurie said. “I’ll do my best.”
“The thing to remember is that police work is as much of an art as a science,” Ian said. “It’s delicate work in a small town; you can’t just stomp around enforcing the letter of the law all the time, like some big police robot. You’ve got to take everything in consideration. The context of the crime, the likelihood that it will be committed again, the personalities of the people involved, and what you would want done if it was your kin who committed the same crime.”
Claire stood in shock as her father spoke like he used to, like himself, someone she hadn’t heard speak since she returned in the spring.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Laurie said. “Thanks, Chief.”
Moving as quietly as she could, Claire sat down on the edge of the couch, as if her father were operating under a sanity spell, one she could break with too much noise.
“That’s all behind me now,” Ian said. “I’m happy just to drive the school bus.”
He sat up, dislodging the sleeping cat and dog, and turned to Claire.
“I’ve forgotten the kids,” he said. “They’ll be waiting for me.”
“Pudge Postlethwaite took over your route, Dad,” Claire said. “Don’t worry.”
“Pudge?” he said. “But Pudge works at the power plant.”
His eyes clouded with confusion. The spell had broken.
“He’s retired now,” Claire said. “You just forgot; no big deal.”
“I’ve forgotten a lot of things,” he said.
Claire’s heart broke for him, like it did every day.
“My dad forgets things all the time,” Laurie said. “It comes with age, he says; it happens to us all.”
“He’s right,” Ian said. “It’s a good thing you young folks are around to look after us.”
“It’s the best thing,” Laurie said, and looked at Claire. “It’s the most important thing.”
Laurie had brought a big bucket of fried chicken and all the side dishes offered by the colonel’s chain store in Pendleton. Claire used paper plates, which she had deemed the tableware du jour while her mother was at the beach. Laurie was gracious and accommodating to her father, and didn’t seem to notice when her dad dropped more bites on his stained shirt than went in his mouth, and then talked with his mouth full.
Mackie Pea had stationed herself beneath Ian’s chair, the better to catch falling snackies, and Junior grabbed anything the little dog missed. Claire caught Laurie surreptitiously supplementing these snacks with pieces of his chicken.
Tentatively, Claire allowed herself to relax and enjoy the meal. The chicken skin was crunchy, greasy, and delicious. She added up the carbs in her head, and rationalized to herself that the protein balanced them out. She’d skip the mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and biscuits, and then exercise longer tomorrow to make up for it.
After dinner, Laurie helped Ian back to the living room, and then proceeded to play any song the older man requested on the newly tuned piano. Claire was amazed at how many songs her father remembered. Singing along with Laurie, he nodded his head to the music (that everyone else could hear, for a change), and seemed content. Eventually, he got sleepy, and Laurie played some beautiful, peaceful melodies. When he began playing “Claire de Lune,” he turned around and looked at her.
“Remember this?” he asked her.
“I do,” she said.
When her father began to snore, Laurie stopped, shook out his hands and whispered, “I was rusty.”
Claire and Laurie convened in the kitchen, where he ate some blackberry cobbler and Claire made him some coffee.
“Thanks for that,” she said. “You play so beautifully.”
“My mother insisted on lessons. I hated it then but I enjoyed it immensely tonight,” he said. “I used to play for my own father. I miss it.”
Claire sighed.
“I keep telling myself I need to enjoy him while I have him, but it isn’t easy. He has these delusions, about my mother, about me. It’s hard. I saw a glimpse of my dad in there tonight, but he’s mostly someone I don’t know and I don’t always like.”
Laurie didn’t say anything, but his sympathy was palpable.
“And now for the haircut,” she said.
Claire retrieved her haircutting equipment from the bathroom, along with a towel. Laurie obediently sat where she told him to, held still, and allowed her to move his head as she needed to. When she was done, she gave him a hand mirror so he could look at her work. It was then that she noticed his hands were trembling. He saw her notice and their eyes met in the mirror.
“Is that from playing so long?” she asked.
He smiled that wry, sad smile that she was coming to know so well.
“Oh,” she said.
He nodded.
“I have some whiskey,”
she said.
He took her hand, kissed it, and then clasped it to his heart.
From the cabinet over the refrigerator, Claire retrieved the bottle of Jameson’s that her cousin Patrick had given her father many years before. Her father had forgotten it was there, and her mother didn’t drink anything stronger than the occasional glass of wine, so it had never been opened. Claire only knew it was there because she found it when she was searching for the paper plates.
She hooked her fingernail under the seal to remove it and then unscrewed the lid. She placed the bottle on the table next to his coffee cup.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Help yourself.”
Claire went to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Now her hands were the ones shaking.
She had just given whiskey to an alcoholic.
In the moment, she had just wanted to relieve his suffering; she wasn’t thinking about anything else.
He said he had it under control; maybe a little was all he needed.
But she knew better.
She washed her hands and then counted to twenty before she went back to the kitchen. Laurie was clearing the table. On top of the fridge sat the bottle of whiskey, the level showing very little had been poured out, and his coffee cup was upside down in the dish drainer on the counter by the sink.
“Thank you for dinner,” Claire said.
“It was a lovely evening,” Laurie said.
He embraced her and kissed the side of her forehead.
Claire put her arms around him and hugged him. He loosened his grip and she tipped her head back.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked him.
“Probably not,” he said.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’ve kicked it before,” he said. “I can do it again.”
“Have you tried AA?”
“It’s not a good place for the chief of police to be seen,” he said. “I would lose my job.”
“You say you have it under control,” Claire said, “but it gives me pause.”
“As in, let’s take a step back and reassess?”
Hollyhock Ridge Page 12
