CRY UNCLE

by Judith Arnold

  “Lizard, Birdie, Kitty... Is there anyone named Toad I ought to know about?”

  Joe threw back his head and laughed. It was such a deep, warm laugh Pamela almost begged him to remove his sunglasses. She wanted to see what happened to his eyes when he dissolved in robust laughter—whether they squinted into two crescent slits or sparkled, or... No, she didn’t want to know anything about his eyes at all.

  “I reckon I’m as close as anyone gets to being a toad around here,” he said. “We should all count our blessings we’re about to add a swan to the menagerie.”

  It took Pamela a full minute to realize he meant that she would be the swan. She felt her cheeks grow warm. She hadn’t prepared herself for flattery—especially not after Lizard’s succinct assessment of her appearance. And Joe’s compliment wasn’t like the usual line a man would use to beguile a woman. He had already established that he wanted to marry her, and that once he did they would sleep in separate beds. Maybe he was trying to soften her up so she would overlook his niece’s tactlessness.

  Or maybe he really meant she was swan-like.

  That was a discomfiting thought. This marriage was going to work only if she knew it was based on nothing more complex than sheer necessity. “Your house is nice,” she said to distract herself.

  “I’ll show you around. Here’s the living room.” He waved through an arched doorway off the hall. “And through that doorway is the dining room, which leads into the kitchen.”

  “Everything’s so tidy.” Given Lizard’s appearance and behavior, Pamela would have expected the living room to be strewn with toys—or arrows. But it was an oddly sedate room, full of old, comfortable-looking furniture brightened with throw pillows and antimacassars and a few oddities—a brass peacock umbrella stand in one corner, an unused brown candle shaped like a turkey on a table, a strange tree-shaped light constructed of artistically bound fiber-optic threads, a clumsy crayon drawing of two stick people, one large and one small, elegantly framed and hanging prominently on a wall.

  “I told Lizard if she didn’t pick up her things before you arrived, I’d hang her from the ceiling fan by her toes and turn the fan on high speed. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say,” he added, at last removing his sunglasses and treating Pamela to a twin flash of glittering blue. “She pleaded with me for half the morning to tie her to the fan. She said she wanted to see if she could vomit in a perfect circle on the rug. The thing about Lizard,” he went on, leading Pamela back into the hall and up the stairs, “is, she’s as gross as any boy. There’s not a prissy bone in her body. I like to think she’s liberated.”

  “Does she vomit much?” Pamela asked delicately.

  “Rarely.” Joe tossed her an easy smile. “I’ll be in charge of all upset stomachs. Don’t worry about it.” The upstairs hall was also lined with a faded runner rug. Joe gestured toward a half-open door. “That’s Lizard’s room. I wouldn’t look inside if I were you. It’s a nightmare scene. My room’s way down at the end of the hall. And your room would be here,” he said, U-turning and heading to the opposite end of the hall.

  Despite the sloping ceiling beneath the eaves, the bedroom he led her into was bright and airy, the walls papered in a sunshine yellow pattern, the double bed neatly made and the few pieces of furniture polished to a high gleam. The mirror above the dresser wasn’t warped; the dresser itself was constructed of solid maple, not particle-board. The rug covering the floor was the color of honey.

  She closed her eyes and visualized the bedroom in her sleek condominium back home in Seattle, with its cool parquet floors, its marble master bathroom, and its floor-to-ceiling windows. She pictured her platform bed, the simple lines of the room’s decor—a hybrid of Shaker and Asian styles—and the enormous dimensions of her closet. Opening her eyes, she saw the exact opposite of the exquisitely designed bedroom she’d left behind when she’d fled for her life.

  “This is beautiful,” she said.

  “I think you’ll find it pretty quiet. The windows overlook the back yard, so you won’t get much street noise. If it’s too hot for you, I can install a window AC unit. But with all the windows open, you’ll probably get a nice breeze in here.” He watched her expectantly, as if not quite convinced she liked the room.

  She turned and smiled. “Really. It’s fine.”

  He returned her smile. She wished he would laugh again, another big, rousing, heartfelt laugh. In spite of his smile, his eyes were serious, the blue of his irises layered in shadow. He seemed as nervous today as she’d felt last night.

  She was nervous, too. Even though they seemed to have cleared a hurdle, they hadn’t finished running the course yet. Too many things could still go wrong. She could still discover Joe was a slob, a wastrel, demanding or moody or any number of other unpleasant things.

  And then there was his lunatic niece, armed and dangerous.

  Yet her anxiety waned when she stood with him in the sun-filled room that would be hers if she agreed to marry him. She thought about what she’d seen of the house—the massive, well-used furnishings, the old-fashioned arrangement of the rooms, the verdant yard, all of it the antithesis of her condo back home. She considered the comforting order of the living room, the small, personal touches, the framed crayon drawing of a man and a child side by side, holding hands. She surveyed the room that would be hers, and contemplated the long hallway that connected her room to Joe’s.

  How many steps loomed between the two rooms? she wondered. How many paces separated a husband and a wife?

  Silly thought. Ridiculous thought. No one would be pacing anywhere. That was the way she wanted it, the way they both wanted it. If she and Joe got married, that was the way it would be.

  “It’s a very nice room,” she said one final time, then edged past him and out the door, ready to face the next hurdle: his niece.

  Chapter Three

  A MILD BREEZE wafted through the screened porch as they sat around the table. Lois, one of the barmaids at the Shipwreck, boasted of having read everything Martha Stewart had ever written, and she’d suggested that they eat lunch on the porch instead of in the dining room—”Too stodgy,” she’d said—or the kitchen—”Too familiar. The porch is just right. Casual elegance. Even kinda romantic.” Lois had also suggested that Joe festoon the house with cut flowers, and that he set the table with cloth napkins rolled and tied with string as if they were diplomas, and that he serve deviled eggs and endive salad in a vinaigrette for lunch. Some of her suggestions were better than others.

  Canned tuna fell within his limited culinary capabilities, so that, accompanied by sliced tomatoes and a loaf of seven-grain bread, was the menu he went with. He knew some women preferred green, crunchy things for lunch, but as eager as he was to make a good impression on Pamela, he wasn’t going to impress her at the expense of his own stomach.

  Besides, Lizard considered salads toxic. Not that that mattered much; nowadays, the only thing she would consider eating for lunch was peanut-butter and mashed banana on a bagel, accompanied by a glass of milk flavored with enough strawberry syrup to turn it shocking-pink.

  She was seated across the table from him, gnawing on her bagel and glaring at Pamela, who sipped her water-on-the-rocks and pretended Lizard’s flagrant rudeness wasn’t getting to her. Joe was tempted to haul the brat out of her chair and throttle her.

  Instead, like Pamela, he pretended not to notice her testy mood. “So, does the house meet with your approval?” he asked Pamela.

  “It’s lovely. It’s larger than I expected. Have you lived here long?”

  “Ever since Lizzie came to live with me. Before that I lived on a house boat.”

  “A house boat?” Pamela looked astonished.

  He stifled a reflexive sigh. Man, but he’d loved that house boat. He’d loved the smell of the Gulf surrounding him, clinging to him, and the way the timbers creaked and the ropes clanked and the wind whispered its secrets to him. Most of all, he’d loved lying in bed and being rocked by the waves,
caressed by the tide. Sometimes he’d liked that even more than the usual rocking and caressing that went on in his bed.

  He supposed it all depended on who—or what—one was being rocked and caressed by. For not the first time, he wondered how Pamela would stack up as a bed-mate. Better than the Gulf tides?

  He would never know. And he ought to quit thinking about it. “I couldn’t continue living on the boat with a rowdy little toddler,” he explained. “She could have toddled overboard.”

  “I’m not rowdy,” Lizard protested, then took another lusty bite out of her bagel.

  “Sweetheart, you are the definition of rowdy. Anyway—” he turned back to Pamela “—the fellow who owned this house had just been divorced and was antsy to remove himself from the scene of his folly. He wanted to sail away from all his troubles, and I wanted to put some terra firma under Lizard’s feet. So he and I swapped homes, with a bit of cash thrown in to make up the difference.”

  “I don’t need anything under my feet,” Lizard announced, then held her half-eaten bagel above her chin, hiding her mouth behind the semicircular sandwich. “Look,” she said. “I’m smiling.”

  “Don’t play with your food.”

  “I’m not playing. I’m smiling.” She turned her bagel grin to Pamela. Her voice emerged from behind the sandwich: “You like our house?”

  “I do indeed,” Pamela said.

  “You gonna move into the spare room upstairs?”

  “Maybe.”

  Lizard’s big, dark gaze slid back to Joe. “What if I don’t like her?”

  “Lizard—”

  “No, that’s all right,” Pamela interrupted, her hand reaching across the table to pat his arm. Her touch was brief but consoling, her fingers cool and soft against his skin, like silk ribbons. Before he could react, she retreated, shifting in her seat so she could address Lizard directly. “You don’t have to like me, Lizard. And I don’t have to like you. All we have to do is get along.”

  Lizard sized her up. “You gonna marry my uncle?”

  She shot Joe a look even more fleeting than her touch. Then she turned back to Lizard. “Maybe.”

  “Does that mean you love him?”

  “It means he and I think we can make a life together.”

  “My mommy loved my daddy.”

  Pamela had been batting a thousand up until then, but Lizard’s fastball whipped past her for a strike. She fell back in her seat and glanced toward Joe, evidently expecting him to step up to the plate and pinch-hit for her.

  Not knowing what else to say, he opted for the truth. “Yes, Liz. Your mommy and daddy loved each other.”

  “Is that the way you love her?” Lizard asked, tilting her head toward Pamela, who had somehow managed to twist her napkin tighter than a nautical rope.

  “No two people ever love each other the way two other people do,” he said, relying on vague platitudes. “Besides, Pamela and I haven’t known each other that long. But I think she’ll be a nice addition to the household, don’t you?”

  “I think,” Lizard said with titanic self-importance, “she doesn’t eat enough.”

  Joe had noticed that, too. Maybe Pamela didn’t like tuna. Maybe she wanted green crunchy things.

  “It’s the heat,” Pamela told Lizard. “I’m not used to such hot weather. It takes my appetite away.”

  Lizard slurped her milk, then squirmed into a kneeling position on her chair. “What do you do?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What do you do? Like Megan, she’s sometimes my best friend when she isn’t being a dope? Her mother is a county at the Casa Marina.”

  “An accountant,” Joe translated, secretly pleased that Lizard had asked Pamela what he himself had wanted to ask.

  “Or like Birdie? She’s a Boo Doo Chief.”

  Pamela sent a bewildered look Joe’s way. “Voodoo,” he mumbled, recalling that he’d already identified Birdie as Lizard’s baby-sitter. Birdie had immigrated from Haiti back in the eighties, and the older she got, the quirkier she got. She made puffy fabric dolls and used them for pin cushions, and she spent hours with Lizard in the back yard, mixing dirt from the garden and water from the hose, a sprig of this and a leaf of that, and chanting mumbo-jumbo. Joe didn’t believe her routines accomplished anything more useful than keeping Lizard entertained—which, granted, was no small feat.

  Pamela nodded uncertainly, then turned back to Lizard. “I’m an architect,” she said.

  Joe swore under his breath. Sure, he’d wanted the woman he married to make a positive impression on anyone who had the power to take Lizard away from him. He’d wanted his wife to be educated and affluent and well put together and all that. But he didn’t want her to be a hot-shot. He didn’t want to be stuck married to an uppity yuppie who would pontificate on Corinthian columns and Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius at the drop of a hat.

  An architect. Shit.

  He cautioned himself not to panic. For one thing, there wasn’t much an architect could do in Key West, professionally speaking—not without a commission and some heavy-duty financial backing, neither of which Pamela was likely to have in her current predicament. For another thing, once she married Joe—her savior, her protector—she would be beholden to him, wouldn’t she? She couldn’t put on airs, not when her neck was on the block.

  Okay. He could handle being married to an architectt. As long as she didn’t act like an architect.

  “What’s an ock-attack?” Lizard asked.

  “It’s someone who designs buildings,” Joe told her.

  “Like with Legos?”

  “Sure.”

  “I got lots of Legos. I guess I’m an ock-attack too.” Lizard dropped her half-eaten sandwich onto her plate and shoved back her chair. “If you want to eat the rest of my bagel, go ahead. I’m done,” she announced, rising and heading for the door out to the yard.

  Joe reached out and snagged her wrist. “Hey, pal, what do you say?”

  “May-I-be-excused,” she recited, as if it were a single word, not a question. She slipped out of his grasp and raced outside.

  Pamela watched through the screened walls as Lizard bounded across the back yard, tramping haphazardly through the scraggly herb garden she and Birdie had planted and vanishing into the denser shrubs beyond. Then Pamela lifted her glass and sipped her water. Her eyes were hard and silver, like the ice cubes clinking in her glass.

  The silence grew as heavy as the thick, warm air. Joe felt obliged to say something. “Lizard has a way to go when it comes to manners,” he explained with what he hoped was an endearing smile. “She tends to confuse bluntness with honesty.”

  “That’s all right,” Pamela said, though she didn’t look all right. She looked pale and fragile and uncomfortable—which, under the circumstances, he should have expected.

  Even so, he wanted to vanquish the worry that shadowed her eyes and pinched her lips. “Really, she’s a great kid. A little mouthy, but...”

  “She said I was ugly,” Pamela announced.

  Joe opened his mouth and then shut it. Definitely, the brat deserved a throttling. “When did she say that?”

  Pamela seemed embarrassed all of a sudden. “Oh, I know she didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t know why I mentioned it—”

  “You are not ugly.”

  “As you said, she’s very honest.”

  “I didn’t say that. She’s a little beast, and she’ll do anything to get a rise out of people. Please—” he wanted to grab hold of Pamela, hug her, reassure her “—trust me. You’re not ugly.”

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

  Did she think he was just handing her a line? Trying to preserve her ego? Should he haul her into his arms and kiss her, ravish those pursed lips of hers until she realized her appearance wasn’t a turn-off?

  He swallowed a wry laugh. If he tried to kiss her, she’d probably slap his face or kick him someplace lower. One wrong move on his part, and she’d decide she was better off dealing with
her Seattle assassin than marrying Joe.

  “You know what?” he said, trying a new tack. “I think Lizzie’s biggest problem is that she doesn’t have a female role model. She needs someone to show her the proper courtesies. I try—it took me two years to train her to ask to be excused before she bolted from the table, and she still doesn’t always remember. Maybe she needs a woman in her life.”

  “She has Birdie,” Pamela pointed out.

  The Boo Doo Chief. Joe rolled his eyes and laughed.

  “And Kitty. Kitty told me she adores Lizard.”

  “Yeah, well...Kitty’s a great lady, to say nothing of the best waitress I’ve ever had. But role-modeling isn’t her forte. Are you sure you don’t want some more to eat? Should I make some coffee, or tea?”

  “After all the trouble you went to to get those tea bags, I suppose I should have tea.” The smile Pamela gave him was brittle.

  Things were falling apart, and Joe was having trouble finding the crack and repairing it. Lizard had done her part, sure. And he himself was still unsettled by the news that Pamela was a member of a highly esteemed profession, a good two thousand rungs up the ladder from bar owner. But more than that was wrong. There was an undercurrent of uneasiness, a tension between Pamela and him that he needed to fix before the situation was broken beyond repair.

  He had to touch her. No kisses, no graphic proof of her lack of ugliness, but he had to connect with her in some friendly way. If she misread him, if she slapped and kicked and otherwise gave vent to her rage at his taking even the mildest of liberties, well, so be it. If this engagement was doomed, better to find out now, while he still had a little time to hunt down a wife on the mainland before his in-laws showed up and staked their claim on Lizard.

  It was unlike him to make such a big deal out of taking a woman’s hand. He’d held her hand last night at the Shipwreck, and no thunderbolts had descended from the heavens. But now that his niece—the beast, the monster, the troublemaker extraordinaire—had introduced the subject of Pamela’s attractiveness, to say nothing of love...