Tea-Totally Dead

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “A hard job, but someone’s got to do it?” Gail said mockingly.

  “That’s it!” Lori cried, pointing her fork happily at Gail. Apparently Lori hadn’t heard the mockery in Gail’s voice. Or maybe she had but didn’t choose to acknowledge it.

  A dog barked somewhere in the silence that followed Lori’s cry. No one seemed to be eating anymore.

  “Oh dear,” murmured Ingrid.

  “Hey, can I be an irritant?” demanded Ace. He stuck his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers. Then he crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out.

  Eric and Mandy doubled over laughing.

  It wasn’t that funny. But Dru was laughing too. And Lori. So much for my discussion of Harmony.

  “Well, if there is such a thing as an irritant,” Trent commented dryly, “Ace must indeed be one.”

  “Oh, Dad,” Lori said, spooning tabouli into her mouth. “You’re such a card sometimes. But anyway, Harmony is an obvious irritant—”

  “That’s enough, Lori,” Trent broke in. “Harmony is a behavior problem, nothing more and nothing less.”

  Lori stopped short. I could see the struggle in her eyes. Was it worth it to challenge her father? Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her tabouli. Why did she let him do that to her?

  “Poor troubled soul,” Ingrid murmured sadly. For a moment I thought she was talking about Lori, but then I realized she had probably meant Harmony.

  “You know what?” Eric asked. Heads turned his way. “You can do all these totally cool things with the punctuation on computers. You can make smiley faces and sad faces and…”

  Ten minutes later, I was trying to figure out how to get the subject back to Harmony.

  “So, Gail,” I said finally. “You’re a psychotherapist. What do you think about Harmony?”

  “What do you really mean by that question?” she asked back.

  “Well…” I temporized. Damn, she was cold. Was she still mad at me for playing therapist the night before? I reworded my question. “Do you think Harmony was crazy enough to need institutionalization?”

  Gail just stared at me. She didn’t even say “hmm.”

  “She was obviously pretty screwed up,” I persisted. “All the things she said about UFO’s—”

  Gail interrupted me quietly. “Why are you using the past tense?” she asked.

  - Sixteen -

  I sat there on the cold lumpy ground, mesmerized by Gail’s cool stare. Why had I used the past tense? Had I subconsciously meant to tell the murderer that I too knew Harmony was dead? That I had seen what was left of her battered face? I looked into Gail’s unblinking brown eyes and thought of Harmony’s pale blue ones staring upward. Goose bumps sprang up on my arms. I rubbed them as I tried to think, then decided to tell the truth.

  “We found—” I began.

  “Oh Gail, honey,” Dru bubbled gaily. “Why are you always so critical? Past tense, present tense, what does it matter? You’re not an English teacher, for heaven’s sake.” Dru’s playful tone should have taken the sting from her words. But somehow, it didn’t seem to.

  Gail shifted her unblinking gaze to her mother without a smile.

  “Here we are in this nice little park and you’re all gloomy,” her mother finished up. “Have some fun!”

  “Mother,” Gail answered, her cool tone edged with a hint of heat. “Not having your infinite capacity for denial and repression, I find it difficult to have ‘fun’ while wondering if my aunt has been murdered.”

  Dru let out a high-pitched giggle, as if Gail had just said something witty. A whole new set of goose bumps raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “You know what—” Eric put in.

  “What?” said Ace and then wrestled the boy to the ground before he could answer.

  “Wheee!” Lori shouted and launched herself on top of Ace, knocking over the nearest deli containers as she did.

  I didn’t bring Harmony up again.

  The walk home was more leisurely than the one to the park. I placed myself in the middle of the pack so I could listen in on the various conversations.

  “… this totally awesome psychologist named B.F. Skinner,” Eric was saying to Ace and Wayne at the front. “He taught these pigeons how to drop the bombs in World War II by pecking at the targets. They were totally good at it, but these dweebs wouldn’t let them…”

  I switched my attention to Dru and Gail, striding along a few feet behind the men.

  “… just because one boy doesn’t like you anymore. It doesn’t mean anything,” Dru said. Now, this was interesting. “Remember, honey, there are plenty of other fish in the sea.”

  “Mother, how many times do I have to tell…” Gail began, and then she lowered her voice. Damn.

  “… how Grandpa treats Mom,” I heard from behind me. It was Mandy’s voice and it sounded angry.

  “I know he gets grouchy,” a penetrating whisper replied. Ingrid’s, I was pretty sure. “But he really loves you and your mother, dear. He just, oh…” Ingrid’s voice faltered.

  “It’s okay, Grandma,” Mandy said, her tone softened. “He isn’t completely hideous.”

  Then I heard the jingle of bracelets. I turned in time to see Lori striding up beside me.

  “I just had a wonderful inspiration, Kate,” she told me, laying her taloned hand on my arm. “Since you and Wayne have shared so much with us, I thought I could give you both massages.” I looked down at her long red fingernails and shuddered. “I can do Shiatsu or Swedish or deep tissue,” she went on blithely. “Even acupressure. And I just took a seminar in foot reflexology.”

  I tried to think of a way to signal Wayne that I needed help here. But all I could see was the back of his head.

  “… so then they put the rat in this totally cool box, see, and…” Eric was saying.

  I turned back to Lori, who smiled widely.

  “Doesn’t this beautiful day just make you want to sing?” she demanded, and without waiting for an answer, she leaned her head back and burst into song. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…”

  I bolted into a near run, wondering how opera singers could stand it. Did it hurt their eardrums as much as mine to be sung to at top volume by someone so close by?

  My ears were still ringing by the time we reached home.

  We all trooped up the steps and into the house again. Dru flung herself onto the couch gracefully and let out a long theatrical sigh. Eric headed straight for the pinball machines. Lori followed behind him, humming a new tune. Everyone else stood around with varying degrees of uncertainty on their faces. What were we supposed to do now? I snuck a peek at Wayne. His face was set in stone. No help there. I took a deep breath, readying myself to play hostess.

  “Would anyone like a hot tub?” I asked, glad I had thought to turn up the heat earlier.

  “Oh my,” Ingrid quavered, twisting her wedding ring around her finger. “Well, I just don’t know—”

  “Go ahead, Mama,” Lori encouraged her. “It’ll do you good.”

  “Well, I—” Ingrid began again.

  “Do we get to wear bathing suits?” Dru asked, tilting her head coquettishly. “Or do we soak au naturel?”

  Ingrid’s face reddened under her white hair. So that was what was bothering her.

  “Of course you can wear suits,” I said hastily, counting spares in my mind.

  I had quite a collection, the living legacy from a friend who had lost eighty pounds over the course of one year (and unfortunately gained most of it back the following year). The extra-large ought to fit Ingrid, I thought. She was broad as well as tall. And Gail would be about right for the large. Dru and Lori were tall but slender. Mediums? And Mandy might be okay in a bikini. I knew Wayne had extra trunks for the men. I looked at him again.

  “Only room for five or six in the tub,” he muttered, barely loud enough to be heard. But Ingrid heard him.

  “Oh my,” she said again, visibly brightening. “I wouldn’t want to take a
nyone else’s place.”

  Lori laughed and crossed the room to kiss her mother’s cheek. Ingrid smiled back at her daughter sheepishly.

  “Well, I’m game,” Ace said heartily. He turned to Wayne. “What about you, kid?”

  Wayne shook his head. I resisted the urge to scream. It was his idea to invite his family over. And one of us should sit in the hot tub with the others, not just in the name of hospitality but to listen for any stray confessions of murder. Wasn’t that the point of this visit? I stifled a sigh. It looked like I was elected for hot-tub duty.

  “Grampy, can I just play pinball?” Eric asked, feeling for the switch on the bottom of Hayburners as he did. The machine lights came on and he pushed the reset button, returning the metal horses in the recessed backglass to their starting positions before Ace even had a chance to tell him yes. Or no, for that matter.

  Mandy didn’t even bother to ask for permission. She just powered up the other machine, an old wood-railed Gottlieb model by the name of Texan, and shot a ball.

  “Dad,” Lori said. “You should go soak in the tub with Ace. You need to relax more.”

  I thought Trent would argue, but he didn’t. He just nodded his well-groomed head ponderously. Then Dru said she’d “just love” a hot tub. And pretty soon she had convinced Gail too.

  I passed out bathing suits before anyone could change their minds.

  After fifteen minutes of taking turns dressing—boys in the guest bathroom and girls in the bedroom—we were all in the hot tub on my back deck, soaking. And I was glad I had been elected. The hot, churning waters were doing a good job of massaging my shoulders, better I was sure than Lori could have done. I closed my eyes and leaned back into the jet of hot water, feeling my muscles loosening. Over the hum of the tub, I could hear the sound of bells ringing from the living room. Someone was racking up a good score on a pinball machine.

  “Wow, this is the life,” Ace moaned appreciatively from where he sat on my right. I opened my eyes as I turned to gaze at him through the steam. Sweat was trickling down his homely face. But his body wasn’t homely, I’d noticed. It was trim and muscular, even more muscular than Wayne’s. All that weight-lifting, I supposed. “I’ll bet Vessie sure enjoyed this hot tub,” he added.

  I shrugged, embarrassed. Vesta had never used the hot tub in the months that she’d lived here, not because she was modest or wouldn’t have enjoyed it, I suspected, but because it was mine and she had hated anything that was mine.

  “Vesta wasn’t always so hard,” said Dru quietly, as if in answer to my thought. Her mascara was running a little in the steam, but her eyes still sparkled. “She was a good sister to me when I was little.” Dru straightened up abruptly, causing a small tidal wave to move across the tub and splash next to me. “Remember the fairy costume she made for me the year Ma was sick?” she asked Trent.

  “Yes,” Trent answered with a slow nod. “I do remember.” Then he sighed. As I watched him, I realized that he looked pretty damn good in swimming trunks himself, not as muscular as Ace, but more muscular than I would have thought from seeing him fully clothed. And just as trim. If Wayne’s body looked as good as either of his uncles’ when he reached their ages, I was going to be one happy woman.

  “Hey, how about the puppet theatre Vesta made for us that summer?” Ace remembered aloud. He laughed and the water reacted, splashing over the side. “Now that was really grand!”

  “Old cardboard boxes and tape and paint,” Trent said dismissively. But then a smile gentled his face. “Vesta was an artist, all right. She made it all shine.”

  “And the puppets,” Dru put in. “All different animals from socks. I had a gray rabbit—”

  “I had a lion,” said Ace.

  “What was yours?” Dru asked Trent. “I remember Nola had a cat and Camille’s was a dog, but I can’t remember yours.”

  “A horse,” he answered briefly.

  “That’s right,” Dru trilled. She leaned back against the tub’s edge with a smile.

  I leaned back too and tried to imagine Vesta making cute little puppets out of socks. I wiped the perspiration from my face with a wet hand. No, I decided, I just couldn’t imagine it.

  “What happened to Aunt Vesta?” Gail asked from my left. Her tone was softer now, almost dreamy. I turned and saw that her face had softened, too. Her eyes looked large and vulnerable without her glasses. Maybe that was one reason she usually wore them. “Why do you think Aunt Vesta changed?” she pressed.

  Trent frowned across the tub at her. Dru looked at him for a moment and then at Ace. Ace shrugged massively. The water rippled and splashed with his movement.

  “Well, honey,” Dru said, her voice deeper now than usual, “it was real hard on your Aunt Vesta when Pa… well, when he threw her out of the house.”

  “But why did he throw her out?” Gail asked softly.

  “She was pregnant, honey,” Dru answered. “And she wasn’t married. That meant a lot more back then.”

  “Oh,” said Gail, nodding her head. She didn’t say anything else.

  In the silence that followed, I could hear someone from the house laughing. Was that Lori? And the sound of an unseen airplane overhead.

  “Hey, remember,” Ace said, filling the silence. “Remember when…”

  And then the three siblings were talking again, recalling growing up in Hayward. They’d all had part-time jobs when they were in high school. And they’d worked hard. Ace made everyone laugh telling us how he’d always managed to drop one watermelon from each shipment when he’d worked at a grocery store. That way, the employees had been forced to eat it, since they couldn’t very well sell it cracked open.

  “And that was the best watermelon I ever tasted,” he finished up.

  “What were my grandparents like?” Gail asked.

  The tub went silent again. Gail sure knew how to kill a conversation.

  “Well, honey,” Dru answered finally, “they were hardworking people, religious. Your grandfather worked at the local cannery. Your grandmother was a housewife.”

  Nobody bothered to restart the conversation after that. We just sat in the tub, soaking and sweating. And thinking our own private thoughts.

  I closed my eyes and sank down even deeper into the hot water, listening to the sounds of pinballs from the house and the sounds of dogs and kids and cars from the surrounding neighborhood. This is so peaceful, I thought, I could almost forget about Harmony.

  But as soon as I thought it, I found I couldn’t forget Harmony. It was like trying not to think of a white elephant. My mind kept showing me pictures of Harmony both as she had been alive and as she had been that morning, battered and bloody on the floor. A slide show by Stephen King.

  I popped my eyes open. Dru was gazing at me, her head tilted to one side, and Trent was frowning down at the tub water as if it had offended him. I tipped my head back to look out over their heads, focusing on my neighbor’s shingled rooftop for a moment and then on Mount Tamalpais in the distance. Still, I shivered, cold even in the hot water of the tub. And then I began to think about Vesta—

  “Are you okay?” Gail asked from my left, perceptive as ever, even without her glasses.

  “Just a chill,” I answered quickly, then realized how stupid that sounded from someone sitting in a hot tub.

  “Maybe we should go in now,” said Dru.

  “All right,” I agreed, suddenly tired of both the hot tub and its occupants.

  I was even more chilled when we all stood up, wet in the cool October air. I shepherded everyone back into the house quickly and pulled out towels to rub away our goose bumps. Then we took turns changing back into our clothes.

  Eric was still playing Hayburners when I made it back to the living room, the last person to have dressed.

  “Just one more game, Grampy,” he was begging Ace. I wasn’t surprised. I’d heard the same plea from pinball addicts of all ages.

  “Hooboy, you’ve been here playing for long enough already,” grumbled A
ce, but he gave in. “One more game,” he said. “Just one.”

  But Eric managed to sneak in at least three more games under Ace’s not so watchful eyes. And then, at last, the Skeritts filed out the door, saying their goodbyes.

  Lori gave me a departing hug as well, and whispered, “Don’t forget, you’ve got a free massage coming.”

  “I won’t,” I assured her uneasily.

  And then they were all gone, except for Ace, who stood in the doorway staring back at Wayne.

  “Wayne,” he said softly. “I…”

  “What?” asked Wayne, his voice deep and brusque.

  Ace stared for a moment longer, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. Then he put on his goofy clown grin again. “Hey, you’ve got a great house here!” he boomed. “Not to mention a gorgeous woman. I’m happy for you, kid.”

  And then he turned and left, clattering noisily across the front deck and down the stairs.

  Wayne and I followed Ace out as far as the deck and watched as his Volkswagen van and Trent’s Volvo station wagon pulled out of the driveway, popping gravel.

  Wayne turned to me, once they were gone from sight, his face stiff and cold. “Well?” he asked.

  “Well, what?” I shot back in annoyance. “Are you asking me if anyone confessed in the hot tub?”

  He didn’t answer me, but I saw the flash of hurt that widened his eyes for an instant.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,” I told him, feeling instantly guilty. “I guess I’m just sick of Skeritts. And I don’t think I know anything more this afternoon than I did this morning.”

  “I do,” he said quietly.

  “You do?” I asked in surprise.

  “Lori wants to marry her acupuncturist, but her father would stop sending her monthly checks if she got married,” he began, holding up one finger. “Gail’s boyfriend just left her,” he continued, raising another finger. “He was a law student. He just passed the bar and moved in with his bar review instructor. Uncle Trent wants to retire and Aunt Ingrid wants to go back to work as a teacher, but he doesn’t want her to. Eric’s mother abandoned him when he was four. Now Uncle Ace and Eric’s father, Earl, take care of the boy. And Bill Norton is an alcoholic,” he finished up, raising his thumb.