Going For Broke

by Nina Howard

  “Really?” Victoria asked with disbelief. Alcohol was one of her four basic food groups.

  “He’s been sober for sixteen years, and I don’t really miss it,” Barbara explained.

  I’d sure as hell miss it, Victoria thought. I miss it now.

  “How about some tea,” Barbara offered. She busied herself getting the tea together as Victoria sat in the kitchen and began to relax. It was funny being in her mother’s house again. There were a few things she recognized, like the floral plates that they used while she was growing up, the clock that was shaped like a teapot and the potholder Victoria had made in kindergarten. She briefly wondered if kids were still making those. They certainly didn’t at the Chapin school.

  “All I have is Lipton,” Barbara said as she poured the hot water into a Public Radio mug. “But it’s decaf. I can’t have caffeine after 9 am. Just another perk of getting old.”

  Victoria cupped the warm mug in her hands and looked at her mother. Barbara hadn’t been out to see them in a couple of years, and Victoria could see that she had aged. Barbara had always been a very attractive woman, and was aging gracefully, if there was such a thing. Victoria was surprised that she hadn’t remarried sooner. Come to think of it, she never even dated until Victoria left for college.

  Her mother was taking inventory of her as well -- she could sense it. Victoria was sure she didn’t hold up as well. The stress of the past month or so had really taken it’s toll. She hadn’t seen the inside of a beauty salon in weeks, and she was sure that it showed. She grabbed her hair and tied it in a knot behind her head wiped invisible soot out of her eyes.

  “Thank you Mom,” Victoria hated owing anyone anything. “I wouldn’t have asked if there was any other way.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Barbara said. She started to say something else, but stopped herself. Instead, she stood up. “Oh dear, it’s time for bed. Don’t stay up too late, Vicky. You and the children have a big day tomorrow. It’s a school night after all.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The next morning, Victoria got out of bed exhausted. She kept waking up in the middle of the night in a panic and had no idea where she was. When the dim realization that she was sleeping in her mother’s twin bed with the poly-blend Joan Walsh Angland sheets, the panic deepened. Her heart started racing. She kept going over the series of events that got her here, and tried like hell to think of a way to get out. She would try to listen to Posey’s steady breath, focusing on the rhythm like she was at a yoga class back in Manhattan. When she finally fell asleep, she’d wake up again an hour later and the entire cycle would start again.

  She got the kids up and dressed, in their best go-to-school outfits. Posey looked adorable in a Papa d’Anjo pastel smocked dress, with white anklets and polished Mary Janes. She finished it off with an white bow on Posey’s blonder than blonde head. Parker was wearing a Thomas Pink button-down with a pair of khakis that she had begged her mother to iron. (That was one skill she had no interest in acquiring.) He was wearing a darling Jacquadi quilted barn coat in a navy that really set off his blue eyes. She had wanted him in a blue blazer, although her mother had vigorously argued against it. The entire time she was engrossed in choosing her children’s outfits, she was cheerful and engaged. For a few minutes, she had forgotten where she was and what she was doing there.

  She then set about getting herself dressed. She chose black Jil Sander trousers with a black cashmere TSE cardigan. The assholes with the FBI had taken most of her good jewelry, so she threw on a Jose and Maria Barrera coral necklace and topped it all with a Loro Piana cashmere throw. It was almost the end of April, though it was still near winter in Chicago. She went through the box that held her shoes and shook her head. The FBI didn’t take all of her clothes, what she did bring would have accounted for a long weekend in New York. It was like having to choose a favorite child, picking the 30 final pairs that could make the trip with her. She left most of her dress shoes in at home, as she figured she probably wasn’t going to hit the social circuit in this town any time soon. She fished out a pair of Stella McCartney two-toned pumps to finish off her outfit. The hicks in this town probably didn’t even appreciate a pair of decent shoes.

  She walked out of her mother’s house. The traffic was thick, even by this small town standards. They walked the quarter block to the corner, where Victoria was humiliated by having to cross with a crossing guard.

  “Mommy,” Posey said as they were waiting at the corner. “Why do we have to wait for the soldier to cross the street?”

  “Yeah, mom, this is really lame,” Parker added.

  Victoria thought for a moment. Just how was Lumi walking her kids to school? She didn’t want to know. She looked around at all the other mothers and their children waiting patiently at the crosswalk, and decided that Parker was right. It was lame. She grabbed Posey’s hand and started to walk, New York style.

  The crossing guard immediately whistled sharply at Victoria and put his hand in front of her.

  “Ma’am, please wait for my signal,” he said.

  All the other mothers were looking at Victoria as if she had just killed two puppies right in the middle of Willow Road. Nobody said a word. Chagrined, Victoria took two steps back up on the curb. The crossing guard gave her a pointed look when he finally put up his “stop” sign to oncoming traffic and blew his whistle. The herd started crossing and Victoria, Posey and Parker were caught up in it.

  As they legally crossed the street, Victoria took a minute to check out the other pedestrians. There was only one Nanny, and Victoria could spot her because not only was she was Hispanic she was one of the only women who wasn’t dressed in exercise clothing. All the other mothers were tiny blonde women dressed in yoga pants and fleece vests. Most of them had baseball caps on. They all knew each other, so it looked to Victoria like the warm up to some Olympic event, not the start of an elementary school day. There were five women with Labradors, and at least three with gigantic double jogging strollers.

  As she neared the entrance to the school, she saw the oversized SUVs lined up to drop off their precious cargo. It seemed that the bigger the car, the smaller the woman. Again, from what she could make out behind the windshields, the women all were wearing workout gear and baseball caps, talking on cell phones. She looked down at her carefully chosen outfit and for the first time in decades, felt overdressed.

  After successfully (and amazingly easily) registering the children for class, the principal took them off to meet their new teachers. Victoria had to bite her lip. No interviews? No testing? And best of all, no tuition? There might be something to this public school thing after all, even if all the mothers dressed like they lived at the gym. Didn’t anyone in this town have a private trainer? The idea of going to a public gym and intermingling with other people’s sweat gave her the willies. Besides, she would have never been caught dead in public dressed like that.

  “Hi! You must be the new mother!” A short, heavyset woman wearing chambray shirtdress and a primitive Betty Rubble necklace caught Victoria just as she was leaving the school. “Janet Steinhauser, PTA president.” She pulled out a business card and handed it to Victoria. A PTA president with business cards? This woman took her job seriously. She read the card: Janet Steinhauser, Realtor. Just Remember Janet for All your SteinHOUSEr needs! She handed the card back to the little woman with a dismissive nod of her head.

  “Thanks.”

  Janet followed Victoria out the door, displaying either a thick skin or a thicker head. “I know it’s the end of the school year, there are lots of opportunities for you to get involved. We still need someone to bake for Field Day.” Sensing Victoria wasn’t exactly the baking type, she took a different tack. “I know that Missy Brossingham has been hell-bent on hosting the parent/teacher luncheon, but I would be able to move a few things around if you’d like to host. Where did you say you lived?”

  “I didn’t.” Victoria kept walking. Janet had to take two steps for every one of Victoria
’s. Which made it look like a small dog was nipping at Victoria’s heels. Suddenly, Janet stopped and turned to walk in the other direction. She caught sight of another woman getting out of her aptly named Suburban, and ran over to her, hands waving above her head.

  “Missy! I’m so glad I caught you...” her voice trailed off as she headed toward the parking lot. Victoria walked back home and was grateful that the surly crossing guard was off duty. She crossed the street on an angle just because she could. A man jogged by her and smiled.

  “Hey there,” he said as he passed. Victoria nodded dismissively. She turned.

  “Wait!” she called after the man.

  The man stopped and turned. He walked back to her, smiling. “You talking to me?”

  “It’s you. From the diner.” She couldn’t put it together.

  “So many diners, so many women. Help me out,” he smiled sheepishly.

  “In Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. The run-in with the cop.”

  “Oh, that diner. Good to see you’ve managed to stay out of jail.”

  “You know me.” It was a statement.

  “Guilty.”

  “Are you following me?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Did you follow me here all the way from New York?”

  “Guilty.”

  “I’m going to call the police!” He didn’t look like a stalker, though Victoria recalled that Ted Bundy was supposedly very attractive too. She started back into the house.

  Mike called after her. “Mrs. Vernon, no need to call the police.”

  She didn’t stop.

  “I am the police,” he called after her.

  She kept going.

  “Mike Towner. FBI. We met in your apartment in New York. I had a subpoena.”

  She turned on her heel.

  “You!”

  “Guilty.”

  “You’re following me?”

  “Not so much following you as waiting for your husband.”

  “He’s not here,” she stated the obvious, indicating her mother’s small house.

  “He will be. They always come back.”

  Victoria had wondered about this all along. Would Trip come back for her and the kids, or had he left her for good? She still hadn’t heard anything from him. Or Jack. What did this guy know?

  “So you’re here. Following me.”

  “Unless you know where he is. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “You know I don’t know where he is. Why don’t you?” She asked the question Mike asked himself daily since he’d been assigned to this case.

  “We’re working on it. If we find him, you’ll be the first to know. I suppose you’re not going to share any information with us?”

  “Guilty,” she said as she turned to go inside.

  ###

  She sat on the living room sofa, spent. She sat there for at least ten minutes, not really knowing what to do. If things weren’t bad enough, now she had the FBI following her. Not that there was much to garner. Unless you wanted to document how far she’d fallen.

  She picked up the remote and turned on the TV. She and Trip really didn’t watch much TV -- they didn’t have the time. The first thing she came upon was Oprah. She had never seen an Oprah show, although had met her a number of times in New York. She had always been lovely and Victoria had found her to be a great conversationalist. Oprah was having a “before and after” show where they took unsuspecting women off the streets of Chicago and whisked them away for a new look.

  Within minutes, Victoria was hooked. How could that woman have gotten out of bed this morning, looked in the mirror and thought that orange Crocks, high-waisted jeans, a too-small tank with a dingy white bra poking out looked good? Another woman was wearing a teeny tiny jean miniskirt, a puffy jacket, suntan hose and three inch stilettos. With blonde and black skunk hair. She was sure there was something evil lurking under that jacket. To think they found these women on Michigan Avenue. She had to get back to New York as soon as physically possible.

  After Oprah she met the ladies from The View, then Ellen, Martha and Dr. Phil. During the course of her ‘Introduction to Daytime Television’, Victoria opted to change out of her carefully chosen outfit of earlier this morning into a pair of jeans and a simple James Perse T-shirt. She realized that she was hungry. At home, Lumi would bring her carefully constructed Zone meals exactly four hours apart. She rummaged through her mother’s cupboards and found a sleeve of Ritz crackers, a box of Cheerios, a loaf of bread, jam and some really old chocolate chips. She gathered her bounty and set up camp on the sofa. Fritz jumped up on the sofa and nestled next to Victoria. She didn’t even flinch.

  Before she knew it, Posey and Parker came home from school, excited with news of their first day at the new school. They walked in to find their mother camped out, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, watching tv and eating. They had never seen her do any one of these things, let alone all of them at the same time. They had seen her eat, of course, except only sitting at a table, being served by someone else. She didn’t even look up when they came in the room.

  Parker looked at Posey and shrugged. Then he went and sat down on the floor next to the sofa and grabbed the crackers. Posey threw down her book bag and grabbed a spot on the sofa next to Fritz. She wasn’t used to seeing her mother like this, but she liked it. She reached over Victoria to grab what was left of the chocolate chips.

  By the time Barbara came home, the three of them had segued from daytime talk to Jeopardy.

  “Victoria!” Barbara was more surprised than upset.

  Three heads, four if you counted Fritz, turned to look at Barbara in unison. They nodded at her in acknowledgement, then turned back to the TV.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Barbara asked.

  “Grandmoth--” Parker stopped himself. “Bubbe,” he corrected himself.

  “Mother, how many times do I have to tell you - we’re not Jewish? Don’t make him call you that,” Victoria said.

  “I like it. It’s warm,” Barbara said defensively. “Grandmother sounds like I’m 100 years old.”

  “But Bubbe is hip?”

  “Bubbe -- it’s a show where they give you the answer and you have to figure out the question! Isn’t that cool?”

  Barbara looked at Victoria with disbelief. “They’ve never heard of Jeopardy!?” she asked.

  “It’s not on our regular schedule, mother,” Victoria bit back. “Shhh - it’s Final Jeopardy!”

  Barbara shook her head and started back for the kitchen, picking up empty boxes along the way. She whistled for Fritz, but he didn’t move a muscle.

  “Hey, mom, are you going to the grocery store anytime soon?” Victoria called after her.

  ###

  For the next couple of weeks, they fell into a regular routine. Barbara was first out the door, followed by Posey and Parker. Victoria stopped walking them to school after their third day. It was really too much to put together an outfit just to walk them across the street to school and then have to come back and change for her day. She would see them off from the front door in her pajamas, and watch them until they got to the crossing guard. Maybe he wasn’t such an asshole after all.

  She and Bud would sit at her mother’s bright yellow formica kitchen table and wordlessly read the paper and finish the pot of coffee. Bud would leave to head out for his day, which consisted of something like the Elks Club. Victoria didn’t know and never thought to ask. After Bud left, Victoria would change into her ‘day clothes’. The True Religion jeans weren’t really comfortable, so she had borrowed a pair of sweatpants from Bud. She had to admit, she’d never be caught dead in public in these things, though boy, they were comfortable.

  She would load up a tray full of essentials and head back to the sofa in the living room. Fritz would take his place at her side, and together they would spend the day engrossed in the wonders of daytime TV. She remembered girls in college watching All My Children and General Hospital, though now daytime TV was so much more. From
Tyra to The Girls Next Door, there was something for every mood. Reruns of Get Smart and Bewitched. A host of dating shows, which included but were not limited to Shot at Love with Tila Tequila and Date My Mom provided hours of entertainment. Parker and Posey came home every day after school and fell into their spots right next to her. Victoria got hooked on their shows too. She couldn’t believe that nobody put it together that Miley and Hannah Montana were one in the same person. Duh.

  It wasn’t until Barbara came home from work and broke up their marathon session that they would turn off the television. Barbara would sit Parker down at the kitchen table to do his homework. She’d make dinner, run a load of laundry, walk the dog and fall into bed each night wondering how she managed to raise such an self-absorbed child. When she was younger, Vicky was independent, especially after Tom died. Barbara couldn’t help feeling that her daughter had spent the past 25 years regressing. She said a silent prayer asking that somehow Vicky could get the guidance she needed.

  ###

  Mike sat in his black Dodge Ram pickup with a covered jewel top that he had picked up from the Agency’s Chicago warehouse. He had been given a couple of options - a standard-issue cable truck, a beat-up white Econovan with ‘Phil The Painter - Color Your World’ painted on the side, or this pickup truck with various magnetic signs that he could swap out. He chose the pickup once he saw the signs. ‘Suz-ee’s Squeegee Windows and Gutters’, ‘Leaky Larry’s Plumbing’ and his favorite: ‘Cheryl’s Cleaning-land Chicago”. Today his magnet read ‘Whack-a-Mole Exterminators.’ Apparently the Chicago office had way too much time on their hands.

  He figured the truck wasn’t too conspicuous. Then again, if he had a Suburban or a Range Rover, no one would ever notice him. Mike sat in his truck, parked in the same spot in front of a house with a ‘For Sale’ sign in front of it. Anyone wanting to look at the house would probably pass as it looked like they had a serious infestation problem. Mike had a knack for making any surveillance setup feel like home. The other agents would give him shit any time he set up shop. Bobby Cardinale took great delight in calling him ‘old woman’ and trashing his space. It drove Bobby crazy that Mike never took the bait - he was a man comfortable in his old womanhood.