Ladies' Night

by Andrews, Mary Kay

  “Oh!” one of the women said, clapping her hands in glee.

  The bird nuzzled Wyatt’s ear, then dipped its neck and poked her head into the right breast pocket for a treat.

  “This is Cookie,” Wyatt said. “She’s an African gray, a total diva, and the star of the parrot show. I can’t take any credit for her, though. The birds were my mom’s idea.”

  “Weren’t there monkeys, too?” the ninety-year-old inquired.

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Wyatt said. “The monkeys were here when I was a little kid. But when this neighborhood started going residential, with all the subdivisions closing in, we were getting a lot of complaints, especially since the little boogers were too clever and kept getting out of their pens and frightening the neighbors. Eventually, all of them were adopted out.”

  Cookie found a parrot pellet in Wyatt’s pocket and began chewing contentedly.

  “That was certainly interesting,” the old man said, pumping Wyatt’s hand again. “This is a grand place you’ve got here. We’re a little surprised to have it all to ourselves today.”

  Wyatt was not surprised. But he made a valiant effort to keep up a good front.

  “You just happened to catch us on our slow day,” he lied. “But you come back later in the week, and the crowds will be here, I guarantee.”

  That was a lie, too. They hadn’t had what you could call a real “crowd” at Jungle Jerry’s in months and years. Okay, decades, if you wanted to be brutally honest. In this post-Disney era, families got their kicks in air-conditioned comfort, with audio-animatronics and movie-quality special effects. Animal rights advocates didn’t approve of exotic birds performing quaint tricks like riding a tiny bicycle on a high wire, and kids were bored silly just looking at a bunch of plants and trees.

  Jungle Jerry’s had shrunken significantly over the years. Right now, they were at around a hundred acres, since Jungle Jerry’s son-in-law, Wyatt’s father, Nelson, had been forced to sell off a chunk of land to pay inheritance taxes after Jerry’s death.

  Wyatt had never intended to work in the family business. He’d been a horticulture major in college and had gone to graduate school at Clemson for a degree in landscape architecture, which was where he’d met Callie Parker, a twenty-two-year-old graphic arts major from Orangeburg, South Carolina. He and Callie had been in a fever to get married, such a fever that he’d canned the idea of getting his master’s and dropped out of grad school to get a job working for a mail-order nursery in Greenville.

  He’d worked there for four years when his mother called to beg him to come home to run Jungle Jerry’s. Nelson had suffered his first heart attack, and Peggy, his mother, had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, although she didn’t tell him that until after he and Callie moved back to Bradenton.

  Peggy lived just long enough to hold Bo, christened Nelson William Keeler II, before succumbing to the cancer.

  The first few years at the park, Wyatt had worked furiously to try to turn the tide at Jungle Jerry’s. He’d advertised, joined civic associations, networked like crazy. He’d phased out the old kiddie rides, which were rusting safety hazards anyway, and had begun emphasizing ecology and the botanical aspect of the park. And at first, things seemed to be working. Attendance crept up. Callie came to work at the park, designing posters and ads. Bo took his first steps chasing after Beezus, a gold-capped conure. They weren’t getting rich, but they were young and happy. And dumb, Wyatt reflected now. At least, he was.

  They’d bought their first house in one of the newer subdivisions nearby and enrolled Bo in the neighborhood school, one of the best in the school district. Wyatt was working crazy long hours at Jungle Jerry’s, and Callie was doing some sporadic freelance work. Most of the other families on their block were like them, young marrieds with one or two kids. They cooked out together, took the kids en masse to Holmes Beach—all the things you did when you were young with not much money.

  The one bachelor on the block, Luke Grigsby, was a salesman with a chemical company. Luke was the neighborhood fun guy. He wore cool clothes and drove a sharp white Trans-Am. His home was the biggest, newest house on the block, and since he had a pool, he entertained frequently.

  Every year Luke threw a big, crazy Halloween party. Everybody competed to come up with the most outrageous costume. Wyatt wasn’t a big one for parties, but Callie loved dressing up. That year, she decided they should go as Aladdin and Jasmine, the characters from the Disney movie.

  Wyatt reluctantly allowed himself to be talked into wearing a turban, idiotic-looking billowy pants, and, worst of all, a short embroidered vest over his bare chest. For her own costume, Callie outdid herself. She took one of her old bikinis and covered the top and bottoms with hot-glued gold sequins, then attached some kind of filmy fabric to the bottoms to make harem pants. She bought a felt fez, cut a hole in the top, and pulled her blond ponytail through, then made herself a veil with more of the filmy fabric.

  Callie refused to let Wyatt see her in her costume until the night of the party. When she stepped out of the bedroom, he couldn’t believe this was his wife.

  She’d swept glittering blue eye shadow on her eyelids and outlined them in black liner. Her breasts jutted out of the skimpy sequined bikini top, and her harem pants skimmed right above her pubic bone. She wore half a dozen jangly gold bracelets on each arm, huge earrings, and little gold sandals. As a final touch, she’d somehow attached a huge plastic rhinestone in her belly button.

  Callie’s eyes danced from above the veil obscuring the lower half of her face. She did a little pirouette followed by a suggestive hip grind that sent her bracelets jingling.

  “What do you think?”

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Wyatt asked.

  She pouted. “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t like it?”

  He looked over his shoulder, toward the kitchen, where the teenage babysitter was trying to con Bo into eating his dinner. “I like it just fine if we’re staying home tonight—just the two of us,” he said in a low voice, running a finger down her bare arm. “But don’t you think it’s a little, uh, I don’t know, risqué for a neighborhood party?”

  “No, I do not,” Callie snapped. “I’ve been working on this costume for weeks. Yours, too. And that’s all you can say? I look risqué?”

  He shrugged. “You asked.”

  “Well I don’t care what you think. I think I look hot. And cute.” She grabbed a gold beaded clutch purse and opened the front door. “Are you coming?”

  He went to the party, had a couple beers, talked football with a couple of the guys, and watched glumly from across the room while his wife knocked back half a dozen wine coolers and then proceeded to strut and shimmy and flirt with every guy in the room.

  Callie was doing a tipsy but highly suggestive belly dance with Luke out on the patio when Wyatt tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled around, then frowned when she saw it was her husband. “What?”

  “It’s eleven thirty,” he said pointedly. “We promised we’d get Melanie home by midnight.”

  “It’s Friday night. There’s no school tomorrow! Just call her and tell her we’re going to stay later,” Callie said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It actually is a big deal,” Wyatt replied. “She’s got to get up early because she’s taking the SATs tomorrow.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Callie said. “Just when the party is starting to crank up.” She looked over at Luke and gestured at Wyatt. “Meet Aladdin—he traded his magic carpet for a wet blanket.”

  “You don’t have to leave,” Wyatt said stiffly. “I’ll go, since she drove herself over to the house.”

  “You mean it?” Callie’s face lit up, her pout forgotten. “I won’t stay that much longer. I just want to hang around long enough to see who wins the costume contest.”

  Luke laughed and wrapped an arm around Callie’s shoulder. “You already know who won—lady.” He gave Wyatt a wink. “Don’t worry about her. I’ll walk her h
ome myself. Okay?”

  What could Wyatt say? Callie planted a perfunctory kiss on his forehead. He walked the two blocks home, paid the babysitter, and walked her out to her car. He looked in on Bo, who was fast asleep, then went to bed. Alone. He woke up at 3:30 A.M., glanced at the clock, and then back at Callie’s side of the bed. She wasn’t there.

  He couldn’t sleep. Finally, Wyatt got up. He peered out the front window, just in time to see Luke and Callie stroll slowly up the sidewalk. The window was open, and the curtains billowed in a faint breeze. Callie’s giggle floated on the night air, and Luke said something in a low voice. She leaned heavily on the arm Luke had around her waist. As Wyatt watched, they stopped just short of the driveway. Luke pulled her from the sidewalk into the shadow of their neighbor’s Florida holly tree. Wyatt’s heart stopped. His hand clutched the curtain fabric as he watched his wife wrap her arms around Luke’s neck, press herself up against his chest, and pull the neighborhood fun guy into a long, deep kiss.

  As he walked back to their bedroom, Wyatt checked the dial on the clock radio on his side of their bed. He made a note of the time. 3:47 A.M. It was the moment time stopped in what he thought had been a perfectly happy marriage.

  9

  Callie never did come to bed that night. She was asleep on the living room sofa in the morning. Her fez was on the floor, her hair mussed and spilling over the sofa cushion. The blue eye shadow and black liner were smeared into raccoon circles under her eyes. One breast peeked all the way out of the bikini top.

  “What happened to Mommy?” He hadn’t heard their barefoot son pad into the room. Bo stood looking down in horror at Callie.

  Wyatt pulled an afghan over Callie’s shoulders and scooped Bo up into his arms. “She didn’t feel so good last night when she came home from the party, so she slept out here. Come on, sport, let’s get you some breakfast.”

  Months later, after the trial separation, after the tears and accusations and denials, Wyatt knew, in retrospect, he should have said something the night of the Halloween party. Maybe if he’d let Callie know what he’d seen, told her he loved her and didn’t want to lose her, maybe things would have turned out differently. Or maybe he might have admitted he didn’t love her enough. Not enough to fight Luke for her.

  But things didn’t turn out that way. Eventually, Callie admitted that she and Luke were in love. Eventually, she told him the marriage had been in trouble for a long time. And so Wyatt did the decent thing. They agreed it was important for Bo’s life to retain some degree of normalcy. Callie would keep the house so that Bo could stay in his school. Wyatt was thirty-eight years old, with a failed marriage and an ailing business.

  Wyatt moved out of their little house and into a battered double-wide trailer at Jungle Jerry’s that had once been the living quarters for a security guard—from back in the day when they actually had the funds and the need for a security guard.

  When it came time to start divorce proceedings, his Aunt Betsy offered to handle his side, pro bono. They somehow worked out a time-sharing agreement, with Bo splitting his time between the two of them. Wyatt’s dad, Nelson, moved into the second bedroom of the double-wide to help out with child care for Bo on the weekends and after school on the days Bo stayed with Wyatt.

  Wyatt was shocked at how fast his marriage unraveled and dumbfounded at the changes in Callie once she and Luke moved in together.

  Or had she been somebody else all along? Wyatt would never be sure.

  Their temporary custody-sharing arrangement got off to a rocky start. On the first weekend Bo was to spend with Wyatt, he got a tearful call from his son on Friday night, hours after Callie was to have dropped him off at Jungle Jerry’s.

  “Daddy?”

  “Hey, Bo,” Wyatt said, relieved to hear his son’s voice. “Grandpa and I are waiting on you. We’re having your favorite, mac ’n’ cheese.”

  Bo sniffed, and then, in a thin, wobbly voice, “Mom says if you want me, you gotta come pick me up.”

  Wyatt frowned. That had not been the agreement.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”

  Now Bo was crying. “But, I’m not at Mom’s house. I’m at Luke’s friend’s house, and it’s way far away.”

  He heard Callie’s voice in the background. “Just tell him you’ll see him in the morning. Your dad will understand.”

  “But I wanna see Daddy,” he heard Bo wailing, and his heart sank.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he heard Callie say.

  And then she was on the phone, her voice crisp and unapologetic.

  “Look, Wy, we’ve had a little change of plans. We went over to St. Pete Beach with Luke for a work thing, and with Friday traffic and everything, we’re just not gonna make it back in time tonight. You understand, right? I’ll drop him off first thing in the morning.”

  “This is crap, Callie,” Wyatt protested. “You were supposed to bring Bo here as soon as school was out, four hours ago. Now you call me and tell me you took him all the way to St. Pete? And I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

  “You’re supposed to be okay with doing what’s good for your son,” Callie snapped. “Luke’s friends live right on the beach here, and they have a pool, and Bo was having a blast until he all of a sudden decided he needed to talk to you. The next thing I know, he’s blubbering and saying he wants to leave. And if we leave now, with traffic and everything, he’ll be asleep by the time we get him there anyway. So what’s the difference if you get him tonight or tomorrow morning?”

  “The difference is, I haven’t seen him in three days,” Wyatt said, feeling his chest tighten with anger. “I made plans for tonight, with Dad and Bo.”

  “Whoop-dee-shit,” she said. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll pack his ass up now, and we’ll get in the car and drive him all the way back over there so you can see him. Asleep.”

  Wyatt took a deep breath. “I wish you wouldn’t cuss in front of him. But all right, he can stay. As long as you have him here first thing in the morning. And since you’ve got him tonight, I want him to spend Sunday night with me.”

  “Great.” She hung up without another word.

  10

  Gracenotes

  Despite what you might think, I am definitely not a neat freak. My desk is frequently a disaster area, and dust bunnies are not an endangered species at my house. But truthfully, I get deep personal satisfaction out of making my surroundings beautiful—and comfortable.

  I’ve learned a few tricks that make housekeeping less drudgery and more delight. For one thing, I try and tidy up every night before bedtime. Dishes always get put in the dishwasher—is there anything more depressing in the morning than a sinkful of greasy crockery? I spritz the sink and kitchen counters with my favorite all-purpose organic cleanser, watered-down white vinegar.

  In the morning, after I’ve showered, I use more of my diluted vinegar-water spray to freshen up the tub and shower surfaces, and I keep a special “squeegee” under my bathroom sink to allow me to wipe down the glass shower door before it gets any annoying water spots or streaks.

  * * *

  On the Wednesday after her court appearance, Grace flipped the last of the heavy wooden chairs onto the tabletop. She dipped the mop in the bucketful of scalding soapy water, then, with rubber gloved hands, wrung out the excess soap. She swished the mop back and forth across the Sandbox’s gritty linoleum floor, halfheartedly listening to the morning news roundup of traffic accidents, taxpayer revolts, and local political skullduggery.

  The smell of coffee somehow managed to waft through the biting aroma of Pine-Sol. Her mother was standing at the bar, holding out a freshly brewed pot.

  “Come on, hon,” Rochelle urged. “It’s early. You can stop for one cup. That floor ain’t going nowhere.”

  It was barely eight o’clock. Grace had been up since six, taking a run along the quiet predawn streets of Cortez while it was still relatively cool, then starting in on her new ritual of swabbing down the restaurant
, from floor to ceiling.

  Out of boredom and desperation, in the weeks since she’d moved in, Grace had been waging a one-woman war on the Sandbox’s decades-old accumulation of grease, grime, and clutter.

  She’d started in the storeroom, clearing out an entire Dumpster’s worth of antiquated equipment, a deep fryer her father had always meant to fix, an ice machine that had stopped working ten years earlier, boxes and crates of old business records, food service catalogs, and broken chairs and tables.

  From there she’d moved on to the kitchen, ruthlessly tossing anything and everything that wasn’t essential to their food-service operation. She’d inspected every glass, dish, and piece of cutlery, consigning anything chipped, bent, or discolored to a crate she’d allocated for the local homeless shelter’s soup kitchen.

  Along the way, she’d had to abandon all her old, genteel ideas about housecleaning. Diluted vinegar and baking soda were useless in her dust-busting efforts here. Now, her weapons of choice included every industrial-strength, commercial-grade cleaner she could find at the local janitorial supply house.

  Grace set her mop aside, peeled off the rubber gloves, and sipped her coffee. She gestured around the room. “I feel like I’m finally making some headway, don’t you?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Place doesn’t even smell like a bar anymore. You’ve scrubbed away every last trace of the Sandbox ambiance.”

  “Mom, that wasn’t ambiance, it was crud. Years’ and years’ worth of baked-on, smoked-in, ground-down crud. This place was gross. Can’t you just admit you like it better clean?”

  Rochelle rested a hand on the old mahogany bar. “I liked it the way it was,” she said pointedly. “We were shabby before shabby got cool. Now it’s like a hospital operating room, for God’s sake. Who wants to grab a beer and a burger in a hospital?”

  “There’s a difference between shabby gentility and run-down and decrepit, and it’s really not so fine a line,” Grace said. “Our regulars may grouse at first, but you wait, they’re gonna appreciate pouring beer from a pitcher without a busted spout or eating with a fork without bent tines.”