“But they were,” Grace insisted. “You don’t know what the blog world is like. We read each other’s blogs and comment and cross-post and guest blog. And we see each other at meet-ups, once or twice a year. I care about these people, and they care about me.”
Rochelle shook her head. “No, they don’t. Did any of these so-called friends call you after your big breakup with Ben was all over the news? Did any of them drive over here, take you out to lunch, or just give you a shoulder to cry on when you needed it most?”
“That’s not how it works in my world,” Grace said stubbornly.
“Then your world is seriously screwed up. You’ve gone through a lot in the past two months, but as far as I can tell, not a single friend has stepped up. And not just these so-called blogger buddies of yours. Where are your old girlfriends? The couples who used to come to all those dinner parties you used to throw all the time?”
Grace clutched her coffee mug so tightly she thought it might crush. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “A couple left me messages on my phone. But I was just too embarrassed to call them back. After a while…”
“They quit calling,” Rochelle finished her sentence. “Fair-weather friends, every last one of ’em.”
“I guess Ben got custody of all our old friends.” Grace blinked back tears, and wondered if her tear ducts would ever dry up. “And that hurts, too. I try to keep busy, to keep from dwelling on everything, but everyday, it’s like something else happens, another slap in the face. My blog? I know it seems silly to you, but, Mom, this is my work. If I don’t have a marriage, and I don’t have any friends, and then, somehow, I can’t even make a living, what the hell else do I have? What kind of life is this?”
Rochelle handed her a paper towel. “Dry your eyes, honey. This is the life you’ve got, so put on your big-girl panties and make it what you want it to be. All your old friends are gone? Find some new ones. Ben’s attacking you. Counterattack. Stay on the offensive. The best way to do that, from where I’m sitting, is to figure out a way to do what only you can do, and then get on with it. Everything else will take care of itself.”
“How?” Grace’s voice quivered with emotion.
Rochelle threw up her hands in surrender. “I don’t know, Grace. I’m not Dr. Phil. But you can’t just give up and sit around and whine. That’s not how we raised you.”
She leaned closer to Grace, rested her forehead against her daughter’s. “Figure out what you want. And then go get it.”
* * *
She hadn’t had all that much contact with the Gracenotes advertisers. That had been Ben’s department. But she’d had some correspondence with the bigger, most important ones: Home Depot, Levolor, Benjamin Moore, Viking, a big carpet manufacturer, and DeWalt, a power tool manufacturer.
Now Grace scrolled through the contacts on her laptop, searching them out, mentally composing the message she’d send.
Dear Sir: Just wanted to take the time to thank you for your past support of Gracenotes. Unfortunately, a situation has arisen that I wanted to make you aware of. I am currently in the middle of an unpleasant split from my husband, Ben. The result is that although Gracenotes.com is still online, I am no longer authoring or associated with those posts. I’ve started a new blog, TrueGrace.com, and I hope you’ll take a look at it. In the meantime, you should know that Ben is actually lifting my intellectual property—my writing, my recipes, and my photographs—and publishing them on Gracenotes, representing them as original. I also believe he’s actually engaging in sabotaging my career as a blogger, by posting potentially libelous, scurrilous, negative comments and material on other lifestyle blogs and signing my name to them. I know your company values your brand and identity too much to underwrite these kinds of activities, and I hope you will take the appropriate steps to ensure that your company is not associated with individuals who rely on devious, underhanded, negative activities. All best, Grace Davenport (formerly Stanton), the True Grace.
She pushed the SEND button and, for the first time in weeks, felt like herself. The real Grace.
19
Grace had never been what you would call athletic. She’d been a book nerd as a kid, always happier inside with a book than outside with a racket or a club or playing a sport that made her sweaty.
It was only after her sophomore year of college, when she’d gained not just the freshman fifteen but a whole twenty pounds, that she’d reluctantly taken up running. She’d kept it up, off and on, since then. Running to keep her weight down or the stress of daily life at bay.
Lately, she’d started running for sanity. Since the split with Ben and moving into the apartment above the Sandbox, she’d taken to waking before dawn. Sometimes she read; sometimes she worked on her blog; sometimes she laced up her running shoes and hit the road.
Reading again through all the e-mails in her in-box left her feeling infuriated and helpless, even a day later. Ben—or somebody—had done a thorough job of poisoning her Internet presence. Using her name, he’d posted inflammatory blog comments on every single blog from her old blog roll. She knew this because nearly all of the bloggers had e-mailed to tell her that she was dead to them, too.
She had to get away. It was still dark when she slipped down the stairs and let herself out the Sandbox’s side door.
Grace wasn’t fast, and her running form left much to be desired. She popped her earbuds in, pressed the PLAY button on her iPod, and loped down the street. The route she’d developed took her along the winding roads that paralleled the Gulf of Mexico. If she looked to her left, she could see blue skies, sometimes catch patches of blue-green surf through the tree line of shaggy Australian pines and palm trees.
After crossing the bridge from Cortez, she ran through Bradenton Beach, on to Holmes, and Anna Maria. After an hour, her nylon tank top was drenched with sweat, her gym shorts plastered to her butt. Even her ponytail dripped sweat onto her shoulders.
The last mile of her run was actually more of a cool-down walk. She did a run-walk on the beach for a half mile or so, keeping her eyes on the surf line, scanning for any shells, watching the seagulls and sandpipers. At one point, she stopped and stared at a huge gray heron, poised, motionless at water’s edge. The bird never flinched as Grace approached and stood, marveling at its elegant blue-gray plumage. Eventually, she moved on, but the heron did not.
It was early Monday morning, so the streets of Anna Maria were quiet. She loped up one sandy, narrow street after another, walking, fuming. Every once in a while, she felt a faint breeze coming through the tree line. The houses on these streets were cottages, many of them bearing real estate signs indicating they were vacation rentals.
This was a new neighborhood to Grace. She slowed to a stroll, appreciating the modest concrete block or frame structures, so unlike the rambling, overblown megamansions on Gulf Vista. She wished she had her camera to capture the early morning sun, the tropical gardens of palms, bromeliads, crotons, bougainvillea, and hibiscus.
Grass was sparse here. Instead, the small yards seemed to consist of dense plantings of vines and ferns and flowers. Lizards darted across the narrow sand-strewn road, and she saw hummingbirds hovering over the thick hedges of ixora with their star-shaped coral blossoms.
It seemed the whole world was still slumbering, until she came across a house that stood out like a sore thumb on this block of neatly maintained homes. The curb was heaped high with trash, the yard weedy and strewn with dead palm fronds and fallen limbs. Barely visible, behind an overgrown hedge of ficus, she could see a glimpse of faded white siding.
Also blocking her view was the mountain of refuse. Two big city-issued receptacles were spilling over with plastic bags of garbage. Alongside these were sodden cardboard boxes overflowing with old clothes and shoes and more. A stained king-sized mattress leaned against the receptacles and was propped up by two cheap fiberboard nightstands.
Grace heard a screen door slam, and, as she watched, an old man muscled a long rattan couch through th
e doorway and into the yard. He cursed softly as he pushed and shoved the sofa to the curb.
“Hey,” he said, barely noticing Grace. He dumped the sofa, wheeled, and went back into the house.
Something about that sofa caught her eye. She glanced at the house, to see if the man was watching, but he’d disappeared.
The rest of the discards at the curb were junk, cheap, soiled, ruined junk. But this sofa … Grace squatted to get a better look.
The rattan arms formed huge pretzel-like shapes. It was a three-seater, and it looked, she thought, like it could be by Paul McCobb. The rattan wrappings were in surprisingly good shape, and all the seat supports looked intact.
A moment later, the screen door slammed and the man reappeared, this time with a wheelbarrow heaped with thick cushions covered in a hideous orange and rust synthetic plaid fabric. He dumped the cushions without comment and wheeled back inside.
Grace was intrigued. She walked across the street, down the block, and then doubled back again. It was like a floor show whose second act she couldn’t bring herself to miss.
By now, an armchair had joined its matching sofa. And the man with the wheelbarrow was back, this time bringing a low-slung, boomerang-shaped rattan coffee table with a yellow pine top, which he unceremoniously dumped on end. The table’s top, Grace saw, was marred with cigarette burns and water rings, but the legs and the rattan wrappings were in fairly decent condition.
The man looked annoyed at having a spectator. He was tall and thin, with a high forehead and thinning gray hair and a lit cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth. He wore a pair of loose-fitting khaki slacks and a shapeless gray T-shirt.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Grace blushed. “Did somebody die?” she blurted out.
“I wish,” he said. His voice was gravelly. He set the wheelbarrow down, took a wrinkled handkerchief from his back pocket, and mopped his face.
“My damned tenants moved out and left me with this mess,” he said, removing his eyeglasses and wiping them down.
“That’s awful,” Grace sympathized.
“You don’t even know,” he agreed. “Three months back rent owing, not to mention they trashed the house so bad, I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get it into shape to rent again.”
He was gazing at her, taking in her sweaty, disheveled appearance. “Don’t I know you?” He gestured at her ball cap, with the Sandbox logo. “Maybe from the bar?”
Now that he mentioned it, she did think he looked familiar. “Maybe. I’m Grace Davenport. Rochelle’s daughter.”
“Riiight,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants and shaking her hand. “And I’m Arthur Cater. I knew your daddy. Took him fishing a couple times. Butch was a great guy. How’s your mama gettin’ along?”
“She’s good,” Grace said. “We miss him, but if you know Rochelle, you know she’s a tough old bird.”
“She is that,” he said with a laugh.
Now he gestured toward the mountain of trash. “Should have trusted my gut instinct. But they were a young couple, and my wife felt sorry for ’em. Famous last words.”
Grace gestured toward the mound of trash. “You’re throwing all of this out? Not even calling Goodwill to come pick it up?”
He snorted. “Goodwill wouldn’t take this mess. Would you? Mildewed, pee-stained. They had dogs, even though the lease specifically forbids pets, and they swore they didn’t have any. So everything is crawling with fleas.”
Grace shuddered and took a tiny step backward.
He flicked his handkerchief at the rattan sofa. “This was my grandmother’s. She left me the house, and this was always in it, as long as I could remember. We’ve been renting this house, furnished, with no problems for fifteen years, and then these bums move in, and now it’s not fit for the dump.”
He was mopping his neck. “You see anything here you want, be my guest.”
“The rattan furniture is actually very pretty,” Grace ventured. “Probably from the forties. You’re sure you don’t want to keep it? Maybe have the cushions redone?”
“Nah,” he said dismissively. “We got a house full of furniture. And my wife doesn’t like this old grandma stuff.” He studied her. “There’s an end table and another armchair inside, that goes with this set, if you think you might want it. Course, you’d have to haul it off yourself.”
“I just might want it,” Grace said, surprising herself. And then she had an idea.
“Would it be all right if I came inside, took a look at the furniture?”
“You got a clothespin for your nose? And if you get bit up by fleas, don’t blame me.”
The walkway to the front door was brick, but it was barely visible beneath the tendrils of vines and weeds that grew up in the sandy yard. The house was raised up from ground level on concrete block piers. It had a steep gabled roof with slatted wooden air vents near the V-shaped peak and a half-shed tin-roofed porch with large wooden brackets supporting the overhanging porch eaves. The siding was aluminum, and it was pulling away from the house in several spots.
Arthur Cater yanked open the screened door, and she followed him inside.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. She was on a screened porch, or what was left of it. Most of the rusty screens were torn, and in some cases, they were missing entirely. Two cheap plastic armchairs were overturned, and the painted wooden floor was littered by overflowing trash bags.
Her new friend pushed open the front door. “After you,” he said with a flourish. She was greeted with a pungent smell—a mixture of urine, mildew, and stale cigarette smoke.
“Oh my,” she gasped, forcing herself to breathe through her mouth.
“Now you see what I’m dealing with,” he said.
The front of the cottage was basically one room. They were standing in the living room. Its windows were cloudy and smeared with dirt. Venetian blinds hung crazily from one hook on a long window that looked out on the porch. The rattan armchair was pushed up against the wall, heaped with an old sleeping bag and pillow, and a matching end table rested, upside down, atop it.
“That’s it, right there,” the man said. “And I warn you, it’s heavier than it looks.”
Grace upended the table, setting it on the filthy avocado-green shag carpeting. Its top had more water rings and cigarette burns, but she loved its rounded-off triangular shape. She gingerly removed the bedding from the armchair and concluded that it, too, was in sound shape, although the cushion was ruined.
“You really don’t want these?” she asked Arthur, who’d walked to the other end of the room. Which was a dining room, from the looks of it. The only furniture here was a flimsy card table and a pair of old-timey folding aluminum beach chairs with rotting plastic webbing. A cheap brass chandelier dangled over the table, but only one of its candle arms was lit.
“What?” He turned around. “Nah. But I would have liked the dining room furniture that used to be here.”
Grace went over to join him. “They stole your furniture?”
“Yup,” he said. “Mahogany table and chairs, and a buffet kind of thing. Those were my mama’s. I thought about taking ’em out of here, but we didn’t have room at the house, and I thought they’d get ruined if I left them in the garage.” He shrugged. “I’d love to know how they got that heavy stuff out of here. They didn’t have but one car, and that was a crappy little Kia.”
“Mm-hmm.” Grace wasn’t really listening. She was taking a good look at the house itself now.
It was a typical Florida cracker house, she thought. These walls were board and batten, probably old pine under the multiple layers of paint and dirt. The ceilings were quite tall, also board and batten, although they’d never been painted. Through a tall doorway, she could see into the tiny galley kitchen.
“Okay if I look around, Arthur?” she asked.
“Just watch your step,” he advised, heading back toward the porch with another load of trash.
A single grungy window over the kitchen sink let in feeble light. Grace found a light switch, and as the ceiling fixture flickered on, half a dozen cockroaches skittered for the shadows. She shuddered, but was not surprised. Roaches were as much a part of living in Florida as palm trees and sunshine. Her least favorite part.
The kitchen was something of a time warp. The countertops were speckled gray formica. The cabinets were wooden, with gummy-looking chipped white enamel paint. There were two wooden upper cabinets, one on either side of the sink, and two lower ones, each topped by a drawer. The cabinet doors were all ajar, and she could see a sad assortment of mismatched pots and pans, some cloudy glasses, chipped plates. An old avocado-green stove sat at the far end of the counter, its surface spattered with grease and food particles. A small saucepan with an unspeakable layer of burnt … something … sat on the front burner. The oven door was open, and when Grace closed it she saw another scattering of roaches.
Turning around, she saw the refrigerator. It was a somewhat newer model than the stove, but its white surface was freckled with rust. To the left of the fridge was another counter, with a pair of wall-mounted upper cabinets. Beneath the counter there was nothing but an open space, where an evil-smelling plastic trash can was tipped on its side.
Through a second doorway was a short hall. An open door showed the bathroom. The black-and-white penny-tile floor was now a grimy gray. The sink, commode, and bathtub were pale pink, which meant, Grace knew, that they probably dated from the early fifties.
There were two more doors, both closed. Grace was about to open one when she heard a faint scratching sound coming from inside the room.
She took a step back. Rats? She took another step back.
Arthur poked his head inside the hall. “I wouldn’t open that door unless you wanna get attacked,” he warned.
Grace decided she’d seen enough of the house.
“Bad enough those lowlifes trashed the house like this,” he said. “They went off and left their damned dog behind. I ask you, who moves out and leaves a dog behind?”
Ladies' Night Page 15
