Ladies' Night

by Andrews, Mary Kay

  “Isn’t that what we want? You—divorced? Free to get on with your life? Free to have a relationship with Wyatt or anybody else of your choosing?”

  “The whole thing with Stackpole and Paula—it’s wrong, Mitzi! And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You are doing something, Grace. You’re building a new life for yourself. The financial aspect aside—I still haven’t given up on that—I still think we can argue that you’re entitled to your equity in the house since so much of the labor and materials were given to you as compensation for exposure on your blog … All that aside, you are doing what I preach to all my women clients. You are not letting this divorce define you. You’re not letting bitterness defeat you. Grace, you’re a rock star!”

  Grace snorted. “I don’t even have a place to shack up with the new man in my life! So what kind of rock star does that make me?”

  Mitzi’s eyes lit up. “Ohhhh. So it really is getting serious with Wyatt. Why didn’t you say something earlier?” She dug a key ring from her purse and extracted a key, which she pressed into Grace’s hand.

  “Here. This is to my condo at Anna Maria. My long-term tenant just moved out, and I’m converting it to a vacation rental. I’ve bought some furniture and had it painted and recarpeted, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten with the place. Decorating is just not my thing. I’ve been planning on hiring a decorator to finish it, but maybe that’s something you could do?”

  Grace flushed and tried to return the key. “Oh, Mitzi, no. I couldn’t. I really wasn’t asking for your charity. I just needed to vent for a minute.”

  “I’m not trying to give you charity,” Mitzi exclaimed. “I’ll pay you, for God’s sake! You’d be doing me a huge favor. The management company that’s going to handle the rentals has been after me to get the place ready to be photographed for their Web site, but I hate shopping, and I suck at decorating. You’d be doing me a huge favor if you’d agree to fluff the place. Please?” She grinned. “It’s not fancy, but there’s a sofa and a bed and sheets and towels and a flat-screen television. What more do you need for a romantic evening? Say you’ll take the job, and I’ll stock the fridge with champagne and chocolate.”

  “I don’t know,” Grace demurred, but Mitzi grabbed her hand and closed her palm over the key. “You’ve got a credit card again, right?”

  “Yes, with a five-thousand-dollar limit,” Grace said.

  “Great. So that’ll be your budget for the condo. Five thousand will be enough to get some curtains and some rugs and doodads, won’t it?”

  “Sure, as long as I don’t have to buy the big-ticket items like mattresses or sofas or furniture, I should be able to fluff it for that much. When do you need it ready?”

  “Like, yesterday, according to the property-management people. They wanted it done before Memorial Day, but that ship has sailed.”

  Grace gave it some thought. “Give me two weeks. Is that okay?”

  “Works for me,” Mitzi said. She reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook. “Designers work on retainer, right? So, how much?”

  “No retainer,” Grace said firmly.

  Mitzi’s eyes narrowed. “Then give me back my key. Because I won’t let you work for me for free. Listen to me, Grace. I have to remind my women clients about this all the time. Just because your spouse didn’t recognize your worth doesn’t mean you have no value. You’re a professional interior designer, not some little dabbler who does this as a hobby. Don’t devalue yourself by refusing to be fairly compensated. Now. What do you bill out at?”

  Grace opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Finally, she said, “Going rate here is about 125 dollars an hour, but since I won’t actually be doing any sketches, and since it’ll mostly be a matter of shopping and installing, I charge a hundred dollars an hour.”

  “Fine.” Mitzi wrote the check and handed it to her client. “That’s fifteen hundred. If you think it’s going to take you more time than that after looking at the place, let me know.”

  Grace took the check and looked at it. It was written to Grace Davenport, her first paycheck under her born-again maiden name.

  “Thanks,” she said, her eyes shining with barely suppressed tears. And then she remembered the reason she’d asked for this meeting with her lawyer.

  “Okay. What about Stackpole?”

  “Oh, all right,” Mitzi grumbled. “I’ll take a look at his recent dockets to see what other attorneys I know have had cases before him. I’ll ask around, to see if any of their clients have been sentenced to divorce camp with Paula Talbott-Sinclair. Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “Totally satisfied.”

  “In the meantime,” Mitzi wagged a finger at Grace, “stay away from Wyatt Keeler’s wife. That woman is trouble.”

  Grace shuddered. “Don’t worry. I have no plans to get anywhere near Callie Keeler.”

  * * *

  Wyatt Keeler spent the morning in his tiny office at Jungle Jerry’s, staring at a mounting pile of bills. When his cell phone rang and he saw who was calling, he snatched it from his desktop.

  “Betsy? Hey! How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How’s the rash?”

  “Mostly gone, thanks to you. Guess I should listen to my elders more often.”

  “I’ll have to remind you of that in the future,” Betsy said drily. “Look, I won’t beat around the bush. I just got a call from Callie’s lawyer. They’re asking Stackpole for an emergency hearing.”

  Wyatt’s throat went dry. “What’s the emergency?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Betsy said. “Promise me you will not go crazy when you hear.”

  “I won’t go crazy,” Wyatt said automatically. “Now tell me what’s going on. Please.”

  He heard the sound of pages being turned. “Callie is now claiming that Nelson is suffering from acute dementia. Her filing says that when he is not confused and nonresponsive, he is verbally abusive and threatening, and he uses profane language in front of Bo, and he’s capable of violence. In short, she’s saying that as long as Nelson is living with you, your home is an unfit atmosphere for a child.”

  “What!” Wyatt put the phone down on the desk. He stood back and kicked his old army-surplus battleship-gray desk so viciously his work boot left a hollow impression in the bottom file drawer.

  He sat back down and took several deep breaths.

  “Wyatt?”

  “I’m here,” he said quietly.

  “Do you have any idea what prompted this piece of garbage?”

  “I do,” he said grimly. He quickly recounted Saturday evening’s events for his aunt.

  “Well.” Betsy sighed. “You and I know Callie deliberately provoked Nelson into a tirade. Is any of what she’s claiming true? Is your Dad suffering from dementia?”

  “No. Betsy, you know what Dad’s like. He’s slowing down, no question about it. Sometimes, usually in the evenings, he gets a little … foggy. And sometimes, again, usually when he’s overtired, he can get a little verbally combative. But most days, he’s still sharp as a tack. And he’s a sweetheart, you know that. He adores Bo. Being around Bo, helping take care of him, it’s given him a real sense of purpose. Of responsibility. And it’s good for Bo, too. There is no way Dad is capable of violence. Ever! He might rant and rave at Callie, because as far as he’s concerned, she abandoned us. But he would never act on his threats.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Betsy said. “But this latest ploy has me worried. Stackpole really chewed her out last time around. I’m thinking she wouldn’t risk annoying him again unless she thinks she really has something that will stick.”

  Wyatt buried his head in his hands. “Oh my God,” he said softly. “This is like a nightmare that never ends. She really will stop at nothing.”

  “I know,” Betsy agreed. “Stackpole wants to see us at eleven A.M. tomorrow. In the meantime, I went ahead and made an appointment with Margaret-Ellen Shank. She’s a really well-respected geriatrician on staff at
Sarasota Memorial. Fortunately for us, she had a really messy divorce a couple years ago, and I was able to help her out. Can you have your dad over there by four this afternoon? She’s agreed to juggle her schedule to see him.”

  “I’ll have him there,” Wyatt said wearily. “But what do I tell him? He’s gotta see a doctor to prove he’s not senile so I don’t lose custody of my son?”

  “Tell him the truth,” Betsy said. “I’ll see you there.”

  43

  Arthur Cater stood on the porch staring into the doorway at the little cottage on Mandevilla. He wore an ancient T-shirt with chopped-off sleeves; shapeless, colorless green pants; and a dubious expression. He poked his nose inside the living room. He sniffed. His craggy face scrunched into some indefinable expression that threatened to give Grace an anxiety attack.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” She’d spent all day Sunday using a rented floor sander to take the dirty, scuffed finish off the oak floors. She’d worked all night, mopping every last particle of sawdust before staining the floors a rich, dark walnut color. Her arms and lower back were still throbbing from her efforts.

  When Arthur Cater called to casually announce his intention to drop by and check on her progress, Grace had only managed to stall him until after her meeting with Mitzi. Her stomach had been in knots all morning, wondering what Arthur’s reaction would be to her progress.

  Now she had it, and judging by the look on his face, the news was not good.

  Suddenly, she got angry. And defensive.

  “Arthur,” she exclaimed, “it’s just paint. If you hate it, I can repaint. But I wanted a higher contrast between the floors and the walls, which is why I chose the dark stain for the floors.”

  “Hush!” Arthur turned on his heel and walked rapidly out to the porch and into the yard.

  Grace stared, speechless. Was he leaving?

  No. A moment later he was back, carrying a bulky leather-covered camera. It was an old 35-millimeter.

  He stood in the doorway and clicked the shutter. He walked into the dining room and snapped another picture. When he got to the kitchen, he stopped in his tracks.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” When he turned to Grace, his face was actually wreathed in smiles.

  “You did all this?”

  “I did,” Grace assured him.

  “By yourself?”

  “With a little help.”

  He gestured at the secondhand Craigslist range, fridge, and dishwasher. “How the hell did you get those in there?”

  “Some guys I used to work with back in my model-home days. Jimmy and Eduardo. I hired them to pick up the appliances in their truck and to install them. I don’t do wiring, Arthur.”

  He gestured at the floor, with its gleaming red-checkerboard pattern. “What’s that made out of?”

  She gulped. “It’s marine-grade plywood. The old linoleum tiles just were not coming up. So I nailed the plywood down, primed it, then taped off the squares and painted it with deck paint. Do you hate it?” She prayed he didn’t. Her knees still had bruises from all the hours she’d spent taping and painting.

  “It’s good,” Arthur said, nodding and flashing that rare-as-diamonds smile again. “Better than good. It’s great. This floor—it looks just like the tiles my grandmother used to have in here. I’d forgotten that until just this minute.”

  “How about the open shelves?” Grace asked, still anxious for his approval. “The old cabinet doors were warped and gummy with all those old layers of paint, and the only way to clean them up would have been to strip them all down to the bare wood, and I just didn’t have the time or the patience for that.”

  “Hush,” Arthur commanded. He snapped two more pictures of the kitchen in rapid succession. “Wait until my wife sees this.” He chortled. “She’s said all along that we should just get rid of the darned cupboard doors. She even showed me a picture in one of her magazines, but I told her she was crazy. Just shows you how much I know.”

  He walked back through the abbreviated hallway and poked his head into both bedrooms, nodding and snapping more exposures.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. He looked over at Grace, still dressed in a simple cotton sundress for her coffee date with her lawyer.

  “A little bitty gal like you got all this done, just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  If only he knew, Grace mused, the untold hours she’d spent working on the house, for which she’d never be compensated—not in money, anyway.

  “So, do you like it?” she asked.

  “I do,” he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

  “There’s still so much more to accomplish,” she cautioned. “The bathroom vanity—I know I told you all the fixtures were okay, but the sink has a leak, and that vanity is all rotted out underneath. I’d like to replace it with a pedestal sink with more of a period look. And the tub—I’ve scrubbed it and scrubbed it, but it’s pitted and chipped, and it’s going to look even nastier once I get the bathroom painted. I’d love to have it reglazed.”

  “Do it,” Arthur said expansively. He was in a rare mood, Grace thought. Maybe now was the time to spring the rest of her wish list on him.

  She followed him onto the front porch, where he gazed out at the yard. “What the hell have you done out here?” he asked wonderingly.

  Grace blushed. “I have a friend, he’s a landscape architect, and he gave me some suggestions about cutting things back, reshaping the beds. There’s a lot more I’d like to do in the yard, eventually. This house has such incredible curb appeal now, but it could be even better.”

  “It looks grand,” Arthur said, and he was actually beaming. “It looks better than it has in twenty years. Not just the yard, everything.”

  “I’m so glad you like it,” Grace told him. “Once I get some poly on those floors, they’ll really look sharp. And then I was thinking, I could probably start furnishing it in the next week or so.”

  “Fine,” Arthur said. “That sounds fine.”

  “About the air-conditioning, Arthur,” Grace began.

  He scowled.

  Grace picked up a wooden paint-stir stick from her stack of supplies in the corner of the front porch. She poked the outside of the air-conditioning unit protruding from the living room window. A flurry of rust chips fell to the porch floor.

  “The salt air has completely rusted this unit out,” Grace said. “It’s on its last legs. And the other units aren’t much better.”

  “No ma’am,” he said firmly. “Why, those units aren’t that old. I put them in here myself.”

  “In 1982. I found the owner’s manual in the hall linen closet. Arthur, these units are almost as old as me. They’ve outlived their useful life.”

  “Then I’ll buy some new ones,” he said, his face set in a mulish expression.

  “You’ll need five window units, at the very least,” Grace said, consulting the notes she’d scribbled on her last shopping trip. “I checked at Sears and Home Depot, for the BTUs we need in the main rooms, meaning, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and both bedrooms, that’s a little over two thousand dollars.”

  “Nonsense,” Arthur said. “I can buy those units for under a hundred bucks apiece.”

  She handed him the most recent sales flyer she’d picked up at Sears. “Maybe thirty years ago you could buy them for that, but not these days.”

  He scowled down at the flyer. “I suppose you’re going to keep after me about putting in central air-conditioning?”

  “Yes, I am,” Grace said emphatically. She handed him another brochure. “That’s an estimate I had worked up by a very reliable HVAC guy who my mom uses at the Sandbox. It’ll cost less than five thousand dollars! You’ll get an up-to-the-minute energy-efficient unit, and there may be tax breaks involved as well. And, since you pay the utilities, there will be a substantial savings on your electric bills.”

  He ran a bony finger down the printed estimate, frowning. “I never
figured to put all this much money in this little house.” He looked up at her. “There’s hardly any sense fixing it up this grand, just so the next bunch of tenants can come in here and ruin all our hard work.”

  Now, Grace told herself. Ask him now.

  “About the next tenants,” she said, fixing him with her most winning smile. “What would you say to renting this place to me?”

  “Ah-hah!” he cried. “At last the other shoe drops. I should have known you had an ulterior motive for wanting me to spend all this money.”

  “I want you to spend what is really a very reasonable amount of money to maintain and improve this lovely property,” Grace said, willing herself to keep calm and use all the arguments she’d gone over and over in her head. “I really didn’t intend to ask about renting it, but then, once I got it cleaned up and saw just what a nice place it could be, it occurred to me to inquire about renting it.”

  His smile grew crafty. “All this money of mine you’ve been spending, you realize the rent’s going up, right?”

  “Of course. If you’ll recall, that was one of the arguments I gave you for fixing it up. You’ve rented it so cheaply in the past, it’s no wonder you’ve gotten deadbeats and lowlifes as tenants. But if you rent it to me, at a fair market price, I’ll be a model tenant. I’ll pay on time, every month, no excuses. I’ll keep the property in pristine condition. And I’ll continue to make improvements, provided you pay for them.”

  “Like what?”

  He hadn’t, Grace realized, said no yet.

  “The kitchen still needs more work,” she pointed out. “Better lighting, especially under the cabinets. There’s that big dead space by the back door; I think it could be made into a nice laundry room, with a stacked washer/dryer and a shelf for folding clothes. All the windows need caulking, which should also help make the house more energy-efficient. The garage needs paint; it’s a major eyesore. And then there are tons of little things. Like replacing all the nasty old electrical outlets, maybe installing ceiling fans in the bedrooms…”

  “You love spending other people’s money, don’t you?” Arthur complained.