Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  “I’m sorry about the car, really. I will never, ever, take it again. Unless you tell me to. Is that what you meant I had agreed to? Because I can’t remember, but I’ll never forget again. I thought I’d have it back before you woke up. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not talking about the car. I meant all that squabbling and hysteria before you agreed to make the phone call and notify the police. It could have been so easy—couldn’t we skip the fireworks from now on? Everybody would be happier.”

  They all were against her. She hated them. Hated him. Why should she do anything he wanted?

  “You’re immature. Compared to us, I mean. I’m not blaming you—it isn’t your fault. You’re normal, that’s all. You’re eighteen, haven’t been through much. But it makes life really—”

  “I’ve been through plenty! I’m not a baby, the way you make me sound! I made a fuss because I understand more than you do. You’re all manipulating me, pushing me around. Whatever’s comfortable for all of you is what’s right, and screw me!” The scream drilling through her skull hit a well of tears and she blinked and brushed hard against her eyes. “I’m not doing any of it. I’m not calling the Marshalls. They’d never understand in a million years why I left and—”

  “Isn’t that where you were this morning?”

  “I never said I’d do it on my own. You were supposed to write out what I’d say. Besides, none of you care if my entire life is ruined by it!”

  “You think you’re grown up, but that’s the most childish— You won’t take care of messy things, loose ends. You don’t do what you say you will.”

  “All you want is peace and quiet. That’s not adult—that’s dead! More time for the crossword puzzle or the computer, and to hell with everybody else!”

  He took her arm and held it. “Calm down,” he said, acting like a jailer. “Okay, fine. I’ll go tell them. You can wait in the car. They won’t see you, it’ll be done, and then we’ll stop at the police, or you’ll call—or I will, and then we’re going to have lunch and a reality check. You get that? You’re a spoiled little girl, no matter what you think. All you want is what you want, when you want it. Now get in the car. The day’s ruined, anyway.”

  “My stepfather—I want to see him. I want him to know there’s no more secrets.”

  “Are you crazy? Didn’t you run away from them? And you think I’m going to stand around here like a kidnapper? Like I’m responsible for your running away? Get in the car and give me the charm.”

  She got into the hearse, but clutched her necklace.

  “I’ll give it back, but I want them to remember what I’m talking about, think about where they got theirs, what they know about them, and call the police.”

  “This is too stupid,” she muttered, handing it over. But if she cooperated, got this over with, she could use a lunch. Her stomach growled. And maybe when he wasn’t so hungry, he’d look at her in that kind, loving way again, and go back to being Lucan the Steward, then she could be Gwyneth for as long as life itself.

  “Which one should I go to first?” he asked. “Where are they?”

  “They? Who?”

  “The two women who had hearts like yours.”

  She’d forgotten she’d said that. She’d made up that there was a second one, added on only to shut them up and make the hearts seem even more common. But what was the made-up name? And why did she have to do this at all? There’d been thousands of girls with heart-shaped pendants, and if she didn’t happen to know all of them, did that make them less common?

  She couldn’t remember what she’d said. Instead, she thought of somebody who worked all day, who was never going to be around. “I’d see Mrs. DeLuca first,” she said. “She’s in San Anselmo.”

  “DeLuca? I thought Matterson. Or Masterson. Like in ‘It matters some’ is what I thought last night when you said it.”

  “Well, you thought wrong.” He must be testing her. She didn’t remember giving him any specific name.

  He shrugged and started the car.

  “It’s out of the way,” she said. “San Anselmo. You should skip it, or go some other—”

  “It’ll be fine.” He was so wrapped up in his little adventure, he didn’t even care. But maybe it was okay. Maybe they could go home straight from there, skip the Marshalls. Maybe they could get back to where they’d started.

  “Life is so much easier on everybody,” he said, “when you handle things instead of whining about them.”

  She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him way up on the pedestal where he’d placed himself. She wanted to slap him, drag him back to real life, scream at him. But she controlled herself, an act of great maturity, if only he were mature enough to notice.

  Eighteen

  Billie’s car was aimed toward the office where she hoped to find Stephen Tassio. Not in the flesh, but in the computer. That group the receptionist had mentioned—his mother had sneeringly referred to it, too, hadn’t she?—the medieval thing. Maybe there was a way to find him through that. If, indeed, people who were in love with the Middle Ages were able to balance that alongside the artifacts of cyberspace.

  The fleeting thought of the senior Tassios made her shoulders slump as if the couple had settled on her like twin gargoyles. How could they care so little about their son? What happened during a life to cause such estrangement? Between Penny Redmond and her parents, too. She rolled her head to ease the strain in her neck.

  Odd that she would even ask, given that she knew the answer anyway, from personal experience. She had next to no contact with her own parents in the hope that the farther the distance, the less sharp the pain would be. And it was in fact a partial cure. She believed in running away from some problems. What else was a divorce? Distance made the heart grow calmer.

  Had the Tassios ever felt about Stephen, Sophia Redmond about Penny, the way she did about Jesse, the linchpin of her life?

  She hadn’t seen her son in what felt like too long and then for only brief and insignificant moments. A kiss and a glimpse of a sleep-swollen face and footed pajamas in the morning, and then, when? She had promised to be home to tuck him in and hadn’t made it. All she’d gotten to do was turn off the light he’d insisted be kept lit pending her arrival.

  Maybe that’s how estrangements of the Tassio and Redmond kind began. Maybe parents didn’t have to do anything directly to shut off communication. Not being there might suffice.

  She glanced at her watch. Nursery school was over and Ivan didn’t have class today or tonight, so no extended day for Jesse. A quick stop home wouldn’t hurt. She lived so close anyway, a matter of five or six blocks. No big thing. While she ran around in search of Stephen, she didn’t want Jesse becoming the shoemaker’s child.

  Touch base, that was all, then back to the office for a spell on the computer. She could work as late as she needed. While she U-turned to head home, one stay of the guilt-corset loosened. Not the one about Cameron re-kidnapping Jesse. Not the one about not being able to provide the niceties, let alone luxuries for her son. Not the one about needing to keep her son from his father. Not the one about the way the house wasn’t kept up, or the one about whether Ivan really paid enough attention, or the one about the junk food too often served up or the dozens of other undone or half-done items that squeezed her rib cage smaller than Scarlett’s so that day or night, she could barely catch her breath.

  “Mommy!” Jesse said, with enough surprised delight to break her heart and a running knee-tackle that nearly knocked her over. He seemed able to leap from sitting cross-legged to a full sprint. Maybe he had a future in sports. “Mommy! Ivan—Mommy’s here!” He clung to her knees in his baby-monkey pose, which she found—and the monkey knew she found—irresistible.

  And where was Ivan? All she could see was Jesse, plus her semi-nice brown sofa, the usual droppings on the puke-green carpet that had come with the house and that she couldn’t afford to replace. Jesse’s trains and trucks, two of her half-read New Yorkers, an unruly stack o
f sheet music, a bowl with a dozen Cheerios, and a half-empty glass of juice.

  “Hey, mister!” She lifted her son, although a new solidity to his three-year-old flesh and density to his bones made it harder to arc him out of gravity’s pull. “You’re getting enormous! Mind if I plant one on you?”

  He wrinkled his nose and squirmed, laughing the whole time. A few weeks ago, he had entered a tough-guy phase—swaggering, bragging, and declaring that there would be no more kissing, but either he’d forgotten, or he was allowing her to break the new rules on this special occasion.

  Ivan walked in from the kitchen. His welcoming smile was mildly concerned.

  “Mommy’s here. She’ll make us dinner and read to me and I’ll—”

  “Wish I could stay, Jess, but I have to get back to work.”

  Jesse looked as if he were deciding whether to have a tantrum or not at this news.

  Ivan, on the other hand, looked relieved. Trouble hadn’t brought her home at this unexpected hour.

  She wondered if he paid enough attention to the boy. His course load was packed, and his workload compounded as he studied in a language that was still new to him. She knew he was the best deal possible for her, maybe the only one—where else would she find a barter system nanny? It was pointless to be annoyed that the TV blared a mindless cartoon while Ivan did his classwork in the kitchen.

  “Tell me about your day,” she said to Jesse, postponing a Serious Talk with Ivan for the evanescent Time twins—Some Other and When I Have. “What did you do in school?”

  “I made bubbles, and painted, and we made juice from the inside of oranges, not a can! Vanessa brought in this machine that smushes them and juice comes out! I did it, too!”

  Bad California mommy, whose kid was dazzled by juice coming out of fruit, not packaging. “Was it good?” she asked.

  He nodded, jgravely, his eyes wide. “Could we get one of those machines?”

  She couldn’t remember if a wedding-gift juicer was packed up somewhere in the house. “I’ll try,” she said. “Know what? Right now, I have time for a story if you’d like. Or we could play piano and sing, or—”

  The doorbell rang. Then, much too quickly, rang again.

  Ivan, raised to worry about anything the least out of the ordinary, glanced at Billie. “Expecting anybody?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  The bell rang a third time. Either an emergency or the kind of person she didn’t want to know. Billie put her son down, close to Ivan, and went to answer it.

  “Where is he?” a thin, wild-eyed woman asked before the door was half open. “I know he’s here.” She flicked an errant strand of dark hair off her narrow face. “I thought you’d be at the beach, at our place maybe, but then I saw you go here.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Behind her, Billie heard Ivan tell Jesse to stay on the sofa, then he moved closer to her. She’d forgive his preoccupations as long as he was alert when it mattered. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the one you think you’ve replaced. I’m the cast-off.”

  “Ivan?” Billie asked. “Is this a friend of yours?”

  He moved still closer, all six feet three inches of him. He had a broad and smiling face and wasn’t particularly muscular, but the size of him alone was a comfort. “Who are you?” he asked, his accent thickening with each syllable. “What you want here?”

  “Who’s he?” the woman asked Billie, as if they were confidantes. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Listen carefully,” Billie said. “I’m calling the police unless you either make your point or get out of here.”

  The woman stood straighter. Billie realized she was quite young. Only the tension pulling her every muscle made her look indefinable but ancient. “Like you don’t know that I’m Yvonne,” she said. “Stephen’s Yvonne. I know he’s with you. I saw you at ILM. I saw you at his parents’. I want to see him. I have the right to see him!” She put her hands up, palms toward Billie. “Look, I’m clean. No weapons. I only want to talk. He has to talk to me!” She leaned closer. “Stephen!” she screamed into the house. “Stephen!”

  “Make her go away,” Jesse whimpered from inside the living room.

  “Where is he? Is he already at the beach? You meeting him there?”

  “This’ll take a minute.” Billie pushed forward over Ivan’s protests, closing the front door behind her. Her internal organs pulsed with the understanding that this woman, the one who was said to be stalking Stephen Tassio, had stalked her. Observed her through the day—and she hadn’t noticed. She was unable to believe her own stupidity. She was unfit for her job, might as well hand in her resignation. Blind, oblivious—here she’d been mentally castigating Ivan for being preoccupied—when she’d led an insane woman to her home, to her child. And what had prompted Yvonne to make it clear that she wasn’t armed at the moment. Was she usually?

  “He’s mine,” Yvonne said, her voice a cat’s, if cats could speak. “He s mine.”

  Billie felt dumbfounded, but that wouldn’t do any good. She thought of Emma, tried to be Emma, to bulk up, add years and solidity. “Go away,” she said in a low but steady voice. “I’m talking forever. I’m taking out a restraining order against you, you understand?” She had no idea if such small provocation would get her one, but maybe Yvonne didn’t know, either. “If you show your face in this neighborhood again, if you ever once come close to my house, to my child, my baby-sitter—you will be arrested. Do you understand?”

  Yvonne burst into tears. “But I love him! He’s mine! It was his parents—they put a wedge between us, they poisoned his mind. I can make him understand. Give me the chance, a few minutes. You don’t need him—you’ve got that one.” She waved at the house. “I can’t live without him. He has to see that, has to understand.”

  Or? This kind of sick passion, possessiveness, was too often a preface to a headline-making event. All the “If I can’t have you nobody can” murders. Because, of course, they love the corpse so much.

  And then Yvonne changed tacks, anger replacing desperation. “He owes me,” she said. “Owes me big, and he’d better pay up. I never finished college because of him. Palimony. A lawyer said I had a case. He can’t go spending his money on somebody like you. He owes me!”

  “He isn’t here,” Billie said. “I’ve never met him. I’m looking for him because maybe he knows what became of a runaway. I haven’t found him, either. I don’t have an address or a phone number or anything. Go away.”

  “He’ll ruin you, the way he ruined me. It’s all a game with him, like his imaginary world thing, his Society people—that’s all he cares about.” Her hand’s gesture seemed to brush away the imaginary thing. “Not any kind of society people I ever heard of. ‘Creative,’ they called themselves. Their name. ‘Creative…’” She shrugged. “Some shit. Can’t remember what they were creative at. “Creative Assassins. Right. A lot of crap about lords and ladies in the meadow. Hell, get a grip, look around—this look like a castle? The fake names—like he’s suddenly, really, Lucan the Steward. Like he’s tight with King Arthur.”

  Lucan. The Steward. Luke Stewart. Billie felt a schizy split of rage and terror at her intruder, and excitement about seeing the hunt more clearly. “I don’t know him, never met him, and you’d better get out of here and stay away from us.”

  Yvonne made Billie think of a vibrating wire. Even stock-still, waves of energy, tension, and near hysteria jostled the air around her. “I’ll get out,” she finally said in a growl. “But don’t think it’s over. I’m not through with this. Never will be. True love is forever. I won’t be through with Stephen until one or both of us are in our graves.”

  Billie watched the madwoman make her way to and then into her car, a dark hatchback that looked victimized by inattention. You will stay away. You will never again frighten my son. You will…

  She reentered her home, slamming the door, the image and fear that persisted behind her. “How about I read you a sto
ry before I have to head back out?” she asked Jesse.

  He beamed and nodded. As long as the people in his personal drama, even the reduced cast he’d been scripted, stuck to their assigned roles, stayed in character—even if he knew they were only acting—all was right with his world.

  They were the opposite of estranged. They were intertwined pieces of the whole—as long as she played her role, that of protector. Jesse was simply too young and trusting to comprehend that she had led the snake home to Eden. She was glad her son didn’t hear the hint of a tremor in her voice as she began, for the hundredth time, his current favorite, The Velveteen Rabbit, the story of the toy who loved his boy, who was saved from disaster on the discard pile. The story of Jesse, who, she feared, remembered being taken and not returned.

  She had to make sure and keep his story the same as the rabbit’s, complete with happy ending. And the happy endings had to happen every day, with every new installment.

  She refused to allow her voice to shake. Instead, playing for the second balcony, she read: “There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid.…”

  Nineteen

  Number twenty-seven, she had said. Brown-shingled. Second or third on the left. She was paranoid, made everything more difficult than it had to be, insisting that he park where she couldn’t be seen, around the corner.

  What was it about him that attracted normal-seeming girls who then went bonkers? Yvonne hadn’t seemed crazy at the start—would he have lived with someone who did? He found girls with the seeds of craziness, but what did he do to make that seed bloom and grow to blue-ribbon size?

  He pressed the doorbell of number twenty-seven, waited, then repeated the process.

  Maybe they were around back. There were obviously children, if Penny sat for them. Maybe there was more of a play area behind the house, because out front, there was almost none. He walked up the narrow cement drive that led to a shingled single-car garage, and saw a plot of mostly dirt behind the house. A wooden climbing gizmo, two beach chairs, and a sandbox with a rain-filled cover over it. No Mrs. DeLuca, no DeLuca kids.