by Dave Cravens
“Leftovers are in the fridge. Grab a plate, and two glasses.”
“Two?”
“I think we could both use some wine,” answered Valerie as she headed to the door to the cellar.
14.
As the midnight hour approached…
Valerie poured a 2012 bottle of Saint-Emilion Grand Cru with great care, filling Parker’s glass first. “Here,” she said. “This should take the edge off.”
Parker practically robbed her mother of the glass, then gulped the red liquid in its entirety before Valerie had even finished pouring her own. “Yup,” Parker belched. “Sure does. Hit me again.”
“Sweet Eva Marie Saint,” Valerie grumbled. “You’re supposed to sip and savor.” She elected to pour half of what she did before.
“Come on, Mom,” said Parker, waving her in for more. “Don’t be shy. Filler up.”
Valerie poured a single drop more. “You can have more after you explain Chicago.”
Parker stuck her tongue out and plopped herself onto the couch. Despite having changed into her favorite Slippery When Wet classic Bon Jovi t-shirt and sweat pants she felt uncomfortable and anxious. Valerie sat across in the armchair, watching her daughter closely as she toyed with her glass, rolling the wine around within it.
“Tonight,” Valerie prompted.
“Hold on, I’m getting there.” Parker raised her glass of wine, this time taking a long deliberate sip.
“Parker!”
Parker held out her finger to signal her mother to wait as she finished her sip. “There. Lips are suitably loose now.” She coughed, having downed the wine too fast. “Excuse me. Chicago. Chicago—” her voice trailed off. “So, you know how, on occasion, I can be late to events and things?”
Valerie tried not to roll her eyes. The more accurate statement might have been that on rare occasion Parker showed up on time. “I’m aware.”
Parker let out a nervous laugh. “After Kurt died, my tardiness kind of went into a death spiral. Juggling work, three kids, it was a lot, even with the new nanny.”
“I would think so.”
“I tried everything. I got the kids into a carpool, which worked pretty well at first, but then I’d often be running late on my pick-up days and it just kind of became this – thing.”
“Thing?”
“Carpool kids are mean and evidently they don’t like waiting around at school for thirty minutes while I fought cross town traffic. Their mothers didn’t like it either. By the way, their mothers are also mean, I guess, that’s where these kids got it.”
Valerie arched a brow as she savored another sip. “I’m surprised you weren’t kicked out of the carpool.”
“Ah, see, they threatened to kick me out, but through some clever accounting on my part, I was able to stay in.”
“You paid them off.”
“And, I made the nanny takeover all carpool responsibilities.” Parker held her empty glass in the air to accept a phantom toast.
Valerie shook her head. “That’s – one way of handling it.”
Parker shrugged. “It worked. But Maddy found the whole thing embarrassing. ‘Why can’t you be like the other moms? Why can’t you ever show up on time?’ But none of the other moms were busting their ass every day trying to track down leads to expose the corruption of our favorite shit-head Senator. I kept telling myself, once I break the story, once I finally nail Hammers, I’ll take a vacation and make it up to Maddy, and Drew and Ally. I just needed to get the story done and out. I needed that win, so I could -- move on, you know?”
Valerie held the wine bottle up to signal she was ready to reward her daughter with another pour. Parker eagerly accepted. “None of this sounds so bad, Parker,” Valerie assured her.
“It wasn’t bad. I didn’t think it was bad. Things seemed to be working just fine. But then Maddy insisted on starting up piano lessons again. Which was a big deal because—" Parker let the sentence linger, searching for strength to finish it.
“Maddy only ever learned piano from Kurt.” Valerie finished the sentence for her. Valerie’s heart sank as she watched her daughter’s eyes well up.
“Right,” Parker paused, allowing the emotion to wash over her. When the wave passed, she took another sip and pressed on. “So, I found a local teacher, someone nearby, and we met with her, a Mrs. Johnson, I think. It didn’t matter, because Maddy hated her. And she hated, Mrs. Weatherby, the next one I found. And, Mr. Schmidt. And Mr. Mish.” Parker began to count the names on her fingers. “Then there was, Klingsborn, Sandquist and Mauler, all more expensive than the previous, all further and further away from home.” Parker held her forehead, reliving the trials in her mind. “Finally, finally, we found Mrs. Lidstrom. An older lady. A former concert pianist who owned a piano store in downtown Chicago and gave lessons in the back room. It was far from home, but close to work, and watching her and Maddy work together you’d think they were musical soulmates or something. They really hit it off. Forty bucks an hour for each lesson, which seemed a little steep but whatever. Later on, Maddy told me she wanted to go an extra half hour so Lidstrom raised her price to fifty an hour and wanted it in cash, and I was all – really? But you know, Maddy was happy playing again, and learning again. So, I paid it.”
“None of this sounds bad.”
“The problem was, the nanny could drop Maddy off, but picking her up was too much. For drop off, she already had to pack up Drew and Ally to drag them into the city and then back again, but the nanny was also taking courses at a community college and needed to be finished with everything by 7pm. And since the piano store was on the way home from my work, it made the most sense for me to pick Maddy up.”
Valerie nodded. “Okay.”
“I was never, ever on time, Mom. Maddy would be furious when I finally pulled up to the curb. Usually, thirty minutes later.”
“How many piano teachers did you say you went through?”
Parker recounted on her fingers. “Seven. Eight including Lidstrom.”
Valerie poured herself some more wine. “My dear, Parker, did it ever occur to you that Maddy settled on Lidstrom precisely, so you would be forced to pick her up?”
Parker frowned. “Please don’t tell me that.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes what I’m about to tell you far worse.”
15.
Parker downed the last of her wine glass.
“Now, for the record, I won’t let Maddy have a cell phone until middle school. So whenever I was late to pick up Maddy, I’d call Lidstrom to let her know. Meanwhile, my deadline for the Hammers expose was fast approaching. My source was getting cold feet about turning over his evidence, and I needed to keep him engaged. So, when it came to picking up Maddy, thirty minutes late would turn into forty minutes, and so on and so on. Sometimes I even took Maddy back to the office with me just to sneak in a few more hours of work. I was so close, and so tired, and then—” Parker snapped her fingers. “Just like that, my source grew some balls and finally delivered! He told me he’s got access to records that would prove Senator Hammers was illegally funneling campaign money to buy off a mafia boss, who would then hire thugs to start fights at immigration protests. One of those protests exploded into a full-blown riot that led to seventy-five million in store front damages and the death of five people.”
“Including two cops,” Valerie bowed her head. “I remember. It made national news.”
“Fucking Hammers,” Parker clenched her free hand into a fist. “My problem was, I didn’t have the files in my possession. The mafia accountant did everything old school, wrote everything down by hand so there was no chance of a computer hack. I was going off what my source was telling me. He claimed to have snapped pictures of the records, but now informed me he was holding out for a better offer. One of my competitors from the New York Times caught wind of the story and that undercutting bitch was willing to deal in twice the cash. Fuck that. I was not about to let five months of my hard work get upen
ded in the eleventh hour. I wanted the win. I wanted to prove to myself, my family, the whole goddamn world that Parker Monroe was still a forced to be reckoned with.” Parker sighed. “So, I made the biggest mistake of my career. I lied to my editor, told him I had the files when I didn’t, and I convinced him to run the story.”
Valerie’s jaw dropped open. “That doesn’t sound like you at all.”
“It was a gamble.” Parker swallowed. “That I lost. The day I got fired started with Jerry calling me into his office at ten o’clock that morning, demanding to know who my source was for the Hammers piece. He said Hammers was furious, demanded proof and that he was going to sue for libel, slander and everything in between. I told Jerry to cool it, to trust me, and that I’d get the docs. But when I went through my usual channels to contact my source, it was like -- he never existed. The guy had just vanished. Disappeared. He never even went with the New York Times for more money, which I was counting on to validate my headline. I spent the day kicking over every rock I could to find my source. Jerry and I argued on and off for hours. My phone was blowing up left and right with everyone in the world – rival journalists, threats from Hammers’ lawyers, talking heads on cable, everyone but my source.
“Jerry finally called me back into his office for the final time around six. I shut my phone off to plead my case without interruption. Three hours later, I turn it back on, and its full of messages from the nanny.”
Valerie’s eyes widened. “Oh my.”
“Yup. I was so wrapped up with the chaos of the day, I’d forgotten to pick up my own daughter from piano lessons. Only this time, I wasn’t thirty minutes late, or forty, I was two and a half hours late.”
“Parker,”
“No, Mom, it gets worse. To her credit, the nanny was way ahead of me sensing something was wrong. Normally, Maddy and I would have shown up at home hours ago. So, the nanny starts calling around. She tries the piano store but finds out it’s been closed for two hours. Then she tracks down Lidstrom’s personal number – but Lidstrom says Maddy told her that her mother had arrived, way late as usual, to pick her up! But the nanny can’t confirm that with me, because she can’t get a hold of me, and meanwhile I’m thinking, who the fuck picked up my daughter from piano lessons? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me!
“So, I start freaking out, leave Jerry in the dust and I drive like a madwoman downtown to the piano store, all the while dialing everyone I can think of who is involved in Maddy’s life. Friends. Mothers of friends. Teachers. No one has seen her and I’m starting to get hysterical. I call the police. They want me to come down to the station, fill out a report. Finally, I get to the piano store, and spend the next few hours going into full reporter mode and interviewing every smelly bum on the street and passerby to see if anyone has seen my beautiful, missing eleven-year-old daughter. Nothing. And I am losing it!” Parker took another deep breath, trying to hold back her tears and anger. “Finally, one bum who lives in a cardboard box in an alley three blocks away tells me he watched a girl Maddy’s age get into a cab at the taxi stand across the street a few hours ago. He found it noteworthy because she was so young and alone. Then, the nanny calls me back, and tells me Maddy just called the house.”
Valerie was about to breathe a sigh of relief but held onto it. Parker clearly wasn’t finished.
“Maddy only called to relay a message. She wanted to ‘say goodbye to Drew and Ally.’ Then she hung up!”
“Oh, Parker.”
Parker wiped the tears away from her cheeks. “So, I call in another favor at the station, and get Maddy’s call traced. It came from a payphone at a Greyhound station across the river. I rush over there, and by now its nearly 11pm. The station is getting ready to close. And there she is, my little Maddy, curled up on the bench, completely passed out with her coat as a blanket and her music folder as a pillow.”
Valerie finally exhaled.
Parker tapped her fingers incessantly on her glass. “I was so relieved to see her. And so pissed. I didn’t wake her. A security guard approached me, asked me if I was her mother. I said yes, and he told me he’d been keeping an eye on her on and off all night and was getting ready to call the police. And then I notice it clutched in Maddy’s hand – a one-way bus ticket.”
Valerie ruffled her brow. “Where on Earth was she planning to go?”
“To San Diego. Which puts her in spitting distance of you.”
Valerie smiled and clutched at her heart as if flattered. “Oh,” she said softly. Then stiffened her posture. “Oh!”
Parker frowned. “Yeah. At least, she likes one of us.”
“Where did she get the money to do that?”
“Ha!” Parker snorted. “This is how super-villain brilliant my daughter is. Remember when she told me Lidstrom raised her price? It was a lie. Maddy had been skimming off the top for months. I guess she was preparing for the day I really fucked up. And wow, did I ever fuck up.”
Valerie bowed her head. “You did.” She looked up with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “But Maddy isn’t innocent in all of this. Her actions were premeditated. She lied about you picking her up. She stole money. She wanted to punish you.”
“It worked.”
“But she endangered her own life in the process!”
“I know, but she’s eleven, she’s angry and she just lost her father!”
“For the love of Julie Andrews, that doesn’t make it better! She’s lucky you are a good investigator and found her at all! Honestly, I think both of you need some serious counseling.”
“I know, I know,” Parker shifted uncomfortably. “I just want to establish a new baseline, first, okay?” Parker set down her glass of wine on the coffee table and began to rub her temples. “We moved out here to start over. I kind of want to give that a chance.”
“Family counseling is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Baby steps, Mom.” Parker took a deep breath. “Step one, school. Step two, a new piano teacher. That’s the next thing I need to work on.”
“You’re the mother,” Valerie conceded. She stood up from her seat and retied her robe. It was a time-honored gesture to signal she was finished with whatever conversation she had been having late into the night. “I might suggest, however, the very first thing you work on is getting to school on time. Without having your car towed.”
Parker aimed her fingers as a gun to her mother. “Good plan.”
16.
Today is a new fucking day, and I’m going to ‘mom’ the shit out of it.
Parker awoke with a renewed energy and jumped into the shower. She slipped into the outfit she’d chosen the night before, a white blouse and navy pants combination that wouldn’t earn an eye roll from Maddy, nor any leering if she happened upon Glory. Most importantly, it fit her current body comfortably. She glided across the upstairs to find Drew in a desperate search for matching tube socks. Parker wadded a pair of Pokémon socks into a ball and threw it at his head.
Boom. Mommed that.
Ally woke up crying in her room across the hall. In a flash, Parker swept in with a fresh diaper and changed Ally before Valerie even knew what was going on.
Diaper bomb – defused. Fucking mommed that too.
With twenty-two minutes until lift-off for school, the Monroe family was running on all cylinders – save for one.
Parker took a deep breath before knocking on Maddy’s door and entering her dark room. “Maddy?” she called to the huddled mass of sheets on the bed. “It’s time to get up. You don’t want to be late for school.”
The mass shifted, revealing a foot and an arm.
Parker tried to keep her voice light. “Maddy, come on, it’s time to get up. New day. New start. Let’s do this, huh? I’m dressed. I’m ready – see?”
Maddy’s head popped up. Her squinty eyes examined her mother’s outfit.
“I was planning on talking with your music teacher today after I drop you off. See if she had any recommendations for a piano teacher. What is
your music teacher’s name?”
“I don’t know.” Maddy answered with a yawn.
Parker grimaced. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“We didn’t have music class yesterday.”
“Huh,” Parker bit her lip. Her mind flashed back to the arguing voices she’d heard in the music room. Was it related? She shook the question from her head. “Maybe you don’t have music class every day. I’ll ask around.”
“Sure.”
Parker tried not to frown at Maddy’s delivery of the word. Her heart yearned for it to contain a quantum of gratitude or excitement to acknowledge the prospect of starting up piano lessons again. But her head knew that would be too much to ask from a sleepy eleven-year-old coming off the screaming match from the night before. “Alright then,” Parker nodded. “See you downstairs.”
No tears, no foul – right?
Twenty minutes later, Parker had both kids loaded up in the Highlander and was pulling out of the driveway. Valerie and Ally waved goodbye from the porch window. Parker took a moment to enjoy the fact she’d left on time.
Tuesday is my bitch.
Parker’s hopes for a timely arrival at school would soon be threatened by a blue Ford Explorer seven cars ahead and paralyzed with fear. Afraid to challenge oncoming traffic and complete its left turn into the school parking lot, it simply straddled the middle of the road and blocked the entire intersection, earning a litany of angry honks. The ordeal went on for five minutes, prompting several cars to deposit their children directly into the streets to walk the rest of the way to school, congesting traffic even more.
Parker’s patience wore thin. “Blue Ford needs to grow some fucking balls,” she muttered under her breath.
“Mom,” Drew perked up at hearing the statement from the back seat. “I thought you weren’t supposed to swear.”
“Maddy backed out of the game,” explained Parker, earning an eye roll from her daughter. “What? You did.”
“You could still try not swearing,” challenged Maddy. “For the sake of decency.”