The Best of Enemies

by Jen Lancaster

  “Semi. Otics.”

  I hold up my hands in surrender. “I give up. We’ll just ride in awkward silence.” And undeniable comfort.

  We pull up to a sprawling home with a steep roof, highlighted with peaks and arches and gray timber over white stucco, so expanded and overblown that there’s room for only a couple of flowering bushes before the whole thing bleeds onto the sidewalk. As we pull down the drive back to the garage, I note that the house spans the depth of the property. At Steeplechase, one doesn’t get a sense for the magnitude of the home because the dwelling is proportional to the amount of land and trees around it. Here, the house is a sore thumb hulking over a tiny parcel, meant for something cozy, like the original bungalows and small ranches.

  Kitty expertly navigates into the garage while I hold my breath, sure she’s going to clip a side-view mirror. Oh, my God—the mirrors fold!

  “We’re here,” she announces. “Brace yourself for my mother-in-law, Nana Baba. She’s the worst.”

  “In what respect?”

  Kitty exhales with such vigor she fogs a portion of the windshield. I bet this car neatly handles interior condensation. “Long story.”

  I follow Kitty through a garage like I’ve never seen before. Even Teddy would be impressed. Never has it occurred to me that a garage could be more than just a place to disassemble a dirt bike, or house hundreds of old newspapers, oily rags, and paint cans.

  Instead of poured concrete, rife with oil stains, these floors are finished with a gleaming, glinting material that resembles a granite countertop. There’s a massive wall of shelves, each containing an identically sized Rubbermaid tote, all with detailed labels such as GREAT ROOM CHRISTMAS VILLAGE DECOR, PART I OF III. Another wall is covered entirely by pegboard. Rakes, hoes, shovels, and clippers are all impeccably hung Tetris-style. Other than the five bikes neatly tucked into a rack in the corner next to a pristine lawn mower, there’s not a single item that isn’t hung or boxed. The garage windows are not only spotless, with nary a spider carcass in sight, but adorned with curtains in a lightweight fabric. And, instead of reeking of gasoline, the space is lightly fragranced by . . . the holidays?

  “Am I having a stroke, or do I smell Christmas in here?” I ask.

  Kitty digs for her keys and says, “Peppermint’s a natural rodent repellent. Every couple of weeks, I soak cotton balls in peppermint oil and then strategically stash them throughout the garage.”

  I announce, “Kitty, I’m about to say something flattering, so please accept the compliment at face value. We clear?”

  Not meeting my eye, she nods curtly.

  “Okay. The peppermint trick is really clever. Also, I could live in your garage.”

  Kitty stops in her tracks and scans my face for mockery. Sensing none, she says, “Thank you. I don’t like chaos, so I work hard to keep my home clean and organized.” She unlocks the door and we step out of the garage and into a stunning space with lots of white wood and map-covered walls. “Attractive kitchen, too,” I say.

  “This is the mudroom.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Before she can reply, Kitty is broadsided by a small pink and yellow plaid cannonball that’s come flying around the corner. “Mommy!! You’re home! Yay! Nana Baba said to be nice to you because you’re sad.”

  Kitty picks up her daughter with one deft motion and hugs her close, burying her face in her daughter’s hair. “I am sad, sweetie, so thank you. Compassion is one of the Always Always values we talked about, remember?”

  Kassie nods.

  “So you are a kind little girl to worry about someone else’s feelings and I’m proud of you. Very good listening! Now, Kassie, I want to introduce you to an old . . .”

  Kitty pauses, clearly struggling for the right word to define our relationship.

  “Nemesis? Foe? Antagonist?” I offer.

  “Friend,” Kitty says with some decisiveness. Behind Kassie, she mouths, “She’s eight,” and vehemently shakes her head.

  “Semiotic?” I confirm.

  “You think?” she replies. Gently, she places her little girl back on the ground. “Kassie, please say hello to my old friend. Please call her Miss Jack. We went to college together. She’s also very sad today so can you help me give her an extra special welcome to our home?”

  Kassie throws a small but surprisingly clean hand up at me. “Pleased to meetcha, Miss Jack! How come you have a boy’s name?”

  “Because my mother had an unhealthy obsession with a dead president,” I reply.

  “Did I mention my daughter is eight?” Kitty asks pointedly.

  I haven’t had much interaction with children since I was one myself, but I see that speaking to them as though they’re adults is not the right call. I quickly adjust. “My full name is Jacqueline.” I kneel down. Over many years of speaking to sources, I’ve learned that interactions are always more positive when the other person’s eyes are parallel with my own, rising or lowering myself depending on their level. “You know what’s hard to spell? Jacqueline. It’s J-A-C-Q – Wait a minute, Q? Who puts a Q in a name? So I shortened it to Jack.”

  “Ha! That’s why I’m called Kassie. There’s a lotta letters in Kassandra. Too many, if you ask me. Same with my mom. She’s K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, but that’s sooooo long, so she’s Kitty. I have a friend named Bo. Two letters! He’s very lucky.”

  “Sounds like it,” I agree.

  She looks at me long and hard, taking in every bit of my face, coming in so close her forehead touches mine. Finally, she says, “Your eyes are funny colored,” and touches my orbital bone.

  “Funny ha-ha or funny weird?” I ask.

  “You’re funny,” Kassie giggles. She scrunches her shoulders and covers her mouth with her hand as she laughs. Then she throws one hand on her hip and declares, “I am going to be your friend, Miss J-A-C-K.”

  I stand back up. “Hear that, Kitty? Kassie is going to be my friend.”

  Kitty pets her daughter’s long corn-silk locks before planting a kiss on her temple. “Can you do me a big, big favor and go tell your Baba and your brothers that I’m home?”

  Kassie is doing a little jig around the room, finding it impossible to stay in one spot. I remember how I could never hold still at her age, either. (When do I grow out of that stage? I wonder.) She exclaims, “Yes! Are we all going to play a board game? I’m thinking . . . Trouble or Sorry.”

  I tell Kassie, “Your mom and I are trying to avoid anything to do with Trouble or Sorry. Do you have Candyland?”

  Kassie shakes her head, hair flying out in all directions. “We don’t have Candyland. Ask me why. Please, please! Ask me why.”

  “Okay, why?”

  Kassie’s already cracking herself up before she can say, “Because my mom can’t hide broccoli in candy!”

  “She’s said this before?” I ask.

  “Once or twice,” Kitty replies. But instead of growing taciturn like my mother would when the boys and I would tell our Little Johnny jokes over and over, Kitty gives her daughter a big squeeze and says, “And it’s hilarious every time! My turn. Knock, knock, Kassie.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Olive.”

  “Olive who?”

  Kitty yells, “Olive you and I don’t care who knows it!”

  Kassie squeals with fresh delight and there’s more hugging and tickling. As I observe their unabashed mutual affection, I’m hard-pressed to recall a single time when my own mother responded similarly. When we’d get too riled up for her liking, she’d lock herself away in my parents’ bedroom, Tom Kitten in tow.

  Collecting herself, Kassie asks, “You got any jokes, Miss Jack?”

  “Sure. How about this? There are two muffins in an oven.” I glance at Kitty and say, “No, wait, there are two zucchini muffins in the oven. One zucchini muffin turns to the other
zucchini muffin and says, ‘Whew, it’s hot in here.’ And the other zucchini muffin says, ‘Oh my God, a talking zucchini muffin!’”

  Kassie reacts as though I’m the unholy love child of Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin, and Lisa Lampanelli, rolling with laughter as she dances around the room. She’s still sputtering when Kitty says, “Eight-year-olds are the most appreciative audience on the planet. Fact. Anyway, sweetie, I’m so sorry but Miss Jack and I have some work to do. We’d love to have you join us, but we’re going to talk about really boring topics so I bet you’d hate it.”

  “Like grown-up lady stuff when you talk to Miss Ashley?”

  “Yes, just like that.”

  “Blech. No, thank you, please.” Kassie scratches her head as though in thought. “I’m going to find Nana Baba and tell her that funny joke.”

  “Good idea,” Kitty replies. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

  “Will Miss Jack tell me another joke before bed?”

  I glance over at Kitty, but I can’t read her expression.

  “Depends,” I reply. “Do you like elephant jokes?”

  With deadpan delivery, she replies, “I don’t like them . . . I live for them!”

  “Then it’s a date,” I reply.

  “Okay, then. ’Bye, new friend Miss Jack!” She scampers off into the recesses of the home. As she propels herself up the stairs, I can hear her exclaim, “Zucchini muffins!” and I can’t hide my grin.

  “Stop smirking, Bouvier. She’s eight. She’s still at the age where she likes everyone.” But she says this without rancor. “Anyway, let’s talk in here.”

  I follow her out of the mudroom and to the kitchen proper. I sit at an old wooden table, heaped with bowls full of lemons. Why so many lemons? Is Kitty starting a lemonade stand? And what is it about women and kitchens? Mrs. Martin used to have a sign that read NO MATTER WHERE I SERVE MY GUESTS, IT SEEMS THEY LIKE MY KITCHEN BEST. Is kitchen-gathering a portion of the girl code I never learned? My brothers and I always headed as far away from the kitchen as possible because the chairs weren’t as comfortable as the couch, and also because no one wanted to accidentally be crushed in a landslide of dirty dishes.

  “Let me change out of these wet clothes and check in with my husband. Hopefully I’ll catch him before he goes out to dinner,” Kitty says as she trots down the hall. “Back in two shakes. Stay right there. Mean it. Don’t go anywhere.”

  By the time I reply, “Where would I go?” she’s already upstairs.

  • • •

  “Where the hell are you, Bouvier?”

  Kord, Konnor, and I are all gathered in rocking gaming seats in front of the gigantic television in the basement. After ten minutes of waiting, I couldn’t resist the siren song of what sounded like action.

  “Mom, Miss Jack’s down here with us!” Kord, the elder son, calls. Kitty hustles down the basement stairs. “She’s KILLING IT on Madden NFL! How come you never brought her over before?”

  “Hey, Mom!” Konnor says, brightening when he sees his mother. “You want a turn?”

  Kitty bends down to fix Konnor’s wrinkled collar. “Love to, but not now, kiddo. Miss Jack and I have some business to discuss upstairs. But don’t forget, you still owe me a rematch.”

  “Mom’s almost as good as you are,” Kord tells me.

  “You play Madden 15, Kitty?” I ask. I’m surprised to hear she joins in her children’s games. My mother would always retreat when we broke out the Atari. She said the electronic beeps gave her a migraine.

  “I have many talents,” Kitty replies lightly. “Boys, did Baba give you dinner yet?”

  “Yeah, we ate around five o’clock,” Kord replies, gaze fixed on the game.

  Kitty places a finger to her ear. “Beg pardon?”

  Kord shoots her an apologetic grin. “Yes. Sorry, Mom, yes. We had the spinach lasagna.”

  As they all interact with one another, with their blond hair, toothy grins, and patrician features, the three of them look like a page ripped out of the JCPenney catalog.

  “That’s great, sweetie!” She places a conspiratorial hand on his shoulder and leans in close. “So, what’d you really eat?”

  “Busted!” Konnor said in the same kind of smug, you’re-gonna-get-it tone I thought emanated exclusively from John-John.

  “Frozen pizza. But I split a bag of spring mix salad with Kassie and Konnor,” he says.

  “How many colors?” Kitty asks.

  Kord raises four fingers, eyes back on the game. “I added those sliced mushrooms, plus red peppers, black olives, and pepperoncini.”

  Wow. Only under threat of martial law would my brothers or I consume anything healthy at that age.

  Kitty holds out her palm. “Up top, my man.” Kord rewards her with a high five. She returns her attention to Konnor. “As for you, don’t pretend you weren’t playing Medal of Honor: Airborne while I was out. Rated T for Teen means not you, my twelve-year-old friend.”

  Konnor’s mouth hangs open. “How did you . . .”

  “I’m on top of everything that happens under this roof. Okay, guys, you have fun! We’ll be upstairs if you need anything. Jack, shall we?” She so handily makes this order sound so much like a request that I find myself complying without argument. Who’d have guessed Kitty could be a commanding presence?

  As we climb the basement stairs, I’m curious as to her methods. “How’d you know about the pizza and the video game? Nanny cams?”

  Kitty’s now dressed in an outfit similar to mine, hair pulled back in a loose bun. We look like those women in the tampon commercials, drinking wine with lunch. “Nothing that high-tech, I’m afraid. Just finely tuned MSP—Mom Sensory Perception. You see, Kord had an oil stain on his shirt from drippy pizza cheese and I saw crumbs on the counter. My spinach lasagna isn’t greasy and doesn’t contain cornmeal.”

  Wow. My mother would never have picked up on those clues. “Okay, then how’d you know about the younger one?” As a reporter, I’m trained to observe my surroundings, especially when embedded. With so much danger in the field, one uncalculated move could mean the difference between life and death. “I didn’t notice a Medal of Honor game box sitting out anywhere.”

  Kitty tells me, “Motherhood is the ultimate game of high-stakes poker. You want to win, you have to know how to read your kids. You learn their tells and anticipate their next moves. For example, Konnor’s cheeks were flushed. When I touched his collar, it felt damp, as though he’d recently been worked up about something. Madden 15’s a fine E for Everyone game, but doesn’t provide that level of adrenaline rush, so I speculated he’d been playing Medal of Honor. That’s our only Rated T for Teen game. On that hunch, I glanced at the shelf where we house the boxes and spotted open space between alphabetically arranged Mario Kart and Minecraft. Case closed.”

  • • •

  Our tentative truce holds while we compare notes and form our plan of attack. Finding Ingrid is our first priority. “Here’s how we play this—I’ll ping my NSA contact who owes me an off-the-books favor. He can very quietly run the gamut from recording cell phone calls to tracing credit card activity on Ingrid and anyone in her family.”

  Kitty furrows her brow. “On a scale from one to ten, how legal is that?”

  “A ten.”

  Kitty begins to chew on her lower lip, as though in thought. “Really? Because that sounds like something a super-villain would do.”

  “Oh. I reversed the numbers. One, definitely. Probably more like zero.”

  Without hesitation, Kitty says, “Big no. Big, fat, huge, screaming no.”

  “Kitty, do you want to help Sars or not? This would all be through unofficial channels, not part of the public record.”

  “Help Betsy, yes. End up in Orange Is the New Black, no. Look at this face. I would be the Piper character and I wouldn’t have an ex-girlfriend there t
o protect me.”

  “Kitty, I see no other alternative.”

  Kitty’s voice ratchets up a note. “Yeah, because you only see what you want to see. Tell me again why we can’t go through official channels.” Kitty begins to police up our dirty dinner plates. To give due credit, her spinach lasagna was superb. The roasted eggplant was an unexpected addition and the ricotta had a touch of something sweet—cinnamon, nutmeg? Her meal made me want to learn to cook. But just because she knows her way around a kitchen doesn’t mean she understands the complexities of conducting an investigation.

  “Kitty, a Fort Knox’s worth of money is missing. A crime on this level had to involve more than a single person. We have no idea who else may have helped perpetrate the fraud. Dozens could have been on the take, paid to look the other way. Starting an official investigation could tip off Trip. I’m sure he’s fled to a country without an extradition treaty. My suspicion is he’s fled to someplace cushy and relatively easy for us to look for him, like Monaco, but if he finds out someone’s on his trail, he could go deep undercover somewhere impossible to travel to, like Equatorial Guinea.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a small country in Western Africa, south of Cameroon.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Exactly.” While Kitty rinses our plates, I add, “I suppose you’re also opposed to monitoring Ingrid’s banking activity or hacking security cameras in her neighborhood?”

  She bangs flatware into the dishwasher in response.

  “Fine,” I reply, growing frustrated at her rejection of each viable solution. “If you’re not comfortable using modern, covert technology, we can go old school by interviewing associates and potential witnesses. We can stake out her domicile. But I’m afraid we’ll inadvertently tip off Trip. Or, God forbid, Sars.”

  “A stakeout, Jordan? With cold cups of carry-out coffee, sub sandwiches, and us hiding behind an open newspaper in the front seat? That would be a fab way to approach the situation, if we lived in, say, 1976. Shall I start calling you KoJack now?”

  My bonhomie dissipates with every obstacle Kitty throws in our path, but at least she’s stopped calling me Bouvier. “Listen, I can always do this without you.”