by Cathy Lamb
She nodded, kept shredding, her eyes darting to the entrance as if she expected him to burst through the door of the café at any moment, which was a definite possibility. “You should have seen the kids’ faces. Hannah burst into tears. Logan ran to his room. Luke hid behind the couch and shook. Haley started to hyperventilate. It was awful.”
“Oh no! I thought he was gone for good.” I noticed that her glorious hair was a mess. I’m not sure she’d even remembered to brush it. “I thought you told me that after he got kicked out of the hospital, he went to a motel, then an apartment.”
“He ran out of money,” Katie said. “He went right after me, leaning on his crutches. He could barely stand, Julia, but his face was beet-red. ‘You listen up, Katie Bitch,’ he was shouting, and swinging his crutch. Luke started screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ and Hannah stood right in front of me to protect me until I told her to go to her room. I was afraid he was going to hit her.”
I closed my eyes for a second. J.D. was so like so many of my mother’s boyfriends.
“He broke a lamp with his crutch, then my favorite bowl, and he tossed three plates against the wall and screamed, ‘This is my house, and I’m living here. You can’t kick me out. My attorney says I got as much right as your fat, sorry ass to live here.’
“He limped over to me, and I thought he was going to hit me, but I never let him get close enough. Hannah and Luke were screaming and begging him to stop, but he kept chasing me around the couch, yelling and screaming, saying that I was a bad, fat-ass wife who didn’t even care enough to see her husband in the hospital and that he had told every nurse and doctor at the hospital what a lousy wife I was.”
She paused for a moment, her hands clutched around her coffee cup for dear life.
“He finally tripped over one of the kid’s toys. He picked it up—I think it was a train—and threw it right at Hannah’s head. She ducked and didn’t get hit, but you should have seen her face. She hates him, Julia, absolutely hates him.”
“I would hate him, too,” I said, but I knew she didn’t hear me.
“He was swearing and screaming and telling all of us to help him. He told all the kids they were totally worthless and stupid, and he told Luke he was probably gay the way he protected his mother. As soon as he started in on the kids, I grabbed them and left. We stayed in a hotel last night on the highway.”
She sighed, her eyes looking so tired, as if someone had taken them straight out of her head and left them out to dry and age. She had looked so much better lately, too, the spark back in her eye, a smile on her face. Katie Margold had even had a blush on her cheeks.
Now she looked bone-deep exhausted.
“Katie, we’ll have lunch,” I told her, taking a moment to hope that J.D. got hit by a steamroller. “Then we’ll go and get your things and find someplace for you to live with the kids.”
She nodded, her red ponytail slipping over her shoulder. “The house is rented. I’ll tell Bernie and Diane that I’m moving out and that J.D. is going to pay for it from now on. But where do I go?”
I thought for a minute, and then it hit me. Easy as pie. Chocolate pie, of course. Stash had a small cottage on his property with a nice front porch. It hadn’t been lived in for years, and I was willing to bet he wouldn’t mind if Katie moved in for a while, even for good.
I told Katie about the potential plan, and her eyes opened wide. “That’d be perfect. J.D. would be way too scared to go on Stash’s property. Do you think he’ll say yes?”
I grabbed my cell phone, called Stash.
“Julia, dear!” he said. “Wonderful to hear your voice! I just saw your Aunt Lydia!” I told Stash what Katie told me. “Of course! It’s perfectly okay for Katie to come live here. I’d welcome having her little whippersnappers around!” Katie told me to tell Stash she would pay any rent he asked. I told Stash. He refused to let her pay. “That girl’s been through enough. Tell her to come.”
I put my hand over the phone and told her what Stash said. Katie’s chin went up a couple of inches, she refused to live in Stash’s cottage for free. She would pay what she had been paying before: $600 a month.
I told Stash. He was aghast. He told me to tell Katie that rent would be $100 a month, if she insisted.
I relayed this to Katie. She said forget it.
Stash refused to renegotiate. “I will not charge $600 in rent to a woman in distress with four young children. I will not.” I told Katie. She lowered her amount. I told Stash. He refused but came up a tad.
Katie tightened her lips. “I don’t take charity.”
“I heard that,” Stash bellowed. “Tell that stubborn girl it’s not charity, and if she cleans my house now and then, we’ll call it good.”
Katie held her chin up. “Tell Stash I’ll agree to the low monthly rent but will clean his house on a weekly basis and provide two meals a week.”
I told Stash.
“Done. Shake her hand, Julia girl, and do it on my behalf. I don’t want her sneaking out of her deal. Lord knows I need some good dinners around here since your Aunt Lydia doesn’t invite me over every night.”
I reached out my hand, but Katie refused to shake it. “You tell Stash that he is to cash my check every month. I know him, and he’ll just let my check sit there, but I’m paying for me and the kids.”
On the other end of the phone I heard Stash sigh. “Why can’t you women take a gentleman’s gift? You’re all so damn independent and feisty. Especially your Aunt Lydia. She is the worst. All right. Tell Katie I’ll cash her checks.”
Katie and I shook hands.
I told Stash, “She’ll be there later today. We have to go and get her things before J.D. destroys more.”
“Absolutely, positively not,” Stash roared.
“I’m sorry?”
“Neither you nor Katie is to set foot in that house with J.D. in it. He’s a drunk, mean son of a bitch, and I don’t trust him. I’ll come along with Dave and Scrambler and a couple of the other men with a trailer, and we’ll load her stuff up. I repeat, Julia Bennett, you and Katie are not, not, to go there alone. We’ll see you in two hours. I’ll bring Oscar.”
Oscar was Stash’s favorite gun.
Dave, an African-American man who had been Stash’s foreman forever, was six feet six inches tall and ran Stash’s farm like it was his own. In return, Stash paid him enough that Dave and his wife had one of the nicest homes in town and a beach house.
Dave and Marie had been married for forty years. One son, Rupert, was a doctor in Portland at a teaching hospital, the other, Jordan, owned three car dealerships, and the third, William, was a screenwriter. I had actually seen his name on several different movies I’d seen over the years. Rupert, Jordan, William and I used to run through Stash’s cornfields and race tractors together during the summer. Rupert delivered me my first kiss. It wasn’t bad, I’d told him. Not good, but not bad, either.
Rupert had not seemed disappointed by my pronouncement.
Every year Dave’s chili won at the state fair. His wife’s roses always won first place at the flower show.
I loved Dave, but if you want someone beside you who looks intimidating, he’s your man.
Scrambler doesn’t look like someone to mess around with, either. He’s almost as big as Dave and has a murky past. “He’s made mistakes,” Stash had told me. “He had a lousy childhood and ended up robbing a couple of stores as a teenager. But he did his time in the pen, he’s worked for me for eight years, and he’s as loyal as they come. Teenagers do stupid things, he’s paid for it, and he’s changed. That’s all anybody needs to know. Story over.”
I personally had always liked Scrambler. He was a perfect gentleman. Very polite, very kind. And very, very loyal to Stash. But he was tough, too. Tell him not to smile, pull his cowboy hat down low, and even a strong man will shake in his boots when he sees him.
“Dave, me, Scrambler, and a couple of our other boys will be fine by ourselves. You tell Katie to meet us there so she
can tell us what she wants to take, but she is not to get out of the car until she sees us. And make sure she’s got a sitter for the kids. I don’t want them anywhere near that house this afternoon.”
I told Katie and then called Caroline, who offered to watch the kids for us while we retrieved Katie’s and the kids’ things.
We were set.
Katie pushed her red hair off her face, her brown eyes worried, but definitely relieved. “Stash is a saint.”
I nodded. “You need to go to the bank before we leave. Close the checking accounts, the credit card accounts. You need to let them know that you’re separating.”
Katie nodded. “I’ll go before we leave. Margo will take care of it for me. She’s hated J.D. ever since he ran over her white picket fence, then blamed her for it. Plus, she’s a single mom. She’ll understand.”
I nodded. Margo Fuller was a quiet firebrand who had been promoted to manager of the bank. Her husband had left her for another man. He had initially paid no child support for their four children, telling Margo that he was a new man, that country life bored him, that he had been suppressing his true self for years, and that he and his boyfriend, who had also been married, were forgetting about their pasts and going straight to their futures.
Margo’s last words to him had been “Fuck you,” and her attorney’s last words had been to pay up or have his wages garnished. It wasn’t long before that ex-husband, who had so wanted to go straight to his future, was losing half his paycheck.
Yep. Margo would take care of things.
Dave smiled at me when we drove up to Katie’s small but impeccably cared for house. He was wearing jeans, a button-down sage green shirt, and loafers. At fifty-eight years old, he was fabulously good-looking in his own tough, take-no-shit way.
“How’s Marie?” I asked him, as if we were at a tea party instead of standing outside a drunken lout’s house, ready to go in to get an abused wife’s belongings without anyone getting shot.
“Marie, my dear Marie, is as lovely as the day I met her,” Dave said, that big smile shining. “But age has not diminished that temper. Just the other night she chewed me out for something. What was it? Oh yeah. Now I remember.” Dave shook his big head.
“Does Marie ever let you be the boss?” I teased, already knowing the answer. Marie ran the ship, and her men loved her for it. She was the most loved and adored wife/mother I have ever known, and when she told her boys to do something, or when she told them to shape up, they did.
“Let me tell you something, Julia,” he told me. “A long time ago I figured out that if I did what Marie told me to do, and if I taught the boys to obey their mother, we’d all be happier. So when Marie says jump, we jump. Except if it’s on poker nights. But my Marie knows that those nights are sacred.”
“A sacred time to lose money to Stash?” I laughed.
He spread his arms out like a giant eagle. “I beat him once, and I can beat the other men, so I don’t walk home with nothing. One time, Julia, I came home with fourteen dollars in my pocket. Now, that was a good night. Of course, Marie took the money and gave it to the church on Sunday.”
I laughed. Poor Dave.
Dave said hello to Katie as she reached us, and Katie gave him a hug. Stash and Scrambler were right behind her.
“Let me go in first,” Stash said. Scrambler followed one foot behind Stash. Dave followed Scrambler. Next came three farmhands from Stash’s business. They nodded a polite hello at both of us. I squeezed Katie’s hand, and we walked up together. I felt the fear rise in my throat like bile. Abusive men can do that to me.
Stash used Katie’s key to open the door.
“J.D., it’s Stash.” Stash didn’t even wait, he just walked right into the house, his entourage following close behind him.
By the time Katie and I got to the door, we could see Stash bent over an inert lump on the couch. J.D. was snoring like a banshee, saliva dripping out of his mouth. Beer cans were scattered all over the coffee table. His left leg was in a soft cast, his crutches by the couch. I tried to summon up pity for a man who had spent four days trapped in his car, but I couldn’t. J.D. was a Major Prick.
“Well,” Dave drawled, “Looks like the man’s deep into his sauce. We could wake him up or just move things out. What do you all think?”
“I think we move it all out. Let him wake up to nothing,” I said. Katie nodded, as did Stash.
“What would you like us to grab first, ma’am?” Scrambler asked. “You just point, and we’ll have your things out in a jiffy.” I loved the way Scrambler talked, always so polite.
So we quietly started moving Katie’s stuff out of the house. First went the dining room table, which had been Katie’s grandmother’s. Then went the oak kitchen table and five chairs which Katie’s parents had given to her.
“I’ll leave him one chair,” Katie muttered. “The one he always sat his fat butt in.” She turned the chair inward to face the corner. “Asshole.”
Next we grabbed pots and pans and other kitchen items, including food. They jangled against each other, but J.D. kept snoring like a sledgehammer on speed.
The men grabbed the kids’ two sets of bunk beds, dismantling them quietly. Katie grabbed some moving boxes she’d stored in the attic, and we went through the house, taking what she wanted to save, which wasn’t much. We piled the kids’ clothes, games, and stuffed animals into other bags.
This would have taken a normal person days to do, but Katie was the perfect housekeeper and believed in throwing all nonessentials out of the house immediately.
Katie showed us where her “office” was, where she was writing her book. An ancient computer slouched atop a rickety table in the same cramped, dark room where the washing machine and dryer sat. We grabbed the computer, her disks, her folders and writing books, and left the table
The men moved onto her bedroom.
“Don’t bother,” she told them quietly when they reached for her bed. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to ever see it again.”
They nodded at her and moved out two antique pieces—a dresser and an armoire that had been willed to her by her Great-Aunt Zee Zee. Katie and I dumped her clothing into one big sack—she didn’t have much, I noted—and I took it out to my car.
And still J.D. snored on.
We even moved the couch next to the one his enormous body was lying on like rotting meat, and he didn’t stir. I couldn’t help but hope he would quietly choke on his tongue or that his liver would be quickly pickled by alcohol.
It wasn’t until Katie made the mistake of jarring his prized and most favorite possession, his stereo, that J.D. woke up like a cat that’s had a mouse run over its back.
“What the fuck is going on?” he slurred, his eyes bloodshot, belly hanging over his pants. “What the fuck is going on, and what the fuck are you doing here, Dave? I ain’t invited you into my home. And I don’t want no criminals here, either, Scrambler, so get your ass out. This is my house, and I sure as hell don’t need you two in it.”
Dave and Scrambler spread their legs out and crossed their arms over their chests.
“Take it easy, J.D.,” Stash said, his voice low and steady as he came into the family room. Stash had done two tours in Vietnam, fighting with a special unit that he never spoke about, and a drunk like J.D. didn’t scare him at all.
“I ain’t fuckin’ takin’ it easy, Stash. What the hell’s going on? You took all my furniture! Dammit, Katie! What the fuck have you done now?”
Katie took a step forward, her chin high. “I’m taking my things, J.D. I told the landlord that you’ll be renting this place from now on, not me.”
“Me? Well, shit, bitch,” he said, reaching for his crutches and lurching to his feet. Dave and Scrambler took a step forward, standing between her and J.D. “You’re leaving me when I’ve still got a cast on and I can’t even work? What kind of lousy shit wife are you?”
“Don’t talk to her like that, J.D.” Stash said. “Do not cuss in front of
a woman, especially not your wife.”
“But this bitch—” The rest of whatever vile words were going to come out of J.D.’s mouth were stopped when Stash put his hand on the back of J.D.’s neck and squeezed. The Army will teach you wonderful things, I thought to myself, trying not to smile as J.D.’s eyes bulged.
“I told you not to swear, J.D.” Stash said, his tone calm, as if they were discussing a sunset. “I don’t want to have to squeeze any harder. You don’t want that none, either, do you?”
J.D. was turning a lovely shade of red, then purple. Finally he nodded, his eyes furious.
“I’m only taking my things, J.D.,” Katie said. “The furniture my family gave me, the kids’ things. I’m leaving the stereo that you bought. The bill for it is on the kitchen counter.”
Stash released his neck, and J.D. gasped, bent over, then straightened as much as he could on his crutches. “How am I supposed to pay for it when I don’t got a job? I can’t work—look at my leg!” He looked around the room. “You’ve stolen everything from me!”
“No, I haven’t. I’ve only taken what I walked into the marriage with and the kids.”
“You’re leaving me high and dry during the worst time of my life, Katie, you—” he stopped talking when Stash grabbed his neck again. “I’ll get you for this,” he wheezed after Stash let go.
Katie looked at him, strength in every line of her face. “You have left me high and dry our entire marriage, J.D. Plus, you were leaving me for Deidre when you got in your car accident, and you know it.”
“I already told you I was going to the city for a break.” He wobbled on his crutches. This was a man who was going to have to fend for himself. I almost giggled. “I had to get away from your constant nagging.”
“For a break?” Katie snorted. “You took all the money out of our checking account that we had, J.D. and you knew I had rent due in three days. You packed all your clothes. You took photographs of your mother. You didn’t even bother to say good-bye to the kids, I might add. You were leaving me. Worse, you were leaving the kids.”