Dearie turned those clear blue eyes on Greer. “Now that we’re alone, tell me what’s going on with your mother. And don’t give me any crap about a curling iron, or say how fine she is, because I’ve been around long enough to spot bruises on her wrists. I know she’s not fine. Is she boozing again?”
“No,” Greer said.
“What is it, then? A man? So help me, if some guy hit her … Come on. I’m a big girl. I can take whatever it is.”
Greer sighed. “She’s got cancer. Late stage. She doesn’t have much time left.”
“How can that be?” Dearie cried in alarm.
Greer told Dearie everything Lise had told her about her condition. “She’s been dealing with it pretty well, but she’s getting weaker and it’s causing problems. This week she burned her hand really badly on a frying pan and then tried to drive herself to get help and instead ended up rear-ending her neighbor’s car. The air bag deployed, and that’s how she got the black eyes.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Dearie said with a sniff. She fumbled with the cigarette pack. Greer shook out another Virginia Slim, lit it, and handed it back to her grandmother. Dearie’s long arthritic fingers shook as she took a drag. “When was she going to tell me?”
“Maybe never,” Greer said. “I think that’s why she wanted to bring me with her today. So I’d tell you and she wouldn’t have to.”
“Did she … did she tell you how long?” Dearie asked, blinking back tears.
“I didn’t ask. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’m ready to find that out just yet.”
“And they’re sure it’s really terminal?” Dearie asked, stubbing out her cigarette on the gravel by the bench.
“She says so. I want to talk to her doctor, of course, but right now, she’s fighting me on that. Says I should mind my own business.”
“That’s my girl,” Dearie said with a sigh. “She was an independent little booger from the get-go. I guess that was a blessing and a curse.”
Greer hesitated. “Dearie, is there any history of breast cancer in your family?”
Her grandmother gave a helpless expression. “Not that I know of, but my mother died when I was only fifteen, you know. Heart attack. Back then, people didn’t talk about their medical problems. If you died, it was God’s will.”
*
They found Lise dozing on Dearie’s bed, with the open box of See’s salted chocolates balanced on her chest. On the television, Valerie Bertinelli’s character was saying good-bye to her married lover in the shadows of a darkened ice rink at full volume.
“How was the movie?” Dearie asked loudly.
Lise opened her eyes. Greer hooked her mother’s good hand through her arm and helped pull her up to a seated position. “Terrible,” Lise reported. “She had absolutely no chemistry with the male lead. But I will say she looked pretty good in those skating tights.” She handed the remote to Greer, who clicked the Off button.
“You two have a nice visit?” Lise asked, setting the candy box on the nightstand.
“Of course,” Dearie said calmly. “It’s always good to see my only granddaughter.”
Greer watched her mother’s wary expression. Dearie sat, damp-eyed, but silent. Maybe the two of them would get around to talking about Lise’s diagnosis, but Greer already knew today wouldn’t be that day. Dearie needed time to process things, and so did Greer, for that matter. She walked over to the bed and offered her mother her arm.
“Let’s go,” she said.
CHAPTER 14
Greer chewed her lower lip as she backed the Mercedes into the curb in front of Villa Encantada. She’d always hated parallel parking, and it felt weird driving Lise’s car, because her mother never let anybody else drive Nellie-Belle.
The field trip to see Dearie had taken its toll on Lise. Occasionally Greer shot a sideways glance at her mother, but Lise’s head was tilted back on the headrest, her eyes closed, a pinched expression around her lips. It was probably time for her pain meds.
When she’d finally gotten her mother into the apartment, Greer warmed up the leftover pizza in the microwave, and poured a pain pill into Lise’s hand.
“I guess I’d better get one of those little pill thingies with the slots, like your grandmother has for her medicine,” Lise mused. “Probably need to get some more of those hideous yoga pants too, until they take these bandages off.”
“I can go shopping for you,” Greer volunteered. “And I can take the Mercedes to the shop to get an estimate for your insurance.”
Lise nodded in a vague way. “You told Dearie about the cancer, right?”
“Yeah,” Greer said with a sigh.
“How’d she take the news?”
“Same as me. Like she’d been stabbed in the heart,” Greer said.
All afternoon she’d been pondering how to approach her mother about the one topic Lise wanted to avoid, and she’d finally struck upon the universal solution: guilt.
“Look, I know you don’t want me snooping around, but I honestly think you owe it to me to let me go with you to see your doctor. Breast cancer is hereditary, you know. I need to know if I’m at risk, too.”
Lise waved away her concerns. “There’s no history of breast cancer in my family, that we know of, and Clint told me there’s no history in his, either.”
“Clint?” Greer said, startled. “You mean my father?”
“Of course,” Lise said. “What other Clint would I be talking about?”
She stared at her mother for a long moment, too surprised to speak at first. “You’re in touch with him? Since when?”
“He friended me on Facebook. I guess it’s been a few months.”
“You’re on Facebook?”
Lise rolled her eyes. “Yes, Greer. I’m on Facebook, and I have electric lights and even use a GPS. You’re not talking to Dearie, you know.”
“You don’t have to get all offended,” Greer said. “I just had no idea you had any interest in what’s going on with him. I mean, when’s the last time you saw him?”
“I saw a selfie he posted a couple of weeks ago,” Lise said. “With his new car. Some things never change. Once a car nut, always a car nut.”
“I meant in person,” Greer said.
“Mmm, lemme think. Probably your high school graduation.”
“He wasn’t at my high school graduation.”
“Sure he was. Well, that is, he came to town. With his new so-called wife. But when I told him he couldn’t bring that whore to your graduation party, he left in a snit.”
“You never told me he tried to come to my graduation. As far as I knew, he just sent a check.” Greer shook her head.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lise said. “It was your big day. You were graduating with honors, president of your senior class. And then Clint shows up out of nowhere with that … girl. My God! She was total white trash. You would have been humiliated if your friends had seen them. At the time, I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“And what’s happened to change your mind? I mean, I can’t get over the idea that you’ve actually been in touch with that bum.”
“Who says Clint’s a bum?”
“What else would you call a man who walks away from his marriage—and his only child—without a backward glance?” Greer countered.
Lise closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the back of the chair.
“What if I told you maybe our split didn’t happen the way you think it did?” Lise said.
“So what? You’re rewriting history thirty years later? Why now?”
“Maybe because I’m dying?”
“Don’t talk like that!” Greer said fiercely.
“It’s not like I enjoy saying it,” Lise said. “But it happens to be true. And maybe it also happens to be true that Clint wasn’t the only one to blame for our divorce.”
“So it was all your fault?”
Lise made a gesture of impatience with her good hand. “You always want things to be either
black or white. A hero and a villain. But it’s not that easy. Maybe I could have done a better job of explaining things to you back then, I don’t know. I was young and dumb, and angry. At both of us, for not being able to make the marriage work.”
“Did you have a fight and throw him out?”
A prolonged silence.
“Mom?”
“I don’t know. We were fighting all the time. I was pissed at him for buying some stupid old car, and he was furious that I bought some sexy outfit for a callback, even though we were pretty broke. We were always broke back then.”
“But you did kick him out, right?”
“Maybe. What does it matter now? He left, that’s all.”
Her frustration boiled over. Greer bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood.
“It matters a lot to me, Mom. I’ve spent a lifetime believing my own father didn’t love me enough to hang around and help raise me. You know what? I’m thirty-six years old and I can’t figure out how to have a meaningful relationship with a man. What’s wrong with me? Why do I always latch on to the creeps and losers, but then pull away from a guy who seems like a decent, caring human being?”
“Are you saying it’s Dearie’s fault you’re still single? Or mine? Or Clint’s? For the love of God, Greer, do you know how crazy you sound?”
Greer nodded emphatically. “I know exactly how crazy it sounds.”
Lise pressed her fingertips to her temples as if they were beginning to throb. “What I’m trying to say is there are no absolutes. I’m trying to tell you that your dad isn’t a bad guy, and I wasn’t some plaster saint.”
Her mother’s voice sounded strained and sad, and suddenly old. “Let’s just drop this, can we? Let’s talk about you and when you’re going back to work.”
“Work is the last thing I need right now. What if I get a job that sends me to some far-flung place just when you need me most?”
“You know what would make me feel better? Knowing that you’ve got a J-O-B. That you’ll be able to support yourself after I’m gone.”
“I’m supposed to have a meeting—sort of an interview—maybe later this week.”
“Tell me!” Lise’s face was suddenly animated.
“It’s a new project, a feature for Bryce Levy.”
“Bryce Levy!” Lise whistled her approval. “Hot stuff. How did you manage to hook up with him?”
“He’s CeeJay’s new squeeze.”
“Good for her,” Lise said. “What’s the project?”
“Top secret stuff. So top secret, in fact, that the only information I could wheedle out of CeeJay was the setting. It’s supposed to take place at a small-town beach. When I meet Bryce I’m supposed to act surprised. I haven’t even seen a script. All I know is he wants a sleepy Florida beach town. No high-rises, something with a pre-Disney vibe.”
“That’s it? How are you supposed to scout locations from something like that?” Lise demanded.
“I’ve done some advance work online,” Greer said, being deliberately evasive. There are a few towns that look like possibilities, mostly in the Florida Panhandle.”
“Maybe Clint could help you out. I think the place he’s living now is near the Florida Panhandle. They’ve got nothing but beaches there.”
“So I’ve heard,” Greer said, rolling her eyes. “I do this for a living, remember?”
“Hang on,” Lise said. With some effort, she got to her feet and went into her bedroom. When she came back a few minutes later, she held out a slip of paper.
“This is Clint’s phone number. If you get to Florida you should call him.. He’d get a kick out of hearing from you.”
“Maybe,” Greer said. She tucked the paper in her pocketbook and motored for the door, intent on leaving before her mother dropped any more bombs.
“He’s your father, for God’s sake.”
“Technically, yeah. I guess he is. If you say so.” Greer was aware of just how bitchy she sounded, but she didn’t really care.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lise demanded.
“What it sounds like. He hasn’t been a real father to me since he left, right? Where was he all those years when I actually could have used a father? I’m thirty-six now, so I don’t actually need a daddy anymore. And I don’t see why it’s so important to you that I go visit a man I barely remember, and who hasn’t lifted a finger to see me in years.”
“Humor me, will you?” Lise asked, sounding exasperated. “Clint really wants to see you. I think he feels bad about the way things ended up with us. He’s not all that bad a guy, you know.”
“Then why’d you divorce him?”
“It was a long, long time ago,” Lise said. “We were kids. He loved to party. And I was fed up, you know? We were a couple of stupid, stubborn kids.”
“Mom, even if I do go to Florida, which I’m not saying I will, I won’t have time to go running off for some half-baked father-daughter reunion. If I get the job, I could be gone for weeks and weeks. Months maybe. I’m not even sure I should take it. I mean, what if you really need me by then?”
“If you promise me you’ll make an effort to see your dad, I promise I’ll try not to die while you’re out of town.” Lise favored her with a wry smile, but her daughter could see her energy was flagging.
Greer gave a noncommittal shrug. “I know you’re already sick of me, and you resent my interference, but I feel bad about just going off and leaving you. Who’s gonna wipe your butt?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Lise said. “You might not know it to look at me, but I’m really not the dumb blonde I play on television. Hell, I’m not even really a blonde.”
“I shouldn’t go,” Greer said.
“Sure you should,” Lise said. “Not forever. Just for now. It’s time to get back in the game. We Kehoe women have never been quitters, you know.”
Greer cocked her head. “Kehoe women, is that how you think of us?”
“Sure. It was Dearie’s maiden name. I always liked it.”
“What about the whole Cary Grant thing? I mean, you never used Kehoe professionally. And you never took Clint’s last name either. Do you honestly believe Cary Grant was your father?”
Lise’s lips curved up dreamily. Her eyelashes fluttered and she settled back into the sofa cushions again.
The pain pills had kicked in, Greer decided. And maybe it was time to give this particular topic a rest.
But Lise wasn’t done. “Doesn’t matter what I believe,” Lise said finally. “Dearie told me that story when I was just a little kid. Did I ever tell you the details?”
“I was always afraid to ask,” Greer admitted. “I remember when you told me not to put it on that family tree project I did for school.”
“You were in fourth grade. That teacher—I can’t recall her name—she hated show business people. Always looked down on me because I was a single mom.”
“Mrs. Roeback,” Greer said.
“I used to pester Dearie all the time about who my father was. All she’d tell me was that my father died when I was a baby. So one day, I guess she was tired of me asking, she said Cary Grant was my dad—but it was a big secret! We never talked about it after that, but when I started acting, I decided I’d be Lise Grant. I might have told a few people I was Cary Grant’s illegitimate daughter. He was long dead by then, so who was going to contradict me?”
“Do you think it could be true?” Greer asked.
Lise’s eyes closed briefly. “Hmm? It’s possible. I found an old scrapbook when we were selling her house. There were postcards and pictures, movie stubs, even some telegraphs. I know Dearie and a girlfriend got to go to Europe when they got cast in a movie Cary Grant was making in Germany. They made that movie in nineteen forty-nine. And I was born in nineteen fifty.”
A thought occurred to Greer. Was Clint Hennessey her real father?
Lise read her mind. “Don’t you even think it. Clint absolutely is your father. I have his baby pictures somewhere. You look
exactly like him at that age.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Lise sighed and closed her eyes again. “Look, I’ll be right here, and I swear, I’ll be good. No more cooking or driving. You can deputize Sean and Luis to spy on me. I’ll even give up being Lisette, since it makes you so nuts.”
Greer leaned over and pried one of Lise’s eyeballs open. “You’re going to quit doing phone sex?”
“Intimacy counseling,” Lise said. “It’ll make Clint happy, too.”
“You told him about Lisette?”
“Mmm-hmm. Anyway, it was getting to be so boring. These guys—they think their fantasies are so wild and mind-blowing? They’ve all read Fifty Shades. Big deal. Nobody has any really original fantasies.…”
“Lise?”
“Sleepy.” Lise’s eyelids fluttered rapidly.
“Does Clint know … about the cancer?”
“Yeah,” Lise said, her voice trailing off. “He wanted to come see me. But what’s the point? I look like shit. Better he remembers the hot young blonde he married all those years ago. Right?”
She turned her head slightly and gazed woozily at Greer. “Don’t be mad at me for telling him, but not you, okay?”
Greer looked away for a moment.
“Please, baby?” Lise reached out with her bandaged hand. Greer touched it lightly.
“I’m not mad.”
“Cross your heart…?”
“Hope to die,” Greer whispered.
Her mother’s breathing was deep and even. Greer tucked a blanket around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on Lise’s forehead.
“Stick a needle in my eye,” she said.
She fetched a saucer from the kitchen and laid Lise’s pain pills out in it.
She was a Kehoe woman. There would be no more unfinished business.
CHAPTER 15
Nothing about her meeting with Lise’s oncologist had gone as Greer had expected.
For one thing, she hadn’t really expected her mother to actually follow through and schedule the meeting. On the Friday morning of the meeting, she’d arrived at Villa Encantada to find Lise dozing on the sofa in her apartment.
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