by Sue Margolis
“I’m sorry?” Stephanie said, taken aback by the statement. K-Mart took the dress from her and started examining it. “I’m assuming you managed to get the stain out.” It was obvious she thought Stephanie was from a dry-cleaning company.
“I—I don’t know,” Stephanie stammered. “I just delivered these.” She nodded toward the flowers. “Actually, I’m Stephanie Glassman.” K-Mart frowned with surprise. She didn’t speak for a moment. Instead she just stood there, looking Stephanie up and down.
“So, you’re the voice,” she said eventually. Stephanie nodded and watched her pinch a cigarette out of a packet with two highly polished, blood-red talons. “OK, what do you want?” She lit the cigarette with a gold lighter and took a long, urgent drag. “Hasn’t Sidney paid you enough? Are you after more? If you’re thinking of blackmailing me I think I should warn you—”
“Katherine, I don’t want anything. I delivered some CDs and the manager asked me to drop these flowers off.”
“Well, now you’ve done that,” K-Mart sneered. “Close the door on your way out.”
At that moment Sidney appeared. When he saw Stephanie was with K-Mart, the smile left his face. “Well, ah do declare,” he said, looking as if he expected the eye scratching and hair pulling to begin in a matter of seconds. “My two most favorite ladies …” K-Mart told him to cut the crap.
“Sugar, are you OK? You look a little pale. Maybe ah could get you something. How’s about a massage? Or ah could call your clairvoyant. That always calms your nerves.”
“I’ll be fine,” K-Mart barked, “as soon as Miss Glassman has gone.” As Stephanie walked past her, K-Mart let out a plume of smoke through her nostrils. Sidney offered her a feeble wave. She closed the door as instructed. OK, what did she expect? The woman was hardly going to fall all over her with gratitude. On the other hand, a simple thank-you might have been nice.
Stephanie went home to pick up her car and then drove over to her mother’s to collect Jake. As she pulled up she noticed one of those American-style motor homes parked across the drive. It wasn’t the biggest she’d seen, but it still looked massive and lumpen in the narrow suburban street full of station wagons and hatchbacks.
As she walked down the path, her mother’s neighbor, Jean, a thin, pinched Jehovah’s Witness who always gave the impression the aliens had forgotten to remove her anal probe, called out to her: “Stephanie. A letter for your father came to us by mistake.” Stephanie was just about to take the letter from Jean, when Estelle appeared from nowhere and grabbed it instead. Even in the half-light Stephanie could see quite clearly that it was addressed to Mr. P. Enis Extension. Jean shot Stephanie a pitying look, which said, “If I had known what was going on when you were growing up, I would have called in social services—what your poor mother must be going through.”
“Thank you, Jean,” Estelle said in a tone that indicated that would be all and Jean could go back inside now. Jean turned away in a huff.
Estelle stood there, tearing up the letter. Apparently there had been three other letters that week addressed to Mr. P. Enis Extension, which had gone to Jean by mistake. “They’ll drum us out of the neighborhood, I just know it,” Estelle said, voice clenched.
Stephanie was just about to ask her mother what she was doing out of the house, when Lilly and Bernard appeared. They had clearly been visiting and were now leaving. So, Lilly and Estelle were speaking again. That was a relief. Harry was standing in the doorway holding Jake. “Wave bye-bye, Jake,” he was saying. “Wave bye-bye.” Jake appeared to have gone shy and had his head buried in Harry’s shoulder.
“You two off home, then?” Stephanie said to her grandmother and Bernard.
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” Lilly replied with a smile. Stephanie returned the smile with a perplexed frown. “Your grandmother has a new home,” Estelle announced, her voice brimming with sarcasm. “Why don’t you ask her to show you?”
“I don’t understand,” Stephanie said. She watched Lilly and Bernard exchange uneasy glances. “Bernard and I can’t teach tai chi in America because we couldn’t get work permits. They said we were too old. So, instead we’re going to offer classes to the elderly in this country.”
“All over the country, to be exact,” Bernard butted in. “Starting in Devon. Hence the camper bus.” He explained that so far eight old people’s day centers in the South West alone had booked their specially designed one-week courses.
“Omigod, so that’s yours?” Stephanie said, turning toward the motor home. “You’re going to live in it?”
Bernard and Lilly nodded. “Isn’t she a beaut?” Bernard enthused. “Of course she’s not brand-new, but she handles like a dream.”
“My God,” Estelle muttered, lifting her head heavenward, “it isn’t enough the whole neighborhood knows my husband receives porn in the post, now they know my mad mother’s run off with a gypsy.”
“Ignore her,” Harry called out from the doorway. “Give her a few days. She’ll get over it.”
Lilly and Bernard insisted on giving Stephanie a tour of the camper. The vehicle itself couldn’t have been more than two or three years old, but the oppressively brown and beige interior was a monument to the seventies. “Genuine teak veneer,” Lilly said, rubbing her hand over one of the cupboard doors in the minuscule kitchen area. “Feel the quality.” Then she opened the cupboard, which was packed with tinned salmon, tuna and Heinz Cream of Tomato soup. She insisted that Stephanie sit on one of the benches, which were upholstered in brown and orange stripes. Stephanie couldn’t place the fabric, but suffice it to say that as she touched the metal edge of the wood-effect Formica table in front of her, she received a sizable static shock. Bernard lifted up the table to demonstrate how the benches unfolded to make a double bed. “Cozy,” Lilly said, winking and digging Stephanie in the ribs. “There’s even a shower and a loo.”
“So, you two are really serious about this?” Stephanie said. They told her they were. Deadly.
“Stephanie,” Bernard said, “your grandmother and I don’t know how many years we’ve got left, but for now we’ve got our health and we want to make the most of it. And we love each other.” He put his arm around Lilly and kissed her cheek. “This is going to be such an adventure,” he went on. “We’re going to help people as well as see a bit of the country.”
“Well,” Stephanie said, seeing the excitement dancing in their eyes, “if it’s really what you want, then I couldn’t be more happy for you.” She stood up and hugged them both.
By now, Estelle had gone back into the house. Lilly and Bernard wanted to pop in again for a final good-bye. Stephanie followed them. As they walked into the kitchen, Estelle was sitting at the kitchen table hugging Jake as if to say “At least I’ve got you.”
“Come on, Estelle,” Harry said, sitting down next to her, his hand on her shoulder, “you should be glad you’ve got a mother with so much get-up-and-go. And at least she’s not leaving the country now.”
“Harry’s right,” Lilly said. “What do you want me to do all day, sit around watching Family Fortunes and dribbling?”
Estelle looked up. Her eyes were threatening tears. “I just worry about you, that’s all. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Look, it probably won’t.” Lilly sat down at the table and put her hand on Estelle’s arm. “But if it does, at least you’ll know I died happy, right?” Estelle shrugged a noncommittal shrug. “Now come here,” Lilly said, “and give your old mother a hug.”
They finished their good-byes in the street. Harry and Bernard exchanged handshakes. Then Harry bent down to kiss his mother-in-law. “You’re a good boy, Harry,” Lilly said affectionately. Harry mumbled something under his breath about his mother-in-law waiting until he was nearly seventy to finally tell her he was a good boy.
“You make sure you look after my mum,” Estelle said to Bernard, her eyes filling up now. “And phone from the first campsite, just to let me know you’re OK.” He nodded an
d kissed her on the cheek. Lilly hugged Stephanie one last time. A few moments later, Bernard gave a couple of loud honks of the horn and they were gone.
As they walked back into the house, Estelle turned to Stephanie and said, “So, do you reckon they—you know—do it?”
Stephanie suggested that she, Jake and her parents go out for dinner to cheer themselves up, but Estelle said she was still feeling a bit emotional. “I think I’d rather just stay in and watch TV with your father.”
In the end, Stephanie took Jake for pizza. Since she’d spent three days at the studio pigging out on doughnuts and bacon rolls, she decided to have a prawn salad. The mayonnaise tasted slightly bitter, she thought, but not enough for her to send it back.
Next morning she was feeling a bit nauseated and she could feel the beginnings of stomach cramps. She took a couple of Diacalm and hoped it would go away. It didn’t. Then, to make matters worse, a dispatch rider turned up at lunchtime with a letter from Sidney Doucette’s lawyer saying an injunction had been taken out against her, preventing her from going within half a mile of Katherine Martinez. The letter wasn’t exactly threatening, but she was left in no doubt that her career would suffer if she started making trouble by asking for more money or if she tried to sell her story to the press. Indignant and fuming, she got straight on the phone to Ossie. “I told Katherine I didn’t want any more money. And I’d never go to the press. If I did that I’d have to own up to my part in all this. Where would that get me?”
“I know,” Ossie said, “but the pair of them have started to panic. The nearer they get to the first night, the more scared they are of the secret being blown.” Then he called Sidney a slimy, evil bastard and told her there wasn’t much they could do. “Take my advice. The injunction is totally unfair, but it’s not worth fighting. Just keep your head down and bank the money. The first check should reach you any day.”
She got the point. Sidney was a powerful man. She couldn’t take him on. The only thing she could do was to try and let it go. Of course, she was well aware she had no real right to the indignation she was feeling. After all, she was practically as guilty in all this as Sidney and K-Mart. The only difference was that her motivation had been financial desperation while theirs had been greed.
By now the cramps were getting worse. On top of that, Jake, who had missed her these last few days, was demanding her full attention. “Mummy do painting now?” he said after she’d spent an entire morning reading and doing puzzles. “OK, poppet,” she said, rubbing her stomach, “painting it is.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table doing finger painting when Stephanie heard the key in the door. “Albert?” she called out.
“No, Fidel Castro. Of course it’s me.”
“My daddy,” Jake squealed. A second later he had scrambled down from the table.
“Jake, your hands are covered in paint! Come back!” But she was too late. Jake had practically collided with Albert, who scooped him up and threw him in the air. Jake screamed with delight. “Hiya, big guy,” Albert said, kissing him. “I have so missed you. So, how’ve you been?”
“Better.” Jake nodded solemnly. “My doing painting. Come and see.”
As Albert carried him back to the table, Jake started smearing his father’s face in red paint. Albert realized but didn’t seem to mind in the least. “Hi, principessa.” He bent down and kissed Stephanie on the cheek.
“Welcome back.” She smiled, returning the kiss. She was aware that she felt genuinely pleased to see him. Albert stood back, looking at her. “You OK? You look really pale.” She told him about last night’s prawns. He suggested she go to bed while he took care of Jake. She told him that Jake was really excited at having her back and that she was sure she could make it until bedtime. On top of that, Mrs. M. was popping round later to give Jake his Christmas present.
“Oh, by the way,” she said, picking up the letter from Sidney Doucette’s lawyer. “This arrived a couple of hours ago.” He took the letter and started reading. “Christ, what did you do to bring this on?” She explained.
“That man really is a miserable slimeball,” he said. Then he made much the same point as Ossie had about how she couldn’t fight him and that she should take the money and run.
While Albert took Jake into the living room to open the present he’d bought him, Stephanie made coffee. When she went in a few minutes later the carpet was strewn with bits of cardboard packaging and Albert was showing Jake how to work a radio-controlled Jeep. He was far too young to master the controls and he kept crashing it into the furniture. Then Albert would put his great big hand gently over Jake’s and show him how to guide the joystick. “That’s it, Jake. Easy does it … See, you did it! Good job.” Jake would then insist on doing it on his own. Of course he would crash it again and Albert would patiently take his hand again. Stephanie stood in the doorway, holding two mugs of coffee, watching all this. When he saw her, Albert looked up. “I know,” he said. “Let’s see if Mommy can do it.” Stephanie protested that she was hopelessly uncoordinated, but Albert got up, took the mugs from her and pulled her down onto the carpet with them. To entertain Jake, she made out she was even more hopeless than she really was and crashed the car into the hearth.
“Silly Mummy,” Jake said to Albert, clearly feeling she was so useless that she was beyond help.
“Girls,” Albert whispered, shaking his head. Then the pair of them started laughing conspiratorially and Jake pushed Albert onto the floor and began crawling over him. Seeing them together like this brought tears to her eyes.
“Now Daddy’s turn,” Jake cried.
As they watched Albert guide the car skillfully around the room, Jake climbed into Stephanie’s lap. “You love having your daddy here with us, don’t you?” she said, bringing her cheek next to his. Jake started nodding.
“My daddy come and live in my house now?”
She hugged Jake to her and felt the lump in her throat getting bigger.
Albert said he had to go back to his flat to check his post, but he promised he would be back in time to help bathe Jake and put him to bed. Mrs. M. arrived just as Albert was leaving. He was his usual flirty charming self and she was clearly smitten. “Now then, isn’t he just gorgeous,” she said after he’d gone. “What a lovely little family you make.” Before Stephanie had a chance to say anything about Albert moving in, Jake came tearing in. He looked at Mrs. M. and suddenly went shy, burying his head in Stephanie’s lap. But Mrs. M. soon got around him with the Play-Doh food factory she’d bought him for Christmas. Soon it was as if she’d never been away. Stephanie couldn’t help noticing that Mrs. M.’s limp, although much improved, was still very much with her. “The doctors said the hip replacement has been a partial success,” she confided. “They said at my age I shouldn’t expect miracles.” She paused and looked at Stephanie and then at Jake, who was kneeling up at the kitchen table with his food factory, trying to make Play-Doh spaghetti. Stephanie could see a sadness creeping into her eyes. “I’ve decided to move back to Ireland.”
“Oh, Mrs. M.”
“The thing is,” she said, forcing a smile, “I’m not getting any younger and the doctors reckon this is about as good as my hip is ever going to get. My kids think I need looking after. On top of that, I miss my grandchildren.” She picked up a piece of Jake’s Play-Doh and began kneading it between her fingers.
“We are going to miss you,” Stephanie said, getting up to give her a hug.
“I hope you don’t think I’ve let you down. I know how much you were depending on me.”
“We were,” Stephanie said, excusing herself a white lie. “But you mustn’t worry. I’m certain you’re doing the right thing. Albert and I will work something out.” Stephanie had never seen Mrs. M. look so relieved. “I’m going to rent out my house. So, I’ll be back for visits.”
As Stephanie sat sipping her tea, she was gripped by a particularly viselike cramp. Mrs. M. must have seen her wince.
“You’re not we
ll, are you? I thought you looked under the weather when I arrived.” After Stephanie had explained what was wrong, Mrs. M. insisted on phoning her daughter Geraldine and getting her to come round with a bottle of Collis Brown mixture. “The old-fashioned remedies are always the best,” she declared. “It’ll sort you out in no time.”
Geraldine was a plump jovial soul, a lot like her mother. She had just arrived when the phone rang. It was Ossie.
His tone was controlled panic. “Steph, we’ve got a situation. One of the CDs you brought round to the theater yesterday has gone missing. It’s the press night tonight. They need you to come in and sing a couple of songs live onstage.”
“What? How on earth am I supposed to do that?” He explained that the idea was to hide her behind a pillar and K-Mart would still lip-synch as planned. She burst out laughing and said the idea was preposterous. “And by ‘they,’ ” she went on, “I presume you mean Sidney. Sorry, I refuse to do any more to help that man. Anyway, even if I wanted to, I can’t. He took out an injunction against me. Remember? I can’t come within half a mile of K-Mart.”
“It’s been lifted,” Ossie said. “Listen, you’re not doing this for Sidney. You’re doing it for Konstanty. I just had him on the phone. He’s desperate.”
“But why can’t Konstanty get the studio to make some copies of the CD?”
“He tried, but they’re refitting the place and they’ve closed for a week.”
“Great.”