Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  All the way to the hospital he’d talked to her, trying to break through. He’d been terrified that she wasn’t going to make it. There wasn’t enough of her to put up much of a fight. That first week he hadn’t left her for more than a few hours at a time. When they took her for therapy or tests, he would race home and clean himself up, grab a bite to eat and go through the mail so he could read it to her. Reassuring himself she could hear—she could comprehend—she just couldn’t respond.

  He’d read her everything, even the junk mail. He’d talked about her pet charity, and how it was time to start making plans for the annual fund-raiser. Day after day he’d talked himself hoarse. The morning she’d squeezed his fingers, he had broken down and cried. Then he’d gone downtown and turned in his resignation, justifying it by telling himself he was too busted up to be much good on the force anymore.

  After fourteen years with the Dallas Police Department, he’d made detective sergeant. At first he’d liked what he did, but too much was changing, too fast. Too much had already changed. Evolution was one thing—no society ever stood still—but the direction things were headed was scary. Too many crimes never got solved. Even when they did, the overall picture didn’t seem to improve. After a while it had got to him. The work had become too frustrating, too corrosive, too depressing. It bred cynicism, not to mention alcoholism. Good men dropped out because they saw what was happening and knew they didn’t stand a snowball’s chance of changing things.

  So Joe had quit police work to talk Miss Emma into coming back. Now she was back about seventy-percent physically. Her doctor said that was damned good at her age, and he felt justified. Rewarded.

  They joked about it. Joe told her her backhand would probably never be the same, and she always smiled, but she didn’t laugh. Never laughed anymore. She was rattling around in a house that was too big and too empty. She’d lost interest in bossing him around, lost interest in all the things that used to keep her going. Her charity work. Her family. Daisy and Donna looked in on her regularly, but neither of them was willing to move in with her. They had their own lives.

  Besides, they’d have driven her nuts in no time. Miss Emma called them floozies, and they called her—behind her back, of course—Queen Victoria.

  Kaleidoscopic memories flickered through his mind, and he smiled nostalgically.

  March yourself right back upstairs and put on a dress, young lady!

  Wash that paint off your face, you look like a hussy!

  Straighten those shoulders, ladies don’t slump!

  She’d been too old, even then, to take on the raising of a defensive boy on the edge of adolescence and a pair of spoiled little girls. Not that it had even occurred to him until years later. He’d had his own brand of rebellion to work through.

  Shaking himself free of the past, Joe located a box of trash bags, a broom and dustpan.

  What he needed was a rake.

  “What I need,” he muttered, “is a damned torch!”

  But he swept, sorted and patched up the best he could, dreading Sophie’s reaction when she saw what had happened to her house.

  She wouldn’t fall apart. Oh, no, not Sophie. She might be a little shook up at first—who wouldn’t be? But she’d hold it together. He was coming to believe there was more to Ms. Bayard than met the eye, and what met the eye was pretty damned impressive.

  He called her just before the hospital switchboard shut down for the night. “How’s it going? Are we clear for tomorrow?”

  “Oh, Joe, she’s going to be all right! She nursed a little while ago and then went right to sleep, and her temperature’s back to normal.”

  Joe shifted the phone to the other hand, leaned against the wall and crossed his ankles. He could almost see the way Sophie would be looking right now, that shy half smile, her eyes all bright and eager, as if she wanted to share her joy with him, but wasn’t sure he’d be interested. There were still a few potholes in her self-confidence. He wondered about her family. What had happened to it? What had she been like as a child?

  “Great. What time shall I pick you up?”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Sophie, what time do you want me?”

  They settled on ten o’clock, and he hung up and called Miss Emma. With the time difference, he didn’t have to worry about her being asleep. She turned in early but then watched TV half the night. Claimed it helped her fall asleep. Before her stroke, she’d watched a show called “Baywatch.” He’d teased her about the spandex parade. She’d come back with something about having a pool put in the back lawn, where her great-grandchildren—if she ever had any—could learn to swim.

  Now he told her about finding the Ch’ien Lung, and where he’d found it. He thought he caught a hint of amusement in her voice. That was a rare commodity these days.

  “Smart woman. Most crooks these days are so ignorant. They don’t make them like they did in my day. Why, I remember reading about this case up in Chicago...”

  Her voice dwindled off. Her attention span was down to zilch. Nevertheless, Joe said he didn’t believe Sophie was actually a criminal, but that she’d gotten involved with the wrong man.

  “Well, in my day...”

  “In your day?” he prompted. Earth to Miss Emma.

  He was just about to give up and say good-night when she spoke again. “Did the baby lose weight?”

  “Lose what? Oh, you mean with the fever?”

  “Babies lose a few ounces right after they’re born. Your father did. I told Jonnie it didn’t mean anything, but he was so afraid he’d be runty, like my side of the family.”

  Joe grinned from ear to ear. Not only had she introduced a new topic, but she’d even elaborated on it. He felt like shouting. They talked for a minute or so about his father and how he’d shot up nine inches in his last two years in high school, and Joe told himself it was an encouraging sign. But what he wanted her interested in was the future, not the past.

  On the way to the hospital the next morning he stopped by Hanes Mall and located a pet shop. They were fresh out of Darryls, but he bought the habitat, complete with all accessories, and then picked out a couple of fancy goldfish. They were pretty ugly, but at least they had long tails. And because it was so hot and he didn’t know how long it would be before they got back home, he bought a cooler to hold the paper carton of fish.

  On the way out, he passed a florist and picked up a bunch of mixed flowers that reminded him of Sophie. Big, sunny yellow ones with dusty gray-green foliage. For good measure, he picked out a miniature bouquet of pink rosebuds for Fatcheeks.

  Then he got out of there before he could do any more damage to his wallet. He told himself it was only a diversionary tactic, to take her mind off what she was going to have to face when she got home.

  He told himself it was an apology for what he was going to have to do to her.

  He told himself it was the heat, but hell—he was used to heat. The temperature in Dallas had hit a hundred and six last week.

  It was almost noon before they were ready to leave the hospital. The doctor had been late coming by to sign Iris’s release. Sophie looked tired, but joyous, as she related the doctor’s orders on the way out. “He said to watch her and report any sign of infection or irritation, and he gave me something for the itch.”

  Joe took the baby and the diaper bag, leaving Sophie to bring the rest. He caught an elderly couple smirking at them and scowled, wanting to tell them he wasn’t half of a couple. He sure as hell wasn’t a third of a trio. Wanting to tell them that these people—the woman at his side, the baby in his arms—were nothing to him. By tomorrow, he’d be on his way back to Texas with what was left of Miss Emma’s collection, and Sophie could go back to digging in her garden and writing copy about clearance sales and special discounts for senior citizens.

  He delayed as long as he could. He drove her to get her car. Insisted on buying lunch and her groceries, claiming he intended to eat his share and part of hers. He’d have driven
her to the Ashboro Zoo if he thought she’d go along with it, but there was no way he could justify delaying much longer.

  Besides, it was hot. Darryls I and II were probably floating belly-up back there in the camper. The flowers would already have wilted. The baby was starting to get fussy and he knew Sophie wasn’t about to unbutton her blouse and nurse in the front seat of her car.

  It was nearly three by the time they got home. He braced himself for the worst. He’d done the best he could, even poking the stuffing back inside the sofa cushions, patching it with duct tape and placing the throw pillows so the patches wouldn’t show, but the place still looked like it had been through a hurricane. Any cop would know right off that it had been violated.

  Before they even got inside, Iris went from fussing to four-alarm yelling. Sophie jiggled and there-there’d her. Joe couldn’t help but notice the damp places on the front of her blouse.

  “I’d better...” She stopped just inside the living-room doorway and stared. A frown tugged at her eyebrows, and she said, “Something’s wrong. That blue chair doesn’t belong over there by the window, the upholstery will fade. Where’s Darryl?”

  “Let’s see if we can settle Iris in her crib, and then we’ll talk about it.”

  “She’s hungry. I need to feed her. Joe, what happened to my pictures?”

  The pictures on the wall had been trashed, along with everything else.

  “Joe?” Her eyes were large, her voice small. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain everything, but first let’s get Iris settled. You give her her dinner while I bring in the stuff from the truck.”

  He started out but then thought better of it. She was already halfway down the hall. “Sophie, um, why not use the kitchen?”

  “I’d rather—Oh, no. Not the nursery. Joe? Oh, God...”

  They’d done the nursery. They’d done the whole damned house, including the upstairs rooms, none of which was even furnished except for a bed and a redwood bench in the one he was using. His clothes had been dumped on the floor, but the only things missing were the photos. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up until she’d had time to get over her initial shock, but that’s what this was all about. The jade.

  They sat in the kitchen, because on the surface, it showed the least damage. Other than the fact that the glasses they were using didn’t match and there was a big gouge on the tabletop where the creep had thrown something down on it, it wasn’t in bad shape.

  “Okay, here it is.” he said, pouring them both another glass of tea. Her computer was missing. So far she hadn’t even noticed that. “Yesterday, while we were both at the hospital, somebody broke in here and tore things up. Now, why do you suppose anyone would do that?”

  She’d already lost her tan. Now she looked gray.

  “We both know what they were looking for, Sophie. I don’t think they found it. And I’m not saying I blame you,” he hastened to add. “Davis gave it to you, and you had no way of knowing then it had been stolen. But now you do, and you realize that somebody besides the two of us knows it’s here. So what do you want to do about it? Explain to the police and let them take it in as evidence? Give it to me so I can get it back to the rightful owner? Try to hang on to it and hope to hell you’re not home the next time somebody comes after it?”

  She didn’t say a word. Not a single word in her own defense. He wished she would. Then he might not feel so much like he was throwing stones at an unarmed woman.

  “Ah, jeez, Sophie—Look, let’s just handle this thing between us, can we do that? You hand over the rest of the jade—I’ve already found the Ch’ien Lung vase Give me what you’ve got left, and I’ll get the word out that it’s no longer here. A couple of paragraphs in the newspaper should do it. We’ll set up some protection for you—locks. an alarm system, a dog. And then—”

  “No.”

  “Huh?”

  “No dog.”

  His shoulders sagged with relief. “Not even a small one? A little yapper?”

  “I’m not having any dog.”

  Joe told himself he was over the top now. The rest would be downhill. “Okay, no dog. An attack parrot, maybe, but no dog.” And then he broke off, raked back his chair and said, “Oh, hell.”

  She followed him down the hall to where he’d left the cooler and the rest of the gear from the pet shop. “I’ll need help with this. All I know about fish I learned from the menu in a seafood restaurant.”

  Later, Joe watched while she examined everything and then scrubbed every scrubbable surface. She couldn’t even work until she replaced her computer. Or the police recovered it, which was highly unlikely.

  She stood in her garden for a long time, as if staring at a few scraggly rows of vegetables could steady her in an unsteady world. If it worked for her, he thought, watching from the kitchen window, he might be tempted to take up gardening himself.

  There was still some sorting out to do, mostly putting pictures back in frames under new glass and books on the shelf. Placing photographs back in an old album.

  While Sophie gave Iris her supper, Joe found himself studying a snapshot of a girl who could only be Sophie at about eight, give or take a year. Tall, big-boned even then, she was not what most people would call a cute kid. Knobby knees, big teeth, she was dressed up in an outfit that had obviously been made for somebody else, squinting into the sun, a resentful expression on her face. The house behind her looked big and institutional. There were a few kids in the distance and a woman standing on the steps, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the picture-taker. Nobody was saying cheese.

  Joe felt something lurch painfully inside him. Donna and Daisy had both been small. They’d had a lousy set of parents, but one thing their mother had never done was neglect her baby girls. She would dress them in outrageously expensive clothes and then pitch a fit when they got dirty. They were given all kinds of expensive toys—usually collector dolls. The look-but-don’t-touch variety.

  For years Joe had listened to the late-night arguments, the accusations and cross-accusations, the threats to close charge accounts and burn credit cards. More often than not, he would get up and go to the john, shut the door and quietly throw up.

  So much for wedded bliss. His parents’ marriage, his own, his sisters’ and maybe even his grandparents’. Some men didn’t have it in them to make a woman happy. There was a lot of that going around these days.

  Eight

  She was everything he wasn’t, Joe told himself, standing out on the front porch, listening to the frogs and the cicadas, sipping on iced tea and wishing it were beer. She was soft and sweet. He was hard and bitter. She had a reason to look forward to the future. The only person he cared deeply about was eighty-three years old, and unless she pulled out of her depression pretty damned fast, she might not make eighty-four. Once she was gone....

  Joe didn’t want to think about when his grandmother was gone. He knew, though, that he would have to sell the house. That was a part of her will. Sell the house, split the take, half going to her favorite charity, half to be divided among her three heirs.

  As far as Joe was concerned, they could have it all. Miss Emma was home. The house was no more than a relic of the past.

  At any rate, it was time to wind things up here and get on back. Tonight he’d have to lay it on the line, and tomorrow—what was that cliché? Go now, and don’t look back?

  Yeah. That, too.

  Sophie was not quite as angry as she’d ever been in her life, but she was teetering on the brink. Not that she was frightened. At least, not any more. It was all over now, and nobody but poor Darryl had been hurt. All the same, she felt as if she’d been personally involved.

  Thank goodness Joe had been here. Odd that she’d never once thought that he might have a hand in it. Was there something significant in that?

  Probably. She wasn’t going to think about it, though. Couldn’t afford to.

  With Iris settled, the two, new goldfish installed in the new aquarium
and Joe waiting for her on the front porch, she couldn’t think of another single reason for stalling, other than the fact that once she handed over the rest of the jade, he would leave. And it wasn’t the jade she would miss, or the financial security it represented, as much as it was Joe himself. That was the saddest thought of all. You’d think that after a while a woman would learn.

  As quiet as she was, she knew he heard the screen door. He didn’t turn around. Just went on leaning against the white-painted post, a shadowy figure looking out at the lightning bugs and the occasional flicker of a car passing by out on the highway. He was holding something in his hand—a glass. Light from the living-room window gleamed on that and the band of his stainless-steel wristwatch, and highlighted the worn seat of his jeans.

  Standing there in the doorway, Sophie stifled an irreverent urge to cup her palm under his taut buttocks and squeeze. If that didn’t prove that she had buttermilk for brains, nothing could. A brand-new mother. A brand-new mother threatened with bankruptcy. whose house had just been burgled.

  And she was lusting after the rear end of an ex-cop from Texas?

  Oh, for mercy’s sake!

  “You coming out or staying in?” Joe asked.

  “Out, I guess. No point in letting all the air-conditioning escape.”

  “It’s noisy out here in the country, even though it’s still so quiet.”

  “You miss all the big-city noises?”

  “Not particularly. I dunno—yeah. maybe a few of ‘em.”

  “I suppose if a person’s inclined to be lone-some—”

  “I’m not,” he said quickly. She swallowed the barely realized hope that he would say he was and ask her what she could do about it.

  Standing at the edge of the porch beside him, so close she could hear the slow, steady sound of his breathing, she said, “I’m not, either. I have too many plans now to even think about being lonely. I thought I’d wait until Iris is three months old and then start looking around for a job at a place that provides day care. Some of them do now. The bank says they’ll give me a reference, and I can still write ad copy at night once I can afford to replace my computer, and—”