Nell looked heavenward.
“Come on, Nellie. Don’t you want to know about the Gales? Don’t you want to know about Grandma’s big stage career?”
Nell shook her head an emphatic no.
“Don’t you want to find out about the ring?”
Nell shook her head again.
“Can you really walk away from our last chance at having someone else in the world who cares whether we live or die?”
Nell frowned.
“Then it’s settled,” said Molly. “I knew you’d see the light.”
Nell pointed at Molly. Then she mimed holding the wheel of a car. Then she pointed her finger at her chest, and then at her temple and turned it slowly. You. Drive. Me. Crazy.
“I love you, too,” declared Molly happily. “We’ll just follow Grandma’s footsteps back to New England and present the Gales with two brand-new relatives. It may be fifty years too late, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll end up with the family that Mom always wanted. At the very least I’ll bet they’ll invite us in for a cup of coffee!”
“Hello?” Molly announced, pushing open the screen door of Taffy Hupperman’s house. “It’s us.”
Taffy’s living room looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since Molly’s last visit, two months ago. Dust bunnies the size of Chihuahuas roamed the hardwood floors, occasionally colliding with abandoned articles of footwear. The furniture was draped with dirty laundry of all description. Every surface displayed Taffy’s collection of used Chinese takeout cartons, which in quantity rivaled Molly’s collection of oyster plates.
“Taffy? Are you home? Why do you leave this door open? There’s a serial killer on every block these days, don’t you watch television? Taffy?”
“Does someone call?” boomed Taffy, emerging from the kitchen waving a turkey leg like a magic wand. “Why, can it be the young O’Hara girl? By God, yes! Accompanied by her factotum and sibling, Little Nell, she of the smiling Irish eyes and bosom as white as the driven snow.”
Taffy was a little bit taller than Nell and several times as wide. She had dead-mouse blond hair, tiny teeth, and a face that would be pretty if she lost a hundred pounds. She wore Farmer-Brown coveralls that totally obscured her figure while doing nothing to conceal her girth.
“Why don’t you lock your door?” said Molly, hands on her hips. “Oh, shut up, you little pork chop,” said Taffy, brushing past Molly and draping a fat arm around Nell’s shoulder. “I want to say hello to my friend, Nell. How are you, honey? You been a good girl? I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. Come over here, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
If sound had come from Nell’s mouth it would have been a giggle, judging by her expression. Molly rolled her eyes and wished again that she had someone other than Taffy who she could come to at times like this. A visit with Taffy was like Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. Or a production conference with some over-the-top movie queen from the heyday of Hollywood. Taffy turned to the kitchen door.
“Oomba-lapa-tu!” she yelled, waving her turkey leg. “Oomba-lapa-tu, queen of the jungle! Get your royal ass in here this instant. I want you to meet my oldest friends in the world.”
A moment later a young woman of about Molly’s age and height entered the room. She had a strong, pointed chin, short hair, and was dressed in neatly pressed red slacks and a patterned top. She was built like a stop sign and looked more like a bank teller than a jungle queen.
“Oh, great Oomba-lapa-tu,” extolled Taffy with much exaggerated bowing and scraping, “may I present the short but difficult Molly O’Hara and her enchanting sister, Nell.”
Oomba-lapa-tu strode briskly over and shook Molly’s hand. She had a grip like a clamp.
“My name isn’t really Oomba-lapa-tu,” she announced in a brisk, businesslike soprano. “It’s Alice Markham. Taffy just thinks that Alice is too plain a moniker for the likes of me. Hence the Oomba-lapa-tu routine. Pleased to meet you.”
Then she shook Nell’s hand, repeating her greeting exactly.
“Show plain old Alice here how you can fly, honey,” said Taffy to Nell. “You can still do it, can’t you?”
“Leave her alone, Taffy,” protested Molly, seething with determination and resolve after her meeting with Tim O’Hara. “We’re here for a reason and don’t have time to waste. I need a favor.”
“Oh, hush up, runt,” said Taffy, pushing Molly out of the way as if she were some insolent extra on the back lot. “Come on, Nell. Show Alice your trick.”
Molly opened her mouth to protest, but held her tongue. It was usually better just to let Taffy talk herself out than try to fight. Nell grinned and cocked her eye at the high ceiling to make sure she had enough room. Then she centered herself on the hardwood floor, kicking away an empty plastic cup.
The room fell silent in anticipation. Nell bent her knees, swung her arms out in front of her twice and jumped up into the air. In the next split second she curled into a ball, flipped over neatly, and landed squarely on her feet in the exact place she had launched from.
Taffy clapped her hands in delight.
“Very impressive demonstration,” declared Alice heartily, rushing over and shaking Nell’s hand again. “Thank you, Nell, was it? I greatly enjoy gymnastics. Do you train professionally?”
“She’s a natural, been flipping all her life,” said Taffy, putting her arm around Nell, who beamed. Nell actually liked Taffy, for some reason that Molly had never understood.
“Taffy …” began Molly again, but Taffy paid no attention.
“You want to learn some new words, Nell, honey?” she said. “See, Alice, Nell doesn’t feel much like talking these days, do you sweet ‘urns? But I still try to teach her useful words in case she ever changes her mind. Say ‘mousse au chocolate,’ honey. Say ‘periodontist.’ Say ‘lesbian.’”
“Taffy …”
“Lezzzzzzzzzbian,” repeated Taffy, buzzing like a bee. “Isn’t that a fascinating word, lezzzzzzzzzzzzbian? Now show us how to juggle.”
Taffy picked up a paperback science fiction novel and a balledup sock from the floor and tossed them to Nell along with the turkey leg.
“Taffy!” said Molly.
“She doesn’t mind, do you Nell?”
Nell obviously didn’t. She juggled the items happily until Molly marched over and batted them out of the air.
“Okay, Taffy, you’ve demonstrated dominance. We all bend down and kiss your feet. Now I need a favor.”
“A favor, she needs,” said Taffy, throwing a hand theatrically into the air. “I don’t see her for months, but when she needs a favor, who does she come to? She comes to saintly Taffy Hupperman, that’s who, the Ford Foundation of unemployed scientists. All right, shrimpboat, what’ll it be? And don’t ask for money. ’cause I don’t have any.”
“Well, you will soon,” said Molly. “I’ll pay you seven dollars an hour, off the books, if you go over and mind the shop for a few days. Nell and I have to go out of town.”
“Big money.”
“It’s more than you’re making now.”
“And when do you expect me to begin this odious tour of duty, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”
“Tomorrow. You can stay at our place tonight, if you like, so you won’t have to schlep over in the morning.”
“Forget it!” exclaimed Taffy, sticking her nose into the air and giving a symbolic sniff. “Oomba-lapa-tu and I have important things to do.”
“Like what? You’re never doing anything when I come over here, except maybe eating. Why aren’t you calling labs or working on your resume? You’ve been out of work since February. Your unemployment can’t last much longer.”
“I am closely monitoring several important soap operas,” sniffed Taffy, “and the jungle queen’s presence is required each and every day at Daddy’s odious insurance agency. We are otherwise engaged.”
Molly looked at Taffy’s great hulk of a figure, trying to see the wide-eyed little girl who had lived next door when they were
eight, the girl who had been with Molly at the movies the day Evangeline O’Hara Cole had been murdered. Though her body had enlarged beyond recognition and she was now entitled to be called “Doctor” by virtue of a PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Taffy’s manner was just the same. She still had to be courted and wooed, like a pussycat up a tree, to do the smallest thing. No wonder she couldn’t keep a job.
“There’s a little television at the shop that you can watch at the register,” said Molly. “And your father still handles our insurance, so the shop will be of great professional interest to Oompa-Poompa-choo.”
“Oomba-lapa-tu,” corrected Taffy. “From the Sanskrit, meaning, ‘she who clips the crusts from her Wonder Bread and knows how to Mambo.’”
“Come on, Taffy,” cajoled Molly. “You can raid the refrigerator. We’ve got three pies, homemade by little old ladies, that you’re welcome to. There’s a whole cooked ham. Don’t you want to spend some quality time with Alice in a place that isn’t a pigsty?”
“Are you insinuating that I am a less-than-adequate housekeeper?”
“Yes!”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” muttered Taffy. “Why can’t you just close up, if it’s just for a few days?”
“Because I have people coming with cash money to collect an expensive chest of drawers, that’s why.”
“Then wait a day to leave. Can’t you wait a day?”
“No, I can’t, you lazy bum,” said Molly. “Everybody is always waiting a day and then another day, because there’s always something else to grab your energy if you let it. And then the urge passes and you never do what you wanted to do, and you never have a life.”
“Oh, I get it now,” said Taffy, nodding smugly. “This is one of your little spur-of-the-moment adventures. When did you decide to make this trip? Ten minutes ago? I swear, Molly, you are so immature. Why don’t you just go home, take a nice bath and eat a few pints of ice cream? Tomorrow whatever this is won’t seem so important.”
“I know that, which is why we are going tonight. Will you do it, Taffy? Please?”
“Oh, all right,” said Taffy with a deep, tortured sigh. “Just one more station, I suppose, on the road to my personal cross.”
“Thank you. Now you can take us to the bus station.”
“The bus? Why aren’t you driving?”
“Because the van is ten years old and has been making noises louder than your stomach. I’m not taking the chance.”
“Good, then you can leave it with me. My own vehicle is otherwise indisposed.”
“You mean repossessed?”
“Whatever,” said Taffy. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Ditto,” agreed Molly.
“You’re really an impossible girl.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.”
Half an hour later they were at the old-fashioned brick bus station in decaying downtown Pelletreau. Through the chainlink fence by the squat building, Molly could see the lineup of shiny buses that were still the cheapest way to get out of town.
It was a little past seven. Molly had called and found a bus leaving within the hour that would get them into New York City by morning. Molly was uncomfortable about being away during peak tourist season, but at least Taffy would be minding the store. With any luck she wouldn’t scare away too many sales.
“You take care of this van, you hear me, Taffy?” said Molly as she got out carrying their trusty “escape” suitcase, packed with essentials for both of them. It hadn’t seen action since an auction in Tennessee last fall. “Let her rest for a while when she starts making noises. And drive carefully.”
“Oh, relax, you ridiculous creature,” said Taffy taking over the driver’s seat and, adjusting the rearview mirror so she could admire her greasy curls. “Taffy knows how to make an engine purr, doesn’t she, Alice?”
“You know which one is the house key?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“The Nicholsons are the people coming for the chest,” said Molly. “Be sure you get four hundred dollars cash, that was the deal. You shouldn’t have any trouble, though. They were nice folks, and I’ve already got another four hundred dollars of their money, so they can’t get away.”
“Don’t worry,” said Taffy with a yawn. “It’s not like I haven’t ever done this before.”
“I’ll call you at the shop when I know when we’re coming back so you can pick us up,” said Molly. “We shouldn’t be too long. Not at New York prices.”
“Okay, okay,” said Taffy. “Anything else, oh, great half-pint pain-in-the-ass?”
“Let me know if you happen to notice a red-haired guy with a bushy mustache hanging around.”
“Who is he?”
“I’m not sure, but I’d like to find out. He’s driving a white Mercury Sable.”
Taffy rolled her eyes.
“Women,” she muttered.
“Very pleased to have made your acquaintances,” declared Alice Markham, aka Oomba-lapa-tu from the van’s passenger seat, tapping two fingers to her eyebrow in some kind of insurance-agent salute. Taffy waved a fat hand at Nell and demonstrated how she made engines purr by screeching away from the curb in a cloud of burned rubber.
Nell waved happily until the van rounded the corner and sped out of sight. Molly was pleased to see her sister so carefree for a change, though she herself suddenly wasn’t so confident anymore.
“We’re doing the right thing here, aren’t we, Nell?” Molly said, almost whispering, her mind suddenly flooded with second thoughts.
Nell nodded her head and smiled brightly. Whatever doubts she had had were obviously long gone. Why shouldn’t she be eager to get away after all that had happened over the last week?
Molly bit her lip. When she left Tim O’Hara she had felt so certain about going to New York and tracking down Grandma’s past. Now she just felt foolish and unprepared.
“I mean, maybe Taffy was making sense for a change,” Molly said. “I do get crazy and impulsive sometimes, and we end up spending a lot of money we don’t have. I don’t know how much we can really find out in New York about what Grandma was doing half a century ago. And even if we do ever find the Gales, they might not want to see us. Or they might all be dead. I must be crazy.”
Nell reached over and gently took Molly’s hand in hers. Her palm was soft and warm, her touch gentle.
“Taffy was right,” said Molly unhappily. “If I had any brains I’d just go home, have a bath, and eat a few pints of ice cream.”
With her other hand Nell picked up their suitcase. Then she turned toward the bus terminal and tugged Molly’s hand.
An image of Margaret Jellinek, dead in the nursing home with a pillow on her chest sprang again into Molly’s mind. A second image superimposed itself, the nightmare image of her mother with the little hole in her forehead that had haunted Molly since she was eleven. Two wasted lives. What would Molly and Nell make of theirs?
Nell gave another tug on Molly’s hand. Molly felt her doubts drop away. She let Nell pull her off to finish what she’d started.
No matter where the road might take them, it began in New York.
Four
“Will you come out of there, please?” said Molly to the closet. “I know you can see me through the keyhole, Nell. Come on.”
The door finally opened. Nell was seated cross-legged on the floor of the tiny closet. She grinned and pulled herself up by the door handle. Nell still liked to hide in closets and see the world through the keyholes—especially when she was in unfamiliar places. The Gotham Arms Hotel in New York City was about as unfamiliar as places got.
Molly returned to the bathroom and finished drying her face with the thin hotel towel. The room they had taken was tiny and ridiculously expensive, but at least it was comparatively clean.
When they had left Pelletreau last night, Molly had actually thought about trying to pack all they needed to do in New York into one day, thereby saving the money they
would need to spend on a hotel room. Fourteen hours of trying to sleep in a reclining seat on a speeding bus, however, had cured her of that fantasy.
One or two nights in a hotel wasn’t going to bankrupt them. Whether they could dig out fifty-year-old stories from a city that could hide all of Pelletreau in a vest pocket was another matter.
A gray sliver of Big Apple loomed menacingly outside the room’s sealed window.
Over the years Molly had heard about New York from dealers who came up to the big antique shows at the passenger piers. She had even bought a guidebook at the bus station last night and read it from cover to cover. A city was a city, she had told herself, having been to Charlotte––which was quite a big and sophisticated place—Richmond, and Washington, D.C.
Looking out the bus window this morning as New York had grown like Oz out of the dawn, however, Molly knew she had been wrong. The traffic-filled elevated highways that climbed toward the gleaming towers of Manhattan were like tiny trails of ants approaching a steel forest. Even from a distance New York was bigger, faster, and louder than any place Molly had ever seen. Up close it was positively frightening.
Just the five-block walk this morning from the Port Authority bus terminal to Forty-seventh Street where they had found the hotel had been intimidating.
The morning sidewalks had been thick with weary prostitutes and streetwise kids, bicycle messengers and dog walkers, secretaries in summer dresses and grim-faced men in business suits—everyone revved up to triple speed. Panhandlers swarmed on every street corner, shaking paper cups full of change like rhythm instruments. Wild-eyed tourists, half of them speaking foreign languages, pointed out mounted policemen and porno theaters to one another and recorded the whole erratic scene with video cameras.
It had been a relief for Molly when she and Nell had finally escaped into the relative calm of the Gotham Arms. Nell hadn’t seemed to share Molly’s discomfort. Bright and confident, she had gawked at the gritty skyscrapers and laughed soundlessly as she nimbly dodged the dump trucks, taxicabs, and city buses that vied for dominance in complicated pollution and noise competitions.
The Girl at the End of the Line Page 5