“But since Josh is here, I guess it’s all right.”
“Thanks.” Erin’s voice dripped sarcasm. “We’re gonna make some popcorn. Unless that’s against the rules?”
Mary Bliss wanted to smack her. “Go right ahead.”
Randy offered the little plate of carrots and celery sticks Mary Bliss had so carefully arranged. “If you’re hungry, try some of these veggies and Zippee Dip.”
Josh looked down at the cup of dip. “Gross. No thanks.”
“You might have to learn to like it,” Mary Bliss said. “Your dad bought a couple gallons of it today.”
“Oh yeah,” Josh said. “Hey, Dad. Mom’s over at the house. She needed to get some stuff. She wants to know if I can go up to the lake with her this weekend.”
“What lake?” Randy asked, pushing at the bridge of his glasses.
Josh shrugged. He looked so much like his father, tall and lanky, with the same light-brown hair and milk-chocolate eyes. “I dunno. Some lake up in the mountains. A friend of hers has a house up there. And a boat. We’re gonna go water-skiing and stuff like that.”
Randy grimaced. “What friend? What’s his name?”
“God. I don’t know,” Josh said. “It’s just a lake. No big deal. Can I go or not?”
Erin was watching them both with interest. She saw the look that passed between her mother and Randy.
“Fine,” Randy said. “Just make sure to leave a phone number where I can reach you.”
Now it was Erin and Josh exchanging a look. They popped their popcorn in the microwave while the grown-ups ate their dinner in silence.
The steak was overdone. But the potatoes were warm and buttery, and the Zippee Dip was surprisingly good on it.
“I take it Nancye’s friend is a man-type person?” Mary Bliss asked after the kids were in the other room.
“You could say that,” Randy said wryly. “I’m assuming it’s this professor over at Emory. According to the kids, he’s old enough to be Nancye’s father. And rich, of course.”
“What does Josh think of him?” Mary Bliss asked. “Is he step-father material? Or has it gotten that serious yet?”
“Josh doesn’t talk a lot to me about his mother,” Randy said. “I guess he wants to protect me. Or he’s so angry at both of us he can’t bring himself to talk about it.”
Mary Bliss nodded sympathetically. “What’s happening with the divorce settlement? Is she still trying to keep you from getting custody of the kids?”
Randy dipped a bit of steak in the salad dressing. “She’s done a complete turnaround. Now she doesn’t want the kids and she doesn’t want the house. Just a big old pile of my money. And my retirement benefits.”
“Wow. Why the change of heart? Did the kids convince her they want to stay with you?”
He sipped some wine. “No. I think the folder of photographs and the sworn affidavits from the PI I hired to tail her helped convince her to let the kids stay with me.”
“Photos.” Mary Bliss let the word sit there. So he knew. And Nancye knew he knew.
“Photos,” Randy said. He stood up abruptly.
“Dessert?”
Mary Bliss was astonished. She hadn’t even finished her steak.
Just then the back door swung open. “Mary Bliss,” Katharine called, sticking her head in the door. “We need to talk. Right now.”
But she stopped talking when she saw Randy Bowden, scraping his plate in Mary Bliss’s sink.
He was still dressed in his suit pants. He’d removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled to his elbows. He looked pretty damned at home.
“Hello,” Katharine said. She gave Mary Bliss an accusing look. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Hey, Katharine,” Randy said. “Looks like the whole neighborhood is around tonight. Josh and Erin just came in to watch a movie.”
“Yeah,” Katharine said, a bit of malice in her voice. “And I saw Nancye’s car parked in your driveway too.”
Mary Bliss could have kicked her.
“She’s picking up some things for her new apartment,” Randy said. “Want some dessert? It’s chocolate praline cheesecake. We’ve got nearly a whole pie here.”
“No, thanks,” Katharine said, leaning against the kitchen counter. But she did pour herself a glass of wine. Clearly, she intended to stay for a while.
Mary Bliss decided to ignore her. She finished her steak, poured herself another glass of wine.
Randy sat down across from her and looked miserable. They each ate a small slice of cheesecake, while Katharine worked on opening another bottle of wine.
“I’d better go,” Randy said finally.
“Coffee?” Mary Bliss offered.
“Better not,” Randy said. “If Nancye’s still over there, I should go supervise. There’s not much left for her to take, except for my easy chair and my bed linens. But she’s probably loading those up even as we speak.”
He gathered up his platter and barbecue tools, said good-bye, and left.
From the other room, Katharine and Mary Bliss heard Erin and Josh laughing uproariously at something.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Katharine whispered.
Mary Bliss started to load the dishwasher. “He came over here to screw me,” she said flippantly. “We started here in the kitchen, then we moved upstairs to my room, then we were getting ready to do it in the den when the kids came in. So we stopped and grilled some steaks. What the hell do you think he was doing here?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. I know you wouldn’t do anything skeezy with Randy Bowden,” Katharine said hotly. “This just looks bad, M. B. I mean, Nancye’s car is right across the street. She knows Randy’s over here. By tomorrow morning, all of Fair Oaks will know you two are an item. And do I need to remind you that you’re still married? God. You’re ruining everything.”
“We are not an item,” Mary Bliss whispered, her eyes blazing. “It was a perfectly innocent dinner. He was shopping at Bargain Bonanza, and he ran into me, giving out samples of Zippee Dip. He was hungry and lonely, and so was I. And that’s all there is to it.”
“Oh yeah?” Katharine said. “You’re wearing eye shadow, Mary Bliss. And lipstick. I haven’t seen you this fixed up all summer. And another thing. What was he doing at the Bargain Bonanza way down in Riverdale, when there’s one not five miles from here?”
“He was shopping for the kids,” Mary Bliss said. “And we have all these grand-opening specials down in Riverdale.”
“Bullshit,” Katharine said. “They offer those specials at all the stores when they open a new one. He followed you down there. He’s hot for you, Mary Bliss. He’s single, and he’s on the prowl, and the lonely lady across the street is all of a sudden looking mighty good.”
“You’re disgusting,” Mary Bliss said, throwing down her dish towel. “Go home, Katharine.”
“No way,” Katharine said. “Forget about Randy for now. We’ve got something more serious to discuss.”
24
Mary Bliss clanked china noisily as she shoved plates and cups into the dishwasher. She scrubbed with indiscriminate fury at the remnants of the Zippee Dip on the kitchen table.
“What?” Katharine asked. “Why are you so pissed at me?”
Mary Bliss had to think about that. “I was in a good mood,” she said finally. “For almost an hour, I thought about something other than my own problems. Then you come slamming in here, and I’m right back where I started. My life is lousy. And you reminded me of that.”
“Sorr-Ree. Guess I’ll hit the road if that’s the way you feel about it.” But Katharine didn’t look particularly sorry.
“Never mind,” Mary Bliss said. “Finish your wine. It might be the last bottle I buy around here.”
“That’s sort of what I came over here to tell you,” Katharine said. She glanced nervously toward the door. “Can the kids hear us?”
“Probably not. Mos
t of the time Erin doesn’t hear or see me,” Mary Bliss said. “As far as she’s concerned, I’m invisible.”
“Me too,” Katharine said. “Why is that? In my time, I’ll have you know, I was what my mother called a real head-turner. Men crashed cars into oncoming traffic looking at me. Construction workers fell off their scaffolding trying to get a good look at my legs. And now? I sit in a restaurant for forty-five minutes before a waiter will even approach to ask if I want something to drink. And I happen to know my legs are still damn good. And I’m still damn hot.”
“I know.” Mary Bliss patted Katharine’s hand. “It’s the middle-age curse. You’re still hot to trot, but there’s nobody to saddle you up.”
“Yeah. They’re all hanging around McDonald’s, hoping to score with the french fry girl,” Katharine said. “Let’s go outside, okay? I don’t want to take the chance of Erin overhearing us.”
Mary Bliss fixed herself a glass of iced tea and followed her friend out to the patio.
“All right. What’s so top secret?” she demanded.
Katharine leaned against the wrought-iron table, sipping her wine. “More bad news, I’m afraid. My lawyer called tonight. Charlie has canceled my credit cards. All of them. American Express. Visa. Discover. Rich’s. Macy’s. Saks. Neiman Marcus. Lord & Taylor. I’m toast, M. B.”
Mary Bliss blinked. She could not fathom Katharine without her credit cards. The woman even put Domino’s Pizza on a charge card.
“Won’t your lawyer fight it? Wasn’t that part of your separation agreement?”
“It was supposed to be,” Katharine said. “But I guess I got a little carried away last month. So he’s canceled the cards and put me on a budget. Fifteen thousand a month. Can you believe it?”
Mary Bliss did not even attempt to list all the things she could do with fifteen thousand a month.
“It doesn’t sound that unreasonable,” Mary Bliss said. “And you knew it was coming, didn’t you?”
“That doesn’t make it any easier,” Katharine said sharply. “Especially now.”
“Why now?”
Katharine lowered her voice to a whisper. “Because of Mexico,” she said. “We’ve got to book our trip tonight, before the cancellation goes through. My lawyer got me a twenty-four-hour grace period. So we’ve got to do it tonight.”
Mary Bliss blinked. “I told you, Mexico is off. Definitely. So let’s drop the whole thing.”
She turned abruptly and walked over to the vegetable patch. In the moonlight, she examined her tomato plants, dug a bare toe into the parched clay soil. It was already bone-dry again. She walked over to the side of the house and turned on the faucet, uncoiling hose as she marched back toward the garden.
“Are you out of your mind?” Katharine asked, now at her side. “I’m talking about life and death and you’re watering your damn ’maters?”
“They’ll dry up and die if I don’t get them sprinkled,” Mary Bliss said, pointing the stream of water at the base of the Early Girls.
“Let ’em,” Katharine said. “My God. You can buy tomatoes for fifty-nine cents a pound.”
“Not these,” Mary Bliss said stubbornly. “No store-bought tomato ever tasted like these.”
“You are truly nuts,” Katharine said.
“No,” Mary Bliss said. She stared down at the garden, watching the water soak into the ground. “Not nuts. Just determined. I made this garden. I rototilled it and hauled in good soil and rotted manure. I fertilized it. I weeded it. And now, by God, I’ve gone too far to give up. I will have homegrown tomatoes this year.”
“But possibly no home,” Katharine reminded her.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Mary Bliss said.
She jerked the hose away from the vegetable patch and started walking around to the front of the house.
“Now where are you going?” Katharine wanted to know.
“Front yard. I ordered those caladium bulbs from a nursery in Florida. They cost two dollars apiece. And I’m not letting a hundred dollars worth of caladiums burn up in this drought.”
She stood in a circle of yellow light thrown out from the porch lamps and gave the caladiums a good long drink. Katharine stood silently by and watched.
“Now what?” Katharine asked again.
“The Boston ferns by the door,” Mary Bliss said, mounting the porch steps. “Potted plants dry out unless you water ’em every day.”
“Who cares?” Katharine muttered.
“I care,” Mary Bliss said.
A red-and-white UPS envelope was leaning against the front door. It hadn’t been there when she’d gotten home and checked the mail.
“What’s that?” Katharine asked as Mary Bliss picked it up.
“Overnight package,” Mary Bliss said. “Addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Parker McGowan.”
“From who?”
“Whom?” said Mary Bliss, ever the schoolteacher.
“Yeah, who’s it from?” Katharine asked.
Mary Bliss turned the envelope over and read the airbill. “Consolidated Mortgage. I never heard of them before.”
“Another bill?”
“Of course,” Mary Bliss said. She looked at the envelope with distaste. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”
Katharine grabbed the envelope. “Burn it. There’s no sense opening the thing and worrying yourself sick about something you have no control over.”
Mary Bliss shook her head and gently took the envelope back. “No. I need to know what it is. Anyway, if I did burn it, I’d feel twice as bad as I already do, knowing something else is hanging over my head.”
She pulled the paper tab on the envelope and slid out the contents: a letter clipped to a legal-looking document. As she skimmed the letter, her face paled. She sank down to the porch floor, her back to the door, knees drawn up to her chest. “I can’t believe it,” she said, flipping over to the legal documents.
“What?” Katharine asked. “What does it mean?”
“It’s the end,” Mary Bliss said. “Parker has dug me a hole so deep I’ll never crawl out. I’m going to lose the house. Everything.”
“Let me see that,” Katharine said, snatching the letter away. She was a fast reader. When she got to the last paragraph, she sat on the floor beside Mary Bliss and wrapped her arms around her.
“Is this legal? Is it what I think it is?”
“It looks like it,” Mary Bliss said, picking the letter up, running her finger down the crisply typed paragraphs. Her finger jerked in a spastic motion.
“He’s refinanced the house,” she said shakily. “For eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Can you imagine that? For my little starter cottage? Cash-out, it says. I think that means they handed him a check for something like that much money. And Parker handed them a note that says we’ll pay them back in one big balloon payment. The whole thing is payable August first.”
“Less than two months away,” Katharine said. “But it can’t be legal, can it? Isn’t your name on the title?”
“It was,” Mary Bliss said. She flipped over to the legal documents. “This is a copy of the loan agreement. It says I gave Parker power of attorney to sign for me.”
“Did you?”
“No,” Mary Bliss said. “Look. He did this way back in January. He’d been plotting this all along. The letter says this is the fourth notice of the loan coming due. And the mailing address on the agreement is a post office box in Atlanta.”
“That’s how he did it, the rat bastard,” Katharine said. “No telling what all else is in that post office box.”
The porch light switched on, and the door opened a crack.
“Mom?” Erin stood over them, looking puzzled. “What are you guys doing out here in the dark?”
Josh stood beside her, staring at the two of them.
“We were just talking,” Mary Bliss said. “You know. Girl talk.”
“Where’s my dad?” Josh asked.
“Oh, he w
ent home a while ago,” Mary Bliss said.
“Christ,” Josh muttered. “Bet he and Mom are fighting again.”
“We were gonna make a run up to the Kwik Trip for some Cokes. We’re out, you know. Is that all right?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say no. Instead, Mary Bliss nodded. “Come right back, though. You’re still on restriction.”
“Oh yeah,” Erin said. “I nearly forgot. Not.”
She closed the door harder than was necessary.
“See?” Mary Bliss said.
“What I see is a great big old fraud,” Katharine said. “You’re not gonna let Parker get away with this, are you? He must have forged your name to that power of attorney thing. Hey. I know. I’ll call Charlie. He’s got a soft spot for you. He’ll take care of this.”
Mary Bliss was silent. A moth fluttered around her head, and she batted it away with one hand. “Look at this thing,” she said, handing it to Katharine. “See? Charlie signed it. He was the closing attorney. He can’t represent me.”
Katharine let out a long breath. “The son of a bitch. He must have been in on it. I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”
“No, Kate. You’re right. Charlie wouldn’t deliberately hurt me. I bet Parker tricked him into doing it. It’s not his fault.”
“Well, somebody deserves to be killed,” Katharine said. “What can you do? Want me to get my lawyer on Parker’s ass? Get her to throw an injunction on him or something like that? She hates men. I think she might be lesbian. Lipstick lesbian, though. She’s got a thing for spike heels and slit skirts.”
“We don’t know where he is,” Mary Bliss said. “I can’t sue him if I can’t find him. And I can’t even afford to hire somebody to track him down.”
They both sighed in unison.
“I do know one thing,” Mary Bliss said, a little while later. She clenched her hands tightly together in her lap. “I won’t let anybody take my house away. I just can’t. When I was a little girl, and my daddy left? Mama couldn’t afford to keep our house. We lived with my granny for a while, before Mama got a job. Granny lived through the Depression. She used to tell me stories about people who got evicted. Back then, if you were poor and homeless, they sent you to this awful place. Granny called it the poor farm. And it was a real place. I’ve never forgotten that. Never forgotten the day we had to pack up and leave our house. I’d never seen my mama cry before that day.”
Little Bitty Lies Page 13