Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) gs-1

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Out came the math papers first. They were stapled in several bundles, with Arch’s wobbly zeros floating across the lines like jellyfish. I smiled, remembering his first-grade habit of chewing his tongue when he wrote the numbers 1 to 100. Then wadded social studies papers cascaded out, on the subject of drugs and avoiding peer pressure. My groping hands pulled out six erasers and a clump of science worksheets on gerbils and their habitats. Pencils, a mitten, multisided dice. Spelling. Book report. More gerbil info.

  And then.

  A crumpled envelope. Beige stationery. Something inside, which I didn’t look at. Not from school, not from home. I looked at the envelope briefly and then, with the nonchalance that often accompanies being completely stunned, reached for my purse.

  The outside of the envelope read, “For Arch, my special friend.” In the upper corner, a scrawled “October 2.” The handwriting I recognized from numerous other communications—progress reports, comments on book reports, thank-you notes for helping on field trips. I dropped the note in my purse.

  The handwriting was Laura Smiley’s.

  The date was the day before her death.

  Perhaps she had left a note, after all.

  CHAPTER 15

  I walked out of the school building feeling dazed. It was essential that I avoid Arch: my eyes would give me away. Guilt riddled my conscience like bullets. The letter might as well have been burning a hole in my purse. I couldn’t read it yet. I needed time to think and I didn’t have it. My cleaning assignment on the other side of town was due to start in ten minutes; at noon the owner was having a bridge party.

  Waves of children were already surging into the school building. With a growl of defiance, the van started. I slapped it into first gear and took off.

  The job was in Aspen Hills, a residential area dominated by boxy contemporary houses that looked as if they’d all been popped ready-made from ice cube trays. In the assigned house I put Laura’s letter to my son, her “special friend,” out of my mind while I covered the sunken tubs and tiled floors with cleaning solution before starting on the living room. The architect who had designed this particular dwelling had obviously never washed a window in his life. I propped a ladder against the highest of three stories of glass and began to climb up with a bucket containing a squeegee and squirt bottle of ammoniated solution. Below, the ladder teetered on sculptured chartreuse and pink carpeting.

  I wondered A, if dropping the solution on the rug would improve its appearance, and B, if my life insurance would be sufficient for Arch should the ladder tumble. To my vertiginous chagrin I noticed that the ceiling was covered, between its rough-cut beams, with the same pink and green carpet. The architect had been impractical; the designer, insane.

  After three hours the house from Atlantis was done and I was famished. The pastry shop beckoned: Cornish pasties and tea. The van once again cut a defiant and dusty path through town, but I was thankful for both the trustworthiness of the transport and the warmer weather. Despite early-morning frosts the month was remaining summery and dry. I could do without snow for a while since the blizzard of difficulties in my life was about all I could handle.

  The air in the pastry shop was filled with the scent of fresh brownies. I knew Patty Sue would be down after her appointment with Fritz, sometime in the next hour. This would allow me enough time to balance my guilt with my need-to-know, a term they use someplace like the Pentagon. But I did need to digest lunch and Laura’s epistle before the driving lesson.

  I reached gingerly for the crumpled letter and smoothed it out on the table.

  “Correspondence?” said Fritz Korman over my shoulder.

  He met my upward stare with a conciliatory nod, then lowered himself into the chair opposite mine. His sudden appearance made me wonder if he’d been watching for me from his office window.

  “May I see it?” he asked as he reached for the letter, which I quickly stuffed back into my purse.

  “No.” I paused. “Why are you so interested? Did the handwriting look familiar?”

  He laughed. “Still playing detective, I see. No,” he said, “it didn’t look familiar. I just thought since you took liberties with my files, you wouldn’t mind if I had a look at your letters.”

  “Right.” I dug my fork into one of the pasties. The spicy meat and onion scent steamed out. “Fritz,” I said, “do you want to tell me about some mistrial you were involved in?”

  “Say,” said Fritz, his handsome face suddenly cheery, “doesn’t that pasty look and smell good. I believe I’ll order something myself. My patients love this place.” He winked at me. “Some of them too much. Mind if I join you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Listen, Goldy,” he said when he returned in a few minutes with a plate containing two brownies, “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Oh?” I said, cheery myself. “About the time in Illinois? What were the charges?”

  “Well.” He tilted his head and gave his serious look. “That was all a long time ago, best left in the past. I guess that’s why I was surprised when you came barging into the office with all your questions.”

  I sipped tea, waited. He wasn’t touching his brownies.

  “I did know Miss Smiley,” he said. He closed his eyes and bobbed his head. “Of course. That’s why I was at the funeral with the teachers and others who also knew her.”

  “What was your relationship in Illinois? And did you have contact with her here? I mean beyond the last office visit, of course.”

  “Now Goldy, you know I take care of women. But that doesn’t mean I understand them.” He laughed and shook his head. “She showed us this town, Aspen Meadow, one time when we came out on a skiing vacation. She was helping us with our … family. But we weren’t close after … after we moved out here. We loved Aspen Meadow. When it came time to leave Illinois, we moved here in part because we had loved it when we’d seen it before and in part because at that time Colorado and Illinois had reciprocal licensing procedures for doctors. But Laura … she … knew Vonette—”

  “Why exactly did you leave Illinois? And why did Laura come to see you the day she died? If she wasn’t a patient of yours?”

  Fritz stuffed some brownie into his mouth.

  “Goldy,” he said between chews, “I’ve told you everything I can. You know I can’t talk to you about office matters or anything along those lines.” He Wiped his mouth and fingers with a paper napkin and then regarded me. His eyes were steely, then soft. “Look,” he went on, conciliatory again, “I know you’ve gotten all involved in this since your business was closed down because of that unfortunate incident at Laura’s house.”

  I looked at him and then puffed up my stomach and chest with air. It was a yoga breathing thing I had learned in the Seventies that was supposed to calm you down. It didn’t work.

  “Unfortunate,” I said, “indeed. It happened to you, and you seem pretty indifferent. What’s worse, it just doesn’t seem to be getting solved, does it? I keep getting more questions than answers. Pretty weird, huh? Do you know if Laura had medical problems? Emotional problems?”

  He pursed his lips, shook his head.

  “Goldy,” he said, “I don’t. She was a troubled girl, woman, that’s why she killed herself. We just all need to put losing her behind us. And I sure would like to help you financially through this particular time of stress. Let Vonette and me give you a couple thousand until you reopen. Okay?”

  I shook my head, but he ignored me.

  He said, “And I would appreciate it if you would quit worrying about this rat-poison silliness. Just let the police finish their job. They’re the ones with the most information. They know what they’re doing.”

  I stood up to clear my place. I said, “As I recall, that was the approach that worked so well with Watergate.”

  He smiled, stood up, sat down, sighed.

  “Tough as nails, that’s our Goldy. Now if I had been John Richard, I would have learned how to keep you—”


  “Well now, isn’t this cozy,” said Marla as she waddled up to us. She was wearing a sky-blue sweat suit embroidered with tiny turquoise feathers. Close on her heels fluttered Patty Sue, a vision in rose mohair sweater and white wool slacks. “Is the pastry shop neutral territory? No attempted poisonings allowed? No need for hostilities, it was a joke. Let’s see. What are we having? Pasties and chocolate! But I’m interrupting.”

  “You’re not interrupting,” I said as I motioned to Patty Sue that we had to leave. Marla pouted. I said to her, “Fritz was just telling me how he doesn’t understand women, and he was hoping you could enlighten him.”

  “Oh Fritz, this just sounds too scrumptious a topic for words,” said Marla, seating herself beside him and eyeing his remaining brownie. “I’ve never enlightened anyone in my life.”

  On that hopeful note, I guided Patty Sue out of the shop. Pomeroy had instructed me to obtain a learner’s permit for her. This proved easy enough at the local office of the Division of Motor Vehicles, because, happily, Patty Sue had learned enough from her handbook to pass the written test.

  “I haven’t had any lunch,” she said, once she was done and we were on the way to the lesson. “Have you?”

  She picked up a hot dog and cone at the Dairy Delight next to the high school. We started to walk to class; I held the cone while she worked on the wiener.

  “Patty Sue,” I began in what I hoped was a mild tone, “could we just try chatting a little bit about Laura Smiley? Please?”

  She groaned.

  “That reminds me,” she said through bites. “Trixie called. From the athletic club. She wanted to know exactly when it was you were going to clean over there, and when we were going to set up the food.”

  “Right,” I said. “Did you all talk about anything else?”

  Patty Sue gave me a glassy look. She said, “Not this time,” and began on her cone.

  “What did you talk about last time?”

  “I can’t tell you, Goldy.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t. It’s too … dangerous.”

  Oh give me a break, I thought. I looked around. Pom had said Driver Ed was above the parking lot, next to Dairy Delight. Why the county commissioners had permitted a small commercial zone between two areas of the high school grounds was beyond me. But as with the workings of the police department, I didn’t question it.

  “No more goodies now,” I said firmly to Patty Sue as she gave a longing look back at the giant glass ice cream sculpture. “You don’t want to turn into a pillar of salt.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know,” I said, “Lot’s wife. She looked back when she wasn’t supposed to.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Forget it.”

  One of the boys in my Sunday school class, after hearing this part of the Sodom and Gomorrah story, had said his mom looked back at their house and she turned into a telephone pole. Now I gave a longing look back at my van. I would have preferred being anywhere other than where we were going.

  We clambered over a sloped concrete embankment and saw Pomeroy and his students clustered in the middle of the paved expanse ahead. Although the weather had warmed to a cool fifty degrees, the teens standing around in groups wore no sweaters or jackets, but only the uniforms of their group: preppies, punks, or jocks. No hippies, though, and no ideological messages on the shirts. Things had changed.

  “There you are,” said Pomeroy as he came sauntering up to us. My heart flip-flopped, but I ignored it.

  “I have delivered your trainee,” I announced. “Now may I go sit over on the embankment while you teach?”

  Pom shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “I need you to stay in the car with her. Most of the other kids in the class have been learning to drive for the last six weeks. But Patty Sue here will need more supervision.” He smiled at my roommate in her pink and white outfit.

  She said, “I’m glad to be learning from a real driving teacher this time.”

  “You can use my driver-ed car,” Pom told me and motioned to a yellow Japanese number on the other side of the lot. “I rigged it up myself so that it’s equipped with a brake on your side. That way you can slow things down if you need to. That’s old-fashioned driver ed. This is my last class of the day, so when we’re done we can go over to Dairy Delight and have hot fudge sundaes. Sound good?”

  “It sounds super,” said Patty Sue.

  He winked at me. “I’ll give her the stationary instructions once we get over to the course. You can drive her over,” he said, then turned to Patty Sue. “Young lady, you’re going to be driving like a pro in no time.”

  Oh, God. No time was what I had for this educational experience.

  “Brother,” said Patty Sue as she opened the door to the old yellow Civic, “this car sure is little.”

  “Compared to the van,” I said as I slid in on the driver side, “it is.”

  The teens were trudging across the course marked with fluorescent orange cones toward the Dairy Delight edge of the Driver Ed lot. There, about half of them formed a group to one side while the others disappeared into a line of dark cars with taxi-type signs on top—CAUTION! STUDENT DRIVER!

  I had noticed ours didn’t have a sign, probably because it was Pom’s. Well, who needed a warning about us? I looked at the small windshield and tried to rid myself of a mental image of going through it.

  Patty Sue said, “I’m scared. Well, you know what I mean. I wish Pom was the one in here with me.” That made two of us. Patty Sue wiggled in her seat. She said, “I feel so cramped.”

  At that moment Mr. Wonderful was waving and honking to us from his nice big safe-looking Saab.

  “First gear!” he called back and made the wagon-ho sign. In Colorado they never let you forget the Old West.

  I put the Civic into first and started across the course. I looked over at Patty Sue’s feet, which were next to the brake bar. She saw me and tapped the bar. We screeched to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Will you just please put on your seat belt and then hold still?”

  “I thought you wanted me to do it,” Patty Sue said. “Anyway, my body is top long for this little seat.”

  I said, “The Japanese are small people.”

  The Saab chugged along in front of us, and for a moment I had the apprehensive feeling that accompanies the slow incline on a giant roller coaster. When we came up to the class, Pom jumped out. He signaled to the driving teens to repeat the course before heading over toward us. At Pom’s request, Patty Sue and I changed places.

  “Okay,” he said, as he reached across Patty Sue’s lap to restart the car. “You say you’ve had some driving experience.”

  “Yes,” Patty Sue said hesitantly.

  I thought, If she’s lying, I’ll kill her.

  “Do you remember to press in the clutch each time you need to change gears?” Pomeroy was asking. She nodded and he went on. “Then you go a little faster. Do you know how to change gears?”

  She nodded again. “I’ve done it in our driveway at home. Neutral to reverse.”

  Pom frowned and said, “Why don’t you move this seat back a little, Patty Sue? But watch it. When you go back, Goldy here’ll come forward. I did it that way for teenage drivers with shorter legs and adult instructors with longer ones. You all are sort of the opposite of that.”

  I hated it when people referred to my being short. To make up for the coming lack of legroom I put Patty Sue’s purse in the back next to Home Beekeeping and Fifth Grade Science in the Classroom, Teachers’ Edition.

  Patty Sue grunted and brought her seat back. My face made a sudden spring toward the windshield.

  “Not so much!” I howled, but Patty Sue was off.

  “Let me know if I’m making you nervous!” she yelled as she gunned the accelerator while we were in first gear. We spurted forward. When I was trying to get comfortable she veered right.

  “Gos
h, this steers so easily,” she cried, as we tilted on two wheels and my door swung open.

  “No, no!” I shouted. But she veered left and then right again. Only my seat belt kept me from falling out.

  “Brake!” called Pom. “Brake!”

  With another screeching turn I was back inside the car and pressing with both feet on the brake bar.

  “Damn you!” I yelled at a surprised Patty Sue. “I’ve got a kid at home to take care of! And at my age I don’t care for an extended trip to the hospital and a set of dentures! Now will you calm down, for God’s sake?”

  “I guess I’m not very good at this,” she said, contrite at my sudden rage.

  Pom trotted up to us and leaned in on her side.

  “Take it easy now, girls.”

  “Oh shut up!” I said. “Why don’t you get in here with Mario Andretti in first gear? See what it’s like.”

  Pom again gave Patty Sue gentle explanations about the gears, clutch, accelerator, and, most important from my point of view, brakes. Getting Patty Sue into a comfortable distance from the steering wheel had meant that my feet were only inches from the brake bar on my side. The students, still standing around in groups, giggled and pointed at us.

  “Sorry,” Patty Sue said once Pom had sauntered off again. “I guess I just screw up everything.”

  I felt bad in spite of myself.

  “You don’t screw up everything,” I reassured her as she bumped us along, still in first, to the short middle track of the drivers’ course. When she did not answer I surveyed the cones and fences, which had looked like a miniature golf course when we first climbed over the embankment. Now they presented themselves as large and unyielding. Dairy Delight and the cars in the high school parking lot, on the other hand, looked like pieces from a Lionel train set. Laughing, blase teens zoomed by on both sides of our Honda, downshifting and upshifting and steering around the obstacles as effortlessly as toddlers on trikes.

  “I do screw up everything,” she said while we were waiting our turn.

  “Come on, Patty Sue,” I said with false enthusiasm. “You’re going to learn to drive, the business is going to be reopened, everything is going to be okay.”