Just Flirt

by Laura Bowers

  Mom wipes the tears from her face. “Of course I do. He helped me when John died. Carl Bedden.”

  “Carl Bedden?” Madeline asks. “Do you mean Judge Bedden?”

  Whatever thin slice of composure Mom was clinging to dissolves like a tissue in tepid water. “What? He’s a judge now? That’s right. I completely forgot! So that means … no, I don’t have a lawyer!”

  Ivy takes Mom by the elbow and pulls her to her feet. “Let’s talk in the store. Roxanne! Come over here and stand guard in case any campers have an emergency. And later on, there’s a guided hike scheduled for three o’clock. I’ll need you to grab a map and take care of it.”

  Roxanne.

  I forgot that she was at the playground, close enough to hear everything. She must be loving this, getting to witness firsthand how right she was—I am nothing but a stupid, horrible person who hurts people.

  “Me?” Roxanne asks. “You want me to lead a hike?”

  “Yes, step up to the plate and handle it, girl,” Ivy barks, opening the store door and leading Mom inside before Roxanne can respond. Ivy locks the deadbolt and turns the sign to CLOSED before facing us. Gone is her normal air of bored retiree. Gone is the woman who would spend hours deliberating whether she should learn how to crotchet or go to bingo with other senior citizens. Instead, she looks controlled. Fierce.

  Powerful.

  “Jane, don’t panic,” Ivy sternly says, pulling down the blinds on the front windows. “Ninety percent of lawsuits never make it to trial and are not winnable, okay? So, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to calmly contact your insurance company and report to them how you received the summons and at what time. They are the ones who will provide a lawyer for you. That’s why you have insurance.”

  Mom’s eyes widen. She runs over to the files and jerks open a drawer so hard the entire cabinet rocks. “The insurance bill. I just paid it Monday a week ago,” she says, rifling through the folders. “It was late, but I had misfiled our statement and didn’t remember it until I found the late notice, and—oh my gosh, Madeline, why did you have to rearrange everything?”

  The air turns stagnant.

  The payment Mom said she had to drop by the insurance office that Saturday. But the office was closed, so she couldn’t pay until Monday.

  Ivy presses a hand to her mouth. “Jane. How late was it?”

  Madeline races behind the counter, elbowing Mom aside and finding the insurance folder in a different drawer. She thumbs through the papers and then turns to Mom with her mouth held aghast. “Jane. How could you?”

  “What? I paid the bill.”

  “But you didn’t respond to their late notice!” Madeline holds up a sheet of paper, her dark Florida tan turning crimson. “Guess what happens when you don’t respond to a late notice, Jane? Your policy is canceled and you’re not covered!”

  Mom snatches the notice from her. “What are you talking about? They’re not going to drop me over one late payment, are they?”

  “No! Of course they won’t drop you over a late payment. But if you read the notice, you’d know they only gave you a ten-day extension while waiting for payment. That extension expired on June 18, meaning that on June 19, the night Sabrina fell, you had no insurance. No insurance, no coverage. Which means, no lawyer. And judging from your bank account balance, you can’t afford one either.”

  “So because I made an accounting mistake—”

  “Mistake? Is that all you can say, Jane?” Madeline picks up an activities schedule and shakes it in the air. “You’ll take the time to plan themed weekends, but insurance? No. You’ll pay for wireless Internet, but insurance? No! After all the hard work my husband and I put into this campground, you didn’t even bother to protect it!”

  Mom slumps in a chair. She twists the gold band around her finger and stares at the photo of my dad holding up a ten-pound bass he caught at the Susquehanna River before saying, “John always did the bills, okay? He was so much better at it than I am.”

  Madeline closes her mouth.

  We are silent until Ivy steps forward. “I know you both are upset, but we need to calm down, because everything will be okay. I promise.”

  “How, Ivy?” Mom asks. “I’m being sued for two million dollars and I can’t afford a lawyer, so how is it going to be okay?”

  Pain swells in my chest, making it hard to swallow or breathe. The reality of what is happening crashes upon me like water from a broken dam. First we lost Dad. And now, we could lose the campground. The room blurs as I start to sob, pinching my eyes shut until strong hands grasp my arms.

  It’s Ivy.

  “Dee, you listen to me,” she says, with a strength I’ve never heard from her before. “Everything will be fine, I promise. You hear me, Jane? Everything is going to be fine. But first, Dee, I want you to tell me the absolute truth, right here and right now. Did you touch that girl at all on the stairs, even briefly?”

  Her abruptness makes me question everything that happened that night. Was I to blame? No, I might have done some things wrong, but “I never touched her, Ivy. I was inside the rec room when she fell.”

  “Okay, then. Okay.” Ivy nods. She steps back, still nodding, and peers at her reflection in the small mirror hanging behind the chip display. Ivy reaches up to touch her messy hair and then grimaces at her plain yellow T-shirt. “Okay, then,” she repeats, walking to the door and flipping the deadbolt. “Jane, listen. You know how the worst thing a lost hiker can do is panic and run wildly through the woods? No, she should stop, be calm, and stay in one place. That’s what I want you to do right now, stay calm, because you do have a lawyer. You have me.”

  Hold on.

  It takes a moment for her words to make sense.

  “You’re an attorney, Ivy?” Mom asks in complete shock.

  “Yes, I was … I mean, I am. And after I take care of a few details in town, we’re going to get down to business and make this all go away, I promise. So stay calm, I’ll only be gone for two hours, maybe three.”

  She leaves before we can say anything, and we hear her firing up her truck outside.

  Ivy … Miss Almond Pudding herself, a lawyer? No, I can’t wrap my head around it, not with the words “personal injury” and “emotional distress” churning in my brain like a bucket full of blue gills. Mom puts away the insurance folder then leans her chin on the cabinet, staring at the photo of Dad again. Madeline makes coffee and pours herself some, only to dump it after just one sip.

  I can’t sit still.

  I can’t stay calm. I have to do something. Something other than listen to the ticking clock or Madeline’s aggravated sighs or Mom’s occasional sniff. I grab the inventory chart and go to the first aisle, trying to lose myself in the mundane task of tallying butane lighters and waterproof matches. Mom joins me, kneeling to count the coils of extension cords, water pressure gauges, and surge guards, but I can tell she can’t concentrate.

  Neither can I.

  Madeline sighs again and walks over to where Mom and I are counting the spare camper parts. When she reaches for the sewer caps, Mom’s body stiffens. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she says.

  Madeline ignores her and starts counting.

  “I said,” Mom repeats, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “And I wish you paid your bills on time,” Madeline says. “Maybe then you’d have a real lawyer to call instead of us waiting for Ivy and God only knows what.”

  Mom stands, her muscles flexed. “You want to talk about wishes, Madeline? Okay, then, here’s mine: I wish you were more supportive of my decision not to sell the campground after John’s death. Maybe then I would have done better. I wish you had helped me, instead of throwing all my mistakes in my face. Maybe then I would have done better. I wish you had mourned John’s death with me instead of against me. Maybe then we both would have done better.”

  “This has nothing to do with his death, Jane.”

  Mom steps past me, almost knocking the hos
e clamps from my hands. “This has everything to do with John’s death. You blame me, don’t you? You think I should have forced him to go to the hospital. You think it was me who said ignore those chest pains, honey, go ahead and take a nice long drive.”

  Madeline turns away.

  Mom forces my grandmother to face her. “Don’t you think I tried? Don’t you think I asked him to go to the doctor? But no. John didn’t think guys like him had heart attacks. And he was right, they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t. They shouldn’t!”

  I drop the clamps.

  I never knew this. I didn’t know there were warning signs—I thought the heart attack he had while driving to the hardware store was sudden. But I can imagine Dad shrugging it off, keeping his hands on the wheel through the storm that claimed him in the end.

  Madeline’s lower lip shakes, her aloof demeanor threatening to crumple. She quickly composes herself. “So, the campground being sued is my fault, I suppose?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. But you certainly didn’t help!”

  I slap the clipboard on the counter. They are not to blame. It’s my fault. All of it is my fault. Sabrina tripped because of me. Mona is suing because of me.

  Suddenly the room feels like a sauna.

  I want to leave.

  I want to run through the woods until my lungs ache. I want to get in a boat, cut the rope, and let the river take me away. Instead, when I go onto the porch and see Ivy’s dirty clothes on the sidewalk, I take them to the laundry room, hoping to find comfort in the sound of agitating water and the sweet smell of drying clothes. But by the time her last pair of shorts is folded, my mind still feels as dizzy as a pinwheel in a tornado.

  Natalie. I need Natalie.

  By now, she is probably knee-deep in Disney discussions, but twenty minutes after I send her an urgent text, Natalie arrives, driving her grandmother’s minivan. She sits beside me on the porch steps. “You want to talk about it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, Dee. We’ll just sit here, then.”

  So we sit.

  We stay that way for thirty more minutes, watching fluttering alfalfa butterflies and a little girl playing hopscotch with a hot dog in her hand, dripping ketchup on her arm with each jump. Roxanne soon limps around the corner, sweaty and damp, with a troop of clammy hikers behind her. Her pace falters when she sees me. Natalie shoots me a curious look when Roxanne says, “Um, we kind of got lost, so our one-mile hike turned into five. Sorry.”

  Guess she doesn’t know about Ivy’s stop and be calm policy. And if it didn’t feel as though my life is destroyed, the surprise of her talking to me without a slur would’ve sunk in. Instead, I only say, “Oh. Well, thanks for taking care of it.”

  She shifts her weight and brushes back her soggy bangs. “Okay, then, I better get back to my—” Roxanne stops when she notices a shiny black car with sparkling chrome-rimmed tires pulling in. For a second, I think it’s Blaine, coming to tell me not to worry—he’ll tell everyone I never pushed Sabrina. But it isn’t a Mercedes.

  “Whoa,” Roxanne says. “That’s a BMW 335i Coupe!”

  The black car sweeps into a parking spot. We watch as the door opens and a slender foot in a navy sling-back heel emerges, stepping down with a loud click. The driver stands tall, wearing a slim-cut skirt and tailored blouse. She pulls a leather briefcase from the backseat and turns, her hair swinging in a classy curve across her cheek. The smell of perfume sweeps over us as she walks up the porch stairs, takes off her dark sunglasses, and says, “Roxanne, close your mouth, kiddo, the car is only leased. Natalie, you drive Jake to the dealership in town so he can bring back my truck. And, Dee? Get those scumbag lawyers Wyatt, Hyatt and Smith on the line. Now I’m ready to kick some rear.”

  Ivy.

  Well, goodbye, Miss Almond Pudding, hello, Miss Hotshot.

  * * *

  Inside the store, Ivy, her gray hair now cut in a sleek, elegant bob, opens her briefcase. She tosses me her cell. “Dee, tell them that Ivy Neville, Esquire, would like to speak to her former boss, Aaron Wyatt.”

  “You were with Wyatt, Hyatt and Smith?” Madeline asks. “But I thought Jane said you used to work for an investment firm.”

  Ivy pulls out a legal pad. “It is an investment firm—they invest in themselves. And they never made me partner, which is why they were able to ‘encourage’ me into retirement. Afterward, I did maintain my license,” Ivy says, reaching into her new purse for a pen. “But I felt too depressed and too old to keep practicing … until now.”

  I thought about the clues. Reading John Grisham novels. Never backing down from an argument. Her inability to feel relaxed despite her therapist’s many attempts. And now, Ivy Neville is our lawyer.

  Maybe hope is not lost after all.

  The receptionist answers on the fourth ring. When I ask for Aaron Wyatt, she informs me with a snotty voice that he’s unavailable. I relay this to Ivy and her eyes narrow to angry slits. “Hmm, he’s not taking my call, is he?”

  She strides over and takes the phone. “With whom am I speaking? Oh, hello, Sheila. This is Ivy Neville. Yes, I’m well, thank you, how are your husband and kids? Good, good. Now be a dear and put me through to Aaron. No? He’s in a meeting?”

  Ivy shifts the phone to her other ear.

  “Well, then, perhaps we should start this conversation over, shall we? Hello, Sheila, how are you? And how is Steven Jones, the associate you slept with at the Christmas party four years ago?” Nod, nod, pause. “Oh, Aaron is available now? Wonderful, thank you, Sheila. Give my love to your family.”

  Ivy clicks open her pen. “Dee, I promise. Everything is under control. Oh, and call my therapist. Tell him he’s fired.”

  13 Sabrina

  Everything was under control.

  After I discovered Dee’s blog that Sunday morning—and after Mom dragged me to the hospital for X-rays that showed my wrist was sprained—I drove straight to Blaine’s and told him I was an idiot for not trusting him, and that I should have known it was Dee who came on to him instead of the other way around. He stopped packing his suitcase long enough to wrap his strong arms around me and say he was sorry, too, so as far as I was concerned, that whole stupid mess was over, and for the rest of the summer we were going to do nothing but have fun together.

  Well, once he returns from his New York trip with Larson, that is.

  As for Dee Barton, my first intention was to tell everyone about her stupid blog and see to it that her life is a total nightmare when school starts. But after reading all of her entries, I realized that everyone—especially the guys—would think the blog was hot, unlike her desperate letter to Blaine. Dee’s status would skyrocket to iconic levels and I’d be forever known as the evil girlfriend. Uh, not happening. My best course of action was to just let it go, regardless of how mad I was. Bravo, Dee, you got your revenge … and maybe I did deserve some of it.

  So life was perfectly under control.

  Until, of course, Mom screwed everything up.

  Now, not only is everyone going to find out about Dee’s blog, they will also find out how my mother filed a tacky suit against her mother, seeking restitution for my hospital visit and a little extra. I won’t be just the evil girlfriend. I’ll be the pathetic, poor, and evil girlfriend, much to Torrance’s amusement.

  And what will Blaine think?

  In our backyard on Wednesday evening, I yank on a ragweed that is choking the marigolds and almost fall on my rear when it pulls loose. Mom and I have an arrangement—she plants and I weed, which is fitting, since I’m always the one who gets stuck with her messes. I toss the weed into a plastic tub and pull off my gloves, sifting my fingers through the chalky gray mulch that used to be a fresh black. I can’t even imagine how to break the news to Blaine when he gets back from New York. Hey, guess what, sweetie, my mother is suing your ex-girlfriend’s mother, now give me a big kiss.

  As I put my gloves back on to attack a cluster of ground ivy, my cell rings. I hope it’s
Blaine finally calling me back. Then I can get it over with and tell him about Mom’s latest scheme, but when I answer, a shrill voice screams out, “You witch, why didn’t you tell me?”

  It isn’t Blaine. “Torrance?”

  “Of course. I cannot believe you let me find out this way!”

  Oh, man. She knows about the lawsuit. My throat tightens, like the ragweed is now choking me. I’ve been dreading this ever since Mom barged into my room on the Monday after the horrible Dee incident looking like a possessed airline stewardess in a lime green skirt and pastel sweater. She pulled out a blue sundress from my closet and said, “Change into this and put your hair up all nice and pretty, sweetie. We have an important meeting that’s gonna change our lives forever!”

  My first thought was Oh, no, she’s dragging me to another one of those whacked-out psychics. The last time Mom saw a psychic, she was depressed for weeks after the phony told her she’ll never remarry and will die alone.

  “Come on, Sabrina, chop-chop!” Mom bellowed from the hallway.

  My wrist was aching, so I was in no mood for her chop-chops, but I threw the dress on anyway and coiled my dark hair into a messy bun. Mom cocked her head and sighed when I met her at the front door. “Aw, you look like an angel, sweetie. Now let’s go!”

  We climbed into the Trooper and she floored the accelerator before I even had a chance to put my seat belt on. “Where are you taking me, anyway?” I asked.

  “I’m not telling, sugar, it’s a surprise!” Mom then lifted her giant fringed purse onto my lap and said, “Now dig in there for another little surprise, will ya?”

  The only thing in her purse that could pass as a surprise was a country classics CD, unless she meant her hair-ensnarled brush or collection of super-sized tampons. “Yep, that’s it,” Mom said, taking the CD and popping it into the stereo. Twangs of steel guitar came through the speakers and Mom rocked to the beat. “You remember this one, Sabrina? ‘Harper Valley PTA’ by Jeannie C. Riley? It’s our theme song for the summer.” She started to sing. “I wanna tell you all the story ’bout a Harper Valley widowed wife.”