A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  A Woman’s Place

  BARBARA DELINSKY

  Contents

  ONE

  Had I been a superstitious sort, I would have taken…

  TWO

  The heading proclaimed the paper a Temporary Order issued by…

  THREE

  I remembered when Brody bought his house. He had been…

  FOUR

  Carmen’s office was on the fourth floor of a building…

  FIVE

  At its simplest, the word “wicker” means woven. Common usage…

  SIX

  I wasn’t a big television watcher. By the time I…

  SEVEN

  I hadn’t expected Carmen to answer the question. Without knowing…

  EIGHT

  Early Tuesday morning, I called the house. Dennis picked up…

  NINE

  I’m not sure that anyone who hasn’t ever been granted…

  TEN

  My key still worked. I let myself in, dropped my…

  ELEVEN

  Rona’s panic came over loud and clear—Connie’s heart had…

  TWELVE

  My silence had nothing to do with defiance. I was…

  THIRTEEN

  “How are you, Mom?”

  FOURTEEN

  Rona hadn’t exaggerated this time. I flew out on Sunday…

  FIFTEEN

  Carmen called first thing that Monday before Thanksgiving with good…

  SIXTEEN

  My heart began to hammer at the sound of her…

  SEVENTEEN

  Snow was falling when I returned to Reaper’s Head, large…

  EIGHTEEN

  A blustery wind blew me along Federal Street the following…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  BOOKS BY BARBARA DELINKSY

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  one

  Had I been a superstitious sort, I would have taken the smell as an omen. I had wanted the morning of our leaving to be smooth and now it was down to the wire. The last thing I needed was Dennis annoyed.

  But I was a trusting soul. Entering the kitchen that October Friday, I sensed nothing of the broader picture. All I knew was that something had gone bad. A rank smell sullied what should have been the sweetness of fall—the scent of crisp leaves drifting in from the backyard, cranberry candles on the glass tabletop, a basket of newly picked Macouns.

  I checked under the sink for fishy paper from last night’s scrod, but the air there was fine. Same with the inside of the oven. Nothing hit me when I opened the refrigerator, still I checked the milk that my daughter too often left on the counter, the chicken that was ready for Dennis to eat while we were gone, the cheese bin where plastic wrap might hide something fuzzy and blue.

  Nothing.

  But the odor remained, offensive and strong, another glitch in a godawful week of glitches. With a husband, two young children, and a career to juggle, preparing to go away for more than two days was always a challenge, but I was going away for eleven days this time, in part on a dreaded mission. My mother was dying. My equilibrium was shaky, even without complicating glitches.

  Having ruled out the obvious, I was beginning to wonder if something wasn’t rotting under the two-hundred-year-old floorboards of the house, when my son padded in in his stockinged feet. He looked more sober than any nine year old with mussed hair, an authentic Red Sox baseball shirt, and battered jeans should look, but he was a serious child under any conditions, and perceptive. Much as I had tried to minimize the meaning of our trip, I suspected he knew.

  “I can’t find my sneakers, Mom. They’re not in my room, and if I can’t find them, I don’t know what I’ll wear at Grandma’s. They were my best pair.”

  “‘Were’ being the operative word.” I draped my arms over his shoulders. The top of his head reached my chest. “I had to scrape mud from the bottoms last night. What were you up to, Johnny? We agreed you wouldn’t wear good sneaks to play football.”

  “It was basketball. Jordan’s dad put in a hoop, but nothing’s paved yet.” He made a face. “Peewww. What stinks?”

  I slid a despairing glance around the kitchen. “Good question. Any ideas?”

  “Don’t ask me. Ask Kikit. She’s the one always leaving things lying around. Are you sure I’ll be home in time for practice Tuesday?”

  “The plane lands at one. Practice isn’t until five.”

  “If I miss practice, I’ll be benched.”

  I took his face in my hands. His cheeks were boy-smooth, deep into the lean and cool of preadolescent limbo. “The only way you’ll miss practice is if the flight is delayed, in which case Daddy or I will talk with the man—”

  “It’s a rule,” Johnny broke in and took a step back. “No practice, no play. Where are my sneakers?”

  “On the landing in the garage.” My voice rose to follow him there. “Want something to eat? Brody will be here in forty-five minutes. They’ll feed us on the plane, but I can’t guarantee you’ll like it. Unless you want some of Kikit’s food.” Silence. He was through the mudroom and into the garage. I used the pause to shout upstairs for my youngest. “Kikit?”

  “She changed her mind again and is moving the menagerie from her bedroom to the den,” my husband announced, tossing the morning Globe, minus the business section, which he held, onto the table. “I have never seen so many stuffed things in my life. Does she really need all those things?” He sniffed and screwed up his face. “What’s that?”

  The question was more damning coming from Dennis. In the overall scheme of our marriage, the house was my responsibility.

  But I couldn’t hunt more now, just didn’t have the time. “It may be a rat. The exterminator had to rebait some of the basement traps, which means some of the poison was eaten, which means something may have died before it reached the outside.”

  Johnny ran through with a pithy, “Gross.”

  His sneakers left a trail of dried dirt, but there wasn’t time for remopping, either. “Eggs, Dennis?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Coffee first.” He sat down with the paper.

  I put on the coffee and, ignoring the heebie-jeebies inside that cried, Come on, come on, let’s get this show on the road, said gently, “Eggs, yes or no? I have forty minutes to be cleaned up, packed, and gone.”

  “What about that smell? I can’t live with this for eleven days.”

  “It may go away on its own,” I prayed. “If not, give the exterminator a call. His number is on the board.”

  “But I won’t be here to let him in. I’m leaving right after you do to meet the Ferguson group in the Berkshires. That was the whole problem with driving you to the airport.” He shot me a disparaging look. “I can’t believe you messed up with the service.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, Dennis. I booked the airport run two weeks ago and have the confirmation number to prove it. They say I called and canceled last week. But I didn’t. If I hadn’t called to check a little while ago, we’d be waiting an hour from now for a ride that isn’t coming. Lucky thing Brody can take us. And as for the smell,” I tried to keep calm, “have the exterminator come when you get back. I don’t know what else to do, Dennis. It’s a holiday weekend. Flights are booked solid. I can’t just decide to fly later.” There was more to be said, more about his being sensitive, what with my mother’s illness preying heavily on me, but he was already taking care of the kids so that I could fly on for a week’s work after Cleveland. I wasn’t ungrateful, just feeling frayed around the edges. It was getting later by the minute.

  Just as I took out the egg tray, skipping footsteps came from behind, then the voice of seven-year-old Clara Kat
e. “Mommy, I’m taking Travis, Michael, and Joy, okay?” She gazed up at me with her cheek at my waist, an angel’s face framed by a barretted mass of chestnut curls. My own hair was the same color, though the curl had long since fallen prey to scissors and a blow-dryer.

  Hooking an arm around her neck, I held her close while I beat eggs. “I thought we agreed you’d only bring two.”

  Her cheek moved against my arm. “Well, I said I would, but which one can I leave? I’m the only one who knows what’ll make Travis sick if he eats it, and Michael has nightmares if he isn’t with me, and Joy’ll cry the whole time because they’re always together, those three. Besides, I want them to see Auntie Rona, and they’ll cheer Grandma up. What’s her hospital like?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it.”

  She waved a small hand, fingers splayed. “Is it all shiny and noisy, like mine?”

  “Only the parts that treat little girls who have allergic reactions to things they’re not supposed to eat. Grandma’s floor will be shiny and quiet.”

  “Will she be sleeping?”

  “Not all the time.”

  “Some of the time?”

  “Maybe some. Probably not while you’re there, though. She’ll want to be awake for every minute of that.”

  “Can she talk?”

  “Of course she can.”

  “Not if she has tubes in her throat. Will she have tubes in her throat?”

  “No, sweetie.” I opened a pack of shredded cheddar and offered it to her.

  She took a fistful. “Will she have tubes in her nose?”

  “No. I told you that last night.”

  “Well, things change sometimes.” She put the fist to her mouth and, nibbling cheese, ducked free of my arm. “Daddy, why aren’t you coming with us?”

  “You know why,” he said from behind the paper. “I have to work.”

  “If you have to work,” she asked, climbing up a chair to the table top and sitting on its edge so that her legs swung, “why’d you put your golf clubs in the car?”

  I whisked together shredded cheddar and eggs, but softly.

  “Because,” Dennis said, “I’m playing golf after I work. After,” he emphasized.

  “We’re missing school to see Grandma. I think you should come.”

  “I went with you in August.”

  Her legs swish-swished against the paper’s edge. “When’s she getting out of the hospital?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she ever?”

  “Good God, Kikit,” he said with a tight laugh and the abrupt rustle of newsprint set aside, “I can’t read when you bump the paper like that. You’re getting cheese all over the place. Get off the table.”

  “Are you meeting us at the plane on Tuesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “The airport’s really big, so how will you know where to go?”

  “I’ll know where to go. Off the table,” he ordered and flipped the paper back up the instant she complied.

  “He’ll be there to meet you,” I called as she hopped from the room. I poured the egg mixture into a sizzling skillet, pushed the toaster down, and reached for a plate. “The flight information is on the board,” I told Dennis, “along with the number you can call to find out if the plane is on time. The Cleveland numbers are there, too, and, after the kids get back, who’s taking who where on what day, with phone numbers.”

  The newspaper went down again, his chair scraped back. He went to the board by the phone, stood a minute, made a grunting sound.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What else? Same old, same old. We need a nanny.”

  “We had a nanny. She monopolized the phone, drove like a maniac, and kept offering Kikit peanut butter no matter how many times I told her it was lethal.”

  “She was French. French nannies are frivolous. We need a Swedish nanny. I know, I know. You say we do better without,” he tossed an impatient hand at the board, “but that list of who’s taking who where and when is a joke. Even when you’re home, things get hairy. Remember last week?”

  How could I forget? I had kept Kikit and her friends waiting an hour after ballet, when the store in Essex, where I had been working at the time, lost electricity and the clocks stopped. I had felt awful.

  “Why didn’t you look at your watch?” he asked for the umpteenth time.

  “I was distracted trying to get the computers up again.”

  “You’re overextended,” said the die-hard pessimist.

  “I’m not,” said the die-hard optimist. “I do fine, as long as you help.”

  “It’d be simpler just to hire someone to drive the kids around.”

  “They would hate it,” I said, scrambling the eggs. “They want us. I want us. Besides, we have a sitter for emergencies. Mrs. Gimble.”

  “She doesn’t drive.”

  “She lives two doors away and loves the kids. Dennis?” I waited for him to look up from the paper. “You’ll be at Johnny’s game Saturday, won’t you?”

  “If I can.”

  Oh, he could. The issue was whether he would. “He’ll be heartbroken if you aren’t there.”

  “If something comes up and I can’t be there, I can’t. I’m running a business, too, Claire.”

  I couldn’t forget that either, not with him reminding me so often. Nor could I point out that, with his business a shadow of its former self, he had time to parent if he chose, because that would put him on the defensive. We had been down that road before. This wasn’t the time to travel it again. I simply needed to know that the children would have Dennis’s full attention while I was gone.

  “How many in the Ferguson group?” I asked.

  “It varies.”

  I turned the eggs again. “What is it they make, exactly?”

  “Plastic things.”

  I turned the eggs once more. “For commercial displays?”

  He grunted, yes or no, I didn’t know.

  The toast popped up. I buttered both slices, cornered them on the plate, slid the eggs in the center, and slipped the plate into the gap between the paper and Dennis. Then I set to scrubbing the skillet.

  “The game is at ten Saturday morning. Plan business around it. Please? Johnny needs one of us to see him play. Besides, he loves it when you’re there. He was crushed when you missed his touchdown last week. He’s convinced he’ll never score another one. Even if he doesn’t, he needs to know that you want to see him play.”

  “I said I’d try,” Dennis warned, “but if work interferes, I may only make it to the last half. What is that smell?” He shoved the paper aside with the most unruly rustle, pushed back his chair, and started banging cabinets open and shut. “Your mind has been everywhere but here lately. You must have put something where it didn’t belong.”

  It was possible. But I didn’t expect him to find anything in the cabinets. They had been thoroughly cleaned the week before.

  “Here,” he said with disgust. “Get rid of this.”

  A reeking baggy landed in the sink. It contained half of a decaying onion. I had no idea how it had ended up in a cabinet with refolded grocery bags, but when I looked questioningly at Dennis, he was backing away from the stench and returning to his breakfast.

  I disposed of the onion, grabbed the air freshener, and gave a spray. “See?” I said on an up note. “You’re good at finding things. Much better than me.”

  He shot me an irritated look before returning to the stock market report.

  Brody arrived thirty minutes later. He helped himself to a cup of coffee and talked business with Dennis while I finished packing our bags, made the beds, and slipped into a suit. It had soft gray pants, an ivory vest, and an apricot jacket, and would be perfect for the work following Cleveland. More, my mother would love it. She loved fine things, loved the feel of them against her skin and the sight of them on her daughters, and understandably so. She had known hard times and was pleased they were past.

  Once everything was in the
car and Dennis had been hugged and kissed and left waving on the front porch of our Cape Cod Georgian, which wasn’t on the Cape at all but in a small township just north of Gloucester, we joined the Boston commuters and headed for Logan.

  Settling into the seat of Brody’s Range Rover, I exhaled.

  “Tired?” he asked softly.

  I smiled and shook my head, then moved my hand in a way that contradicted the headshake. Yes, I was tired. And worried. I was also, at that moment, relieved to have Dennis behind me. He hated my traveling, saw it as an imposition on our lives, even in spite of my attempts to minimize the inconvenience. Actually, he hadn’t been too difficult this time, more grumpy than belligerent. Maybe he was mellowing. Or feeling bad about my mother. Whatever, there hadn’t been any major explosions.

  Now, with Brody at the wheel, I could relinquish responsibility for the hour it would take us to reach the airport. “You’re a peach to do this,” I said, turning my head against the headrest. He was as easy on the eye as he was on the mind—light brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses over deeper brown eyes still soft from sleep. He was loose and laid-back, a welcome balm.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “By the way, I think Dennis is onto something with the Ferguson thing. The company has suffered some bad breaks, but it has solid management and mega-brains. It just needs a little money to work with. If Dennis can arrange that, he may have a winner.”

  I hoped so. He had had too few of them of late, which made my own success with WickerWise more difficult for him. Not that he worked that hard. Not that he wanted to work that hard. But it wouldn’t bother me if he hit a bonanza. My own ego needs were small.

  “I should get the St. Louis franchise contracts back today,” Brody went on in his quietly competent way. “Once the franchisee is locked in, I can finalize a deal with a builder for the renovation work. I’ll have that information faxed to the hotel by the time you get there Wednesday. He’ll handle the subs. Do you have the design plans?”