Louisa wasn’t so sure. No one had an excuse for frightening a woman, or even mangling a mailbox.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Teddy woke up while Francine was moving the car. Champ had crawled onto the couch next to him.
“Your dog smells, Aunt Louisa.”
“But he had a bath.” Then she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that. He ate too much at the barbeque.”
“What are we doing here?”
“I got spooked by a noise in the woods across the street. Your mom came to keep me company.”
“Why didn’t you call Uncle Dan? He’s not afraid of anything.”
“Because your mom is plenty brave too, okay?”
His mom was in the kitchen, crying again. Louisa had left her with a dish of super fudge chunk ice cream, and the hardcover romance novel. She led Teddy up the stairs to the room she and Annie used to share. She hadn’t repainted the room yet, so it still looked girly, with pink ballet slippers on the wallpaper. Her nephew had complained bitterly when he was here, but he complained of the bugs and the boredom and sharing a bedroom with his sister anyway. Louisa had felt redecorating the other rooms was more important. She moved a fluffy white stuffed cat from the pillow of one of the narrow twin beds and pulled back the pink coverlet. Luckily Teddy was too tired to notice, or care. He tucked the cat under the covers with him, whispering, “Don’t tell the guys,” before he rolled over and went back to sleep.
When the ice cream was gone, Louisa showed Francine to a small downstairs room with a single bed, a desk, a chair and a lamp. It might have been a dining room years ago, but now Louisa kept her computer there. It would make a nice office, overlooking the backyard the way it did, if she could think of a home business. She’d never gotten around to pricing the pearls, so her online sales venture had never begun. She never wanted to part with the treasures she found on her garage sale scavenger hunts, anyway. And she had two jobs for now.
Once she’d pointed Francine to the bathroom, Louisa locked the front door. And the downstairs windows. The early July night was not really hot, and she did not care if it was. She’d never be able to sleep with the house open, feeling so vulnerable, and so responsible suddenly for two other lives.
She couldn’t sleep anyway. Her mind was in chaos, to say nothing of the caffeine. The day and night kept rewinding through her head like a broken tape.
You just never knew about a man, she concluded an hour later. Here you pledge your life and your love, and he turns out to be a conscienceless creep, or a drunk, a womanizer, a mailbox batterer. Then again, Dante’s wife had turned out to be unfaithful, to his entire sex, so maybe disloyalty was not limited to men.
People changed, changed their minds. So how did anyone stay married? For that matter, why did anyone get married in the first place? Just look at the divorce rate; the odds weren’t good. Louisa thought of how many of her college friends were already on their second husbands. Then she thought of her mother and Aunt Vinnie, whose husbands had died. The statistics on widows versus widowers, women outliving men, were not encouraging either. One way or another, a lot of women ended up alone, so what was the point of the heartbreak along the way?
Life was hard. Love was harder, so why did people keep trying? Louisa asked herself, tangled in her sheets. Maybe they were all gamblers, looking for the long shot. Or optimists, desperately wanting to believe in that happily ever after. Wasn’t that why publishers put out so many books with handsome hunks on the covers? They gave their readers a small escape from reality, and a little trust that happy endings were still out there.
Trust, that’s what it took, she thought, finally feeling drowsy. Trust, and luck.
She was not having much of the latter this night, or sleep, either. Francine snored, Champ had wind, and the house was hot with everything shut up.
She could not have slept through the truck barreling down her quiet block, anyway. The dog growled, but didn’t get off the bed. Louisa did, to see where a truck could be going at this time of night, on the dead end street. She had been thinking of Dante, she remembered, half-asleep, and thought, hoped, dreamed, dreaded that he might have come by with her clothes after all. His truck was old, but never as decrepit or as loud as the one that turned around past the Mahoneys’ and parked across her driveway, bumping the front fender against the poor old oak tree at the corner of her property. Now she couldn’t drive away without knocking over the new fence, but she had no intention of fleeing her own house. What, leave Teddy and his mother unprotected? She’d never forgive herself, and knew Dante would never forgive her either, not that Mr. Rivera’s opinions mattered all that much, of course. She had no intention of going downstairs, however. She could just picture Dante shaking his head at that idiocy.
Louisa had no doubts as to the identity of this new visitor. She leaned out her bedroom window and called down, loudly enough to be heard by the lout, she hoped, but not loudly enough to wake the neighbors, or Francine. “Go away, Fred.”
“Not without my son. It’s a holiday and I get to see him.”
“The Fourth of July was yesterday. It’s already the fifth. Go home.”
“No, I came to see my boy.”
“What makes you think he’s here, anyway?”
“That crazy old Vinnie said my Fran was playing with the nice little Waldon girls over at Whaler’s Drive, that’s what.”
“Well, Francine’s not here now. No one is but me and my dog. My big, protective guard dog.”
“I don’t hear any watchdog barking.”
“He’s trained to attack silently, without warning.”
“Call him off. I only want to see for myself that my family’s not holed up in your place. Let me come look, then I’ll go.”
“No way. Go home.”
“Why not? What are you hiding in there? Dante? Bets at the Breakaway give him the edge. It’s close, though. Rivera’s rich, but his money’s tied up in real estate. Old man Bradford’s rolling in dough, and he can’t live long, they say, so that might be the better deal. Especially for a city broad. Dante ain’t going to fix up no Manhattan duplex like the old man already has. Dante wouldn’t do it for Susan; he ain’t going to do it for a skinny merink like you. He can’t be much in the sack, anyway, or his wife wouldn’t of turned, so you might as well go for the sure bet.”
Louisa would have slammed the window shut, if she thought he’d go away. “How dare you! My life is no business of yours!”
“It is if you’ve got my kid. Abduction, that’s what you’ve gone and committed, taking the boy without parental consent. And you’re an immoral influence on a little boy’s mind, too. I’ll tell the judge you were screwing around right-in front of my son. Everyone knows you’re carrying on with both of the sons of bitches.”
“No one knows anything, but be my guest. You go ahead and talk to the judge. Be sure to tell him how you were out disturbing the peace, driving while intoxicated, and—what are you doing?—carrying a weapon.”
Fred had taken an aluminum bat out of his truck. He started swiping at the tree. Leaves were flying, and bark chips shattering. “Fran!” he yelled.
Lights went on next door. Dante’s renters were going to complain. Louisa had lost him one month’s rent already and didn’t want to cost him another. “If you do not stop that racket this instant, I am going to call the police.”
Fred stopped taking batting practice on the oak. He sat on the grass beneath Louisa’s window, in the light from her front porch, and put his head in his hands. “What am I going to do?”
He was a big man, Louisa could see, thick-waisted and beefy. He needed a shave, and a haircut too. His shirt was half in his pants and half out, and his jeans were torn across at one knee. He looked like a man desperately in need of a caring hand, not hers or Francine’s of course, but Louisa did feel sorry for him. He seemed lost and defeated.
“Go home, Fred, and get some sleep,” she called down in what she hoped were friendly tones. “Francine will talk to you in the
morning.”
“She is here then!”
Oops. “No, I spoke to her, that’s all. She says she wants to come to an agreement with you, not fight like this. It’s bad for Teddy.”
Fred didn’t move, but started pounding the bat on the ground—hammering Louisa’s marigolds.
“Stop that! If the police come and find you with a weapon, they’ll have to press charges.” Louisa was guessing at the legalities, but willing to commit perjury for the sake of her flowers.
“’S not a weapon. I bought the bat for my boy. A surprise.”
“Little League season is over. He won’t need it until next year.”
“He needs the practice.”
No amount of practice was going to get Teddy an athletic scholarship, certainly not with a bat that had seen better days, and calmer nights.
Fred was going on: “I bought it before they could take everything I owned. It’ll be the last thing I can buy for my own kid.”
At least he wasn’t shouting. The neighbors had turned off their lights and gone back to bed, which Louisa wished she could do, too. Fred seemed in no hurry to move. In fact, he looked as well-rooted as the oak. Louisa sighed. If talking to him kept the lummox calm, she’d keep talking, but she wasn’t going to let him think he was the victim here. “For Pete’s sake, they’re only taking child support out of your wages, not your life’s blood. If you’d paid on time no one would have to—”
“Not them. The feds. I, uh, messed up my taxes.”
“So you’ll pay the penalty. No big deal.”
“No, it’s worse’n that. I never told them about the money from selling the house when Fran and me split up. Or the money from hauling lobster pots. Or the time I won big at the track. Or when my sister’s kid Arlen was doing day trading and we all cashed in a bundle before he tanked.”
“You haven’t been paying your taxes at all?”
“No one would of known if I hadn’t had to show the forms to Fran’s lawyer, for the divorce. He turned me in, the bastard.”
“They would have caught up with you sooner or later. It’s all on computers, except for the lobsters, I’d guess, unless you had to register for a permit.”
“Damn computers are taking over the world. It’s come to how an honest man can’t even make a buck without some twerp at a keyboard in Wisconsin putting his hand in your pocket.”
“I hate to say it, but I can’t help thinking that an honest man would have declared all that money and paid taxes on it, like the rest of us.”
“The rest of who? Everyone cheats on the IRS.”
“I don’t.” Well, she wouldn’t have declared any money she made on those pearls, but that was a moot question.
Fred was maundering on: “It’s too late now anyway. They’re taking my boat and my camper, my season pass to Aqueduct Raceway, everything but my tools and my truck. Then they might come get me. They might get Francine too, even though I told them she didn’t know anything about any of it.”
“And she never saw a dime of it either, I bet.” Louisa was scribbling on a piece of paper from the pad where she made her lists of things to do. She tossed it out the window in Fred’s direction. “Here, that’s the number of a good tax attorney.”
“I can’t afford no high-priced lawyers.”
“This one will work for free. You call and tell him Louisa sent you. He owes me. He’ll make them work out a payment system or something. That’s what he does all day, and he’s good at it. The IRS isn’t going to make an example out of a poor shnook like you; they just want their money. If they put you in jail, what will Francine and Teddy do? They’d have to sign up for social services, which would cost the government more money. So would keeping you in prison. They’d much rather let you work off your debts.”
Fred didn’t want to hear about working the rest of his life for Uncle Sam. “Nah, Fran won’t have to go on welfare. Big brother Dante will take care of them.”
“He’s her cousin.”
“Same thing, the way he’s always around, and how she thinks he walks on water. The s.o.b.’s got money and brains, she was always telling me. Her mother was always saying how I should be more like him. My own mother told me, too. Try harder, be more ambitious, get ahead like Dante. Bull. How could I compete with that?”
“He’s her cousin,” Louisa repeated. “There’s no race, no competition. She married you, didn’t she?” Why, Louisa would never be able to figure out. Her neck was getting a crick in it from looking down at the lush on her lawn, so she said, “Go home, call Howard in the morning. He’ll be able to do something about the mess.”
Fred listened to her, amazingly enough, and lurched to his feet, leaving the baseball bat behind, thank goodness. He got in his truck, started it up on the second try, and put it in gear. Unfortunately, he should have put it in reverse. Louisa thought the old oak might have rocked from the impact. The truck sure did. Smoke rose from its radiator, and pieces of metal thunked into the road, startling the peepers and crickets into silence.
Louisa leaned so far out the window she had to clamp her hands on the wooden frame, which was soft with dry rot. “Are you all right?”
“Better’n my truck.”
“Should I call you a cab?” she offered, still not knowing if any ran at night.
“Nah. I’ll sleep in the truck. Won’t be the first time, or the last. Fran can take me home in the morning.”
“Francine’s not here!”
He shrugged. “Then you can.”
With his truck across her driveway? Louisa couldn’t get her car out—much less retrieve her clothes from the side of Mr. Bradford’s pool. That was small potatoes, she acknowledged, compared to the troubles Francine was going to face in the morning. Fran’s car could be driven away from the Mahoneys’ tonight, but she’d have to go right past Fred. Who knew what mayhem he’d commit at the sight of his wife driving away, leaving him stuck, next to Louisa’s mailbox?
Besides, poor Francine was sleeping soundly in the downstairs room, emotionally and physically exhausted. Louisa did not want to wake her. If Francine stayed through the night, though, Teddy would wake up to see his father slumped over a steering wheel, stinking of booze. Fred had to go.
Louisa thought of calling Dante, despite Francine wishes, but realized the other woman was right. Fred was bitter toward his wife’s cousin, he might explode if Dan tried to get him out of the truck. Dante seemed fitter, but Fred outweighed him, and Louisa bet Fred fought dirty too. That would be a worse thing for Teddy to see: his two male role models brawling in the flower beds. Louisa’s flower beds.
The neighbors would see too.
Besides, she’d already asked Dante to pull her chestnuts out of the fire once today. He’d found her dog; that was enough. Any more and he was going to think Louisa was a clingy, helpless woman—the kind he hated—and not a reasonable, intelligent, decisive female who could solve her own problems.
So she called Alvin.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Louisa made blueberry pancakes the next morning. Actually, the microwave had made them, from the freezer, but she’d added the blueberries to the syrup. She was proud enough when Teddy ate the whole stack.
Francine had left early for her Saturday half-day at the bank, so she could check on her mother and change her clothes at home. She’d leave a message for Dante to pick the boy up at Louisa’s, if Louisa did not mind. Louisa didn’t. Teddy could help her walk the dog, she told Francine, and help her find more of those shiny jingle shells she needed to fill a glass lamp. The lamp had come from a yard sale, of course, filled with dried beans. Who would want beans in their living room?
Fred, maybe. There was no sign of him in the morning, only a few beheaded or flattened marigolds, new scrapes on the oak tree, tire ruts on the street-side grass, and a few shards of glass Louisa swept up before Champ could cut his feet on them.
Good riddance, Francine said, when Louisa explained what had transpired last night while the others slept. Louis
a hadn’t slept at all, thinking of love, sex, marriage, and her clothes in the pool. It was way too late to worry about them now. Either they had been discovered, or the pool guys were doing a lousy job. Louisa was in no hurry to find out which.
Mr. Bradford didn’t need her today, because he was having lunch with an old friend. She’d have to stop by the hill later, to check the messages and see what function they were to attend that evening, so she could figure what to wear. They saw many of the same people every weekend, and they had all seen most of her clothes. Now the pool guys had too. What was the worst that could happen? Mr. Bradford could fire her for conduct unbecoming a lady, or the gardener would be laughing. Well, she thought her job was secure because no one else could read Mr. Bradford’s handwritten notes, and she’d been laughed at by everyone else in the world, so why not give the yard workers a chuckle? She was almost getting used to being the comic relief in this town. Maybe in a few months, or years, she’d be able to laugh at herself.
Meantime, she could go to yard sales as soon as Teddy left. When they got back from the dog walk, Louisa took her newspaper clippings, a pad, pen, and the local map out to the porch.
“Do you know where Seaview Avenue is?” she asked Teddy, who was throwing a tennis ball for Champ in the front yard. Either he was getting better at throwing, or Champ was a better catcher than the kids on the ball team, but they were having a great time. Louisa didn’t even worry about her old, half-rotten windows.
“Sure, James lives there. Julie lives around the corner. She’s in sixth grade.”
“That’s a big help. How do you get there from here?”
“On the school bus?”
“Thanks.” She went back to the small print on the big map. If nothing else, she was learning her way around Paumonok Harbor. Some people went on house or garden tours; she took the tag sale route. She bet she saw more of the way people really lived, too.
When the tennis ball was so slobbered on that Teddy didn’t want to throw it anymore, he came to sit beside Louisa on the porch steps. He asked if she wanted to come along with him and Uncle Dante to Montauk. They were having a library sale there.
Love, Louisa Page 19