CRY UNCLE

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CRY UNCLE Page 14

by Judith Arnold


  ***

  IF ANYONE HAD TOLD Pamela she was destined to be married to a man she never saw, she wouldn’t have believed it. Then again, if anyone had told her she was going to observe the slaying of a professional colleague, put herself in jeopardy by testifying against the murderer in court, and flee to a steamy, sticky island off the southern tip of Florida, where she would take an utter stranger as her husband and accept his wild little niece as part of the package, she wouldn’t have believed that, either.

  None of this had been a part of her life plan.

  She wanted to see her husband. She wanted to talk to Jonas, tell him how her day had gone, boast about how she’d persuaded Lizard to behave with the assistance of a dish of peppermint-stick ice-cream and a pad of graph paper that had so pleased the little girl she’d forgotten all about her demands to be taken to the beach. Pamela had purchased pencils, a ruler, a protractor and the graph paper so she could begin jotting ideas for the overhaul of Birdie’s house. Lizard had insisted that she knew Birdie’s house—and Birdie—better than Pamela did, and therefore she should have some graph paper to jot ideas on, too.

  If peace could be bought for the cost of a pad, Pamela wasn’t above spending the money. More than peace, Pamela had bought victory over the Liz-Monster. It would have been cheap at twice the price.

  Pamela wanted to tell Joe. She wanted to brag that, for a single, professional woman who’d never had any dealings with five-year-old brats, she had acquitted herself with Lizard rather nicely. Joe had told her not to wait up for him, but she’d wanted to see him, so she’d pulled a paperback novel from the shelf in the den and settled on the porch to read until he got home from the Shipwreck.

  And then, apparently, she’d fallen asleep.

  She hadn’t seen Joe, but he’d seen her. When she woke up the next morning, she found herself in her own bed. Who but Joe could have carried her up the stairs?

  She knew he was strong enough. She knew how easily his powerful arms could lift her and cradle her against his chest. He’d carried her across the threshold, hadn’t he? And embraced her, and kissed her...

  She supposed she should be grateful that he’d left her fully clothed when he’d brought her to her room last night. It would have been simple enough for him to undress her when she was too soundly asleep to protest. For that matter, it would have been simple enough for him to kiss her awake like a scruffy Prince-Charming arousing Sleeping Beauty from her century-long slumber. Pamela wasn’t sure she would have stopped him.

  But obviously he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, or undress her, or join her in bed. Now that the enchantment of their wedding had worn off, he had come to his senses and decided to keep his hands, and his lips, to himself.

  Pulling herself out of bed, she removed her wrinkled clothing, tossed it into her laundry hamper, and donned her bathrobe. She passed the bathroom to peek at his bedroom door, which was firmly shut. No doubt he was still sleeping.

  Feeling out of sorts, she showered, returned to her bedroom and dressed in the Key West uniform: fresh shorts and a T-shirt. Then she went downstairs.

  Lizard was seated cross-legged on the floor of the den, no more than a couple of inches from the television, an open box of sugar-laden cereal in her lap. She wore a tank shirt and sweat pants cut off at the knees, with a feather tied into the drawstring at the waist. Her attention glued to the cartoon on the TV, she didn’t acknowledge Pamela’s quiet “Good morning.”

  Pamela could have urged Lizard to put a few more feet between herself and the screen, or to turn it off altogether. But Lizard wasn’t her child, and training her not to pig out on junky cereal while watching junky cartoons wasn’t Pamela’s job. At the moment, she wasn’t really in the mood to be sociable, either.

  Abandoning the den, she went outside to get the newspaper. A light drizzle was soaking the earth, and the newspaper was soggy despite its plastic wrapper. Her spirit felt soggy, too.

  Really, she assured herself as she returned to the kitchen and spread the sections of the paper out to dry, she didn’t care about seeing Joe. He was just her husband, and Lizard was just her niece by marriage. Nothing important. Hardly a family. Pamela would fix herself a pot of coffee and read the waterlogged paper, and she wouldn’t mind a bit if she was all alone.

  ***

  AS IT TURNED OUT, she didn’t see Joe once during the entire day. After breakfast, she and Lizard went across the street to Birdie’s house to measure the rooms and diagram the building’s foundation on their graph-paper pads. When they went back home for lunch, Joe was gone. In the afternoon Pamela traipsed through the mud of Lizard’s garden, listening to Lizard pontificate on the balance of nature and the fact that Birdie knew how to make dandelion wine, which proved that dandelions were just as valuable as grapes, and that if weeds weren’t good God wouldn’t have made them. Pamela refrained from pointing out that God had also made thugs like Mick Morrow, so maybe not all His creations were good. Lizard was too young to become a cynic.

  For dinner Pamela served salmon. Lizard argued that it was in fact orange and not pink, but Pamela held firm and the kid ate it. Afterward, Lizard endured two baths—she flunked Pamela’s inspection after the first bath—and Pamela read her a chapter from a book chronicling great battles in world history. “I like the parts about weapons,” Lizard told her. “Read about the catapults, okay? They’re neat. I wanna build one.”

  Pamela read the chapter on catapults, then tucked Lizard in. “I’ll tell Uncle Joe you said good-night,” she said, although heaven only knew when she would have the opportunity. Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe today had been an anomaly, but Pamela couldn’t shake the suspicion that Joe didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t even want to be in the same room with her.

  “Give him a kiss from me,” Lizard requested.

  Pamela gritted her teeth. “Okay.”

  “And tell him I don’t really think you’re ugly. Just kinda skinny, is all.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And you should grow your hair longer, so you can make it in braids, like mine.”

  “Okay. Bedtime, now, Lizard.”

  “And tell Uncle Joe we’re gonna borrow his tools to build Birdie’s house.”

  “I’ll tell him.” If I happen to bump into him anytime in the near future, Pamela grumbled under her breath. “Have you ever gone a whole day without seeing him, Lizard?”

  Lizard peered up from her pillow. Her small round face was surrounded by a mass of hair, and then by a menagerie of stuffed creatures that included an alligator, a possum, and what appeared to be a rat. “No, but that’s on account of, we didn’t have you. Sometimes he’d bring me to the Shipwreck with him. But now you’re here, and I bet he never brings me there again.” This prospect clearly did not sit well with her. She scrunched her face into a scowl. “He keeps telling me a bar is no place for a kid. I like it there, but he doesn’t like me hanging out there. He says now that I’m older I gotta clean up my act. If you ask me, two baths is clean enough.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not going to the bar. I agree with him—that’s not an appropriate place for a child to be.”

  “But I like it there. And Kitty’s teaching me how to mix drinks, and she always makes me pink stuff. Strawberry daiquiris or pink ladies, only she leaves the booze out.”

  “Thank heavens for that,” Pamela muttered. “You’re better off drinking milk.”

  “Milk is yucky. I like daiquiris better.”

  “You definitely need to clean up your act, young lady.” Pamela ruffled her hands through Lizard’s hair, then smiled and turned off the light.

  “Don’t forget to kiss Uncle Joe for me!” Lizard called after her.

  She closed Lizard’s bedroom door and descended the stairs. The house was unnervingly quiet, as still and silent as her condominium back home when she wasn’t listening to Mozart. It didn’t seem right that she should have changed her residence, her name, her marital status, her entire existence—and still f
eel so alone.

  She wandered into the den, perused the television listings in the newspaper, and decided there was nothing she felt like watching. Joe had a modest stereo system, and she studied his collection of CD’s. Not a single classical recording among them. Mostly rock—oldies as well as an assortment of more recent grunge bands.

  She wondered if he owned a copy of Stand By Me.

  The closest he would get to standing by her would be a song on a disc, she thought grimly. Joe was doing exactly what she’d once hoped he would do. He had married her and now was giving her as much independence as she’d had as a single woman.

  She didn’t want a relationship with him, she reminded herself. She didn’t want to become overly involved in his family. All she wanted was a disguise, protection from Mick Morrow. Not a lover, just an adult to talk to at the end of the day. Someone to confide in, to boast to, to describe Lizard’s zany concepts for Birdie’s house: “I think we should build a tree house in the living room, with a rope ladder. And then if the company got boring you could hide up there and shoot arrows down at them. And you know what? We should put a chimbley in the middle of the kitchen, just in case Birdie’s food catches on fire.”

  Perhaps, given her voodoo activities, Birdie’s food did spontaneously combust. Perhaps, given the woman’s apparent obsession with all things avian, she could use a tree house.

  If only Joe were home.

  Sighing, Pamela picked up the book that had put her to sleep last night. She was about to stretch out on the sofa when the telephone rang.

  The shrill sound was so unexpected she flinched. Her heart thumped wildly; her breath caught in her throat. It took her a full minute to remember that no one in any position to do her harm knew where she was. The call would be for Joe, not for her.

  Either that, or the caller was Joe himself. Calling to say hello, maybe. Calling to say he would try to get home earlier tonight, or wake up earlier tomorrow, so they could exchange a few words like a married couple.

  Refusing to give in to pleasure at the thought of getting a phone call from her absentee husband, she hurried into the kitchen and lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Mary DiNardi here,” said Joe’s attorney. “Is this Pam?”

  Pamela tried to stifle her disappointment. “Yes,” she said, recalling Joe’s brisk dark-haired lawyer, whom Pamela had met a few days before the wedding. She had gotten the impression that Mary didn’t like her much—or at least didn’t like the notion of her marrying Joe. Mary had treated her with a cool formality totally at odds with her easy humor and congeniality with Joe.

  Well, Mary didn’t have to like Pamela, and Pamela didn’t have to like Mary. They were united in keeping Joe and Lizard together; they could tolerate each other.

  “Hello, Mary. Joe isn’t in right now. He’s—”

  “At the bar. I know. I figured if I called him there, he might get the message garbled or whatever. Anyway, since you’re the lady of the house...” She cleared her throat, as if speaking those words strained her voice. “I’ve received a correspondence from the Prescotts’ lawyer saying they’ve filed custody papers with the court. The court has appointed a guardian for Liz.”

  “A guardian?”

  “A legal representative, basically. The judge assigns her to make sure Lizard’s best interests are represented during the custody hearing. The judge named a local social worker, and she’s coming to visit you tomorrow morning, to have a look at Lizard’s home life.”

  Pamela had expected such a visit. Joe had married her for no other reason than that he knew the home he provided for his niece was going to be evaluated, and he wanted that home to have a mommy figure as well as a daddy figure. Yet hearing that the visit was actually going to occur—tomorrow—sent a chill down Pamela’s spine.

  “Isn’t it a little soon for the court to be taking this step?”

  “Honey, it was a little late that Joe got around to taking a wife. I hope you can pull off this charade.”

  “As his lawyer, how do you think we should handle this?”

  “Don’t make the house spotless. You want it to look clean but comfortable. Tell Lizard not to wear any feathers. And tell Joe not to wear an earring that dangles. And for God’s sake, pretend you love each other.”

  Pamela bit back a retort. She didn’t need Joe’s lawyer lecturing her on how she and Joe were supposed to act. They had forged their alliance with a clear understanding. Of course they would pretend they loved each other.

  Damn it, there was no of course about it. She and Joe hadn’t even been in the same room at the same time for the past two days—at least not while she was conscious. How was she going to act as if she loved him?

  She’d just have to do it, that was all. That was the deal she’d made with Joe.

  “Do you know what time we should expect the social worker to show up?” she asked, filtering all emotion from her voice. “Joe tends to sleep late.”

  “Tell Joe he’d better tend to wake up early tomorrow. They didn’t give me a time. They like to drop in unexpectedly, so they can catch you in your normal routine. It’s the way they do things. You’re lucky you got this much warning.”

  “I see.”

  “Knock ‘em dead tomorrow, Pam. Joe deserves to keep that little girl.”

  Pamela recollected that little girl’s whining, her mule-headedness, her aggressiveness...and decided that Joe definitely deserved her. “I’ll do my best,” she promised Mary before saying good-bye.

  Once again, silence swelled to fill the house. It wasn’t a lonely silence, though; it was a tense, prodding silence, a void Pamela intended to fill with work.

  She gazed about her at the kitchen. She knew where the food, dishes and pots were kept, but she had no idea where Joe stored his cleaning supplies. After all, he had assured her she wouldn’t have to take care of the house. That had been part of their deal. She hated housekeeping, and in Seattle she paid a service to do clean her home for her. Then again, in Seattle she lived a calm, childless existence, her condominium tidy and rarely in need of major cleaning.

  The same could not be said for Joe’s house. The kitchen, while not filthy, was far from neat. Weeks-old third-class mail shaped a sloppy heap on the counter; newspapers lay piled on the floor in the corner for recycling; the sink was decorated with crumbs and soggy celery leaves; the calendar hanging from a hook on the broom-closet door displayed the April page.

  She crossed the room, flipped the calendar to July, and opened the closet door. Not surprisingly, she found everything she needed inside: a broom, a mop, a bucket and a shelf filled with scouring supplies. Just the sight of all that cleaning gear made her groan.

  She really, truly, did not want to spend her evening putting Joe’s house in order. His custody battle with his in-laws wasn’t her problem.

  Yes it was. She was his wife, for better or worse, until they got a divorce. She had married him for Lizard’s sake, and for Lizard’s sake she was going to have to pretend she was a devout homemaker, the little woman, Joe’s better half. Pamela wasn’t going to renege on her obligations.

  She permitted herself a few pungent curses, then pulled a can of cleanser and a few rags from the shelf and got to work.

  ***

  THREE HOURS LATER, the house had achieved Mary DiNardi’s prescription of clean but comfortable. Table tops and shelves were polished. The dust balls under the sofa had been harvested. The chairs had been pushed in around the dining room table. Lizard’s toys had been transferred from the living room to the den and arranged to convey that this was a user-friendly house. The few house plants had been watered, the framed crayon artwork had been hung straight, and the utilities bills Joe had left wedged under the base of the food processor had been tucked discreetly into a drawer.

  If Pamela had had the time, she would have looked at the bills. She had no idea what it cost Joe to keep his house running. She would have liked to contribute to the household expenses, but she’d already fought that partic
ular battle with Joe and lost.

  So she’d spent the evening contributing in another way, a stereotypically wife-ish way. Surveying the living room, admiring the plumped pillows on the sofa and inhaling the tangy fragrance of lemon-scented furniture polish, she acknowledged that while cleaning Joe’s house was a hell of a lot more bothersome than writing a check for her share of the utilities would have been, it did give her a greater sense of accomplishment.

  She glanced at her watch and scowled. Ten past eleven. Her labor had exhausted her; after a quick shower, she would head straight to bed. She would have to be up early tomorrow morning to get Lizard fed and dressed—sans feathers—before the social worker arrived. Pamela would have to hold things together until Joe surfaced—if, indeed, he did surface. Heaven knew when he would be getting home tonight.

  She wasn’t in the habit of making late-night calls, but she realized she ought to try to reach him at the bar and let him know about the court-appointed guardian’s planned visit. She should have phoned him earlier, but she suspected he wouldn’t be easy to connect with while he was at the Shipwreck. If he were, Mary would have called him instead of Pamela.

  Still, Pamela ought to try. Swallowing a yawn, she trudged to the kitchen and dialed the bar’s number. After five rings, Kitty answered the phone. “Shipwreck,” she shouted above the raucous din that filled the barroom.

  “Kitty? It’s Pamela.”

  “Pam? Hi! How’s it going? Wait, hang on a second...” Pamela heard a scratchy sound as Kitty held her hand over the mouthpiece and screamed something about being out of Heineken. Then she came back on the phone. “So, how’s it going? Why don’t you come on over and say hello?”

  “I’m watching Lizard,” Pamela reminded her. “She’s fast asleep.”

  “Oh—oh, yeah. Well, we’ve gotta get together. I’ve got to tell you about this guy I met, he looks just like Ernest Hemingway...” She went on and on, occasionally interrupting herself to holler something to someone. Through the cacophony of voices Pamela heard the high-pitched croon of Neil Young warbling “Helpless.”

 

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