by Alexie Aaron
“I have to wait for it to cool down a bit,” Glenda said, stalling.
“I saw all those baseball trophies. You must have been good,” Mia said, twisting her fingers together. “Whitney Pee Pants had a lot of trophies too.”
“Why do you call him that, dear?” Glenda asked.
“Because the first time Whitney met Murphy, Murph raised his axe and scared everybody, and Whitney peed his pants. I gave him my flannel shirt to tie around his waist so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. He drove off and left me alone at the farm. I had to walk five miles home. It was worth it. Murph walked me to the end of the farm.”
“You and Murphy go back a long ways,” Glenda said.
“Yes. On and off. I didn’t live in Big Bear Lake after I graduated. I came back after my Grandma Fred passed. Murphy was still there.”
“So, what brought you back?” Mike asked.
“I’m not really sure…” Mia said.
“I think it was brave of you to come back where pretty much everyone knew you were a bit unusual,” Mike stated.
“Mrs. Dupree, your son is a man of caliber,” Mia said.
Mike turned and looked at her.
“Thank you, Mia. I think so too,” Glenda said, looking proudly at her son.
Mike then stared at his mother.
“Mia, you can call me Mom or Glenda.”
“Mom, I like that. Do you mind sharing your mother with me, Mikey… oops Mike,” Mia said, dropping her voice an octave.
Glenda looked at Mike and tried not to laugh. Mia was stoned. Glenda put the plate of food in front of both of them and watched them eat.
“Oh, my god, this is so good,” Mia gushed. She made a lot of pleasure noises as she tasted the food.
Mike got up and left the table.
“Did I do something wrong?” Mia asked.
“No, dear, I’m glad you like the quiche.”
“It’s really good. Cid makes these, but yours is better,” Mia said honestly. She looked over at Mike’s unattended plate and stuck a fork in his serving.
“Mia, could you answer a question for me?” Glenda asked.
“I’ll try. Better not make it too hard because the pills have me a little loopy.”
“Explain your and Mike’s relationship.”
“Whoa, that’s a hard one. We’re friends. We can’t be anything else because Ted would kill Mike.”
“That would be a problem,” Glenda said. She thought about stopping there, but she had to know. “Have you and Mike ever made love?”
“No.”
“Would you like to? If Ted said it was okay?”
Mia laughed. “That’s not going to happen. Ted and I are married, and Mike doesn’t like me much. I think he thinks I’m a rube.”
“Huh,” Glenda said, thinking. “I think he likes you.”
Mia smiled. “No. He’s polite. He says ‘Cooper, you’re a piece of work,’ and he’s right.” Mia looked at Mike’s now empty plate. “Oh damn, I ate his food. Mom, I’m going to go and sit on the front porch. I love front porches.” Mia got up and poured Mike’s coffee into her mug before she walked to the front door.
“Shame on you,” Mike said from the mudroom.
“How much did you hear?” Glenda asked.
“All of it. Notice she never gave you a direct answer,” Mike said. “Even looped Mia is very aware.”
“She doesn’t think you respect her, son.”
“No, she thinks that I think she’s a hick,” Mike corrected.
“Last night, I asked her and Murphy to watch over you when I’m gone.”
Mike looked sharply at his mother and asked, “Are you ill?”
“No, but I’m getting up there in age.”
“What did she say?” Mike asked.
Glenda smiled. “She said you would never be alone. She would see to that.”
Mike smiled.
“What’s that silly grin for?” Glenda asked.
“I’ve come a long way, in Mia’s eyes, Ma. When we met, she hated me. Now she’ll watch over me. I see that as a win win.”
“From what I’ve witnessed, if you pressed her, she would probably fall into your arms,” Glenda observed.
“But then I wouldn’t be a man of caliber, would I? What Cooper and I have is better. She’s my friend. We can laugh, fight and share secrets, guilt free.”
Glenda looked at her son and smiled. “Well, the two of you have today and the house to yourselves. I’m headed to your aunt Mary’s. I was going to take Chatty Cathy with me, but she’s too stoned. I’m afraid she’ll sprout wings or something.”
~
“I’m sorry, Mia,” Ted said. “I didn’t know you were so sore or I wouldn’t have left you.”
“Neither did I? It looks pretty nasty. I think I’ll give it overnight, and if it’s a problem, I’ll head over to see Judy before I meet you guys in Rock Island.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’m sure Glenda is spoiling you.”
“I had two pieces of quiche,” Mia said.
“Can you put Mike on the phone?”
“I don’t know if he’s here, hang on.” Mia got up and walked in the front door. “Mike, are you home?”
Mike trotted out of the kitchen. “I’m here.”
“My husband would like to speak to you,” Mia said and handed him her phone.
“Hey, Ted.”
“How bad is she?”
“Ma said her ribcage is bruised, and she has a gash that is healing. Mia said that Sariel started the healing process. Does she have to fly to heal?” he asked Ted.
Ted, who was pleased to hear that Glenda and not Mike was taking care of Mia, answered, “I think that it’s going to take time. If you medicate her, watch her. She will wander off.”
“I’ll tell Ma.”
“When are you starting out?” Ted asked.
“If Mia is fit to travel, after breakfast tomorrow. We will come into town late. Make sure you have a room for me or I’m bunking with you and Mia.”
“Dream on, Dupree,” Ted said.
Mike handed Mia the phone. “Ted, I miss you.”
“Me too. Behave yourself.”
“I’ll try. Call me when you get home,” Mia requested. She put the phone down and shivered.
Mike looked at Mia and her lips were blue. “Are you cold?”
She nodded.
“Come on,” he said, directing her into the house. “I think it’s time for you to rest and sleep that pain medication off.”
“Will you read to me?” Mia asked.
“How old are you, four?”
Mia’s face fell.
“I’ll read to you.”
Mia perked up. She climbed the stairs, and Mike went in search of his iPad. He found his mother getting ready to leave. He helped her carry to her car a box of casserole dishes, Glenda no longer used, that she would be giving to her sister.
“I’ve got some arthritis medication in my medicine cabinet if she’s still in pain when that other crap wears off. I’ll pick up a pizza on my way home from Mary’s. I’ll call first,” Glenda said.
“Why?”
“Well…”
“Nothing is going to happen. Stop instigating,” he warned.
Mike walked up the stairs. Mia wasn’t in the room she shared with Ted. He found her in his room. She was reading out the captions on the framed awards on his wall.
“You have a lot of firsts,” she said. “You must have been popular.” She sat on the edge of the bed and took her shoes off.
“Mia, what are you doing?”
“Taking a nap. You said you’d read to me.”
“Sweetheart, let me take you to your room. This isn’t proper.”
“K,” Mia said and lay down on his bed. She got under the covers. “If I stay under the covers and you atop them, then we’ll be proper.”
“That’s not… Oh hell.” Mike slipped off his shoes, fluffed the pillows, and sat back and selected a book. “I thought I would read you a cha
pter of Lord Waterford’s Secret.”
“Cool,” Mia said and laid back, folding her hands atop the coverlet.
Mike began to read. Mia asked questions, and they argued over the unrealistic plot until, finally, Mia fell asleep. Mike read for a while before putting the book down, and after a while, he himself nodded off.
~
Mia got up and looked down at Mike sleeping. She covered him up and went downstairs. She built a fire in the fireplace. She then began collecting the odds and ends that she and the other PEEPs had left in the company rooms. She smiled as she put the cards away.
In the kitchen, she washed down the kitchen table and started to remember snippets of Glenda’s and her conversation.
The sly old broad was maneuvering her and Mike to make love. “Leave the two of us alone in this house, me high as a kite and…”
“We could lie to her and tell her we screwed our brains out,” Mike said sleepily from the doorway. “Maybe she would stop pushing. She really loves you, doll.”
“I love her too. If it was another time, a time before Ted, then I would love to spend a day in your arms. But that’s not realistic, is it?”
“No. We have a responsibility to not make love. I think it would be more than PEEPs and your marriage we would be destroying. For what? Just some elbow and knee action.”
Mia laughed. “For the record. I have thought about it.”
“Oh I know you have, doll.”
Mia shook her finger at Mike. “How could I not,” Mia sighed dramatically. “After all, Lord Waterford looks so handsome and vulnerable standing there…”
“Cooper…” Mike warned.
“And I the freshly-scrubbed maiden he rescued from a brute and a fate worse than death!” Mia emoted.
Mike pouted.
Mia felt bad. “You could write a better romance, Mike.”
“I read them because I want to have a romance.”
“Haven’t you though?” Mia asked, sticking her head in the refrigerator and coming up with two beers.
“No.”
“You’ve had a lot of lovers.”
“Yes, but that’s not a romance,” Mike argued, accepting the beer.
“How many lovers have you had?” Mia asked.
“Quite a few. You?”
Mia blushed. She took a drink of the beer and sidestepped into the living room. Mike followed her.
“Ted, Whitney, Burt… That’s three, but that’s not all of them, is it?” he asked.
Mia took another long pull.
“Who took your innocence, Mia?” Mike asked.
“Who took yours?” she challenged.
“Plum,” Mike said. “I fell in love with her, but she was already screwing half the town. Your turn.”
“It doesn’t seem kosher to tell you. Ted doesn’t know.”
“Why?”
“He hasn’t asked.”
“He will. Tell me, Cooper.”
“Before Burt, I had two lovers. Can that be enough to squelch this conversation?”
“Someone disenchanted you. When we first met, you were distrustful and angry. It took Burt to bring the real Mia back.”
Mia sat down. “Yes it did.”
Mike looked at her with that silly smile on her face and wished it was him that had put it there and not Burt.
Chapter Five
Whitney pulled Justin back into the alley. They had followed the teen through the fog. Eileen had befriended him on the path. The kid called her by another name. She played along at first but then seemed to become this Miss Ivory Stewart. They had lost Orvin in the fog. He was either wandering around in the woods or had entered the town from the other side.
Justin jotted down the boy’s description in his moleskin flip notebook. Tall, thin, white, blue eyes, dark blonde hair, pimples, even teeth. Wearing a crew neck tee and straight leg, slim Levis. Black basketball shoes (Converse?). Voice – Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
Justin’s team leader Whit Martin was a stickler on details. He said that the more information they could gather, the more power they had when dealing with the odd things they came across.
“Put down that the kid is a hypnotist. Eileen’s orders were to turn around once the kid took her to his lair, but she’s still with him, acting weird.”
“We’re going to have to come up with something to use other than weird. The chief isn’t pleased with us inserting that word, as she says, ‘hilly-nilly,’” Justin said, tapping the notebook. “How about, Eileen is acting like a spinster, high school, English teacher?”
The kid moved on after watching Eileen go into a small postwar house. Whit waited and turned to Justin.
Justin was gone.
Whit ran down the alley and saw Justin walking with the kid towards the high school. Whit was at cross-purposes. Should he follow Justin or go in and rescue Eileen? He felt that Eileen presented less of a problem, so he turned around and ran down the alley and across Main Street. He reached the front porch and heard piano music from within. He knocked on the door, and the music stopped. Eileen answered the door.
“Yes?”
“Eileen, follow me. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Excuse me, young man,” Eileen asked, “Is this a prank?” She looked at Whit but didn’t seem to be seeing him.
“I’m sorry. I was just doing as I was told. Who was that young man that walked you home?” he asked.
“I hardly think it’s any business of yours, Kenny, but everyone knows Jerry, Jerry Keys. Just because you’re going to college on an athletic scholarship, you don’t have to be such a snob. Your mother raised you better, Kenny.”
Whitney stood back. He was getting lectured by his subordinate who thought she was a school teacher and he was some jock named Kenny.
“Remind me again, what sport did I receive the scholarship for?”
“Football, you’re our quarterback. Maybe you should see Doctor Braelyn. You’ve had one too many hits on the head.”
“Where is the doctor’s office?” he asked Eileen, hoping to draw her away from the house.
“Oh dear, hold on, and let me get my coat. I’ll walk you there.”
Whit waited impatiently on the porch. Eileen came out wearing a Jackie Kennedy inspired cloth coat. She took Whit’s arm and started walking him to the middle of town.
“It’s pretty quiet for a Main Street, don’t you think?” Whit asked her.
“Nonsense. Besides, Jerry says almost all the people that need to be here are here already. He has just a few to collect.”
“Eileen, do you hear yourself? You’re part of a collection. Come on,” he said. He grabbed her arm, forced her between the buildings, and headed for the woods. The fog rolled in. He held on to her and walked in, what he thought was, a straight line. The fog broke up, and he found himself on the other side of the alley across the street from Miss Ivory Stewart’s house. “No!” he exclaimed in frustration.
Eileen shrugged off his hand and walked back to her house. She stopped and shouted some advice, “The sooner you play your role, the sooner we can all go home.”
Whit ran back through the alley and over to the high school where he found Justin tossing a football with Orvin. They were both dressed in practice gear of half shirts and light pads. On the sideline, a group of girls practiced a cheer. One of the girls looked familiar. Whit pulled out the flyer, and sure enough, she was the missing Heather. He ran over calling, “Heather!”
The young woman turned around and smiled. “I’m sorry, who are you looking for?” she asked, her eyes fixed on someone or something behind him.
Whit turned around and saw the kid in the bleachers on the visitors’ side.
“Heather, come with me now. I’ll get you out of this,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Kenny, but you’re a bit confused. My name is Becky.”
“Heads up!” Orvin called.
Whit turned around and caught the thrown football. He tossed it back to Orvin. They tossed it back and for
th for a while, and soon, Whit started seeing Orvin as a young black man by the name of Joe. With each toss of the football, Whit lost hold on who he was and became Kenny the football hero, a role he had lived before.
~
Burt pulled into the lot of the Hillside Cabins. He went in to register for their lodgings. Tom got out and opened the door for Audrey.
“This place looks clean,” Audrey said, staring at the long line of whitewashed log cabins. Each had a parking space before it, two Adirondack chairs and a small potted fir tree. There was an outdoor pool, closed for the season, and shuffleboard courts – still open ten to dusk. “Burt’s going to ask you to check out the rooms since you have the sight. He doesn’t want to upset Mia by putting her in with a ghost.”
“I don’t blame her. I sat and had a conversation with a guy at a diner. I didn’t know he was a ghost until the waitress spilled a coffee and it went right through him. I must have looked like a nutcase.”
“A slice of Mia’s world,” Audrey said sagely.
“You know, I feel so guilty. I was one of those kids that teased her. As I grew older I stopped. It just didn’t seem right.”
“You grew up. Most people never change,” Audrey observed.
Burt walked over with the keys. “Tom, you’ll bunk with me tonight in Cabin E and Cid tomorrow night. Our cabin is the largest. It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette and living room. A good place for us to hold meetings. Tonight, Cid and Ted are going to take cabin C. Audrey, you’re in D, and we have F reserved for tomorrow night. Mia is feeling better and will be leaving with Mike in the morning.”
“I feel bad about leaving her,” Audrey said.
“She’s a big girl,” Burt said. “By now, she’s got Mike wrapped around her little finger.”
“He’s kind of stuck on her,” Tom said, worried.
“Never fear, Mike is a gentleman, especially around his mother. And Mia only has eyes for Ted. I do worry about the two of them fighting though. The longer they are together, the more they revert into nine year olds.”
“Mia never had siblings, or friends for that matter,” Tom related.
“Mike was out on the farm solo, but he was pretty popular in school,” Burt told them. “There’s always been chemistry between those two, but it’s not necessarily good chemistry.”