Bowled Over

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Crap!” Kathy said. “What the hell is this?” She tapped away at the tiny keyboard while Connor pivoted idly on his heel.

  Jaymie considered trying to approach Kathy again but decided against it. Her onetime friend was staring at her cell phone with an angry frown while her nephew tugged at the hem of her T-shirt.

  “Connor, let go!” Kathy said, swatting at his hand. “Can’t you see I’m busy right now?” The boy began running his hands along the vitamin bottles on the closest shelf, humming tunelessly as he did.

  Jaymie covertly examined Kathy’s face. It looked like she’d had a shock: she was drained of color, and was still staring at the tiny screen of the cell phone. It was useless to try to sort things out with her former friend while Kathy was so distracted. Jaymie turned away and was about to call out to Valetta that she’d see her later when the little boy screeched and wailed. Ella Douglas cried out and moved her wheelchair rapidly, and the little boy hopped up and down, his face becoming red as tears trickled down his cheeks.

  “Connor, Connor!” Kathy cried, whirling around. She knelt at his side, as he moaned and muttered. “What did you do to him?” Kathy said, looking up instantly at Jaymie, then at Ella.

  “M-my footie!” the boy wailed, pointing to Ella’s wheelchair. “She wan o-o-over me!” he howled, his voice catching between sobs.

  “Oh no! I must not have seen him,” Ella cried, a look of distress on her wan face, sickly in the fluorescent lighting of the Emporium that glared off her glasses. “Is he okay?”

  Valetta came tearing out from the pharmacy just as old Mr. Klausner tapped down the wooden aisle with his cane, his gait a thump-thump-tap counterpoint to Connor’s crying, Kathy’s shouted accusations, Ella’s thin, reedy denials and Valetta’s demands to know what happened.

  “She ran over Connor!” Kathy yelled, jabbing a finger in Ella’s direction.

  “Not on purpose,” Jaymie said.

  “So you know what she’s thinking?” Kathy said, straightening.

  “Want Grampa! Want Grampa!” Connor shrilled.

  “Connor, no!” Kathy said. “Your grandpa doesn’t want you!”

  “How could you say that to him?” Jaymie cried, appalled.

  “What do you know about anything?” Kathy said, thrusting her face in Jaymie’s.

  “Ladies, cut it out!” Valetta said.

  “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t—honest!” Ella shrilled, a sob in her voice. She covered her face with her pale, thin hands.

  Connor was silent now, his tears drying as his gaze slewed between the adults, watching the brewing storm with interest on his thin, intelligent face.

  “Ella wouldn’t have run over Connor’s toes on purpose!” Jaymie said, glancing at the wheelchair-bound woman, who was sobbing into her hands. Valetta knelt by her side and tried to calm her.

  “Are you calling my nephew a liar?”

  “When did I call him a liar?” Jaymie asked.

  “I didn’t see him, really!” Ella cried, her voice thick with tears. She put out her hands in an imploring gesture. “Please, is he all right?” She reached out to Connor, trying to grab his shoulder. “Are you all right, little boy?”

  Kathy pulled him away, and he clutched hold of his aunt’s leg. “Professional victim, aren’t you, Eleanor? Why’d you change your name? Hoping people wouldn’t remember what a nasty piece of work you were?” She grabbed Connor’s hand and tugged him down the aisle. Connor didn’t appear to be limping as he trotted after his aunt.

  After Kathy was gone, Valetta and Jaymie looked at each other over Ella’s head. “What was that all about?” Valetta asked, as Ella sniffled and blew her nose.

  “I have no idea.”

  * * *

  JAYMIE STOOD AT the deep porcelain Belfast sink in her kitchen; with an old toothbrush and some mild dish detergent, she scrubbed the deep grooves of the Depression glass bowl she had discovered at a thrift store in Canada on her trip to see her grandmother a week before. Maybe she was a little vehement in her scrubbing, because when Becca came in through the back door from the sun porch and set her bags down on the trestle table, she raised her brows.

  “You okay, little sister?”

  “I’m all right,” Jaymie growled, as Hoppy, her little three-legged Yorkie-Poo, who had come inside with Becca, danced around her feet.

  She examined the chunky square base of the glass bowl as she turned it over and stuck it under the tap to rinse it off. Why on earth had it been made with a square base like that? One would almost think the thick glass square base was meant to fit into something, but she had already done a little research, and that proved not to be the case at all. In fact, the Depression glass bowls with square bottoms came in nested sets, like her Pyrex Primary Colors, and could be found in other, rarer colors: amber, pink, green, even amethyst. She held hers up: bland, clear glass. Too bad it wasn’t one of the pretty ones. Now she was going to have to scour the vintage shops on both sides of the border, because she wanted one in each color. She could imagine them lined up along the shelves in the east-facing window to catch the morning sun.

  People were confused by what was meant by Depression glass; did it mean created during the Depression, or did it refer to the ridges and patterns most Depression glass had? As far as Jaymie could tell, the name did refer to glass made during the Great Depression, but it spanned a longer time frame, and referred commonly to vintage glass of a lower quality, meant for middle-class consumption.

  She didn’t care what it meant; she liked it.

  “So…what’s wrong?” Becca finally asked, plopping down the last of her bags.

  Jaymie turned to face Becca with a smile, calmer from contemplating her collection and future collecting. Her cluttered kitchen, filled with vintage tins along the top of the cupboards, old bowls on every surface and pitchers, cups and kitchen utensils, calmed her like nothing else. Just when she thought she could not fit another item in her already-crowded kitchen, she found a few precious inches of space to cram in something else. She was able to tell her sister what happened at the Emporium without overdramatizing it.

  “Poor Kathy,” Becca said, unexpectedly.

  “Poor Kathy?” Jaymie said. “You should have heard her! You would have thought we were ganging up on the kid.”

  “Dee told me that Connor is more than a nephew to Kathy; he’s like the child she never had,” Becca said, referring to her best friend in Queensville, DeeDee Stubbs. Everyone in Queensville liked to gossip, so Dee’s knowledge and relentless sharing of information was not surprising. “Kathy would have loved to have had a kid herself, and she did get pregnant once, but lost the baby.”

  “I remember hearing about it when I was at university, and you were already married and living in Canada. Kathy was in nursing school, but when she got pregnant, she and Craig got married and she quit school. She seemed really protective of Connor,” Jaymie mused.

  “Word on the Queensville pipeline is, she’s trying to adopt him.”

  “Really? It was kind of weird; she was all over Ella when the kid cried about being hurt, but before that she was impatient with him and…I just don’t know. Then she told him his grandpa didn’t want him. How mean is that?”

  “She must have been talking about Andy Walker, Drew Walker’s dad,” Becca said.

  “I guess,” Jaymie said. “I know Kathy and Kylie’s dad died years ago.”

  There was silence for a moment. “I don’t know what I ever did to Kathy Cooper,” Jaymie mused. “We used to be friends. I just don’t know what happened.”

  Becca raised her brows; it was a very “big sister” kind of look. Jaymie set the dried bowl on the porcelain worktop of her antique Hoosier cabinet, and said, “What, was I some kind of super-brat, like Kathy says, and just don’t remember?”

  “You were never a super-brat, sis, but you did want to fit in.”

  There were fifteen years between Jaymie and Becca’s ages; sometimes Jaymie felt every minute of those years, and sometimes it
seemed like they were just months apart. Right now, there seemed to be decades between them, and not in a good way. “And what does that mean?”

  “You were no sterling-silver sweetie pie,” Becca said, handing cheese and pork chops from the farmer’s market in Wolverhampton to Jaymie, who put them in the fridge.

  “Was anyone?” Jaymie asked.

  “I know. Forget it,” Becca said. She went on to ask about some repairs that Jaymie was having done to the front of their house, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old yellow brick. Jaymie and Becca had co-owned their family’s Queensville home ever since their parents had moved to Boca Raton, but Becca also owned her own house in London, Ontario. She was in town for a holiday that would span the Fourth of July sailboat race and picnic in Boardwalk Park, the Queensville park that hugged the St. Clair River. She didn’t come back every year for July Fourth, and Jaymie suspected that she mostly wanted her current boyfriend to meet her younger sister.

  As they unloaded the rest of Becca’s shopping bags, Jaymie detailed the trim work that she had commissioned from the local handyman, but then, returning to their earlier conversation, said, “Becca, what did I ever do to anyone? Was I really so bad in high school?” She plunked down on a chair by the trestle table. The kitchen was furnished in the style of the 1920s, with Jaymie’s newly purchased Hoosier cabinet on one wall, displaying some of her vast collection of vintage kitchenware, the rest of which crowded along the tops of the upper cabinets.

  “You’re a legend at Wolverhampton High, Jaymie; you were the one who came up with Craig Cooper’s nickname! I didn’t even live here, and I heard about it through the Queensville gossip grapevine!”

  Jaymie flushed and bit her lip. Not her finest hour, but it had seemed funny at the time. How was she to know at fourteen that “Pooper Cooper” would stick? The poor guy was called that until high school ended. “Do you think Kathy’s grudge against me is from that?” Considering Craig was her husband, it was a remote possibility.

  “She didn’t start dating Craig until after high school, right?” Becca said, handing Jaymie the last item from her shopping, a bag of mixed salad greens.

  “I don’t think she even knew Craig when she started hating on me,” Jaymie agreed, jumping up to put the greens in the crisper section of the fridge.

  “So, you weren’t maybe as nice as you remember,” Becca pointed out. “Was there anything else aimed specifically at her?”

  “Some insult or injury that’s lasted sixteen, seventeen years? I’d remember something that bad.”

  The phone rang, and Becca picked it up. She talked for a while, as Jaymie rearranged the fridge and looked over her sister’s other purchases, then held the phone to her chest. “It’s Valetta, Jaymie. She wants to talk to you.” She held out the receiver.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Jaymie asked, taking the cordless phone and sitting down at the table again.

  “Just thought you’d be interested,” Valetta said. “After you left, Ella’s motorized wheelchair was acting up, so I called her husband. Bob came right away and fixed her chair while she poured her heart out about Kathy. He seemed really angry that Kathy upset her so much.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I have to say, I was completely taken aback: Did you know that Ella Douglas is Eleanor Grimshaw? Remember the Grimshaws?”

  It took a second, but the memory snapped into place. “I do,” Jaymie said. “Wow! I remember her, but she sure has changed.” Eleanor Grimshaw’s family bought a farm near Kathy’s parents when they were both about fifteen. Eleanor had been a big girl: tall, strong, hearty, a fresh-faced farm girl in homemade clothes. To see her now—shrunken, frail, shoulders rounded, skin gray and papery—was a shock. It didn’t seem possible that it was the same woman.

  Valetta said, “Strange how two different people moved back to Queensville just in the last couple of months. Johnny Stanko has moved back here, too.”

  “Johnny Stanko? Why would he move back here? He hated Queensville. I remember when his folks died. Before he left town he made that big speech at the Autumn Fest barbecue, called everyone in town snobs and said he’d never be back.”

  “Well, never just arrived,” Valetta said, then cackled. “And if I recall, the word he called everyone in town was not snob.”

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  She snickered. “Gotta go. After that brouhaha, I told Ella I’d call her when her prescription was ready, and Bob could come pick it up.”

  “What’s wrong with her, Valetta? Why is she in a wheelchair?”

  “You know I can’t talk about that, Jaymie,” she said. She might be a gossip, but when it came to professional ethics, Valetta was stern.

  “I know, I know.”

  “You should drop in on her sometime. You were in her class back in the day, weren’t you? She seems so lonely since she moved back here.”

  Jaymie thought about it for a long minute. Something was tugging on her memory, but it was gone before she could grab hold of it. “I might do that. Talk to you later, Valetta.”

  Two

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jaymie woke up ready for her usual tasks. For the last month or so she had been helping Anna Jones, who ran the Shady Rest Bed-and-Breakfast next door. Jaymie’s task was the breakfast part of bed-and-breakfast. Anna was a couple of months pregnant and sensitive to smells. Eggs turned her stomach, and since it was generally advisable that a bed-and-breakfast hostess not throw up in front of her guests, Jaymie had volunteered to help. Anna’s husband pitched in on weekends, but he was in Toronto, where he worked, all week.

  Jaymie would have done it for free just to help out her friend, but Anna insisted on paying her, so it had turned into another part-time job. With her duties looking after the family property out on Heartbreak Island, filling in for Queensville shop owners who needed time off, and now with the picnic basket rental business to take care of, she was in danger of having too many jobs.

  Since Anna had only two couples as guests, Jaymie was done in an hour, and returned to discover that Becca had gone to Ohio for the day with their friend, DeeDee Stubbs. Dee, who bought sixties and seventies kitsch to sell online, had dragged Becca along to an estate sale in Toledo that was supposed to be fertile ground for her selling empire.

  It was good that she’d been left behind, Jaymie thought, looking around her kitchen, since she was getting close to the bursting point on kitchenware. She should go upstairs and work for an hour or two on her second cookbook, More Recipes from the Vintage Kitchen. Not that she had sold the first one yet. A New York publisher was still looking at it, and after some research Jaymie had figured out it could take months before she heard anything. However, it was best to be ready with a second book, publishing industry wisdom went, because no publisher liked a one-shot deal.

  But who wanted to work inside on such a gorgeous day? She sat on the back step of the summer porch and looked out over the carpet of green grass and at the roses bursting into bloom, while Hoppy nosed down the length of the line of holly bushes she had planted that spring. June, July and August were months to soak in the good weather in Michigan. Spring and autumn offered unpredictability, going from blazing hot to frigid within days, sometimes, and winter could be off-the-charts abysmal. It was best to enjoy summer while it lasted.

  She just couldn’t seem to settle into thoughts of her work in progress, though. The conversation the day before with Becca had left her uneasy. Had she really been such a little witch in high school? She didn’t think so, and she couldn’t remember any incident that would have turned Kathy against her. They were friends one day, and the next Kathy wasn’t talking to her.

  Jaymie had tried to figure it out at the time and had pleaded for reconciliation, but then had backed off. She had left things alone too long, she supposed, thinking time would sort it all out, taking her mom’s advice to let Kathy cool off over whatever was bothering her. The cooling-off period had stretched to sixteen or seventeen years, with no end
in sight. It was certainly too late to rekindle a friendship now, but she could try to at least get to the bottom of the animosity.

  If Kathy wouldn’t talk to her, maybe the people around Kathy would. She’d have to talk to Craig “Pooper” Cooper. Her cheeks burned. How could she have forgotten making up that dreadful, childish nickname? She must have put it out of her mind because she was so ashamed of herself. She hoped her memory was right and it had been an out of character slip-up.

  She jumped up, determined suddenly to do something about a dark spot that had bothered her for too long. “Hoppy, wanna go for a walk?” Her little dog did a clumsy spin on the grass and trotted into the house past her with the loping gait that had earned him his name, Hopalong, while Denver, her moody tabby, watched from the safe shelter of the space under the Hoosier cabinet. Jaymie snapped on Hoppy’s leash and set out into the beautiful early July morning. The Glorious Fourth was tomorrow. She had to figure out what her contribution was going to be to the picnic dinner that she, Becca, Daniel and Becca’s new mystery beau, Kevin, were to share. When she got home she would flip through her old cookbooks in search of a vintage Fourth of July recipe.

  She headed to the Queensville Emporium and put Hoppy in the puppy pen to the side of the store, where he could usually meet and greet some of his Queensville buddies and rivals. It was empty this morning, but there were toys and pee-mail, lots to keep him busy. Jaymie entered from the creaky wood porch and waved at Mrs. Klausner, Mr. Klausner’s elderly wife. She looked up from her knitting and nodded, her mouth turned down in her habitually sour expression.

  Valetta was sorting catalog packages but looked up as the wood floor creaked. “Jaymie! What can I do for you?” she asked, coming to the catalog window.

  “I’m on my way to Laskan Cooper.”

  “Oh. Accounting problems?”

  “No, I want to sort out, once and for all, what is wrong between me and Kathy. I know Kathy works for her husband, but she’s not actually in the office, is she?”