Stepping around the desk, she leaned against the credenza. Last winter, the club almost leased the office to a new tenant, but the deal fell through. At some point, the office would become occupied. She was prepared, she thought. At least all his personal items were carried home shortly after his death. The last time she escaped to Jack’s office was over a year ago. That last visit was categorized as an escape because, like Lizbeth, Callie fought second-stage anger herself.
Before Jack became bedbound, news about his terminal cancer and his move to her home seemed afloat around the club. She sensed people knew. A few sent her looks of outright contempt at her decision to allow a married man to live with her. In that regard, she was defenseless.
After Jack’s death, Callie didn’t direct her anger at those coworkers who subscribed to the belief that the God who could create such beauty as the country club surroundings would also send disease as punishment for adultery.
It was the doctor in whom Callie vested her anger.
The oncologist promised he could control Jack’s pain, but Jack suffered unbearably with every hour near the end, and she blamed the doctor. Fortunately, when her grief struck, his path had not crossed Callie’s as Arnett blocked Lizbeth’s. Callie’s anger ran its course and subsided.
Somewhere during her reminiscences, she adapted her fight with anger to Lizbeth’s fight. Callie worried that Arnett—merely by being Arnett—was pushing Lizbeth toward Florida. The two mule-headed Sebring women needed guidance, and Jack was gone. More than custody of a quilt was at risk.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Chad lifted off the ground by a parachute operating in reverse. Lizbeth and Arnett cut off their incessant arguing and rushed to him, but he floated first out of Arnett’s reach, then his shoe slipped from his mother’s grasp. Callie shuddered at the imagined scene and was suddenly, obstinately committed to stand in for Jack. Lizbeth’s comment about Jack and Arnett at her dinner table came racing back: “Bless him, he had a way with her.”
Callie must find a way with Arnett, too. No, she would find a way. Her positive energy flowed, and she pictured the child’s gentle descent, until his glow-in-the-dark Nikes touched the solid earth.
Without warning, the weird route she followed took a jog, and she knew the approach to take with Arnett.
I will simply march up and knock on her door. The thought, when she formed it, was crisp with determination.
Conflicting Opinions
Callie drove down Billingsley Drive. Up ahead was Brahms Way. Arnett Sebring lived in a two-story Tudor on the corner of the two streets. Callie looked around. The upper-class neighborhood was quiet; its landscaped yards painstakingly maintained.
She eased her blue Santa Fe over to the curb. The SUV crept forward another few feet, then she braked abruptly: Arnett just walked out from the side yard with a watering can in hand. Callie watched and waited from the opposite corner while Arnett tended to what distantly appeared to be pink begonias tucked between box-shaped shrubberies.
After a moment, Callie switched the engine off and stepped down to the concrete street. She took a few steps, willing a strengthening agent into her legs, one that would bond with rubbery bones. The determination she projected in Jack’s office fled by the time she arrived home to get the Santa Fe.
Before she backed the SUV down the driveway, her pluck returned. She issued herself a stern lecture. Her cause was just. She could not stand by and let Lizbeth, in the throes of grief, make life-altering decisions. Even the contemplation of uprooting Chad and moving to Florida was a mistake. Lizbeth needed time to heal. Chad needed as much normalcy in his world as possible. They both needed stability.
On the other side of the conflict, Arnett needed to understand the stages of grief, then she could rally with Beebe and Callie and slow Lizbeth down. Callie was willing to beg for Arnett’s cooperation. Was it too much to accept the quilt if that concession brought Chad back into her home?
Despite all the assertions made in her bedroom while changing clothes before driving over, Callie’s stomach was knotted. She felt the fear of confrontation. She expected to find Arnett inside the house at a level removed. But across the way, Arnett was giving a medley of dusty miller and petunias growing around a lamppost a long drink. Callie kept Arnett in her sights and crossed the street. Arnett emptied the spouted jug, then turned away and disappeared back around the house.
Callie thought her luck was ripening. A tall, solid redwood fence surrounded the backyard and the pool, she knew, was there. If Arnett went around back, the fence would contain their conversation. Callie pushed on. At the top of the drive, she stepped off into grass.
In the shady side yard, she found a lone garden glove on the ground. It was green and pink with a strip of elastic at the wrist. She carried it to the redwood gate. It stood open several inches. Callie peeked through the narrow crack to the low wooden deck attached to the house. She shifted her gaze and found Arnett. She aimed a hose nozzle at a thigh-high concrete planter. A shower of water jiggled plantings in the same theme Callie noted out front: upright dusty miller and droopy petunias. Four planters in total marked the corners of the rectangular in-ground pool. Four lampposts were stationed along the pool’s length, two on each side.
Callie swung the gate toward her enough to improve her view. Along the fence line, she saw a blue and white striped canvas changing room, lilac bushes, and a gold-fringed freestanding umbrella protecting two cushioned chairs from the sun. Beyond Arnett, a white trellis of yellow roses was set against the redwood planks. But it was the child’s sandbox in the grass with its blue and white canvas roof that pulled her through the gate opening.
Seeing the sandbox dislodged a memory of Jack. He sat across the table from her in a restaurant. The man who was a near genius at golf course planning frequently delighted her with funny and unique phrasing. The glint in his eye teased. “Will you visit the sandbox before we leave?” Over the years, Callie never tired of the question. She would look in the direction of the ladies’ room and answer one way or the other.
The scene flashed by and Callie found herself several steps inside the backyard fortress. The gate closed silently. Callie’s greeting snagged the older woman’s attention. “Hello, Arnett.” Callie took off her sunglasses and pushed up the bill on the cap she wore. “You dropped this.” She held out the glove.
Arnett, bewildered and speechless, automatically patted the pocket of knee-length shorts with her free hand. When she rounded up words, she spat them. “What are you doing here? Get out.” She squeezed the hose nozzle, sending a spray of water Callie’s way, treating her no better than a trespassing cat.
Callie backed out of the stream’s path. “Arnett, stop,” she ordered.
An indignant Arnett shot another squirt of water from the hose. “How dare you!”
Callie danced away from the spray. “I’m not leaving until we talk about Lizbeth.” That brought her another frigid blast. “Will you, please, stop.” When Arnett took aim again, Callie raced for the turn-off valve at the house.
“No. Leave that alone!” Arnett’s last arching stream, before pressure was lost, located the stationary target. The soaking was limited to Callie’s nylon jacket, which shed most of it, and one spot on her Levis. “I can’t believe you walked straight into my back yard.”
“You had to expect someone would come to reason with you about Lizbeth.”
“Reason?” Arnett shook her head like a frustrated billy goat. “As if I’m not reasonable. As if not wanting to spend a week in West Virginia in my husband’s love nest with my husband’s lover is unreasonable.”
Callie slipped out of the jacket and shook off the wet. She moved toward Arnett at poolside to hang the jacket over a chair back to dry in the sun. She laid the glove and her sunglasses on t
he seat.
“It’s hot,” Arnett said, suddenly incredulous. “Why are you dressed in that getup?”
“I wore this so your neighbors wouldn’t recognize me.” Callie pulled at the damp spot on her jeans, trying to break the suction on her leg.
The idea surfaced while Callie was home. She thought she could save Arnett the embarrassment of having the woman Jack left her for show up, park out front, then boldly ring the bell. The alternative tack might prove advantageous, especially since Callie was trying to woo Arnett toward an amiable frame of mind with regard to Lizbeth. Disguised, Callie thought she’d be less noticeable in case anyone on Brahms knew of her existence, her frequent appearance in the sports pages, and made the connection.
At home, Callie hooked her short blonde hair behind her ears, then added Jack’s favorite cap. She hoped the sunglasses, jacket, white tee, faded Levis, dirty sneakers, and general sloppy appearance with her slight build would, at a glance, imitate a teenage boy’s wardrobe.
“You mean you wanted to save yourself from recognition,” Arnett fired back.
Callie’s head came up. Her finger jabbed the air. “No. To save you. So you wouldn’t need to answer questions about my visit.”
Arnett’s eyes blazed. She emitted a deep scream that scraped violently over windpipe and vocal cords on its way up from her gut.
Callie’s expression turned to one of exaggerated patience. “But if you don’t stop screaming, your neighbors will figure it out anyway. I couldn’t be sure how much they knew or what was said, but if they knew my description, well— I thought I’d come in disguise. And I parked around the corner for another degree of separation.”
Arnett raised the hose nozzle and depressed the lever repeatedly, mimicking the firing of a pistol empty of bullets. “Go,” she said. “Get your bony behind off my property.”
“Not until we talk.”
“We don’t need to talk.”
“Yes, we do. You need to understand what Lizbeth is going through.” Callie’s hands were in motion. “She’s grieving. She’s angry, and she shouldn’t make monumental decisions now. Beebe and I don’t want her to move to Florida with Chad any more than you. That would be a mistake.” She laced empathy into her tone. “She’s hit the anger stage of grief. Hit it pretty hard. There truly is a grieving process. You’re a strong woman, Arnett, but I see Lizbeth flailing, swinging wildly. She’s looking for a handhold, for someone to grab. Surely the best someone for the job is you.”
“This is a crock of bull, coming from you.”
“This same speech could come from Beebe. I can get her over here. She’s the expert. Don’t be the one to make Lizbeth angry. Cooperate. Trade in a fraction of your pride.”
Arnett’s stubborn chin came up, but she held her tongue.
“No matter our relationship,” Callie said, gesturing, “I can’t stand by and not help when Lizbeth is about to make a huge error.” She waited for a reply; Arnett’s face only reddened. “Beebe and I have got Chad in mind.” Callie thought she tacked on a positive statement, but Arnett blew.
“She will not take my grandson to Florida!”
“If you’ll consent to this week to sort things out, we can probably guarantee that. Lizbeth needs to pass through these stages of grief. Beebe can explain them best.” Callie saw no chink in Arnett’s body armor, yet she persisted. “It’s a two-year process. I’m not there yet, either. Neither are you.”
“Don’t tell me where I am in the process. If Lizbeth would just leave everything alone, she’d be fine. Chad would be fine. He needs to spend time with his grandmother while his mother works. That’s the way it’s been with all the boys; that’s the way it should be for him.”
“After next week, if you’ll agree, that may be the outcome. I have faith in Beebe.”
“You’re the one putting these ideas in Lizbeth’s head. You’d do anything to hurt me. Again!”
“No, it’s not the two of us against you. It’s really three against one: you, Beebe, and me. We need to team up against Lizbeth, to keep her from making a bad decision at the worst time in her life. She needs to give herself more time.” Callie delivered her words on a steady plane, but her mind was throwing out memories of the horrible, lost feeling that walked alongside her after Jack’s death. “Please, Arnett, call Lizbeth. Tell her you’ll participate. You take the credit. No need to mention my visit.”
“She doesn’t know? She didn’t put you up to this?” Her sweeping hand took in the cap sitting back on Callie’s head and the jacket draped on a lounge chair.
“No one knows but you and me.”
Arnett wandered a step. “So this is a secret rendezvous then. You’re so good at that.”
Callie shifted position. “You’re getting off the subject.”
“No, between you and me,” Arnett said, indicating the space between them, “that will always be the subject. There is no other.”
Callie noticed a gleam lighting Arnett’s dark eyes and a smirk tugging at her face. A stirring breeze fluttered by, trailing the smell of chorine. Arnett had gotten Callie’s back to the pool. She was one good shove from the edge. Callie popped up an eyebrow and glanced over her shoulder to the shallow water, showing Arnett she read her drenching thoughts. Arnett wore a satisfied smile anyway. Callie could plot too. She spoke, and the smile disappeared.
“You need to think back to the last time you saw Chad because that may very well be the last time you’ll ever see him. Etch that picture in your mind.” She anchored her thumbs in her jeans pockets to hamper the finger-pointing urge. Callie moved to leave, then paused before she stepped past Arnett. “Call Lizbeth. She has a certain quilt she wants you to accept.”
Arnett rounded on her, her anger reborn. “Why are you doing this?”
Callie’s brief answer pressed the connection they made nearly five years before. “Why? You know why.” She watched a shadow of understanding cross Arnett’s face. Back then, Jack was ill, and it was Arnett who reached out to contact Callie. The purpose behind that contact changed everything. Callie closed her eyes. She pushed the rest of the story away. Today, herding Arnett toward a better path was the least she could do.
She lifted her jacket and sunglasses off the chair and scuffed through the grass toward the gate. Outside the solid eight-foot fence, she stopped to don her costume. She took a half-dozen steps, then large drops of icy-cold water rained down. Arnett Oldstone Sebring was agile, stealthy, and owned amazing blind aim.
Callie turned the Santa Fe around and drove straight to the small house at the end of Morris Lane. Petey lived there. Adeline “Petey” Peterson Sebring was Jack’s stepmother. During her twenties, she played baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League founded by Philip K. Wrigley and was tagged “Petey” by her Rockford Peaches teammates.
In sharp contrast to being ignored by Jack’s sons throughout the entire three years Callie and he lived together, Petey insisted upon an introduction the moment Callie’s existence became known. Petey was charming. A spitfire. And she took no guff from anyone, including Arnett Oldstone Sebring. She put a stop to Arnett’s harassing phone calls. That act effectively carved Petey out of the Sebring family. A widow twice over, Petey was watched over by the granddaughter, Nora, who lived next door, and by Callie.
“I may have lost Jack,” Petey said to Callie the first time she visited after his death, “but I love him for leaving me you.” Petey made the exchange sound both treasured and even.
During one afternoon visit, Petey gave Callie an impish smile, then sat forward in her cushioned rocker. “I remember sitting at that kitchen table with Jack’s father. Avery, Jack, and I just finished one of our famously long coffee breaks. After Jack left, Avery and I looked a
t each other. ‘Something’s up with Jack,’ he said. ‘He’s happier. He smiles more.’ That coffee break was twenty years ago.” Her eyes lit. “We didn’t know, then, that you were in the bushes.”
Callie let herself inside the house. She left the disguise portion of her wardrobe behind. She found Petey seated in the rocker with the sports page tipped toward the window to catch the afternoon light. Quietly, not wanting to startle her good friend and confidant, Callie spoke her name twice. The second time, she folded one corner of the newsprint down and looked out. Grinning, Callie waved.
“Well, hello,” Petey said. Her wavy white hair was wound into its usual knot at her nape, setting off a gleaming pair of blue eyes. “This is fabulous. What a surprise. I wasn’t expecting you.” The newspaper lay across her lap now, her wire glasses atop the paper. “I wasn’t expecting you, was I?”
Callie kissed her cheek, then backed up to a nearby chair. “No, you weren’t, and you’re not the only person who didn’t expect a visit from me this afternoon. I just came from Arnett’s.”
Petey’s reaction was a full two seconds of flabbergasted silence, then words burst forth. “Save us all, Callie, why did you go there?”
Sitting forward, Callie answered that question. An astonished Petey listened carefully to the story that began with Arnett’s arrival at Callie’s house and closed with Callie’s rationale for offering Heatherwood for counseling sessions. “Jack seemed to brood about Chad more than anything. He would want him happy and safe. I can speak for Jack. This is something I can do. And Beebe thinks it’s best to get away.”
Petey shook her head. “It saddens me to think of Jack brooding about that little boy. And now, a ruckus with Chad dead center.” Then her eyes drilled Callie’s. “You go,” she said. “You take a stand for Jack’s grandson. You’ll come shining through. You always do. Stop here first thing when you get back and tell me all about it.”
Wild Raspberries Page 5