The Marine (Semper Fi; Marine)

by Cheryl Reavis

  “Up to you,” Josh said. “You can keep your word or not keep it. Your choice. But if you’re worried about Joe-B, my guys will make sure he understands what’s expected of him. He’ll show up presentable and he’ll know how to behave. How much you worry about what people will think if you go with him—well, it’s up to you how much power you want to give them over your life, right?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said, but from the sound of her voice, the conclusion didn’t make her happy.

  Grace heard a chair scrape back, and she ducked into the den so she wouldn’t be caught eavesdropping. Having a Marine in the house was growing more complicated all the time. She waited until she heard Lisa go upstairs before she went into the kitchen. Josh was still seated at the table.

  “Is she all right?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “The problem is what?”

  He looked at her, but he didn’t answer.

  “I’m her mother,” Grace insisted.

  “She asked me what I thought, Grace.”

  “About going with Joe-B to the prom.”

  “About not going with Joe-B to the prom. After she told him she would.”

  Grace didn’t say anything.

  “I need to check on Elizabeth,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “I want to ask you something before you go,” Grace said.

  “What?”

  “How bad was it for you—in foster care? You said you didn’t want that for Elizabeth.”

  “If you mean, did they chain me to a wall in the basement and feed me bread and water, the answer is no. I wasn’t physically mistreated. I was . . .”

  “What?” she prompted when he didn’t go on.

  He looked past her, toward the kitchen windows. “I was a commodity—if anything. My being there brought money into the household. Not much, but a little bit. I got medical care if I needed it. I got fed. Sometimes people even made sure I’d done my homework. But I was never . . . Joshua. I was the foster kid. And foster kids are pretty much interchangeable. You don’t really belong. If it’s a pretty good situation, you try not to rock the boat so you can stay where you get looked after. But you’re not really . . . cared about, not in a way that counts, if that makes sense. I want Elizabeth cared about. I want her to matter.”

  He looked at her then, clearly waiting for her response. But Grace had none. She understood perfectly about not wanting to rock the boat and wanting to matter. She had loved her Aunt Barbara, and she believed her aunt had loved her in return, but that sense of belonging had been hard to come by.

  “It’s late. No more questions,” she said finally. The DNA results were still pending, and she needed to have a family meeting.

  Chapter Ten

  “I DIDN’T PICK her up,” Allison whispered when Josh came into the guest bedroom. “You said not to if I could help it, so I didn’t. She woke up fussy, but I’ve been sitting here talking to her and she went back to sleep.”

  Josh looked at his sleeping daughter, then at Allison, immediately registering that Allison had been doing more than talking. Her eyes were puffy and red and she was working to keep him from seeing her face. He wondered who had been comforting whom.

  “Thanks. Good job,” he said quietly. “You . . . okay?”

  He got a sigh for an answer, one he immediately filed away in his growing mental databank concerning the care and feeding of daughters. He’d learned a lot since he’d been in the James’ house, and even as new to the job of raising a girl child as he was, he could recognize that this was no ordinary sigh.

  “What’s going on?” he said, sitting down on the corner of the bed.

  It took her a long time to answer, but when she did, he didn’t hear it.

  “Say again?” he said.

  “Lisa’s right,” she said after a moment. She glanced at him, but a small hole in the knee of her jeans was far more interesting.

  “About?”

  Another sigh. And another interval to decide whether or not she wanted to tell him.

  “Me,” she said finally. “I’m a . . . total mess. I don’t know anything she knows. I don’t know how to dress. I don’t know what to buy. And just look at my hair!” She looked at him directly then, her eyes brimming with tears, and he immediately wished his databank had more . . . data.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, relying on the Marine Corps training for this one.

  “Do?” she said.

  “Yeah, do. If the situation is unsatisfactory, you do something about it—unless you’re in boot camp. Then you shut up and follow orders.”

  “I’m in boot camp,” she said. “Believe me.”

  He tried not to smile. “Why don’t you ask your mom to help you?”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “She worries, especially since Dad died.”

  “What about Lisa? She’s got a handle on that kind of stuff, right?”

  She gave him a look, one that reminded him of a time he’d fed Elizabeth strained squash when she’d been expecting applesauce. Clearly, female children learned very early on how to communicate to the male of the species that he’s said or done something truly incomprehensible and idiotic.

  “I’d rather have red hot pins stuck in my eyes,” she assured him.

  “Well, then, we need an alternate plan.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. You did want my help, right?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “All right then. Here it is. You either do nothing and cry in your beer . . . or you get yourself a workable plan and do everything you can to fix it. If you want to go shopping, check with your mom about the cash flow for that kind of mission and get back to me.”

  Allison frowned. “You mean actual . . . shopping?”

  “Correct. Let me know what she says.”

  “So . . . who am I going shopping with?”

  “The Marines,” he said. “Who else?”

  ALLISON DIDN’T REALLY expect anyone to show up, but this time she was sure the word “miracle” fit the situation. She couldn’t believe the speed with which the whole thing had come about. Before she knew it, the plan for her to go buy some new clothes was in place, including—with the help of her unspent birthday and Christmas money—a more than adequate operating budget.

  But if anyone had asked her what she was doing standing all by herself in front of one of the “boy bait” stores, she wouldn’t have known what to say. She still wasn’t completely sure that Josh had been serious about meeting her here after school. In spite of her initial enthusiasm, she had a real problem imagining a bunch of Marines actually wanting to go shopping with her. Of course, “wanting” might have nothing to do with it. She’d seen enough of late to understand that these Marine Corps people had a definite pecking order and that personal preference wasn’t a significant factor in mission-planning. She understood, too, that she would be participating in something so well-organized, it could have a name. It could be called Operation: Clothe Dorky Allison. Josh had told her mother as much. Whether it was an assault boat landing or helping Allison snag a new wardrobe, it was all the same to him and his “guys.” She took a deep breath and looked toward the parking lot.

  No Josh. No Elizabeth. No Marines—or none she knew, at any rate.

  She tried to decide whether or not she was glad. If they didn’t show, then she could just pretend that she hadn’t really confided in Josh. Even now, she didn’t know why she had—except that he was sort of . . . like her dad. She could have told him she felt buried in an avalanche of ugliness and she didn’t know how to get out of it, and he would have listened. But she didn’t know if he would have been so sure about what needed to be done to fix it.

  She suddenly smiled. She coul
d see Josh wheeling Elizabeth in her regular stroller in her direction. And a Marine on crutches—two Marines on crutches, actually, both of whom she knew, Peña and Crawford, and one of the nameless girl Marines who had come to the house as well. This was going to be some shopping trip, Allison could tell that already.

  “Allison!” Josh called, and she hurried to meet them. She kissed Elizabeth on top of her sweet-smelling little head, as much to delay the inevitable as to greet her.

  “Okay, listen up,” he said. “Especially you,” he said to Allison. “I need all of you to know the parameters. Money is the first thing. Crawford, you take the cash and keep track of what we’re spending. And I don’t want you hitting on the sales girls.”

  “How about the customers, Sergeant?”

  “You keep up with the money. Period. The other thing is we are not going for the skanky look, got it? Got it?” he said to Allison, who nodded. Actually, she didn’t think she could look skanky if she tried. Her image was more “Care Bear” than “Lolita.”

  “Okay, who’s got the juice and the manual?”

  “I do, Sergeant,” the girl Marine said, producing a baby bottle of apple juice for Elizabeth and a magazine insert titled Cosmo Girl To Go. Allison had seen those inserts before. They were full of fashion trends for teens.

  “What is your name?” Allison whispered to the girl Marine.

  “Call me Muley,” the young woman said.

  “Okay,” Allison said, wondering if she was the one who, according to Lisa, offered to cut Joe-B’s hair. She still couldn’t believe Lisa was even considering going to the prom with Joe-B. Where was the real Lisa James and what had Pod Lisa done with her body?

  “We’re going to start up at this end and see how it goes, unless Allison has somewhere in particular she wants to check out.”

  “No,” she said, still a little bewildered. “I’ll just . . . get with the program.”

  “Then we are good to go. Peña, you get whirley, you sit. Understood? Nobody wants to scrape you off the floor.”

  They hit the store en masse, all of them conferring in a little huddle before they turned Allison loose to rummage through the racks of teenage girl clothes for things to try on. Her first selection met with unanimous approval, as did the second one.

  “No way,” Josh said of a see-through black lace top with tiny sequined straps she took off the rack next. “Keep looking.”

  She was shy at first about trying things on and then having the “panel” judge the results, but after the first few times, she got over it. The Marines were tactful for the most part—unless she got too close to “skanky.” Unfortunately, though, it was Allison who ultimately wasn’t happy with the try-ons. Everything was just too “Lisa.”

  “Pink,” Crawford said, abandoning his accounting duties for a moment. “And baby blue. Those are the colors you want. It says so in the manual.”

  He took the magazine insert away from Muley and showed Allison a picture of a young girl wearing a puffy pink corduroy retro hat with a visor and some kind of baby blue crocheted shawl over a girlie, pale pink cotton dress. Two ties with crocheted strawberries dangled at the neck of the shawl and the workman look of the hat had been softened by a daisy brooch pinned to the left of the brim.

  “This looks like you,” he said.

  “It does?”

  “Hey, yeah,” Muley said over his shoulder. “That’s good—kind of sweet, but just a little bit sassy.”

  “Sassy?”

  “Yeah. Like you are.”

  I’m sassy? Allison thought. To hear Lisa tell it, she was more a pain in the butt.

  Sassy.

  Allison liked “sassy.”

  It took some serious reconnoitering, but the team found a reasonable facsimile of everything in the photograph, including the bracelets and necklace the model was wearing and the puffy hat with a visor. Then they went for variations in the same theme. In no time at all, it was clear that the group had “sweet but sassy” down pat. And Allison was loving it.

  “How’s the money?” Josh asked Crawford when they regrouped in front of the store.

  “Thirty-seven bucks, fifty-nine cents,” Crawford said immediately. Allison had to admit that he must really be good at math, especially if he could do it while checking out girls.

  “Muley, you take it from here,” Josh said, handing her the envelope with the remaining cash. Then he, Elizabeth and the two guy Marines left.

  “Take what where?” Allison asked, struggling to hold onto her bags of committee-approved garments.

  “Buying your skivies,” Muley said.

  “Skivies?”

  “Underwear,” she elaborated.

  By the time the money ran out, Allison had more than enough clothes, outside and under, to affect her new look.

  “So what do you think?” Josh asked her when they were ready to leave.

  “I think I am never going shopping again,” Allison said. “Without all of you guys.”

  “WHAT HAPPENED to you?”

  Allison froze, her hand on the doorknob. She had hoped to get to the relative safety of her room without Lisa seeing her, but all the tiptoeing Allison had done to get past Lisa’s open door clearly had been for nothing.

  “Haircut,” Allison said, stating the obvious.

  “Let me see.”

  Allison sighed and stood where she was, suffering Lisa’s assessment of her new “do” as best she could.

  “Who did it?”

  “Muley.”

  “Muley the Marine?”

  “Yeah,” Allison said. She was about a millimeter away from being highly insulted now, and she suspected that Lisa knew it.

  “Cute,” Lisa said after a moment.

  Cute?

  Allison made a small noise that could have meant nothing or could have meant Pod Lisa was back.

  “Let me see what you bought,” Lisa said next.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know who you are, that’s why. You never want to see what I’ve bought.”

  “That’s because you have no taste whatsoever. I want to see what kind of influence the Marines had—if any.”

  “Well, okay. Wait out here until I get it all set up.”

  “Allison, just open the bags and let me see.”

  “No. My way or no way. You need to get the full effect.”

  It took Lisa a few seconds to make up her mind.

  “Knock yourself out,” she said finally.

  “You wait out here till I call you.”

  “Allison—”

  “I mean it.”

  “Okay! I’ll wait out here!”

  Allison opened the door to her room just wide enough for her to slip inside, then closed it firmly behind her. Just to be sure, she locked it and slid the straight chair over and propped the back of it under the doorknob.

  Satisfied that it was more than secure, she began to take out her sweet but sassy ensembles and arrange them on the bed as they were meant to be seen. When she was finished, her bed looked like the backdrop for a catalog photo shoot.

  “Okay,” she said, removing the chair and unlocking the door.

  “You are such an idiot,” Real Lisa said as she stepped into the room. She looked at the bed, then walked closer, carefully inspecting each perfectly arranged pile of clothes, fingering the jewelry, picking up the pink puffy hat as if she wanted to try it on.

  She put the hat back down again. “These are . . .”

  Allison held her breath.

  “Totally . . . not bad,” Lisa concluded.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re . . . welcome.”

&n
bsp; They stood looking at each other.

  “Lisa, don’t go to that stupid beach party,” Allison said suddenly. She hadn’t known she was going to say it. She wasn’t even thinking about it. Maybe it was being with the Marines all afternoon and seeing how they looked out for each other. It must have worn off on her somehow, making her suddenly worried about what might happen to her only sister if she decided to sneak off to Julia Rose’s cousin’s house.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. Jason will probably be there.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s—he’s not . . .”

  “Not what?”

  “Not good for you.”

  “Allison, you’re just a kid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know you’re not you when you’re around him. You’re this . . . this . . .”

  “What?”

  “Doormat! All you need is ‘Welcome’ stamped on your chest.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true. Don’t go to the party. You don’t need to try to get Jason to take you to the prom. Let the Marines do their thing and fix Joe-B up for you. Believe me, they can do it. Muley will get his hair right. Lisa, I’m scared for you!”

  Allison hadn’t meant to say that last part, either, but it just sort of came out. She took a deep breath and braced herself for Lisa’s reaction.

  Incredibly there was none. Lisa stood for a moment, then quietly left the room.

  The telephone rang. Allison expected Lisa to stampede into the room to get it like she usually did, but she didn’t. It rang a few more times before Allison ran to the extension in her mother’s bedroom.

  “Allison,” a man’s voice said when she answered.

  There were voices and music in the background—bar music, her recent excursion into that world suggested to her. She waited.

  “Hello?” she said after a long moment of hearing nothing but “Boot Skootin’ Boogie.”

  She heard him swear, but she didn’t think she was meant to.

  After another long moment, he hung up.