Ladies' Night

by Andrews, Mary Kay

  “Cool,” Bo said, tickling Sweetie’s belly. “Can we start tonight?”

  “In the morning, maybe,” Wyatt said. He touched a fingertip to one of the newly painted walls. “Man, you work fast. I can’t believe you got this whole place painted in one day.”

  “Not all of it,” Grace said. “I was just starting on the second bedroom when you guys showed up. I’ve still got the bathroom and the kitchen to do, not to mention the screened porch. Those are the rooms that are going to take the most work.”

  “Still,” Wyatt said, walking into the abbreviated hall and then into the bedroom. “When you said this morning that the place was a mess, I was picturing something much, much worse.”

  “You should have seen it the first day I got here,” Grace said, wrinkling her nose. “If my camera had smell-a-vision, I could have totally grossed out everybody on the Internet. It was so, so, nasty. Rotting wall-to-wall carpet, skanky old appliances. Everything was filthy. And that bedroom, where they’d locked Sweetie…” She shuddered.

  “Are you ready to knock off for the day?” Wyatt asked.

  “I don’t even know how late it is. I kind of lost track of time.”

  “It’s nearly six,” Wyatt said. “Bo and I are going for pizza. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

  “Pizza?”

  “There’s a place just over on Holmes Beach,” he said. “Arturo’s. Nothing fancy, but it’s good and it’s cheap, and if we get there reasonably early, we can get a table on the beach and watch the sunset.”

  Grace glanced at Sweetie. “What about her?”

  “It’s pet-friendly,” Wyatt promised. “As long as we get a table outside.”

  She glanced down at her paint-spattered, braless self. “I can’t go like this.”

  “Sure you can,” Wyatt said. “Bo and I don’t care. And neither does Sweetie.”

  “But I do,” she said gently. “Certain standards must be maintained. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you guys go ahead to Arturo’s. I’ll get cleaned up and meet you over there in thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes?” he scoffed. “I’ve never known a woman yet who could shower and change and show up someplace in that little time.”

  “Thirty minutes,” Grace swore. “If I’m one minute late, the pizza’s on me.”

  * * *

  At precisely 6:30, Grace hurried through the door at Arturo’s. She was dressed in a pair of white capris, a black tank top, and a pair of gold metallic sandals from Pay-Less. Her hair was still wet from the shower and the only makeup she wore was a bit of coral lipstick. A pair of simple gold-hoop earrings sparkled at her ears, and around her neck she wore a necklace made from a tiny nautilus shell she’d found on the beach, hanging from a long thin gold chain. She walked through the main dining room and through a set of doors onto an expansive veranda, where she spied Wyatt and Bo sitting at a table close to the beach.

  Wyatt’s eyes swept over her appreciatively. He scrambled to his feet and gently pulled his son to a standing position, too.

  “You clean up pretty good,” he told her, pulling out a chair for her.

  “And fast,” she reminded him. “Thirty minutes. That might be a new land record for me.”

  “I guess that means dinner’s on me,” he said.

  * * *

  They ordered the Arturo’s special, which meant a huge pie with everything, including pepperoni, Italian sausage, onions, peppers, olives, and anchovies; a glass of milk for Bo; and a pitcher of beer for the adults.

  “Anchovies?” Grace asked, glancing over at Bo, who’d devoured two slices of pizza in the time it took Grace to work her way through one. “Your kid likes anchovies?”

  The boy looked up, his face smeared with enough tomato sauce to fashion another whole pie. “I love anchovies!” he exclaimed, his broad smile revealing two missing front teeth.

  “I haven’t found anything he doesn’t love,” Wyatt said ruefully. “He’s eating me out of house and home. I swear, every week he’s grown another two inches.”

  “I’m the third tallest boy in first grade,” Bo reported. “Cory Benton was the second tallest, but he’s not going to our school next year, so I’ll be the second tallest. Unless I grow some more, and then I’d be the first tallest.” He took a gulp of milk and stood up, whispering in his father’s ear.

  Wyatt nodded. “It’s inside, near the bar. Don’t forget to wash your hands, and come right back here, okay?”

  When he was gone, Grace took a sip of beer. “What a nice boy. I love that he’s figured out he’s the third tallest.”

  “He’s fascinated with numbers and statistics,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “I do not know where he gets it. There are no bean counters in my family, and certainly none in his mother’s. I haven’t had the heart to point out to him that if Callie gets her way, he won’t get to be the second tallest boy in the second grade at his school, because he’ll be going to a new school. In Birmingham.”

  “Maybe it won’t come to that,” Grace said.

  36

  Bo came bounding back to the table. “Guess what, Dad? Scout’s here! She and Coach Anna and her dad are eating dinner. Can I go sit with them for a while?”

  Wyatt half stood, craned his neck, and spotted Anna and her family in the dining room. Anna nodded and pointed to an empty chair at the table and Wyatt gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Okay, but are you all done with your pizza?”

  He eyed the last remaining piece on the tray. His father scooped it up into a napkin and handed it to him, and Bo ran off to join his friend.

  “Anna’s assistant coach on Bo’s T-ball team,” Wyatt said casually. “Scout’s our pitcher, and Bo’s best friend—on days he doesn’t think girls are icky.”

  “What about Bo’s father? Does he still think girls are icky?” Grace kept her tone playful.

  “No, I’m a reformed girl hater.” He reached across the table and tucked a strand of her damp hair behind her ear. “Especially where present company is concerned.”

  “Good to know,” Grace said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s your dad doing? You said he was pretty worn out today?”

  “He’s okay,” Wyatt said. “I’m just going to have to get used to the idea that he’s not getting any younger. All my life, he was this rugged, can-do guy. He literally did everything and anything at Jungle Jerry’s: he built buildings, including the gift shop; paved the parking lot; dug the reflecting pond for the bird rookery. It was nothing for him to work a twelve- or fourteen-hour day, come home and play ball with me, and then get up and do it all over again the next day. I think my mom’s death kind of took the wind out of his sails. He’s only seventy-four, but some days, you’d think he was twenty years older.”

  “Your dad’s seventy-four? Wow. Rochelle is only fifty-eight. How old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” Wyatt said. “You wanna see my ID?”

  “I trust you,” Grace said.

  “Dad was thirty-six when they had me, same age I was when we had Bo. Dad went in the navy when he was just eighteen and got out in the late sixties. He and my mom met at an Allman Brothers concert in St. Pete, at the old National Guard Armory there. Crazy, huh? To think about your parents grooving to the Allman Brothers back in the day? My mom was six years younger than him, so she wasn’t that old when she had me.”

  “Rochelle always says she was just a baby when she had her baby. She was only twenty when she got pregnant with me. Of course, my dad was a good bit older, too. He was already thirty, and he’d just bought the Sandbox when she came to work as a waitress. Dad claimed he threatened to fire her if she didn’t marry him.”

  Wyatt thought for a moment. “It still bugs me, you know? That my parents had this long, happy marriage, and I had a happy childhood, and, with all that, I’m still ending up divorced. And you’re in the same boat, right?”

  “I guess.” Grace took a sip of her beer. “I mean, I always assumed they were happy. Lately, I’m not so sure. Lit
tle things Rochelle’s says. Maybe she wasn’t as happy as I always thought. Certainly, I didn’t have what you’d call the average childhood, growing up in a bar, but I don’t think there was any lasting psychological damage.”

  “You grew up in a bar; I grew up in a tourist trap, playing with monkeys and parrots. And I always thought that was totally normal. I thought all kids had to shovel zebra poop when they got home from school every day,” Wyatt said. His voice turned wistful. “I always just assumed Bo would have that life, too. He really loves hanging out at the park.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. “You mean he won’t, because Callie’s taking him to Birmingham?”

  “Not just that,” Wyatt said. “I’m really not sure how much longer we’ll be able to hang on at Jungle Jerry’s. People don’t want to spend a half a day wandering around a park where the big attraction is a bird riding a bike. Nobody cares about a tree that’s two hundred years old or an orchid that doesn’t grow anywhere else in the world. We’re an anachronism. And we’re bleeding money.”

  “It’s that bad?” Grace asked.

  He shrugged. “This is too depressing. Let’s discuss something else. Like your new project.”

  “It’s not depressing,” Grace insisted. “It’s just reality. Isn’t there anything you can do to turn things around?”

  “I’ve tried everything I can think of. Billboards, social media, Groupon offers, coupons in the mail. It helps a little, just never enough. Did you know that up until nineteen seventy, there were at least a dozen roadside tourist attractions, right here in this area?” He ticked them off on his fingers, “Sunken Gardens, Sarasota Jungle Gardens, Weeki Wachee, Silver Springs, Rainbow Springs, the Aquatarium, Tiki Gardens, Six Gun Territory, and that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Lots of them are long gone, but others are still limping along, like Cypress Gardens. The last I heard, most of it had been turned into Legoland.”

  “I remember some of those places from when I was a little girl,” Grace smiled at the memory. “I guess Disney coming to Florida in the seventies probably was the kiss of death.”

  “That and the interstates bypassing them,” Wyatt said. “And people’s tastes change. So, Jungle Jerry’s is a dinosaur. A really expensive, dying dinosaur.”

  “What’ll happen to it?” Grace asked.

  “I’m not sure. We had a hot offer from a developer, right before Bo was born. They wanted to build one of those new urban centers, shopping and office and multifamily housing. My mom was sick; she had cancer—although we didn’t know then that it was terminal—and she wanted us to keep the place running. Her father started it. He was the original Jungle Jerry. And like the fool I was, I thought maybe I could make it work.” He shook his head. “Callie never let me hear the end of it afterwards. ‘We could have been rich. You should have sold out.’”

  “And then the economy tanked,” Grace said. “How well, I know. Since nobody could sell a new house or condo, they sure didn’t need a decorator to design a fabulous model home. And developers and builders probably couldn’t afford to break ground on yet another new project with all that unsold inventory sitting around.”

  “Six months after we turned down the deal, we heard the developer defaulted on all his bank loans,” Wyatt said. “So probably, even if we had made the deal, we never would have gotten paid.”

  “I know housing starts are starting to inch up again. Do you think it’s possible that another developer would be interested?” she asked.

  “Right now, there’s only one interested buyer,” Wyatt said, lowering his voice, as the waitress came by their table to ask if they wanted another pitcher of beer.

  “Who?”

  “The state of Florida,” Wyatt said.

  “Really? But that’s good news, right? What would they do with the park? Keep it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sounding irritated. “Dealing with bureaucrats is a major pain. They say they’d turn it into a state park. They say if the state legislature approves their next budget, the money’s there, if Manatee County can kick in some money, too. There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ flying around.”

  “What does your dad think?”

  “He says he’s okay with the idea,” Wyatt said. “But I’m not sure he really understands all it involves. He just knows I’m worried all the time, and that worries him.”

  “Hey Dad!” Bo ran toward their table with a little girl with blond braids close on his heels. “Anna says we can have ice cream for dessert if you say it’s okay.”

  “Hi Scout,” Wyatt said, reaching out and tugging one of the girl’s pigtails. “How was your pizza?”

  “She hates pizza,” Bo announced. “She had ’pasketti. And I had some, too.”

  From the looks of it, Grace thought, Both Bo and Scout had applied as much spaghetti sauce to their faces as they had to their bellies.

  “It was dee-lish!” Scout announced. She was kneeling on the patio, and Sweetie was jumping up to lick her face.

  “This is Sweetie,” Bo told his friend. “We get to keep her at our house at night.”

  “Cool!” Scout said. “Does she go to your mom’s house, too?”

  Bo’s shoulders sagged. “No. You know who is allergic. But I get to keep her at Dad’s, and he’s going to teach her how to fetch and stuff.”

  Wyatt took a napkin and wiped the outer layer of sauce from Bo’s face. “Tell Scout’s mom I said it was okay for you to have ice cream.” He reached in his pocket and took out two dollar bills and handed it to the little boy. “That’s to pay for your dessert. Don’t spend it all in one place. Right?”

  “Okeydoke.” The two ran back inside.

  “He’s the real reason I hesitate to pursue this thing with the state,” Wyatt said, nodding in his son’s direction. “Dad and I will be okay. Theoretically, we’d come out of the deal with a little money. Enough to pay our bills and keep a roof over our heads. But Jungle Jerry’s is Bo’s legacy. He’s grown up with the park. He thinks Cookie is his little sister. How can I sell that out from under my son?”

  Grace met his eyes. “You’re asking me?”

  He clasped his hand over hers. “I’m asking you.”

  “It seems to me that Bo’s legacy is you. And his grandfather. Times change. You know that as well as I do. I think we have to be flexible to survive. Look at me. When my work as an interior designer dried up—I mean, in this economy how many people need a twelve-thousand-dollar hand-knotted silk rug or eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of window treatments? I had to reinvent myself. I had to go back to my roots, making do with what I had, doing most of it myself, with a lot of creativity and not much money. You do what you have to do, right?”

  “Yeah.” Wyatt sighed. “I just keep thinking, if I could hold on a little longer…”

  He laughed. “Like I did with my marriage. And you see how well that turned out.”

  “It was different for me,” Grace admitted. “These months, since I walked out on Ben, I’ve been blaming him for everything. And he’s responsible for a lot of it, truly. But I think in the last few years I changed. My belief system and my values changed. It became more about status, having the best, the most expensive everything. Even though I started out writing DIY on Gracenotes, that changed, too. We monetized, got advertisers, and I needed to make them happy in order to survive. Or so I thought.”

  She took a sip of her beer. “I guess I sold out. And it wasn’t entirely Ben’s fault. I liked all that free stuff, giving big parties, living in the big house in the gated subdivision. And I loved having what seemed like unlimited resources available for any project I dreamed up. Ultimately, along the way, that’s when our marriage started to go south.” She gave a wry smile. “Rochelle would tell you I got too big for my britches.”

  Wyatt scooted his chair over toward her and leaned down to give her an unconvincing leer. “Your britches look just fine to me.”

  “Wyatt?”

  He turned around to see Anna Burdette standing
there, with Scout and Bo holding on to her hands. Anna gave Grace a friendly, if curious smile. “Hi there.”

  Wyatt stood. “Anna Burdette, this is my friend Grace…”

  “Davenport,” Grace finished for him, not wanting to be introduced by her married name. She shook Anna’s hand. “I hear Scout’s the Babe Ruth of T-ball.”

  Anna’s nose crinkled as she laughed. “To hear Wyatt tell it, you might think so.” She was studying Grace’s face. “I don’t mean to keep staring at you, but I keep thinking I know you from someplace.”

  “She’s a famous blogger,” Wyatt said.

  Anna snapped her fingers. “Gracenotes, right? Your blog is my guilty pleasure. I read it in the middle of the night when I can’t get to sleep.”

  “Thanks,” Grace said. “Actually, I’ve changed the name. My old blog got, er, co-opted by my soon-to-be ex. Check out TrueGrace, if you will.”

  “I definitely will,” Anna said. “In the meantime, the kids have been telling me about this spectacular little dog named Sweetie. I hear she’s going to learn all kinds of tricks over there at Jungle Jerry’s.”

  “She’s actually Grace’s dog, but she can’t keep her where she’s living right now, so we’re sort of sharing custody. Bo has big plans for her,” Wyatt said.

  “Anyway,” Anna said, “the reason I came by … Jack had to go on to work, but I told the kids I’d take them to play putt-putt for an hour or so, if that works for you. I can drop him off back at your place around eight.”

  “Please, Dad, please, please, please?” Bo was hopping up and down.

  “I guess that would be okay,” Wyatt said. “But not too much later, right, buddy? We’ve got a big game tomorrow, and your granddad is making you pancakes in the morning.”

  “Don’t worry, the assistant coach is not gonna risk letting her star catcher suffer from sleep deprivation,” Anna said.

  “Let me give you some money to pay for Bo’s golf,” Wyatt said, half standing to get to his wallet.

  “Not necessary. I’ve got buy-one, get-one coupons,” Anna said. “Grace, it was nice to meet you.”