Grandma came and took Lucy’s place at the table. “I would like to get out of this house and go for a walk.”
Mom took this as a good cue for me. “Jeannie, why don’t you help your grandmother into her wheelchair and take her out for a while? Buddy, too,” she said as an afterthought.
We heard Lucy retch again.
“Is that girl pregnant?” Grandma demanded. “Bad business, babies. Never could stand ’em. Lumpy lumps of flesh.” I was glad Dad wasn’t around to hear this from his mother. My own mother was getting the wheelchair out of the hall closet and didn’t hear her, which was a good thing, because Mom probably wouldn’t have let this one go unanswered. I loaded Grandma into the chair and nearly lost her down the ramp.
“There’s a brake on the left side,” Grandma instructed over her shoulder. I pushed her down the street while Buddy pulled at his leash, trying to go any way but the way I was going. We strolled up to where volunteers were setting up tables and chairs in Custer Park for the ice cream social. It was starting later today, with a parade featuring the Shriners, the fire truck, and the high school band. Mrs. Mearston came over to say hello.
“Hi, Jeannie,” she said, and then in that cooey voice people use with old people and dogs, she said, “And who might this be?” She knew Buddy, so I assumed she meant my grandmother. I introduced them, then continued wheeling Grandma through the park. After fifteen minutes I figured Mom had had enough alone time with Lucy so I took her home.
Lucy was curled up in Dad’s red chair and Mom was on the phone. I helped Grandma out of her wheelchair and stuck her at the kitchen table with her deck of cards. She immediately began playing solitaire.
“What’s going on?” I asked Lucy.
“She’s making an appointment for me. She wants me to see a counselor so I can understand all my options.”
“Did she say what she thinks you should do?”
Lucy looked at me wearily. “You know she would never do that. If I have it, she’ll say I made the right decision, and if I don’t have it, she’ll say I made the right decision.”
“If you knew that already, why did you come all the way home to talk it over?” I asked.
“Because she’s the only one who knows exactly what to say to me.”
Mom hung up the phone and told Lucy to get her coat. The counselor would see Lucy right then since she had to leave in a few days to get back to base. When they left, I was feeling a little lonely, so I decided to make brownies. I don’t care if they come out of a box; I am proud of my brownies. Tom, the handyman, knocked on the back door just as I was pulling them out of the oven
“When did you suddenly start knocking?” I asked as I opened the door. He trailed in behind me.
“Seemed the polite thing to do, since you have company.”
I was puzzled until I realized he meant Grandma.
“Your dad said he was leaving me a check, and there should be a big manila envelope here for me, too.”
I looked on the counter but didn’t see them. Searching in the mess of papers on top of the refrigerator I finally located both the check and the envelope. Eyeing the mound of letters and junk mail, I itched to organize it all. But I knew Mom and Dad would kill me if I changed their “system,” as they called it. Climbing down from the chair that was my ladder, I handed the items to Tom. He peered into the empty Mr. Coffee, then looked at me, wounded.
“We’re out,” I explained. “Want a Coke?”
“Nah.” He took off his John Deere hat and scratched his head. “But I’ll take a brownie.” He sat down at the table and I put the whole pan in front of him. He delicately cut out a piece and looked at me. “What? Do you live in a barn? Can a guy get a plate around here?”
I looked right back at him. “You know where they are.” It’s not like I was running a restaurant or something. This guy spent more time at our house than I did.
Tom went to the cupboard. When he sat back down, Grandma shuffled in and sat with him. “Did you bring these?” she asked him.
“No, Mrs. Thompson.” Tom smiled. “Jeannie made them.”
“They haven’t had food in this house for days,” Grandma insisted. She jerked her head at me. “Her father lost his job, you know.”
Tom snapped his head around to me. “What? Jeannie, you didn’t tell me!” He fingered the check in his hand like it could bounce right then and there. “You would have thought it would be in the paper, with your Dad being the county administrator and all. Do you have today’s Chronicle?”
Oh, for crying out loud, I thought. Tom had the biggest mouth in town. Now this rumor would be all over the place. “Grandma!” I said sharply. “You know very well that Dad did not lose his job. Will you please stop saying things like that?”
Grandma leaned over and whispered loudly to Tom, “The kids are always the last to know.”
Tom nodded conspiratorially, then got up and took another brownie with him. As he was heading out the door I asked, “What’s in the envelope anyway?”
“Your parents’ taxes.”
“What are you doing with that?”
“It’s time for them to file. I got them an extension in April, but they need to get these finished up now to avoid late penalties. Course, with your father losing his job and all, there may be complications.”
I stared at our handyman, who apparently was also (hopefully) an accountant. “I didn’t realize you were a jack of so many trades.”
Tom stopped at the door. “I graduated first in my class in undergrad and grad school at Northwestern. But accounting is so damn boring. I just do it for the cash once in a while.” He slammed the door behind him and I heard him pull the cord on the lawnmower. After a couple of tries, it came to life. I watched him run over half the marigolds while wheeling the mower to the lawn. He paused, looked back at the marigolds, shook his head, and began mowing.
I turned back to Grandma. “Why do you keep saying Dad lost his job?”
“There are some things adults don’t tell children,” she said. “They think you’re too young to know.”
I was wrapping up the rest of the brownies in Saran Wrap when I remembered Elizabeth’s hysterical phone call to the Blit. That had been night before last. In the panic of thinking Lucy was dead, I had forgotten about her. I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Elizabeth?”
“Hi, Jeannie.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know why you care. You didn’t even call me back yesterday.”
“We thought Lucy was dead, but it turned out she was all right. So we were busy, sorry.”
I could feel Elizabeth’s exasperation humming over the line. She said tartly, “I have a real life problem and Mom decided that one of us was dead again? She has got to stop imagining things.”
“We had more evidence than usual so you can’t blame Mom this time. But anyway, what’s wrong?”
“I’m moving home.”
I leaned against the wall and slid to the floor with the phone still to my ear. This was going to be a long call.
Elizabeth sobbed out her story. My liberated sister had agreed to having only Ron’s name on the checking account. She dutifully signed her name on the back of every paycheck she got and turned it over to him. He took care of, or was supposed to take care of, the bills. Today, a repo man had come to her door to repossess the car that had just been sold.
“Where was the money going?” I was bewildered.
“Who knows? There may also be a woman involved in all of this somewhere.”
I could hear the heaviness in her voice as she continued. “He told me he was a therapist. But whenever I call his office, he’s not there. So I asked some people who work in offices on the same floor if they ever see him. They didn’t even know who he was. I don’t think he was working at all.”
“Mom will be back soon. Do you want me to keep quiet or do you want me to tell her you’re coming home because Ron took all of your money?”
After a l
ong pause, Elizabeth said, “Tell her I’m coming home because I’m pregnant.” Then she hung up the phone. I got up from the floor and put the phone back in its cradle. I could hear the band warming up for the parade. It was almost noon. When the firehouse blew its whistle, then the parade would start. It was a source of consternation to most of the town that the firehouse blew its whistle every single day at noon. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, like church bells. It was a horn that sounded like we were being warned that the Japanese were flying in for a bombing raid on North Muskegon. It went on for a full minute and had been doing so since 1943. After Mr. Vanderman dropped dead unexpectedly at 12:01 one day, Mrs. Vanderman petitioned to stop the infernal noise. But the city council voted her down because they said that since he was raised in this town he should have been used to, and therefore should have expected, the racket.
I suddenly realized Grandma wasn’t anywhere in sight. I checked the sliding doors but they were closed.
“Grandma?” I called. There was no answer. I didn’t think she could make it up the stairs by herself but maybe she had tried. I called up the stairs, but again there was no answer. She wasn’t anywhere in the house. I went outside and tried to make myself heard over the lawnmower. “Hey, Tom!” Finally, he looked up and put a hand to his ear, and then he bent over and shut off the machine. Just then the noon whistle went off and we were both rendered speechless for the full minute. We stood with our fingers in our ears until it died away.
“Have you seen Grandma?” I asked.
“Nah, but I haven’t really been looking. I meditate when I cut lawns. It’s a Buddhist method that—”
I cut him off. “I’d love to know more, but I have to find Grandma.” I ran back inside to double-check the house. She hadn’t reappeared in the kitchen. As I was deciding where to look next, the phone rang.
“Jeannie, honey, this is Mrs. Mearston.”
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Mearston.”
“Honey, I just wanted to let you know I saw your grandmother wheeling up the street. She’s headed for the ice cream social.”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. “Thanks, I’ll run up and get her right now.” I hung up quickly and ran out to the garage and grabbed the green Schwinn. I would have to wheel the bike and Grandma back. I pedaled up the street until I saw the crowd gathered for the parade. As I got closer, I noticed there was an opening in the crowd, like everyone was avoiding something. I got off the bike and put the kickstand down. Leaving it on the sidewalk, I trotted into the mass of people. I heard some shrieks and ran faster. I spotted Grandma in her wheelchair, all right. She was tearing through the crowd like a scythe in a field. I stopped cold. Mrs. Mearston had neglected to tell me that Grandma was bare-ass naked. I yelled for her to come back, but either she was ignoring me or couldn’t hear me over the John Philip Sousa music the band was playing. Several people turned to me. “Is that your grandmother, Jeannie?” one asked.
“Yes,” I said as I pushed on toward Grandma.
“She’s trying to catch a cold,” someone yelled after me, “but she’s not running fast enough!”
Very funny. I saw an opening in the crowd and made a break through it. I was yelling her name now. “Pearl! Pearl! Come back here!” My face was bright red, and it wasn’t from exertion. She looked over her shoulder and caught sight of me, but instead of stopping, she sped up. Grandma’s wheelchair clipped a table ahead of me and knocked it over. Paper cups and lemonade went flying, and two little girls started crying. When their moms ran over to see what was wrong, the girls pointed at my grandmother. “That mean, naked lady knocked over our stand.”
The red and white paper tablecloth from the stand was now entangled in the wheelchair. Grandma, seeing I was gaining on her, stood up and moved faster than I have ever seen her move. Boobs flopping, butt swaying, she ran toward the only open space, the street. If she kept going, she was in danger of being run over by the fire truck leading the parade. Forgetting my complete embarrassment, I darted and dodged through the crowd even faster. I had gone from thinking I would be teased unmercifully for the rest of my life to thinking I was going to be responsible for letting my grandmother get squashed by a fire truck.
“Please, someone stop her,” I yelled out. A few men standing on the curb glanced over and saw the commotion. One of them jogged over and grabbed Grandma by the wrist. They struggled long enough for the fire truck to pass by without incident. But then Grandma twisted away from him and ran into the baton twirlers who were leading the band. She bumped into one short-skirted, tassel-booted, glittery girl, who dropped her baton. Like a trouper, the girl picked it up, glued her smile back on, and proceeded up the street. The rest of the parade parted to go around my grandmother, who was frozen in the middle of the street.
“Excuse me,” I said to a group seated around a picnic table as I swept aside paper plates and plastic forks. “I need this.” I pulled the paper tablecloth off and took it with me into the street and wrapped it around my grandma. She was shivering. Mindless of the band that was making its way around either side of us, I rocked her back and forth as I’d seen my father do to my mother. I lay my head on top of hers. “It’s okay,” I soothed. Someone had retrieved her wheelchair and, in a break in the parade, raced it out to us.
“Thank you,” I murmured as I lowered my grandmother into her chair, careful to keep the tablecloth wrapped around her. With my head held high, I wheeled her to a side street and headed for home. When I opened the gate to push the wheelchair through, Tom came running to help me.
“Is she all right?” He looked down at her, concerned.
“I think so.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “She’s pretty shaken up and I’m not sure she knows where she is.”
Tom took command and pushed her up the ramp. Then he lifted her, still wrapped in the tablecloth, out of the chair and carried her upstairs. I followed and, after gesturing to Tom to leave the bedroom, helped Grandma swing her legs up and into bed. I threw the tablecloth into the bathroom wastebasket. After making sure she was asleep, I went back outside. “Thanks, Tom,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. He took his hat off and rubbed his head while he looked out over the garden. “One day we all might be in that situation. I just hope my family is around to help out like yours.”
I sat down cross-legged in the grass and plucked a dandelion puff that Tom had missed. “You don’t think we’re all crazy?”
“I didn’t say you weren’t all crazy. But I’ve never seen a family pull for each other so much. That doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.”
“Sometimes I think it’s actually a curse,” I said, staring at the grass.
“Then think of it as a warm and comforting curse.” Tom ruffled my hair and went to put the lawnmower away. I looked closely at the white spokes of the dandelion, then brushed its softness against my cheek—little seeds just waiting to land somewhere, plant their roots, and start growing on their own. I closed my eyes, blew on it, and made a wish. When I opened my eyes, the white seeds were floating around my head, catching the sun.
Chapter Twenty-two
April 2006
The next morning was spent with Stripe going over his special shoot concept. Stripe insisted that Katsu be in the room with us. “So we’ll start the piece with a man entering the alley with a gun.”
“Stripe, that’s brilliant,” Katsu solemnly intoned, “simply brilliant.”
He said something to this effect after practically every word Stripe uttered. I kept quiet, took notes, and tried to figure out how we were going to shoot this within budget.
The afternoon was spent trying to persuade the star of Jet Fuel, Jeff Cross, to fly from New York to Los Angeles for an advertising photo shoot. Normally I would have done the shoot in New York, but the rest of the Jet Fuel cast—who also needed to be photographed—was still here in Los Angeles. Also, the concepts for the poster called for the talent to be shot on the fabulously expensive film sets that had been created here on the studio lot.
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“I’m not coming,” Jeff told me on the phone after he had slurped noisily through a straw. With my elbow on my desk I rubbed my forehead. This was the third phone call I’d had with him. And the answer was still the same. No. Jeff continued, “I haven’t seen Stephanie in almost a month so I’m staying here with her in New York.”
I didn’t have to ask who Stephanie was. Jeff Cross and Stephanie Langer were a hot item and had become darlings of the press. Stephanie, in addition to being a well-known movie star, was the lead singer of a band that had shot to the top. The two of them had been nicknamed Jeffanie and they couldn’t even go to Starbucks without attracting throngs of paparazzi.
“What if we fly Stephanie here with you? I’ll put the two of you up in a suite at the Four Seasons,” I begged.
There was a long pause. Then, “First class plane seats and spa treatments every day for the both of us,” he announced. I perked up. This wasn’t so bad. These were pretty typical demands. I quickly agreed and hung up. Then I juggled phone calls and meetings and reviewed tapes of trailers and TV spots that needed major revisions. All the while I waited for Aidan to call me. But no.
When I finally looked at my watch it was almost 9:30 at night. I decided Aidan and I needed to have a long talk.
When I entered Aidan’s door a half hour later, I was startled to find him in the living room with two women. One of them happened to be the number one female star in America and the other was Montana. Aidan and I would have to put off our talk for another time.
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