by Kate Merrill
God help them all! Diana couldn’t proceed with this charade. She offered a sick smile to Brenda and Keener. “Your buyers are here, Brenda. Shall I send them away?”
“God, yes. Get rid of them, Diana.”
She met her clients at the front door, told them a lame story about the owners being ill and contagious, and sent them on their merry way, grumbling and confused. As soon as they pulled from the driveway, Diana stuck her head back in the kitchen.
“Sorry folks, I can’t breathe in here. I’m going for a walk…”
With that, she escaped through the back door.
THIRTY-SIX
Will they forget me, too…?
JohnnySorvino was suffocating in the cramped space, and there was no way he could get comfortable. He was lying on his side with his knees tucked up under his chin. His legs ached, while the ropes and metal beneath him on the hard floor bit into his ribs, but he could not stretch out. And it was so very dark.
The place stank of rubber and gasoline, and the fumes made him sick to his stomach. He pictured how his mama would be calling him for lunch and wondered if she had made peanut butter sandwiches or pizza pockets. He wished he had his glow-in-the-dark dinosaur watch, so at least he’d know how long he’d been in this scary place.
Tears streamed down his face and sweat soaked his tee shirt. Twisting, he managed to pull off the shirt and wad it under his head like a pillow, and burying his face in the moist fabric helped to stifle his sobbing. One thing he knew for sure--- he better not call attention to himself. He also knew he was the one who deserved to be here. All along the kidnappers wanted him, not Juan, so Johnny was the one who should die.
His mom and dad thought he didn’t know what happened. They had sent him to his room when the TV news came on, but he put on his earphones and watched his own set. He saw Juan’s Aunt Nita and the man called Bobby asking everyone to help save their boy. And he heard his dad tell the policeman that he would not help.
They’d be sorry now. Mama and Daddy would cry, but it would be too late, and they’d never see him again. Not ever!
On TV they had shown a picture of Juan holding his fish, the one he caught the day when they both went out with Mr. Trout. The rocking motion under him now, the part making him sick, was like being on that boat. Johnny squeezed his eyes shut and tried to bring the good times back.
The day they all went fishing, they enjoyed sun, and swimming, and the awesome storm, but already Juan’s face was getting harder to remember. It was so much like his own, that Johnny couldn’t tell them apart. Juan was his blood brother. Again he saw the knife flash and heard Juan chanting the secret oath. They had shared their blood like Indian warriors, and that meant true until death.
But where was Juan? Did he feel the same pain and fear? Mama and Daddy didn’t talk about Juan anymore, like he was already dead. Will they forget me, too? He wondered.
Johnny held his breath when he heard footsteps right outside his black prison. They came closer, then stopped as every muscle in his body froze in terror. At first he saw only a crack of light, then a blaze of sunshine blinded him when the tarpaulin ceiling rolled away.
“Who’s in there?” A woman’s face loomed above him. He couldn’t see her features because of the sun, but her pale hair was like an angel’s halo. “My God, is that you, Johnny?” she said.
His legs were so cramped that Miss Diana had to lift him out of the sailboat. He clung to her shoulders. “How’d you find me?”
She carried him to the bushes near the pier, where the handlebars of his bike reflected a tiny glint of light.
“I guess I didn’t hide it so good,” he muttered.
They sat together in the cool grass while Johnny took deep breaths and his heart slowed down to normal. He was glad she didn’t talk. His mom would have freaked by then. Plus, his mom would never sit on the ground in a new suit, or step off the dock in high heels, like Miss Diana just did.
People came out of the Club and started strolling towards their boats. Still she said nothing, just kept watching and smiling at him with those big blue eyes. Soon she got up and found his wadded shirt in the bottom of the hull. Then she buckled up the tarp where he’d pulled it loose, like he’d never even been there. Johnny figured he could’ve hidden there forever, if only he could’ve snapped those buttons from the inside.
“Your mother’s worried about you,” Miss Diana said. “Are you ready to go home now?”
He nodded, then pulled his bike out of the bushes. Miss Diana spread his wet tee shirt across the basket. He started to mount, but then changed his mind. She couldn’t keep up if he rode, so they walked side by side. She took long strides for a lady. They’d be home soon at this rate, so Johnny figured he’d better ask her now.
“You promisedyou’d find Juan, Miss Diana. Don’t you remember?”
She stopped and put her cool hand on the back of his neck, gave him a little squeeze. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“Nobody cares!” he cried. “You’ve already forgotten him!”
“No we haven’t…” She leaned close and Johnny noticed she smelled like flowers. “I think about Juan every minute of the day, just like you.”
“But you promised!”
“Yes, I did.”
Johnny searched her face and understood. She didn’t make another promise, but he trusted her all the same. As they rounded the corner, he saw a police car in his driveway, and even worse, his daddy’s silver BMW was parked there, too. “They’re gonna killme!” he wailed, grabbing onto Miss Diana’s hand.
“Would you blame them?” Miss Diana sounded stern, but she was still smiling. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell them you ran away? Maybe we should tell them you decided to go sailing?”
Would she really do that for him? Johnny dropped his bike to the sidewalk and flew through the front door, hitting an immoveable object…his mom…before he’d even gotten into the hall. She hugged him so tight, covering him with big slobbery kisses, that he couldn’t breathe.
Then Daddy came running from the kitchen, followed by the policeman who came the night Juan disappeared. Daddy looked funny and pale, but he was mad as a grizzly bear. Johnny tried to escape, but Daddy grabbed him. He smacked his bottom three times, so hard Johnny cried all over again. But Daddy was crying, too. He lifted him up in his arms and squeezed so tight that Johnny thought his ribs would crack.
No one asked him any questions, not one. Instead, they hugged and patted him like he was a baby, and all the time Miss Diana stood in the doorway like she was going to leave.
“She found me,” Johnny pointed. “I was going sailing, but then I decided to come home.”
“I’m glad you did, son.” Daddy lowered him to the floor and walked to Miss Diana. “And we are verygrateful to Diana.”
Everyone was acting real weird. The policeman stood back watching with his arms crossed, while Daddy reached into his pocket and took out his checkbook.
“Diana, I don’t know how to say this…” Daddy’s voice was gruff and strange. “But I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately…” He glanced at Johnny, and then looked back at Miss Diana. He took out a pen. “Brenda told me you folks still need some money to help Juan. How much?”
Johnny’s heart broke with pride.
&nbs
p;
THIRTY-SEVEN
Between parents and children…
“I stillsay it’s none of your business, Diana,” Mama said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. “You should be tending to your own life. Why aren’t you at that real estate class?”
Diana sighed. What was the point in trying to explain, when Mama knew perfectly well why she wasn’t in class. An hour ago Mama had left an urgent message saying she’d suffered a severe low blood sugar, an emergency that would land her in the hospital. But when Diana arrived at Shady Oaks in a panic, Mama was sitting in her room eating junk food. Apparently the episode was yet another bid for attention.
“You worry about that Mexican child day and night,” Mama scolded. “Too bad you never worried so hard about your ownchildren.”
In fact, after the scare at the Sorvinos that afternoon, Diana’s maternal need had been so powerful that she’d rushed home and tried to call both Robbie and Amanda. In both cases, she got an answering machine, proof that her offsprings had lives of their own.
“And I suppose you think you’re some sort of a herojust because you found that Sorvino boy?” Mama was relentless. “But really, Diana, you know those policemen would have found him eventually. It was just a matter of time…”
Diana tuned out, refusing to let Viv’s criticism dampen her joy. First Juan’s grandparents had come up with part of the cash, then John Sorvino had supplied the rest. Her heart still skipped with pride to have witnessed those generous bids for redemption. Redemptionwas a strong word, but it seemed to apply. Unfortunately, finding Johnny had not earned Diana any absolution. Her only hope was to keep her promise to Johnny and help save Juan.
“Those people should’ve given money in the first place, like I did,” Mama continued. “Now, with God’s help, they’ll rescue that boy.”
Diana prayed Mama was right, but she also believed God needed the help of human hands. At the same time, she watched with growing tenderness as Mama licked her lips and closed her eyes from the simple ecstasy of food well enjoyed. Vivian was a terror, but she was Diana’s terror, and she loved her mama dearly. If this mess had taught her anything, it had renewed her faith in the fragile, yet abiding bond between parents and children.
“Mama, I have something to show you…”
At the last minute, Diana had decided to bring the apple doll to Shady Oaks. She would tell Mama the whole story, then endure the inevitable lecture about how stealing was a sin. But in the end, Viv’s curiosity got the better of her as Diana propped the doll on the dresser, in Mama’s direct field of vision.
A bar of golden sunlight leaked through the Venetian blinds and fell on the doll’s grotesque little face. The room was so silent she feared her mother had fallen asleep, as she often did after a big meal. But instead, Mama’s eyes looked magnetized behind her thick glasses as she was drawn to the little creature.
“May I touch it?” Her veined hand trembled as she reached out from her chair.
Wordlessly, Diana handed her the doll. She took it gently and held it near her eyes, as though a very close look would reveal all its secrets. She sniffed it, then fingered its leather breeches and straw hat. “This doll is mine,” she said.
“No, Mama, it came from the trailer, like I told you.”
“Yes, but it belongs to me.”
Mama had finally lost it. Diana reached out to take the doll, but Viv slapped her hand away.
“Let me hold it! I don’t mean it’s literally mine, but it’s identical to the one your daddy bought me on our honeymoon.”
This was news to Diana. As her brain shifted into high gear, she remembered that her parents had indeed honeymooned in the North Carolina mountains. It had been the first and only time her father, a gentle Quaker from Pennsylvania, had ever seen the state.
“Where did Daddy buy the doll?”
Mama stoked the doll lovingly. “My mother, your Nana, always promised to buy me one when I was a little girl. We went to Boone each year on summer vacation, but Mama never bought me that doll.”
“So the doll came from Boone?
“Aren’t you listening, child? Of course this doll came from Boone, and the only person in all the world who made them was a girl from Switzerland, not much older than me at the time. We called her The Apple Lady.”
Diana’s blood pumped with excitement. Everything fit. Hadn’t the photograph of the mysterious country girlbeen taken in the mountains? Her mouth filled with a hundred unanswered questions, but Mama had fallen asleep with the gnarled head of the apple doll tucked under her chin. The sight made Diana ache with love, and she decided two things: First, this particular doll would live with her mother from then on, and second, Diana would get herself to Boone. She had never been to the mountains, didn’t know how to get there, but she did know when she going…
Tomorrow.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Apple dolls and wooden reindeer…
Matthew was nervous as a schoolboy as he stood outside the door of Diana’s condominium. He rang the bell and wondered why she had summoned him for breakfast at such short notice. On the other hand, he wasn’t complaining, because every fiber in his body ached to see her, and his mind was hungry for her company as well. It seemed he had come too early, for when she opened the door, Diana was still wearing a white terrycloth nightgown and her hair was wrapped in a towel.
“Oh, Matthew, come on in!” She seemed surprised.
“You said eight o’clock, right?”
“I meantto say nine.” Yet she took his arm and pulled him into the hall.
“Hello, Motherfucker!” her blasted bird hollered from the bedroom.
Fortunately, Matthew was used to Perry, Diana’s foul-mouthed parrot, but the unlikely relationship between the pet and his mistress never ceased to amaze him. Theirs was not a match made in Heaven.
“Get lost, asshole!” Perry’s strident squawking followed them through the living room.
As they entered the kitchen, Matthew noticed that Diana had set the patio table for breakfast. She had arranged a little bundle of pink daisies in a glass bottle, and he saw she had picked them from the makeshift garden she had planted in a barrel. The gesture filled him with tenderness.
“Coffee smells good,” he ventured.
“I should get dressed.” She smiled. “Just how hungry are you, Matthew?”
He liked the way her breasts moved inside her thin robe. The intense hunger he felt had nothing to do with food. “I can wait…” He helped himself to the coffee. “But don’t change on myaccount. You look mighty fine in that getup.”
Diana blushed and tightened the cinch on her robe. “I’ll feel more comfortable in clothes, so will you excuse me?”
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When Diana left, he took his coffee out to the patio and sat alone, sipping and staring out at the blue lake. Diana’s coffee wasn’t half bad, but her view of the Main Channel was downright outstanding. He’d like the scene better without the towering tiers of condominiums marching along the shore like a battalion of concrete soldiers, but what could he do about that? Matthew hated progress and the developers who spoiled the land and the lake. He could understand why Diana had been compelled to preserve a little bit of nature, even if only in a barrel garden.
When she returned, wearing a dress and carrying a tray of food, the sight of her took his breath away. He climbed to his feet and helped her with the tray. “How come you’re all dressed up?”
“Why not?” She giggled. “You look pretty sharp yourself, Matthew.”
The turntable compliment caught him off guard, as did the shy formality that seemed to have crept between them. He wondered, not for the first time, if Diana had an ulterior motive for inviting him to breakfast. He had seldom seen her in a dress, especially one like this, that revealed her shoulders and the gentle curve of her bosom.
And he realized she had seldom seen him in anything but jeans and old flannel shirts. Maybe that’s why she was staring? That morning he had ironed a new pair of slacks and unwound a fresh cotton dress shirt from its laundry cardboard. Both items, along with his polished loafers, had been hidden away at the back of his closet for a special occasion.
They ate in companionable silence. Diana’s cooking, like her coffee, was mighty fine, and soon Matthew’s new slacks felt tight at the waist. Over a third cup of coffee, she told him about her adventure at the Sylvan Acres trailer park. He wanted to scold her for putting herself in danger, but by the time she described the apple doll, he was hooked.
“So you think this mystery woman is hiding in Boone?” he asked.
“Seems like a possibility.”
This revelation was too coincidental not to be true. It seemed Diana had been reading his mind, which brought him to the surprise he’d been saving for just the right moment. He walked into the living room, where he’d seen last night’s Mooresville Tribunelying in Diana’s easy chair, and then he carried the newspaper back to the patio. “Take a look at this…” He spread the paper open on the table.
She followed his finger down the column to an article about a truck the police had pulled from a gully near the dump. “So what?” She tried to make sense of the black and white photo of the truck hanging from the wrecker.