Portals

by Amy Simone

  Portals

  Amy Simone

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. The Boxes

  2. The meeting

  3. The Daze

  4. An Admission

  5. Out in the Field

  6. Regrets

  7. The Laptop

  8. The Road Not Taken

  9. Suspicion

  10. Peas in a Pod

  11. The Garage Sale

  12. Bob's Barn

  13. Library Time

  14. Annie's Quest

  15. To Work to Work We Go

  16. Jungle Action

  17. Negotiations Wanted

  18. Liar's Poker

  19. Bad Rides

  20. Sad Goodbyes

  21. Truck Tall Tales

  22. In Laws, Outlaws

  23. Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

  24. Into the Fire

  25. Normal Life?

  26. Up Up and Away

  27. Work Calls

  28. Denial is Not a River in Egypt

  29. Work

  30. Lesson

  31. Lunch

  32. Questions and Answers

  33. More Questions

  34. What to Do?

  35. Decisions and Consequences

  36. Wondering

  37. Too Much of Everything

  38. Tiger

  39. Get This Cat Out of Here

  40. A Tussle

  41. Where is She?

  42. Nighttime Fun

  43. Leroy

  44. Aftermath

  45. Redux

  46. Tired and True

  47. Hayworth

  48. Zoo Craziness

  49. Submittal

  50. Quietude

  51. Bad Meditation

  52. The Labryinth

  53. It's a New Day

  54. Held

  55. The Price

  56. The Talisman

  57. Evening Prayers

  58. Consequences

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Several people helped me with this book. My husband, David, remained patient as he heard me out. Lida McAllister served as my alpha reader. Dr. Manos Chatzopoulos of Louisiana State University gave me some science tips. Wonderful Chani Taylor did the cover artwork.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2019 Amy Simone

  1

  The Boxes

  Lafayette, LA

  The doorbell rang. It was the third time that day. Cassie’s three-year-old son Josh ran to the front door. It was the UPS man again. Cassie left her kitchen computer whirling and joined Josh who jumped up and down in the little hallway.

  “What is it mama?” he cried.

  She waved to the delivery driver as he sped off, then dragged the large box into the living room.

  “I think it’s a present for you and Caleb,” Cassie sang out. She pulled out several plastic bags of designer clothes for her sons and held one denim outfit against her toddler’s chest.

  “This will look great!” Their yellow striped cat, Tiger, played with the wrapping.

  “Quick, help mommy clean up this mess,” she urged her son. Within minutes she’d plunged the new clothes into the washing machine, then cut up the box.

  Caleb, her five-year-old, hadn’t come home from school yet. She added the cardboard pieces to others she’d stuffed in between the washer and dryer by the back door. Cassie liked to keep things looking tidy—and hidden in case her husband came home unexpectedly.

  Her husband Ralph was at work at his animal clinic. He rarely got back until close to bedtime for the kid. Just this morning she’d asked him to hurry home because she had a business meeting by seven. Her sister, Catherine, had proposed Cassie help a friend of theirs who ran a local gift shop. The Lazie Daizie specialized in all things Louisiana but its owner, Annie, was deathly afraid of computers and tech.

  Cassie settled Josh in front of the TV and returned to working on the computer. She was always buying and selling online. Her nose stayed pointed at the screen. She loved Amazon and eBay and selling on line. The only problem was the creeping credit card debt. Ralph didn’t know about it. So far she’d kept the rising bills a secret by paying the minimums on time. A month ago she cringed to see her total owed was over $30,000. In earlier years it’d been easy to buy clothes at thrift shops and resell them. Now everybody was selling on line.

  After she’d clicked away on the keyboard and dispatched several potential buyers’ questions about shoes she was selling, she saw it was 3:30. The school bus would deliver her other son in a few minutes. Scooping up Josh she walked out to the small wooden porch at the front of their manufactured home.

  Out in the old barn where she used to keep her retired horse Soldier Boy, she’d stashed two pallets of shipping boxes from the post office. Earlier in the week she’d asked the USPS delivery driver to back up to the main barn door. He wheeled in the loads of shipping boxes. She pulled Josh along who clapped and cheered, encouraging the delivery man. Then she covered everything with two tarps so nothing got wet. The barn’s roof leaked sometimes. Josh strained at her hand. He loved prodding around in the tack room where her old riding equipment still hung. They lived on a small-acreage tract in a rural area just east of Lafayette called Breaux Bridge. Ralph kept his clinic five miles away and worked on both small and large animal. Cassie begged him to give her a job there, but he refused He claimed it wasn’t professional for a spouse to work in one’s clinic.

  The sound of the bus’ brakes made her turn back to the road. She watched Caleb hop off of the bus, gripping the handrail as he navigated the steep steps. He waved to his friends, then walked up the long dirt drive.

  “How was school today?” she asked.

  Her oldest son had light brown hair. He was a bit aloof and diffident. Her other son, red-headed Josh was a clown.

  “Good,” Caleb said.

  “Just good?”

  “Tree…”

  “Go on,” she prodded.

  “Tree-men-dous,” he spurted out and spread his arms out wide like a showman. It was a routine they performed between themselves—not every day but often enough.

  “I got something for you to do,” Cassie told him as she opened the front door. “Take some boxes to the burn pile.”

  “Aw mom.”

  “I’ll pay you with another gift card to Walmart.”

  Josh set his little Batman backpack on a chair in the living room, making sure to do the special positioning of it in the chair so it looked like a person was sitting upright in the chair. He was superstitious. Dutifully he went into the small utility room. He reluctantly grabbed a few sheaths and walked into the yard. He dreaded this because it meant he must walk alongside the grave of Soldier Boy which he believed was haunted. He’d make the sign of the cross every time he drew near the marked mound. Nothing bad ever happened although one time he’d tripped and gotten muddy. Whenever the pile got too big his mother burned the boxes.

  “Remember our plan,” she said after he’d made three trips out back. “This is our little secret—Great mama, Daddy and your aunt don’t need to know about the boxes, right?”

  Calab nodded. “Can I have some ice cream now?”

  She plunked a gift card on the table.

  “Be sure to put this in your hidey box under your bed,” she reminded him. The box contained a sizeable collection of five-dollar bills and a few Walmart gift cards.

  She smiled to herself as her sons enjoyed their treat. This was Heaven—being a stay-at-home mom buying and selling clothes and knickknacks.

  2

  The meeting

  Ralph didn’t know what his wife was into now. She’d been talking about looking into another business deal. This had happened before. He fig
ured it would fizzle away like so many of her other schemes.

  It’d been a long day. If he could just slide his truck into the carport, enter the house and sit down with his sons then not move…. Earlier that day he performed field castrations on several calves. Then there were the office appointments. A horse stepped on him and a parrot bit him. His phone rang non-stop. After eight years his practice grew enough. He needed to add onto his main building and hire an associate. He wanted two more examining rooms plus a better operating theater. It wouldn’t hurt to level and enlarge the parking lot either, he figured. He tried to arrange a meeting with a loan officer for next week but an emergency call came through so he hung up. The bank would have to wait.

  Cassie met him at the door and explained their supper was ready for them. All he wanted to do was relax.

  “Just put this bowl in the microwave for two minutes.“ She grabbed her purse, then rushed out to her aged silver-blue Toyota. Instead of wearing her usual jeans and a button-down shirt she’d put on a pencil black skirt, creamy blouse plus a gold brocade blazer. After bearing two kids, she looked good he thought. Sometimes, though, she complained that her stick-straight hair was thinning and duller.

  Catherine saw Cassie approach the front of the restaurant. It surprised Cassie to see their mother standing with her sister. Everybody called her mother “Hayworth” because she resembled the actress Rita Hayworth. She still kept her dancer’s legs which she showed off this evening with shimmery dark beige hose and expensive bone-colored patent high heels—being overdressed for this middle-of-the-road eatery. Her mother had a flair for the theatrical. She acted in stock theater shows in the Acadiana and Baton Rouge areas. Catherine was a carbon copy of her mother—tonight preppy and cute in her tailored khaki slacks with a pale pink polo shirt. She’d pushed the collar up to frame a small white kerchief dotted with tiny green shamrocks knotted around her neck. Both women kept their hair highlighted and on the blond side although her mother‘s hair had more mica-like, silvery tones in it.

  “C’mon, I think Annie is waiting on us,” Catherine told her.

  Catherine was married to a stomach doctor. Their three kids were enrolled in private school—one son and two daughters. She also maintained “staff” which meant she kept a nanny employed and a housecleaning and lawn care service. They lived in the ritzy part of Lafayette, close to all the cool shops and grocery stores in a planned neighborhood. In college Catherine studied interior design whereas Cassie only had taken a few community college classes. Cassie hated school and found it a waste of time.

  “Mother, I didn’t know you were coming,” Cassie asked.

  “I’m the test audience,” her mother answered. “I just wanted an excuse to get out.” She laughed, then ran an appraising eye over Cassie’s outfit. “Dear, you should do more with your hair.”

  “Oh mother, lay off,” Catherine scolded.

  Hayworth was getting over the death of her husband, a petroleum engineer, who’d died in a helicopter crash in New Iberia ten years ago. Now she used a dating service. She seemed to cultivate a rather serious relationship with another engineer. She’d met Frank because his youngest son was a tow truck driver who pulled Hayworth’s broken down Cadillac to the shop. Frank, on furlough in between rig assignments, was riding along with his son that day. Later, both Catherine and Cassie snickered among themselves when they found Frank sometimes spending the night at their mother’s house. He had a full white beard and a deep, rough baritone voice. He often showed up in his Expedition, wearing his fire-protection suit after just coming from the rig in the Gulf. Their dad’s personality had been more like an accountant’s. He’d been much more cerebral and quiet.

  Cassie’s dad loved Soldier Boy, the horse she had through her teens. In fact, it wasn’t a full week after her dad’s fatal accident that Cassie found Solder Boy, now almost thirty, dead in their field behind the house. It was as if her horse had known his benefactor had died. Her father always doted on the horse—talking about him, feeding him treats and hugging and touching the animal with reverence.

  “Mother, Frank’s so coon ass,” Catherine protested one day.

  “But he’s a fun coon ass,” Hayworth claimed.

  Eventually the two girls admitted Hayworth was right. Frank got along with their kids and always brought them small gifts. He’d been divorced a long time and had several grown kids of his own. Most of them lived in Colorado where he used to work.

  Annie sat in one corner of the restaurant. She was a diminutive middle-aged Cajun woman whose face and skin tone reminded Cassie of so many women of this area—the type that Cassie saw clustered in front of Catholic churches on Sundays. The look was almost ubiquitous among the whites in Lafayette with a fine-pored, smooth skin tone, almost on the olive side and open almond-shaped doe-like brown eyes. They had thick dark brunette hair, worn down if they were younger. Small in stature so many looked like Old World French. Annie’s hair reminded Cassie of Cruella deVil from 101 Dalmatians. In the middle of her thick dark hair sat a long bright light grey streak right down the middle.

  Previously Catherine explained to Cassie that Annie used to have a business partner but that the woman and her spouse moved to Texas. This left Annie stranded to run the shop. Forced to buy out her friend’s share, Annie was floundering now. She operated her gift shop in a popular large open air shopping strip on the southwest side of town, near a Target store and large grocery stores where the rents were high. Cassie felt sorry for her. Annie looked deflated, almost lifeless.

  “Annie, this is my sister, Cassie. You already know mom.” Annie smiled over her glass of wine and reached out to shake Cassie’s hand. “Cassie, this is my neighbor, Annie!” Catherine gave all the introductions with a trill in her voice as always. The sunny one she captivated any room she entered. Cassie wished she affected folks like this.

  Cassie learned that Annie ran the store solo for the last year. It did well at first when it first opened five years ago. Now with sales slowing, Annie’s husband demanded she close the shop. Annie wanted to stay in business. Too many other competitors had flooded the market with Louisiana collectibles, making it hard for poor Annie. Her shop offered small artisan clothes made by local artists and a plethora of food items and wall art. She tried to do business only with folks who made things locally. Catherine kept emphasizing how valiant a fight Annie put forth.

  Cassie got the impression her sister worked hard at trying to lift her friend’s spirits.

  “That’s why I wanted to meet you,” Annie said, looking at Cassie. “I never considered myself much of a businesswoman. Your sister said you are a whiz at selling stuff on the Internet.”

  “I try,” Cassie agreed. “Can we use a different name for your Internet side, though? Maybe something more hip like ‘The Daze’?”

  Annie thought for a moment. “Sure, why not?”

  “I’ve been in The Lazie Daizie before and it’s cute but people in computer-land won’t have that frame of reference.”

  “Okay, I think I get you,” Annie agreed. Cassie got the impression she didn’t understand what Cassie was driving at and took a leap of faith here.

  Hayworth and Catherine nodded in unison.

  “What’s easy to ship?” Cassie asked.

  “Just about everything. Except I have some big pieces of art. Those won’t work but I don’t mind packaging things, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Let me visit tomorrow,” Cassie suggested. “I’m thinking fifteen percent for my part.”

  “Okay. I’ll need to up some prices,” Annie said.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Cassie agreed. “Make a rough inventory of what you think I can put online. I’ll swing by and take pictures.”

  Annie brightened. “I sure hope this takes off,” she said. Her eyes were still overly moist, though.

  “Why don’t we see how it goes the first month, then go from there?”

  By the time Cassie got home it was 9:30. She found everybody asleep. Ralph was on t
he sofa in front of the TV with the boys sacked out around him. She helped the boys and her husband to bed, cleaned up the kitchen and turned out the lights.

  3

  The Daze

  Cassie visited Annie the next day when the store opened at ten. She brought Josh with her. The Lazie Dazie was a cluttered affair overflowing with china and pastel colors—many things that ladies of taste coveted and didn’t need.

  Annie seemed nervous. She followed Cassie throughout the store, anxiously wiping her hands on her shop apron.

  An older gentleman entered so Cassie kept looking around as Annie helped him. Cassie ran a fingertip along the backs of several of the shelves. She found lots of dust. Some price stickers were curling up because of age.

  After the customer left, Annie broke down.

  “It’s hurting our marriage,” she admitted. “My husband and I got into an argument last night. He thinks it’s foolish I’m hiring somebody like you.”

  Cassie grimaced. “Let me put Josh over here,” she whispered to Annie, “so we can talk.” She lifted him out of his stroller and placed him in a corner of the store so she could still watch him but he wouldn’t have to hear how upset Annie was.