Antiques Maul (3 page)

I sighed. “Is Rin-tin-what’s-it around?” Couldn’t recall the drug-sniffing canine’s name.

“Rudy was taken out to the high school this morning. I’ll see if he’s back.”

Rudy? Sushi and Rudy. Rudy and Sushi? Didn’t exactly roll off the tongue; maybe if I panted it…

While the chief abandoned us, my eyes searched his office. Other than a couple of duck-hunting prints, no evidence presented itself as to this mysterious (and not unattractive) man’s life after working hours.

Soon Tony returned.

“Lunchroom,” he said, not mincing words.

I thanked the chief and told him I’d find my way. By the time I entered the lounge, Sushi had worked herself into a frenzy.

Two uniformed officers were seated at a dinged-up dining table, both brown-bagging it. One was Brian Lawson—another attractive cop—and the other I’d never seen before.

Rudy was on the floor by the table, his large brown head resting on one paw, eyes closed, most likely pooped from sniffing kids’ lockers. But the German shepherd still had enough of his olfactory perception to get a whiff of Soosh; he lifted his head, and—I swear—groaned!

I lowered Sushi to the floor and she followed
her
olfactory perceptions, scampering over to the canine (or in cop terms, K-9), and started crawling all over him, making a complete fool of herself. (I will point out that I was too restrained to do the same with Officer Brian Lawson, despite a crush I was nurturing). Rudy, however, was a gentleman, and put up with her shenanigans.

I saw Brian give the other cop an ever-so slight “beat it” look, and his fellow officer did so, giving
me
a not-so-slight sly grin.

Was this middle school?

I assumed the vacated chair and looked at Brian and asked, “Does your partner know something I don’t?”

“I don’t think so, Brandy.”

“I mean, if you want to talk, I’m in the book. Even have an answer machine, should you miss me. And my cell number could probably be pried out of me, knowing your keen interrogative skills.”

He laughed in an aw-shucks way.

“I was afraid,” he said, “you’d consider me a kind of unpleasant reminder.”

Officer Lawson had been a participant in those juicy murders I mentioned (not the murderer—he, as a cop, took one of the cop roles) (typecasting, courtesy of Mother).

“Not much about that experience I care to linger over,” I said. “But we could always have some
new
experiences.”

He flashed a nice smile, full of teeth and sex appeal. “That would be fine with me. What was that cell phone number again?”

By late afternoon, Sushi and I had left the police station, having wasted enough of the time of two law enforcement officers, one human, one not; I didn’t feel like making the trek home on foot, so instead strolled over a few blocks to Main Street to catch the Traveling Trolley, which was really a bus reconditioned to gas from an old electrical car.

The trolley was the brainstorm of the downtown merchants to bring patrons to shop at their stores rather than out at the mall—free to the public, as long as a person was going to, or coming from…that’s right…downtown.

Sushi seemed subdued as we waited for our free hitch, probably thinking lovey-dovey doggy-style thoughts about Rudy, while I watched an elderly woman in navy blue slacks and a tan coat crossing the street in my direction, trying to use a U-shaped walker with one hand while talking on a cell phone with the other.

When she jostled into the curb, I should have felt more sorry for her. But steering with two hands applies to walkers as well as cars….

Still, I helped the lady on to the sidewalk, and she stood next to me, apparently also waiting for the trolley.

I’d just like to know…at what stage do old folks lose the ability to censor themselves? I mean, they just blurt out whatever comes into their minds.

She said, “
My!
You’ve certainly dropped the weight after the baby.”

I responded, “This isn’t a baby—it’s a dog.”

The woman leaned in for a closer look, her cataracts almost as bad as Sushi’s. “Well, thank goodness!” she said. “Here I was thinking you’d given birth to just about the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!”

“What a lovely thing to say,” I said, smiling.

Soosh just growled.

The trolley arrived, and the silver-haired, bearded gent driving assisted my new acquaintance with her walker up the few steps, then turned to me.

“No pets on the trolley,” he announced. “Sorry.”

Hmmm. “What about Seeing Eye dogs?” I asked.

“In that case, of course. But, young lady, you’re obviously not blind.”

Liking the “young” part if not wild about the “lady,” I said, “Well, the
dog’s
blind and
I’m
her Seeing Eye human.”

And giving him no time to think about that, I climbed aboard.

The wonderful smell of Mother’s beef stroganoff greeted us when we arrived home, and I thought Sushi was going to swoon and faint—Rudy and stroganoff in the same day! Heaven on earth….

In the kitchen, I mixed a little of the stew with Sushi’s dry dog food (was a woman in Japan right now feeding a pet named Dry Dog Food sushi?) and put it in her dish. That way, Soosh would be sure to eat right away…so I could give her the insulin shot. (It’s not good to have a diabetic animal who’s a finicky eater.)

After dinner—at which I was anything
but
a finicky eater, forgoing my one-half portion rule—I did the dishes (well, the dishwasher did the dishes…but I put them in). Then I retired to the seclusion of the music/library/den room to catch up on my e-mail on my laptop, which hadn’t been tended to for a few days. Usually this amounted to an hour or so of deleting unwanted spam, but to my surprise, I had one from Jacob.

The e-mail read

I sat back.

He hadn’t written “Dear” Mom; he put his grandma before me; and he didn’t sign off “Love” Jake…but still…hearing from him was…hearing from him.

You see, though I’d sent Jake many missives via both snail-and e-mail, this was the first message I’d received from my son since the divorce.

Could this be a warming trend along with the Indian summer?

I was alive with excitement about his visit……but also, I have to admit, a little trepidation.

If I was the kind of writer who wrote things like “Little did I know how much trepidation I’d have felt, had I but known the danger I’d be putting him in,” that’s what I’d write right here.

But lucky for you, I’m not.

A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip

If you can’t wait around all day at a local auction for a particular item of interest to go on sale, ask the auctioneer to move it up in the schedule. But don’t try this at a federal auction; you’ll get your head bit off.

M
y sister, Peggy Sue, was old enough to be my mother. Born in the 1950s, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue was named after Buddy Holly’s hokey if infectious rock ’n’ roll song.

Mother always claimed the idea to call sis Peggy Sue came to her in a vision shortly after giving birth; but Father, who kept a diary (a holdover from his World War II correspondent days), penned that a pimple-faced but pretty nurse’s aide was singing the rock ’n’ roll tune as she pushed a groggy Mother-on-a-Gurney out of the delivery room, still wearing saddle shoes from a sock hop. (The aide, not Mother!)

Then, after eighteen years passed with no more children, Mother and Father thought they were done with child-rearing, Mother having entered menopause. But (as she has told me so often) when Mother began gaining weight and filling out around the middle, she trundled to the family physician, Dr. Swayze, thinking I was a fibroid tumor gotten out of hand (I’ve been called worse).

According to Mother, when Doc Swayze gave her the news, she fainted dead away, hit her head on the examining table, and had to get twenty stitches. (Mother always exaggerates, as you’ll learn; it was probably only fifteen stitches.)

I don’t know what Father thought about my surprise arrival—there was nothing recorded in his daily musings, which stopped just before I was born. Shortly thereafter, he departed for the Great Beyond, courtesy of a heart attack. Guilt feelings that somehow my unexpected (unwanted?) presence may have contributed to my father’s premature exit had haunted me for years.

Of course, I’m over it now. Aren’t I? And my marrying an older man couldn’t have anything to do with daddy issues. Could it?

Mother came downstairs looking normal (relatively speaking) in emerald-green velour slacks and jacket, her silver, wavy hair pinned back in a neat chignon. But the blue eyes behind the thick, large glasses were a little wild, even for her.

“Hurry up, Brandy,” she commanded, in a manner both regal and hysterical. “You know how Peggy Sue hates it when we’re late! And she’s been so thoughtful to have us over for dinner before we leave for the auction.”

I found it prudent not to point out that I had been ready for an hour.
And
had packed the car.

Not wanting to add to the palpable tension, I said simply, “Okay,” and scooped up the pooch, who had been dancing at my feet, knowing something was in the air. When Mother had pronounced that fateful word, “dinner,” Sushi had practically done a back flip.

With the inside automatic light switches set (which fools no one into thinking we’re home) and the house locked up, we headed out into the crisp fall evening, the kind perfect for burning leaves, if the city hadn’t banned it.

I had a little trouble backing out of the driveway, what with a U-Haul hitched to my new used vehicle, a burgundy Buick.

Mother, seated next to me with Sushi secured on her lap, said, “Brandy, dear, whatever direction you want to go, turn the opposite way.”

This was helpful advice, as long as I ignored her contradictory and (of course) theatrical hand gestures, though I did wonder if her words about turning opposite to my instincts might also work in my rudderless life about now….

Peggy Sue lived in an upscale housing development on the outskirts of town with her husband, Bob (a CPA), and their only child, Ashley (a senior in high school). To get to this promised land, we had to cross the Red Sea of a treacherous bypass.

One of the first built in the state—cleverly routing business away from our fair town—Serenity’s bypass was designed with too great a curve factor for drivers to properly see the on-coming, fast-moving traffic, and had no “safe zone” between the four lanes where terrified souls might hole up after a misjudged crossing, waiting for their sobbing to cease and another dangerous opportunity to present itself.

The bypass was originally conceived with no traffic lights to slow people down as they sped around our little burg…but over the years, in response to the number of traffic fatalities, several lights had been installed—just not at our juncture. Apparently, the intersection where we now sat idling hadn’t racked up enough of a body count to warrant a light. Patience. (Or is that patients?)

I squinted to the left into the setting sun, wishing I hadn’t blown off my appointment for new contact lenses. Choosing between shopping and my eyesight was no contest. Mother looked to the right, but I had little confidence in her vision with those thick, trifocal glasses.

I saw an opening in the steady stream of traffic.

“Now!” I exclaimed.

But Mother shouted, “No!”

So I braked, the car shuddered, and so did I. We waited. Another car pulled up behind us wanting to cross, and the pressure mounted. In my mind the
Jaws
theme played counterpoint to the
Jeopardy
final round music.

Teeth bared, eyes glittering, Mother said, “
Now!
”

But I exclaimed, “No!”

Then, several long moments later, Mother and I
both
yelled “
Now
,” and I hit the gas…. Whether the decision was a good one or a bad one, at least we’d made it together.

And you thought life in a small heartland community lacked in excitement.

Nearly across, I was feeling relieved, until a car horn blasted and brakes squealed. I looked in my rearview mirror to see a figure in a pickup truck giving me a high five, the one-finger variety.

I guess I hadn’t allowed for the U-Haul.

I sank down in my seat and said to nobody, “Sorry….”

Mother sniffed, “Serves him right. He was going too fast, anyway.”

Probably, but that would have been a small consolation had we been hit.

Dusk had fallen, or crept in or sneaked up or however it gets here, and a huge harvest moon popped up on the horizon like a big orange Necco wafer as our little caravan pulled into the Mark Twain housing addition. As soon as we had made the turn, Sushi knew where she was—don’t ask me how, doggie radar, I guess—and she began to shimmy and shake with excitement. We rumbled down Aunt Polly Lane, went left on Tom Sawyer Drive, then right on Becky Thatcher Road, and finally arrived at Peggy Sue’s modern monstrosity of a house on Samuel Clemens Court.

Get back to me, if you sense a theme here….

I pulled into the long driveway and parked in front of the first of the Hasting household’s three garages. As Mother opened her car door, Sushi jumped out (blindness be hanged) and began running and sniffing all over the thick, green grass. There wasn’t a lawn anywhere that she liked to pee and poop on better than Peggy Sue’s, much to my sister’s dismay.

I, however, had made sure Soosh was running on empty before we’d left home, and it was comical to see the darling trying to squeeze out even one little chocolate drop to mark her return—much as I hated to spoil her fun.

From the car I gathered up Sushi’s pink bed, and a tote bag containing her special dog food, insulin, and syringes, and followed Mother up the curved walkway, which was lined with colorful fall mums. The wonderful, smoky smell of burning leaves wafted toward me. The leaf-burning ban was restricted to inside the city limits—which was designated by the bypass; the ban was partly in consideration of those afflicted with asthma, but mostly due to an old couple who accidently burned their house down.

Bob opened the front door as if he’d been poised there waiting for us.

Mother gave her son-in-law a cheerful “Hello!” and brushed past him, stepping into the house; her level of interest in Bob was minimal, because somebody as cheerfully self-centered as Mother doesn’t have much left in the gas tank for a mere in-law. I, however, stopped short, startled by Bob’s appearance, although I hope I didn’t show it.

Peggy Sue’s husband looked thinner than usual, face more gaunt, with less hair on his head than I’d remembered, and suddenly seemed way older than his fifty-plus years. Unless Bob was recovering from a recent bout with the flu, my brother-in-law was in desperate need of a vacation.

I gave him a hug with my usual greeting, “Hi, handsome…what’s new with you?”

He grinned, showing some of his old spark. “Not much…work, work, work….”

The two of us had a nice, comfortable rapport due to our mutual standing: We were both at the mercy of my sister.

“You should get some extra help at the office,” I scolded.

He shrugged good-naturedly. “That’s a problem.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“I’d have to pay them.”

“Generally how it works,” I returned, while keeping an eye on Sushi, who was navigating the front stoop.

Bob shook his head and grinned, changing the subject. “That dog’s amazing…she remembered every step.”

I smiled. “We
were
underfoot around here while they rebuilt our house, remember?” As if he could forget. “And, anyway, Sushi is a regular canine memory expert. Watch…she’ll go straight to where her water dish used to be.”

Which the little dog did, trotting down the long gleaming hallway toward the kitchen.

Chuckling, Bob shut the door. “I’ll remind Peg not to rearrange any of the furniture while we’re taking care of her.” He was the only one on earth who could call my sister Peg and get away with it.

To the right of the entryway yawned a formal living room, tastefully and expensively decorated, a wonderful room for entertaining. So, of course, nobody ever went in there except Peggy Sue’s cleaning woman. To the left, a formal dining room, also exquisitely furnished, the perfect place to share a sumptuous meal. Nobody but the cleaning woman ever went in there, either.

Nostrils flaring, I followed the delicious aroma to the kitchen, where Peggy Sue was retrieving a pan from the stainless steel oven in a kitchen so modernized and gadget-arrayed that it would make Martha Stewart’s mouth water. Like mine was at the sight of Sis’s homemade lasagne.

Peggy Sue—wearing a tan/light pink plaid jacket and matching wool slacks (my guess: Burberry), pearls, and pumps, her brunette hair perfectly coifed—looked like a high-power broker, and not the homemaker and sometime volunteer that she was.

I’m not knocking my sister. If you got it, baby, flaunt it, flaunt it! And by “it,” I mean green stuff, and I’m not talking broccoli.

Peggy Sue announced, “Dinner’s ready.” To her husband she commanded, “Call Ashley.”

And Bob left the kitchen to get my niece, who, like every teen, was holed up in her bedroom. Back in my day, my bedroom was where Mother would send me for punishment, a sparse little chamber overseen by Madonna and New Kids on the Block posters, with no TV and no phone. Today a girl being sent to her room meant banishment to a barren landscape populated only by computers, flat-screen TVs, and iPods.

The horror.

Ashley arrived in short order. Tall, slender, brunette, and as beautiful as her mother (which was saying something), my niece could easily have earned my resentment for the comfortable, coddled, privileged, lucky, painless ride she’d had in life. But I imagined that having Peggy Sue for a mother had its drawbacks, and since I’d come back home to live, Ash and I had connected more and more, like sisters. Or like I would imagine sisters connect, when one of them isn’t Peggy Sue.

Soon chair legs were screeching on the tiled floor as everyone took their proper place at the table that separated the kitchen area from the great room with its overstuffed leather furniture, huge flat-screen TV (turned off), and fireplace (roaring). Over the fireplace hung a huge portrait of the family, Photoshopped into sheer perfection.

Utensils clanked, glasses tinkled, and everyone made yummy sounds as they dug into the Caesar salad, garlic bread, gourmet olives, and lasagne.

I said to Peggy Sue, with the stiff awkwardness that I call my own, “Thank you for fixing dinner for us, Sis. It’s delicious, and Mother and I really appreciate it.”

Peggy Sue waited until she had completely chewed and swallowed (unlike me) before she said, “Chicken cacciatore would have been a healthier choice…but you wanted lasagne, so lasagne you got…even though it’s heavy and fattening.”

Wouldn’t “thank you” have been sufficient?

The eighteen-year spread between sisters—both in age and social attitude—conspired against us ever being on the same wave length. For as long as I can remember I seemed to be a constant disappointment to my painfully perfect older sister. And my ramshackle self must have been a crushing blow to her.

Is it possible to love someone but not like them?

Ashley filled the strained silence by announcing, “I’m going to see
Rocky Horror Picture Show
on Halloween night with some of my friends?” (She was an up-talker, treating sentences like questions. The first couple of times are endearing, and the final few instances are guaranteed to induce teeth grinding.)

Mouths stopped midchew at this unusual opening dinner-table gambit.

Peggy Sue slowly set her fork down and looked pointedly at her daughter. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Ashley shrugged. “Why? I’ve never seen it and everybody says it’s a hoot?”

“It’s not a hoot. It’s a disgusting, perverted movie. Encouraging all sorts of deviant behavior.”