Bringing Home a Bachelor (17 page)

23

P
ETE
DRAGGED
HIMSELF
to a sitting position against Jocelyn Edgeworth’s dining room wainscoting, while Mark did the same at the perpendicular wall.

Jocelyn sat in the middle of the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, mascara running in twin rivers down her cheeks and the toasting fork in her lap. One of her expensive shoes dragged in a puddle of gravy, but she didn’t appear to notice or care.

Kendra, utterly silent now, handed her a cloth napkin for her face. Then she began to tackle the mess with a dustpan and broom. She was clearly upset with her husband, and didn’t offer him so much as an old washcloth for his bruises.

Mark watched her sheepishly. “Uh. I’m sorry, Ken. I just lost it.”

“Apologize to him, not me.”

“We’re guys. We don’t do that.”

Kendra looked at Pete.

Pete shrugged. “It’s true.”

“Then apologize to your mother,” she said sternly, “for trashing her house.”

“I’ll get to that. But first, I have to say that was one spectacular meal, Ma.” He winced as he fingered his swelling eye. “What do you have planned for dessert?”

Jocelyn’s broken sobbing continued unabated.

“Though I gotta tell you, that scene is a tough act to follow.” He gingerly fingered his split lower lip and prodded a couple of teeth to see if they were in any danger of falling out.

Pete tried to muster the energy to do the same, but failed.

“Hey, just checking—you didn’t bribe Kendra to marry me, did you?”

Jocelyn collapsed onto the floor, her shoulders shaking.

“Mark!” Kendra rebuked him sharply. “Is that necessary?”

He sighed and crawled through the mess to get to his mother. He rubbed her back as she lay there, then eased an arm under her and pulled her upright, into his embrace. She leaned her head on his shoulder, still weeping.

“Look, I’m an ass sometimes. But Ma, what were you thinking?”

Her response was indecipherable; not recognizable as human. She just keened like a wounded animal.

“Okay, okay,” Mark said soothingly. “Shh. Shh, Mom. It’s going to be all right.”

She blubbered something incomprehensible into his shirt.

Pete supposed he should have felt satisfaction, but all he felt was pity for the woman. He was embarrassed by her raw emotion—he felt superfluous, to say the least. He searched for the motivation to get himself up and then out the door to his car. But every part of his body throbbed in agony. And that didn’t even begin to describe his psyche.

He’d lost Melinda. For good. There was no coming back from something like this. No forgiveness.

Get up. Get out. Slowly he obeyed his brain’s commands and hauled himself upright. “Mrs. E, I won’t say it’s been a pleasure, exactly, but thank you for having me. Kendra, take care. Mark—”

“Where do you think you’re going?” his friend said.

“Home.”

“Sit your ass down,” said Mark.

“No, keep it standing,” his wife ordered. “And you get yours up,
dear.
One of you can get me a contractor bag. The other one can bring a mop and a bucket so I can teach you how to use them. Nobody is leaving this house until this mess is cleaned up and we have a list of china and crystal that we need to replace for Jocelyn. You morons.”

Mark’s eyebrows shot up.

“Welcome back,” Pete said wryly, “from your honeymoon.”

Kendra dumped another dustpan load into the trash, as if to say, “Damn straight.”

“I’m guessing the garage is still this way?” Pete asked, jerking a thumb toward the back of the house.

“Yeah.” Mark groaned as he detached himself from his mother and the floor. “Damn, dude. Where’d you get that right hook?”

“My brother. Let’s just say I had plenty of opportunity to study it.”

“Huh.”

“You ever grab my nuts again, Mark, I will bury you so deep that you’ll float up in a Chinese sewer.”

“Yeah? You ever straddle mine again, and I’ll kick your ass to Baghdad.”

“Will the both of you shut up and get poor Jocelyn off the floor? And then get me a contractor bag?” Kendra snapped.

“Sure thing, honey,” Mark said. To his credit, he only moaned once as he lifted Mommie Dearest off the parquet and deposited her into a wing chair in the living room.

“And bring me the Ghirardelli bar out of my purse, too. This is no time to be on a diet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then get your mother a Xanax and wipe the gravy off her shoes.”

Kendra and Pete ended up using a rake in the dining room. He righted the table, then lifted armfuls of gooey mess and plate shards while she held the contractor bag.

“We have to figure out how to fix this,” she said quietly.

“Fix it?” Pete repeated. “Fix what? My life? Melinda’s?”

“Yes. Not to mention my in-laws’ marriage.”

“How? I don’t think any of it’s fixable.”

Mark had come back into the room to help. “Do you really love my sister?” he asked Pete gruffly, as he picked up a fallen chair and set it upright.

“How many times do I have to say it?”

“For real. You. And Bug-Eyes.” Mark was evidently still having a hard time with the concept.

“Yes. Not that she’ll ever talk to me again. And don’t call her that.”

“How do we get her to talk to Pete again?” Mark asked his wife.

“I don’t know,” she said wearily. She looked at Pete. “Did you really take a bribe from Jocelyn to call her?”

“No! That’s what I keep trying to tell you people. I told Mrs. E. NO. I told her that I was planning on calling Mel anyway. I was really pissed. I even talked to Dev about it.”

“Aha! You have a witness,” Mark said.

“Well, no. But Dev can testify that I was really hot under the collar about it.”

“Dev,” Mark said thoughtfully. “You know, if anyone can sweet-talk a woman, it’s him.”

“But I don’t want her to talk to Dev. I want her to talk to me.”

“True. Here’s the thing, though—Dev is dating Kylie, you know, my aunt? Who’s our age?”

“Kylie? The hot blonde who shot him down at the rehearsal dinner?”

“Seems she didn’t actually shoot him down. And Kylie is Melinda’s best friend. Maybe she can set her straight.”

“Set her straight how?”

“Tell her your version of things.”

“My version of things is still bad—I did let your mother book her charity events at Playa Bella, instead of telling her to go straight to hell.”

“Wouldn’t have done any good,” Mark said philosophically. “The devil? He wouldn’t have let Mom stay. She’d have been trying to redecorate hell, put all the imps and minions on a diet, make him donate to charities.”

Pete choked.

Mark winked at him, from his good eye. The other was swollen closed. “Yeah. The devil woulda kicked her out for sure.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Dude. Just trying to lighten the atmosphere around this place. It’s like the world has come to an end. Mom’s on Xanax, Kendra’s on Ghirardelli, and we’re on cleanup duty.”

“How’s your mother doing?”

“Tried to dial my dad ten times and is hysterical that he won’t pick up. I finally took the phone away from her and gave her a killer vodka martini. Now she’s somewhere in outer space, heading for a black hole. I’ll deal with her when she wakes up.”

“I’ll deal with her,” said Richard, as he walked into the dining room. “Dear God, what happened in here?!”

“Mark and Pete happened in here,” Kendra said acidly, as she rescued a headless Lladro shepherdess from the china cabinet, along with a couple of broken porcelain cups. “Mark will be replacing everything he broke,” she added, brandishing the shepherdess’s broken lamb at him.

He nodded.

Richard looked around in dismay. “Son, this isn’t a football stadium!”

“Yeah,” Mark muttered, his gaze on the floor. “I lost my temper. I screwed up.”

“We’re very sorry,” Pete interjected. “I’ll help with the replacing, too.”

“Peter, I must apologize on behalf of my wife. I’m mortified. But I can’t say that I’m pleased with your part in things, either.”

“Sir, I never meant—”

They all froze as Jocelyn stumbled into the room in her stocking feet, clearly stoned out of her gourd. “Ris-shard? Oh, Rishard. You came back.”

“I did,” he agreed, eyeing her warily.

She’d cried off all her makeup, and she looked absurdly young and yet a hundred years old simultaneously. “Please forgive m-me. I…I din’ want her to feel rejected. I din’ want her to feel, ever to feel, l-like I did.”

Her husband just stood there, his expression pained, not making a move towards her.

The hand she’d stretched out toward him dropped, and, unsteady on her feet, she clung to the doorjamb for support. “I din’ want her to feel…used an’ thrown away.”

Mark frowned. “Ma, what are you talking about?”

But she just stood there, swaying, eyeing her husband.

An excruciating silence followed. Pete had the uneasy sensation that the lid on a family Pandora’s Box had just been pried open, and he didn’t want to be around when the rest of the awful secrets flew out to torment everyone.

He opened his mouth to make his excuses, feeling that it was long past time he got out of Dodge.

Then Jocelyn lost her feeble grip on the doorframe and her consciousness. She toppled forward, and Richard instinctively stepped forward to catch her.

24

M
ELINDA
HADN
’
T
EATEN
in forty-eight hours, despite the turnabout of her cursed Inner Drill Sergeant, who urged her to do so, and tried to tempt her with Dove ice-cream bars. She told him where to go, as usual.

She’d tried to call Kylie twice, but she’d been unable to reach her. Cryptic Kylie had become Scarce Kylie.

Mel cried into the batter of a chocolate groom’s cake and had to throw it out and start over. She wept into the strawberry icing of a sweet-sixteen cake, too, with the same results. And she dissolved the head of a little yellow marzipan duck for a shower cake, also with tears.

That was all on Monday, while she hid in the back of her shop and made Scottie deal with customers. On Tuesday, he found her flooding the order book, smearing the details and endangering the receipts.

“Okay, I’m doing an intervention, here,” he announced.

She was tucked sideways into her chair, barefoot, clutching Mami like a tiny canine life raft while the poor dog looked bewildered.

“It’s either that or build an ark. You’re raining on Mami’s head, did you realize?”

Mel sniffed and looked down. Her dog’s head was soaked, her little mane matted with salt water. Mami twirled in her lap, put her paws up on Mel’s chest and licked her chin and cheek.

“At least Mami loves me,” she said brokenly. “Oh, Scottie,” she wailed, “how could he do it?”

“Who? Oh, him. You know, if you’d take one of his phone calls, you could ask him. But as long as you’re not speaking to him, there will be some communication problems. Know what I mean? It’s inevitable.”

“H-h-hate him,” Mel said, into Mami’s fur.

“Don’t tell me that. Tell him. To be honest, I’m starting to feel sorry for the guy.”

“Don’t you dare. You’re on my side. I pay you, remember?”

“Very true. But Melly, you do not pay me enough to deal with your mother.”

“Just hang up on the witch!”

“Yeah…I would, but she’s here in person and she’s refusing to leave until she’s seen you.”

“Call the cops and have her hauled off the premises in chains.”

“The cops have better things to do.”

“She’s a menace to society. Seriously, have her arrested.”

“Melinda, I can’t do that.”

“As your boss, I’m ordering you to.”

“Mel, you have to talk to her at some point,” Scottie said reasonably.

“Do not.”

“You sound like a little kid. Grow up, boss.”

“Please make her go away,” Mel whined. “I’ll give you a raise if you do.”

“I’m still waiting for the last one you promised me, so no offense, but I don’t believe you. Now, man up and go talk to your mother, missy.”

“Sic ’im, Mami,” Mel ordered her dog. “Gnaw off his toes.”

Mami jumped down and ran to Scottie. She sat up on her hind legs and begged. He gave her a cat-shaped biscuit iced in orange-and-white, complete with green eyes and black licorice whiskers.

Mami lost no time in eating it, tail first.

“I’m surrounded by traitors,” Melinda moaned.

“Mel, I do have sympathy for you, really. But you need to get up and go face your mother.”

Slowly, Mel twisted in the chair and put her feet on the floor, slipping them into the padded clogs she wore at the shop. She had a hard time forcing herself to get up.

“Now!” Scottie ordered. Evidently this was tough leprechaun love.

“Jeez. Okay, okay.” Mel grabbed a clean tea towel and mopped at her face. “Can you send her out back, though? I can’t deal with her in front of customers.”

In back of the bakery, in the little alleyway where the retail shops in the strip mall took deliveries, Melinda had placed a small café table and two chairs. She didn’t want to encourage her mother to stay, though, so she stood near them, leaning against the wall with her arms folded across her chest as Jocelyn made her approach.

“Why are you bothering me at work?” she asked rudely.

“Because you haven’t left me any choice. I can’t get through the gate at your town house and you won’t answer the phone when I call. You ignore texts and emails. So I’m here.”

Her mom looked frail, and it was evident that she, too, had been crying behind the huge, Jackie-O style sunglasses she wore. Her nose was red and raw; she’d bitten off her pinky-brown lipstick. And horror! Jocelyn had applied her foundation hastily and sloppily—Mel could see a beige line demarcating her chin from her neck.

“The question is, why are you here? I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“I have something to say to you.” She gestured at one of the wrought-iron chairs. “May I sit?”

“If you insist.”

With a sigh, Jocelyn lowered herself into the seat, rubbing absently at a blue vein in her hand. “I’m not sure where to start.”

Mel eyed her stonily.

“Melinda, I don’t mean to be the food police. Wait, let me rephrase that. I have meant to be the food police, but my motives didn’t stem from wanting to criticize you. They stemmed from wanting to protect you. The truth is that your father had an affair a number of years ago—”

“Yes, he told me.”

“He told you?”

Mel nodded.

Her mother looked nonplussed. “Well. All right. Well. I was devastated. I thought that he’d had the affair because I was fat, because I’d gained weight when I had Mark and you. And I became obsessive. I looked at the women whom your father’s contemporaries married after their first wives, and they were all thin, all pretty and well-maintained.”

“I get it, Mom. What I don’t get is—”

“Just hear me out. Fast-forward to Mark’s wedding. I had said nasty things to you when you told me you’d, ah, been with Peter.”

“He doesn’t go by Peter anymore. He’s Pete.” Mel wondered why she cared enough to point that out.

“Pete. Fine. Anyhow. I’d said awful things to you, things which I very much regretted. But I couldn’t unsay them. And I felt fiercely defensive of you, my darling daughter, and very suspicious of Pete’s motives. I wanted to let him know that he wasn’t going to get away with using you—and I also wanted to do something to make up for my assault on your self-esteem.”

“Make up for it?” Mel repeated scathingly. “Or make it a hundred times worse?”

“Darling girl, I regret what I did with all my heart. It was wrong, on so many levels. I’m sorry.”

“Mom, the words don’t change what you did. And they don’t change what Pete did, either.”

“I know that I can’t say ‘sorry’ and make it all better. But I haven’t really come on my behalf. I’ve come on Pete’s.”

“Oh, please. This should be good.”

“You need to know that he did say no. That he did tell me that he was going to call you anyway. I rode right over him. I simply assumed that he was being polite, but I don’t think he was. He was angry, Melinda. He wanted to throw me out a window.”

“Big deal. He still took the bribe.”

“I’m not sure I left him a lot of choice, honey. In all fairness, it is his job to bring in business for that hotel.”

“Don’t make me sick.”

“I think he truly loves you.”

“Right.”

“After you and Daddy left, Mark attacked him. He hauled him over the dining room table and they destroyed things while going for each other’s throats. And he kept yelling—Pete did—that he loved you, and why couldn’t anyone get that through their heads?”

Mel felt her face crumpling, and resisted fiercely. She wasn’t going to cry in front of her mother. She especially wasn’t going to let Jocelyn see that her words had given her any kind of hope. She told herself not to be stupid.

“He’s a good man, Melinda. He stayed to clean up. He was agonized about his part in the whole thing, and let your father reprimand him. I really think he loves you, darling.”

“Love? What would you know about love?” Maybe it was wrong, especially in light of the fact that her mother was here to apologize, but all Melinda wanted to do was hurt her as badly as she’d been hurt.

“What would I know about it? Well, you think about this, I loved your father enough to stay with him after he’d betrayed me for another woman. I could have walked out, taken him to the cleaners and deprived him of his children. He certainly deserved it. But I loved him. He was my husband and we’d built a life together. So I swallowed my pride and my hurt and I let him come home…I worked on trying to forgive him. I love your father more than the air I breathe. He’s my rock. He’s my reason for living. Maybe it’s not always easy for you kids to see that. But it’s true.”

In the face of Melinda’s unforgiving silence, Jocelyn got up and hitched her purse over her shoulder. “You don’t have to forgive me. I understand that it may take a very long time for you to even think about it. But I do think that you should give Pete a chance to explain to you, to make it up to you, and to love you.”

She touched Mel’s shoulder, and Mel did her best not to recoil. “Thank you for at least letting me talk…letting me apologize.” Jocelyn turned and walked away, back down the little alley, toward the parking lot where she’d left her car.

Melinda watched her go. She couldn’t tell her that everything was okay between them. She couldn’t yet forgive her. But she did recognize that it hadn’t been easy for her mother to come here, to talk about the past and old wounds, or to plead the case of a man who had every reason to hate her.

She’d done it out of love, plain and simple—even if that love was buried deep under Botox and St. John knits, under compulsive dieting and Valentino handbags. She deserved an acknowledgement of that, some kind of crumb.

“Hey, Mom,” Melinda called. “You want to come inside for an oatmeal-raisin cookie?”

Okay, so it was a test. She admitted it. Was her mother up to the challenge? Would she ingest actual calories in the name of peace?

Jocelyn stopped in her tracks. Put her hand to the strap of her bag. And turned around. She walked three steps back toward her daughter. And her voice trembled as she said, “Yes, Melinda. Thank you. I’d love an oatmeal-raisin cookie.”