Cry Uncle (33 page)

“
Well...” Lizard taped a
fourth yellow fluff of dandelion onto Barbie’s pert ponytail. “If
she loves me, she oughtta love my doll.”

“
I agree. But you should
respect her feelings about certain things, Lizard. It’s important
that she sees what a good job Uncle Joe has done raising
you.”

“
He didn’t raise me. He’s
just my uncle.”

“
And he loves you, too,
maybe even more than your Aunt Joyce. So it’s important to make
sure your Aunt Joyce and Uncle Lawton and Ms. Whitley all realize
that Uncle Joe has taught you how to respect others and be
polite.”

Lizard eyed her askance. “That’s icky.”

“
Courtesy isn’t
icky.”

“
No—I mean, all those people
who have to realize things. It’s icky. You know what? I’m gonna
tattoo Snoot. Kitty has one on her boob. Right about...here,” she
said, pointing to the left side of the doll’s breast, just above
the edge of the dandelion brassiere. “She let me see it once. It
was neat. I think I’m gonna tattoo Snoot.”

“
I think you’re going to
take a bath,” Pamela refuted her. “And then you and I are going to
have some supper. How about tuna salad?” She didn’t feel like
making a big meal. The afternoon was hot and muggy, smothering her
appetite. She felt overloaded, inundated by events: Mick Morrow’s
capture, her impending trial testimony, Joe’s impending custody
case, Lizard’s treatment of her doll. Mixed together and garnished
with a discussion of tattoos, the concoction made Pamela
queasy.

“
Okay,” Lizard said,
swinging her doll by its ponytail and jogging toward the porch.
“But make sure you put the right amount of mayonnaise in. If you
put in too much it doesn’t look pink. And I want a bagel, too.”
With that, she disappeared into the house.

Pamela gazed after her, feeling a tug was
part pride, part protectiveness and part something she might have
called mother-love if she believed herself capable of maternal
sentiments. Lizard was exasperating—but in a perverse way, that was
one of her most appealing traits. She was uncouth and sassy and, in
a word, icky—and Pamela loved her for it.

The Prescotts would never view Lizard’s bad
behavior as lovable. Neither, Pamela feared, would the court. Ms.
Whitley going to declare Lizard a maniac and tear her from Joe.

Pamela couldn’t let that happen. She would
have to work on Lizard some more—make sure she scrubbed behind her
ears in the bath, make sure she dressed neatly, make sure she
didn’t call her Barbie doll “Snoot” or Joyce Prescott “icky” in
front of hostile witnesses. Pamela had married Joe for better or
worse—something along that line, anyway—and she was now entering
the “for worse” stretch with him.

She was simply going to have to make things
work out.

***

“
I’M COMING TO THE SHIPWRECK
with you,” she said.

“
You? At the
Shipwreck?”

Four days had passed since the Prescotts had
come to town. Four days of sunny skies and apprehension, of
meetings with Mary DiNardi and high tension in the house, of Joe
spending as much time at the Shipwreck as he had when he’d been
avoiding Pamela.

He wasn’t avoiding her now. Over breakfast he
reviewed with Pamela everything his lawyer had told him. He seemed
to value Pamela’s opinions. He definitely valued her ability to get
Lizard to dress in pretty matching shorts and tops, and to either
braid all her hair or none of it, instead of just plaiting the
locks at her ears.

Yet he sought refuge at the Shipwreck every
night. Pamela doubted he was drinking there. In fact, the last time
she’d seen him partake of liquor—a single bottle of beer—was the
night he’d wound up making love to her.

She willfully closed her mind to the image.
She didn’t want to think about it, or dream about it, or find
herself, at odd moments, wishing for a recurrence. She didn’t want
to love him.

The Prescotts had taken Lizard to their
resort for dinner tonight. Joe had protested, claiming that they
were getting too much easy access to Lizard, but his lawyer had
insisted that it was important for Lizard to establish some ties
with the Prescotts, just in case she wound up in their custody.
Hearing his own advocate mention such a possibility had sent Joe
into a funk.

Pamela had no illusions that she could cheer
him up by accompanying him to the bar. But she didn’t want to sit
home alone, worrying about him. She would accompany him to the
Shipwreck, spend a couple of hours catching up with Kitty and
nursing a glass of wine, and then go home in time to greet Lizard
when the Prescotts dropped her off.

“
It’s a public facility,”
she pointed out reasonably. “You can’t tell me not to
come.”

Joe mulled over her assertion. “I wasn’t
going to tell you not to come. I just don’t know what you’ll do
there.”

“
Listen to the juke box,”
Pamela suggested. “Keep you company.”

“
I’ll be
working.”

“
Fine.”

Evidently he could find nothing more to
object to. “Okay. But you’ve got to be home before the Prescotts
get back with Lizard. If they come home to an empty house—”

“
They said they’d be
bringing her home at nine. I’ll be home before then.”

“
Okay.” He shrugged, then
lifted the keys to his car and handed her the keys to
hers.

The bar was already bustling with happy
drinkers by the time she and Joe arrived, a little after five.
Within minutes, she lost track of the number of people who said
hello to her—people she scarcely recognized. They all claimed to be
friends of Joe’s, or regulars, or former boyfriends of Kitty who’d
attended Joe’s wedding.

The noise level rose as the
one hour shifted into the next. The juke box blasted an eclectic
mix of songs: Tim McGraw, the Pointer Sisters, Tony Bennett,
Sting—and Ben E. King warbling
Stand By
Me
.

Seated at a table at the
rear of the room, Pamela sought Joe with her gaze as that
song,
their
song,
filtered through the thick, smoky air. Joe was apparently searching
for her, too, because when their eyes met she felt a jolt, as
visceral as if he’d crossed the room and kissed her. She wanted to
promise she would stand by him forever. But that was a promise he
had no use for. All he’d ever asked of her was that she stand by
him during the custody fight.

Yet his gaze remained on her for the duration
of the song. Brick seemed to sense his boss’s distraction, because
he picked up the slack and filled all the orders until the last
plaintive notes faded away. Only then did Joe break from her,
severing the unspoken, unreadable communication.

She approached the bar, but Joe was suddenly
very busy organizing his whisky bottles. “Whenever that song gets
played, he thinks of you,” Brick confided, stringing together more
words than Pamela had ever heard from him.

“
Maybe he’s just remembering
what a good time we had at the wedding.”

Brick grunted and shook his head.

Joe finished inventorying his whisky. He shot
a quick glance at the tacky steering-wheel clock hanging on the
wall, then sent Pamela a fleeting smile. “You’d better head off.
It’s quarter to nine.”

“
I’m on my way.”

“
Kiss Lizzie good-night for
me.”

“
I will, Joe.” Pamela was
tempted to kiss him good-night, too. She saw the pensive glimmer in
his eyes, and for a selfish instant wished his emotions were for
her. But they were for Lizard, she knew. Lizard was the one who
mattered to him.

Forcing a smile, she slid the strap of her
purse over her shoulder and sauntered out of the bar. The streets
were clogged with traffic, but Pamela made it to Joe’s block by
five minutes to nine—enough time to get inside, turn on some lights
and wait for Lizard.

Not quite, she realized as she spotted the
Infiniti parked in front of Joe’s house. She accelerated down the
street and steered up onto the driveway. By the time she’d turned
off the engine and climbed out of the car, Joyce and Lawton
Prescott had emerged from the Infiniti. Lawton’s hand was clamped
firmly around Lizard’s wrist; he was practically dragging her
toward Pamela. Something pink was spilled across the front of
Lizard’s sun dress.

“
Hi,” Pamela said in a
falsely bright tone. “I’m sorry you had to wait. You got here a
little early.”

“
We got here at eight
fifteen,” Joyce snarled. “We’ve been waiting all this time. Another
minute, and we would have left her at the social worker’s house.
We’ve had just about all we can take!” Lawton released Lizard with
a slight shove, and Lizard flew into Pamela’s arms.

Ignoring the adults, Pamela inspected Lizard
for signs of damage. Besides the pink splotch on the bodice of her
dress, her hair was matted and her neck wore rings of dirt. She
looked remarkably dry-eyed, though, feisty and defiant.

“
What happened?” Pamela
asked her.

“
Nothin’.”

“
That child is a beast,”
Lawton declared tautly. “She ought to be sent to reform
school.”

“
Lizard,” Pamela scolded.
“What did you do?”
And whatever it was,
will it persuade the court that Joe’s an unfit parent?

“
It was her fault,” Lizard
said, pointing a dirty finger at Joyce. “She asked me what I
thought of her dress.”

“
This is a Versace,” Joyce
erupted. “It was bad enough that she told me it was gross, but then
she deliberately spilled water all over it. This is silk. Water
stains won’t come out.”

“
Perhaps a
dry-cleaner—”

“
She ruined this dress for
no good reason. Then she ran around the restaurant, throwing a
tantrum. She humiliated us in front of the other
patrons.”

“
It was an icky restaurant,”
Lizard argued. “They didn’t even have pisketti.”

“
Spaghetti,” Pamela
corrected her before addressing the Prescotts. “She’s rather young
to be going to fancy restaurants.”

“
We don’t eat at fast-food
joints,” Joyce sniffed. “Perhaps your idea of dining out is
shouting your order into a microphone and driving up to the pick-up
window, but we consider dining an important social experience—and
we expect a well-bred child to behave properly in a restaurant.
Elizabeth was horrible. She deliberately tripped a
waiter.”

“
I’m sure it wasn’t
deliberate,” Pamela asserted. “Was it, Lizard?”

“
Unh-unh.” The little girl
shook her head. “I did it on purpose.”

“
The waiter was carrying a
chocolate soufflé,” Lawton said.

“
Needless to say, it
collapsed because of her,” Joyce added. “She’s a spiteful, hateful
child. She has no sense of decorum. She reduced me to
tears.”

“
Lizard.” Pamela tried hard
to look indignant, but a rebellious smile stole across her
lips.

“
She is a heathen beast,”
Joyce continued. “I don’t see how we can possibly fit her into our
lives, if this is the way she chooses to behave.”

“
She’s vulgar,” Lawton
added.

“
Ordering a strawberry milk
shake at a three-star restaurant. And when the chef d’hôte came out
to see what the ruckus was about, she called him a butt-face. I
thought I was going to die!” Joyce whined.

“
She isn’t fit for society,”
Lawton concluded. “She’s beyond redemption. There’s nothing we can
do for her.”

“
Excuse me...” Pamela was
afraid of jumping to the wrong conclusion and then having her hopes
dashed. “Are you saying you aren’t going to ask for custody of
Lizard?”

“
Joseph can have her. She’s
obviously a Brenner.”

“
Tainted genes,” Lawton
concurred.

“
A hideous
child.”

“
She’s a wonderful child!”
Pamela argued, hugging Lizard and not caring that some of the pink
stuff—strawberry milk shake, no doubt—was rubbing onto her T-shirt.
“And his name is Jonas, not Joseph.”

“
And my name is Lizard, not
Betsy,” Lizard shouted.

“
Lizard suits you well,
little girl,” Lawton retorted. “You and your aunt and uncle deserve
each other. We’ll be leaving for Hillsborough in the
morning.”

Before Pamela could say another word, the
Prescotts, dressed in their overpriced, water-stained apparel,
strode regally back to their expensive rental car, climbed in and
drove off into the hot, starlit night.

Too stunned to move, Pamela laughed. So did
Lizard. Pamela closed her arms snugly around Lizard, and Lizard
hugged her just as tightly.

“
We ought to telephone your
Uncle Joe,” Pamela whispered, aware that her cheeks were damp with
tears.

“
Yeah. And then can I draw a
tattoo on Snoot’s boob?”

“
You can draw all the
tattoos you want on Snoot,” Pamela promised, swinging Lizard high
into her arms and carrying her inside the house.

Chapter Fifteen

LIZARD RULED THE SHIPWRECK from her perch on
the bar. In one hand she held a non-alcoholic Pink Lady; in the
other she held her Barbie doll, its body wrapped in rubber bands
and its hair woven into a lopsided braid with a feather glued to
the tip. “It was great,” she regaled anyone who wandered close
enough to listen to her. “I tripped a waiter and he was carrying
this chocolate stuff and it went flying everywhere, and it looked
like poop.”