Face Time (6 page)

“Think you’re a comedian, huh?” Josh tries to rumple her hair, but she flattens herself into the corner of the booth, laughing, and pulls her knees up to her chest, tucking those little shoes under Josh’s thigh. She obviously adores him. “Gotcha, Daddy,” she says “Two points.”

I might as well not even be in the room.

“On the floor,” Josh says, affectionately pushing her feet off the suede. I’m watching the bread pellet fall apart in Josh’s glass. Disintegrating. Just like our relationship, if I can’t find the secret words to break through Penny’s no-trespassing barrier.

“So Mom says to tell you both hello,” I begin, attempting to make us a table for three. “I was just at the hospital, and the doctors say she’s recovering nicely.” Then I stop. Talk about the elephant in the room. My first venture into conversation, and I’ve brought up the M word.

Penny pulls a lock of hair across her mouth and looks at me from under her lashes, her smile vanishing. “
My
mother is a doctor,” she says. “She’s on a cruise.” She briefly turns back to pellet-making, then looks at me again, challenging. “To Montserrat. It’s French.”

Okay, I’m going for it. She’s eight. I’m a grown-up. Lots of kids even like me. I can do this. “Yes, I know,” I say, putting down my chopsticks. “I actually covered the story in Montserrat, after the volca—”

Two waiters in sleek black T-shirts arrive, their steaming platters cutting off what might have been my best chance to finish an actual sentence. Penny’s plate is white, her scallops are white, her pasta is white, and she looks skeptically at the green flakes sprinkled on the sides of the dish.

“I hate—” she begins.

Josh twists the end of his napkin into a point and with one swift gesture swipes the parsley out of existence. “There, fussy bird,” he says, touching her nose with one finger. “All white again.” He shrugs, looking at me apologetically. “Not worth the struggle, you know? White food. Victoria says it’s a phase.”

I hate—when he says her name. I know it’s silly, they’ve been divorced for two years now. But if Victoria told him it’s a phase that means they must talk. And of course they have to talk—they share Penny. And Penny will always be both of theirs, no matter that Victoria married Elliott what’s-his-name. No matter if Josh and I—

I sneak a foot under the table, slide a toe under one leg of Josh’s jeans. “How’s your—salmon?” I ask.

Josh flickers a look at Penny, who’s focused on twisting her spaghetti, and then winks at me. “The cottage in Truro has a private outside shower,” he says, leaning across the table. His voice is PG matter-of-fact, but his look conveys an unmistakably X-rated double meaning. “Did I tell you that? Warm summer nights, in the moonlight, you can wash the sand out of your hair. Or wherever.”

And there’s the rub. Here’s where I’m supposed to look dreamy and seductive, perhaps mention my new and frighteningly small bathing suit, perhaps allude to coconut-scented suntan lotion. And it would all be from the heart. I’m longing to try out that shower, and see just how X-rated one summer vacation can be. Just one hitch in the potential passion. Dorinda Keeler Sweeney is stuck in prison. And I can get her out. Does that trump spending time on Cape Cod with the man of my dreams, shower or not? Wouldn’t any other decision be selfish?

“Um,” I reply. “That sounds perfect.” I move a bit of gingered sea bass around my plate, stalling. It’s usually my favorite, but now I’m too tense to enjoy it. I bring a bite of fish to my mouth, then put it back down. “But you know,” I begin. Dorinda’s potential innocence pesters me like an insistent child, never far from my side. “You know I told you about Dorinda Sweeney?”

P
ENNY IS OUT OF IT
. She’s strapped by the seat belt into the back seat of Josh’s Volvo, mesmerized by some PlayStation gizmo, the real world muted into muffled background by her iPod earbuds. Oblivious to the intense conversation in the front seat. We’re all parked outside of my apartment, the car windows open, letting in the summer as the last of the daylight fades. Tourists with cameras around their necks stroll along the twisting narrow sidewalks, pointing and gesturing, locating the architectural quirks and oddities of the oldest part of Boston. A blue-uniformed police officer in BPD shorts bicycles slowly past, giving me a quick appraising glance, and salutes as I return a reassuring wave—I’m fine. I hope that’s true. I’ve got to go inside soon. Josh and Penny are going home.

“It’s fine, sweets,” Josh reassures me. He runs a finger down my cheek, tracing my jaw, then tilting my chin. “Got to get you another Emmy, right? And get Dorinda Sweeney out of prison. Penny and I will be fine in Truro. And you can be our special treat. Come see us whenever you can. It would be…” He pauses, cocking his head back at Penny. “Well, if someone had unjustly taken me away from her, I’d be unstoppable. Whatever. Do your stuff, Brenda Starr. Truro can wait.”

I glance into the back seat, see the child Josh loves so much. They have such a connection, a bond, a certainty. Right now, she looks sweet, clicking intently on her computer game. And loving. And eight. And what little girl wouldn’t worry about the other woman, essentially a stranger, threatening to take her dad away? How can two be three?

Reaching over, I take Josh’s hand. “I need you to understand, I’m not choosing my job over you two. It’s just—Dorinda. That videotape is a perfect alibi. She should not be spending one more day behind bars.”

Without another backward glance, Josh pulls me toward him, his eyes locked into mine. “We’ll be here for you,” he says, giving me a delicate kiss on the forehead. “Me, and even little Penny. I’m proud of you.”

The complicating combination of a stickshift and an eight-year-old means I can’t melt into his arms. Or slide my hand under his shirt. Or slide his hand under mine. But I trust him. Victoria is completely out of the picture, thousands of miles away, cruising happily with her husband. Penny will come around. And Josh would tell me, I reassure myself, if he was upset. Maybe, maybe it could work.

“Before.”
I’m peering into the oversize makeup mirror, illuminated by the unforgiving perimeter of frosted bulbs surrounding it. Maysie, ponytailed as always and hands on hips, is looking at me in the mirror, too. Since she’s the only woman working for Channel 3’s all-sports radio station, she’s claimed this fourth-floor ladies’ room as her private salon, the place where we convene for high-level gossip and general life discussions. Today, it’s face time.

“And after.”
I use two fingers on each side of my face to yank up what Mom insists are my worrisomely sagging jowls. “Is it that much better? I mean, don’t I look like a lizard with blond hair and red lipstick?” My voice sounds a little lispy, since pulling on my skin spreads my mouth out of its normal range. I let my face drop back from fantasy-35 into reality-46.

“Well?” I demand, still contemplating the mirror. “Do I need a face-lift?”

Instead of answering, Maysie leans forward toward the mirror, too, trying the two-finger jowl-lift demo on her own actually-35 face. Today she’s back in her trademark black jeans. And I still can’t tell she’s pregnant. I smile at the memory. They hadn’t been trying. Apparently, the impending new kid was just as much a surprise to her and Matthew as it was to me.

“I think I look better, you know? Fixed?” Maysie’s voice now has the fake face lift lisp. “I’d do it in a heartbeat, too. After little whoever is born. Maybe get a tummy tuck, while I’m at it. Bye-bye baby fat. And I’ve got to be on TV soon, after all. My days of hiding behind radio have come to an end.” She focuses on her reflection, first tugging at the corners of her eyes, then pulling up her eyebrows. “Can’t hurt.”

“Margaret Isobel Derosiers Green,” I turn to her, my own face forgotten. “You wouldn’t. Would you?”

“You wear contacts, right? Had braces? And might I ask, in my role as your best friend forever, whether you know the true color of your hair? As my preteen queen Molly so often puts it when she’s angling for pierced ears, ‘what’s the diff, dude?’”

Maysie’s now checking for loose skin under her neck. I check my own. Suddenly I’m envisioning a rhinocerous. Maybe Mom was right.

I tear my eyes away from the mirror and boost myself onto the counter, leaning my back against the wall, knees drawn up, feet on the counter. My mind flashes to Penny in just this position in our booth at dinner. “So like I said,” I say, changing the subject. “Penny acted as if I were invisible. She’s devoted to Josh, and he dotes on her. I felt like such an outsider. I mean, I
am
an outsider.”

I stare at the toes of my little black suede flats, unseeing. Franklin and I are heading back to Swampscott in a minute. We decided to make it a casual day. The power reporter look can work in the corporate world, but high heels and Armani are sometimes too daunting when you’re trying to extract info from cautious—and potentially suspicious—neighbors. But first I needed to talk to Maysie. And not just about my face.

“So you didn’t
study
to be a mom, did you? Seems like Molly arrived and you somehow knew what to do next. Sleep, diapers, crying. You just—”

“There was no sleep,” Maysie says with a smile. “For about two years. Then Max arrived. And there was even less sleep.”

“You know what I mean,” I say, waving away her digression. “Do I have a heart-to-heart with Penny? Am I her friend? Do I tell her what she can and can’t do? Do I always have to agree with Josh? What’s my attitude about Victoria? What if Penny, I don’t know, hates me?” I twist my gold-linked bracelet, a three-month anniversary present from Josh, around my wrist. “I hate surprises,” I say. “I’m better at things I can control.”

“You want a real answer?” Maysie asks. She sits across from me in her black director’s chair, leaning toward me, her face earnest. “I didn’t plan on little number three here. Talk about surprises. But I love her. Him. Already. Love is not about control, that’s one of the joys of it.”

She stops, and it seems as though she’s considering her own words. “You’ll never know unless you have your own child.”

My eyes turn teary, emotion unexpectedly washing over me. Of course I’ll never have my own child. Those days are gone.

Maysie jumps up, throws her arms around me. “Ah, my hormones, I’m so sorry,” she says. She steps back and holds her arms out, apologizing. “I sound like one of those Chicken Soup books, I know, and I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, honey, you know I’ve crossed that bridge,” I say, reassuring her. “Years ago.” At least I hope I’ve crossed it. I swing my legs down from the counter and brush the wrinkles out of my black slacks. “But that’s Victoria’s connection to Penny, you know? And Penny’s to Victoria. And I don’t want to change that. Couldn’t. I just hoped I could be Penny’s best friend, confidante, role model, or something. And maybe stepmom. But if last night proves anything, it ain’t gonna happen.”

From inside my tote bag, my cell phone begins a muffled rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Franklin’s and my theme song. He must be ready to leave for Swampscott.

“I’ve gotta disagree with Mick Jagger this time,” Maysie says giving me a quick hug. “Sometimes you can get what you want. Just let yourself love her. And she’ll eventually love you back.”

Y
OU CAN TELL
it’s summer at Swampscott High School even with your eyes closed. No footsteps from packs of students giggling down the halls. No bells insistently clang for classes. No muffled unintelligible public address voices proclaim the day’s schedule over the teenage din.

Not only is the reception desk at SHS deserted, the halls are empty. Some lockers flap open. Hand-lettered “Good luck to the Big Blue graduates” and “Go Seagulls 4-Evah” posters are beginning to untape themselves from the institutional beige walls.

On the counter in front of us, the
Swampscott Chronicle
’s headlines blare what’s fast becoming the biggest story in Massachusetts.
Oz Tops Pols Polls.
Franklin picks up the paper, reading the story out loud as we wait for someone to answer the hotel-desk bell on the counter we pinged, hoping for attention.

“This law-and-order thing seems to be resonating,” Franklin says, picking up the newspaper and flapping it open. “Listen to this. ‘Oscar Ortega, now an unprecedented seventeen points ahead in the polls, says his history of convictions is unmatched across the country.’ And, he told a crowd of cheering supporters, quote, ‘an Ortega administration means parents can be—’”

“Let me guess. Safe in their homes and safe in the streets,” I finish the sentence. “You’d think he’d get a new stump speech. Although this one seems to be doing the trick with voters.”

I peer across the counter and around the corner, checking for open doors in the line of offices that’s tucked on the other side. I ping the bell again. Its tinny jingle resounds hollowly through the room. No answer. “He’s not going to be happy when he hears we’re looking into Dorinda. What Oliver Rankin said at the elevator is an understatement. Bad publicity is death on the campaign trail, so Oz will certainly try to stop us. Though there’s nothing he can do, I suppose.”

Franklin puts the paper back. “Time, as they say, will tell.” He takes a few steps into the long hallway. “You know, there’s got to be someone here. Someplace. I mean, we just walked into the building. It was open.”

“How about this,” I say. “Franklin, you take the car, and hit the Swampscott paper. See if they have archives, a reporter who covered the case, old photos they didn’t use. I’ll check around here. Maybe someone’s in the library. Or the gym. Even if no one’s there, I bet there’ll be yearbooks. Names, pictures, all kinds of stuff. If someone asks what I’m doing here, I’ll…” I pause. “I’ll think of something.”

“Good luck with that,” Franklin says. “You’re probably guilty of trespassing, if someone decides to be a hard-liner about it.”

I look at my watch, ignoring him. “Call my cell in two hours,” I say. “We’ll compare notes over clam rolls at the Red Rock.”

I
STILL HAVE NIGHTMARES
that I didn’t study for some exam, or I’m not ready for a test, or I can’t find my classroom. Those dreams have nothing to do with high school, I’m told, and everything to do with my struggle for perfection. Still, I’m probably in for some heavy sleep drama tonight. The smell of leftover pencil sharpenings and notebook paper and industrial-strength floor wax inside the Swampscott High School library time-travels me back to Anthony Wayne High in suburban Chicago, home of the Fighting Red Devils and my four misfit years of high grades and low self-esteem. High school—get through it, then forget it. For me at least.

The glass and metal door opens without a sound and clicks back closed behind me. The fluorescent lights buzz and hum as I scan the long, narrow room. This place is deserted, too. A dark wood librarian’s desk, looming and massive, protects one end. In its sights, long pine tables with stocky chairs are lined up with geometric precision. A forest of pale wooden shelves stands in well-ordered lines, each displaying a brass and paper bracket, block lettered to show the range of Dewey Decimal numbers it contains. I’m on the prowl for yearbooks. And since there’s no one here to stop me, I’m going to find them. I head for the stacks and search until I see a line of tall, narrow, identical dark blue books. The gilt-lettered year is on the spine of each.

I grab the wooden ladder, and slide it closer, doing the math in my head. Dorinda Sweeney. Class of 19—she’s forty-three years old, so that would mean—82. I climb up, spot the book and pull it from the shelf. The
Seagull.
Almost ceiling-high on the ladder, I prop my open book against the row of closed ones. No index.
Rats.
But I can start with the senior class, that’s always alphabetical.

If I find something, though, that’s a dilemma. I stop, mid-search, and lean against the shelf. There’s no one here, so there’s no way to check out a book. I’d have to steal it, and although tempting, that’s not the best plan. Then, a brainstorm. I’ll just use my cell phone camera again. I’m a genius.

I flip through pages of lip-glossed girls with overpermed hair and unfortunate leg warmers. Power chicks with
Dynasty
shoulder pads. Boys with surfboards, cars, guitars. At the beach, in the bleachers, in the back of a white convertible. I hurry to the
K
’s. And there’s Dorinda Keeler.

“Might I inquire,” says a prim and birdy voice from three feet beneath me, “who you are and what you possibly think you are doing?” It sounds like “enquiah” who you “ah,” but there’s no need to translate her intent. She’s in charge, I’m the interloper. I hope she’s not packing pepper spray or something.

Still holding the
Seagull
in one hand, I twist myself around on the ladder. Now I’m looking down at a polka-dot headband, a gray bob and brown sensible-looking shoes. Someone who, with one shake of this already unsteady ladder, might be able to dump me onto the scuffed linoleum. Headband tilts her face up to look at me, inquisitorial.

“Would you like to get down and leave quietly?” she asks. “Or shall I call security?”

Tucking the book under one arm, I begin my descent, talking the whole time in the most reassuring tone I can muster. I’m grateful I wore those flats. “I’m Charlie McNally, Channel 3 News?” I take a step more, trying to look right at her and not my feet, so she can see how unthreatening I am. “The building was open, and the library, too. I looked everywhere for someone, I’m so sorry, and when there was no answer, I just—” I wind up with one arm hooked over a ladder rung and one foot on the ground, face of a grown-up but feeling like a teenager nabbed in some after-hours mischief.

I pause, entreating the journalism gods to play ball. “Do you remember Dorinda Keeler?”

A
PACK OF LAUGHING TEENAGERS
, reef sandals and baggy cutoffs, sweeps into the Red Rock clam shack, their boisterous laughter filling the circular glass-walled restaurant. It smells of fried everything—clams, potatoes, onion rings—plus ketchup and tartar sauce. Out the window, the Atlantic Ocean touches Swampscott Beach on one shore and the white cliffs of Dover on the other. June sun glints on the water, its glare darkening figures walking on the sand into flickering silhouettes. Franklin and I have commandeered a table for six so we can spread out his loot—old newspaper articles and photographs. He even managed to snag Dorinda and Ray’s photo from the wedding section. Her childlike white-gowned figure, veiled and tiny, is tucked under her tuxedoed husband’s shoulder. He’s holding a glass of champagne. She has only a bouquet of white rosebuds. He’s beaming. Her face is obscured by the frothy veil.

“Here’s one for the psych books,” Franklin says, covering the newlyweds with another page from his black leather folder. He turns the photo toward me, pointing. “This was spray painted on the sidewalk in front of All Saints Church.”

“Where Dorie was—”

“Married, right,” Franklin continues. “And it was on her wedding day. Some newspaper photog got a shot of it before the city power-washed it away. See? It says ‘Dorie and CC 4-Evah’. Spelled like that, ‘evah.’ The archives guy, a real walking history book, remembers that Dorinda dumped her devoted boyfriend CC Hardesty for Ray. He figured this paint job was CC’s last cry of unrequited love, like Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate
yelling “Elaine,” pounding the glass. But Dorie ‘chose the Sweeney money and power,’ so says Mr. Archives. And apparently that was the end of Dorie and CC.”

A miniskirted waitress, polo shirt with collar flipped, annoyingly long tanned legs and bouncing hair, arrives at our table. She’s carrying two waxed-paper-lined red plastic baskets, and hesitates as she dubiously eyes the documents strewn across the plastic tabletop. Franklin sweeps his copies together, tamping the edges to make them straight before he inserts them into his folder. “I like the boyfriend,” Franklin says, snapping the folder shut. “He’s—”