Monday's Child (11 page)

Twenty-Six

Her mother was sitting quietly at the table, both hands wrapped around a coffee cup, and seemingly lost in thought when Jill entered the kitchen.

For a moment Jill hesitated, uncertain at the cause of the tension she felt in the room, but it did not appear to be directed at her, so she crossed to the table and sat opposite her mother.

“Good morning,” she said.

Her mother glanced up, the frown on her face disappearing. “Jill, honey. I didn’t expect to see you up so early this morning. How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” In fact she felt very, very good.

“I’m glad.” Her mother smiled and reached across the table, brushing the back of her hand gently across Jill’s cheek. “You look well rested. Are you hungry?”

“A little.”

“I only have a few minutes before I have to leave for work, but how about some hot cereal? With brown sugar and raisins? Would you like that?”

She liked hot cereal, so she nodded, and watched as her mother rose from the table and went over to the cupboard to get down a bowl.

“I’m going to make sure you eat right from now on,” her mother said. She took a box of Instant Cream of Wheat from a shelf near the stove and studied the side panel. “The nurse at the hospital gave me a list of foods that are rich in iron and vitamin B.”

Jill said nothing. She noticed a crumpled and stained piece of paper laying near her mother’s coffee cup and tried to read it upside down. It-was addressed to her dad, she saw.

“I mean, we can’t have you fainting on the school playground because you’re not eating sensibly,” her mother was saying.

“No,” Jill said absently. The note mentioned her Aunt Beverly and cousin Katy coming for a visit. When had this been arranged?

“Maybe some of the things that are good for you don’t taste that great, but you can at least try them.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Jill.”

“I know.” It wasn’t a matter of concern, really. There were other things to think about.

At the stove, her mother poured hot water into the bowl of cereal and stirred. “This looks pretty good—”

“Are we having company?” Jill asked, interrupting.

“What? Oh . . . yes. For the weekend at least, but maybe your cousin Katy can stay longer. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Jill considered it. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you would. You and Katy will be great friends—you’re cousins, after all.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“Well, you were still in diapers, so I don’t suppose you would. We had an old-fashioned family get-together. Beverly and Katy, the three of us, Grandpa Wright, and, of course, your Grandmother and Grandfather Baker.”

“We don’t see
them
much anymore.”

“No, no. Florida is a long way away, and they don’t care to fly anymore, not that I blame them.” Her mother sprinkled brown sugar onto the cereal and brought it to the table, placing it and a clean spoon in front of Jill. “I’ll get the raisins.”

The brown sugar had begun to dissolve and Jill quickly picked up the spoon to eat; she liked it best when the sugar still had a granular texture.

“That a girl,” her mother said. She put a tiny lunch-size box of raisins near Jill’s hand. “Eat up.”

Jill ate.

Her mother remained by her side. “You scared me yesterday,” she said.

All at once, her mother was kneeling beside her, brushing the hair away from her face and looking up into her eyes.

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you. You’re my baby, my precious baby. You’re all that I have.”

Jill saw tears form in the corners of her mother’s eyes. Somewhere deep inside, she felt a pang of regret for the pain she would cause this woman. She knew very well that without her mother’s intervention, she might have wound up like some of the others of her kind.

She touched her mother’s face hesitantly. Offering comfort was not something she knew how to do, but the motions were simple enough . . . a touch, a smile.

Her mother’s smile in return was dazzling.

“Look at me,” her mother said, then turned Jill’s hand over so that she could kiss the palm. “I’ve got to be at work in fifteen minutes and here I am crying.”

“It will be all right,” Jill said.

“I hope so, baby.” She took a napkin from the holder and used it to dab under her eyes. “You be a good girl, okay? Make friends with Katy and I’ll see you when I get off work.”

Jill inclined her head in agreement.

When her mother had gone, she sat for a time, drawing circles and shapes through the cereal with the spoon. She dumped the raisins on top and mixed them in, but although she liked the taste, she really didn’t want to eat.

She was drawing nourishment from another source.

Twenty-Seven

Georgia reached the library a scant five minutes before opening, parking her car—which the police had indeed returned to her late last night—in its customary spot and hurrying across the lot.

“You didn’t have to come in today,” Faye said as she walked through the door.

“Oh yes, I did.”

“Really, we could’ve managed without you. You know Saturdays are slow.”

Georgia shook her head. “Think of my being here as crime prevention.”

“What are you . . .? Oh, Dave.”

“Dave,” she agreed. She came around the counter and put her purse in a drawer beneath the microfiche reader. “Sometimes, I swear, I could strangle him, and with a smile on my face.”

“What’s he done now?”

“It’s what he hasn’t done. He never did call me yesterday, and I left him a note last night, asking him to wake me up when he got home. He didn’t. I found the note in the trash this morning.”

“Maybe he tried to wake you up but you were sleeping too soundly. When I’m real tired, a 747 could land on my roof and I wouldn’t hear it.”

“Faye—”

“I know, make up my mind whose side I’m on. Well, I’m on yours, but I hate to see you upset like this. I’m not defending him, really; I’m trying to keep you from feeling so bad.”

“For that, I thank you, but I think it’s in my best interests if I stay upset.”

Faye frowned. “This sounds serious.”

“It is.”

“Oh boy. What are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Georgia smiled and nodded at Mrs. Spencer, always the library’s first patron of the day, and this morning two minutes early.

“You’re not thinking the D word, are you?” Faye asked, her voice hushed.

It had occurred to her this morning when she’d gone into the kitchen, found the note missing from the refrigerator, and recovered it from the trash. She hadn’t been able to rid her mind of the image of him tossing it in the garbage. If he had any regard for her at all, he wouldn’t have done that. “Maybe.”

There.

She’d said it, sort of.

“Oh Georgia,” Faye breathed, her eyes widening. “I know how you must be feeling, but don’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“For a lot of reasons. How long have you been married? Ten years?”

“Thirteen,” she said, and thought,
an unlucky number.
“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Thirteen years ago things were a lot different out there. Hell, even two years ago. But with all this, uh . . .
disease
stuff going around, being single is not what it used to be.”

Georgia shook her head. “I’m not interested in dating anyone—”

“Now
you’re not, maybe, because you’re pissed at Dave, but in a year or so, you’ll change your mind. It’s a real hornet’s nest out there.”

“You’re divorced. Are you saying that you’ve been celibate?”

“Well no, not
that,
but I’m very careful. But you, you’re a romantic—the type who can be swept off her feet by a smoldering glance.”

“Not anymore.”

“I don’t believe you—look at your taste in books—but even if it were true, you have to think about the financial consequences.”

“I’m working,” she said with a shrug.

“Right. So is Dave and you can’t pay your bills on both of your salaries. How are you going to survive on your paycheck alone?”

“I could cut back on a lot of things.”

“Like what? What wild extravagances have you been indulging in that I don’t know about? What luxuries can you dispense with?”

Georgia couldn’t think of any. “Well . . .”

“That’s what I thought. You make, what? Thirty-five percent of your joint income?”

“A little more.”

“Call it forty. If you divide your bills fifty-fifty, can you pay your share and make it on what’s left? Will you be able to cover the rent, utilities, groceries, insurance, clothes, and transportation?”

“There’s always child support—”

“I’ve never met a woman who was able to support her child on what her ex-husband gave her alone. It’s a pittance. And the checks are late half the time, or they bounce, or don’t come at all.”

“I do have an inheritance coming,” she said. “The money my father left me.”

“But didn’t you tell me you’d agreed to invest that money in the restaurant?”

In fact, she had signed a promissory note in a moment of weakness, hoping that it might improve things between them. “I did,” she admitted, frowning.

“So you’ll end up splitting that with him, too.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d manage.”

“Uh huh.” It was Faye’s turn to smile at Mrs. Spencer who was browsing in the new book section a few feet away. “What happens is, you won’t be able to afford the house payments on your own, so you’ll have to sell it and split the profit if there is any, which there might not be. Winslow isn’t exactly a hot market. Then you rent an apartment for you and Jill, some little hovel, with hot and cold running water leaks.”

“When we were first married, we had a studio apartment, so small that we—”

“—had to take turns turning around,” Georgia finished for her. “And you were happy. Sure, you can do it, scrape out a living, but why should you when he’s living high on the hog?”

“He wouldn’t be, would he?”

“He would after he moves in with someone like that hostess.”

“Tanya.”

“Her name is Tanya? What, did her mother wake up in the hospital the morning she was born and say, “’Hey, I’d like my daughter to grow up to be a bimbo. Now what’s a good name?’”

Georgia laughed. “Honestly, Faye.”

“Never mind. Anyway, Dave finds an adoring woman, or slut as the case may be, who takes him in to heal the wounds inflicted by his bitchy ex-wife who’s sucking the very blood out of his veins. That’s you.”

“So I gathered.”

“Anyway, he’s doing well, spending afternoons by the pool, and evenings in the hot tub. Maybe fitting in a game of tennis. Tanya feels so sorry for him, she doesn’t even ask him to pay a share of the rent—”

“Wait a minute,” she held up her hand. “How much money does
she
make?”

“More than you do.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it or not, it’s true. Bimbos are never poor. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. Nobody knows; it’s a quirk in the economic system. Maybe they save a lot by not buying underwear, or maybe they’ve got a good union. The point is, he’s doing better than he’s ever done in his life, and you’re doing worse.”

“It sounds gruesome—”

“That’s the point,” Faye said, tapping her finger on the counter for emphasis.

“But how about the way I feel?”

“Okay, right now you’re steamed. I would be too, but really, what happened? You had a scare, but it turned out that Jill will be fine, and there was nothing he could have done anyway.”

“He could have been there for me.”

“Your vows said ‘For better or worse, in sickness or in health, and in case of an emergency, be there to hold my hand?’”

“It’s the principle that matters. And you left out the part about forsaking all others.”

“Honey, you don’t get a divorce over principles. As for forsaking all others, if you come home and there’s a naked woman wallowing in lime Jell-O in your bathtub,
then
you get a divorce.”

Off to their left, Mrs. Spencer snorted and covered her mouth with her hand. Throwing them a guilty look, she sidled off into the stacks.

“All I’m saying is, think about it. Remember that divorced women raising children alone make up most of the households living below the poverty line. Don’t do something in the heat of the moment that you’ll live to regret.”

Georgia sighed. “I won’t.”

But neither, she thought, am I going to lay down and let him walk all over me.

Twenty-Eight

“Well, here we are,” Beverly Wright said, pulling in beside a Chevrolet Blazer in her sister’s driveway. She revved her engine twice before switching it off. “What do you think, kid?”

Katy made a face. “Now I know how Lewis and Clark must have felt.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad.” She released her seatbelt and reached into the back seat to rummage for her overnight bag.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

Beverly couldn’t argue that. “But look at how blue the sky is.”

“It’s nice. How much time per day do you think a person spends admiring the sky?”

“There are other things to do.” She opened the car door and got out, then waited patiently for her daughter to do the same. “Watching the grass grow, for example. Or if you’re lucky, watching paint dry.”

Katy’s expression indicated she believed it.

“Don’t forget you’ll have your cousin Jill to keep you company; I’m sure you two will find all kinds of things to do.”

“I can hardly wait.”

Beverly draped an affectionate arm around her child’s shoulder as they started up the walk. “Try not to be a sour puss.”

“I had plans for today,” Katy said. “I have a life, you know.”

“Rank has its privileges, you know. And when you grow up and you’re the mother—”

“I’m
not having kids.”

“—then you can be the privileged one who decides what you want to do every weekend and know the joy of listening to your sniveling brats complain.”

“I don’t snivel.”

“Oh? What was that trophy on your dresser for? I thought it was for sniveling,” she teased. “Sniveler of the Year?”

That brought a hint of a smile. “It was not.”

Beverly leaned down and kissed Katy on the ear. “You can be a pain sometimes.”

“Mom, I live for these tender moments.”

She laughed. “So do I.”

Dave was about as good-looking as she’d remembered him being, which was very, but also just as cold. There was a kind of nothingness in her brother-in-law’s eyes that reminded her of a particular fish in the aquarium at her dentist’s office.

She went to her dental appointments hoping against hope that one day she would see that fish floating belly-up.

She felt much the same about Dave.

“Beverly,” he said, and extended a hand to her. “How are you? And how are things in Hollywood?”

“Keen, absolutely keen.”

“And this is Katy?”

“Actually,” Katy said wonderingly, as though the thought had never before occurred to her, “I am.”

“Well, Katy, I think Jill’s in her room, if you want to come and say hello.” Belatedly, he seemed to notice that they had luggage, and he took both cases before starting down the hall.

The pictures that Georgia had sent her of Jill didn’t do the child justice. Her niece looked up as they stood in the doorway, and Beverly was stunned to the point of being nearly speechless.

In her business, she’d come across some pretty kids, but this one was achingly beautiful.

“Jill, this is your Aunt Beverly and your cousin Katy,” Dave said.

“Hello,” the girl said.

Katy crossed to where Jill was sitting and promptly plopped down beside her. “Hi.”

Feeling wretchedly traitorous, Beverly couldn’t help but see the contrast between the two of them, one plain, the other breathtaking.

“Well, you’ve certainly grown since the last time I saw you,” she said, finding her voice. She glanced at Dave who appeared immune to his daughter’s looks, and she wondered at that.

“What’ve you got?” Katy asked.

Beverly hadn’t noticed before, but she saw now that Jill had a wooden-lidded box in her lap, and she had covered it with both hands.

“Nothing. My collection.”

“Can I see?”

Jill tilted her head slightly, her gray-green eyes looking, Beverly realized, at she and Dave. “Private, huh? That’s okay, we understand, don’t we, Dave?”

His smile was fleeting. “Sure. Listen, I hate to run off like this, but I’ve got to get down to the restaurant. Do you mind if I show you to your room?”

“That’s fine.” She winked at Katy. “Be good or I’ll sell you to the gypsies.”

“Promises, promises,” Katy said.

The extra bedroom was surprisingly secluded, at the very end of the hall. Better yet, it was spacious and had its own bathroom.

“I think this was a great idea,” she said to the room after Dave had left.

Katy might be unappreciative, but she was glad to get out of the city once in awhile. There was no place like LA—and she loved it—but there were times when the relentless pace of it was overpowering.

She sat on the bed and bounced lightly, testing the mattress, then kicked off her shoes and scooted over until she was in the center. The middle of her own bed sagged, and she’d learned to sleep on the firmer sides, one hand curled around the bedpost to keep her from falling back.

“Heavenly,” she murmured, and pulled the bedspread around her. Her eyes closed of their own volition. She hadn’t felt particularly sleepy until just this minute, but now . . .

There was a knock on the door.

She groaned. She sincerely believed that kids were equipped with some kind of radar which told them when their parents were trying to sleep. “Yes?”

“Mom?”

“Yes.”

The door opened and she sensed rather than heard Katy come to the side of the bed. Her eyes didn’t want to open, and she wasn’t inclined to force them to.

“Is it all right if Jill and I go and get an ice cream cone?”

“If you want.”

“Can I have some money?”

“It’s in my purse. Get it yourself, baby.”

“Thanks.”

She heard her purse being unzipped and then a general jingling as her daughter pawed through it.

“Enough for a banana split instead?”

“If I’ve got it.”

“You do.”

Beverly heard a thump as Katy dropped the purse back to the floor and then the bed dipped as her daughter climbed up and kissed her on the cheek.

She smiled, her eyes still closed. “That was nice.”

“There’s more where that came from,” Katy said, and then she was gone.

Beverly drifted toward sleep.

I
should have told her to be careful,
she thought drowsily, and smiled at the absurdity of it.

Every day Katy braved the streets of LA, and she’d never had a problem she couldn’t handle. If the kid could survive that craziness, what was there to worry about in a small town like this?