Mrs. Million (4 page)

“I always liked Art. We went out once. He was a perfect gentleman.”

Mary Beth nodded. “That was always his problem.”

Barbaraannette laughed.

Mary Beth drained her coffee cup. “Are you ready?”

“Ready? For what?”

“It’s Saturday, dear. Did you think I dropped by simply to chat?”

“Oh!” Barbaraannette had completely lost track of time. Saturday was the day she and Mary Beth visited their mother, Hilde Grabo. “Did you call her?”

“An hour ago. She should be expecting us.”

Barbaraannette nodded. The phone call made it more likely that Hilde would recognize them this time, but it was no guarantee.

H
ILDE GRABO LIVED IN
a small apartment in the Bluebird wing of the Crestview Retirement Community. She had her own small kitchenette, sitting room, bedroom, and bath. Every morning at 8:15 a young woman knocked on her door to make sure she had not died in her sleep, and every evening another young woman dropped by to make sure she had successfully fed herself. And if she failed to emerge from her apartment during the day, a young man who called himself the “activity director” would call to ask her why she hadn’t shown up to work on the Crestview Peace Quilt, or missed the croquet tournament, or the Thursday Bird Walk, or whatever horrifically boring “activity” it was that she had managed to avoid.

Hilde found it all quite amusing, even on those days when she could not seem to remember why or when she had checked into this peculiar hotel.

On her clear days, Hilde enjoyed writing limericks and reading her favorite publications—
Cosmopolitan
and
Vogue.
It was important to stay abreast of modern fashion trends. She wished she could get out shopping more often, but it seemed as if every time she tried to go, one of the hotel staff interrupted her, insisting that she work on that silly quilt or something. When she called a cab, the cab never came.

She had slipped past them once and borrowed a car, but when she got to Harold’s Fashions, the manager—a rodent-mouthed little twit less than half her age—had refused to let her in, bringing up those ridiculous accusations of shoplifting. It was embarrassing. True, Hilde had on occasion forgotten to pay for a few items, but she was no shoplifter. That chinchilla coat they’d caught her with, well, she’d tried it on and simply forgot to remove it. And the tubes of lipstick in the pockets, what was that? Four or five tubes. That was all. When one bought as many outfits as she had over the years it was natural that one might neglect to pay for a few items. She’d given Harold’s plenty of business. It was the height of insolence for them to squawk over a few lousy lipsticks and a coat.

Hilde Grabo had tried her best to instill her sense of style in her three daughters. For the most part she had failed. Her oldest, Mary Beth, appreciated quality tailoring but chose to dress with the humorless severity of a modern-day Carry Nation. And poor Antonia, though she tried so hard, always looked as though she had one idea when she began applying her makeup, but a completely different notion by the time she stepped into her shoes, like a cross between the young mother she was today and the punk rocker she’d been a decade back. Hilde worried about Antonia. Twenty-eight years old and the girl still chewed on her thumb and never left the house without at least one button missing. If she ever became famous—although why that might ever happen Hilde could not imagine—Toagie would rocket right to the top of Mr. Blackwell’s worst-dressed list.

But it was Barbaraannette who had provided Hilde with her greatest fashion triumphs and disappointments.

Hilde was paging through the February
Vogue
when she came across a photo spread of Khristianya, a statuesque ice queen recently imported from Latvia. Khristianya wearing fur and lace. Khristianya wearing a ruby-sequined cocktail dress. Khristianya wearing a linen, silk, and alpaca suit. Khristianya, looking very much like Barbaraannette had once looked, except for having green eyes instead of blue, and being narrow-faced and thinner and taller.

Hilde looked up from her magazine.

“Speak of the devil,” she said. “Barbaraannette, I was just thinking about you!”

Barbaraannette smiled. She had such a beautiful smile, but she was not wearing a spot of makeup, not even lipstick. Her outfit, some sort of sweatshirt with a big loon printed on the front and a pair of khaki slacks, concealed her figure as effectively as a gunny-sack. And those shoes! Like something a foot doctor might prescribe. A far cry from the old Barbaraannette.

Hilde heard a flinty voice: “Mother, we’ve been sitting here talking to you for the past ten minutes.”

“Mary Beth!” said Hilde. “I was thinking about you, too!” She put her hands on the arms of her chair and straightened up, gaining a few inches in altitude.

“I am sure you were, Mother.”

“Well then!” Hilde crossed her arms and composed her face. “And have you girls been behaving yourselves?”

“Mother, we are grown women,” said Mary Beth.

Hilde frowned. “Of course you are.”

Barbaraannette said, “Hilde, did you know I won the lottery?”

Hilde felt her mind spin free for a moment, then experienced an almost audible clunk as concepts meshed and formed complete memories. Of course she knew! Barbaraannette had won millions of dollars! She’d seen it on TV. It was all the other hotel residents had been talking about. Hilde’s daughter had won the lottery!

“That’s nice, dear,” she said.

“And she’s offered a one-million-dollar reward to get her worthless runaway husband back,” interjected Mary Beth. “I was hoping you could talk some sense into her, but maybe this isn’t a good day.”

Yes, Hilde recalled as more veils lifted, she had heard about the reward. She had actually seen Barbaraannette, her own flesh and blood, smiling on the TV screen, wearing lipstick for once. A million dollars to get that man back, that Bobby Quinn. That certainly had set the old biddies buzzing around their silly Peace Quilt!

“It’s a
fine
day,” Hilde said. She shook her finger at Barbaraannette. “Shame on you, Barbaraannette! Making a public spectacle that way. Why, with a million dollars, you could wear anything you want. You could have that mole removed.”

Barbaraannette hunched down in her chair, assuming the same stubborn defensive posture she had invented at the age of three. Mary Beth put on a grim smile and sat back.

Hilde said, “Mary Beth, dear, would you excuse us for a few moments? I need to have a talk with your sister.”

The moment Mary Beth left the room, Hilde’s demeanor changed. Her shoulders relaxed and her mouth widened and opened to show a set of bright white dentures. She winked at Barbaraannette.

“That girl is a trial, I swear. Has she been giving you a hard time, Babba?”

“She’s just worried about me,” said Barbaraannette.

“She worries about me, too, dear. Frankly, it’s a pain in the bejeezuz.”

“She thinks I’m making a big mistake, trying to get Bobby back.”

“Is that what you think?” Hilde’s eyes crackled with alert intelligence.

Barbaraannette had seen these changes in her mother before. The sudden transitions from apathetic vacuity to steely alertness was not typical in Alzheimer’s patients, but neither was it unheard of. Her doctor said Hilde might swing in and out of the world for months or years, with each visit becoming more brief. It was sad and disconcerting, but Barbaraannette had resigned herself to her mother’s fate.

The other change—from finger-shaking authority figure while in Mary Beth’s presence to relaxed co-conspirator the moment Mary Beth left the scene—had been going on ever since Barbaraannette could remember. Hilde Grabo became a different mother for each of her daughters.

“I don’t know what I think, Mama. I just did it. Didn’t plan it. You know how it was when Bobby left me. I hired that private detective to find him, but that just cost me money I didn’t have. I mean, I know there was no way we could have spent the rest of our lives together, but I thought, you know, another year or two. I just wasn’t ready. He left without a word and I felt like I’d failed. Like it wasn’t finished.”

“You always did like to finish things. From when you were three. I never had to tell you to clean your plate.”

Barbaraannette nodded. “As soon as I realized they were going to put me on the news…I just thought that would be the way to get him back. I didn’t think about what I’d do after. I mean, if somebody finds him.”

“You didn’t?” Hilde was smiling.

Barbaraannette blushed. “Well, I thought about a few things. You want to know something, Hilde? I’ve been faithful to that man, not that he deserved it.”

Hilde’s smile broadened. She sat back in her chair. “You, Barbaraannette, you are a case. Twenty years now I’ve been laying awake nights worrying about your sister Antonia and all the time it was you should have been keeping me up nights.”

“You think I’m an idiot.”

Hilde said, “Idiot? Sweetheart, I understand completely. You don’t have to be an idiot to be stupid over a man. You know, your father was a lot like Bobby.”

“Like how, Mama?”

“You don’t remember him, do you, honey? See, Sammy, he came between poor Edward, God rest his soul, and Anthony Alan, Antonia’s father. You understand, there were nine long years there with only Mary Beth for company. I know you understand, dear.”

Barbaraannette nodded. This was no surprise. Her mother made no secret of Barbaraannette’s origins. Her father, according to Hilde’s most oft-repeated version, had been a disreputable sort, a gambler she had met in St. Paul and lived with, on and off, for three years. She had heard the story several times, but she had never before heard the legendary Sam O’Gara compared with Bobby Quinn.

“What do you mean, he was like Bobby?”

“Well, sweetheart, Sammy wasn’t as tall as Bobby, nor as good-looking. He was a small man, truth be told, but he was a man with big ideas. You know what I mean, dear. He had big ideas in the right places. He knew how to treat a girl. I was just crazy for that man.”

“Why did you leave him?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t know. I was busy with you and your sister, too busy to take care of a man as well. I bought you that little red dress on your third birthday. You looked so cute in that dress. And then I met Anthony Alan. It wasn’t so long ago, was it? You were a beautiful child, Barbaraannette.”

Hilde smiled, remembering Barbaraannette in her red birthday dress. She thought she had a snapshot somewhere, but where? She had a lot of snapshots someplace. In a closet, if only she could remember which one. Which house. She turned her head to ask Barbaraannette where all her snapshots had gone, but instead of Barbaraannette she found a smiling young man sitting at her bedside holding a clipboard.

“Where did you come from?” she asked. The man was wearing a teal-blue golf shirt that did not go well with his complexion. The name “Reed” was embroidered in white on the left chest of the shirt.

The man’s smile wavered. “Do you mean, where did I grow up?”

“You just walk into a woman’s room? What kind of manners did your mother teach you, young man?”

“I, um…Mrs. Grabo, we were just discussing this evening’s croquet tournament.”

Hilde frowned. “Where’s Barbaraannette?” she demanded.

“Your daughter?”

“Of course she is.”

“I’m sorry,” said the young man, and he really did look sorry. “Both your daughters left about twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh!” said Hilde. She thought for a moment, then smiled slyly. “Would you like to hear a limerick?”

The young man said, standing up, “Maybe I should come back later—”

Hilde recited, before he could reach the door,

“There was a young lad in a pickle

Cuz he sat on his favorite testicle

He said, while it smarts

In my tenderest parts

It’s better than breaking my dickle.”

“Uh, I’ll stop back later, Mrs. Grabo,” said Reed as he closed her door.

Hilde giggled. Now, what had she been thinking about?

I
’M THIRTY-FOUR AND ONE
third years old, Art Dobbleman thought. Six feet four inches tall, one hundred seventy-six pounds. My car has eighty-six thousand, two hundred eleven miles on it. Last month I wrote four hundred sixty thousand dollars in retail loans. I’ve been working at Cold Rock S&L for nine years and four months. I wear size thirty-six trousers, a forty-four jacket, and I have twenty-eight teeth. My golf handicap is an embarrassing thirty-three. I made forty-one thousand dollars last year. I have been married once, divorced three months, and I am sitting in my car waiting for the woman I have loved for twenty years to come home so that I can lend her one million dollars to help her find her husband.

With his right hand, Art took the web of skin between his left thumb and forefinger and pinched, grimacing. He squeezed until his thoughts shattered and tears spurted from his eyes, held it for an agonized count of ten, released his grip with a blinking gasp. Galvanized, he yanked open the car door and got out and climbed over the snowbank, rubbered shoes sinking into the crumbly gray ice, overcoat flapping in the brisk wind, briefcase held high for balance. Art made his way up the walk to Barbaraannette’s front door, his vision spotted with floaters in the bright sun. He lifted the back of his coat and sat on the landing. The concrete felt warm with stored sunlight, and the house blocked the chilly wind. He set his briefcase down, rested an arm on it, stretched his long legs, and began, again, to wait.

Was this better than sitting in his car? Yes, he decided, because now he had, at least, acted. When Barbaraannette returned he would have no choice but to talk to her, even if she was accompanied by the formidable Mary Beth. Art shuddered. Hilde Grabo’s three daughters-known locally as the Grabo girls, despite the fact that all three girls had been christened with different last names and then renamed themselves again with marriage—each excited in him a powerful emotion. Mary Beth, whose steely, square-jawed appearance somehow managed to understate her strength of will, excited in Art a primal, hindbrain terror—the sort of raw, unintellectualized fear one might experience when confronted by, say, an approaching tornado. Certain Cold Rock residents referred to her as the Iron Matron, but not Art. Where Mary Beth was concerned, he preferred not to take chances.