Puppet (27 page)

No, Florida is her home now, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. It has everything, Amanda tells herself, slipping her overnight bag off her shoulder and stretching
the muscles in her neck before repositioning the bag and continuing down the street. It has sun, even though she avoids it with almost religious fervor; the ocean, although she rarely goes to the beach and certainly never swims in the dangerous water—think of the sharks and the sea lice and the invisible undertow, not to mention the occasional oil spills that pollute the sand and tar the bottoms of your feet; shopping malls, even though they’re filled with the same stores you can find anywhere, one shop looking pretty much the same as the next—hell, the Eaton Center is as impressive as any of them; culture—just think of the Kravis Center and the Royal Poincianna Playhouse—all right, so Toronto’s theater district is second only to New York’s, so what?; art—yes, there’s the wonderful Norton gallery, and some truly fabulous art shows and lots of charming little galleries, but if she sees one more ceramic frog, she just might scream, I mean, really, how can they call that art? “What am I doing?” Amanda demands, the words sliding out of her mouth into the cold air, like children on a sled, so that she can almost see them written on her breath. “I love ceramic frogs.”

Besides:

What Florida doesn’t have: her mother.

What Florida also doesn’t have: Ben.

Isn’t that why she went there in the first place?

Amanda continues south along Palmerston toward Harbord, wondering why she didn’t tell the cabbie to let her off directly in front of her mother’s house. “Because some things you have to lead up to gradually,” she says into the collar of her coat. “Some things you have to take nice and slow. Fools rush in,” she whispers, smiling at an elderly man gingerly making his way along the icy sidewalk.

“Damn winter,” the man grouses audibly as he passes.

“Damn right,” Amanda agrees, soldiering on. And while we’re at it—damn Ben, damn her mother, and damn Jennifer. Where did that woman get off, anyway? With her sleek, modern hairdo and flawless complexion. Planting a preemptory kiss hello on Ben’s cheek. Not to mention that totally unnecessary kiss on the lips as she was leaving, as if to say, He’s mine now.
Call me later?
Whose benefit was that for? Certainly not Ben’s. And Ben’s response?
Absolutely.
Was he really so easily fooled? Couldn’t he see that behind Jennifer’s calm, competent exterior was … what? A calm, competent interior? So what? Who needs calm and competent when you can have competent and chaotic? What’s more fun anyway? Damn it. Ben couldn’t be in love with this woman.

Unless he was.

Amanda kicks at a mound of snow, watching it disperse like baby powder. And so what if he’s in love with Jennifer? What possible difference does that make to her? The fact that they were once husband and wife—briefly, when they were way too young, when they had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives, let alone whom they wanted to spend them with—doesn’t give her any residual claim to his affections. Nor is she interested in staking any such claim. She’s only feeling this way—what way exactly is she feeling?—because of circumstance. As soon as she gets back to Florida, these feelings for her former husband—what feelings exactly?—will disappear. She’s only feeling this way—what way?—because she’s confused and vulnerable and not used to men who say no.
You can’t stay with me, Amanda
, he’d told
her. Although it was possible he’d been about to change his mind.
Maybe
, he was saying, just as calm, competent Jennifer appeared on the scene.

Maybe what?

“Guess we’ll never know.” Amanda stops in front of the brown brick house with the bright yellow door. We may never know a lot of things, she thinks, walking toward the front steps that are all but buried beneath a small mountain of snow. She treads carefully, feeling for the concrete with the toes of her boots. We may never know who John Mallins really is, or why he had plastic surgery, or who this guy Turk is, even if it’s obvious that her mother knows.

I’m sorry I was such a bad mother to you, Amanda.

What the hell does
that
mean?

Amanda shuffles through the snow on the landing, stopping at the front door, as if waiting to be admitted. It’s not too late, she is thinking. She can still turn around, hail another taxi, hightail it back to the downtown core, find a hotel,
any
hotel, even the Metro Convention Center, maybe call Jerrod Sugar again, ask him if he’d like the pleasure of her company for a night or two.

Sure, she thinks, shrugging off the memory of their last encounter, although in truth, she remembers little of that night except for the way it ended. She was too drunk; he was too eager; the whole thing was over too fast. Or maybe not fast enough, she amends, smiling at the memory of Ben’s unscheduled visit, the way he came knocking on her door in the middle of the night, pushing himself into her hotel room over her objections, then flipping on the lights. And then—the startled look on his face when he realized she wasn’t alone,
the surprise in his eyes giving way to … what? Anger? Disappointment? Regret?

What might have happened that night had Jerrod Sugar not been in her bed?

“Guess we’ll never know,” she says again, fumbling inside her purse for the key to her mother’s house. Why did she let Ben talk her into staying here? Yes, it was silly to spend money on a hotel when her mother’s house sat empty, and, yes, it would give her another opportunity to search through her mother’s things at a more leisurely pace. After all, their previous search had been rather perfunctory, and in light of everything they’d discovered in the last twenty-four hours, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to go through the house again more carefully.
You never know. You might find something else
, Ben had said before putting her in the taxi and telling her he’d speak to her later.

Call me later?

Absolutely.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Amanda mutters as she unlocks the front door, pushes it open, and teeters over the threshold, as if she were standing on the edge of a dangerous precipice.

Well, what are you waiting for?
she hears her mother shout from upstairs.
Either come in or stay out. Don’t stand there letting all the cold air inside.

The cold air was always inside, Amanda thinks, carrying her overnight bag into the front hall, and kicking the door closed with the heel of her boot.

Suddenly her father is walking toward her, his index finger held tight against his lips, urging her to keep her voice down.
What are you doing?
he whispers.
You know your mother is resting.

“She’s always resting,” Amanda says now, as she protested then, her eyes following the memory of her father as he turns his back on her, leaving her to tend to her mother. “That is, when she isn’t killing people.” Amanda laughs, the giddy sound spiraling through the empty house, bringing another shout from her mother, another plea from her dad.

She kicks off her boots and hangs her new parka in the hall closet, then walks into the living room, absently running her hands across the yellow-and-gray-print sofa that occupies much of the small room. Tiny little dots inside tiny little triangles inside tiny little squares, the pattern repeated again in the trim of the two yellow chairs on either side of the fireplace. A fireplace that was rarely used, Amanda remembers, admiring the towering plant in the far corner of the living room, recalling Corinne Nash’s admonition that someone should probably water the plants.

She plops down in one of the chairs, stares through the delicate white sheers drawn across the front windows to the street beyond. As a child, she was never permitted to sit in this room, let alone play in it. No, if she wanted to play, she was supposed to go down to the basement, where any noise she might make wouldn’t disturb her mother. Amanda never liked the basement. It was cold and damp and dreary, even with all the lights on. And sometimes there were shadows that scared her, even though her father told her there was nothing to be afraid of.

Once, when she was down there, she’d found a bunch of old hand puppets. Someone had tossed them in a box behind the furnace, and their faces and clothes were so dusty they made Amanda sneeze when she fitted them
over her hands. So she brought them upstairs and washed them carefully in the sink. But that made the sink filthy, and she knew her mother would get angry when she saw the mess, and it was important not to make Mommy angry or upset her in any way—wasn’t Daddy always telling her that? But Daddy was at work, and Mommy was sleeping, and the puppets looked so much prettier now that they were all cleaned up, surely her mother would see that. Although their hair was still a mess, it could use a good cutting. And she knew where her mother kept her scissors, although she couldn’t trim their hair here, not in the kitchen, where her mother might hear her moving around, and it was too dingy in the basement to do the job properly. But the living room was just right. There was carpeting to muffle her footsteps, and the light from the windows so that she could see, and besides, she wouldn’t be very long. And maybe when she showed her mother how nicely she’d cleaned up the old puppets, her mother would stop being so sad, and maybe she’d smile and be happy, and then Amanda might even put on a show for her with the puppets, and her mother would laugh the way Amanda remembered she used to laugh. Yes, there was a time when her mother used to laugh, she reminded herself as she carried the puppets into the living room and set up a little impromptu hairdressing salon, and proceeded to cut the dolls’ hair, watching the yellow threads scatter across the gray carpet, like flecks of gold dust. And now she’d make her mother laugh again.

Except that her mother wasn’t laughing. She was crying, and yelling, and hurling the dolls across the room with such fury that the plastic head of one of the puppets
was completely severed, its freshly cut hair spraying out in all directions.
What have you done?
her mother was sobbing, over and over and over again.
What have you done? What have you done?

I just wanted to make them pretty
, the child Amanda whimpered in response, grabbing her stomach and turning away from her mother, doubling over at the waist, as if she’d been punched.

What have you done?
came her mother’s only response.
What have you done?

“What have I done?” Amanda asks now, jumping to her feet. “What have
I
done? Goddamn it, I was six years old. I was a child.”

Not for long, she thinks, deciding she can’t stay here after all. She marches back into the foyer and pulls on her boots, then retrieves her coat from the closet, the back of her hand brushing up against something cold and hard. Pushing aside several of her mother’s coats and jackets, she finds a brand-new shovel with a bright red handle, the price tag still dangling from its thin, wooden neck. Never been used, Amanda thinks, pulling it out of the closet and examining it. No—her mother was too busy shooting people to have time to shovel snow off her front steps.

“What the hell? Might as well do something useful with my time.” Amanda removes the price tag—$19.95 from Home Hardware—and steps onto the front porch, leaving the door open behind her as she slides the shovel under the snow and drags it across the concrete, before tossing the snow toward the front lawn. She works steadily, one shovelful of snow quickly replaced by another. Within minutes the landing is clear, and she moves on to the stairs, scraping the shovel along each step until they are free of
snow. The walkway is more difficult, the snow more compact, and several times she almost slips on the ice. By the time she reaches the sidewalk, her face is wet with perspiration and her back is filling with unpleasant twinges. What she needs is a hot bath, she decides, remembering Ben’s earlier admonition:
Take a hot bath, order room service, and get some sleep.
Sure thing. “What the hell am I doing here?”

“Excuse me,” a voice calls from across the street.

Amanda looks toward the sound. What Amanda sees: a young woman in a raccoon coat and black, fur-trimmed hat standing in the middle of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry? Did you say something?”

The woman looks both ways before crossing the street. Amanda estimates that they’re about the same age, although it’s impossible to make out exactly what the woman looks like beyond her full cheeks and small, turned-up nose, the tip of which is glowing bright red, like Rudolph’s. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my grandmother saw you from across the street and got very agitated. She insisted I come over here to find out ‘who’s the woman shoveling Gwen Price’s snow?’ ” She nods toward the house behind her.

Amanda looks at the house across the street, then back at the young woman standing in front of her, watching the years fall away from the woman’s face, until she disappears into a slightly pudgy, apple-cheeked little girl with big brown eyes and an eager smile. “Sally?”

Wariness replaces curiosity. “Do I know you?”

“It’s Amanda. Amanda Tra—Amanda Price.” The name feels foreign on her lips, as if it belongs to someone else.

“Amanda! Amanda, oh my God. Amanda. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I mean, considering … I assume you’ve heard about my mother …”

“Yes. I can’t believe it. How is she?”

“Holding up okay,” Amanda says. Better than okay, she thinks. “How are you?”

“I’m good.”

“And your grandmother?”

“Not so great.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What isn’t?”

Amanda pictures old Mrs. MacGiver, with her gray hair and blue-veined hands. She always seemed ancient, even when Amanda was a child. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, what can you do? She’s eighty-six.”

“Does she still bake?” Amanda remembers the lemon cake Mrs. MacGiver brought over after her father’s death.

“Not so much anymore. Mostly she just sits in her room and watches TV. But will she consider selling the house and moving into an assisted-living community, which would make life easier on everybody?” The question hangs in the air without completion, the ensuing silence all the answer necessary.