Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (7 page)

I was getting mad, the way my child had been manipulated.

“So first she stops at Kroger's to get the ingredients to her ‘Grandpop DeWitt's Power Punch.' It's like her favorite beverage and this is what it is, Dad, you're not going to believe this. It's lime sherbet, three packets of grape Kool-Aid, and ginger ale. You put everything in a blender. We get to her house and she makes this famous ‘power punch'—it's supposed to have vodka, too, but no we didn't, you should see your face, Dad—and it is disgusting and I don't see how vodka would make it any better—not that I'd know, Dad, so relax.”

I had swung my legs off the bed. “Are you telling me Phoebe drinks?” I know teenagers drink. But the girl had my daughter in the car.

“I'm telling you that according to Phoebe, when Grandpop DeWitt makes his power punch, he puts vodka in it. That's what Phoebe says. So maybe that's true and maybe it's a lie, how am I going to know?

“Then Phoebe's stepmom comes into the kitchen and sees the glasses of power punch, and she sees the sherbet container and the empty Kool-Aid packets on the cabinet, and she slaps her chest and staggers back like she's having a heart attack and she says, ‘You have broken a hard-and-fast.' You would have thought she'd found us cooking meth in her kitchen. She goes running out screaming for Phoebe's dad and I grabbed a paper towel and I swept the whole mess into the garbage can. Phoebe said to leave it—her stepmom was always on about something, but Alex helped me and we had the countertops scrubbed and the blender rinsed and draining before her stepmom got back dragging her dad to see what we'd done, not that we'd done anything. Alex and I couldn't even drink the stuff, ours went in the sink, but Phoebe sucked it down like it was a Vanilla Frappuccino after a day in the desert. My mouth was practically black from the one swallow I took.” Jo gave a shiver of distaste. I knew the shiver was for the drink but I got up and draped her quilt over her shoulders. She was still damp with sweat and the air conditioner was on.

“Her dad gets her stepmom calmed down, he says, ‘We've got an audience here, Liz,' meaning me and Alex, because, yeah, embarrassing. Turns out Liz is way diabetic so she doesn't keep sweets in the house. That's what the Kool-Aid and sherbet fit was over, which, okay, I get that but then she also adds that she doesn't want obese children. She said that right out. I don't want obese children either, but I don't go around saying, ‘I
don't
want
obese children
!'”

That last was done in a dead-on mimicry of Lizabeth, complete with hands on hips and head cocked.

“And then. Then Phoebe takes us up to her room, and gives Alex the whole ‘Story of Phoebe's Tragic Life,' which I've heard before, twice, and she was all serious and crying and we were holding her hands because even though I
hate
Phoebe Pickersley, I wish she were
dead
—”

I was off of that bed in a flash, “Jo!”

“You know what, Dad? Mrs. Thompson says I have a right to my feelings.”

“Not those feelings, you don't. Not ever. Don't you ever let me hear that kind of hatefulness coming from one of my girls. You're working for the wrong side when you talk that way. I mean it.” Jo had shocked me. There are lines we can't cross when we choose our road—Jo had crossed one.

Jo hid her face behind her hair and her hands. Baby Bear had roused himself when I raised my voice. He tried to push his nose between her fingers and when he couldn't, he snaked his tongue through and licked whatever he could reach.

“Dad,” she said through her fingers.

“I mean it.” My heart was thumping.

“I know. But I didn't. I only said it. It came out, is all.” Her breath caught.

Okay. I needed to calm down. I can overreact sometimes. I sat on the edge of her bed and heard it groan under the combined weight of Jo, Baby Bear and me. I gave Baby Bear a shove and he dropped reluctantly to the floor. He thought he should be the one up there comforting Jo. He thought he would do the better job. He probably would have. I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze.

“I don't care what Phoebe's done. I don't care what she has said. How we treat other people, that's about who we are,
what
we are, not who they are. You are called to be better than those words.”

“I
know
, Dad. It was a figure of speech, okay? I didn't mean it.”

“Words have power.”

“I
said
I didn't mean it.”

“Phoebe's had a hard time since moving here.”

“Dad. I was about to say that Phoebe isn't totally awful because her life does stink, and if she's telling the truth, it's all her stepmom's fault because she got pregnant with Toby and Tanner when Phoebe's dad was still married to Phoebe's mom—”

“Now, now, Jo—”

“All over again, I'm feeling sorry for her—but who knows if she's telling the truth? Because, Dad, I don't want her dead, but that girl is a bald-faced liar!”

Ahh, gee. You know, in this case, I really hoped Phoebe was a liar. I did. Divorce is wrenching and complicated no matter the factors, but to have your dad start a new family before he had stepped out of the first, that's harsh.

“When did Phoebe lie to you?”

“She has, that's all! So then she starts on how classical ballet is a dead art, with nothing new to say and no new way to say it, and I was selling myself body and soul to an arcane system. What does ‘arcane' mean, anyway? And why would anyone give up a boy like Alex to go practice toe points . . .”

Jo got up, quilt about her shoulders, and did a spastic parody of
en pointe
. “She did it like that. I said I
wasn't
giving up Alex and she smiles like a nutria with a can of drippings and says if I go away for the summer, maybe I
am
! And Alex smiled! But I'm
going
, Dad, I'm
going
! This has been my dream forever.” And there were tears.

I held my arms out. “Come here, baby girl.” I wrapped my arms about my daughter, picked her up, quilt and all, and settled in the rocking chair in her room. I'd rocked her in this very chair when she was first born. Rocked Merrie in it, too. Baby Bear roused himself to stand next to his mistress, pushing at her with his wet nose and rumbling his concern.

I said, “Jo, Phoebe is a hungry, hungry girl. I think she's been hungry a long time, hungry for the things you have and she doesn't. I don't blame her for that. She's lost her mom—”

“I don't think Phoebe's mom was a good mom.”

“Jo, most
any
mom is better than no mom.” I gave her a little shake. “You
are
going to New York. You are going to take the opportunity that you have worked so hard for and God made possible for you and that your mom and I are paying out the nose for.” That got me a muffled giggle. “I think Alex has better sense than to choose Phoebe over you just because she's available and you're away. But if he doesn't, then that boy doesn't deserve you, you hear me? If Alex is that dirt stupid, I don't want to know him.”

Still muffled, “He's not stupid, Dad.”

“I know it, baby.”

“He's really, really smart. He might make valedictorian.”

“I think he's a smart boy, Jo.”

We rocked in silence for a while. Jo pulled the blanket over her head to shield her face from me.

“She said something else. After Alex got picked up. I should have begged a ride home but Phoebe made such a big deal.”

“What did Phoebe say?”

Silence.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Long silence, then, “No.”

I pondered on that.

“Did she tell you she came by to see me today?” I asked.

Jo lifted her head. “She said
you
saw
her
.”

“Is this the ‘lie' you've been talking about? When you say Phoebe is a liar? Let me tell you about the visit.” A long pause, and I could hear the
chimp, chimp
sound that meant Jo was biting off slivers of fingernails, then I felt her head nod against my chest.

I didn't go into detail, but I told her the gist of it, and I made sure my daughter knew that Phoebe Pickersley had not been alone with me for one second when Rebecca couldn't see us both clearly.

Jo sat up. Her precious face was tearstained. “I knew it, Dad. When she said you came on to her . . .”

I groaned. “Did she say that, Jo? Those words?” Those words could end a man's career if he's in the ministry.

Jo thought. “She said it without saying it.”

“Implied,” I said

“I slapped her face, and grabbed my bag and left.”

I groaned again. I should have gotten pencil and paper and started making a list of all the apologies and explanations I was going to have to make tomorrow.

“You slapped her? Josephine Amelia—”

“The Bible
says
there is a time to throw stones. I only slapped her.”

“That's ‘cast away stones,' Jo. And that doesn't mean bounce them off someone's head. If I hear about you hauling off and whacking someone again, we're going to have to—”

“I'm not going to tell you stuff if I get in trouble every time I do.”

Okay. That was fair. It was why, for eighteen years, I never told my mother a thing. I'm still careful what I say around my mom.

I said, “Sorry.”

“It's okay.”

“But you will try to keep your temper, Jo?”

“I was trying when I slapped her.”

“Explain the coming in through the window part.”

“I didn't have my key—”

This had to be the fifth house key Jo had lost. “Jo,
why
didn't you have your key?” I got an eloquent shrug in reply.

“—and I didn't want to wake you and Mom up, and I can get in through my window perfectly well . . .”

“Okay. Get up now, you're getting too big for this old man. Here's what we're going to do. You take a quick shower and get in bed. You'll never sleep if you go to bed with dried sweat all over you. I'm going to go have a bowl of cereal and I'll come back up when I hear the water turn off. I'll tuck you in. Okay?”

Baby Bear accompanied me downstairs and we each had a bowl of Cheerios. I gave Jo five minutes after I heard the shower stop, and then we went upstairs. We found Jo smelling like peaches and peppermint and tucked under her covers. I knelt next to her bed and put my hand on her wet head.

“Okay. How could you have handled the situation differently? In a way that wouldn't get you grounded?”

“Am I going to be grounded?”

“Yes. Tomorrow you're grounded to the house. Do you know why?”

A sigh. “Because I slapped Phoebe.”

“No. I'm not happy about that, but I won't ground you for it since you told me about it yourself. Try again.”

A bigger sigh. “Because I walked home by myself.”

“Bingo. At two in the morning. You know better, Jo.”

“Dad, I had to get out of that house.”

“You could have called me on your cell and waited at the door. It would have been hard. I know it. Instead, you made what Nana would call a ‘grand gesture.' But, Jo, it's not more than six or seven years since a girl only a few years older than you got murdered out here.”

“Dad—”

“Bad things happen.”

I got a bleak “Okay, Dad.”

“You have to stay in the house or in the yard all day unless you're with me or Mom.” I then relented. “But I don't mind if you have a couple of friends over.”

We hugged and I said her prayers with her. We haven't done that in a hundred years, had bedtime prayers together. I hoped she still said them when I wasn't there to make sure. Baby Bear circled the rug and lay down with a “whumpf.” I went downstairs to bed. I knew I would have to go see Liz and Mark tomorrow.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

I don't remember you losing your house key all the time. Jo has lost her house key again. Do you have a suggestion?

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Go to Lowe's or Home Depot. Make a dozen keys. Give Jo a new one and mail one to me, too. I lost mine at the meet last week.

Four

T
he next morning I filled Annie Laurie in on the night's activities—those that had gone down while she was sleeping the sleep of the just.

“I'm coming with you,” she said after hearing that I thought I should go see the Pickersley-Smythes.

I told her she didn't need to. Mark and Liz were reasonable people and I wasn't expecting a problem.

Annie banged her mug down on the counter and had to wipe up the coffee that sloshed out. “You should be. If Phoebe is going around telling people you made advances to her, no one's going to be feeling very reasonable about that, Bear. If I come it will keep things calmer. I guess I'd like to think Phoebe wouldn't make any wild allegations in front of me, so there's that, too. Give them a call and see if they can see us in about an hour. I want to talk to Jo and get my own take on things and then I want a shower.”

•   •   •

About an hour later I pulled out of the garage and Annie grabbed something from the garage freezer before slipping in next to me. She waited expectantly, and when I didn't back the car out, she looked at me.

“What?”

“What's that?” I gestured to the foil-wrapped package inside the Ziploc bag.

Annie waited a beat, her eyes on mine. “What has it been the last four hundred times I've pulled a package like this out of the freezer?”

“Pound cake.”

“It's pound cake this time, too.”

“Liz is diabetic,” I said.

“Oh, shoot. That's right. Okay, then, Mark and the kids can eat it.”

“Annie, there's no sugar in the house. It's a hard-and-fast.”

“It's a wha . . . oh, forget it.” She opened the car door and took the five steps to toss the cake back into the freezer. She stared into the interior for a moment and then slammed it shut. Once back in the car, she slammed that door shut, too.

“We're going empty-handed, then. I sometimes have some cheese straws frozen but there have been three showers over the last month and I'm flat out.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It would have been nice,” she said. “It's hard for people to get mad at you when you've handed them a homemade pound cake.”

I smiled as I turned the corner. Pound cake diplomacy.

The Pickersley-Smythes don't live far from us, you can walk there in fifteen minutes if you take the greenbelts that cut across neighborhoods, or detour across the golf course. It's about ten minutes by car. But it's a different neighborhood and the homes cost more than three times what ours would sell for—and we couldn't afford our house if we had to buy it at today's prices.

Their two-and-a-half-story red brick wasn't one of the biggest homes in Sweetwater. It was an older home—by Sugar Land standards. The landscaping was mature and the oaks full grown and you would have had trouble believing that where the house stood there had once been fields of rice—when I was a kindergartener, that's all there was out here.

We sat in our car for a moment before we faced the Pickersley-Smythes.

“Do you want to say a prayer, Bear?” Annie said.

“I've been praying ever since I woke up this morning. Let's get it done.”

Liz met us with a smile, which was a better start to this meeting than I'd hoped for, and showed us into a small sitting room that held a love seat piled with decorative pillows, two chairs, a low table and about four hundred pictures of Toby and Tanner being blond and photogenic. There was a white Persian cat sitting on the love seat. He slipped out of the room when we came in.

I said, “Is Mark here, Liz? Could he join us?” Because I only wanted to tell this story once.

“When we saw you drive up, he went to wake up the girls.” Liz made a small adjustment to the bowl of roses on the table. “They were having so much fun last night, we let them sleep in. Teenagers.” She smiled, the picture of the calm and indulgent mother.

Annie looked at me and I hesitated and we heard a tumble of steps down the stairs followed by Mark's more measured tread. Toby and Tanner burst into the room.

“There's no Jo,” said one of the three-year-olds, hopping to a stop at his mother's knees. He was pleased with himself—the first to bring this unexpected news. Liz licked her thumb and wiped at something invisible on his immaculate face.

“Jo gone,” said the other, confirming the news. “Phoebe is still sleepy.” He put his hands together, laid his head on them and made a snoring sound. His brother gave him a push, but he ignored him, snoring louder.

Mark came into the room, smiling, but looking puzzled.

“Hey, guys—I don't know where Jo's got to. I checked the bathroom, too.”

The first twin said, “Jo gone! Jo gone!”

Annie said, “She's home, we—”

Now the second twin joined in on the chant, “Jo gone! Jo gone!”

Mark said, “You picked her up early? Then—”

“Jo gone!”

“The girls had a disagreement last night,” I said. “That's why Annie Laurie and I wanted to—”

Liz's smile had stretched and thinned. “This can't be over that blender mess, can it? I explained to Jo that we have a hard-and—”

“Jo gone!” They were accompanying themselves with a hop-kick dance step.

“No,” I said.

Mark corralled the twins. “Go ask Phoebe to put on
Bob the Builder
for you. Tell her Daddy wants her to get dressed and come down.”

The boys ran off singing or screaming the theme song, “Bob the Builder—Can we fix it? Bob the Builder—yes, we can!”

Mark sat down across from us and laced his fingers over his stomach. “What's up, Bear?”

Liz kept her smile, but you could see it was a struggle. She spread her hands on her thighs and leaned toward us. “I may have upset Jo a little bit when I found the kids messing around in the kitchen, I—”

Mark put a hand over hers. “That's not why they're here, Liz. It's not about the Kool-Aid.” He didn't take his eyes off me.

I cleared my throat. Annie gave my knee an encouraging squeeze. I said, “Yesterday Phoebe came to see me at the church.”

“What time was this? Before they went to the movies?” Mark wanted to know.

“It was before lunch—”

“During school hours, then?” His forehead was puckered.

“Yeah. She said she wanted to talk to me, which, of course, was fine, I was happy to, ah . . . See, church policy is that I don't meet with women, ah, girls . . .”

Annie said to Liz, all woman to woman, “Bear doesn't meet with any woman one on one—I mean, there's a couple of rooms up at the church that are soundproofed, so what you say is private, but they have a glass wall so nobody can misinterpret what's going on. Or Rebecca, you've met Rebecca, haven't you, Liz? Rebecca will stay in the room with Bear and whoever.”

Mark said, “Phoebe wanted to talk to you about what?”

I said, “When Phoebe said she wanted to talk to me—”

“What did she want to talk to you about?” said Mark. “Is something wrong?” He turned to his wife who had gotten very still.

“Well, we never quite got there, because . . .” I stopped because I could hear someone on the stairs, a slow, soft
thump thump
. We all waited.

Phoebe slouched into the hall, looked in at us. Her eyes were smudgy with makeup, but I was glad to see her cheek didn't bear the mark of Jo's slap. She wore a pair of crumpled boxers and a green T-shirt that had
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON
printed in white across the chest. After a quick scan, she turned away. She stood with her back to us, her hands on her slim hips. Phoebe gave a gusty sigh, and said, “What?” It looked like she was asking the dining room.

Mark said, “Phee. Come in.” She didn't move but Mark waited and she finally turned around and made it as far as the doorjamb where she propped her lean frame. She looked at no one, her arms were crossed and her thin, white hands cupped her elbows.

“I thought Jo was going to spend the night?” her dad said.

“She changed her mind.” Her eyes flickered over the pictures of her half brothers. I didn't see any pictures of Phoebe displayed.

Mark said, “Why did she change her mind? And what did you go up to the church for? What did you want to talk about? Is there something wrong? You haven't said anything to me.”

Phoebe gave me a slow look. In it was a lot of anger over yesterday's humiliations and my dismissal. I was about to pay for that ineptitude—I could see it coming and I started to lift myself out the mass of cushions I was sunk in.

I opened my mouth to tell Mark and Liz what Phoebe had said to Jo, my idea being that it would be better for them to hear it from me first, for me to meet this head-on, but Annie Laurie gave my knee a restraining squeeze, and I sat back down. My course wasn't clear enough for me to override her.

Annie said, “Phoebe?” Phoebe looked at the ceiling with its ten inches of crown molding. “Jo came home with a wild story. I wonder if she misunderstood you? Jo can be so dramatic, and she doesn't always stop to think.”

Phoebe looked at me again, and her eyes narrowed. I thought,
Here it comes
 . . . but then her eyes met Annie's.

There was no accusation in Annie's eyes, no mockery, no dare. Annie's eyes were grave but open and loving. Phoebe met them full-on. The anger fell away and what I saw in Phoebe's face then was grief. Another loss, this substitute mother who had been put out of her reach because of my careless girl.

Phoebe's head dropped. “She could have misunderstood.”

“Misunderstood what?” said Liz. I think Liz had been afraid this was going to be about her—some revelation that Phoebe could use to put her difficult stepmother in as uncomfortable a position as Phoebe had been put in, living in a home that wasn't her home, second always to the beautiful twins. If what Phoebe told Jo was true, if those boys had been on their way before Mark had ended his marriage to Jenny, then Phoebe certainly had the ammunition.

“I hope you don't feel like we've mistreated you, Phoebe, that we haven't been fair to you,” Annie said.

That was a judicious word choice—if Annie had said “kind,” I don't know how we would have come out of this, because neither Jo nor I had been especially kind. Only Annie had truly been that.

“What did you see Bear about?” Mark said again.

Phoebe shifted her weight and colored. She opened her mouth, but I cut in.

“Mark? Can that be private? I want Phoebe to feel like she can come see her minister”—keeping it on a professional level, there—“when she wants to. That okay?” I smiled at Phoebe. Her face stayed neutral—I was all good with neutral.

Mark glanced at Liz, but he didn't wait for her yes or no. “That's fine, Bear. I'm glad she has you to go to.”

Considering how I had handled her first visit, I was certain it would also be her last. I don't know how else I could have handled what happened yesterday, but there had to have been a better way. I smiled, slapped my thighs and stood up.

As we said our good-byes, the boys streamed down the stairs and hung on Phoebe's arms. They wanted another
Bob the Builder
show and they wanted Phoebe to watch it with them. Before she could escape with them, Annie Laurie stepped over to Phoebe and put her arms around the girl, drawing her close. Phoebe was taller than Annie, but Annie held her tight and rocked from side to side for a minute. Very slowly, Phoebe put her arms up and hugged Annie back. Annie whispered something in Phoebe's ear, then pulled back and held Phoebe's shoulders so she could look the girl in the face.

“I mean it, now, you hear me?” Annie said. Phoebe's eyes shone with tears. She nodded and then climbed the stairs with Toby and Tanner.

Liz followed us out the door, her smile overbright.

“Well. A lot went on in there but I still don't have a clue what. I've got to tell you, Annie Laurie,
I've
never gotten a hug from that girl. I've poured money into her, tried to take her shopping, but she's never given me so much as a smile or a thank-you, not unless Mark drags it out of her.” Liz stood in front of her beautiful home, trim and toned and dressed like a woman from a catalog. And completely clueless.

Annie laughed. “She didn't give me a hug, Liz. I took it.” And then Annie put her arms around Liz and took a hug from her, too. Liz's arms hung straight at her sides until it was almost too late. Just as Annie Laurie was beginning to pull away, Liz's arms came up and she clasped Annie to her hard. Annie's face went soft.

“It's going to be okay, Liz. Everything's going to be okay,” Annie said.

We didn't know it as we drove away, but Annie Laurie was wrong. Everything was not going to be okay. Everything was going to fall apart.