Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (9 page)

I’m calculating in my head. What has it been since I left Ed… a week? I haven’t heard from him after I told him I was leaving for Florida, but then again I didn’t expect to.

He’s not the reaching out type. And I’m not the reach-able type.

I sigh.

My mother sighs, too.

“Is the spare key still in the garden frog?” I ask.

“I could look.”

“Can you just go in and walk around and make sure everything’s okay?” I ask, thinking about broken pipes or an oven left on. Then I think, what if Ed didn’t just leave, what if something happened to Ed, and he’s in there buried by marbles… decomposing… or something. “Um, mom? Bring someone with you, okay? Mr. or Mrs. Salli? Someone.”

“Okay dear, I’ll go later this afternoon, after my doctor’s appointment.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. How are you doing down there?”

I haven’t called her since I moved out of my father’s condo.

In some lonely way, I know my parents still love each other. Although I know my father has dated some, nothing has lasted. And my mother, well… “I can’t DATE,” she tells me. She says the word like it’s the sticky fruit and not the verb.

“I got my own place,” I tell her.

“Oh, that’s good.”

“It’s little,” I say, searching around for an accurate adjective. “I started working. Dad gave me an office.”

I can almost hear her eyebrows going up. “Well, you know. Uncle Paulie’s watching out for me. I had dinner with him and Tweenie last night.”

“That’s lovely,” she says. She worries about me being alone.

“Tweenie’s nice.”

“I think so too,” she says.

“I met some of my neighbors.” I smile. “I live in a retirement community.”

“Isn’t that fun,” my mother says.

We’ve always been close, my mother and I. I can feel the concern bursting at the seams of her little sentences. I nod my head. “What do you think happened to Ed?” I ask her.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“I should call him,” I say.

My mother is silent.

“I don’t want to.”

She stays silent. She’s really got this mothering thing down.

“Let me know if you find out anything,” she says.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“Bye sweetie, I love you, too.”

I press Ed’s name on my cell phone contact list before I have time to think about it and chicken out. It rings and rings, then I get his voice mail. “Ed, it’s me. My mother went by the house and it didn’t look like you were there. I was worried. Call me. Let me know what’s going on. Please,” I say. “Mrs. Salli has the mail,” I add.

Dreamer pads into my office, plunks herself down under my new chair. “Good thing I didn’t leave you behind, huh?” I tell her. “You’d be living with Mrs. Salli.” Nothing wrong with the Sallis, they’re just neat-nicks. Mrs. Salli told me once that I should vacuum Dreamer every day to suck all the loose hairs out so she didn’t shed. “You’d be hairless by now,” I tell her.

I can’t imagine Ed leaving his house. It was always HIS house. He’d owned it for six years before I even met him. It was probably a bad idea to move into an established territory like that, but it made sense at the time. He had inherited the house from his uncle and it was all paid off. It was a 50’s house, a stone front, all plaster walls and hardwood floors inside, rounded archways leading to small rooms and tiny closets. It was charming in a kind of Hansel and Gretel way before he started burying us in all of his collections. I can see him abandoning me and our marriage, but not abandoning the house and its contents. Especially the collections. What’s wrong with that picture? Still, I hope nothing bad happened to him.

I press his name again on my cell phone contact list. This time I leave a message that says, “My mother’s going to break into the house to look for your dead body, so you better call me back,” which really makes no sense at all.

Time to get to work, such as it is.

I get my surveillance kit together. I bought a child’s suitcase the other day. It was just the right size and it had compartments and straps to keep things organized and secure. I put in my camera, zoom, binoculars, tape recorder, bottle of water and power bar. It fits perfectly, except when I pick it up, I feel like I’m carrying my travel Barbie case. If it wasn’t pink retro flowers, maybe I wouldn’t have this issue.

Dreamer’s in the back seat. It looks like rain; it feels like rain. The whole sky seems to be drooping.

I’ve got the AC on, and Dreamer’s snoring mildly, steaming up the windows. I drive to Fred Davis’ house, the alleged insurance fraud guy, and I park across the street in a Mr. Speedy Printer’s parking lot behind a big bush. We’re fairly well concealed, but, if I crane my neck, I can see Fred’s home—a small mint green bungalow with jalousie windows and a corrugated metal roof. The yard is chain link fenced and patchy with one tree that looks like a giant pineapple squatting in front of the door. There’s an old swing set in the backyard with one broken swing. A black Buick Riviera circa 1980 is parked in the driveway. The neighborhood is mixed residential and commercial. Halfway down the block there’s a Quickie Stop and a gas station. “An American neighborhood at its finest,” I tell Dreamer. We settle in to watch. I figure I’ve seen this a million times on TV, how hard could it be?

There’s a blue light flickering from one of the windows. Daytime TV. We wait an hour. Just then, the front door pops open and a guy and a woman come out and get into the car. A dog that looks like a Rottweiler pushes his nose against the front door window. “That’s a big dog,” I say.

The guy, who IS Fred Davis, (I compare his face with the photo in the file) has a big metal brace on his leg, like a shiny cage with straps and he walks on it without crutches. I take a couple pictures of him walking. He’s a big guy and his button down shirt is unbuttoned and he’s wearing camouflage cargo shorts. He looks like he has a tattoo of a dog on his chest. He gets in the driver’s seat of the car, and his girlfriend who is about six feet tall and a hundred pounds, sashays into the passenger side. It takes her awhile to get herself in, because she’s wearing a cut off shirt with long fringe and beads that keep getting in the way of her closing the car door. I start the car, but I don’t go anywhere. They drive halfway down the block and I’m about to follow, but they turn into the Quickie Stop. I stay where I am idling. Ten minutes later, they drive back. They have two clear plastic bags. I use the binoculars. One has a carton of cigarettes popping out of the top. The other looks like it’s stuffed with a package of Oreos, a bag of Cheese Doodles and a bottle of Jack Daniels. It’s 10:30 a.m. It looks like they’re spending the disability money on a daytime party. The door closes behind them.

In a half hour, Dreamer has to pee. We walk toward Fred’s house. When we get to the chain link fence, barking erupts from the house. I hear a couple curses, then the door swings open. The dog explodes from the house and hurls itself against the chain link fence spraying drool. Dreamer and I both jump back. Dreamer says, “Moof?” Fred Davis is standing in the door watching and laughing. He’s holding a glass of Jack Daniels in his hand. His face is red. And, he’s standing without his brace.

I quickly pull my camera out of my sweatshirt pocket. My hand is shaking. I kind of aim the camera at him and shoot. Maybe I get a couple pictures of him, I don’t know. His face gets instantly wild. I pull Dreamer and we run back to the car.

In a second, he’s out of his house and opening the gate. I hear the dog coming after us. We have a little bit of a lead, but Dreamer is not so good at climbing into my Pathfinder. She actually can jump in just fine, she just pretends that she can’t. She puts one front paw up and then the next and then she likes to have her whole back end boosted in. It’s a game for her.

I yank the back door open and she places once paw up when I hear a yell and a car screech behind us. I don’t stop to look. I grab Dreamer’s butt and I throw myself (and her) into the car pulling the door shut behind us. She flies forward and her rear quarters accordion into her front quarters and rise up so that she does a little hand stand on the back seat. I’m upside down on the floor. She looks back at me surprised at how quickly it all occurred.

I hit the lock button on my keys. I scramble into the front seat. A car is stopped in the middle of the street and some guy is yelling at Fred Davis and his dog. But Fred Davis and his dog are paying no attention to him. They’re on us. He’s pounding on my car. The dog is trying to eat my window. Fred Davis is cursing at me. He’s climbing on my windshield trying to break through the glass with his fist. “Holy wow,” I say.

I turn the key and back up fast. He’s still clinging on. I click on my windshield wipers. Fred Davis grabs onto them and slides back and forth across my windshield like he’s doing the wave. I crank up the speed of the wipers and Fred’s body swishes violently back and forth. Why doesn’t he let go? I slam on the brakes. Fred Davis is almost flying he’s wipering so fast. I squirt the wiper fluid. I keep my hand hard on the squirter. The wiper fluid spritzes out merrily.

He reaches up with one hand to wipe his eye, and I slam on the gas and accelerate forward. Fred Davis slides sideways off the hood like he’s going off a waterfall. I hear him land with a PFUT! “If he didn’t have an injury before, I think he’s got one now,” I tell Dreamer.

I do a screeching turn on two wheels and exit the parking area as expeditiously as I can. I go over a bush and a curb, but I don’t flip the car, which is good. Dreamer looks out the back window with bland curiosity. I get a few houses down the street and pull to the side to look back too. Fred Davis, Mr. Indestructible, is standing in the road gesturing and yelling. The dog seems to be nodding in agreement. I take a picture of them. This one probably won’t come out because my whole body is shaking wildly.

Squirt looks up when I walk into the office.

“Hmmm, hmm, hmm.” I hum like everything’s fine, and I didn’t just almost windshield-wiper some guy to death. I go into my office, close the door, and take out my camera. I can’t wait to see what I got.

There’s Fred Davis smiling, standing without his brace, clear as day. The next photo is kind of sideways, but it doesn’t matter. I got him. “Ha!” I say. My father’s right; I should hate this job. But, I don’t. It’s like exercise. You suffer when you’re doing it, but when it’s over—whew, you feel alive. You feel great. My endorphins are doing back flips.

My cell phone rings. It’s Ed. “I’m in Hawaii for a week,” he says.

“So, your wife leaves you and you go to Hawaii?” I ask.

“Well, you’re in Florida.”

He’s right.

He says, “I’m not dead. So tell your mother not to go in my house.”

“My?” I think. “Why didn’t you stop the mail?” I say.

“I forgot. It was spur of the moment.”

“You’re not a spur of the moment person,” I tell him.

“Now I am,” he announces.

“You’re not a vacation person,” I say.

“I’ve changed,” he says. “You were holding me back.”

“I was holding YOU back?” I can’t believe it.

“I took this ‘Positive Healing’ course in Hawaii. It’s all about changing your perspective and how that changes your life. I learned how to meditate.”

“You?” Ed is a heating and air conditioning guy. He’s always been suspicious of things like feelings.

“You blocked my energy,” he tells me.

“What energy?” I say.

“You didn’t love me enough,” he says.

I’m ready to fire back at him, but I hesitate. He’s right. I didn’t love him enough. I don’t say anything.

He hangs up on me.

Chapter 17

When I get home, I sit in my cardboard chair and Dreamer curls onto my feet. I think about my marriage, think about what went wrong, but all I keep getting is this image of Ted and Fritzie—two people in their Lazy-Boy recliners—dying simultaneously.

“NOW, he’s taking vacations?” I ask Dreamer. “What happened to Mr. I-only-like-to-sit-in-front-of-my-computer? What happened to Mr. Marbles, Mr. Sinkers, Mr. Rubber Band Balls?”

Dreamer glances at me. “Remember how you used to bite those rubber band balls, and they’d break off in your mouth and zap you?” I tell her. She looks down.

“He probably met some young chick,” I say. Ed really is a very handsome man; women were always looking at him. I grit my teeth. It’s not that I’m jealous exactly. It’s just that it pisses me off that he has the nerve to be different… NOW… after I left. But, then again, “different” is a perfect adjective for how I’m living too.

I call my mother and tell her to forget about Ed and his house, not to go over there, not even to drive by anymore. “It’s over, Mom,” I tell her.

“But I care about him, Lola. He’s my son-in-law.” My mother works at relationships. She never liked Ed much, but she worked at liking him. I think I might have done the same thing.

“Not for too much longer,” I tell her.

∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

Joe’s happy hour party is already in full swing when Dreamer and I get there. The Chinese lanterns are twinkling and Rosemary Clooney is playing on the stereo. There are already people milling about on Joe’s patio eating hors d’oeuvres. Joe is wearing a red checked apron over a Hawaiian shirt, and he looks downright festive.

He whispers to me, “Welcome to the blackmailing party. These are all the people Ernie worked for. “He looks around. “Maybe he blackmailed one of them…”

“What?” I say. “I thought this was a welcome to the neighborhood party?”

“That too.”

Then he scurries away.

George is here with his parents. “Welcome, neighbor,” he says and smiles. The Mean Muumuu lady and Ramrod nod at me. “I don’t know if you’ve met my mom, May, and her husband, William.” We shake hands. Oh, I think, William must be a step-dad.

“Can I get you a drink?” I ask them. They are empty handed. “We don’t believe in alcohol,” William says looking at George.

“A coke?” I offer.

George nods for them. “I’ll take a beer,” he adds.

I go to the bar. There’s a round patio table with an umbrella set up with bottles and ice and a very short, very old lady standing behind it wearing a cowboy hat with gold braid. “What can I getcha?” she says smartly.