So Close (26 page)

“Right, okay, well . . .”  I walked over to her.  “I’m sure it’s because of that.  I’ll talk to Billy.  He’s got a good head on his shoulders.  Let’s get some sleep and we can sort this out in the morning.”  I went to take her hand and she suddenly pounded the bed with her fists.

“No!  I can’t!  I won’t!  None of you have the right to ask this of me.”  She was rigid, her breath shallow.  “Just get them out.  And leave me in peace.” 

I stuffed a bag for both of them.  Weighing practically as much as me, Billy was the harder of the two to move and, for a harrowing moment, I doubted I’d be able to.  His head lolled over the seat belt, he watched as the town lights receded, the blackened farms on either side of the road enveloping us, leaving me with nothing to ground my racing thoughts.
Get them to my apartment—take it from there—to where? To what? 
What
was I going to do with them? 
I had a five am plane to board, an empty refrigerator to fill—a fucking husband to vet this with. 

              Ray Lynne moaned.

              “Hey, bunny.”  I checked the time, an hour more to Jacksonville.  “You’re in my car.  I’m taking you and Billy to my house for a sleep over so just rest your eyes, okay?  We’ll be there soon.”

              “My stomach feels bad.”

              “Bad how?”  I peered at her in the rearview.

              “Bad,” she repeated before vomit spewed from her mouth.

              I swerved to a stop.  Trucks whizzed by as I triaged the mess with Billy’s t-shirts and the water I’d picked up from the Renaissance Living home in Ft. Lauderdale at eleven o’clock that morning.  Then, as I helped her back into the car in a fresh pair of pajamas and swept her hair from her sweaty forehead, she threw up onto both of us.  Bright Nilla Wafer yellow.  For a second I was too stunned to move.  She began to sob for our mother.  My phone rang.  Mentally coming back to the scene, I leaned down to hug her against me, the sick gluing us together.  This was a terrible mistake.  I reached into the front seat for the phone.  “Grammy?” 

“No, it’s Lindsay.” 

Billy sputtered awake, his face contorting from the stench.  He groaned. 

“I was just going to leave you a voicemail.  You could have just let it go.  I didn’t mean to bother you.”

              “No—I’m—how can I help you?”  We were out of water, pajamas and Billy’s t-shirts.  Everything reeked.  Squatting like a duck next to the open side door I rubbed Ray Lynne’s shuddering back.

              “Well, it’s stupid, but—I hadn’t heard from Tom tonight and I was going to ask you to have him call me.  Y’all are still at the Breakers, aren’t you?”

              “No.  I mean, yes.  I mean, he is.  Should be.  Sorry, I might need to call you back—

              “Are you okay?” she asked with the taut alarm of a mother.

              “No,” my voice broke as Billy fumbled to push his door open to retch.  “I’m not.”

Pulling to a stop at my apartment complex, I left the kids asleep in the car and ran in to get a makeshift bed set up for them before they had to move inside.  Tugging out my keys from the lock, I was stunned to find Lindsay in my living room, making up my couch with flowered sheets.  She didn’t so much as blink at what I must have looked or smelled like.

              “I set our air mattress up in there for Ray Lynne.”  She pointed to my bedroom.  “And I brought a few of the twins’ stuffed animals to make it more homey for her, although she might be too old for all that stuff now.”  She gave a small smile.  “I figured Billy could take your bed so you could have a little space out here to collect yourself.  I stopped at the gas station for milk and cereal, the basics.  That should get you though the morning–”

              For a second I couldn’t take it.  The contrast between discovering that Grammy’s love was—as Delilah had always claimed—finite, and that Lindsay’s generosity was not—made me feel like I was disintegrating.  Lindsay Davis, still in her pajama top, stepped forward to take me in her arms and stand firmly without comment, judgment or need.  Like it should have been with my own mother but never, ever was.  And there was nothing, not one fucking thing that I would not have done to repay her.

Between my siblings, our MIA mother, and the woman I’d committed to “taking off the grid” getting Pax onboard for what happened next required serious selling.  I pitched him that a trip with Tom’s groupie could provide a practical solution to my suddenly overcrowded apartment and lack of childcare, offer us the honeymoon we no longer had to put off, and provide a fully funded, five-star, four-week break from the campaign—time together. 

Pax was convinced enough to meet up, but as the five of us were shown to the Kiawah Island Resort and Spa reception desk his jury remained understandably out.  Especially when I asked for his Amex.  “I had to give them back my corporate card, obviously,” I added, as if my assignment was standard campaign protocol.  By ‘them’ I meant Jeanine, who’d arrived at my apartment that morning to download logistics.  As she explained it, the resort was on the shore of a gated island community off the coast of South Carolina best known for its golf course, which meant the media was only allowed in for the PGA.  Cheyenne was due to deliver in four weeks, but could go earlier if I ‘offered her spicy food’ and ‘encouraged her to do aerobics’.  Above all I was not to ‘rock the boat’ or ‘shake the cage’ in any way.  “She wants a perineum massage you get out the lotion, just keep her off the 6 o’clock news, are we clear?”  When I asked her opinion of the situation Jeanine said it was an “irrelevant question” and the less we discussed it the better.  “We’re sending them receipts and they’ll reimburse me when this is over,” I reassured Pax as he reached for his wallet.

By ‘this’ I meant the tiny pregnant woman who we’d chauffeured from the Charleston airport.  Cheyenne sashayed around the lobby, an oversized straw hat flattening her blond bangs to her eyelash extensions.  Her Pucci caftan read like graffiti against the muted seersucker attire of the milling guests and about a hundred bangle bracelets on her stick-like arm served as an unintentional windchime as she bent to take in the sterling lemonade service.  “Love,” she stated to the concierge like a queen who’d stopped her hunting party to offer compliments to a peasant.  He managed a humoring smile. 

“Just had to get her here,” I murmured to Pax.  “She’ll do her thing.  We’ll do ours.”  From the moment she’d stepped off her flight from Chicago it was clear this was the cruise Cheyenne had been saving a lifetime for.  From the private plane to the mini ketchup bottles, everything delighted her at a voluble ten.  Until her alpaca blanket was ‘scratchy’.

Taking a sip of the complimentary libation, her regal composure once again tweaked.  “Uch.”  She clattered the glass on the marble side table.  “This is
way
too sweet.” 

              “Funny, I was just going to say the same about you,” Pax chided with a good-natured grin. 

              “I don’t want some stranger carrying in my jewelry.”  She pointed at the brass dolly ferrying in her things.  “You can do it.”  She eyed Pax before turning for the elevators.  “See you up there!” 

But she didn’t.  See us, that is.  Cheyenne was too busy criss-crossing the three bedrooms of our suite like a coked-up Goldilocks while we stood dumbfounded with the bellboy.  “This view of the beach is so glam—but the water pressure isn’t very . . . Oh, no, the bird print in here has to go—”

              “How do you know this chick?”  Billy finally spoke after a day of grunted responses.

              “I told you.  I work with her.  And her name is Cheyenne.” 

              “I like Cheyenne’s bracelets,” Ray Lynne threw in her two cents.

              “I’m home!” Cheyenne pronounced from the master bedroom before four pillows flew out the doorway in rapid succession.  “No synthetic inserts, thank you!”

I apologetically showed out the bellman and his armful of rejected hollowfil.  Billy had disappeared into one of the bedrooms before I could return and I didn’t have it in me to go after him.  Ray Lynne, dually pooped from a morning of being shuffled through lines, hopped on the couch where I helped her find the Disney Channel. 

With the kids squared away, I sought out Pax, who was setting himself up at the desk in our room.  We were
finally
together.  And in a hotel, no less.  This was our good familiar territory.  I went up behind him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.  “Hey,” I leaned into his ear.  “Can I make an appointment?”  He twisted his lips to mine as his cell chirped in his pocket.  “Cricket?” I asked.

              “I’ll call her later,” he said between kisses as he walked me backward to the door.

              “See?”  I reached behind to secure the lock.  “We just had to get them settled and—”

              “MANDY!” Ray Lynne screeched.

              “One sec.”  I squeezed his hands and sped out to the living room where Cheyenne was aiming the television remote with purpose.  She clicked to CNN then dropped it on the couch beside an outraged Ray Lynne.  “There.”  Tom’s face appeared and she lit up.  She spread her arms in front of the flat screen as if introducing us to God.  “
There
he is.”

“Yes, we’ve met.  Cheyenne.”  I stepped between her and the anchor giving polling updates I already had on my phone.  “Ray Lynne was just going to chill out for a little while so maybe we could—” 

“Oh no.  No.  Nononono.  We must give him energy,” she dismissed me fervently.

“I want to give energy to
Dog with a Blog
,” Ray Lynne clarified.

              Cheyenne picked up her sun hat, the brim of which could shade a helipad.  “Off to the pool!”

              “Oh, great.”  I grabbed the remote to change it.

              “Don’t.”  She spun back to me.  “I need to keep the connection strong.”

              “But you’re going to the pool.  Can’t you . . . connect from there?”

              “I’m pregnant,” she said like that answered that.

              “Yes.”

              “So I can’t carry a phone—or be checking my iPad—the radiation isn’t good for the baby.  This is how we stay connected, Amanda.  You’re not going to interfere with that are you?”  

              I couldn’t begin to know how to respond, which was just as well because she wasn’t asking a question.  She blew a kiss to Tom as he talked about healthcare and then repeated the gesture from her rounded abdomen.  “And follow up about the pillows, ’kay?”  She headed for the door.  “Once we’ve gotten our vitamin D I’ll be back for a nap.” 

              She left.  Ray Lynne looked to me.  I looked at the TV to see the tour stop that I should have been standing at, where a thousand penned-in people waved Davis-for-President signs.  I took Ray Lynne’s hand and led her to the room she’d be sharing with Billy.  “Where did your brother go?” I asked, finding it empty.

              “He left.”  She went over to the bed where he’d set out her stuffed raccoon.

              “Left?”

              “To check the place out.  That’s what he said.  Did you talk to mommy yet?”  She dropped her head on the duvet and held the remote out to me.  Grammy’d been right, Delilah’s phone was turned off.  I hadn’t even been able to leave a message. 

              “I’m sure I will in the next day or two.  Until then we’ll have a nice time here at this fancy place, okay?”  I found
The Dog with a Blog
and kissed her on top of her head.  She nodded as the show resumed, its tranquilizing effects setting in.

              I scurried back to Pax only to find him on our balcony, looking down in consternation.  He tipped his chin at the pool six stories below where the Lily Pulitzer set gawked at the woman trying out every deck chair/umbrella combination in search of the perfection she was due.   “Do we know Cheyenne got the off-the-grid memo?”

              “I assume so.  I mean, I’m sure she did.”  Honestly, I’d been so busy trying to get us out of the house while keeping my instructions straight that I had no idea
what
she’d been told. 

              “What, exactly, does she think we’re all doing here for the next four weeks?”

              “Well, he’s married, which she must know.  So she has to be hidden away to send him energy or something until she has her baby, at which point he can prove it’s not his.  I don’t know what he’s told her—”  My eyes landed on Billy surveying the pool in his “Beer Me” t-shirt.  Between his low rider shorts and scowling expression, he looked like he was about to hold somebody up.  “So, she thinks he’s taking care of her.” 

              “Until he can unload her.”

              “Look, Jeanine said the less we all talk about it the better.”

              “Why not just pay her expenses directly?  The Davises are well connected.  He could get a friend to give her money.”

              “Because he doesn’t want to make this any more complicated than it needs to be.”

“He’s asked you and, by proxy
me
to babysit a grown woman, that’s not complicated?”

“It’s not like I raised my hand for this assignment, Pax.  Look, he trusts me.  Me.  Mandy Luker.  Who used to sleep on the floor at campaign headquarters.  He’s now relying on me to keep this nutcase under control.”  I took Pax’s hands, tipping my face to catch his downcast eyes.   “I don’t think Lindsay’s doing well.  I don’t know what the stress of finding out about something like this would do to her, but I doubt it’d be good.  If I can help spare her that then I have to—I owe her so much.”  I kissed him as though the conversation had been concluded and grabbed my bag.  “I have to get Billy some Bermuda shorts and Cheyenne a golf hat before she takes out someone’s eye with that thing.  I’m going to sign Ray Lynne up for sand art or something.  And we should plan a fun dinner.  I think they have a barbecue on the beach.  Keep an ear out for Ray Lynne and please don’t touch CNN.  Sorry, thank you.  Love you.  Bye.”

It was a bust.  All of it.  A wild goose.  A greased pig.  Whatever you want to call it.  Cheyenne stuffed the visor in a trashcan as if I’d asked her to go Amish.  Billy threw his hands up at clothing he deemed “stuck up bullshit.”  And Ray Lynne ditched sand art to call a psychic hotline about Delilah.