The Merchant of Menace (6 page)

She was able to get her groceries in record time and even made it home before the bags of ice started melting. To her surprise, Mike was awake, dressed, and watching for her. He brought in the bags of food and put the ice in the basement freezer while she set everything out in the order she was going to need it. "Mike, I need a favor. I have two hams ordered and ready to be picked up. I've already paid for them. Could you run and get them from the ham shop?”

While he was gone, she started cooking. She filled several disposable aluminum pans withpackaged scalloped potato mix, added thinly sliced red and green pepper rounds, and topped them off with extra
cheese. No room in the
fridge for them until it was time to put them in the oven, but she'd cleared a space in the garage, put down brown paper, and they could sit there under foil keeping cool until later. She threw together the five-bean salad, tossed it with the dressing, and added the big bowl to the garage stash of food.

The cats were charmed by this unusual activity. Jane noticed them watching her and laid a cardboard box over the food.

When Mike returned with the hams, she asked him to take them to Shelley's. "They're going in her oven this afternoon since I don't have room," she explained. "Oh, and take along the parsley to decorate the plates. God, I'm good, aren't I?”

Feeling devastatingly domestic and terribly smug, Jane took on the dining room. She'd already struggled to get all the table extensions put in place, which hardly left room to squeeze around the end of the table, and had put the big red tablecloth and centerpiece in place. Now she put out the sturdy paper plates (she'd sprung for far more than was sensible for them because she loved the colorful wreath pattern around the edges), cups, and plastic silverware. She fished around in the drawers of the china cabinet for hot pads and scattered them artistically.

Jane closed the door on the dining room after a last, admiring look, to keep the cats and Willard out of the room, and she tackled the broccoli.

“Anything I can do?" Mike asked, coming in the kitchen door. "By the way, Mrs. Nowack said parsley is passé and she's doing a pineapple and Chinese mustard sauce for the ham."

“Parsley is passé? How dare she?" Jane said with a grin. "I'm the hostess with the mostest today."

“Be careful," Mike said, pouring himself a soft drink and sitting down at the table.

“Of what?"

“Of getting too cocky.”

Jane went on cutting broccoli flowerettes. "Are we talking about me or you?"

“Me, I guess," Mike admitted. "School?" Jane asked.

“Yeah. Do they send my grades to you, like they did in high school?"

“Either that or you'll send them to me. Won't you?”

He nodded. "You're not gonna like them much. All C's, unless some instructors take pity on me."

“Oh, Mike," Jane said, knowing she sounded terribly disappointed in spite of her resolve to be supportive. "You were a straight-A student in high school."

“Yeah, but I knew why I was doing it. I was working at getting A's so I could get into college and now I'm there and don't know why. See what I mean?"

“Not exactly."

“I don't know what's next… why I'm doing this… where I'm headed."

“But you know wherever you're headed you need a college degree to get there.”

“Sure. But in what? One of my nerdy roommates knows he wants to be an accountant so he's taking all these math and business courses besides the basic stuff and he's acing everything. Mom, he doesn't know the difference between a fork and a spoon, but he knows what he wants to be. Another one is taking all this science stuff and likes it so much he wants to talk about it all the time. Genes and DNA and that. I'm just taking all this dumb college freshman stuff. English, algebra, earth science. I've already aced those in high school."

“And now you're getting C's in the same things? They're that much harder?"

“No, the courses aren't hard at all. In fact, some are a lot easier than high school. It's just 'cause they're so boring. I want to be really, really interested in something. I want to be like John, spouting about double helixes because I think they're so neat I can't keep it to myself."

“But Mike, you're interested in — and knowledgeable about — a lot of things."

“Uh-huh. Too many. I'm pretty good at sports, but I don't have dreams about making touchdowns. I can play a couple instruments, but I'm not good enough to make it my life's work. I know all the grammar rules and have big chunks of
Macbeth
memorized, but you can't make a living with that stuff. Besides, I don't want to.”

Jane dumped the broccoli flowerettes into a bowl and started peeling the stalks and cutting them into slices. "Okay, I'm getting the picture. Yesterday I was asking Shelley for advice and she said she'd like to be the wise woman and give it to me, but had none. I feel sort of the same way. But I do have a few suggestions.”

“Yeah?"

“First, get the grades in the dumb courses u "Yeah, I know that. I will. Piece of cake, really."

“Second, get it out of your head that you have to decide right now what you're going to be for the rest of your life. You've got at least two years before you have to even pick a major — and even then you can change it. Third, go get the college catalog. I saw a copy in your room when I was cleaning it up after Thanksgiving."

“Why the catalog?"

“Because I want you to go through it and mark the weirdest courses you can find and take at least two of them every semester. If they're upper level and you can't actually enroll for credit, at least you can audit them. It doesn't matter if your first two years of required courses take two and a half or three years. There's enough money in the trust I set up for you with your dad's life insurance money to spring for an extra year if you want.”

Mike went upstairs with what Jane imagined was a little bit of a spring in his step. He returned to the kitchen with the catalog open. He was laughing to himself.

“Here's a good one. 'The History of Armor: From Leather to Kevlar.' "

“Sign up for it," Jane said, dumping the broccoli stems in the pot of water that was now at the boil.

“Omigawd!" Mike exclaimed. "How aboutthis one: 'Mortuary Science: Chemistry, Cosmetics, and Counseling.' I can't believe it."

“I sure hope that's not something you'd take and want to blab about at home. Although it would probably go over great in a dorm.”

Mike found courses in gender bias in the military, an art class called "Color and Psychology," a history class titled "Catherine the Great: Was She?", a course in flower arranging ("Flower arranging?" Jane exclaimed. "Are there parents actually paying for their kids to take that?"), and several revolting-sounding premed courses.

“Mom, you're great!" Mike finally said. "Even if I don't take any of this stuff, you've sure made me feel a lot better." He bounced off to his room, still flipping through the course catalog.

Am I great?
Jane wondered.
No, probably not.
But she was doing her best and if her best was just making her son feel better about himself, that wasn't too shabby an accomplishment. And who could tell — it might turn out that Mike would actually want to be a mortician, or an armor-maker.

She tossed the broccoli flowerettes into the steamer sitting over the boiling stems and started the white sauce.

Jane went
on checking off items on her oh-so- efficient list. By three o'clock she was feeling that hosting the caroling party was no big deal and with a little organizational effort, she could entertain more often. Possibly quite spectacularly.

She managed to put out of her mind the many other times she'd believed herself to be highly organized only to discover that she'd omitted some vital consideration. Once, with a houseful of people, several of whom had occasion to use the bathroom, she'd run out of toilet paper. Another time she prepared to start the coffee for a party as the first guest arrived and realized the coffee can contained only a few disgusting crumbs. On both these occasions Shelley had bailed her out.

But this time, she truly believed she was prepared for anything that could happen.

She was wrong.

At quarter after three, Mel called. "I've just picked my mom up from the airport and she's dying to meet you," he said. "Is this a good time?”

Jane had never really wanted to meet Mel's mother. He always spoke of her very fondly and Jane could find no specific fault with what she'd heard about Addie VanDyne. It just amounted to a vague uneasiness.

But she said, "It's a perfect time. I don't have to put the potato casseroles in until—" She consulted her list. " — five-fifteen.”

This didn't make much sense to Mel, but he didn't question her. "I think we may have a slight problem," he said. "I'll tell you about it when we get there.”

In her current cocky mood, the concept of a slight problem didn't trouble Jane. She was Woman, she could cope. Little problems were mere trivialities: She quickly threw together a big green salad. This was marked as a four o'clock job, but it probably wouldn't wilt too badly if done a bit early. She glanced out the window while tearing lettuce and noticed that it had begun to snow again. Big, fluffy white flakes that were quickly covering the ground, but melting on the street. If it didn't get a lot colder and glaze over, the snow would be nice, adding a very traditional Christmas touch to the party.

She refreshed her hair and makeup, changed into a fresh blouse and slacks because she'd inexplicably gotten tomato juice and seeds all over herself.
They ought to be here any minute,
she thought as she sat down in the living room to wait, idly flipping through a holiday crafts magazine while she tried to remember what she knew about Mel's family and why she had a sense that she and Addie weren't going to be on exactly the same wavelength. Mel didn't talk about his relations very often. His father had died young and his mother, if Jane was remembering right, had started an escort service in Atlanta. Not
that
kind of escort service, he'd hastily explained. A real one, driving visiting celebrities and rich business types around town. Ted Turner's television network had been God's gift to her. She invested in a limo and did the driving herself at first, then as she became more successful, she purchased more cars and hired drivers. She had eventually expanded the service to a number of Southern cities, franchising the business and traveling frequently to keep a close eye on the efficiency, courtesy, and driving skills of the drivers and the manner in which the home offices were run.

An admirable woman, Jane had thought. But now that she was about to meet Mel's mother, she had a few uncomfortable second thoughts. Jane herself had been widowed with young children and hadn't done anything nearly so impressive or financially aggressive. Thanks to life and mortgage insurance, and her own and her late husband's investment in his family's small chain of pharmacies, the profit from which hadn't died with him, she'd been able to be a stay-at-home, full-time mother. She had no regrets. Raising her children was a job that was both challenging and important to her and she felt she'd done it fairly well so far.

And her contribution to the outside world was substantial as well. She volunteered for a great many worthwhile endeavors. Once a week she drove a group of blind children to their special school that had no bus service. She served, albeit unwillingly, on the PTA board and had often allowed herself to be dragooned into being a room mother. She worked for her church and several charities and had served on the fundraising committees for a number of civic groups. But all of that might well appear pretty inconsequential to a woman who had started a highly successful business from scratch.

She heard Mel's red MG pull into the driveway — she
had
to get that pothole at the end of it fixed soon or his little car would disappear into it someday. She had visions of firemen lowering rope ladders into the hole. She opened the front door to greet them.

The snow was getting heavier and Mel introduced his mother while they crowded into the house, shaking snowflakes from hair and shoulders. "Mom, this is Jane Jeffry. Jane, my mother, Addie VanDyne.”

Jane was stunned. The woman hardly looked more than a couple years older than Jane herself. She had masses of curly dark hair; a valentine-shaped face without a single wrinkle that Jane could see; small, sparkling white teeth and big china-blue eyes. She was — well, there was no other word cute, in a very expensive, sophisticated way. She wore a black cashmere coat, black patent boots, and the same elegant black gloves Jane had wanted to get Shelley for Christmas but simply couldn't afford. As Addie Van-Dyne shed her coat, she revealed a slubbed silk princess-line suit that precisely matched her eyes and did wonders for her perfect figure. She even had a dimple, just like Mel's, which en- hanced the impression that she might just be a slightly older sister instead of his mother.

Jane wanted to run away and burn her own khaki slacks and plaid shirt.

She hung up their coats and indicated they were to make themselves comfortable in the living room. As she closed the closet door, she noticed there was an unfamiliar suitcase sitting in the hall. Mel must have brought it in. Dear God, Addie VanDyne hadn't brought them presents, had she? This possibility had never crossed Jane's mind. She'd prepared for the visit with a nice bottle of perfume and an elegant little atomizer in an Erte-like design which was wrapped in fancy red foil for Mel's mother, but that was all.

Jane had coffee and tea ready to put into the antique, but somewhat shabby, slightly dented silver service that had been a wedding present from her grandmother, and she'd arranged a plate of cookies — good ones, not the deformed elves. She filled the tray and took it into the living room.