The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (32 page)

Almost like a vision, I recalled the sight of his face tilted away from me, uneasily, hiding something he didn’t want me to see. The sound of his voice came as clearly as if he were speaking once more that phrase I’d heard so many times.

I’ll save this for later, when I can really enjoy it.

“Oh no!” I said aloud, and got to my feet.

I walked to the little chest beside the bed where Chester always hid the gifts I brought him. I opened the drawer and looked inside. The huge pile of green-and red-candy wrappers was right on top. He’d made no attempt to hide what he’d done. He knew I would find them. At last, he’d wanted me to know.

The scent of sweet chocolate filled the air. He had saved every Snickers bar and enjoyed them all that one last night.

A
S
I
STOOD
shaking hands on the front porch of my house, the hot sun of an August afternoon wilted me. The man beside me, Edmund Crowley, executive director of Friends Resource, didn’t seem to even notice the heat. He was as excited as a kid at Christmas.

“It’s a great opportunity for us,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for our clients. And I have every reason to believe that it will be a financially prosperous venture for you as well, Ms. Domschke.”

“Yes, I think so,” I told him.

The sound of an approaching automobile caught our attention and we both turned to see an aging Toyota sedan pull into the driveway. Shanekwa was behind the wheel.

As she got out of the car, she was grinning broadly.

“We couldn’t miss the opening,” she called out.

Mario, the huge bouncer-looking assistant chef at Le Parapluie, emerged from the passenger side of the vehicle.

“And what’s a welcome celebration without something to eat,” he added.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, surprised and delighted.

“Frederic bought all the food,” he said. “Shanekwa and I just donated our labor.”

“That was very kind,” I said. “And terrific of you two.”

He glanced over at Shanekwa, who was retrieving a sandwich tray from the backseat.

“I’ll get that, honey,” Mario told her. “Go on inside to the air-conditioning.”

“I’ll carry this one,” she told him. “But I’ll leave the rest to you.”

“I can help,” Mr. Crowley volunteered and headed to the car.

“How’s your love life?” I asked Shanekwa as we greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek.

The young woman blushed.

“Oh, I guess about like yours,” she answered, a teasing glint in her eyes.

“Glad to hear it,” I told her. “He seems like a good guy.”

Shanekwa nodded. “Just when I’d been thinking there weren’t any left.”

Mario brushed past us, his arms loaded down. “Are you leaving, Jane?”

“Yeah, I need to get back to the store.”

Shanekwa gave me a look indicating she didn’t quite believe me. I let Mr. Crowley get by us and safely into the house before I explained myself.

“When I’m around, Mr. Crowley focuses totally on me,” I told her. “I want today to be completely about the kids, I mean the
clients.
”

She nodded slowly, giving me an admiring look. “How is it that you always seem to know the good thing to do?” she asked me.

Her words elicited a big laugh.

“I only wish I did, Shanekwa,” I said. “Most of the time I’m as clueless as everybody else.”

From the kitchen, Mario called out, “Honey, get in here with those sandwiches before you all melt.”

I winked at her. “See you soon,” I promised.

She went inside and I headed toward my car. I opened the driver’s-side door and slid inside. The interior of the Beetle was hot enough to roast a pig. I opened the sunroof, to let the worst of the heat out, and turned on the air-conditioning, optimistic that it might be almost comfortable by the time I reached my destination.

I had just backed into the street when a white Lexus SUV, which I immediately recognized as Mikki’s, pulled up in front of me. For a moment I was puzzled. I couldn’t imagine what David’s new wife might be doing here. Then as I glanced at the woman behind the wheel, my curiosity dissolved into full-tilt thrilled!

I shut off my engine so quickly the little Volkswagen jumped at the clutch. A second later I was out of the door.

“Brynn! You’re home,” I said, hurrying to her side.

My daughter hugged me with surprising enthusiasm.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. “You look great.”

She was looking very chic and very grown-up, herself. So I returned the compliment.

“When did you get back?” I asked. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I flew in yesterday,” she answered. “And I tried to call. They said our number here has been disconnected. Did you, like, forget to pay the bill? And I’ve left a half-dozen voice mails on your cell phone.”

I was immediately contrite. “Oh, I’m sorry. The mobile is probably at the store somewhere. I can’t remember to keep it charged up, so I never bother to carry it.”

She nodded as if she understood. But she was looking at me as if she clearly did not.

“How was Italy?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Incredible,” she said, her expression youthfully raptur
ous. “You should go, Mom. Europe changes your whole perspective.”

“Really?”

“You see all the stuff that really seems to matter. Your clothes, your clique, even your parents’ cash, it’s just more smack. It’s meaningless,” she said.

“Meaningless?”

“Yeah, or maybe that
is
the meaning,” she said. “It’s so like existential, you know.”

I wasn’t sure that I did. But I liked the sound of what she was saying.

“The kids I met, we would sit in the piazzas half the night, all of us students, from all over the world,” she said. “We’d drink espresso and talk philosophy.”

“Well, that certainly sounds…ah…fun,” I said.

“We were foreigners, all just foreigners,” she explained. “There’s tremendous equality in that. Losing the boundaries of culture and class. It’s just so freeing.”

She looked up at me, smiling. I got a flashback of the bright inquisitive child who had somehow disappeared into my daughter’s adolescence.

“It was the first time in my life,” she continued, “that I felt like I was more than just your daughter. I was me, Brynn Lofton, citizen of Planet Earth.”

“So you had a good time?”

“Yeah, I had a great time,” she admitted. “But I’ve ruled out art history as a major. I like it, but I wouldn’t want to make it my life’s work.”

“Art history?” I said. “I didn’t know you were even thinking about that.”

“I went to Italy with my art studies class,” Brynn admitted. “The stuff about Dr. Reiser, that was just talk-smack. It sounded so ripe! I’m sorry if it worried you.”

She said that with the nonchalance of a someone who has never lived through the torture of worrying about another person. I forgave her that and let it go. Life has a way of teaching those lessons all on its own.

“Brynn,” I said carefully, “nothing you do as a person, no choice that you make, no matter how much I might disagree with it, could ever devalue who you are in my eyes or cause me to love you less.”

She stared at me with a creased forehead, allowing my words to sink in.

“Sure, Mom,” she said as easily as if the fact had never been in doubt.

Somehow that made me feel exhilarated.

“So what’s going on with you?” she asked me. “Dad says you’ve, like, got a boyfriend and that’s why you’re never at home.”

“I do have a gentleman friend,” I admitted. “Actually, I’ve moved in with him.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Mom, that is so
not
you,” she insisted.

“It’s me now,” I said.

“It’s not that old guy?” Brynn asked. “You’re not living with that man from the nursing home?”

My heart momentarily caught in my throat.

“Chester? No, it’s not Chester,” I said. “He passed away while you were in Italy.”

Her teasing grin immediately disappeared.

“Oh gee, Mom, I’m sorry,” she said. “I know he was a special friend to you.” She hesitated, not sure exactly what to say. “He was, like, really old, right?”

I took a breath and managed a half smile. “Yes, he was old,” I said.

At that moment a green minibus with Friends Resource
painted on the side pulled up in front of the house. I waved to the familiar faces inside the vehicle as it turned into the driveway.

“They’re coming here?” Brynn asked.

I nodded.

The door to the bus opened and a young man with Down’s syndrome stepped out excitedly. He was pulling along with him a wide-eyed and giggling young woman who appeared handicapped, as well. Within the next couple of minutes a half-dozen other mentally challenged adults emerged. They had different reactions. One woman appeared timid, almost fearful. Another jumped up and down, full of exuberant energy shouting, “We’re home! We’re home!” The rest were somewhere in between.

Four men, four women, the driver of the bus and a Friends Resource staff member were all greeted at the door by Edmund Crowley, Mario and Shanekwa.

“What is going on here, Mother?” Brynn asked. “Is this your latest do-gooding charity project? Afternoon tea with the handicapped?”

“No,” I told her. “This is a business venture. These people are my new tenants.”

“What?” Brynn’s expression was horrified.

“I was trying to figure out a way to make money on the house without selling it,” I explained. “Then I read about what a shortage there is of group homes for mentally challenged adults. These people have supervision, steady employment and a genuine desire to be a part of the neighborhood. The opportunities to live on their own are so few, that a well-managed group home is likely to have occupancy at one hundred percent for the next twenty years or more.”

“So you’re renting our home to make money,” she said.

“I’m leasing a house that I got in my divorce settlement to a nonprofit foundation that provides group home facilities to mentally challenged clients,” I said.

My daughter’s strange expression gave me pause.

“Oh, Brynn,” I said. “I didn’t think. Did you love this house? I should have asked. Do you feel like I jerked your home out from under you?”

She looked as if that was exactly how she felt. But she waved my words away.

“No, it’s okay, Mom,” she said. “It’s really okay. If we’re not going to live here, then it’s silly to keep this house empty. You did the right thing.”

Brynn was so vulnerable and yet she was so brave. Her parents’ marriage had disappeared while she wasn’t looking and now her home, the symbol of family life, had been swept away without a thought for her feelings.

“You’re a very good daughter, Brynn,” I told her. “You’re very good to try to understand me.”

Our gazes locked for a long moment, then one side of her mouth curved into a wry grin.

“Mom, you are too weird,” she said with conviction.

“Believe me, you are not the only person who thinks so,” I admitted, laughing. “Would you like to go get some lunch?”

“Only if it includes a frozen margarita,” she answered.

“I think we can manage that,” I told her.

“That’s the only bad thing about Italy,” Brynn told me. “No Mexican food.”

“Have you got your phone? I’d like to call Scott and get him to meet us there.”

“He’s, like, your boyfriend, right?”

“Yes,” I answered simply.

Brynn considered that for a moment.

“Okay,” she said finally. “It’ll give me a chance to check the guy out. See if he’s really like a total waste or whatever.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever.”

“Let’s take your car,” she said.

I was surprised and it must have showed.

“Mikki’s mega-transport is way lofty,” she said. “But yeek of the universe, Mom, it has a car seat in the back. That’s a natural guy repellent.”

“Little Worth has to sit somewhere,” I told her.

“You mean Lofton IV,” she said. “That’s what I call him.”

“Sounds more like a space mission than a baby,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, well, let’s take this Beetle-thing, it’s like…sort of cool.”

She was right. It was sort of cool. We were in agreement on that.