Vampire Blood (4 page)

“Pretty good, Dad. When the mortgage on the place is paid off in full, it’ll be a nice little money-maker.” His excitement brightened his eyes. Jenny realized in that instant that he was proud of his success, proud of his restaurant.

“In fact, I was thinking of expanding next year, after it’s paid for. Looks like the glass figurine shop next door will be closing. They’re not doing so well. I could knock down the wall between.”

“Sounds pretty ambitious to me,” their dad drawled.

“Sounds smart to me,” Jenny piped in.

“Especially now.” Joey smiled like he always did when he knew something they didn’t. “Jenny,” he said excitedly, “you’ll
never
guess what I found out last night.”

“I’ll bite. What?” She was wiping her hands on her napkin. With a full stomach, another cup of great coffee before her on the counter, the sun shining outside and the day stretching out comfortably busy in front of her; she was content.

Joey’s eyes lit up, he beamed like a kid. “The Rebel’s reopening.”

“You’re kidding me?” Jenny experienced a shiver of unexpected pleasure. “After all these years? Are you sure?”

“Positive. I met this guy the other night.” Joey’s hands were busy gesturing. “He came in here and asked about the theater next door. I told him all about it and its jaded history; how gorgeous and grand it used to be inside; how long it’s been closed.

“Remember that as kids we always thought it was haunted?”

“Yes, I remember,” Jenny answered.

“He seemed real interested. Then we talked about the town, just talked; he didn’t want anything to eat. Talked my arm off. He’s an outsider, never been here before, he said. A queer sort of guy, dressed real strange.” A funny look settled on her brother’s face, and though he smiled quickly to cover it, Jenny caught it. It made her uneasy for some reason she couldn’t name.

“Two nights later, why, he came in again and announced he
owned
it. Was I surprised. You could have knocked me over with a feather.” Joey seemed as pleased as Jenny about it.

“Did he say when he was going to reopen it?” Jenny observed her father playing with his spoon in his coffee.

“Naw. Soon, I’d guess. When it does reopen, it’ll bring in a lot more business for me here, I bet.”

“You’re probably right, Joey,” Jenny agreed. “Won’t it be wonderful to have the old place open again? Imagine it has to be at least twenty-two years since old man Trump shut its doors. God, all the movies we saw there as kids, you remember?” Jenny gushed, spinning herself lazily and happily around and around on the stool.

Joey nodded, as he wiped off the counter.

“Remember those marble drinking fountains,” she mused aloud, “those magnificent drapes and that plush red carpeting? It was so rich-looking.” Richness nothing like their simple linoleum-floored farmhouse and curtains from K-Mart.

“Remember how I used to hide in the balcony and scare the hell out of you during the scariest parts of the movies?” Joey sniggered.

“How could I forget? Thanks to you, I’m still afraid of the damn dark.”

Both Joey and her father laughed at that.

It was the truth. To this day, Jenny always had to have a night-light shining in her kitchen at night. She was petrified of complete darkness, like an irrational child. Evil shapes lingered in lightless closets and in shadowy corners. Things hid waiting to attack her in black rooms. Slithering beasties—fat and spider-like with venom dripping from their razor-sharp slimy fangs—lurked just around a murky corner ...

Jenny inwardly shuddered and recoiled just thinking about it.

It was a paranoia of hers that embarrassed her to no end.

“Yeah,” Joey then said dreamily, “but what I recall the best is smooching in the back seats with Melissa, and Janey, and Sylvia, and then—”

“Enough already, Cassanova.” Jenny put her hands up to stop him. “Men!” she huffed, but her brown eyes were smiling.

“Joey, I think you’ve got customers to attend to, don’t you?” she inquired sweetly. “Better get back to your grill and pancakes.” A group had meandered in and was perusing the menus at a booth table, giving Laurie their orders.

Her brother chuckled, knowing he’d gotten a rise of some kind out of her. “Well, anyway, Jenny, when the Rebel reopens, all of us should go. It’ll be like old times.”

“No,” Jenny’s face closed up for a second. “Not exactly like old times.” Jeff had always gone with them. He’d adored the monster movies. “But,” her face brightened up, “I’ll take you up on that offer when it does reopen. Laurie and Dad can come, too.”

“Ha, not on your life,” her father snorted, taking a last sip of his coffee. “I like my color TV at home, just fine. Won’t catch me paying eight dollars to see a movie I can see for free in a couple of years. Just smaller, that’s all.”

“Suit yourself, Dad. Joey, Laurie and me will go by ourselves and you, you old-stick-in-the-mud, can just stay at home—alone.”

Her dad rolled his eyes at her brother, behind her back, and made a face.

Joey ignored him and winked at her. “Well, I have to make a living, so back to work. See ya later, then.” With that, he was gone.

“Well, no more reason to lollygag, girl.” Her father stood up, ready to leave, placing a generous tip for Laurie on the counter.

“We’ve got a house to paint. It’s not getting any earlier.”

“Or cooler.” Jenny peered out the large picture window behind them into the hazy summer morning. The layers of heat were shifting and glowing. She could have sworn she saw the pavement melting before her eyes.

“Off to work,” her dad announced, heading for the door, sounding and acting so much like one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White it made her laugh again. What a cutup.

“Bye Joey! See ya later,” she yelled out at the last second. As they went through the door into the morning, the warmth hit her like a hard slap.

When she strode by the boarded-up Rebel, she knocked lightly on the boards. “Be seeing ya in the movies,” she promised it fancifully.

Her dad stared at her as if she wasn’t in her right mind. “Just glad it’s reopening,” she explained self-consciously. Craning her neck, she gazed up the height of it.

“Kids,” he grumbled, good-naturedly, as they got into the station wagon.

“Dad, I’m thirty-eight, for God’s sake,” she replied.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, child,” he responded curtly. Jenny saw the humor underneath and breathed in deeply as she lounged against the hot seat. “Ouch, ouch.” She squirmed around trying to ease the burning through her clothes on her sensitive skin.

“I thought it only got this hot on the sun,” she grunted as they drove off and stole one quick last glance back at the old Rebel. Imagine.

The Albers’ house was a few miles out of town. Jenny let the breeze fan her flushed face through the open window, her mind daydreaming far away.

Outside, the glowering August sun’s rays splashed everything into golden shades. The car bumped along the road. The same road Jenny had traveled so many, many times in her life.

Summer Haven. A pretty little town with hilly, narrow streets and stately rambling houses, where everyone knew you. Old-fashioned. Home. She hadn’t minded coming back; in fact, she’d found she’d missed it in the ten years she’d been gone. She’d missed the woods and the sea, missed her family.

Ten years.

It was a long time to be away from home.

She only wished that Samantha lived closer and that her parents weren’t estranged.

She only wished that she weren’t so damn broke that she couldn’t even afford a plane ticket to Seattle.

Jenny frowned into the wind.

How had she gotten here? Thirty-eight and alone. No husband. No kid. Going nowhere. Lost. Joey was right, damn it. He was right.

This morning, as she’d been getting ready to go to work, she’d stared into her bathroom mirror and had seen her mother and grandmother reflecting back, not the Jenny she had always known.

A lone tear trickled down her wind-burned face. She wiped it away with a trembling finger.

Jenny, the good daughter. Jenny, the laughing young woman who’d been so in love with her first husband, Jeff, the love of her life. Jenny, the novelist, the devoted mother, so sure of herself and content ... where was that Jenny?

Where had she gone? Her dreams had shattered as the years had flown by faster than anyone had ever told her they could. Life had a way of dealing the cards—and they were never the cards you wanted.

When she and her brothers had been kids, Joey had wanted to be a millionaire; Tom, President; and she’d wanted to be a writer. Not just any writer, but a great writer—rich, famous, adored, married to a loving husband and mother to five perfect children.

Now look at the three of them.

Joey ran a tiny, grease pit of an excuse for a restaurant and had never loved anyone longer than a second; Tom was a mediocre salesman for a farm supply store in St. Augustine’s, had a brood of kids he couldn’t afford and a wife who lived at the bingo hall ... and Jenny?

All those wasted years. Going nowhere. When she, of all of them, had once had such great expectations. How naive you are when you’re young.

Jenny looked over at her father. At least she understood now how her parents had ended up like they had. How some people couldn’t help ending up the way they did. Her mother lost in a clouded booze bottle, her dad penniless and alone in a dilapidated old farmhouse. Both of them getting older and sicker by the day, and their situations steadily growing more hopeless.

She knew her father didn’t see any Jenny but the Jenny he’d always seen.
Let him
, she thought,
keep his illusions that she was the perfect child, the perfect woman that he still believed in. Let him believe that she’d taken all the right roads, and had only ended up here at this dead end by mistake.

She knew better.

“Have you seen Mom lately?” It’d just slipped out. As soon as the words hit the air, Jenny wanted suddenly, desperately, to snatch them back, but it was too late. Discussing Mom nowadays hurt them all far too much.

Her dad’s face closed up, his eyes grew wary. He was aware that she didn’t understand his cavalier attitude to his wife’s temporary insanity.

“Ain’t gonna lie, Jenny. I have.” Then, when she didn’t say anything derogatory, he went on. “I go to visit. Make sure she’s all right.”

Jenny almost demanded why, the old anger boiling up inside her, but then peeked over at him and caught the loneliness in his face and said nothing.

She knew about loneliness now, too.

It was her father’s forlorn face that answered what she’d really wanted to know.

“She’s still drinking, Jenny,” he said, his voice sad and his mouth grim.

Probably drunk out of her mind,
Jenny brooded.
Nothing’s changed.

Mom had always been a drinker.

Even when she was a little girl, Jenny could recall her mother having a glass in her hand. It would make her laugh in those early days. For some reason, her drinking had gotten out of hand the last few years, like her growing dissatisfaction, her sense that she’d missed out on her life. That Dad and her children had stolen it somehow.

She had always been a homemaker, a good mother. Suddenly, it hadn’t been enough. The older she got, the worse it’d gotten. Dad had tried so hard to make her happy, any way he could, but it never seemed to help. Some sickness was eating at her.

Her mom was drunk now more than sober, and she was an ugly, spiteful drunk. She threw things. She ranted and raved. She hurt people.

Dad had always covered for her and he was still doing it.

He was driving faster down the highway, playing with the rearview mirror like a new driver. They hit some ruts, and she thudded against the door, hating herself for even opening the subject. It had only upset him.

“Dad—” She was going to say she was sorry, that she understood, but before she did, he cut in.

“It’s none of your business. You don’t know nothing about it, as smart as you are. Your mom and me’s been married for nigh on forty-three years. We were high school sweethearts. We’ve been through a heck of a lot, you just don’t know. Hard times, bad times. I won’t desert her just because she’s—”

“Unstable,” Jenny supplied.

“Unhappy,” her father corrected.

“Unhappy?” Jenny shook her head in amazement. “Is that why she got the ridiculous delusion one day last winter that she had to live alone and packed her clothes and belongings in different sized paper bags, in the middle of a snow storm, and moved into a dinky, cockroachy apartment in town? Where she sits in the dark, talking to herself, and drinking until she passes out?” She’d been there ever since. A recluse. A mouse cowering in her hole.

Her father didn’t look at her.

“She doesn’t even know who I am,
Dad, when I call. She didn’t even care when I cried on the phone last time and told her that I missed her, that I was worried about her; would she just please let me see her? She hung up on me like I was a stranger.” Jenny cringed at the memory.