Double Trouble (6 page)

Eventually. First came the tirades.

“Trouble is what you are, Mary Elizabeth, trouble is what you’ve always been.” He sat at the table and poured himself a cup of strong tea before giving me another look. “Your sister, now, there’s a girl who gave your mother and I no grief at all, none at all.”

Ah, dear sainted Marcia. She who never took my father to the doctor, she who never called, she who seldom sullied her angelic reputation by actually showing her face at the ol’ homestead. Be amazed, oh gentle reader, for I gritted mine own teeth and said naught.

It just about killed me. Look, Ma, I’m Hercules. Maybe Atlas is more like it, holding up the world and all its woes. Haha.

My dad had tried to leave no hint that he was making breakfast, but the skillet was on the stove and I could smell bacon. I was not offered a cup, so got my own, then poured my own tea.

I was late and I knew it, but I had had things to do.

“Some kind of crappy service you’ve got in this restaurant, Mr. O’Reilly.” I took a healthy swig of very strong tea—four teabags per pot in this house, the expense be damned, it’s not made of gold and a man’s got to have some pleasures—and got a lightning bolt of caffeine.

Oh, I needed that. I had to send off that beer this morning and the brewery shop hadn’t opened until nine.

Besides, these family doings were going to screw up my routine if they kept up. I was getting a major rash, just from the demands. Call my delay a mental health break.

“Always complaining, too.” My father waved his cup at me to punctuate his criticism. “That’s another thing different between you and your sister.”

“Maybe you should hire some staff.” I pretended I hadn’t heard him. “A waitress, you know, to greet people with a smile, pour tea, that sort of thing. It would give this joint some much-needed ambiance. If she was cute, she’d lift your spirits too.”

He glared at me, spoiling for a fight. He was more wizened every time I came here and seemed to get shorter by day, but age certainly hadn’t mellowed my dad. Nope, he looked like a gnome ready to go to the mat.

It was probably what kept him going—and what kept my sister away. Oh, she of the faint heart. I kind of looked forward to sparring with the old guy.

A habit, if you will.

“Look at you!” he said with scorn. “Nearly forty years old and you look as grubby as a penniless student! Has no one told you that you’ve grown up, Mary Elizabeth?”

“It’s a lifestyle choice.”

“So is washing your jeans.”

I grinned, unrepentant. “Ah, but that’s why I buy black ones. They don’t need to be washed until I can write my name on them with my nail.”

He snorted. “The smell would give you away in a crowd.”

Don’t be getting the wrong idea here. I’m clean. It’s the choice of clothing that annoys my father. He’d prefer that I came à la Doris Day, with little gloves, spectator pumps, a perky hat and one of those dresses with the cinched waist and ballerina skirt. Polka dots, maybe. The man got lost in the fifties. Can’t blame him entirely—they had some awesome shoes.

“Here we were, your mother and I, doing our best to raise our girls right, and look what happened. You look like a bit of trash left behind by a biker gang.”

“Now, don’t be sweet-talking me.”

Amazingly, he became even more belligerent. “You didn’t come over here for a cup of tea, I know that.”

“Can’t a woman visit her doting father once in a while?”

“Ha! You’ve got a scheme, or my name’s not...” He shook a finger at me in sudden outrage. “If you think you’re going to take me to the doctor, as though I’m no more fit than an old woman, then...”

I feigned surprise. “You’ve got a doctor’s appointment today?”

“As if you didn’t know it.” He sipped his tea, a man disappointed in the world.

“I know it because you told me.”

“You would have found out anyway and insisted upon coming along. I know how you are.”

“Jeez, this is some kind of invitation you offer.”

“You would have had to escort me, just as you always do,” he muttered unhappily. “As if you didn’t think I’m too feeble and too old to be going just two blocks to the doctor, that’s what you’re thinking.” He roared fit to rattle the dishes in the cupboards. “I’m not dead yet!”

“Of course not.” I leaned forward. “Corpses are silent.” I clicked my tongue. “Bloody hell, but you make a lot of ruckus. You’re going to give me a headache, and that before I’ve had my breakfast.”

He snorted, pleased though he tried to hide it.

“Not only that, dead people are easy to push around. God knows you don’t have that problem.”

He actually smiled before shaking a finger at me. “I’ll be late just because I’ve had to entertain you.”

“Then let’s go right now.”

“Ha! You don’t trust me to take care of myself. I knew it, I did.”

“Hardly. But, now that I’m here, I might as well go along to protect the doctor.”

Nose hairs bristled at that. “What?”

“If you terrify him, he may need trauma counseling. It’s my family obligation to ensure he gets it quickly.” I wagged a finger at him. “And you always said I wasn’t the responsible one. Try not to be too disappointed. Is there more tea in that pot?”

“It’s no wonder I’m suspicious then. Why the sudden concern for a doctor you don’t even know?”

I sighed and cast my eyes heavenward. “I’m trying to reform my wicked ways before I go to meet my Maker.”

“Your Maker lives the other way, Mary Elizabeth O’Reilly,” he said with great delight. “And don’t you try to tell me different.”

I laughed, then looked pointedly around the kitchen. “I distinctly remember being bribed with a promise of breakfast. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten so old that you forgot how I like my eggs?”

He snorted again, then pushed to his feet. “Don’t begin to think it. I forget nothing,
nothing,
you hear!” He tapped his temple. “Everything I ever saw, everything ever heard, everything I ever thought, is as clear as crystal and don’t you be thinking otherwise.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I can’t remember anything and if I had to remember all your stuff as well as all of mine, we’d be in serious trouble.”

“Cheek. Nothing but cheek,” he muttered. He pulled a carton of eggs from the fridge and popped some bread into the toaster, moving with the swift economy I remembered. My father never wasted energy getting anything done—he might bitch through Tuesday about it, but usually the job itself took a lot less time than his complaints beforehand.

“Suppose it’s my job to be feeding you, as a parent and all,” he growled as he cracked two eggs into the skillet. “Have you eaten since the last time you were here?”

“Just caviar and champagne.”

He scowled at me over his shoulder. “Don’t be giving me that. You’re too skinny, Mary Elizabeth, and that’s the God honest truth of it. You should be more like your sister, a woman with a few curves.” He turned his back on me and I knew what was coming. “A man likes a bit to hold onto. If you weren’t so thin and you didn’t look as though you’d had a fright, you might not be scraping by on your own.”

“Wow, breakfast and counseling, too.” I poured myself another cup of tea. “I thought advice to the lovelorn was my department.”

“And that’s another thing.” He kept a careful eye on the eggs. I’ve never had eggs cooked more perfectly than my father’s. He even manages to get the yolk almost exactly in the center of the white every time. “If you had a real job, you might meet a decent man.”

“I have a real job, Dad.”

That won me a boffo snort. He said nothing more, certain all that needed saying had been said. He slid the plate in front of me a moment later, and I refilled his tea, noting that there was only the one plate on the table. “What about you?”

“You took so bloody long that I already ate.”

I dunked a piece of toast in the yolk and cast a glance at the clock. I had to say it. “If I had a real job, I wouldn’t be able to have breakfast with you at ten on a Tuesday morning.”

“And there would be a loss,” he snapped. “There I’d be, an old man, knowing that his daughter has enough to eat, that she’s happy and healthy and raising a family while she lives in relative comfort. I can have my breakfast alone, thank you nicely.”

He turned his cup in the circular mark it made on the linoleum table top. He watched me eat for a minute, his lips pursed, his eyes still that robin’s egg blue. “You’re not going to tell the doctor that I can’t live alone anymore, are you?”

“God, no!” I rolled my eyes. “Then you’d have to move in with me. I couldn’t put up with you all the time. And if I ate breakfast like this every day, my arteries would choke up with cholesterol. I’d be a dead woman in no time flat and I’ve got contracts to deliver.” I pointed my toast at him. “If anything, I’m here to insist that they let you stay loose in the world.”

He chuckled to himself then, well and contented to sip his tea and watch me eat.

“It’s good, Dad,” I said as I practically licked the plate clean. “Thanks.”

We shared a smile and he got to his feet, hunched over like the old man he wanted so desperately not to be. He hunted down his other glasses and his cardigan, then his better shoes and his cane “just in case”. I finished my tea and put the dishes in the sink, then gave them a rinse.

Thing is, he
is
getting older. He’s not so quick as he used to be and not so observant. And I like having him around. Conceptually at least. He was not walking even two blocks in this city’s mad traffic without me and that was that. He was right—I do come over and examine his calendar once in a while to make sure that he isn’t holding out on me. He’s stuck with my escort service, like it or lump it.

My sister, you know, could never have been so casual about this. If she had ever bothered to accompany my dad, she would have hovered and fussed and made him completely paranoid about walking out the door. He was already worried enough about how much the world had changed without her assistance. I was sure that my own no-big-deal approach was better.

Even if I had some major doubts about his independence. He was getting older and more frail despite his tough talk and yes—don’t miss this rare soft moment—I do worry about him.

What if he fell? My nightmare is of that commercial, with my dad in the starring role. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Oh boy. Hang on a second here, my gut just had a convulsion.

Because no one would know that had even happened, because he would never even have one of those alarm beepers in his house. And he gets mad if I call or drop by “too often”.

On the other hand (OTOH in netspeak) losing his independence would kill him even more quickly. Break his spirit. Since I didn’t know what to do for the long term, I kept doing what I was doing in the short.

“Too bad it’s not Marcia who came,” he said so innocently that a casual observer wouldn’t have guessed it was a jab aimed right for my heart. A practiced one at that.

I sauntered, indifferent as only a biker chick in a leather jacket can be. You’d think I’d be used to this crap by now. I flicked my silken tresses over my shoulder, insouciance squared. “Why’s that?”

“Ah, she’s the one with the lovely manners, always was. You were the one with the devil in your eye, right from the day you were born. I told your mother that you would be nothing but trouble, and she didn’t believe me until you began to talk.” He shook a finger at me. “Nothing but sauce from you. Like those two princesses, remember that book I used to read to you? One who had pearls fall from her mouth when she talked and one who spewed frogs.”

“Frogs are cool.”

“There’s no hope for you, then, and never will there be.” He sighed then shuffled out on to the porch. I took his keys, locking the door behind him.

“I didn’t hear the deadbolt,” he complained. “Do it again.”

“I heard the deadbolt.”

“Well, I didn’t and you’ll be doing it again and not giving me any trouble about it for once in your life.”

I unlocked the door, opened it, shut it and turned the key once more. The deadbolt shot home audibly and I gave him a look. “Got to make sure no one steals that television.”

He squared his shoulders. “It’s a perfectly good television.”

“It’s the only thing in that house of any value, and that’s only because it’s old enough to be antique.”

His chin set. “I’ll not have some young hooligans in my home.”

I looked at those single pane basement windows, and knew that it was only ten thousand coats of paint holding the frames together. Anyone armed with so much as a butter knife could break into that house in nothing flat.

But there was no point in arguing about it. If he believed in the power of a single deadbolt to defend his fortress against the wickedness of the world, well, so be it. I’d tried and failed at all other arguments. Everything was “perfectly good”, including those windows. A person could only hope that any would-be thieves would case the place, see how little there was to take, and shop elsewhere.

We started down the sidewalk and I surreptitiously matched my pace to his slower one. “Oh yes, it was Marcia who always spoke so lovely and polite,” he said, getting even with me for challenging him. “It’s Marcia who knows the right thing to say and to do, Marcia with two handsome sons and a successful husband. It’s Marcia I’ve no need to worry about.”

“Marcia who has the morals of an alley cat,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“You said something, I heard it.”

“Then why are you asking me to repeat it? I thought your hearing was perfectly good?”

“Cheek!” he accused, then lunged forward. A good rant would propel him halfway to the doctor’s, so I let him have at it. “It was always cheek from you, no matter how many tastes of the soap you had. Marcia, now, Marcia might have been born with a gilded tongue.”

“Dear sainted Marcia,” I muttered, sorely tempted to blow my sister’s cover.

Dad spun. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“You said something and I demand to hear it.”

“I said that Marcia was such a dear.”

“You did not!” He scowled at me skeptically and I shrugged.

“You’ll never know.”