Dry Spell: A Mercy Watts Short (3 page)

Rodney hollered after me as I went into the kitchen. “Tell Ellen we’ll have this design ready in forty-eight hours.”
 

“Fantastic!”

Manuel flipped a burger and grinned at me. “They tell you all about Rod’s Charger?”

“What about it?”
 

“Rod thinks it may have been involved in an alien abduction in 1973.”
 

“Why would,” I put up my hand, “never mind don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
 

“Neither do I, but I work here.”
 

Everyone had a cross to bear, and Aaron and Rod were his. Dad was mine. I went out and walked past the Charger in question. The only thing that car had been involved in was teenage pregnancy.
 

Ellen’s house sat on a shady street in a post-WWII subdivision. It hardly looked like a place where the unusual happened. People went to work and came home on time. Children were raised and resented their parents’ limitations. It was normal. Of course, their doors were closed, like Ellen’s with its summer wreath hanging above a welcome sign. Who knew what went on behind those doors, but it was nice to think it was all simple.
 

I parked and went into the kitchen through the side door. The air was thick with the smell of tater tots and pork. It was the best Ellen’s kitchen had ever smelled. I peeked in the oven. Maybe not. She had what looked like pork chops on a cookie sheet. They were all curled up and grey. I didn’t know pork could do that. Other than the curly pork, everything was lovely. There were bowls of home-grown vegetables in the center of the table displayed with flair. All surfaces were scrubbed and polished and smelled of lemon. The feeling was of joy, love, and attentiveness. Ellen’s kitchen made me feel as if I were entering another version of my mother’s, one without baking. I wanted to stay and take deep aching breaths of fragrant air, but I heard Ellen yell out, “Mercy, we’re in the family room.”

I left the kitchen with regret and irritation. I could’ve been anyone. Ellen refused to lock her doors during the day. Night was no problem, but day, forget it. She simply couldn’t understand how anything bad could happen on a sunny day or any other kind of day. I’d told her horror stories about rapes, kidnappings, not to mention burglaries. Ellen would look at me with her wide-set brown eyes and I would watch the disbelief set in. She couldn’t understand that bad things happen and bad people don’t call to warn you first.
 

I walked into the family room and was attacked by two small blondes.
 

“Auntie Mercy! Auntie Mercy! We went to the zoo today and Jilly cried,” squealed Janine.

“I didn’t cry. Mommy!” Jilly said with tears starting to well in her eyes.

“Girls, please,” said Ellen. “Janine don’t torment your sister.”

The girls quieted down and started their routine. Jilly showed me her stuffed animal collection. Janine showed me her fish and they had the usual fight over which sister would hold the cat up for my inspection. It was Jilly's turn. I sat between the two of them during dinner, answered questions that had no reasonable answers and trying to listen to Jeremy tell about his plan to reconstruct an overpass. No one spoke about the reason for my visit. Both Jeremy and Ellen had purple grooves under their eyes. Jeremy’s eyes darted around the room enough to make me nervous.
 

After dinner, Ellen said she would make coffee and Jeremy would give the girls a bath. She plunged her hands into a sink full of hot soapy water and scrubbed the pots. I got myself a cup of coffee. We stood in silence for a moment listening to the rinse water pour down the drain and Jeremy singing the ABC’s in the living room.
 

“I’m sorry about last night. I can’t believe I went to the hospital,” Ellen said.

“It’s no problem. Has anything else happened?”

“No, well, nothing major. She’s mentioned him once today, but nothing about the girl. I’m afraid to ask.”

“Then I will.”

“What will you say?” she asked, rinsing her hands and drying them slowly on a dish towel.
 

“Dad said to distract her. Maybe I’ll give her the bath.”

“What if she won’t talk to you?” The towel was carefully folded into thirds and placed on the back of a chair. Ellen fiddled with it while looking out the door.

“I think she will. She’s always been my special sweetie.”

“That’s true,” Ellen said to me with a glimmer of her usual smile.

I hugged Ellen and then chased Janine and Jilly around the living room before filling the tub with hot, sudsy water. Janine liked her bathwater hot enough to cook lobster. She stripped off her dirty clothes. I put them in the hamper while she climbed into the tub. Steam filled the room with soft, velvety clouds scented with watermelon bubble bath. A few more degrees and it would’ve felt like outside. Janine looked small in that tub, her narrow shoulders nearly covered with bubbles, cheeks rosy with the heat and her fine, blond hair curling into tendrils around her face. She giggled and slipped around the tub talking to her tub toys and me simultaneously. She was getting to be a big girl and yet so delicate that I couldn’t quite fathom that she’d been around for four years. I’d been with Ellen in the delivery room and I’d caught Janine as she came into our world and placed her upon her mother’s chest. Now she was threatened by something or nothing and I had to figure out which it was. I wanted to scream at the thought that there could be something that locks couldn’t keep out, but I smiled, sang the ABC’s, and tried to think of a way to begin.

“So Janine, I hear you have a new friend,” I said, using the toilet to lower myself to the bathmat with a grimace.
 

“Christy. She has a purse and a puppy.”

Not exactly what I was going for.

“That’s nice. Do you have any other new friends?”

“No.” She motioned for the shampoo and I soaped up her hair.

“Oh, I thought your mom said that you’ve been seeing a man around.”

“The brown man, but he’s not my friend. Christy’s my friend. I like Christy.”

“You don’t like the brown man?” I said while shaping her hair into a Mohawk.

She shrugged and started piling more suds on her head.

“Is he nice to you?”

She shrugged.

I decided to take a different tact. It couldn’t hurt.

“Do you know what my daddy does?”

“He’s a detective, like
The Great Mouse Detective
.”

“And do you know what a detective does?”

“He finds things.”

“That’s right, and sometimes I help him do his job, like you help your mommy around the house.”

“Uh, huh,” she said.
 

I had her attention. She’d stopped her hairdressing and looked in my eyes. I didn’t think her eyes could open that wide.

“Do you know anyone we could help?” I asked.

“Maybe.”
 

I got her washcloth and soaped it up. She took it from me and began washing her face.

“Is there a little girl you would like to help?”

“She’s a big girl.” Janine splashed and got my tee all wet. Fantastic. Just what I wanted, a wet tee.

“Is she?” I asked. “How big is she?”

She shrugged and didn’t seem remotely interested. I made big spikes on her head and showed her with a hand mirror. She giggled and poked the spikes that were amazingly stiff.
 

“It’s a good look. Maybe I should do it for work,” I said.
 

“You’re silly,” she said.
 

“I am silly. My dad always says that. He says I’m curious, too. Right now I’m curious about the girl. How do you know she’s a big girl?”
 

“She has a big girl bike.”

“What color is it?”

“Pink,” said Janine.

“Do you know anything else about her?”

“She has pretty hair.”

“What color is her hair?”

“Brown.”
 

Janine withdrew from me. Maybe I’d gotten too curious. She moved to the other side of the tub and traced a finger along the edge.

“Well, what do you want to do now? Rinse and get out?”

“There’s a brown man,” she whispered.
 

“Oh, yeah?” I tried not to look too interested, but my heart skipped a beat. I’d decided not to bring him up, thinking it might be too much.
 

“He knows the girl.” She popped a big bubble on the tile.

“Like he’s her daddy?”

“No.”
 

I was afraid to ask too many questions, afraid to know how far the fantasy went, afraid that it wasn’t a fantasy. “Does she know him?”
 

“No.”
 

That was interesting. He was a stranger to the girl, but she wasn’t a stranger to him. Would a four-year-old think that complexly? I dug out a container of bubbles and blew through the wand. Janine giggled and popped the opalescent bubbles as they floated past her little nose.
 

“Did you ever see him before he came to your house?” I asked.
 

“No.”
 

“What does he look like?” I blew another load of bubbles.
 

“He’s brown,” she said. “More bubbles.”
 

I sucked in a huge breath and blew a huge one the size of Janine’s head. She clapped and then caught it on the tip of her finger.
 

“He has brown hair,” I said.
 

“He’s brown.”
 

“Like your Uncle Phil? He’s African-American.”
 

She rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath. I had a sneaking suspicion that she got that from me. “He’s brown.”
 

“All brown? No clothes or anything?”
 

She shook her head and popped the giant bubble, squealing like a banshee. I blew her another one that she promptly caught on the top of her head.
 

“Look, Mercy,” she chortled. “Look what I did.”
 

“I see. You’re very talented. I think we should keep that bubble forever and name him Salvatore,” I said with a forced grin. My whole fantasy theory was sounding less and less likely. This was too detailed, too off-the-wall for a four-year-old.
 

“His name is Jeanette.”
 

“That’s an excellent name for a boy bubble.”
 

Janine slapped her arms on the water, rewetting me good. “He’s a girl.”
 

“I’ll remember that. So Janine, is the brown man a shadow?”
 

She nodded and sunk lower into the soapy water until only her eyes were visible. Enough of that. I knew when I was being told to stop unlike a lot of guys I knew.
 

“So are you ready to get out?” I asked.
 

She popped up, grinning. “No. I want to wash your hair.”

Ah crap!

“Wash my hair? But I’m not taking a bath.”

“I wash Mommy’s hair sometimes.”

“Do you do a good job?”

“Really good.”

I looked at her and plunged my head into the tub. I brought it up with a quick movement that sprayed the room with water. Janine squealed as I blubbered and snorted water.

“Get to work,” I said.

She poured half the bottle of shampoo on my head and worked up a good lather.

“Does the girl have hair as pretty as mine?”

“No, silly. She has long hair and she wears lots of barrettes.”

“Maybe I should wear lots of barrettes. What do you think?” She thought about it and decided I needed more shampoo.

“Does the girl wear clothes that match her barrettes? Your bows always match your dresses.”

“Uh huh.”

“What color are her barrettes?”