Dusted (7 page)

“So, are we moving beyond your foyer?” Mom asked, as the doorbell rang again.

“That’s Peri,” I said. “We’re having lunch.”

“You’re having lunch with your ex-husband’s wife?”

I turned defensive. “I like her.”

“I don’t,” my mother said.

My mother had met Peri exactly once, last spring at Hunter’s graduation. I don’t think they’d said more than two words to each other.

“Regardless, be nice.” I didn’t think this was a good time to mention that I was thinking about keeping Peri when Jerry divorced her. Jerome, I quickly corrected myself.

Peri and Jerry sounded ridiculous. I was really never putting Cal and Sal together in a sentence again.

I opened the door and saw my ex’s current wife holding a large bag marked
Psst
! I just knew Honey had sent something good.

Peri was twenty, tanned, and blond. Not a bottle blonde, but a true Scandinavian looking blonde. She was model tall and thin, and she was wearing a tight yellow dress that emphasized her curves.

I knew Peri didn’t require a body-sucker. Not that I wore one often. I might require one, but I simply sucked in my stomach…when I remembered.

I remembered now.

Peri breezed in. “Hi, Quincy. I’m on time. Well, almost on time, and you know, for me, that means I am on time. Jerry would be thrilled if I was this close to on time for him.”

She spotted my mom. My very professionally dressed, frowning mom.

“Hi, Mrs. Mac. I’m Peri, just in case you don’t remember.” She grinned and extended her jewelry spangled hand. “We met at Hunter’s graduation, but that was a quick hi.”

“Oh, I remember. You may call me, Dr. Mac,” my mother said.

Peri thrust the bag at me, and enveloped my prickly mom in a hug. “Dr. Mac, it’s so nice to finally get to meet you properly. You have the most amazing daughter, and your grandsons are the most wonderful boys ever. Did I tell you they taught me to surf this summer? Well, of course, I didn’t because I basically only saw you at Hunter’s graduation. I’m so proud of him. I told Quincy though about the surfing. And let me tell you, it took the patience of Job to get me upright on a wave. I’m not the most coordinated woman ever. But they did it. Jerry of course doesn’t surf. But he was impressed that I mastered it. Well, not mastered it, but at least didn’t die out in the ocean. And when you’re as klutzy as me, not dying while you’re in the ocean is a success.”

She wrapped an arm over my mother’s shoulder and led her toward my kitchen as if they were old friends. As if my mother were a cuddly, touchy-feely sort of woman—she wasn’t.

“You should have seen your boys at my wedding. They stood up with Jerry, you know. I should have invited you. Really, what was I thinking? You’d have loved seeing the boys in their tuxes. Quincy, how could you let me neglect to invite your family?” She shook her head, as if I should have known inviting my family to my ex-husband’s wedding was a given.

“Well, it’s not the same, but I have some pictures on my phone. Did you see the dress Quincy wore? It was absolutely perfect, and she was stunning.”

Before I knew it, my mother and Peri were sitting side by side at the table, looking at pictures on Peri’s phone.

I stood at the counter and watched—incredulous.

Here’s the thing, I should have been surprised, but after a few moments, I heard my mom say, “Call me Judith, sweetie,” and I just chalked up another victim to Peri’s charms.

She could charm the scales off of snakes.

She could make the Internet’s Grumpy Cat smile.

“Mom?” Miles whispered as he came into the room. He pointed at my mom and Peri.

“Grandma’s here for your play,” I said.

“But she’s laughing and smiling with Peri.” Miles sounded confused. My boys love my mother, but they knew this was out of character.

“I know.”

“Our family is sort of
Twilight Zone
-ish,” Eli said, humming the bars from the show’s opening.

I figured the
Twilight Zone
music was more generous than the theme from
Jaws
, so I didn’t scold him.

“I’ve never seen Grandma laugh like that,” Miles said.

“Peri has a way about her,” I said.

At her name, Peri looked up and squealed, “Boys.” She was up and out of her seat in a blink of an eye and hugging the boys as if she hadn’t seen them in years instead of days. “Now, your dad and I will be there opening night, so don’t you worry about that. He can’t wait.”

Eli snorted. Jerome was a very good father, but attending things like plays and various sporting events was not his strong suit.

Peri laughed. “I know you have your doubts, but if I have to, I’ll get tough. He’ll be there or face my wrath.”

Both boys did laugh then. So did I. I looked over and saw my mother was laughing, too. For the life of me I couldn’t make the idea of Peri and wrath register.

“We’ve got to get to practice,” Eli said.

“Do you want something to eat?” she fussed.

“We’re getting pizza tonight,” Miles said. “Well, we’re getting it after they do a clean run-through on the play.”

“Well, break a leg,” she said, and kissed each boys’ cheeks. “Go say hello to your grandmother before you leave.”

The boys walked over to my mom, who was still sitting in her chair. The scene reminded me of a queen waiting for homage from her minions.

“It’s nice of you to come to town so you can see the play,” Miles said formally.

“Yeah,” Eli added.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Your grandfather will be here Friday morning, so he’ll be there, too.”

“Okay, then,” Miles said as if trying to think of something else to say. “Well we’ve got to go.”

Peri cleared her throat. “Kiss your grandmother goodbye,” she commanded.

Here’s the thing, I only remember a handful of times my mother had ever kissed me or indicated she’d like me to kiss her. I remembered even fewer times that she’d kissed or been kissed by my boys. The Mac-ish Mac’s were not overly demonstrative. And though Mom was born a Quincy, she was a Mac through and through. So were my father, my brothers, and my brothers’ wives. My Uncle Bill and I are the black sheep, and we both are prone to hugs and kisses.

But my boys obliged and kissed my mother on the cheek. “See you later,” Eli said as they fled.

“Now, let’s have a nice girls chat,” Peri said. “I way overbought lunch for me and Quincy, so there’s plenty of food. Honey sent a new dish for us to try. We’re to report back.”

Peri became the cruise director for our little lunch. I don’t know how she managed to eat while she kept up her steady stream of conversation. She told my mother all about the boys and their vacation. I was content to simply listen to her as I ate Honey’s new rice dish, which was delicious, but then Peri said, “And that whole investigation last month. I was never so nervous for our Quincy. The boys have told me about their great uncle and his problems. I understood why she was concerned. I was so proud of her. Not only did she find the murderer, but she managed to subdue him all by herself before Cal could ride in and save the day…”

My mother sat, fork halfway between her mouth and the plate, as she listened to Peri gush about my solving Mr. Banning’s murder.

“…I’d have never been able to handle myself in that kind of situation. And now she’s working with that terribly cute Mr. Macy to turn the whole encounter into a script? It’s going to be brilliant. Jerry’s interested in it, but he said it wouldn’t be right for him to produce his ex-wife’s script, but when it’s done, he said he’d read it and pass it on to someone.”

That was the first I was hearing of that.

Peri clapped her hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed tell you that. He said he didn’t want your first script to be scrutinized because people thought he’d got it because of nepotism. He wants you to have a brilliant career. So far the script is wonderful.”

“How do you know it’s wonderful?” I asked.

“Miles might have shown me a few pages, and I might have shown them to Jerry,” she admitted. “Are you mad?”

I wanted to be annoyed or even angry. After all, the script wasn’t nearly ready to show anyone other than Dick. But Peri looked so pleased, and I knew that she’d only done it out of love, not anything else. I sighed. “No. I’m glad you like it so far. It’s rough. Dick says we have a lot of work to do.”

She grinned. “Good. Now I don’t have to sneak around. If you show me it when you’re ready I’ll show it to Jerry. He really liked it, Quincy.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

My mom cleared her throat and set her fork down with a thunk. “Murder? You found a murderer?”

“Let me start at the beginning, Mom. Theresa, our worst employee, called in sick, so I took over her jobs for the day and accidently cleaned a murder scene. Well, you know Uncle Bill went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and he hadn’t even tampered with any evidence which since I’m very good at my job, I’d done and then some. I even scrubbed the murder weapon clean. I was sure I’d end up in prison, so I set out to find out who did it…”

An hour later, the lunch was over, Peri was kissing me goodbye and then turned and kissed my mom. “Judith, it was so nice to finally spend time with you. You have a lovely family. And your daughter is a very special lady. Not everyone would be so kind to their ex’s new wife.”

She left and my mother turned to me. “You went through all that and you never told me?”

She seemed hurt. That wasn’t something I expected. My mother was not the kind of woman to expect or relish confidences. I remember telling her about a boy I had a crush on when I was in fifth grade. She said, “If you want him, go after him,” and left it at that. In her mind, she’d solved my problem.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I said, though I doubted my mother had ever been worried about anything or anyone.

“Quincy, I’m a mother. I know I’m not overly demonstrative, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you and your brothers, and now my grandsons. The day you left for California on that bus…”

She just left the sentence hang there as if her emotions were too close to the surface to go on. She took a deep breath and added, “Letting you get on that bus to come to LA was the hardest thing I ever did. You and I have never understood each other, but I have always loved you and with that kind of love there’s worry. I know you’ve worried about Hunter.”

“I have. I do.” I worried that he wasn’t eating, that he was getting into trouble, that… I worried about him constantly.

“I know I don’t show my emotions as well as you, and certainly not as well as Peri—”

I laughed as I interrupted. “No one wears their emotions as well as Peri.”

She offered me a ghost of a smile as she nodded her agreement. “But I love you and I wish you would have told me what was going on in your life.”

I’d known my mother for every one of my thirty-eight years, but I’d never seen her so open and emotional.

I took a page from Peri and hugged her. “I love you, Mom.”

She hugged me back. “I love you, too, Quincy.” She pulled back and walked toward my kitchen. “Now, come tell again. This time tell me exactly what happened.”

I did.

Then I told her about our current crisis.

“So, show me your white-board,” my mother requested. I knew it was a question because her voice went higher on the last word. But in reality it was an order. She was a doctor. Worse, she was a surgeon. She was accustomed to being obeyed.

I took her into Hunter’s room. She stared at it. “You’ve organized it well,” she said. “I can see your thought process. You’ve got an organized mind.” She said that in such a way I knew it was praise. Praise was something I didn’t receive from my mother often.

“Thank you.”

“This is what you used when you solved the murder?”

“Yes. Though the board didn’t really help me in that regards. I sort of lucked into it.”