Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (22 page)

“I’ve got a car,” Miz June said. “The Lincoln. I’ve only driven it a few times. It barely has any miles on it, from when it belonged to Chester Delmore’s dead wife.”

“Gas guzzler,” Anna Bee said. She was always environmentally responsible.

“Room for lots of people. Four seat belts in the back. Three in front.”

“Well,” my mother said. “It’s decided. It’s a mission for true love, which I, for one, had lost hope in.”

Miz June opened a drawer of a side table and
brought out a pen and a page of stationery, decorated around the edges with roses. You could smell a faint whiff of sweetness—it was scented. “I’ll have to go, of course, since I’m driving.” She wrote her name down. I had an image of her driving twenty miles an hour all the way to California, her nose pressed to the windshield. It would be faster to take Anna Bee’s Schwinn. “Ann, as the leader of the group and only sane member. Which means Ruby and Chip Jr. too, I assume. And of course we can’t forget Lillian. That leaves two seats.” Miz June waited for agreement. Everyone nodded.

“We’ll draw straws,” Harold said.

“Mrs Wilson-now-Mrs. Thrumond will be sorry she left now,” Peach said.

Anna Bee scurried to the kitchen. I’d never seen her move so fast. This was like
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
with the golden tickets. “Do you have straws?” She shouted to Miz June. It wasn’t like her to shout, either. She had a surprising set of lungs.

“In the pantry. Top shelf. I like them with my lemonade. Scissors in the drawer under the phone.”

“Ann will hold the straws,” Harold said, though he was the only one we had to worry about as far as cheating went.

Anna Bee came back with the straws. My mother turned her back on the group, put the straws in her fist. Everyone chose. It was solemn as a church service.

“Yippee,” Peach said. “I’m in.”

“Long straw,” Harold said. You could tell he was suppressing his glee.

“Short,” Mrs. Wong said.

“We’ll still need you to help steal Lillian,” Miz June said.

“That’s the most important job,” I said.

“I’m out too.” Anna Bee said. Her face dropped.

“Thank goodness,” Miz June said kindly. “Someone’s got to stay behind and look after the pets. Beauty and Harold’s fish. And, oh, my sweet peas.”

“Joe Davis can look after Poe now that they are best friends,” I said.

“Joe Davis, the minister?” Miz June asked. One eyebrow shot up.

“Ann, you’re blushing,” Anna Bee said.

“He’s helping us fix a few things,” she said. “Poe just has a new leash on life, ha ha.”

“Things are looking up!” Peach said.

“As long as I don’t have to sit by the viper,” Harold said.

“I wouldn’t sit by you if I were dead and couldn’t tell the difference,” Peach said.

“Road trip,” Harold said.

That day, the day we stole Lillian, we were all capable of
magic, each and every one of us who had gathered on our front lawn holding a copy of the plan for the human heist that my mother had copied on the library copy machine. You could see it later, that magic, in the pictures Chip Jr. was running around and snapping maniacally with the old camera Joe Davis had given him that morning. The camera was a present after their discussion the night before, when Joe Davis told Chip Jr. that he thought Chip Jr.’s noticing and curiosity were the best kind of compliments to God, like an art lover’s appreciation and study of a painting. If so, his new compliments were going to cost Mom a fortune in developing, as Chip Jr. was noticing and capturing everything.
Click,
Harold in an uncharacteristically tacky orange baseball cap, knapsack
over one shoulder, posing with one arm around Peach and making rabbit ears with two fingers behind her permed head.
Click,
Joe Davis with his eyes fixed on my mother, a beautiful blur at the outside frame of the photo, as Poe sat upright at his feet in perfect focus, looking up at the minister adoringly, as if he’d just found the Supreme King of Red Meat.
Click,
Miz June’s puff of blonde hair in the Lincoln, which sat at the curb all gold and chrome glinting in the sun like a carriage in a modern fairy tale.
Click,
Anna Bee and Mrs. Wong sneaking a look at the
Playboys
that Mrs. Wong brought along for Grandfather Wong, Anna Bee’s face red as a geranium and Mrs. Wong’s wearing the expression of a lost soul stuck by a roadside trying to read a map upside-down. And
click,
me, a pencil behind my ear, caught by surprise, glancing over one shoulder as my name was called, looking relaxed and happy and, most amazingly, myself. Not small or narrow, but full and alive, and for a moment, not racked with thoughts about Travis and Libby.

You could see the magic we all had that day. The magic that comes with the force of a mission, lit with a fine and rare energy. The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not television love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket. We were all part of that.

Miz June wanted to get going. She kept revving the
accelerator of the Lincoln, urging us to get a move on. My mother went to the bathroom five thousand times like she always does when she gets nervous. Joe Davis kissed her goodbye behind the hydrangea bush. Every time Chip Jr. kneeled to take a picture, Poe would trot over and stick his nose up to the lens, wanting another closeup. Later, we’d have six fine shots of this one segment of Poe’s face—huge smeary black nose, slightly wet lips, enormous, slightly deranged-looking eyes.

My mother quizzed us one last time about the plan, which Lillian had agreed to with a nod and tears in her eyes when Peach and Anna Bee had last visited. Finally we loaded into the Lincoln, with Mrs. Wong and Anna Bee in Mrs. Wong’s Mercedes behind us. We waved goodbye to Joe Davis. Sydney and her mom drove up the street just then and yelled “Good luck!” through their rolled-down windows.

Even though Miz June stepped on the gas too hard and we all lurched forward as violently as those crash test dummies in the commercials, I had never felt so happy. It was like a party in my heart.

The Golden Years Rest Home was not officially in Nine Mile Falls, but sat on the boundary marker of it and the neighboring town, as if neither wanted to claim it. As those kinds of places go, it really wasn’t that bad—hunched, drooling people weren’t abandoned in Pine-Sol-smelling halls, like the one place we went to with my seventh-grade choir class. This one had art by the residents
up on the walls and a large, attentive staff, which was exactly what our biggest challenge was going to be. That and the fact that Lillian’s daughters were there twice a day, as Peach had already found out when she had visited.

Still, the Golden Years was a place we all wanted to forget about, the way we draw a line in our brain between us and things terrible or unjust. The rooms’ residents with the small gray heads drooped in sleep while the television blared, were not people who once worried about a math test or first learned to drive or hated mustard or fell madly in love. They were void bodies. I guess we were all hoping that if we ignored old age it might go away, the same way my mom turns up the radio whenever her car starts making bad noises.

Stealing Lillian was Mrs. Wong’s show, and for the first time in the group’s history, she met them on time. In fact, she was the first to arrive. She’d even drawn us a map of the place. First floor, reception. Second floor, library, recreation, and dining. Third floor, living quarters. Our two major Points of Challenge, as she’d labeled them on the page, were the main reception desk as you walked in, and the nurses’ station in the middle of Lillian’s floor. We’d divvied up the one receptionist and the three nurses we’d have to get past. It would have been easy if we could have just taken Lillian for a long, long walk, but that wasn’t possible; the staff required a relative to sign her out and a nurse chaperone to take the resident out to the yard. The Golden Years people were lawsuit-paranoid—obviously
imagining reckless relatives going for a stroll and forgetting to bring Grandma’s oxygen stand. The only way of escaping was going to be with a mad dash after all of the nurses had been diverted.

Our plan was this: first, Peach and I would arrive to visit Lillian, get her ready, and stuff her things in a bag. After we were in, Harold would arrive. His job was to go to the room of the nearly comatose (and therefore silent) Mr. Fiorio. A few minutes later, Mrs. Wong would enter with the
Playboys,
Grandfather Wong’s payment in exchange for his performance. Grandfather Wong was excited about the plan, so much so that Mrs. Wong had to bribe him with a can of Almond Roca to make sure he didn’t spill the beans ahead of time.

After five minutes, Grandfather Wong would begin making a commotion. This would busy at least two of the nurses, Mrs. Wong assured us. Enter Harold. He was to call the third nurse, claiming an emergency in Mr. Fiorio’s room. Finally, Mom would arrive in the front, asking the receptionist for information about Golden Years for her mother (who was long dead). She was to do everything she could to get the receptionist to the back room, where the copy machine was, and away from the exit. Miz June was to man the getaway car, and Anna Bee was to keep a lookout for Delores and Nadine in the front parking lot. Chip Jr. would run to help load Lillian’s things in the trunk, and act as extra lookout. All of this had to be done as quickly as possible, for although we knew that Delores and Nadine visited daily, we didn’t know when they might appear.

“Okay, snap to it,” Mrs. Wong said, knocking on the glass of our car window when we reached the parking lot of the rest home. I barely had my seat belt off yet. Anna Bee stood behind Mrs. Wong and peered over her shoulder. I hoped no one was watching us. We already looked pretty suspicious, if you asked me. Anna Bee was rubbing her hands together like a bank robber.

“Good luck, Queens,” Miz June said. Too loudly.

“Let’s go kick butt,” Harold whooped and spun his fist around in circles.

We were doomed.

Peach and I walked up to the automatic doors. I was ridiculously nervous. My stomach was dancing to some music I didn’t like. I could feel rings of sweat growing under my armpits. I was glad for the drifts of clouds that periodically covered the sun—I needed any help I could get to lower my body temperature.

“You’re my granddaughter,” Peach said. I looked over at her. She looked as if she’d dressed up for the occasion of stealing Lillian—her lipstick was a bright pink and she was wearing a sweater with glamorous beads along the collar that she obviously hadn’t worn in a while. It had those little hanger bumps on her shoulders.

The doors
shushed
open and suctioned closed behind us. Peach looked straight ahead. I felt like I could get a serious case of nervous giggles. Peach was so serious and walking at such a clip that I flashed on the image of her crossing the floor to the “Mission: Impossible” theme. I wanted to burst out laughing. I wanted a bathroom.
Maybe I’d judged my mom and the bathroom-nerve thing too harshly.

Peach gave a wave to the receptionist. “My granddaughter,” she said to her. Maybe she should have made me hold a sign. But the receptionist just smiled and went back to whatever she was studying on her desk, probably a
People
magazine.

We went up two floors in the elevator. The ride took about five years. Peach gave us each a mint from her purse, which I could hear clicking against her teeth as she rolled it in her mouth. That clicking made me want to scream.

We passed the nurses’ desk. “We’re here to see Lillian,” Peach said. “This is my . . .” She was just about to let loose with the granddaughter thing when one of the nurses said, “Oh, hi, Ruby.”

“Friend,” Peach said. “My friend, Ruby.”

“Hi, Mrs. Connors,” I said. Her daughter, Justine, had been in my class during elementary school. In the fifth grade I went to a sleepover at her house, where I stayed awake all night because I worried I might snore or do something else embarrassing when I was asleep. Justine was one of those people who were friendly to you when none of her friends were around.

“How’s your summer been?”