Occasion of Revenge (6 page)

“Little ingrate,” Emily said cheerfully. She swung Chloe into her arms and, using the tail of her linen shirt, wiped the baby’s chin dry. “Bear her, feed her, change her diapers, and read her stories and the first word out of her mouth is
dah.
” Emily boosted her daughter over her shoulder and with a firm grip on her ankles, slid Chloe down her back like Santa’s sack. Emily jiggled her gently up and down until the little girl was convulsed with giggles. “Bath and beddie-bye and
Goodnight Moon
for you, sweetie pie!” She turned to smile at me. “I’ll be back to help with the tree in a bit, OK?” Emily gazed wistfully at the boxes of decorations and sighed. “Speaking of
Dah …
” She swiveled
her head around and spoke directly to Chloe’s laughing pink face. “I wish your father could be here to help with the decorating.”

Paul laid another log on the fire. “I realize the rich and famous need to be pummeled into shape for the holidays, but doesn’t Dante get time off for Christmas?”

“Like, sure. Three whole days.” Emily stiffened her back and thrust out her chin. “Zoh, ven I tell you ve haf mudge respect for zee family here at New Life, you vill zoh vant to verk vith us.” She giggled. “But it will be great once we find a place of our own, won’t it, Chloe? Then Daddy will come home to us at night.”

Studying my daughter’s face, roundly cherubic in the candlelight, I found myself softening toward my son-in-law. Clearly he cherished Emily and adored his daughter. He was also turning out to be a good provider. While he toiled on a Virginia mountaintop, working his fingers to blunted nubs, I worked to overcome my prejudices and get over the fact that Dante’s degree came from the Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and not from Haverford.

Paul adjusted the damper in the fireplace. In the gentle draft the ornaments on the tree twinkled. With tears pricking the corners of my eyes I watched a sleigh I had made for my father out of Popsicle sticks revolve into view. I had been only eight when I painted it fire-engine red and stenciled
Daddy
on the slats in white. That treasure should have hung on the tree at my parents’ house, but Daddy had declared that he didn’t want a tree this year—it was too painful a reminder of Mother—so he’d hauled the decorations out of the attic and begged us to take the boxes away.

Ruth’s box had ended up at my house. Any minute
she’d be showing up to help decorate. I prayed she wouldn’t complain about where we’d put the tree. If I knew Ruth, she’d point out that there was better feng shui between the two front windows. Alas, the ancient Chinese hadn’t been around in 1856 to advise our builders of that fact, or instruct them to install an electrical outlet on the wall there, so if I had anything to say about it, our tree was staying put.

I watched Emily skip upstairs with Chloe’s head bobbing joyfully over her shoulder. Two minutes later I heard the bath water running. While Paul put the kettle on to boil for tea, I slipped a selection of Christmas CD’s into the changer and happily unwrapped and hung our collection of ceramic angels while singing the alto part to “Silent Night” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.” In the middle of a particularly fine
glo-o-o-ria
, Ruth materialized in a multilayered swirl of scarves, sweaters, and cold air. She froze when she saw the tree, her eyes glistening.

“You OK?” I asked. “You’re not crying, are you?”

Ruth shook her head, then ran a mittened finger under each eye. “Just the cold.”

I didn’t believe her.

Ruth took off her mittens, stuffed them into the pocket of her sweater, and walked slowly around the tree, touching familiar ornaments. “Hannah, it’s gorgeous.” She knelt to inspect the Brio train that circled the tree stand on a lumpy green-and-white felt skirt. With a long index finger, she pushed the engine forward a foot. “I wish Daddy were here tonight.”

“So do I, Ruth. I invited him, but he said he had other plans.”

Ruth stood. “Right. Urgent business in Chestertown.”

I looked at my sister and said what I knew she must be thinking. “I wonder if he’s decorating Darlene’s tree tonight.”

Ruth shrugged.

“With—who is it?—Darwin and Deirdre?”

“Darryl,” Ruth corrected. “Darryl and Deirdre.”

“The Darling D’s,” Paul added. He set the tea tray down on top of the piano and drew Ruth to him in a one-armed hug.

“Darling?” Ruth ducked out from under Paul’s arm and turned to face him. “Darling? Try dreadful, Paul. Or how about dangerous?”

I could tell by the look on his face that Paul didn’t want to go there. “Tea?” He smiled, teeth gleaming, and gestured toward the tray.

“I need something stronger than tea tonight.” She peeled off a Kaffe Fassett design I knew she had knit with her own two hands, laid it across the arm of the sofa, then fell onto the cushions, her legs sticking straight out in front of her. “How about a scotch on the rocks?”

While Paul went off to fix Ruth’s drink, I moved empty boxes off the chair opposite my older sister and sat down in it. “What makes you think Darlene’s dangerous?”

“Are you kidding, Hannah?” She sat up and leaned toward me, elbows resting on her knees. “Three men walked down the aisle with that hussy and none has lived to tell the tale.”

Paul returned, carrying a tumbler full of crushed ice and a generous measure of scotch. “Your slushee, madame.” It was ironic that none of us would have drunk like this around Daddy.

Ruth took a sip, smiled a thank-you to Paul, then
looked directly at me, her eyes like coal. “I don’t want Daddy to be Number Four.”

“Neither do I, at least not until we’ve had a chance to check Darlene out thoroughly.”

Holding her glass in both hands, Ruth took another sip of her drink, then melted into the cushions. “So, what do you suggest?”

“I’ve already searched the Internet for Darlene Tinsley.”

“And?”

“Nothing much, except her name appeared in the register of the Chestertown Garden Club. Then I tried just plain Tinsley and there were so many hits the blasted computer froze up on me.”

Paul balanced himself on an arm of the sofa and raised his mug in a mock toast. “Thank you, Bill Gates.” He took a sip of tea. “How about the son, Darryl? Didn’t your father say he worked at McGarvey’s?”

“Yes.” I felt my face redden with embarrassment. “I even stopped by McGarvey’s to talk to him. I told the guy at the bar I was Darryl’s aunt, but he’s taken a week off. He’s on a ski trip out west somewhere. Won’t be back until Monday.”

“And darling Deirdre?”

I glared at my sister. “Ruth, get a grip. Deirdre could be a perfectly nice woman.”

Ruth gave me an I-don’t-care shrug and concentrated on her drink.

“But I couldn’t find her, either. Directory assistance doesn’t list her in Bowie and the university, as you might expect, is not in the home telephone number sharing business.”

Paul set his mug down on the end table. “I have a radical idea! Why not just ask your father?”

“I did,” I said, a bit miffed that he’d think I hadn’t already thought of that.

“So did I,” Ruth added.

“Paul, Daddy doesn’t know any more about Darlene’s past husbands than we do. He says that any time he mentions the subject, Darlene gets all choked up and teary-eyed. It’s just too, too hard to talk about.”

“Convenient.”

“Maybe so, but he feels sorry for the woman and isn’t about to push it.”

Paul looked thoughtful. “Except for Tinsley, we don’t even know their last names, do we? It’s not common knowledge …” He drew an exaggerated breath. “… like Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Kotinsky.”

I applauded appreciatively. “Very good! I doubt I could dredge that up out of
my
creaky database!”

“Before you go handing out any medals, I have to confess I saw it on A and E the other night.”

“Nut!” I beamed at my husband, loving his crooked smile, his bright, intelligent eyes, and the unruly way his hair, slightly gray as if touched by frost, curled over the tips of his ears.

“Earth to Hannah.” Ruth punched my arm.

“Uh, what I was going to say is that I asked my librarian friend, Penny, at Whitworth and Sullivan to run a search on the name Darlene Tinsley in the newspaper databases—”

“And?” Ruth interrupted.

“Nexis turned up nothing. And nothing for Darryl or Deirdre, either.”

“You guys plotting again?” It was Emily, holding Chloe, pink from her bath and stuffed like a plump
sausage into a blue-footed sleeper with Winnie-the-Pooh appliquéd on her chest.

I rose and gathered Chloe, slightly damp and smelling of Johnson’s Baby Powder, into my arms.

“How old’s this Darryl guy, anyway?” Emily asked.

“Twenty-five.” I kissed the top of Chloe’s head and felt a twinge. Emily had smelled just this way as a baby.

Emily, the grown-up, smiled. “Why don’t you leave Darryl to me?”

Paul hugged his daughter, then took her chin in his hand and looked directly into her eyes. “Poor schnook will never know what hit him.”

Emily shrugged. “Proud to do my bit for God and country.” She held her arms out for Chloe. “Say good night to your grandma and grandpa and Auntie Ruth.”

Anchored firmly in Emily’s arms and swaying from side to side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Chloe planted sloppy kisses on cheeks all around before Emily took her upstairs to bed. Paul watched them disappear before turning to me. “Motherhood has certainly agreed with Emily, hasn’t it?”

I couldn’t argue with that. “It’s like a miracle. Last Sunday in church I was saying to myself, Lord, I don’t know who this young woman is, but I think we’ll keep her.”

Ruth balanced her glass on the arm of the sofa. “Maybe she left the evil twin back in Colorado?”

“Emily was never evil, Ruth. Just difficult.”

“You call running away from home for months and months at a time ‘difficult’?”

I sighed. “That’s all in the past.”

“Following that rock group?”

Thankfully Emily bounced back into the room just then, saving us from further Ruth-isms. We finished decorating, then sat back and relaxed, listening to the music, admiring the tree, and enjoying the cozy warmth of the fire as it burned ever lower in the grate. Ruth finished off a third scotch on the rocks and was so limp-limbed and mellow that when the time came, Paul had to drive her back to Providence in her own car, with me following.

Back at home, lying in the darkened bedroom next to my husband with a midnight showing of
Stalag 17
casting flickering shadows on the wallpaper, he asked, “Think Ruth’s going to be OK?”

“Of course. I gave her a bottle of water and watched while she took two aspirins. Couldn’t get her out of her clothes, though.” I ran my hand slowly down Paul’s arm. “She might be moving a little sluggishly in the morning.”

“Come here, sweetheart,” growled the Humphrey Bogart of Prince George Street.

Sometime later, we fell asleep with the TV on.

When the telephone rang, I struggled to open my eyes. On the screen, Lenny Briscoe sat opposite Mike Logan in
Law & Order
, pawing through some papers on his desk.
Why doesn’t he answer his damn phone?
I patted around the covers, feeling for the remote, found it, and clicked off the TV.

But the phone kept ringing.

Three-oh-five. Shit! Nobody ever calls at that hour unless it’s bad news. In the seconds before I picked up the receiver I remember thinking,
Thank goodness Emily is safe in her bed
. I prayed it would be a wrong number. A kid. A prank. “Hello?”

“Hannah! It’s me, Ruth. The police called. There’s been an accident!”

My head swam. “What?”

“A car accident! It’s Daddy!”

“Is he OK?”

“They wouldn’t say. It’s a head injury. They’ve taken him to the emergency room. I’m going over there right now.”

“Wait a minute!” I was already shaking Paul awake. “Don’t you
dare
get behind the wheel, Ruth. Paul will be right over to pick you up!”

I turned on the bedside lamp. Paul looked at me with molelike eyes, rapidly blinking.

I covered the receiver with my hand. “Get dressed. Daddy’s been in an accident, and you’ll need to pick up Ruth. I’m going over to the hospital as fast as I can.”

By the time I threw on the jeans I had abandoned on the carpet the night before, pulled a sweatshirt over my head, stuffed my bare feet into a pair of old jogging shoes, grabbed my parka from the front closet, and headed out the door, Paul was just pulling out of a precious parking spot directly across the street from our house. He powered the window halfway. “Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”

I leaned over, my breath a white cloud. “No. I’d rather walk.”

“Hannah, it’s nearly four in the morning! Get in this car!”

How could I explain? Eight months ago I was heading out this same door for the same emergency room, but that time I was in an ambulance with a pair of paramedics who were struggling to keep my mother’s
heart beating. How could this nightmare be happening again?

I kissed my fingers and pressed them against the window where they left misty white impressions on the glass. “Go get Ruth. I’ll meet you at the hospital.” And I turned and jogged away from him down Prince George Street.

chapter
5

It was the same receptionist. The same one,
I swear, who was asking me the same damn questions in the same flat, emotionless voice. She’d probably taken a course—Pacification 101: Dealing with the Distraught Customer. My fingernails dug into my palms as I fought the urge to scream. I wanted to scream until I ran out of breath, until I fell, blue-faced and exhausted, to the cold, hard floor.

“I don’t know his Social Security number.”

The receptionist, Miss Prozac of 1999, managed a cool, dispassionate smile, but her fingers hadn’t budged from the keyboard.

“I don’t have a clue about his health insurance! Look in your computer! Look up my mother. My poor, dead mother.” I slapped the counter with the flat of my hand. “Look up Lois Alexander. The information’s the same.”