Getting Sassy Read online

  Of course, there were also days when I wished I’d been adopted. As I came within earshot of her little group, I conceded that this might be one of those days.

  “Of course it’s not pizza, Effie,” my mother was saying. “You need more than cheese to make a pizza. It’s got to have sausage or those pepper things on it. Why if—” She broke off when she saw me, and the moment of confusion she often had when I arrived unexpected passed—like a cloud lifting from her eyes—and, without getting up, she opened her arms to me.

  “This is my beautiful daughter, Robyn.” She often introduced me this way. It made me feel schizophrenic—as if there were a homely but more compassionate daughter who showed up more often.

  I took her hand and gave it a little squeeze.

  The three women looked at me with varying degrees of skepticism. Effie, whose hair was dyed a harsh shade of brown that matched her perpetually arched brows, looked up at me and said, “What do you think, Robyn? Can a pizza have just cheese on it?”

  My mother’s grip on my hand tightened. I swallowed. “It’s not a very interesting pizza.” A nail dug into my palm, and with some effort, I pried my hand from hers.

  “I brought your wine, Mom. Should I take it up to your room?”

  Her eyes locked on mine. Glaciers exuded more warmth than those pale blue stones.

  “So it is pizza,” Effie crowed, proving herself as pugnacious as her soft, square jaw implied.

  “It’s a sorry excuse for a pizza.” I turned toward my mother. “Why don’t you come up to your room with me?” I asked, offering her a way out of this deteriorating situation.

  Bestowing a gracious smile on the women, my mother said, “Syl, Vera, do come to my room before dinner for an aperitif.”

  Before either Syl or Vera could respond, my mother took my arm and, steadying herself with her cane, allowed me to escort her out of the lounge.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw the three women huddled together, talking, glancing our way. Effie was smiling.

  “Would it have killed you to agree with me?” my mother said.

  “Pizza’s important.” Then, because it never hurt to remind her, I added, “You don’t always have to be so confrontational.”

  “I’m entitled to my opinion, aren’t I?”

  “You are. But you stated it as fact.”

  “I see.” She nodded as though this angle required careful thought. “So what I should have said was ‘that’s not pizza to me.’”

  “That would have been more diplomatic.”

  “The hell with being diplomatic. I’ve been diplomatic all my life.”

  Hardly.

  My mother’s room on the second floor overlooked the river and the walking path. When she’d moved in, we sat together with the binoculars I’d given her, watching the ducks and geese. A pair of cardinals frequented a nearby yew, and she referred to them as “my cardinals.” I was grateful that the couple had chosen a tree near my mother. Not only were they fun to watch, but their antics provided conversation fodder.

  My mother settled into her rocker by the window, and I checked her tissue and hand cream supplies and rinsed out her wine glass, using my thumbnail to rub the tinge of red from the rim. I always felt like I should do more to make this a home for her. But there wasn’t any more to do.

  This was what getting old was like. Everything got smaller—our homes, our freedom, our bodies. After my stepfather died, we had moved to a three-bedroom ranch house. When I went to college, my mother gave me as many of her belongings as I would take and moved to a two-bedroom apartment and then later to a one-bedroom retirement condo. Now her home consisted of a square, beige room with a microwave and mini-fridge in one corner and her bed, a chair and television in another. She’d jettisoned everything else, donating most to Salvation Army. She did give me her jewelry and a Wedgewood plate. And even though she’d instructed me to throw away a box crammed with old papers and clippings, I’d stashed it in the basement of the building where I rented. I didn’t want to throw away anything I hadn’t looked at, but out of sight was out of mind, and I seldom thought about it.

  I adjusted the angle of a photo—my mother in her mid-thirties in front of the Trevi Fountain—on the wide windowsill. Her life had been distilled to a few mementos: a picture of me, some figurines— two dachshunds and three finches. And, of course, there were my biological father’s remains, which currently resided in a raku vase she kept on the window ledge. He died just before I was born, so I have absolutely no memories of him, but every year on his birthday I buy a new vase for his ashes. I’m not sure why I do this, but I think it’s both a way to honor my father and an excuse to buy pottery. Plus the fact that my mother seemed to enjoy the ceremony where we removed the plastic container holding his ashes from the one vase and put it into the new one. We would toast him with wine and she would tell me a story about him. It’s usually the same one—how he proposed to her—but she likes telling it.

  After I’d poured her a glass of wine, I told her I had to leave. Then I braced myself. My mother hated being alone, a time when she was more likely to get confused and anxious. It was as if this worrisome voice in her head started in on her when she was by herself. In order to combat it, she’d usually turn on the television. But she couldn’t converse with the TV, and so there were days I nearly had to fight my way out her door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got an appointment with my accountant.”

  “Why do you need an accountant?”

  “Because I was a journalism major.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t study something more difficult. Like finance. Or medicine.”

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  She paused for a moment, and her thin white brows drew together as she posed a question to herself. “It’s not tax time, is it?”

  “No,” I said, hoping she’d drop it.

  “Then why do you need an accountant?” For an eighty-two-yearold woman with encroaching dementia, she sure knew what questions to ask.

  “He’s also my investment advisor.”

  “Oh.” She pushed herself up from the chair. “Take me with you.”

  This was what I feared. “I don’t know, Mom. I’m just going to be sitting in an office.”

  “I don’t care. I need to get out of here.” Her tone had taken on a panicky edge. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was teetering on one of her anxiety states. The signs were there. But I figured it was more likely she didn’t want to return to the lounge, where she’d have to face Effie and friends and might have to acknowledge her erroneous take on pizza. Losing face was not something that Lizzie Guthrie did gracefully.

  But before I could come up with a reason for her to stay here, she had propped her cane against the wall and was zipping up the front of her hoodie.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Arthur Floyd Tart building, Fowler’s tallest, was named after the architect who designed it. The big, black slab of stone had tinted windows and an impervious look to it. Several floors of the building once housed a prosperous computer software company that made the kind of computer games that were probably inciting children and other impressionable types to violence. But they were quite successful at it, so Fowler took the attitude, if they’re not designing cyber characters who gleefully disembowel each other here, they’ll be doing it somewhere else. Which is exactly what happened after they were bought out by a larger company. So now those floors were empty, and the darkened windows looking down on Fowler’s business district reminded me of some carrion beast waiting for the town to gasp its last breath.

  The Tart’s remaining businesses occupied the lower and upper floors, and my money man was on the tenth, and highest, floor.

  Unlike his persona, Mick Hughes’s office was unassuming. It consisted of an outer room where his secretary du jour plied her trade and his own office, which gave him a view of Fowler’s skyline, such as it was, and the expressway extension beyond it.
/>   Since I’d been his client, he’d had three different secretaries. Different and yet not. As though they had all risen from the same gene pool: tall women with athletic builds and blond hair. They were polite enough, but smiles were hard won.

  The current secretary’s desk plate identified her as Myra Quill, and she peeked into Mick’s office before waving me in. No way I was letting my mother sit in on this meeting, so I settled her into one of the armchairs in the outer office and selected three magazines for her. She discarded Southern Living and Time but opened In Style. I left her in Myra’s care.

  When I walked into Mick’s office, he stood—not something he normally did—and whistled under his breath—not something he ever did. “What happened to the rest of you?”

  Since I’d seen him in February for my taxes, I’d lost the thirty pounds I’d been carrying since my divorce twelve years ago. It was a combination of things—walking, a little weight training, less fast food. And there is no underestimating the toll that worry can take on a person’s metabolism. Nerves apparently speeded mine up. I might have been a happier person a year ago, but I did like being able to fit into smaller jeans.

  “I donated it to Models without Hips,” I said as I drew the big envelope filled with my finances from my satchel and set it on his desk.

  “You look good.” He said it like I was a Philadelphia cheese steak sandwich.

  “Thanks.” I dropped into the chair and patted the envelope. “And I’m hoping you can find some money for me.”

  I noticed he had his own “Robyn Guthrie” file opened on the desk. After allowing his gaze to linger on me—on my chest in particular—for another moment or two, he settled into his chair. I knew I’d overdone it with the knit top, which was a snugger fit than my usual sloppy Ts. I was here hoping he’d offer me a loan, not a romp in the sack.

  But Mick moved on, picking up the top sheet from his file and placing it squarely in front of him. “This looks pretty good,” he said, after perusing it for a moment. Then he glanced up at me. “You planning on taking early retirement?”

  “No,” I said with the sigh of a person who knows she’ll never retire. “My mother lives in Dryden Manor, and she’s running out of money.” I hated telling anyone this. “If I can come up with some of it, maybe I can get a bank loan to cover the rest.”

  He folded his arms on the desk and leaned toward me. “How much you talking about?”

  “It costs roughly five grand a month.”

  He whistled again in a different kind of appreciation and looked down at the figures.

  “I’ll do anything to keep her out of a Medicaid bed,” I said.

  Shrugging, he said, “Have her move in with you.”

  “I’ll do anything but that.”

  He was right—I should find another apartment—one on the ground floor with an extra bedroom—and move her in with me. The “sandwich generation” did it all the time—three generations under the same roof. I didn’t have kids, so I guess that made me an openfaced sandwich. The guilt and shame I felt over my own ambivalence was eased slightly by the knowledge that my mother didn’t want to share an apartment with me any more than I did with her. I knew that because we’d tried it once.

  “Okay,” was all Mick said with a nod. He opened the envelope I’d given him, then sat back, smoothing his tie against his chest. Neither of us spoke for several minutes as he went over the papers I’d assembled, which laid bare the state of my financial affairs.

  Having someone peruse my finances felt a lot like getting a pelvic exam, and to keep from squirming, I glanced around the room. Mick had no photos on his desk, and his bookshelves were filled with thick, imposing tomes. The only items interrupting the monotonous beige of his walls were his degree from U of I, which hung on the wall next to his desk and, beside that, a watercolor of a chestnut horse in a white-fenced paddock. I suspected that Mick, or someone else he held dear, had painted it. It wasn’t very good. The horse’s legs were short in proportion to the rest of its body, and its tail was inadequate. But I’ve never asked about the artist, because I was afraid he might ask for my opinion. And I would have to tell him the truth. Because that is what I do.

  Rumors swirled around Mick Hughes like flies around a rotting peach. He’d been a jockey—that much was known fact. I’d heard that he walked with a limp, although I’d never seen him walk far enough to determine the veracity of that rumor. I seldom saw him without the desk between us. The source of that limp was up for debate. One story had him mangling his leg in a bad fall during a race. Another had someone mangling his leg for him when he refused to throw a race. I find the former story more credible, since I couldn’t believe Mick was familiar with the higher ground. He seemed to revel in his role as Fowler’s bad boy. He was probably a few years younger than me—early forties—with a broad forehead and bright, rather intense, eyes. I always thought his sandy brown hair needed a combing, but he may have been going for the unkempt look, because he sometimes looked like he could use a shave as well. As far as I knew, he’d never married, but I doubted he had qualms about dating women who were.

  Until today, I’d been content to know nothing of Mick’s life outside this office. An editor at the Fowler News and Record had recommended Mick Hughes to me when I’d first gotten to town, saying that Mick earned money on the side as a bookie and as a loan shark, but that he kept his various enterprises separate. This convinced me that reasonable people benefited from Mick’s financial acumen. The rumors didn’t bother me. Besides, I figured the more shady his extracurricular doings, the harder he’d work at keeping everything above board in his legitimate business.

  “If you didn’t need five grand a month, it’d be a pretty good year for Robyn Guthrie, wouldn’t it?” Then he leaned back in his chair and raked a hand through his hair.

  In fact, it was a good year. I’d ghosted a book and had established myself as a stringer at several magazines that paid well. In addition I was earning some money as a freelance editor. If you ignored the fact that I needed sixty thousand dollars to keep my mother at Dryden for the next year, I was doing great.

  Just as he began punching my numbers into his computer, his phone rang. He answered, saying, “I’m busy here, Myra.” As he listened to her, he picked up a slip of paper, tapping it against the edge of his desk. Then, abruptly, he said, “Send him in.”

  He gave me a thin smile. “You mind waiting outside for two minutes, Robyn?” He wagged his head toward the door. “Gotta see this guy.”

  “Sure,” I told him, relieved that I didn’t have unfinished business with Mick.

  The man waiting for Mick carried a black briefcase and wore a black suit with a bright white shirt and a stern look. I got a whiff of a spicy cologne as he brushed past me on his way into Mick’s office. I had an image of the two of them exchanging wary looks along with thick wads of money.

  My mother had nodded off, head resting on one shoulder. It was a position I often found her in, and one that looked like it would give her the neck cramp from hell. But I let her sleep and picked up Time. To be honest, I was also more in the mood for In Style, but would’ve had to extract it from beneath my mother’s hand, possibly waking her.

  Myra seemed interested in what was going on in the other room, but since there was a closed door keeping her out, she had to content herself by keeping watch on her side. She reminded me of an overeager Doberman—alert and all jittery with stifled energy. Like she was just waiting for an excuse to throw herself at the door.

  I didn’t have long to read. No more than five minutes passed before the man left Mick’s office. He glanced at me with eyes the color of washed-out cornflowers. Myra watched as he walked out the door then settled back onto her haunches.

  My mother roused from her nap.

  “Who’s bringing the salad?” I heard a trace of panic in her voice.

  “I am, Mom.”

  She nodded, murmuring, “Don’t put any grapes in it,” and went back to sleep.

 
“I’m good, but I’m not a magician.”

  Back in his office, Mick delivered the bad news as he studied my life on paper. He shook his head and went silent for several moments, tapping his pencil against the edge of his desk. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and pulled his tie down an inch or so.

  There was an edginess to him now, as though he was a doctor about to tell me I had better get my affairs in order. Then his lips moved slightly as though some new thought struck him, and he began plugging more numbers into his computer. I noticed a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. At least he was working hard.

  I surveyed the room again—anything to distance myself from the edginess. That was when I noticed that the painting of the horse was crooked.

  It hadn’t been crooked before the man with the briefcase stole a few minutes of Mick’s (and my) time. Or had it?

  I quickly added together a number of facts: Mick made book on the side, therefore he dealt in cash; the man had something in the briefcase, which might well have been cash he was bringing to Mick; Mick had to put the cash somewhere, and the painting was large enough to hide a small wall safe. More insane justifying: while money made on illegal betting wasn’t exactly stolen, it wasn’t obtained in a legal manner either. Therefore, it was okay to steal it.

  Then the cautionary, albeit underdeveloped part of my brain kicked in, and I reminded myself that Mick’s reputation was due, in part, to the gusto with which he pursued deadbeats. One persistent rumor had him kidnapping the mistress of a man who hadn’t taken his debt seriously enough and he had threatened to return her to the man’s wife one digit at a time. I had no idea how that particular ploy ended and wasn’t even certain it had occurred.

  Images of my own shattered kneecaps were enough to restore reason. You are nuts, Robyn, I told myself, adding a mental thump upside the head.