Chapter 14
On the ride home from the arcade, Callie fell asleep in the back seat. This reminded me that when Lisa was crying excessively as a baby, we knew one sure way to calm her down—get in the car, and drive until she nodded off.
I called Jake. “I have so much news. But the kicker is that Di is in town. In fact, she’s in the house, living there.”
“Permanently?” he asked.
“Temporarily. A client is staying at her place because she was supposed to be away. She insisted I sleep in Lisa’s room, and she take the guest room.”
“And you did?” he said, great surprise in his voice, making me feel I should’ve stayed put, no matter what Lisa had to say.
“Only because Lisa begged me not to start trouble.”
“Perhaps she should’ve begged Di not to start trouble.”
“I love it. You’re taking my side.”
“But if Di is there, why did Lisa invite you to watch Macallan?”
“I told you. Lisa didn’t know Di would be in town.”
“The boys have been calling me. Michael said to tell you that a certain star who just won an Academy Award has charcoal foot.”
“It’s Charcot foot.”
“What is it?”
“A disease that can cause painful sores or change the shape of a foot.”
“And good news: Alex offered to visit. Great kid.”
“Wow,” I said, not revealing I had enlisted Alex’s eldercare services before I left Florida. “Alex decided to come on his own. Our boy is a man.”
Why decimate Jake’s happiness, his pride in his son, by revealing the truth? I did wonder whether Alex would come and go quickly, due to the Pilgrim’s progress in hassling him as she did when I spoke to him on the phone.
“Any idea how long Lisa will need you?”
“Do you miss me already, Jacob Wexler?”
Callie woke as I parked in front of Lisa’s house. Di’s old Mercedes was gone, which meant she was out, probably selling sand in the desert. Yes, I thought. Hurray. I set out a snack and milk, told Callie to do her homework at the kitchen table.
It was peaceful—much more peaceful than when my three kids had convened before dinner in Manhattan to do school assignments together. After a day at the office in SoHo, I arrived home ready to switch roles from doctor to mother. No matter what had happened at work, I kept my smile on. If I needed a moment for myself, I snuck it in after the kids had started their homework. Sometimes, I kicked off my shoes, took off my irritating pantyhose, lounged with my head on a pillow on my bed. Then one of the children would call out, “Mom, come in here. I can’t do division.”
Jake would show up later. By the time we had dinner, I was too pooped to notice what I was eating—even though I had prepared it while doing long division. Jake was happy to put the children to bed but always needed something from me to complete the process.
“Lisa doesn’t know where her pajamas are,” he’d shout from her bedroom.
“Under her pillow,” I’d yell back.
“Alex can’t find his blankie.”
“On the floor,” I’d reply.
“Michael wants you to say good night.”
“I’m coming in,” I’d said as I surrendered, and Jake made no more effort.
As I watched Callie do her homework, it made me feel tired to remember how tiring it was back then.
“What would you like for dinner?” I asked her.
She frowned. “Mac and cheese. But I can’t have it. I had pasta the day you came. Remember the spaghetti? Mom says I’m only allowed pasta once a week.”
“Well, Grandma is here for a short while, and I think it would be okay if we lived it up.”
Callie was over the moon. “Really?”
I crouched next to her. “Really. All I want to do is have fun. And pasta is fun.”
She had completed a few questions on her worksheet. “You know what would be fun? If you did all my homework.”
“We’re not going to have that much fun,” I said.
As I reached for one of the copper pots hanging from the ceiling, Di turned up in zippered boots, gray wide-wale corduroy pants, and the kind of Shetland sweater impossible to find anywhere anymore. She wore her trademark headband as well. Her blonde hair was perfect, her light makeup flawless, as though she had hired an artist to apply it. Di and Annie were skilled at things I had never mastered.
Callie didn’t look up, didn’t say hello. This surprised me. She had manners. I had seen her charm strangers.
“Callie, say hi to Di.” I remembered not to call her Grandma or Nana, or anything related to age. Did she really think people thought she was thirty-five?
“Hi, Di,” Callie said without glancing up from her workbook.
Di replied, “Macallan, those are cookies.” She said it as though she’d never seen food in a kitchen before. I suspected she would’ve seemed less shocked if she’d seen a lion cub on the table.
Callie didn’t respond, dug her head deeper into the homework. Her nose almost touched the page.
“Macallan, my sister is overweight, and believe me, it’s no picnic. No one likes a fat kid.”
Appalled, I asked Di if we could converse in the living room. First, I addressed the body shaming. “Why would you say ‘no one likes a fat kid’?”
“Because no one likes a fat kid.”
No one likes a fat mouth.
“I was overweight. No one liked me,” she said.
Maybe it wasn’t about your weight, I said to myself. I wanted to take her on, but I knew I couldn’t modify her stinking thinking. Now that I knew whom I was dealing with, I meant to keep my distance, but she seemed to turn up wherever I was.
Later that evening, Di sashayed into the living room, where I was checking emails at the desk. “I heard you met Annie.”
“You heard?”
“This isn’t New York, Joanie.”
Was she really calling me by the incorrect name again? She had no memory loss whatsoever about anything else.
“What do you think?” Di continued.
“Of?” I wasn’t about to make it easy.
“Grannie Annie,” Di said snidely. “Does it bother you that Lisa and Macallan—and even my son Brian—call her Grannie?”
“Not at all. I think it’s very touching.” If I fibbed any more, my nose would start growing.
“Well, guess what? It gets in my craw. Don’t tell Annie it bothers me. In fact, don’t tell her anything I tell you. My life is none of her business.”
“You don’t like Grannie Annie?” I said “Grannie Annie” on purpose. Also, I wanted to make it appear as though I didn’t know the kid lived with Di’s first ex-husband, father of her sons, which would be enough reason for Di to loathe Annie.
Di brushed her palms together as though flicking off dirt. “What’s to like? She’s a child.”
“I think she’s charming,” I said to annoy Di as much as possible. “Talented with hair.”
Truthfully, I felt Annie was fine. Good at heart, devoted to my granddaughter. I didn’t enjoy the moniker, Grannie Annie, or her delusion that she was a genuine grandmother, but it seemed like she had nothing else in her life worth clinging to—so I sort of understood.
Di said, “Don’t be swayed by the constant, endless friendly chatter. She’s a fool, a fool in love with Milton. After all, my first ex-husband, even at his age, is a handsome man. He’s interesting, knows music, plays guitar and piano—still has gigs. We were in love when we married, but he couldn’t behave, ran off with a phlebotomist, bloodsucker that she was. Next, he found an X-ray technician. I’ve eaten bread older than Annie. Mark my words. Milton will move on before Annie does. I should know. I’ve had four marriages. I wedded one man twice simply to make certain he wasn’t the one.”
“You don’t have to marry every person you meet,” I offered.
“Apparently, I do. I asked Milton to leave when Brian was four, days before I gave birth to his brother, Lucky.”
She said this without expression. How awful and scary it must have felt for her to end a marriage knowing she had a newborn on the way. To take care of two children completely alone. I wondered if Milton had paid child support. Had he helped at all? Maybe Lisa was right about Di. She was hardened by fire. She was tough, and when I had stood up to her, she’d made me feel weak. But I wasn’t weak. I had created my life the way I wanted it. It wasn’t as though my long marriage had been a hayride, but I wasn’t getting off the wagon. No matter Jake’s current mood and predicament, we’d already made it through the bumpiest times, most of which were when our kids were young. It occurred to me I was an unusual case. Maybe Lisa was right to accept Di’s obvious warts, and I should give Di some leeway.
Leeway? She stole your bedroom.
Once Callie was tucked in, I emptied the guest room, where I was no longer the guest. Packing annoyed me, but instead of angrily rushing through it, I dwelled on each item as I placed it in the suitcase, concentrating on my stuff as though I’d never see it again. I went so far as to read the labels. I held up the facial moisturizer I used every day. Although my fair skin was generally dry, with age it had become the Sahara. The instructions on the moisturizer said, “Do not feed to children.” What? The coffee cup I had brought from home and took everywhere I went had a message on the bottom: F OR BEST RESULTS , THIS SIDE DOWN .
I went down the hall past the only bath on the floor and into Lisa and Brian’s room, an attractive space with Lisa’s go-to ruffle curtains on eight-pane windows. The canopy bed was draped in blue. Way back when, a canopy bed provided both privacy and warmth. Nice idea, but I was claustrophobic, freaked out in enclosed spaces. Going for an MRI required premedication. I refused to travel on a cruise ship because I couldn’t get off at will. I figured I’d survive in a jail cell five minutes. If I was distracted while conferring with my lawyer—and he was good looking.
Reluctantly, I sat under the canopy to try it out, turned onto my back, shut my eyes. I felt as though I were in a casket about to be buried. I imagined my relatives standing above me. The Pilgrim rolling her eyes as though my funeral would never end and that praise of me was a misjudgment.
I shot back up, rubbed my face, assuring myself I was alive.
Across the room was a floral recliner. I unpacked a book from my suitcase. I fell asleep on the chair while reading the four-hundred-page historical novel someone had claimed on the cover blurb to have completed in one sitting.
I awoke when I heard Callie’s voice, felt her gentle touch on my arm. “Grandma Jo? It’s me. I’m lonely, Grandma. I don’t want to sleep by myself. Can I sleep with you?”
I raised the recliner with the hand crank. I glanced at the bed. I couldn’t do it. I was already prickly at the idea of sleeping on Lisa and Brian’s mattress and claustrophobic about the canopy.
“Callie, that would be nice, but I’m sleeping in this chair.”
She looked at me with pleading eyes. “You could stay in my room, in my bed, with me.”
“I could,” I said.
She lit up, pulled my hand.
I snatched a pillow, joined Callie in her room. We snuggled up. I had landed in the perfect place. And that’s where I would stay, happily, until the day I left.
At 1:00 a.m., nature called. I hurried to the bathroom in the hall, twisted the brass knob. The door was locked.
“Someone’s in here,” Di called out.
“It’s Jodi,” I said. Like, who else would it be?
“You’ll have to wait,” she said as though I was a major annoyance.
“Long?”
“Could be. Not sure. I do feel a bit constipated.”
I didn’t want to wake Callie, so I returned to Lisa’s bedroom and sent a short text to Jake, although I wasn’t a fan of texting. I blamed it for putting an end to actual human interaction. My nephew Josh said these days, if you’re interested in dating someone, you sent an email first. Then, if you decided you liked the woman, you sent a text. If you called her on the phone, it meant you aimed to marry her. I asked Jake how he was doing. I wrote about the bitch in the bathroom, but then I took it back before sending the text. I was where I wanted to be. No reason to complain while he was out of sorts. That could wait for a phone call.
I clicked on the TV. There was The Nicki Nussbaum Hour . Nicki was about to promote an upcoming show. I increased the volume. “Tune in tomorrow! Get real about real estate when I introduce you to a woman who excels in her field.”
Hmm, I thought. Maybe I could make Jake happy—contact Nicki’s guest agent to show me the home in Great Barrington. Tell him I took a tour. Then I saw the face of Diandra Summer Lake. The woman was everywhere. No escaping her.
I tried the bathroom again.
“Can’t you use the toilet on the first level?” Di said.
Proceeding to the stairs, I tripped on the accent rug and fell on the landing, shouting a few choice words.
Di barked from the throne. “I told Lisa that rug is hazardous. I advise all my clients to do away with runners and mats before a showing.”
I take a tumble, and she lounges on the pot talking real estate.
I went into Lisa’s room and found a bobby pin on Lisa’s bedside table, approached the bathroom on tiptoes, pushed the pin through the lock.
She squealed as I opened the door.
There was Di. Caught. Red handed on the pot with her phone.
I decided to give her another reason to make a call. Posing in the entry, I said, “There’s a promotion on TV for your interview with Nicki Nussbaum.”
“It’s up already?”
“Yes, but I’d ask her to retape it.”
“Retape? Why?” she asked, anxiously.
“You kept touching your hair. Seemed like a nervous tic. I thought I should tell you. Also, she was unkind. She called you the agent out of touch with reality. Or was it the real estate agent from hell? Not sure.”