Chapter 6 Hailey
Hailey
Why did everything always have to happen all at once?
No matter: Hailey would dial in from the pool.
She would put Gulliver into her big canvas bag and smuggle him past the club attendant.
She’d blow up the swim floaties, wipe the chlorinated snot from Gigi’s face, and coax Mabel off the diving board a few times.
She’d order the girls grilled cheese sandwiches and reapply their sunscream, as Mabel still called it.
Then, after she’d squeezed in delivering the news to David Rainier about the two hundred and fifty grand he owed her, she would put the kids and the invalid sausage in the car and drive down to Akron to check on her mal-coordinated mom.
(A thousand dollars said Mack had been told about this meeting months and months ago, and just hadn’t bothered to write it down. Any sympathy Hailey felt over his Goodfellas childhood had evaporated.)
Gulliver hated riding in any kind of anything, especially now, which meant that Hailey knew ahead of time that she’d have to cover his head with towels and sneak past the zitty teenage pool attendant with a writhing, jumping beach bag on her arm.
This had been her focus during the preparations, and so she hadn’t supervised Mabel’s final swimsuit choice.
Which was why Mabel, who had just removed her cover-up, was now prancing around the very exclusive Shoreby Club in a tiny sequined bikini from Walmart and jelly plastic platform sandals, both gifted by Hailey’s mother.
She looked like a six-year-old stripper.
Hailey took a deep breath, and a bit of luck came her way: there were three chaises free on the far corner closest to the lake.
She could tuck Gulliver behind one of them and he could snooze undetected in the shade.
She had even remembered to bring the leftover painkillers from the vet in case he had trouble falling asleep.
She waved to Allison Murdoch as she passed, she of the six boys in seven years (and all in private school!), and then smiled at the old guy with the weird mustache who lived in one of the big houses on the shore.
He was always around, walking the neighborhood, swimming laps in the pool, checking his perimeter.
Oh, to be retired! Hailey was more than ready.
Too late she recognized the occupants of the chaises next to the ones she was aiming for: their next-door neighbor Betsy Wakefield and her two daughters.
The eldest, Arabella, was wearing the exact same strawberry-print (one-piece) Crewcuts swimsuit that Hailey had laid out for Mabel that morning, and also the matching hair bow and the coordinating flip-flops.
She and her equally well-turned-out sister, whose name Hailey couldn’t remember, were both reading books that looked very advanced for their ages.
Hailey made a mental note to get Mabel brushed up on her phonics.
Mabel was always a little behind in everything: she had been born at twenty-two weeks and, having fought like hell for six months to stay alive, now seemed to have only placid happiness left in her.
No matter; Hailey would clear a path around Mabel for the rest of her life if she had to.
Mabel had kept up her end of the bargain by not dying.
Neither of the Wakefield kids acknowledged Mabel or Gigi, and the snub was roundly reciprocated, even though the girls had all played together a few times.
Hailey wished adults could indulge the same instincts; she and Betsy hadn’t even been able to get past vague pleasantries and empty discussions of meeting for coffee.
Hailey said hello to the Wakefield females and made a comment on the beautiful day.
“We brought our dog Gulliver swimming,” Gigi immediately said to Betsy. “He has an infection in his privates and so we can’t leave him so now we’re going to take him in the pool so he can swim. Have you met Gulliver?”
“I certainly hear Gulliver all the time,” said Betsy, with a disgusted glance at the verboten four-legged pool guest. “But I don’t believe we’ve met formally, no.”
Hailey’s phone buzzed. It was a 212 number that flashed up; it had to be David Rainier.
A full two hours ahead of schedule. Of course she took the call, directing Mabel and Gigi, who still hadn’t taken her T-shirt and shorts off, toward the baby pool.
Fortunately, Mabel knew the drill, and Hailey’s voice came out calm and even when she spoke: “Mr. Rainier. Thank you so much for agreeing to this call today.”
“Yep.”
“I felt sure that if we could just connect and speak candidly, we could come to an arrangement.”
“You mean you’re sure you can talk me into paying you?” He laughed. “Rebekah told me you want two hundred and fifty grand?” He laughed again.
So this was how it was going to go.
“You think you shouldn’t pay me? You’d rather that I tell all the people that work for me that the hundreds of hours they spent fighting in your wife’s corner in good faith was just for fun?”
Rainier didn’t say anything, but he didn’t hang up, either.
“Then I’ll have to fire a few of those people, of course, because of the bank breathing down my neck, but I’m sure they’ll register for unemployment cozy in the knowledge that you and your wife have decided to rekindle your romance, at least for now.”
More silence. Hailey saw that Mabel had tugged up her bikini bottom so that it was basically a thong, and Gigi was sitting in the shallow water fully clothed. Any minute now they would be thrown out of here.
“Look, Ms. Evans. Hailey. I dislike my wife even more than you probably do. Off the record, she’s a nasty, narcissistic cokehead that I wouldn’t leave my children alone with for five minutes.
We both know the family courts would try to make me do just that, and that she’d use custody as leverage.
So Rebekah and I have come to an arrangement, as distasteful to me as that may be. ”
“Then your arrangement needs to include settling her legal bills.”
“I don’t think so. I’m really sorry.” He sounded genuinely sorry, which threw Hailey off. “I really am, but I don’t have two fifty to throw around just because your firm was dumb enough to give a crazy woman a huge line of credit. It’s the principle, is the way I see it.
“People change their minds about getting divorced all the time. Surely your policy should be to make your clients pay you up front, or at least as they go.”
“We extended credit in Rebekah’s case because—”
Gulliver had escaped Hailey’s bag and was sprinting toward the baby pool. He was going to pull the stitches right out of his dick.
She pressed on. “We made an exception because . . . because—”
“Because you knew I had a lot of money to go after. I’m sorry, Ms. Evans. You took a gamble, and it didn’t work out this time. But I’m not covering for this stupidity.”
It was unclear whether he meant her own stupidity or Rebekah’s.
Gulliver briefly tested the water in the baby pool, deemed it unsuitable, and was now running back toward Hailey, with hordes of excited children in pursuit. She had to get off the phone before their shouts got loud enough for Rainier to hear.
“You’ll hear from our counsel, then. We’re going to get our money, and that’s all there is to it. HaveanicedayMisterRainier.”
As she hung up, the pool manager was approaching, in his Shoreby polo shirt and logoed blazer. They’d called in the big guns. He reached her just as Gulliver cocked his leg over Betsy Wakefield’s espadrille.
“Ewww,” screeched Arabella. “Gross, Mommy look! He’s doing a wee wee in your shoe!”
“He’s always doing that,” said Mabel casually as the pool manager dove to snatch the sandal out from underneath Gulliver. “Peeing in shoes is like his most favoritest thing in the world.”
* * *
Hailey’s mother’s foot was not broken, just badly sprained.
She’d therefore ignored the medical advice to keep the weight off it, and she hobbled out into her driveway to help Hailey unload the girls.
In her hands she dangled a pair of jelly plastic shoes identical to Mabel’s, but smaller.
Gigi was ecstatic (her size had been previously unavailable), and Hailey sighed.
She didn’t have the heart to tell Pamela Byers that the shoes were the ugliest things she’d ever seen and that the buckle on Mabel’s was already broken; her mother had been as excited about them as her granddaughters. And Pammy Byers was just warming up.
She led Hailey immediately to a pair of twisted metal chickens by the front steps.
They were new since Hailey had come by the week before, though had her mother not pointed them out she might not have noticed them among the other wildlife: flamingos and porcupines and foxes and deer, in stone and wire and wicker.
The chickens were especially hideous though, up close. They looked sinister somehow.
“Wow.”
“You like them? They’re yours. Marc’s has a deal going on the farm animals.”
“Oh no, you keep them. They’re in the perfect spot right there.”