Chapter 6 Hailey #2
“Mine are in the back, I got these for you. Ten bucks a pair, can you believe that?” Hailey lived in fear of the bargain treasures her mother would force on her; Pammy’s biweekly trips to Marc’s discount superstore yielded anything from giant boxes of goldfish crackers to a fly swatter in the shape of a freight train.
Still, Pammy had already planned next week’s excursion with Mabel to buy her granddaughter her second round of school supplies, and Hailey knew that Grammie, as the girls called her, would hop there on one foot—backward—if she had to.
Pammy did anything and everything for Hailey and her girls, and for Mack too, so Hailey had never breathed an honest word about the junk Pam bought her, and displayed it faithfully.
She suspected Pammy’s lawn ornaments in particular had a very specific purpose: though she’d never said it out loud, Hailey knew that her mother found the new house, and indeed Bratenahl itself, stuffy and soulless.
Which was ironic, because it was Pammy who had first sparked her daughter’s ambition to live there.
When Hailey was still a very little girl, they’d gone to Bratenahl to hit up an estate sale.
(It certainly wasn’t called a garage sale in Bratenahl.) Hailey had little memory of the house they went to, but the specter of the giant estates with their yards running right down into Lake Erie was like nothing she’d ever seen before.
“I’m gonna have one of those when I grow up,” Hailey had told her parents, her nose pressed against the rear window of her dad’s Cutlass Supreme.
“You can clean it then,” Pammy said. “Just think of all those bathrooms.”
The moment had stuck in Hailey’s brain forever.
Her obsession with the neighborhood had endured, and the very first phone call she made from her brand-new house in the new Magpie Court subdivision of Bratenahl, Ohio, was to Molly Maids.
The $200 they charged for a biweekly visit was worth every penny.
Hailey set up the sprinkler in her parents’ small front yard for the girls to run through. Pammy poured out purple Kool-Aid (also from Marc’s and served in plastic cups so old they had to be shedding BPA by the bucketful) and then finally sat down to put her foot up.
“Dad fishing?”
Pammy nodded. “You said Mack had some meeting? Sorry we couldn’t help this morning, Dad was already gone and I—”
“It was fine.” Hailey had only been a little bit distracted, had only failed in her attempt to save her firm from bankruptcy. No big deal.
“And what’s this I hear about Mack going to see his mom?”
“When did he tell you that?” He’d only told Hailey last night.
“When he called to ask me to handle school on Tuesday. You’ll have to tell me how the drop-off works, but I should be fine to drive by then—”
“He’s such a—” Hailey stopped herself; her mother hated to hear a bad word uttered about Mack, it was infuriating. “I can’t believe he’s going to miss Mabel’s first day. I can’t take any more time off, and he should—”
“I wouldn’t sweat it, honey. I don’t remember anything about your first day of school, and I doubt you do either.
It’s only your generation that insists on all these ridiculous milestones.
Anyway, you’ll both be able to come to the six-week anniversary of her starting kindergarten ceremony. That won’t be too far away.”
Hailey laughed in spite of herself. Maybe the Kool-Aid had vodka in it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Is his mom worse? Poor Mack.”
“No, she’s the same. It’s more like an admin thing.”
“Maybe he can finally move her up here. I couldn’t stand to be that far away from you, it’s hard enough with you all the way in Cleveland and your sister leaving us behind—”
Hailey’s sister Lyndsey had moved to Dayton, which was, to Pammy, like moving to Siberia. It took three hours and half a tank of gas to get there.
“Mack’s mother doesn’t know she’s far away, Mom. She doesn’t know anything.”
“That’s a little harsh, sweetheart.”
Hailey let it go. She was eager to change the subject.
Her mother was a bloodhound when it came to secrets, and Mack was really going to Florida to try to find out about his father.
Eighteen thousand dollars was a lot of money, when you thought about it, and it had been gnawing at Hailey even as it flew out of their bank account.
Mabel’s school bill would have made a big dent in their savings if it hadn’t been for this present from the Father Fairy, but Hailey didn’t like the idea of being beholden to a Mafia don, even if he was technically family.
She was a member of the Ohio bar, for God’s sake, and she wanted reassurance that Mack’s dad was just a harmless old con man trying to settle his affairs before he croaked.
That way she could spend his money in peace and guiltlessly use it to replace the bonus that there was probably no chance of this year.
Finally, finally, after hours of chipping away at him, Mack had caved and agreed to investigate further.
Then he’d gone too far in the other direction, and now he was taking himself off to Florida.
Why he couldn’t just make a phone call, why he had to buy a plane ticket and fly all the way to Jupiter just to ask a couple of people a few questions, was absolutely beyond her.
Maybe it was his last hurrah before his classes started again.
It was then, sitting on her mother’s porch getting drunk on Kool-Aid, that Hailey realized that for the first time in the history of their relationship, she didn’t actually know when Mack was going back to school.
He’d always made a big deal of counting down the last days of summer, and in the week before all the students came back to campus, he would insist Hailey take a day off.
He’d buy Cedar Point tickets so they could spend a day riding roller coasters and eating crap, then maybe he’d take her to a concert at Nautica.
But this year he seemed to have abandoned tradition.
Maybe, Hailey thought, he was finally starting to grow up.