Cry Uncle (20 page)

“
A guardian?”

“
A legal representative,
basically. The judge assigns her to make sure Lizard’s best
interests are represented during the custody hearing. The judge
named a local social worker, and she’s coming to visit you tomorrow
morning, to have a look at Lizard’s home life.”

Pamela had expected such a
visit. Joe had married her for no other reason than that he knew
the home he provided for his niece was going to be evaluated, and
he wanted that home to have a mommy figure as well as a daddy
figure. Yet hearing that the visit was actually going to
occur—
tomorrow
—sent
a chill down Pamela’s spine.

“
Isn’t it a little soon for
the court to be taking this step?”

“
Honey, it was a little late
that Joe got around to taking a wife. I hope you can pull off this
charade.”

“
As his lawyer, how do you
think we should handle this?”

“
Don’t make the house
spotless. You want it to look clean but comfortable. Tell Lizard
not to wear any feathers. And tell Joe not to wear an earring that
dangles. And for God’s sake, pretend you love each
other.”

Pamela bit back a retort. She didn’t need
Joe’s lawyer lecturing her on how she and Joe were supposed to act.
They had forged their alliance with a clear understanding. Of
course they would pretend they loved each other.

Damn it, there was no
of course
about it. She
and Joe hadn’t even been in the same room at the same time for the
past two days—at least not while she was conscious. How was she
going to act as if she loved him?

She’d just have to do it, that was all. That
was the deal she’d made with Joe.

“
Do you know what time we
should expect the social worker to show up?” she asked, filtering
all emotion from her voice. “Joe tends to sleep late.”

“
Tell Joe he’d better tend
to wake up early tomorrow. They didn’t give me a time. They like to
drop in unexpectedly, so they can catch you in your normal routine.
It’s the way they do things. You’re lucky you got this much
warning.”

“
I see.”

“
Knock ‘em dead tomorrow,
Pam. Joe deserves to keep that little girl.”

Pamela recollected that little girl’s
whining, her mule-headedness, her aggressiveness...and decided that
Joe definitely deserved her. “I’ll do my best,” she promised Mary
before saying good-bye.

Once again, silence swelled to fill the
house. It wasn’t a lonely silence, though; it was a tense, prodding
silence, a void Pamela intended to fill with work.

She gazed about her at the kitchen. She knew
where the food, dishes and pots were kept, but she had no idea
where Joe stored his cleaning supplies. After all, he had assured
her she wouldn’t have to take care of the house. That had been part
of their deal. She hated housekeeping, and in Seattle she paid a
service to do clean her home for her. Then again, in Seattle she
lived a calm, childless existence, her condominium tidy and rarely
in need of major cleaning.

The same could not be said for Joe’s house.
The kitchen, while not filthy, was far from neat. Weeks-old
third-class mail shaped a sloppy heap on the counter; newspapers
lay piled on the floor in the corner for recycling; the sink was
decorated with crumbs and soggy celery leaves; the calendar hanging
from a hook on the broom-closet door displayed the April page.

She crossed the room, flipped the calendar to
July, and opened the closet door. Not surprisingly, she found
everything she needed inside: a broom, a mop, a bucket and a shelf
filled with scouring supplies. Just the sight of all that cleaning
gear made her groan.

She really, truly, did not want to spend her
evening putting Joe’s house in order. His custody battle with his
in-laws wasn’t her problem.

Yes it was. She was his wife, for better or
worse, until they got a divorce. She had married him for Lizard’s
sake, and for Lizard’s sake she was going to have to pretend she
was a devout homemaker, the little woman, Joe’s better half. Pamela
wasn’t going to renege on her obligations.

She permitted herself a few pungent curses,
then pulled a can of cleanser and a few rags from the shelf and got
to work.

***

THREE HOURS LATER, the house had achieved
Mary DiNardi’s prescription of clean but comfortable. Table tops
and shelves were polished. The dust balls under the sofa had been
harvested. The chairs had been pushed in around the dining room
table. Lizard’s toys had been transferred from the living room to
the den and arranged to convey that this was a user-friendly house.
The few house plants had been watered, the framed crayon artwork
had been hung straight, and the utilities bills Joe had left wedged
under the base of the food processor had been tucked discreetly
into a drawer.

If Pamela had had the time, she would have
looked at the bills. She had no idea what it cost Joe to keep his
house running. She would have liked to contribute to the household
expenses, but she’d already fought that particular battle with Joe
and lost.

So she’d spent the evening contributing in
another way, a stereotypically wife-ish way. Surveying the living
room, admiring the plumped pillows on the sofa and inhaling the
tangy fragrance of lemon-scented furniture polish, she acknowledged
that while cleaning Joe’s house was a hell of a lot more bothersome
than writing a check for her share of the utilities would have
been, it did give her a greater sense of accomplishment.

She glanced at her watch and scowled. Ten
past eleven. Her labor had exhausted her; after a quick shower, she
would head straight to bed. She would have to be up early tomorrow
morning to get Lizard fed and dressed—sans feathers—before the
social worker arrived. Pamela would have to hold things together
until Joe surfaced—if, indeed, he did surface. Heaven knew when he
would be getting home tonight.

She wasn’t in the habit of making late-night
calls, but she realized she ought to try to reach him at the bar
and let him know about the court-appointed guardian’s planned
visit. She should have phoned him earlier, but she suspected he
wouldn’t be easy to connect with while he was at the Shipwreck. If
he were, Mary would have called him instead of Pamela.

Still, Pamela ought to try. Swallowing a
yawn, she trudged to the kitchen and dialed the bar’s number. After
five rings, Kitty answered the phone. “Shipwreck,” she shouted
above the raucous din that filled the barroom.

“
Kitty? It’s
Pamela.”

“
Pam? Hi! How’s it going?
Wait, hang on a second...” Pamela heard a scratchy sound as Kitty
held her hand over the mouthpiece and screamed something about
being out of Heineken. Then she came back on the phone. “So, how’s
it going? Why don’t you come on over and say hello?”

“
I’m watching Lizard,”
Pamela reminded her. “She’s fast asleep.”

“
Oh—oh, yeah. Well, we’ve
gotta get together. I’ve got to tell you about this guy I met, he
looks just like Ernest Hemingway...” She went on and on,
occasionally interrupting herself to holler something to someone.
Through the cacophony of voices Pamela heard the high-pitched croon
of Neil Young warbling “Helpless.”

“
Listen, Kitty,” Pamela said
quietly, trying to break Kitty’s stream-of-consciousness chatter
without raising her voice. She’d managed to dust and sweep the
house without disturbing Lizard. She didn’t want to wake the child
up by yelling into the phone. “I need to talk to Joe.”

“
So, how are things with you
lovebirds? Didn’t I tell you the man’s a prince?”

“
Sure.” If Joe was a prince,
Pamela must be a scullery maid, if not one of the serfs. “I really
do need to—”

“
But I keep telling him,
what he ought to do, once everything dies down, is take you on a
real honeymoon. I mean, yeah, I know, the whole thing is kinda
bogus—”

“
Please, Kitty! You’re in
public!”

“
My lips are sealed. Don’t
you worry your little West Coast head, Pam. Everybody just knows
it’s a love match.”

“
Fine. Can you put my love
match on the phone right now?”

“
Matter of fact, I can’t.
There was a scuffle here. This guy was massively stewed, and he
took a swipe at someone and lost his balance. He hurt himself, is
all. Fell into a chair and needed a few stitches on his chin. Joe
took him down to the hospital. The last thing he wants is to have
this bozo suing him.”

“
Oh, God. Is there a danger
of that happening?”

“
Nah. This sort of stuff
happens all the time. Joe’ll just fill out an accident report. Joe
won’t have to worry about much.”

He’ll only have to worry about having the
court and his in-laws find out that he earns his living by carting
drunks to the hospital to get stitches, Pamela thought grimly.
“Will he be back soon?”

“
Can’t say. Hang on a
second...” Kitty again muffled the mouthpiece with her hand and
shouted, “Lois, get your butt over here! These margaritas have been
sitting here for years!” Back to Pamela, she said, “So, you want me
to give him a message?”

Pamela sighed. “Ask him to get home early if
he can.”

“
Don’t hold your breath,
honey. Tonight’s been a rough one. I wouldn’t expect any nookie if
I were you.”

Pamela wasn’t expecting any nookie in any
case. She considered telling Kitty the reason she wanted Joe home
early, but decided not to. Kitty was clearly in a garrulous,
dangerously indiscreet mood. If Pamela mentioned the social worker,
everyone in the Shipwreck would know about it before Joe got back
from the hospital. “Just tell him I called,” she requested, then
said good-night and set down the phone.

She pulled open the drawer where she’d hidden
Joe’s bills, rummaged inside it, and came up with a sheet of paper
and a pencil. “Dear Jonas,” she wrote. “A court-appointed guardian
is coming tomorrow morning to check up on Liz. Please wake up as
early as you can, and don’t wear a conspicuous earring. I’ll do my
best to take care of everything else. Pamela.” She taped the note
to the newel post at the bottom of the stairway, where Joe would be
sure to see it. After double-checking to make sure the porch light
was on for him, she climbed the stairs.

Her back ached. Her hands were chapped from
the cleansers, and the flesh under her fingernails felt gritty.
Sweat glued her hair to the nape of her neck. She grabbed her robe,
then trudged down the hall to the bathroom for a shower.

Fifteen minutes later, her hair still damp
from her shampoo, she sank into bed and closed her eyes. She
thought about the impending visit from the social worker, about
Joe’s in-laws, about trying to convince the court that she was a
good mother-figure to Lizard when she herself wasn’t terribly
convinced of that. She thought about Joe, staggering home at some
ungodly hour, wearing a drunkard’s blood stains on his shirt, and
finding her note with its unwelcome news.

She had always thought of marriage as a
shimmering vision on the horizon, beautiful yet distant, something
to aim toward, to dream about, to reach for, something that would
be waiting for her once she was ready for it. She had imagined
marrying a man who shared her tastes, her rhythms, her low-key
demeanor and her preference for intellectual pursuits and aesthetic
pleasures.

She had not imagined that it would entail an
exasperating five-year-old child, a mop, and an out-of-touch
husband. She had not imagined that it would result in sleeping
alone.

She had not imagined that being married would
compel her to take care of everyone, putting their needs and
concerns ahead of her own. Yet deep in her heart, she knew that
that was exactly what marriage was all about.

So much for pretending that this was a real
marriage. Except for the empty pillow beside her, she felt
incredibly married—and not terribly thrilled about it. Marriage,
she realized as she rolled over and hugged her blanket to herself,
was damned tiring. She fell asleep wondering whether she’d gotten
more than she’d bargained for, or less.

Chapter Nine

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Pamela
emerged from her bedroom, her head pounding and her nerves
twitching like the quills of a porcupine sensing danger. She moved
quietly down the hall, pausing at the open door to Lizard’s bedroom
and surveying the bedlam within. The floor was strewn with toys,
clothing, a pillow, peanut shells, and, not surprisingly, an
impressive assortment of feathers. Picture books were stacked
haphazardly on the bureau, several drawers of which hung open. The
bed’s mattress wasn’t lined up with the box springs. The roller
shade hung at a drunken angle.

Lizard herself wasn’t there. Not that Pamela
blamed her; she wouldn’t want to spend a second longer than
necessary in that room, either.

With a shudder of disgust, Pamela continued
down the hall to Joe’s room. Halting outside his closed door, she
listened for sounds of life within.

She heard nothing.

Wonderful. He was sleeping late, and she
couldn’t count on him to assist her with Liz’s court-appointed
guardian. The first true test of the contrived Brenner marriage,
and Joe wasn’t going to do his part. He was going to sleep the
morning away.

A strange mixture of emotions seized Pamela:
disappointment, exasperation, sympathy for a man who might lose his
niece simply because he worked odd hours—and a sudden, treasonous
pang of doubt. Perhaps a man who couldn’t wake up early on what was
conceivably the most important day of his niece’s life didn’t
deserve that niece.