Cry Uncle (31 page)

She was doing it for Joe.

Not because she’d made a deal with him, she
realized. Not because he offered her his name as a shield. Not
because he trusted her—she wasn’t entirely sure he did.

Not even because of last night, which Pamela
was still convinced had been a major mistake.

She was mothering Lizard, scolding her,
finger-painting and collecting sea gull feathers on the beach with
her and staying up late at night to discuss her well-being with
Joe, because somehow, Lizard and her uncle had come to matter more
to Pamela than her expensive condominium and Mozart and all the
rest of it.

In the past eight years, she had designed
buildings, received plaudits, earned bonuses in her work—but that
all came easy to her. She had spent her life training for it,
studying, developing her innate talents as a draftsman and an
artist. Maybe she had a gene for architecture somewhere inside her,
but everything she’d ever accomplished had been well within her
abilities, completely under her control.

Lizard was different. Dealing with her didn’t
come naturally to Pamela; she had no gene for it, no training, no
talent, little control over what Lizard did and even less control
over how Pamela herself felt about it. But she was doing it for no
other reason than to make another person happy.

Two other people: Lizard and Joe. Her
temporary family. She was doing it for them.

And no snooty, swanky interlopers were going
to convince her to give in to their wishes without a fight.

Chapter Fourteen

THE PRESCOTTS’ ARRIVAL on Key West was like a
solar eclipse, blocking out Pamela’s other concerns and throwing
the world into shadow. She had no time to worry about her
relationship with Joe, her situation back home in Seattle, or even
her plans for Birdie’s house. Her thoughts zeroed in on one subject
only: the battle for Lizard.

Joe spent the afternoon at Mary DiNardi’s
office on Eaton Street, plotting strategies and working out
schedules. Pamela spent the afternoon with Lizard at the beach. She
supposed there were things she ought to be doing—cleaning the
house, tidying the yard, buying Lizard a wardrobe of respectable
feather-free clothing—but somehow, none of those activities seemed
as important as making sure Lizard had a happy afternoon.

Pamela wasn’t used to exerting herself to
make a child happy. She tried to remember what her life had been
like not so very long ago, when all her energies had been devoted
to her career, her adult friends, her memberships in museums and
subscriptions to the opera. In those days, she used to grimace when
she saw children entering a theater with her or sitting near her on
an airplane, because she knew they would be noisy and disruptive.
She used to pride herself on the order in her life, the
dependability of her surroundings. She used to go for days—for
years—without ever considering the significance of pink food.

But now that placid existence had vanished.
Pamela could no longer control the flow of events that coursed
around her. She was geared to the needs of others—most
particularly, the needs of a demanding, occasionally obnoxious and
chronically messy little girl.

And the strange part was, Pamela was too busy
worrying about that little girl’s needs to mind.

The phone was ringing when they got back from
the beach late in the afternoon. During the walk home, Lizard had
groused about having to keep her swimsuit on the entire time they
were at the beach, but Pamela had stood firm in her view that
Lizard had to behave modestly, at least when it came to her
body.

Modesty in all other matters seemed beyond
Lizard. “I’m the smartest kid I know,” she boasted when Pamela
expressed surprise at her ability to identify the different breeds
of palms bordering the beach. “I’m smarter than Megan, even. She’s
my best friend, but I’m smarter than her. Ask anybody. Even Birdie,
she’ll tell you how smart I am. And she knows Boo Doo so she
oughtta know.”

Pamela heard the shrill, rhythmic peal
through an open window and hustled Lizard up the front walk. “Maybe
you’re smart, but right now you’re as slow as molasses. That could
be your Uncle Joe calling us. Let’s pick up the pace.”

Just to be contrary, Lizard chose that moment
to drop the bag containing her beach toys and chase after a
butterfly flitting among the rhododendrons. Ignoring her, Pamela
raced up the front steps to the porch, unlocked the door, charged
into the kitchen and dove for the phone, eager to answer before Joe
hung up.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Joe. “This is Mona
Whitley,” the social worker’s voice chirped through the line.

Dear lord, Pamela thought a few minutes
later, after Ms. Whitley had explained to her that, in order for
her to observe the Prescotts interacting with Lizard, Pamela would
have to host a get-together with Lizard and her long-lost relatives
tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.

Lying through her teeth, Pamela assured Ms.
Whitley that this would be no trouble whatsoever. She had to behave
courteously, exactly the opposite of how she felt about
entertaining a social worker and the bad guys in Joe’s house.

She glanced at her watch. After five. Lizard
was still outside; through the kitchen window Pamela could see her,
armed with her plastic bow-and-arrow set, firing arrows blithely at
the butterfly. Pamela considered calling Lizard inside for a bath,
but wrestling the kid into the bathtub was more than Pamela could
handle right now. The realization that Lizard’s life—or, more
accurately, Joe’s life—was about to cave in, sapped Pamela of
energy.

She recalled the last time Mona Whitley had
paid a call on the Brenners. Pamela had knocked herself out to make
the house and Lizard presentable. Joe had knocked himself out to
convince Ms. Whitley that he and Pamela were madly in love, even
though, at that time, Joe could barely tolerate her.

Obviously, he could tolerate her now. More
than tolerate her, if last night counted for anything. Would he
kiss her again in front of Ms. Whitley? Given that they’d been
intimate, did he think kissing was too tame? Did he want to kiss
her again? Did she want him to? Would kissing him lead to other
acts, acts that would throw her emotions into even greater disarray
than they were already in?

Had Pamela ever wasted so much mental effort
trying to figure out a man before?

Since Joe hadn’t called her, she telephoned
him at the Shipwreck. After three rings, Brick answered. “Hi, it’s
Pam Brenner,” she said. “Is Joe there?”

Brick grunted something and set the phone on
the bar with a loud thud.

She heard the sounds of
early tavern traffic, a low babble of voices and the muffled strain
of music from the juke box. She recognized the song at once:
Stand By Me
. It sent a
tremor of longing through her. Life had seemed so complicated the
day she had married Joe—but in fact it had been much simpler. Now,
life really
was
complicated, but when Pamela contemplated it everything seemed
simple.

She had to help keep Joe and Lizard together.
She had to stand by Joe.

Really, very simple.

She heard his voice through the line.
“Pam?”

“
I just got a call from Mona
Whitley,” she said, then reported on the following day’s
agenda.

Joe cursed. “I’ve been waiting for this to
happen for so long,” he confessed. “Now that it’s finally in the
works, I can’t stand it.”

“
I know.” She sensed the
sadness and frustration in his tone, and felt a powerful desire to
reassure him. “Joe, those people—the Prescotts—they aren’t cut out
for dealing with Lizard. It doesn’t take much of perception to
realize they aren’t child-oriented.”

“
They’re rich,” he said
laconically.

“
So what? You’re not exactly
poor.”

“
I could shave every day,
and I’d still be a bum.”

“
No,” she said, refusing to
let him label himself the way she’d once labeled him. “You’re a
good father. Or uncle. No, father. That’s what you are to
Lizard.”

“
Yeah, sure,” he
muttered.

“
What did your lawyer
say?”

He cursed again. “In twenty words or less?
She said the law was a funny thing, and she hoped I could hang onto
my sense of humor.”

“
We’ll get through this,
Jonas,” Pamela promised, wishing she actually had some influence on
the outcome. “I’ll do whatever I can to convince the courts that
Lizard belongs with you.”

He said nothing for a minute, and then,
“Thank you.” Just two small words, yet they conveyed so much. She
heard the catch in his voice, the slight waver, and felt a
closeness to him far more profound than the closeness she’d felt
during those few intense minutes last night when her body and his
were locked together in love.

This was it, the main event, the reason Joe
had taken her in and given her his name. She would do whatever she
could, and he would trust her.

“
Come home early,” she urged
him. “You’ll need a good night’s sleep.”

“
I’ll try,” he said, and
hung up.

Pamela lowered the phone into the cradle and
let out a long breath. She felt oddly shaken. The last part of
their conversation had been strangely personal, the sort of
solicitous back-and-forth a husband and wife engaged in.

She reminded herself once more of the terms
of her marriage to Joe. They weren’t going to become involved.
Their wedding was strictly for show. Behind closed doors they would
remain separate.

When had she lost control of the arrangement?
When had she lost control of her own feelings?

Why did she care, to the depths of her soul,
what happened to Joe and his niece? Why did she feel her heart
wrenching in sympathy for him? Why did it seem as if his losing
Lizard would hurt Pamela as much as it did him?

And however it ended up, once it was all
behind her and Joe, how would she ever be able to find her way back
to the life she loved in Seattle?

A thump at the window startled her out of her
ruminations. She glanced across the kitchen and saw the suction tip
of one of Lizard’s arrows sticking to the outside surface of the
pane.

She should have been incensed at Lizard’s
wild play. The window could have been shattered, for heaven’s sake.
Lizard could have gotten cut by flying glass.

But all Pamela thought, as she strolled to
the back door to call the girl inside for her bath, was that Lizard
was a splendid shot.

***

THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS slid by in a blur.
Joe could hardly remember going to the Shipwreck, chatting with the
customers, tapping the kegs and tallying the receipts. All he
remembered, as he reviewed the period since the Prescotts showed
their hoity-toity faces on his island, were the signs, as bright as
the neon lights on Duval Street, that he was going to lose
Lizard.

Joyce and Lawton were just so damned nice to
Lizard. The morning they came to play with her under the watchful
eye of Mona Whitley, Joyce accompanied Lizard up to her bedroom and
adopted a cloying sing-song voice, making a fuss about each and
every one of Lizard’s ratty old stuffed animals. Joe couldn’t
believe the kid was taken in by it. Usually Lizard had a bullshit
detector sharper than a state trooper’s radar gun. But she fell for
Joyce’s gushing: “Oh, so this is your stuffed manatee! Why, isn’t
he just adorable! What’s his name? May I shake his hand—or is it a
flipper?”

A few minutes of that, and Joe was ready to
lose his breakfast. He wondered why Lizard played along, but the
fact that she did made him even more certain the court was going to
decide in favor of the Prescotts.

Sickened by the prospect—to say nothing of
Joyce’s saccharine behavior, Joe headed downstairs, where he
discovered Lawton and Mona Whitley seated on the living room couch,
drinking Joe’s coffee and yakking like long-lost friends. When they
weren’t exploring their shared passion for golf, Lawton was
describing the school system where he and Joyce lived. “The
Hillsborough public schools are among the best in the country,”
Lawton bragged. “But with state budget cutbacks, we might choose to
send Elizabeth to private school, instead. There are several fine
preparatory schools within a reasonable distance of our house.
Elizabeth would receive the best education money can buy. Do you
think she’d like to be called Betsy? She seems like such a Betsy to
me.”

“
She likes to be called
Lizard,” Joe interjected, which won him a reproachful look from
Mona Whitley.

That was the first day, a day Joe dealt with
by heading for the Shipwreck as early as he could and submerging
himself in his work. He insisted on staying until closing time,
hopeful that Pamela would be asleep by the time he got home. He
didn’t want to have to talk to her, to reveal how miserable he was.
He didn’t want to confront the truth that it would be much easier
for him to get through the night if he had her in his arms.

The following day, the Prescotts took Lizard
out for a while, with Mona Whitley chaperoning. “They’re going to
win,” Joe groaned to Pamela once he no longer had to smile and wave
at his niece as his loathsome in-laws ushered her down the front
walk to their rented Infiniti. “They’re going to take the Liz Kid
away from me.”

Pamela patted his shoulder and said, “We’re
not going to let them.” She was wearing a pair of culottes and a
neat button-front shirt, obviously an effort to compete sartorially
with the Prescotts. Joe hadn’t seen her dress so well since she’d
moved in with him and learned what life with Lizard could be like.
Turning from the door, she said, “I’m going to change into some
real clothes, and then take a run to the supermarket. We’re out of
strawberry yogurt. Is there anything you want me to pick up for you
while I’m out?”