Tied to the Tracks (14 page)
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
“But I didn’t.” John said it clearly and saw Angie jerk, ever so slightly. Which gave him more satisfaction than he deserved, or could explain to himself.
Rob said, “In all fairness, Angie, the old man hated just about everybody, our mother included.”
“How is Lucy?” Angie asked John. She had met John’s mother only once, but it had been memorable.
“Fine. She’s fine.” He shot Rob a sharp look, but Kai missed the significance of that. She said, “She is remarried. Again.”
“Really?” Angie said. “How many times is that?”
“Four,” said John.
“Five, counting our father,” added Rob. “If you want to know my theory—”
“Please don’t,” said John.
“—it all started as a way to irritate Grandfather Grant after Daddy flew his plane into the sea, but then Lucy got into the serial marriage habit and she hasn’t been able to break it.”
“I think your grandfather would not have liked Lucy no matter what,” said Kai thoughtfully. To Angie she said, “He took Rob out of his will when we got married.”
“And then he died,” said Rob. “That’ll teach him.”
“I didn’t know about your grandfather,” Angie said. Her mouth worked as if she were tasting something unpleasant. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be,” Rob said. “We aren’t. Or I’m not. I can’t speak for John—who got the building on Morningside and the house on Long Island, by the way.”
“I sold the Long Island house,” John said.
Angie was looking at John, but for the moment he couldn’t meet her eye. He was too busy fighting back a swell of irritation with Rob and himself, too, for this irresistible urge to provide Angie with information that she clearly did not want.
Her attention was fixed on him, her eyes so dark and so brilliant that it looked, just for that moment, as if she were about to cry. Which was his imagination, because he had never known a woman less inclined to tears, unless it was Kai. Or his own mother.
Very slowly she said, “Jay, you still won’t admit you were angry about my hair.”
“Jay?” Kai looked between them. “I have never heard you called this before.”
“And you never will,” John said. “Angie’s always renaming people—” He paused before the rest of the thought forced its way into words: Angie renamed only the people she cared about. He cleared his throat. “She calls her father Apples and her mother Peaches. She calls her close friends
winkie
when she’s feeling good about them and
mope
when she’s not. How is your mother, Angie?”
winkie
when she’s feeling good about them and
mope
when she’s not. How is your mother, Angie?”
“Fine,” Angie said, and Kai said, “Winkie?”
To Angie, John said, “I admit your timing was bad, Angie. But that’s all I’ll admit.”
“Harvey, give it up. You were angry and, oddly enough, you’re still angry.”
“This is all ancient history. And if I have any say in the matter, if I’ve got to have a nickname, I’d like to stick with Jay.”
Kai said, “John does not like to show anger, it is true. In this, he and Caroline are well matched.”
It was rare that Kai pushed him so hard that John was in danger of losing his composure, but now it took everything in him to control his tone. He said, “I don’t want to talk about Caroline.”
Angie’s gaze hadn’t left his face. “But that’s where all this started. I wanted to know if Caroline has been told about our ancient history. Which she hasn’t.”
“She doesn’t know?” Rob sat up straight.
Kai, oblivious as she could be at times, smiled. “Do you think she will be angry at you? Is that why you haven’t told her?”
John said, “Now I’m a obsessive closeted homosexual afraid of anger, confrontation, and women.”
“Named Harvey,” said Kai cheerfully.
The doorbell rang, but John couldn’t bring himself to look away from Angie, who had come back into his life to wreak havoc, and was making excellent progress. He let Rob leave the table to answer the doorbell while he held Angie’s gaze, because it would have been cowardly to look away, and because there was something in her voice he didn’t understand, quite, or even want to understand.
Angie pressed the fingers of both hands to her mouth and then drew them down to her chin. “I think we’ve established that you’re not gay.”
“As you have cause to know,” he said, quietly.
She said, just as quietly, “But the rest of it fits. As I have cause to know.”
Kai said, “So those are the reasons your relationship failed?”
“No,” said Angie, her voice wavering. She managed a smile. “Those aren’t the reasons. Excuse me, would you, Kai? It’s been good to meet you, but we seem to be going in circles here, and I have work to do.”
Angie was so intent on making it to the front door before John caught up with her—she heard him push his chair back when she was halfway through the kitchen—that she turned into the hall without looking and bumped into Rob, who stepped sideways and collided, full force, with Patty-Cake Walker, whose arms were full of huge wallpaper sample books that cascaded across the floor, flapping like a flock of mute and uncoordinated geese.
Then John ran into Angie, and she lost her tenuous balance and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the elbow. She heard herself gasp, and she heard him draw in breath, and then she was free again—absolutely free again, unattached, alone—and standing, breathing heavily, between Patty-Cake Walker and John Grant. Rob was on the floor, gathering the wallpaper books into a pile.
Angie knew her face was red with embarrassment, but John looked far worse, like a teenager who had just been caught on the couch with a fast girl. Patty-Cake was looking back and forth between them with a sharp, uneasy smile that said she was seeing things she didn’t like.
“Hello, Mrs. Walker,” Angie said. “And good-bye. I was just on my way out.”
Patty-Cake smoothed her hair. “Am I early, John? I’m supposed to be meeting the Rose girls here. Don’t let me chase you off, Angie, I’m sure Caroline would be so pleased to see you again.”
“You’re not early,” John said, opening the door for Angie. “They’re late, as usual. Thanks for coming by, Angie.” He managed a grim smile, which was more than Angie could do. She nodded at Rob, and slipped out the door.
EIGHT
Miss Zula wasn’t ever a beauty and she is still wearing dresses she must have bought in 1963, but she is dignified and distinguished. By all accounts she is an excellent teacher. I cannot speak to her stories, as I have never read one.
Your name:
Corrine Stillwater (Mrs. Howard). If you would like to talk to me, you may find me at home, looking after my family. I am also chairlady of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
I’ve made some resolutions,” Angie told Rivera the next morning. “First, I’m not hiding out in this house anymore.”
Rivera pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Well, good. You’ve got to see about Tony. I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”
“I’ll corner him and get some answers,” Angie said. And then: “Who is it?”
River scowled at her. “Harriet Darling, of course. Harriet Darling with the husband who should just
die
.” Rivera had perfected Harriet’s accent and mannerisms in record short time. She sent Angie a sideways glance. “I warned you.”
die
.” Rivera had perfected Harriet’s accent and mannerisms in record short time. She sent Angie a sideways glance. “I warned you.”
“How far has it gone?”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” Rivera said. “But you’d best go up and catch him right now. Take coffee with you.”
Except Tony wasn’t in his room, which was pleasantly rumpled and strewn with rolls of film and camera lenses, odd papers, and pieces of clothing. If Tony Russo wasn’t in his own bed at seven in the morning, he was in somebody else’s. Angie just hoped it wasn’t Harriet Darling’s.
The rest of the day turned out to be just as frustrating. The office Angie had been assigned in the English department turned out to be without working air-conditioning or telephone—though she remembered both things being there when she had first looked in, over a week ago—and there was no sign of the computer she had been promised. The office was empty of everything but two straight-backed chairs and an old metal desk that looked distinctly out of place against the walnut wainscoting. The top of the desk was covered with something sticky, and all the drawers were firmly locked. With the first glimmerings of a serious headache already making themselves felt, Angie went to find Patty-Cake Walker.
She was barricaded behind a highly polished oak desk the size of a small pool table, the great overturned bowl of lacquered hair unruffled by the breeze from the air-conditioning duct, which might have come off a jet plane.
“Now look who’s here,” Patty-Cake said with a stiff smile. “Dr. Grant isn’t in quite yet, and neither is Rob.”
Angie managed to look surprised. “That works out just fine, because I wasn’t looking for either of them,” she said. “But I do have a few questions for you.”
“You shy thing.” Patty-Cake tilted her head and produced what Angie thought was meant to be a teasing expression. “You and Dr. Grant used to know each other up there in New York, and you never said a word.”
“Because,” Angie said evenly, “it was a long time ago.” It was never good to hold back anger, her father would say, and here was the proof: her headache ratcheted up a notch.
“Five years a long time?” Patty-Cake wagged her head from side to side. “I guess I’m getting old.”
“I guess you are.”
The silence between them sparked. Angie cursed herself roundly, took a deep breath, and managed a smile she hoped might be interpreted as conciliatory.
She said, “There’s no telephone in my office, and the air-conditioning is either turned off or broken.” Then she evoked all the magical phrases due any keeper of the keys:
Don’t want to be a bother
and
If it isn’t too much trouble
and
I would be thankful if
. She ended with the computer, and decided to leave the locked desk drawers for the next battle.
Don’t want to be a bother
and
If it isn’t too much trouble
and
I would be thankful if
. She ended with the computer, and decided to leave the locked desk drawers for the next battle.
Patty-Cake tapped a finger on her desk, her smile very white, and bone brittle. “There was a fan in that office. Now, what do you suppose could have happened to it? Maybe the janitor took it off to be rewired. I’ll have to look into that, just as soon as I can.”
Angie said, “And the phone?”
Patty-Cake had already half turned away. “I’ll put in a work order. In the meantime, you’ve got one of those cute little cell phones, don’t you?”
Later, listening to Angie’s reconstruction of this first, lost skirmish in what promised to be a long and messy war, Rivera shook her head. “Run for the hills.”
“Do you think this is about—”
“John? Most definitely. You practically forced him to tell Caroline about you—”
“You think?”
“Well, of course he did. What choice did he have after Patty-Cake walked in on you? And then Caroline told her sisters, and the Rose girls got on the drums—there was high drama down at Fat Quarters, let me tell you—and now Patty-Cake sees you as a threat to her bid for campus domination by means of her niece’s marriage.”
They were sitting on the grass in the golden light of the early evening. Angie, who had skipped lunch and was making up for it with a second beer, was finding it hard to worry about much at all.
Angie pressed the cold beer bottle to her cheek. “It was perfectly innocent.”
Rivera made a grand gesture, one long hand revolving through the air in a corkscrew motion. “Angeline, my love. Two points. First, where you and John Grant are concerned, nothing is innocent. Anybody who sees you standing next to each other knows that. And second, Patty-Cake might be many things, but she’s got a good nose. Watch yourself. Unless you want to call in the big guns.”
“John?”
Rivera, whose mother was administrative assistant to the mayor of Hoboken, shook her head with great solemnity. “Rob,” she said. “It’ll be Rob who writes her job evaluations. Of course, that would be a declaration of war, and you’d end up on the sisterhood’s ten-most-loathed list. You’ll have to sign an affidavit to get a paper clip in any and every office across the country.”
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