Blame it on Cupid (13 page)

Merry understood the problem. She just didn't know how to inspire trust in Charlie, and the worry preyed on her mind the whole next day, as she waited for the arrival of June Innes. While Charlie was in school, she prepped for the meeting as zealously as for a job interview. Vacuumed. Hid their cheerful new paintings in a closet, made socks and smelly shoes disappear from sight, hid the cookies in a tall cupboard and put fresh fruit in sight. Then redid herself, starting with tweezing her eyebrows and shaving her legs, and then getting serious. Using all her makeup pots, she went for the matronly look, no eyes, no shiny lip gloss. She swooshed up her hair and tidied it into a clip, chose a jeans skirt, clunky shoes, a clunky watch.

She was pacing the living room windows by three, waiting for June Innes's car to pull up, fretting her stomach into knots. Four weeks ago, she'd been the Pollyanna of Minnesota, always singing the live-for-today mantra, always ready to take off at a moment's notice for the next interesting adventure. The bank knew she'd occasionally overdraw. The clerks at BCBG knew her by name. She'd never had a job where absenteeism didn't rear its annoying little head. She couldn't remember a Saturday night that didn't include music and going out and a guy.

She'd been happy.

Nonstop happy.

Thoughtlessly, mindlessly, happy. A bopper. Delighted to just bop through every day, wringing every ounce of sunshine, every chuckle, every hug she could.

Now…now Merry caught her pale reflection in the living room window and didn't recognize herself. It was June Cleaver's granddaughter in the window. All the color wiped out of her. Hand-wringing whether the house was clean enough—in a house that felt like an alien cage, besides.

It was tough enough to be living in a stranger's life, but to be flunking the job of guardian was the real killer. A dark blue sedan pulled in the drive behind her Mini, and Merry hurried toward the door with her company smile on. So it was fake, so? What was wrong with being June Cleaver's granddaughter for a few minutes, anyway? Darn it, she needed Mrs. Innes to be a true ally for Charlene, and hopefully a good source of advice for her.

So she answered the door and started bubbling before she'd even had a chance to take a good look. “Mrs. Innes, I'm so glad to meet you! Charlene's due home from school in the next few minutes, but I've got a fresh pot of coffee on. Come on in!”

“I don't do coffee, but thanks. You've got quite a mess outside.”

“Yes, we had a tree come down in the storm on Saturday night. Thankfully, the insurance guy was wonderful. A roofer's already been here, and the tree guys came this afternoon with chain saws, but unfortunately, there's no way we could get it all cleaned up quite this fast—”

The woman seemed to pick up that she was capable of babbling on indefinitely. “So you're Merry,” she said, and gave her an up-and-down as if examining a bolt of fabric.

Merry gulped. Oh God, oh God. It was a good thing she'd done the JC thing, because June Innes looked like a vintage version of June Cleaver herself. Shoes with a little heel. Hair that didn't move. A knee-covering skirt, with a navy pea coat and navy gloves. A tired smile. One of those you'll-never-know-how-much-I-do martyr smiles—but that was all right with Merry. She knew plenty of martyr types—who didn't? She could get along with a martyr. Cripes, she wanted this meeting to go so well that she'd have tried to get along with Attila the Hun.

She trailed June into the kitchen, since June seemed to naturally lead.

“I met with Charlene after her father died, of course. I'm sure Mr. Oxford explained my role. The court appointed me as Charlene's guardian
ad litem.
I'm an active member of the Virginia State Bar, as well as having met all the other state requirements.”

“I never doubted that for a second,” Merry said warmly, but apparently her opinion wasn't really required.

“My responsibility is to be the child's advocate. That means I'll regularly be talking to Charlene, and to yourself, and to others in her life, such as teachers and neighbors. I'll also be making some impromptu visits to the home. But this time I wanted to tell you about in advance, because I wanted to see both you and Charlene in her home environment. How are the two of you getting along?”

“Just fine. May I take your coat?”

“You're younger than I expected. Or you look younger.”

June pronounced every word crisply, as if she'd studied diction, or as if she'd gotten a degree in spike-up-the-behind stiltedness. By the time Merry had her settled at the kitchen table—which seemed wiser than letting her sit in the living room with the dog-bone-shaped-couch and Red Dominance picture, Merry was trying to keep up a perky conversation about homework and preteen stories and healthy nutrition.

When the back door slammed open, though, she jumped.

Charlie clipped in, plopped her school bag on the counter and then suddenly turned carefully, dead quiet, shooting Merry a stricken look. “Hello, Mrs. Innes,” she said.

For several seconds, June seemed to have lost her voice. Apparently she hadn't seen Charlie before in the army fatigues and brush cut. She shot a disapproving look at Merry.

“How's it going?” Charlie said, opening the cupboard—the one that was supposed to have the cookies—and finding nothing. She reached for an apple on the table instead.

“Just fine. How was school today?”

“Frantic,” Charlie said, making June Innes blink again. “For a while I wasn't sure if I was going to like the eighth grade math class. I mean, everybody's two grades ahead of me. But it's working out. Of course, I have to put up with Dougall. But the computer work and stuff is effing zingy. Hey. Do I have to sit here with you two, or can I go get my homework done?”

“I need to talk to you for a few minutes alone, Charlene.” The older woman promptly stood up. The two went off to Charlie's bedroom. Charlie gave Merry a look, as if to say: how could you make me do this alone?

So Merry went back to pacing by the living room windows, stressed she couldn't save Charlie from the private interview she obviously didn't want, and even more stressed that the woman appointed by the court to be on Charlie's side seemed such a rigid, old-school type.

When June emerged from Charlene's bedroom, she pointedly closed the door. Without a word, she implied that what she wanted to discuss was not meant to be overheard by the child. Merry felt the lead-clunk in her pulse as she led her back into the kitchen. It was impossible not to notice that the older woman's lips looked as if they'd been Miracle-Glued into a thin line.

“You allowed the child to go to school in attire like that?” Disapproval dripped from her voice. “Is that how you see your guardianship? You didn't feel exerting some influence over the child's clothes and behavior and language was part of the job?”

Merry felt the back of her neck prickle. She might have gone into this meeting petrified, but she'd hoped so much that June Innes would be an ally.

“I admit, I was startled when I first saw her choice in clothes. But I believe she's wearing some of her dad's things to try and feel still close to him. And she is only eleven—”

“Her age is precisely the reason why you should have exerted control.”

Merry took a careful breath. “Maybe we just see this differently. I don't see her clothes as an issue about my power or control. I see it as about Charlie's need to feel some power and control.”

“When you call the child ‘Charlie,' you're encouraging this gender confusion problem. The child's name is Charlene.”

Merry never got mad. She was too dad-blamed happy all the time to get mad. But darn it, the woman was starting to push her. “I don't believe she has a gender confusion problem. I believe she has a grief problem. And I understand you might think I'm all wet, but I'm still asking you to leave Charlie completely alone about her clothes and her hair.”

“You think you know so much about children, do you?”

“No, I don't. I definitely don't. But I think Charlie's trying to cope her own way with something so overwhelming she's having a hard time.”

“And you don't think she'd fit in better at school, wearing normal clothes, behaving normally—”

“I don't know what ‘normal' is, when you've had a loss this huge. And I don't see how anyone could get over it quickly. It's going to take her time.”

“Of course. But your position should be to make that go more smoothly, by being a constructive image in the child's life. Letting her dress like that and adopt a boy's version of her name is hardly taking your authoritative role—”

“Mrs. Innes. You want to beat me up, go for it. But leave Charlie alone about her clothes.” Neither had sat down at the table. Merry felt as if they were circling the table like jousters. Originally she'd hoped to spill out so much, about how Charlie didn't feel safe, about Charlie's fight with the boy in the eighth grade…but now that all seemed impossible. This woman just wasn't turning out to be anyone she could trust with a vulnerability of Charlie's.

Possibly this morning—possibly even this afternoon—Merry had been increasingly bummed about her failure at this guardian job. Possibly she'd even been considering backing out. But that was before she knew June was a turkey.

Charlie only had two other people in her corner. The lawyer who was a vulture and the court-appointed advocate who was a turkey. So how the Sam Hill could she abandon her?

She couldn't.

“Miss Olson,” June said, “I looked into your background. That kind of prying is part of my job. And I have to say, I was singularly unimpressed with your history, as far as giving you any qualifications to parent a youngster. On paper you come across as a quitter.”

“A quitter! You don't even know me—”

“I know you've held a half-dozen jobs since leaving school. For that matter, you started college and quit that as well—”

“I tried different things along the way. I hardly think that makes me a quitter—”

“You finished three years of college, but even though your grades were passable, you dropped out, never stayed to complete a degree. You started a cooking course, dropped that. You had jobs as a waitress. An insurance adjuster. A management trainee. Nothing seemed to hold your interest for long. You have no history of knuckling down and sticking to anything. I'd be lying if I didn't say this history looks worrisome to me. You may have been drawn to taking on this guardianship because of the financial circumstances—”

“That's totally untrue. I didn't even know there was any money in her dad's estate when I came here. I haven't even been back to the lawyer to ask for anything—even for money to pay the electric and phone bills yet. The only reason I came here was for Charlie—”

“That sounds very nice. Very idealistic. But talk is cheap. So far I don't see any sign of a background or character. Something that would lead me to believe you can be an appropriate guardian for a young girl.”

Just to insure she was hopelessly rattled, the telephone chose that minute to ring. The first interruption was the school, asking Merry to be a chaperone for the sixth-grade Valentine's dance. Almost before she'd had a chance to say yes, the phone rang a second time. Her dad. “How's your day, sweetheart?”

“Just fine, I'll call you back, all right?”

Mrs. Innes hadn't budged from her position in the doorway, just picked up the fight again. “I believe the child needs grief counseling. And possibly a physical is in order as well. I'll be checking with the school on her situation there. And my next visit—” She plucked a leather appointment book from her suitcase-sized purse. “Normally, I'd say a visit every couple weeks was adequate in the beginning. But I believe I'll schedule a visit every Monday afternoon for the immediate future. And then we'll see.”

We'll see
what?
Merry thought, as she watched the sedan sedately back out the driveway. If she'd run ten miles in the last hour, she couldn't feel more wiped. And then she turned around, to see Charlie peeking her head around the corner from the far doorway.

“You heard most of that?” Merry asked her.

“No.”

“Sure you did. You were eavesdropping. You don't have to deny it. I'd have been eavesdropping in your shoes, too.”

“Maybe I listened some,” Charlie admitted, and then scratched the bottom of her foot, as if the itch suddenly demanded her whole attention. Until she glanced up again. “You're not going to stay.”

“What?”

“I heard what Mrs. Innes said. You're not going to stay with me.”

“Charlie, that's so not—” But protesting was a waste of breath, because Charlie had zoomed down the hall to her room and snapped the door closed.

Merry stood there, wondering if Lee could possibly have felt this defeated in l864.

She was alone in suburbia, in a part of the country where she had no friends, no family. Her charge—Charlie—was fabulous at tearing out
her
heart, but Merry couldn't seem to get through to hers no matter what she tried. The lawyers with all the control in the situation had leaped to negative conclusions about her from the get-go.