Choke (2 page)

Feeling the floor shake from her mother climbing the porch steps, she got up, straightened her shoulders, and prepared to face her consequences. She had to decide if she should tell the whole truth, too. Or if she dared.

Hortense, out of breath from her unaccustomed exertion, yanked the door open and paused. After a few noisy pants, she managed to speak. “What is transpiring? You tell me that, little missy.”

“Mother, close the door. The neighbors will hear.”
Ha. That’s what she always says to me.

Hortense slammed it shut and folded her arms. “I am awaiting your response.”

She makes me feel like I’m ten, dammit, but at least she’s back to normal with her vocabulary.
Immy lifted her chin. “I quit, I told you.” Immy was proud that there was a little edge to her voice.

“Why?” Hortense asked, with a puzzled, pained look. Her mother hadn’t raised her to be a quitter.

That knot was taking over her insides. Immy wanted to double over. Lying to Uncle Huey was one thing, but she wasn’t sure she could get used to standing up to Mother. Even with the door closed, the neighbors were getting an earful through the thin metal walls.

Immy glanced at the air to her left for an answer. What would sound plausible?

“He asked me to put in double shifts again next week.”

“Working extra hours would not be injurious to your person or to your pocketbook, Imogene.”

This wasn’t going to fly. Immy focused over her mother’s right shoulder and pulled a better reason, she hoped, out of thin air, or rather, borrowed it from the goings on at the diner earlier. “I’m so sick and tired of him pinching my bottom.”

“What? You’re…he….” Hortense deflated, unfolding her arms and stumbling across the living room to take the seat Immy had vacated. She didn’t notice the spilled ice tea.

Her little fib was shocking Mother more than she had thought it would. Immy hadn’t even thought Mother would believe her. Did Hortense really think her own husband’s brother would pinch Immy’s bottom? The brother of her own dead, sainted husband?

“Uncle Huey is…is a dirty old man?” Hortense must have been so shocked she couldn’t think up a big word for creep. She looked older than she had a moment before. Her thinly plucked eyebrows furrowed upwards toward a mass of curly gray hair, the curls compliments of Cathy’s Kut and Kurl on Second Street.

“Yes.” Another big sigh. “Uncle Huey is a filthy, dirty, lecherous—”

“I get it.” She waved her hand for Imogene to stop. “Enough adjectives.”

“He’s always hit on the waitresses.”
That much, at least was true.
“I’ve told him over and over to keep his hands off.”
I’m getting in deep. Maybe I should tell her the real reason I quit, but how can I?
The lie was gaining momentum, taking on a life of its own. Immy had a sour taste in her mouth.

“Why have you never told me this? How could he? This is the family’s business. He’s impugning the honor of your dead father, your dear, sainted father.” Immy mouthed the last words with her.

Hortense shook her head and stared at the spreading tea stain, still not seeing it. Immy’s father had owned half the restaurant when he was alive. Hortense wasn’t the only one who wished he were still here. In fact, Immy kept his detective badge in her top dresser drawer and got it out often to rub her fingers over the shiny surface. He was the reason for her dream. His had failed. Hers would not.

Imogene watched her mother process the information, then come to a conclusion. Not a good one, she could tell.

Hortense caught the fabric of her polyester pants in a clenched fist. “I’ll tear his damn puny testicles off.” Her voice was soft, almost gentle. Bad sign. “I will remove them from his insignificant torso and I will cram them down his damn throat.”

The sour mass in Immy’s stomach doubled. That’s what she got for telling whoppers. Then her stomach clenched still another notch.

“Mother, where’s Drew?” Immy’s daughter was usually home from pre-school by now. How could she not have noticed? What kind of a mother was she?

“They had a field trip today. They’ll be home late.” Immy would have known that, if she’d read the note Drew brought home. Hortense always read them, though. She also picked Drew up from daycare, since Immy worked until after their pick-up time. Until today. “The school said they’d drop the kids off at the house around five.” Her fleshy face grew grimmer. “Huey, you no good…”

Hortense heaved herself up from deep in the couch and lumbered out of the room, gathering momentum as she marched out the door a second time and careened down the stairs.

Immy pressed her stomach where it ached and considered her options. Her daughter was not a concern for a couple of hours, Mother had said.

A third big sigh.
Better stop doing that or I’ll hyperventilate.
Immy pulled her shoes back on, donned her sweater, and cracked the door open after a discreet interval.

Mother was going at a fast waddle down the road. Uncle Huey was in for a tongue-lashing, but since he’d never pinched Immy’s bottom, Huey wouldn’t know why the hell Hortense was screaming at him. Maybe Immy should hear what went on in case she needed to defend her lie to Mother or step up and confess.

She would tail Mother. She needed the practice anyway. Immy entered the place in her head where she existed not as Imogene Duckworthy, overeager but sometimes ineffectual unwed parent of Drew, nor as the smothered only daughter of her doting but critical mother, nor as a clumsy waitress—no, none of these. In this nice place, where her stomach never hurt, Imogene was Detective Duckworthy, a daughter her father would have been proud of, but one whose existence her mother would prevent if she could.

She watched until Hortense disappeared around the corner of the last trailer on the block. Then Immy dashed outside and ran in the opposite direction to get to the diner by another route. She could beat her mother there and hide in the doorway of the library next door. Would Mother really harm Uncle Huey? She sure did look mad enough to spit. Maybe madder. It worried Immy a little. She needed to keep track of what was going on.

She hadn’t been honest with Uncle Huey, nor with Mother, because her dream was too fragile to take the ridicule she expected. When she made it come true, they would all sit up and take notice. She hoped.

For now, Immy had no idea what to do about the situation. She hoped Detective Duckworthy would know.

Immy pressed herself tightly into the narrow doorway of the library. It was shallow but deep enough to hide her thin form. Her foot stuck when she tried to move it out of sight. Some jerk had spit gum on the sidewalk, right outside the library.

I wonder if that’s where the term gumshoe comes from, hiding in dirty alleys and getting gum on your shoes.

She scraped it off on the shallow step as best she could, then ducked back as she spied her mother sailing down the sidewalk, pink windbreaker flapping behind her like the wake of an ocean liner. She heard Hortense rattle the knob, then bang on the door of the diner. It wasn’t open for supper on Mondays, so it was closed down now until tomorrow, no doubt locked. Uncle Huey was most likely upstairs doing his books. Clem, the cook, was probably in the back, chopping vegetables and making gravy for tomorrow. Baxter should be around, washing dishes or cleaning up. If Immy still worked there, she would be in the dining room right now, refilling salt shakers and ketchups and wrapping forks and knives into paper napkin bundles.

Hortense kept pounding, and eventually the door opened, then slammed shut. Immy peeked out. Her mother had entered the restaurant. How would a detective operate in this situation? She had no idea. She would have to get a book on the subject of being a PI next time she went to the book store in Wymee Falls. There were no PI books in the library, Immy knew, because she had read every book of crime fiction and mystery it held. If picking up her new business cards hadn’t taken longer than she’d thought it would, she would have looked for one today. Surely someone had written a guide for PIs, one of those Dummy or Idiot things. She had read one of those on child care once, and it had seemed pretty good.

For now, she craned her neck out of her cubbyhole to search the sidewalk for onlookers. She didn’t want anyone to see that she was spying on her own mother. Next to Huey’s Hash, on the corner, stood the video rental place with the huge plate glass windows. No one was there at the moment. The library, where she hid, had closed at noon, since it closed early three days a week due to budget cuts. Beyond the library was the tiny hardware store, its pale yellow paint peeling from the west Texas sun. No one was outside.

There was a time, Mother often said, when Saltlick seemed destined for greater things, like an unlimited budget and possibly a real stoplight on Second Street instead of the yellow, blinking one. The town had swelled years ago with the booming oil industry, specializing in providing drilling equipment for wildcatters; but as the drilling subsided, and the speculators moved on to natural gas, Saltlick sank as well. At the edge of town remained one last equipment yard, half-full of rusting pipes and pumps. Somehow, though, the town and the people hung on. They were from tough stock.

Across the street from the library and hardware store stood the All Sips “inconvenience store,” as Hortense called it, with its gas pumps. Next to that, directly across from the diner, was the popular Cathy’s Kut and Kurl, painted a vivid, sickening pink. No one was in sight there either. She waited a few more minutes, gathering her courage, then made her move.

Immy slunk to the door of the restaurant and peered in through the glass. The dining room was dark and empty. The chairs, flipped onto the tabletops, stuck their legs toward the whitewashed ceiling. The Closed sign was flipped out, but Immy was in luck. The door was unlocked. Huey must have forgotten to lock it after he let Hortense in.

Immy slipped inside, quiet as a possum, clicked the door shut behind her, and had no trouble telling where they were. Shouts rained down from the upstairs office. She peeked into the kitchen but didn’t see the cook, Clem, or Baxter, the handsome devil of a busboy, either. Clem was probably in the storeroom. From the looks of the half-chopped cabbage head, he was in the middle of making coleslaw. He had also finished dry mixing the biscuits for tomorrow as evidenced by the liberal sprinkling of flour on the floor. Sometimes he sent Baxter out to get supplies, so maybe that’s where he was.

“You are out of your fucking mind!” That was Uncle Huey’s unmistakable nasal tenor. And his language.

“Don’t you speak to me like that. I know my daughter wouldn’t prevaricate to me!”

Immy flinched.
Not usually, but…

“She just did! I have never touched her, never!”
OK,
prayed Immy,
let’s drop this subject right now.

“Then why did she quit?”

Immy held her breath and listened for the answer. It came, softer than the preceding shouting match. She had to move closer to the bottom of the stairs to hear. Huey told Hortense that Immy had quit because he demanded she work extra shifts this coming weekend.

“You’re a filthy, rotten liar!” The volume was going up again. “Imogene Duckworthy is not afraid of a little hard work. Thank the good Lord above she takes after her father, bless his soul, and not you. You’re a bum, nothing but a bum. You always were a bum, and you always will be.”

Huey’s voice got very quiet, but Immy could make out what he said. “Leave my office right now.” He bit off his words and sounded mucho ticked off.

“Not until you tell me what you did to her!”

“I’ll call the cops if you’re not out of here in two minutes. One, one thousand, two, one thousand…”

Immy heard her mother’s muttered curse, then her heavy tread sounded on the wooden floor above, heading for the stairs.

Immy fled out the door and ran around the corner, and she kept running until she was home. Her mother didn’t return for hours, long after Drew was dropped off from her field trip.

* * *

THAT EVENING IMOGENE WAS SITTING on the carpet in front of the TV playing Candy Land with her daughter, Nancy Drew Duckworthy, commonly called Drew, when her mother muted the television, directed a glare in her direction, and started in on her. Immy had know this was coming and braced herself, hunching her shoulders toward the game board.

“You know, Huey says he never pinched your bottom.”

“Mother, not in front of…” Immy nudged her head toward tender young Drew, whose ears would have stood up if she had been a dog. Why couldn’t her mother have said
gluteus maximus
or some such?

“Unca Huey pinched Mommy?” Drew squealed, glee behind her sparkling green eyes.

“Drew,” said Immy, trying to sound as authoritative as her mother always did, “go to your room and bring me your Fuzzy Bear.”

“Why?”

Hortense took over. “Do it, Drew. Now.” There, that authoritative sound. Why did her own voice have to be so high-pitched?

“OK, Geemaw.” Drew scooted down the hallway, her bright chestnut curls bouncing behind her.

“I’m waiting.” Hortense drummed her fingers against her ample thigh.

A knock on the front door interrupted them.

Saved by the bell. Or the knock, since we don’t have an operating doorbell.

Hortense aimed her annoyance at the door and nodded for Immy to get it.

Immy jumped up gladly
. I hope it’s a SWAT team that picked the wrong house to search for a meth lab. That might, just might, make Mother forget about this.

It was almost as good. In the doorway stood a small man, dwarfed by a huge white box. He thrust it toward Immy. A delivery van from a Wymee Falls florist idled on the front yard grass.

“For Mrs. Duckworthy,” he announced.

“I’m Mrs. Duckworthy.” Hortense pushed past her daughter and grabbed the box. She tore it open, and it revealed a mound of lush, de-thorned red roses.

“Wow,” breathed Immy. “How many are there?”

“Twenty-four,” answered the little delivery man with pride.