Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (2 page)

“Not always, Mom. We got divorced, remember?”

“And then you hooked up again. Isn’t that what they call it? You need to get married, Whitney.”

“I don’t want to get divorced.”

“So don’t get divorced. But do get married. It’s not complicated.”

“It’s very complicated.”

“No, it’s not. You just want to make it complicated. In my day, when a girl got knocked up, and the boy was willing to marry her, they got married. It’s still that simple. You’re just stubborn.”

Other people had been known to make the same observation. Could my mother actually be right? Nooooo. That couldn’t happen. Could it?

My mother’s ringtone was “Born Free.” While I was growing up, she used to croon that over-dramatic movie theme song from her youth. The thing about my mother and her favorite songs is she never gets the lyrics right, but that doesn’t stop her from singing. Loudly. In this case, she endlessly warbled “Born free” followed by a few rhyming lines that made no sense. She said the song inspired her. It inspired me. Every time I heard my mother belt out “Born free,” I couldn’t wait to test my freedom. I ran off with Jeb the day after I graduated from high school. Cancer had killed my father a few months earlier. I might have acted out a little.

“Well, I’m not going to argue with you on the phone,” Mom said.

Relieved, I was about to ask if she’d like a new bathrobe for Christmas when she added, “I’m driving up from Fort Myers right now.”

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“Of course I can,” my mother replied. “I’m more than halfway there already. Last week I leased a new Chevy Volt and I want to see how she runs. Besides, you need a good talking-to.”

There was no point arguing. Mom was born free.

“I need a vacation from Florida, anyhow,” she said. “There are too many old people and one of them wants to marry me.”

This was huge news. In the sixteen years since my dad had died, I couldn’t recall Irene Houston ever mentioning another man.

“You—you have a boyfriend?”

Now there was a question I’d never planned to ask my mother, especially after she’d qualified for Medicare. As soon as I said it out loud, I knew it was ridiculous. I may have even giggled.

“Not a boyfriend, dear. A fiancé.”

“What?”

“Howard and I are engaged, but we haven’t set a date. We’ve been living together since March, when the college kids came down for Spring Break. Watching all those young lovers got us going.”

“Mom, I don’t need the details.”

“I wasn’t going to give you any. Howard’s a sweet man, Whitney, but I do miss my privacy.” She sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“I just said that,” I reminded her. “Marriage is very complicated.”

“Not in your case, dear. You got a bun in the oven. You need a hubby.”

Mom said she expected to be in Magnet Springs by this time tomorrow. I was afraid to ask where she planned to stay. Following my advice, Mom had leased out her house last year when she moved to the Sunshine State.

“Peg Goh is renting me a room in her house,” Mom informed me.

“Peg Goh is going to charge you rent?”

I was stunned. We were talking about our mayor, one of the nicest folks I knew and also my mother’s closest friend.

“That was my idea. In fact, I insisted on it,” Mom said. “I’m going to stay awhile and Peg needs the money. Business is terrible in Magnet Springs. You of all people should have noticed.”

“Our weather’s bad, too,” I told her. “It’s almost like Florida, minus the sunshine. Winter tourism is way down.”

“I’ll do my part to help,” Mom vowed. “And so will Howard.”

“Howard? I thought you were taking a break from him.”

“I am. But he’ll follow me north, you’ll see. Howard needs me.”

“Do you need him?” I was genuinely curious.

“It doesn’t matter, Whitney. When two people fall in love, they take turns needing each other. Right now you need Jeb. But you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Because I’m stubborn?” I hoped Mom could hear my cynicism.

“Because you’re in denial,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”

I had nothing more to say to my mother, especially since I was going to see her within twenty-four hours. Who knew how soon Howard, my potential stepfather, might turn up?

Adjusting the driver’s seat to accommodate my expanding belly, I marveled—and not for the first time—at how fast life could change. I had lost Leo in the blink of an eye. Actually, I hadn’t even blinked. I was asleep in the passenger seat when his aorta burst and we sailed into a ditch. I woke up to find him dead beside me, Abra howling in my ear.

That was almost two years ago. For months afterwards, I was numb with grief. Then I was lonely. And horny. About that time, Jeb returned to Magnet Springs. For better or worse, he remembered how to touch me in all the places that drove me wild. Such fun, such comfort. Suddenly life seemed nearly perfect again, even though Leo was gone.

Then I got pregnant. How the hell did that happen? I mean, I knew how it happened. I just didn’t know how I’d let it happen. Or why. Noonan believed the Universe was trying to show me the real me. I was inclined to believe I’d just got lazy.

The “why” didn’t much matter at this point. It was the “what happens next” that scared me silly. So far, all the increased estrogen in my system hadn’t added up to a single surge in maternal instincts. No matter how many visualization exercises I did with Noonan, I still couldn’t picture myself raising a child. Hell, I couldn’t even admit I had a dog. I certainly couldn’t keep track of her.

That morning was a case in point. Activating my overhead garage door while simultaneously shutting the door to my breezeway, I had balanced a mug of coffee, my laptop and my briefcase. I could have made it all work, even with the sun in my eyes. Except that Abra managed to bolt from the kitchen just in time to squeeze past the closing breezeway door, her sight hound mind fixed on the prize, a day of blissful play chasing shiny objects along the coast.

Before I could scream “No!” or—more appropriately—“Stop, bitch!” she had knocked me sideways, spraying my coffee like an arc of hot lava and scattering my bags. The sleek blonde beauty vanished into the dewy morning, ready to wreak havoc with tourists, if there were any. Abra lived to steal purses and jewelry. She was also inclined to seduce every male dog she met. My only solace was knowing that Fenton Flagg, Noonan’s estranged husband, was back in Texas, where Abra couldn’t corrupt his medical companion dog, Norman the Golden. Though well trained and devoted to Fenton, Norman had no will to resist Abra. My dog was one bad seed.

Full confession: I lived with and consistently failed to control a felonious canine. I frequently forgot to feed or groom her, much less track which side of the door I’d last seen her on. What the devil would I do with a baby?

These thoughts tumbled around my brain as I drove Broken Arrow Highway toward home. Leo and I had named our rural estate Vestige because it was built on land that once belonged to a large farm overlooking Lake Michigan. We’d saved the original tumble-down barn but built everything else from scratch—our house and out-buildings, our decks and dock. After Leo died, it had almost killed me to come home alone, but my young neighbor, Chester, made sure I didn’t do it often. Ignored by his musical superstar mom, he was only too happy to hang out at Vestige and attempt to reform Abra. Before Chester could reform her, or I could remember to spay her, she had provided a puppy for Chester.

I rounded a bend and hit the brake. Ahead of me, on the gravel berm, were Chester and that very puppy. The dog—whose papa was Norman the Golden—had recently celebrated his first birthday; Chester was eight but looked six and often acted forty. To my amazement, Prince Harry the Pee Master and Chester were running, and no one was chasing them.

I honked and pulled over about fifty feet ahead of them. I rolled down my window and waited for them to catch up. Chester waved and Prince Harry leaped straight into the air, acknowledging his share of Afghan hound blood.

“Hey,” I said, when the panting boy and dog arrived at my vehicle. “What are you guys doing?”

“This is what jogging looks like, Whiskey,” Chester said. “Didn’t you used to do it?”

“Before I wised up and got a bike. Why are you all the way out here? We must be a mile from The Castle.”

Chester consulted some kind of shiny techno-gizmo attached to one skinny ankle.

“Point-eight-nine miles, to be precise.”

Prince Harry proceeded to lick the gizmo as if it tasted like cheese.

“To dogs, this pedometer tastes like cheese.” Chester explained. “I bought it online, at Dogs-train-you-dot-com. It’s guaranteed to keep your dog running by your side, and to keep you running because the dog’s tongue tickles.”

Chester emitted a high-pitched giggle. Suddenly, I noticed something about my diminutive multi-millionaire neighbor that I’d never seen before.

“Chester, you broke a sweat. Why on earth—?”

“It’s an order, Whiskey. Direct from my headmaster.”

“Headmaster?”

For a nanosecond I wondered if he was referring to a new hire at The Castle. Until recently Cassina—Chester’s harpist/pop singer mom—and her paramour Rupert, who was Chester’s sperm donor, had employed a handsome though mysterious Scotsman to drive them around and fix their mistakes. MacArthur called himself a “cleaner.” On the side, he sometimes sold real estate, part-time, for me. Chester adored him, and I must admit, I lusted after him until the cleaner made his own mistake, which was a whopper. MacArthur somehow fell under the spell of my shrill ex-stepdaughter, Avery. He even had her sour face tattooed on his sinewy arm. One minute they were living together, with her twins, in a wing of The Castle, and the next minute MacArthur was gone. As far as I knew, he never even left a text message.

I continued cautiously, “Did Cassina hire a replacement for MacArthur?”

Prince Harry whimpered softly, as if the name stirred a fond memory. Chester blinked at me from behind his round wire-framed glasses.

“I’m talking about the headmaster at my school.”

“Oh. Your headmaster gives orders?”

“He calls it homework. But Mr. Vreelander makes it sound like an order. He used to be career Army.”

“I thought teachers gave homework,” I ventured.

“Not at my school. And that’s the problem, according to Mr. Vreelander. He says we’ve gotten soft at The Bentwood School. This is Mr. Vreelander’s first year as headmaster, and he’s cracking the whip.”

Chester mimed doing exactly that. In response Prince Harry performed a perfect back flip.

“Things are changing big-time,” Chester said. “Now we have to learn stuff.”

“But you’ve always learned stuff. You’re the smartest third grader I know.”

“Thanks to my personal assistants.”

“Assistants?” I asked, stressing the plural. “How many do you have?”

He held up three fingers.

“One to tutor me in math and science, and the other to tutor me in literature and fine arts.”

“That’s two assistants,” I pointed out.

“My third assistant keeps my calendar and feeds me. She’s a Cordon Bleu chef. Everything I know about cooking, I’ve learned from her.”

While I couldn’t personally vouch for the first two assistants, I owed a great deal to the third. Using the meager contents of my consistently under-stocked kitchen, Chester often created elaborate meals.

“You’re saying the only way you’ve learned anything at The Bentwood School is by hiring personal tutors?”

“’Til now. But the headmaster is shaking things up. That’s why Prince Harry and I are out running. Every student in the Lower School is required to jog two miles a day. Mr. Vreelander says our whole student body is out of shape.”

“Is Mr. Vreelander’s body in shape?” I inquired.

“Judge for yourself.”

My gaze followed Chester’s index finger to focus on a broad-shouldered Spandex-clad cyclist heading straight for us. Other than a helmet, he wore no more clothing than would be required for a summer afternoon workout. I appreciated every bulging muscle.

“That’s your headmaster?”

I stepped down from my vehicle for a better view.

“Buff, isn’t he?” Chester said.

“That’s one word for him.”

Other words included “taut” and “hot.” But I didn’t go there. Instead I observed aloud that the headmaster may have been buff, but he wasn’t following his own order to run.

“That’s because a landmine in Afghanistan blew out his knees,” Chester explained. “He’s got titanium knees now, but he can’t run. So he bicycles twenty miles a day no matter what the weather.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone bicycling twenty miles along the coast of Lake Michigan in winter weather. In real winter weather, that is, not the fake Florida stuff we had right now.

“Keep running, son,” the headmaster said, briskly saluting Chester as he sailed past, a yellow and white Spandex blur.

“Yessir!” shouted Chester, returning the salute. “Whiskey, I gotta go. Next week is the President’s Fitness Challenge, and I need to improve my time.”

Prince Harry yipped his encouragement.

“You’re sure you don’t want a ride to The Castle?” I said. “I’m going your way.”

Chester studied my stomach, which wasn’t rude since my stomach was eye level.

“You might want to work out with us,” Chester suggested.

“I’m pregnant, not flabby,” I reminded him. “That belly contains a baby.”

“A baby who will be healthier if you exercise every day.”

“Which personal assistant taught you that?”

“I saw it on the Oprah Winfrey Network.” He sighed heavily. “Starting next week, the headmaster’s restricting how much TV we can watch.”

“Wait a darn minute,” I said. “Schools can’t control what you do in your own home.”

“Sure they can. It’s called homework. Teachers at The Bentwood School never gave any, but Mr. Vreelander is giving it now. He’s changing everything. We’ve got new rules, new policies, a new curriculum and new textbooks. We may even have to wear uniforms.”

“You already wear a school blazer.”

“I’m the only one who does.” Chester shrugged. “I bought mine online because I liked the brass buttons. Almost nothing is required at my school. Except tuition, which is steep.”