Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (3 page)

I wrenched my eyes off Phoebe and bent down to kiss the top of Jo's head.

Jo said, “She's Mark Pickersley's daughter, Dad. Her mom died, and now she lives with her dad and stepmom. Lizabeth is where the ‘Smythe' comes from, but Phoebe doesn't use that.”

This girl was the same age as my two. I said, “Ahh, gee. I'm sorry, Phoebe. That's hard, to lose your mom and then have a move on top of that.” Wholly inadequate. Any words would be in the face of that kind of loss. “So, are you at Clements with Jo and Alex? What year are you?”

Baby Bear had given the new girl a thorough smell inspection and now did Phoebe the courtesy of inviting her to play Steal the Sneaker. He did this by pulling at her bootlaces.

Phoebe took hold of Alex's arm to keep her balance and waggled her foot, trying to shake Baby Bear off. “I'm a junior. I'll go back to Torrance to take my finals, but I have to finish the year at Clements. Dad doesn't want me driving back and forth, and Liz says she doesn't want Dad commuting four hours a day to take me and pick me up. I'm only putting in days here. I can't have any more absences or they'll, like, make me repeat my junior year. They're making this huge concession since Clements is in a different district.” She gave her left foot another little kick. Baby Bear was pleased with her encouragement and gave a play growl, mouth full of laces and butt in the air. “I wanted to stay at Torrance. I could have, too, if my dad had let me stay with Grandpop DeWitt. He moved into my old place. That's what I should have done.”

I said, “Torrance High School?” Torrance High School is close to Hobby Airport—forty minutes away if there wasn't any traffic, but we're talking Houston and its outskirts—there's always traffic. Mark really could spend close to four hours a day driving if he had to drive Phoebe to and from school. And Torrance isn't only miles away—it's a world away from the green and affluent campus of Clements High School. Torrance is, at best, a struggling high school. According to a
U.S. News & World Report
article, it's a dropout factory. It serves a population that has never been given much voice in Houston politics, and I couldn't imagine anyone with options choosing to send their kid there. For a man who lives in a million-dollar house to send his daughter to Torrance—I couldn't see that. It made me reassess what I knew about Mark Pickersley-Smythe, above and beyond the whole hyphenated-name thing.

I said, “Huh,” because nothing better came to me.

Phoebe nodded, sucked her cheeks in and looked over my head.

•   •   •

“I was in the magnet program at Torrance. Science and mathematics. Top of my class.” Now Phoebe was gazing into the thicket of azaleas at the corner of the house.

Okay. I nodded my head. Jo and Alex had abandoned me to this awkward conversation and were romping with Baby Bear. Jo named the dog, by the way. Not me. I didn't name that dog after myself and when Jo did, my protests got me nowhere. It was bad enough when Baby Bear was a puppy, but at least he looked like a baby then. Baby Bear, like all Newfoundlands, got big. His weight, at five years, wavered between 180 and 185.

“I hear good things about Houston's magnet schools,” I said, wondering if I could excuse myself and go do something else. Anything else.

“I'm going to the Air Force Academy after I graduate. It's in Colorado. Colorado Springs.” She addressed this to the front door.

I nodded. I knew where the Air Force Academy was. I didn't think the Air Force Academy was all that big on piercings.

Jo grabbed the strap of Phoebe's backpack and pulled her toward the house. Jo can be abrupt—when she's no longer interested in a conversation, the conversation is over. Baby Bear romped alongside, leaving me and Alex alone in the front yard.

Alex shuffled his feet. “Mr. Wells? Phoebe wants to go to dance class with Jo. I could drive the girls. It's only two point eight miles from here.” He grinned up at me. “I googled it.”

I was shaking my head before he finished.

“No, Alex. I'll take Jo to dance. I'm going that way anyway.” I was going that way because
I
was taking Jo to dance class, not Alex. I led the kid into the house and poured him some tea from the pitcher Annie keeps ready-made.

Alex leaned his butt against the kitchen counter. I sat down at the kitchen table. We were silent, listening to the girls rummaging around upstairs in the room Merrie had left behind when she started her first year at Texas Tech.

“And how are you doing, son?” You have to say something.

Alex scooped a spoonful of sodden sugar from his tea and ate it.

“Mr. Wells, I'd be a whole lot better if you'd let me take Jo out now and then.”

“She's fourteen, Alex.” Jo wouldn't turn fifteen until September. Not that Alex didn't know this.

“Jo says her mom was dating at fourteen.”

I mulled that over. Merrie, my eldest, had a boyfriend when she was fourteen or fifteen. My memory was that they went out in groups. And her guys weren't as intense as Alex—Alex is so intense about Jo. I didn't like it.

“Then I don't know what her father was thinking.”

Alex put his glass in the sink and filled it with water. “You know I'd never let anything happen to Jo. I'm not going to take her anywhere bad. She's got the cell phone.”

“Son, you took her out without our permission. I'm not happy about that. I don't want to beat you over the head with it, but that wasn't right.”

“I know, and I didn't . . .”

He trailed off. He wouldn't say anything bad about Jo. It hadn't been his idea for Jo to sneak out of the house; it had been Jo's.

I held my hand up. “Alex, we've been through it. It's not happening. I've got nothing against you. You're welcome here anytime it suits Jo, as long as either Mrs. Wells or I am at home.” I stopped to give him a meaningful look. “But as far as Jo and the truck goes, well, it goes as far as this house here. No farther. So. How'd you meet Phoebe?”

Alex opened his mouth but closed it again when we heard the girls clattering down the stairs. Jo had her shoe bag in her hand—my mother made it a hundred years ago to hold Jo's ballet slippers. Phoebe clutched a worn pair of Merrie's cast-off black ballet slippers to her chest.

Jo saw a protesting Alex to the door and we piled into my car, girls in the backseat, me and Baby Bear in the front seat.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Do you remember how old you were when you had your first real date? Was it that Chris guy?

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Are you giving Jo grief over Alex? He's a good kid, Dad.

•   •   •

Jo was full of Phoebe stories that night at dinner.

Phoebe had studied dance with a Russian instructor. Gyorgy taught her some new exercise techniques she could share with Jo. On hearing that Jo had been accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet summer program and would spend the upcoming summer in New York, Phoebe revealed that the only reason she wasn't doing the very same thing with her summer was because she wasn't interested in classical ballet, it was “too regimented” for Phoebe—a girl who aspired to the United States Air Force Academy—but she wished Jo the best. Phoebe had been to New York City a hundred times, so she could tell Jo all the cool places to go. Phoebe would probably spend the summer hitchhiking through Costa Rica, but she could access the Internet from anywhere on Earth, so she could keep in touch with Jo while poor Jo was slaving away in hot, sweaty New York City. Or Jo could follow Phoebe's blog, instead. She's been getting a lot of interest from literary agents over the blog.

Annie Laurie had begun listening with an interested smile, by the time Jo ran out of enthusiastic comments, the smile was gone and Annie had an eyebrow raised in the position referred to as “askance.” I hadn't looked up from my plate once.

Annie poured herself some wine, and said, voice carefully neutral, “What did Madame Laney think of Phoebe's dancing? Is she going to let Phoebe join up?”

Jo twined the fibers of a spaghetti squash around the tines of a fork and smelled it. “Is there butter on this?” Jo is thoroughly vegetarian and leaning toward vegan. My daughter is a sixth-generation Texan and practically vegan. I think somebody snuck in some California blood somewhere along the line.

Annie said, “A little. Not enough to make a difference—maybe a tablespoon for the whole squash. What did Madame Laney say?”

Jo put the bite in her mouth and held it there for a meditative moment before chewing and swallowing. She looked a question at me before turning back to her mother.

“Didn't Dad tell you about the fall Phoebe had right outside the studio? She tripped on the curb and fell on her knee. She couldn't dance today. She's going to have to go easy on the knee for a week. Madame Laney said Phoebe could sit in on class today. If she wants to dance, Phoebe needs to bring Madame a letter from Gyorgy, saying what level she is.”

Annie Laurie looked from Jo to me. I offered Baby Bear a strand of underbuttered squash and declined to meet her eyes. Baby Bear made a big deal over the single, flavorless strand.

•   •   •

Over dishes that night Annie said, “What's up?”

There was only a dab of that squash stuff left. I shoveled it into Baby Bear's dish. Annie took the serving dish from me and told me to sit down, and I was happy to. The scar on my belly didn't look like a big deal, but I still felt achy and tired by early evening. I eased down into a kitchen chair and rubbed the wound on my belly. Sometimes it itched.

“Is her door closed?”

Annie looked at the ceiling. Muffled music reverberated. “It's closed, Bear. She's working on her algebra sheets.”

I sighed. Merrie had been taking pre-AP Geometry at Jo's age.

“You haven't met Phoebe . . .”

“No,” Annie Laurie agreed, “that's why I'm . . .”

“She's a little different.”

“Mother Teresa different or Lady Gaga different?” She fitted a cabinet door back in its frame and bumped it with a knee to get it to stay. I've fixed it twice but the screws are stripped. Which means filling old holes, drilling new holes . . .

“Just . . . well, more Gaga than Teresa. I don't know. No, that's not true. Okay. Here's what I've heard, either from Jo or from Phoebe herself.”

Annie Laurie put the last pot away, picked up her wineglass and rested a hip against the sink. “I'm listening.”

“She says she's top of her class in the math and science magnet program at Torrance High School—that could be true. She could be smart.”

Annie did her eyebrow thing. “Torrance? Mark Pickersley-whatever had his daughter going to Torrance?”

“That's what she says.” Baby Bear insinuated himself between my thighs and I gave his ears the long, slow massage he likes.

“Hmm.

“She says she's going to the Air Force Academy.”

Annie jerked her head back a little. “Hmm, again.”

“Well, yeah. If it's true. You haven't met her, Annie. Remember that visit to the Academy a couple of years back? Everybody so clean-cut they squeaked when they walked? That's not Phoebe. I mean, I've never checked the requirements for the Air Force Academy, but I do know you have to have a letter of recommendation from your senator or representative, and I can't see Kay Bailey Hutchison having her picture taken shaking hands with Phoebe. Phoebe looks more like that girl with the dragon tattoo than a cadet. It's not going to happen, and I don't care if she's Richard Feynman smart. So there's that.

“Then we hear she's got a personal dance instructor, a Russian, and she could have gotten into The School of American Ballet summer program only she didn't ‘choose' to, and she's hitchhiking through Costa Rica. Solo. While she writes some award-winning blog. You think her dad would let her hitchhike through Costa Rica?”

Annie tipped the last of her glass into her mouth. “Maybe. He let her go to Torrance High School.”

I snorted.

“Couldn't be any more dangerous.” Annie smiled at me and rinsed her glass under the faucet, swirling the stem and letting the water fountain up.

“The dancing thing . . .”

“Yes?”

“She's not a dancer.”

Annie set her glass down and considered me.

“Let's move into the family room. You'll be more comfortable.”

She gave me a hand up, not that I needed one; it was a friendly thing to do, that's all. We settled next to each other on the sofa. Baby Bear, after making his token attempt to join us on the sofa, settled at our feet. I put my feet on the coffee table and Annie let me. I'm getting away with a lot while I'm convalescing.

“Tell me why you don't think Phoebe could be a dancer.”

I pulled Annie close to me and tucked her head under my chin.

“She's too tall . . .”

“Dancers are getting taller, Bear. The kids are getting taller.”

“I think she's taller than Merrie.”

“Cynthia Gregory is pretty tall.”

“I don't know who Cynthia Gregory is, but if she's a ballet dancer, I'm betting she's not five feet eleven, like Phoebe.”

“Okay.”

“But that's not the main reason.”

“Okay.”

“The main reason is that the girl doesn't move like a dancer. Phoebe's ungainly and awkward.” I caught Annie's look. “No, I'm not being ungenerous or too hard on her. Merrie moves like an athlete. Jo moves like a dancer. Phoebe moves like, like she's put together wrong.”

Annie scooched to the edge of the sofa so she could lean her back on the sofa arm and put her feet in my lap. I slipped her sandals off and began rubbing her feet.