Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (26 page)

Everyone made jokes about spoiled Veronica. What about
Sarah? She had all the good things in her own life and then, because she wanted more, she helped herself to the good things from Veronica’s life, too. She took clothes and jewelry and lessons and vacations and horses and money. She even stole things that couldn’t be spared, like a mother’s love. Sarah had had a mother who cared. Everyone knew that about Aunt Abbey. She’d cared about every little thing in her daughter’s life. Veronica had had a mother who didn’t give a shit. But Sarah took her anyway.

This time
, though, Veronica had an answer for Cousin Sarah because good old Dorthea had a strange way of getting very worked up over any little problem that bothered Veronica. When she’d smashed her car through someone’s fence, Dorthea jumped in and smoothed things over so well that nobody ever found out about it, not Mother or the police or nosey Aunt Abbey. Another time, when a new cop in town hadn’t understood that curfew laws didn’t apply to Veronica and her friends, she got him fired. Snowballs in summer or sandcastles in winter, it didn’t matter; if Veronica wanted it done, Dorthea did it.

Veronica liked Fridays and
this one looked to be shaping up even better than most.

On the elevator ride up to Dorthea’s floor
, Veronica looked at Horrick, who looked at his shoes like usual. Except for his ugly face, she didn’t mind him too much. He didn’t talk and he didn’t look at her. Not like that spaz Ernest who stared nonstop but was too much of a weirdo to do it like a normal person, so he did it sideways.

When the elevator door opened
, Veronica heard classical music. It sounded out of place. Other than dorky Lawrence Welk, which Dorthea sometimes left on while they talked, there had never been any music. And when she got to Dorthea’s living room, she found other different things—like everything. The place looked like a living room now, instead of Abe Lincoln’s log cabin. Instead of a rocking chair, Dorthea sat at the far end of the room in a red velvet chair with gold claw legs. The homey sofa, the wooden reading lamp, and the TV with the ugly rabbit ears had disappeared. Veronica quickly scanned the rest of the room and looked for one thing in particular: her purple gift bag. It usually sat on the floor by Dorthea’s feet. Just as the panic started to rise, she saw it, partially hidden by an ivory figurine, on a gold table that stood behind a red and gold velvet sofa.

“Please sit down my dear
. I’ve been so worried about you,” said Dorthea, who looked different, too. She looked more like the creepy lady in the painting who acted like the queen of England or something. She sat up proper and straight in a stylish mauve dress and her spinster hairdo had been replaced by a toned down bouffant—not too modern, but a definite improvement. Queen Wannabe had knocked off Granny Make-Nice and it made Veronica nervous. She just wanted to make the score, sick the dogs on Cousin Sarah, and get out of there.

Dorthea motioned
toward the sofa, which stood adjacent to her chair. Veronica slid behind a gold coffee table and sat down facing the big window. Dorthea, who sat to Veronica’s left, stared with watery gray eyes, head tilted to the side, and a phony look of concern painted on her face. She looked like all the other idiotic people who kept offering their “sincere condolences.” Her mother had been dead for three weeks and everyone kept saying it.

“Now my dear, how are you holding up?”

“Fine.”

More silence and tilted head bullshit. It
felt all wrong. They had their routine. Why did it have to change? Annoying questions, old lady stories, and out the door with an eight-ball. That’s how it worked. Emotional bonding had never been part of the deal.

“I’ve got an idea,” Dorthea finally said. “You tell me everything that
’s on your heart. The last thing I want is for you to feel alone in this difficult time.”

That
sounded more like it. And if she wanted everything, she’d give it to her, starting with Cousin Sarah served up on a silver platter.

“Alone? Didn’t you
hear?” asked Veronica. “I’m not going to be alone for twelve years because Mother made Cousin Sarah my boss.”

“
Oh that’s nothing to worry about, my dear. That was probably written into your mother’s will before you came of age. It’s very common to name a legal guardian for a child.”

“Not
a legal guardian, something else.”

“Financial guardian?”

“No. Trustee. That’s what it is. She’s the trustee, which means she practically owns Sunny Slope Manor and everything else until I turn thirty years old.”

Dorthea stood up, looked into Veronica’s eyes, straightened her
designer dress, and then sat back down. “I’m sure you are mistaken, Veronica. Walter Tubbs has assured me that your mother’s will is in perfect order. I spoke with him just yesterday.”

“
Walter Tubbs didn’t have anything to do with it. He’s an idiot. It was a bunch of lawyers from Santa Marcela. The law firm of Mackerel…Marmalade…and Snodgrass…. Something like that. We had a meeting at their office this morning. They handed everything over to Sarah.”

“No! This will not happen!”
screamed Dorthea, jumping to her feet again. “It will not get ruined by a bunch of bumbling idiots! Do you hear me?”

“Don’t yell at me
, lady. He’s your bumbling idiot, not mine.”

“
Dorthea, I’m here,” said a loud voice in the foyer. It sounded like Ernest.

“Not now
, Ernest! I’m busy!” barked Dorthea.

He breezed into the room
anyway, wearing a funny looking black top hat, a black cape with bright red lining, and his usual dorky white button up shirt and wrinkled black polyester pants. The cape, along with what could be seen of his greased-back black hair, made him look like a cheesy Count Dracula.

With a shiny black cane in
his hand, he paraded back and forth along the length of the giant window and dramatically flung his cape at each turn. Then he stopped and said, “Oh Dorthea! You’ve redecorated! If I’m not mistaken, I’d say you’ve entered your Windsor Castle phase, and all I can say is thank goodness. That Little House on the Prairie thing was really scary.”

“Ernest! What are you doing?”
asked Dorthea.

He stood rigidly
straight and looked to the right of Dorthea. “You know. That little thing we talked about…. My proclamation of love.”

He sang the word “love” like an opera singer and Veronica laugh
ed out loud. But then he clicked his heels, did a military turn, and winked at her vigorously. She stopped laughing and started wondering if Ernest had found Dorthea’s secret stash.

“Ernest, get out of here now!” shouted Dorthea, her arm raised, pointing toward the exit.

“But the job isn’t done, Dorthea. And if the job isn’t done, then the vermin gets run over. What’s a vermin to do? He must do the job!”

He dashed around the coffee table and knelt before Veronica, almost looking at her.

“My dearest Veronica, I know we hate each other, but I want to marry you…and…have babies…and…what was the other thing Dorthea? Oh yeah, take you to lunch. I’ll await your answer on pins and needles, but don’t hurry.”

He stood up.

“There. It’s done. The vermin is safe for another day, isn’t he, Mother?”

“Do not call me that
!” thundered Dorthea.

“Yes,
Dorthea.”

She moved in a step to face off with
him over the coffee table. With a concrete face and a bobbing head, she said, “You leave this instant or I’ll have you removed.”

“Yes
Dorthea,” said Ernest. And then he left with drooping shoulders and none of the fanfare that had just ushered him into the room. He’d gone back to just being Ernest the weirdo.

Dorthea took a deep breath. Veronica looked down at the coffee table and tried to make herself small.
She didn’t mind freaky, but this place had turned freaky to-the-max.

“You need to go
, too, Veronica,” said Dorthea. “I have things to do.”

Veronica stood up
and grabbed her bag off the table behind the sofa.

“You can put that
down. I don’t have anything for you today.”

“Yes you do. It
’s right here.”

“That’s not for you.
”

“No, no, no. You can’t do that
, lady. I won’t make it without it!”

“Make it? You don’t have a clue about making anything
. Now put down the bag and leave.”

Veronica did just the opposite. She clutched the bag and made a run for it,
through the foyer, out the double doors, and to the end of the hallway, where she frantically slid her free hand up and down the wall in search of the elevator button. Why couldn’t it be a normal elevator? Just this once. She’d take her chances with Dorthea and all the rest of the freak show. Just no more loony-tune elevators.

Then
it opened and she stood face to face with Horrick. And he wasn’t looking at his shoes. She stared at the ugly red scar that made his face look like two pieces of meat that had been picked up off the floor and sewn back together.

“If you get in
to the elevator with that bag, you and I are going to have business together,” he said.

Veronica looked to the left.
The double doors had been closed. The guards stared straight ahead, wooden, unmoved by her sad situation. She looked back at Horrick’s stern, butchered face and dropped the bag to the floor.

~~~

Veronica made it back to Sunny Slope Manor, slouched against the wall of the elevator, and slapped at the button on the control panel. Nothing happened. She cussed and slapped it again. This time the door closed and she started going up from the basement level, where she’d just parked her car in the garage.

She didn’t like
the manor all that much. It was old and out of style. In eighth grade she’d invited some friends over to watch the movie Psycho. At a point in the movie where they showed the spooky home behind the motel, Eileen Londale said, “Oh look, it’s Sunny Slope Manor.” Everybody laughed. Veronica made Eileen pay for her wisecrack but the barb had stuck. All her friends lived in modern houses with big windows and sunken living rooms while she lived in one that looked like it had a dragon under the stairway. Old people liked to gush over the place but it didn’t do anything for her.

When the elevator door
opened at the first floor, Veronica found a startled servant girl standing by a pull cart piled with coffee cups.

“I’m sorry
, Miss Veronica, I didn’t know you were here.”

“
It’s my home. Where am I supposed to be?”

“Yes
, Miss Veronica—”

“Unless you’re like my cousin and think it belongs to you…then all I can say is welcome to the club. Now buzz off and use the service elevator.”

“The service elevator is being repaired and Mr. Perkins wants me to soak these cups.”

Veronica pushed past the servant and her cart, and started on the long walk to the
sitting room where her mother kept the booze. She turned to the right outside the elevator, walked through a narrow corridor, and emerged into the big, wood paneled main hallway, which ran from the front doors to the wide circular stairway where she now stood. This main stairway led up to the ballroom balcony on the second floor, to the bedrooms on the third floor, and to the servants’ quarters on the fourth. Shuffling down the hallway, toward the front doors, she passed two sets of sliding doorways. The door on the right led to the dining room, the one on the left to the ballroom, but only servants used this entrance, mostly when they carried platters and trays back and forth from the ballroom to the dumbwaiter in the dining room; guests always entered and exited the ballroom by way of the grand stairway and the second floor balcony. She next passed a narrower hallway on the right which led to the billiard room, movie theatre, three guest bedrooms, and further down, the tower, where the library occupied the first three floors. She passed parlor number two on the right, which she’d taken for herself and turned into a psychedelic hi fi room where she and her friends got stoned and listened to the Beach Boys, Beatles, Stones, and Doors. Next came parlor number one, also on the right, and then, finally, the sitting room on the left, near the front entryway.

As a little girl
Veronica had known the sitting room quite well because that’s where she often tracked down her hard to find mother. Always flitting from room to room with her cocktails and flowing gowns and long cigarette holders, Mother had belonged to all of Sunny Slope Manor—the lavish human ornament perfectly complemented the old ornamented Victorian—but the sitting room had been her private hideaway. The room itself looked crowded and busy, just as her mother’s life had always been too crowded and too busy.

Veronica
peeked through the partially opened sliding door and saw old Rufus, her mother’s Yorkshire terrier, who lifted his head, looked expectantly at her for a second, and then lowered it back down to rest on his paws. She hadn’t been prepared for that. Her mother was dead. Nothing proved it more than seeing Rufus all alone.