The Chocolate Mouse Trap (7 page)

“Honest craftsmanship,” he had told me. “The best way to keep your self-respect.”

But a few months earlier he’d edged back into law when he took a part-time job as city attorney for Warner Pier. He supposedly gave them the equivalent of one day of work a week. He had taken the job because of me, and I wasn’t sure I liked that. He had been making so little money in the boat business that he hadn’t felt he could ask me to marry him. The part-time job paid for an apartment in downtown Warner Pier, an apartment we’d be sharing in three more months.

But I didn’t want Joe to feel that he had to compromise on how he wanted to run his life because of me. The idealism that had driven him out of the practice of law was one of the things I liked about him. My father was an auto mechanic; I would be perfectly content with a craftsman as a husband. Besides, I’d tried the upscale life during my first marriage, and I didn’t like it.

But I tried to put all this aside when I carried a tray with crackers and cheese and two glasses of wine into the living room. The couch has a good view of the fire, and we settled down on it.

“What’s this e-mail problem you had?” I said.

Joe laughed. “It’s not really an ‘e-mail’ problem. It’s an ‘e-go’ problem.”

“Ego? Yours?”

“Not this time. Have I told you about Ellison Peters?”

“Is he on that e-mail list of small town city attorneys?”

“Oh, yeah. But he’s a cut above the rest of us. The ‘small town’ he represents is St. Anthony. You know, ‘Tony City.’ ”

“Over by Detroit?”

“It’s the place people move to when they want to go upscale from Grosse Pointe. We may think we have lots of millionaires around here, but Tony City makes Warner Pier look like the low-rent district.”

“And Ellison thinks his city’s economic status gives him clout?”

“Definitely. Not that he has the money to live there himself. But he’s one of these with a slick suit, a slick haircut, and a slick car.”

“But is he a slick lawyer?”

“He’s a pretty good lawyer. Just a shade too dignified for me to invite him out to the boat shop. Anyway, he has appointed himself chairman of the small town city attorneys e-mail list.”

“What did he do to cause a problem?”

“He’s decided we should present a case at a moot court competition. He committed us without consulting the rest of the list.” Joe laughed. “Some of the other guys aren’t very excited about it.”

“If he can’t get enough people to take part, he can’t pull it off. Why is this a problem?”

“There was a lot of e-mailing back and forth when it came up.” Joe laughed again. “And some of the people failed to remove all the old messages before they sent new ones.”

I began to see. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes. The word ‘idiot’ was used.”

We both laughed. “Then you,” I said, “had to spend the afternoon on the phone calming this guy down.”

“Right. It took a conference call between four of us. But we got Ellison to climb off his high horse. It’s all going to work out.”

Then Joe got up and poked at his fire. He was looking in the fireplace, not at me, when he spoke again. “All the guys on the list want invitations to the wedding.”

There went the evening, right down the drain.

D
arn. Joe had obviously come with a new array of arguments designed to get me to agree to a big wedding.

“I’d better check on the meatloaf,” I said. I got up and went to the kitchen.

I fled the living room because I didn’t want to argue about it. Again. Oh, I knew we had to settle the issue sometime, but not that night. I got angry at the thought.

Besides, a tricky little voice told me, if I waited long enough we wouldn’t have time to plan a big wedding before April, and Joe would have to give the idea up.

I had looked at the meatloaf and turned the fire on low under the green beans when I heard Joe coming.

Joe spoke slowly. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, no. I’m just upset tonight. The funeral and everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’ve put the fire under the green beans—Texas style, with bacon bits. We can have another glass of wine.”

Joe looked concerned, but again I told myself I didn’t want to discuss the wedding plans that night. I led the way to the living room and tried to change the subject.

“Julie’s family is a bit strange,” I said.

“How so?”

I described the funeral and the reception afterward, including my tête-à-tête with Rachel Schrader, and ending with Uncle Martin’s declaration that he wanted to discuss Julie with “someone her own age.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not Julie’s age. I’m at least five years older. Or at least I thought I was. Julie’s age wasn’t in her obituary. But I found out today she went to high school with Margaret. Margaret knows her a lot better than I do, actually.”

Joe laughed. “Margaret’s the one with six kids, right? She might not be nearly as interesting to Martin Schrader as a gorgeous six-foot beauty queen.”

Suddenly I was as angry as ever, and all my intentions of not discussing how angry I had been flew away. “Gorgeous six-foot beauty queen! You sound just like my mother.”

Joe looked taken aback. “Your mother? Why?”

“The only reason I got into the beauty pageant business was my mother. She pushed and pushed. She kept telling me it would help my self-esteem, give me confidence.”

“You seem to have plenty of both. Maybe it worked.”

“No! It destroyed both. How would you like having a pageant director tell you to work on your inner thighs? Having the musical director tell you not to worry about your tiny, weak little voice because he can beef it up with the sound system? I may have learned how to fake confidence, but if I have any self-esteem, it’s because I learned to stand up for myself and tell the beauty business—and my mother—to go jump.”

Joe sipped his wine, then put the glass down on the coffee table. Then he turned toward me, but leaned back in the corner of the couch. “Did I ever tell you that you have a beautiful—” he paused and cleared his throat—“mind?”

I looked at him narrowly. “Just don’t forget that,” I said.

Then we were both laughing, and I had laid my head on his shoulder, and he had put his arms around me.

“Am I wrong in thinking I brought this on by talking about our wedding plans?” Joe said.

“You made me think of my mom, I guess, and she’s a major reason that I don’t want a big wedding. Besides, Joe, I’m almost thirty years old. I’m too old to be a blushing bride.”

He pulled me closer. “I don’t expect you to blush for anybody but me. But that’s beside the point. Your problem with the wedding isn’t really about your parents.”

“I thought it was.”

“No, it’s about something more important. It’s about you spending fifteen years of your life avoiding confrontation with your parents.”

“That’s silly! My mother and I argue all the time.”

“No, you don’t. You get mad at your mother all the time, but you never tell her what you think. You haven’t really told her to ‘go jump.’ You’ve just started avoiding sensitive topics.”

“I don’t think I do that.”

“Remember Christmas? We wanted to spend Christmas Day with her, then go to Prairie Creek to see your dad the day after. But she said we’d have to do it the other way around so she could stay over a day in Hong Kong. All you said was, ‘Yes, Mother.’ ”

“Why fight about it? She’s entitled to her plans.”

“Yes, but those plans forced us into spending Christmas Day with your stepmother’s family. We didn’t have a chance to really talk to your dad until late that night, and only for a short time. And having us show up a day early annoyed Annie and her daughter.”

“They’re always annoyed with me over something.”

“I don’t think Annie was annoyed with you. She was mad at your mom.”

“Why?”

“Because your mom forced us to change our plans and our new plans interfered with Annie’s family reunion. Now, Brenda’s another case. Brenda’s just flat jealous of you.”

“Jealous! Why?”

Joe hugged me tighter. “Because your dad loves you best.”

I stared. “But he’s my dad! He’s just her stepdad.”

“Does Brenda have a father?”

“Well, he’s never around.”

“I noticed she didn’t get a Christmas present from him.”

I sighed. “I guess it is pretty hard on her.”

“Besides, you’re the beauty queen. You’re the one who graduated from college with really good grades. You’re the one who can wrap your dad around your finger with the flicker of an eyelash.”

“You make me sound awful!”

“From Brenda’s viewpoint, you are. She can’t possibly compete for your dad’s attention when you’re around. And all it takes is a phone call from you and he drops everything and buys you a car.”

“I paid for it! He just found it for me.”

“And drove it to St. Louis for you to pick up.”

“Well, I notice he found a good car for Brenda’s high school graduation present. And I bet she didn’t have to pay for it.”

“We’ve gotten way off the subject I thought we ought to talk about.”

“Oh? I thought we were analyzing my relations with my family.”

“Oh, it’s a much broader subject than that. We’re analyzing your relations with me and my relations with you.”

“That’s a more interesting subject, I guess.”

“I hope so.” Joe stopped talking and gave me a kiss. “But our interpersonal relations worry me sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes you treat me like you treat your mother.”

“My mother!”

“Yes. You avoid confrontation. You let me have my way—sometimes—because you don’t want to argue about it.”

“If it’s something I don’t care about . . .”

“Then say, ‘I don’t care.’ And say it as if you mean it. Don’t refuse to discuss something because you’re afraid we’ll argue over it. And don’t stonewall me just as a way to win an argument.”

He’d seen right through me, right through to that tricky little voice that told me if I stalled long enough the wedding issue would decide itself. I didn’t know what to say.

But I didn’t have to say anything, because Joe gave me a kiss that I’ll remember a long time. Then he patted my fanny gently. “Think about it, okay? But we don’t have to talk about it anymore tonight. Nothing should interfere with meatloaf.”

“First things first, huh?”

“I’ve got
my
priorities straight.”

It’s easy to see why I fell for this guy. A little later I got up and went to the kitchen to finish up the dinner. Joe followed me. He stood in the doorway and watched me slice the meatloaf and get the baked potatoes out of the oven.

“What did you tell Martin Schrader?” he said.

“When he wanted to talk to me about Julie? What could I say? I told him I would.” Then I finished up the story, telling Joe about Brad Schrader’s warning.

“Are you uneasy about meeting Martin Schrader?” Joe asked.

“Not really. I’m certainly not going to meet him at a lonely cabin in the woods, like the naive heroine of a romantic novel. But I wouldn’t be afraid to talk to him in my office or in a restaurant. Of course, I might want to drive my own car to the restaurant.”

“And you’ll wear a business suit.” Joe grinned.

“My black pants suit and the heavy boots with the chunky heels. The modern suit of armor. Ready for battle.” I picked up the dinner plates, already served, and gestured at the salad with my elbow. Joe obediently lifted it and followed me into the living room.

“Joe,” I said. “You’ve lived around Warner Pier most of your life, and Martin Schrader has been around here all of his—at least in the summers. Is he notorious as a skirt chaser?”

“I never heard of it. But I was gone nearly ten years. Besides, I definitely don’t move in the same circles he does. I’ll ask Mom. She sells the summer people a lot of insurance, and she doesn’t do it by ignoring who lives next door to whom and who’s seen having dinner with whom.”

The rest of the evening was ordinary. Joe and I talked about the wedding, decided to send his mother flowers on her birthday, argued about what the city council should do to try to solve the Warner Pier parking problem, then touched on the old house Lindy and Tony had bought. We were doing the dishes when Aunt Nettie and Hogan came home. We lingered in the kitchen, so they could have the living room, and Joe went home before eleven.

I stay over with Joe sometimes, but he rarely stays with me. The house Aunt Nettie and I share simply doesn’t have any privacy. The walls are so thin that a conversation anyplace upstairs is plainly audible downstairs. And there’s not a lot of space. Aunt Nettie had talked about putting in a second bathroom, upstairs, but since I was planning to move out, she dropped the idea.

I’d just gotten into my pajamas when the phone rang. I answered the upstairs extension.

“Lee?” It was Joe. “When I drove by Mom’s house she was still up, so I stopped and asked her about Martin Schrader. She told me something interesting.”

“
Is
Martin a notorious skirt chaser?”

“Not really. She knew of only one person he’d dated locally. Carolyn Rose.”

I nearly dropped the phone. Carolyn Rose? The florist member of the Seventh Major Food Group.

“Ye gods!” I said. “At the funeral this afternoon, he didn’t speak to her at all. They acted like complete strangers.”

“All Mom knew is that when Carolyn first opened her shop—that’s more than five years ago—she came to Mom for insurance. And she told Mom she was moving to Warner Pier because it was close to her ‘boyfriend.’ Mom said she almost bragged about who he was—Martin Schrader.”

“I guess he didn’t turn out to be the marrying kind.”

“Not if that’s what she wanted . . .”