An Arm and a Leg (6 page)

Chapter Six

Tim’s body was released for burial the next week. The funeral was held in the church where Frankie served as music director and organist. Her boss, Pastor Dan, offered a lovely eulogy, and her choir sang an exquisite anthem to the filled-to-capacity gathering. Although heartbroken, it comforted her to see how many people her brother’s life had touched.

Once home from the cemetery, Frankie pulled a recorded pipe organ concert out of her collection and slid it into the player. She walked to the new leather sofa in her living room, kicked off her black patent leather heels and sat, her legs drawn up underneath her. With her head rested on the back of the sofa, she closed her eyes and allowed the majestic sound of Widor’s “Toccata” to pour over her as the dammed up grief for her brother broke loose.

She had just picked up a pile of soggy tissues and headed toward a waste basket when the sound of an all-too-familiar, disembodied voice made her hand freeze in midair.

Please help me
…

Frankie cocked her head to one side, listening.

Please
…

The tissues slid from Frankie’s suddenly-numb fingers. She braced herself against the wall to keep her knees from buckling. “Stop it. Go away,” she said to the empty room.

Please help me. Don’t let her
…

“I said go away.” Frankie’s voice rose to near-screech level, so distorted she barely recognized it as her own.

Like a goldfish dropped onto the floor, she opened her mouth wide, sucking great gulps of air into her lungs. She stumbled to a table in the entryway next to the front door, grabbed up her purse and pulled her phone from the leather holster attached to the side of the bag. Barely able to control her trembling fingers, she punched a pre-set speed-dial. The phone was picked up at the other end after two rings.

“The offices of Doctors Angela and Peter Demaris, Raynell Lavender speaking. How may I help you?”

“This is Frankie O’Neil. I have an appointment with Doctor Angela Demaris next week, but I was wondering if you could work me in sooner…maybe sometime tomorrow?”

“Is this an emergency?” The young-sounding female receptionist’s voice, undoubtedly modulated to soothe the savage beast, flowed with her version of gentle understanding—something for which she’d probably earned high marks in Receptionist Training 101. But for some reason Frankie couldn’t fathom, rather than calming her, the sound scraped along her already raw nerve endings.

“I guess that depends on your definition of the word. But I would like to see her as soon as possible.”

The phone first went dead, then pulsed with Muzak while the receptionist checked the doctor’s schedule. Her eyes drawn to the snotty tissues on the floor, Frankie chewed on her thumbnail. She winced when her teeth tore a sliver of nail too close to the quick and sucked at the resulting drop of red.

The sight jerked her memory to the vision of Tim’s blood pouring from his marred face. To the thick redness pooling on the floorboard at his feet, and to her clothes drenched in it.

“Hello, Miss O’Neil?”

“I’m still here.”

“You’re in luck. Doctor Demaris has had a cancellation for three tomorrow afternoon.”

“Perfect. I’ll be there.” Frankie hung up and hugged herself.

What would the therapist say when she told her about hearing voices? Would the expression on her face change from the standard I’d-like-to-help warmth into the wide-eyed, yikes-you’re-crazy stare?

Frankie stood in her entryway and cried. She had no one with whom to share her fears. No one to just be there for her. She had only herself to depend on. And now even that was beginning to look shaky.

Words like
crazy
,
cracked
, and
wack-o
floated through her mind.

“Dammit,” she said to the cosmos. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

Chapter Seven

Frankie awakened early the next morning. The sun poured through her half-open venetian blinds and lit her room with a cheeriness she recognized but didn’t feel.

Still in her pajamas, she padded to the kitchen and made a pot of her own special blend of chai tea. As she sipped from a steaming cup of the fragrant, spicy brew, she stepped over to the large pantry she’d had installed, pulled open the wooden accordion doors and slid her eyes over the rows of items stored there.

Cans of asparagus, green beans, peas, and turnip greens sat next to yellow wax beans and corn. Sweet potatoes and carrots sat alongside cans of miscellaneous fish and meats. Bags of dried beans, peas and rice lay next to the cans, and four five-gallon bottles of water stood on the pantry floor amid cases of packaged soup mix and marinara sauce.

She adjusted the cans so that the labels faced outward and placed the most recent purchases at the back of each row, checking the expiration dates as she went. She felt relieved to find that nothing would need replacing for the next several months.

Fruit—that’s what was missing.

She added the word to her shopping list and wrote
twenty dollars
next to it.

Finances would be tight this month. She twisted her lips in a wry smile. Okay, so she’d pay the minimum on her Visa instead of the two hundred dollars she’d promised herself. Problem solved.

At least she’d had enough savings to cover the cost of Tim’s funeral. The young mortician, a scion of the owner operator, had been kind. His voice had been pitched low in well-rehearsed, comforting-the-bereaved mode as he showed her the photos and itemized expenditures of the funeral packages available. Frankie had nearly swallowed her tongue at the prices before settling on a modest but lovely blue polyester-lined casket in spite of the guilt trip the young man laid on her.

“This will be your brother’s final resting place. Of course you’ll want to do right by him.”

“Actually,” Frankie had responded, “this will merely be his body’s resting place. My brother is no longer here. And if he were, he’d be yelling at me to have him cremated and use the savings to help someone in need.”

An image had blown through Frankie’s mind of the casket maker’s employees sifting through the landfill, collecting plastic milk and water jugs to melt down and mold into their obscenely over-priced wares. The memory of the crestfallen look on the young man’s face brought a grim smile to her face.

After another sip of tea, she touched each can exactly three times before doing the same with the packages, bags, and bottles. Then she moved to the hall closet and performed the same ritual with the food stored there. As usual, the process calmed her, soothed her.

Back in the living room, she stood staring through the picture window at Tim’s old Volvo. The vehicle’s once-shiny, emerald green paint had oxidized to a dull matte finish. The interior had the unmistakable smell of an old beater, and the odometer read two hundred thousand miles. But she’d keep it. Tim’s nearly palpable presence was a comfort to her as she sat in his driver’s seat. The good news was the engine still ran so smoothly as to be nearly silent.

She’d decide what to do with her Jeep once it had been cleaned up and repaired. One thing was certain—she could never again drive the vehicle in which her brother died. The image of its interior horrifically baptized in his life’s blood would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

The hungry whine of her stomach pulled her attention back to the present. She returned to the kitchen and filled a plate from the truckload of food brought by the members of the church where she served as choir director. A breakfast of ham and sweet potatoes was nutritionally sound, wasn’t it? Couldn’t be any worse than cold pizza. Reflecting that she should probably have something green, she spooned lime gelatin into a cup.

When the microwave dinged its all-done bell, she noticed for the first time the blinking light on the landline sitting next to it. Like the warning beacon before an approaching train, the phone’s built-in answering machine blinked six times. Six messages.

Frankie had initially kept the outdated phone because it belonged to her Uncle Mike. But after a solar flare jacked up her android’s reception, she decided to maintain the landline’s service. She pressed the replay button.

The machine’s pseudo-human voice announced the dates and times of each message, the first of which had been left nearly one week earlier. All the messages were from the same young male. And although the first message was spoken in matter-of-fact tones, each successive message grew in intensity and decibel level, until the final one, which dropped off to more of a pleading whimper.

“Miss O’Neil, this is Greg at…at The Regal Scratching Post. Could you please come and get your cat? Um…could you do that, like, right now?”

Collette. She’d completely forgotten about that damned cat.

Frankie wolfed down her breakfast, ran to her room and dressed, grabbed Tim’s car keys and headed for the door.

****

As Frankie entered the Regal Scratching Post’s front door, a young man walked from behind the counter and approached her. He wore khaki pants and a green Henley style tee shirt with the establishment logo appliquéd on the left side of his chest. Embroidered in neon yellow, the name Greg had been stitched on the right. The young man sported brightly-colored cartoon character bandages on his face, arms, and hands.

Frankie introduced herself.

“Thank goodness you’ve come.” Greg rubbed his index finger over the bandage on his chin, his eyes so wide the whites showed all around the brown irises.

“I’m sorry, I’ve had a death in the family. I only just got your messages a few minutes ago.”

“It’s a good thing you came today.” Greg moved close to Frankie, his voice low and conspiratorial. “Mom Blatney was going to take your cat to the pound this afternoon. And they only keep animals there for a few days before putting them down.”

“Mom Blatney?”

Greg nodded. “The owner. She makes us all call her Mom.” He wrinkled his nose as if he’d just caught a whiff of something disgusting. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice even more. “Personally, I don’t even want to think of anyone getting close enough to actually make her a mom, if you know what I mean.”

Unsure of how to respond, Frankie said, “Ah.”

After motioning for her to wait in the foyer, Greg disappeared through a metal door. In a couple of minutes, an older woman—apparently the infamous Mom Blatney—walked back through the same door. With the light of battle shining in her eyes, the woman approached.

Somewhere in her mid-sixties, Mom Blatney resembled a grandma from the 1950s. Silver hair in tightly permed rosettes rested above gray, doe eyes. Her mid-calf-length dress—a veritable meadow of floral print fabric pulled tightly over what appeared to be two thick sofa cushions jammed together and fastened to her chest—hovered above black slip-on clogs.

The woman’s voice, however, took Frankie by surprise. The
basso profundo
rasp reminded her of the sound her garbage disposal once made when she dropped a teaspoon into its grinder-maw. The attendant effluvium of stale cigarette smoke suggested the cause.

“I deeply regret that we cannot continue boarding your creature.” Mom Blatney then embarked on an extended diatribe highlighting the dangers of spoiling one’s pets.

Frankie fought back the instinctive sympathetic urge to clear her own throat during the woman’s phlegm-rattling rant.

“It’s popular for pet owners to treat their animals like little people wearing fur coats.” Like an air-impact drill removing lug nuts in a machine shop, Blatney’s barking voice resounded off every hard surface in the office. “That’s nonsense. It’s neither good for the pet, nor its caregivers. Our animal friends not only need to be disciplined, they expect it.”

Suitably chastised, even if only by proxy, Frankie studied the tops of her shoes.

“Greg will take you to Collette.” Blatney sniffed and peered down her lumpy nose at Frankie. “None of my staff is willing to approach your animal. You’ll have to gather her yourself.”

Greg materialized from somewhere and escorted her into the back of the building. Alternate hissing, meowing, growling and purring filled the air. Someone had sprayed air freshener, but the fragrances of vanilla and lilac had long since given up their heroic battle with the
essence du
boarded pet urine and feces-soaked litter boxes. Frankie’s stomach tightened.

Greg unclasped the door to Collette’s kitty-condo and quickly stepped back out of attack range. Unsure of what to expect, Frankie approached the cage, holding the open pet carrier in front of her like a warrior’s shield.

A gaggle of Pet Pals stood silently by in high anticipation. But in an act of anticlimactic insouciance, Collette first shot withering glances around the room then went passively from cage to carrier.

Frankie smiled inwardly at the stark disappointment on the faces of the encircled staff. She latched the carrier’s door, and made her way back to the front desk.

Mentally calculating how many months it would take her to pay off the ludicrously high fee, she plopped down her Visa. She breathed a sigh of relief when it wasn’t rejected for being maxed out, hoisted the pet carrier and made for the exit.

As the door shushed closed behind Frankie and the conspicuously docile Collette, Mom Blatney hurled her voice at them like the Biblical stones out of David’s slingshot. “Consider taking our Perfect Pet Parenting class. It would do you both some good.”

Once back at her vehicle, Frankie lifted the carrier onto the back seat and peered in at the scowling kitty face staring back at her. “Perfect Pet Parent? Please. A Perfect Pet class…now that’s an idea.”

Collette shifted inside the confined space, showing her backside to the world. Most likely the kitty equivalent of giving someone the finger.

Frankie chuckled. “Brat. Wait ’til your daddy gets back.”

She’d just climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled up when a flash of light caught at the periphery of her vision. She instinctively turned her head toward the source—an ancient Chevy sitting a few spaces away. Sunlight reflected off the other car’s windshield, making it impossible to see the driver’s face, but Frankie was certain she’d seen the vehicle a couple of times that day, once driving down her street and again at a gas station.