Nothing but Trouble (13 page)

Mostly she just stayed out of their way and hoped they weren’t buying stuff on eBay.

Or getting hauled into the local police station.

But perhaps she’d been too rough on the Russians. It couldn’t be easy to lose a son to a woman across the ocean. And they had been shopping for a gift for Davy online. That was sweet.

Last night, after her mother left, PJ had sat on the deck, breathing in the fragrance of the flower garden, listening to the crickets begin their nighttime serenade. Boris joined her and they’d sat in silent appreciation. He must have had a green thumb, because he actually got up and surveyed the bleeding heart bush for a long time.

On page two of Connie’s instruction manual, she’d listed a
subsection on her garden. Because Connie excelled at everything she put her brain to, she also had a flower garden featured in a Twin Cities magazine every year. Peonies, delphinium, lupine, phlox, columbine, lily of the valley, and a hedgerow of roses. In the back, safely away from the swing set, were two exotic Japanese crab apple trees that cost a small fortune and a vibrant bleeding heart bush, already in bloom with hanging pink buds. But her pride and joy were the gladiolas. Tall as oboes, with buds running down the shoots, tiny trumpets of red or yellow or pink, the color of new beginnings. Connie personally harvested the bulbs every year, and they would be in full bloom when she returned from her honeymoon.

Thankfully the lawn company tended her garden as well as her lawn.

“Davy, go get your bathing suit on. I’m going to show you a fun thing your mommy and I used to do in the summer.”

PJ netted a glimmer of a smile from him as he pounded up the stairs. A few moments later, PJ followed and spied him sitting in his room, working his LEGOs. Clearly they had some focus issues. She could relate to that
 
—lately her brain felt like a bad penny movie, jerky images flickering through her thoughts. Jack’s face when he tackled Hoffman at the pool. Denise’s glistening eyes while telling her about Ernie’s bankruptcy. Boone’s expression, dark with anger and something else as he touched her face. Ben’s smooth swing sending the ball in a perfect arch. Most of all, she saw herself standing at the country club, facing her mother as she said,
“I’m so glad you’re home.”

She could hear the code
 
—
“Please don’t mess up”
 
—but she could also choose to hear something else. Sincerity. Gratefulness.
“I need you
.
”

Wouldn’t that be something?

She went to her room and rooted through her mound of clothes for her swimsuit top, a pair of shorts, and a baseball hat.

“Auntie PJ, I’m ready!”

PJ poked her head out into the hall just in time to spot Davy wearing his swimsuit, his scuba mask, his fins, a life jacket, and a towel around his neck. “Yes, you are, pal.”

They headed down the stairs, through the house, and to the kitchen. “I loved running through the sprinkler when I was a kid, daring myself to dive through the spray, squealing when the cold water hit me. You’re in for a treat.”

When they walked into the screened-in porch, she heard a groaning, something moaning.

“Boris, are you ok
 
—?” She stopped, her mouth half-open as Davy broke into a wobbly run, threw open the door, and scampered out, his little fins flapping on the deck.

“I love it!”
His scream jolted her forward, and she stumbled out onto the deck as he hurled himself at the animal tethered to the fence.

PJ reached for an iron chair to steady herself. She probably needed to put her head between her knees. “Is that a . . . ?”

She couldn’t say it.

Where the bleeding heart plant used to be
 
—five feet of delicate grace tended with love by her bereaved sister
 
—stood a goat. Long white beard, stubby horns, beady dark eyes. And littered around their new backyard inhabitant, PJ recognized the remains of the gladiolas.

This couldn’t get worse, couldn’t get
 
—“Boris! Vera!”

“Mine, mine!”

Davy’s voice yanked her back to aunthood. “No, Davy!”

Davy already had the goat in an armlock. Before her eyes was a hazy vision of blood and screams, accusations, and finally her leaving, exhaust in the outline where her happy future had once been.

“Davy, get away from it!” PJ began to peel his arms off the animal, averting her face from the rank, earthy odor.

The screaming started.

And finally out came the Russians. Vera stood on the porch yelling, but Boris leaped the hostas and raced out to the goat.
“Nyet!”

No what? No, don’t touch the goat, or
 
—her preferred choice
 
—maybe a disbelieving no, there was no goat?

Please let this be a nightmare.
Maybe she’d gotten hit in the head, and she lay, right now, on the ninth tee, bleeding, her wig askew while her tired threesome waited for Boone’s arrival.

No, that would be worse.

But as she stared at Boris and Davy, at Vera waving her hands, everything went eerily silent and she saw a movie scene
 
—a horse’s head on a pillow, regards from Vito Corleone, only this note read
Boris Sukharov
.

The goat began to buck, trying to get away. PJ landed in the dirt, pillowing Davy on her stomach. Screaming filled her ears, and she wasn’t sure it wasn’t coming from her.

“Nilzya!”
Boris grabbed the goat and growled at PJ like she’d just terrorized his newborn. She sat up, scooting back, away to safety, Davy pulled tight against her as Boris crouched next to the goat, speaking to it in low, soothing Russian, which sounded way too much like he was clearing his throat of a fur ball.

“I want it! It’s mine! Mine!”

“No, Davy.” PJ wrapped her arms around his flailing body, trapping him against herself as she found her feet. He’d reached uncharted decibel levels, and when she turned toward the house, PJ was suddenly a filament short of joining him.

Elizabeth Sugar stood on the deck, dressed in her Saturday-afternoon-at-the-club best, her hand to her mouth, the other braced on the same chair PJ had just used for stability.

Like mother, like daughter.

Slowly Elizabeth drew her hand from her mouth and pressed it to her chest as if trying to slow her heart, maybe stave off a cardiac arrest.

“Mom
 
—”

“Oh, PJ, what have you done?”

Pizza. PJ needed a deep-dish pepperoni
 
—and fast.

It wasn’t completely fair that the second her mother began to question PJ’s hold on sanity, she reached for the pizza. Like some sort of Pavlovian conditioning, just a tone of voice made her body crave cheese, pepperoni, and tomato sauce.

Lucky for her, she’d seen a pizza deliveryman outside a neighbor’s house just last night. With the goat moving in on the roses and her mother soothing her terrorized nephew, PJ crept into the house and dialed information.

She just about poured her troubles out to the operator, she sounded so friendly.
My mother thinks I’m insane and I have a goat eating my sister’s prized garden.
But she could clearly hear the short circuits inside her fraying nerves and limited her request to the number for pizza delivery.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not showing a pizza delivery in your area.”

“Are you sure? Did you check all the pizza chains?”

Silence. “No. I’m showing nothing under pizza for your area.”

Listen here, sister.
“How about delivery anywhere in Kellogg?”

“I have two listings
 
—one for a Hal’s, the other Angeno’s Pie Palace.”

“Angeno’s, please.” Relief leaked out of PJ even as she pulled open Connie’s desk drawer, searching for a scrap of paper. She found a jumble of rubber bands, some dried-out pens, a few bent business cards, and a photo album. Glancing outside, she could see her mother still comforting a crying Davy, and Boris had plopped down on the grass, petting the goat. Vera, thankfully, had stepped in, trying to shoo the animal away from the roses, throwing out feed.

Sure, she’d eat hard barley instead of rose hips if she were a goat.

She took down the number, scratching it on the back of a business card for carpet cleaning, and dialed Angeno’s.

“I’m sorry, we don’t deliver to the Chapel Hills area.” PJ detected just a touch of pride in the girl’s voice on the other end. Well.

However, she received the same line from Hal’s, and as she put down the telephone, she had the strange impulse to run across the street and ask where they’d ordered their pizza. Because as her mother led Davy into the house, a grim look on her face, PJ knew that frozen just wouldn’t do.

She climbed onto a tall leather barstool and leaned her head into her folded arms as Elizabeth and Davy came into the kitchen, Davy dribbling from his nose and eyes.

Elizabeth grabbed a tissue and wiped his entire face. Then she settled Davy in the next room, in front of a Magic School
Bus DVD. “You can dispose of the goat tomorrow while he’s at school,” she said, returning to the kitchen.

Oh, sure. That would be inconspicuous.

Her mother stared at her a long moment. Then, “What were you thinking?”

“Please, Mom. Take a good look at what’s happening out there.” PJ gestured to the goat bonding with Boris in the backyard. “It’s not my goat. I didn’t even know they were getting a goat.”

Her mother shook her head, as if seeing a natural wonder. “He sure seems taken with it.”

Something to look forward to when she hauled the goat away to the . . . pound? Where did one dispose of a goat? Or rather, put a goat up for adoption?

PJ pressed a hand against her stomach. “Mom, do you know of any pizza places around here that deliver? I can’t find one.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. Sugars didn’t “do” pizza. Another reason she’d left home. “I don’t know, PJ. You’ll have to check the yellow pages.” She went to the French doors and stood there, arms crossed. “I can’t believe your sister has only been gone a week. Just wait until Constance sees this.”

The tone transported PJ to the days before they moved into the Colonial
 
—maybe third grade
 
—when she made a fort on her sister’s lower bunk bed and accidentally started the bedding on fire with a candle. What was a campout without marshmallows? The flames had charred Connie’s new satin comforter and pillow sham.

PJ managed a deep, steadying breath. Connie didn’t have to know anything. She’d get rid of the goat, beg Davy back into Fellows, somehow scrape up the money to replant the garden
 
—

“I wonder if it’s a religious thing,” her mother said, still
staring at Boris. PJ gave a silent prayer of thanks that at least he was still fully clothed. “You know, I read once that peasants in Russia give livestock as wedding gifts.”

PJ narrowed her eyes, trying to laser out of her mother’s brain where she might have picked up that tidbit of information. Elizabeth read long literary novels
 
—maybe she’d read Tolstoy or something.

“So you think the goat is a wedding gift?” PJ latched on to this notion with a whitened grip. It was ever-so-much more palatable than a head on a pillow.

Her mother shrugged, and PJ grimaced, remembering Boris and the computer and the lightbulb that had gone on behind his eyes when he pronounced the word
keed
. Oh, a
kid
.

“What’s this?” Her mother lifted the photo album from Connie’s open desk drawer. She flipped through it. “I remember this.”

PJ sidled up to her mother, peered over her shoulder.

Two faces, both tan, the older one wearing a pair of bug-eyed glasses, her hair tied up in a bandanna. The younger wore a swim cap topped with bright orange flowers. They posed before a stunning sand castle, the sun lifting the gold from the chocolate sand.

PJ guessed she might have been about five or six in the picture. “I remember that light blue whale bathing suit.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Where’s Connie?”

“She was probably playing with her Barbies under the umbrella. She loved to drag them out to the beach. But she never liked the sunshine like you did.”

“Did you make that sand castle?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I was one of the best sand castle–making mothers on the beach.” Elizabeth gave her a wink, something soft behind her eyes. “Remember the high dive?”

PJ took the album from her mother, ran her finger over the smile of the five-year-old. “I remember I was scared to death. Connie dared me to climb it, over and over. But every time I got to the top, I stood there, frozen.”

“It was the same way at the country club high dive. You couldn’t jump. Until you were ten years old. I remember watching you, climbing again and again, and I felt sick, knowing you’d get to the top only to have to climb back down.”

PJ closed the album. “I stood there shaking, thinking that the water looked about a million miles below, wanting to throw up.” She could hear the jeers of the boys lined up behind her, smell the water, feel the grit of the sandpaper ledge, the slick hot metal of the railing in her whitened grip. Fear soured her throat.

But then . . . then . . . her mother was there. Climbing up past the boys on the ladder, inching out to the edge. Her mother, in her black one-piece with the big red flowers. Her mother, with her hair pinned up, her eyes neatly mascaraed, red lipstick bright under the afternoon sun. Her mother, unpeeling a hand from the railing, lacing it with her own. The voice, soft in her ear:
“That’s about enough of this.”

“We did it.” PJ said softly. “We jumped off that platform. Together. I remember the fear, wild in my stomach, my scream as I flung myself out into space. I loved it.”

“I knew you had it in you. Just needed someone to hold your hand.” Her mother regarded her with a smile. She took the album from PJ, put it back in the drawer, closed it.
“Unfortunately you weren’t afraid of much after that. I probably started an obsession.”

What obsession might that be? Her propensity to fling herself out into the wind, or the primal need to head to the water?

Elizabeth ran her hands up her bare, now goosefleshed arms, looking past PJ, seeing something PJ couldn’t place. Then abruptly, she came back to herself. “How about I take you to Sunsets for lunch?”

Sunsets might be nice. PJ thought they might even have a view of the beach from there.

Elizabeth turned off the DVD. “Let’s go get some lunch, Davy.”

PJ watched her, the way she held out her hand for Davy, again wiping his ruddy, moist face, then plopping a kiss on his clean cheek. She had eased off his swim fins, mask, and towel and now disappeared with him up the stairs.

They descended moments later, Davy dressed in a clean white shirt and a pair of pressed navy shorts. Elizabeth picked up her purse. “Are you going in your bikini?”

“Oh.” PJ looked at herself. “Uh, what about Boris and Vera?”

Elizabeth dug out her keys, glanced at the yard. “We’ll pick them up a pizza.”

Oh, not fair. Only, somehow, PJ wasn’t hungry for pizza after all.

* * *

“It must be hard for him, with his mother gone all the time.”

Maxine Hudson’s words echoed in PJ’s thoughts as she leaned against Davy’s doorframe, watching the little guy sleep. He lay
on his back, one leg up, the other crossed over it, as if sleep swept in and froze him midmovement. His dark hair fell over his eyes, his lips were slightly askew, and inside that brain she hoped he was dreaming of the sand castle they’d made today.

She still had sand lodged between her toes, and the burn on her shoulders had started to smart, but she had waged a sound rescue of their afternoon, obliterating the image of the goat from his mind, at least briefly.

After lunch at Sunsets she’d packed up Davy’s discarded scuba gear and, ignoring the beast in the backyard, trotted down to the beach for some afternoon sun. Instead of opening her beach chair, she’d hunkered down in the sand with Davy.

She couldn’t believe it when Maxine showed up to survey their work, along with a small crowd of admirers, other mothers out with their youngsters.

“You’ve quite a talent.” Maxine dropped down beside her. “You should take it on the road.”

“Just one of my many skills,” PJ said as Davy joined Daniel and Felicia running back and forth into the lake, dragging up globules of sand, plopping them onto the pile, laughing.

“Look at me, Auntie PJ!” Davy screamed, erupting in a sweet high laugh with an explosion of giggles. A wave from a nearby speedboat splashed onto his ankles.

His joy ignited explosions of warmth in her chest.

“Trudi tells me that you and she used to be best friends,” Maxine said, lathering sunscreen onto her smooth, dark skin. She wore a lemon yellow one-piece with matching flip-flops and lay back onto a light blue beach mat. She looked like an ad for a beachcomber magazine.

PJ tried to ignore the dry, gritty sand that layered her up to
her thighs, the fact that she wore a shapeless muscle shirt cut off at the waist over her swim top and a pair of faded men’s swim trunks. They were here to have fun, not look good.

But she hoped that Boone didn’t happen by.

Why, oh why, did her thoughts always return to Boone the minute her feet touched sand? Did she not remember their last dangerous conversation?

Yes. Painfully well.

She nodded to Maxine’s comment, digging a moat around their castle. “I left town right after high school, but we’ve caught up in the last week.” PJ peered at her through her sunglasses. “I take it you’re not from around here?”

“We moved to Kellogg about six years ago. I work at the Hennepin County hospital as a trauma nurse.”

Ah. That would explain her calm demeanor and bent toward psychology. PJ’s gaze darted toward Maxine’s left hand as she shaped the bottom of the sand pile. Davy ran up and dumped more sand on top. “Is your husband a doctor?”

Maxine smiled, and it seemed just cryptic enough to spark curiosity. “He works from home, on his computer.” Although PJ didn’t know her well
 
—and with the sun in her face, it was hard to tell
 
—she thought she saw something dark cross Maxine’s expression, followed by a sigh. But PJ felt it, knew it well. She possessed her own shadows, her own sigh.

“He prefers to stay to himself and only goes out for church.”

“Sounds like that might be a challenge.”

A muscle twitched on Maxine’s face. “We all make our choices and have to live with them.”

PJ’s stomach hollowed, as if they’d both fallen into a place
where neither wanted to go and now gulped for air.
Choices
. That was one word for them.

“How long have you been back in town?” Maxine asked.

“About a week.”

“Then you haven’t been to the Mall of America new park yet. They just renovated the rides
 
—we’re going over there on Saturday. Want to join us?”

PJ could barely think beyond dinnertime. But maybe it would be nice to a have a friend in Kellogg who wasn’t attached to the past. “Maybe, yeah.”

“Well, for sure we need to get the kids together for a play
 
—”

A scream edged with terror cut off her words. PJ spotted Davy standing hip-deep in the water, arms flailing, eyes closed, as waves, this time from a yacht motoring by, pummeled him chest-high.

“Davy!” PJ jumped to her feet, splashed through the waves, and scooped him up into her arms. He threw his arms around her neck and wrapped his trembling legs around her waist.

“You okay, buddy?”

His face dug into her neck, and he shook his head.

PJ waded farther into the water and lowered herself, bobbing as she held him. “Pal of mine, are you scared of the water?”

He didn’t move, his breath rushing in and out, broken. PJ pulled his arms from around her neck. He resisted, but she leaned back to look in his face. “Little man, what’s the matter?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Have you ever been out past your knees?”

He shook his head, and PJ touched her forehead to his. Of course not. Without a father, and with Connie hating water . . .

“I knew you had it in you. Just needed someone to hold your hand.”

“Come with me.”

“No!”

“Shh. Look at me, Davy.”

His wide eyes, big and feverish, latched on to hers.

“Auntie PJ isn’t going to let anything happen to you. Hold on to my neck; see, I have my arms around you. Do you feel them?”

He nodded.