Part 16 (1/2)
”Are you and Denny together now?” she asked through sobs. ”You could always have any guy you wanted.”
I pushed aside the hurt that she believed I would betray her and her out-sized notion of my attractiveness. ”No way. In fact, I'm seeing someone else, a guy from Animal Control.”
”Denny's always had feelings for you. I always knew that a part of him wasn't available for me.”
”Marcie, it's just his loyalty to Rick. He's trying to be there for Robby, the only way he can honor their friends.h.i.+p. It's not about me. He and I are done with each other. You've seen that-we bicker non-stop. He drives me crazy.”
How could she be so calm and sensible for other people's problems and fly off the rails so thoroughly with her own? My turn to be the adult was long overdue, but all I could do was witness the bleeding. I did that for an hour and a half. Somehow Denny had been the splint on her sterile childhood and her timid personality, someone who let her live with courage, even with joy. With him gone, she seemed more wounded than ever.
”You can't keep suffering like this. You remember that therapist you saw in college? Call her. Promise me you'll call her.”
After she agreed and I confirmed that she still had the phone number, I hugged her and promised to be back in a day or two.
Was this what Marcie felt like after my melt-downs over Rick's drinking, his death, my fears about being a single parent? I wanted to turn the car around, go back, and apologize.
I needed someone to talk to about my fears for Robby, about the dead people in my dreams, about Calvin retiring. It wasn't going to be Marcie.
Chapter Nineteen.
The parents were watching TV when I came in. ”Robby went to bed okay?”
”He was fine,” my mother said. ”How's Marcie?”
I dropped to my hands and knees and rooted around in the liquor cabinet below the television screen until I found a bottle at the back. I took it into the kitchen and returned with a couple fingers of scotch in a water gla.s.s. Settled next to my mother on the sofa, I gulped down a good portion of it and emerged gasping.
She muted a commercial. ”That bad?”
”That bad. Denny broke up with her a couple of weeks ago, and she's devastated. It's not getting any better.”
In the silence that followed, out of the corner of my eye I could see emotions, advice, and observations warring on her face. She said, ”I'm sorry. I like Marcie.”
I was appreciating that mild comment when my father's voice startled both of us. ”Good thing, if you ask me. That kid's a dingbat. She can do better.”
So much for mild.
”Dad, you've hardly met him. He's full of verbal bulls.h.i.+t, but he's a good person. Just not the right person for her. He's done his best to help me and Robby.” I surprised myself. Why was I defending him, after all the damage he'd done?
I sipped the scotch. Loyalty. Honesty. That was why.
My mother's self-control evaporated. ”Dear, do you really want to drink all that? Tomorrow's a work day, isn't it?”
I finished the scotch and reached into her lap to push the mute b.u.t.ton and reactivate the show. ”I'm going upstairs to read. See you in the morning. Sleep well.”
”Let me get you some aspirin...”
Upstairs, I brushed my teeth while the alcohol burn doubled back from my alimentary ca.n.a.l and circled up into my brain. I yielded to it, willing mind and muscles to relax. I'd never get to sleep otherwise. Marcie, Liana, Jeff and Tom-sleep wasn't going well these days. Why did scotch and toothpaste have to be such a nasty combination?
I settled into the narrow bed, careful not to wake Robby crashed out on his mattress on the floor, turned on the reading light, and opened The Last Tortoise by Craig Stanford. The book was good, but alcohol didn't help my focus. Was pair bonding a loser's game? Marcie had given it her best shot and flamed out. The scotch helped me convince myself that tonight Marcie might have hit bottom and tomorrow she would start rebuilding. I could hope. In the meantime, I missed my friend. I was just plain lonely.
Ken hadn't called and that was probably good. Not meant to be, et cetera. So why did I feel like a spineless loser when I thought of him?
It was only nine o'clock. I activated my laptop for a little research, then stepped out to the bathroom where I wouldn't disturb Robby. I opened up my phone and dialed. ”Hey, you awake? It's Iris.”
”I'm awake. What's up?”
”I found out about a reptile show that starts Friday. You said you kept box turtles as a kid. Maybe you'd like to go.”
Ken said, ”Never been to a reptile show. Where is it?”
”A hotel south of Portland off I-5. Starts at ten in the morning. I want to ask the vendors about customers for illegal tortoises.” I gave him the hotel name and the freeway exit.
”Meet you there?”
”Yeah. That would be good.” Not spineless. Sloshed and forlorn and foolish.
Friday morning I stood in a Holiday Inn banquet room staring at tables with rows of small creatures in clear deli containers, like so many scoops of potato salad or slices of chocolate cake. Little snakes, lizards, hairy-legged spiders. This ”show” was really a sale. Each vendor had a sign or banner at a table where his or her wares were displayed. Price tags on the containers ranged from tens to hundreds of dollars. I'd never seen animals in such barren housing in my life, and it jarred all my zoo keeper sensibilities. Those sensibilities were already bruised from telling Neal I had a family emergency and had to take the day off. I was here to seek the other end of the Tipton tangle of string-their customers.
Spotting Ken and joining up felt entirely natural. He looked good, much better in a green chamois s.h.i.+rt than that dubious Hawaiian thing. We edged along with the crowd, circling the room. The customers were mostly families with school-aged children, probably thanks to a teacher in-service day. A bearded man and a teenage boy both shopped with snakes wound around their necks.
”Let's get some coffee and come back,” he suggested after our first circuit. ”I saw a restaurant off the lobby.”
Excellent idea.
Ken ordered blackberry pie and, at my nod, two pieces. He ate with a focus that matched my own. When his pie was history, he looked up. ”Cool event.”
”It's more fun with somebody else. Thanks for coming.”
”My pleasure.” He s.h.i.+fted on the seat. ”I'd like to have a bearded dragon. Someday when I have a stable place to live.”
”My husband, Rick, had a pet iguana. He was the zoo's reptile keeper.”
He studied his coffee cup. ”That Denny guy has the job now?”
”Right.”
Ken stirred a packet of sugar into his coffee. ”How are all those tortoises doing? I got the impression there were a lot of them.”
”Twenty-five or so. One is pretty sick. Pneumonia, I think.”
”Denny's looking after them?”
”He's micro-managing by nagging. They're all in quarantine and he's not allowed in. He's making the vet tech crazy.” I finished the last of my pie.