Monday, October 19

8 days ’til the end

Dolly’s little white house with no porch and a red door, three concrete steps up from the street, looked abandoned. Newspapers leaned against the door and a UPS sticker was stuck to the window. Her concrete planter, at the foot of the steps, held two very dead geraniums bending over each other. The planter had been her pride all summer long, with the pink geraniums blooming wildly and Dolly bragging about her secret fertilizer, about which I was afraid to ask.

Dolly’s patrol car wasn’t in the drive but that didn’t stop me from parking and going up the broken concrete walk between small patches of weedy brown lawn, then standing on the second step and pounding at her door. “Dolly!” I called again and again, knowing I was reaching no one because there was no one in there to reach.

That was it for me, I told myself. Let her do whatever dumb thing she wanted to—look like a coconut or a casaba melon if that’s what made her happy. I would be damned if I was going to get myself worked up, caring about some little runt of a woman who didn’t care about any of her friends, about her job, which she’d always said was the most important thing in her life; and was letting all of us down—especially me. I stomped down the steps to my car, leaving a string of mumbles behind me.

Who needed a billiard ball for a friend? I asked myself as I drove over to EATS to get a fried egg and a stack of pancakes and fried potatoes and white toast—throwing caution and my arteries to the wind. Who needed a person who went flying off in all directions when you most needed her to keep her feet on the ground and concentrate?

It had to be Dolly’s “family” thing, I told myself as I parked in the EATS lot. She had nobody. Her string of foster homes hadn’t been warm and fuzzy. I heard about a couple of abusive boyfriends she’d had to put in the hospital, and then there was her husband, Chet Wakowski, who didn’t stay around long enough to let the ink on the marriage license dry. She’d already spent money to bury the unfaithful Chet, after he was found dead, his bones floating out in Sandy Lake. She’d looked on his uncaring family as her own, until they stiffed her on the funeral, and left town early. Now she’d found a group that, like all cults, reached out and sucked her in with smiles and pats on the back and talk of being together, right up to the end of all time. Which wasn’t long now. Maybe she’d already given them money; maybe signed the deed to her house over to the reverend. If the world was going to end, what good were any of those things to the cult leaders? I had no doubt that the Reverend Fritch was no different from others who came before him, all greed and power-lust and ego under the guise of religion. If God ever got into smiting again, I would happily provide him with a list of smite-ees.

I found a booth in one corner of the restaurant and sat on the side facing away from everybody. I didn’t want to be bothered. What I needed was to be left alone to nurse my steaming anger and take in enough calories to blow up my rear end to a size I could blame on Dolly. Gloria came over fast. I think my narrow eyes, hunched back, and fast walk warned everyone else away. She looked down at me nervously as I told her what I wanted and added that I didn’t want the eggs hard—as Eugenia usually cooked them; and I didn’t want my toast burned; and I didn’t want the potatoes floating in lard.

Gloria got the idea, wrote out my long order, and turned on her toe to get away.

“Has Dolly been in yet?” I think I growled, catching her mid-turn. Whatever I did, Gloria’s eyes got huge. She blinked a few times then looked around for reinforcements, in case I attacked.

“Did you hear?” She dared to take a step closer. “She joined those pilgrims out to the campground.”

“Pilgrims?”

“You know, those folks who’re waiting for the world to end. Shaved her head and everything. Eugenia saw her yesterday at the service.”

“What’s Eugenia doing out there at a service?” Now I was truly tripping through Never Never Land.

“She doesn’t believe in any of it. Not Eugenia. She only goes to see what’s happening. Cheap theatre, she calls it. Wants to keep count of who’s the most gullible in Leetsville. I’ll tell you, Dolly really surprised her.”

“Yeah, me too. But that’s her choice. Anybody that dumb …”

I didn’t want to get into a rant before breakfast so I smiled and sent Gloria on her way.

I settled back against the booth, ran my hand over the red Formica table, picking at hardened egg someone left behind as a souvenir. I glanced around the restaurant to see who I’d snubbed in my snit and who would be mad at me for a week or two.

The bag lady was there, watching. She was a vision, in all her finery. Today it was a torn designer skirt and her down-at-the-heels Gucci shoes. A rhinestone butterfly was pinned at the very top of her white pouf of hair. Every time I’d come in lately there she’d been, sitting with a cup of tea or coffee or a mostly uneaten plate of food in front of her. If she wasn’t a relative of Eugenia’s, I couldn’t imagine why she let her kill so much time, taking up a seat or a stool and lingering for hours. Eugenia had claimed not to know the woman. Said she thought she was famous. Maybe infamous, I thought, wondering again if this was one of Eugenia’s outlaw relatives come to life.

The woman stared at me. I was in too belligerent a mood to be stared down. I frowned but didn’t nod or acknowledge her. Let’s see who gives up staring first, I told myself, and settled my elbows on the table, chin in my hands.

The woman rose slowly from her table at the center of the restaurant. It took a little time for her to rearrange the green scarves she wore around her neck, then to pull her skirt down over her terribly uncomfortable-looking shoes. She never took her eyes from mine as she straightened her rhinestone butterfly, wings standing straight up at the top of her hair. With shoulders settled back, she took step after step toward me. No smile. No expression at all. Just this little old lady coming around tables and chairs with me clearly in her sights.

I moved back into the corner of the booth, hoping she would make a right turn toward the bathrooms. She stopped beside me, gave me a long, hard look, then slid into the booth without being invited.

“You are Emily Kincaid,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice.

I couldn’t disagree. “And you are …?”

“Call me Cate. That’s what I’m known as.”

“I’ve seen you in here a lot lately. Did you recently move to town?”

She shook her head, the butterfly dancing.

“Are you related to Eugenia?”

Again she shook her head then looked over toward where Eugenia stood at her counter, keeping an eye on us.

I watched the old woman from the sides of my eyes, suspicious. Maybe I was in for a sales pitch, or about to be hit up for a loan. There’d once been another old lady, with red cherries on her hat, who accosted me in Grand Central Station in New York City. She’d pleaded that her purse had been stolen and could I lend her enough money to get home. It turned out the trip would cost her twenty dollars and I couldn’t resist an old lady asking for money. She wrote down my address, to send my money to me. I never got it. Not again, I told myself. Not this time. I wasn’t a kid anymore. Nobody could fool me.

“I want to tell you a story,” Cate said, sighed, and gathered her wrinkled hands together before her on the table.

Gloria brought my platter of food and set it in front of me. She filled my tin tea pot with hot water, brushed crumbs from the table, then—finding no other reason to hang around—attended to the crumbs on the table next to ours.

Cate waited while Gloria tidied every table around us then brought a broom to pick up the crumbs she’d dropped to the linoleum. I ate the fried eggs, poured syrup on the pancakes and ate them, then nibbled at a piece of toast while the woman sat across from me in silence.

“Can I get you tea or coffee?” I’d already been less than hospitable. Tea or coffee wouldn’t cost me much. Cate shook her head and turned to smile at Eugenia, who nodded slightly and went out to the kitchen.

I finished my toast and pushed the empty platter away. I wiped my fingers on a paper napkin from the holder on the table, finding I was stickier than I’d thought. I tipped the water glass over my fingers, got another napkin, and cleaned up as Cate watched me. When I was finally finished with all my ablutions, she leaned forward.

“A story,” she said again and cleared her throat. “Once upon a time I had a daughter …”

Never Never Land. . .

“She grew up to do destructive things to herself. I thought I had the power to stop her, but I never could. She ran away with a man and had a baby. The man left her … such an old, sad story … and she gave her baby away. When I asked about the child, she told me she’d found a loving home for the girl and it was all for the best. After that she found a group of people she said were helping her to straighten out her life; they were treating her like family and she was seeing the error of her previous ways. I was happy for her.”

Cate drew a deep breath.

“The next thing I knew, her group didn’t want her coming home again. They moved to a village in France. I tried to tell her it wasn’t right, what they were asking of her. All I could think of were terrible stories I’d heard of cults and how they stole the minds of their followers. She said she’d be fine, she was happy with her friends, and she would write to me. I was disgusted and swore I’d never ever have a thing to do with her again as long as I lived.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Who are you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Let me finish.”

Light was dawning. This was going to be a Dolly thing. Everyone in town must know how mad I was at Dolly and were using this poor soul as a way to tug at my heart strings, this woman with a daughter who’d given away her kid, like Dolly’s mother had. It wasn’t going to work.

“I went to France to find her. I searched everywhere. For a while, I stayed in Paris and put ads in all the newspapers, asking her to contact me. I never heard. I should have acted sooner. Anger didn’t help either one of us. Maybe I could have rescued her …”

I sat back and smiled. “Eugenia sent you over to tell me this story, right?”

The woman nodded. “She thought you should know because you’re so mad at your friend. Like my daughter, she needs your help. Don’t wait …”

Her words deflated me. Like a balloon, curling down flat, I sank into myself. “It’s her choice.” I sounded like a miserable little kid.

“Maybe not. Maybe there’s more we don’t know.”

I raised one hand. “Excuse me … eh … Cate, but what are you doing here? Who the hell are you? And what’s this all about?”

“I overheard people talking and I thought I could help.”

“But …”

She moved to get up.

“Do you go from town to town, righting wrongs and battling evil-doers?”

Cate’s look was withering, and I deserved it. “I’m not staying in Leetsville long. I have a few weeks left, until this End Time thing is finished. Then I’ll be gone. I’ve followed cults before. Something I’m compelled to do. Often, when the disappointment sets in, people need help, someone to talk to, a way to get back to their real lives.”

“Sorry,” I said, and meant it. “But what can I do? I mean, about my friend, Deputy Dolly?”

“Go out there and find her. Talk to her. Let her know how worried you are and then offer her an easy way back to her real life. She may be sorry already, about what she’s done. You could be a lifeline.”

She reached over the table and put one of her knobby hands in tough black lace on mine. “You could be a friend.”