Bernie pulled her SUV into a parking space at her apartment complex, glad the day was over. Since early that morning, she’d been on a security detail for a high-profile chef on his whirlwind book-signing tour of the Dallas metroplex. Why his publisher thought he needed security, Bernie didn’t know. Forty-something housewives hoping to get an autograph of the star of their favorite Food Network show didn’t exactly pose a security risk. Boredom set in about the time she picked him and his publicist up at the airport that morning, and it didn’t end until she driving out the north exit of Dallas–Fort Worth airport eight hours later. But Bernie was paid to stay vigilant, and that was exactly how she’d behaved.
The biggest drawback to her assignment today, though, was all the food talk she’d had to endure. Since late morning, even the thought of eating had turned her stomach, the nausea fading in and out, never quite taking hold, but never really going away, either. She felt somewhat better now, but maybe that was only because she was no longer hearing a certain chef repeating his story about going to Osaka and eating whale testicles.
She got out of her car and started up the stairs to her apartment. She put her hand on the iron railing. It shuddered beneath her hand, practically falling out of the wall.
With a muttered curse, she climbed the rest of the stairs, pulling her phone out and hitting speed dial eight. How bad was it to have the manager of her apartment complex on speed dial so she could complain about the latest code violation?
Five rings, no answer. Of course not. The last person Charmin wanted to talk to was Bernie.
Without a doubt, Charmin Brubaker was the most unpleasant, unmotivated, unlikable person Bernie had ever met. She spent a good portion of her day on the Internet playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. She had permanent orange Cheetos stains on her fingers. And whenever a tenant requested something, she went out of her way to “lose” the order three or four times before finally doing something about it. And since the owner, Harvey Farnsworth, was a tightwad who didn’t mind letting costly repairs slide, Charmin’s incompetence didn’t bother him in the least. As long as she kept the occupancy rate up and the delinquency rate down, she could run a prostitution ring for all he cared.
Charmin had successfully browbeaten most of the tenants until nobody wanted to go head to head with her. Bernie had no such fear. If there was one thing she hated, it was seeing somebody like Charmin screw people who couldn’t help themselves. Evidently that was the kind of person you turned into when your mother named you after toilet paper.
Bernie reached the landing in front of her apartment just as she heard the beep to leave a message. “Charmin. This is Bernie Hogan. I want these railings fixed. The one by my apartment, and the ones in buildings five and nine, too. If you don’t fix them, I’m reporting you to the city. Again. Old people live here, Charmin. They need those railings! Do you hear me? Now, fix them!”
With an angry huff, she disconnected the call, shoved her phone in her pocket, and stuck her key into her door.
“Hey! Who you calling old?”
Bernie spun around to see Ruby Wilson standing in her doorway, a Marlboro hanging out of her mouth and her gnarled fingers wrapped around a bottle of Bud. A Hawaiian shirt was stuffed inside the stretchy waistband of her denim pants, which were pulled up under her breasts. She had a face that looked like a relief map of Appalachia, and every time a puff of cigarette smoke wafted past it, a dozen more skin cells gave up the ghost.
“Ruby. You’re eighty-two. Most people think that’s old.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re almost forty. Some people think that’s old.”
“Okay, then,” Bernie said. “We’re both old. And we both need that railing fixed.”
Ruby took a long drag off her cigarette. “That Charmin’s a real bitch. Wish I knew how to do one of them evil eyes, or stick a voodoo doll, or something. That’d teach her.”
No, if Ruby fell and broke a hip and sued, that’d teach her.
“I’ll follow up with her tomorrow,” Bernie said. “In the meantime, don’t touch that railing.”
Ruby sighed. “Guess I’ll have to build in an extra ten minutes just to get down the stairs.”
“Just be careful, okay?”
Ruby nodded. “Goin’ to the Choctaw on the bus tomorrow with my girls. If you’re not workin’, why don’t you come along?”
Oh, yeah. Sounded like a blast. Going to a casino and plugging nickel slots with three chain-smoking senior citizens. Ruby had won a five-hundred-dollar jackpot on her sixty-seventh birthday, and she’d had the once-a-month habit ever since.
“No, thanks,” Bernie said, her stomach still upset enough that an hour-long bus ride on the Casino Express sounded like torture. “I’m sticking close to home tomorrow.”
“Okay. Holler if you change your mind.”
Bernie went inside her apartment, found a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and downed a dose. She took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. The queasiness was starting to subside, so it probably wasn’t the flu, which was a very good thing. She had a week-long assignment starting on Monday. She hadn’t missed a day of work in years, and she wanted to keep that record clean, because she’d never taken kindly to being thought of as the weaker sex. Men accepted any kind of sickness from other men—flu, cold, migraine, hangover, bronchitis, poison ivy, blue balls, anything—but the moment a woman was sidelined, it was because of female problems. She could have a flesh-eating bacteria that had consumed one leg and was starting on the other one, and they’d still say she hadn’t shown up that morning because Aunt Flo had paid her a visit.
She went to her fridge and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade to drink as she flipped through her mail. Electric bill. Postcard with a coupon for an oil change and lube. Solicitation from a local real estate agent. Weekly grocery ads.
Wait. A copy of Home & Hearth? Where had that come from?
She checked the mailing label, figuring the mailman had gotten it wrong. Nope. There it was. Her name and address, as if she’d subscribed. She thumbed through the magazine, saw the headlines, and realized she didn’t need to read the articles to know the answers.
“Secrets to an Always-Clean House.” Ajax, a sponge, and elbow grease.
“Real-Life Exercise Strategies That Work.” Weightlifting, kickboxing class, and five-mile runs.
“Dinner in Under Ten Minutes.” Lean Cuisine in the microwave.
She was sure this magazine had good advice for most women. She’d just never been like most women.
Suddenly her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, and when she saw her cousin Billy’s name, her stomach felt even sicker than before. She waited until he left a message, then picked it up.
“Hey, Bernie, it’s Billy. I need your help.”
Bernie sighed. Of course he did.
“I applied for a job, and I need a reference. They’ll be calling you tomorrow. Can you tell them I’m a good guy? Hard worker, and all that?”
Translation: Will you lie for me?
“Now, I swear it won’t be like my last job at the video game store. That wasn’t my fault. My boss was a real bastard who had it in for me. No matter what he said, I did not steal that copy of Assassin’s Creed. Somebody must have put it in my backpack. So this time it’ll be different. I swear. It’s a job at an auto parts store. You know I love cars. This is my dream job, Bernie. You have to help me.”
Dream job? Not likely. Her cousin Billy’s dream job didn’t exist, unless there was an opening somewhere for a TV-watching, pot-smoking, freeloading deadbeat.
So what was she supposed to do this time? If she told them he’d be a good employee, she’d be lying through her teeth. If she didn’t, he might not get the job, and within a few weeks, he’d be on her doorstep asking for money.
She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.
She just wanted him to take care of himself. That was all. Just get a decent job and hold on to it. Was that really too much to ask?
She heard a knock at her door. With a heavy sigh, she went to answer it. Looking out the peephole, she saw her mother. She was wearing her mint green dress and carrying a small white box, which meant she’d come from some church function and Bernie was going to have to hear all about it. She loved her mother, but sometimes it got to be too much.
Bernie opened the door, and Eleanor Hogan strode inside. “When I was getting out of my car,” she said, “I saw a man lurking by the stairs with a bunch of little silver rings in his eyebrow. Just one eyebrow. Would you tell me the purpose of that? Five rings in one eyebrow and none in the other?”
“So you’d rather see him put five in each eyebrow?”
“Heavens, no. But at least that would make sense. And that odd little woman across the way was looking at me through the window as I was coming up the stairs.”
“Ruby is harmless.”
“I’m sure she’s very nice,” Eleanor said. “But she was smoking and drinking, of all things. At her age. That can’t possibly be good for her.”
“Wait a minute,” Bernie said, suddenly remembering. “The stairs. You have to be careful going back down, Mom. That railing is broken.”
“Everything’s broken around here. This isn’t a decent place for a woman to live. If I were you—” All at once Eleanor stopped short and stared at Bernie, her brow furrowed with worry. “Bernadette? What’s wrong? You’re white as a ghost. Are you sick?”
“No. Of course not. I’m fine.”
“There’s Pepto-Bismol on your kitchen counter. Do you have stomach problems? Nausea? Gas?”
Bernie sighed. “I really don’t want to discuss my gastrointestinal system with you, Mom.”
Eleanor put her hand against Bernie’s forehead. “Hmm. No fever. You didn’t eat at that new restaurant on Branson Street, did you? Sushi is unnatural. Only grizzly bears should eat raw fish.”
“No, I didn’t eat sushi. I’m fine now. The Pepto Bismol did the trick.”
“You’re still pale.”
“That’s because the Pepto-Bismol pink hasn’t made its way to my face yet.”
Eleanor looked unconvinced. “Okay. Just be careful. Get plenty of rest. So many terrible things are going around this season.” Then she spied the copy of Home & Hearth on the counter between Bernie’s kitchen and dining room. She set down her purse and the white box and picked it up. “Oh, how nice! You’ve started getting the magazine. It was only an extra eight dollars to give a gift subscription when I renewed mine. I couldn’t turn down a bargain like that.”
Bernie heaved a silent sigh. She should have known.
In recent years, her mother had begun to recognize the futility of overtly begging her daughter to marry and procreate, so her game plan had shifted to subtle hints. Bernie couldn’t imagine that her mother actually believed she’d sit down with a Home & Hearth, read an article or two, slap her forehead, and say How could I have been so blind? This is the life I want! But that was her mother. She stuck to hope like gum to a tennis shoe.
“Did I tell you Katherine’s daughter Susan was getting married at the church this afternoon?” Eleanor said. “I wouldn’t have chosen yellow Gerbera daisies for a bridal bouquet, but it was lovely just the same.”
Eleanor Hogan had definitely found her calling as head of the altar guild at the Sunnyside Baptist Church. It was all weddings, all the time. According to her mother, everything about them was lovely, from the cakes to the dresses to the flowers to the nut cups to the blissful expressions on the brides’ faces as they pledged undying love to their grooms. Statistically speaking, within a few years, half those brides would be hurling china at their grooms’ heads on their way out the door to hire a divorce lawyer, but Bernie refrained from pointing that out.
To stem the tide of wedding talk that was sure to begin, she grabbed the book she’d brought home. “Mom, look. You know that guy you watch on the Food Network? The chef who does all that international cuisine stuff? This is his cookbook. I had him sign it for you.”
Her mother took it reverently, her eyes wide with awe. “You got Chef Allen’s autograph? The Chef Allen?”
“Yeah. He was in Dallas doing some book signings. I was on his security detail.”
Eleanor frowned, her brows pulling together again. “Security detail? For Chef Allen? Was there any… trouble?”
“Yeah. Those ladies who showed up for his signings were really pushy. I think one of them stepped on his toe.”
“Don’t joke,” Eleanor snapped. “Your job worries me to death.”
“No need to worry. About 99 percent of the time, it’s a real bore.”
“It’s the other one percent that concerns me.”
Bernie was tired of rehashing this. Yes, she knew her mother worried, but in the end, her biggest objection had to do not with what her daughter was, but with what she wasn’t: a secretary, schoolteacher, librarian, or stay-at-home mom with six kids and a minivan. On her mother’s side of the family, women were shuttled onto a bullet train that sped straight into a blackened tunnel of Kool-Aid spills, diaper changes, and perfunctory sex with the lights out. And when they emerged on the other side, what was waiting for them? Social Security, TV remotes, and ungrateful children who never came to visit.
Bernie remembered when she was fourteen and her mother made an appointment so they could have a spa day together. A spa day. God, was there anything worse than that? Evidently Eleanor thought if she shoved that pendulum really hard in the other direction, her daughter would end up somewhere in the middle. Bernie would have licked the spout of every drinking fountain in town if it meant she’d pick up the flu and be forced to stay home. Unfortunately, the hundred different strains floating around that season had bypassed her, so she’d been stuck enduring an afternoon of people’s hands on her from her hair to her toenails, buffing, polishing, massaging, and scrubbing until Bernie had lost an entire layer of skin and any semblance of privacy. And through it all, her mother had said, Now, isn’t that nice? That’s a lovely shade of pink nail polish, isn’t it? And I don’t think your complexion has ever looked prettier. And Bernie had come home reeking of jasmine and vanilla and hating every minute of it.
“Billy said he was going to call you,” her mother asked tentatively. “Did you hear from him?”
Bernie closed her eyes. “Yeah, Mom. He left me a message.”
“I hope you’ll help him out. The job sounds very promising.”
“A reference from a blood relative doesn’t count for much.”
“But you present yourself so well. Anything you say will help.”
“He stole from his last employer.”
“He says that was just a misunderstanding.”
“Yeah. He misunderstood that he wasn’t supposed to steal things.”
“But it’s been so hard for him,” Eleanor said sadly. “Growing up without a mother.”
Oh, God. Here it comes. “Mom, your sister died when Billy was eight years old. He’s twenty-nine now. Don’t you think it’s time he stood on his own two feet?”
“Bernadette. If I were the one who had died, I would have wanted Rose to help you.”
Ignoring, of course, the fact that Bernie hadn’t needed any help from anyone in approximately thirty years. But that was logical, and her mother had never run on logic.
“Okay, Mom,” Bernie said on a heavy sigh. “I’ll give him a reference.”
“I’m sure you can think of something nice to say.”
Yeah. She could say he had good manual dexterity and superior powers of persuasion. As long as they didn’t realize she was talking about him punching a TV remote and begging for a loan, maybe she wouldn’t be struck dead for lying.
“Sorry to be abrupt,” Bernie said, “but I have plans this evening. I need to take a shower.”
“Dinner with friends?”
“No.”
She blinked hopefully. “A… date?”
As if she could speak it into existence. “No.”
Her mother frowned. “You’re playing poker again, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, Mom. I’m playing poker. I like poker.”
“It’s gambling.”
“Given the guys I play with, there’s really not much gambling involved.”
Eleanor let out a weary sigh. “You do take after your father.”
Yes. She did. And if only her mother would accept that someday, Bernie would be the happiest woman alive.
Her father had been a cop, shot in the line of duty when she was only sixteen. She didn’t know if she’d been a tomboy from birth, or she’d just loved her father so much that she wanted to be just like him. He took her fishing. To baseball games. Taught her how to play basketball. The first time he took her to the shooting range, she’d hit a bull’s-eye. He told everybody within range of his voice that his baby girl was a hell of a shot. It had been a losing battle for her poor mother to get her to wear perfume when her favorite scent was gunpowder. To this day, every time Bernie smelled it, it was as if her father was smiling down at her from heaven.
“Can’t I make you dinner before I go?” Eleanor said. “Maybe some chicken soup to help you feel better?”
“No, thanks.”
“You still don’t look well. Promise me you’ll get home early and get some rest.”
“I will.”
Eleanor grabbed her purse and walked to the door.
“Wait,” Bernie said, picking up the white box her mother had left there earlier. “You forgot this.”
Eleanor turned back. She froze, looking at the box, then tilted her head. “Is that mine?”
Bernie felt a tremor of apprehension slither between her shoulders. “Yeah, Mom. It’s yours. You brought it here.”
Her mother swallowed hard, her hand slinking to her throat, her eyes blinking anxiously.
“Did it come from the church?” Bernie asked. “The wedding?”
“Oh!” Eleanor said, exhaling, her eyes falling closed, then opening again. “Cake. It’s cake. From Katherine’s daughter’s wedding. I just forgot for a moment. Such a busy day.” Her mouth turned up in a shaky smile. “It’s why I dropped by. To bring you the cake. It’s delicious. White buttercream frosting on the outside, but the cake itself is chocolate. Not exactly traditional, but what woman ever complained about chocolate? And such pretty yellow roses on top. With a vase of yellow roses beside it, it made such a beautiful cake table.”
Bernie winced at the information overload. See, I remember all the details. Every one. So there’s no problem. No problem at all.
“Well, I’d better be going,” Eleanor said breezily. “You have things to do. Enjoy the cake. And thank you for the book. If you’ll come for dinner sometime soon, I’ll try one of the recipes.”
“I will.” Bernie followed her to the door. “Mom?”
Eleanor turned back. “Yes?”
“Have you been feeling okay?”
“Me? Of course I have.”
“Are you sure?”
“Bernadette,” she said, her voice laced with nervous laughter. “It’s nothing. I’m sixty-eight years old. Sometimes it’s just… just normal forgetting. You know.”
Don’t panic. It was just a momentary lapse. Things are still okay for now. “Yeah. I know.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. See how you’re feeling.”
Bernie started to say that it wasn’t necessary, but she stopped herself. She could see now that she couldn’t let a day go by without talking to her mother, without judging each day’s experience in light of the one before. Sometime soon there would be a tipping point, and Bernie needed to recognize it when it happened. She had the terrible feeling that day was coming sooner than she expected.
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Bernie said. “Give me a call in the morning.”
Her mother nodded and slipped out the door, and Bernie closed it behind her. She turned and leaned against it for a moment, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Damn it. Damn it. She hated that life had thrown her this curveball. And she hated that she hated it. A good daughter would remain calm and sympathetic instead of feeling the undertow of responsibility dragging down until she could barely breathe.
Why on earth had her mother let her health insurance lapse?
If Bernie could count on help from the rest of the family, it might be different. But all she had was a grandmother who was too old and too eccentric to take care of anyone. Billy, who was allergic to work and sponged off anybody he could. There were others who were less of a pain but loony in their own right, or they weren’t local, so how much help could they be? If only her father were still alive to run interference and take care of her mother, Bernie would be free to live her own life. But now it fell on her to be the sane one, the voice of reason, the one strong thread that kept the ragged fabric of her family from falling apart at the seams. To make sure her mother was protected, now until the end.
She thought about what had happened with Jeremy. About the money she wasn’t making now. For all her complaints about him, she never would have quit that job unless she’d done something so stupid that quitting had been her only option. It wasn’t until now, almost two months later, that the sting of that experience had even begun to fade. She’d just been so damned angry, and then she’d tossed down those shots, and then Jeremy had taunted her, then kissed her…
No. There was no excuse for what she’d done. None at all. She’d never been one to blame anyone else for her own actions. It was the only time in her adult life she’d behaved in a way that made her ashamed to think back on it, and now she had to live with the memory of it forever. And in the coming months and years, she’d just have to find a way to keep things afloat that didn’t involve a great big paycheck from a womanizing millionaire.
She drained the Gatorade bottle and headed to her bathroom to take a shower, then head to Bill’s house for poker. Just for tonight, she was going to lose herself in Texas Hold ’Em and a few longnecks and pretend everything was A-OK.