Dying in Style (24 page)

Jane got a job at the bank and went to work like a martyr mounting the scaffold. She had one goal: Josie had to recapture her dream.

“Mom, I know you were happy, but I’m not cut out to be a corporate wife.”

If Josie had followed her mother’s plan, she would be just like Alyce—and just as trapped. Josie knew that now, and on some level she must have known it then.

“You didn’t try,” her mother said. “One minute you were engaged to Andy. The next, you ran off with that man.” Jane couldn’t bring herself to say his name.

Josie knew it must have looked that way to Jane. But it wasn’t what happened. She’d been unhappy with Andy. Nathan made her understand that.

Josie knew one other thing: She loved Amelia’s father the moment she saw him. She loved him still. But there was no way Amelia was ever going to meet the man.

Josie could still recall the way Nathan had looked the first time she saw him. She’d been sitting with her business school friends at O’Connell’s Pub. Josie felt sophisticated drinking half-and-half—half Guinness stout and half lager—and eating a bloody-rare burger and fries.

She was half listening to Andy with the beautiful eyes and the adding-machine soul. In the dark pub Andy whispered in her ear, “It’s my job to convey the bottom-line benefits to my customers.”

That’s when Nathan walked in the door. Josie saw his dark blond hair, the color of wild honey, his brown eyes, his leather jacket, and his swagger.

A woman at Josie’s table waved and said, “Hi, Nate. Come sit by us.”

“He’s a helicopter pilot,” she whispered to Josie.

That explained his absolute confidence, Josie thought. He needed it. One miscalculation and he’d be flying a rock.

Nate squeezed in next to Josie, swiped one of her fries, and started talking about flying.

Before the night was over, he’d taken her on a moonlight helicopter ride along the Mississippi. Josie saw the silver light shimmering on the Arch and knew she could never listen to another bottom-line lecture from Andy. She gave him back his “investment diamond.”

A week later Nathan was her high-flying lover. He had a downtown bachelor apartment with black satin sheets and a view of the Arch, a white Porsche Boxster, a Harley, and an Infinity sound system. Flying a copter must pay well, Josie thought. Nate was Canadian and flew regularly between his hometown of Toronto and St. Louis.

“You changed overnight,” Jane said, bringing Josie back to her man-free bedroom. “You threw away everything—your career, your scholarship.”

But, oh, what I gained, Josie thought. Nate took her to New Orleans for jambalaya, to the Grand Canyon to see the sunrise, to the Grand Caymans to scuba dive. He took Josie everywhere except Toronto. He always made those flights alone.

Josie’s grades slipped. Her teachers lectured her about the future. But Josie didn’t care. She had a marvelous man who never talked about “win-win negotiations.”

One night, Josie and Nate made a pitcher of margaritas, lit a hundred candles and got gloriously drunk. When she woke up the next morning, Josie saw the box of condoms by the bed had never been opened.

“I knew it wouldn’t last,” Jane said. “I knew that man didn’t have staying power. He abandoned you when you were pregnant.”

“I left him!” Josie said. It was the one part of her past she could never get her mother to believe.

Six weeks after their candlelit night, Josie knew she didn’t have the flu. She was pregnant. She also began to wonder where Nate got his money. He had lots of it, in cash. When she was hunting for a CD, she found the bag of white powder stashed in the cabinet. Josie knew the man she loved didn’t make his money flying helicopters.

She couldn’t go back to school with the bottom-line boys and her expanding belly. She couldn’t marry a drug dealer, either. Josie decided she wasn’t cut out to be a wife. But she did want to be a mother.

She was going to tell Nate about their child when he was arrested in Canada for drug smuggling. Nate went to prison and was barred from reentering the United States. Josie cut off all contact with him. She never told Nathan he had a daughter. She never told Amelia she had a father in a Canadian prison. For her mother’s sake, Josie said she was the widow of a copter pilot who’d died in a crash. It was almost true.

She dropped out of college to have Amelia, then went to work as a mystery shopper. Josie thought she lived fairly happily ever after. She loved her daughter. She liked mystery shopping. Only Jane saw Josie’s life as a failure.

“That man ruined everything I worked for,” Jane said. “He left you a college dropout, with no marriage prospects.”

“Andy still wanted to marry me,” Josie said for the hundredth time. “I didn’t want to marry him. He found someone else. Andy’s happy. I’m happy.”

Her mother looked smaller than Josie remembered. Older, too. Suddenly Josie was filled with love for this little woman, who picked up the pieces of her collapsed dream and trudged off to the bank every day. She only wanted the best for Josie. It’s just that Josie and her mother had different definitions of best.

“GBH, Mom,” Josie said, and this time her mother came into her arms without reserve.

“I just want you to be happy, Josie,” she said.

“I am happy, Mom. Please don’t get your hopes up about Stan. He’s a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s right for me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish dressing for my date.”

Stan didn’t say where they were going to dinner. But now that Maplewood had become hip, there were dozens of places. Josie hoped it would be the Monarch, a ravishingly romantic restaurant. But she knew the coupon-clipping Stan would never shell out for the Monarch. He wouldn’t even go Dutch. Besides, any man who wore wash-and-wear shirts would not eat black bass rolled in hazelnuts.

But there were other affordable choices: Arthur Clay’s, the Schlafly Bottleworks, even the special at Spencer’s Grill in Kirkwood.

Stan showed up at five thirty on the dot. Josie’s mother opened the door and gave Stan a smile fit for a future son-in-law. Josie groaned inwardly. Stan was wearing self-belting polyester pants and a knit shirt that clung to his torso. The man had bigger breasts than she did.

While Jane waved from the porch, Stan opened the car door for Josie. He drove a tubby white Chevy with plastic seat covers.

“I have two early-bird coupons for the Big Buckaroo Barbecue,” Stan said. “It’s all-you-can-eat. That’s the best dinner value.”

They were the only people under seventy in the restaurant. It looked like a barn and was just as romantic. It even had a cow—a giant plastic bovine with a salad bar on its back. As they stood in the “chow line” Josie sneaked a look at her watch. Six o’clock. It was going to be a long night.

Josie and Stan carried their trays to the plastic picnic tables. “If you can’t think what to say, ask a man about himself,” Jane used to tell her. It was still good advice. Josie asked, and Stan poured out his troubles.

“I’m in risk management at the hospital,” he said. “I’m the best in my field, but I’m not taken seriously. No one in management pays attention to me. I wish I knew why. What do you think, Josie?”

“It’s your shirts,” she said.

Stan looked at her in surprise. He quit gnawing on the Big Buckaroo rib special.

“You wear drip-dry shirts with short sleeves,” Josie said. “That’s why no one takes you seriously. You also need a good suit and tie.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stan said. “It’s so superficial.”

“Yes,” Josie said. “But it’s how the world works. I shop for a living. I know where the sales are. I can buy you designer shirts and a good suit at bargain prices. They’ll change your appearance, and that will change your supervisors’ attitude. They’ll look at you in a whole new way.”

“No, thanks. Kmart is good enough for me,” Stan said.

That was the problem, Josie thought. Stan would settle for what he had, rather than try something better.

She looked at her watch. Six fifteen.

Josie talked about the weather, her job and her dying air conditioner while Stan gnawed plate after plate of greasy ribs. The bones were piling up, but the minutes were not.

“For dessert there’s butterscotch pudding, chocolate cake, or soft-serve yogurt,” Stan said.

The pudding had a thick skin on it. Josie chose a stingy square of sheet cake. It was six twenty-two.

“Would you like to go for a drive after dinner?” Stan said.

“How about a drink somewhere?” Josie said. “My treat.”

“Bars are so noisy,” Stan said. “I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Then let’s drive,” Josie said. With the high gas prices, Stan couldn’t afford to drive around for hours. But what were they going to talk about?

The door to the big white car shut like a prison cell. In desperation, she began telling Stan about her mother and the Home Shopping Network.

“Stan, I can’t tell you how scary it is,” Josie said. “Every closet is stuffed with boxes. Most of them were never opened.”

Josie knew how much Stan liked her mother. She expected him to dismiss her worries.

Instead, he looked serious.

“This sounds bad. Could be depression,” Stan said. He had a small speck of barbecue sauce on his chin. “It’s a problem in older people. It could also be obsessive-compulsive disease or even a borderline personality problem. Can you have her checked?”

“I couldn’t get Mom near a shrink,” Josie said. “She belongs to the generation that thinks only crazy people go to psychiatrists.”

“Would she see a doctor or a priest?”

“I think her internist, Dr. Randall, feels the same way she does. But Father Keller might be some help. She likes him and he’s younger.”

“There’s a priest who does counseling at the hospital,” Stan said. “I’ll get you his name. There’s one other thing: She might need her medicine checked.”

“What?” Josie said.

“My mom was acting strange,” Stan said. “She’s seventy-one and she started talking vague and sleeping too much. Some days she didn’t make sense at all. I was afraid she had Alzheimer’s. I got her to the doctor. Turned out she’d been on this diet—Atkins, I think it was—and lost thirty or forty pounds. She was taking several different kinds of medicine and overdosing herself. When we got Mom’s medicine adjusted, she was her old self.”

So far as Josie knew, her mother hadn’t lost or gained any weight. She took only Zocor, for high cholesterol.

“A lot of older people self-medicate, you know,” Stan said. “They take their spouse’s medicine or a friend’s pills ‘because I have the same symptoms.’ Or they don’t tell their internist they’re taking a prescription from a specialist. Or they don’t mention their over-the-counter medications. Add in a dramatic weight loss and it can make a real difference.”

Josie knew her mother had a healthy respect for medicine. But someone else thought he was smart enough to prescribe for himself. And he’d had a sudden weight loss. Serge! Serge had lost fifty pounds on the Atkins diet, and bragged about it in the paper.

Nobody killed him. Josie’s heart rose at the thought. Serge killed himself. He poisoned himself because he was too cheap to go to a doctor.

Serge had calibrated his weight against a fat rat. But when he lost fifty pounds, he didn’t change his dosage. Josie would bet anything that’s what happened. Patients didn’t think about that. That’s why they went to doctors.

Josie would do some research on the Net, but she knew the answer already.

“Stan, that’s it! You’ve been a big help. I could kiss you.”

“That would be nice.” Stan’s ears turned red. He was such a sweet man, Josie wished there was some spark between them.

She gave Stan a sisterly kiss on his cheek. It was like smooching the seat cover.

Chapter 24

“What were you doing in my closet, Josie?” her mother demanded, hands on her hips.

“I was looking for a cup of sugar,” Josie said.

“I don’t keep sugar in my bedroom—or the hall closet.” Jane’s eyes snapped and sizzled with anger.

“You don’t keep it in the kitchen, either,” Josie said. “There’s no room with all the Home Shopping Network boxes.”

“How I spend my money is none of your business, Josie Marcus. Why aren’t you working? You’re always gone by nine.”

“Today I’m staying with you,” Josie said. “We have to talk. I don’t care how you spend your money, Mom, but I do care how you spend your life. This is—”

The doorbell rang. Her mother started for the door, but Josie blocked her path. “I’ll get that, Mom.”

“It’s my house. I’ll answer my own door.”

Jane was determined to push past her daughter. But Josie was an August-white-sale veteran. She’d shopped at eight p.m. on Christmas Eve. She’d bulled her way through the crowds at Loehmann’s to buy designer suits knocked down 90 percent. One small woman couldn’t stop her. Josie shoved her mother aside and opened the door.

The UPS deliveryman had a boyish grin and guileless blue eyes. I’d order a dozen toe rings to have this hunk on my doorstep, Josie thought. Why couldn’t Mom fix me up with him?

The deliveryman held out three packages and smiled fetchingly. He had a dimple.

“Sorry, but we don’t want them,” Josie said. She wrote, “Refused.”

The driver shrugged and left.

“Josie, what are you doing?” Jane sounded frantic when the driver departed with her packages.

“No, Mom, what are you doing?” Josie said. “Why are you buying this useless stuff? It’s crazy! Who is this for? Amelia doesn’t play with dolls anymore.” She held out the frilly $159 doll.

Jane said nothing.

“And this?” Josie picked up the lip-finishing stick.

More silence.

“And this?” Josie grabbed a handful of ankle bracelets. The gold daisies and fake amethysts tinkled sadly.

Jane put her face in her hands. “I don’t know. But I can’t stop.”

Josie put her arms around her mother and kissed her. Jane’s gray head settled on Josie’s shoulder. She saw her mother’s hair was thinning at the crown, and felt even sadder. Jane wept bitterly. She hadn’t cried like that since Josie’s father had left her.

Josie held her mother and rocked her. She could feel Jane’s angry body loosening. She saw the flabby arms, the age speckles on her skin, the creases in her neck, and loved her mother more for them.