Dying in Style (7 page)

“Never!” Josie said, like the heroine in a melodrama. “I’ll retract my report over your dead body.”

She shouted her noble words to Danessa’s back. The businesswoman stalked out, the PR person trailing behind her. Josie wondered what kind of positive spin Stephanie could put on this encounter. St. Louis’s sweetheart had a temper like a rabid mud wrestler.

There was an awkward silence, then everyone in the Suttin offices began talking nervously.

Harry cleared his throat and searched his desk for his pork chop. “Well, glad that’s over. You handled it pretty well, Josie, but I think I’d better put you on unpaid leave for your protection.” He began gnawing nervously on the cold pork chop.

All that bacon had turned Harry into a swine, Josie thought. She wasn’t going to let Danessa destroy her reputation and take her job. She was not going on leave, paid or unpaid. Harry was a coward and a bully. Josie knew how to deal with him. She had to bully him right back.

“Listen here, Harry,” Josie said. “I did a proper report. I told you it might be a problem before I turned it in. I warned you Danessa wouldn’t be happy. I have that all on tape. And what did you say? ‘Let ’er rip.’

“Well, it ripped. You put me on unpaid leave now and I’ll sue you for unlawful termination and endangering the welfare of a minor child under Section 131-B of the 1996 Federal Female Employment Code. I’m a single mother, remember. It’s double indemnity.”

Harry gulped, but not because he was chewing on the pork chop.

“Let’s not be hasty, Josie,” he said. Sweat broke out on his low, hairy forehead. He’d been threatened with two lawsuits in two minutes. “I was trying to work out a reasonable solution. I can’t have you shopping at our high-fashion stores until this problem is resolved.”

“Fine,” Josie said. She was happy to forgo pantyhose and toe-pinching shoes for a while. “Send me apartment shopping. I can do discount stores or restaurants. I’m good at restaurants. You’ve never had any complaints on my restaurant work.”

Harry looked relieved. “Well, I guess you can do our Fifty Is Nifty promotion at Pleasin’ Pizza. But you’ll have to front the fifty-dollar reward money. It’s going to cost you two hundred a day minimum, and the Pleasin’ Pizza people are slow to reimburse. You won’t get your cash back for six to eight weeks.”

“I’ll take the job.” Josie grabbed the assignment sheet from his greasy fingers. Harry was chomping the pork chop like a toddler with a teething ring.

She started to breathe easier. She was going to walk out of the office with her job. That was a minor miracle after the scene with Danessa and her spineless boss.

She hoped Harry didn’t check out her threat. There was no such thing as the Federal Female Employment Code. She’d made up all that stuff. The year, 1996, was Amelia’s birth year. As for Section 131-B, with any luck Harry wouldn’t realize Josie lived at 131 Phelan Street, Apartment B. She hoped he never asked for the tape. It didn’t exist, either.

Josie was almost out the door when he said, “One more thing.” His voice was hard now. Josie looked into his small, porcine eyes.

“If you want to keep your job, you better find that Marina woman,” Harry said. “Because if it turns out that Amazon with the Russian accent doesn’t exist, you’ll never work again.”

Josie yanked up her tube top and walked out.

Chapter 6

A cheap tart. A liar. A bribe taker.

Danessa had called Josie all those things, had accused her of deceit and corruption, while Harry cowered with his pork chop. Her pig of a boss didn’t say one word in Josie’s defense. He let Danessa verbally beat her up.

Josie marched across the hot pavement with short, furious strides, her cheap red shoes sinking into the melting blacktop.

She yanked her car door open and broke a fingernail. The seat burned her bare legs, but it was no match for her flaming anger. Josie cranked the engine and started to peel out of the parking lot. She wanted to be away from Suttin Services as soon as possible.

Danessa had insulted her character, her integrity, even her home. What had she called Josie?

Oh, yeah, a “jealous little nothing from Maplewood.” Josie slammed on the brakes and skidded across the lot. Maplewood. Danessa knew where Josie lived. She knew her name, too. She’d said, “This report says you were in my Plaza Venetia store . . . Josie Marcus.”

Even the client wasn’t supposed to know the name of the mystery shopper. That was confidential, for Josie’s protection. But someone gave Danessa her name and told her where Josie lived.

Josie knew who did it, too: Her scumbag boss. Danessa—or her lawyers—had applied a little pressure and Harry had cracked like an egg. He’d sold her out. She couldn’t complain to Harry’s boss at headquarters. She was cheap help, easily replaced.

Josie was shaking so badly she was afraid to drive. Deep breaths, she told herself. Take deep breaths. You can’t help your daughter if you’re arrested for road rage. Josie checked her watch. It was two thirty. She’d never make it to the school by three to pick up Amelia. She took out her cell phone.

“Hello, Mom. I got called into the office unexpectedly. Can you pick up the kid?”

“Office? You never go into the office. There’s trouble, isn’t there? It’s Danessa.” Josie’s mother had an irritating way of being right. “There’s a big stink over your report, isn’t there? You slammed poor Danessa.”

“Mom, poor Danessa just tried to get me fired,” Josie said.

“Good!” her mother said. “I told you not to attack her, but you didn’t listen to me. Since this problem is your fault, I’ll pick up my granddaughter on one condition. You have to go out with Stan. He stopped by today to look at the air conditioner and asked if you’d be interested in a date.”

Ha, Josie thought. He wasn’t looking at the air conditioner. He was hoping her tube top would roll down again. Too bad he didn’t make anything move for her. Stan was a friend, not a lover. Everyone but her mother could see that.

“Mom, that’s blackmail.”

“It’s for your own good, Josie. Now, am I going to pick up Amelia or not? It’s two thirty-five. At three fifteen, she goes into the extended school day. That will cost you an extra twenty-five dollars. Don’t expect me to pay it.”

Twenty-five bucks would make a serious dent in Josie’s pay.

“You wouldn’t leave your own granddaughter stranded in after-school playtime.” Amelia would be mortified. She knew it was mostly for the work orphans, the kids who’d been abandoned by their ambitious parents. Poor Amelia wouldn’t even have the comfort of a parent who was a high-profile lawyer or doctor. Her parent checked out chicken franchises.

“If it meant giving her a future, I would,” Jane said.

Josie wished she had a video screen on her phone so she could see her mother’s face. If Jane’s jaw was set in that bulldog line, nothing would change her mind.

“Stan has a steady job at the VA hospital. He would make a good husband,” Jane said.

“So marry him, Mom.”

Stan would make a terrific husband for a woman of sixty-eight. He drove twenty in a thirty-mile zone. He saved his pennies in a Mason jar on his dresser. He clipped coupons and shopped for the best values. He’d once talked to Josie for twenty minutes about paper towels, detailing the differences in price versus absorbency.

“What’s it gonna be, Josie? This is for your own good.” Josie saw her daughter languishing in the extended-day play class.

“Okay, Mom, I’ll go out with Stan.” I just won’t say when, Josie thought.

“Good. I’ll tell him you’ll go out with him Thursday night. I’ll call him before I pick up Amelia.”

Josie was trapped as surely as the dragonfly around Danessa’s neck. The date with Stan would last aeons.

She sat stalled in traffic, nearly suffocated by General Cheeps fumes. She’d left the chicken in the hot car when she’d had her run-in with Danessa. Josie thought she could hear the salmonella spawning in the buckets. She knew the food wasn’t safe to serve for dinner anymore. She’d have to throw it all out. There wasn’t a General Cheeps on her route home. Josie would have to stop somewhere and pick up dinner. She sure wasn’t cooking after the day she’d had.

It was another hour before Josie made it home. She arrived, hot and frazzled, with an armful of fries and burgers.

“I like onions and ketchup on mine—no pickles,” Amelia said.

“I remembered,” Josie said.

“Did you remember the vegetables?” Jane said.

Josie tossed a pile of ketchup packets on the kitchen table. “Here you go, Mom. President Reagan said ketchup was a vegetable. If it’s good enough for the president, it should be good enough for you.”

After that declaration of war, Josie knew it was only a matter of time before she and her mother engaged in battle. She longed for a bubble bath, a good book and a margarita. She knew there wasn’t a chance for any of them.

At least Josie had time to shower and change into jeans and a plain white shirt. She buttoned it higher than usual after her day of wrestling with the tube top. The evening settled into an uneasy quiet while Josie helped Amelia with her homework at the kitchen table. Amelia worked on perfecting her cursive writing.

“So what do you think, Mom?” Her daughter proudly showed her a page. “Does it look grown-up?”

“Your writing is so much better than mine. You don’t have your mother’s chicken scratches.”

Josie admired the faint cinnamon sprinkle of freckles across her daughter’s nose and her straight black hair. Amelia hated her own nose. She thought it was too big, but Josie knew it would give her daughter’s face character. Josie’s nose was a hopeless pug. The nicest thing anyone ever called it was cute.

Tonight, Amelia’s slightly slanted hazel eyes were worried. She knew there was a fight brewing between her mother and her grandmother.

“Amelia, you know that your grandmother and I love each other. But you can love someone and still disagree with them sometimes.”

“It’s your mystery-shopping job, isn’t it?” Amelia said. “Grandma says she still has some pull at the bank. You’d have a pension and benefits.”

Josie could feel the walls close in on her. Her mother had worked at the same job, worn the same navy suits and eaten the same tuna-salad lunch for twenty years. Josie couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sit at a desk all day.

“The bank was a good place for Grandma, but not for me.”

“A mystery shopper is a sweet job, Mom,” Amelia said. “Emma thinks so, too.”

Emma was her best friend at Barrington.

“Thanks,” Josie said. “You’re sweet, too.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead.

“You’re not using it right,” Amelia said. Slang had strict rules at age nine. “Can I call Emma, Mom, before it gets too late?”

“Go ahead.”

Amelia raced to her room, dodging Jane in the kitchen doorway. Josie’s mother had her arms folded defensively across her chest. She was still angry. Josie noticed her mother’s gray hair had a yellow cast and straggled down her neck. Jane hadn’t made her weekly visit to the beauty shop.

“Are you really going to get fired?” Jane said.

“I don’t know, Mom. Danessa said I lied on her report.”

“And did you?”

Josie was hurt. “How can you say that?”

“Because I know how much you resent Danessa. You’re jealous of her.”

“I don’t resent her.” Right now, Josie burned with resentment for what Danessa had said and done to her, but she hadn’t when she wrote that report. “Her stores were a mess, Mom, and I said so. Harry told me to tell the truth and I did. Then that coward hung me out to dry. He sat there while Danessa screamed at me. So, yes, I may get fired.”

“I never did like that man,” Jane said. “He’s low-class.” That was her mother’s worst insult. “But so much of what you do in that job is low-class. Look how you left the house yesterday. Mrs. Mueller saw you. She mentioned your outfit to me. She said it wasn’t decent for a woman your age to dress like that.”

“She’s the worst busybody on the block,” Josie said. “She’s disappointed that I don’t have any boyfriends who stay overnight. Then she’d really have something to disapprove of.”

“She’s concerned,” Jane said. “We don’t have many women of her caliber in this neighborhood. She’s president of the St. Philomena Sodality. She’s an important person, Josie. Lived here forty years. She cares about this neighborhood. Of course she’s worried when one of her neighbors dresses like a prostitute.”

“A what? I’m a hooker because I wore a tube top? And you sat there and let her say that?” First her boss, then her mother.

“I most certainly did not, Josie Marcus. I told her you were in a play. But I hope you do get fired. Maybe then you’ll get a decent job. You could have worked your way up to vice president at the bank by now. You’re so smart.” Josie could see the tears in her mother’s eyes. She didn’t want to hurt Jane. She just couldn’t live her mother’s life.

“GBH, Mom,” Josie said.

Her mother submitted stiffly to a hug.

“Josie, I never doubted you,” Jane said. “I just want a better life for you.”

What all mothers want, Josie thought. Including me. But tonight Jane’s love felt like a smothering blanket. “Mom, we’re out of milk. I’m going to run to the store, maybe go for a drive. Amelia’s in her room talking on the phone with Emma.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her. She can watch TV with me,” Jane said.

“Thanks, Mom,” Josie said and kissed her again.

She stopped by her daughter’s room. “Amelia, it’s a school night. You have to be in bed by nine o’clock. Start your bath by eight thirty if I’m not back.”

“Why do I have to take a bath at eight thirty?” Oh, God. Amelia looked just like her grandmother when she put her jaw in that locked-down pout.

“Because I’m the mom; you’re the kid.”

Josie stopped, too horrified to continue. Another mother phrase had slipped out of her mouth. She fled in the middle of Amelia’s “Oh, Mooom.”

Josie drove in circles, worrying about her life, her daughter and her job. Love is fear, she decided. Her love for Amelia was a different kind of love than what she’d had for Nathan, her child’s father. That was over. Josie hoped someday to feel that same wild love again. But she could live without it.