Seven Up

  “That's impossible,” my mother said. “You have a gown.”

  “I canceled the gown.”

  “Does Joseph know this?”

  “Yep.” I tried to act casual, digging in to my meal, asking my sister to pass the green beans. I can get through this, I thought. I'm a blonde. I can do anything.

  “It's the hair, isn't it?” my mother asked. “He called the wedding off because of the hair.”

  “I called the wedding off. And I don't want to talk about it.”

  The doorbell rang and Valerie jumped up. “That's for me. I have a date.”

  “A date!” my mother said. “That's wonderful. You've been here such a short time and already you have a date.”

  I did some mental eye rolling. My sister is clueless. This is what happens when you grow up as the good girl. You never learn the value of lies and deceit. I never brought my dates home. You meet dates at the mall so you don't give your parents a stroke when your date shows up with tattoos and tongue studs. Or, in this case, is a lesbian.

  “This is Janeane,” Valerie said, introducing a short, dark-haired woman. “I met her when I interviewed at the bank. I didn't get the job but Janeane asked me out.”

  “She's a woman,” my mother said.

  “Yes, we're lesbians,” Valerie said.

  My mother fainted. Crash. Flat out on the floor.

  Everyone jumped up and ran to my mother.

  She opened her eyes but didn't move a muscle for a good thirty seconds. Then she yelled out, “A lesbian! Mother of God. Frank, your daughter's a lesbian.”

  My father squinted at Valerie. “Is that my tie you've got on?”

  “You have a lot of nerve,” my mother said, still on her back on the floor. “All those years when you were normal and had a husband, you lived in California. And now that you're here you turn into a lesbian. Isn't it enough your sister shoots people? What kind of a family is this?”

  “I hardly ever shoot anyone,” I said.

  “I bet there are lots of good things to being a lesbian,” Grandma said. “If you marry a lesbian you never have to worry about someone leaving the toilet seat up.”

  I got under one arm and Valerie got under the other and we got my mother to her feet.

  “There you go,” Valerie said, all chipper. “Feeling better?”

  “Better?” my mother said. “Better?”

  “Well, we're going now,” Valerie said, retreating to the foyer. “Don't wait up. I've got a key.”

  My mother excused herself, went to the kitchen, and smashed another plate.

  “I've never known her to smash plates,” I said to Grandma.

  “I'm going to lock up all the knives tonight, just to be safe,” Grandma said.

  I followed my mother into the kitchen and helped pick up the pieces.

  “It slipped out of my hand,” my mother said.

  “That's what I thought.”

  Nothing ever seems to change in my parents' house. The kitchen feels just as it did when I was a little girl. The walls get repainted and the curtains replaced. New linoleum was laid down last year. Appliances get swapped out as they became unrepairable. That's the extent of the renovation. My mother has been cooking potatoes in the same pot for thirty-five years. The smells are the same, too. Cabbage, applesauce, chocolate pudding, roast lamb. And the rituals are the same. Sitting at the small kitchen table for lunch.

  Valerie and I did our homework on the kitchen table, under my mother's watchful eye. And now I imagine Angie and Mary Alice keep my mother company in the kitchen.

  It's hard to feel like a grown-up when nothing ever changes in your mother's kitchen. It's like time stands still. I come into the kitchen and I want my sandwiches cut into triangles.

  “Do you ever get tired of your life?” I asked my mother. “Is there ever a time when you'd like to do something new?”

  “You mean like get in the car and just keep driving until I get to the Pacific Ocean? Or take a wrecking ball to this kitchen? Or divorce your father and marry Tom Jones? No, I never think about those things.” She took the top off the cake plate and looked at her cupcakes. Half chocolate with white icing and half yellow with chocolate icing. Multicolored spinkles on the white icing. She mumbled something that sounded a little like fucking cupcakes.

  “What?” I asked. “I couldn't hear you.”

  “I didn't say anything. Just go in and sit down.”

  “I was hoping you could give me a ride to the funeral parlor tonight,” Grandma said to me. “Rusty Kuharchek is laid out at Stiva's. I went to school with Rusty. It's going to be a real good viewing.”

  It wasn't like I had anything else to do. “Sure,” I said, “but you'll have to wear slacks. I've got the Harley.”

  “A Harley? Since when do you have a Harley?” Grandma wanted to know.

  “There was a problem with my car, so Vinnie loaned me a motorcycle.”

  “You are not taking your grandmother on a motorcycle,” my mother said. “She'll fall off and kill herself.”

  My father very wisely didn't say anything.

  “She'll be okay,” I said. “I've got an extra helmet.”

  “You're responsible,” my mother said. “If anything happens to her, you're the one who's going to be visiting her in the nursing home.”

  “Maybe I could get a motorcycle,” Grandma said. “When they take away your car driving license does that include motorcycles?”

  “Yes!” we all said in unison. No one wanted Grandma Mazur back on the road.

  Mary Alice had been eating her dinner with her face down on her plate because horses don't have hands. When she picked her face up it was covered with smashed potatoes and gravy. “What's a lesbian?” she asked.

  We all sat frozen.

  “It's when girls have girlfriends instead of boyfriends,” Grandma said.

  Angie reached for her milk. “Homosexuality is thought to be the result of an aberrant chromosome.”

  “I was going to say that next,” Grandma said.

  “What about horses?” Mary Alice asked. “Are there lesbian horses?”

  We all looked at one another. We were stumped.

  I stood at my seat. “Who wants a cupcake?”

  Stephanie Plum 7 - Seven Up

  15

  GRANDMA USUALLY GETS dressed up for an evening viewing. She has a preference for black patent pumps and swirly skirts just in case there's some beefcake present. As a concession to the motorcycle, she was wearing slacks and tennis shoes tonight.

  “I need some biker clothes,” she said. “I just got my Social Security check, and first thing tomorrow I'm going shopping, now that I know you've got this Harley.”

  I straddled the bike. And my father helped Grandma get on behind me. I turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, and the vibrations rumbled through the pipes.

  “Ready?” I yelled at Grandma.

  “Ready,” she yelled back.

  I went straight up Roosevelt Street to Hamilton Avenue, and in a short time we were at Stiva's, parked in the lot.

  I helped Grandma off and removed her helmet. She stepped away from the bike and straightened her clothes. “I can see why people like these Harleys,” she said. “They really wake you up down there, don't they?”

  Rusty Kuharchek was in Slumber Room number three, the positioning of Rusty indicating that his relatives had cheaped out on his casket. Horrific deaths and those purchasing the top-of-the-line hand-carved, lead-lined, mahogany eternity vessel got laid out in room number one.

  I left Grandma with Rusty and told her I'd be back at Stiva's in an hour and I'd meet her by the cookie table.

  It was a nice night, and I wanted to walk. I wandered down Hamilton and cut into the Burg. It wasn't quite dark. In another month people would be sitting on porches at this time of night. I told myself I was walking to relax, maybe to think about things. But before long I found myself standing in front of Eddie DeChooch's house, and I wasn't feeling relaxed at all. I was fe
eling annoyed that I hadn't made my capture.

  The DeChooch half looked utterly abandoned. The Marguchi half was blasting out a game show. I marched up to Mrs. Marguchi's door and knocked.

  “What a nice surprise,” she said when she saw me. “I've been wondering how things are going with you and Chooch.”

  “He's still out there,” I said.

  Angela made a tsch sound. “He's a wily one.”

  “Have you seen him? Have you heard any activity next door?”

  “It's like he dropped off the face of the earth. I never even hear the phone ringing.”

  “Maybe I'll just poke around a little.”

  I walked around the perimeter of the house, looked in the garage, paused at the shed. I had Chooch's house key with one, so I let myself in. There was no sign that DeChooch had visited. A stack of unopened mail sprawled across the kitchen counter.

  I knocked on Angela's door again. “Are you taking DeChooch's mail in?”

  “Yes. I bring the mail in each day and make sure everything's okay over there. I don't know what else to do. I thought Ronald might have come around to get the mail, but I haven't seen him.”

  When I got back to Stiva's, Grandma was at the cookie table talking to Mooner and Dougie.

  “Dude,” Mooner said.

  “Are you here to see someone?” I asked.

  “Negative. We're here for the cookies.”

  “The hour just zipped by,” Grandma said. “There's lots of people here I didn't get to visit with. Are you in a rush to get home?” she asked me.

  “We could take you home,” Dougie said to Grandma. “We never leave before nine because that's when Stiva puts out the cookies with the chocolate inside.”

  I was torn. I didn't want to stay, but I didn't know if I could entrust Grandma to Dougie and Mooner.

  I took Dougie aside. “I don't want anybody smoking pot.”

  “No pot,” Dougie said.

  “And I don't want Grandma going to strip bars.”

  “No strip bars.”

  “I don't want her involved in any hijackings, either.”

  “Hey, I'm a reformed man,” Dougie said.

  “Okay,” I said, “I'm counting on you.”

  AT TEN O'CLOCK I got a phone call from my another.

  “Where's your grandmother?” she wanted to know. “And why aren't you with her?”

  “She was supposed to go home with friends.”

  “What friends? Have you lost your grandmother again?”

  Damn. “I'll get back to you.”

  I hung up and another call came in. It was Grandma.

  “I've got him!” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Eddie DeChooch. All of a sudden at the funeral parlor I had this brainstorm, and I knew where Choochy would be tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Picking up his Social Security check. Everybody in the Burg gets their check on the same day. And it was yesterday, only yesterday DeChooch was busy wrecking his car. So I said to myself he's going to wait until it gets dark, and then he's going to ride by and get his check today. And sure enough that's just what he did.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Well, that's the complicated part. He went into his house to get his mail and when we tried to arrest him he got a gun and we all got scared and ran away. Except Mooner didn't run fast enough and now he has Mooner.”

  I thunked my head down on the kitchen counter. I thought it might feel good to just keep banging it like that. Thunk, thunk, thunk with my head against the kitchen counter.

  “Have you called the police?” I asked.

  “We didn't know if that was such a good thing to do, being that Mooner might have some controlled substances on him. I think Dougie mentioned something about a certain package in Mooner's shoe.”

  Great. “I'll be right there,” I said. “Don't do anything until I get there.”

  I grabbed my bag, ran down the hall and the stairs, out the door, and jumped on the bike. I skidded to a stop in Angela Marguchi's driveway and looked around for Grandma, spotting her and Dougie hiding behind a car on the opposite side of the street. They were wearing Super Suits and they had bath towels pinned around their necks like capes.

  “Nice touch with the towels,” I said.

  “We're crime-fighters,” Grandma said.

  “Are they still in there?” I asked.

  “Yes. I've been talking to Chooch on Dougie's cell phone,” Grandma said. “He said he'll only release Mooner if we get him a helicopter and then have a plane waiting at Newark to take him to South America. I think he might be drinking.”

  I punched his number into my cell phone.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said.

  “Never. Not until I get my helicopter.”

  “You're not going to get a helicopter with Mooner as hostage. Nobody cares if you shoot him. If you let Mooner go, I'll come in and take his place. I'd be a better hostage for a helicopter.”

  “Okay,” DeChooch said. “That makes sense.”

  As if any of this made sense.

  Mooner came out dressed in his Super Suit and bath towel. DeChooch kept a gun to his head until I stepped onto the porch.

  “This is like, embarrassing,” Mooner said. “I mean, how does it look for a superhero crime-fighter to get snatched by an old dude.” He looked at DeChooch. “Nothing personal, man.”

  “Take Grandma home,” I said to Mooner. “My mother is worried about her.”

  “You mean like now?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  Grandma was still across the street and I didn't want to shout at her, so I called her on the cell phone. “I'm going to work this out with Eddie,” I said. “You and Mooner and Dougie should go home.”

  “That doesn't sound like a good idea to me,” Grandma said. “I think I should stay.”

  “Thanks, but this will be easier if I do it myself.”

  “Should I call the police?”

  I looked at DeChooch. He didn't look crazy or angry. He looked tired. If I brought the police in DeChooch might go into defense mode and do something dumb, like shoot me. If I got some quiet talk time with him I might be able to persuade him to come in. “Negative on that,” I said.

  I disconnected and DeChooch and I remained on the porch until Grandma and Mooner and Dougie left.

  “Is she going to call the police?” DeChooch asked.

  “No.”

  “Think you can bring me in all by yourself?”

  “I don't want anyone to get hurt. Me included.” I followed him into the house. “You don't really expect a helicopter, do you?”

  He made a disgusted gesture with his hand and shuffled into the kitchen. “I just said that to impress Edna. I had to say something. She thinks I'm a big-shot fugitive.” He opened the refrigerator. “There's nothing to eat. When my wife was alive there was always something to eat.”

  I filled the coffeemaker with water and spooned coffee into the filter. I looked through the cupboards and found a box of cookies. I put some cookies on a plate and sat down at the kitchen table with Eddie DeChooch.

  “You look tired,” I said.

  He nodded his head. “I didn't have any place to sleep lastnight. I was going to pick up my Social Security check tonight and get a hotel room somewhere, but Edna showed up with the two clowns. Nothing goes right for me.” He picked at a cookie. “I can't even kill myself. Fucking prostate. I pulled the Cadillac across the tracks. I'm sitting there waiting to die and what happens? I've gotta take a piss. I've always gotta take a piss. So I get out and go over to a bush to take a leak and the train comes. What are the chances of that happening? And then I didn't know what to do and I chickened out. Ran away like a fucking coward.”

  “It was a terrific crash.”

  “Yeah, I saw it. Boy, he must have pushed that Cadillac a quarter mile.”

  “Where did you get the new car?”

  “Boosted it.”

  “So you're still good a
t some things.”

  “The only things that work on me are my fingers. I can't see. I can't hear. I can't piss.”

  “You can fix those things.”

  He pushed the cookie around. “There's some things I can't fix.”