Chapter Fourteen
If anyone wants me
tell them I’m being embalmed.
— Casey Stengel
“I’m... gonna-get-cha,” Keely said, gently “walking” her fingers up Candy’s bare belly, then lightly tickling the baby’s neck. Candy held her breath in expectation, then giggled, kicked her legs as she lay on the padded dressing table. “I’m...” Keely repeated as Candy held her breath again, “... gonna-get-cha.” The baby giggled, squealed in delight.
Still playing with her, Keely quickly, confidently dressed Candy in diaper, sleeveless undershirt, and a soft pink cotton dress with a white collar and a parade of yellow ducklings embroidered on the bodice.
At first, after Jack’s warning about her stiffness, Keely’d had to work at relaxing around Candy. But Candy was such an easy baby, a happy baby, that Keely had begun to find it equally easy to drop her fears, her stiffness, and just enjoy her. Now she could flip Candy onto her hip with the best of them and just go with the flow. The difference in Keely, she knew, had made a difference in Candy, who cuddled with her more, giggled more, and held her arms up to her more.
It was nice. Really nice. Even great, and Keely fell more in love with Candy by the minute.
Once Candy was sitting on the changing table, Keely poured a few small drops of baby oil into her own palms, then stroked her hands through the baby’s two-inch-long, wispy blond curls. With a soft brush, she fluffed out the sides and back of Candy’s hair, ending by putting a finger-roll fat sausage curl smack in the middle of her head.
“There,” Keely said, pulling back slightly to inspect her handiwork. “Every child should want to grow up hating Mommy just a little bit for taking a picture of a curl like that. And you’ll have to admit, sweetheart, that I’m being kind here. I could have taken a picture of you lying naked on the changing table, that cute rump of yours stuck in the air. Then I could blackmail you into coming home early from your first date—or else I’d show the boy what a cute baby you were.”
Candy looked up at Keely as if she knew exactly what was being said, then grabbed hold of the hem of her dress and tried to stuff it into her mouth.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Keely said, quickly freeing the material from Candy’s grip. “We’re going to take pictures and we’re going to look beautiful for those pictures. We are not going to have a wrinkled wet spot in the middle of our skirt because we want to gnaw on something.”
Candy’s bottom lip pushed forward and she batted her long, dark eyelashes, clearly deciding whether she wanted to cry or she wanted to... she grinned, reached out, and grabbed onto Keely’s nose.
“Hey, not my nose, either,” Keely protested, reaching for the pacifier that sat on the back shelf of the changing table. “Here,” she said, holding it in front of Candy. “We’ll make a trade. My nose for your pluggie, okay?”
The exchange made, Keely quickly located Candy’s socks—so cute; small and white, the cuffs tipped with pink lace. She hadn’t yet bought shoes for the baby, but that was all right. She’d be walking soon enough.
Would she still be here when Candy took her first steps? Who would hold out their hands to her? Who would she walk to, to be swept up in a congratulatory hug, be smothered with kisses?
“Stop it,” Keely warned herself out loud, picking up Candy and carrying her over to the rocking chair. “We’re not going to think about that now, are we, sweetheart? We’re just going to take a bunch of pictures of my pretty little girl.”
She sat Candy down on the padded chair, right beside her stuffed bear, then stepped back, fished the one-time-use camera from her skirt pocket in time to catch Candy trying to aim her mouth at the bear’s big black nose.
She snapped photographs of Candy looking into the camera, smiling straight into the camera.
She got three shots of Candy resting her head against the huge bear, playing her new game of “I-I.” All Keely would have to do is say, “I-I, Candy. Play I-I with the teddy,” and Candy would tip her head and press it against the bear, loving it.
The child was brilliant, simply the smartest baby in the entire world. There just wasn’t any question about it. Da-da, I-I. Tomorrow, nuclear physics!
“Whoa,” Keely said, rethinking that as she scooped Candy into her arms once more. “I’m not so sure the world is ready for another Petra Polinski. Now come on, we’ll go find Aunt Sadie and take some pictures with her, okay? And Da-da. We’ll take pictures with Da-da. Lots of pictures, Candy. Lots and lots of pictures.”
So I will have something to take with me when this is all over and I have the rest of my life to get through without you or that stupid man.
Keely carried the baby downstairs, then walked through the still mostly unfurnished rooms, looking for somebody, anybody. But nobody else appeared to be in the house. Well, fine. It was a beautiful day, so maybe everyone was outside. Outdoor pictures would be good, right?
Besides, it was probably time Keely faced the family again, after pretty much locking herself and Candy away during two days of damp and rain, two days of her and Jack trying to avoid each other. They did meet at meals, but having Sweetness and Joey sharing the table had protected her, kept her from having to speak to him, him having to speak to her.
She never thought she’d be grateful for Joey Two Eyes, but the man certainly knew how to talk and eat at the same time, not that he said anything anyone would want to remember or comment on. Except that one time, of course, when Joey had told them, on his first night back, that his mouthpiece had told him to get himself back to Whitehall, plant himself, and not move until he heard from him.
Keely had looked across the table at Jack then, wordlessly asking him if he thought Joey had a snowball’s chance in hell of gaining custody of Candy. He’d just rolled his eyes, shook his head, and grabbed another warm roll from the basket, while Joey took off on another subject—something about making a real killing selling baseballs he wanted Jack to autograph for him.
The odd thing was that Jack had agreed, and there were now three cartons of baseballs stacked in the den, ready for his signature. Keely had decided that Jack was going to be as nice as he could be to his cousin, then toss him out on his ear as soon as Jimmy the lawyer said he could do it.
She spared a look at the cartons as she passed the otherwise unoccupied den and headed for the kitchen door—then stopped dead in her tracks. Three cartons. There had been three cartons.
So how come there were now about ten cartons, ten huge cartons?
Retracing her steps, Keely approached the cartons, to see that they were marked as stereo equipment. There was a shipping order lying on top of one of the boxes, and she picked it up and read it, her eyes widening as she realized just how extensive a collection of equipment was sitting in Jack’s den. Woofers, tweeters, surround-sound speakers, equalizer—what was that, a great big gun to shoot it all with? Who the hell was appearing here tonight—Aerosmith? What did one man need with so much equipment?
Worse, where the hell was she going to put it? And in what? Wasn’t that monster of a television set enough for the man? Did anyone except women ever even think about the problems inherent in trying to decorate around a bunch of big, ugly black boxes?
“Ah, you’ve seen my stuff,” Jack said, startling Keely so that she turned around and shook the papers at him, forgetting that, basically, she wasn’t speaking to him.
“Why didn’t you consult me, Jack?” she asked, adjusting Candy more firmly on her hip. “This is... this is a decorating nightmare!”
His smile stopped her, because he looked so entirely pleased with himself. “Really? Gonna take you some time to figure out how to make it all look right and still keep the speakers in the right places? That’s okay. Take all the time you need.”
“Da! Da-da-da!” Candy called out, reaching her arms toward Jack, who quickly scooped her up, planted a kiss on her cheek as he told her that she looked like a blond hot dog had landed on her head.
“It’s a curl, Jack.
I have pictures of me with that same curl on my head. It’s a tradition.”
“If you say so,” he responded, kissing Candy again. “Personally, I’d hunt down and burn any picture that had me looking like a hot dog just landed on my head.”
“It does not—oh, the hell with it. What am I going to do with all this... all this stuff?”
He smiled again, looking a little like Jim Carrey at his most adorably evil. “Not my problem,” he said. “But since you’re asking, I was sort of thinking of shelves. Built in shelves. Lots of them. I could show you how it’s all supposed to be arranged and, together, we can figure out just what we need.”
“Together,” Keely repeated hollowly.
“Yeah, together,” Jack went on, grabbing Candy’s hand as she tried to shove it into his mouth. “You know, that thing we haven’t been for a couple of days. Together.”
Keely narrowed her eyes, lifted one hand, and sort of slowly twirled it in front of her. “Kind of like a truce, huh? You wanted to ease the tension around here, right? And this is what you thought of? Some men send flowers, Jack. Some men even talk. You buy stereo equipment?”
He shrugged. “We’re talking again, aren’t we? See how that worked out?”
Keely opened her mouth to answer him, then realized she had absolutely nothing to say. The man was a nutcase. And she adored him.
“Hey,” Jack went on as Keely realized that it could take days—weeks—to have shelving custom-made for the den, “I was coming to get you anyway, you know. You’ve got to see this, Keely. Petra’s giving Sweetness boxing lessons.”
Keely snapped out of her half-frightened, half-hopeful reverie. “She’s giving him—you’re kidding.”
“Would I kid about something like that?” Jack asked, turning for the kitchen, Keely close at his heels. “They’ve got this sort of ring set up over on the side of the house, where the land is flat. Joey’s acting as timekeeper, and Sadie keeps telling everyone she should be wearing a swimsuit, then parading around the ring, holding up numbers between rounds. I wish I had a camera.”
“I have a camera,” Keely told him, skipping to keep up with him. “I was taking pictures of Candy with that special throwaway camera we bought, remember? But there are already some sort of built-in borders for every picture that will show up on the finished photograph. You know, baby blocks, little baby-type toys and stuff?”
“Perfect,” Jack said, grinning at her. “Sweetness surrounded by a pink and blue border of teddy bears. Please be sure you get a couple of Joey, too. I may want to send them out to our mutual relatives at Christmas.”
Keely smiled, shook her head. Jack certainly seemed to be in a good mood today. “Why are you so happy? Nothing’s changed, has it? Or have you heard something you haven’t told me?”
He stopped, looked at her. “Nothing much. Jimmy’s got an official copy of Candy’s birth certificate now, and it matches the one Cecily included with her note. Mother, Cecily Moretti, father unknown. He’s got a letter from the pediatrician, saying that Candy’s in great health but didn’t have any of her baby shots, which looks bad for Cecily when it comes to the ‘competent mother’ portion of our program. And”—he took a deep breath, grinned—“five minutes ago Jimmy phoned to say he’s talked to Cecily and she says she thinks Wyatt Earp would make a great daddy.”
Keely had been smiling as she listened to Jack, but now she frowned. “Wyatt Earp? Wyatt Earp is dead.”
“Wrong. Wyatt Earp is alive and living in Whitehall. You’re looking at him. But don’t worry; Jimmy didn’t understand, either. He just thought Cecily was nuts.”
“That makes two of us,” Keely admitted. “But wait a minute. Are you saying that you’re Wyatt Earp?”
“Bingo! So now, if the court will buy the idea that Cecily’s got her head strapped on tight enough to be able to make an informed, rational choice, Candy could be mine.”
“Oh... Jack...” Keely said, opening her arms as she walked toward him, hugging both him and Candy. “Who would have thought it could be this easy?”
He brought his free hand around her back, rubbed it up and down her spine. “Probably because it isn’t. Joey swears he’s still going ahead with his lawyer, and Cecily changes her mind about as often as she changes lovers, which is about once every three weeks. But I can’t help it, Keely. I’m feeling pretty optimistic. Even if...”
His hand stilled on her back, and Keely suddenly realized where she was standing, how she was standing. She let go of him, backed up three paces. “Even if what, Jack?”
“Even if Jimmy says we can’t call off the engagement lie yet or else it would look too much like the lie it is.” He cupped his free hand around Candy, pulled her close as the baby said “I–I,” then laid her head against his shoulder. “Do you mind?”
“Mind?” Keely said, fishing in her pocket for the throwaway camera, hiding her stinging eyes behind it as she snapped three quick photographs. “No, of course not. I don’t mind. Okay, I’ve got it. Little devil; I swear she knows she’s posing for the camera. Now come on, I want to see this boxing ring.”
She started forward, but Jack grabbed hold of her arm at the elbow. “Keely, I—”
“Yes, Jack?” she asked, not looking at him, not allowing him to see the tears brimming in her eyes.
“Never mind. We’ll talk later. Let’s go see Sweetness in action.”
Moments later, her tears nearly forgotten, Keely thanked her lucky stars that Sadie Trehan, Petra Polinski, Bruno Armano, and even Joey “Two Eyes” Morretti had come into her life—because she would have had to be dead and already growing cold not to be cheered by the sight that met her as she turned the corner of the house.
Jack hadn’t been kidding; there was a ring of sorts set up on the grass—four metal garden umbrella poles with two badminton nets strung around them to form a square, she found out later. Very inventive.
Joey and his stopwatch were on a folding chair on one side of the ring. He held his finger on the button of the stopwatch, while in his other hand he held a white ceramic figure of Miss Piggy in a Southern belle gown, a little china clapper under her skirts serving as the bell that was rung between rounds.
Aunt Sadie, clad in paisley shorts and a fairly normal light pink blouse, and wearing a hot-pink sweatband low on her forehead, stood beside one of the poles, a metal bucket at her feet, a dripping sponge in her hand.
“She’s the corner guy,” Jack told her as Keely stared at Sadie. “She cools Sweetness off between rounds.”
“Of course she does,” Keely said, biting back a giggle. “Where did Petra get the trampoline? I mean, I’m assuming it is hers.”
“Just so you didn’t think it was mine,” Jack said, walking with her, moving closer to the ring.
Inside the ring, Petra was standing on a small, one-person trampoline. Bouncing on it, actually, dancing about in baggy blue nylon shorts and a T-shirt stamped EVERLAST. She wore bright red boxing gloves and her mouth looked all puffy—thanks to the mouthpiece protecting her teeth.
The trampoline put the slightly built teenager more on a level with Sweetness, who stood, gloves up, facing her, his muscles bulging, his black satin trunks edged with three-inch-long fringe, the words BEAST OF BAYONNE tattooed on their back side.
Keely lifted the camera, snapped a few quick pictures.
Petra raised a glove to her mouth, struggled to remove the mouthpiece, then turned to grin at Candy. “Hiya, sweetie. Come to watch Petra show Sweetness how to throw a right cross?”
“I know how to throw a right cross, Petra,” Sweetness told her. “I’m just being nice to you.”
“Of course you are,” Petra countered, winking at Keely. “That’s why you’re oh-and-twelve, right?”
“But Joey says—”
“I know, I know. Joey says kiss the canvas. Well, not anymore, Sweetness. Not now that I’m here.”
Joey stood up, holding Miss Piggy by the head as he shook the little bell furiously. “Enough of dat, big mouth. Roun
d three, comin’ up.”
Keely frowned at Jack. “Am I missing something here?”
“Only that ol’ Two Eyes—not Blue Eyes, Two Eyes—gets a better paycheck when Sweetness goes down. He even gets to pick the round.”
“Oh,” Keely said, watching as Petra replaced her mouthpiece, then began dancing on the trampoline once more, her gloved fists flashing out, drawing back, making absolutely no contact. “I think I vaguely remember something about that. I think it’s not illegal in Bayonne.”
Jack snorted. “Yeah. Right. And maybe you want Two Eyes to sell you the Bayonne Bridge while he’s at it.”
Keely glared at him, opened her mouth to say something, then just snapped, “Never mind. I get the picture.”
Once again, Petra had taken the mouthpiece out, this time spitting it onto the grass. “Oh, come on, Sweetness. Hit me. You’ve been dancing around ever since we started, not throwing a single punch.”
“I can’t hit you, Petra,” Sweetness said, remarkably very able to talk around his own mouthpiece. “I’d break you in half.”
“Oh, yeah?” Petra countered, bouncing up and down on the trampoline, her right hand protecting her face, her left arm sort of cocked, ready to jab, to punch. “You and whose army, buster? Come on. Make a move.”
Sweetness looked at Jack. “Mr. T?” he asked piteously. “What do I do?”
“You bust her one in da chops, dat’s what you do! Stupid dames! She’s beggin’ fer it,” Joey called out from the other side of the ring, earning himself a swipe in his own chops with a wet sponge. He sat back down, clutching his stopwatch and Miss Piggy, pouting as if he might just cry.
“Mr. T?” Sweetness persisted, looking lost.
“Let her hit him,” Keely suggested, speaking softly, out of the corner of her mouth.
“What?” Jack asked.
“I said... let her hit him,” Keely repeated. “That’s all she wants, really. Not that Petra is thinking about becoming a boxer or anything like that. But there isn’t a woman alive who hasn’t wanted to legally throw at least one good punch at somebody. Besides, she says boxing is a science. Let’s see some science.”
Jack looked at her owlishly for a moment, then sighed and motioned for Sweetness to approach the ropes. “Let her hit you,” he said quietly, as Petra kept bouncing on the trampoline, throwing out punches at the air.
Sweetness turned his head, looked at Petra. “Ya think?” he said to Jack, who looked at Keely, who nodded at him, so that he nodded to Sweetness.
Jack said, “She can’t hurt you, right?”
Sweetness’s eyes sort of clouded. “Uh—I guess not.”
“What do you mean, you guess not?” Jack asked, but then Joey started ringing the Miss Piggy bell again and Sweetness turned away, approached Petra once more.
“You ready now?” Petra asked, swiping at her nose with the thumb of her glove. “Now watch me, Sweetness, because the right cross is a real thing of beauty. Keep your hands up, protect yourself in the clinches, and all that good stuff, because I’m coming for you, baby.”
“Oh, good grief,” Keely said, sighing. “She’ll probably break her hand on him.”
“Go get him, Petra!” Aunt Sadie called out, then frowned. “Go get her, Sweetness!” she added, then smiled, happy with her compromise.
Joey consulted his stopwatch, then shook Miss Piggy one more time, signaling the beginning of another round.
Sweetness raised his hands, balanced himself on the balls of his feet.
Petra raised her own hands, bounced her weight from side to side on the trampoline, bobbed and weaved with her head, made herself a moving target.
She threw out her left arm with a snap as she turned her gloved hand so that it was knuckles-up. Jab-jab-jab.
“She’s good,” Jack told Keely, who was watching with one eye closed. “I mean it. Most women would just slap at an opponent, but she’s got it down.”
“Remind me to ask her for a few lessons,” Keely grumbled. “What do you mean, most women? Would that be the same as women drivers? Because if it is, I think I’m insulted.”
Jack shot her a quick look. “Sorry. But she must have been studying, unless she’s a fight fan, and I sort of doubt that. See how she’s got her legs? Perfect position. And she’s keeping the right up, jabbing with the left. Drops her shoulder a little, but a lot of beginners do.”
Keely looked at him, watched him watching Petra. “I don’t get it. You boxed?”
Jack smiled. “No, I fought. Tim and I. Fought with each other. A lot. So Dad bought us gloves, taught us the basics. We thought it was pretty neat, until we figured out that the gloves were so big and so padded, we couldn’t hurt each other. We’d each throw about fifty punches, then fall to the floor in the living room, exhausted from trying to lift those big gloves. Smart man, my dad. Look—she thinks she’s setting him up. But Sweetness has to be too smart to fall for that. God, you’d think he’d throw at least one punch and not just use his arms to block hers.”
Keely watched the ring as Petra continued to jab, to move... and to drop her shoulder before she threw the right, just as Jack had pointed out to her. “Is that a feint?” she asked, whispering her question.
Jack took his eyes off the pair in the ring to look at Keely. “A feint? Where did you hear that one? But no. A feint is where she’d, say, pretend to throw a left, then catch him with her right when he goes to defend against the left. Got it?”
Oh, yes, Keely got that. Not immediately, but very soon, because only about ten seconds later Petra, still trying to goad Sweetness into throwing a punch, finally threw one of her own with her left, aiming it at his gut.
Sweetness moved to cover up, block the left, and Petra—packing all her might and the helpful bounce of the trampoline into her punch—delivered a roundhouse right to Sweetness’s jaw, just in front of his ear.
He went down like a stone.
It all happened so quickly. One moment Sweetness was standing there, outweighing Petra by at least one hundred and fifty pounds, towering over her by at least a foot and a half in height (minus the trampoline, of course)... and the next moment his knees had turned to rubber and he was flat on his face in the grass.
“Oh, well, that is depressing, isn’t it?” Petra said, looking down at Sweetness, who just lay there.
If Sweetness was a cartoon, Keely thought wildly, there’d be a string of stars turning in a circle over his head. Because he was down; he was out.
Petra, jumping down from the trampoline, was the first to reach Sweetness, who, thank goodness, had begun to move, even groan. She helped him to a sitting position as Jack stood on the badminton net so that Keely could step over it, get into the ring.
Sadie, without Jack to help her, merely crawled under the other side of the net on her hands and knees. She knelt beside Sweetness, squeezed the sopping sponge over his head.
“Is he all right?” Keely asked Petra, who was in the process of holding up two of Sadie’s pudgy fingers in front of Sweetness’s face, asking him to count them for her.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine,” Joey said, slipping the stopwatch back in his pocket. “It’s his jaw. Solid glass. And he’s a wimp, a wuss. Don’t want ta hit nobody. That’s how come nobody knows fer sure he’s taking a dive. Hell, he don’t know he’s taking a dive; he just thinks maybe he is, ya know. Everybody knows he gonna lose. I just knows what round ta pick, then tell him ta drop his hands, do dat Muhammed Ali rope-a-dope as he dances around the ring. Some dope. He drops his hands and blam! One good poke in dat jaw of his and out he goes. That’s da beauty of it.”
Keely watched as Petra’s eyes narrowed, as a deep pink flush rose in her cheeks.
“Now, Petra...” she said, grabbing at the girl’s arm, but Petra was too quick for her and was already on her feet, heading for Joey.
“You no good, lousy, rotten—”
Petra had been right, Keely thought later, looking at Joey Two Eyes—for the moment, pretty much Joey One Eye—sitting ac
ross from her at the dinner table, his left eye swollen shut. Boxing was a science, and the girl had very scientifically cleaned Joey’s clock for him with a single punch.