Charming Grace

  “She doesn’t wish me real well. I understand.”

  “I’ll talk to her. What did Stone say when you called?”

  “The kind of things a man says when you tell him you let his son get used for boxing practice.”

  “He doesn’t wish me well, either. My speech got his son hurt. He’s right.”

  “It was my job to protect Leo. Not yours. He’s not upset with you.”

  “This is the same father who nearly let Leo drown in a whitewater river as an exercise in manhood? This time he wants to say all the right things he didn’t say or do for Leo before? I’m an expert on fathers who try to make up for their mistakes after it’s too late to undo the damage.”

  “Don’t worry about Stone. Worry about his sister. Diamond’s coming to get Leo in the Senterra jet.”

  She nearly dropped her coffee. “She can’t do that! Why would Stone send her?”

  “Because I’m not considered trustworthy enough to take care of him, anymore.”

  “It’s not fair to you and not fair to Leo. He’s trying so hard to step out of his father’s shadow. He’ll be humiliated.”

  “I know, but he’s not my son and I don’t make the rules. Look, I’ll drive you and the gals back to Dahlonega after Diamond flies off with him in her claws. Let me play chauffeur, at least.”

  “We can’t do that to Mika. She won’t leave his side. I won’t even try to talk her into leaving his side. I know how it feels to be that young and in love . . . ” she halted, looking up at me with troubled eyes, guilty eyes. “If she can’t stay beside Leo, she’ll feel as if she betrayed him.”

  A painful silence settled over us. Finally I said, “None of this is your fault. It’s mine. Including what happened at the inn.”

  “You didn’t seduce me.”

  “You don’t have to pretend, for my sake, that you’re happy about what happened.”

  “Boone—”

  “I shouldn’t have been with you. I didn’t do right by you, I didn’t do right by Leo, I didn’t do right by my job.”

  “So everything’s always your fault? I thought you served your time in prison and now you’re supposed to be free.”

  “I’m not a free man, and I never will be. I have debts to pay, and I honor them. I owe a big one to Stone.”

  “I was the one who gave the speech about protecting and honoring Harp’s legacy. I was the one who encouraged those high school kids to fight for what they believe in. I never intended for them to interpret that as a license to attack Leo. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for my feud with his father. And as for Mika. . .the last thing I ever wanted was to see Harp’s niece get hurt because of something I said or did. But she did get hurt, and so did Leo. Harp would be so disappointed in me. I let Harp down.”

  “Harp would never be disappointed in you. Not for what a bunch of no-brain punks did, and not for . . . ” I let the thought trail off, but we both knew. Not for sleeping for me. I hoped I was right about that.

  “Harp would tell you not to be so hard on yourself.”

  “Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Your husband never forgave himself for anything, did he, chere? Not for being born poor and trashy, not for what happened to his sister, not for being rejected by Mika’s highbrow Detroit family, not for never living up to what he thought your family wanted him to be. You were the only soul who ever made him feel good enough, and he never wanted to let you down. I know the feeling.”

  “Boone, please—”

  I jerked my head toward Leo’s room. “Let’s go tell Mika she’ll have to pry herself away from Leo when Diamond gets here on her broomstick. I know it won’t be easy, but I swear to God I’ll make this up to Mika, and to Leo, and to you.”

  Grace sagged. “All right. I don’t want her and Leo caught in the middle of any more fights. Not tonight.”

  We eased into the dark room. Mika jerked awake. “Leo?” She groggily bent over him, then realized he hadn’t made the sounds that woke her. “Oh. Ssssh. It’s just Grace and Boone.” Leo stirred, moaned, and opened his eyes. At least, he opened his good one. “Not sleepin’ . . . ” he mumbled. He mouthed every word as if he had glue in his tongue. “Just restin’ between rounds. Bring the dudes back. I’ll hit ‘em with my face some more.”

  “Oh, Galileo. I love your irony.”

  Grace turned on the small light above Leo’s bed. She looked like hell. “Sorry, guys, but we need to talk.”

  Mika cuddled Leo’s hand in hers. “Is anything wrong?” Mika asked. “Grace, I’m sorry if I looked angry with you earlier. Or if you overheard what I said to Leo. Uncle Harp wouldn’t blame you for what happened.”

  Leo nodded weakly and gazed at Boone with squinty, one-eyed sincerity. “Boone, iz okay. Chill out. Dad’s prob’ly glad I got pounded, izn’t he? My first ass-whippin’ street fight. Now I’ve prove I got good Senterra cajones, right? Maybe we can juz not let him know it was mainly my ass that got the whippin’, huh?”

  “Your papa loves you, kid. He’s proud, no matter what. You did a good job. You took on four big drunks and you put some hurt on two of ‘em and you kept the other two from wipin’ the street with you. And you protected your lady when she got in the fight. I call that a win-win ass whuppin’, Leo.”

  Leo made a painful try at sitting up straighter and thrusting his chin out. He winced. “When we get back ta Dahlon. . .Dahla. . .town, I gonna tell Dad I have no intention of join the army thiz fall. Thaz wha he wans me ta do, ya know.”

  Mika gasped. “No!”

  “Yah. Become a Ranger, like he did. But when we get back I’m goin’ ta walk—well, stagger—inta his office an’ tell him I’m gonna study engineerin’ with a double major in art. Mika and I are goin’ start our own software design company and create the most bitchin’ video games since Dungeons met Dragons.”

  Grace made a soft, miserable sound. “Leo, Mika—I think that’s a great plan, but, Boone and I have to tell you something. This situation tonight is a minefield of diplomacy. Your father is worried, and your Aunt Diamond is . . . well . . . ” she hesitated, looking at me for help. So now we’d tell Leo his brawny auntie was coming to get him in his papa’s private jet and he’d just better get a grip on his diapers and put up with it. I took a long hard look into her eyes, then faced Leo.

  “Look, Rambo, here’s the plan: Diamond’s coming to get you. She’s your aunt and she loves ya. Do you want her to take you back to the mountains in your papa’s jet?”

  Leo’s lopsided face contorted. “Without Mika? Without you n’ Grace?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Mika yelped. Leo shook his head. “No wa!”

  I took a long breath. Some day Stone would fire me permanently. Might as well be today. “You were man enough to kick some ass tonight and I think you’re man enough to get out of this bed. If you want to go back on your own terms and you can handle seven hours in the backseat of a car, I’ll drive you.”

  “Lez go!”

  “Good.” I smiled. “We’re takin’ our womenfolk and getting the hell out of this sissy town. Comprende vous, dude?”

  Leo grinned. Or tried to. “Ta-day, I’m a man. Ouch.”

  Mika hugged him. Or tried to.

  When I looked at Grace, I saw a lot of admiration in her eyes. She might not ever love me the way she’d loved Harp, but I could go a long way on the look in her eyes right then.

  Today, I am a man.

  “Noleene, where are you?” Stone yelled. “Have you lost your mind? My sister’s down in Savannah frothing at the mouth because she’s there and Leo’s not! And I don’t blame her! I gave you orders and you blew them off! I’ve always cut you a lot of slack but this is going too far!”

  “Leo wanted me to drive him back,” I said into my cell phone. “He’s a grown man and it’s what he wants.” Grace stood beside me, listening grimly outside a convenience store somewhere in the flat, hot, pinelands of south Georgia. Throw in a swamp and a pony and I’d have flashed on my childhood. I felt like a runaway,
again.

  “I don’t care what he wants! I told you to let his aunt bring him home on the jet!”

  “I got him into this mess. I owe him some dignity.”

  “Screw his dignity! His mother’s mad as hell. Called me from New York and yelled that I’m a bad influence ‘as always,’ Noleene! Kanda overheard her on the phone and went ape-shit on my behalf. Now I’ve got an ex-wife and a wife going at each other like wrestlers in a smackdown match! My daughters are crying because their big brother is hurt, and next week the Enquirer’ll probably run that damned file photo of me with the bald spot under a headline like, ‘Senterra Pulls Hair Out As Grace Vance Kidnaps His Son!’”

  “Leo’s not kidnapped. Look, I’ll have him there in a few hours. Then if I’m fired, I’m fired.”

  “Bring my son here, Noleene, and I’ll decide what to do about you later! You’ve got a helluva lot of explaining to do! This isn’t like you, Noleene!”

  Click.

  I lowered the phone. My ear tingled.

  “What did he say?” Grace asked gently. “I mean, the parts that weren’t yelling. I heard all those.”

  “He says I’ve lost my mind and I’m not acting like myself. He’s right.”

  She looked at me with quiet respect. “He’s wrong. This is who you really are.”

  Way to go, beauty queen, I thought to myself. You got Leo hurt, Mika’s upset, and Boone may lose his job for real, this time. Harp, I’m sorry. I’m protecting your legacy but you’d never want other people hurt because of you. What should I do?

  Fight for the living, not the dead. I heard the words in the rush of hot, green, fertile mountain scenery outside my car window. But since I’d just gotten off the phone with G. Helen, maybe I was channeling her advice, not Harp’s.

  “More cold napkins!” Mika called from the backseat. I grabbed a small cooler by my feet and pulled soaked paper napkins from the bed of ice and frigid water. Mika slapped a fresh one of Leo’s forehead.

  Boone drove a little faster while glancing darkly at Leo in the rearview mirror. “Don’t fight it, Leo. A little puke never hurt leather upholstery.”

  “I refuse. . .to. . .hurl,” Leo managed.

  Leo was all heart but no stomach, and by the time we reached the Dahlonega city limits he was only one small step away from riding the vomit express. We had propped him on pillows in the back seat of a big, rental sedan. Mika held an ice pack on his cheek. handed her a steady supply of soft drinks outfitted with straws for him to sip. “Thank you, Grace,” she kept whispering, as if we were at a tea party and she ought to be formal. Thank god Dew wasn’t with us to make comments about the ludicrous situation—she’d opted to make her own way home in my car.

  “I inherited my mother’s stomach lining,” Leo whispered between swollen lips. His face now resembled the Elephant Man’s. “Pain meds make her spew like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.”

  “You’re in no shape to confront your father right now,” Mika told him. “Why don’t you just let us take you to the Downs to recuperate for the rest of the day? Grace, Boone—please? Can’t we just keep driving and take him to the Downs.”

  “Whereever you want to go,” Boone said grimly. “Gracie?”

  I nodded. “In for a penny, in for a pound, in for a puke.”

  “No,” Leo mumbled. “I’m a man, and a man. . .stands up to his. . .father. . .and squelches his. . .spew. Onward, Aragorn. Gandalf will. . .do battle with. . .Sarouman even if the fires of Mount Doom. . .make him want to. . .agggh.” He leaned his head back on the pillow and groaned.

  “It was nice knowing you, son,” Tex said to Boone at the gate to Stone’s Victorian. “How-do, Mrs. Vance.”

  “How do.”

  On the other side of the sedan Mojo said, “Welcome to our nightmare, Mrs. Vance.”

  “Sorry to be the cause of it, guys.”

  The smaller man shrugged but peered worriedly across me at Boone. “Diamond got in from the airport about an hour ago. She walked into the house here yelling at everybody in sight and kicking furniture. You’ve seen Godzilla stomp Tokyo? It was like that.”

  “Thanks, Mojo. Thanks, Tex. You gave me fair warning. Now, go hide. Save yourselves, boys.”

  The old wrangler sighed. “She’s had just enough time to get her fangs filed down to nice, sharp little points. And the boss isn’t much happier.”

  Boone smiled grimly. “Perfect.”

  We drove up to the house, dappled in early afternoon summer sunshine. As Boone pulled the sedan to a stop the small mansion’s side door burst opened under an ornate kitchen portico. Stone’s little girls, dressed in bright pastel shorts and flowered tops, burst out. They had recently arrived from California. They were followed closely by their dark-haired mother, Kanda, who looked like a suburban soccer mom except for the designer sundress. Next came Stone, dodging the portico’s big wicker rockers as if it were an obstacle course in the aisle at the Academy Awards; behind him came Diamond, striding across the yard on mile-high black sandals with jeweled straps. She was dressed in a champagne-hued silk skirt and a matching leather vest. Muscles bulged angrily in her arms. She stared at me with ice-pick eyes, then gave Boone a virtual stab in the jugular, too. Finally her stiletto gaze settled on Mika. That’s when I began clenching one fist.

  “Boonie!” Stone’s daughters chorused tearfully, grabbing Boone’s hands as he stepped from the driver’s seat.

  “Ssssh, petites, it’s all right.”

  They rushed to the back passenger window, where their half-brother Leo managed a sickly, grotesque smile, winked at them with his good eye, and wobbled a thumbs up. A thin trickle of blood slid from the stitches on his swollen cheekbone.

  The girls howled. “Is Leo going to die?” the smaller one cried. “He already looks dead.”

  By then their mother had them by the hands and pulled them back, cooing and comforting.

  “My God,” Stone bellowed as he reached Leo’s door. “He looks like something I shot with an anti-matter cannon in Alien Bounty Hunter.” Stone jerked the door open.

  Leo nearly fell out. Only Mika’s arms around him kept him semi-upright. He waved weakly at the rest of his family, then frowned up at Stone. “Dad, I’m here to say . . . I love ya but I’m not ever going to be the macho man you want me to be, and so this fall I’m going to go to . . . ” He leaned out of the doorway suddenly and threw up on Stone’s imported snakeskin loafers. “Agggh.” His eyes rolled back. He never finished his righteous statement, and his coup d’Dad became nothing but an embarrassing puddle of half-digested Coke a Cola and a vanilla milkshake from an interstate Dairy Queen. His baby sisters shrieked.

  Diamond leapt forward. “Stone, help me get him into the house. Oh, poor little Leo. Poor little sweet, helpless—”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Senterra, but he’s a man,” Mika said evenly, still holding the half-fainted Leo in her arms. “And he proved last night that he can take care of himself and any woman lucky enough to be with him.”

  Diamond went ballistic. “Listen, you cocoa-lite babycakes, you’re not a woman, so don’t lecture me. Let me tell you exactly what I think of you and your crazy Aunt Grace. You’re getting off this property right now and I’m going to make sure you never get within a mile of my nephew, again.”

  Mika yelped. “That’s unethical, immoral, and unfair.”

  “As my Italian grandmother used to say, ‘You want fair? Call the Pope.’”

  “Diamond, that’s enough,” Kanda said. She had two sobbing little girls hugging her legs, and she scowled at her sister-in-law as they cried harder. Tex and Mojo ran up to help Stone and Boone lift Leo from the car. He groaned, a lanky, battered heap of fainting, goateed idealism. Mika trailed her hands over him. She began clambering from the back seat, keeping one hand on his long, bluejeaned legs. “Leo,” I’m going inside with you. I’m here. I promise.”

  Diamond grabbed Mika’s wrist. “You didn’t hear me very well, did you? You stupid little bitch.”

  “Back off on
the language, Sis!” Stone roared. He was trying to hoist Leo into his arms, shrugging off Boone’s help. Boone was the only one who saw me start around the car toward Diamond like a green-eyed tornado aiming for a trailer park. “Sic her, Gracie,” he said in a low voice

  Mika wrestled furiously with Diamond’s vise-like grip. “I’m a DuLane and a Bagshaw and a Vance!” Mika said, puffing loudly. “I fought in a street fight last night and I can do it again! No one calls me names and arm wrestles with me and keeps me from my man!” Bless her heart. I hadn’t been on hand to help her in the fight the night before, but I could make up for it, now.

  I reached Diamond in two more steps. “Diamond?” I warned. Diamond looked up. “You’re a cubic zirconia set in green gold.” I punched her in the mouth.

  I must have hit her just right—otherwise, she’d have hit me back and killed me. She wobbled, blinked owlishly, then sat down on the lawn. She looked like a bobble-headed doll in the back window of a sixty-four Chevy.

  “Grace,” Mika said with awe. “You street hoochie, you.”

  Everyone else gasped.

  Only Boone came to my aid, getting between me and the downed Diamond. Stone bellowed to a crowd of stunned assistants, huddled on the mansion’s veranda. “Somebody come help my sister up and then call a dentist! I might as well put one on the payroll!”

  “Might want to get a tranquilizer gun to use on Diamond before her eyes stop spinnin’,” Tex drawled under his breath, while darting amazed looks at me. He helped Stone lift Leo into a wicker chair Mojo hurriedly procured from the portico. Leo’s head lolled and he pawed the air. “Mika,” he moaned. She ran to his side. Boone gently pushed me to the driver’s door of the rental car. “Go home,” he ordered, and cupped my aching fist in his hands. “I’ll bring Mika later. I’ll take care of her. And I’ll keep Diamond away from her. You have my word.”

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have hit her if she hadn’t zeroed in on Mika.”

  “Don’t worry about Diamond. She has spare sets of capped teeth.” He pressed the car keys in my hands. “Go home, slugger. You can’t win the war by stayin’ here, even if you just won the punchin’ contest. Where’d you learn to hit like that?”