If At First

Part 16 - Chapter 15

"A lot."

"How much?" I repeated.

"Don't tell dad. Promise?"

"No."

He sighed. "About fifteen thousand dollars."

"fifteen thousand dollars?! Where did you think you were going to get fifteen thousand dollars?!"

"I didn't! I didn't realize!

"Tabithaaaaa," Beverly sang from the second floor, "your grandmother is waaaaiting"

"There might've been more but they had me doing shots until I passed out."

"How much more? How can you play poker if you're passed out? How're you still alive? Don't you feel like hell?" I looked him over. "You look like it."

"I don't know, Doug just said he saw me with my face on the table so he dragged me over to a couch until I sobered up enough to walk back to his place. I don't know anything after that."

"Ta-Bi-Tha!" Beverly's voice was more pressing now.

"Don't move," I said to Andy, "don't leave this house."

"I have to! I'm supposed to meet Doug."

"For what? Tell him you can't!"

"He told me there was a restaurant I have to try while I'm here."

"You're going out to dinner when you're fifteen thousand dollars in the hole and there's probably people looking for you? Because that sounds really brilliant, Andy."

"Well you said to be wealthy and vague. I think I've pulled off the wealthy part, and if I've gotta maintain 'vague' I can't exactly come clean with him, can I?"

"I didn't say to come clean, just...just stay here until we figure out what we're going to do." I turned to leave and stopped again. "I'm really sorry I got you involved in this, Andy."

He waved me off, falling back onto the bed. "I should've known you'd find a way to blame yourself. Go."

I ran down the steps to my grandmother's anxiously awaiting nurse. "Sorry Bev, just getting Andy settled in."

"Your grandmother is very impatient tonight."

"I know, I know. Kinda makes me wonder what she did before I got here."

"Before you got here her social program was much more sedate, I can tell you." She remonstrated.

I followed her to the 'pink drawing room', one of the yet-to-be redecorated spaces that had the unique ability to brag of a satin couch and innumerable hand painted porcelain cats, where Nana held most of her gatherings. The frequent use of it lately is the main reason for its inaccessibility to renovation.

Tonight was euchre, and the only reason she actually needed me there was because Mrs. Josephine was sick so they needed a fourth. I never even fully grasped how to play, since most of their time was occupied in talking while just holding their cards rather than playing them, but she refused to start without me.

It was sad for Mrs. Jenning that she was always forced to be my partner, though it had to be because she didn't have any more skill at the game than I. We never won, but she never complained. She never really said or did anything, just sat with her elbows tucked into her corpulent sides, listening to the observations of my grandmother and Mrs. Landon.

Mrs. Landon, Mira's grandmother, was much the opposite of Mrs. Jenning in both size and demeanor. She was also very likely the gossip-monger keeping my grandmother so well informed. Within only a few minutes, she smoothly expressed and transitioned between a verbal restructuring of her gift wrapping room, to a reproach of the way women dress for the beach (in particular that cousin visiting the Stanhope's down the street), to wholehearted agreement with Nana that her nurse was stealing her medications.