John parked in front of the house and trudged onto the front porch, trying to steel himself against the ordeal of calling Ma, when he caught sight of a cardboard box in front of the door. He wasn't expecting any deliveries.
He checked the address to make sure it wasn't delivered to the wrong house. The address was his, and the package wasn't for Lizzie, it was for him. He unlocked the door and carried it inside.
The shipping label concealed a little envelope. John ripped it off and discovered a gift card with a printed message: "Told you I'd get you a new one! Lizzie." John drew out a pocket knife and cut the tape. The picture on the inner box looked like the exact model grind-and-brew machine she had ruined. He tore the outer carton, lifted out the inner carton, struggled with more tape and packing material, and there it was, all shiny and new.
He set it in the spot formerly occupied by the ruined coffee maker and put some plain water through to wash out any factory dust. Then he poured some Molten Chocolate beans in and brewed himself a cup. The vital aromas of dark chocolate and dark coffee mingled and drifted through the house. He still had to call Ma, but it seemed much more cheerful a job now.
He dialed. The line rang, and Ma picked up.
"Ma, it's John."
"I thought you were never going to call! Didn't Lizzie give you the message?"
"She did, Ma, but I was working till one a.m. and then I was at work all day." No sense telling her he'd really had another day off in between.
"Well, thank God you finally called. Things are awful here, Johnny." Tears crept into her voice. "I don't know what to do."
"Lizzie said you got fired."
"Yes, I did, and I don't even know why. She had no right to fire me. I didn't do anything wrong."
"What happened?" John poured his cup of luscious-smelling brew and opened the refrigerator for cream.
"Sandy said she was losing membership because of me," said Ma. "She said I was creating an 'adversarial atmosphere' in her gym." That accusatory, little-girl tone again. John could just see her head pecking back and forth like a bird after a worm.
Sandy Smith was Ma's boss at the gym. John had met her once when he picked Ma up after work to take her out to dinner. The gym was old, and so was the equipment in it—Sandy had bought it at a fire sale several years ago when a small local chain went bankrupt—but it looked clean and offered a full slate of classes, and it had everything but a pool. Sandy was painting inside and fixing it up as best she could on what looked to be a limited budget.
John couldn't understand this latest. Sandy seemed like a nice enough person, and his mother was unfailingly pleasant to people she didn't know well.
"I don't get it, Ma," he said. "How'd she arrive at that?"
"I have no idea. I have lots of friends there. A lot of women signed petitions to the paper for me, and my classes were always full. But Sandy said this Valerie lady I told you about—remember that?"
John caught himself nodding and said, "Yeah, I remember."
"Well, you remember what she said to me, right? In the locker room, right in front of all those women?"
"Yeah." John stirred in sugar and sipped his Molten Chocolate. He'd gotten the grind just right—not too weak, not too bitter. The brew slid across his tongue like velvet.
"I called up some friends of mine, those nice ladies I told you treated me to lunch, and they couldn't believe I got fired. They told me Valerie had been going around saying I was all hung up on my celebrity and didn't know how to act. They told me how unfriendly Valerie always was, sucking up to the women who drove Beemers and whose husbands bought them huge houses on the beach, and one girl told me she pointed it out to Valerie and Valerie said—referring to me—she said, 'No, I'm just giving the crazy people the cold shoulder!' And a bunch of women with her laughed."
She was beginning to sound like an angry Minnie Mouse. John wanted to hold the phone away from his ear. He had looked forward, momentarily, to sharing the good news about Lizzie and her commercial, but he could see he would be a while getting around to that.
He stifled a yawn and checked his watch. Barely eight o'clock. It felt more like eleven. But then, he'd had a hell of a day. "God, Ma," he said finally. "What a thing to say. I can't believe Sandy fired you. Sounds like this Valerie person is the problem."
"That's what I tried to tell Sandy!" said his mother. "And the worst thing is, I don't know if I'm going to get my unemployment because of this. You know unemployment isn't very much money anyway, and if I don't get work at another gym right away, I don't know if I can afford the mortgage. Can you float me some money, Johnny?"
John didn't say anything. Having a girlfriend who was iffy on her part of the bills was expensive, and the numbers in his savings account had been drifting in the wrong direction lately. He really shouldn't have bought the original grind-and-brew machine in the first place.
Finally he said, "Gee, Ma, do you think Sandy would really do that to you? She seemed like a pretty nice person, do you think she's really that mad, that she would block you from getting unemployment?"
A moment of silence on the other end; then his mother said, "Well, maybe not. She did say she was sorry she had to let me go, because she knew I'd just been let go at the paper."
John rolled his eyes and suppressed an irritated sigh. Ma was forever blowing things out of proportion. He'd become immune to it by the time he was fourteen, when she'd come home from the doctor's office, looking perfectly healthy, telling him the doctor had said she might have a brain tumor based on a female symptom she shouldn't even have told him about. Then she had gotten angry because he didn't get all upset, run over, hug her, and act all concerned. He had been lying on the floor looking at the funnies, and all he could do was lie there thinking, Oh, come on, you do not have a brain tumor! and pretend he hadn't heard her. No way could he get away with actually saying that—she'd have popped him one, and then regaled the rest of the family with stories about his callous attitude for days. The female symptom: lactation while not pregnant. She'd turned out to be hypothyroid.
He forced out a gentle tone. "Well, Ma, why don't you go ahead and apply and see if you can get unemployment? If you don't and you're really short, call me back. We can work something out then."
"Well, okay, Johnny. I hope I get it. I don't know how I'm going to afford both the mortgage and food if I don't. Unemployment isn't very much, you know. It isn't very much at all!"
John set his coffee cup down, the good vibe from the chocolate vapors dissolving as his blood pressure rose. Maybe he should have poured a beer instead. He glanced around the room, mopping his sticky forelock off of his face again. He still needed a shower.
He took a deep cleansing breath to keep his voice gentle and soothing, and went with, "You should just go and see. It could turn out better than you think. And maybe I could call Sandy and talk to her."
"Could you, Johnny, really? I know she'd listen to you, you being a policeman and all!"
The eagerness in her voice gave him the idea that this was what she had been angling for in the first place. He'd said the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time. He had to think fast. "Well, I'd have to think about it, Ma. This is a delicate situation. It's all in how I'd approach it, you know."
"Oh, yes, I know."
"Well, okay, then. Give me Sandy's number and I'll be thinking about it over the next few days." And maybe you won't call for at least that long. I hope.
Ma gave him the number. "Thanks, Johnny. I knew you wouldn't let me down." From her tone, John half expected droplets of waxy, sticky honey to ooze through the holes in the phone's earpiece into his ear.
There was his signal to start coming up with his excuse for why he wouldn't, in fact, call. John knew it would take him at least three days to come up with a good one. Truth to tell, he didn't really feel comfortable interceding with Ma's boss. Before it had been different; that was a police matter, and the Hampton lieutenant had called him. Why did he do this to himself? It certainly wasn't the first time. When would he ever learn?
"Okay, Ma. You take care, now. See if you can't take a walk around the block, or call some of the girls for lunch, or something. It's not good to sit in there alone."
"Can't you come visit?"
"Not right now. I'm up to my ears in this murdered model case and the one where the boss got shot. Maybe when things calm down a little."
"You're doing that one again? I thought they closed that one."
"Well, it's back open again. We got a new lead."
"Okay." She sounded crestfallen. "Be careful, Johnny. I love you."
"I love you, too, Ma. Bye," John said, and after waiting for a "bye," he hung up the phone.
He'd been tired, but now he felt the urge to go over to the nearest precinct house and punch their punching bag a while. He hated it when he decided to do something she really wanted him to do and then he got all this mushy stuff from her about what a good son he was. It never failed to give him an icky feeling that crawled up his spine.