“Neither of them are hurting a bit, but you’d think I’d pulled some tricky thing to get them tossed out naked into a blizzard. From everything Fort told me about Glenna, she must have been a doll. How could those two have such dreary people for their children?”
We ate busily and finally she looked over at me and said, “What I really had the most need of, Trav, was somebody to be my friend and take it for granted I haven’t stolen money, and who’d know I didn’t know anything about the money when I married Fort. I didn’t make friends here. We wanted all our time together. There wasn’t enough to share. But I thought, too, it is a lot of money and it does have to be somewhere. And I remembered the way you… make a living. Maybe I’m crazy to think you or anybody could ever find out where it went.”
“It went somewhere. It’s a nice jackpot. He had to have a good reason. Let’s just say I don’t have the feeling I’m wasting my time. If I can get some kind of line on what happened, then I’ll see if my fee for mula grabs Sonny and Sis. If the only way they can possibly get what they had coming is through me…”
“Expenses off the top and cut the rest down the middle. You know that is okay with me on my share, dear. When I think it even entered my mind to turn mine over to those two… I’d rather give it to a home for… old television comedians!”
She looked so totally outraged and indignant I had to laugh. She put her plate aside and I saw she had not eaten much.
“Where’s that wolf-like appetite I remember from old?”
“I don’t know. It’s fine for five minutes and then gaah. I guess I could have expected some kind of crazy thing happening, like the money. What is it, Travis? Why in the world should my life be some sort of continuous soap opera? I think I had six uneventful years. The first six. Gloria Anne Ridgen. Then all hell broke loose. Is there such a thing as drama-prone? You know, you go hunting for the action. My daddy bought me a ride on a merry-goround, and that was the time the man running it had to be drunk and decided he wasn’t going to stop it. When they died I had to live with my nutty old aunt, and if my astrology tables were wrong any given day, she wouldn’t let me go to school. The boy I went with in high school was walking by a building and somebody dropped a can of paint, and when he woke up from the coma a year later, he had the mind of a two-year-old. In college my roommate was a secret klepto and hid the loot in my luggage and when they began to narrow it down, she turned me in, and six months later she got caught and they apologized and asked me to come back to school and the day I was due to leave I got infectious mononucleosis and my dog was run over. All I want is a plain, neat, ordinary, unexciting life. But what happens? In Buffalo one day I got off the bus downtown on a hot afternoon and the bus door closed on my wraparound skirt and drove off and left me spinning like a top in my little yellow briefs on the busiest corner in town. You know, I dream about that. There I am, and everybody is applauding and I can’t stop twirling.”
Anna Ottlo had gone to bed. We took the dishes out to the big bright kitchen and she rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. I was aware of the wind, and of the emptiness of the stretch of dunes and winter beach outside, and of the comfort of the house.
“Was this whole thing in the news?” I asked her.
“No. From what John Andrus says, It isn’t news until there’s some kind of legal thing that goes on, the probate or something. He can explain.”
I decided it would be better not to tell her what had entered my mind. If a man, before dying, had converted his holdings into over half a million in cash, there would be a certain number of dim minds in a city of this size who would be inspired to pay a night visit to the little woman and see if she could be persuaded in ugly ways to tell where the deceased had hidden it away. It would be a clumsier variation of Heidi’s and Roger’s incorrect suspicion.
She turned lights off, and when one was left, we said goodnight by the embers of the fire. “You’re so good to come,” she said softly, standing close, hands holding my wrists, head tilted back to look up into my eyes.
“Beach bums have to take care of each other, Glory.”
“But it’s never your turn.”
We were smiling, and then there was that awkwardness born of a simultaneous remembering of a special closeness of long ago. Her gaze slid away, and I bent to her quick kiss, and we said goodnight. I took one glance back into the big room after she had turned the last light out, and I could see her small brooding silhouette in front of the ember glow.
THREE
THERE WAS a watery sunlight when I got up, and a diminishing wind. I found the bright and cheerful breakfast alcove off the kitchen. Anna said Miss Glory had gone walking along the beach and should be back soon, and I should eat.
“Eat like the bird, Miss Glory is. Too thin, ya?” Anna said.
“She looks healthy.”
“Need some fat. Better in the winter some fat.”
When she brought my bacon and eggs to the breakfast booth I asked her if she had worked long for Dr. Geis.
“From I was thirty only.” she said proudly. “Refugee. Only the German language I had. My little girl eleven. Husband had one grandmother Jew. He got us out, was to come later.” She shrugged. “The Doctor Geis helped looking for him after the war. Never found. Then it was the house in the city we were in, ya? Heidi has only one year then and Roger has five years. All happy. Three years I am here and the lady then has the bad sickness of the heart. A very sad thing for the house. Weaker weaker weaker, and the last year in bed. Nurses. Even such a man like the Doctor Geis, he cannot the lady save.” Her broad heavy-featured face looked tragic, but then as she looked beyond me out the window, she smiled suddenly, “Here comes Miss Glory.”
Gloria came striding through the loose sand and stamped her feet when she reached the flagstone walk. She had on wine-red wool slacks, a stocking cap with a red topknot, her hands shoved deeply into the slash pockets of a short leather coat. She smiled at me through the window, and came in, yanking the stocking cap off, shaking her black crisp hair out, shedding the leather coat. As she slid in opposite me, Anna brought her a steaming cup of coffee. Gloria had red cheeks. She wore a black lightweight turtleneck sweater.
“My word! Can we afford to feed this creature, Anna?”
“Good to cook for a big stomach.”
“Sleep well, Trav? It’s going to be glorious later on. There’s that feel in the air. It’s going back up into the fifties, I bet.”
She had a toasted English muffin, and we took our second coffees into the living room where she called John Andrus and told me he said he would try to get out to the house by ten-thirty.
“Who does he think I am?”
“Sort of an appointed big brother. An old friend. Somebody I trust. I told him I wanted him to explain the things I don’t quite understand, so you can advise me and help me.”
“What does he think I do for a living?”
“Well, I said you’re in marine supplies. Okay?”
“It’s nice to know what you said,” I told her. “And after we get into it, could you sort of remember something you have to go do?”
“Darling, it will be a pleasure. When he talks about that stuff, it makes my head hurt.”