Julia owned way too much property in White Pines Junction. As she sat with her accountant’s report for the year end, she was appalled at how much property she owned, how much she paid in taxes, how much she got back in rents, and what her net worth was. She was pleased, there was no question about that. When her husband had taken off with his tart, she had strong-armed him for most of his wealth, and she’d had a little tucked away herself. It hadn’t taken her long after the wedding to realign. He’d evidenced his snaky ways the minute the honeymoon was over. So while Julia was pleased with the bottom line of her investment portfolio, she wasn’t all that crazy about being overly invested in real estate. In Vargas County real estate, anyway.
Marcy needed a helping hand, and Julia had no spare cash. The only thing she could offer her daughter-in-law was real estate—a little cottage or an apartment—for her and the boys, but Vargas County and kids . . . not a good match. She could move Kevin Leppens out of his cottage and into—no, he was a good tenant. Too good to lose.
She wanted Marcy and her boys nearby, but far enough away to be safe.
This was the price, she thought, as she had every day since her son—Marcy’s druggie husband—had become a problem. This is the price one pays for populating a place out of the mainstream. Vargas County was a sportsman’s paradise, an investor’s dream. It had pretty much everything anybody needed, including wonderful summers and exquisite winters. Everybody in Vargas County prospered, including—she consulted her financial statement—her. And the down side was . . . well, the down side was that Marcy couldn’t move next door, not with those little boys, because those two sweet little things would be vulnerable to the down side. And Julia would never forgive herself for sacrificing them in order to prosper.
She could move. She could set them up in a close-by town. She could send Marcy some money and let Marcy make her own decisions. Ultimately, Julia thought, it wasn’t up to her. It was up to Marcy. And Marcy had her own parents—she wasn’t really Julia’s responsibility. And if Marcy decided to bring her boys to White Pines Junction, well, that was between Marcy and her conscience. Julia would advise her of all the pros and cons.
She set the financial statement aside and picked up her appointment book. She was to show property to a young couple at two p.m., and just had time to finish dressing before her appointment at the hair salon. She’d be finished there just in time for a lunch date with Mitch, and be ready to show property at two. Life was good. And if she really admitted it to herself, having Marcy and the boys close by would cramp her style a little bit. Julia wasn’t crazy about living the rest of her life alone, but she was having fun being single, even in the limited local social scene.
Julia tried not to think about Marcy, and put her mind on Mitch instead, and dressed appropriately, then bundled up and headed out for the Shear Pleasure and a little girl talk with Lexy.
Lexy, true to form, had multiple levels of hair piled on top of her head, and exaggerated cuts on the side, so they were asymmetrical and off balance, much like multi-layered, asymmetrical, off-balance Lexy herself. Her hair was a flaming red, bordering on purple, and she wore Kelly-green eye shadow. She was dressed in her signature white lab coat over tights. Today her tights were purple, and there was a hole in the thigh of one, where white skin protruded, attesting to the tightness of the tights and the generous proportion of Lexy’s thigh.
“Hey, baby!” she greeted Julia, as she opened the door to the salon, which used to be a garage attached to Lexy’s little house. Julia wanted to believe that Lexy knew her name, but, in reality, she believed that Lexy didn’t know anybody’s name, she just marked her appointment book with X’s.
Julia took off her coat and unwound her scarf. It was too hot in Lexy’s place; it always was. But it was festive with tacky Christmas decorations that were still up two weeks after New Year’s, and that made Julia smile.
“Oooh, so dressy, Miss Sassy,” Lexy said. “Looks like you’ve got a date. Go take off that dress and put on a smock.”
Julia did as she was told behind the Oriental screen.
“Wash and set? Perm? Color touch-up? Nails? Pedicure?”
Julia smiled. She’d like all of that, but wasn’t sure she could put up with the company for all that long.
“Wash, trim, blow dry,” she said. “That’s it for today.”
She got her wash, then Lexy examined her roots and pronounced they were good for two more weeks before she would be so obvious people would be able to see her gray part approach long before they saw her face.
Julia appreciated Lexy’s idiosyncrasies. She was fun, for a while.
As the ends of her hair were beginning to coat the floor in little dark commas, as the tiny silver scissors flashed around her head, a cold lick of wind blew in and the jingle bells on the door handle jangled.
“Hey, baby!” Lexy said.
Margie came in, and pulled her stocking cap off her head. She rubbed her reddened cheeks with mittened hands and sat down in the other swiveling chair. “Hi, Lex. Hi, Julia. I thought I’d come by and see if you had time to give me a trim.”
“Hmmm,” Lexy said, “let me look.” She left Julia and consulted her appointment book on the table by the phone. “If you don’t need too much, I can squeeze you in quickly right after her.”
“Great,” Margie said, and unbuttoned her coat. “I’ll wait.”
Julia tried not to stare at Margie, but whenever she looked at the once-beautiful young woman who pioneered the area by opening the best diner in the county, all Julia could see was the grief she held onto so tightly it showed in her face. Margie had never recovered from Micah’s disappearance. Would Julia be able to recover if she encouraged Marcy to move her boys to town and one—or, god forbid, both—disappeared in the same way? Would Julia be able to recover if she were merely silent in her encouragement to Marcy?
The thought gave her a hot flash.
Lexy blotted Julia’s forehead with a tissue, and with it came most of her makeup. She’d have to go home again to repair the damage before meeting Mitch.
Lexy went back to trimming Julia’s hair while Margie watched, and Julia watched Margie in the mirror. Lexy hummed, the heater fan wouldn’t stop, and the three women were otherwise silent. Then Margie spoke.
“How do you stand it?”
Lexy stopped clipping and they both turned to look at her.
“How can you live here?”
Lexy dropped Julia’s strand of hair and pulled up a chair. Julia looked at the clock. She’d never have time to go home to primp for Mitch. Oh well. She’d have to make do.
“It’s where we live, baby,” Lexy said. “Why? What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve been thinking about trying to get pregnant again,” Margie said with a catch in her voice, “but I could never have another child and keep living here.”
“It’s been what, two years since Micah?” Julia asked.
A tear tripped down Margie’s cheek. She nodded. Lexy handed her a tissue. “I know your kids are grown, Julia,” Margie said, “but what about your grandkids? Don’t they ever come to visit you? And you, Lexy, don’t you want to have a couple of kids? Don’t you think we sell our souls to live in this place where they steal our children?”
Julia was disappointed that she hadn’t followed this train of thought through earlier in the day, and then maybe she’d have some answers.
Margie dried her eyes and her sorrow was immediately replaced with anger. Righteous indignation. “I make a good living here, just like everybody else. We prosper, Jimbo and me. And you, Julia, hell, you own more real estate in this county than anybody else. We know you’re rich. Lexy, your appointment book is full. It’s the same for everybody up here. Everybody does well. There isn’t an unemployed, poor, street person in this whole county, except for maybe Recon John and Chainlink Charlie, and they want to be that way. They aren’t poor, they’re just weird.”
Lexy looked like she’d like to have a cigarette, but of course she wouldn’t while there were customers in her shop.
“So doesn’t it make you mad? Don’t you think we’re all guilty?”
Lexy squinted up her face and clipped her scissors a few times. Julia felt as though she were the responsible adult in the room, she ought to be saying something. “It’s a thought I’m sure we’ve all had, Margie, but I don’t think we’re guilty of anything but doing life well. Lexy works hard for her prosperity. So do you. So do I.”
“And look at the dues we pay to belong to this club. It costs us a child a year, just about.”
“People die everywhere,” Lexy said, and stood up, ready to tackle Julia’s head again. Julia was ready for her to resume. She glanced at the clock. She was going to be late for Mitch.
“These kids don’t die, that’s the point. We just give them away, and give lip service to what a shame it is, and go on with our lives.”
Lexy turned and gave Margie a full-frontal look. “You didn’t leave when Micah left. You are still here, reaping the prosperity.”
“I’ve paid my dues into this little club of the damned. More than you will ever know.”
“You knew about this place before you settled here. You knew it happened, but you never thought it would happen to you,” Lexy said.
Julia had never seen Lexy this confrontational before. Margie started to cry again. “Yeah, sure,” Lexy went on. “I want to have some kids someday. I kind of hoped that I’d get together with Paulie Timmins. But then, you know . . . he died. One of these days I’ll snag me a nice fisherman, though, and we will have some kids. Will we stay here? I don’t know. I think it’ll never happen to me.”
“It could.”
“Yes. It could. And to you it did. We make our choices, Margie, and we live with the consequences.” Lexy grabbed Julia’s head and, with hard fingers, turned her face to the mirror and went at her hair again, quite viciously, with the comb.
Margie shrugged into her coat and left without another word.
“Jeez. She’s still blaming us.” Lexy pulled on Julia’s hair hard enough to make her wince.
“Got any tea?” Julia asked.
“Sure, baby,” Lexy said, brightening up immediately. “Lemon Zinger?”
Julia smiled.
When she left Lexy’s, she went straight to Mitch’s office, where the waiting room with a gold garland over the receptionist’s window was empty and the receptionist told her the doctor was expecting her. Then she pushed the intercom, announced Julia, and soon Dr. Mitch Kardashian, the amazingly handsome dentist, came out looking like he was ready for the opera, wearing a full-length black wool coat and a white silk scarf. Julia knew it wasn’t going to be long before he whisked her off into the land of carnal bliss, but she was going to hold him off for as long as she could. She was hoping for a wedding ring, or at least she thought she was. It had been a long time since she’d fallen for a man, and she wanted to be sure. If she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry him, she didn’t want to bed him.
But he sure was handsome. He smiled at her with genuine pleasure, and nothing made her feel sweet and feminine like a man who was eager to see her.
“Darling,” he said.
Another point in his favor.
“I had an emergency this morning and had to put off a client. I’ve squeezed her in at the end of my lunch, and I’m afraid we’re not going to have time for the lunch I hoped. I intended to take you”—he pushed the door open and held it for her to step into the frosty air—“for a leisurely lunch, but I’m afraid it’s Margie’s for us today.”
Julia was surprised at how disappointed she felt at the change of plans she didn’t even know about. He made it sound so intriguing. She waited for Mitch to unlock his Mercedes and open the passenger door for her. He treated her like a queen. Leisurely dining or fast food, it didn’t matter to her. With his swarthy, hairy good looks and those milk-white teeth and deep brown eyes with the whiter-than-white whites, he was all hers.
“I’m sorry you had a stressful morning,” she said.
“Not as stressful for me as for the sheriff,” Mitch said. “He was the emergency. A tootsie-roll pulled off an old crown and exposed the root of a molar.”
Julia shuddered.
“Said he saw God.”
They both laughed. Mitch had a deep, hearty laugh that matched the rest of him. Julia loved it.
Two minutes later, they pulled into Margie’s crowded parking lot. Mitch opened the car door for Julia, then he opened the diner door, and escorted her to a booth in the far corner. There was something special about being the date of the most eligible, handsome professional man in town. Julia felt remarkably well-tended and pampered within Mitch’s protective aura.
Margie came over with the perennial coffee pot in one hand, and two menus in the other. She wouldn’t meet Julia’s eyes, and Julia knew that Lexy had hurt her feelings, had hurt them deeply. “Margie,” she said, and, when Margie did look up, Julia could tell that Margie had been crying. Had cried off all her mascara and her eyes were a little bit puffed. “You know I don’t share Lexy’s opinions about things.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Forget it.” Margie took a ragged breath, and her mouth tightened against a new serving of tears. “She’s right.”
“She is not right,” Julia said, maybe a little bit too forcefully, because Margie turned and walked back into the kitchen.
“What the hell is that all about?” Mitch asked. The concern in his face made Julia feel bad that she’d made Margie cry all over again. She briefly related the incident, and Mitch looked down at his fingernails.
“Lexy’s right, you know,” he said. “I’d never have children here. I think about it a lot, the kids that I see, their parents. I think they all live on the knife’s edge of hope versus fear, and I think it’s a conscious decision they make. They’re gambling.”
Julia gasped at the concept.
“Sometimes you win,” Mitch went on, “and sometimes you lose. But the constant is that the house takes its percentage from every single bet. Ultimately, the house always comes out on top. Winning and losing is just an illusion. When you gamble, the house wins.”
Just then, a composed Margie came back from the kitchen, and when she filled up their coffee cups, Julia touched her hand with a fingertip. Margie managed a weak smile, then took their orders. Two salads with vinaigrette.
“What about me?” Julia asked Mitch. “I’m not gambling.”
“But you will. That’s the uncanny thing about this place. It’s a giant casino. Odds are, you will eventually place a bet. Even the UPS guy is bound to plug a quarter into a slot, just on the off chance.”
That just settled it, Julia thought. No Marcy, no grandkids. She would put her foot down. She felt her face grow hot that she had even considered bringing them here.
“What’s so amazing to me is that Margie and Jimbo, bereaved and bitter, continue to live here, even though they’ve got another son.”
Julia had that plunging elevator feeling. “And she’s even considering another. You think they’d take two kids out of the same family? Don’t you think they’ve paid their dues?”
“Flip a coin and it comes up heads ninety-nine times in a row. What are the odds of it coming up heads the hundredth time?”
Julia shrugged. “Astronomical.”
“Fifty-fifty,” Mitch said. “The coin doesn’t care what happened before or after.”
“What about you?” she asked him.
“I’m a compulsive by nature,” he said, leaning close to her. “I’ve done drugs, booze, gambling, sex, food, even exercise . . . you name it, I’ve indulged in it to excess. And now I don’t do any of that anymore. Now I’m a moderate. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I won’t have sex outside marriage, I exercise like a normal person, and I eat right.”
“You keep a tight rein on yourself?”
“My world has become more black and white,” he admitted. “There are things I don’t do, places I don’t go.”
“Isn’t that terribly restrictive?”
“Actually, it’s liberating. I can do anything I want to now. Anything I want. It just so happens that I don’t want a martini. I’d rather have a Diet Coke. Or a cup of coffee.”
“And you live here because . . . ?”
“Because it’s so beautiful. And it’s a fine dental practice. And there’s you.”
“Think you can live inside the casino without plugging in that quarter?”
“I’m not smug about it. I’m just not interested. Besides, I’m not here for the long term. I’m here to put in my time, get my stake, and get out.” He reached across the table and took her freshly manicured hand. “In the meantime, there are healthier things around to capture my interest.”
“But what about the house’s percentage?”
“I can afford it,” he said, and kissed her fingertips.
~~~
The whole time Julia was showing property to the young couple, she wondered what her responsibility was in informing them of the pitfalls of living in the area. They were newlyweds, sure to want to have children eventually, maybe sooner.
She didn’t mention it.
When she got back to her home office, she kicked off her shoes, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and busied herself in the kitchen making her annual apricot jam for the library fundraiser. But her mind couldn’t leave Mitch and his theories of Vargas County. Was he kidding her with all this stuff? Was he kidding himself? Was he right? Was Lexy right? Should she move to firmer soil?
Why would she? Because she’s living the good life, funded by the sacrifices of grieving parents?
Boy, that was sure an ugly thought.
And another not-so-great idea was hitching herself up to a compulsive for the long run. Mitch could drink again, gamble away all she had built up over the years, snort it up his nose, gain three hundred pounds. . . . He was not as attractive now as he had been hours earlier.
Julia had a lot to think about.
When Marcy called just as Julia was filling the jars with lava-like boiling apricot jam, she let the machine get it. She listened to the message later, as the cooling canning jars pinged with a tight seal, and she was having her ceremonial bagel with a taste of the fresh jam on it.
Marcy was crying. Hysterical. Julia threw the bagel into the sink and tried to understand what Marcy was saying. She was at the hospital with Seth, the oldest boy. It sounded as if Jack, Marcy’s husband—Julia’s son—had beat her up and when little Seth tried to come to her rescue, Jack broke his arm.
It was way past time for Julia to act. Jack had broken Seth’s arm! The boy was only eight. That bastard. She grabbed her coat, purse and keys and jumped into her car.
The hospital was two hours south. By the time Julia got there, she was even more confused than she had been before she started out. Driving left too much time to let thoughts tumble around in her head like laundry in a dryer.
But when she saw Marcy’s face, bandaged and bruised, one eye swollen closed, one ear stitched up where she’d taken a kick to the head, all Julia’s good ideas about anything fled and she was filled with compassion, remorse, guilt, love and sympathy. How could she have ever raised a son that could do something like this to a sweet girl like Marcy?
Marcy fell sobbing into Julia’s arms. Julia knew that Marcy’s parents lived in squalor down south in Mississippi or somewhere, and that Marcy would never go back. Julia was her mother now. Julia comforted her daughter-in-law and asked about Mikey. He was upstairs in the hospital day care. He was physically safe, if traumatized. Seth was having his arm set.
By the time the social worker talked with Julia, and she’d helped Marcy with the police, the forms, and had met with a counselor, it was late. Julia loaded up Marcy and her two silent children, Mikey, six, and Seth, eight, and took them to McDonald’s, but it didn’t help much.
“Okay,” Julia said, putting a French fry into her mouth and trying to appear positive, “here’s the deal. You’re all going to come up and stay with me at the lake for a while. And as soon as we can, we’re going to get your stuff from your house and move you all up to the northwoods.”
“With Daddy?” Mikey said.
“No, honey,” Marcy said with a hitch in her voice. “Daddy can’t be with us anymore.”
“Good,” Mikey said. “I hate him.”
It was like a stab in Julia’s heart to hear her grandson state hatred for her son, but under the circumstances, she could understand it. Truth be told, she wasn’t too far behind Mikey on that one.
The boys fell asleep in the backseat as they drove back to Julia’s house. The closer they got to Vargas County, the more agitated she got, trying to think of alternate locations they could stay until Julia figured out the finances. She was real-estate rich and cash poor, and she just didn’t have the money to put Marcy up in a hotel or a motel or apartment. She’d have to get rid of a tenant, which would take time, or they’d have to stay at her place. Either way, the boys would be in the casino.
But anything was better than sending them back to Jack. Jack would likely kill Marcy next time. And Seth too, if he got in the way.
Marcy was silent on the way home. Julia wished her daughter-in-law would talk—either nervous chatter or confessions or just tell the story of what had happened—but Marcy was deep into her own thoughts, letting Julia stew in hers.
She was actually bringing the boys to Vargas County. Julia didn’t even want them to visit, although they did regularly. They loved the lake. They swam like little fish, they made friends easily and probably this summer they’d learn to water-ski. Seth would, anyway. They would love it. She found herself trying to bargain with God. They’ve been through so much, she found herself praying. Please let them live with us in peace. Please protect them and don’t let them disappear. Don’t take them away from me, please, I’ve been a good girl.
It was temporary. She’d find them another place to live, and she’d do it right away. Some place outside of Vargas County, before Marcy found work, the boys got settled in school and all. She’d get them out. They’d only stay with her for a little while. Just a little while. Just a little while. They’re not really residents. Just guests. Temporary guests. Surely they can’t be subject to the house take.
But as Julia pulled into the driveway of her beautiful waterfront house, her mind busy with who would sleep where, whether or not the beds were made up, and if there was enough food in the house for breakfast, she very clearly heard the sound of a quarter dropping into the slot.