Marcia Talley - In Death's Shadow

So don't introduce me to the mayor, you insensitive clod! I'm just the nanny . I sent a half-hearted curse in Mrs. Padgett's direction- May lipstick stains defile your teeth -then turned my attention to her granddaughter, my knees popping audibly above the strains of "My Heart Will Go On" as I knelt on the carpet next to the child.

"Hi, Miss Miranda. Do you remember me?" I didn't want her to think I was some creepy stranger.

"Yeth. You're Mrs. Hannah."

"That's right. I came to your house one day and your mommy and your daddy and you and me all went running in the rain!"

Miranda nodded sagely.

"So, why don't I call you Miranda and you can call me Hannah, just like friends."

"Okay."

Switching into grandmother mode, I asked, "Do you need to go potty, Miranda?"

Miranda nodded, her ponytails bouncing like springs.

Kramer, Jr. pointed us in the direction of the ladies' room which, when we found it, was decorated in soft peach tones, a welcome relief from the relentless sea of blue. Miranda and I discovered that one of the two stalls was already occupied by a pair of slim ankles in bright red, high-heeled sandals.

I ushered Miranda into the other.

To my surprise, Miranda was wearing disposable pull-ups.

"Mommy's gonna buy me big girl panties," Miranda chirped as I boosted her up onto the commode.

"Wow," I said, trying to sound impressed. After two weeks of potty training, Chloe, at three, had already reached that milestone. I suspected she could have nailed it in two days flat, but Emily was bribing her with M &Ms, so the little scamp had drawn it out, milking the training for all the M &Ms she could get.

Miranda sat primly on the toilet, producing nothing but the tap-tap-tap of her patent leather heels against the porcelain. "Don't watch me," she said.

"Okay." I pulled the stall door toward me and held it closed while Miranda tinkled, waiting for the telltale rumble of toilet paper spinning off the roll. From the stall next door came an unmistakable sound. The owner of the red shoes was quietly retching.

"You okay in there?" I asked.

"Fucking clams!"

"Is there anything I can do?"

The red shoes turned, heels facing out, and a bright floral hem floated down, gently covering them. I knew the next sound, too: the dry heaves.

When I'm sick to my stomach, nothing feels better than a cool washcloth across my forehead. I was heading for the paper towel dispenser when I noticed Miranda had hopped off the toilet seat and was crouching on all fours, peering under the partition into the adjoining cubicle. "That lady's throwing up ,” Miranda crowed.

"Go away!" the lady whimpered.

I tried again. "Are you sure there's nothing I can do?"

"Just get that damn kid out of here and leave me the fuck alone!"

I grabbed Miranda's arm and eased her gently to her feet. "C'mon, Miranda. The lady wants some privacy."

With one chubby hand Miranda tugged at her pull-ups. "What does fuck mean, Mrs. Hannah?"

I bent to help Miranda with her panties. "It's a very, very bad word."

Miranda smiled up at me slyly. "My mommy says I should never say fuck. Only bad people say fuck."

"Your mommy is right, Miranda," I said, fighting the urge to giggle. Whatever explanation Valerie had given her daughter, the child was clearly seeking a second opinion.

"Is that lady bad?" Miranda asked, pointing toward the occupied stall.

"No, the lady's not bad. She's just not feeling very well."

"My mommy gives me ginger ale," Miranda offered helpfully.

"Maybe somebody will give the lady ginger ale, too, Miranda," I said. But, I thought, it sure as hell ain't gonna be me.

In olden days, a woman waved her sailor off with a perfumed handkerchief and a kiss, then paced the widow's walk until his sails reappeared on the horizon.

Nowadays, we send them off with plastic bags full of Snickers bars and wait for a call on our cell phones.

But nothing has changed about the kiss. I planted a good one on Paul, then stood on the seawall and watched until Northern Lights was a tiny white triangle against the far, dark shore of Kent Island.

Then I went home to look for my life insurance policy.

I started with the Bombay chest in the living room where Paul keeps Important Papers-capital I, capital P. Frankly, I don't go there very often. It holds our old checkbooks, of course, so you'd think I'd open the drawer from time to time, but after I got cancer, I gave up balancing checkbooks. Numbers had never been my friends, and as it appeared that my days themselves could be numbered, I didn't want to spend a single one of them fooling around with numbers.

Besides, Paul can extract square roots in his head. He does our accounts on Quicken. And he loves his Turbo-Tax. "It's the most challenging computer game in the world," I've often heard him say. "If you play it right, you get money back. If you play it wrong, you go to jail."

H &R Block and I? We love that in a man.

I sat cross-legged on the rug, pulled open the drawer and began to paw through its contents. I found checkbooks going back to 1985, the deed to our house, titles to the cars; and in the back, held together by a green rubber band, were Emily's report cards from elementary school. In kindergarten, I noted, my daughter "played well with others." She still did, I mused. There was a lot to be said for that.

Why Paul would want to hold on to a deed to one square inch of land in Alaska from a 1950s Ralston cereal promotion was completely beyond me, but underneath our precious toehold in the Klondike, I found what I was looking for: a fat brown folder marked, in Paul's neat square capitals, INSURANCE.

Inside there were pockets for House, Car, and Life, and an empty, achingly optimistic pocket labeled "Boat." I pulled an accordion-like document with my name on it out of the "Life" pocket, unfolded and read it through, including the fine print.

If I died tomorrow, Paul would be a quarter of a million dollars richer. He could buy that boat, I thought, and a nice one, too, although I prayed he would wait a decent amount of time before allowing some other woman to lounge about the bow in her tankini like a hood ornament.

I tucked the insurance documents into my handbag, then wandered upstairs to put the rest of my outfit together.

What's appropriate when bartering with strangers for one's life? I decided on a lime green frock with splashes of white because it gave me a demure, slightly vapid look. I wiggled into some panty hose, then buckled on a pair of white-white sandals with two-inch heels and tottered over to the Imari dish on my dresser where I keep my hair ornaments. I selected a rhinestone-encrusted bobby pin and slid it into the cluster of curls over my right ear.

I was done.

No I wasn't. A vision of my life insurance policy poking out of that lumpy brown leather object presently masquerading as a handbag in my entrance hall sent me back to the closet for a small white clutch that had once belonged to my mother. I pulled out the spaghetti-thin strap that was tucked inside and suspended the bag from my shoulder. I minced over to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of our bathroom door to check the results. If my sister Ruth could see me now, she'd be laughing her caftan off: Mary Tyler Moore, circa 1965, on her way to make life miserable for Alan Brady.

I certainly hoped so.

I drive an old LeBaron, an orchid-colored convertible that I wouldn't trade for anything-unless a sweet deal on a vintage Mercedes 450SL happened to come along. Making the most of a beautiful day, I cranked down the top and let the wind run riot through my hair as I sped north on Ritchie Highway as fast as traffic would allow.