Marcia Talley - Occasion of Revenge

“So do I, Ruth. I invited him, but he said he had other plans.”

Ruth stood. “Right. Urgent business in Chestertown.”

I looked at my sister and said what I knew she must be thinking. “I wonder if he’s decorating Darlene’s tree tonight.”

Ruth shrugged.

“With-who is it?-Darwin and Deirdre?”

“Darryl,” Ruth corrected. “Darryl and Deirdre.”

“The Darling D’s,” Paul added. He set the tea tray down on top of the piano and drew Ruth to him in a one-armed hug.

“Darling?” Ruth ducked out from under Paul’s arm and turned to face him. “Darling? Try dreadful, Paul. Or how about dangerous?”

I could tell by the look on his face that Paul didn’t want to go there. “Tea?” He smiled, teeth gleaming, and gestured toward the tray.

“I need something stronger than tea tonight.” She peeled off a Kaffe Fassett design I knew she had knit with her own two hands, laid it across the arm of the sofa, then fell onto the cushions, her legs sticking straight out in front of her. “How about a scotch on the rocks?”

While Paul went off to fix Ruth’s drink, I moved empty boxes off the chair opposite my older sister and sat down in it. “What makes you think Darlene’s dangerous?”

“Are you kidding, Hannah?” She sat up and leaned toward me, elbows resting on her knees. “Three men walked down the aisle with that hussy and none has lived to tell the tale.”

Paul returned, carrying a tumbler full of crushed ice and a generous measure of scotch. “Your slushee, madame.” It was ironic that none of us would have drunk like this around Daddy.

Ruth took a sip, smiled a thank-you to Paul, then looked directly at me, her eyes like coal. “I don’t want Daddy to be Number Four.”

“Neither do I, at least not until we’ve had a chance to check Darlene out thoroughly.”

Holding her glass in both hands, Ruth took another sip of her drink, then melted into the cushions. “So, what do you suggest?”

“I’ve already searched the Internet for Darlene Tinsley.”

“And?”

“Nothing much, except her name appeared in the register of the Chestertown Garden Club. Then I tried just plain Tinsley and there were so many hits the blasted computer froze up on me.”

Paul balanced himself on an arm of the sofa and raised his mug in a mock toast. “Thank you, Bill Gates.” He took a sip of tea. “How about the son, Darryl? Didn’t your father say he worked at McGarvey’s?”

“Yes.” I felt my face redden with embarrassment. “I even stopped by McGarvey’s to talk to him. I told the guy at the bar I was Darryl’s aunt, but he’s taken a week off. He’s on a ski trip out west somewhere. Won’t be back until Monday.”

“And darling Deirdre?”

I glared at my sister. “Ruth, get a grip. Deirdre could be a perfectly nice woman.”

Ruth gave me an I-don’t-care shrug and concentrated on her drink.

“But I couldn’t find her, either. Directory assistance doesn’t list her in Bowie and the university, as you might expect, is not in the home telephone number sharing business.”

Paul set his mug down on the end table. “I have a radical idea! Why not just ask your father?”

“I did,” I said, a bit miffed that he’d think I hadn’t already thought of that.

“So did I,” Ruth added.

“Paul, Daddy doesn’t know any more about Darlene’s past husbands than we do. He says that any time he mentions the subject, Darlene gets all choked up and teary-eyed. It’s just too, too hard to talk about.”

“Convenient.”

“Maybe so, but he feels sorry for the woman and isn’t about to push it.”

Paul looked thoughtful. “Except for Tinsley, we don’t even know their last names, do we? It’s not common knowledge…” He drew an exaggerated breath. “… like Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Kotinsky.”

I applauded appreciatively. “Very good! I doubt I could dredge that up out of my creaky database!”

“Before you go handing out any medals, I have to confess I saw it on A and E the other night.”

“Nut!” I beamed at my husband, loving his crooked smile, his bright, intelligent eyes, and the unruly way his hair, slightly gray as if touched by frost, curled over the tips of his ears.

“Earth to Hannah.” Ruth punched my arm.

“Uh, what I was going to say is that I asked my librarian friend, Penny, at Whitworth and Sullivan to run a search on the name Darlene Tinsley in the newspaper databases-”

“And?” Ruth interrupted.

“Nexis turned up nothing. And nothing for Darryl or Deirdre, either.”

“You guys plotting again?” It was Emily, holding Chloe, pink from her bath and stuffed like a plump sausage into a blue-footed sleeper with Winnie-the-Pooh appliquéd on her chest.

I rose and gathered Chloe, slightly damp and smelling of Johnson’s Baby Powder, into my arms.

“How old’s this Darryl guy, anyway?” Emily asked.

“Twenty-five.” I kissed the top of Chloe’s head and felt a twinge. Emily had smelled just this way as a baby.

Emily, the grown-up, smiled. “Why don’t you leave Darryl to me?”

Paul hugged his daughter, then took her chin in his hand and looked directly into her eyes. “Poor schnook will never know what hit him.”

Emily shrugged. “Proud to do my bit for God and country.” She held her arms out for Chloe. “Say good night to your grandma and grandpa and Auntie Ruth.”

Anchored firmly in Emily’s arms and swaying from side to side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Chloe planted sloppy kisses on cheeks all around before Emily took her upstairs to bed. Paul watched them disappear before turning to me. “Motherhood has certainly agreed with Emily, hasn’t it?”

I couldn’t argue with that. “It’s like a miracle. Last Sunday in church I was saying to myself, Lord, I don’t know who this young woman is, but I think we’ll keep her.”

Ruth balanced her glass on the arm of the sofa. “Maybe she left the evil twin back in Colorado?”

“Emily was never evil, Ruth. Just difficult.”

“You call running away from home for months and months at a time ‘difficult’?”

I sighed. “That’s all in the past.”

“Following that rock group?”

Thankfully Emily bounced back into the room just then, saving us from further Ruth-isms. We finished decorating, then sat back and relaxed, listening to the music, admiring the tree, and enjoying the cozy warmth of the fire as it burned ever lower in the grate. Ruth finished off a third scotch on the rocks and was so limp-limbed and mellow that when the time came, Paul had to drive her back to Providence in her own car, with me following.

Back at home, lying in the darkened bedroom next to my husband with a midnight showing of Stalag 17 casting flickering shadows on the wallpaper, he asked, “Think Ruth’s going to be OK?”

“Of course. I gave her a bottle of water and watched while she took two aspirins. Couldn’t get her out of her clothes, though.” I ran my hand slowly down Paul’s arm. “She might be moving a little sluggishly in the morning.”

“Come here, sweetheart,” growled the Humphrey Bogart of Prince George Street.

Sometime later, we fell asleep with the TV on.

When the telephone rang, I struggled to open my eyes. On the screen, Lenny Briscoe sat opposite Mike Logan in Law & Order , pawing through some papers on his desk. Why doesn’t he answer his damn phone? I patted around the covers, feeling for the remote, found it, and clicked off the TV.

But the phone kept ringing.

Three-oh-five. Shit! Nobody ever calls at that hour unless it’s bad news. In the seconds before I picked up the receiver I remember thinking, Thank goodness Emily is safe in her bed . I prayed it would be a wrong number. A kid. A prank. “Hello?”