Beth Harbison - Head Over Heels

“So you’ve known him since high school, right? Mr. Bailey, I mean.”

“Yes, why?”

Grace stirred her tea thoughtfully. “I was just wondering why he never got married.” But she was really thinking, again, of Luke. How come he hadn’t gotten married? Was he going to end up like Mr. Bailey, a lifelong bachelor in Blue Moon Bay?

“I couldn’t say,” Dot answered, looking out the window. “Looks like Jimmy’s having a good time with the Bonds’ old spaniel out there.”

Grace took a cookie off the plate her mother had set out. “He loves dogs.”

“Maybe you should get him one.”

“Mom! I can barely take care of the two of us as it is, despite Michael’s meager monthly payments.” It was then that it truly hit her. She had to take care of herself and her son, and if things continued the way they were, she wasn’t going to be able to. She’d have to…she didn’t even know what she’d have to do. Go on welfare? She shuddered at the thought. “What if I could find a job as a cocktail waitress or something over in Ocean City? Do you think you could keep Jimmy at night?”

Dot frowned. “I don’t want to say no to you, honey, but…well, I sometimes have things to do in the evenings. I just can’t commit to staying home according to your schedule.” She assumed a pleasant expression and added, “But, as I told you, he’s welcome to stay with me any time during the day.”

Grace swallowed her shock. Though she wouldn’t say she’d ever been spoiled, exactly, and she’d always been careful not to take advantage of her mother, at the same time she never thought her mother would say no to her. Especially on something as important as this.

But Grace was well aware that Dot had already been very generous in letting her daughter and grandson move in with her. Grace wasn’t going to argue for more. “Do we still have today’s newspaper?” she asked, trying to sound upbeat, although she felt anything but. “Maybe there’s something there that I overlooked before.”

Right. Like a classified ad offering a miracle to the most desperate candidate. Now there, Grace thought wryly, was a position she definitely was qualified for. High qualified.

* * *

“So what’s she doing at night that she can’t reschedule?” Jenna Perkins asked Grace a few nights later. After an unproductive week of job-hunting, Grace had reached the end of her rope. She had to get out. Now she and Jenna were in a crowded downtown bar called Harley’s, shouting to each other over the throbbing beat of a terrible band. Jenna was Grace’s oldest friend and had once shared Grace’s dream of leaving Blue Moon Bay, but she had stayed when the time came to decide. In reflection, it seemed like the better choice. She’d married a carpenter and had twins two years after Grace had Jimmy.

“Think she’s got a secret life you don’t know about?” Jenna went on, then raised an eyebrow. “Maybe a boyfriend?”

Grace laughed. “I don’t think so. Can you imagine it? Mom dating? Good lord!” She shook her head and reached for the peanuts. “Like life hasn’t gotten weird enough as it is.”

“Ten years is a long time to be alone,” Jenna said lightly. “And your mom’s a very attractive woman.”

“Come off it, Jenna. She’s known everyone in this town for sixty-three years. I don’t think anyone new has come in to sweep her off her feet.”

Jenna shrugged. “You never know.”

“You said you had a great job idea,” Grace reminded her, steering the conversation away from her mother. “What is it?”

“Well, you know how I was working in my dad’s shop last month when he and Mom went on that cruise?”

“Sure, I remember.” Jenna’s father was the only jeweler in Blue Moon Bay, and his shop had been there since his own father had established it in the forties. “What do you have in mind? Knocking off a jewelry shop and pawning the stuff at your dad’s?” Grace laughed.

Jenna laughed with her. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no, there was a woman who came in like three times while I was working, and she must have spent at least three grand just on big tacky rings and things. Know what she does for a living?”

“What?”

“She reads tarot cards.”

Grace groaned. “Oh, no, you want to be a fortune teller?”

“Wait a minute, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I think I could make a mint off the summer tourists. Probably even enough to keep us going the rest of the year, if that woman is any indication. Although she did say she works in Atlantic City, which, granted, has a bit more tourist traffic. But still, I might be able to make a living off it.”

“Right. You, Bob and the twins, all living off the telling of nineteen people’s fortunes.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“There are more tourists in Blue Moon Bay than that and you know it. The town’s going to be mobbed in a couple of weeks, just you wait.”

“Mobbed by Blue Moon Bay standards, anyway.” Since leaving town, Grace had seen “mobbed” on a grand scale. Atlantic City in summer. Walt Disney World in summer. Blue Moon Bay did get a fair amount of tourists and beach-goers, but its reputation as a family-beach town kept the wild singles and college kids away. They went to Ocean City, forty miles from here, for their fun, leaving Blue Moon Bay comparatively quiet. “But it’s not like it’s going to be mobbed with the kind of people who go to fortune tellers.”

“ Everyone likes fortune tellers. You should do it too,” Jenna went on, unperturbed. “Say thirty bucks a reading, two readings an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week, that’s…” She paused, thinking.

“Unlikely?” Grace supplied.

She shot Grace a look. “Thirty-six hundred bucks a week, right? With virtually no overhead. I could live with that.” She shifted on her barstool, nearly slipping off. The bartender approached and she shouted an order to him, then turned back to Grace and said, “Now where was I?”

“Dreaming.”

“No.” Jenna speared an olive from the bartender’s supply with a toothpick, then popped it into her mouth. “Tarot cards. Seriously, think about it.”

“How about if you try it and let me know how it works out. In the meantime, I’m going to find a real job.”

“Well, you haven’t so far. I would think you’d be willing to at least consider some untraditional alternative possibilities.”

“You’d be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.

Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.

“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”

Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”

“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”

Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”

“But you are back home.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.

She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.