Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“I’m not teasing,” Laura said. “Stu says they’re screening The Right Time sometime this week. Rocky’s sure to be there. I can easily make a call or two and find out where and when. Pring was supposed to let me know, but Stu says he’s out of town courting some money guys for a new movie. The production office will still be open. They’ll give us some passes. That is, they would if your mother would let you stay for a few days.”

She dropped her eyes and fiddled with the silver bracelet that circled her thin wrist. I wanted, as I had wanted so many times in the past, to shake her until her perfect white teeth rattled.

“Mother…Mom…”

I took a deep breath. I was certainly not going to allow Pom to punish her for this flight. On the other hand, I could not let her be rewarded for it, either. Glynn was a responsible child, but I had a horror of her coming to think that running away was an answer. There had been too many flights, literal or figurative, in my life to allow her that notion. I knew the prices paid all around for them. But my heart hurt me, just the same. Damn Laura. Damn Pom. Damn Mommee.

“Not this time, Glynn,” I said firmly. “This isn’t a pleasure trip, remember? We’ve got to go home tomorrow. Your father is already fit to be tied, and there’s nobody with Mommee. Show him you can be grown up about things this time and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t let you come back and visit Aunt Laura before school starts.”

“But Rocky MacPherson—”

“Rocky MacPherson is the very last reason on the face of this earth I would let you stay in California, Glynn. I don’t want to hear any more about him, or this. Aunt Laura spoke before she thought.”

I gave Laura a long, level stare and she gave me her three-cornered kitten’s smile in return. Stuart Feinstein studied the contents of his glass with interest.

“I think I’ll go to bed. I’m very tired. Excuse me, please,” Glynn said, her voice shaking, and walked with absurd and touching dignity out of the room. I heard her steps climbing stairs somewhere off to the right. All of a sudden I felt old, as old as Mommee, as old as the world. Old and dull and inflexible and…all right, mean. And tired within an inch of death.

“Good work, Laura,” I said.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” my sister said. “You ought to lighten up on her, Met. You could lose her if you keep treating her like a prisoner.”

“Do tell me where you acquired your child-rearing expertise,” I said, suddenly furious with her.

“Not, apparently, the same place you acquired yours.”

The old sullen petulance was in her voice.

“I managed to keep you fed and clothed and out of jail for a lot of years,” I said.

We stared at each other.

“It’s late. I’ve got to be getting back,” Stuart Feinstein said, rising painfully. He seemed for a moment to totter. Laura broke the stare and turned to him, putting her arms around him.

“No way am I letting you drive all the way back tonight,” she said. “Met and I will save our fight for tomorrow; it’s nothing new. It’s been going on for thirty-odd years now. We know the rules. You can have the couch. I’ll even give you the mink throw. I’ll make you cinnamon toast for breakfast and you can go back after that. Please, old Pooper. I just can’t worry about you passing out on the road tonight.”

“I’ll take you up on it, if you dollbabies will stop fighting,” he said, giving us the sweet smile. “You’re too precious and pretty to fight. Merritt, did anyone ever tell you you looked like Kay Kendall? She was an English actress, very classy. Used to be married to Rex Harrison. An offbeat beauty with such a nose, and a smile that could melt your fillings. You’ve got both of them. You’re far too pretty a dollbaby to fight with this bad child.”

“I’ll stop if she will,” I said, managing to smile at him. Even ravaged with illness, his charm was enormous. “I need to sleep more than I need to fight. Where am I sleeping, Laura? Not, I hope, in the room with Camille up there.”

“No. I’ll sleep on the other bed in her room. You take mine. It’s the first door at the top of the stairs. I need to get up early, anyway, and you need to sleep a little. If you’re set on the noon plane you can zonk in till about eight.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I’d better call Pom and get it over with. I’m surprised he hasn’t called four hundred times by now. Is there a phone upstairs?”

“There is, but why don’t you wait until morning? It’s one A.M. in Atlanta now. And he may have called; I turned off the answering machine and the phone bell. Glynn was spooked bad enough as it was.”

“Oh, shit, Laura,” I said. “Now he’s going to think that we’ve all three run away or been ax murdered or something. But you’re right. I forgot the time difference. He’s got early pediatric clinic in the morning. He’ll be asleep by now. Wake me when you get up. I need to get that over with.”

“I will,” she said. “You go on up. I want to talk to Stu a little while longer.”

The last thing I heard as I climbed her deep-carpeted stairs into darkness was my sister’s melted-butter voice saying, “Now, tell me everything you know about Pring. Don’t leave anything out.”

I didn’t call Pom the next morning for the simple reason that Amy Crittenden called me first. Laura came and shook me awake at six A.M.

“Grendel’s Mother is on the telephone for you,” she said.

“Who?”

“The snottiest woman I ever heard in my life. She says she’s Pom’s secretary, but I doubt it. He’d have fired her years ago.”

“Oh, God. Amy,” I sighed, and reached for the phone on Laura’s bedside table.

“Hello, Amy,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “I’m sorry you had to call. I was going to call in a little while.”

“Well, I wish you had thought to do it last night, Merritt,” she said in her long-suffering tone. I wondered if Pom really heard her anymore. Laura was right; he’d have had to fire her.

“Sorry. It was so late there when we got in that I thought I’d let Pom sleep,” I said. “What’s up?”

“You could have called any time. Doctor hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours. Neither one of us has. His mother was terribly agitated, and your housekeeper declined to come in on her day off. Doctor was so distraught that he called me. I was glad to come, of course. He absolutely must have his sleep; we have pediatrics this morning, I expect you know. He asked me to call you and find out if everything is all right. You simply cannot imagine how worried he has been, what with his daughter running off like that, and then you, and his poor mother—”

“Yes, I’ll bet he was,” I said, idiot laughter tugging suddenly at my mouth.

“Well, Doctor has some messages for you,” she went on briskly, after waiting a space for the apology that did not come.

“I’ll bet he does. Shoot, Amy,” I said, gulping back the laughter.

“The first is that he has you and Glynn booked on Delta’s noon flight out of Los Angeles today. The tickets are waiting for you at the counter. The second is that you’re to come straight to the clinic on your way from the airport. We had to bring his mother with us this morning; he simply could not spare me another day, and of course it was out of the question that he stay home with her. She has been terribly disruptive; we have had to lock her in the children’s playroom, I’m afraid. Two of the nurses are with her, but she is upsetting the children no end, and of course we cannot spare the nurses indefinitely.”

“Where on earth is Ina?” I said, the picture of Mommee commandeering rocking horses and dolls from tearful toddlers threatening to undo me completely.