The Piper

TWO




Olivia was barely aware when the movers arrived at nine forty-five a.m. instead of eight, and though she was a veteran mover and knew better, she supervised very loosely while they loaded the furniture and boxes. They were grateful for the Gatorade (electrolytes), the bananas (potassium for muscle support) and cashews (protein) that she always provided. They worked up a serious sweat and took smoke breaks, and, as usual, never stopped for lunch. By six p.m. the house was dirty, empty, echoing.

Olivia did her final walk through, with her phone jammed into the front pocket of her jeans, where it had sat, silent and uncomfortable, all day.

She had kept the phone line open for an hour last night before she hung up. Then she’d checked the record of incoming calls. It had been there, twelve twelve p.m., lodged, inexplicably, as voice mail. No number to trace.

The Mister Man.

Olivia was upstairs in Teddy’s empty bedroom when she heard the front door open and Teddy shout for Winston. She headed down the stairs, smiling hard.

Teddy’s khaki shorts were crumpled and stained with something orange, little round glasses loose on her nose, fine brown hair limp from the heat. Her toes were dusty in the sandals, and she had a Nancy Drew book tucked under one arm. Right now it was The Secret of the Old Clock.

‘The truck’s gone, Mommy. How come you didn’t call? I’m hungry and Dr Amelia’s taking us to the Wolf Creek Grill. I ate a bite of Winston’s dog chow. It really wasn’t bad.’

‘I promise you she got to the dog chow before I could stop her.’ The red of Amelia’s hair had a harsh glint, like a bad dye job, though Olivia knew Amel paid several hundred dollars a month for that particular shade. Her eyes were brown, slanty and kind, and she wore black cat glasses on a chain around her neck.

Olivia had toyed with the idea of going red herself, maybe a rich auburn instead of her natural color of mud brown, but constant coloring was expensive so she settled for blonde streaks when she was in funds. She kept her hair shoulder length and layered to set off the rounded shape of her face, the Kewpie doll lips. On good days she looked at that face in the mirror and thought Botticelli angel. On bad days she thought fat.

Amelia had changed out of the usual white coat and scrubs into blue jeans and a tee. She was a physician’s assistant with her own practice in conjunction with a family services clinic in Valencia, and she had been Teddy’s pediatrician since the Los Angeles move.

‘Teddy and I stopped and got your last bit of mail. Don’t let me forget to give it to you.’ Amelia patted the green crocodile purse slung over one shoulder. ‘It’s in the bag. So, are you hungry? Did you even eat today?’

‘I had a mustard sandwich for lunch. Teddy, did you thank Dr Amelia for letting you hang out at her office all day?’

Teddy was shy around moving men. Packing up the house always upset her.

‘Thank me?’ Amelia said. ‘I should be thanking her. She organized my store room, sorted and threw away all the old magazines, then curled up and read her book for the rest of the day. If I’d known how useful she was, I’d have kidnapped her a long time ago.’

Olivia gave Amelia a grateful look. Things had been going badly with Teddy since the divorce. Badly enough to scare both Olivia and Hugh into setting their inevitable hostilities aside, so they could present a united front.

The most infuriating thing was the lies – not big ones, defiant ones. When it came to the big stuff, Teddy seemed to have the strong moral center she’d had since she was a little girl. No, the lies she told were stupid ones. Obvious ones. Like a little girl begging to get caught. Things like eating cookies for breakfast and saying she’d had toast and jelly, when there were Oreo crumbs spilling down her shirt. Or saying that Hugh had given her permission to pour beer into Winston’s water bowl.

Hugh and Olivia had instituted the policy of same rules, both households, had sat down together all three of them to explain all boundaries.

Teddy had responded by ignoring her work at school – going so far as to stand on the back of the toilets in the girls’ restroom after lunch every day, folding her arms and refusing to come out, much less do her school work. Teddy was doing things that made Olivia want to laugh and punish her at the same time. My outrageous daughter was what Hugh called her now. But even when Olivia and Hugh laughed, they knew it wasn’t good.

‘Teddy, take Winston out, okay? He needs to pee.’ Olivia waited till the sliding doors opened and closed. ‘Amelia, what’s wrong? You’ve smeared all your mascara off. And there are wads of tissues hanging out of your pocket.’

‘Maybe I’ve known you too long,’ Amelia said. Olivia was famous for leaving a trail of tissues wherever she went. ‘And couldn’t I just be sad because my best friend is moving all the way to Tennessee? Or tired because you called and woke me up in the middle of the night?’

‘Why don’t you just set that shit on fire and tell me what’s up?’

Amelia tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Marianne Butler. More fluid in the lungs and Alexis and Jack won’t let her go. They want another round of chemo while Marianne gags like a baby fish on a hook. Don’t ever let anybody tell you drowning is painless.’

Olivia squeezed Amelia’s hand. Little Marianne Butler, in and out of hospitals with leukemia for most of the three short years of her life, haunted Amelia in her dreams.

Amelia and Marianne’s mother, Alexis, had been college room-mates, together during all the major milestones, graduation, Alexis marrying Jack, Amelia opening her practice. Four years ago they’d gone to Santa Barbara for a couples weekend, Alexis and Jack, Amelia and Brandon, for a miraculous forty-eight hours that ended with two unplanned events – Amelia and Brandon in a spontaneous wedding resulting in a marriage that lasted eighteen months, and the conception of Marianne.

Olivia had learned to slough off the little geysers of envy when she saw Amelia and Alexis together. A friendship, lasting through the years, stronger than your average marriage, was not an option for a nomad like herself.

‘Look, let’s skip dinner. You go ahead to the hospital, Amel.’

‘I can’t do it anymore, Livie. I won’t. Alexis is a brick wall when I try and talk to her about it, Jack is a zombie, and the oncology team is dead set on prolonging the agony – there’s nothing I can do. Let’s go have dinner and a drink. Or two.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘We absolutely have to talk. I’ve been googling all afternoon. I’ll tell you over dinner, Livie, but there are entire websites devoted to this stuff.’

‘This stuff?’

‘Phone calls from the dead.’