Pawns Read online

Teddi walked quietly, so as not to disturb her, and gathered up her supplies.

  There was a package of pork chops defrosting on the drain board when she entered the kitchen. Two chops. Teddi hesitated, then opened the freezer and got out another package. There would be three for supper now.

  The upper bedroom wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it might be to put in order, though it was awkward reassembling the bed by herself. Under other circumstances she’d have asked Mamie to come up and help haul the springs and mattress onto the frame, but she kept remembering how Mamie had looked when she had gone to her room to rest. Much older than only a few hours earlier, certainly.

  Teddi didn’t know for sure just how old Mamie was. In her early fifties, probably. The shock of having Dora show up on her doorstep had momentarily aged her beyond that. At least Teddi hoped it would be momentary.

  She had to make several trips up and down the stairs. Once for the vacuum cleaner, to get rid of the dust. Then for the mop to wipe off the linoleum that covered the floor. And again for sheets for the bed.

  She had brought her own bedding when she’d moved from next door, but it was on the bed downstairs, in the room where Dora was resting. She didn’t have another bedspread. Maybe she’d be able to get it later and put Ricky’s old spread in its place.

  It wasn’t very homey in the attic room. There was Sheetrock on the walls, but it had never been papered or painted. She’d have to bring her clothes up, out of the dresser and the closet downstairs, but there wasn’t much of any place to hang them or put them away, she thought. She might have to pound some nails into the unfinished walls in lieu of a closet, and maybe the old radio would serve as a place to put stacks of underwear.

  The windows were the last thing she cleaned. One of them looked out on the street, the other over the house that for most of her life had been her home.

  She stood at that window for a time, remembering.

  There had been good times, before her mother got sick. Some people got cancer and died very quickly. It had taken her mom a long time. There hadn’t been many good times then. No more games or reading together, or just sharing confidences. The chemo made her mom so sick much of the time that she hadn’t been up to doing much of anything. Teddi had prayed and prayed that her mother would get well, but it hadn’t happened.

  Sometimes, when the pastor or a church member had visited her, Mom had smiled and seemed a little better for a few hours. But the pain always came back; she had grown weaker and weaker, less and less interested in whatever was going on with anything outside her bedroom.

  Teddi could see into that room now, because the curtains had been taken down when the room was painted before the house was put on the market. The second floor of that house was on the same level as this attic room at Mamie’s. The soft blue carpet was still there. Blue had been Gloria Stuart’s favorite color. She had been buried wearing her favorite blue dress. It had been much too big for her, since she had wasted away during the time she was sick, but the funeral director had arranged it so that it didn’t seem grotesquely large.

  Teddi swallowed the lump in her throat that remembering the funeral always brought, and was turning away from the window when a yellow truck pulled into the driveway next door.

  It was one of those trucks that people rent to move their household goods.

  As her attention was caught by the new arrival, her recollection of her mother in the flower-shrouded coffin, so pale and unnatural looking, began to fade. She didn’t want to remember the funeral. Even after four and a half months, it was still incredibly vivid and painful. She pressed her face against the clean glass to see better.

  A man got out of the truck, a rather husky figure in blue jeans and a work shirt. A moment later he was joined by a woman, also in jeans with a flaming orange shirt, and together they went up the steps to the front door. They had a key to open it.

  Teddi knew the place had been sold. The realtor had reported that to Mamie. The deal hadn’t gone through yet, because the new family needed to get a mortgage, but they also needed to move as soon as possible, so they’d arranged to pay rent for a month or two.

  Mamie said that when it sold, Teddi might get a little money out of it. Not much, though, because there were bills to settle first, and the Stuarts hadn’t owned the house free and clear. Because of the way her father had died four months ago, only a few weeks after his wife’s death, there hadn’t been any money from his life insurance, so even a small sum would be welcome. The social services agency paid Mamie to keep Teddi as a foster child, but there were things like shoes and clothes that Teddi needed and didn’t think she could ask for. When the house money came, she hoped it would be enough to take care of things like that.

  As she watched, a car drove in beside the truck. The driver—who got out, stretched, then opened the back door for a couple of younger children—looked to be in his midteens. Sixteen, anyway, because he couldn’t have gotten a driver’s license before that age.

  He was slim hipped, with somewhat bony, wide shoulders under a black T-shirt with some sort of motto on it. From her angle, Teddi couldn’t make out what it was.

  There was a little girl of about ten, and another of maybe seven. A family. A nice, happy family, Teddi guessed. She wondered if they would be happy in her old home, or if they, too, might face tragedy as the Stuarts had.

  At the moment, there was no sadness. The girls were laughing as they walked toward the house. Then the little one ran back to the car and hauled out a small suitcase, bumping it down to the ground.

  “Jason! Come help me!” she yelled.

  His name was Jason.

  “Teddi! Are you up there?”

  She heard her own name and turned away from the window. For a moment she felt a touch of warmth, of pleasure in the knowledge that someone who looked pleasant was moving into the house that had stood vacant since the night she had found her father’s body.

  Probably the realtor hadn’t told them about Stan Stuart killing himself in the garage. It wouldn’t have been a selling point for the house.

  “Teddi?” Mamie called again.

  “I’m coming,” Teddi called back, and started down the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, her fears were once more prickling along her spine.

  Chapter 3

  “Did you have a good nap?” Teddi asked as she emerged from the bottom of the stairs.

  Mamie stared at her over the basket of lettuce she’d brought in from the garden. “Nap? Oh, dear Lord, I didn’t sleep, child! How could I sleep?”

  She led the way into the kitchen and started water running into the sink to wash the lettuce. “I made some iced tea; I thought we could have some before we get supper started. Sit down, Teddi, so we can talk.”

  There were two tall frosty glasses on the table, and a plate of sugar cookies. Another glass, empty, acknowledged the third presence in the house now. When Dora showed up, she would know she’d been expected.

  Teddi sank into a chair and took a sip of the tea as Mamie whisked the greens through the water and set them to drain in a colander before she joined Teddi at the table.

  “I can hardly form a coherent thought,” Mamie said, “before another one pushes it out. I don’t know if you can imagine . . .” She pushed back a wisp of hair and sighed. She was obviously very tired, yet there was an undercurrent of excitement, too. “I knew Ned and Leah weren’t planning to have a family, even before Ned got hurt in that car wreck. Now with all the reconstructive surgery he’s having, the expense will be another reason why they can’t afford a family. And they’re both too career-oriented, anyway. But I’d hoped Ricky might eventually give me grandchildren. And then, when they called to tell me he’d been on that plane. . . . That was one of the things I thought about, you know. Not only that Ricky was . . . gone, but that there would never be any grandchildren.”

  She sipped at her tea and reached for a cookie, which she didn’t eat but left lying on a napkin, picking at the edges of it so that it crumbled.


  If I ever have any kids, Teddi reflected, they won’t have any grandparents. Maybe Mamie would fill in for them.

  “And now,” Mamie said, “this. Dora. It’s almost a miracle, isn’t it? Not only do I have another daughter-in-law, but she’s pregnant. I suppose I should tell Ned, but he has so many problems right now, maybe it’s better to wait.” She sat, clearly pondering an uncertain future.

  Teddi cleared her throat. “It seems funny Ricky didn’t let you know he’d gotten married and that they were expecting a baby.”

  “Oh, that’s disappointing, yes. But he was never a very good writer. When he went to camp, when he was nine or ten, the only postcard I got was the one they made him write. And the time he got banged up in that motorcycle accident just after he went to San Diego, when he was hospitalized for five days, he didn’t have anyone let me know. And even the good things . . . Ricky didn’t always communicate. Did I ever tell you about the trophy he won his last year in high school? For academic excellence! And he never mentioned it! I found it in his room after graduation. Of course, if I hadn’t been sick the night of the ceremony, I’d have been there when they presented it to him, I suppose. I felt so bad that I missed his graduation, especially since his father was no longer alive to go. But I was down with the flu.”

  Mamie laughed a little, fondly, remembering her younger son. “I thought all the possibilities were gone, Teddi, and now I’m going to have a grandson. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Dutifully, Teddi nodded, glad that Mamie seemed happy, happier than she had been.

  “I wonder if he’ll look like Ricky? He was such a pretty baby. Big dark eyes and always plenty of hair, even when he was born.”

  “Is Dora still sleeping? She must have been very tired.”

  “She was dead to the world when I peeked in on her a few minutes ago. She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

  Again Teddi murmured assent. A part of her was alert for any sound from the bedroom that had, until a few hours ago, been hers.

  “I’m sorry we had to move you upstairs,” Mamie said. “Was it an awful mess up there?”

  “Not too bad. I got the bed up and the dust off things. I don’t have anywhere to put my clothes, though, when I move them.”

  “Why don’t you take that clothes rack out of the laundry room? We can get by without it. Maybe we can find a dresser at a garage sale; everybody’s having them right now. Keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anything.”

  That suggested that Dora moving in didn’t necessarily mean that Teddi would have to find somewhere else to go. Teddi relaxed, but only fractionally. The situation was still too tense. Who knew what Mamie might think when she’d had time to consider all the possibilities?

  Teddi had no family anywhere except three elderly aunts she scarcely knew, living hundreds of miles away in Utah. If she left Mamie’s, it meant going to an unknown foster home.

  They drank their tea, each of them deep in her own thoughts, and then they worked together to fix supper. Mamie thanked her with a smile for getting out the extra chops. They scrubbed potatoes for baking, made a salad, and Mamie sent Teddi out to pull up a few baby carrots for steaming.

  Teddi was setting the table—in the dining room, as for a special occasion—when Dora finally showed up. They heard her go into the bathroom first, and then she came padding out in her stocking feet, red marks of sleep still on one side of her face.

  “I hope you had a good nap,” Teddi said uncertainly.

  “Oh, wonderful. If I hadn’t had to go to the bathroom, I probably would still be asleep,” Dora confessed. “Now I’m feeling hungry.”

  “It’ll be about twenty minutes, I think. The meat and potatoes are in the oven.”

  “It sure smells good. Will it be okay if I sit in the living room and watch TV?”

  “Sure. Help yourself.”

  Teddi went back to the kitchen for napkins. “She’s up now,” she said.

  Mamie had her head in the refrigerator. “Good. I hope she’s feeling better. Do you think we should have cottage cheese, too? Maybe with pineapple stirred into it?”

  They had never, since Teddi had been here, had their cottage cheese jazzed up with pineapple.

  They took their places a short time later, with Dora across from Teddi, and Mamie in her customary chair at the end of the table. The aroma drifting up from the chop platter was mouthwatering.

  Dora smiled. “Oh, this looks so good!”

  Mamie nodded. “Let’s bless it, and then we’ll dig in.”

  Obediently, Dora put her hands in her lap and bowed her head. But Teddi had the feeling the girl wasn’t used to saying grace.

  Mamie didn’t settle for the usual brief blessing, either. Instead she added, “And thank you, God, for sending Dora to us, and for the child she will soon have. May she deliver it safely, and have a healthy baby. In Jesus’ name, we ask. Amen.”

  Being pregnant must make an expectant mother extra hungry, Teddy thought as Dora loaded her plate and dug into her food. At one point she asked, “You only have the two bedrooms, then? Aside from the one nobody used, in the attic? Somehow, I pictured you living in a larger house.”

  “That’s right. Rick and Ned always shared the room you’re in now, so we never needed a third bedroom.”

  Teddi felt a twinge of something she couldn’t quite identify. Already it was Dora’s room, though she herself had not yet moved out of it.

  Dora cleaned her plate, then hesitated. “Does anyone want that last chop? I must seem an awful pig, but eating for two seems to do that to me.”

  “By all means,” Mamie told her, handing over the platter, “finish it off.”

  Teddi hadn’t wanted it, but for some reason she felt slightly uncomfortable about Dora finishing off two chops. It wasn’t as if two helpings of meat were out of line; in the very old days, when her mom was cooking their meals, her dad often had extra helpings.

  In the later stages of Gloria Stuart’s illness, many of their meals had consisted of toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, or take-out Chinese or chicken on better days. By that time her mother wasn’t interested in either eating or anyone else’s nutrition. It had been a joy to eat at Mamie’s table, where fruits and vegetables and even the chicken had all been home-cooked.

  Dora picked up the chop bone in her fingers to gnaw off the last of the meat, then daintily used her napkin. “That was terrific, Mamie. Ricky always said you were a fabulous cook. He wasn’t exaggerating.”

  Mamie smiled her pleasure. “Why don’t you go in the front room and relax now, Dora. Teddi and I will clear away.”

  As soon as they were finished in the kitchen, Teddi suggested that she use this opportunity to get as much of her stuff out of the downstairs bedroom as she could.

  “Good idea,” Mamie said, patting her shoulder. “Dora may want to go to bed early.”

  Teddi was about ready to go to bed, too, by the time she’d run up and down the stairs a dozen times. She lugged the hanging rack up from the laundry room and put her underclothes and T-shirts into paper bags for the time being. Luckily she didn’t have all that much to move; she had had new clothes over the past year or so only when she completely outgrew the old ones.

  Before what she planned as her final trip for the evening, Teddi went toward the living room to say good night, only to find herself in the middle of a conversation.

  “When is the baby due, Dora?” Mamie was asking.

  “Within the next week or two, I think. I’d expected to be able to make more preparations for him, but what with losing Ricky . . . well, I didn’t get very far.”

  Teddi, unnoticed in the doorway, thought, But Ricky only died two weeks ago. Why had she waited until she was a month from giving birth before she did anything? Didn’t people usually start making or buying baby clothes sooner than this?

  “I don’t have anything left from the boys, of course,” Mamie said. “I gave everything away years ago. We’ll have to start looking. Wha
t do you have?”

  “Nothing, really. Not even diapers. I’d hoped to use disposable ones; they’re so much easier, aren’t they? And of course I don’t have a crib.”

  “We’ll be watching garage sales to find a dresser for Teddi,” Mamie told her. “Maybe we can find a used crib, too.”

  “We were going to buy everything new, seeing that Danny would be our first.” Dora sounded wistful.

  Mamie laughed. “I don’t think we had a thing new when Ned and Ricky were born. Except for handmade gifts the church ladies brought us. The lucky thing about babies is that they don’t know the difference between new and used.”

  “I guess that’s true, isn’t it? Well, in the long run, I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t have much bought for the baby. I couldn’t possibly have carried it here with me on the bus, could I?”

  “Where did you come from, dear?” Mamie asked, and Teddi hovered, waiting for the answer.

  “Where did you last hear from Ricky?” Dora asked.

  “Oh, the letter was mailed in San Diego, I think. Is that where you were?”

  “Yes. We had an apartment there. I wouldn’t have come to you so quickly except that the rent was up on the first of the month, and I didn’t really feel I could afford to pay it for another month. We didn’t have much of anything in the bank, so I didn’t want to waste any of it. I can see now that I’ve been a shock to you. I should have written, but I couldn’t find your address in any of Ricky’s things. I just knew the town. I looked you up in the phone book when I got off the bus and I started to call, but then I thought it would be better just to come, as long as I was nearly here. I’m sorry if that turned out to be poor judgment.”

  “Well, it’s turned out all right. Ricky was working, wasn’t he?” There was a note of concern in Mamie’s voice. “He wrote to me quite a while ago that he’d gotten a job with a computer firm.”

  “Yes, he did, but they laid him off. He got another job, but not until he’d been out of work for about two months, so we got behind. It’s hard to save when the work isn’t steady, and you’re newly married and need to furnish a whole apartment.”