Pawns Page 4

  “Do I get the feeling you don’t like this Dora very much?” he asked bluntly.

  Teddi felt the heat in her face. “That makes me sound pretty . . . petty, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. We have a rule in our house: Nobody can pick up a book someone else is reading until the first person is finished with it. Mom says they almost came to blows about that when they were first married, because Dad would pick up anything lying around wherever she had left it open and start reading it. Then she’d either have to wait until he was through with it or feel guilty for demanding it back. Either way, she said it made her angry. Now she’s got a red leather bookmark, and if it’s in any book, the rest of us leave it alone.”

  “Sounds like a good system. I wish I’d thought of it and explained it to Dora yesterday,” Teddi said, feeling guilty.

  Three days later, she was still feeling guilty about one thing after another.

  She’d felt violated when she’d entered the bathroom—after waiting over half an hour while Dora took a long soak (were you supposed to do that when you were expecting a baby practically any minute?)—and then found the container empty when she went to pour out some of her favorite bubble bath.

  It was a bottle that had been her mother’s, one she’d always associated with the fragrance of her mom. She’d hoarded it, using it sparingly, because she didn’t have the money to buy any more. Teddi swallowed her disappointment and took a bath with plain old soap.

  Because she knew Mamie didn’t care for dirty dishes sitting around, she picked up the odd coffee cups and sandwich plates Dora left in the living room and disposed of her apple cores, including one that had stood overnight and was covered with ants when Teddi discovered it. There was a trail of them straight through from the kitchen that required getting out a can of insect spray.

  At least that time Mamie advised Dora it wasn’t safe to leave anything around that could draw ants, and Dora promised to be more careful.

  Teddi was cleaning up the kitchen after supper that evening when Dora came out for a drink of water, then stood watching as the younger girl wiped off counters and the stove.

  “How long have you lived with Mamie?” she asked.

  “About four months.” Teddi swallowed. “My mother died first, and then my dad. We lived next door, and I’d known Mamie for a long time.”

  “Did you know Ricky, too?”

  “Yes. He was a lot older than I was.”

  “And you were alone when your dad died? You don’t have any other family?”

  “No,” Teddi said around the lump in her throat. The old aunts didn’t count; she’d only met them a couple of times, and they’d never shown any interest in her.

  “I don’t have any family, either. My dad deserted us when I was a little girl, and then my mom was killed in a street accident. Run down when she was walking home from work.”

  Dora was making an effort to be friendly. It seemed only reasonable to be responsive.

  Teddi made herself think quickly, to sound friendly. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. I don’t have a soul except for Danny.” She rested a hand on her protruding belly. “And now Mamie. Thank God for Mamie. She’s a dear, generous person, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “I wish Ricky had told her about me. About us.”

  “It’s funny he didn’t,” Teddi said, then wondered if that was less than tactful.

  “He didn’t like writing letters,” Dora said, sighing. “How lucky for you, too, that Mamie took you in. So you intend to stay here? You won’t be moving on?”

  “I have nowhere else to go,” Teddi said, still fighting the lump.

  “We have something in common, then, don’t we?” Dora gave her a small smile. “We’re both alone. It’s a scary thing, to be alone, especially with a baby coming.”

  Once the kitchen was in order, they joined Mamie in the living room, where she was reading the paper. She put it down and smiled up at them.

  “It’s time we had a talk, don’t you think? I need to know details . . . how you and Ricky met, what your lives have been like. What he did during the past year or so, when I didn’t hear much from him.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I guess I should have tried to get him to write to you more, but I don’t have anyone to write letters to, and I just didn’t think about it.” Dora sank onto the couch. “You know what I’d really enjoy? Having you tell me all about Ricky as a little boy, as a young man. He never talked much about himself, and there are so many things I don’t know about. Do you have pictures of him when he was little? I never saw any pictures of how he looked before I met him.”

  “Actually, there are snapshots in that big album right over there,” Mamie said. “See, the dark red one. Why don’t I get it down, and we’ll sit on the couch, all three of us, and I’ll tell you about the pictures.”

  So they did. Mamie sat in the middle, turning the pages, pointing out her husband, Greg, then Ned as a baby, and then Ricky.

  Dora studied the studio portrait of Ricky when he was a year old. “I hope Danny looks like him,” she said softly. “He was so cute.”

  It seemed very strange to Teddi to sit looking at photographs of a child, and then a young man, who was no longer living. She wondered how Mamie could bear to do it, and then realized that there were tears running down Mamie’s cheeks, though her voice was steady. Her own eyes were blurry, too.

  Dora ran her fingers over Ricky’s first-grade school picture. “Thank you for taking us in, Mamie. I would be so frightened if I were alone, with the baby coming.”

  For long seconds Mamie hesitated, as if she, too, like Teddi, had uncertainties. Then she said slowly, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Dora. “We’ll take good care of you, won’t we, Teddi?”

  They spent more than an hour poring over the photo album, and Mamie told stories about her boys as youngsters, some of them very funny. Dora laughed sometimes, and so did Mamie, but Teddi found laughing a hard thing to do when her eyes were so full of tears. And as Mamie was putting the album away, Teddi watched her, and thought that Mamie looked lost and torn about these recent events. As if she, also, struggled with doubts.

  But Mamie voiced none of the misgivings Teddi was feeling. If she did, indeed, have them, perhaps it was too much to expect that she would share them with a fourteen-year-old girl who was, after all, only a foster child. Mamie had adult friends to talk to if she needed counsel, if she had questions about Dora that were unanswered except by that totally unexpected marriage certificate.

  As she climbed the stairs, Teddi thought that if she were in Mamie’s position, she might investigate Dora more thoroughly before offering her unqualified acceptance. But she could not bring herself to say so. Mamie was the adult; she was far more competent than Teddi to determine the truth of matters, and it was her own business if she chose not to discuss any of it with a kid who wasn’t even related to her.

  She continued to feel the sting of tears as she undressed and got into bed, feeling confused and uncertain and afraid of what the future would hold.

  Chapter 5

  The crib and bassinet turned out very well. Dora inspected them while Teddi held her breath, then smiled. “They look almost new!” she approved. Dora followed Jason as he wheeled the crib into her room.

  Mamie cast a look at Teddi as they joined them. “She’s so brave, isn’t she? Not a tear out of her, with all she’s been through.”

  I’d be crying buckets if my husband had just died, Teddi thought. She didn’t say it, though. Mamie was looking happy for the first time since Ricky’s plane had crashed into the Pacific. If Dora and a soon-to-be grandson could make her happy, all the better.

  It helped some that Jason had moved in next door. Neither of them had shades on their bedroom windows, so if they retired at anywhere near the same time of evening—and Teddi quickly learned that to be around ten P.M.—they talked between their houses.

  “I guess
I’ll have to find something for a shade,” Teddi said ruefully. “It doesn’t seem quite decent to look into a guy’s bedroom, or to have him look into mine.”

  “I noticed some shades at one of those yard sales. Want to check it out?”

  “Sure,” Teddi agreed readily.

  • • •

  They found shades to fit their windows at their first stop, and Teddi found a chair, and they looked at all kinds of furniture and junk. Once, she paused before a jewelry display with old-fashioned brooches and necklaces and rings.

  One of the latter was obviously a wedding ring, a plain gold band like the one Dora wore.

  “I wonder why they’re selling it,” Teddi mused, picking it up to look at it. “Inside it says G.H. TO V.S. What do you suppose happened to V.S.?”

  Jason was more interested in a gigantic squirt gun, which he thought might interest Heidi. But he was polite enough to respond to her casual comment. “If she died, they’d probably have left the ring on her finger, if she didn’t have a relative who wanted it. So maybe they were divorced, and the ring didn’t have any sentimental value.”

  “I have my mom’s ring. They said it was senseless to throw it away. Sad things happen a lot, don’t they?”

  “Yeah. Listen, you going to take that chair? I can probably carry it home.”

  “Okay. I think I can afford it if they’ll shave a little off the sticker price.”

  Jason laughed. “You’re getting the idea! Make them an offer. If they won’t accept it, then pay the full price, but not before you’ve tried for a better one.”

  The sticker on the ring said $2.00. She had had no idea how cheaply some things could be obtained.

  Of course, unless a thing was cheap, there was no way Teddi would ever buy it. “One good thing about Dora coming,” she observed, “is that it made Mamie think about giving me an allowance. She realized Dora needs money for personal items and has no income, so she’s going to pay her a little bit every week. She apologized because she hadn’t thought of doing the same for me, so now I have an allowance, too. When the money comes in on the house, maybe I’ll have a little of my own.”

  They carried home their latest purchases, stopping to rest a couple of times because the chair was heavier than they’d thought. Teddi didn’t care. It made it take longer, and they laughed a lot.

  Later that day, when she was dusting off the big photo album, something occurred to her. Dora was listlessly paging through a magazine, but lifted her head when Teddi spoke.

  “You know, I think Mamie would like to have a copy of any picture you have of Ricky. It would have to be newer than any of the ones she has.”

  “Oh. Well, actually, I don’t have any pictures of him,” Dora confessed. “We never got around to taking any.”

  “You have none at all? So the baby will never know what his daddy looked like?”

  “Maybe Mamie will give me an extra of one of hers,” Dora said.

  But Dora had not asked for one when they came across duplicates in the loose snapshots, or when they looked at Ricky’s graduation picture. Teddi knew there were several of those.

  I’d have asked for a graduation picture, Teddi thought.

  “She probably will,” Teddi said. “It’s too bad you didn’t have a newer one.”

  “Yes. You never expect anything bad to happen to a young, healthy man. So you don’t do things like take pictures,” Dora said sadly.

  Gradually they were getting used to each other. Dora never offered to help with any of the household chores, but considering how pregnant she was, that was probably natural. She couldn’t bend over to tie shoes, so she wore slip-ons all the time, and if she dropped anything, she just about had to wait for someone else to pick it up.

  Dora had bought some delightful-smelling bath oil. Teddi looked at the pink bottle with the gold lettering, tempted to try some of it, but she didn’t. She felt guilty even thinking about it, in spite of the fact that Dora had used the last of her own.

  Mamie went to town and returned with packages of diapers, baby shirts and gowns, bibs, and three cute little outfits of knitted shirts and pants. One of them had a baseball cap to go with a uniform. “I hit a sale!” she said cheerfully.

  Mamie watched Dora open everything and laughed. “This was far more fun than shopping for my own boys. They didn’t have all this cute stuff then.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Dora said, smoothing out a bib made like the front of a tuxedo, complete with a black bow tie. “Thank you, Mamie.”

  Teddi stared down at them. “They’re so tiny. It doesn’t seem as if anyone could ever be small enough to fit into them.”

  “He probably won’t fit into them for long,” Mamie predicted. “Babies grow so fast. I bought six months’ size, so they’ll probably only fit him for a little while. They may be too big to start with, though.”

  • • •

  Teddi and Mamie always went to church, but Dora declined to go with them.

  “I’m so awkward and uncomfortable,” she protested. “I’ll just stay home and get a little extra rest, if that’s all right.”

  Mamie, smiling, rested a palm on Dora’s belly. “Fine. You just take extra good care of my grandson.”

  One evening ten days after Dora came, Mamie went out to a church meeting. “We’re making a quilt to be auctioned off to raise funds for our missionaries. We’re trying to finish it, so I may be late getting back. Just lock up when you go to bed, girls, and I’ll use my key.”

  Right after she left, Dora turned on the TV and watched a game show. People on the screen were jumping up and down and hugging each other as they won cash prizes. Teddi decided she’d rather read, which she could do better upstairs. She made a sandwich to take with her.

  Just as she passed the telephone on the hall table, though, it rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Teddi? I’m going to be delayed even later than I thought,” Mamie said. “I’m going over to help Myra Jenkins hang some new curtains and visit with her for a while. She’s depressed because of her husband’s illness and wants to talk to someone. Don’t wait up for me.”

  Teddi had no sooner hung up than the phone rang again and a different voice responded to her own.

  “Hi. I’ve got to pick up a prescription from the drugstore. Would you like to walk over there with me?” Jason asked. “I understand they sell good ice-cream cones.”

  “I’d love to,” Teddi said, and then blushed. Did she sound too eager? She’d never been on a date. Of course this wasn’t a date, exactly, just a walk to the drugstore.

  She stuck her head around the corner, looking in on Dora. “I’m going out for a little while. Walking over to the mini-mall. Will you be okay by yourself?”

  “Of course,” Dora said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Have fun.”

  Teddi did have fun. She pointed out directions to places like the high school, where she and Jason would both be going in September, and the park, where they sat in swings to eat their triple-dip butter pecan cones.

  “They have public tennis courts,” Jason observed, curling his tongue around a trickle of ice cream down the side of his cone. “You play?”

  She shook her head. “No. I never learned how.”

  “You want to? I could teach you. I’ve been looking around for a part-time summer job, but I haven’t found anything. And Dad wants me to do some things around the new house, anyway, but it won’t take me all day, every day. How about it?”

  “I’m not very athletic,” Teddi said uncertainly. She couldn’t believe this very attractive boy was actually issuing such an invitation.

  “You’ll never get any more so until you try. How about tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock, before it gets too hot.”

  “Okay,” she decided. “If it’s okay with Mamie.”

  They finished their cones, washed off their sticky hands in the fountain in the middle of the park, and headed for home, both content to walk slowly.

  As they neared a service stat
ion two blocks from home, Jason said suddenly, “Isn’t that your Dora?”

  “She’s not my Dora, she’s Mamie’s,” Teddi said automatically, but came to a standstill. “What’s she doing making a phone call from there instead of using the phone at home?”

  “Probably just wanted to get a breath of fresh air, maybe a little exercise,” Jason said. “Hey, what do you say we drop off this prescription at home for Mom and then go back to the high school? We can walk around it, check it out. You can explain where everything is.”

  “This will be my first term there, too,” Teddi admitted. “I’m only a freshman.”

  “Okay. So we’ll explore together. All right?”

  So that’s what they did. Not that they were able to determine much except where the gym was, and the library building. It didn’t matter. It was a pleasure to spend time with someone young, someone who had the power to make her laugh. She hadn’t laughed much for quite a long while.

  They finally walked home again in the dusk, once more passing the service station. There was the phone booth, and seeing it brought a sudden question to Teddi’s mind.

  “I wonder who Dora was calling? I mean, she said she didn’t have any family, and she hasn’t met anyone in town since she got here.”

  It was a puzzle neither of them could figure out. And when Teddi entered the house a short time later, the TV was off, and there were no lights on anywhere except in the bathroom.

  “Dora?” she called out, resolving to ask about the phone call. After all, Dora lived here now; Mamie wouldn’t object to her using the phone.

  Only the question never got asked.

  Dora opened the bathroom door and panted rather than said, “Oh, Teddi, thank goodness you’re back!”

  Her face was sweating, and her hair stuck to her head. “Help me, Teddi, I’m having the baby.”

  Chapter 6

  Dora’s thin fingers, surprisingly strong, curled around Teddi’s wrists, drawing her into the lighted bathroom against her will.

  Teddi resisted, but Dora was stronger than she was.

  “You’ll have to help me,” Dora panted. “Mostly I should be able to do it myself, but I need you to help. I found sheets and scissors and a blanket to wrap the baby in, but . . .”