Pawns Read online

  Teddi swiveled to face him, wanting to tell him about Danny, too. She felt oddly shy about it, though. She wasn’t sure boys were much interested in babies.

  “You ready?” Jason asked, whacking a pair of tennis rackets against his leg. He was wearing white shorts and a red knit shirt, and Teddi thought “cute” was an understatement. “I missed seeing you last night. I even decorated my new window shade for your benefit, and when I got it up you didn’t bother to look over and see it.”

  “I was busy delivering a baby,” Teddi told him after she’d introduced him to Callie. “I didn’t get to bed until it was almost time to get up again.”

  “A baby? Dora had her baby?” And then, as the full significance of what she’d said hit him, he said, “You delivered it?”

  “Well, sort of. Dora had the baby, and I was the only one here, so I did what I had to do. Mostly she told me, like cutting the cord and everything.”

  “No kidding! How come you didn’t call for help?” He sounded impressed.

  “I wanted to, but Dora said she couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, and she wouldn’t let me call 911. Um, do I need to change clothes to play?”

  “Cutoffs, T-shirt, tennis shoes. You look okay to me. Let’s go, and you can explain to me all this business about delivering a baby. We got the bed ready for him just in time, didn’t we?”

  “I’d better go,” Callie interjected quickly. “Come over when you get a chance, okay?”

  “This afternoon,” Teddi promised. And then, to Jason, “Let me tell Mamie where I’m going.” She felt a twinge of guilt as she stuck her head into the laundry room. “Jason’s offered to teach me to play tennis,” she said to Mamie, who was folding sheets. “Is it okay? Or would you rather I stayed here and helped?”

  Mamie smoothed the top sheet on the stack. “No, go ahead. I’ve done all these things before, many times, even if it was a long time ago. I always wanted to know how to play tennis, but I never seemed to have a teacher and the time to try it at the same time. Oh, wait, I’ll give you some cash. On your way home would you pick up a few things from the store? We have baby clothes and disposable diapers, but we hadn’t gotten around to things like Baby Wipes, and Q-Tips to clean his ears, and I think maybe we ought to have a few cloth diapers. They make such good burp cloths.”

  “Okay,” Teddi agreed. “I’ll see you around lunchtime.”

  They went down the steps and around the house together, Jason swinging the rackets. “It must have been pretty scary, delivering a baby.”

  “It was. Dora said there wouldn’t be anything to it, though, that women have been delivering babies with no help for hundreds of years, and she’d read up on what had to be done.”

  “I’m glad it was you and not me,” Jason said with feeling. “I suppose Mamie’s all excited to have a grandson.”

  “Yes. She was so devastated when Ricky died, and now it’s as if her life’s been given back to her.”

  There must have been some reservation in her voice, because Jason looked at her sharply. “Don’t you want that to happen?”

  “Yes,” Teddi said slowly, matching her strides to his as they headed for the park. “I’m just not sure about . . . Dora.”

  Jason made a sound deep in his throat. “Kind of . . . lazy, is she?”

  Immediately, Teddi felt a stirring of guilt. “Well, she seems quite content to have Mamie wait on her. And me, a little bit. But of course, when she first came, she was pregnant and not feeling too well. And now she’s had the baby and hasn’t had time to recover. So it’s probably not fair to make that kind of judgment.”

  Yet she had made it, hadn’t she? There was this small but unmistakable thread of resentment running through her, though Dora really hadn’t done that much to make her feel uncomfortable.

  “Give her a few more weeks,” Jason advised, “and see how she does. Listen, you know anything about the game of tennis?”

  She shook her head, so he explained the basic rules, and Teddi willed herself to remember what he said.

  They had to wait about ten minutes when they reached the park, and they watched two boys who were finishing up. Teddi knew who they were, though they were several years older than she was and, outside of exchanging greetings when they met on the street, they’d never had much to do with one another.

  Still, they walked over to where Teddi and Jason were waiting, and she introduced them. They were friendly, asked Jason about his classes in the fall and his general interests, and invited him to join them in a swimming competition at the local pool.

  Teddi felt him being pulled away from her, and wondered if she were becoming selfish and unrealistic. She was the first one Jason had met since his family moved in next door, and it stood to reason that he’d make other friends as soon as he met other kids. It was possible he wouldn’t bother with her at all once he got acquainted with those closer to his own age. But somehow she’d hoped that she and Jason would remain friends.

  She had nothing to complain about in her first tennis lesson. Jason was patient with her ineptitude and, instead of humiliating her when she didn’t do it very well, he made her laugh. A sense of humor, Mamie had told her, was one of the most important characteristics a man could have as a companion.

  Because she arrived home just as the mailman was coming up the walk, Teddi was the one who accepted the mail. Ordinarily she paid no attention to what he brought. The only mail she’d gotten in a long time were two postcards from Callie that came while she was in Kansas City.

  Teddi didn’t know why she leafed idly through the handful of envelopes, since she didn’t expect anything herself. An electric bill. An ad from a local department store. A notice of some kind about a church activity. And an envelope from an insurance company. It was crumpled and dirty, as if something had happened to it in transit, even torn on one corner. The post office had stamped it DAMAGED IN HANDLING and MISSENT TO PORTLAND, OREGON.

  Then her eye caught another detail, and Teddi came to a standstill at the foot of the front steps.

  It had been mailed in Los Angeles on the date Ricky’s plane had crashed, a date burned into Teddi’s mind for all time.

  A small prickle of alarm ran up her spine, though she didn’t know why. She left that envelope on the top of the stack as she carried the mail into the house and handed it to Mamie.

  Mamie didn’t react to the envelope itself, but cut it open with the letter opener she kept on the desk just inside the dining room door.

  A moment later, she gave a small gasp. “Oh, my dear God,” she said, and handed the contents of the letter to Teddi before she sank into a chair. “Oh, Lord!” And she started to cry.

  Chapter 8

  Dora appeared from the living room where she’d left the TV blaring. “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Teddi said blankly, with an uncomprehending glance at the printed form in her hand.

  Tears continued to slide down Mamie’s face. “Oh, Ricky! Bless your heart, son! Bless you!”

  She groped for a handkerchief and wiped at her eyes and nose.

  Dora came to stand beside Teddi, taking the paper out of her unresisting hand. She frowned as she scanned it, and then suddenly cried out in understanding. “Insurance! Before he got on that plane, Ricky bought flight insurance for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t have welcomed Ricky’s wife and child anyway,” Mamie managed to say, blowing her nose. “I would have seen that you were taken care of. But oh, what a difference this will make! A quarter of a million dollars!”

  Teddi swallowed. Mamie had taken her in, after some papers had been filed to allow her to consider Teddi a foster child, and there was a small sum payable for her care, so she wasn’t completely a charity case. But she’d been wondering how Mamie could take on a daughter-in-law and a grandchild, and keep her, too.

  She knew Mamie had a small pension, and there had been some savings when her husband died. Luckily the house was paid fo
r, so there was no mortgage. Yet Teddi was fully aware that Mamie lived a basically frugal life, spending almost nothing on luxuries.

  Teddi had traveled very little, and only once on an airplane. But she remembered overhearing a conversation between strangers at the airport regarding flight insurance. “It’s so cheap to buy insurance for one trip,” a wife had said to her husband. “What can it hurt?”

  The couple had been laughing. “If my plane goes down, you’ll be the richest widow on Fourteenth Street,” the husband had pointed out.

  “If we have the insurance, I know nothing will happen to you,” the wife told him. “Buy it, and I won’t worry about you. If you’re worth all that money, you’ll be perfectly safe, because I never got something for nothing in my whole life.”

  It had been a joke, a lark, when they approached the booth where the flight insurance was sold. Teddi had watched with no special interest as they made out the papers, handed over the fee, and returned to their seats opposite Teddi and her father, still joking. The husband tore off part of the form and handed it to his wife.

  “There. Don’t lose it. If my plane disappears or crashes during this flight, you’ll need to file this as proof that I bought the insurance.”

  “At least with this,” the young woman had said, “I wouldn’t be dependent on my parents until I could get a job.”

  “Just don’t get carried away and put a hex on my plane,” the man told her, grinning. “Don’t be tempted by all that wealth.”

  Struck by a sudden thought, Teddi blurted, “Who’s the insurance made out to? I mean, who’s the beneficiary?”

  She knew that word because there had been a small check from insurance when her mother died. Unfortunately, the policy her father had owned had a suicide clause in it; it had not been in effect long enough to pay if he took his own life.

  That was one of the many things that Teddi had found so painful. Why had he done it, when he knew that he was leaving no provision for his only daughter? How could he have cared so little for her that it hadn’t mattered if Teddi were left orphaned and penniless?

  The other two women were staring at her. It was Dora who recovered first and reconsulted the form.

  “It’s addressed to Mamie, right? Yes, she’s the beneficiary.”

  Mamie sat up straighten “Oh. Yes, so it says. That’s odd; you’d think he would have designated you, Dora. Especially since he knew you were pregnant. He would have wanted to provide for you and the baby.”

  “Force of habit, probably,” Dora said. “He was used to naming his mother.”

  “But he never bought insurance before,” Mamie said slowly.

  “How do we know?” Teddi asked. “His plane never crashed before.”

  “No. But this copy, or one like it, would have been sent before he got on the plane, wouldn’t it? That’s the whole point of the notification. If he had kept the only proof of having bought insurance, it would have been lost with him.” It suddenly dawned on her that Dora, as Ricky’s wife, might feel hurt that her husband had named his mother to receive his insurance benefits. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to cut you out, dear. Maybe he thought that if anything did happen, it would be better if funds were in my hands to take care of you. Since you were so close to delivering a baby.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.” Dora smiled suddenly. “It doesn’t matter, does it? The wonderful thing is that he did buy insurance, and it will make things easier for all of us.”

  “The baby’s crying,” Teddi noticed suddenly.

  Dora, engrossed in reading the terms of the insurance policy, murmured, “Would you check and see if he’s wet, Teddi?”

  Teddi left them figuring it all out and went back to her old bedroom, feeling strange about it. She had only moved out such a short time ago, but already the atmosphere was completely changed.

  Even though a few of Teddi’s possessions were still there—a few pictures, some books in the white-painted bookcase, a teddy bear left over from early childhood—Dora’s belongings had taken over, along with the baby’s. Her clothes were scattered around. Every flat surface was cluttered with magazines and odds and ends; and of course the crib, the bassinet, the stacks of disposable diapers, and other baby paraphernalia were everywhere, transforming the place from a teenager’s bedroom to a nursery.

  The baby’s face was red and screwed up into a protest as his thin wail made known his discomfort. Teddi bent over the basket, looking down at him.

  “What’s the matter, Danny?” she asked softly. He didn’t seem to be wet. She hesitated, then lifted him out of his tiny prison, cradling him against her shoulder and patting him instinctively.

  Danny released a few belated sobs, then subsided into her warmth. “You’re going to be all right,” she whispered against his soft little head. “Your daddy bought an insurance policy, so you aren’t poor anymore. Your grandma will see you’re well taken care of.”

  She stood there for a time, rocking him back and forth, murmuring reassuring words, until he gradually relaxed and closed his eyes.

  It had been so terrible, the day the news came about Ricky and the plane crash, waiting for news that his body had been found, the grief both at his loss and finally at the knowledge that, like a few others in the more than two hundred people onboard, his remains might forever rest beneath hundreds of feet of water at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  After the two recent funerals of her own parents, Teddi hadn’t looked forward to another burial, this time of the young man who had lived next door. But it was obvious that a body to bury might have been helpful to Mamie. She needed that for closure on the tragedy. She had been so grief-stricken at first that Teddi had almost feared for her sanity, though that period hadn’t lasted long.

  The lethargy into which Mamie had then sunk had been almost as bad. Neighbors and church friends brought in food for which Mamie had no appetite. Guiltily, Teddi had sampled casseroles and cakes and pies, then wrapped them in foil and put them in the freezer.

  Though Teddi seldom mentioned her own losses, and she saw a similar restraint in Mamie, it had been a period of deep mourning for them both.

  And then Dora had arrived, and now Danny was here, warm and soft and helpless in Teddi’s arms.

  Maybe, Teddi thought hopefully, the sadness would eventually be put aside, and life . . . a good life . . . would go on.

  Danny was sound asleep now, but Teddi was reluctant to put him down.

  She stood for some time, rocking him to and fro, enjoying the feel of the peach fuzz hair against her cheek. No doubt Mamie remembered when it had been Ricky she held in this way, and no doubt, too, there would be tears when she held Danny, instead.

  But please, God, let them be healing tears. Otherwise, nobody could bear the pain, Teddi thought.

  She wasn’t even aware that her own cheeks were wet as she cradled Dora’s baby, cuddling him while he slept.

  • • •

  The summer days fell into a pattern.

  Most mornings, Teddi had a tennis lesson at the park. At first she was so incompetent that she was tempted to stop trying, but Jason was patient and quietly encouraging.

  “Nobody starts out like a pro,” he told her. “I’m probably not even the best teacher. But I can help you learn the basic stuff. And it’s fun, and good exercise.”

  Sometimes they had to wait to get a court, and they would stand watching the others, often talking between themselves. She always enjoyed talking to Jason.

  To her surprise she found one day that she could tell him a little about her father.

  “I guess we were never very close,” she said. “He was always so busy with his work, and in the evenings he liked to tinker around with his woodworking in the garage. A few times I tried to go out and talk to him, but he made me feel like a nuisance, so I didn’t do it very often. It was funny. He and Mom could talk for hours together, and before she got so sick she and I talked a lot. But Daddy and I never did seem to have much in common.”

 
“Sometimes I can’t talk to my dad, either,” Jason said. “If I really want to persuade him to let me do something or have something, I talk to Mom first. She can talk him around better than I can.”

  Teddi nodded. “My mom did, too, before she was sick. Then it was like she just wasn’t up to it anymore. I didn’t want to bother her when she didn’t feel well. And the sicker she got, the more Daddy worried about her and ignored me. Except when he reminded me that we needed clean clothes or something cooked, he hardly paid any attention to me at all. Some days I felt as if he wasn’t even aware that I was in the house.”

  Jason sighed. “Yeah. That would be rough. Dad notices me, all right. He’s always telling me to pick something up, put something away, get my act together. And not to borrow his yellow shirt, or eat the last of the roast because he wants it for his sandwich the next day. I guess you’d have been grateful for even that much.”

  “I would have,” Teddi affirmed. “I could sort of understand what he was going through, because we knew Mom was dying. For a while we hoped maybe the chemo would work, but for several months before the end we knew there wasn’t going to be a miracle. We were going to lose her.”

  Jason watched her face with sympathetic eyes. “It hit him pretty hard.”

  “Yes. Me, too, but he never noticed about me because he was hurting so bad himself. He was devastated when she finally died. The doctor had to give him some pills to get through the day of the funeral. Nobody asked if I needed anything. And then he came home and holed up in his den and didn’t talk to me. It was awful, but I figured he’d get over it, the way other people do.”

  “Only he didn’t,” Jason said softly. “Instead, he committed suicide.” He sighed. “A kid likes to think his parents are stronger and wiser than he is,” Jason murmured. “Sometimes they aren’t, I guess.”

  It has been strangely comforting to confide in Jason. And later, when they got a court and played until both of them were sweating and tired, Teddi thought it was one of the best days she’d had since it all happened.

  Other days there were kids sitting on the sideline benches, watching, which made Teddi nervous. It was one thing to be awkward while learning the game, another to be under close scrutiny when she flubbed a shot. Once in a while someone shouted, “Good one!” For the most part the only negative comment from the spectators was an occasional collective groan when she missed the ball entirely.