Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [2]
“I’m pouting,” Renie replied. “I’ve been pouting since Wednesday.”
“You can really pout,” Judith said, “but you usually don’t do it for more than a day. What’s wrong now?”
“The same thing that was wrong when I last talked to you,” Renie retorted. “That damned cruise line. I haven’t heard back since I threatened them with Bub.”
“It’s only been two full working days,” Judith pointed out. “They have to check with their Suits in response to your Suit.”
“My Wig, you mean,” Renie corrected. “I always refer to Bub as my Wig, not my Suit.”
“Poor Bub,” Judith murmured.
“What?” Renie spoke sharply.
“Never mind. By the way, I’m getting my hair colored Tuesday.”
“Colored what?” Renie asked, her voice showing mild interest.
“Some kind of brown,” Judith replied. “I’ll let Ginger advise me.”
“She’s good,” Renie conceded. “So’s her husband, Steve. I sort of take turns between them.”
“But you don’t have to color your hair,” Judith declared. “You inherited your mother’s hair, which still hardly has any gray in it.”
“It’s not my fault,” Renie said. “I’m just a freak of nature.”
“True,” Judith agreed, not without a touch of sarcasm. “Hey, I’ve got to go make crab-and-pork wontons for the guests. See you in church.”
Judith and Joe did in fact see Renie and Bill at Our Lady, Star of the Sea’s ten o’clock Mass. But Bill was lectoring at the service and had to sit in one of the side pews reserved for readers. Renie was in the row behind him, while the Flynns occupied their usual place in the middle of the church. At the Sign of Peace, instead of offering the person next to her a warm handshake and prayerful words, Renie clenched her fists and seemed to snarl. Clearly, she was still in a bad mood.
Later, when Judith and Joe pulled into the driveway, they discovered Gertrude trying to negotiate her motorized wheelchair up the back-porch ramp that had been added during Hillside Manor’s renovation three years earlier. The old lady seemed to be stuck.
“Mother!” Judith cried as she tried to get out of Joe’s beloved MG without damaging her artificial hip. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s that horrible cat,” Gertrude asserted in her raspy voice. “Where’d he go now?”
Judith looked around the backyard, where daffodils, hyacinths, and other early spring bulbs bloomed. “I don’t see Sweetums anywhere,” she said, trying to budge the wheelchair. “How did the cat make you get stuck? I can’t move this thing. Here comes Joe.”
Gertrude heaved a sigh. “Not Knucklehead,” she grumbled. “Call the medics. Call the cops. Call anybody but him.”
“Now, now,” Joe said. “Is my darling mother-in-law annoyed with me? How can that be?”
“It’s easy,” Gertrude snapped. “I’d stop being annoyed if you disappeared.”
Judith tried to ignore the ongoing feud between her husband and her mother. Gertrude had never approved of Joe—or Dan McMonigle. In fact, the old lady resided in the converted tool shed because she refused to live under the same roof with Judith’s second husband.
Joe, however, wasn’t having any luck with the wheelchair. “Is this thing turned on?” he asked.
“You bet,” Gertrude replied. “Come on, push. You don’t look like any ninety-pound weakling to me. Your big fat head weighs that much.”
“Mother—” Judith began but stopped when she glimpsed Sweetums’ large orange-and-white body creeping through Carl and Arlene Rankers’s vast laurel hedge.
Joe’s ruddy complexion was getting even redder. “Did you set the brake?” he inquired of Gertrude.
“’Course I did,” the old lady snapped. “How else could I keep from running over that cat? He wouldn’t move. Should I have totaled him?”
“Why don’t you two have an ornery-off?” Joe muttered. “The loser gets sent to the Home. So does the winner.”
Gertrude cupped her right ear. “What? I can’t hear you. I’m getting deaf, you know.”
Joe released the brake. The wheelchair sailed up the ramp and onto the porch.
“About time,” Gertrude said to Joe.
Judith opened the back door. “Why were you coming into the house?” she asked.
“To get a magnifying glass,” Gertrude replied, proceeding down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen.