Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [80]
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I had a message on my machine when I got in this morning. Your mayor told me there’d been a mistake.”
“Mayor Haston?”
“He told me he was sorry for the imposition, but we were to discontinue any work we’d started. Don’t tell me there was never anything wrong with you people?”
“Nothing’s been canceled, Ms. Mulherin. We’re still as sick as ever.”
“Good. Well, no, not good that you have this, but . . . Do you have this?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“I’m sorry. Well, I’m still gathering a preliminary team of graduate students. I won’t be out to your station until early next week.”
“I guess you’ll see me then,” I said, savoring the irony.
How many others had Steve Haston contacted, and why would he disband the committee?
Before I could give the news to Stephanie, a voice on the station intercom paged me to the watch office. I was barely out the door when my girls ambushed me in the corridor.
“Daddy, Daddy. Look what we got,” Britney said, leaping into my arms. She had a stuffed animal, a grisly-looking creature that could only have been designed by someone on PCP. Allyson held a similar toy at arm’s length, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before Allyson’s distaste would poison Britney’s feelings for her own gift.
“Where’d you get these?”
“Grandma and Grandpa,” Allyson said. “Grandma said you forgot to pick them up at the airport. Grandpa’s mad, but he’s pretending he’s not. Grandma already pinched my face. She says I look like Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street.”
“You do look a little like Natalie Wood.”
“Really is he mad?” Britney asked, squirming out of my arms. “I’m gonna go see.”
“Don’t say anything, Brit!” Allyson called out as her sister disappeared. “Blabbermouth.”
I said, “I forgot all about them.”
“They’re so boring.”
“They love you, even if they are a little—”
“Don’t say they’re different, Dad, ’cause they’re a lot more than different. I didn’t want to see them last summer, and now it’s already this summer, and here they are again. Omigod. My life is just draaaaaggging on. If it weren’t for Stephanie and Morgan, this would be the longest of the nine summers I’ve had to live through. I suppose they’re going to stay at our house again? Daddy. Can’t you tell them we’re contagious or something?”
“They’ve come a long way to see you.”
“Grampa smells like BO.”
“Let me put it this way: We can pick our friends. We can’t pick our relatives.”
“You picked Mommy.”
“Allyson, you’re getting too smart for me.”
Wesley Tindale was retired from Alcoa Aluminum, and Lillian from retail sales. They had only the two grandchildren and doted on them, insisted on speaking to them on the phone once a week, an ongoing ordeal both girls had to be coached through. The Tindales saw Allyson and Britney as their second chance. They’d had two daughters themselves, my ex, Lorie, and Elaine. Elaine was doing drugs somewhere in New York, and Lorie, also involved in drugs, was wanted by the law. It was hard to tell which of Lorie’s offenses was worse in their minds, the drugs, the forged checks, or the lesbianism. It drove me to distraction that they blamed Lorie’s conversion to homosexuality on me.
Wesley was almost as tall as I was, saturnine, invariably in baggy slacks and today sandals with black dress socks worn so thin his toenails showed through. His long sideburns were left over from the seventies—or was it the sixties?—and his eyebrows were so overgrown, both my girls were frightened by them. He had severe dark eyes that were always a little blurry, yet he spoke in a commanding voice, his best feature.
Coming from a family of teetotalers, it had taken me years to realize Wesley was drinking before breakfast. He did most of his driving drunk, did most everything drunk. Lillian, on the other hand, was arguably the worst driver in the Western Hemisphere, drunk or not. The irony was that, with over a century of driving between the two of them, neither had a mark on their driving records. Go figure.
At less than five feet, Lillian was short enough she looked like a joke walking alongside Wesley,