Unexpected Dismounts Read online

  The woman led us into what could only be called a parlor, complete with velvet camel-backed sofas and the scent of lavender valiantly trying to overpower the Florida mildew. Bonner Bailey, who looked starched beyond his usual real-estate-broker attire, stood before an open china cabinet cluttered with porcelain clowns and angels and horses in impossible positions. He wasn’t quite tapping the toes of his loafers, but the small red smear at the top of each cheekbone spoke volumes about my tardiness.

  India sat in the center of a couch, whose two ends faced each other as if to force a conversation. With luscious hair just brushing her rose pashmina shawl, she poured tea from a silver pot I was surprised she could lift and chatted away like Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. There was no Allison-where-the-devil-have-you-been evident in her deep, dark eyes, but then, India had way too much class to mix irritation with china cups.

  For Hank, on the other hand, “bull in a china shop” could be taken literally. She jockeyed from behind me and nearly knocked over a marble bust of some composer or other as she offered her hand to the figure ensconced in a green velvet high-backed chair.

  At least, I thought there was someone there. The woman was so small I had to look twice to be sure she wasn’t just a large housecat with blue-tinted fur. The cobalt frock with its ham-shaped sleeves could have just as easily been wearing her.

  “Allison, honey,” India said, voice like refined maple syrup, “I’d like for you to meet Ms. Willa Livengood.” She pronounced it liven, though livin’ would have fit the old lady’s lifestyle better. She apparently had everything but a butler, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if one had appeared, heeding the call of a bell.

  “Ms. Willa, this is our Allison,” India said.

  “Does she have a last name?”

  I stopped midway to her and stared. There was nothing frail—or syrupy—about her voice. It sounded so like a terrier barking out of its nose, I had to practically swallow my tonsils to keep from laughing.

  “Chamberlain,” Bonner said for me. “Allison Chamberlain.”

  I finally found the woman’s face tucked in the middle of the mane of blueish whiteness, and I knew immediately that face wasn’t happy. I didn’t get the impression it always looked like it was on the edge of a snarl. This was a little something special just for me. And I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet.

  “Chamberlain,” she said. “Any relation to Alistair Chamberlain? Of Chamberlain Enterprises?” She spat it out like it was a taste she had to get rid of.

  “Alistair Chamberlain was my father,” I said. “But I haven’t been connected with the family or Chamberlain Enterprises for twenty-five years.”

  Her small dark eyes sparked at me like angry suns. The rays of wrinkles deepened. Her voice didn’t.

  “If you’re a Chamberlain, what do you need my money for?”

  My neck stiffened. “As I said, I am completely disconnected from all things Chamberlain.”

  “What did they do, disown you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Right after I disowned them.”

  Her mouth went into a startled pucker, which gave me a moment to try to get my bearings. Bonner was already pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, and India was pushing a steaming cup toward Ms. Willa. What happened to everybody else doing the talking?

  The old lady waved the teacup off with a hand so veined she seemed to have teal yarn running beneath her skin. I was actually surprised she could move it at all. There must have been fifteen carats worth of diamonds weighing down her skeletal fingers. We could slide those babies off and probably pay for two more houses.

  “Is she telling the truth?” Ms. Willa said to Bonner.

  He cleared his throat, rendering him apparently not quick enough, because she turned to Chief. “What do you know about it?”

  “I’m privy to her financials, Ms. Livengood,” Chief said. “She is, essentially, devoid of significant cash flow.”

  The shriveled thing settled back into her chair and poked a finger toward the ottoman located nearby. “Sit,” she said to me.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said.

  I could hear Bonner clearing his throat even more emphatically, and I imagined Hank and Chief exchanging significant glances behind me. India gave up on the tea service and bit into one of the petit fours.

  “Talk,” the old lady barked.

  India moved the cake away from her mouth, but Ms. Willa pointed at me. The stifling of moans was thunderous. None was harder to smother than the one in my own head.

  But I said, “I’m sure my board members have already explained our ministry.”

  “This is your board?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What kind of board rides around on motorcycles?” She eyed me shrewdly. “Don’t think I didn’t notice half of you came in here dressed like the Heck’s Angels. And what’s that dirt on your forehead?”

  I didn’t dare look at Chief. A guffaw at this point would not be a good idea.

  “Don’t let that fool you, Ms. Willa,” India purred. “Miss Allison has a heart as—”

  “She has a bleeding heart, far as I can tell.” Ms. Willa waved the bejeweled hand at India without taking her eyes from me. The old lady’s talons were polished to a crimson sheen.

  “These women,” Ms. Willa said, “don’t they have food stamps and Medicaid and everything else my tax dollars are paying for?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they do,” I said. “We use every service available to them.”

  “Then again I ask: What do you need my money for?”

  Bonner purged his throat yet again. I was beginning to suspect he had a hairball. “Ms. Livengood, what we’re most in need of is an additional residence so we can house more women and provide them with the kind of personal assistance—”

  “You want me to buy them a house.”

  I thumped the ottoman. “There you go. That would be fabulous.”

  The old lady leaned forward in her chair, leaving an indentation in the cushions just big enough for a five-year-old. “Can you prove to me that these ho-ahs aren’t going to turn the building named after me into a drug den?”

  It took me a few seconds to realize “ho-ahs” was Southern for “whores.” India leaped into the stunned silence.

  “That’s the beauty of it, Ms. Willa. Once they come into the Sacrament House ministry, they can leave their old lives behind. They don’t need drugs anymore.”

  “Nobody ‘needs’ drugs in the first place,” Ms. Willa said. “They choose to take them, and the minute you give them everything else they want, they’ll just go out and do it again. They’ll be coming around here robbing our homes. I’ve taken to keeping a gun in the house because I know how these people are.”

  “Really,” I said. “You have some drug-addicted friends, then?”

  Ms. Willa drew herself up to her full sitting height, all of about four foot ten. “I most certainly do not!”

  “Then how do you know ‘how they are’?”

  “I think what Ms. Willa is trying to say—”

  Ms. Willa chopped India off with the diamonds yet again. “Don’t tell me what I’m trying to say.”

  “Then you tell me, lady,” I said. “Because I’m not getting how you can sit there and tell me you know all about something you haven’t been within a hundred feet of.”

  “I read.”

  “Can I read a book about you and know Willa Livengood?”

  “No one has written a book about me.”

  India tittered an octave out of her range. “I wish they would, Ms. Willa. That would be a best seller, now, wouldn’t it?”

  Ms. Willa ignored her this time and craned her neck at me like a ticked-off turkey. “All I know is that you might be able to rehabilitate a person who has turned herself o
ver to drugs, but you cannot keep her rehabilitated. People don’t change.”

  She sat back and pursed her lips like she was pulling a drawstring. At first all I could do was blink at her—and listen to the nervous shuffling around the room, which was enough to rattle the Lladró in its cabinet. I’d have cheerfully yanked open the glass door and let every china-faced angel jitter itself out. Until I heard it again: Allison, wash their feet.

  Yeah. Somebody get a bucket so I can soap up this lady’s gnarly old dogs. I wasn’t appreciating God’s sense of humor at that point.

  “Maybe we should regroup here,” Bonner said.

  “Would some figures help?” Chief said.

  “I think we all just need to take a little break and sweeten our palates,” India said.

  Or let’s all take off our shoes. Really? ‘Wash their feet’? That’s all you have for me in this situation?

  “Well?” Ms. Willa was watching me, a victorious glint in her eyes.

  “Well,” I said. “If people don’t change, then I guess we’re done, because evidently I have a bleeding heart. And yours is completely anemic.”

  Ms. Willa gasped. Or maybe that was India. Actually it could’ve been anybody in the room, except Hank, who didn’t appear to be breathing at all.

  I wasn’t sure how we got out of there. The next thing I knew we were all back in the alley with the three bikes. Hank leaned over her silver blue Sportster and laughed until I thought she was going to throw up.

  “I just do not see what is so funny,” India said. She tossed one end of the pashmina shawl over her shoulder and planted her hands on her hips. “You just completely blew it with a woman who probably has more money squirreled away than Bill Gates spends in a year. I don’t see the humor in that.”

  Chief evidently did, because his eyes sparkled at me. “You sure have a way with people, Classic.”

  “Just people like her,” I said. “I grew up with that crowd.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by your manners.” Bonner’s reddish hair picked up the shaft of sunlight in the alley as he shook his head. “Seriously, Allison, did you have to tell her she was bloodless?”

  “I said she was anemic.”

  “Oh, that’s so much better. I’m surprised she didn’t pull her gun on you.”

  “All right, listen, y’all.” India swept the other end of her shawl over her arm and shifted her face from Appalled Bystander to Madam Chairperson. “This was our first try with a wealthy potential donor, and I think we learned something.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “That I shouldn’t be within a hundred yards of any of them.”

  “You have to be,” Bonner said. “You’re the heart and soul of this ministry.”

  “Just not the mouth,” I said.

  “I can help with that.” India’s voice had recovered its honey smoothness. “I’ll coach you, Allison.”

  “This I have to see.” Those were basically the first words Hank had spoken since we walked in Willa Livengood’s door, and they were probably the most accurate. She dabbed at the laugh-tears in the corners of her eyes and supported herself on Chief’s arm. Her shoulders were still shaking.

  “No, really now.” India’s eyes begged Bonner. “Don’t you think with a different kind of venue, where Allison can speak from a podium instead of—”

  “Getting into discussions with anybody east of King Street?” Chief said.

  “There you go.” I ran my hand down my neck to smooth the quills I was sure were standing straight up.

  India tucked my other hand between hers. “I’ve seen you be positively eloquent, Allison. You don’t whine like you have a personal ax to grind. You speak for God, and that is the whole reason I came over to your side.”

  “We’re not choosing sides,” I said. “I want to get rid of the sides.”

  Bonner pulled off his glasses and replaced them with his Ray-Bans. The black Croakies dipped toward his shoulders. “You’re going to need a nylon strap to pull Ms. Willa over.”

  “You can’t pull a fat lady out of a doughnut store with a nylon strap,” India said. “We’ve got to get us a chain.” She finally flashed her handsome smile at me. “I’ll work on that.”

  Chief glanced at his watch. “Look, I have to go. I’ve got a meeting with a judge.” He backed toward the Road King. “Tell Desmond I’m sorry I couldn’t come to his show, but we’ll make it up tonight.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Almost two,” Bonner said. “I have to get going too.”

  He took India’s arm, and as Chief roared out of one end of the alley, I watched the two of them stride toward the street at the other end like the pair of polished entrepreneurs they were. Surely one of them should be the spokesperson for Sacrament House. They could probably make even “Wash their feet” sound sane.

  “You out of here?” Hank said, helmet under her arm.

  “Yeah. Desmond’s getting an art award. I promised him I’d be there.”

  “You okay, Al?”

  I shook my head. “You keep calling me a prophet, so why don’t I know how all of this is supposed to pan out?”

  “Because you’re a not a ‘foreteller’—you’re a ‘forthteller.’ Think in the present, not the future.”

  Hank watched me for a moment longer before she climbed on her bike and eased it down the alley.

  The present. Did she mean the present where wealthy blue-veined women heard two words from my mouth and tucked their checkbooks back into their purses? That present?

  I mounted my own bike and flipped down my visor.

  “God?” I whispered. “You’re going to have to be a whole lot clearer.”

  Then I remembered my long-ago breeding and added, “Please?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I barely made it to the gym at Muldoon Middle School before the presentation started. Between having to climb over several rows of parents to find a seat on the aging bleachers, and the fact that I was still in chaps and bandanna and had an ashen cross smudged on my forehead, it was hard not to gather stares.

  The only pair of eyes I cared about, though, was Desmond’s. It wasn’t hard to locate the big ol’ head perched atop the skinny body with enough arms and legs for an octopus. Before I started having his ginger-colored Brillo pad cut every other week, Chief used to say the kid looked like a mulatto Q-tip.

  He was sitting on the speakers’ platform, already sending me a “Where you been, Big Al?” look and pointing at the Harley watch dangling from his bony wrist. I’d let him wear it to school only for this special occasion, since it usually provided too much of a distraction in the classroom. Although, what about Desmond wasn’t a distraction in a seventh-grade classroom?

  I grinned and motioned for him to pay attention to the fluffy woman approaching the microphone. Desmond always referred to her as Vice Principal Foo-Foo. She did sort of have the air of a Pekingese show dog, but I’d threatened Desmond with permanent loss of his motorcycle helmet if he ever called her that to her face.

  While she thanked everybody and their mother for attending and sang the praises of the two art teachers, I shifted into mother mode. That was still a grinding move sometimes, since I’d only been at it for a few months. At age forty-two, it was hard to take home a twelve-year-old baby whose previous home life had consisted of abandoned storerooms and whatever food he could rip off without getting caught. The only thing harder to believe than the fact that I was this kid’s current mom was the fact that he was stepping up to the microphone to receive an award for something besides the ability to charm the change out of just about anybody’s pocket.

  “Our first award,” V.P. Foo-Foo was saying—what was her real name, anyway?—“goes to a young man whose artistic talent just amazes us.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ amazing about
it,” Desmond’s voice shrilled through the mike. “It’s just what I do.”

  The audience laughed, and Foo-Foo shuffled her notes. Desmond grabbed that opportunity to take over the sound system. “And I couldna done it without Big Al,” he said. “That’s my mama. Well, she almost my mama. And Mr. Schatzie. Where you at, Mr. Schatzie? Stand up and take you a bow. You, too, Big Al. Come on, both of y’all.”

  Down on the bottom row of bleachers, my next-door neighbor Owen Schatz rose and doffed his golfing cap, revealing a sun-leathered scalp. His dentures gleamed at the crowd like he’d coached Picasso. I only let my backside come a few inches from the bench and sank back down.

  “You’ve got yourself a character,” said the father next to me. His eyes glanced over my forehead and looked away as if he’d just noticed I had an extra nose growing there.

  The woman in front of me was less appreciative. “There are other kids getting awards,” she said, sotto voce, to her husband.

  Desmond waved his blue ribbon at his adoring fans and did some kind of hip-hop move back to his seat. I smothered my mouth with my hand and shook my head at him. He pumped the ribbon up in the air until I finally acknowledged with a large nod that he was, indeed, cooler than cool itself.

  If, as the miffed mother had pointed out, there were other kids getting art prizes, I barely noticed. I kept my focus glued to Desmond, vigilant for signs that he might be planning to leave the platform and work the crowd like David Letterman. As soon as the other eight students, none of whom gave an acceptance speech, were in possession of their ribbons and we were free to browse through the “gallery” set up on the gym floor, I made a beeline for the kid. But by the time I reached him, he was surrounded by what he called his “women,” a bevy of pubescent girls who followed him around like he was Edward Cullen. So I made instead for the aisle of portable walls where his work was displayed.