thought the deck would be a wonderful place for us to gather as a family. I’d even believed that John Richard and I would enjoy watching the progress of its construction. Ha.
I ran my fingers over the smooth redwood railing that always smelled so wonderful after a rain-storm. When the builders started, John Richard had second-guessed and criticized every aspect of the construction. Why redwood? It’s too expensive. Why do you have to have it so big? The next day: Why is it so small? Why don’t you add a barbecue? and despite the fact that he wasn’t contributing, he’d yell This is costing a mint! Do you think I’m made of money? In the end, he’d declared he was never going to sit out on our lovely redwood deck. So the deck stood empty. To his friends, he’d laughed about my project. He’d called it Goldy’s Golden Goof.
After the divorce papers were signed and I had deposited my settlement check, my very first act had been to drive to Howard Lorton Galleries, the most exclusive furniture store in Denver. There I’d impulsively ordered a thousand dollars’ worth of deck furniture.
Why rehash old history now? Once again my brain supplied a warning. Because he’s barged into your life again, and it’s not just to declare bankruptcy. Watch your back, Goldy.
7
Inside the house, Arch was on the phone. He looked at me solemnly, then shook his head.
“ReeAnn,” he said impatiently into the receiver. Had John Richard’s secretary called us? Or had Arch just phoned her? “I don’t know what you’re supposed to tell the patients. Better see who’s on call for Dad… I don’t know! Look, would you please ask him to give me a ring if he phones in?” His voice cracked. “No! How should I know what they’re doing to him?” He banged the phone down and regarded me dolefully. After a moment he said, “You look terrible, Mom.”
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you cook .or something?”
I glanced around the kitchen. Cook or somethIng. The rows of cupcakes sat waiting to be iced. The remains of my coffee fixings lay in a heap by the sink. Nothing beckoned.
“Mom, please.” Arch gave me a quick hug, then pulled back, embarrassed. “It’s going to be okay. It’s just all a big mistake.”
“Oh, honey…” But words failed.
“Let me go see if Macguire went back to bed after he let Jake out,” Arch announced abruptly. “It’s time for him to be up, no matter what, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, sure.” I shook my head as Arch left to rouse our boarder. To keep from brooding, I made another espresso.
“I’m up, I’m up,” Macguire Perkins hollered through the closed door of his room. His muffled voice echoed mournfully down the stairs.
I slugged down the coffee, hauled myself over to our walk-in refrigerator, and stared at the contents. Fixing breakfast for Macguire Perkins ? maybe that was a cook or something challenge I could handle. Arch was right: I seemed to think more logically when preparing food, anyway. And with Macguire as a buffer, perhaps Arch and I would be able to discuss his father’s status as a murder suspect without further fireworks. I heard more banging upstairs.
“I’m up, didn’t you hear me?” called Macguire. “Why is everyone tormenting me?”
Good old Macguire, I thought as I got out eggs and butter. With no plans one year after graduating from the same prep school that Arch attended, Macguire had begun the summer working part-time for me. Macguire’s father, the headmaster of Elk Park Prep, had agreed to let Macguire live alone in their house on the school grounds for three months. Meanwhile, Perkins senior was off to direct a summer seminar in Burlington, Vermont. When he started as my assistant, Macguire confessed that he was reluctantly trying to decide what to do with his life. What he wanted to do with his life wasn’t catering, I discovered after he’d been working in the business a few weeks. Then Macguire made the announcement that he’d decided to become a police detective. Unfortunately, he’d run amok.
Against all advice, Macguire had tried to solve a case on his own. The result was that a criminal had savagely beaten him and-in a raging storm, by the side of the road-left him for dead. Macguire had ended up in the hospital with multiple bruises and lacerations. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of his medical troubles. After being discharged from the hospital, he’d gone home to Elk Park, where he immediately developed strep throat that quickly evolved into full-blown infectious mononucleosis.
Headmaster Perkins had flown home and asked for my help. Macguire was unable to swallow anything more than liquids and began to shed weight at an alarming rate. During the first three weeks of July, he lost twenty pounds. His doctor said when Macguire finished his antibiotics, he needed rest, support, nutritious food, and very moderate exercise. But Headmaster Perkins couldn’t picture trying to help his son get better while the two of them lived out of suitcases in a Vermont bed-and-breakfast, no matter how quaint the setting. That was when Perkins senior begged me to allow Macguire to live with us for the remainder of the summer.
“Just give the kid three squares a day. Or even three cubes. You know, steaks,” he’d told me. A square meal or a cube steak? The headmaster thought he was hilarious. For the most part, Perkins senior was merely ridiculous. “Under your care, Goldy dear,” he’d announced airily, “I have no doubt my son should recover nicely in a week or two.”
I’d said yes, and as a result Macguire Perkins had been living with us since mid-July. But recover nicely was exactly what the teenager hadn’t done. Of course, our observation of Macguire was inevitably colored by our experience with the now-absent Julian Teller, whose high energy, intellectual sharpness, and enthusiastic affection for our family had been hallmarks of his time with us. Julian had done everything from loving Arch as if the two were the closest of brothers to cooking wildly inventive vegetarian dishes for our family meals. To Julian’s surprise but not to ours, he’d been offered a great summer job working in the kitchen of a chic hotel in upstate New York. We felt his absence deeply.
When Tom and Arch and I had agreed to take Macguire in, I’d secretly hoped that Arch would somehow be the beneficiary, because he would have a new friend Julian’s age.
Arch, sensing my motive, had mumbled, “It’s like when your dog dies, you can’t just go out and buy a new dog.”
“Arch, give him a chance,” I’d protested.
“Trust me, Mom, it’s not the same.”
But despite Arch’s initial reluctance, he’d grudgingly accepted having Macguire as a boarder. Macguire was slow-moving, honest, and sweet. Furthermore, he presented a much more challenging rehabilitation situation than we’d ever faced with Jake, Arch’s beloved bloodhound, who’d been fired from law enforcement for being suspected of being unreliable. Which the dear dog wasn’t, as it turned out.
The problem with Macguire, however, was that he would not eat. He said he couldn’t-he wasn’t hungry. Wouldn’t or couldn’t, the result was the same. The boy would not take nourishment.
In the breakfast department Macguire shunned bacon and sausage; scrambled, poached, boiled, or fried eggs; toast or English muffins; ready-to-eat cereal, oatmeal, or granola; yogurt shakes; fresh fruit of any kind. I had yet to convince him to swallow anything more than orange juice. He claimed his stomach hurt whenever he ate even the smallest morsels. His doctor had proclaimed, “When he gets hungry, he’ll eat.” In the three weeks he’d been with us, however, that hadn’t happened. But I was ever hopeful. Now I set aside the eggs and butter and went back to our refrigerator. There I retrieved a bowl of homemade chocolate pudding left over from a catering job. I ladled spoonfuls of it into a crystal parfait glass.
Arch clomped back into the kitchen after completing his summoning duty, flopped into a chair, and turned doleful eyes to me.
“When do you suppose I’ll be able to talk to Dad? He hasn’t called his office and ReeAnn is having a fit.”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
“But… is Dad in jail? When will he get out?” Arch insisted.
“Um, I’m not sure. He’s probably being processed.”
“Oh, great. Like liverwurst.” I let this pass, set the chocolate pudding on the table, and started to mix up a batch of hockey-puck biscuits. If Macguire wouldn’t go for traditional bacon-and-egg-type breakfast-taste sensations, perhaps he’d flip for chocolate and biscuits.
While Arch contemplated the table, wrestling with his confusion, I sifted the flour with the other dry
