Fear itself

own. Frightened and disoriented, she started to call out for Simon, then remembered that she was on the fold-out sofa in Ganny Wilson’s living room, and that Ganny had promised her pancakes for breakfast. Only Ganny called them hoecakes-sometimes different people had different words for the same thing.

But as soon as she started thinking about food, Missy became aware of trouble inside her tummy and realized that that was what had awakened her in the first place. All that good Ganny cooking: pan-fried smothered chicken, corn fritters, southern-fried okra (Missy only ate the southern-fried part, not the okra itself), sweet potato pie, and after supper, all the little sesame seed cookies she could eat. Benni cakes, Ganny called them. And now it all wanted out all at once.

“Uh-oh,” Missy told Tweety, who was rustling around in her little square cage on top of the TV. “This is gonna be a stinky.” Then another uh-oh occurred to her as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the sofa bed: she couldn’t remember where the potty was.

“Ganny! Ganny, I hafta make!” No answer. The cramps were getting worse. She pressed her palms tightly against the sides of her temple to make herself remember. Think, you silly-you went potty last night. Only Ganny calls it the toe-lit. Different people, different-

Then it came to her: you had to go through Ganny’s bedroom. Missy shuffled across the room, doubled over from the cramps, clutching the waistband of her pajama bottoms to keep them from falling down. Please don’t lemme make in my jammies, she begged Jesus. In her own house you couldn’t ask Jesus for things, because Simon said he didn’t exist there, but in Ganny’s house it was okay to ask him for help because he existed all over the place here: there were pictures and statues of him in every room- baby Jesus in the cradle, grown-up Jesus on the cross, and lying asleep in his mommy’s lap. Missy mostly didn’t remember their mommy, but Simon did.

Missy’s prayer was answered. She tiptoed through Ganny’s room without waking her up, did her stinky, and felt much better. When she came out of the bathroom, Ganny was still asleep under the covers, lying on her side with her face to the wall.

“Spoons?” asked Missy. Taking Ganny’s silence for assent, she crawled into Ganny’s bed and snuggled up against her back. But something was wrong-Ganny was so stiff it felt like cuddling up against a wooden chair.

“Are you sick?” Missy asked her, reaching around to feel Ganny’s forehead, the way Ganny used to feel hers when she was sick. “Nope, cool as a coocummer. C’mon, Ganny, wake up.”

But Ganny would not wake up. Gently, Missy tugged the neck of her nightgown. “Ganny, I’m hungry.” No response. Missy pulled the covers back, saw that a watery coffee-colored stain had spread across the seat of Ganny’s long white nightgown. “Uh-oh.” Now she understood-it was Ganny who had made in her bed and was so embarrassed she was pretending to be asleep. Missy had done that once herself, when she was little, and Ganny had gone along with it, stripped her jammies off, carried her into the bathroom, cleaned her up, changed the bedding, tucked her back in, never said another word about it.

Missy decided to handle this situation the same way-sort of. She crawled out of bed, pulled the covers back up over Ganny’s accident, and left the room to give Ganny a chance to clean herself up in private.

But when Missy returned to the bedroom, after what seemed to her to be a very long time-long enough to polish off a six-pack of little powdered doughnuts-Ganny still hadn’t moved. Quietly- somehow Missy understood she was in the presence of something solemn, though she wasn’t quite sure what-she walked around the side of the bed and saw that one side of Ganny’s face, the side she was lying on, was black and swollen, and that although Ganny’s eyes were open, she wasn’t looking out from inside them.

Horrified, fascinated, not quite ready to let herself understand yet, Missy edged a little closer and saw that Ganny’s slightly parted lips were crisscrossed with cobweb-thin threads of cottony white dried spittle, as if little fairies had been trying to sew them back together.

“Poor Ganny,” she said, as softly as she could-Simon was always telling Missy that she talked too loud. She knew she had to do something-but what? She couldn’t call the police even though she knew how to dial 911: Simon had drummed it into her head that if the police ever came to the house, they would end up taking her away from him or him away from her, and in either event, she was bound to end up in an institution for the feeble- minded.

Feebleminded: that was the exact word he used, every time he gave her the speech, and Missy had come to fear the speech so much that she’d often be crying by the time he got to “in either event.” Then he’d stop, and dry her eyes, and promise to always be there for her, and she in turn would promise him that she’d never, ever call the police.

Nine-one-one was out, then. But she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, either. At times like this, there was only one person Missy could turn to-only one person she was allowed to turn to: Simon.

The first thing to do was get dressed. No, undressed first. Missy stripped off her jammies, then dumped the contents of her valise onto the sofa bed. Picking out undies was easy-they were all white and the label went in the back. Socks were also easy-it didn’t matter what foot you put them on, so long as you picked out two of the same color.

As for pants and shirt, Missy knew you had to match them with the weather if you were going outside that day. With some difficulty she managed to unbolt the kitchen door, then stepped out into Ganny’s sunlit backyard wearing only her socks and panties, and felt the warmth of the autumn sunshine on her bare skin. Shorts and T- shirt weather for sure-sunglasses, too.

Always grateful for a chance to wear her sunglasses-which not only were pretty, with thick pink rims and lenses shaped like sideways teardrops, but hid her eyes so strangers couldn’t tell right off that she was a Downser (or so she sometimes thought)-Missy padded back inside, leaving the door open. She picked out a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and a Special Olympics T-shirt from the pile on the sofa bed and took them back into the kitchen so she could look at the flowers in Ganny’s garden while she finished dressing. There were purple morning glories climbing the back fence, glowing in the sunlight, and golden sunflowers taller than Missy, just starting to go to seed.

It took a few tries to get her Deedees-white Adidas cross-trainers-on the correct feet, with the tongues pulled up smooth instead of crumpled and the Velcro straps tight but not too tight. When she had finished, she slung her pink plastic purse that matched her sunglasses over her arm, picked up Tweety’s cage, and left the house via the front door, grim-faced and determined.

“You stay here, Ganny,” she called on her way out. “I’ll go get Simon.”

2

Alluring as she’d been in the late afternoon, Pebble Beach was somehow even more bewitching in the early morning, with the fog drifting in wisps and tatters across moss-green fairways glistening with dew. And as if to make up to Pender for her behavior the day before-or perhaps, beautiful bitch that she was, just to keep him on the hook a little longer-she showered him with favors. The damp air kept his booming drives from flying too far, the breeze blowing in from the bay kept them dry, and the dewy greens saved more than one overmuscled putt from slipping past the hole and rolling all the way to Maui.

The fog burned off a little before ten, leaving the sky a fresh-scrubbed blue. Pender stepped up to the eighteenth tee shooting eighty-four, laid up right, reached the green in three, and twoputted for a glorious, unashamed bogey: he’d broken ninety.

After their round, and an elegant lunch at Roy’s, over in Spanish Bay-a Kobe beef carpaccio carved so exquisitely thin that the slices were almost transparent-Pender and Dolitz repaired to their two-bedroom suite at the Lodge. Naptime for Sid; time to get down to business for Pender. His first call was to Linda Abruzzi.

“Linda, it’s Pender.”

“Hi, Ed-how’s the vacation going?”

“Good, pretty good. Weather’s great-and I broke ninety at Pebble this morning.”

“Is that good?”

“It is if your handicap’s higher than the drinking age.”