“YOU MUST BE out of your mind, Jake Wexler. Go to a track meet with all those people pointing at me, snickering, saying: ‘Look, there she is, the mother of Cain and Abel.’ I’m not even sure I have the nerve to show my face at the Westing house tonight.”
“Come on, Grace, it’ll do you good.” The podiatrist urged his reluctant wife down the third-floor hall. “Stop thinking about yourself for a change, think how poor Turtle must feel.”
“Don’t ever mention that child to me again, not after what she did to Angela. I never told you this, Jake, but I’ve always had a sinking sensation that the hospital mixed up the babies when Turtle was born.”
“It’s no wonder she wanted to blow us all up.”
Grace’s despair exploded in anger. “Oh, I get it, you’re putting the blame on me. If you had given her a good talking to about kicking people when I asked, she might not have ended up a common criminal.”
“Whatever became of that fun-loving woman I married, what was her name—Gracie Windkloppel?”
Grace quickly looked around to see if anyone had overheard that ugly name, but they were in the elevator, alone. “Oh, I know what people think,” she complained. “Poor Jake Wexler, good guy, everybody’s friend, married to that uppity would-be decorator. Well, Angela’s not going to have to scrimp and save to make ends meet; she’s going to marry a real doctor. I’ll see to that.”
“Sure you will, Grace, you’ll see that Angela doesn’t marry a loser like her father.” A real doctor, she says. A podiatrist is a “real” doctor—well, it is these days, but when he went to school it was different. He could have gone back, taken more courses, but he was married by then, a father—oh, who’s he kidding. Gracie’s right, he is a loser. Next she’ll mention having to give up her family because she married a Jew—no, she never brings that up, Grace with all her faults would never do that.
The elevator door opened to the lobby. Grace turned to her silent, sad-eyed husband, the loser. “Oh, Jake, what’s happening to us? What’s happening to me? Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not a nice person.”
Jake pressed the close door button and took his sobbing wife into his arms. “It’s all right, Gracie, we’re going home.”
The doors opened on the second floor. “Mom! What’s the matter with her, Daddy, she’s crying? Gee, Mom, I’m sorry, it was just a few fireworks.” If her mother ever found out who the real bomber was, she’d really go to pieces.
Turtle looked even more like a turtle today with her sad little face peering out of the kerchief tied under her small chin. “Let go of the door, Turtle,” Jake said. “And have a good time at the track meet. You, too, Mrs. Baumbach.”
Track meet? They weren’t going to a track meet. And they sure were not going to have a good time.
Grace was still sobbing on Jake’s shoulder as he led her into their apartment.
“Mother, what’s the matter? What’s wrong with her, Dad?”
“Nothing, Angela, your mother’s just having a good cry. Why don’t you and Ms. Pulaski leave us alone for a while.”
“Come, Angela,” Sydelle said, prodding her with the tip of one of her mismatched crutches. “We have some painting to do.”
Angela looked back at the embracing couple; her father’s face was buried in her weeping mother’s tousled hair. They had not asked how she got home from the hospital (by taxi), they had not asked if she was still in pain (not much), they had not even peeked under the bandage to see if a scar was forming on her cheek (there was). Angela was on her own. Well, that’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? Yes, yes it was! She uttered a short laugh, and her hand flew up to the pain in her face.
“Do I look funny or something?”
“No, I wasn’t laughing at you, Sydelle, I’d never laugh at you. It’s just that suddenly everything seemed all right.”
“It’s all right, all right,” her partner replied, unlocking the four locks on her apartment door. “Tonight’s the night we’re going to win it all.”
Were they? The will said look for a name. They had a song, not a name.
“‘O beautiful for spacious skies,’” Sydelle began to sing, “‘For purple waves of grain.’”
“Not purple,” Angela corrected her, “amber. ‘For amber waves of grain.’”
Amber!
JUDGE FORD PACED the floor. Tonight Sam Westing would wreak his revenge unless she could prevent it. If she was right, the person in danger was the former Mrs. Westing. And if Turtle was right about the wax dummy, Sam Westing himself might be there to watch the fun.
There was a knock on her door. The judge was surprised to see Denton Deere, even more surprised when he wheeled Chris Theodorakis into her apartment. “Hello, Judge. Everybody else in the building is going to the track meet, it seems. I passed Sandy on the way out and he said you wouldn’t mind having Chris for part of the afternoon. I’ve got to get back to the hospital.”
“Hello, Judge F-Ford.” Chris held out a steady hand which the judge shook.
“You’re looking well, Chris.”
“The m-medicine helped a lot.”
“It’s a big step forward,” the intern said. Wrong word, the kid may never leave that wheelchair. “An even more effective medication is now in the developmental stage.” That really sounded pompous. “Well, so long, Chris. See you tonight. Thanks, Judge.”
“He knows lots of b-big words,” Chris said.
“Yes, he certainly does,” Judge Ford replied. What was she going to do with this boy here? She had so
