“Bob,” Veronica said, “your daughter is speaking to you.”
He was focused on twisting his spaghetti into a spool at the end of his fork with the help of a spoon, just as her son-in-law, Tony, had taught him years ago. In better days.
“Bob!” Veronica shouted. Her husband’s German shepherd, Champ, sat up in the corner, ears perked.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” He raised his glass toward their daughter, adding a wink.
Ginny beamed. That was all it took, Veronica thought. A smile and a wink and her daughter went over the moon. She supposed one needed only so much when used to so little.
They ate, plates overflowing with Tony’s spaghetti marinara, roast chicken, and fried zucchini, prepared because the dishes were Bob’s favorite, and Ginny had, Veronica guessed, begged Tony to cook. How many times had she heard Bob grumble, At least that no-good son of a bitch can cook.
“This is Tony’s zucchini,” Ginny said. “From his own garden behind the house.”
As if, Veronica thought, Tony, an underachieving know-it-all, had performed a miracle on par with the multiplying of the fishes and loaves. The real miracle would be Tony back at school, finishing his engineering degree so he could take advantage of all the strings Bob had pulled for him at the factory.
“Daddy, did you hear? Tony’s zucchini!” Ginny shouted.
Veronica stifled a laugh. She caught Dom hiding a smile behind a forkful of spaghetti. Old Champ clambered to his feet, his back legs shaking.
“Yeah, for Pete’s sake,” Bob said. “Tony’s zucchini. Quit your hollering, Virginia. I’m not deaf yet.”
He kicked Champ and the dog’s legs buckled so the poor beast splayed out on the linoleum.
Ginny gave Veronica a confused look. She regretted telling her daughter that Bob refused to wear his hearing aid. Another lie. Veronica had hid the plastic flesh-toned device. Tucked it in one of her velvet jewelry pouches soft as a rabbit’s ear. Drawstring double-tied. Bob was less trouble this way. She couldn’t have him getting all worked up. Not when things were so unpredictable. Ignorance is bliss, she thought as she watched Bob stuff a slice of Wonder Bread into his mouth. A tall stack sat on a plate in the center of the table. Her son-in-law’s one consolation despite his loathing for the processed bread.
The dinner plates were familiar, Royal Albert and Wedgwood patterns, chipped hand-me-downs from the big house a few hundred yards down the path past the rose garden. She had forgotten how small the cottage was. She should have stood up to Bob and had the three-room groundskeeper’s quarters made over ages ago. She added cottage renovation to her mental list, one she’d been writing and rewriting those past few weeks since life as they knew it had been turned upside down by the call from Grudder CFO Dick Gernhardt. As soon as Veronica had heard Dick’s Southern drawl on the phone, she’d known the problems at the factory had escalated to, as Bob would’ve joked in his more lucid days, DEFCON 1, Cocked Pistol.
The sound of Champ slobbering on the rawhide Bob insisted on giving the dog nauseated her, and she feared she might have to excuse herself. Run barefoot (the humiliation!) to the bathroom and empty her already-empty stomach. Her appetite had been absent these past six months since her double mastectomy in Tampa. Not even a chocolate éclair—her favorite indulgence—tasted right.
She’d hired a woman to cook for them, then fired her when dish after dish was filled with stringy meat that seemed to poke at Veronica’s gag reflex. Pot roast, brisket, corned beef. There were too many strangers in their lives these days—distant doctors, uppity nurses, apathetic receptionists, and baby-cheeked hospital residents. She’d had to hire an aide to watch Bob during her operation, and had then paid the aide extra to make up for her husband’s behavior, which the woman, unreasonably proud for someone who wiped people’s behinds, had called “aggressive.” True, in a moment of confused panic, he’d threatened to kill Greta, accusing her of working for the Gestapo. It had been the unluckiest week of Veronica’s life—stage IV breast cancer, surgery, and having been assigned the only aide at Sunrise Home Health Care with a Germanic name, who, according to Bob, was a Kraut undercover spy.
The offended aide had been another reminder of how sensitive people were these days. So many feelings, Veronica thought as she watched her daughter’s family, knowing they were too timid to ask the question—what on earth were she and Bob doing back on the island? She had spared her daughter the news of the cancer and the surgery; spared herself the impossible task of reassuring her daughter. Why share the news when it would just add to Veronica’s list of things to manage?
She wasn’t ready to tell Ginny about Bob’s situation either. She didn’t trust her daughter, and definitely not Tony, to keep their lips buttoned. God forbid the Grudder men heard. Dick Gernhardt and his two flunkies, Scooter Bryden and PR-obsessed Carl Buckley. Face-to-face, they swore dedication to their Colonel, but Bob had been suspicious for years now, certain they were waiting for him to slip up. Veronica had dismissed his fears as paranoia but that was in prosperous, stable times when George Bush had just begun his term, and all of Grudder (and the island) was optimistic. The new president had been a navy man, a war hero, having flown one of Grudder’s own Avengers off the USS San Jacinto, the bombs he dropped on the Japs hitting their mark even with his engine ablaze. Now, with the so-called enlightened Bill Clinton (and that pushy wife of his) making his claim for the White House, promising the whole nation a new beginning, Veronica imagined all hell had broken loose on the upper executive floors of Old Ironsides. If they knew Bob couldn’t recall the year (or his own middle name) some days, he’d be their first pick for a scapegoat.
She had tried to ward off the various Grudder men who’d called their condo in Florida every month or so. With keenly timed lies—Bob is out on the green, practicing his swing—when, really, he’d been slumped in his La-Z-Boy wearing boxers and his Hawaiian-print bathrobe, watching the coverage of Bill Clinton’s campaign. Shouting at the television so spittle sprayed the TV guide. You coward! You stinking draft dodger!