Between the Plums Read online

TWO

  My sister Valerie came in from the kitchen. Valerie is recently divorced and penniless and has moved herself and her two kids into my old bedroom. Before the divorce and the move back to Jersey, Valerie was living in southern California where she had limited success at cloning herself into Meg Ryan. Valerie’s still got the blond shag. The resilient perkiness dropped out of her somewhere over Kansas on the flight home.

  “Dang,” Valerie said, taking Diesel in.

  Grandma agreed. “He’s a pip, isn’t he?” she said. “He’s a real looker.”

  Diesel elbowed me in the side. “You see? They like me.”

  I dragged Diesel into the living room. “They think you’ve got a nice ass. That’s different from liking you. Sit in front of the television. Watch cartoons. Try to find a ball game. Don’t talk to anybody.”

  My mother and grandmother and sister were waiting for me in the kitchen.

  “Who is he?” Valerie wanted to know. “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, and I can tell he’s a hottie,” Grandma said. “He’s got that look in his eye. And I bet he’s got a good package.”

  “He’s nobody,” I said, trying to push aside thoughts of Diesel’s package. “He moved into the building, and he doesn’t know anybody, so I’ve sort of adopted him. He’s kind of a charity case.”

  Valerie got serious. “Is he married?”

  “I don’t think so, but you don’t want him. He’s not normal.”

  “He looks normal.”

  “Trust me. He’s not your normal guy.”

  “He’s gay, right?”

  “Yep. That’s it. I think he’s gay.” Better than telling Valerie that Diesel was a supernatural pain in the behind.

  “The gorgeous ones are always gay,” Valerie said with a sigh. “It’s a rule.”

  Grandma had a big wad of cookie dough on the table. She rolled it out and then she gave me a star-shaped cookie cutter. “You do the sugar cookies,” Grandma said. “I’m going to get Valerie working on the drop cookies.”

  If I take anything with me when I die it’ll be the way my mother’s kitchen smells. Coffee brewing in the morning, red cabbage and pot roast steaming the kitchen windows on a cold day in February, a hot apple pie on the counter in September. Sounds corny when I think about it, but the smells are real and as much a part of me as my thumb and my heart. I swear I first smelled pineapple upside-down cake when I was in the womb.

  Today the air in my mother’s kitchen was heavy with butter cookies baking in the oven. My mom used real butter and real vanilla, and the vanilla scent clung to my skin and hung in my hair. The kitchen was warm and cluttered with women, and I was drunk on butter cookies. It would be a perfect moment, if only there wasn’t a space alien sitting in the living room, watching television with my dad.

  I stuck my head out the kitchen door and looked through the dining room to Diesel and my dad in the living room. Diesel was standing in front of the Christmas tree—a scrawny, five-foot-tall spruce set into a rickety stand. Four days to Christmas and already the tree was dropping needles. My father had placed a green and silver foil star at the balding top of the tree. The rest of the tree was ringed with colored twinkle lights and decorated with an assortment of ornaments collected over the lifetime of my parents’ marriage. The rickety stand was wrapped in white cotton batting that was supposed to resemble snow. A village of aging cardboard houses had been assembled on the cotton batting.

  Valerie’s kids, nine-year-old Angie and seven-year-old Mary Alice, had finished the tree off with gobs of tinsel. Angie is the perfect child and is often mistaken for a very short forty-year-old woman. Mary Alice has had a longstanding identity problem and is usually convinced she’s a horse.

  “Nice tree,” Diesel said.

  My father concentrated on the television screen. My father knew a loser tree when he saw one and this was no prizewinner. He’d cheaped out, as usual, and he’d gotten the tree from Andy at the Mobil station. Andy’s trees always looked like they were grown next to a nuclear power plant.

  Mary Alice and Angie had been watching television with my father. Mary Alice tore her attention away from the screen and looked up at Diesel. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Diesel,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Mary Alice, and I’m a beautiful palomino. And that’s my sister Angie. She’s just a girl.”

  “You aren’t a palomino,” Angie said. “Palominos have golden hair, and you have brown hair.”

  “I can be a palomino if I want to,” Mary Alice said.

  “Can not.”

  “Can too.”

  “Can not.”

  I closed the kitchen door and returned to the cookie cutting. “There’s a toy store in the Price Cutter strip mall in Hamilton Township,” I said to my mother and grandmother. “Do either of you know anything about it?”

  “I never saw a toy store there,” Grandma said, “but I was shopping with Tootie Frick last week, and we saw a store with a toy soldier on the door. I tried the door, but it was locked, and there weren’t any lights on inside. I asked someone about it and he said the store was haunted. He said last week there was an electrical storm inside the store, with thunder and everything.”

  I transferred a raw cookie-dough star from the table to the cookie sheet. “I don’t know about the haunted part, but the place is supposed to be a toy store. The guy who owns it has failed to appear for a court date, and I haven’t been able to find him. Supposedly he makes some of his own toys, and he has a workshop somewhere, but I haven’t been able to get an address for the workshop.”

  When the bail bonds office opened tomorrow morning I’d have Connie, the office manager, run a cyber search on Claws. I could also check to see if Claws was on the books for electric and water at a location other than his house and his store.

  “You’re gonna have to pick the pace up here,” Grandma said. “We still got to put the frosting on these cookies. And we got the filled cookies to make yet. And the cream cheese snowballs. I can’t be doing this all day because I gotta go to a viewing tonight. Lenny Jelinek is laid out. He was a member of the Moose lodge, and you know what that means.”

  My mother and I looked at Grandma. We were clueless.

  “I give up,” my mother said. “What does that mean?”

  “There’s always a crowd when there’s a Moose laid out. Lots of men. Easy pickins, if you’re in the market for a studmuffin.”

  My mother was mixing cookie dough in a big bowl. She looked up, spoon in hand, and a glob of dough slid off the spoon and plopped onto the floor. “Studmuffin?”

  “Of course, I’ve already got my studmuffin all picked out,” Grandma said. “I met him at Harry Farfel’s viewing, week before last. It was a real romantic meeting. My studmuffin just moved into the area. He was driving around, trying to find a business associate, and he got lost. So he went into Stiva’s Funeral Parlor to ask for directions, and he bumped right into me. He said he bumped into me on account of he has vision problems, but I knew it was fate. All the little hairs on my arm stood up the second he knocked me down. Can you imagine? And now we’re practically going steady. He’s a real honey. He’s a good kisser, too. Makes my lips tingle!”

  “You never said anything,” my mother said.

  “I didn’t want to make a fuss, what with Christmas on top of us.”

  I thought it was sort of cool that Grandma had a studmuffin, but I didn’t really want a mental image of Grandma and the good kisser. Last time Grandma brought a man home to dinner he took his glass eye out at the table and set it alongside his spoon while he ate.

  I had some success at eliminating senior studmuffin thoughts. I was having less success at eliminating thoughts of Diesel. I was worried he was in the living room deciding who in my family should be beamed up to the mothership. Or maybe he wasn’t an alien. What then? Maybe he was Satan. Except, he didn’t smell like fire and brimstone. His scent was more yum. Okay, probably he wasn’t Satan. I went
to the kitchen door and did another look out.

  The kids were on the floor, transfixed by the television. My father was in his chair, sleeping. No Diesel. “Hey,” I shouted to Angie. “Where’s Diesel?”

  Angie shrugged. Mary Alice looked around at me and also shrugged.

  “Dad,” I shouted. “Where’d Diesel go?”

  My dad opened one eye. “Out. He said he’d be back by dinnertime.”

  Out? As in out for a walk? Or out as in out of body? I looked up to the ceiling, hoping Diesel wasn’t hovering above us like the Ghost of Christmas Past. “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Nope. Just said he’d be back.” My father’s eyes closed. End of conversation.

  I suddenly had a scary thought. I ran to the front foyer with the spatula still in my hand. I looked out the front door and my heart momentarily stopped. The CRV was gone. He took my car. “Damn, damn, damn!” I went outside to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. “Diesel!” I yelled. “Deeezel!” No response. Big deal Man of Mysterious Talents can open doors but can’t hear me calling him.

  “I just got to thinking about today’s paper,” Grandma said when I returned to the kitchen. “I was looking at the want ads this morning, thinking I could use a job if the right thing turned up . . . like being a bar singer. Anyway, I didn’t see any ads for bar singers, but there was an ad in there for toy makers. It was worded real cute, too. It said they were looking for elves.”

  The paper was on the floor beside my father’s chair. I found the paper and read through the want ads. Sure enough, there was an ad for toy makers. Elves preferred. A phone number was given. Applicants were told to ask for Lester.

  I dialed the number and got Lester on the second ring.

  “Here’s the thing, Lester,” I said. “I got this phone number out of the paper. Are you really hiring toy makers?”

  “Yes, but we’re only taking toy makers of the very highest caliber.”

  “Elves?”

  “Everyone knows, they’re the top of the line toy makers.”

  “Are you taking on anyone other than elves?”

  “Are you a non-elf, looking for a job?”

  “I’m looking for a toy maker. Sandy Claws.”

  Click. Disconnect. I redialed and someone other than Lester answered. I asked for Lester and was told Lester wasn’t available. I asked for the job seeker interview location and this resulted in another disconnect.

  “I didn’t know we had elves in Trenton,” Grandma said. “Isn’t that something? Elves right under our nose.”

  “I think he was kidding about the elves,” I said.

  “Too bad,” Grandma said. “Elves would be fun.”

  “You’re always working,” my mother said to me. “You can’t even bake Christmas cookies without making phone calls about criminals. Loretta Krakowski’s daughter doesn’t do that. Loretta’s daughter comes home from the button factory and never thinks about her job. Loretta’s daughter handmade all her own Christmas cards.” My mother stopped mixing dough and looked at me, wide-eyed and fear-filled. “Did you send out your Christmas cards?”

  Omigod, Christmas cards. I forgot all about Christmas cards. “Sure,” I said. “I sent them out last week.” I hoped God and Santa Claus weren’t listening to me fib.

  My mother blew out a whoosh of air and made the sign of the cross. “Thank goodness. I was afraid you forgot, again.”

  Mental note. Buy some Christmas cards.

  By five o’clock we were done with the cookies and my mother had a tray of lasagna in the oven. The cookies were in cookie jars and cookie tins and some were stacked high on plates for instant eating. I was at the sink, washing the last of the baking sheets, and I felt the skin prickle at the back of my neck. I turned and bumped into Diesel.

  “You took my car,” I said, jumping back. “You just drove off with it. You stole it!”

  “Chill. I borrowed it. I didn’t want to disturb you. You were busy with the cookie making.”

  “If you had to go somewhere why didn’t you just pop yourself there . . . like you popped into my apartment?”

  “I’m keeping a low profile. I save the popping for special occasions.”

  “You’re not really the Spirit of Christmas, are you?”

  “I could be if I wanted. I hear the job’s up for grabs.”

  He was wearing the same boots and jeans and jacket, but he’d substituted a brown sweater for the stained thermal.

  “Did you go home to change?”

  “Home is far away.” He playfully twirled a lock of my hair around his finger. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not getting any answers.”

  “There’s a chubby little guy in the living room with your dad. Is that your boyfriend?”

  “That’s Albert Kloughn. He’s Valerie’s boyfriend.”

  I heard the front door open, and seconds later, Morelli sauntered into the kitchen. He looked first to me and then to Diesel. He extended his hand to Diesel. “Joe Morelli,” he said.

  “Diesel.”

  They spent a moment measuring. Diesel was an inch taller and had more bulk. Morelli wasn’t someone you’d want to meet in a dark alley. Morelli was all lean hard muscle and dark assessing eyes. The moment passed, Morelli smiled at me and dropped a feather-light kiss on the top of my head.

  “Diesel is an alien or something,” I said to Morelli. “He appeared in my kitchen this morning.”

  “As long as he didn’t spend the night,” Morelli said. He reached around me to a cookie tin, removed the lid, and selected a cookie.

  I cut my eyes to Diesel and caught him smiling.

  Morelli’s pager buzzed. He checked the readout and swore to himself. He used the kitchen phone, staring at his shoes while he was talking. Never a good sign. The conversation was short.

  “I have to go,” Morelli said. “Work.”

  “Will I see you later?”

  Morelli pulled me out to the back stoop and shut the kitchen door behind us. “Stanley Komenski was just found stuffed into an industrial waste barrel. It was sitting in the alley behind that new Thai restaurant on Sumner Street. Apparently it had been sitting there for days and was attracting flies, not to mention some local dogs and a pack of crows. He was muscle for Lou Two Toes so this is going to get ugly. And if that isn’t bad enough, there’s something screwy going on with the electric grid. There have been power outages in pockets all over Trenton and they all of a sudden correct themselves. Not a big deal, but it’s making a mess out of traffic.” Morelli turned his head to look through the glass pane, into the kitchen. “Who’s the big guy?”

  “I told you. He popped into my kitchen this morning. I think he’s an alien. Or maybe he’s some kind of a ghost.”

  Morelli felt my forehead. “Are you running a fever? Have you fallen down again?”

  “I’m fine. Pay attention. The guy popped into my kitchen.”

  “Yeah, but everyone pops into your kitchen.”

  “Not like this. He really popped in. Like he was beamed down, or something.”

  “Okay,” Morelli said, “I believe you. He’s an alien.” Morelli dragged me tight against him, and he kissed me. And he left.

  “So,” Diesel said, when I returned to the kitchen. “How’d that go?”

  “I don’t think he believed me.”

  “No kidding. You go around telling people I’m an alien and they’re eventually going to lock you up in the booby hatch. And just for the record, I’m not an alien. And I’m not a ghost.”

  “Vampire?”

  “A vampire can’t enter a home without an invitation.”

  “This is too weird.”

  “It’s not that weird,” Diesel said. “I can do some things most people can’t do. Don’t make more of it than it is.”

  “I don’t know what it is!”

  Diesel’s smile returned.

  At precisely six o’clock we sat down to the table.

  “Isn’t this
nice,” Grandma said. “It feels like a party.”

  “I’m squished,” Mary Alice said. “Horses don’t like when they’re squished. There’s too many people at this table.”

  “I’ve got room,” Albert Kloughn said. “I can pick my fork up and everything.”

  My father already had lasagna on his plate. My father always got served first with the hope that he’d be busy eating and wouldn’t jump up and strangle Grandma Mazur. “Where’s the gravy?” he asked. “Where’s the extra sauce?”

  Angie carefully passed the bowl with the extra marinara sauce to Mary Alice. Mary Alice had a hard time getting her hooves around the bowl, the bowl wobbled in midair and then crashed onto the table, setting loose a tidal wave of tomato sauce. Grandma reached across the table to grab the bowl, knocked over a candlestick and the tablecloth went up in flames. This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

  “Yow! Fire,” Kloughn yelled. “Fire. Fire! We’re all gonna die!”

  My father looked up briefly, shook his head like he couldn’t believe this was actually his life, and returned to shoveling in his lasagna. My mother made the sign of the cross. And I dumped a pitcher of ice water into the middle of the table, putting an end to the fire.

  Diesel grinned. “I love this family. I just love this family.”

  “I didn’t really think we were going to die,” Kloughn said.

  “Have another slice of lasagna,” my mother said to Valerie. “Look at you, you’re all skin and bones.”

  “That’s because she throws up when she eats,” Grandma said.

  “I have a virus,” Valerie said. “I get nervous.”

  “Maybe you’re pregnant,” Grandma said. “Maybe you got the morning sickness all day long.”

  Kloughn went white and fell off his chair. Crash, onto the floor.

  Grandma looked down at him. “They don’t make men like they used to.”

  Valerie clapped her hand to her mouth and ran out of the room, up the stairs to the bathroom.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” my mother said.

  Kloughn opened his eyes. “What happened?”

  “You fainted,” Grandma said. “You went down like a sack of sand.”