The Girl in White Pajamas (2 page)

At ten o’clock that night, Bogie sat at the desk in his office finishing reports for the security firm that he and Rose Jones owned while Amanda lounged on a couch in the large lobby with her two blonde girlfriends, Tiffany and Zoe, on either side of her like bookends.

The girls watched TV while they ate unbuttered popcorn and sipped sweet tea. Bogie called his sister, Ann. As soon as she answered the phone, Ann started sobbing. “Don’t cry, Annie! I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said helplessly.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t stand this anymore!” Ann wailed.

“You have to be strong, Ann.”

“No, I don’t! I’m not tough like you. I’m not a strong person. I’m sick of all of this. And now Bud’s dead! This is a nightmare!”

Suspecting his sister was fairly well lubricated, he said gently, “Get some rest. I’ll be there tomorrow. I love you, Annie!”

“I love you too,” she whimpered.

After he ended the call, Tiffany looked at him sitting behind the desk in the office. “Mr. M,” she called out.

“Yes, Tiff?”

“Is your sister still mad at Mandie?”

Bogie shook his head.

“The last time she talked to her she gave Mandie crap about TBS.”

Bogie looked over his half glasses and shook his head. “That was a long time ago. Ann’s got other things on her mind now.”

Bogie recalled the girls’ tarnished scholastic records from their stay at The Benjamin School. When he and Amanda flew into Palm Beach four years earlier, Bogie planned on passing papers on the property, meeting with prospective construction supervisors and then returning to Boston to work out a timetable for their move. He expected Bailey, the love of his life, to be a part of it. Bogie hadn’t planned on Bailey dumping him or that he he’d have a heart attack en route to Palm Beach. The property was uninhabitable so when Rose arrived, she got a six month sublet in North Palm Beach where Bogie and Amanda lived while Bogie underwent open heart surgery and recuperated. It was Ann who had found the Benjamin School and insisted that was the place for Amanda to mingle with her social peers. Ann paid her tuition for one year, and Amanda reluctantly attended. The only thing Amanda liked about the school were the friendships she formed with Zoe and Tiffany. When it was time for final exams, the girls were not prepared; however, they obtained copies of the exams complete with the correct answers. Their test scores were almost perfect. Taking into account that Amanda and Tiffany were barely C students while Zoe was just a cut above, the teachers and administrators questioned the girls over and over and over. Fingers were pointed at Amanda and Tiffany whose ability to obtain such scores was highly questionable. They were expelled, and Zoe stayed at the school. Bogie knew all the girls were involved and spoke to Paul Gallagher, Tiffany’s dad, because he was a cop. They agreed that it was probably Zoe who came up with the answers, but Zoe was smart enough to keep her mouth closed and not incriminate herself.

When their mindless program ended, the girls sighed. Zoe pushed her streaked blonde hair back behind her ear and checked a small chip on one of her hot pink acrylic nails while asking, “Did he call you?”

Amanda shook her head sadly and her shiny black hair moved from side to side over her shoulders.

“What are you gonna do?” Tiffany asked scrunching up her freckled nose.

“I can’t think about it!” Amanda said dramatically. “I can only deal with one tragedy at a time! Maybe he doesn’t even know what happened.”

The two blondes studied her. Zoe asked, “Do you want me to tell him about your uncle?”

Amanda shook her head believing Zoe would be only too happy to pass along the news to Randy and maybe ease her way into the spot Amanda had vacated.

Bogie listened to these young ladies and wondered if they had a clue about life, love, family or raising a child. He hoped that, unlike her mother, Amanda would come to realize that it wasn’t a Barbie doll she was giving birth to but a real human being.

As her granddaughter and her friends lounged on couches in the apartment complex lobby in Florida, Elizabeth McGruder sat straight up in her bed in Boston. Wearing a white flannel nightgown, Elizabeth walked to the bedroom window and stood staring into the backyard which was shrouded in darkness. Elizabeth grasped the window sill as she stood bare-footed with her thinning white hair hanging down her back. She saw him! She caught him! Elizabeth made her way down the staircase of the brownstone. She moved through the back hallway to the den. Sitting in a large leather chair behind a mahogany desk, she cried while she inserted six bullets into the cylinder chamber of a .38 revolver. She pulled back the hammer and muttered, “I saw you go over there, you cheating snake!” Without her cane but fortified by the sedatives and a half a bottle of scotch consumed over the course of the day, she headed for the kitchen and out the back door. When she entered the tiny back yard, she walked over to the adjoining brownstone and fired six shots through the kitchen window yelling, “You, lying, cheating bastard! I did everything in this world for you! And how do you repay me? You take up with yet another whore! And this Russian whore, Olga. She’s your son’s wife and has
your
baby!?”

A shot blasted over Elizabeth’s head as Jeannie McGruder, herself drunk, yelled through the broken window, “You fuck’n crazy bitch! Go home and sleep it off. That dickwad’s dead and so is his whore!”

Two small figures sat on a couch in a house eleven miles outside of Boston. The tiny Cambodian woman wiped a tear off her cheek with a shaky hand. The little girl with a mass of red curls took the woman’s other hand. “Don’t be scared, Kim! I’ll protect you. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Remember when Fluffy was hanging from the tree?” The child lifted her right arm in the air and dropped her tongue out of the side of her mouth to illustrate her point.

Kim nodded.

Isabella continued, “You told me I’d feel better tomorrow, and I did. I was still sad but not so scared.”

They sat in silence staring at a TV screen. The small woman grabbed the little redhead’s hand again as
The Bride
used her sword to slice off the arm of
O-Ren’s
assistant. Blood gushed from the gaping hole, and
The Bride
moved on to slay and maim the
Crazy Eighty-Eight Army
. “This is Lucy Liu,” Kim said softly.

The child nodded as they watched their favorite part:

The Bride confronts O-Ren

and O-Ren says ‘Silly rabbit.’

The Bride answers, ‘Trix are for—”

O-Ren finishes, ‘kids’.

Isabella giggled and Kim smiled. Then they watched the screen mesmerized as the warriors had a fight to the death.

No one paid attention to a vehicle that stopped in front of their house on this isolated road. As the car slowly drove away, the woman and little girl sat transfixed on the couch surrounded by moving crates and boxes with a large bag of potato chips, a tub of French onion dip and two juice boxes sitting between them–the breakfast of champions.

The black Dodge Ram truck moved up the roadway surrounded by lush grass and palm trees. Carlos squinted from the bright sun as he tried to follow the correct path to the departures area of the Palm Beach International Terminal. When Carlos stopped, Bogie got out on the front passenger side and opened the back door for Amanda. The large, modern terminal was bustling with scantily clad travelers who were departing the Sunshine State ready to show off their sunburned skin to the folks back home. Everyone seemed to be smiling except Amanda. She got out of the truck with her shoulders drooping. Carlos opened the driver’s door, jumped out and grabbed Amanda’s suitcase from the back. As he dragged it to curbside check-in, he studied Amanda’s pale face and wondered what she packed that weighed so much. Bogie thanked Carlos and bumped fists with him. “Take care of my truck!”

As Carlos drove away, Bogie looked from Amanda to the two suitcases in front of him. “Where’s the garment bag?” he asked.

Her mouthed dropped open as she remembered placing the bag on the couch before they left. “I must have forgotten,” she said softly looking at the ground.

Bogie put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ve lived through worse.”

After riding on an escalator down to the security area, Bogie and Amanda moved through easily. They walked to their gate past shops selling overpriced souvenirs, books, magazines, drinks and snacks. Bogie turned to Amanda. “Do you want something to drink?”

She only shook her head.

When they walked to the next vendor, Bogie asked Amanda to stop while he purchased two bottles of spring water. She bit her bottom lip then said, “I just told you I didn’t want anything.”

“Why do you assume they’re for you?” Bogie asked as they arrived at their gate and sat down. Bogie looked at his large black Suunto Core watch while Amanda scrolled through messages on her iPhone. Bogie reached down into his computer bag and picked up his Kindle. After bringing up a chapter from a W.E.B. Griffin book in The Corps series, he reached down again and pulled out a large bag of trail mix. He opened the Ziploc bag and grabbed a handful. Amanda watched him, took the bag from him and picked the cashew nuts out the way he knew she would.

As she reached for one of the water bottles, Bogie asked, “Do you love him?”

She froze in place then turned to him. “Of course I love him! We were supposed...” She trailed off and teared up.

“Then call him!”

Amanda looked at him as if he were demented. “That’s not how it works! He’s supposed to call me.”

“Aren’t you the one who gave him his ring back?”

“I know. I was mad,” she mumbled.

“
Angry
” he corrected

“Whatever!”

“Maybe you could text him and tell him your uncle died. Then the next move would be his.”

Amanda studied him. “When did you become
Dr. Phil
?”

One side of Bogie’s mouth twitched to indicate he was almost smiling. “I just don’t like seeing you unhappy. I’ve made my share of mistakes and would like to spare you from a few of them.”

Amanda rested her head on his shoulder as other prospective passengers gave them surreptitious glances believing this was another one of those May/December Palm Beach matches.

When it was time to board, Amanda quickly texted a message then stood up. She clutched the phone and glanced at it every few seconds until the flight attendant instructed her to turn it off. Reluctantly, she sat back in her seat.

As the plane ascended, Amanda looked over at her father and asked, “How old were you the first time you went to a funeral?”

“Thirteen. It was my mother’s funeral.” Bogie remembered standing alone with the priest in the back section of the cemetery as his mother’s cheap coffin was lowered into the ground while the priest chanted prayers and sprinkled holy water. Bogie was paralyzed with fear as he realized he was all alone. His mother had been a drunk, but she was all he had.

“So I beat you. I was eight when Jennifer died,” Amanda said bringing Bogie out of his reverie.

“You can keep the dubious honor,” Bogie said. “That was definitely the worst thing I ever witnessed. Remember those cops dragging Jeannie out of the cemetery? She wanted to carry that small coffin home with her. I felt so sorry for her. She was out of her mind! The whole thing was heartbreaking!”

They both shuddered until Amanda said, “I know. I felt really bad, too, but it was all her fault. She’s the one who shot her own daughter! God! Jennifer was only six years old!”

“It was an accident. Jeannie was trying to shoot Bud, and the bullet went through the wall and killed Jennifer. The poor kid was sound asleep.”

“Jeannie was a cop. She should have known better.”

“We all do things we shouldn’t. That’s what makes us human. In her case the whole thing was fueled with alcohol. They were both boozing pretty heavy then. Jeannie never quit. She just kept on going. Losing a child has derailed many men and women.”

“You didn’t go ballistic when Barbara died.”

“I was saddened by her death. She was an innocent victim like Jennifer, and her death was avoidable. Barbara was killed because she had two self-absorbed assholes for parents, and…she wasn’t my child.”

“You pretended she was.”

“But she wasn’t. She was a cute baby, and I liked her. She was my father’s child, not mine. I kept reminding myself of that all the time. It made it easier not to love her. I feel sad when I think about her. Christ! Eighteen months old! But there wasn’t a bond there. If something happened to you, I don’t think I could go on.”

Amanda squeezed his arm. “And what about Is-a-bell-a?”

Bogie studied her. “Am I detecting sibling rivalry with a little girl you’ve never met, a child neither of us has met?”

“Well, she can’t be that great! She’s Bailey’s child!”

Bogie shook his head as Amanda once again reminded him of her resentment toward Bailey. Four years earlier, Bailey, the love of his life, secretly handed Amanda an envelope and asked her to give it to Bogie when they were on the plane. When Bogie read the note, it burned a hole in his heart. Knowing Bogie as well as she did, Bailey memorialized his greatest fears and reservations about their relationship in the note. He was too old for her, he was the biggest mistake she ever made, what she thought was love was probably just gratitude for all his kindness. Listing these concerns made the heartache worse. Bogie vividly remembered the searing pain in his chest as he finished the letter. Bogie wanted to yell out and tell the pilot to turn the plane around, but they were descending into Palm Beach. The pain got stronger and the world grew darker as he clutched Amanda’s hand while she screamed for help.

He remembered Amanda, fourteen years old, crying and calling Rose as the ambulance doors were closed. Bogie almost laughed when the EMTs started the oxygen and he looked up to see a large sign reading ‘Welcome to Palm Beach’.

Now after four years Bogie and Amanda were returning to Boston, and they knew their lives were already changing.

After eating both hers and Bogie’s small packets of blue potato chips passed out by the flight attendant, Amanda pulled her cosmetic bag out from her tote stored under the seat. She artfully applied foundation, several shades of eye shadow to her eyelids then lined her eyes and quickly dabbed her lashes with mascara. She penciled her eyebrows and lined her lips before coloring them a soft pink. After applying blush with a small brush to her cheeks, forehead and chin, she checked herself in the mirror and sighed.

Bogie said nothing. He believed his daughter was beautiful with no makeup. And no amount of makeup was going to cover the puffy, bloodshot eyes that crying half the night produced. It was Rose who taught Amanda make-up tricks to look naturally beautiful. Rose had often said she didn’t need to explain the cosmetics process or rationale to a man, even Bogie, believing that was far above any male’s range of comprehension. Bogie deferred to his partner and his daughter who tried to imitate Rose in so many ways.

Approaching Logan Airport, they could see Interstate 93 congested in both directions. Amanda had her iPhone in hand ready to turn it on the second the plane met the tarmac.

Bogie watched as she checked her incoming texts, nothing from Randy Carpenter. But a call was coming in.