The Girl in White Pajamas (6 page)

The little girl held the Cambodian woman’s hand as they walked out the cellar door of the converted farm house toward the carriage house at the end of the driveway. Isabella argued with the older woman. “I must, Kim! Uncle George hasn’t seen me in days! He misses me. He’s sad when I don’t come to visit him.”

“But he’s resting,” Kim argued.

“That’s all everybody does! Everybody’s so sad and resting all the time.” She reached up and pushed the buzzer waiting for the white curtain on the glass to move. When it did, she grinned as did the slim man with a long mane of black hair. He opened the door, grabbed Isabella, lifted her up and twirled her around. They both laughed.

“Thanks for bringing her over, Kim!” George said.

“She say she must see you.”

George Doyle Hampfield grinned at Isabella as she nodded. “Well, Izzy, since you’ve come to visit me, maybe we should have some milk and cookies!”

The chubby little redhead agreed. “And we can read a book, too,” Isabella added.

The handsome man turned to Kim. “If you have something to do, you can come back in an hour.”

Kim nodded, waved good-by to George and Isabella, and turned to walk away. While she moved across the lawn to the large house, George noticed a dark sedan driving slowly down the road past the property. He thought it odd because their street had very light traffic.

When Kim was gone, the little girl took her uncle’s hand, “Uncle George, I’m worried. Something bad is happening! Mommy’s always crying. She slept for two whole days.” Raising her two fingers to make her point. “Is she going to die?”

The handsome man sadly lifted the little child and hugged her. “I promise, she’s not going to die. Some things happened to make her sad, but she’ll be okay.”

“Why did she cry when she answered her phone this morning?”

George shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask her, won’t we?”

Isabella nodded. “And you and Uncle Jack haven’t come to visit me.”

“I haven’t been feeling well, I’ve been home and Uncle Jack’s had to do my work and his.” George pointed to the yellow floral pattern loveseat and indicated that Isabella should sit down. The living room was decorated with white, lace curtains and yellow and orange accents throughout with white end tables. George called it ‘Early Doris Day’. Isabella picked up the remote control and flicked through the stations of the TV until she found what she was looking for.

When George returned to the living room with a small tray holding two glasses of milk and a plate of cookies, he studied Isabella as she watched two blondes with over-processed hair arguing and trading obscene hand gestures while members of Jerry Springer’s audience egged them on. George placed the tray on the coffee table, picked up the remote control and switched off the TV. They smiled at each other, and he sat down. “Do you think we should find out what
Stuart Little
is up to today?” he asked as he reached for the book.

Isabella nodded as she chewed her cookie.

After Bogie, James and Trudie finished their breakfast, James stepped outside to enjoy one of his new cigarettes. Bogie checked his watch. “Everybody still sleeping?”

Trudie shook her head. “Miss Amanda left before you got here. Rose picked her up. I believe they went shopping.”

“Where?” Bogie asked.

“I think Copley Place,” Trudie offered.

With visions of Neiman Marcus, Saks and high-end boutiques going through his head, he sighed.

“Let her be,” Trudie suggested. “Rose enjoys spoiling Amanda. She’s like a mother to her. She wants her to have the finer things.”

“No, Rose is more like Auntie Mame! She helps develop delusions of grandeur in Mandie then leaves me with the cleanup detail. I’d rather Rose encouraged her to be more practical.”

Trudie smiled. “Well, as you like to say ‘She is what she is’! Amanda’s a beautiful girl! Rose wants her to look her best. I saw pictures of her mother. Amanda looks just like her, doesn’t she?”

Bogie nodded. “I just hope she doesn’t turn out like her.”

“She’s a good girl, with a good heart. She’ll be fine.”

“You know she’s pregnant?”

Trudie nodded.

Bogie laughed. “Does Herself or Ann have a clue that you and James probably know more about what’s happening in this house than they do?”

Trudie smiled and shrugged.

“But she’s so young. He’s so young,” Bogie lamented.

“And how old was her mother when you married her?”

“Nineteen.”

“And how old were you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Isn’t that similar to Amanda and her young man?”

“I hope not!” Bogie said. “You saw how well that turned out! Besides it’s up in the air whether he’s still her young man.”

After breakfast, Bogie went next door to the brownstone with one large outside door, a vestibule and two inside doors. As he walked up the stairs, he remembered hurrying down these same steps four years earlier when he was angry with everyone. That day, Amanda had been dilly dallying, and they were going to miss their flight. But more than that, he was concerned about Bailey. She was being touchy and unreasonable. Even through the fury, he thought that everything would work out. It didn’t. It all turned to shit!

When he noticed there were two holes where the doorbells used to be, he knocked on the downstairs door. Frustrated, he found himself pounding on the glass insert so hard it was rattling in the frame.

Jeannie McGruder yanked the door open, and Bogie almost gasped.

Fifteen years earlier Jeannie was treated like a movie star in the Boston Police Department. With her platinum colored hair and 38DD bust she was the sexiest looking rookie on the force. Jeannie was in top physical condition and could outrun any of the guys. Unfortunately, she didn’t run fast enough to get away from Bud McGruder. He pursued her, married her and, in the tradition of his father before him, began to look for new conquests before the ink on the marriage license was dry. After the birth of their beautiful baby girl, Jennifer, Bud swore he’d mend his ways and be a good husband and father. He didn’t, and the marriage turned into a series of bitter alcohol fueled fights. One night, drunk and desperate, Jeannie pulled her service revolver out when he came home with the smell of another woman all over him. She aimed at his arm, but struck the wall next to him. The bullet went through the wall and killed little Jennifer, who was asleep in the next room. Jeannie’s life as a mother, cop and useful member of society ended that day.

Looking at her now, Bogie had difficulty believing this enormous woman with a bloated face and black slits for eyes was Jeannie.

“What the fuck?!” She slurred and spit, “Who the fuck?”

“Hi, Jeannie,” he said a bit shaken.

Her hand moved to her mouth and she started sobbing when she recognized him. Bogie put his arm around her and led her into the downstairs apartment that he once called home.

When Bogie was married to his father’s mistress, Olga, they lived here pretending to be a family while Baxter McGruder paid the rent. Bogie and Amanda moved their simple furniture from their Quincy house into this apartment. The cheap furniture was probably out of place in the formal living room, but Bogie didn’t care. The dining room was turned into Amanda’s bedroom and the den into a bedroom for the happy couple and baby Barbara. Bogie never slept in that room and only went in there once to change the crying baby’s diaper when Olga was passed out on the bed. He kept his few belongings in Amanda’s room and slept on the couch. Although they were somewhat crowded with baby paraphernalia placed around the apartment, it was as neat as possible as a result of Bogie’s obsession with order and cleanliness.

As he looked around this place now it was unrecognizable to him. Some of the old furniture was still there but totally destroyed. The blue tweed couch now had springs popping out of the back and large stains over the cushions. Some of the unidentifiable stains were three dimensional. They matched similar stains on the carpeting. The walls had unusual substances attached to them. As he glanced at the one wall, Bogie remembered the saying ‘If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it sticks’. It looked like some of the shit stuck to this wall. There were bullet holes in the wall between the living room and what had been Amanda’s bedroom. The furnace was running nonstop and waves of heat made the room feel like it was a hundred degrees, but he felt a cold breeze as he crossed the hall to the living room. He assumed the fresh air was a result of Mother McGruder shooting out the kitchen window.

The smell in the apartment was a combination of second hand booze, greasy take-out, dirty bodies and shit.

Sadly, Bogie looked down at Jeannie’s greasy, gray hair, her enlarged abdomen and her swollen hands and feet. He helped her to the couch and said, “I’m sorry, Jeannie.”

She squinted as she studied him then made a curling motion with her index fingers as she tried to point to him. “
Sorry
,” she repeated. “You hated him!” She cackled.

“I’m not sorry for him. I’m sorry for you. You’re the one who got the shit end of the stick.”

“We have to make arrangements for Bud. Are you up for it?” Bogie asked.

“I don’t give a shhhhit! He’s dead!”

“Don’t you want to be involved?”

“Involvvved? He lived up there!” She pointed to the ceiling. “Wouldn’t even let me come up any more. This is myyy…hous…,” she tried to say with her finger still twirling above her. “He said I was…he was a bad...”

“I know,” Bogie said softly. “You don’t rent out this apartment anymore?”

She looked at him blankly then shook her head. “Not since you.” And then she seemed to drift away into her thoughts.

“How about if I come back tomorrow, and we can talk about the arrangements?”

She nodded.

“I’ll send somebody over this afternoon to fix your window.”

Jeanie moved her head in a strange motion resting the side of her face on one shoulder and then the other. “Why?”

“So you won’t have animals crawling through your window,” Bogie said.

Jeannie cackled again. “Like the old lady?”

Bogie smiled and repeated, “Like the old lady.”

“She’s fuck’n crazy! They should lock her up and throw away the key!”

Bogie only nodded.

“What happened…to...you and the kid? Where’d you go? You look…different.”

“We moved to Florida.” Since she probably wouldn’t remember it the next day, Bogie figured that was all the explanation she needed.

Bogie left the apartment and walked down the stairs even faster than he had four years earlier. This time he needed fresh air, but he was also in much better shape than he had been just before the heart attack, the big wake-up call! He was forty pounds lighter with no fat. All flab had long since turned to muscle.

As Bogie returned to the McGruder house, he somehow resented that these God-awful tasks were falling on his shoulders. He wasn’t a real McGruder and his old man and Elizabeth McGruder went to great pains to remind him of that on a regular basis. They did, however, change his name. They believed Boghdun Uchenich just wasn’t an acceptable handle in Boston society. Even that turned into a battle when the judge in Family Court asked him if he was okay with changing his name to Bradley McGruder. Bogie told the judge that he didn’t
want
to change his name; he was being forced to change it. Bogie pointed out to the judge that his father had helped name him Boghdun and was the one who shortened it to Bogie. The judge was surprised to hear that Baxter McGruder lived with Mary Uchenich and their son Boghdun until he deserted them when Bogie was three years old. Bogie told the judge that it would be disrespectful to his dead mother to change his name. Without glancing at Baxter or Elizabeth McGruder, Bogie knew they were glaring at him and wanted to kill him. He maintained his sincere expression, the one he used when he was an altar boy back on the South Side of Pittsburgh a million years earlier. The judge ruled that for family continuity, his last name would be changed to McGruder and he could keep his first name.

He knew the old man would punch him in the back as soon as they went down the courthouse steps, and Baxter McGruder did not disappoint him. It wasn’t the first time his father beat him and wouldn’t be the last.

Elizabeth McGruder, when she called him anything, took to calling him ‘Bog–dune’ believing it sounded more WASPish than a Hunky sounding name like Boghdun ‘Boogh–down’. Since they both had blue eyes, people who were not aware of the family dynamics believed that Bogie was her natural born son since her own two children had their father’s brown eyes.

Now as the last male McGruder he was expected to deal with all the family crap when he wasn’t really part of the family.

Bogie was about to ring the bell to Elizabeth McGruder’s brownstone when he heard a car brake in front of the house. The vehicles behind it in the heavy traffic beeped their horns. Bogie turned around and watched as Randy Carpenter, wearing a wool peacoat, got out of a yellow cab carrying a duffle in one hand and holding the top hook of a garment bag with the other. Bogie’s first thought was that at least Randy, unlike Amanda, remembered to bring a garment bag. They looked at each other expressionless. Finally, Randy said, “If it makes you feel any better, take a swing at me!”

The corner of Bogie’s mouth twitched before he said, “It wouldn’t do a thing for me, but if it would make you feel any better I’ll be glad to oblige.”

Deflated, Randy said, “I’m sorry. It got out of hand.”

Bogie nodded once. “I didn’t walk out there to fight with you. I only wanted to remind you to treat my daughter with respect.” When he saw the relief on Randy’s face, he added, “But I only remind someone once.”

“I do respect her. I love her. I…should have said something sooner. Can I speak to her?” Randy asked.

Bogie shook his head as they walked through the front door. He pointed at Randy while speaking to James. “This is Amanda’s…friend.”

While James smiled and shook Randy’s hand, Bogie continued, “She’s not here. She’s out shopping with Rose.”

Randy set his luggage down next to Bogie’s and sighed. He knew only too well that a shopping trip with Aunt Rose insured that Amanda would come home with new outrageously overpriced clothes.

Bogie, Randy Carpenter, James and Trudie sat around the kitchen table while Randy wolfed down three large pieces of the coffee cake with two cups of black coffee. He told the old couple how he moved in with his father a year and half earlier when he got a job with the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office. “There was nothing going on in Ohio. More factories were closed than open. Guys I went to high school with are still working two or three minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet. My mom’s been a hairdresser as long as I remember, and she said she’s bringing home half of what she used to. Customers don’t come in as often and tips are way down. I called my dad and asked him to keep his eyes open for any job openings in Florida. I was lucky to get the job with the PBSO; but, you know, after a while you understand why it’s called a job.”

Bogie raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like working in law enforcement?”

Randy shrugged. “If I could just do my job and go home, it would be great. But there are all these politics and back stabbing and crap going on.”

The side of Bogie’s mouth twitched. “You think that’s the only place where that happens? No matter where you work, it’s the same shit.”

Randy shrugged and said, “I guess so. I don’t care as long as I have Mandie to come home to.”

The doorbell rang, James stood up and Randy froze in place.

Looking at Randy’s pale face, Bogie said, “Talk to her in the parlor. You can close the door and have some privacy.”

Randy got up and walked down the hallway toward the front door. When Amanda saw him, her lips quivered and her shoulders shook, one tear rolled down her cheek as she stood looking at him. He held her hands. “I’m sorry, Mandie.”

They held on to each other as she cried then Randy led her to the parlor.

Rose walked in the kitchen and sighed. “Well, she’s not our baby anymore!” Without waiting for an invitation, she poured herself a mug of black coffee, opened the back door and walked out to have a cigarette. She stood in the small yard and inhaled deeply.

Bogie looked up when he heard pipes rattling above him knowing that Herself and Ann were probably awake and showering or bathing or doing whatever they do. The in-house phone rang in the kitchen. James answered, “Yes, Miss Ann.”

Ann walked down the stairs and moved immediately into the dining room. She sat at the dining room table looking pale. Bogie walked in the dining room from the kitchen carrying a cup of black coffee and two slices of buttered toast with jam. Studying the table, Ann said, “James” when she heard movement behind her.

“Yes,” Bogie answered.

Ann looked up immediately. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were James. Where is he?”

“He’s in the kitchen. I told him I’d bring your breakfast in since I wanted to talk to you.”

Her hand shook as she started to raise the cup. She put it down, grabbed a piece of toast and started chewing on it. Bogie studied her then said, “Annie, you can’t go on like this!” Ann lay the toast back down on the plate as she stared at him. He continued, “You’ve got to get out of this house!”

“And do
what
with mother? Leave her by herself?”

Bogie shook his head. “You’ve both got to get out of this house! Do you want to end up like her?”

Before Ann could answer, Elizabeth McGruder walked into the dining room tapping her walking stick as she moved. “Who closed the doors to the parlor?” she demanded.

Bogie looked at Ann and said, “Amanda and—”

“Amanda!” the old woman shrieked. “She’s a thief! She stole the guns from—”

“No, she didn’t!” Bogie said angrily. “I took them!”

Elizabeth McGruder studied him as she sat down. “Why?” she asked.

“They needed to be cleaned and oiled.”

“Who gave you permission?” the old woman asked haughtily.

Bogie stood up quickly and said a bit too loudly, “Well, slap my ass and call me cheeky!” He walked into the kitchen as Rose stood in front of the sink smiling and shaking her head. “You’re so suave, Sport! And slick as shit in a sneaker!” Rose checked her watch. “We’ve got about three hours so let’s use them wisely.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Jesus is covering the shop till two o’clock.”

“Now he gets to be King for a Day,” Bogie said knowing Jesus considered himself invaluable to the running of R&B. Bogie’s feeling was that Jesus was a great asset who didn’t need to remind them of that fact every chance he got.

Rose pointed toward the front hallway. “You checked out of the hotel?”

“Yes! I felt like I was sleeping in a box, a very small box!”