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For the Love of Wanda
Pat Dixon
4
“I want Wanda Gomez to have everything—my savings—stocks—household goods—my TV, stereo, DVD player, furniture—my paintings, my kitchen stuff—everything I have—though, of course, she’ll be totally free to do whatever she pleases with any and all of it—including blowing it on some pretty young man she that fancies.”
George Wilson Cathcart III nodded for emphasis and smiled at his young lawyer.
Sherri Birnbaum, whose firm had sent her to Cathcart’s apartment to discuss how he wished to update his will, leaned forward and smiled encouragingly.
“I see here,” she told the elderly man, “according to your previous will you left three-fourths of your estate to your daughter, one eighth to your sister, and one eighth to be distributed equally among an array of listed charities. Just for my own clarification, because my old law journal editor used to say, ‘Better a stupid question than a stupid mistake’—just for clarification, Mr. Cathcart, do you mean to drop all of these other persons and charities—completely?”
“My sister died of cancer five years ago, as did my wife about fifteen years ago, and my daughter, Jean—she fell down a flight of stairs—about five months ago—and she—she died shortly after that. At this time, however worthy any other charities may be, I would rather have Wanda Gomez be my only ‘charity.’ My chief reason for choosing them, when I made my other will, was to honor various friends and family members who’d suffered from various—problems—conditions—fatally. Two died of cancer—my folks died of heart diseases—a friend died of MS—another was killed by a drunk driver. Since that time when my other will was written, my aunt has died of diabetes—and so on—so there’s plenty of charities I could give to if I still wanted to go that route—but I don’t anymore. All these people are dead—lights out—and I want to help a nice young living person—whom I know face-to-face—here—and now.”
Sherri glanced up at him, startled.
“Now—? Are you—?”
George blinked twice and grinned, showing his perfect white dentures.
“No—no—no. ‘Now,’ meaning ‘now I want to do X-Y-Z planning with respect to the eventual disposal of my—my estate.’ Not ‘now’ in the sense of me dropping dead today or tomorrow to get the stuff to her right away. You probably—you have to’ve met sixteen tons of geriatrics who are about to drop dead from one or more of the fifty-seven ‘conditions’ they’ve been limping through their ‘golden years’ with—or seventeen tons of majorly depressed old coots—or their widows—who have been stockpiling their meds—with the idea of—‘going gentle into that good night,’ right? No—that’s not me. I’m still as healthy as your proverbial horse, and all I mean—meant—is that this is my ‘will’ now—now—at this time—today.”
“I understand,” she said, smiling down at the beige living room carpet for several seconds. “What about—contingencies, Mr. Cathcart? It just may turn out that, like I said before, for whatever reason and/or reasons, Ms. Gomez cannot or will not accept your bequest. We should write your will so that—so that all the bases are covered, so to speak—not that anything will happen, of course, but just in case, by one of those billion-to-one flukes, it does. Have you no other close living relatives?”
“My daughter’s son is a—well, calling him a flake is the kindest word I can think of. Jean would say, ‘Bobby is still finding himself.’ Well, I’ve known people to be ‘late bloomers’—I was in education for forty-five years—higher education—college level—but if Bobby Martineau were a plant—.” He paused to grin in anticipation of his own wit. “If Bobby were a plant—he’d be a century plant! I never told my daughter that, but I thought it often enough.”
“I see. I can understand—and fully appreciate—your reluctance. Since he is a blood relative, perhaps you could put him in for a small specific amount.” She looked up at the sprinkler that hung down near the far corner of the living room ceiling. “It has sometimes—oftener than not these days—been our experience at Reilly, Cohen, Cohen, and Levine, that blood relatives who have been left out of a will entirely—especially close blood relatives—will tie matters up by contesting the—the soundness of the deceased’s mind—and have occasionally prevailed in their suits—whereas if a smallish figure is specified, they cannot say—pardon me if I use the coarse words of a recent plaintive I had to deal with—‘The very fact that I was cut off without a cent makes it clear the blankety-blank old fart was out of his blankety-blank blanking mind!’ And some courts have been very sympathetic to that sort of view—you see?”
She brushed her dark bangs out of her eyes and smiled, making direct eye contact with George. He smiled back and brushed his own longish white hair out of his own eyes. For a brief instant she wondered it he were mocking her—or flirting with her.
A moderately loud gurgling sound suddenly came from George’s midsection, and his smile faded. Sherri’s eyes widened slightly, and one of her eyebrows moved an eighth of an inch higher.
“Hold that idea,” said George, reaching for the hand grips of his walker. “I shall return, as General Douglas MacArthur used to say—way back in my day. Just be a moment—just two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
He took a deep breath, let it out as he rose, and slowly walked to the bathroom of his small studio apartment.
Sherri glanced around at the furnishings. The sofa, she guessed, opened up to serve as a bed. On either end of it were a pair of old Formica-top tables with ugly ceramic lamps on them. In front of it was a small scarred coffee table. The chair she sat in, at least, was comfortable enough. A tall wooden stool stood in the small kitchenette next to a cheap drop-leaf pine table. On the walls hung a pair of framed documents and seven oil paintings done in the style of Modigliani—signed GWC 3. From her seat she read the nearer document—“Even the ‘exact sciences’ deal with averages and probabilities.—GWC 3.” She made a face expressing her disagreement, and stood up to read the farther one. It made her laugh: “‘Whatever the sun may be, it is certainly not a ball of flaming gas.’—D. H. Lawrence.” Behind her, she heard the toilet flush and the bathroom door opening.
“I see that you’re an artist, Mr. Cathcart,” she said. “Did you teach art in a college by any chance?”
“We all try to connect dots and make sense of the world—far and near,” he said. “No, I was a professor of mathematics for twenty-two years and then went into college administration. I worked at a small state university in Colorado for about seven years after I got my Ph.D., and then I moved on to Witherspoon Academy—a quasi-military college just twenty-five miles north of us here. Painting is just my—hobby.”
“I’ve heard of Witherspoon—heard good things about it, Mr. Cathcart. Or should I now call you ‘Dr. Cathcart’? No?”
“Somebody’s lied to you about Witherspoon,” he grinned. “It’s been going down hill for the past thirty years—standards-wise, faculty-wise, morale-wise—but then so are nearly all places of so-called higher learning—and most places of lower learning as well, including law schools, I’m sure. Oop—sorry. I mean—I meant to classify law schools in with institutions of ‘higher,’ not ‘lower’ learning. No offense intended.”
“No offense taken. It’s often said that it’s impossible to insult a lawyer. And that is almost true. I’d even be willing to classify law schools with the places of ‘lower learning.’ Did you make that up yourself? I’ve never heard that expression before—though it’s an obvious gap that our language has had, now that you . . . .”
“Yes—that’s one of my ‘George-isms,’ as my wife used to call them—one of my many George-isms. I used to frame some and have them in my office, and the ones that were too ‘hot’ for the work place ended up on our walls at home—at least for a time. It was sort of a rotating display, as museums say.”
“Uh-huh. Getting back to basics, sir, since you are paying me at the rate of one hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour, I’d recommend that you stipulate a small bequest to your grandson—Bobby Martineau. And I’d also recommend that you have a kind of contingency plan for your estate in the event that Ms. Gomez is unable—or unwilling—to accept your generous bequest to her. You could, for example, in the event of her prior—death—leave some share of your estate to her heirs, whomever they might be—and, in the event that she declines your generosity for any reasons, you might want to reconsider leaving various bequests to charities, to your grandson, to some college or university, or to whomever you might prefer.”
“All right—fifteen hundred bucks for shushing up Bobby Boy—Robert Taylor Martineau—and, in the event Ms. Gomez can’t or won’t get the money and property, give the bulk of it to—to the local Animal Rescue League. I think they do good work and benefit the homeless and afflicted as well anyone else does. And if Bobby predeceases me, give the Rescue League all of it. Yes—do it that way.”
Sherri read back her notes to George to confirm his wishes.
“Now, what I need are the addresses for your nephew and Ms. Gomez. They should be in the will so that these people can readily be located, assuming they are living—after you have completed your own much, much longer life, that is.”
“You can copy Bobby’s address from this little booklet I’ve got here. As for Ms. Gomez, I don’t know her home address. I’ve never tried to learn it because I didn’t want to seem like a stalker—and I’m not sure they’d give it to me in any case, downstairs. I bet they’d give it to you, though, if you ask them, though I would not want for Ms. Gomez to know she’s in my will. I suppose you could talk with the Director of the apartment building, and she’d give it to you and would agree to keep it confidential. I—I would not want Wanda Gomez thinking I’m trying to get any sort of special treatment by anyone saying I’m leaving her something. That would be a really—a really itty-shay way—pardon my Latin—a really bad way for a guy to act—though I’ve known a lot of fellows who wouldn’t hesitate to do far worse—as far as women are concerned.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Cathcart. You’re a—a gentleman—as well as a scholar.”
“True—and there’s damn few of us left.”
Sherri reached out her hand to George and demonstrated that a smallish woman could have a very firm and frank handshake.
“Today is Tuesday,” she stated. “I’ll get a draft copy off to you tomorrow or the day after, and then, if there are no changes needed, we can schedule a signing party.”
3
Lying in bed that night, listening to the cars and trucks softly passing on the highway below his fourth-floor studio apartment, George Wilson Cathcart III smiled and recalled how he had found “my Wanda.” He had been living here in Golden Valley Apartments for over six months and had increasingly regretted heeding his daughter’s advice to move here in preference to either of the two other nearby extended care facilities which they had visited last December: The Sheltered Hermitage, with its warm, blue-tiled swimming pool, and especially The Hearth of Wellness, with its dozen slender young black aides, all attired in bright, formfitting T-shirts. Each “girl,” Jean and he were told, was “designated her own uniquely different color” to facilitate her identification. “Young black aides,” George remembered Jean whispering, “tending rich, elderly white ‘inmates’—for minimum wage.”
Jean had insisted that The Sheltered Hermitage’s pool was “too dangerous, for one thing—they have no life guards on duty—and, for another, the water’s so warm it could put a body to sleep. Also, they don’t trust folks to have microwaves in their rooms—or battery-powered wheelchairs.”
As for the pretty aides at The Hearth of Wellness, Jean had objected, “All that eye-candy would shorten your life by twenty years. You’d go into cardiac arrest within three days of moving in there. Furthermore, I don’t like that staircase coming to the lobby from their second floor. A person with a wheelchair or a walker could tumble down and break their fool necks. That place is a deathtrap every way I look at it.”
And then, irony of ironies, within three weeks, Jean herself had fallen down her own stairs in her two-story condo—knocked herself out—reflexively vomited her late-night snack and vodka tonic—and then breathed in her own vomit, blocking most of her throat and putting herself into a coma—a vegetative coma from which he, with her son Bobby’s agreement, had released her just a week later. He grimaced, recalling how Jean, propped up in bed, had gone stark white within seconds when her heart stopped, her blood leaving her face and neck and pooling in her legs . . . .
“Bless that nurse,” he now whispered softly, just as he had often done since that day. Thanks to Jean’s living will and his own insistence, a doctor had given the order to take Jean off life support—but had inconsistently left the oxygen tube under her nostrils. After six long hours, George had suddenly noticed the tube and had told the attending nurse to remove it—please. Nodding sympathetically, the nurse has said, “I think your daughter will begin to experience oxygen thirst soon—which will make her uncomfortable, wherever she is now—and I’d like to give her a little injection of this—to ease any discomfort she’ll have—if that’s all right with you—and her son.” And he had said, “Bless your heart, nurse,” and hugged the shoulders of Bobby, who had nodded “yes”—Bobby, who quickly sold every bit of Jean’s property including the condo George had bought her, not even asking Gramps if he wanted anything as a memento—Bobby, who never phoned or wrote—except a single line of belated thanks for checks sent for birthdays and Christmases . . . .
Well, dangerous stairs or not, George remembered being tempted to move from the mind-numbing, oatmeal-like excitement of Golden Valley to the rainbow of the nearby Hearth of Wellness, with its dozen comely aides—tempted and tentatively decided and all but acted upon—until the advent of “my Wanda” . . . .
Gazing up at the blurred shadows of his blinds moving across his ceiling, George smiled and recalled that happy morning. He had been taking his new secret shortcut to the dining room with the large service elevator at the far end of the hall—and its door had opened and—“Mon Dieu!” he had exclaimed aloud.
Facing him was a short, dark woman—perhaps in her late twenties—perhaps her mid-thirties.
He recalled they had stared at each other for ten to fifteen seconds, and then she had moved backwards, pulling a huge vacuum cleaner and a cart filled with cleaning equipment with her.
“Thank you—Miss,” he had said, stepping aboard the elevator.
“Thank you—Meester,” she had replied.
The door had closed, and another five seconds elapsed before George pressed the button for the first floor. While the elevator descended to the second floor where this new woman was taking her equipment, George had stood to her left and had strained to look at her from the corners of his eyes. She was very short, and her black hair was pulled back in a little pony-tail. Her profile had reminded him of a bird of prey—a noble hawk or eagle. She was—plumpish—perhaps “stocky”—and her legs were covered with dark blue trousers with white stripes running from waist to ankle—the lower half of a nylon track suit—and the flesh of her thick little waist was exposed for an inch or an inch and a half, depending on how she leaned—and her upper body was clad in an snug, almost-matching dark blue T-shirt with a small Golden Valley logo—and she had—he thought—interesting breasts—the sort he had not seen in nearly sixty years—cone-shaped—and rather small and quite high.
Lying now on the brink of sleep, George recalled the pleasing effects created by those “bullet bras” that suddenly became ubiquitous on college campuses just when he was completing graduate school and beginning to teach as an assistant professor. “Sweaters, sweaters everywhere—an’ what’s a guy to think,” he recalled exclaiming to a colleague while they walked across campus on an April day; “Lo, the geometry of cones is very popular in my classes—have you noticed the same in your own?”
Could it be possible, he wondered now, that Wanda herself wears some of those vintage garments—leftovers from—the ’fifties? Or do they still make them in Latin America—perhaps only for Latinas? He imagined dozens—no, hundreds of brassiere factories in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay—especially Paraguay—and, most logical of all—Brazil, of course—producing millions of 1950s-style circle-stitch bras—for women who looked like Incas . . . .
And three days later, at 10:15 a.m., Wanda had knocked on his open door and had glanced up at him and said, “House-kipping, Meester.” And she had then come in to change his towels and sheets and remake his bed, to dust, vacuum, mop his bathroom and kitchenette, and empty his waste cans. And when she picked up an armload of his dirty pajamas and socks and shirts and even his underwear, he had stopped her—“No, no, Miss. I’ll wash and dry my own stuff—my own clothes—in the machines just down the hall. No—thank you, no.” And Wanda, though he did not yet know her name, had looked at him with mild mute puzzlement, shrugged, and said, “Not wanting—washing—close—now?” And he had thanked her again—and then watched her, while pretending to watch his TV, as she vacuumed and mopped—and when she left, he thanked her twice more—then smiled and whispered, “Be still, my heart,” and then grinned like the boy of fifteen he had once been . . . .
Could he, George wondered vaguely, at his present age, even begin to construct a formula accounting for even his own tastes? Could he explain why or compute how he himself preferred certain types of noses—hair colors—or skin tones? Or explain why he found facets of Wanda attractive—like her dear little Wanda-songs that she sang quietly to herself—and always unsmilingly—while she mopped his kitchenette once a week? There must be some sort of transfer of affect, from one factor to other factors—or to the totality—to the whole—or at least to most of it . . . .
Perhaps he should take a night course and learn more Spanish? Perhaps he could somehow offer to help her learn more English to improve herself as far as wages and job opportunities were concerned? If she could become certified as a home health aide, he thought, surely she would then surely make more money surely than as a “house-kipper” or cleaning woman—surely . . . .
And, if she chose, she would be able to work longer shifts, if she chose, just as the aides did—all of them having twelve-hour shifts—and often taking two or even three twelve-hour shifts in a row without rest when Golden Valley was shorthanded. . . .
A dozen times he had almost asked Wanda if she were from Peru or Ecuador or Chile or Bolivia—but a dozen times he had shut his mouth. It would be too personal—and it would be harassment—and not a proper thing to do . . . .
Just before drifting off to sleep, George smiled, remembering the clever, casual way he had learned her name after she had cleaned his little apartment the third time. He had gone down to the front desk with a handful of change and a crumpled five-dollar bill and had lied that he had found these in the corridor outside his room a short time after “the housekeeping woman—the younger one with the dark hair, you know—not the one who wears glasses” had finished her work on his floor—“I think she might have dropped it, and I’d hate to think how hard she worked for it.” And the woman at desk had thanked him and said she would check for him, and then George had asked, “By the way, I don’t even know that young woman’s name yet—do you happen to?” And the woman behind the desk had said, “Wanda—I think. Yeah—Wanda—Gomez,” and had then answered the telephone with one hand, while putting the money into a drawer in front of her with the other . . . .
But whether anyone ever asked Wanda about the money, George had never ever learned—and he had never asked the woman at the desk about it, not wanting to be told—truthfully or not—that Wanda had accepted it—or (also truthfully or not) that somebody else had claimed it. Nobody ever mentioned the money to him. So be it, he thought—at least he had gained his purpose: “detecting” Wanda’s name—without setting off any “alarms” . . . .
2
Thursday, ten days later, George Wilson Cathcart III met again with Sherri Birnbaum. He had received a draft copy of his new will, along with a bill for nearly two thousand dollars for work thus far done, and was now prepared to sign it before witnesses. Two officials of Golden Valley came up to his apartment with Sherri—one of them a notary public. While Sherri pulled materials from her large leather briefcase, the Assistant Director gazed around George’s living room,
“What a charming job of decorating you’ve done here, George,” she cooed. “I’ve never been up here before today, and I just love what you’ve done with it!”
“Mr. Cathcart painted those pictures himself,” remarked Sherri with a warm-looking smile.
“Really! They’re lovely! You have hidden you light under a bushel, George. Perhaps you’d like to display some of your work in the library room or the computer room downstairs—or even give lessons to some of our residents.”
“Hmm. We’ll see,” said George. “It’s something to think about—or rather two somethings—to think about.”
“Have you painted anything recently, George?” asked the notary, laying her equipment out on the small coffee table in front of her.
“Yes,” said George, blushing slightly. “As a matter of fact, I have been working on three things lately. After all—this is called a ‘studio’ apartment, isn’t it? As—as—as some painter once remarked, ‘A painting is never really finished. It’s just something we finally just stop working on’—or words to that effect, if you know what I mean. And I keep going from one to another—revising—and I hope improving them.”
“How interesting, George,” said the Assistant Director.
“Well, gang,” said Sherri, “the meter is ticking for my law firm—an’ I’m ready to rumble, if you people all are.”
And so the signatures of George were witnessed by Sherri and the Assistant Director, and the notary put her chop marks on the document verifying that all the signatures were true and valid and kosher.
When the three women had left, George went into his bathroom, where the ventilator was running, set on high, and took his three newest paintings from his shower stall.
One by one, he set each of them carefully up on his window sill and then walked towards his “front” door to look at them from afar. There, with the aid of a small hand mirror, he looked at their reflections to judge better their composition and balance. Then, one by one, he turned them upside down and repeated the distant viewing process.
“No major flaws that I can see,” he muttered to himself. “Comin’ along fairly well.”
George returned the paintings to his shower stall to continue drying, making a mental note to hide them in the back of his clothes closet before Wanda came to clean on Friday. Then he put on a tie and his sports jacket and went down for his supper.
1
Sherri Birnbaum sat across from Bobby Martineau in a small Greek diner slightly more than ten miles west of Hartford, Connecticut.
“Ma’am,” said Bobby with a faux-shy smile, “I can’t honestly say I’m too broke up about my ol’ Gramps—‘cause he was undoubtedly losin’ it towards the end an’ was cranky as hell, if you’ll pardon my language. I do much appreciate your phone call, mentionin’ a—a ‘flaw’ in his will? I borrowed plane fare to get up here from Atlanta on the strength of our little conversation, an’ if you are as right as I think you think, then I’d like to give you a hundred dollars down t’ retain your services in this matter—on the books if you can be—or off the books if you can’t be. Results are what I’m interested in, an’ I figure you’re my sort of lawyer—you bein’ up north, close to New York an’ all. Heh.”
Sherri smiled back at Bobby.
“Mr. Martineau, when I drew up his will, I did so to the best of my abilities, based on what information your grandfather conveyed to me and what information I obtained from the officials in his apartment building. It is now my professional belief that his latest will cannot stand a challenge—based on the fact that it contains substantive errors pertaining to, as I’ve said, the correct name of the primary beneficiary, one—”
Sherri pointed with a finely manicured index finger to the passage in George Wilson Cathcart III’s will naming the cleaning woman.
“—so-called ‘Wanda Gomez.’ This woman, it can be argued, does not exist per se.”
“’Cause of a huge problem in—orthography,” added Bobby.
“Precisely. It is both my professional opinion and personal belief that she will be unwilling and/or unable to fight your view of the matter. A woman with a somewhat similar name does indeed exist—in fact I have made it my business to have her pointed out to me. She is undoubtedly the sole person your grandfather intended to reward for—for being cute or young or—or whatever men have as their reasons—in a thousand different cases every day—here in the state of Connecticut alone.”
“But her name, you said, is correctly pronounced ‘H’wahn-duh Goh-mess’? An’ it’s spelled different? Correct?”
“Indeed, Mr. Martineau. But I am merely an advocate—one who can see both sides of any matter. If I were a man and living in the Middle Ages, I might, for my living, well have been what was sometimes in your Anglo-Saxon language picturesquely called a ‘sell-sword.’ Some with a different linguistic taste might call such a person a ‘mercenary.’ I try to keep my emotions in check and will only say I’ve heard worse—and have been called far worse.”
“Well, Ma’am, then you’re in real good company, ’cause I sure have too. An’ words never broke none of my bones either.”
“Indeed. Any transaction between us will, for the record—or more properly off the record—will be ‘off the books.’ In fact, under most foreseeable circumstances, I will totally deny ever having met with you or dealt with you in any way, should you later claim I’ve done so. But, be it known, should you try to ‘stiff’ me on any split we now agree to, I have ways of hurting you through the courts that you wouldn’t begin to understand. I will not be ‘a woman scorned’ where my cut of the pie is concerned. All I’m asking for is a forty-five percent finder’s fee from you.”
“That’s a bit steep, considerin’ I’m his blood kin an’ could testify Gramps was funny in the head ever since my mom did a header down her stairs an’ died. How ’bout we say—oh—twenny-five percent.”
“Forty.”
“Umm. Thirdy-five.”
“Agreed. Shake on it.”
“Did you just—uh—New York me down or somethin’?”
Sherri laughed aloud.
“Yeah. I just did somethin’ like that. That leaves you sixty-five percent, which is almost two-thirds of nearly a million bucks for you, though—all for doing nothing but pissing off that sweet ol’ guy for years.”
“Well, I’m still findin’ myself.”
“Aren’t we all,” she replied.
Raising one eyebrow very slightly, she recalled having been denied an associate partnership at Reilly, Cohen, Cohen, and Levine, just two weeks ago.
“Any advice—counselor?” said Bobby.
“Yes. I’d advise you first of all to locate the woman at your grandfather’s old apartment building and get her to sign a piece of paper—it doesn’t even have to be witnessed by anybody—saying that she relinquishes any and all claims to your grandfather’s estate. Second, I’d advise you to give her a personal check for—oh—what can you afford? Can you slip her two or three hundred? You’ll find that her signature on the check will be very convincing to a jury or a judge that she had made an agreement with you on this matter. If she tries to renege on it in the future, both would tend to come down harshly on her—and she might even lose her green card and be sent back—to wherever she came from. Of course this is just advice that comes with no guarantees—law, you must know, is not one of the exact sciences.”
“How ’bout since her signature’s the important thing, I just give her a check for forty or fifty bucks?”
“That would probably do the trick. That amount is a lot of money for a person making under seven dollars an hour—it’s about a full day’s pay for her.”
Again, for some reason, Sherri laughed.
“Since there’s a choice, an’ it’s comin’ out o’ my hide, I’m makin’ it forty.”
“Suit yourself. It probably will never come up anyway—in court or anywhere else.”
“Any other last-minute advice or thoughts, counselor?
“Just what I said before. Don’t try to cross me. Let me show you few Polaroids I took just yesterday, in prep for our meeting.”
She handed him three small photographs of three paintings.
“Your grandfather was working on these the very day he had his choking spell in the dining room—and nobody knew how to get lasagna out of his throat in time.”
“Hmm. This is the one I really like—though I don’t know anythin’ ’bout art.”
“Somehow I predicted you would, Mr. Martineau. I’m sure that that one was the artist’s equivalent of poetic license—mermaids of course do not exist, whether clothed or—like this one. I doubt he ever saw Juanda Gomes in anything but her normal work clothes—the blue shirt and blue track pants of this next little painting he did of her. It’s almost a pity that she will probably never see any of these. I suspect that he was planning to give the work-clothes painting to her as a little ‘friendly’ gift—perhaps for Christmas—or Chanukah. But the one I like best, just from an artistic standpoint, of course, is this last one—with her sitting astride a white llama, wearing a colorful blanket and a kind of derby hat, with snow-covered mountains in the background.”
Bobby studied the three photographs in silence for half a minute, and Sherri watched him, expectantly.
“Well,” he finally said, “now I know who I’m to get in touch with. Thank you, counselor. It’s been a pleasure.”
“Stop—I’ll take those back with me, thank you. They have my fingerprints on them. Just so’s you know that I’m not bluffing, young man, be further advised that, in the unlikely event that you do try to cross me in any way—”
Sherri put the three photos back into an envelope and put the envelope into her leather briefcase.
“—I have the original paintings as evidence that Juanda Gomes in fact was whom he intended as his beneficiary when he gave me his own misspellings for her name for the will I prepared.”
She smiled at Bobby, and Bobby smiled back.
“I will charge that you were attempting to con her out of her windfall by preying on her ignorance of English—and her very real financial difficulties—and, perhaps it will also come out—just in passing—that you threatened to get her deported.”
Bobby laughed good-naturedly and looked around the diner to make certain that nobody was paying them any special attention.
“You play a mean game of poker, Ma’am, if I do say so myself. Looks like you have all the cards you need to get your way with me.”
Bobby laughed aloud, and Sherri grinned amiably at him.
“Indeed. Indeed I do,” she said, standing up.
Five minutes later, as Bobby drove east back to his motel, Sherri drove north to her mother’s house, where she still lived, genuine contentment in her eyes for the first time in months.
“Perfect!” she said aloud. “Little Bobby Boy now will contest his Gramps’s will—and so it’s only right that somebody see to it that ol’ Gramps’s wishes for ‘his Wanda’ get carried out—to some degree—say, on a contingency basis—say, fifty-fifty? I’m sure little Ms. Gomes would be thrilled out of her shirt with that arrangement.”
Sherri Birnbaum cast a quick glance at her briefcase and smiled.
“And you, Bobby Martineau, you anti-Semitic little cracker prick—I’ve also got your prints on my photo of Gramps’s portrait of Juanda—a photo that I kindly and innocently showed to you when you flew north to ask, ‘Who’s this mystery bitch that’s tryin’ t’ gyp mah Gramps’s only blood kin out o’ his rightful an’ hard-earned legacy?’”
Two miles farther up the road, Sherri found herself chanting a parody of Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Half a mil, half a mil, half a mil onward—right past what’s left to ’em—‘cause someone has blundered.”
She burst into a hearty laugh.
“As ol’ Dotty Sayers’s ol’ Montague Egg’s ol’ Salesman’s Handbook might say, ‘Half a mil’s far better than a measly third—or that, Chérie, is what I’ve always heard.’”
