“Who’d have thought?” Maxine murmured.
She leaned forward and kissed Tammy very gently on the cheek. “Go to sleep, honey. I want you well.”
When she’d gone, Tammy lay beneath the coverlet, listening to the reassuring rhythm of conversation between Maxine and Jerry from next door, and the draw and boom of the Pacific.
Of all the people to have found such comfort with: Maxine Frizelle. Her life had taken some very odd turns, no question about that.
But somehow it still seemed right. After the long journeys of late, the pursuits and the revelations, the terrors that could not speak, and those that spoke all too clearly, she felt as though Maxine was somehow her reward; her prize for staying the terrible course.
“Who’d have thought?” she said to herself.
And with Maxine’s words on her lips, she fell asleep.
“I want to go back to Rio Linda,” Tammy announced two days later. They were sitting on their favorite spot, out on the patio, and today there was a splash of the vodka mixed with tomato juice in Tammy’s glass.
“You want to go home?” Maxine said.
Tammy took her hand. “No, no,” she said. Then, more fiercely: “God, no. That’s not my home any longer.”
“So — ?”
“Well, I had this huge collection of Todd Pickett memorabilia. And I want to get rid of it. Then I want to think about selling the house.”
“Meaning you’ll move in with me?”
“If it isn’t too sudden?”
“At our age, nothing’s too sudden,” Maxine said. “But are you sure you want to go through all that stuff yourself? Can’t you get one of the fans to do it?”
“I could, I suppose,” Tammy said. “But I’d feel better doing it myself.”
“Then we’ll do it together.”
“It’ll be boring. There’s so much stuff. And Arnie’s been using the house on and off so it’ll be a pig-sty.”
“I don’t care. When do you want to go?”
“As soon as possible. I just want to get it over and done with.”
Tammy tried to find Arnie, first at the airport and then at his new girlfriend’s house, just to warn him that they were coming into town, but she didn’t get hold of him. Part of her was glad that Maxine was accompanying her, when there were so many variables she couldn’t predict; but there was another part of her that felt a little uncomfortable at the prospect. Maxine lived in luxury. What would she think when she laid eyes on the scruffed, stuffed, little ranch-house where Tammy and Arnie had lived out the charmless farce of their marriage for fourteen-and-a-half years?
They got an early plane out of Los Angeles, and were in Sacramento by nine-thirty in the morning. Maxine had arranged for a chauffeured sedan to meet them at the airport. The chauffeur introduced himself as Gerald, and said that he was at their disposal. Did they want to go straight to the address he’d been given? Tammy gave Maxine a nearly panicked look: the moment was upon her, and suddenly she was anxious.
“Come on,” Maxine said. “We’ll face the horror together. Then we’ll be out of here by the middle of the afternoon.”
Arnie hadn’t bothered to mow the front lawn, of course, or weed the ground around the two rose bushes that Tammy had attempted to nurture. The bushes were still alive, but only just. The weeds were almost as tall as the bushes.
“Of course he may have changed the lock,” Tammy said, as they approached the front door.
“Then we’ll just get Gerald to shoulder it in,” Maxine said, ever practical. “It’s still your house, honey. We’re not doing anything illegal.”
In fact, the key fitted and turned without any problem; and it was immediately apparent from the general state of the place that Arnie hadn’t after all been a very regular visitor here in a while. But the heating had been left turned up so it was stiflingly hot in all the rooms; a stale, sickly heat. In the kitchen there was some food left out and rotting: a half-eaten hamburger, a pile of fruit which had been corrupted into plush versions of the originals, two plates of pizza crusts. The stink was pretty offensive, but Tammy got to work quickly clearing up the kitchen, while Maxine went around the house opening the windows and turning down the heating. With the rotted food bagged and set outside, and bleach put down the sink to take away the stench, the place was a little more hospitable, but Tammy made it very clear that she wanted to stay here for as short a time as possible, so they set to work. Given the size of the collection it was obviously not going to be sorted through and disposed of in a day; all Tammy wanted to do was collect up all the stuff that was personal, and either burn it or take it away. The rest she would let members of the Appreciation Society come in and collect. They’d end up fighting over the choicest items no doubt; all the more reason not to be there when they came.