Rush Klondike

Not quite a month after I signed the papers with Desmond Desmond, there was an invitation in the mail. It was one of those fancy linen jobs that usually meant a wedding that was setting the father of the bride\'s finances back to the stone ages.

The Thurgood James Foundation
Presents
A Day at the Circus
The Barrel Range Country Club
Saturday, March 29th,
1 p.m.
Donation: $100 per plate
All Proceeds Benefit the Art Museum Construction Fund

On the back was a hand written note from Peg\'s brother.

Mr. Klondike,

We\'d be so pleased if you and Nannette could join
us for this event. Everyone in the family is curious to
meet you, as well as missing our precious Nannette.

Warmest regards,
Dr. Dennis James, esq.

And shit, didn\'t that beat all? Peg\'s brother was finally checking in to see if I was making the grade with Nannette. A hundred bucks a plate? Something told me I ought to rent a tux and spend a little on something froufrou and frilly for Pinky the Wonder Heiress (who was at that moment running in circles around the sofa with a saucepan on her head and singing a song about how much she loved carrots. She wrote it herself just five minutes before. She has such talent).

As the 29th of March approached, I tried to stay loose about it. I was doing a decent job with Nannette, she was happy. She was a good kid. I didn\'t have anything to prove to these people. Sure, they were one of the richest families on the east coast. Sure, they were Nannette\'s kin, but I was her father and, if push came to shove, they could keep their country club parties and their money. Except, I did have to convince Dr. Dennis James, esq. I wasn\'t ruining his niece\'s life. Just as long as Peg\'s brother let Nannette and I stay together, it was copasetic. That said, I was sweating the details. I reserved a tux and Mrs. Rovello helped me shop for a dress for Little Cherry Blossom. I even looked up the fork issue on the net, eating at a circus shouldn\'t require six types of forks, but it was at a country club, so I figured better safe than looking really stupid. It\'s not like I had anything better to do with that particular naptime anyway.

Speaking of how I spent naptime, Nannette was sleeping on my shoulder late afternoon on the 26th as I folded laundry one handed (Yeah, I said folded laundry. Wanna make something of it?). We didn\'t get a lot of visitors since I\'d kinda let go of most of my former associates, them not being kid-type people. So mostly, if there was a knock, it was Mrs. Rovello. She liked to stop by with cupcakes and pies. She shared them with us because Mr. Rovello was diabetic and couldn\'t eat all the really good, bad for you stuff she liked to bake. I didn\'t get up for the knock today \'cause she had a key and knew I didn\'t mind her using it. I didn\'t have anything to hide anymore, you know.

The second set of knocking made me jump and Little Red stirred in her sleep. I guessed it wasn\'t Carmella after all and slid Sleeping Beauty onto the sofa, covering her to her shoulders with a towel from the clean laundry, just for expediency\'s sake. I opened the door and it was lucky I\'d been in my share of scuffles \'cause I had to duck a clumsy fist.

\"Oh dear! I\'m terribly sorry that was intended for the door.\" The apologetic guy was about my own vaguely tallish height, with a really young looking face, thick, dark hair and light eyes. He had an open expression on his face, the kind which, a month before, I would have used to peg him as a pretty good mark. \"Are you quite all right?\"

\"Yeah, don\'t sweat it. What can I do ya for?\" I asked and gestured him inside.

\"Ah, yes. My name is Dennis James. Margaret James was my sister.\" He stuck out a hand, which I shook.

\"Oh yeah, I can see the resemblance to Peggy around the eyes. Rush Klondike, pleased to make your acquaintance,\" I said with a wink to make sure he knew I really wasn\'t holding the punch against him. This was the brother who could make things hard for Nannette and me if he wanted to or if I screwed up. I figured I had better turn on the charm real fast.

\"Peggy? She let you call her Peggy?\" he half-laughed. \"The one time I tried, she made me eat dirt.\" Okay, he was a likeable mark.

\"That sounds like Peg,\" I agreed, \"She was never one to let disrespect slide. She sure as hell kept me in line.\" That\'s good, complement Peg, and make myself humble. It was riding a bike off a log.

\"Granted she was eight and I was six, but her preference remained over the long term.\"

\"So, uh- Denny, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?\"

\"Ah, yes. I . . . Well, that is to say . . . My, this is a much more difficult subject to broach than I had anticipated.\"

\"\'S okay, take your time. I never had a sister, but I get that it must be hard to talk about her right now.\"

\"At times, indeed it is.\"

\"So, come in and have a seat.\" I ushered him passed the sleeping Nannette (he paused and brushed a hand over her plump little cheek like he felt her giggles in his chest, too) and into the kitchen so we could let The Gingerbread Girl sleep. \"You want a beer?\" I asked, getting one out for myself.

\"Oh, certainly. That would be nice.\" Man, Peg\'s brother was weird. I don\'t care where or how you were raised; beer ain\'t nice. It\'s refreshing or addictive or your personal demon or just what you need after a long day or the opiate of the masses or man\'s greatest invention or the root of all evil but, it ain\'t nice. Wine is nice. I don\'t drink wine unless there\'s a really cute redhead drinking it with me (or a blonde or a brunette).

I handed him a bottle. \"Here ya go: one nice beer. Enjoy.\" We sat at my kitchen table and just drank for a couple of minutes. He wasn\'t looking at me. A couple of times he opened his mouth making like he might say something, but closed it again, looking dejected. After the forth time with that little routine, I figured I\'d help him out with it. That way I\'d have the advantage.

\"So if this is the whole defending your sister\'s honor \'cause I wasn\'t there when she was knocked-up deal, let me save you the trouble. I was a horse\'s ass and nothing you might say to me about it will make me feel worse for not being there Nannette\'s entire life and especially for when Peg was sick. If I\'d been any kind of man, I\'d have been there, but I wasn\'t and I suck.\"

\"You suck?\" he repeated.

\"Like a Hoover.\"

\"And you\'re a horse\'s ass?\"

\"Possibly the biggest one you\'ll ever meet,\" I granted him.

\"So, you\'re a sucking horse\'s ass?\" he asked barely keeping a straight face.

\"Damn straight I am!\" I confirmed and we ended up laughing our asses off over that, which was as much about losing Peg and me missing the important shit as it was about the stupid way I apologized. I was really starting to like ol\' Denny. I knew I had better not let myself. I was pretty sure he was here to tell me what I was doing wrong with Nannette.

\"I have to say, I certainly see why Margaret loved you so dearly,\" he offered, wiping his eyes.

\"Loved me?\" Yow! \"Peg said that?\"

\"Oh yes. She did. I feel as though I already know you, she spoke of you so often. She always painted you in a favorable light. I\'m so very glad you have Nannette. It would be a terrible shame if she was being raised by anyone else,\" he insisted.

\"Yeah well, I do my best. I just hope she . . . that you aren\'t expecting some perfect fairy story. That\'s more than I can do. I mean, she\'s out there sleeping under a bath towel.\" I pointed in the direction of the living room.

\"It\'s clean isn\'t it? The fact that you thought to cover her is the point. Children don\'t care about the details of such things, not until the world teaches them to,\" he answered.

\"Yeah, maybe.\"

He leaned forward, two elbows on the table, like he was gonna tell me something really worth hearing and said, \"Consider this, Rush. Nannette is going to inherit an indecent amount of money when she reaches adulthood; she needs to be raised by someone who can teach her that she has worth far greater than her money. Someone who can teach her that her wealth, her privileged life, is not just unusual, but truly rare, that literally the rest of the world has nothing compared to her. So, she better keep that in mind or she\'ll lose her way.\" He sat back letting that sink in.

\"Yeah, I guess I\'d be pretty good at making her remember that. I\'d kick her ass if she turned into some snooty, high society bitch that didn\'t care that other people starved to death.\"

\"Of course you would, because you\'ve done it, lived by your wits and nothing else, I mean.\"

\"I don\'t know if I\'d call it that.\"

\"And modest, too. Margaret told me you were on your own and penniless at sixteen. I\'m quite certain that I wouldn\'t have managed to succeed in that situation.\"

Something about the way he was smiling at me and I got it. \"You\'re really on my side, aren\'t you?\" Didn\'t that just butter your biscuit? He was either a better con than I was or I was home free with him.

\"Yes I am,\" he replied, ducking his head like he was shy to admit it. \"Which is the reason I\'m here: the fact that there are sides,\" he looked up again, too serious.

\"As in the some of the family already hates me?\" I finished my beer and walked the bottle across the room to the recycling just to be able to move as I talked. \"Makes sense, I\'m the low-life that screwed Peggy in every sense of the word. I don\'t get why you think I\'m the cat\'s pajamas.\"

\"Because Margaret did.\"

\"Yeah, but if she thought I was so great, why didn\'t she tell me she was knocked-up? I would have been there, even if it was just for Nannette.\" I paced some more, not really talking to Denny anymore, because I was sure he didn\'t have the answer.

He stood and blocked my path to make me look at him. \"That\'s precisely why. Rush, she knew you cared for her. She knew you\'d be a wonderful father, that you\'d do anything for your child. She also knew you didn\'t or perhaps couldn\'t love her, but that you\'d marry her in spite of that fact.\"

\"Of course I would, even I\'m not that much of a sucking horse\'s ass.\"

\"But, she didn\'t want that. If you\'d asked, she would have had to say yes, because she loved you but, if you got married, she would have had to give up the happily ever after.\"

\"Marrying a guy she\'s in love with isn\'t the happily ever after?\" I sat down again, because the conversation was making my cerebellum swell up, at least it felt that way.

\"Not if he doesn\'t love her as well and being married to him closes off the possibility of meeting another prince charming who could love her,\" he explained, sitting down again, too.

\"Let me see if I\'d got this straight? Peg didn\'t tell me she was pregnant because I would have been too good a father and done the right thing by her, which really would have been the wrong thing for her?\"

\"Essentially.\"

\"Yow!\" The dryer in the utility room off the kitchen buzzed and I got up to get the next load.

\"Yow indeed,\" Denny agreed, following me to the dryer and holding the number two basket (the one with the broken handle with the duct tape on it) for me. \"I did argue for you, repeatedly, but she would not budge. I\'m quite certain that had she told me your name, I\'d have told you myself, her happily ever be damned, a bird in the hand and all that. That\'s why I was so relieved that your real name was in her will.\"

\"But the will had all those provisos in it. She thought I might screw up and need you to bail me out. She gave you approval over my life.\"

\"Actually those conditions were meant to protect you and Nannette. I volunteered to be your ally. As a matter of fact, I insisted on it.\"

\"From what?\"

\"Ah yes, from the family. Rush, you must understand something about my family; they\'re all money grubbing lunatics.\"

\"Peg wasn\'t.\"

\"No, but she was the only one. You see, with the exception of Margaret and me, everyone in the family comes from money on both sides, so they never had anyone to tell them that money isn\'t the be all and end all.\" Denny held the clean laundry as I moved the wet stuff to the dryer.

\"So, they\'re all snooty, high society types that don\'t care that other people starve to death. How\'d you and Peg escape?\"

We headed back into the kitchen and Denny put the laundry basket on the floor between the chairs we\'d been using as we sat back down. \"Oh, it was a great scandal. Our father knocked up the maid.\"

\"Your mom was the maid? That rocks.\"

\"It gets better. My father not only impregnated a servant, but he had the gall to stand by her, and then to marry her,\" he confided and picked up one of Nannette\'s little footsie pajamas to fold.

\"So, your mom kept you real, put towels over you instead of silk baby blankets?\"

\"Something along those lines, yes. She tried to do that for my cousins as well, but it\'s not an easy thing to teach children who\'s own parents don\'t know the word no. It\'s probably the only thing she ever failed at in her life.\"

\"Sounds like Peg.\"

\"Indeed. You were the only thing she ever failed at.\"

\"God, I\'m a sucking horse\'s ass.\" I really was.

\"No, you\'re not,\" he said like he believed it. \"You\'re a good father, I knew you would be. As far as I\'m concerned, nobody else on the planet can do a better job with Nannette. Listen, you were invited to the circus, correct?\"

\"Yeah, we\'re going. I thought Nannette should get to see the rest of her family. Should I bail?\"

\"Oh heaven\'s no. You need to go. They need to know you\'re not afraid of them.\" He was holding a Pretty, Pretty Pony T-shirt up against his own chest and trying to fold it. He couldn\'t get the sleeves to line up.

\"Why would I be afraid of them?\" I took the T-shirt from him and stretched the left arm, which I had discovered was the secret. I folded it and put it on the pile on the table.

\"Because they want custody of Nannette, of course.\"

\"They want to take her away from me? Duh, Rush, of course they do. You\'re not their kind.\" We folded tiny, pink underwear.

\"I\'m afraid their motivation is a great deal more than elitism. They want Nannette\'s trust.\"

\"But you said they all came from money. On both sides, you said. Why would they need her trust?\"

\"You\'d be amazed how fast one can spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if one has no concept of how hard it is to acquire.\" We matched lacy, white socks.

\"They\'re broke?\"

\"Not so much broke as poorly invested and highly greedy. Nannette\'s trust has taken on the properties of being a golden fleece in the family\'s psyche and whoever controls Nannette controls her trust.\"

\"But it\'s a trust; I only get a few thousand bucks a month. It\'s more than enough for the two of us, but hardly much for someone who can squander money in the millions.\" We finished the folding. I put the laundry back into the basket and slid the basket out of the way under the table.

\"Rush, you\'ve met Mr. Desmond Desmond. You don\'t think they can do an end-run around him? He was chosen him for his honesty, which, while admirable on my sister\'s part, makes it fairly certain that he isn\'t the tops in his field.\"

\"You\'re right, he was too nice to be a lawyer,\" I agreed. Then I remembered the esq. after Denny\'s name. \"Present company excluded.\" He just smiled at that and got back to the point:

\"You and I are what\'s standing between them and Nannette\'s trust. Until you put on a good show, they\'re going to assume you\'re the weak link. Peggy put her confidence in us. We need to be worth it.\"

\"I\'m planning to spend every day of my life doing just that. Hey! You called her Peggy.\" I gave him a congratulatory punch on the arm.

\"Yes,\" he replied, rubbing the sore spot.

\"How\'d it feel?\"

He looked up in mock fear. \"I\'m still waiting for the lightning bolt.\"

\"Nah, she\'s up there laughing so hard she\'s squirting heavenly nectar out her nose and spilling manna on the guy sitting next to her.\"

\"No doubt.\"

Right about then, Nannette shuffled into the room, the bath towel/blanket clutched in her hands, climbed into my lap and went back to sleep. Mmm, I don\'t even feed her pop tarts, she still smells like them. \"You want to stay for dinner? I\'m ordering Chinese. She loves the Lo Mien noodles.\"

\"I\'m afraid I can\'t. I\'ve got a hot date,\" he said as he stood up.

\"You dog, you,\" I mocked, trying to get up without waking Little Rose Bud.

He waved me back into my chair. \"I can see myself out. I\'ll see you on Saturday.\"