Rachel Gibson - True Confessions

Shelly shrugged. “Dylan’s a good daddy, and when Adam needs female influence, he goes and stays with his grandma and aunt at the Double T. And, of course, a lot of the time he stays here with me and Wally when Dylan is working.” Shelly bit into the cracker, then asked, “Do you have children?”

“No. No children.” Hope waited for either the puzzled frown to wrinkle Shelly’s brow or the oh-you-poor-thing look to cross her face. Neither happened.

“This stuff is addicting,” Shelly said while fixing herself another cracker.

Hope relaxed in the chaise and ate her lunch. She watched Wally and Adam stare intently down, hands poised over the surface of the lake. The meal was greasy and fattening and she polished it off with three Oreo cookies and a piece of licorice. When they traded the baskets back, all that was left in Hope’s basket were a few pitiful grapes still on the vine, the two diet Pepsis, and her camera. She removed the Minolta from its case and pointed it at the two boys diving to catch minnows with their hands. Hope wasn’t a great photographer, but she knew enough to get the shots she needed. She focused the lens and snapped.

“Are you taking pictures for your flora-and-fauna article?”

Suddenly Hope didn’t feel so comfortable lying to Shelly. “Yeah,” she said, which wasn’t a real lie. She was taking pictures of the area for her alien article. She took several more photos; then the boys ran up the beach toward them and grabbed some towels.

Adam dug into the pocket of his swimming trunks and handed Shelly several small rocks. He told her she could have the most special one.

“Take a picture of me, Hope,” Wally urged as he flexed his pencil-thin arms.

“No, me.” Adam pushed Wally out of the way and posed like a bodybuilder.

“I’ll take a picture of each of you and give them to you when I get them developed.” She took several photos before the boys grabbed their peanut butter sandwiches and sodas and took off to find more “cool rocks” on the lake’s shore.

“When are you going to finish your article?” Shelly asked.

Hope opened her mouth to rattle off a fictitious deadline, but stopped. They’d shared picnic baskets. She’d drunk Shelly’s orange soda and eaten her Oreos, and she didn’t feel like lying anymore. Shelly hadn’t judged Hope when she’d discovered that Hope didn’t have any children. Maybe she wouldn’t judge her profession or want to relate Elvis sightings. “Well, if you won’t spread it around, I’ll tell you who I really write for.”

Shelly sat up a bit straighter and leaned toward Hope. “I can keep a secret.”

“I really write for The Weekly News of the Universe. I lied about the Northwest magazine article.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because people assume all sorts of things about tabloid writers. Like we’re sleazy and write gossip.”

“And you don’t?”

“No. I write stories about Bigfoot and aliens and people living beneath the ocean in the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Hmm… that black-and-white tabloid they always sell next to the Enquirer?”

Hope waited for a boat to speed past before she snapped a picture of the clear green lake. “Yes.”

“The one with Bat Boy on the cover?”

“Bat Boy,” Hope scoffed as she focused her camera on the distant shore. She made the trees the focal point and blurred the beach in the foreground. A perfect spot for fuzzy aliens to picnic. “That’s Weekly World News. They can’t write their way out of a paper sack. Those people have absolutely no imagination.” As far as she was concerned, Bat Boy was one of the stupider stories she’d read from the competition.

“Oh! Giant ants attack New York?”

“Bingo.”

“Oh, my God! Did you write that?”

Hope lowered the camera and looked at her neighbor. “No, but my stories are feature articles, and once in a while I write a sort of point-counterpoint advice column under the pseudonyms Lacy Harte and Frank Rhodes.”

“You’re Lacy Harte?”

“I’m both Lacy and Frank.”

“You’re kidding! I always thought those two were separate people. I mean, they’re just so rude to each other.”

“At first I kind of felt schizophrenic, but I like it now. I also write features under the name Madilyn Wright.”

“What have you written that I might have read?”

Hope put the camera back inside its case, then stretched out in her chair and lifted her face to the sun. “Last year, my series of Bermuda Triangle articles turned out to be real popular. I followed those up with the Micky the Magical Leprechaun features.”

“Oh, my God! I read some of those Micky the Magical Leprechaun stories. That was you?”

“Yep.”

“My mother-in-law buys those magazines and she gives them to me when she’s through.”

As far as Hope could tell, only “mothers-in-law” bought tabloids. Everyone read them, but she’d never met anyone who’d confessed to actually buying one. Kind of like trying to find anyone to admit they’d voted for Nixon.

Yet subscriptions alone to The Weekly News of the Universe were around ten million worldwide. There were a lot of closet readers, and they weren’t all mothers-in-law.

“I really liked it when Micky transformed himself into RuPaul.”

That story had been the last of the leprechaun features and the beginning of her trouble. “He hated that particular story.” When he’d read it, he threatened to sue Hope, her editor, and the president and CEO of the paper.

“Micky the Leprechaun is a real person?”

“He’s not a leprechaun, he’s a dwarf. His real name is Myron Lambardo, but he’s also known as Myron the Masher. I met him in Vegas while I was there researching an article on Elvis impersonators. At that time, he worked in a little dive of a bar, wrestling women in a plastic kiddie pool filled with mud.” She’d paid him to let her photograph him, and she’d made sure he’d signed a release for the photos. “At first he really liked the stories. He made the most of his fifteen minutes of fame and managed to get a few higher-profile wrestling matches as Micky. He used to call and leave messages on my business line, telling me how much he liked them. Then I did the RuPaul feature and he thought it made him look gay. He said I exploited and humiliated him, as if women pinning him in the mud was so much more dignified.

“When Myron discovered that he’d signed away his rights,” Hope continued, “he started calling and threatening me. He wanted me to morph him into someone macho like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When I didn’t respond to his threats, he found out where I lived and showed up at my door. He harassed me and wouldn’t leave me alone, and I had to take him to court and get a restraining order against him.”

Shelly swung her legs over the side of her chaise. “You’re being stalked by Micky the Leprechaun?”

“Myron Lambardo.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“No, he just threatens to ‘tombstone’ me.”

“But you’re bigger than him.”

“Yeah, but he’s one buff little dude. He wrestles for a living.”

Shelly’s eyes got big and she raised a hand to her mouth. Hope thought she might have shocked her neighbor speechless, until Shelly burst into hysterical laughter.

Wally and Adam turned and looked at Shelly as if she were nuts. “What’s so funny, Mom?” Wally called out.

Shelly shook her head and the boys switched their attention to Hope, as if she had the answer.

Hope shrugged. What could she say? Some people were just plain nuts. Sometimes she wondered if she was the only sane person in an insane world.

Water sprayed across Dylan’s gray T-shirt, turning it black in spots. “Hey,” he said as he poured shampoo on Adam’s head. “Get your fingers out of the spout.”

“I can do it myself, Dad,” Adam complained, sitting in the empty bathtub, the water running down the open drain.

“I know you can.” Sometimes Adam forgot to scrub his whole head, and Dylan liked to make sure at least once a week that all of Adam’s hair got clean. “What’s in here?” Dylan asked. “A gravel pit?”

“Nope. Wally and me got into a sand fight at his house.”

Like he’d done since the very first time he’d bathed his son as a newborn, Dylan shaped Adam’s short hair into a point on top of his head, then leaned him back and rinsed out the shampoo. “I’m surprised Shelly didn’t beat on your behind.”

“Hope was there,” Adam said as he shut his eyes and relaxed. “Shelly never whacks ya in front of company.”

“Hope went down to the beach with you?”

“Yeah.” Adam raised his hands to his face and cleared the water from his eyes.

“In a swimsuit?”

“Yeah. It was blue and green.”

“One piece or two?”

“One.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she’d looked, but he guessed he knew anyway. Hope Spencer would look good in a garbage bag. “What did you all do?”

“Hope took some pictures, and then after a while she helped me and Adam build a sand castle. Only it got all wrecked when a beetle flew on her arm.”

Dylan raised Adam to a sitting position, then, using his hands, squeegeed the water from Adam’s head. “Did she scream?”

Adam laughed. “Yep, and jumped around, too.”

Dylan would have liked to see Hope jump around in her swimsuit. He shoved the rubber plug into the drain and poured banana-scented bubble bath into the running water. “There’s the soap and washcloth,” he said, pointing to the soap dish. “Scrub yourself real good.” He set a plastic basket filled with a mask, snorkel, and various action figures on the edge of the tub. “Don’t forget your parts. And,” he added over his shoulder as he stood and walked toward the bathroom door, “clean your ears. There’s enough dirt in there to grow potatoes.”