Read Online Lucky Stars by Jane Heller - Free Book Online

was “JonBenet Ramsey.”
    “Do you like it?” I asked, wondering how anyone could.
    “It’s great. Fine. Wrap it as a gift.”
    She shoved her American Express platinum card into my hand and took off for the glass cabinet in which the store’s china and silver pill boxes were displayed. I speculated about what sort of pills she might be taking and whether she’d forgotten to take them that day.
     
     
    O n the home front, my mother had composed her complaint letter to Fin’s Premium Tuna and mailed it to their corporate headquarters in San Pedro, about a half hour south of L.A., depending on traffic. Apparently, Fin’s was the only big tuna company with its office and canning plant still in the southern California harbor, the others—Star-Kist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea— having defected to foreign ports.
    “I’m telling you right now, Stacey, I’d better get a response from those people,” said my mother. “I don’t intend to be dismissed as just another cranky consumer.”
    “You’re hard to dismiss, Mom. At the very least, they’ll write you back to apologize.”
    I was right about the “at the very least.” A mere two weeks after my mother sent her missive to Fin’s, she received a letter from the company’s public relations director, not only apologizing for the bone and assuring her it was not the norm to find anything other than pure premium tuna inside a can of Fin’s, but inviting her to stop by the cannery, observe the canning process for herself, and see firsthand how deeply committed Fin’s is to providing consumers with the best quality control in the industry.
    “Well, that was nice of them,” I remarked after my mother read me the letter. “Do you feel vindicated?”
    “Not yet,” she said. “Not until I get a look at that cannery and find out what goes on there.”
    I laughed. I honestly thought she was joking. “You’re not really going to San Pedro, Mom. Tell me you’re not.”
    “Of course, I’m going. I was invited.”
    “Mom.” I sighed. “They didn’t mean for you to make a special trip down there. They were just blowing you off in a very smart way from a PR standpoint. They want you to keep buying their product and quit badmouthing them to other people, so they said, ‘Sure, come on by when you’re in the neighborhood.’ You can’t take any of that stuff seriously.”
    “And since when did you become such a cynic? Is this what show business has done to my little girl? Turned her into a person who scoffs at everything?” Did I scoff at everything? Had show business turned me into a cynic? Had all the posturing and pretending and jockeying for position taken away my ability to trust? To believe that there really were people who cared if you almost choked on their tuna fish bone?
    Nah.
    “I’m not a cynic,” I said. “I just think you should be glad you got your letter from Fin’s and leave it at that. Buy Star-Kist from now on, if it’ll make you feel better.”
    “I’m going down to their plant and getting a look at their operation,” said my mother, sounding like a five-star general. “If they’re just ‘blowing me off ’ as you suggest, a visit from me will catch their attention.”
    I couldn’t talk her out of it. In a way, I didn’t want to. The more involved she became with Fin’s and their quality control, the less involved she’d be with me, I figured. And wasn’t that what I’d been praying for? That she would get a life of her own?
    “Of course, since I’m new to southern California,” she went on, “I don’t even know where San Pedro is. Would it be too much to ask that you go there with me, Stacey? You could drive and I could read the directions out loud, and we could stop for lunch somewhere, just the two of us. It might be f un , don’t you think?”
    No, I don’t think. “I’d like to, Mom, but I’ve got to work.”
    “You couldn’t skip a day at that store when your own mother needs you?”
    “Well,