Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  Billings would be turning 21 soon. Butte hadn’t said a word about Billings turning 20, or 19, or 18, even. No concern at all for the annual event since the divorce. “Why?” I asked, watching a squirrel race across the grass and climb up a tree with a piece of discarded pretzel.

  “He’ll be 21. That’s a big deal. Shouldn’t I want to be there?”

  I couldn’t deny that. “I can ask him, I guess. We haven’t really made any plans yet. You know how hard it is to make plans with our jobs. But I’m pretty sure he’ll say no.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you first. I want you to change his mind.”

  “Because I’m really persuasive,” I pshawed him, taking a big relishy bite out of my hot dog. The dill relish had just a little kick to it that I wasn’t hating. I swallowed half of my mouthful and talked around the rest. “I haven’t been able to change your mind in, oh, ever.” I hadn’t considered it before, but that was really true. I couldn’t even convince him to not marry me in the first place. He won me over with flowers, chocolates, and a twilight serenade of “I Will Always Love You” sung acapella. He really had a very good voice. I could still hear that serenade in my head and I was close to swaying to the melody. I gave myself a mental bitch slap and knocked it away. “I can’t make any promises.”

  His eyes shifted downward. “I realize that. It’s just,” his fingers played with a loose flap of bun. “I guess this was pretty stupid. Who am I kidding? You guys both hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I said without hesitation. “Why do you think I hate you?”

  “Well, possibly because you slugged me at Heathrow.” Last month, after the Paris mission, we’d gone to England and bumped into Butte at the airport. Billings and I had exchanged several choice words with him and it had ended with me giving him a right cross. Now, Butte is about 6’2” and you know I’m The Incredible Shrinking Woman, so I didn’t have a lot of leverage. I was helped immensely by his accidental but serendipitous placement of his wheeled carry-on that turned his stumble into an all-out pratfall.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said sincerely.

  “No, you’re not.” See? I’m not very persuasive at all. “And you shouldn’t be. I was a dick that day. Besides, if you hadn’t, Billings would have and, let’s face it, he could have snapped my neck like a twig. I’d rather you slug me when I need it. You made me fall on my ass in public, which was embarrassing, but at least it wasn’t lethal.”

  I was silent for a moment, then took a drink of soda to wash down more hot dog. “Is that an apology?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was out of line, not you.” He drank some water as if those words had left a bad taste in his mouth. “Look, even if you don’t have a party or anything, I’d like to see him, take him out, buy him a drink.”

  “Are you sure you want to be alone with him? After all, I did stop him from killing you at Heathrow. You know he has a lot of issues.”

  “More issues than Reader’s Digest, I know,” he said impatiently. He licked some leaking ketchup and mustard off the side of his bun. “All the more reason to talk to him, father to son. Man to man.”

  “You don’t have to give him the talk. I’ve already done that.”

  He laughed, probably imagining me tossing a hygiene book in Billings’ lap and a condom to use as a book mark. In reality, like I had just done with the team, I had introduced the topic one evening, this was before CURDS came into it, and opened the floor to questions. It was somewhat awkward. These kinds of things always are. But I thought I handled it pretty well.

  “It’s not that,” he insisted. “Do you think you can convince him?”

  I had a sudden worrisome thought, and I didn’t wait to confirm it. I’d been about to take a bite of hot dog, but I let my hands drop to my lap. “You’re very persistent. Butte, are you okay? Are you sick? Do you need a kidney or something?”

  He lost his patience and stood up. “Stop trying to give me ulterior motives! I just want to see my son!”

  I looked up at him, still ignoring my own food but not rising from the bench. Ulterior wasn’t what I was going for. Ulterior implied depth and I didn’t really see Butte as that deep. If anything, he’d have posterior motives because he always seemed to be a pain in the behind. I studied his face, then moved to take a bite of my hotdog. I stopped short, and adrenaline shot through me as I spotted a spider crawling on the bench right next to me. I dropped the remains of the hot dog, leapt up and stood on the bench, then grabbed onto Butte’s neck and hauled myself into his arms. “Spider!” I yelled. I can take most bugs. I have no problem with millipedes, centipedes, beetles, cockroaches, or even bumblebees, but I really really can’t stand spiders. And this one was no lightweight. I think I saw one of his ancestors on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom back in the day. It was large enough to have escaped from the zoo if we’d been just a couple of miles closer to it. I hugged Butte’s neck and hid my face in shame.

  My leap had caused Butte to also drop what was left of his hot dog in order to catch me, and I had knocked over the half empty soda as well. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from the creepy crawly. “Kill it, Butte! Kill it!”

  Butte was calm. While still holding me, he raised one foot, tapping the edge of the seat for balance before bringing it down on the offending creature. He’d done it for me many times during our dozen years of marriage, though not usually with me in his arms. I know I looked ridiculous. Part of me felt ridiculous, too. But as Butte lowered me to the ground I still checked under the bench and around the grounds to see if the spider had brought any friends with him. The adrenaline surge was easing, but my heart still pounded like it had as I’d gotten off the treadmill this morning.

  Picking up the dropped food and wrappings, Butte said, “okay, now you owe me. Talk to Billings or that’s the last time I save you from a spider.”

  I didn’t want to go directly back to HQ, so I walked over to the Reflecting Pool in front of the Capitol Building and sat there while I calmed down, before I caught the Metro back. It wasn’t just the spider upsetting me. I found it extremely odd that Butte wanted to see Billings. He had pretty much written us both off after the divorce, had not come to the high school graduation, let alone Billings’ graduation from the CURDS training a couple of years later. The few times I’d talked to Butte had all been happenstance, and usually a bit hostile. The feelings I still held were associated with earlier, happier times and didn’t particularly carry over, although the physical attraction was still there. I didn’t want it, but that’s not the sort of thing you can turn off. Believe me, I tried. There had to be more to it than Billings turning 21. And I wasn’t fond of the idea of Butte being the one to introduce him to alcohol, either. As far as I could tell, Billings had no interest in alcohol anyway. There was something else, but the only way to find out what it was would be to allow Butte to see Billings.

  And once I’d decided that, there was the much harder question of how to sell the idea to Billings. I was sure he’d be willing to do it out of curiosity, once I’d explained my reasoning to him, but, as they asked in Marathon Man, was it safe? In our chance encounters, as far as I know, I’d always been there. Sometimes it was mostly for the aftermath, like in Paris when Billings had stunned Butte during a WHEY riot. I’d been dealing with the riot a distance away and found Billings watching over his father, who lay twitching and drooling on the ground. Billings had not been sorry about it in the least. At this point, I wasn’t sure if Billings actually remembered enough about the circumstances surrounding the divorce to form an opinion or if he’d absorbed the hostility from me. If so, it certainly had not been a conscious thing on my part. He had asked about infidelity this morning, so it seemed even he did not entirely trust whatever he remembered from that time period. Maybe it wouldn’t take much to get him to master his resentment. Maybe his relationship with Avis would even help. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to suddenly find the value of family when t
hey’d begun building one of their own.

  As I sat at the edge of the pool, reflecting on my reflection in the reflecting pool, a small group of young people came up to me. There were two men and two women, all thin as rails, scantily clad in touristy shirts and cut offs, the girls with tiny useless purses slung crossways across their torsos. “Excuse me,” said one of the men as the girls giggled behind him. “Could you tell me where to find the White House from here?”

  “It’s a bit of a walk,” I warned. Maps can be very deceiving. It looks like the White House is just a quick jaunt from the Capitol Building, but it’s actually about two and a half miles. And there are a lot of distractions along the way.

  “No probs.”

  I gave them quick directions, using landmarks, not street names. Tourists don’t come here to read street signs. They want to see the sights, even if it’s just in passing. I’m proud of D.C. and talked it up a bit, said I hoped they enjoyed their visit. They thanked me and started off toward the Washington Monument, the girls still giggling shyly. Oh, to be that young. I watched them until they got lost in the human traffic, then headed for the Metro station.

  When I got back to HQ, the party atmosphere had dissipated somewhat. The twins were having their physical, but Sir Haughty, Badger and Roxy had all finished, leaving Billings on deck. I didn’t know how long it would be before he was called, but I wanted to at least broach the subject of meeting with Butte and let him mull it over during the exam. I kind of wanted to do it privately, but given the speech I made this morning I could hardly do that. So I retook my seat on the wheeled chair as if I’d never left. “Billings, I have to talk to you about something.”

  Billings sat close, and the others pretended to be doing other things. Sir Haughty had a newspaper to hide behind, Badger was on his phone, and Roxy was paging through a glamour magazine, but there was no doubt they were listening in. Sylvia, I was told, had gone for a walk. They were finished, so none of them was required to stay. Since they had not left, however, it was easy to guess why. I shrugged, turned to Billings, and spoke in a normal voice. “Your father wants to see you.”

  “See me? What do you mean, see me?” The distrust was not subtle.

  “For your birthday. He wants to take you out for a drink.”

  Billings’ eyes became tiny slits. “A drink? Why?”

  “I told you, for your birthday. You know, welcome to adulthood and all that.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” I admitted. “I’m just passing on a message here. If it makes a difference, I think you should go.”

  “I don’t want a drink. I’m not interested in that scene.”

  “Look, I don’t like it, but think about it. Butte’s up to something. The only way to find out what is to take him up on it. You don’t have to actually drink anything if you don’t want to. It’s symbolic. I’m sure he’d buy you a soda if that’s what you really want. The drink isn’t the issue.”

  “I see,” he said. And I could tell that all the implications had met in the middle of his brain. “My birthday isn’t until next week. We might not even be in town.”

  “Trust me. Wherever we are, he’ll be there.” It seemed inevitable these days. And annoying. “And you probably don’t even have to wait until then. If you’re fine with just a soda or two, you can go anytime you want.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He paused, glancing toward the back door and listening for the twins’ return. “About my birthday, Mom…”

  “Yes?”

  “Has Grandma talked to you about it yet?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Does she know I’m turning 21?”

  “Of course she does. She was in the delivery room with me.” The standard conversation with Mom on Billings’ birthday was ‘I know where you were X years ago today!’ and, of course, on my birthday it was ‘I know where I was X years ago today!’ Solving for X didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  His eyes dropped from mine for a moment. “I only ask because of what she got me last year. When I turned twenty.”

  I thought hard, but I didn’t remember. “I don’t remember. What did she get you?”

  “The Razor Scooter.”

  I brightened. Now I remembered. “Hey, you’re using that!” I said.

  He pointed toward the backyard, where there was a collection of various workout equipment like a climbing wall, which doubled as a privacy fence, a jungle gym, a balance beam, a horizontal ladder, and other things all surrounded by a dirt running track. “As a hurdle, Mom!” he said a little too loudly. That was true. The child size scooter was even now upended over an open area on the running track. “By the way, could we get some actual hurdles? It looks like a kid disappeared here or something.”

  I laughed. “Okay, okay. You win that argument. What DO you want? I can suggest it, nonchalantly.”

  “A Bük.”

  “Which book?”

  “No, not a book, a Bük. B, U with the dots over it—“

  “Umlaut,” I said. Once a teacher, always a teacher, even if the subject changed.

  “B, U with an umlaut, K,” he said.

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s an ereader from IKEA.”

  “But you already have a Kindle.”

  “A Bük is better. It’s awesome,” he said, stealing one of my words for emphasis. “They were smart about it. It’s compatible with all the Kindle stuff, and it really gives you a reading experience closer to the real thing. It has a Tyvek edge, so it feels like paper. The ad shows a woman getting a paper cut. A real paper cut! Do you know how long it’s been since I had one of those?”

  I was skeptical. “You WANT a paper cut?”

  “That would be so evil!” He really seemed very excited about the prospect of a paper cut. I was tempted to remind him how often he drank lemonade. Spilling it on your hand with a papercut present ranked right up there with a dentist’s drill.

  “Evil?” I had to ask.

  “Yeah, evil is good. It’s beyond good. It’s so far past good that it’s coming up the other side of the scale. Evil.”

  “I thought bad was good.”

  “It used to be. Now bad is bad again. Evil is good.”

  “I’m not sure I like this trend. What do you call something that’s just flat out really really bad?”

  “Cursed.”

  “Cursed? You guys are screwing with Roget again, aren’t you? Trying to drive him crazy?”

  “Sober,” he said. “Crazy is sober.”

  Okay, now I was really confused. “Sober means crazy?”

  “You got it.”

  “I think I’m getting a headache. Badger, is all this true?”

  Badger looked startled. He didn’t realize I knew he was listening, I suppose. But at least he didn’t try to pretend. “I don’t know. I haven’t looked at slang in quite a while. Do you think it might come into play?”

  “Don’t worry about it. If it does, we’ll ask Billings.”

  The back door opened and the twins came in, each with a towel around her neck and carrying a bottled water. “That was fun,” said Agnes as they came in.

  “Can we do it again?” asked Avis. I was pretty sure they were being sarcastic, but it was hard to tell. The lines were delivered with a smile and a sparkle of flushed energy, like kids after their first roller coaster ride.

  Billings stood up. “Hey, you asked what I wanted. Tell Grandma, please? Or she’ll probably send me a Hula Hoop.” I agreed to talk to my mother and reminded him to consider getting a drink with Butte. Billings left for his physical. As he passed them he kissed the twins. Avis, on the lips and Agnes on the cheek. I wondered how long this relationship had been going on. I didn’t let my mind go there. Even with the new openness, some things still stayed private. Billings was an adult and he knew the score, but I wondered if he still needed a bookmark.

  About an hour later, Billings came back. I was alone in the living room, sipping a coffe
e and paging through the magazine Roxy had left behind, and I had moved to a couch and was lounging. Sylvia had come back from her walk while Billings was in there, and they had all gone out to dinner together. I opted out for myself and Billings because I wasn’t finished with Billings yet. When I heard the door, I sat up. Billings drank his bottled water in one long gulp and tossed it into the recycle bin on the way in. “Done for another year,” he said, coming to sit on the couch near me. “I’ll do it.”

  “Do you think you can handle it? Do you want me to shadow you?” I always enjoyed throwing his own lines back at him.

  But he did have to stop and think about it. “I think I’ll be okay. Kind of depends on what he wants, I guess. Got his number? I’ll call him. If I can handle that part without throwing my phone at the wall, I’m probably good to go.”

  Instead, I handed him my phone. “He’s on the contact list.”

  “What if I end up throwing it at the wall?”

  “Then you owe me a phone.”

  He took the phone, passed his thumb over the screen and put it to his ear. I pretended to casually page through the magazine, but my gut was growing knots and my nerves were on tenterhooks.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Billings. “Mom said you wanted to see me.” I had hoped he would think to put the phone on speaker, but he didn’t, and I didn’t dare ask. He listened for a bit, then said, “Look, Dad, I don’t care about the drink. If you have something to say to me, I’ll meet you. How about tonight?” I sat up straight, tossing the magazine aside and giving up all pretensions. “Fine,” he continued after another pause. “I’ll be there. What? I’ll tell her. Yes, I promise. I’ll use those exact words. See you there in about an hour, I guess. Wait, make it two hours. I need a shower.” A very short pause. “I’ll explain it when I see you.” He thumbed the phone and tossed it back to me. “So far, so good.”

  “It’s all set? That was fast.”