by Flynn, Avery
“I’ll make coffee,” is all he says, but his expression shows that he’ll take care of her.
That leaves me out here with my mother—exactly where I don’t want to be.
“I have to say, I don’t really like what you’ve done with the place.” She looks around. “I know you’ve never been a fastidious housekeeper, but really, this is pretty bad even for you.”
“Yes, well, maybe if I’d known you were coming, I could have made more of an effort,” I answer, tongue totally in cheek. Because, seriously, what else have I been doing for the last week and a half but busting my ass on this damn house?
“A lady’s house should always be prepared for company.” She wipes a finger over a window ledge, then wrinkles her nose at the dust on it.
“Yeah, and a lady’s husband probably shouldn’t father offspring with another woman, but we’re pretty much oh and two for that, aren’t we?” The words pop out before I knew I was going to say them, but as my mother’s spine stiffens and her eyes widen, I can’t say I’m sorry.
I’ve spent my entire life tiptoeing around her feelings while she shredded mine, which—now that I think about it—is exactly what I did with Karl as well. It felt good standing up to him the other night, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some satisfaction at standing up to my mother as well. I’m sick to death of always worrying about everyone else’s feelings when they never worry about mine.
“I don’t know why you insist on being so crude,” Mom snaps at me right before she marches into the kitchen with her nose in the air.
Part of me is tempted to just let her stew for a few minutes, but Sarah and Nick are in the kitchen and neither of them is prepared for prolonged exposure to Elizabeth Martin when she is in a snit. And while I’m annoyed as fuck at my mother right now, it isn’t fair to leave them alone with her.
By the time I make it to the kitchen, Mom is sitting at the table while Nick makes coffee. Sarah is leaning against the counter on her phone—as far from my mom as she can get and be in the same room. Not that I blame her. That’s pretty much how I’ve spent my entire adult life.
But since that’s not an option now, I sit down next to my mom. Nick plops cups of coffee in front of both of us and I’m impressed he’s remembered that I like mine with cream. Then I take a sip and nearly choke on the burn making its way down my esophagus. Nick must have figured out where Aunt Maggie kept her alcohol because there is a whole lot of whiskey in this coffee. I turn toward him, gasping for breath.
He just shrugs. “It seemed like coffee by itself wasn’t going to cut it for the two of you right now.”
Truer words have probably never been spoken. I swear, if my mother weren’t here, I would kiss him for that alone.
Then again, if my mother weren’t here, I wouldn’t need to be drinking whiskey anyway…
Speaking of, my mother is drinking her spiked coffee with nary a peep, but that just might be because she’s too busy staring at my sister to notice. Sarah, on the other hand, is doing her best to pretend my mother doesn’t exist.
And she almost pulls it off. But she makes a rookie mistake when dealing with Mom—she looks up from her phone and makes eye contact.
Which is pretty much a declaration of war in my mom’s book—and always has been.
“So you’re staying here now?” my mother asks in the snootiest tone I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth—which is saying a lot.
I drain my coffee and hand the mug back to Nick with a low, “Can I have another, please? Hold the coffee this time.”
Sarah must be getting sick of Mom’s rudeness, though, because she stands up straight and gives Mom a very impressive fuck-you glare. “Yeah, I am. What of it?”
And just like that, my strong, indomitable, never-show-weakness mother crumbles. She drops her head on the kitchen table and starts to cry as if her heart is breaking wide open.
“One more coffee, please.” I shove her mug at Nick, too.
He responds by plunking the whiskey bottle down in the middle of the table along with three glasses. Then he settles into the chair on the other side of my mom and gives her a hug. And he never even winces when she lets loose with a tortured wail and buries her face in his shoulder and cries and cries and cries.
I grab the whiskey bottle and pour us all a stiff drink. We’re going to need it before this day is over, of that I’m sure.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mom sets down her now-empty shot glass. “After he finally came clean to me and told me about Sarah, I told him that he did you girls a great disservice.” She looks from me to Sarah. “To never let you know each other when you’re family. It was the last straw. I packed up and left while he sat there in his chair by the big front window doing his damn crossword puzzle.”
“This calls for a drink.” Nick gathers the shot glasses from in front of him, Mom, and me.
“Another one?” Sarah asks from her spot at the head of the kitchen table, the only sober one in a room full of adults having a much-needed medicinal moment.
“Yes,” Mom agrees. “Page sixteen.”
I thumb through Aunt Maggie’s My Drinking Buddy book that was tucked into the cabinet with the liquor. We’ve been playing this game for the past hour, ever since Mom apologized to Sarah for their initial meeting. One of us would call out a page number and someone else would pick a drink to try from that page.
“Banana Bombers.” I concentrate on the letters in the middle of the row of three in my immediate vision. “Triple sec, grenadine, and banana-flavored schnapps.”
Nick scoots his chair closer to mine and looks over my shoulder at the page. “Who has banana-flavored schnapps?”
Sarah gets up and goes to the built-in liquor cabinet, hunting around for a minute before crowing in triumph and turning, holding a bottle aloft. “Aunt Maggie!”
Mom throws both her arms up in the air and lets out a loud “wooooooo.” My mom is a woo girl; who would have thought.
“I might regret this later,” she says. “But I’m beginning to think that old bat was onto something with this hoarding thing.”
“Mom!”
“Come on,” she says. “Margaret would have laughed at that and you know it.”
It’s true. She would have. Aunt Maggie loved to laugh at herself and everyone else.
“Ready, bartender?” I ask Sarah.
She nods. “Ready.”
“One ounce of schnapps, three-fourths ounce triple sec, splash of grenadine. Shake it like a Polaroid picture and put it in a— Oh shit.”
“What?” Nick asks, his words a little slower than usual like the rest of us—well, except Sarah. “Do we have to put it in a pineapple or something?”
“Worse.” I look up from the page. “A chilled shot glass.”
Nick grabs the shot glasses, gets up, then puts them in the freezer and slings the door shut. “Give it a minute.”
“Booooo,” Mom says, obviously drunk.
Really, we all are, well, except for Sarah. It’s the only thing that can explain why we’re willing to try banana-flavored schnapps. There’s no way it’s going to taste good. We munch on chips and salsa delivered by a bored teenager from the world’s best Mexican restaurant this side of the Hudson.
“So you really think I could carry off longer hair?” Mom asks Sarah, picking up the conversation they’d had ten minutes ago as if no time had passed at all. “I thought once I hit forty, I had to cut it all off.”
“No way.” Sarah shakes her head. “With your bone structure, you could do anything you want with your hair. Have you ever considered going auburn?”
“Red?” Mom blushes. “Oh no, I couldn’t. That’s very…in your face.”
“Come on, Mom, live a little.” I cheer her on. “You’re sixty-three, not dead! You can do whatever you want.”
“I can’t believe I l
eft,” she says as she fiddles with the bent corner of the Drinking Buddy book. “I wonder if he sat at the dining table expecting dinner to magically appear in front of him.”
I sigh. “That is how it’s worked for the past forever.” True story. I don’t even know if he knows where the kitchen is in their house, but he definitely doesn’t know where to find the pots and pans.
“I have to make a confession.” Mom looks around at us, her gaze hazy as she weaves a bit in her chair. “I tossed out all the leftovers before I left, and you know how he abhors delivery food. He’ll have to make something from scratch or break his own rules and go out to eat by himself.”
We all stare at her in an impressed silence.
“Mrs. Martin,” Sarah says. “You are an evil genius.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Call me Elizabeth or Liz or Bet; that’s what my friends growing up called me because I always won everyone’s milk money when we played Jacks.”
Who would have thought that my mom was a grade-school hustler?
“Bet it is,” Nick says as he opens up the freezer and gets out the shot glasses. “Ready?”
“You bet,” the rest of us call out in one voice and then break into laughter.
Sarah pours the Banana Bombers out of the shaker and hands us each a shot glass.
“To fresh starts,” I say, my glass held aloft.
Nick, Mom, and I clink our shot glasses and Sarah adds her water glass.
I close my eyes, gird my taste buds, and throw back the shot. That’s when I know I’m really past the point of no return—because it tastes delicious. Oh shit. I’m definitely going to regret this in the morning.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I wake up with a hangover for the second time in a week—which is saying something, since it’s been more than a decade since my last one before this week. I really, really want to do nothing more than pull my pillow over my head and stay exactly where I am. Except now that I’m awake, it’s impossible to ignore how uncomfortable this couch is. And how much my neck hurts in my current position.
The first thing I’m going to do when the divorce is settled is burn this damn couch and buy another one. And when I do, I’m going to make sure it’s the most comfortable one on the market. If I have to spend the next God only knows how many nights on this couch, I freaking deserve it.
In the meantime, I’m going to get myself off this one and get dressed. It’s Sunday, which means…I have a lawn to mow.
I force myself to stand up. The room goes up, down, sideways, and then does some kind of undulating diagonal-wave thing. I flop back down and bury my head in my hands. Correction, I’m going to get myself off this couch as soon as my head doesn’t feel like the slightest move will make it shatter into a million pieces.
“Mallory?” my mom calls out from the kitchen. “Is that you, dear?”
“Yes, Mom.” Just getting those two words out makes me wince with pain—in part because all the brain cells I didn’t kill off yesterday are crying in agony and partly because my voice sounds like a frog has not only taken up residence in my throat but has actually died there.
Lucky frog.
“Well, come in here, then,” Mom says. “Sarah and I are making blueberry pancakes for breakfast.”
Shit. She sounded closer that time. I pry my hands away from my eyes and force myself to turn and look back toward the kitchen.
Sure enough, my mom is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and family room, dressed in her favorite apron and brandishing a spatula like a weapon. “You’re not going to get any better sitting there. I have hot coffee and Tylenol waiting on the table for you, and the pancakes and bacon will be ready in just a minute. We’ll get that hangover fixed up in no time.”
Then she disappears back into the kitchen.
And if I ever need—more—proof that my mother is an alien, today is definitely supplying it. She had way more to drink yesterday than I did, yet she’s acting like she’s perfectly fine. That isn’t human.
Still, I spent enough of my life under Elizabeth Martin’s thumb to know that the clock has started. If I don’t get my ass to her table—I mean, my table—in the next three minutes, she will come drag me there by the ear. And since my ears are part of the head that feels like it will shatter at any moment, it seems like a bad move to let that happen.
I make a quick stop in the half bath and splash water on my face and wind my totally unruly hair up into a topknot before I drag myself to the kitchen table. I shove the Tylenol my mom has waiting for me into my mouth, then swallow it down with scalding-hot coffee.
The shot of caffeine is totally worth the pain.
I take another long sip, then turn to look at my mom and Sarah, who are working the stove in perfect harmony. It’s a far cry from “you must be the mistake,” but apparently several rounds of Banana Bombers can cure anything.
Except this hangover.
As my mom drops a stack of blueberry pancakes on my plate, I get my first good look at her. I can’t believe it. Her hair is wild around her shoulders and her face is devoid of makeup. Considering my mom doesn’t even leave her room in the morning without being fully done up, this is one of the few times in my life I can remember seeing her like this.
Figuring it’s because she is devastated about leaving Dad, I brace myself for more tears. But instead of looking sad, she looks resolute. Not happy necessarily, but like she knows what she wants to do. And, more, is at peace with it.
It’s that peace, and the fact that she’s obviously trying—with Sarah, with me, and with the universe—that has me moving over to hug her. It isn’t something I do often, so I’m not sure who’s more startled by the action, my mom or me.
Still, she hugs me back and even pats my arm. “Eat your pancakes before they get cold.”
It’s pretty much as close to an I love you as my mother gets on non-holidays, so I take it.
Breakfast is a lot more subdued than most of yesterday, but once my stomach is full and the Tylenol has kicked in, I feel a million times better. Which is a good thing because, even though I have a hangover and the mother of all cricks in my neck, I still have a job to do. A job that starts with raiding Nick’s garage for his lawn mower and ends with my grass actually getting cut.
A deal is a deal, after all, and he stuck around through way more yesterday than I would ever have asked him to. And since I start work in the morning, it’s time I keep up my end of the bargain.
After taking care of the breakfast dishes—Sarah and Mom cooked, so I cleaned—I run upstairs and change into a red tank top and my most comfortable pair of shorts. Then I grab my phone and head out the door and over to Nick’s.
Before he left last night, Nick mentioned that he’d be running errands most of the morning. I insisted he text me the code to his garage so I can get the mower, and he humored me—even though the look on his face said he didn’t expect me to be in any condition to mow the yard.
I may not be in any condition to mow, but I am going to do it anyway. After pulling up the text on my way across the street, I get into the garage without a problem. And since I’m braced for it, I’m not even surprised by the obsessive neatness of the space, complete with printed labels above each of the tools he has hanging over his large workbench.
I am, however, shocked by the size of his lawn mower. And sadly, that isn’t even a euphemism.
To begin with, the thing is a Honda, and forget a lawn mower, the engine on it looks like it could probably power a small SUV. Plus, it’s wide. Like really, really wide. And I know it says it’s self-propelled like my vacuum, but I’d be lying if I admitted I don’t have a few doubts about how I’m going to control this thing.
I glance over at my grass. Each green blade looks like it has somehow managed to grow another six inches overnight. Maybe it’s good that he has a giant metal beast like this. I’m not sure anythi
ng else would get through my mini jungle.
The only problem? I have no clue how to get this bad boy to move.
Still, Google exists for a reason.
After I roll the mower across the street to my yard, I pull out my phone and technology teaches me how to start the beast and how to keep it revving afterward. Thank God for YouTube parents who post how-to videos.
Following the steps Ed from Topeka showcases in his video, I turn the fuel valve, move the flywheel break control to the run position, and then yank the starter cord. Nothing happens. Not a thing. I try again. And again. And again. My right arm is jelly now, so I try with my left until it is marshmallow fluff. I’m mentally running through every curse word I know, but I refuse to let this beast defeat me.
My breath is coming out in hard puffs when I turn back to Ed, saving a few curse words just for him. Forty-seven seconds into the video, I spot my mistake. I turn the fuel valve, adjust the choke throttle lever, move the flywheel break control to the run position, and pull the starter cord. The sound of the beast’s motor coming to life almost makes me pass out in joy.
It’s a helluva lot better than actually pushing the mower through my unruly grass. After three feet, though, I realize pretty much nothing is cut. What the actual fuck. So I turn back to Ed, who it’s clear now has left out some pretty important steps.
After scrolling through a few videos, I discover that I can’t mow my grass like they do on the Home Depot commercials. It’s too long. Instead, I have to do some circus-act routine where I lean backward so the front of the mower lifts up and then lower it onto a small section of grass slowly. I try the maneuver. It’s awkward and hard and my sorry excuse for arm muscles are aching like a bitch, but it works. Thank fucking sweet baby Jesus, it works.
An hour later, I’ve sweat out my brain—it’s totally possible—and even more of the stinky wet stuff is rolling down my face, my back, my generous-size thighs. It’s gross and miserable and all of that has to count for something, so with my last ounce of energy, I put the finishing touches on my message to the HOA, cut off the mower’s engine, collapse onto the section of still-to-be-mowed grass, and close my eyes.