by Claire Cook
Noah stuffed some bills into the empty tennis ball can where he kept his money. He stepped around the table and lifted my hair off my neck with one hand. He put his other hand on my shoulder and bent forward to give me a kiss just below my right ear. He smelled like propane gas and sweat, which was sexier than it should have been.
Noah’s hair was thick and messy, and he didn’t exactly have a beard, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen him clean-shaven either. When I’d first met him and he told me he was a glassblower, I’d said something witty like Oh, that’s so cool. And he’d grinned like he was about Riley’s age and said, “No, actually it’s really hot.”
“So,” he said now.
“So,” I said back. He draped one of his arms across my shoulders a bit awkwardly, and I leaned into him, just a little.
“How’s life at the FROG?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Oh, no. Not you, too. I hate that word.”
“Okay, how’s life at the toad?”
“Much better,” I said. “Though I prefer to think of it as a penthouse. You know, with cars as the ground-floor tenants?”
Noah nodded. “Did you know all toads are frogs but not all frogs are toads?”
“Fascinating,” I said. “Did you know only the male croaks?”
“Charming,” he said. “Listen, I have to get back to the studio. I’m really close on something, and I just want to get a few more hours in.” One hand stayed on the small of my back.
I took a step away. “Perfect,” I said. “I’m really close on something, too.”
“HI, HONEY, WE’RE HOME,” I yelled as the kids and I walked into their house. My sister, Geri, and her husband, Seth, were sitting on opposite sides of the sofa, and yes, they were going at it with their BlackBerrys. Since they also each had a glass of red wine within striking distance, I hoped it was the final check of the day. But, who knew, maybe they brought them to bed and woke up repeatedly throughout the night to pound the tiny keyboards with their thumbs. I shivered just a little at the thought.
“Guess what,” Riley yelled. “I get to be in the movie.”
While his parents congratulated him and his sisters started in again with the shark bait stuff, I tiptoed out to the kitchen to see what my chances were for some dinner before I had to consider cooking my own. I was in luck—meatballs simmered in their sauce on top of the stove. As quietly as I could, I pulled a hunk off the loaf of Italian bread and dipped it in. While I chewed, I gave the sleeve of white paper a twist so the remaining loaf wouldn’t start to get stale and even checked the level of the pasta water. I was considerate like that.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” my sister asked behind me.
“No thanks, I’ve just eaten,” I mumbled.
Geri waited for me to turn around. Eventually I did, but not before I wiped the crumbs off my face. “You really should work on your boundaries,” she said.
I opened a drawer, took out a fork, and stabbed a meatball. “You really should work on raising your own children.”
It was pretty standard conversation for Geri and me, since we could never get along for more than a minute or two. Our whole lives, we’d been polar opposites. This might have been more complicated in a family of, say, six or eight siblings, where everybody would have to work harder to stake out niches that didn’t overlap, but with just Geri and me it was easy: she was the good girl and I was the rebel. She married her college sweetheart, and I broke up with mine to travel the world. She had kids and found a steady job. I had a series of boyfriends, an assortment of jobs, more trips.
She grabbed a fork and joined me. “Does that mean your nephew will have to miss out on his first chance at stardom?” she asked.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. Time and a half stays. And I think an occasional bonus would be a nice gesture.” I stabbed another meatball to seal the deal. “Have you heard from Mom?”
“Company!” my mother yelled from the foyer.
“YOU’RE JUST whistling Dixie here, Toots,” my father said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t call me Toots,” my mother said.
“Have a heart, Mother,” my father said.
“I’m not your mother,” my mother said. “And I know you. As soon as we get there, you’ll say, What took us so long? You’re the one who never stops grumbling about how something always needs fixing in an old house, that and the endless yard work. Once we get moved into our new townhouse, you won’t have a thing to do but enjoy yourself.”
My father twirled some pasta around on his fork, then looked up at my mother again. “But, Dollface, we were just getting comfortable. I wouldn’t last a week in one of those brand-spanking-new places. Everything’s too perfect.” He put the pasta in his mouth and chewed while he looked up at the sparkling chandelier hanging from the cavernous ceiling of Geri’s dining room. “There’s no soul in new houses,” he said when he finished chewing.
“Thanks, Dad,” Geri said. Seth checked his watch.
I cleared my throat. “You know, Mom,” I said. “I was thinking maybe you should wait. Dad’s not ready, and, well . . .” I tried to look pitiful, which wasn’t really that hard, “. . . I don’t have anyplace to go yet.”
My mother leaned forward over her plate. “Honey, we’ve been enabling you long enough. It’s not good for you.” My mother was wearing long chunky beads over her T-shirt, and they had just landed on top of her pasta. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. “I guarantee it, moving out again will be the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ll have sixty days once we sell before we pass papers. And the house may not go right away. It’s a tough market out there. We’re post-bubble now.”
“It wasn’t actually a bubble,” Seth said. “It was essentially a balloon.”
“Why don’t you and Noah just get married?” Becca asked.
“Shhh,” Rachel hissed. “Loser,” she said in a whispery voice no one at the table could possibly have missed. “How about because he has to ask first?”
I decided not to try to figure out which one of us Rachel was calling a loser. “It’s not that easy to find a pet-friendly rental, Mom. If you don’t care about me, what about Boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend and you can move in here with us,” Becca said. “My hamster won’t mind.”
“Yeah,” Riley said. “You can have my top bunk. I never use it.”
Geri put her fork down. “This is the last time I’m going to say it,” she said. “Find another name for that cat.”
“What about Neko?” Becca said. “That’s cat in Japanese.”
“Champ has a nice ring to it,” my father said.
There truly was no such thing as a free meal. “Listen,” I said. “For the last time, his name was Boyfriend when I got him from the shelter. How would you like it if someone adopted you and changed your name?”
Geri shook her head while checking to see that she had her children’s undivided attention. “It’s completely inappropriate for a grown woman to call her cat ‘Boyfriend.’ ”
“Fine,” I said. “Call him whatever you want. It’s perfectly okay with me, Grace.” The kids giggled appreciatively while I pushed back my chair and picked up my plate. “Let me know as soon as you find out when Riley starts, okay?”
“It’s so not fair that Riley gets to miss school if we can’t,” Rachel said. “Don’t you think so, Dad? I mean, it’s not like he’s exactly a genius or anything.”
“Totally,” Becca said.
“Ha-ha,” Riley said.
“Girls,” Geri said.
“By the way,” my mother said. “Come by this weekend. Your father and I could use a little help. The house goes on the market a week from Friday.”
Chapter 4
THE SOUND OF A SHOVEL HITTING PACKED CLAY SOIL woke me up the next morning. I knew St. Joseph was involved without even looking, but I crawled out of bed and stuck my head out the window anyway.
“Morning, Mom,” I yelled. “Did y
ou bring me any coffee?”
My mother kept digging. “Sure, I’d love some help. Grab a shovel.”
I could see where my sister had inherited the more irritating parts of her personality. I pulled on some jeans and an old T-shirt, and headed down the stairs.
“Shoes,” my mother said without even looking at my feet.
My mother had always said she had eyes in the back of her head, and here was still more evidence. I stomped back upstairs and slipped my bare feet into some sneakers without untying them, then clomped back down again. My mother handed me the second shovel she’d conveniently brought along. A greenish yellow plastic statue of a guy in a robe watched us from the edge of the driveway. He looked a little bit nervous, I thought.
I caught my mother’s eye and pointed. “St. Joseph, I presume?”
She nodded. My mother was wearing yoga pants and a Kama Sutra T-shirt that said, in smaller letters, SO MANY POSITIONS, SO LITTLE TIME. I blushed. No wonder my father wasn’t himself these days.
I jumped on the shovel with my sneaker-clad feet and managed to penetrate the rocklike ground maybe a quarter of an inch. “Are you sure we should be burying him, Mom? I mean, I’m not an expert or anything, but it sounds sacrilegious to me.”
“Just keep digging,” my mother said.
I did. So did my mother. Eventually we had a hole big enough to bury a little plastic statue. My mother put her shovel down and brushed her hands together briskly. “Okay,” she said, “let’s give it a go.”
I had to ask. “Are you selling the house because of me, Mom?”
My mother was holding St. Joseph now, kind of cradling him in the palm of one hand, as if she were going to rock him to sleep. She shook her head. “I know it’s a revolutionary concept, but your father and I would like to have a life of our own before we die.”
“Have you checked in with Dad about this?”
She put her hands on my shoulders, and I felt St. Joseph’s hard plastic edges digging into me. “Honey, get back out there. Get on with your life.”
I didn’t mean to say it, but it came out anyway. “I’m scared, Mom.”
“Ginger, everyone is scared. You just do it anyway. Never forget, you can be anything you want to be.”
“Mom, don’t. I hate when you say that. I’m forty-one years old. I think it’s a little late.”
My mother dropped St. Joseph headfirst into the hole and picked up her shovel again. “Do you want to know what your problem is?”
“Probably not, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.” St. Joseph was partially buried now, and I thought I could hear him gasping for breath. Or maybe that was me.
“Your problem, my darling daughter, is that you’re afraid you’re going to miss something. But what you don’t realize is that, by not making a decision, you’re missing it all.”
“Who’s missing?” my father asked behind me. When I turned around, I saw that he was carrying yet another garbage bag.
My mother shoveled the rest of the dirt on top of St. Joseph in one fell swoop. “Mind your ps and qs,” she said to him. “What’s in the bag?”
“None of your beeswax,” he said. “What’s in the hole?”
“Coffee, anyone?” my mother asked.
AS MY FATHER booked it up the stairs outside my apartment, I noticed that one of his socks was dark green and the other was maroon today. “You’re not going to put that bag in my shower, are you, Dad?” I asked, even though it was perfectly obvious that he was.
He stopped and turned around. He was wearing shorts and sandals with his socks, and his pale flaky legs looked like they could use a good moisturizer. “Psst,” he said. “Get in here quick. We don’t have much time. Your mother will be back with the java any minute.”
I looked down at St. Joseph’s freshly filled-in hole and wondered briefly which one of us was having the worst day so far. “Give me strength,” I whispered to him, just in case that was in his saintly job description. Then I followed my father up the stairs.
Even wearing sandals with socks, my father was pretty nimble. The bag had already disappeared. “Okay, Dollface, spill the beans. What did the old broad bury out there?”
I knew better than to get in the middle of this sort of thing. “Um, I’m not really sure. Maybe some daffodil bulbs?” I sneaked a peek at the clock on the stove. I’d promised myself I was going to get in eight hours on my earrings today. Or at least six. “And I don’t think you should call Mom an old broad, Dad. Especially in front of her.”
My father ran his fingers through his hair, and the sparse strands in the center stayed sticking straight up. This made him look kind of like an elderly Kewpie doll. “Okay,” he said, “whatever the old battle-ax buried out there, we’re digging it up tonight. As soon as it gets dark, I’ll flash a light in your window, and then you meet me out there. Pronto.”
“Dad . . .”
“Don’t worry. I’ll do all the dirty work. All’s you’ll be is the lookout.”
WHEN MY PHONE RANG, it took me a minute to find it because it was buried under my earring supplies. Geri started right in as soon as I said hello. “Are you sure I should let Riley do this? I mean, it’s not as though he has any interest in acting, and he’s going to have to miss school. And it’s not as if he’s still in kindergarten. There are expectations for second graders.”
I cut a piece of earring wire from the spool and did the math for a week’s worth of work in my head. I didn’t know about Riley, but I could sure use the money. “Well,” I said, “you’re the mother, but it certainly sounds like a résumé builder to me.”
It was almost too easy. “Good point,” my sister said. “Okay, yeah. Can you pick him up at eight A.M. tomorrow?”
“Can do.” Geri loved it when I sounded efficient. “And I’ll figure on time and a half for about twelve hours a day for at least the better part of a week, right?” Boyfriend batted me another piece of sea glass, and I scooped it up.
“No,” Geri said. “The casting person said they can only have the kids for eight hours. Seth did a search last night and says it’s all about the Coogan Act. Apparently, Jackie Coogan had no rights to the money he made as a child star, so because of the public uproar, the California legislature passed the Child Actors Bill, also known as the Coogan Act, to protect child actors.”
I didn’t quite get how this related to Marshbury, Massachusetts, but I didn’t want to encourage her by asking any questions. Geri’s ability to retain detail had always made my eyes glaze over. While she droned on, I pictured a pajama-ed Seth in bed hammering away on his laptop as he surfed the Internet. There were worse things than being single.
“Yeah, well, whatever,” I said, shaking my head to dislodge the image. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”
“Do you think,” Geri continued, as if she hadn’t heard me, “that a spa weekend would work for my fiftieth? I’ve always wanted to go to Canyon Ranch. . . .”
There was only one way to end this conversation in a timely fashion. “Hello?” I said, as if I couldn’t hear her. “Hello?” I repeated before I pushed the off button on the phone and tossed it across the room and onto my sleeper sofa.
I stood up and stretched. I shook the cramps out of my hands, then picked up Boyfriend and walked over to the window. My mother was digging again, this time in the perennial garden. “It’s worth a shot,” I whispered to my cat.
“Hey, Mom,” I said when I got down there. “Wow, it’s so beautiful out here. I don’t know how you could ever stand to leave all this.”
“Don’t start,” my mother said. She dug up a big clump of something or other, then started separating the roots with a pitchfork. “Here,” she said. “Hold that end and pull.”
I did as I was told. Eventually we had a bunch of smaller sections, and we placed one back into the garden and put the rest into old plastic pots. “This phlox is over a hundred years old. When Grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, he’d bring home a little piece of each plant when he d
ivided the perennials at one of those fancy Cohasset estates.”
“Grandpa was a thief?” I couldn’t remember hearing this story before.
“He said it was good for the plants to divide them. And if the owner’s plant died, that way he’d have a backup.” We were adding some garden soil to the pots, and pressing the soil down around the roots with our fingers. My mother wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and smiled. “So, yes, I suppose technically you’d have to call him a thief.”
My mother dug up another clump. “There is nothing like a blue cornflower on a sunny day,” she said. I looked at the plant, but all I could see were roots and green leaves. “What I love most about these perennials is that each one has a story.”
I picked up the pitchfork and handed it to her.
My mother jabbed it into the plant. “Janice Rourke gave me this one. I wonder whatever happened to her. We had a big falling-out, and I can’t even remember why.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “You’re not going to start traveling around the world looking up your former flower friends to find out what went wrong with the relationship, are you? I think I’ve seen that movie.” I separated a few pots from the stack and started putting a cornflower section into each one.
My mother stabbed the ground with the pitchfork and laughed. “No, but maybe I’ll look up my high school boyfriends, at least the ones who are still alive, and give them each a plant. I can tell them they gave it to me way back when and I’ve treasured it all these years and wanted them to have a piece of it back.”
I had the hang of this whole garden thing now, and I was adding soil to the cornflower pots without even being asked. “Yeah, that might work. It’s not like they’d remember whether it was true or not at their age anyway.”
“You’d be surprised what you’ll remember, honey.”
“Did you have a lot of boyfriends back then, Mom?” I’d never really thought to ask before. It had always seemed like my parents must have come into the world joined at the hip.
“My fair share.”