He wasn’t a bad person. He just needn’t be so forthright about his virtues.
Cerise disagreed, of course, always squelching Violet’s opinions on the matter as quickly as they arose. Cerise and Kyle had been friends for ages and in her daughter’s eyes, the budding Mr. Endres could do no wrong.
“I’m nothing but thankful for Kyle,” Cerise liked to tell her. “My life would have been entirely different without him.”
Which was poppycock, of course. But Violet knew that on certain matters, there was no telling Cerise anything. She also knew—rest assured, she and Ed had both kept a very close eye—that the friendship never breached the bounds of romance. Not once in all the years of rainy afternoons spent together in the Baumgartners’ TV room or over a board game at their kitchen table did Violet or her husband ever walk in to find the two of them canoodling. There was Cerise and there was Kyle and there was their friendship.
And the fact that Kyle had managed to live twenty-plus years without falling madly in love with her daughter was just one more strike against the boy.
What Kyle did have to his advantage was his engagement to Rhonda Nelson, a local girl turned Channel 4 meteorologist, who’d recently gone national with a new job and a prime-time spot on The Weather Channel. Violet had always like Rhonda’s style. She was the sort of handsome, educated woman who could be trusted to deliver the weather honestly, without the commercial hype so common in today’s meteorology—every storm ending with “-mageddon” or “-tastrophy.” Not to mention that she hadn’t fallen victim to the low-cut, tight dresses worn by every other newscaster in the business.
No, Rhonda Nelson was the real deal. After all, both Violet’s husband and her daughter were scientists. She could spot a phony a mile away.
“By the way, Eldris,” she said, touching her friend’s wrist gently for emphasis, “I’ve asked Rhonda to say a few words at Ed’s retirement party and she’s agreed. Can you think of a more fitting tribute? One nationally known scientist bidding another farewell?”
“She’s a weather broadcaster, Violet. I don’t think a weather person qualifies as a scientist unless you’re a meteorologist.”
“Semantics,” said Violet. “No one’s the wiser if we don’t mention it. And anyway, in my opinion she has a PhD in style.”
2017 Faithful Redeemer Lutheran Church
Christmas Fair for the Homeless
Saturday, December 23
Your generous donations are once again being sought for the annual church Christmas Fair supporting our less fortunate Cedar-Isles neighbors. Last year’s fair provided gifts to nearly 50 families. This year is expected to bring an even greater demand.
Donation bins are located in the narthex.
RECOMMENDED DONATIONS
Dolls
Children’s books
Winter gloves, hats, scarves
Shaving kits
Small stuffed animals
Warm socks
Small appliances
Tool kits
NOT RECOMMENDED
Video games
Toys or books that glorify images of violence or war
Knife sets
Fireworks
EyeShine Thanks You for
Your Generous Support
FRLC member, Kyle Endres, founder of EyeShine, a nonprofit that provides prescription eyewear to the poor in Africa, would like to thank the members of Faithful Redeemer for donating over 200 pairs of used eyeglasses this year. Says Kyle, “Think of all of the people who will now see God’s creation, thanks to you!”
4
Richard
RICHARD ENDRES ENTERED his fourteen-digit password and clicked Submit. He dreaded this part of his week more than anything, but he forced himself to do it—every Monday, without fail. If he didn’t look... Well, he’d done that before and it led nowhere good.
$1,867.37. They had enough to pay the mortgage. If they didn’t go out to eat, they’d be fine until next week when the utilities came due. Plus, there was the weekly $547 unemployment deposit coming next Monday morning. He checked the transactions list to ensure that this week’s deposit had already cleared. It had.
At least the government was finally paying him for once, instead of the other way around.
It wasn’t that he and Eldris were poor. God, no. He’d been a Senior Vice President at Peter+son Communications managing an eighteen-million-dollar client portfolio, for chrissake. This was no more than a hiccup. They’d navigated choppier financial straits. Setbacks were nothing more than opportunities gaining steam.
God, he was starting to sound like a motivational poster.
Eldris, though—she had to get on board with this new, temporary reality. Just this morning, she couldn’t stop going on about what in the world she was going to wear to Ed Baumgartner’s retirement party.
“The invitation says, Black tie preferred, Richard! We can’t show up in just any old thing.”
Fine, he’d said. He’d wear his tux. He’d been a Senior Vice President. He owned a tuxedo.
“No, I’m not talking about you, for once. I’m talking about me. Just what am I supposed to wear when everyone else is waltzing about in black tie?”
God, he hated when she got hysterical. As if there wasn’t a single piece of clothing in one of her two—yes, two, goddamn it—closets that she couldn’t put on for the twenty minutes he planned to spend at that ludicrous party.
Not that Ed Baumgartner wasn’t a good guy. He was a hell of a guy—accomplished all sorts of medical breakthroughs for people with god-awful shitter problems. Not that you’d hear any of that stuff from Ed. His accomplishments were the sorts of things you read in the newspaper or heard about secondhand on the eighth hole of the Faithful Redeemer Charity Golf Tournament. Ed was just another stand-up guy: he wore a good suit, ushered at church most Sundays, kept his mouth shut.
No, it was Baumgartner’s wife who bugged Richard: Violet. Queen of the Baumgartner Realm, Overseer of the Kingdom of Her Own Creation.
Violet was one of those people who started conversations in the middle of a sentence, who never gave a backstory, always just assumed you cared about what she had to say mostly because she was the one saying it.
So, fine. Eldris and Violet had been friends for who knew how long. What did he care what his wife did with her own time as long as it didn’t cost him money or his sanity? But that was just the problem. Violet Baumgartner cost him more than his fair share of both. Today it was Eldris going on about his failures in black-tie wardrobing. Last week it was couldn’t they possibly redo the kitchen cupboards because Violet had made some crack about the outdated handles. What the hell should she care about how a man opened the cupboards in his own goddamn house?
If it were only Eldris, maybe all this Baumgartner talk wouldn’t feel like a shadow over his life. But it wasn’t just her. Kyle, too. Their son had been Cerise Baumgartner’s best friend since... Well, he didn’t exactly know when, but definitely long before the poor kid was old enough to see the dead end waiting for him on Best Friend Street. Ah, God, he’d watched Kyle spend entire years trying not to wet himself over that girl.
Of course, now he knew. He’d pieced that puzzle together. No one had to tell him outright why Kyle never set her hormones burning. But back then—
One night he came home to find the two of them side by side on the couch, watching a movie so intently you’d think the alien attack unfolding on-screen was the only excitement their teenage brains could manage. Richard couldn’t believe it. He walked into a dark house to find his teenage son alone on the couch with a girl and taking advantage of exactly none of it. No empty beer cans stuffed in the trash. No pretending they’d fallen asleep that way, all tangled up into each other. Not even a pizza box on the floor.
Since when had his house become a high holy monastery?
“Kyle,” he’d said later, closing the kid’s bedroom door behind him. “This thing with Cerise.”
“What thing?”
What thing? He didn’t corner his son very often, and he could tell he was practically scaring the fool half to death.
“You know.” He guessed he should have done this long ago. “The thing. The hanging out. The being best friends.”
“Yeah?”
Oh, for Pete’s sake, this kid.
“What’s it... What’re you... What’s gonna come of it?”
“What do you mean?”
And so the conversation went. An eternity of hemming around a subject the way Richard Endres never hemmed, of not coming right out to talk about the bases when you weren’t talking about baseball. Goddamn it, fatherhood was painful.
“Best friend never turns into boyfriend!” He realized he was yelling and immediately regretted it. “Look. If you and Cerise haven’t started doing the stuff your mom and I don’t want to hear about, you’re never gonna get to do that stuff with her.”
Kyle lowered his head and Richard felt the surrender like a kick in the gut. He wanted his kid to know there was no shame in rejection, but some people just weren’t wired to see it that way. Kyle had his mother’s softer side. That wasn’t all bad, but still. Life happens. You buck up. Tomorrow comes.
“Nobody wants to do that stuff with me, Dad. It’s not just Cerise.”
“You’ll find someone, kiddo. I promise.” Because everybody eventually found somebody. He’d found Eldris. Maybe she was an odd bird sometimes, but she was loyal. And if there was one thing Richard Endres knew, it was the value of loyalty.
Or, he had.
Loyalty these days was nothing but a word, nothing but goddamn spin reserved for CEO crooks and financial planners. He used to think it was a valued commodity. Just like he used to be an SVP at Peter+son. Now he was just a guy with a late-middle-age paunch standing in his kitchen on a Monday morning while his wife waved the mail in his face.
“This has to be 150-pound stock, at least. And linen!” Eldris had gone on and on about the paper Violet had Ed’s invites printed on. As if Richard gave a shit about card stock.
What he did give a shit about was that a single damn square of 100-pound—Eldris and her exaggerations—linen card stock had given him a migraine.
And they were out of Scotch.
This new world baffled him. Fluid was the word now. Data fluidity. Techno fluidity. Gender fluidity. What the hell was he supposed to make of that? Back when he was coming up, the only talk about flow was when you were told to go with it, and that was only fun because you were probably high. These days, strong was bad and bend was good, fusion was on the rise and steel was sinking fast. This wasn’t a world he knew anymore. In it, he wasn’t strong. He wasn’t intimidating. He wasn’t anything.
Everyone blamed the economy, of course. “I’d love to bring you on board, Richard, but it’s the economy. The ad billings have practically dried up.” Same shit, different lunch.
It’s what they’d said to him at Peter+son that day, too, only he’d watched that shit storm crossing the horizon for months. And there hadn’t been anything he could do about it. First his financial services accounts shuttered—in less than a week, three major US banks pulled ad revenues totaling more than six million dollars annually. Then it was the Consumer & Retail segment, then Travel. By the time Richard walked into the CEO suite that fateful day back in May, his client portfolio totaled less than five million dollars.
“I hope you know how much we’ll miss you, Richard.” He watched as his soon-to-be-former boss, a toad of a guy who kept his dermatologist busy with retinol treatments and mole removal, straightened the pin tethering his Dolce & Gabbana tie to his Burberry shirt. Richard wasn’t one for men’s fashion—aw, hell, yes he was. So he knew that this toad, the man who was about to dismiss himself so that some HR neophyte in a tight skirt and heels could talk Richard through his separation agreement, would walk out of the room wearing no less than a few thousand dollars’ worth of thread.
“We’re all hurting. I want to assure you of that.” He gave Richard the same bullshit If only there was something I could do smile that he’d seen him give hundreds of suckers over the years—vendors who were expected to take the shit end of a raw deal, clients who weren’t worth the paper their bills were printed on and saps like Richard about to land face-first on the unemployment tarmac.
I hope you croak, Richard wanted to say. I hear that’s what toads do.
Instead, he stood up and shook hands with him like a damn fool, then watched him hop out of the room in his Italian leather loafers.
Just before the HR girl came in, Richard walked over to the desk, found the toad’s gold pen and pocketed it.
5
Cerise
CERISE PROMISED HER mother that she and Barb would arrive at the retirement party no later than seven o’clock. So far, she might be able to keep her word. If only she could get her dress zipped.
“It’s your boobs.” Barb stood behind her, pulling at gaps in the fabric, trying to gain as much leverage as she could while she tugged at the zipper. “When did you grow boobs?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.” Normally, Cerise would have welcomed the banter, but she wasn’t feeling playful. There wasn’t another dress to choose from, and time was ticking.
“Of course I noticed, but these are like—” Barb grunted and pulled “—real boobs.”
The zipper suddenly crossed its last threshold and glided to a quick stop at the base of Cerise’s neck. Success. She released the air from her lungs—her tummy hadn’t been the problem but she’d sucked it in, anyway.
Breathe.
Barb came around from behind and took her in. “You look great, all shimmery in red. Busty, even.” She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re walking into bombshell territory.”
They’d gone shopping for the dress together and chose this one because of the plush ruche at its waist—plenty of baby disguise, just in case. But neither one of them had been pregnant before; how were they to predict that Cerise’s top half would grow before her belly?
“The boobs aren’t too much?”
“Not nearly.”
Cerise didn’t laugh. “I’m serious. Every dress I’ve ever put on my whole life made me look like a gift-wrapped shoebox. Flat and fancy. Now suddenly I’m in 3-D. My mom’s got to notice.”
Barb swatted away the concern. “I’ll tell her you finally broke down and bought those silicon chicken cutlets from the Nordstrom women’s department. She’s been after you about them for years.”
Cerise groaned. But knowing her mother, she might just believe it.
Shoes, coats, purses, and they were heading for the car. Cerise handed Barb the keys.
“I’m too anxious to drive.”
“First time out in the world with boobs,” said Barb. “Talk about pressure.”
* * *
IT WAS 7:05 P.M. when they walked through the doors of the Historical Society’s Grand Hall. The room was stunning, and her mother had obviously pulled out every last stop. The ceiling glittered with twinkle lights so faint they looked like stars. Crystal Champagne flutes adorned every table. The sound of the string quartet filled the room and floated down the stairs to the street. And the windows—floor-to-ceiling glass with a clear view of the state capitol and the state mall surrounding it.
It was a fitting tribute to the man she and her mother both loved so dearly.
“You’re late.” Her mother pounced from behind the head table as soon as they arrived. Cerise saw that she’d been redirecting a waiter holding a tray loaded with appetizers and she couldn’t help but smile at the look of relief that passed over his face when Violet turned her attention elsewhere. It felt good to help a fella out.
Not to mention, Cerise was the tiniest bit f
labbergasted by how beautiful her mother looked. She wasn’t a particularly pretty woman—she had a deep chin cleft and a shallow jawline that, coupled, left the impression of her mouth sinking into her neck. But there was no disputing her innate elegance, and she carried herself with a fluid grace that Cerise had always envied. Tonight, she was radiant in cream satin and pearls.
“You look wonderful, Mom. Really lovely.”
Her mom smiled and tilted her cheek for a kiss. Cerise complied.
Violet turned to Barb. “Well, Miss Hesse. You look as lovely as always.”
Barb shot her a sparkling grin.
“Let me see you spin,” ordered Violet.
She acquiesced. Hers was a floor-length emerald gown with a modest neckline and an open back that plunged all the way to her hips. Cerise suspected her mother had already spotted the naked zone and was performing a covert propriety check.
“Risqué, no?” Barb winked. “I figure I have to wear this sort of thing while I’m still young.”
Violet nodded primly. She couldn’t have liked it, but she apparently didn’t consider it worth a fuss.
“Mom, what can we do to help? Everything looks just beautiful.”
“I’d like you to stand near the door and welcome guests as they arrive. Direct anyone you know—or anyone you suspect is important—over to your father.” She waved a hand toward the middle of the ballroom where Cerise saw her dad, awkwardly engaged in conversation with their minister, Pastor Norblad.
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners Page 4