Everything was just as it had always been. And yet...
“I haven’t been able to shake it lately, that overwhelmed feeling. Like I don’t even know my own body.”
“Just wait till baby is born. When Audrey came, I cried for a month. I remember sitting at dinner one night saying, ‘No one warned me about how much these things poop!’”
Cerise paused, midbite. “What?”
“Oh, yeah. Newborns, especially. You just get a clean diaper on its butt and baby’s gone and filled it again. Serious poop machines.”
Cerise lowered her fork to her plate.
“You’ll be fine.” Vicky waved a dismissive hand and reached for the last piece of bread in the basket. “Look at it this way—at least there’s one thing you’ll know going into motherhood that I didn’t.”
Cerise felt her salad stick in her throat and knew that no sip of water was going to clear it. The feeling had been there for weeks. Not a physical problem like a rogue kernel of popcorn or a cold virus setting up in her sinuses, but a sensation. She wanted to call it dread but that felt too drastic. What kind of mother would dread the birth of her own child?
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t become a mother?”
Vicky nodded vigorously as she chewed, making her blond waves ping-pong across her shoulders. “Of course!” She paused to wash down her food with her iced tea. “I talk about selling Adam to the circus about once a week. Yesterday I came upstairs to find that he’d cut holes in all of his sheets.”
Cerise suddenly couldn’t remember how old Vicky’s son was. Could he possibly be old enough to play with scissors? How does one know a thing like that?
“I thought I was about to blow a gasket. Every single sheet ruined. When I asked him why he did it, you know what he said?”
Cerise couldn’t begin to guess.
“He said, ‘But I need peepholes for when I get scared and have to cover my head.’ Genius, right? I couldn’t get mad at him for that.”
“But you just said he ruined them.”
“Well, yeah—to me. But to him those holes were entirely necessary.”
Cerise could feel the lump in her throat settle in and make itself at home. Her colleague-turned-friend—a woman she’d long trusted and who, the first day they’d met, told Cerise about the box of emergency tampons she’d stashed in the women’s bathroom—seemed to be speaking a foreign language. She was an experienced working mom, a woman achieving the successes Cerise hoped for herself.
Yet her brain couldn’t process a word she was saying.
“But didn’t you punish him? What if he does it again or cuts up something else like your curtains or his clothes?”
“What if? I mean, sure, I told him that fabric was not for cutting and blah, blah, blah—but even grounding him for a year is no guarantee he won’t ruin something else next week. Heck, the only guarantee is that he probably will ruin something next week.”
Vicky breezed on, certain about her son’s destructive genius.
“But—” Cerise stuttered. “There must have been consequences.” She flashed to the afternoon as a child that she sat at the kitchen table coloring all of the polka dots on her place mat with a brand-new Bic pen. The ink glided in seamless circles around and around each fat dot. It had felt so natural, so satisfying. Then her mother discovered what she’d done and sent her to her room.
“Like what? Make him patch the holes?” Vicky paused and studied her from across the table. “You can’t let children run wild, but it’s unrealistic to make a big deal out of every little thing.”
But, that was just the problem, wasn’t it? What was little and what was very, very big?
* * *
“WHAT IF WE have a boy and he turns into a juvenile delinquent because neither one of us understands what he needs?”
Barb shrugged off the question. She’d picked up pulled pork for dinner from the BBQ joint down the road and was busy scooping it onto buns.
“Do you want your slaw on your sandwich or on the side?”
“I’m serious. What do we know about boys? I mean, really—I don’t think you could ask for two people who have exhibited less interest in the opposite sex.”
Barb looked over and waved the coleslaw container. “Which one?”
“On the sandwich, please.”
“Memphis-style it is, then.” She slopped slaw onto the steaming piles of pork and carried the plates to the table.
“I mean, a girl we’d understand. But boys are different. I can’t tell you the first thing about what makes a boy tick.”
Barb took a bite and chewed slowly, looking as if she were in deep contemplation.
Cerise couldn’t stem her flood of questions. “Should we be lining up male mentors? Reading books on raising boys? It’s like people are all fixated on what bedding pattern we’ve registered for while completely overlooking the larger issues.”
“Which are?”
“Which are—huge.” She dropped her sandwich to her plate with a messy splatter.
Barb smirked and handed over an extra napkin. “I mean, what are they specifically? These myriad of issues.”
“Raising a child, for starters. And doing it well. Giving the child the emotional support and confidence it deserves. Heck, even understanding what that is in the first place.”
“So you’re worried we’ll screw it up.”
“Of course. Aren’t you?”
Barb bobbed her head noncommittally. “I guess I assume that’s a risk for every parent. But I certainly don’t think you and I are at any greater risk than anyone else.”
Cerise let go a haughty gasp. “Yeah, right. Two lesbians, one of whom hasn’t even seen her parents in as long as she can remember.”
Barb looked up from her dinner with such shock that Cerise wondered if she’d just broken a tooth.
“What has that got to do with anything?”
Oh, god. Now she’d done it.
“Nothing. I take it back.” If only she could.
Barb flicked a rogue bit of pork from her fingertip and Cerise watched as it flew across the table and stuck to the pepper mill her mother had given her as a housewarming gift.
Barb scraped at her BBQ-stained fingernails with a napkin. “At least I don’t need my mommy’s opinion every time I want to buy a new pair of shoes.”
What?
“I don’t need her approval.”
“Yeah, right. And you haven’t spent every night on the phone discussing paint colors, either.”
“That’s keeping her involved, not gaining her approval.”
Barb rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Whatever.”
Never in all their years together had their tide of emotions turned so swiftly. She couldn’t believe the anger filling the room, both of them suddenly puffed up and venomous like two snakes facing off on a Wild Kingdom special.
“Well, since you’re such an expert on parental relations, Barb, tell me—how should I be dealing with my mother?”
The question in its very supposition was preposterous. For as long as they’d lived together, Barb’s relationship with her parents had been limited to Christmas cards, a birthday check and a list of financial instructions for the various Hesse family holdings that arrived via registered mail each fall. Cerise had met them once, at graduation, and they’d left after a single congratulatory cocktail at the President’s Club.
And yet, Barb deigned to advise.
“Try being honest with her, for starters.”
“So you’d prefer I say it like it is. Like you do. Tell the truth no matter how much it hurts.”
“If it prevents living a lie—yes!” She threw her napkin down and pushed her plate away. “You and your dad dance around your mother with such ceremony you’d think you were at a Victorian ball.”
She lifted her a
rms into a formal dance pose and mimicked a stiff bow. “Yes, m’lady. If it so pleases you, madam.”
“Oh, for chrissake.” Cerise wanted to scream, wanted to throw her mess of a sandwich against the wall and leave it for the family know-it-all to clean up.
“My parents have been nothing but good to you. But do you ever give them any credit? No—it’s always, ‘My god, your family is so dysfunctional, Cerise.’”
What had she been thinking, trying to do this? Getting pregnant and acting as if the blue line on the test strip was miracle enough. The real miracle would be raising a child who didn’t want to either kill or institutionalize them both.
And what gave her the right to be a mother? What gave them both the right? Two messy, career-driven frauds who pretended to have it all together but who, underneath, were nothing but a swamp of contradiction and confusion, simmering to a boil.
This was never going to work.
“You think I’m so weak?” she said. “Try facing your own parental issues for once. I dare you.”
How was that for honesty?
“The Watchers,” Elusive and Everywhere
by Harvey Arpell,
staff reporter, Minneapolis/St. Paul Standard
April 2, 2018
“The Watchers,” the elusive protest art group with a talent for completing its work under the cover of night, has set its sights on cities as far-reaching as Minneapolis, Kansas City and, most recently, New York City. Investigators, though, seem to have little information about the group or its intentions.
“Their message seems to be poverty-related,” says Kansas City Police Chief Ben Renken. “Though at this point, even that conclusion appears speculative. We really don’t know much about them.”
The group has been erecting statues outside of Federal Reserve Banks since December of last year. All of the installations have been constructed of chicken wire and eyeglasses, and all of them have depicted scenes of individuals and families in need.
“So far, the group is still considered a nonviolent threat, as we’ve had no indication that they aim to strike out with anything more powerful than words and images,” said Renken. “Though, I might add that their interest in Federal Reserve sites is of some consideration.”
There is plenty of historical precedent for what officials are, at this point, calling protest art. English artist Banksy, for example, gained international recognition in the early 2000s with his darkly humorous graffiti. Today, Civic Park in Hong Kong is becoming a creative hotbed of antigovernment through the construction of several statues featuring umbrellas and sticky notes.
Of less precedence, however, is the group’s insistence on remaining anonymous and its ability to keep its work out of the public eye until its ultimate unveiling. It’s this secrecy that seems to have officials most concerned.
Domestic terrorism expert Sam Kleven, however, warns that the greatest danger may not lie with the group, but the people attracted to the movement. “Even if their intentions are purely peaceful, they are still gaining the attention of groups and individuals throughout the country—and if there’s anything history has taught us, it’s the dangers of an unpredictable crowd. Attract the wrong fans to your work and anything could happen.”
27
Cerise
“EVER FEEL LIKE you’re walking face-first into a disaster of your own making?”
Cerise handed Kyle a cup of steaming coffee and followed him to a table in the far corner of the shop. It was late Sunday morning, so the room was a mishmash of yoga pants, cable-knit sweaters and proper-person church attire—an ecosystem of her Minneapolis neighborhood.
“When you grow up with a mother like mine you learn to expect it.” Kyle pulled a chair out for Cerise and waited for her to settle before sitting down. “In the Book of Eldris, disaster lurks around every corner. There is no avoiding it.”
Cerise couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve never had a conversation with your mother that didn’t start with who died and end with who has cancer.”
“Lois Jacobsen has cancer,” said Kyle.
“Who’s Lois Jacobsen?”
“I have no idea. But my mother told me yesterday she has cancer.”
Poor Lois Jacobsen. No one was without trouble.
Tensions had run high between Cerise and Barb for several days following their argument—silent dinners and single-word answers to questions that couldn’t be avoided. But with the passing days, life had moved on. They were talking again, though the unspoken still echoed in the emerging cracks of their life together.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
Kyle looked at her from across the table but thankfully didn’t move to grab her hand or make more of the moment than she could handle. Tears were too easy these days and she’d grown tired of their company.
“Do what?”
“Any of it. All of it. Barb and I suddenly feel worlds apart. Like I never knew her to begin with. But now here we are, acting like the sort of people who are capable of giving a child everything it needs.”
Damn it. Tears again. Hot streaks fell down her checks and she wiped them away on a coffee-stained napkin.
Kyle pulled a clean one from the dispenser and handed it to her. “Well, you know my thoughts on the matter.”
She did. He was her ever-unwavering friend.
“How’d you get to be such a cheerleader when your mother acts as if she expects life to end at any moment?”
“Let’s just say I’ve earned a certain sympathy for the downtrodden.”
He winked.
Good old Kyle.
She wiped the last of her tears away and arranged the growing mess of napkins into a pile at the edge of the table. She really wanted to grab Kyle’s coffee and chug it—caffeine be damned. It had been so long.
Instead, she picked up the wad of napkins and pushed them deep into her near-full cup of herbal tea.
“Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t spent my entire life stifling a scream. Like those dreams, you know? Someone’s broken into your house and grabbed you and you try to yell but nothing comes out.”
Kyle shook his head. “I have the opposite problem. My dreams are too real. The last time I was in New York I pushed Rhonda out of bed because I thought it was swarming with spiders.”
“You did not.”
“I did. I woke up to her knocking me over the head with a shoe and yelling, ‘Get off!’ I had her pinned to the floor.”
“Shut up.”
“No, serious. She called her shrink the next day. I thought she was trying to get me medicated or something, but the appointment turned out to be for her.”
God, she should have known. Rhonda was one of those women to whom things always happened. It didn’t just rain; it rained on her new Ferragamos. The flight she was on didn’t just get delayed; it prevented her from receiving a text with a potentially career-changing scoop. The ozone wasn’t just disappearing; it had caused a change in her skin tone dramatic enough for her to have to reorder her wedding gown in a different shade of white.
Still, she was the woman her best friend had chosen.
“Aren’t we a pair, you and I?” said Cerise, laughing through the last of her tears. “Did you ever figure it out? With the dreams, I mean.”
Kyle nodded. “I’ve had them since I was a kid. They’re stress induced. High school exams. College finals. And now, with everything happening...”
“The wedding planning?”
“That doesn’t help, but no.” Kyle shook his head and rubbed his fist back and forth across his forehead. “Remember that bookkeeping issue with EyeShine I mentioned a few months back?”
Cerise nodded. She’d forgotten at first but was reminded when reading Kyle’s end-of-year note to donors.
“We’ve been killing ourselves to figure it out. And I think I may have
stumbled across a possible answer.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
Kyle sighed. “Not exactly. Because if it’s what I think is—” He stopped and sat back.
“What?”
He frowned, the look on his face not so much angry as drawn in disbelief. Still, he didn’t speak, but stared across the room, lost in his own thoughts.
“Seriously, what?” Cerise suddenly felt a bit panicky. Kyle never withheld on her.
Kyle rubbed his forehead again and leaned back in. “It may be nothing.” He was whispering and Cerise had to come in closer to hear him. “But the firm I hired and I have gone over every single donation we’ve ever received. We’ve accounted for every check, every cash donation, every pair of glasses we’ve gotten.”
“And?”
“And, there’s a big chunk of our physical donations missing. A half-dozen or so boxes of glasses.”
“So, good. Now you know that much. Can you trace them? Figure out where they went?”
“That’s the problem,” said Kyle, dropping his head nearly to the table. “We have traced them. All the way back to my parents’ basement. But now they’re gone.”
“What do you mean, your parents’ basement?”
“I stored the first few years of donations there. I didn’t have room in my condo and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on storage.”
“And now they’re gone?” Cerise could see that he was upset but didn’t understand why this would be causing so much stress. Just a few boxes of used glasses.
“Some of them are there, but some aren’t. And my mom swears up and down she didn’t do anything with them.”
“And your dad?”
“I mean, he said, ‘What the hell? What does anyone want with used eyeglasses?’” She noticed Kyle avoided the question.
Cerise watched him for a minute, rubbing his palms against his jeans and distressing his forehead with his fist. She didn’t know what to say.
They sat quietly until Kyle finally broke the silence. “Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.”
Cerise didn’t realize that’s what she’d been doing but, sure. Plus, she wasn’t sure how to gauge her worry meter. He seemed stressed, but Kyle always landed on his feet. He wasn’t exactly an underachiever, after all. He’d work it out. There would be a logical explanation to what now seemed like a mess.
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners Page 18