by Kodi Heart
Penny stood up at exactly nine AM and called out the roll. Don answered that he was there and I glanced down. When I looked back up, he was gone, the door closing softly behind him.
I wanted to stand up and go after him, ask him where he’d been the previous weekend, but Tanya stood. If I’d left when she’d started talking, all heck would have broken loose. She was almost as intimidating as my grandmother.
Almost.
“We lost a member last week and I’m sad to see her go. Debra was a stalwart competitor and she did everything she needed to do to get that weight off. I remember meeting her for the first time when she was giving me clothes of hers that she was too small for anymore.” Tanya looked down at the paper. “The details on her memorial or funeral will be sent out via email and text as soon as we know. Mary, would you like to discuss the points tracking system?” Tanya took a seat, wiping at her forehead. The discussion was cursory and over before it began.
Grandma pulled her glasses from the lanyard and slid them onto her nose, peering at the paper she gripped in front of her. “Yes, thank you. Great job to everyone who weighed in. If you need help with your points or with tracking, we’re here to help you. There are some cheats on how to make your calories last longer so you’re not feeling so hungry.”
I could do it. I couldn’t tell Mom or Grandma – or anyone else really – that I had lied on my tracking journal. I hadn’t honestly tracked even one day. Not once. I could do better. If I really wanted to do better, I would have to focus and not cheat. No more stress eating unless it was celery. That was calorie free, wasn’t it? Wait, I’d have to wait until after Easter. Did they plan around the holidays? Were there extra calories I could buy or something? How did I eat ham, au gratin potatoes, all the salads, and Grandma’s cinnamon rolls, if I was tracking on twelve-hundred calories? I wouldn’t make it past the rolls with honey butter!
“So, let’s move from the instructional portion of the meeting…” Great, I’d missed a huge chunk of what they were saying. Had she mentioned a cheat? Grandma held up a glass jar with our names in it. I knew our names were in there because she did this every few weeks. Said it was like a testimony meeting at church. You had a chance to be heard and listen, maybe even inspire others around you. I wouldn’t be inspiring anyone any time soon.
She reached in and my stomach clenched. Not me. Not me. Not me. Grandma unfolded the name and studied it. She glanced around the room. “Can we hear from my granddaughter, Angie, please?”
Angie stood, faux surprise on her model-like features. She was gorgeous. There was no denying that, and so help me, she grated me the wrong way. Truth be told, I’d dreamt of all kinds of ways to slug her in the face. But she’d been divorced so many times, I didn’t want to minimize her chances of finding another man.
Smiling, Angie flashed her straight white teeth, shiny against the tan she had from a trip to the tropics with one of the men in her life. “I have to say, I haven’t been heavy, except for the two pregnancies I had where I was up twenty pounds. Thankfully, I lost that weight.” She giggled, like she was nervous, but there were no nerves there. She dropped her smile for fake sobriety. “Debra gave me a run for my money on maintenance. Now, though, there’s no competition, so I guess all’s well that ends well.” She tilted her head to the side and claimed her seat with a flouncy move that left me with my mouth half-open.
I slowly moved my gaze to Grandma whose eyes were wide as she stared at her oldest granddaughter. She cleared her throat. “Um, yes, thank you, Angie.” Grandma looked around, shaking the jar with a nervous anticipation. “Let’s see if someone else has something they’d like to share.”
Not me. Not me. Not. Me.
I caught Penny’s gaze from across the room. I could see in her expression that she was irritated with Angie as well and also begging silently not to be called.
“Bonnie…” Grandma glanced around and I could tell that she didn’t want to put me on the spot. I was the only grandkid of hers to have so many kids biologically and my weight was something I struggled with. I didn’t have a lot of confidence around people I knew, but people I didn’t know, I didn’t care.
It was a weird dichotomy.
The last time I got up in front of the family and diet club, I’d started crying – true I was still dealing with post-partum depression, but I cried and Grandma didn’t deal well with tears. No one in my family did. So, I’d cried and then I’d been even more embarrassed.
Well, not this time. I could do this. If I didn’t do it, I would get harassed for getting out of something because of special treatment. No one wanted that differentiation.
I stood, setting my journal and bag on the chair. My hands shook and suddenly my mouth was dry. “Hi, I’m Bonnie, as most of you know.” I laughed uncomfortably, tugging on the hem of my shirt I knew only displayed my back rolls more significantly. “I, um, I’ve had six kids in under nine years and I, well, let’s just say I didn’t say no to any craving I had. In fact, I probably ate it twice and took pictures.” I snorted.
I snort laughed in front of the whole group – even the new members on the side! Who did that? I was mortified and covered my nose and mouth with my hand. Oh, my donuts. Why was I still standing?
Clearing my throat, I wrinkled my nose. “Um, well, I have been trying to track” – lies! – “but I think I can do better. I want to lose this weight and get back into boxing and running, I just… well, I think I just need to keep trying.” I furrowed my brow and looked at Grandma. Was there anything else I needed to say? Viva la chocolate?
“Thank you, Bonnie.” Grandma smiled me back into my seat which I gratefully reclaimed with a sigh.
I think Grandma picked two more people, I’m not sure. I could only think about the Twinkie I had in the bottom of my bag for such a moment as that one.
You know, the kind when I couldn’t believe that I was who I was. Certainly not for when my motivation was at its strongest. I hadn’t had a day like that in eons.
My phone buzzed and I peeked in my purse, noting the cell’s position in relation to the Twinkie. Very close. Very, very close. Maybe it was fate.
The screen of my phone glowed with the text from Nikki.
Have you gotten any more info?
And that’s why I couldn’t back off on looking deeper into Debra’s death. Accident or not, I had to help Nikki. She couldn’t lose her job. She just couldn’t. I knew how much it killed her to ever ask for help and there she was, asking if I’d heard anything. I winced on her behalf.
I had to do everything I could to make sure she didn’t have to face that hardship.
There was my motivation. Why couldn’t I apply that to my eating?
9
Easter didn’t let me down as it was full of crazy excitement and questions without answers. Wasn’t that everything a holiday with family should be full of?
With Aaron still gone at work, the kids and I left directly for Grandma’s after church. The rest of the family wasn’t supposed to arrive until well after three. We got there with four hours to spare.
Plenty of time to dye eggs and get into trouble with Nikki.
I set up the small metal bowls Grandma asked us to use every year and waited for Nikki to come back inside. She’d ducked outside from helping all the kids play in the bubbles from the machine she’d brought. She always came up with the best ways to distract the children.
Sitting there, I had a chance to look around my second home growing up. Grandma and Grandpa’s home was consistent, steady. They decorated with chickens and eclectic art pieces their various daughters gifted them with. Warm wood wainscoting reached halfway up the walls where it changed to a cream wallpaper with chicken footprints and falling feathers in lined patterns.
The house was fairly quiet, at least inside. Grandma was resting from the chaos of eight grandkids and feeding them a fun lunch. I secretly thought she didn’t want to be around Nikki. Nikki reminded Grandma of Aunt Kiki who had left without any real reason and e
veryone felt abandoned by her. Everyone. Most especially her mother.
I’d tried putting myself in her shoes and it hurt too much to dwell on for too long.
Ducking back inside, Nikki smiled as she took her spot beside me at the large oak table. Yeah, I could see the resemblance between her and Kiki, but only if I looked for it. Nikki, to me, had such a different personality than her mother. Peg holing her into one mold just because of the actions of one, didn’t seem fair to me.
She rolled her eyes. “Ryder is trying to eat the bubbles alongside Chewy.” Chewy was Grandpa’s dog and all the kids loved him. The Akita breed of dog grew huge and the smaller children liked riding Chewy. He didn’t seem to even notice that he had passengers. His tongue lulled out the side of his mouth, his expression almost dopey and lost. The fact that Ryder was alongside him eating bubbles didn’t surprise me. He idolized the dog. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to be Chewy when he grew up.
Anything was possible.
I glanced at Nikki, my brow furrowed. “Are you okay? You look tired.” That was putting it mildly. Her normally vibrant blonde hair hung limply in a ponytail down her back. Black eyeliner seemed to enhance the bags under her eyes more than the normally startling blue-green of her gaze. I worried about her, but didn’t want her to think that. She would bristle, if she thought anyone pitied her.
Nikki smiled weakly. “I’m worried about losing my job. I can’t sleep.” She sighed, dipping a hard-boiled egg into the yellow dye. The fact that she admitted to that was huge – escalating my worry and urgency to finding out what happened. I didn’t want to let Nikki down.
“Yeah, I understand that kind of worry.” I didn’t talk about finding Debra’s body. I couldn’t even write in my journal – not the diet journal – about how I felt. Nikki would have understood anything I said or even tried to say, but I couldn’t find words to say how bothered by Debra’s death I was. Was that normal? I didn’t even know how to ask what was normal in that situation. It didn’t seem to be a support group or anything.
I already checked.
Taking a deep breath, Nikki flattened her hand on the table beside the dye while she waited for the next egg to color. She took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t be nervous. I mean, I know my findings are solid and would hold up in court, but I don’t want to go to court. It sounds like Debra’s husband is running for senator and my boss has a vested interest in who wins because that’s who keeps him in office.” She continued staring at the dye, reaching in to move the egg from the colored liquid onto the paper towels covering a plate.
We fell into a comfortable silence, broken by Ryder’s sudden appearance. His still-rounded cheeks were flushed with the early spring breeze and his brown hair I’d so carefully combed that morning looked like he’d just woken up from a restless nap. “Mom! I found an egg already!” He held up a light blue robin’s egg and before I could reach out my hand to stop him, he smashed it on his head.
I closed my eyes as egg ran down his hair and onto his suit. Reopening my lids, I tilted my head to the side and fought the smile at his bewildered expression. “Honey, Nana’s eggs aren’t here yet.”
My mom went by Nana with the kids and she and Miguel emptied dozens and dozens of egg shells throughout the year, rinsed them, let them dry, after she dyed them, she then filled them with confetti. After all of that, they pasted a small square of tissue paper over the hole. She then hid them for the kids to find and they ran around slamming confetti eggs on each other and their own heads.
Obviously, we needed to discuss the difference between blue robin eggs and Nana’s confetti eggs.
“I’ll be right back.” I murmured to Nikki as I ushered Ryder back into the bathroom to clean him up. It wouldn’t be the last time that day I would have to wash his hair or his clothes.
As I rinsed out the yolk from Ryder’s thick hair, I couldn’t help worry about Nikki. If she lost her job, she’d be stuck financially. When her mom left, she’d only been halfway through her four-year degree. She’d had to go deep into debt to finish and then there wasn’t much demand for social workers in the field she’d specialized in. So, she’d worked as a phlebotomist and worked her way up into the morgue work. She was very good at what she did, but that didn’t guarantee anything in a Right to Work state.
Plus, what would happen with her kids, if she couldn’t keep her job? Too many things hung on by a thread in Nikki’s life and I wished I could fix things for her.
Nikki was like my sister and I didn’t want to do anything to upset the precariously balanced boat that was her life. The last thing she needed was to be questioned at work. I could help her figure out where the arsenic came from. It wouldn’t be hard.
Shouldn’t be hard.
How hard could it be?
I held Ryder’s hand as we returned to the dining room. His small fingers in mine comforted me. He was my final baby and it made me sad that we weren’t having anymore. I gripped his fingers a little bit tighter.
Down the steps, he pulled from my grasp and waved to me as he ran out the door, probably to return to Chewy. I turned toward the table and my shoulders slumped forward.
Nikki was nowhere to be found.
She’d cleaned up the egg dying material and set it all aside. All of the colored eggs stacked neatly in multiple baskets.
Nikki was gone. She’d left without saying goodbye. Things were spiraling for my cousin.
I flipped the edges of the tablecloths back into place on the tables where we’d been working on the dye. Glancing around the tables, I checked for anything that would be considered out of place. Grandma put a lot of work into setting up the layout for dinner. I didn’t want to accidentally mess anything up.
Four 4x10 rectangular tables were set up in a T-shape. Two across the top and two perpendicular from the center. White tablecloths draped from the top to exactly four inches below. No more and no less. Grandma would have cut and hemmed them before allowing anything to look different.
At each place setting a white ten-inch plate nested a six-inch salad plate with a copper and brown linen napkin rolled around two forks, a knife, and a spoon. Four lazy susans my husband had designed, claimed the prestigious honor as centerpieces with a Mason jar filled with mini pinecones and green and gold ribbon and a cinnamon candle.
I sat down and realized Nikki was gone. She hadn’t left to come back later. Her kids weren’t outside. She’d left and wasn’t staying for the egg hunt or for the dinner.
When had things gotten so bad, that family didn’t feel comfortable around family?
◆◆◆
Grandpa lifted his wine glass, the contents milder than wine or champagne. Bubbles floated to the top of his sparkling apple cider as he held it aloft. His blue eyes had a rim of gray. He smiled gratefully at the large turnout of family filling the seats he’d carried up from the basement not too long before.
The chatter around the group dulled and soon everyone faced our patriarch. He tucked his left hand into his pocket and rocked forward onto the balls of his feet.
His glee turned misty and I knew he was thinking of the missing family members. “Grandma and I just want to thank all of you for finding the time to come for Easter. I know we’re missing parts of our family, but I know they’re thinking of us just as we’re thinking of them at this special time of year. I look around and I see so many special men and women and little ones. You make me happy.” He smiled at each of us in turn.
Aunt Rikki and Mom might have wiped tears out of their eyes, but I’ll never tell. Crying in our family is frowned on. Anger is good. Hard work is good (ambition is seriously a fundamental emotion in the Fleming family tree). Happiness is reserved for special occasions. I haven’t seen one time where everyone was smiling at the same time.
Kiki’s two children – Nikki and Jim – and their children were missing. Aaron was gone. Other than that, the rest of the Fleming family had made it to the house for the ham dinner and the egg hunt.
The granddaugh
ters – all four of them – brought out the dishes and set them family-style in the center of the tables.
Cissy, Penny’s oldest set the aspic salad right at Grandma’s elbow. She was the only one who ate the atrocity with its lemon gelatin, shrimp, celery chunks, and olives. Yeah, I forgot to mention the tomato juice on purpose.
Scooping out a triple serving onto her place, Grandma arched a drawn-on eyebrow. “I’ve lost weight on this amazing salad. It’s so good.”
“You say that every holiday, Grandma.” I laughed, picking at the au gratin potatoes and their cheesy goodness. I wasn’t sure who was watching me. There was no way I could track all this food. I wanted to. I longed to have the kind of will power I would need to turn away from the rolls with homemade strawberry jelly, the ham covered in honey glaze and horseradish cream, the creamy and cheesy au gratin potatoes, the rich and flavorful Caesar salad with croutons the size of quarters, and the green bean casserole. Just taking inventory of the dishes was enough to overwhelm my senses.
Angie picked at a small plate of salad. She seemed on edge and didn’t really acknowledge my hello when she arrived earlier. She wiggled in her seat and leaned forward, “Did anyone think of Don as Debra’s killer?” The blurted words cast a pall of silence over our group. Even the children sensed there was a need for quiet.
Mom spoke first. “Why do you say that, Angie?” Mom sat closest to my cousin. She cast a glance my way as if to ask if I’d primed Angie with questions or something.
“She drinks coffee at the Crank Brothers. I drink from there, too. What if…” She shook her head. “Could she have been killed by Don?” Worry creased her normally smooth brow. How did Angie even know we thought Debra had been killed? We hadn’t told anyone. Unless, of course, Nikki was talking to more than one person.
If that was the case, things could get blown out of proportion.
“No one knows him very well. He’s always eating ice cream and hitting on random members.” Aunt Rikki spoke up, leaning across to her husband Tommy who was finally at a family event without his police uniform. Southern German coloring kept him just different enough it didn’t look like he was a direct sibling of the group which was good. Dark hair and eyes seemed to give him more personality in the family. Mom and I were the only brunettes unless you counted Penny and her crazy curls.