Kids are Chancey

by Kay Dew Shostak

  Grant caught my eye as he slowly nodded. John mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  I know my food seems awfully dry, so I can’t imagine how Bryan is getting anything down. But they all do. Of course, feeding teenage boys is pretty much like trying to fill up a running garbage disposal with Jell-O. I try to not make it noticeable as I watch Brittani and her new friend get up and go into the water. She has on a tiny, royal blue bathing suit, and he’s got his hand around her waist. Wish I’d put wine in my water bottle.

  When did this happen? Bryan and she were together this past weekend. I may not be actually on the inside with what is going on, but they sat together in church and were in our basement playing video games Sunday night. (I get a lot of laundry done when they’re down there. I’m not spying, I just seem to coincidentally always have a lot of laundry to do when my kids are alone with members of the opposite sex in the basement.)

  Bryan stands up and collects his trash. I give him mine, and he moves off to the garbage can. Grant’s eyes are glued on me, and as soon as Bryan is out of earshot, I meet Grant’s look. “What happened?”

  Grant lifts his hands up and makes an explosion with them. “She just showed up here with Adam Schecter. She didn’t break up with Bry or nothing.”

  “No way!”

  John nods. “It’s crazy.”

  Bryan walks up, and John covers a little loudly, “Class isn’t for a half-hour. My phone is dying, or we could play games.”

  “Go sit in the van and plug it in.” I pull my car keys from my pocket and hand them to Bryan.

  He looks up as he takes them. “But we’re wet.”

  “Not that much. Just sit on your towels.” They walk off, and I finish my chips and water. Brittani and the boy, Adam, I think they said, are out in the water. Seems like all the teens in the water are avoiding them. If she did dump Bryan as unceremoniously as Grant says, maybe she’s being shunned.

  Shunned? Maybe I’ve read one too many Amish romances.

  Speaking of which, where is my book? I pull it out, then stand to set up my foldout chair, which is much more comfortable than the picnic table bench. It’s hard to decide which way to face. Half of me wants to be able to keep my eyes on the two in the water, other half wants to turn away and forget that girl ever existed.

  Facing the water, I can glance over the top of my book and see them in the water, and also see their blanket.

  Really? You thought I might look the other way?

  This is the South, y’all.

  “You are not going to believe this. So then she and her new guy, Adam something, are leaving and she sees me, darts over and hugs me! Hugs me right there in front of everyone. Thank goodness Bryan was busy with his class over on the other side of the swimming area.”

  Laney is being appropriately shocked at everything I’m telling her. When the folks in the baby store they’re shopping in asked her to please quiet down, she went outside to talk to me. Sometimes it’s good to have a friend who will be outraged loudly and often.

  “Listen, hon, I’ve got to go back inside. Store’s closing soon, and I need to pay. I can’t wait to show you everything. Shaw is being so sweet. Like I said before, it’s so much more fun having a baby when you have money. Let’s meet at Ruby’s in the morning, ‘kay? I’ll call Susan, too. Better go, bye!”

  We hang up, and I look down at my book. I think I’ve read all of two pages since I’ve been here. First I was busy watching Brittani, then the guys came back, and I got to watching their class, then Brittani left and hugged me and that took a while to process, and of course, share. Jackson was eating and couldn’t seem to work up the outrage deserved, Savannah is headed this way on a tour of Chancey with Alex, so she didn’t want to talk. Susan didn’t answer. Missus, I was afraid, would dash up here with a gun. So, even though I knew Laney was out shopping, I called her.

  Before I even find my place on the page, Savannah comes up behind me.

  “Hey, Mom.” She has on different clothes than earlier. A light pink sundress with green rick rack along the top and bottom. She told me it was too “cutesy” when her grandmother sent it from a shop in South Carolina. Too “southern belle-like,” she also said. “You remember Alex?”

  “Hi,” he says as he walks out a little in front of us toward the lake. “So, you swim in the lake?”

  Savannah and I look at each other. “Yeah, I guess,” she says.

  I ask, “Do you have a lot of lakes in New York?”

  He turns around, pushes his sunglasses up into his thick hair, and shrugs. “Maybe in the state, but I’m from the city. We have pools. And the Cape, of course. Lakes are good for skiing and sailing.”

  Savannah flips her hair back. “I don’t really like swimming in the lake. Kind of dirty.”

  I just roll my eyes, but of course she’s not looking at me.

  Alex turns around, looking up toward the sky. Savannah and I both look up to see what he sees. The sky is a deep blue as the sun moves farther down it, but that’s all I can find to look at.

  He puts his hands on his hips and turns around again. “These tall trees. Where are their branches? They aren’t dead. They are green at the tops.”

  Even though Savannah and I both now know what to look at, we still don’t know what to look at. “You mean the pine trees?” I ask.

  He motions around us. “These are pines? But they don’t have branches. We have pines, like Christmas trees. They aren’t skinny like this.”

  There’s that saying, you can’t see the forest for the trees? Well, suddenly I’m aware of the dozens, no hundreds, of tall, skinny pine trees around us. We are literally surrounded by cinnamon-colored trunks that soar into the sky, but only have greenery at the top—lush, long pine needles. However, like Alex pointed out, no lower branches.

  He points up high. “You can see where the branches were. But they’ve fallen off. Was there a storm?”

  Savannah puts her sunglasses back down on her face and shrugs. “That’s just how they are. Big, tall trees. Pine trees. They’re everywhere.”

  Alex is still staring up and slowly turning around. “Fascinating. I know where I’ve seen them now. On the golf courses on TV. At the Masters.” He looks at me. “That’s in Georgia, right?”

  “Yes. In Augusta.”

  He grins. “I thought they had cut off the limbs to make room for the golf course. Thought that was ingenious, but I had no idea this is how they are. Look how they sway with the wind.”

  Okay. They’re pine trees. “Most folks here hate them because with big storms they do fall over. And, well, they grow everywhere.”

  “Not where I live. And not just where I am in the city. I’ve never seen them except on TV.”

  When I look to make eye contact with my daughter and grin at his enthusiasm over plain old pine trees, she’s busy. Her eyes, hidden a bit behind her sunglasses, are glued on Alex, and she looks a little drugged. As she callously dragged around boys’ hearts through the years, I’d wondered when she would find hers in jeopardy. She’s dated guys, and even really liked some, but she’s never had that look. That look of obsession. Guess I should be glad we got to put it off this long, but Alex looks like what they call a player. I don’t see his heart getting dragged anywhere.

  Alex walks down to the lake. I thrust out a hand to grab the tail of Savannah’s dress, but it slips through my grasp. And there she is, following him. He didn’t even have to look around. He knew she’d follow.

  Yep, this summer is getting longer by the minute.

  Chapter 7

  “She invited everyone. I didn’t do it!” Susan makes clear, pointing at me as I walk in the door at Ruby’s.

  Laney is draped in a long, voluminous, white top with white capris and a heavy gold necklace, long lacey gold earrings. Her dark hair is held back by a wide gold band. She looks like a goddess descended from Mount Olympus. She’s perched, almost lounging, on one of the stools at the rear counter. Oh, and her sandals are gold, too.

  S
usan is seated in a booth and talking over her shoulder to her sister. I slide into the booth, facing both women, and ask, “Who did I invite, and where did I invite them? And why are you sitting over there?”

  Laney stretches out one leg. “My sciatic nerve is giving me fits. I’m just stretching it out before I sit down. You invited all of Laurel Cove to wine and cheese at Crossings? Shouldn’t you run that by me first? I am the manager, you know.”

  Susan looks at me and tightly smiles, then mouths, “Sorry.”

  “Okay. So now you know. And it’s not all of Laurel Cove. Just the ladies at lunch. Say, twenty?”

  Susan nods, and I look up as Libby carries a coffee cup over, sits it down, and pours. “You needing a warm up, Susan?” Libby splashes a bit into Susan’s orange fiesta ware. “I thought that clubhouse up there was going to open up some nights to non-members. It’d sure be nice to have a fancier place to go out to sometimes. Must be nice to be members up there.”

  Susan stays tanned year round, so it’s hard to see when she blushes, but she’s blushing now. This move up for her and Griffin has definitely caused some hard feelings around town. It’s always been a “them” and “us,” but now that one of the “us” has become a “them,” no one is sure how to deal with it. Folks who’ve never appeared to have a mean bone in their body seem to have found one. And it’s a bone they want to gnaw on.

  Laney comes down off her polished chrome throne. “Excuse me, Libby,” she says as she stands at the end of the booth. “Think I’ll sit here by my sister,” she says. She stares at Libby until she turns to fill other cups around the restaurant. Laney’s face is also red, out of anger, not embarrassment. Laney grimaces, getting turned around in the seat, and her stomach lightly rubs the table. “I’ll give you and my newly hoity-toity brother-in-law hell for moving up to Snobville, but nobody else is. Who does Libby Stone think she is?”

  “Don’t. It’s fine.” Susan sips her coffee. “But it would be nice to get some muffins.” There’s an edge to Susan’s voice I don’t recognize.

  Laney does a double take, too. She says, “Right,” but it’s weak. Almost like a question.

  Did Susan just give her sister an order? That’s what it sounded like to me. And obviously to Laney, too. Laney lifts her hand and waves at Libby. “Can we get some muffins?”

  Libby shrugs and says, “Sure.”

  Our table is quiet, and we are all looking at the marbled top of our antique kitchen table, not a reproduction, but one that’s been here in Ruby’s since Susan and Laney were little girls in Chancey. Libby sits down a blue plate with an assortment of muffins, all studded with blueberries.

  “That one is cream cheese with blueberries. That yellow one, lemon with blueberries and glazed icing, and the dark one is whole wheat with carrots, blueberries, and pecans.” Libby barely gets the word “pecan” out before she’s gone.

  Keeping my voice low, as I reach out with my knife and cut the muffins into, I say, “Is it really that big of a deal you moving up to Laurel Cove?”

  Susan’s voice matches mine in volume. “I told Griffin it would be. He said I was exaggerating.”

  “Men don’t understand these things,” Laney says as she struggles to lean over to reach for a muffin. “Forget it,” she says flopping back. “Just put half of one of them on my plate. I’ve felt so good, I forgot about this part at the end. I won’t get as big as I did carrying the twins, hopefully, but I am seventeen years older. Sleeping is awful.” She takes a bite of the blueberry-lemon muffin. “Okay, so how many will there be Friday?”

  “This whole wheat one is much better than it sounds,” I say. “Big chunks of pecans. What do you think, Susan? Twenty or so?”

  Susan nods. “I’ll see if I can’t get a kind of firm count from Aggie. She’s coming over to the house later.”

  Laney looks at her sister, but just as she opens her mouth, the front door opens. She turns to see who is coming in. “Oh, its Missus.”

  Missus nods in our direction but goes straight toward the back counter. She talks to Ruby, then comes to our table, but she doesn’t sit down. “All yours have blueberries, too.”

  “Here, sit down. Don’t you like blueberries?” I say as I scoot closer to the wall.

  “Oh, I don’t have time to sit. And I do love blueberries, but, well, Anna doesn’t. And you know how Ruby is. If she’s on a kick, we’re all on that kick. She doesn’t have a single muffin left without blueberries.”

  Laney laughs. “Well, tell Anna she’ll have to eat blueberries, or have a piece of toast.”

  “But she wants a muffin. A muffin from Ruby’s.” Missus is worrying her hands, almost wringing them, and about the same time, the three of us watching her realize she’s really worried.

  “Missus, are you okay?” I ask.

  She looks at me, and her eyes well up. “I’m just so tired, let me go talk to Ruby.” She walks back to the counter again, and I watch her.

  “Wonder why she’s so upset?” I ask as my eyes drift back to my table companions. There I’m met by stern looks. “What?”

  Laney growls. “What? You saw Missus. Your daughter-in-law is running her ragged. You need to tie a knot in that girl’s tail. She’s not the first girl to be pregnant, and she has a lot to be grateful for. And if you can’t do it, then Will should. He can’t let his wife act like that.”

  Susan agrees. “That’s right. Everyone is talking about how demanding Anna has become. Even Peter is avoiding her.”

  “Peter is not avoiding his niece. He wouldn’t do that.” I pop the last bite of the whole wheat muffin into my mouth. “She young, she’s in a new place, newly married, and pregnant. She’s scared. Missus is just for the first time having to deal with another female being around. She’s been top dog for a long time. Probably do her good.”

  Laney rolls her eyes. “So you’re not going to talk to Anna?”

  “Not on your life. I’m not thrilled about being a mother-in-law so soon anyway, no way am I going to be an evil one. Missus doesn’t need me to fight her battles.”

  Laney lifts her chin and her big gold necklace catches the light from outside. “One more question. Why aren’t you panicking about having such a big group of people at Crossings Friday afternoon?”

  I wipe my hands on my napkin and shake my head as I scoot out of the booth. When I have laid a five dollar bill on the table and hung my purse on my shoulder, I look at her, then Susan.

  “Maybe I’m excited about them coming over. Maybe I’m changing. See y’all later. I’ve got to go talk to Patty.”

  Remembering to smile, all the way to the front door, I leave Ruby’s, but I just walk a few feet and wait. I know that wasn’t a very good answer about why I invited all those Laurel Cove ladies to Crossings, but it’s the only one I’ve got. And, believe me, I’ve been asking myself the same question ever since the invitation left my mouth.

  Missus comes out the door, head down. “Hey Missus,” I say softly.

  She slides her face up, so she can look down her nose. However, it only stays there for a moment. “Oh, it’s you. Good, I need to speak to you. Walk with me over to the gazebo, out of view of the gawkers in Ruby’s.” She has on a lavender skirt and blouse, very crisp and fresh looking, but I notice her hair looks smashed in back, like she hasn’t teased it up to its normal height. And her lipstick, well, she isn’t wearing any. She’s wearing heels, but they have scuff marks on them and, whoa, I knew something was wrong. She doesn’t have gloves on. She’s not even carrying them folded in her belt. She’s rubbing her hands as we walk, and I wonder if she even realizes her hands are bare.

  Petunias fill the ground around the gazebo and the hanging planters in the gazebo. Purple, pink, and white, along with some striped ones in dark purple and white. Their scent is light, so as we walk up the painted steps, I walk first to push my nose into one of the baskets to sniff. Missus ignores the flowers and takes her seat on one of the wooden benches at the edge. When I turn, she’s holding her hands up.
/>   “Oh, I seem to have forgotten my gloves. How odd.”

  “I noticed that. Are you okay?”

  She cuts right to the chase. “Anna is impossible. Completely impossible. I wouldn’t say that to just anyone, but this affects your life as much as mine. Has Will said anything?”

  “No, I think they get along fine. Maybe it’s just you and her.”

  “No. She’s become a prima donna. She’s running FM ragged, and I won’t have it. They should move back with you.”

  I shake my head. “But you built the rooms just for them.” Still shaking my head, I add, “Maybe you just need to be more firm.”

  She tips her head toward me and raises an eyebrow. “Really? I need to be more firm?”

  “Okay, maybe not. But I’m sure it will be better once the baby comes.”

  “Probably. But mostly because FM and I will be dead, and she’ll have run of the house.”

  “Missus. It’s not going to kill you. Just try and be more, well, don’t let her run over you and FM. She’s really a sweet girl. We know that.”

  “Have you talked to Will lately? He might have a different opinion.”

  “I do not want it to seem like I’m trying to come between them. I won’t. I can’t.”

  “Fine.” She stands up and tugs where her gloves would normally end. She flutters her hands, looks down, and then sighs. “Peter was such an easy child. He still is. Anna has to argue with every word that comes out of my mouth.” She turns and marches down the steps. “Forget I even said anything, Carolina. I’ll take care of things.” Without a wave or a look back, she continues down the sidewalk toward her house.

  Aw, bless her heart, Missus has a teenage girl living in her house.

  I bet it makes her family housing General Sherman during his March to the Sea look like a cakewalk.

  Chapter 8