by Sally John
The window went down, and Claire leaned toward it. “Oh, by the way . . . happy anniversary.”
He watched her drive off, the white luxury car gliding down the long row. Red brake lights lit up. The car turned right, left. It reached the exit, stopped momentarily, and cruised out onto the busy four-lane.
Anniversary?
A searing heat raced like wildfire through Max, consuming even the anger.
How had he forgotten?
Twenty-seven
Late afternoon sun rays scorched the hills above San Diego. Indio, kneeling in the Hacienda Hideaway’s front yard, wiped her shirtsleeve over her sweaty brow. She grasped a squishy green tendril between her gloved hands and tried to wring the life right out of it.
Beside her, Lexi laughed. “Nana, pull like this.” She swiftly yanked a three-foot section of the ice plant clear out of the dirt, roots and all.
“Child, I swear your scrawny arms don’t have a muscle on them. How do you manage that so effortlessly?”
Lexi jerked another piece loose and plopped it on the growing pile behind her. “I guess you’re just too old.” She raised her chin and made eye contact from beneath a floppy straw hat. A smile tugged at her lips.
Indio leaned back on her heels and chuckled. “You think that lame challenge is going to help?”
“Of course it will.” Lexi giggled. “It’s so easy to get your hackles up.”
Indio cherished the moment. The girl laughed too seldom, even prior to the mayhem her parents had stirred up.
“Nana, I want to cover this whole section with purple alyssum and rosemary.”
Indio surveyed the landscape.
They owned more than three hundred acres, inherited from Ben’s family. Sparse vegetation grew on the hilly, desertlike terrain.
Occasional oaks and eucalyptus provided areas of shade. There was a gravel drive and a parking area.
The pale greens and browns had always bothered Lexi. She’d been planting flowers on the place since she was five years old.
Indio turned to her now. “Lovely as new plants sound, why now? This ice plant is healthy and flowering and holding the terrace in place. And it’s such a dry year. I don’t like the thought of watering.”
Her granddaughter jerked out another section with a violent twist of her body. “Sometimes you just have to kill off the old to make way for the new.” Her tone was harsh. She muttered an expletive.
Indio stared at the back of Lexi’s hat. The girl wasn’t talking about flowers. “What’s on your mind, child?”
Lexi remained quiet for a long moment. It was her way. Indio waited.
“Nana.” Lexi paused. “Was Uncle BJ like Dad?”
Something between a sigh and a groan constricted Indio’s throat. Being a grandmother, she thought—and not for the first time—was more difficult than being a mother. Not the “If Mama says no, ask Grandma” part. Spoiling was the easy part. It was the idea that all things being equal, she would die or become incapacitated long before she could pass on to Lexi everything she had learned from life.
Lexi glanced over a shoulder at her and then turned back to her work. “If you don’t feel like talking about him . . .”
“No, it’s all right. What are you thinking of? I’ve told you a lot about your uncle BJ through the years.”
Lexi nodded, still bent over the ground. “Mostly just facts, though. He was taller than Dad and looked more like Papa. He got better grades than Dad. He was an all-star athlete. He never got in trouble when he was a kid. He was a Navy pilot. He’s been MIA for a long . . . long time.” Lexi paused, as did everyone at that point in BJ’s history.
His was a never-ending story.
Lexi said, “And he would be fifty-seven this year.”
“Yes. What is it you don’t know yet?”
Lexi’s hands stilled over the dirt. “Would he have been so hung up on making money that he would reject his family?”
Indio pulled off her gloves and crawled over to Lexi. “Oh, child. Come here.” She enveloped her in a hug, knocking off the big hat.
Lexi cried softly against her shoulder.
“Your daddy hasn’t rejected you, not deep inside his heart. He wouldn’t do that. He just . . . he just got sidetracked along the way.” She smoothed back Lexi’s long, damp hair.
Dying plants lay in piles all about them. The earth lay bare, exposed to the sun’s blistering heat. It looked the way life felt.
What a mess, Lord. What a mess.
She rocked her granddaughter and let her weep in silence.
Lexi didn’t cry for long. Indio let her slide from her arms. With a wordless nod of thanks, she sniffed, jammed her hat back atop her head, and grabbed hold of another section of ice plant. Indio joined her.
Of the four grandchildren, Lexi disquieted Indio the most. There was something broken inside of her. Indio imagined the girl’s struggle had begun in the womb, a space she’d had to share with her twin, Daniel. With his boundless energy and single-mindedness, the boy rivaled Winnie the Pooh’s springy friend Tigger. He could easily have sucked the life right out of Lexi before birth. Not that he didn’t adore his little sister, but he’d emerged fully clothed in confidence and ability. Lexi came out naked as a jaybird.
Indio didn’t think that was it, though. Lexi worked diligently and forged ways around her dyslexia and shyness. She improved all the time, creating beauty in her art and her gardening. No, that wasn’t it. Indio believed “it,” the core issue, was the rejection she felt from her dad.
The old guilt reared its ugly head again.
Indio had become a mother at the age of eighteen. She was too young. It didn’t matter that BJ was the ideal child. Within two years Max was born, and he wasn’t the ideal anything except squeaky wheel. He got attention, all right, but not the nurturing sort he needed.
Lexi interrupted Indio’s reverie with a gesture toward the road, a long stretch of dirt. It meandered like a question mark through trees and hills, a full ten-minute drive up from the main highway hidden from view.
She looked that direction and saw dust swirls in the distance. A car was coming.
“It’s Mom,” Lexi said.
Indio recognized the fancy white vehicle. She sat back on her haunches and waited.
“Today’s their anniversary.” Lexi’s voice sank to a whisper.
Apparently Max and Claire were not celebrating together this year.
Indio sighed. She loved her daughter-in-law and considered her a friend. Claire was the best thing that could have happened to Max. Indio thanked God often for her impact on his life.
But now, on the very date she had welcomed Claire into the Beaumont family with open arms, Indio wanted nothing more than to tell the woman to turn that car around, take all the junk she’d stirred up, and head back on down the hill.
Twenty-eight
Claire, if you keep churning away like that, I won’t have to buy any butter this week.”
At the sound of Indio’s critical tone, Claire squirmed. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but her mother-in-law saw inside her as though she were some dissected bug under a microscope.
In self-defense, Claire sputtered an apology she didn’t really mean. “Excuse me for coming tonight. I don’t know why I did.”
She should leave, but embarrassment glued her legs to the big wicker chair. She seldom sniped at her mother-in-law, even when Indio was at her most annoying.
Of course, Claire knew why she had come.
The scene before her was like sitting inside a hug. She and Indio had lingered in the dusky courtyard after dinner, drinking iced herbal tea. Water trickled down the fountain’s tiers. Now and then a gentle breeze jiggled a distant wind chime, clunking bamboo in a soft, nat-ural rhythm. Flowering bushes perfumed the night air.
Nearby, light poured out from the living room’s open double doors. Inside, Lexi and Ben played their perpetual game of canasta. Samson, the big old golden retriever, would be nestled under the table, while Willow
, the frisky cat, swished her fluffy yellow tail in his face, inviting him to run with her.
At last Indio broke the silence. “We both know why you came. It’s why Lexi comes. The Hacienda Hideaway is a safe harbor for you.”
“The dynamics seem a bit off tonight.”
“Anger can do that, you know. Snuff the peace right out of a place in two seconds flat.”
Guilt landed so heavily, it could have been the dog jumping onto her lap. She thought again how she used to believe wives should not be angry. She did not like feeling anger, but what she liked even less now was denying its existence.
“All right, yes. I am angry. He forgot what day it was. He forgot today is our anniversary.”
“Did you expect him to remember it?”
“I had hoped so.”
“In the middle of what’s going on?”
Now Indio was defending Max!
“Actually, I thought because it is in the middle of this mess, he would remember more easily than ever. A person who cared would be extra sensitive to things like anniversaries. I thought he would feel upset. I thought if I went to see him, it would help. Silly me.”
Indio didn’t respond.
Good grief. Claire knew she’d always behaved as if it was her wifely duty to comfort Max and thereby keep him happy. Maybe, though, she’d gone to see him earlier that day more for her own sake. If he felt better, she would certainly feel better. But it had all backfired, and now she seethed with anger and embarrassment.
“Indio, am I responsible for his happiness?”
“No, you’re not.” The older woman sighed heavily. “I’m thinking about a speaker who was here once to lead a retreat. I’ll never forget what he said. According to him, the human brain is wired with a craving for relationship, for meaningful connection with other humans. We need it like we need air to breathe. We get desperate if we don’t have it.”
“Well, any loving relationship Max and I ever had has gone down the tubes, and I am feeling desperate.”
“What happened? Do you know?”
He left me. Over and over and over again, he left me. And now she had left in a desperate attempt to what? Fix things? Or end things?
Claire said, “I don’t understand it. But, Indio, I am so sorry for hurting you.”
“Can’t be helped.” Her mother-in-law grimaced and rubbed an area around her breastbone, her stubby fingers making circular motions.
“Are you all right?”
“Hmm. Just feel a little tightness in here.”
“Have you felt it before?”
“Now and then. It’s just plain old stress. You’d think I would have learned by now how to let it go.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry for—”
“Claire, stop apologizing. That won’t make anything all right.”
Indio’s chastisement rained over her again like hot sparks from a bonfire. Claire flushed from the singeing. Sometimes she really did not like her mother-in-law.
Indio stood. “Well, I’m tired, so I will excuse myself. If you don’t want to drive back into town, you know you’re welcome to sleep in one of the guest rooms.”
Claire swallowed one last apologetic lament. “Thanks. Good night, Indio.”
The older woman walked away, her usual spry step slowed.
I’m sorry, God. I am so sorry.
Claire did not mean to remain in the courtyard. She wanted to leave, but the hot ash of Indio’s words hung thick in the air, blind-ing her to an escape route.
Indio was angry. There’d been no welcome tone in her invitation to stay. She’d told her to stop apologizing.
But how else was she supposed to deal with the guilt? Go back to Max and pretend everything was hunky-dory?
Oh, God. What do You want from me?
Hey, Mom.” Lexi slid onto the wicker chair vacated by Indio, the yellow cat draped in her arms.
The guilt crescendoed now. Claire’s ears rang with it.
“Papa won at canasta,” Lexi said. “Again. Surprise, surprise. I told him grandpas shouldn’t be so competitive. He didn’t agree.”
With effort, Claire tuned in to her daughter and hung on to her words. Lexi hurt. She needed Claire to be her mom. No matter her age, she would always need that. Claire would not—she simply would not—repeat her own mother’s behavior. Claire was a nurturer. She was.
Lexi was still speaking. “He is so way ahead in points, it’s not even funny. I swear, he hasn’t let me win since I turned twenty-five.”
Claire cleared her throat. “That was awhile ago,” she teased. “When did you catch on?”
“About the time I turned twenty-six last spring.” Lexi slouched and draped a leg over the chair arm, swinging her foot. “Happy anniversary.”
“Umm . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“I talked to Danny this morning. He said if you and Dad hadn’t married, we wouldn’t exist.”
“Good point. Thank you, then. I’m glad you and Danny exist.”
“Me too.”
“I was just thinking about when I first met Nana. Your dad brought me here for dinner. I actually told her while we were doing dishes that her son and I wanted to elope.”
“Really?” Lexi grinned. “I never heard this.”
“You know how she is. She made me feel so at home, right off the bat. I could tell her anything. Your dad said I was like a can of soda all shaken up. Nana popped the tab, and I fizzed out all over the place.”
Lexi laughed.
Claire joined in. “It was true. I was so excited. They were the fam-ily I never had.”
“Then why did you elope?”
“Lots of reasons, I guess.” How often had she wished she and Max had done it differently?
“You always said it was because you didn’t have any money for a wedding, and your parents didn’t either.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But you could have had a small one so at least Papa and Nana could have come. I bet they would have liked that. They had so much fun at Jenna’s.”
“Everybody had fun at Jenna’s.”
“Yeah, like half the city.”
They exchanged a smile.
Lexi said, “I guess money helps. Who wouldn’t have fun with hundreds of people, live music, dancing, free food galore, and an ocean view?” She slowed her swinging foot. “But, Mom, of all places! Why did you and Dad choose Las Vegas? Major yuck.”
“It was affordable, and we thought it was really special because we had to leave town to get to it. At least the minister wasn’t an Elvis impersonator. Although I think the guy in the motel room next to ours was.”
Lexi chuckled. “Seriously, didn’t you ever dream about a big wedding?”
Claire shifted in her seat. “No. Yes. No. I guess on one level I did, like most girls. But on another, realistic level, I knew it couldn’t hap-pen. It wasn’t just the money. You know my mother’s condition. Can you imagine . . .” She shuddered even now at the thought of her mom stumbling down a church aisle, clinging to an usher’s arm, jabbering slurred words. “And my dad. I’ve told you, he never hit me or anything, but he never smiled at me either or said anything nice. I truly didn’t want him around to ruin my day.”
“That’s sad.”
Claire gazed at her daughter. Her long, straight hair fell across her face. She was slight of build, the opposite of the other three, who always seemed so solid by comparison. Lexi was like a delicate feather, her voice as gentle as the sound of a piccolo.
“Don’t you think it’s sad?”
From the mouths of babes. “No, Lexi, I always thought it was just the way things were.”
“Yeah. I can see that. Sort of like I think it’s just the way things were. With my dad.”
Claire held her breath. “How’s that?”
“He wasn’t around much.” Lexi shrugged.
“If that’s what you remember most about him, that’s sad.”
“Guess that makes for two sad storie
s, huh? At least he made it to Jenna’s wedding, and on time. Do you want to spend the night here?”
“Are you?”
“Yep. Paquita promised me waffles in the morning. I brought a video. We could make popcorn and watch it?”
Claire heard the little girl’s heart in Lexi’s suggestion. Her grandpa wouldn’t let her win at canasta anymore, but maybe she needed a few cards stacked in her favor. Maybe Claire could ease her sadness a tiny bit. And maybe Lexi could do the same for her.
At the moment, all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and hope the emptiness inside wouldn’t kill her.
Twenty-nine
Max, you can’t keep this up.” Neva stood on the other side of his desk, hands on hips.
He leaned back in his leather chair. “You look like you’re ready for a fight.”
“I am. It’s 8:30 p.m. Five women are still here working and cry-ing because you yapped orders at them that they couldn’t possibly complete by five o’clock. You’ve been fussing at staff like that for over a week now. You need a haircut. You’re walking around like Quasimodo.” She jerked up a shoulder and tilted her head at an awk-ward angle. “Why didn’t you go to the chiro after your little temper tantrum with the tennis racket?”
He could only blink in the face of her barrage.
She straightened her head and shoulder. “You know what I think? I think you’re feeling a little sorry for old Maxwell Beaumont. His wife has hurt him, so he’s going to lash out at anyone in his path, including his employees. He’s hurt his wife and doesn’t deserve to take care of himself.”
“I’m sorry for the other night.”
“You already told me that.” She crossed her arms.
“I mean I’m really sorry.”
“I know you are. Again, I forgive you for acting like a bozo. Under the circumstances—or should I say influence?—it was a one-time, understandable thing. But now it’s time to pick yourself up and climb out of the gutter.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Today’s our anniversary. I forgot.”
When he looked up, she was sitting in a chair, chin propped in her hand, a forlorn expression wrinkling her brow.