Tree Climbing For Beginners

by Joyia Marie

  I also didn’t mention my upcoming meeting with Jillian or the jump drive fiasco. My mother wouldn’t understand. She thought the prevailing views on sex and the discussion of it were silly and I’d doubt she’d understand exactly why this had the potential to be a disaster. After all, my mother dances sky-clad around a bonfire on occasion. I don’t see her understanding all this fuss about a few risqué books.

  My mother sat there watching me and at one point got up to get us some tea. My mother is a big believer in the healing power of tea. That is one thing she takes with her on her journeys and that solves the mystery of that lone tea bag in my loft that first morning. I don’t drink tea if I can help it, but I let my mother fix me a cup. She’s not the greatest cook so this is her version of comfort food.

  “So that’s what’s going on,” I said in conclusion before taking a sip of tea. Tasted just about how I expected. My mother didn’t believe in Lipton’s or even English breakfast. No, she has tea that tastes like flowers or leaves. She thought all the caffeine I consumed was bad for me so she urged tea on me at every occasion.

  “Darling looks like I got here in the nick of time,” my mother said over her own cup of tea. She was up on me. This was her second cup to my forth of one. My system was screaming for coffee, but currently my coffee maker carafe was filled with hot water for tea.

  “Yes, I appreciate the support, but as you can see it’s all under control. Harold has the kids, Jillian, and Mrs. Gunderson so he and they will be fine. If he’d just sign the divorce papers we could put this all behind us,” I said soothingly. I kept looking at the clock on the wall and watching time tick by. I needed my mother out of here before Jillian showed up.

  My mother’s eyes were looking at me when I looked at her after my last look at the clock. “Okay, darling, that’s the overview, now tell me the rest of it,” she said firmly. Her look was ‘that look’ so I took a sigh and told her about Jillian and the jump drive.

  “Oh, I love those books,” my mother said with a pleased smile.

  I felt my brows crawl up my forehead and a full body shudder threaten. My LV books were my fantasies, well, mostly. Not that scene with the chocolate pudding and the handcuffs. I wrote that as a bit of comedic relief, but nobody got the joke. The folks at Jello might be missing a big marketing opportunity if the emails I received were any indication.

  Anyway, they are my fantasies and the thought of my mother reading them made my flesh crawl. Even worse than it did that day, I saw one of my books in Gwendolyn’s purse. However, even Gwendolyn didn’t bother me as much as this as she was Harold’s mother and not mine. This felt a little like having my mom read my diary.

  “You’re very talented, dear,” my mother said with a pat on my knee as she got up for more tea. “But I’ve always thought that since your first book.”

  My brows did another lift. Was my mother saying what I think she was saying? That sounded suspiciously like she already knew about LV. After Raphael telling me the same thing, I was beginning to think my big secret was as much a secret as Harold’s affair.

  When I went to Raphael’s to pick the file on Jillian he took me into his office and pinned me to the wall. Not literally, but you know what I mean. He wanted to know what was going on and he wanted to know now. I stuttered and stammered through my or his excuse about wanting to know more about the woman who would be around my kids but for some reason that wasn’t flying.

  “Nope, that’s what I said,” Raphael said firmly. “This,” he said, holding up the file,” is what I would do. Not you. You’re the high priestess of giving people the benefit of the doubt. So either Jillian has done something to make you think you needed to look further or she has something on you and you want to have something on her. So which is it?”

  So, I broke down and told him everything. Really, I think he missed his calling. He bypassed a promising career in integration at Gitmo.

  Chapter Fifty: Helen

  After I stumbled to a stop, I noticed my big announcement hadn’t been. “Wait a minute. You already knew,” I said suspiciously. “Not about Jillian and the jump drive, but about LV.”

  Raphael didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. “I knew about Leslie Vandersmoot. Sonya is my sister from another mister. She only told me because you are my other sister from a different mister. She knows I can keep my mouth shut. You know I would never do anything that might harm the kids.”

  I nodded, then we looked at the file and it was juicy. Not Paris Hilton sex-tape juicy but more than enough to keep Jillian in check. Seems our young Jillian did a little modeling when she was younger. Not Playboy, but lingerie. Still, I didn’t see Harold Sr. and Gwendolyn seeing the difference.

  Raphael almost didn’t see the difference and was ready for Jillian to disappear from the kids’ lives when I reminded him of a certain calendar he graced with his younger, less dressed self. ‘Ex-Men of the Military’, was a calendar that a charity produced to raise money and guess who Mr. October was.

  I still have a copy somewhere. Raphael was quite the muscle man during his younger post-Marine days, not that he was a sack of potatoes now. However, after seeing that calendar, I have to admit October was my favorite month that year. I had it up at my loft, as I knew the sight of Raphael in that calendar would drive Harold crazy and make him even more intimidated than he already was.

  As for myself, I wasn’t all that worked up about it other than how I could use it to keep Jillian’s big mouth shut. , I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I write racy books, Jillian took racy photographs and Raphael posed as man-candy for charity. We all had skeletons and I just wanted to keep them safely tucked away in the closet.

  “How did you know about ‘those books’?” I asked.

  I wondered if Sonya had let my mother in on the news as well. If so, she was so going to get it. Raphael was one thing but my mother? That was one step too far. If she had, I was calling her mother, Mrs. Hernandez and telling her about Sonya’s tramp stamp tattoo. Fair is fair.

  “Oh, a couple of years ago when I was visiting I saw Mrs. Gunderson with a book. She liked it and told me I should read it. I did and I knew it was yours. Honey, I have been reading your writing since you first picked up a no. 2 pencil. The way a writer uses language is a good as a fingerprint.”

  I sat there in shock, even my sips of leaves and berry surprise tea not distracting me. Was that true? If so, why had no one else put it together? The only difference between an LV book and the romances I used to write were the level of heat. I hadn’t changed my writing style or the way I used language to borrow my mother’s term.

  Then I realized what else she had said. Mrs. Gunderson reads my books? Again full body shudder time. Mrs. Gunderson was a sturdy German woman and I really couldn’t see her interested in the lingerie and lace world of Leslie Vandersmoot.

  “Does Mrs. Gunderson know?” I asked in fright. For some reason, of all the revelations that would bother me the most.

  “No, dear, I don’t think she’s put it together and you’re such a dragon about your work it would never occur to her to snoop. No, she’s just a fan. She and I trade books when we can,” mother said calmly.

  “So Jillian is coming today?” mother said, bringing me back to the crisis at hand. All the rest would wait. This could not.

  “Yes, mother and I have it handled. Raphael got me some dirt to convince her to keep her mouth shut. Not that what she has is a valuable as she thinks it is. It was an early draft of my latest book so it barely reads like LV.”

  “If that’s the case, then why deal with her at all?” my mother asked after freshening our tea. Oh goodie, I thought, I had barely choked down that first cup of lawn clippings soup and now I had more. The things I do for love.

  “Because I want my property back. Because I want to make sure she doesn’t even mention this in her sleep. You know how rumor is. A whisper is as good as gospel. I will come out of the literary closet, but on my terms and in my own time. This little girl is not g
oing to force me into doing anything,” I said firmly.

  “So what do you think she wants?” Mother asked.

  “Oh, either me to go home to the kids so she and Harold can ride off into the sunset and play house or money,” I said with a growl.

  “Would that be such a bad thing, the going home with the kids part?” my mother asked.

  I had known this was coming. She hadn’t said as much when I told her I left the kids with Harold and I was giving them to him in the divorce. I thought again, of how fiercely she fought for me after the China debacle.

  “Mother I know you can’t understand this when you fought so hard for me when I was fourteen, but I really think this is for the best. I want my kids to have a dad,” I said simply, hoping I wasn’t hurting her feelings. My mother was great, but a kid always misses what they don’t have and I didn’t have a dad. My kids would if there was anything I could do about it.

  “Helen, I know you were torn about leaving the Maguire’s and if they were family I might have made a different decision. Looking back on it, I don’t know why I didn’t ship you off to your grandmother as usual,” my mother said with a sigh.

  I flushed, I knew why. I had begged her not to pull me out of school and she had given in after much persuading. She had left me alone on weekend jaunts, but never anything as long term as the China trip. I was doing fine, my mother had trained me from birth to be self-sufficient, but some nosy parker got wind of my mother-free household and blew the whistle.

  “But, if it was your dad instead of the Maguire’s, I might not have gone to court. So no, I’m not judging your decision to leave the children with Harold. It’s their home, their friends are there, and that the school they’re used to. We both know Mrs. Gunderson won’t let anything happen to them,” my mother stated, using pretty much the same arguments I had used. Now I know where I got my brains from, not the absent and uncertain father, John Dudley.

  “Thanks, Mother, that means a lot. I would hate to disappoint you,” I said my eyes moist.

  “You could never do that darling. You are the miracle of my life,” my mother said before taking our cups to the sink. She rinsed them both before sticking them in the dishwasher. I watched in amazement as she emptied the hot water and set a pot of coffee to brew.

  “Don’t be so amazed, darling, just because I don’t drink it, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to make it. Your father drank coffee like you do,” she said comfortably.

  “Mother,” I said hesitantly. I hated to end this mother-daughter moment, but I needed an answer to this question. “Was John Dudley really my father?”

  Vivian looked dumbstruck at the question. “Why would you even ask me that?” she sputtered, her infinite calm broken for the first time in my memory. “What kind of woman doesn’t know who her child’s father is?”

  “Uh,” I sputtered, not having thought about how that would sound to my mother. I pretty much just accused her of being a big ol’ ‘ho. “It was the early seventies, the end of flower power and free love. I just thought maybe…” here I stopped not sure what I thought. I just knew I didn’t look anything like the picture of John Dudley I had.

  “I don’t look anything like him,” I said finally. I wanted to drop the subject, but since I had already started this I wanted to finish it. “I have your coloring, but other than that, I don’t really look anything like you either.”

  Mother came over and grabbed my hands. “My sweet baby, how long have you been torturing yourself with this?” she asked gently. “You never met your grandmother on your father’s side, but you look just like her with my coloring. You have her features and if I had known this was bothering you I would have dug out an old picture I have of her and showed you.”

  I felt a tremendous weight fall off my shoulders. She had put it just right. I was torturing myself with this and I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter how you get here, just the fact you get here. That pesky addiction to normal had raised its ugly head again.

  “So where is she?” I asked suddenly curious about the family that was truly mine. Did I have aunts, uncles, and cousins, I wondered.

  “She and your grandfather died not too long after you were born. Your grandparents had your father late in life rather like your Harold,” she said sitting down next to me. The room filled with the lovely smell of brewing coffee and my addicted senses were glorying in it.

  “You mean Jillian’s Harold,” I said with a bitter laugh.

  I wasn’t mad at him about Jillian. I had months before the break up to process that, but I was a little irritated with his dog in the manger attitude. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of this change of heart had to do with Aiden. He had not liked the idea of me with someone else, which ticked me off to no end.

  What was he a child and I an old toy? Even though he didn’t want to play with me anymore, neither could anyone else? I sighed as I imagined Aiden playing with me, and then shook it off. First things first, Harold had to sign those papers and then we’d see what we would see.

  “Then let’s call him the kids’ Harold and leave it at that,” my mother said firmly. “Oh, and in case I didn’t say it before I do admire you for not taking a page out of your grandmother’s book. Speaking as a child who’s been through it, no kid likes to be known as the kid whose mother shot her father in the ass. No matter how much he might have deserved it.”

  “Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind in the beginning. By the time, he came to me to talk about it I was past it. Harold is not worth jail time and I might not get as sympathetic a jury as Grandma Gert did,” I said honestly.

  I can’t tell you the nights I went to sleep dreaming of shooting Harold in his bony bottom. He lacked the padding of Grandma John and might not have survived it. I’ve seen pictures and Grandma John was a big man.

  Grandma Gert could cook her behind off and Grandma John was testament to that. She taught me when I visited while mother was on the road and during the summers when we would both go.

  “Oh, you were telling me about my dad,” I said with a smile, happy to be able to say that and know it was true.

  Vivian was many things, but a liar was not one of them. If she said John Dudley was my father then he was. The only reason I had doubted she before was the time I was conceived and the lack of family resemblance. I don’t know why I didn’t think about the other members of the family I might look like. Look at Tonya. She doesn’t look anything like me except her eyes.

  “Oh, that’s right. Like I said your grandparents had your dad later in life and they only had him. Your grandfather, Peter died of a heart attack and six months later, your grandmother Alice followed. I thought it was terribly sad and terribly romantic. I think she died of a broken heart.”

  Wow, I thought as I absorbed this new history. There went the aunts, uncles and cousins, I thought, if dad was an only child. It was weird to miss people that had never existed and I hadn’t really thought about existing until today but I did. My family tree was getting spindlier by the minute.

  “So what happened to dad?” I asked. Here was the question I really needed an answer to. Was my family cursed to single parent households? Should I warn Tonya and Tony?

  “Oh honey, we were so young when we got hand-fasted and we went to stay with John’s mother after his father died. Then when his mother died, John got a little lost. He came to me one day saying he needed some time to think. The next day he was packed and gone. I think he didn’t know how to deal with his grief and I didn’t know how to help him,” my mother said sadly. Her eyes were distant as she reviewed her history and mine as well.

  “He left me power of attorney so I sold his parents house and closed out their affairs, then I got you and went to stay with your grandmother. Her art agent saw some of my photographs and put me in contact with a photography agent and I started traveling and taking pictures. In the beginning, I don’t know if you remember this, but I took you with me, but when it was time for you to go to school, I left you with your gr
andmother until we moved to Texas.”

  Chapter Fifty-One: Helen

  Strangely enough, when you think about how young I must have been, I do remember flashes of traveling with my mom. Sun that made the ground so hot, it burned little bare feet. Skies so blue, they looked like something a child would create in a coloring book. It was fun and I remember throwing a fit the first time my mother left me behind.

  “So do you ever hear from him?” I asked, afraid of the answer. I understand grief and how it makes you crazy, but still, he left me, his kid, and never looked back. Not winning father of the year in my book.

  “From time to time, but he was traveling as much as we were. It seemed like I would get a letter from him and by the time I sent a reply he had moved on again. Or he’d send a letter and we would have just moved. But the funny thing is I just got a hail from him on Facebook,” my mother said with a smile.

  I knew my mother was on Facebook with her photographs. Wearable Art had set her up with a web site and all the social media as part of her contract with them. Mother could have cared less. She took pictures and what happened to them after that was up to the goddess. Good thing she had a decent, honest agent or she’d be broke.

  “So what does he do?” I asked instead of the question I wanted to ask. You know, did he ask about me? Does he ever ask about me?

  “Oh sweetie, I thought you knew. He’s a photographer as well. I know you’ve seen his work. J. Dudley? That’s how he and I met in photography class in college,” my mother said absently as she poured me a cup of coffee.

  I smiled as she went to the refrigerator and doctored my coffee with the perfect amount of cream. My mother has good powers of observation to notice how I took my coffee. Then again, she did, just look at her pictures.