Rocky Road

by Rose Kent

  “Cute,” I said. I did like that name, but I still didn’t like the idea of buying a business.

  Ma wiped the messy hot-fudge jar with a cloth. “Glad you mentioned about Wednesday, ’cause I need you to watch Jordan after school so I can go back downtown for the closing. There’ll be lots of paperwork for me to sign at the bank.”

  But Wednesday was Peer Mediation Club. I’d been thinking about Gabby’s offer a lot. Maybe she was right; I might be good at peer mediation. It was worth a try. “I can’t do it on Wednesday,” I said. “I’ve got plans.”

  Ma wasn’t listening. Her work papers were spread across the counter, and she was talking to herself using business lingo about advertising and promotions.

  “Ma, I’m busy on Wednesday. I’m joining peer mediation, and that’s when it meets. You’re always saying I should get involved.”

  “This is a family priority, Tess. You saw your brother running hog-wild today. I’ll never get through the closing if he’s there.”

  “Why can’t you get a job at Thrifty King?” I asked. “You said yourself deli pays the best in a grocery store, and you’ve got experience as a meat slicer.”

  “Been there, done that. Working for a fat-cat corporation that doesn’t give a hoot if I slice off my finger isn’t my idea of the American Dream. Owning my own shop is. I’ve got six weeks to come up with a plan to make this shop the best thing that hit Schenectady since General Electric opened its factory.”

  Ma’s eyes flickered like she was a kid about to jump on the merry-go-round. She showed no fear about messing up again. But I knew plenty of reasons to pass on this ice cream shop. I’d read the headlines in the Daily Gazette. Nobody shopped downtown Schenectady anymore. They went to malls like Crossgates and Colonie Center. Vacant buildings were scattered everywhere, just like the trash in the streets. And families were tightening their belts on account of the economy.

  Besides, what would happen when the next Shooting Stars sent Ma soaring and then crashing—who’d scoop ice cream then? We’d end up broke, homeless, and frostbitten. I thought about Pete and his dad. I bet they never imagined life’s winds would blow them into a trailer without indoor plumbing.

  Ma didn’t seem to notice my six-foot scowl. She was tying a bag of trash. “Take this down the hall to the Dumpster, would ya?” she asked, handing it to me.

  I flung the bag over my shoulder and stomped across the room without answering. My throat burned. Outside the window, the frozen tree limbs swayed slightly like old people dancing.

  When I returned, she gave me another job. “Go draw Jordan’s bath so I can study my training manual, okay?”

  Smoke was practically shooting from my ears as I walked into the bathroom and turned the tub faucet. Jordan was standing by the tub in his undies, holding a plastic frog.

  The water poured out cold. I waited for it to warm up. But it didn’t.

  “There’s no hot water!” I shouted in my grouchiest, it’s-all-your-fault-Ma voice.

  “Again? I’ll boil water,” Ma shouted back, not even noticing.

  Three pots of water, two capfuls of bubble bath, and a bucket of toys later, the bath was ready. Jordan splashed carefree in the soapy water, but fury bubbled beneath my henley. We were going to get kicked out of this drafty apartment, just like in San Antonio.

  I stormed into the kitchen, carrying the empty pot. Ma was holding her mug and reading the Inside Scoop.

  “You drink too much coffee!” I mumbled.

  “Guilty as charged,” she said, chuckling without looking up.

  Nothing here felt funny to me. I wanted Ma to know how scared I was. I wanted to stop her from wasting whatever money we still had in that Ditch Fund too. The only thing this ice cream shop was going to serve up was disaster.

  Ma started humming. It reminded me of the last time we got evicted, from that apartment on Wurzbach Road. Kids watched us from the second-floor-apartment window as we crammed all our stuff into the Toyota. All the while, Ma hummed some silly old country tune.

  The same thing would happen once Ma blew through the Ditch Fund on this shop. Only this time would be worse. There’d be no backup money and no place to go.

  I followed Ma into the bathroom, still wearing oven mitts on my hands.

  She was kneeling beside the tub, rubbing a washcloth behind Jordan’s neck. Jordan’s eyes ping-ponged back and forth from Ma’s relaxed smile to my worrywart frown.

  I couldn’t hold back one more second. “Don’t do this, Ma. Please!” I said. Tears flooded my eyes. I wanted to rattle off a laundry list of reasons this business would bring us to utter ruin, but I couldn’t. It was hard talking with Ma about all our past problems, never mind Shooting Stars. And even if I did try, I wouldn’t change her mind. She was the worst kind of stubborn: Texas stubborn—determined, unyielding, and willing to go to the mat for what she believed was just cause.

  “Bath’s over,” Ma said, only she signed, “Bath’s open.”

  Jordan looked at me, confused, and I showed him what she meant. He got out of the tub.

  After Jordan passed, Ma grabbed my hands and pulled them to hers like we were praying. “Listen up, Tess. I reckon I’ve made my share of mistakes—big mistakes. But that’s done and over. Chin up, little lady! It’s a brand-new day in Schenectady for us Dobsons. And I’d be deeply obliged if you’d consider helping me with Jordan on Wednesday.”

  Ma’s big brown eyes shouted, “Give me a chance! Give me a chance!”

  And I wanted to. I really did. But my whole body shook. Convincing words struggled to get free from my mouth and put the kibosh on this doomed plan, but they lost the fight when I looked into Ma’s hopeful eyes.

  “Okay,” I said softly, looking at the plastic frog sitting near the tub drain. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 9

  Hire hardworking employees, and show appreciation for their efforts. A pat on the back is only a few inches up from a kick in the pants, but when deserved, it’s more soothing to the bottom line.—The Inside Scoop

  Knock. Knock.

  Winnie’s plump cheeks and dangling earrings greeted us when the door opened.

  “We were out playing in the snow, and I lost my apartment key. Jordan has to go to the bathroom—really bad,” I said as he squirmed in his boots beside me.

  “Step right this way,” she said, taking Jordan’s hand.

  When Jordan came out a few minutes later, Winnie invited us to stay. “You two have Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer looks going. Let me make you a cup of Chocolate Heaven.”

  Chocolate Heaven. Hmm. That sure sounded tasty. I turned so Jordan could see my hands move. “Want a hot drink?”

  “Yes! Yes!” he signed, pumping his fist in the air.

  So while Winnie disappeared into the kitchen, Jordan and I gazed around her apartment. There was so much to take in, and it sure looked wild and exotic. A giant aquarium spanned the back wall and was filled with all sorts of colorful fish. A zebra-patterned couch in the center of the room was sandwiched by end tables with carved-wood animal-hoof legs. Metallic birds swung from the ceiling, and a silhouette of Kokopelli, the flute-playing god of the Southwest, hung near the door.

  Wow. I didn’t think New Yorkers even knew about Kokopelli.

  But what stood out the most was a red piano in the far corner with “Music of Angels” painted in swirly letters above the keys.

  We sat on the zebra sofa while Winnie prepared the hot drinks. Jordan kept jumping up, trying to poke the metallic birds and make them fly.

  “Here you go!” Winnie called as she carried out two steaming mugs and rested them on the coffee table.

  Jordan took a long swig and his eyes lit up like lightbulbs. “Mmm!” He licked his lips.

  “No need for me to translate what that means,” I said, smiling.

  Winnie gave a husky laugh. “I got the recipe for Chocolate Heaven from a fellow nurse I worked with thirty years ago. It uses a secret ingredient, but you couldn’t zap it out of me with a d
efibrillator.”

  I nodded and looked up at Kokopelli again. “I’m into fashion and interior design, and this place has personality.”

  “Thanks. I could tell you know fashion, what with how polished you always look.”

  Suddenly Jordan slammed his mug down, spilling some, and dashed across the room to press his face against the aquarium.

  “Sorry. My brother loves fish. Reptiles too,” I said, wiping the mess and watching as Jordan’s finger moved across the glass, following a yellow fish shaped like a pancake.

  She laughed. “No apology necessary. Curiosity is a good thing.” Then she turned to me. “So are you settling into your new home?”

  I gave a polite half smile. I couldn’t tell Winnie that the odds that Schenectady would be our forever home were slim as that pancake fish.

  Winnie saw right through me. “I think I understand how you might be feeling, honey,” she said. “Landing here in the dead of winter. Must seem like hard times.”

  I sipped silently, watching Jordan try to play peekaboo with the fish.

  “Life in upstate New York must be worlds apart from Texas. I had a cousin visit from the Florida Keys last winter, and Lord, did she have a hard time with our weather. Her body ached for seventy-degree sunshine and warm breezes, never mind Key lime pie.”

  That made me laugh. “You know what I miss? Tapatío sauce. My ma can’t find it around here, and Jordan and I sprinkle it on everything.”

  “Oh, we’ve got hot sauce if you know the right place to shop,” she said. Then she paused before adding, “But loved ones, well, you can’t replace them.”

  The mug trembled slightly in my hand. I missed Juanita and her grandparents. It was hard to say I missed Pop—it had been so long since he’d been a real part of my life, so long since he behaved like a pop, as Ma always said. On second thought, I did miss Pop. I missed the sweet way Ma says he was back when I was first born, even if I couldn’t remember it myself.

  Winnie smiled softly. “I’d like to share something with you, Tess. My husband died when my son was just a little tadpole. That was over forty years ago, and I still remember Elston’s longing look when we’d see boys playing ball with their fathers in the park. We named him after the first black Yankee, Elston Howard—what a fine catcher he was. And wouldn’t you know, my Elston was a natural behind home plate! We’d throw the ball around every night when I finished my shift. But no matter how I tried, my love couldn’t fill that hole. He missed his father.”

  I swallowed hard. Winnie barely knew me, and besides, my father wasn’t dead. He was just distracted. Forever distracted.

  “Now on top of that, there’s a new city, a new school, and putting up with us old-timers. Never mind temperatures that must lead you to believe you’ve been tossed in the bottom of a freezer!”

  I looked away.

  And then the past few weeks of headache and heartbreak gushed out like a busted fire hydrant. “It’s hard to be homesick around Ma,” I explained. “She moved us here at lightning speed without even asking how we felt.” I was glad that Jordan was still staring at the fish. I didn’t want him to see my tears.

  Winnie leaned toward me, all ears.

  “Schenectady is like this giant do-over for her. She’s erased our whole lives back in San Antonio. And now she wants me to get excited about her ice cream shop, and I want to, but I’m scared.”

  “Your ma seems like a shrewd businesswoman to me.”

  “She is smart,” I said, remembering all the times Ma won employee of the month at the grocery-store deli for her ideas on improving the operation and reducing waste. “But Shooting Stars comes—I mean, mood swings—and that ruins everything.”

  “What kind of mood swings?”

  “Sometimes Ma gets turbocharged. Super Delilah, I call her, racing a hundred miles a minute and hardly sleeping. Nothing seems impossible, and she’s full of ideas and plans. But it doesn’t last forever. Eventually, like a shooting star, she crashes, landing in bed, sad and empty.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Four or five years. And when she’s Super Delilah, she blows through money and runs up bills, which gets us into even more trouble.”

  “Tess, your mom sounds like she could be sick,” Winnie said, resting her hand on mine.

  I told her I thought so too, but Ma didn’t agree. “She says that she’s prone to rough patches and ups and downs.”

  “When did your ma last have a checkup?” Winnie asked, sounding like the retired nurse she was.

  “I can’t remember. She avoids doctors. She calls them overrated bearers of gloom and doom.”

  “The mind and body both need regular tuning. Thirty years in nursing I dealt with folks who paid a heavy price for avoiding doctors.” Winnie rubbed my shoulder. “Sickness, death, divorce, it’s all different but the same too, in how it leaves you wounded. Part of your mother taking on a new business might be how she heals. After I lost my husband, I practically turned my home into a shrine, insisting everything had to stay put like before Carl passed on. After six months of living like that, I put Elston to bed, called in sick, and crawled under my comforter. I didn’t wake until noon the next day, to the sight of my little boy at the foot of my bed eating out of a cereal box. But I’ll tell you what: I changed from the caterpillar into the butterfly. Ready to get on with the business of living for Elston’s sake. Maybe your mom’s still in the cocoon.”

  I sighed. “Ma’s gotten us evicted from three cocoons so far. It’s not fair.”

  “My mama used to tell me that life ain’t fair, but to lace up my ugly boots anyway. Lord, I hated those words—and those boots! But she was right.”

  Winnie walked into the kitchen and returned holding an opened tin. “Here. You and Jordan have to try my homemade peanut brittle. Get your mind off your troubles,” she said, handing pieces to me.

  I thumped the floor to get Jordan’s attention. He turned around and came over. We both bit into the crunchy candy.

  “Like peanut butter!” Jordan signed approvingly, and I nodded.

  I told Winnie about our move in the freezing car and taking off the mayor’s car door.

  “Driving cross-country like that, knowing nobody, and now going solo in business. I’d say your ma’s got true grit fitting a Texan,” Winnie said.

  “Pop used to say Ma had more guts than you could hang on a fence.”

  Winnie let out one of her hearty laughs. I giggled too.

  “Is your pop back in San Antonio?” she asked, and I explained about him moving to Galveston and how he didn’t write much. Truth was he never wrote, but I didn’t say that.

  Winnie crossed her arms over her sparkly sweater. “Sounds to me like your mother’s been pulling double parent shifts for a while now.”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Jordan was hunched over the piano, smashing the keys with his hands.

  “Too hard,” I signed, running over and lifting his fingers.

  Winnie sat on the bench beside him. She took his palms and pressed them against the wooden side of the piano. “Tell Jordan to keep his hands still. Right here.”

  She started playing what she called classic Motown. And she sang, swinging her shoulders and making her bangle bracelets jingle. The music bubbled in my heart like a bottle of cherry cola.

  My favorite song was “Stop! In the Name of Love,” especially when Winnie raised her hand high like a traffic cop and shook her fanny.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this child hears the music,” Winnie said, grinning as she watched Jordan raise his hand too.

  As Winnie played song after song, I glanced at the framed pictures resting on the piano. In one, she was standing with four older men with their arms wrapped around each other. They all wore sequined vests. On closer look I recognized Melvin and Sam from Ma’s ice cream test-market session.

  “That’s our band. The Salty Old Dogs. Melvin and I are the lead singers,” she said.

  I bit into the
last piece of peanut brittle. “Is Melvin your boyfriend?”

  She let loose a laugh. “Us seasoned sisters don’t have boyfriends, but you could call us a twosome. That sounds more sophisticated, doesn’t it?” Jordan was sitting on Winnie’s lap now. She was pushing his fingers as if he was playing.

  “I bought this piano the very first day after I retired, and then taught myself how to play,” she said, rubbing the side of the piano after finishing a song. “All those years seeing so much pain and suffering in the ER, I swore one day I’d play the music of angels.” She stretched her back and laughed. “Ow-wee. Even with my built-in padding, these old bones don’t take kindly to benches anymore.”

  I looked at the piano bench, already forming my craft plan. I would sew a patchwork bench cushion and double-stuff it with batting to make it extra comfy. I’d use a black trim border outlined in white lace, to complement the sofa. Each patch would reveal a different side of Winnie, like music and nursing. Maybe even Motown, though that might be tricky.

  The wall clock chimed. Five-thirty. Ma would be home from signing the business papers any minute.

  Winnie let out a yawn. “Excuse me! I’m overdue for my afternoon nap. That’s one of the advantages to being a card-carrying senior. Best you two run on because I get cranky without it.”

  “Yes. Thanks for the snack,” I said, tugging Jordan and walking toward the door.

  “We’re friends now, honey,” she said, sticking some peanut brittle in Jordan’s pants pocket.

  I put our mugs in the kitchen sink and noticed a bag of potatoes on the counter. Winnie saw me looking.

  “That’s for Catherine. I’m bringing meatloaf and mashed potatoes over to her later. Having MS makes cooking hard,” she said. “Am I guessing that Texans like meatloaf and mashed potatoes too?”

  “As long as you leave the skins on and sprinkle hot sauce in the gravy,” I said.

  “And it better be Tapatío sauce, right?”

  “Right,” I said, all grins.

  Chapter 10