The Tea Series

by Sheila Horgan

  “Let me do it.”

  “Teagan, I appreciate the offer, but Suzi is more my person.”

  “I know. But if you give her a baby shower, she’s going to feel like you have to do it because A.J. is her brother and you are her friend and that people will just show up because it’s you giving the shower. That makes the shower about you instead of about her.”

  “I didn’t intend — ”

  “I know, but she’s hormonal and sad, and she needs something more than her best friend doing a pity shower. Oh, and we’re going to make it a surprise. Preggos always know that someone is going to surprise them with a shower, but in this case, we might really get away with it. You know how much I like that. Besides, I need the practice. I’m going to put on a shower for Sinead that the O’Flynns will talk about for years.”

  “Are we back to the male strippers?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Don’t forget that Mom likes lean. Not too many muscles. Make sure at least one of the guys is what Mom likes, or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Mom and strippers. The thought made me laugh. Not in a it-could-never-happen way, but more in a dear-God-what-if-Teagan-really-does-it kind of way.

  The truth is Teagan wouldn’t do strippers for a baby shower.

  I don’t think.

  No, I’m sure.

  Kinda.

  The kettle was just about to boil when Suzi arrived. She looks so cute these days. She is tiny and has kept her shape, except for her pregnant belly and a little bit of softness around the lower part of her face. She’s glowing and looks happy most of the time, and I love to see her like this.

  “Gran says hi.”

  “You could have brought her.”

  “She’s getting together with the girls to plan their next big adventure. She told me that Roland told her that you forced him to talk to Adeline and tell her what is really going on and to say thank you from her and Anna as well. Adeline said she was not going to call you until she has something to report. Adeline was sitting right there when I left, so it is a direct message, not one wandering around or anything.”

  “I already talked to Adeline a little bit. I’m not sure what they’re doing about all of it. I’m kind of out of the loop. Plausible deniability and all that. Roland is big into that. All I know is that Roland gave me his word he would talk to Adeline and that no one would be breaking into my apartment or threatening me again, and then Adeline said that she and Roland had talked.”

  “Yep. I’m not sure why they told me anything at all, but Gran said because I’m staying with her, it’s important that I at least know the basics. From that I’m guessing Adeline wanted to make sure the girls were aware just in case anything happened. I guess when they were in Las Vegas some stuff happened, and they were caught by surprise. They don’t want that to happen again. I don’t know the details, but they got pretty involved with Roland when they came back. I’m guessing part of it was because of Barry and part of it was because of Adeline’s family.”

  Teagan changed the subject. No reason to bring Barry into the middle of a good day. It would whack out everybody.

  “What are we doing today?”

  “I just have to wait for my furniture to be delivered. They gave me a four-hour window.” Suzi pulled her phone out of her purse. “The window starts in three minutes. So for the next five or six hours I’m kind of stuck sitting around waiting for them to show up. I appreciate you letting me stay here, not quite comfortable in the apartment yet.”

  Teagan looked confused. “I thought you said four-hour window.”

  “I did, but you know how it goes here. I’ve had delivery people call me and tell me I was next on the list, then call back an hour later and tell me that it was just too nice a day, they were going fishing, and they’d see me tomorrow.”

  “I’ve had that happen too. Jessie about killed a guy for that. Not literally. Well, maybe literally. He actually took time off work so that he could meet the guy, and the guy called forty-five minutes after he was supposed to be there and said that he wasn’t feelin’ it and would make arrangements to get there another day.”

  “Let’s hope today we got delivery people who actually like their job. Maybe it will be different in this economy. Who knows?”

  “I’m just going to go stick a note on the door so that they know to knock here.”

  “Good.”

  Suzi opened the door to walk across the hall about the time a huge white truck pulled up. “That can’t be them. I’m not that lucky.”

  Two little tiny guys got out of the truck. It was like a clown car, reversed.

  Kinda.

  They walked up to Suzi. Away from the truck they didn’t look so little. The driver showed her some paperwork on a clipboard, then followed her into the apartment.

  Ten minutes later Suzi walked back into my apartment. “They must have been desperate for a tip.”

  Teagan sounded confused. “What?”

  “The driver asked me out.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I laughed. Who asks a woman as round as a whale if she wants to go out on a first date?”

  “The driver!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No normal guy is going to want to start a relationship with a pregnant woman.”

  “Who said anything about starting a relationship? He asked for a date, not a relationship.”

  “I just can’t think about dating or anything like that right now. Besides, it’s just kind of weird.”

  I tried to think. “I can give you a dozen examples of women who were pregnant when they met their person.”

  “Yeah, but celebrities don’t count. They live in a false world.”

  “But you would recognize their names. If I said Bob and Cheryl, you wouldn’t know who I was talking about.”

  “But if you told me Bob and Cheryl met while she was pregnant, I’d believe you.”

  “Actually, other way around.”

  “Bob was pregnant?”

  “Yep.”

  “How did that work?”

  “He and his wife wanted a baby. She couldn’t have one. They got a surrogate. The wife was killed in a car accident. He met Cheryl.”

  “So a man, madly in love with his wife, has a baby on the way and tragically and unexpectedly loses his wife and falls for another woman while the surrogate is still pregnant, and you’re using that as a testament for sane people?”

  “Okay. Good point. But he met her while the surrogate was still pregnant. I didn’t say they fell in love that fast.” I decided to let it go. “What are we going to do today?”

  “Well, I’m going to go settle my apartment. You guys don’t have to babysit me.”

  Teagan laughed. “The pregnant woman saying we don’t have to babysit her. Classic.”

  Suzi blushed.

  “We can help you with your apartment.”

  “Teagan, I appreciate the offer, but it isn’t necessary. I can do it.”

  “I know you can. But do you want to? I’m pretty good with décor. Cara can feed us. You can supervise. And when Cara and I put our pointed little heads together — my Mom’s phrase — we can accomplish just about anything, so we should be able to assemble any furniture you need assembled.”

  “Thanks. I had them deliver it assembled. I didn’t think I would be able to bend and get up and down very well.”

  I shook my head. “A.J. would have done it for you, you know.”

  “A.J. does enough for me. He created a job for me.”

  “My God, I can’t even imagine what he would do without you. He’s already working twenty hours a day with you there. He needs you.”

  “I’ll concede he needs me now, but he didn’t need me when he hired me; he just felt sorry for his screwed up sister.”

  Teagan smiled. “Don’t let that worry you. I feel sorry for my screwed up sister all the time. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Gee, thanks, Teagan, I love you too.”

 
“See, she loves me anyway.”

  Laughter is a good thing.

  “Tell you what. I’m going to put the kettle on. We can grab something to eat, and we can decide what we want to do while we munch.”

  Teagan is good. She’s a good sister. She’s a good friend. She’s a good negotiator, and she is as supportive as any person can possibly be.

  Don’t tell her I said it.

  I would deny it.

  She went to the store and got some plain-white temporary wallpaper — I didn’t even know there was such a thing — a variety of paints, brushes, and a few other art supplies.

  She sent us to the discount linen place with a list of sheets, pillowcases, and quilts. She must have told us ten times that the goal was cheap and plain. White.

  We came back and Teagan got to work. She drew simple little kid pictures — as if a child drew them — on the temporary wallpaper and painted them, cut them out and stuck them to the wall. It looked like a child had drawn on the wall, really big. Then she did the same thing with fabric paint to create curtains out of sheets, and she used really big pushpins to attach them to the wall, which carried the “kid art” theme further.

  Once she had the walls and curtains done, she painted some basic white sheets for the baby. She said they needed to be washed once they were set. They were adorable. She did another couple of small temporary-wallpaper works of art to put on the outside headboard of the crib.

  Then she took it from cute crafty to really remarkable.

  With the same colors, she attacked Suzi’s side of the room. She made bright flowers for the wall and sheets. Huge flowers on the pillowcases and bed skirt and a couple of throw pillows.

  She got one more sheet and did the little kid drawings across the bottom and then just kind of mingled those with a smaller version of the flower pictures that she had done for Suzi’s side of the room. Somehow she got just the right balance. Then she did flowers up one side of the sheet and a little kid sun on the other side. It was this strange combination of little-kid art and sophisticated flowers, and it looks really elegant and kid-friendly at the same time.

  She said that when it was all set, I could just put a row of buttonholes on the top, and Suzi could use it as a shower curtain with a liner.

  When she was all done we stood back and looked at all she had accomplished. “God, I love doing this stuff.”

  “Teagan, it’s spectacular.”

  “It really isn’t that big of a deal.”

  “I never would have thought of it. The baby and I would have been in a white room with nothing for her to look at.”

  “Her?”

  “Still don’t know. I know it’s silly, but I don’t want to know. Every time I go to the doctor they ask. All the women in the waiting room ask. I know that most women can’t wait to find out, but I don’t want to know until I give birth. As long as the baby is healthy, that’s all I want to know before I give birth. So far the doctor says there’s no reason for me to worry. All the stress while pregnant could have caused some problems, but the doctor says she thinks we’re fine.”

  Teagan smiled warmly. “I think that’s nice. This room will work for a boy or a girl. I think it turned out pretty good. It’s all disposable. When you decide to move, just pull it off the walls, and throw it all away. The landlord won’t care because the wall will be back to the way it was when you moved in.”

  “It looks like something out of a magazine.”

  “I’m really glad you like it. Cara, you can feed us now.”

  “I’ll be happy to take you guys out to dinner. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Appreciate the offer, but we’re hot and sweaty, and, besides, Cara’s food is better than anything we’re going to find anywhere else.”

  I don’t think my sister has ever said anything like that before.

  It really touched me.

  Not sure why it was such a big deal to me, but it was.

  Guaranteed good dinner, coming up.

  Suzi decided to go back to her grandmother’s condo for the night. The smell of paint was a little too much in the small apartment. She left the windows open, and I promised I’d send A.J. over to close them before we went to bed.

  Teagan left shortly after Suzi.

  I completely forgot to ask her what she meant by Honey smoking herself stupid.

  I gave her enough time to get home and was about to call when my phone rang.

  “I think your friend is mad at me.”

  “Morgan? What’s going on? Which friend is mad at you?

  “Suzi called me. She’d just left your house.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ve talked a few times over the last couple months when I’ve gone in to meet with A.J. If I had to categorize our relationship, I’d say we are more than acquaintances but less than friends.”

  “Okay.”

  “She called because I’d offered to give her some designs I have for her new apartment. She told me that Teagan went crazy and decorated the whole place.”

  “Mostly the bedroom and bathroom, but I guess she did set a tone. We didn’t know that you were already working on it. I’m sorry.”

  “No problem. I was just going to print some stuff out for her and have it blown at the printers. It isn’t important either way.”

  “Then why did you guys get into it?”

  “We didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m not explaining this well. Too many twenty-hour days in a row. Basically she called to tell me that Teagan had decorated the apartment, and somehow we got onto the subject of being a single parent. From there we got onto the subject of benefits. I guess she has decided that she’s going to sign up for every program out there and see what she can get. I wasn’t aware of that. Not until after I told her I didn’t believe in handouts and that I worked for everything I have while taking care of a baby, starting as a teen.”

  “Oh.”

  “I went on and on. I can’t believe it. My friggin’ foot was so far down my throat I may never recover.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But, Cara, I said all that before she said anything about applying for everything. She works at the studio. I never thought that she would be applying for benefits. She has a job.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re entitled to your opinion. If Suzi doesn’t agree, then she doesn’t agree.”

  “But I work with her brother. All day. Every day. This project is so important for both our businesses. I just don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize that.”

  “A.J. isn’t like that.”

  A.J. came through the door as I made the statement.

  His eyebrows met in the middle.

  He kept walking, dumped his stuff in the office, and went in to take a shower.

  I spent the next several minutes trying to convince Morgan that she hadn’t done anything wrong and that A.J. wouldn’t be upset.

  Then I spent the twenty minutes after I hung up the phone trying to convince A.J. that we didn’t need to get in the middle of it, that if his sister wanted to apply for benefits, that was her right, and that it didn’t mean that the family was failing her or that she was going to starve to death.

  “There has to be more to the story. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Really? You told me that I needed to back away and focus on us instead of my family’s every move. Don’t you need to do the same thing? If Suzi wants us to know, she’ll tell us.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know I’m being totally hypocritical here. I’m in the middle of every O’Flynn thing there ever was, but I swear to you I’m trying to change. I’m trying to focus more on my life and me. I made that decision after you talked me into it, and I think it is a really good decision. I think it was really good advice. For me. For us. How about we just wait and see what happens with Suzi, and if she needs our help, I will do everything in my power to help, and I’ll support you in anything you decide to do for her. Or with her. Or behind her back.”

 
; He looked calmer.

  I took a deep breath. For a second there I thought he was going to get mad at me. He didn’t. He rarely does. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

  “You could have joined me.”

  “I was too busy breaking my own rule and trying to fix things between Morgan and Suzi. See? A missed opportunity because I didn’t stay focused. I could have been in the shower with you instead of talking to Morgan. Missed opportunity.”

  “We can fix that.”

  “Oh, I intend to, but first, I’m gonna take my shower. Can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you put the kettle on when you hear me turn off the water?”

  “Of course. And, Cara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I like that you’re focusing on you. On us. I like it a lot.”

  “You’re going to like it more.”

  I came out of the bathroom in a puff of smelly-good-stuff, with my hair blown dry but not poofed out and one of my favorite lounging outfits on. It’s long and mint green with really light peach-colored appliqués. The appliques are kind of like flowers but remind me of butterflies. I’m not sure exactly what they are, but they’re beautiful.

  The straps are the thinnest little whispers of chiffon. You could never sleep in the nightgown because the straps wouldn’t last five minutes, but I really don’t sleep in my loungewear anyway. It was Bernie who used to tell me, even when I was pretty young, that the best way to sleep is in perfume and a smile.

  Strange how all these little details about Bernie and my grandmother keep finding their way to the front of my brain. It’s not an uncomfortable feeling; it’s just weird that they seem to be popping up more and more often. I know I have the worst memory in the world, always have, but it feels like little tiny moments of memory are flitting around in my brain and I can’t quite catch any of them.

  Maybe getting kicked in the head has advantages. Maybe it shook something loose.

  Or maybe I’m not really remembering anything and my brain is just all screwed up. Isn’t that how déjà vu works? Things get mis-indexed in your brain, and then your brain finds them again, and you think you’ve done it before, but it is really an almost instantaneous thing. I think I saw something about that on television one night.