Raising Rain

by Debbie Fuller Thomas

  She glanced back at Jude and Rain sitting side-by-side on the bench. Jude said something to Rain, who answered with her sad smile. A low, smoldering ember began to flicker inside of Bebe. Rain leaned over and said something in confidence to Jude, and suddenly the glowing traces of rejection and betrayal inside of Bebe burst into flame. Bebe got to her feet and went further along the path out of sight of them.

  It was a good thing for Rain to have some closure with her mother. Bebe acknowledged this. It would never cover the multitude of sins Jude had committed against her, but it would be a comfort to Rain, and Bebe wouldn’t begrudge her that. But for Jude to think she could make up for everything at the end of her life, angered Bebe.

  Bebe remembered the time when Rain wanted Neil to come to her Parent Day party in her kindergarten class. Jude told Rain gently but firmly that he was not her daddy and that, furthermore, she did not need one. Rain said the others had daddies, and Jude said that they didn’t all have them, and the ones who did might be better off without them because their daddies would leave them anyway.

  Then in elementary school, Rain wanted to join Girl Scouts and Jude said that the troop leaders were all simpering moms who baked cookies and did crafts and taught them compliance instead of freethinking, and she would not have them as Rain’s role models. Bebe knew that Rain had trouble making friends in school because of Jude, and that usually their first visit to her home was their last. Anything and everything that followed a traditional line of thought was eschewed by Jude. In high school, Jude went a step further, telling her the same thing she’d told Bebe that first year in college, that she was in charge of her own body and had every right to do whatever she wanted to with anyone, and no one could tell her not to. Not even Jude.

  Over the years, Bebe had tried to repair some of the damage done by Jude, but all she could really do was to love Rain, pray for her, and try to give her advice as long as she would listen. In some ways, she felt like a failure.

  Bebe surveyed the surf, desperate to connect with God, but for the first time, its primitive, unrelenting beauty failed to move her. Memories and regrets loomed large inside her and blocked the very light to her soul.

  Bebe heard someone call, “There you are.” It was Toni, coming down the path toward her. “Some of us are getting hungry and we need to find a place to eat.” When she got closer, she took a good look at Bebe. “You okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” Bebe tried to shake it off. “There are picnic tables at the Piney Woods parking area.” Together they walked back up the path and found the others waiting by the car.

  They loaded up, drove the short distance to the picnic tables, and set out their lunches. Bebe remained subdued, feeling wounded and not trusting her emotions.

  As they ate, Mare read sections of the park brochure. “It says not to turn your back on the ocean. That would have been good to know before we went down there.”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “Everybody knows that, Mare. That’s just common sense.”

  “But don’t you think those pathways are far enough away from danger? Why would they put the trails so close to the ocean, if there was a chance of a wave taking you off?”

  Jude spoke, her voiced edged with bitterness. “Because nature is unpredictable and ruthless, but, unfortunately, it’s part of life and you’d better not turn your back on it.”

  They paused awkwardly for a moment. Then Toni quietly asked Bebe to pass the salad, and they resumed their conversations.

  “Where to next?” Mare said, bending over her brochure.

  Bebe started closing up containers and collecting utensils. “China Beach and Whaler’s Cove are two areas we haven’t seen yet, but they’re not easily accessible . . . for everyone. Well, they’re accessible, but it’s a little distance and it takes some time to get there and back. And I’m not sure how much time we have.” A breeze kicked up and Bebe shivered.

  Mare opened the brochure to the picture of Whaler’s Cove. “But there’s a lot of history there. It used to be a whaling station, and it has a cabin and a museum. What a beautiful walk.” She looked up and took in their lack of enthusiasm. “Oh, come on.”

  “I’ll stay with Mom in the car,” Rain said. “It’s getting chilly, anyway.”

  “No, you will not,” Jude began.

  “Well, if we’re not all going,” Toni interrupted, “we may as well go back to the house.”

  “We came all this way, and you’re ready to go back?” Mare asked, exasperated.

  “I thought you wanted to grill fish tonight,” Bebe said, packing away the remains of the lunch. “We can’t grill in the dark. We’ll take the scenic drive back and stop by the grocery store for dessert on the way. We’ll look for tiramisu.” She bagged up the trash and handed it to Toni.

  “I’m not grilling the tilapia, I’m baking it,” Mare said.

  “Fish again? I don’t suppose you know how to make sushi?” Toni asked.

  Mare threw up her hands. “No sushi! And when we’re at the aquarium, I’m getting you a copy of the Seafood Watch Sushi Guide.”

  They got home just before dusk and Mare pulled Bebe, Toni, and Rain into the kitchen to help her with dinner. She set Bebe chopping garlic, Rain slicing onions, and sent Toni for a bottle of sauvignon blanc to bake the fish in. Then she put Toni to work chopping fresh herbs while she assembled the dish. She also fixed some tofu for herself. As the tilapia baked, the kitchen filled with a heavenly aroma that masked the smell of fish. Mare trimmed a bunch of asparagus and briefly steamed it. At the last minute, she mixed two tablespoons of crème fraiche into the thickened sauce of the tilapia and served them all. Toni selected a Merryvale Chardonnay to go with it. Surprisingly, Jude joined them at the table.

  When they were finished, Bebe made a fresh pot of coffee. Mare brought the tiramisu to the table along with dessert plates and forks. Jude passed on dessert, saying that it was one of her good days and she didn’t want to push it. The others all served themselves generous portions.

  Toni finished her dessert and leaned back in her chair, kicking off her shoes under the table. “That was good. And I must admit your cooking has improved since college, Mare.”

  Mare licked her fork. “Thank you, I think.”

  “You’ve turned into the little domestic goddess, cooking, sewing, birthing babies. How did Arnie do it?” Toni teased.

  Mare gave a contented smile. “There’s nothing you can say to get under my skin, Toni. I am who I am because of my choices, not Arnie’s.”

  “I would venture to say that her mother had more to do with it than her husband,” said Jude. “She’s probably the spitting image.”

  “Well, I guess in some ways, I am. She’s a nurturer, but I stopped at two kids and she had eight. And she put up with my dad’s carousing for all those years. You know, sometimes I think she was relieved to let someone else be on the receiving end of his affections for a while.”

  “You’ve probably got half brothers and sisters running around out there,” Bebe observed.

  Mare laughed. “Oh, I’m sure of it. The Catholic Church was against contraception, but Dad viewed it as a build-your-own religion. He picked and chose what he wanted to observe.”

  “Aren’t we all like our mothers in some way, at least physically?” Toni said, “I’ve tried to deny it, believe me, but I look in the mirror and pull my hair back into a bun, and there she is.” She pulled her hair back into a knot and looked at each one. “See, it’s Irena.” Then she let her hair fall back and tousled it.

  “Your hair used to be really long. You put it up in those orange juice cans before you went to bed, remember?” Mare said with a grimace. “The tub and the sink were always clogged with long, dark hair. It was everywhere.”

  “Unfortunately for me, I don’t have that problem anymore.” She added, frowning, “Thinning hair is something else I got from my mother.”

  “Didn’t she want you to be a movie star, or an ice skater?” Bebe asked.

  “The ice skat
er was my idea. I was dying to have a sequined costume. From the day I was born my mother wanted me to be in the soaps. She watched one right after another, all afternoon. The Guiding Light, General Hospital, even Dark Shadows. I’d come home from school, and she’d say, ‘Tonya, you’re more beautiful than Josette, and so glamorous. You should be a TV star!’”

  Jude said something unintelligible under her breath.

  “I told her I wanted to go out to California for school, and she never could get it straight that Hollywood wasn’t anywhere near San Francisco. She always wrote to me, ‘Did you see any TV stars? When are you going to be in the soaps?’”

  “But the soaps are filmed in New York,” Rain said.

  “Exactly,” Toni said, gesturing with her hands. “This, I know.” She put her hands in her lap. “Sheesh, I’m starting to talk like her.”

  “What about you, Bebe?” Mare asked. “How are you like your mother?”

  Bebe thought for a moment. “I think we’re aging the same way. At least, when I see myself in photographs, I see her mouth and her sagging jawline.” She patted beneath her chin with the back of her hand. “And I think we’re both shrinking.”

  “Maybe your boys are just shooting up taller than you expected,” Toni said.

  “From all those growth hormones in their food over the years,” Mare added. Toni threw her cloth napkin at her across the table.

  Bebe noticed that Rain looked almost distressed, and Jude’s arms were crossed against her chest. Neither one invited a comparison between the two.

  Jude shifted in her seat. “All this navel-gazing is well and good, but when do you want to address the real reason for our little weekend?”

  “Oh, Jude, why spoil the fun?” Toni leaned back in her chair. “We have all day tomorrow.”

  “What’s on the agenda?” Jude asked.

  “The Monterey Bay Aquarium. It’s open between ten and six.” Bebe started stacking dishes. “We can do breakfast or lunch. Whatever.”

  “Let’s do lunch. I’ll buy,” Toni offered.

  Mare looked wary. “Who’s choosing?”

  “There are plenty of restaurants down the block from the aquarium. We’ll look at the menus and decide on a place together,” Bebe said. “If we’re getting lunch, we’ll need to go into the aquarium at ten when it opens. It takes a few hours to see everything. We’ll have plenty of time in the afternoon and evening.”

  As they cleared the table, Toni announced with relish that they needed music and wandered off. Soon, they heard the strains of “Me and Bobby McGee” coming from a speaker above their heads and Toni waltzed in crooning the lyrics off-pitch. Mare joined her and together they gave their best Janis Joplin imitations. Mare loosened her graying blonde hair and shook into a wild frenzy, singing into a wooden spoon matching Janis note for raspy note, tossing her head back with attitude at the end.

  They all howled with laughter until they wiped away tears.

  “Gosh, Mare,” Toni said when she caught her breath. “All you need are a huge pair of glasses and some underarm hair, and you could be her twin.”

  Mare fastened her hair back again with a clip as “Love Her Madly” started up. Bebe and Rain went back to the sink full of dishes, washing pots and loading the dishwasher as they sang along to the music. Mare wiped down the counters and Toni dried the pans as Bebe handed them over, dancing as she hung them back on the ceiling rack. Carole King started “It’s Too Late” and Bebe found herself singing along, finding it ironically pleasant that just a few months ago the music could have tripped her up and laid her out flat. Somehow, being with these wonderful women took the edge off of the past.

  When they were done, they moved into the family room and pulled out board games from the cupboard. Rain seemed to deflate and had trouble keeping her mind on things. She bowed out after the first round of Scrabble. Bebe thought it rather odd that Toni discreetly watched Rain peruse the books on the wall of shelves behind the leather couch. Rain ran her finger along the spines of hardbacks lined up in their dust jackets, tilting her head sideways to read the titles. Bebe saw Toni bite her lower lip and pause in arranging her Scrabble tiles. Rain moved down to the end of the shelves, pulled out a paperback and settled back in her chair. Only then did Toni turn her full attention back to the game.

  Jude went to her room early and they all breathed easier. Bebe wasn’t sure just why. Jude hadn’t been particularly difficult. If anything, she was less vocal and acerbic, and they had seen a bit of her old self emerge. Perhaps it was just the fact that they were always aware of her condition, and of its inevitable outcome. But more than likely, it was that she represented the task looming ahead.

  Rain also called it a night, and the three of them got comfortable on the couch with their mugs while Mare channel surfed.

  “So, what are we going to do?” Toni asked.

  Mare flipped the channel to a M*A*S*H* rerun and glanced over at her. “About what?” she asked.

  “About tomorrow. About the real reason for our little weekend.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Bebe reminded her.

  Toni kicked off her shoes and curled her feet beneath her on the couch. “Our best defense is to come up with our own ideas.”

  Bebe rubbed her forehead. “I’m not sure what she’s looking for.”

  “I’m afraid of what she’s looking for,” Mare said. “You don’t think she’ll want to picket or do something illegal, do you?”

  “I can’t guarantee that, but we always have the power of veto,” Bebe said.

  Mare flipped the channel to late news. “Or get involved in raising money for abortion clinics. I just can’t get on board with that anymore. Not after having kids.” She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think, what if I had aborted Autumn? She was definitely a surprise. Or if she had decided to abort Sammy, or little Wesley? What a tragedy that would have been.”

  Images of a battle somewhere in the Middle East filled the TV screen, and Bebe grabbed the remote. She scrolled through the options and settled on the cooking channel. “I’ve been thinking. What about donating toward animal rescue?”

  Toni laughed. “She doesn’t care that much about animals, Bebe.”

  Bebe was about to defend Jude, since she couldn’t imagine a person who didn’t have a heart for helpless animals, when Toni continued.

  “Remember that little gray cat that hung around the apartment at school? Remember how it just disappeared one day and never came back?”

  Bebe said a slow “Yes.”

  “What do you think happened to it?”

  “I assumed it found its way home.”

  Toni grimaced. “He didn’t get so lucky. Jude had that guy, Terry . . . Jerry, whatever, take it out and dump it in the mountains. He did it when you were in class because she knew you’d throw a fit about it.”

  Bebe was speechless. After a moment, she said, “I’m not surprised.”

  “Besides,” Toni said, “I’m not sure animal rescue is big enough for what Jude has in mind. I think she wants to go out with a bang. And what’s more, I don’t think she has time to pull it off and she knows it.”

  Mare and Bebe both grew thoughtful.

  “Well, look at her,” Toni continued. “She tires out so easily, and did you see her color yesterday? Positively gray, like her veins had collapsed. And she hardly eats anything.”

  The three of them silently contemplated Jude’s condition while nursing their coffees.

  “Well, it’s inevitable, you know,” Bebe said. “But we owe it to her to try to fulfill her wishes.”

  Toni looked puzzled. “We ‘owe it to her’? I don’t see that, Bebe. What do we owe her?”

  “She’s a friend, for one, and she’s dying. She wants to accomplish something significant with the time she has left. You can understand that.”

  “You know, I only went along with this because of our friendship. And for Rain, of course,” Toni said. “I think Jude’s terrified that her life has counted for n
othing. She wants something for people to remember her by, whether she deserves it or not.”

  “Now, you’re being too hard on her, Toni,” Mare said. “She was sincere in college, there’s no reason to think she doesn’t still have a heart for change.”

  “Are you so naïve? It’s all about her, Mare.”

  Again, Bebe glanced down the hall and motioned for them to keep their voices down.

  Bebe remembered the look of fear on Jude’s face when she woke up in the car when they shopped on Cannery Row and the phone call from her drunken mother many years before. “There’s something to what Toni says, Mare. She has a deep need to prove something about herself.”

  Toni studied Bebe over her coffee mug. “You know something,” she said, leaning toward Bebe. “Out with it.”

  Bebe tried to make her face a blank slate. “It’s nothing. Just something that happened a long time ago at school. I can’t go into it.”

  Toni sat back, looking disgusted. “Why are you so indebted to her? As far as I can see, she did her best to try to control your life.”

  “She tried to control us all, from the day we arrived at school,” Bebe said.

  Mare looked up, surprised. “I never let her control me.”

  “You were never around. You spent so much time in the art building with Arnie trying to stay away from Jude and her groupies,” Toni observed. “And look what happened.”

  Instead of being angry, Mare admitted, “True enough. You weren’t around much, either. But she didn’t pursue me like she did Bebe. Either one of us, for that matter. I was never sure why she focused on Bebe.”

  “Neither was I,” Bebe answered. She got up and gathered her cup. “Good night, ladies.”

  November 30, 1969

  The air surrounding the ground floor apartment pulsed before they even reached the door, which pushed open to Jude’s brief knock. The music exploded. Jimi Hendrix wailed, and the notes of his guitar climbed Bebe’s vertebrae. She followed Jude inside, lowering her eyes and trying for a coolness she didn’t feel. Students sat entwined on the couches and in corners stuffed with pillows. The light from the overhead bulb was dimmed by lacy smoke, thick and sickly sweet. Somebody shouted her name and she glanced to a girl named Erica she recognized from psychology who raised her beer and grinned with a guy hanging on to her neck like a leech.