by Abby Tyler
Ruth gasped. “Is Evelyn okay?”
“Sure, sure. It was a lovely day otherwise. She got the photographer to Photoshop the suit, and she got the father-daughter picture she wanted. I think she might be done with him now, though.”
“Goodness.”
“She remembered him the least, being only a toddler when he left. She still had a lot of romantic notions about him.”
“I’m glad she got her picture.”
“Me, too. We mothers do put up with a lot to make our kids happy.”
Ruth thought of Christina’s upset over the idea of her mother dating. Would Ruth cave if Christina remained unhappy? She felt certain that if her daughter only met Theodore, she would love him.
A waitress dropped off two mugs and a carafe of coffee. Marilyn poured them both a cup. “It’s done. All the chicks are squared away, at least for now. I can rest.”
She sat back in her chair, holding the white mug with both hands. She inhaled deeply. “The elixir of life.”
Ruth stirred a bit of milk into her mug, wondering how to initiate the conversation about Theodore. One of the great things about her friendship with Marilyn was that no matter how much time passed between their meetings, they easily slid into the closeness they’d had as girls.
“So I don’t think this was a random invitation,” Marilyn said. “What’s getting you? Christina? Her marriage okay? You missing her?”
“Christina’s fine. She is far away.” Ruth realized she had an opening. “We are having a bit of a spat.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve started seeing someone.”
Now Marilyn leaned in. “Oh, wow! Finally! Who is he?”
“His name is Theodore.” Ruth hesitated. What to lead with? If she said mayor, it might feel misleading. But the RV park conjured another image.
“He lives in Applebottom, that small community across the lake.”
“I know it. Micah Livingston is the lawyer there. I’ve sat across the table from him.”
“Oh! Well, Theodore is a sort of volunteer mayor there. He owns —”
“The RV park!” Marilyn interrupted, setting down her mug. “Don’t tell me you’ve hooked up with T-bone! He’s a scraggly old motorcycle dude!”
He was? She’d never seen him with anything but nice clothes and impeccable grooming. But the woman at the pie shop had mentioned his motorcycle.
She pulled out her phone. Thank goodness she had the picture, even if it wasn’t his most flattering. “Are we talking about the same person?” She passed the phone to Marilyn.
“Oh. Well, yeah. That’s him.” Marilyn reached in her purse for a pair of reading glasses and peered at the image. “But he didn’t look like that the last time I saw him. Leather vest. Big long beard in a knot. Hair down his back.” She handed the phone back. “Cleaned up all right.”
Ruth glanced at the image herself, trying to imagine Theodore the way Marilyn was describing him. “How long ago was that?”
“A couple of years. Lots can change in that time. Maybe he was going through something. A late mid-life crisis.” Marilyn set her glasses on the table. “Did Christina see an old picture of him and freak?”
“I don’t think so. He’s not on the Internet anywhere.”
Marilyn grinned. “So you Googled him. Man, dating sure is different now.”
“Are you seeing anybody?”
“Here and there. But nothing that sticks. I like my life how it is. So how did you meet the mayor?”
“His son and daughter-in-law had a baby a few weeks ago. He came to the hospital, and we ended up walking down to the cafeteria together.”
A young woman brought them menus and a basket of miniature croissants. Marilyn picked one up and tore off the end. “Nice. And then?”
“We took a stroll on the boardwalk and seemed to hit it off. Then I went to Applebottom for a tour. Everyone was very generous and kind to me.”
“It’s a sleepy little town. Nosy, though.”
“I got that.” Ruth unfolded a linen napkin, mainly to give her hands something to do. “We had a lovely lunch with his kids and the grandbaby. I thought everything was going so well. But then last Friday I invited him to my house, and he seemed to totally cool off. We always held hands and sat close. But it was like he needed his space suddenly.”
Marilyn swallowed her bite. “And since then? Phone calls? Texts?”
“We’ve sent several messages back and forth.”
“Who writes first? You or him?”
Ruth hadn’t considered that, relieved that things seemed normal when they communicated by phone. “Well, now that you mention it, I guess I’ve been initiating it all. I’m not sure that means anything, though. He’s a man of few words.”
“You think the house and all freaked him out? It is sort of next-level mansion for this part of the world.”
“Maybe so?”
“And he’s the mayor. He can’t exactly take up residence there, but I doubt there’s anything like your house in Applebottom.”
These thoughts had already gone through Ruth’s mind, but not from Theodore’s perspective. “Do you think it’s a mismatch? Christina’s pretty upset, too. She’s afraid.”
“Of what? T-bone’s a little gruff, but he’s harmless.” Marilyn picked up a second croissant. “Christina’s a worrier. Let her worry.”
“It did seem that before this, she was worried I was lonely.”
“See? You can’t win. So do what you want. Is Theodore what you want?”
“I thought so. But I’m not sure how it could work out. Not with his world and mine being so different.”
“Tell that to Romeo and Juliet.” Marilyn caught herself and held up a hand. “Okay, maybe not their story. But you know, any uptown girl scenario. You find a way to compromise. If this works out, you could always sell your house and build something you’ve always wanted in that little town. It’s the easy side of the lake, not taken up like Branson. A big wraparound porch right on the water.”
Ruth could certainly picture that. And T-bone’s RV park was on the shore already. But giving up the home she’d had with Harold? Where she raised Christina?
Marilyn turned the croissant over in her hands. “I can see those gears whirring in your head. Change is hard. I was forced into it. It’s different when you’re choosing it. You’ve got time. You’ve had what — three dates? You’re not getting married tomorrow. Let it simmer.”
She was right. Ruth was getting way ahead of herself. And who knows, maybe her mayor was cooling for some other reason entirely, and the living situation had nothing to do with it.
T-bone
Baby Maybelle caught the croup the next week, and it took all of them — Luke, Savannah, T-bone, and half the town — taking turns sitting in the steamy bathroom over the next few days to ease her croaky coughs.
T-bone found little time to talk to Ruth, who offered to come and sit with the baby. But T-bone put her off, assuring her the babe was doing all right and she’d gotten a house call by her own pediatrician.
Even after Maybelle recovered right as rain, T-bone discovered he hadn’t the nerve to plan another date.
The RV park’s dumping station got clogged, and T-bone had to call out a service to help him clear it.
It was tough, dirty work. He helped the crew, their noses covered with bandanas, gloves up to their elbows. T-bone wanted it done right.
The current tenants in their RVs got testy about not being able to empty their sewage while the station was down. He was the owner, and all the bucks stopped with him.
It was a bad day, for sure.
The crew took a break for lunch, and T-bone shook his head at how they could soap up and be fine eating after all the muck and misery of the morning. He cleaned up enough to sit on the porch with a Big Red, positively sure he wouldn’t be able to eat regular food for two days after this.
He had a couple of texts from Ruth. One about a pair of twins born that morning, cute as bugs. Another a
sking how his day was.
He pondered what he could say about his day that wouldn’t turn her stomach when Luke pulled up in his truck.
T-bone waved his son over to the store, hoping he’d steer clear of the dumping station, which stank like a cistern on a summer day from the rooting they’d been doing to clear the line.
“Everything okay?” T-bone called as Luke stepped out of his truck.
“Just getting away for a bit. Haven’t left the house in three weeks.” Luke plunked down in the seat beside T-bone, like he had on the nights when he first arrived in Applebottom, before he married Savannah. He looked plumb beat.
“Baby keeping you up?”
“Every night. I shoulda kept a few more volunteers. But Sy is running the puppy clinic this afternoon. I thought I’d break away and see how you were doing.”
T-bone laughed. “You can head on over to the house for a nap if you like.”
Luke’s hand twitched. “How’d you know?”
“Not hard to guess.”
The crew started moving toward the dumping station again.
“What’s going on here?”
“Rooting out the line. Got a clog.”
“So that’s the smell.”
“Yeah, it’s been a chore. More than I could handle myself.” T-bone’s phone chimed again. Another text from Ruth. He lay the phone face-down on his thigh.
“How’s Ruth doing?” Luke asked.
“How’d you know that was her?”
“Not hard to guess.” Luke grinned at him. “Everybody seemed to like her.”
“Yeah, she’s all right.” T-bone watched the crew gather around the equipment. He should get back over there.
“Just all right? A certain officer told a certain someone who told Savannah that he might have caught you two standing mighty close in the courthouse in the dark.”
T-bone sniffed. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve been a bachelor all my life. Probably will die one.”
Luke leaned forward in his chair. “Something go wrong since that lunch we all had?”
T-bone shook his head. “Nah. She’s just a fancy lady, and I’m a man who mucks sewer lines.” He stood up.
Luke jumped up next to him. “You saying she thinks she’s too good for you?”
“No, lad. No. I’m the one saying it. She lives in a big house. I couldn’t even knot a tie till you showed me. And I’m mayor here. Where would we live anyway? There are no fancy houses in Applebottom.”
“How fancy is it?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. And I only went through a small part of it.”
Luke braced his elbows on the rail. “What’s her take on all this? You showed her Applebottom, and she invited you to dinner anyway. Surely she doesn’t see a problem.”
“I dunno. I don’t see any way of making it work.” T-bone pushed out of the chair. “Feel free to sleep in the house. It’s open.”
Luke reached out a hand to stop T-bone from passing by. “Don’t cut her out if you don’t need to, Dad. Have a conversation before you give up.”
T-bone gave his son a quick nod before heading back down the steps to the crew.
Talking about Ruth with his son was fine and dandy, but it didn’t change anything.
There were surely men out there more appropriate for her, suitors who didn’t have to muck out clogged sewage lines at an RV park’s dumping station. He tried to picture his muddy, smelly boots by her back door and couldn’t see it.
Even so, he took care to answer her texts as they came. They talked once or twice over the next week, but as Ruth related her days at the hospital and some of the charities she volunteered for, T-bone felt more and more distant. He put on one of his old leather vests again and quit using the beard oil Arnold had pushed on him at his last trimming.
Ruth had liked the version of a man he’d tried on for size, not who he really was.
Ruth
Ruth bought tickets to California for Thanksgiving months ago and had looked forward to the trip since summer. She hated not seeing Theodore or making any sense out of their relationship before she left, but there was nothing to be done about it.
He replied to her texts and answered her calls. But if she let a day go by without reaching out, then her phone remained silent.
Maybe she ought to let it go. It was easier, and certainly Christina would be pleased that everything was back the way it had been before.
On the flight, she paid attention to happy couples, feeling a pang that hadn’t afflicted her before. She found she missed Theodore’s company and wondered after his kids and their baby. Something had changed, and it was time to stop being alone.
Christina and her husband Jason waited for Ruth at baggage claim.
Although Christina had visited during the summer, and they generally didn’t go more than a few months without a visit one direction or the other, for some reason, Ruth held her daughter tighter than usual.
Perhaps all the introspection about her old life had made her more emotional. Or maybe it was just the holidays, which always arrived with a tinge of sadness. There was nothing like cooking traditional dishes with their scents and tastes of bygone years to make you want to hold the loved ones you still had more tightly.
Christina chattered happily as Jason drove them down the freeway toward their small suburban home on the outskirts of San Bernardino.
When they arrived, Christina threaded her arm through her mother’s elbow as they walked into the warm kitchen through the back door, leaving Jason to unload the bags.
Christina started a kettle of water. “We should catch up,” she said. “Tomorrow will be a little crazy with the in-laws coming and cooking the meal.”
“You know I will help any way I can.”
Christina smiled at her. “I’m counting on it.”
Ruth surveyed her daughter as she puttered around her own kitchen. With her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail and the chill reddening her cheeks, she looked very much like the small girl Ruth had raised. There were plenty who said that Christina favored her mother in her smile and the shape of her nose. But Christina’s eyes were all her father’s. Her eyebrows knitted together in the same way Harold’s always did.
Christina tapped her lips as she looked through the cabinets in search of something, and Ruth’s breath caught. It was a gesture so familiar in her late husband, that seeing her daughter do it brought a prick of tears to the corners of her eyes.
It was true that in your children, your loved ones did live on. She was the picture of her father.
Christina retrieved a metal tin of tea and angled it at her mother. “Earl Grey? Or maybe some orange spice?”
“Some Earl Grey would be good,” Ruth said, managing to keep her voice level.
Jason entered the back door with their bags. “I’ll set this up in the guest room,” he said.
“Thank you, dear,” Ruth said. She was pleased to have a son-in-law. She and Harold had planned to have more children, but somehow they could never fall pregnant again. They looked into it for a few years, but life kept moving, and they opted not to dig too deeply. Ruth had often worried that her life was too happy, too easy, and she shouldn’t tempt fate by asking for too much.
But then she lost Harold so early. And so quickly. Pancreatic cancer was like that. He was so strong, so resilient, right until the last days.
Christina sat across from her, sliding a steaming mug toward her mother. “So I got approved for furnace access at the fine arts studio.”
Ruth sat up straight. Christina had been on the waiting list for over a year. “You did?”
She nodded, emotion playing across her face. “I can finally create glass sculpture whenever I want! I can start building pieces and open my own shop. I just have to find a space.”
Ruth jumped up from the chair to hug her. Christina had been an artist from early on, when they would fashion thumb bowls in art class in elementary school. She had an entire room at Ruth’s house devoted to her
clay and polymers, with shelves and shelves of pieces she’d made. They’d even bought her a small kiln when she was in high school.
But glass was her true love. The high-end glass furnaces and specialized ovens weren’t something you could set up at home. She had to take classes or wait for open slots. She’d spent years working her way up to access at the glass blowing centers near her.
And she had done it.
“When do you start?” Ruth asked.
“Next week,” Christina said. “I won’t be limited to class times or short slots. I can have entire days to work.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I couldn’t have gotten to this dream without you and Dad, and with Jason supporting me.”
“I can’t wait to see what you make.”
Ruth sat back in her seat, and they basked in the good news while the tea steeped. Southern California was glorious, away from the brisk cold of Missouri. Maybe they could even go to the beach for a walk along the sand.
Christina blew on her tea. “So you haven’t mentioned your romantic entanglement in a while.”
Ruth stared into her cup. “Not much to tell. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“What happened?” Christina’s brows drew together, once again reminding Ruth of Harold.
Ruth shrugged. “We’re pretty different. You were right. There is no reason to shake everything up. He lives in a small town. I live in Branson in that big house. I didn’t see how it was going to work out.”
Christina’s eyes widened. “Oh, Mom. You didn’t quit him because of me, did you?”
Ruth reached out a hand and squeezed her daughter’s arm. “Of course not, darling. Seems as though the relationship cooled on its own. I just didn’t see any reason to try and revive it.”
Christina’s lip quivered. “But did you like him?”
Ruth released Christina and returned to her tea. She pulled on the string, bobbing the bag up and down in the cup. “I did, actually. After your father…well, I didn’t think I would feel that way again. I used to be very spontaneous, and it would drive your father mad. After he died, I became very serious. Scheduled. Almost as if I needed to take on his best qualities now that he was no longer there.”