Oh, Frederick, I can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll love him instantly. I know you will. When you wake up Thursday morning, I’ll make you my special French toast, but I better warn you—you are not the only French toast fan in this house anymore, so I better make a big pile. See you soon, so very soon.
Love you.
Love Thomas (my son-shine).
Love life.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Mom shouted from the top of her lungs, tossing the letter into the air. “Finally!” She jumped to her feet and looked down at me and smiled. “Don’t move,” she demanded, pointing a finger at me. “I’ll be right back.” She tossed the sleeping bag on the floor and charged toward the hallway. “This calls for a celebration,” she called out. I heard a big bump, followed by Mom groaning. “I’m okay. I’m fine. Just a little bump in the road,” she said, swearing all the way to the kitchen. From the noise she was making, I figured the celebration involved some kind of eating (it always does, Dad says. In Mom’s family they always eat or drink themselves out of everything: sickness, sadness, sleepiness, too much sleep, headache, heartache. “Everything can be fixed by coffee, cinnamon buns, or a chicken spinach pie,” he claims.).
I picked up the letter from the floor and looked at the words in the middle of the page. “I’m someone’s mom,” it said, right next to six smileys.
“Oh, it just makes me so happy, pumpkin. Aren’t you happy?” Mom yelled all the way from the kitchen.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, still looking at the words worthy of not five, but six, smileys. It’s not like I wasn’t happy for Martha. Of course, I was. I just felt ashamed about every single thought and feeling I had had the last two days. I mean, faced with such a strong case of motherhood feelings (adding an extraordinary smiley and all), how could a baby be a “bad thing?” How could it be a “maybe” or even a “no?” I looked down at my belly. From the way I was sitting, I actually looked pregnant already. Carefully, I reached for my belly and put a little pressure on it. If I had a child at seventeen, would I ever be able to feel the same strong love that Martha was writing about? Would I ever set the alarm clock early in the morning simply to feel “the little feet sensation” Mom was talking about? Or would I resent “it” for standing in the way of my dreams and my future? And what dreams and future was that? An online algebra course? I didn’t even know what I wanted to be. But did I want to be a mom? I looked up at Mom, dancing her way into the living room with two humongous bowls of something white and wiggly in her hands.
She dumped all the letters on the floor and placed one of the bowls in front of me and smiled. “Ta-da. Root beer floats with a twist.” She sat down and started to eat.
I looked down into the bowl. It looked more like a floating disaster of something indefinable, white and brown melted together. My stomach turned right away. “What’s the twist?” I managed to say.
“Well,” she said, looking at me all silly. “We didn’t exactly have any root beer, so I used a Coke instead. And we didn’t really have any ice cream, so I used some Cool Whip instead with some of that ready-to-eat cookie dough on top.”
I looked at the floating disaster again. It looked like someone already ate it once. Again, my stomach flipped. “Mom. For real?”
“It’s actually really good.” She took another bite and opened her mouth and displayed an even bigger disaster. “Michelin stars, baby,” she said with her mouth full.
“Eew, Mom. I think I’ll have to pass.” I pushed the bowl away from me and leaned back with my eyes closed. Would I ever be a mom like Mom, always there, providing her baby girl with creative desserts, Band-Aids, endless love, and a pocket full of friends?
“Can you imagine he called her Mom?” Mom said, again with her mouth full.
“No, Mom,” I said, my head full of images of me as a little piggy-tailed girl wearing my best Sunday dress, eating ice cream with Mom. Could I even imagine someone calling me “Mom?” Could I even imagine having a baby? I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Could I even imagine not having it, as in, having it and its baby feet removed? I looked at Mom. She was plowing through her floating bowl, leaving light brown stains behind on her white shirt.
“It really isn’t that bad,” she said, smiling.
I shook my head. “It’s not that. It’s just...” I took a deep breath. This is it; only downhill from here. Again!
Mom sat up straight and swallowed whatever was left in her mouth. “What is it, honey?” All of a sudden she looked very alert.
“You know yesterday when Miss T and I went to Mount Rainier? Well, we, we, we kinda had to make a small detour because, because, because we found out that I, I, I—”
“—What on earth?” Dad appeared at the door, still wearing his tennis outfit. “Are you two still up? It’s almost midnight.” He set his tennis racquet down and started taking off his shoes.
“Geez, Frank. You scared the shit out of me.” Mom turned and stared straight at me, slightly raising her eyebrows, nodding her head like she was trying to tell me something.
“What?” I mouthed.
With the face of innocence, she looked up at Dad and smiled as she pinched me in my thigh and pointed discreetly at the floor.
I looked down. Fuck! The pile of letters was lying right next to the coffee table, Martha’s neat handwriting facing up. Quickly, I grabbed a People magazine from the side table and dumped it casually on top of the pile.
“Sorry. I thought you’d be asleep by now.” Dad smiled and walked right past the pile of letters and threw himself on the coach. “And what on earth is that?” He looked down into one of the almost-melted floating disasters and frowned.
“Don’t ask,” I said, forcing a smile. I looked at Mom and felt a tightening in my chest. I had been that close to tell her everything. I felt both relieved and not relieved at the same time. Maybe I should just put myself out there with both Mom and Dad here. I leaned back and looked at Dad. Dad was inspecting the sad floats in boats in the bowl in front of him. He shook his shoulder and started digging in.
“Not bad,” he said, looking at Mom. “Actually, not that bad at all.”
“I know. But this girl,” she turned around and pointed at me, “this little spinach-flaxseed-herb-eating daughter of ours wouldn’t touch it, even if it could save her life, right honey?” She smiled and looked at Dad. “Did you have fun tonight?”
He nodded. “We went for a couple of beers and a burger after the game.” He rubbed his belly and smiled.
“Fries?” Mom said, looking at me with one eye.
“Two,” he said, lying. He leaned over and kissed her softly on her lips.
“Frank,” she said with a sigh, returning his kiss. She leaned against him and closed her eyes.
Dad took another big, wiggly bite and looked at Mom. “Have you been crying, Abby?” He turned and looked at me. “You too? What have you girls been up to?” he said, teasing.
“Nothing. We have... um... we, we just watched Sleepless in Seattle for the hundred and fifth time. You know how that movie always gets to me. It’s like walking down Memory Lane.” She smiled and looked at me. “Right, hon?”
“Yep,” I added. “We’ve been down Memory Lane all night,” I said, thinking it was not really a lie. We had.
“Memory Lane. Right!” Mom smiled and winked at me.
“Well, it’s time for this old fellow to go down on memory foam lane!” He stood up and held out his hand. “Care to join me, my weird-food eating wife?”
“Yes, I just need to get something from the kitchen.” She stood up and smoothed her stained shirt.
“What? More stuff to eat?” He grabbed his almost empty bowl.
“A bottle of water,” she clarified. She looked at me and nodded toward the pile. “And you, pumpkin, have fun with all the lonely people.”
I smiled and shook my head. Always a Beatles reference up her sleeve.
“Don’t worry. I got it.”
“Good.” She slipped her hand into D
ad’s back pocket. “Goodnight, my favorite daughter,” she said with her back to me.
“Night, night,” I said, heading for the pile.
“Good night, Miss Apple Pants,” Dad yelled from across the hallway. “Good night, my baby.”
I froze at the word “baby.” I so had to tell them.
Miss T
Mom appeared in the door. “Got a minute, sweetie?”
“Uh-huh.” I looked up from my computer. She looked nervous, her eyes darting around the room. Something was not right. “Sure,” I said, already feeling a little nervous myself. Shit! Maybe she had found out? But how? Miss T?
“Please, Ella, please sit down.”
“I am.” I pointed out the obvious. Something was definitely not right.
“Oh.” She forced a smile. “And I keep telling Dad he’s the one who needs glasses.” She walked across the room and sat down next to me on the bed. She was definitely nervous. “Did you, um, like the French toast I made for you yesterday?” she said, pulling at her hair.
“Yes,” I lied.
Mom had gotten up early the morning after the floating disasters, and my disastrous attempt to tell her everything. The whole house was oozing with butter when I woke up, and I almost puked right then and there, at the kitchen table. I excused myself to go to my room, assuring Mom that I was okay. “I’m just a little tired,” I explained to her when she had suggested that we should call Dr. Kjos’ office and make an appointment. I lied and told her I was feeling much better and that it was just a bug. Technically, I wasn’t lying. It was a bug; a tiny little baby bug. “I’ll eat it later,” I said. Another lie. Of course, I had tossed it straight into the trash can, hiding it under a piece of paper towel. I could still smell the butter in the air.
“Good,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I’m happy you liked them. You don’t think they were too cinnamon-ish? Is that even a word?” She looked at me and forced another smiled, and this time I couldn’t help noticing how her upper lip was quivering. Something was definitely wrong. She knows. She found the pregnancy test in the bottom of my closet, and saw the two blue lines, speaking louder than words. Her teenage daughter was knocked up. In every language!
“Enough of the French toast already. What is it?” I asked, still hoping it was about something else, something less about me. Maybe Dad had lost his job. Again.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, gently shaking her head. “I just found out, and I still haven’t processed it myself, but, but...” She stopped and looked at me with big tears forming in her eyes.
“Mom, come on already, you look like someone died or something.” I teased, suddenly realizing that maybe this wasn’t about me. Maybe someone had died. “Mom?” I held my breath.
Slowly, she nodded and reached for my hands.
For a brief moment, my blood turned cold, and a million thoughts ran through my head. I imagined Grandma sipping sweet bitter lemonade on a warm Connecticut summer day, saying, “Life doesn’t get any better than this.” Oh God, please not Grandma. Not my Grandma. Not yet.
“Grandma?” I managed to whisper. I looked at Mom. Tears ran down her cheeks, making her face all wet. She wiped off a few and shook her head.
“God no, not Mom,” she said, covering her mouth. “You know Grandma; she’ll live to be a hundred.” She looked at me and smiled through a rain of tears.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Grandma was still here, sipping lemonade and smiling gently at me. Suddenly, I got an instant urge to put my arms around her and squeeze her tiny body. How I missed the smell of her; the smell of homemade cooking and coconut oil lotion, her favorite. I opened my eyes again and looked at Mom. She was wiping her nose with a tissue, taking deep breaths.
“Some lawyer called from an office downtown, and I don’t know how to say this to you. But Miss T, um, died two days ago.” She paused to blow her nose. Without looking at me, she handed me a Kleenex. “And all this time, we thought she was in Austin with her sister, but she never made it.”
“She died? Miss T died? Just like that?” Miss T is dead?
Mom nodded. “Just like that, I’m afraid.”
All of a sudden, it felt as if the room was spinning around me, and I couldn’t breathe. I looked up at the light in the ceiling and had a sudden flashback to the airtight Chevron restroom, sitting on the toilet, blowing in a brown paper bag, Miss T holding my hand. How could she be dead? How could she be gone? I mean, she was just here, standing in between the big oak trees, waving goodbye, saying, “No time like the present.”
Mom pulled my hair away from my face. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear was she was saying. It was like I was being sucked into the mattress.
“What?” I think I said, still going deeper and deeper.
Mom grabbed on to my arm, and somehow she managed to drag me up to breathing level.
“You okay, honey?” she whispered.
“No,” I cried, shaking my head. I wasn’t. I was suffocating. How can she be dead?
“Come here.” She pulled me into a hug, and we sat like that for a long time before she explained. “She was in a terrible accident on 405, right south of Bellevue. The very same morning she was going to the airport to see her sister.”
“In her Porsche?” I wiped my nose on my sleeve and looked up at her.
She shook her head. “No. When I asked her if I should take her there, she said she had made other arrangements. It was a red-eye flight. She was...” Mom stopped to clear her throat. “She was in a cab going way too fast when they got hit by a big SUV. The cabdriver survived with just a few scratches, but she ... she died before the paramedics even got there. Oh,” she sobbed, “what a way to go. Poor Miss T,” she whispered into my hair.
I imagined Miss T getting into the cab wearing her going-on-an-airplane look, all matchy-matchy, probably enlightening the cab driver with how she had only recently started driving again. “Not since Eisenhower,” she would have added. Would she have gotten into the backseat? The front seat? And would she have refused to put on the seatbelt? Would she? I looked up at Mom. “Did she wear a seatbelt?” I held my breath as I waited for the answer.
She nodded like she was expecting me to ask. “She, um, I, um, she...” She hesitated. “Yes, I mean no, she wasn’t wearing it. She was sitting in the front seat, but still she had simply refused to, the cabdriver had explained to the police afterwards.”
“But I told her so many times,” I stuttered.
Every single time we had gone somewhere, I argued with her about it. The last time, I had told her that someday it would kill her. And now it had. I guess she was right about one thing: at her age almost, everything could kill her. But that was all just silly talk and theoretical speaking. I never imagined that she would actually get herself killed, in a cab, on the way to the airport. This wasn’t happening.
“Oh Mom, she can’t be. She can’t be.” I buried my head in all of Mom.
“I know you told her. Many times. I know. I know.” She kissed the top of my head. “Come here.” Gently, she wiped my face with her scarf. “Ella, I know it’s heartbreaking and tragic and everything, but we have to remember that she was an old lady, and at least she died on the spot. There was no prolonged pain, no lying in some anonymous hospital or, even worse, in a nursing home for years and years just waiting in line to die. You know how she dreaded that.”
I nodded. She had told me at least a thousand times. “Now don’t you leave me all alone and all dried up in some home for old people just waiting to die.” She sneered at the words “old people” like she was definitely not one of them (she never did give away her exact age, not even in the tiniest whisper). She always said it was the worst thing she could ever imagine. “Nah, I would prefer to go out with a bang. I would probably jump from the top of my roof, if I knew I was going to some kind of home. If I could make all the way it up there, that is,” she had said, laughing really hard. “But you would come visit me if it did happen, right, Miss C?” she
had asked. And I had assured her that I would be there every single day, bringing smoking-hot cookies straight from the oven. “Well, that’s what they all say to begin with,” she had said with a blank stare. But I had promised her, and I would have, too. But now she was gone forever. She had died in the front seat of a cab on 405 of all places, and there would never be another “knock knock” on my window late in the evening. There would be no more late-evening rides, gazing at Mount Rainer on the horizon, no more eating shortbread cookies in my bed, no more late night sneaking around in our PJs, no more listening to Miss T reading out loud. No more little Miss T. Period. And even though she was old, as Mom had pointed out, and even though she had definitely gone out with a “bang!” as she would have preferred, still, it felt as if my heart was breaking into a million pieces. I looked up at Mom.
“But we just started to get to know her. I mean, I just started to, to, to...” I couldn’t say it. The words would hurt too much.
“Love her?” she whispered, nodding like she knew how hard it was for me to say it out loud.
“Uh-huh,” I sobbed as I felt the words stabbing me in the million pieces of my heart.
“I know, baby. Me, too. She was quite the character. Remember the first time she came to the house?” She looked down at me and smiled.
I nodded. How could I not? She was the tiniest little peculiar person I had ever laid my eyes on and standing next to a huge pitchfork sure hadn’t made her appear any taller. “She sure was something, Mom.” I sat up next to her and wiped my nose.
“She was! And do you remember when she couldn’t reach for her keys, and she kept jumping for them?”
Again, I nodded. We were in the hallway saying goodbye when suddenly Mom had insisted that I walk Miss T home. “It’s late and your eyes are tired, you just said,” Mom had argued. “From reading,” Miss T had clarified, rolling her tired eyes at me. But Mom had made it very clear, while handing me my Abercrombie & Fitch poncho, that is was non-negotiable; she was being escorted home. The end.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 31