“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Mom whispered into the circle of love. I couldn’t tell whether this was baby as in “honey” or baby as in “my baby girl”, so I didn’t say anything.
“Me too,” Dad said and squeezed all the arms he was holding on to. I guess it was that kind of baby.
Mom was the first one to finally let go. “My right arm and left foot just died,” she said with a giggle, jumping on one foot all the way to the dining table. She sat down by the table and tapped on her hand.
“Mine, too,” Dad said, chuckling as he jumped on his left foot toward Mom. He sat down next to her and leaned over and kissed her gently on her mouth. “I guess we do make a perfect match, huh?”
“Oh, don’t get me started again.” She pulled him closer and kissed him back.
Dad leaned all the way back in his chair, trying to reach for the wine bottle on the counter. “Al-most the-re,” he said with a strenuous voice. He sat up and rubbed his hair. “Any sleeping feet?” he pointed at my feet, now standing all by themselves in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“Nope. See? Both feet working.” I wiggled my toes and smiled at him. I grabbed the bottle and one of the heirloom glasses from the counter and walked over and poured Mom the rest. “Here, the last drops of liquid love.” I said to her back.
“Thank you, my little keeper.” She looked up at me and smiled with tears in her eyes.
“Empty?” Dad asked, looking at the bottle behind Mom’s back. She nodded and offered him her glass.
“Yes, Mister Magoo. Want some?”
“Nah,” he said, rubbing his belly, “I say we get drunk on noodles.” He looked at me and pointed in the direction of the white bags standing on the counter only a couple of feet away.
“Still sleeping feet? Mom? Dad?”
They both nodded and looked at each other, giggling like a couple of newlyweds.
“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes. I reached for the bags and emptied them of different boxes and sauces. I set them on the table within arm’s-length of everyone. “Here! Last man standing.” I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Dad and grabbed my first soaking noodle. “This is pure art, if you ask me.” I opened my mouth and popped the noodle, helicopter style, and smiled.
Mom looked up from over her box. “You feel fine? A little hungry again, I see.”
I nodded and smiled. “Actually, I am beyond starving.”
“Good for you. Good for you,” Dad said with his mouth full of noodles. Mom, on the other hand, had suddenly stopped eating altogether. She just stared at me with her chopsticks stuck between her lips. Slowly, she pulled the sticks from her mouth.
“A keeper?” she whispered, still staring right at me. As I nodded, I could already feel all my blood rushing straight to my face. I shifted in my seat and looked at Dad. He was busy looking into the almost-empty box, fishing for a drowned noodle or two. He looked up.
“What?” he said, looking at the both of us. “Too fast? Too much? Too loud? What?”
Mom shook her head and smiled. “Nothing. It’s just been a very long and exhausting day. Eat up, big guy! I think we could all use some extra calories today,” she said, still looking at me.
Dad nodded and reached for a new box. “Ah, coconut shrimp,” he said, smelling the box from the outside.
Mom shook her head again and smiled, still looking at me like she was watching my every move. I looked down and tried to grab another noodle, but it kept slipping right out of my hands. I looked up at Mom, who’d been watching my hands too. “It’s okay,” she mouthed, nodding her head slightly. “I love you,” she added, now with big tears welling up in her eyes.
“Me too,” I mouthed back, trying to hold back my own tears—not exactly sure whether it was happy tears, sad tears, scared-to-shit-tears, or all of the above. Either way, it was amazing how they kept surfacing again and again and again. I mean, how could there be any more tears left in me? I took a deep breath and reached for a fork since I was in no condition to fight both noodles and tears at the same time.
“Ha!” Dad pointed at my fork like it was something nasty. “Already throwing in the towel!?”
“And?” I talked back. “Sticks are stupid, anyway.”
“Ah, you two. Not again,” Dad said with a grin on his face. “I say enough crying for one evening. It’s too much for this old man’s heart.” He pointed at his heart with his soya-covered sticks.
Mom wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her Woodstock dress. She looked at me and nodded. “Dad’s right; there have been enough tears for tonight.” She leaned over and touched my face. “Enough tears and surprises for tonight,” she said, clearly telling me to wait.
I nodded, feeling both relieved and anxious. It meant I was off the hook for tonight, but it also meant that I had to wait; wait and worry, worry and wait.
“So, I guess your parents aren’t that perfect after all.” Dad set the box down on the table and looked at me with a silly smile.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” I said, trying hard not to cry. “You never were!”
Heart-shaped PB&J sandwiches
“I wish Miss T were here with us.”
“I know. Me too,” Mom said, sadness lacing her voice.
We were in my room, drinking chamomile tea and eating hot cookies straight from the oven, just as we had done the first time we had seen her.
“In Miss T’s honor.” Mom blew on the cookie before she took a big bite.
“In her honor,” I echoed, taking an even bigger bite.
Dad had just headed upstairs to get ready for bed, while we were getting ready for what appeared to be one of our last Frederick and Martha nights. When I had dumped the last bundle of letters on the floor, we were faced with the sad but inevitable truth: the letters were slowly thinning out—almost at the same pace as the leaves were falling to the ground.
The mere thought that we were running out of letters was downright scary, especially with Miss T not being here anymore, and with me being officially pregnant (at least that Mom was aware of). Indulging in someone else’s life for a moment or two seemed like a good way to get our minds off what was going on in our own lives.
Mom set down her plate and stopped eating. “It’s not really the same without her.”
“No, it’s not.” I looked at the empty spot between us and felt that instant heaviness in my chest. It was the first time we had brought out the mailbox since Miss T passed, and suddenly it was like every single thing in the room reminded me of her: her spot on the bed, the little Seahawks napkins she had brought for the sugar cookies, the window seat where we had watched her stand in the pouring rain, wearing her curlers and slippers. And, of course, the closet with the Post-it notes. Half the Post-it notes had her name on them now.
“You feel like waiting then?” Mom asked.
I looked at the empty spot and imagined what Miss T would have wanted us to do. I could almost hear her practically forcing us to go on with this journey we had started together. “Come on dear, you have to,” she would have said, using perfect English. I looked at Mom and shook my head. “Nah, she would have hated us if we didn’t.”
“You’re so right. She would,” Mom agreed. She moved to the edge of the bed and poured another cup. “But before we start,” she said, adopting a serious face, “I know it’s not fair to bring this up on a book night, but don’t you think we need to talk about what happened last night?”
I leaned all the way back against the wall and sighed. Of course, we had to talk about last night, but I just couldn’t take yet another night of tears and thoughts and feelings coming at me like 9-mm bullets. Why couldn’t we just go back to the eighties, back to the world of Frederick and Martha, back to the letters of love and comforting words—away from the twenty-first century, away from my world—just for a second? Please!
“Uh-huh. You haven’t said one word about it since. I know it’s been hard with Dad working from home all day, but still...” She paused and looked down at the empty
spot between us. “I’ve been kinda waiting for you to come to me.” She scooted back, next to me. “How did you know?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” I said, looking up at the ceiling, wishing it would swallow me whole.
“Try,” she said with a soft voice, “try to put it into words.”
I closed my eyes and listened to my own breathing. It was actually very easy to put it into words, or more correctly, one all-embracing word; Mom! It was mostly because of her, well, her and Dad. When I had seen them dancing together to the voice of Dylan, I realized I had no other choice. I couldn’t bring a baby into a better, safer, or more loving place than right here—with the three of us. How could I ever deny a new life in a place filled with so much love? I knew it would turn my world upside down, but I also knew I could make it work, not because of some romantic fantasy of the never-ending love of the tree-hugging/group-hugging family, but because of Mom. Mom would be there, and that was a hell of a lot more support than most other teenage moms ever had—even those who actually had a boyfriend on the same continent.
I looked at Mom, as always patiently waiting for me to connect a million stray dots together. Should I tell her all of this? Would she feel that she had somehow forced me to make this decision? “Because I know it’s the right thing to do—the right thing for me to do.” I went with the easy version.
“And you’re sure of this?” She moved even closer and stared into my eyes as if she could see the truth somewhere in there.
I nodded. “But I don’t really feel like talking about it right now. I feel we’ve done nothing but talk, analyze, cry, talk, and cry a little more the last couple of days. Can we please just read the damn letters for now?”
She nodded as she reached over and grabbed a letter from the table. “Baby, I understand,” she said as she placed it between my sweaty hands, “but I just want you to know that I’m very happy for you, and I love you so very much, and I promise I won’t cry tonight.” She looked at me through a veil of tears and smiled. “At least I’ll try not to. Now, let’s read some letters. It better be a Frederick letter,” she whispered.
I nodded. His letters had been Miss T’s favorite ones. “He writes with such poetry,” she had said more than once, always followed by a thorough description of how much he reminded her of Georgie. “Did I ever tell you about the time he proposed to me?” she had said more than once. Of course, we always said no. “Oh my, well sharpen your ears and listen,” she would say with her teacher voice. “It was the most precious and romantic moment in my entire life, and I’m old, you know.”
And that’s how she started the story every single time.
“SEE, GEORGIE WAS STILL in the Air Force back then, and one day he invited me to fly along. At first, I simply refused. You see, I hate flying. The thought of sitting way up there all helpless in the big sky with nowhere to run ... oh my, I get such a weird feeling in my stomach, and I get the sweats and shortness of breath and everything. And I guess I didn’t want him to see me this way. See, we had met only three months earlier. Well, I finally agreed to go on the airplane, but not go in the air. He didn’t try to force me or anything. You know how guys that age can be, but no, not Georgie. He just accepted and said I could watch him land the plane and then board with it on the ground.
“So, there I was. It was freezing cold, and I was wearing a tiny dress, pantyhose, and a scarf around my head to cover my hair, which I had spent the entire afternoon on and which was now all over the place, of course. He arrived just before six, got off the plane and waved at me and held out his hand to gesture ‘five minutes’. After a few more minutes, he suddenly appeared from behind me, wearing a white tuxedo and holding a red rose in his hand.
“He gave me that boyish smile I loved so much and said, ‘Ready for takeoff, I mean, take away?’ His face turned pink and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, but he was so cute.
“Then he said, ‘I hope you’re hungry. My mom has been cooking all day.’ It turned out she’d found it amusing when she heard we were going on a plane ride, on the ground. She volunteered to cook her famous chicken wings, which Georgia said would ‘make us fly anyway.’ He was so good with words, just like Frederick. I looked at his hands; they were shaking. He had the most handsome hands I had ever seen.
“He nodded and smiled at me and said, ‘Mom is the best cook ever, and she makes the best chicken wings north of Texas. I can’t wait for you to meet her. Don’t worry, you will soon.’ This was news to me. I didn’t know what to say. Then Georgie said, ‘Well, enough about Mom. This is about you and me, pretty face. Let’s go almost-flying.’ He grabbed my freezing-cold hand and led me to the plane. After we had dinner, and by the way, he was right about those chicken wings: They were the best. Years later Etta, his Mom, showed me how to make them. You know what the secret ingredient is? Just a touch of cinnamon. Yummy, I tell you. Anyway, after the chicken wings and, you know, kisses here, there, and everywhere...”
Miss T always stopped at this point in the story and looked at Mom and me and rolled her eyes.
In a dramatic, sappy-love-story kind of voice, Mom would say, “Oh, Miss T.”
Miss T would play along, using the same overly affectionate tone. “Oh, Abby.”
And then they would start giggling like a couple of teenage girls.
And I, the actual teenager, would always be the one to say “C’mon already.”
At that point, Mom would announce that it was time for a peewee break, and then the both of them would giggle all the way to the bathrooms; Mom in the upstairs one and Miss T downstairs.
After the whole giggling routine subsided, Miss T would bring on the proposal scene. “Well, all of a sudden he became very pale, like he had to throw up or something, and then he gently grabbed my hand and said, ‘Charlotte Ott,’ that’s my maiden name. It’s from some long-gone ancestors in Holland. Well, he grabbed my hand and said, ‘It’s a good thing we’re not flying after all, because then I wouldn’t be able to go down on one knee.’ And all of a sudden it did feel like we were flying. I got sweaty palms, my stomach turned, my head started spinning, and I almost fainted. But this time around, it was because I was so overwhelmed with happiness looking at this very nervous and very handsome young guy down on one knee. And I said yes without a doubt, not then, and not ever since.”
She always closed her eyes at this point, I guess to continue basking in the moment.
“Wow,” Mom and I would both say in the same key, in sync.
“Wow, indeed,” Miss T would agree with her school teacher voice again. “And that’s why I love Frederick’s letters. He has such a romantic soul—just like Georgie. That very same night he told me he wanted five kids—no more, no less. He said I would make the most wonderful mom in the world. He never stopped saying that, even though it was not in the cards for us. He never stopped believing that eventually one day...”
AND THAT’S HOW SHE would end the story every single time she told it at one of our book nights.
We had decided to still call it book nights even though—only after three months—we had already lost one of the founding mothers, but how I wish Miss T could have been here with us, and how I wish she could have read this particular letter from Frederick, his best so far. She would have simply loved it, and it would definitely have made her cry. Mom and I sure did—even though we had promised each other a night without crying. I cried because it was so full of life, so full of love, but also because it made me think about Mom and Dad and Miss T and Georgie and all the hopes and wishes they had shared about starting a family together ever since he had proposed on the plane on ground level.
Dear Martha (Mom),
I cried all the way to Heathrow, and then from Heathrow on, I cried a little more. Happy and sad tears all mixed together. I felt so sad because I had to leave you and Thomas, my family, behind, and so happy because we are in fact a family, a little trio of love. How can a person fall in love with someone so fast? I can still smel
l him on me, and I can still feel the touch of his little sticky feet on my body. I guess I must have kissed them about a thousand times already. I wake up every morning (at three AM because of jetlag) and I catch myself lying in bed, waiting to hear his little feet running down the hallway. I never imagined I could feel this way. Never imagined that the sound of little feet could make me feel this happy.
I stopped reading and looked at Mom. Did all parents really feel this way about their kid’s smelly little feet?
“I told you,” she said with a tearful voice. “Little feet are the best in the world.” She nodded toward Frederick’s letter lying in my lap. “Go on,” she urged me, looking almost as much in love with Frederick as Miss T had been. I nodded and continued where I had left off.
Four weeks ago, it was just you and me. I’m not saying that wasn’t good enough for me. If we had stayed like that, just the two of us, I would still have felt like the most fortunate man in the world. But this was before I met Thomas, before I fell in love. I had never imagined how loving a child could change my whole world in a single heartbeat. And how can I love you so much, and still have so much love left for this little guy, who just stepped into my life a few weeks ago? I’m doubly blessed, and I guess that’s why I was crying out loud on the plane (the woman sitting next to me all the way across the Atlantic looked more and more concerned as we got closer to Heathrow. Can’t blame her, though). Now I have two to-die-for people in my life, and that feels both wonderful and scary. And right this very moment I can’t help thinking, how can I even stay here in Denmark now? How can I miss one more second of my son growing up? Martha, we have a son. We have a son. We have a son.
I love you.
F.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 35