Much Ado About Mother

by Bonaduce, Celia

  “It doesn’t help the community’s arbitrator if his wife goes tripping over tree roots, proving it’s dangerous,” Virginia said, feeling just a touch guilty. She didn’t actually believe it was Suzanna’s fault.

  A wet sponge slapped Virginia in the face.

  Virginia sucked in her breath. Had her own daughter slapped her with a sponge? Suzanna stared at her mother in horror. Lizzy was squealing and clapping her hands.

  “Yay, me!” Lizzy said, patting her chest.

  Suzanna stared at her soggy mother, then turned to Lizzy.

  “Good girl,” Suzanna said to Lizzy, and all three started laughing and clapping.

  After Lizzy was put to bed, Suzanna and her mother sat at the kitchen table, sharing a tea Suzanna had created, a blend of chamomile, valerian root, and cornflowers. She had worked long and hard to come up with a tea that would put you naturally to sleep. This was as close as she’d come. As Suzanna said, “It’s soothing, but it ain’t NyQuil.”

  Suzanna called the tea Twilight since it made you sleep like the undead.

  Eric strode by the kitchen, stopping in the doorway.

  “Hey, guys, I’m going down to the Nook to get more books for Bernard’s Little Library,” he said.

  Virginia jumped up and said, “I have a few paperbacks I just finished. Do you want them?”

  Before Eric could answer, Virginia was out of the room. She stayed down the hall, trying not to listen in on the conversation in the kitchen.

  “How long are you going to punish me?” Suzanna asked.

  “I’m not punishing you,” Eric said. “You’ve just made things harder around here. I’m sorry if I’m not jumping around saying it’s OK, because it’s not.”

  Virginia scooped up the books as fast as she could and headed back down the hall.

  “Eric, I wasn’t—” Suzanna stopped when her mother entered the room.

  Virginia briskly plunked the books down in Eric’s hands. “Here you are,” she said.

  Virginia wasn’t sure if stopping this conversation was a good idea or not, but she went with her instinct.

  Eric kissed one then the other on their cheeks and headed downstairs.

  “I don’t know what to say to him,” Suzanna said, absently touching the spot on her cheek. “I . . . I feel bad about everything.”

  Virginia went to the kitchen counter and got out the cookie jar. Soothing tea was one thing, but this conversation required the big guns: homemade peanut butter cookies.

  “I mean, Eric is wrong to accuse me of choosing sides,” Suzanna said.

  “I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Virginia countered carefully. “I think he just meant it’s harder to give the appearance of neutrality when one side can use damaging photos of the supposedly neutral arbitrator’s wife to their advantage.”

  “That isn’t my fault,” Suzanna said.

  “But . . . ,” Virginia offered.

  “But,” Suzanna said, wiping away a tear. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If I hadn’t been in the courtyard, I wouldn’t have tripped, and Mr. Clancy couldn’t have taken that picture of me.”

  Virginia sat up straight.

  “What makes you think it was Mr. Clancy who took the photo?”

  “Who else?” Suzanna sniffled.

  “Well, he’s not alone in this. There are other merchants who think the tree is a hazard.”

  “Mother! Who cares? Who cares who took the stupid picture?”

  I care.

  Virginia focused on the crisis at hand.

  “You were saying you shouldn’t have been at the courtyard,” Virginia said and took a wild guess. “Why not?”

  Virginia was caught off guard as Suzanna let out a sob and put her head on the table.

  “Dear!” Virginia said, scooting her chair closer to her daughter. “Do you want to tell me what is going on?”

  “Remember when I was taking dance lessons?” Suzanna asked. “Well, I know I made it sound like I just wanted some exercise . . . but I . . . I was in a weird place. I was chasing my dance instructor all over the city. I threw myself at him. It was pitiful.”

  “I don’t understand,” Virginia said, and then suddenly she did. “Was this dance instructor Rio?”

  Suzanna gulped and nodded.

  “When he showed up at the tea shop after being gone for years, I just . . . I just . . . I don’t know. I know I’m the luckiest woman in the world and I must seem completely ungrateful, but part of me has felt like . . . like I’m asleep. Just seeing Rio made me feel awake again. God! I sound like something out of a bad fairy tale.”

  Virginia got up and poured more tea, not because she wanted any but because she knew she had to choose her words carefully and she needed time to think.

  “OK, we’re going to have to take off the mother-daughter suits right now, because I’m going to tell you something you probably don’t want to hear from your mother.”

  “If you’re going to tell me you had an affair, you’re right,” Suzanna said, blowing her nose. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Oh, honey, I worked at a university surrounded by brilliant men. I would have had to have been dead not to want to take those flirtations further.”

  “How much of this do I have to listen to, Mom? I really don’t want to know that.”

  Virginia put her hand on Suzanna’s arm and squeezed.

  “I hope mothers stop reading fairy tales to their little girls,” Virginia said. “Because even the good ones are bad for you. You think once you get married to the love of your life, you’ll never be attracted to another man as long as you live. That’s just not true.”

  “I wish it were true,” Suzanna said, biting into a cookie. She didn’t even think about her skinny jeans.

  “Don’t we all!” Virginia said, sitting back in her chair. “I was young, but I already had Erinn, when your father and I started working at the university. I was overwhelmed with being a teacher, being a wife and mother, remodeling that old barn so we’d have a place to live. On top of that, I felt invisible to the men of the world. Then, one day I was making copies in the Xerox room and this handsome professor of visual arts came in. He bent me over the copier and kissed me!”

  Suzanna’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not,” Virginia said, sounding giddy. “It was crazy. He finally let me up and we both went on making copies of our assignments as if nothing had happened.”

  “Do I want to know the rest?”

  “That was it. That’s the whole story. But I felt great afterward! I felt beautiful and mysterious! When I went home that night, I looked over at your father, who was feeding your sister some macaroni and cheese. I’ll never forget it: a normal family, a father, a daughter, macaroni and cheese, and a mother who just got kissed in the Xerox room. And I knew that it was OK to keep a part of myself to myself.”

  “Please, Mom, I feel like I’m going to pass out. . . .”

  “Yes, well, everything took a little while to figure out,” Virginia said, looking up at Suzanna, who was looking very pale. “I decided that I could have one affair, in my whole married life. So what I had to decide every time I was attracted to a man was: Is this the one? Is this the one?”

  Virginia looked Suzanna in the eye. Woman to woman, not mother to daughter.

  “Do you need another cookie?” Virginia asked.

  Suzanna shook her head.

  “And nobody was just right. In all honesty, it took less time deciding to marry your father than it did deciding if I was going to sleep with this man or that man.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Suzanna said.

  “Well, I might have saved you some pain—or at least some guilt—if we’d had it earlier. The progression was always something like this: I would meet a man I found attractive. Every so often, the feeling would be mutual and I would find myself thinking, Maybe he’s the one. It was so exciting! I would find myself comparing your
father to him and thinking, Oh, if Martin were only a little more like this . . . or a little more like that. As I was deciding if this was going to be my grand affair, I would get to know the man a little better and, after a while, I would think, Oh, if only he could be a little more like Martin, he’d be perfect. Then, of course, I knew he wasn’t the one.”

  “Mom,” Suzanna said. “That’s nuts.”

  “Oh, it gets nuttier,” Virginia said, stirring her tea. “After a while, I realized that I could never have an affair with someone I knew well, since he’d never measure up to your father, so I changed the rules and decided I’d have to have an affair with a complete stranger.”

  Suzanna gasped so loudly that Virginia looked up.

  “Should I stop?” Virginia asked.

  Suzanna seemed incapable of speech. She shook her head again.

  “I won’t go into the gory details,” Virginia said.

  “Thank God!” Suzanna said, finally pushing out the words.

  “But I finally thought I’d found the guy. He was foreign. I couldn’t understand a word he said, so it wasn’t any of the Romance languages. But as we were leaving the bar—did I mention we were at a bar? Anyway, as I was leaving the bar, I realized that I could never sleep with a man who would knowingly have sex with a married woman. I couldn’t believe this man would enable me to cheat on your father! I was outraged! So I just turned away and went back into the bar alone. He probably thought American women are very strange.”

  “Is that the end?” Suzanna asked.

  “Yes. I kept my option open, because just knowing I had one made me feel . . . just a little bit . . . free. I always felt I had a Get Out of Jail Free card. Just in case. And you know what?”

  “Apparently, I don’t know anything!”

  “When your father died, I was really glad I’d never used it.”

  “I’m not sure what to make of all this.”

  “Make of it what you will.” Virginia took another sip of tea, kissed Suzanna on the head, and went to bed.

  The following morning, Virginia was up early, buckling Lizzy into the Baby Jogger. She didn’t really want to be in the kitchen when Suzanna appeared. That woman-to-woman chat seemed a little more embarrassing in the light of day. Besides, Virginia had something she needed to do. She stopped at Piquant’s dog bed.

  “Do you want to go out?” Virginia whispered, but was given the Chihuahua stink eye, so she left him to sleep.

  What kind of dog didn’t always want to go out?

  She took the few steps to Mr. Clancy’s Courtyard slowly. She wanted to know, needed to know, if Mr. Clancy had taken the damning photo of Suzanna. She could understand his take on the tree and felt she had been more than fair in hearing him out. But all that open-mindedness would come to a screeching halt if she found out he was behind that flyer. She found this bothered her more than she thought it would. She had grown very fond of Mr. Clancy.

  She noticed Donell setting up his sage stand with one hand and talking on his cell phone with the other, business as usual. He waved absently and turned his back to her. Virginia was perplexed. Donell had become increasingly standoffish. Was he upset that the tree situation seemed to be escalating? That would be odd, since more and more people were stopping by and checking out the tree for themselves. That had to be good for business. Hadn’t she mentioned that to him before? Donell had his own way about him, that was for certain.

  Virginia took one more step toward the courtyard and then stopped dead in her tracks. She turned back to Donell and waited for him to get off the phone. When he noticed her, he pointed to the phone, signaling that he was on it.

  “I can see that.” Virginia smiled. “I’ll wait.”

  Donell finally rang off.

  “You looking for some sage?” Donell asked, pulling a bundle out of a box. “Always got sage for a pretty lady.”

  “Oh, thanks, Donell,” Virginia said. “But I was wondering if I could use your phone for a minute. Mine is out of battery.”

  “Why, sure,” Donell said, and handed over the phone. “It’s real easy to use.”

  “Oh, I know,” Virginia said as she stepped out of his reach. “It’s the same one I use.”

  She turned her back to him and quickly selected the icon for Photos. She looked up and made sure Donell was busy setting up his table. She quickly flipped through the photos and there it was: a picture of Suzanna taking a tumble in the courtyard.

  Virginia looked up just as Donell spun around. Guilt was written all over his face.

  “Well, lovely lady, you said the tree was good for business,” Donell said, almost, but not quite, apologetically.

  Mr. Clancy came out of his studio in the courtyard and waved.

  “Does Mr. Clancy know you put up those flyers?” Virginia asked.

  “No, ma’am. I’m not sure if he would like the idea of causing trouble like that.”

  “But you do?”

  “Just being a good capitalist!”

  Virginia looked at him sternly, deleted the photo, and gave Donell back his phone.

  “I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Virginia said.

  Donell shrugged. Virginia jogged over to Mr. Clancy.

  “Good morning, Virginia.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Clancy.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and headed off for her jog with Lizzy. Lizzy put her fists in the air and let out a whoop.

  “Faster, Grammy!” With a huge grin on her face, Virginia ran as fast as she could.

  CHAPTER 22

  SUZANNA

  Suzanna was beside herself. First Lizzy had stopped eating kale and now she was off boiled beets.

  “What child in her right mind would eat a boiled beet?” Virginia asked.

  “It’s good for her,” Suzanna said.

  “So are sweet potatoes. You were probably too small to remember, but I used to make you a sweet potato, carrot, and yogurt thing that you just loved.”

  “Did it have raisins in it?” Suzanna said, instantly remembering. “You called it Sweet Potato Surprise or something like that?”

  “That’s the one.” Virginia beamed. “You thought I called it ‘Surprise’ because of the raisins, but it was actually because I got you to eat it—you were so fussy! Your father would come into the dining room and you’d be covered in sweet potato. You and I would both throw up our hands and yell—”

  “Surprise,” Suzanna said.

  “Now, if you had to eat boiled beets or my Sweet Potato Surprise, which would you choose?”

  When Virginia had asked them over dinner (while Lizzy ate her Sweet Potato Surprise) how Suzanna and Eric would feel about hosting a party, Suzanna could only gape at her. The idea behind the party was that Dymphna needed help preparing all that Angora fur so it could be turned into yarn.

  “You don’t usually shear all of your rabbits at the same time,” Virginia said.

  “And whose fault is that?” Suzanna asked.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Eric said. “It is what it is.”

  Did Eric want to have this party? She was treading lightly ever since that damn flyer of her tripping over the tree root found itself plastered all over the neighborhood.

  “Where would we have this party, Mom?” Suzanna said.

  “In the tearoom?” Virginia asked.

  “I can’t have the tearoom covered in rabbit hair, Mom. What would the health department say?”

  “We don’t have to tell the health department. We can always stop if we get busted.”

  Suzanna winced. She hated when her mother used words like busted. That was not a motherly word.

  “Besides, it’s for the greater good,” Virginia said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the tree. Anyone can help with the rabbit hair.

  “It can be a time of healing for the community,” Virginia continued, clearly playing to Eric, which annoyed Suzanna. “We can put up flyers.”

  “No flyers!” Suzanna said, remembering not only her own handbill debacle, b
ut also her sister’s run-in with Christopher’s ex-wife. “And not in the tearoom.”

  “What about the Nook?” Virginia asked Eric.

  Suzanna gaped anew! Her mother was the one who’d chosen sides, and now to ask Eric to throw his principles to the wind over a bunch of fur?

  “We can’t use the Nook,” he said.

  Suzanna’s mouth dropped open. Her mother had some nerve. Eric had made it clear time and time again that the Nook was a neutral zone!

  “There isn’t room,” Eric continued.

  Suzanna could see the disappointment in her mother’s face and she couldn’t stand it. She shot a pitying look at Eric, who had obviously noticed the same look.

  “But I can fix up the backyard,” Eric said. “This is a great idea, Virginia. It will bring people back together.”

  Eric transformed the backyard into a quaint extension of their commercial space. He sandblasted the brick patio and put out ten assorted tables and chairs, now painted bright colors. He strung twinkly lights from the rooftop to the fence, creating a little canopy of stars. Virginia got into decorating mode and found large baskets to hold the fur. She thought she might spray paint the baskets, but Dymphna nixed that idea—the rabbit hair had to be housed in an organic environment.

  The night of the big event, Eric made a quick adjustment to his decorating scheme. The weather report said a rare and frisky storm was headed their way, so he added a tarp roof. Although perfect weather was business as usual, the random storm that turned up to say hello could be potentially pretty spectacular. But most storms blew over quickly, Eric had said. Suzanna looked at him significantly, but he didn’t seem to understand the subtext.

  Suzanna was distracted, but try as she might, she knew she was not being as helpful as she could be preparing for the big yarn-making extravaganza. Eric’s parents Red and Wanda, true to their threat, swooped in to take Lizzy on an overnight to Disneyland. Suzanna had never been separated from her daughter for more than a few hours, and usually her own mother was watching the toddler if she wasn’t. But Eric continued to think it was a great idea for his parents to have some bonding time, and Suzanna thought it would be an olive branch, so she said yes. As the Coopers drove away to the Happiest Place on Earth, Suzanna felt as if she were living in the Most Panicked Place on Earth. She was grateful for the massive preparations ahead of her.