by Claire Cook
The tough part was we’d never had a chance to say good-bye to him. Not even my mother. They’d been inseparable for over fifty years, raised four kids together, never spent more than a night or two away from each other. How do you move on from that? But, clearly, my mother had. She was the one with the date tonight.
Instead of the usual right, I took a left at the bottom of Wildwater and started winding up and down the newer developments off High Street. I’d lived here for years without checking out any of these streets. When I was working, I got in my car, drove to work, drove home, and pulled my car into the garage. If I had shopping to do, I’d do it on the way home, or get back in the car and drive to the store. It would never have occurred to me to wander around on a Saturday night by myself. If I didn’t have a date, I would have made plans with a friend, or stayed in.
It was still light out, and the streets of Marshbury were as safe as any can be in this crazy world. I’d taken the extra precaution of bringing my cell phone with me. I stayed on the sidewalks when they were available, and when they weren’t, I made sure I was facing the traffic, just in case I needed to jump out of the way of some nutty driver. I really liked this solitary wandering. It was a nice balance to the teamwork of our morning walks, where every little twist and turn was a group decision.
I passed Tess’s house on the way to mine. I looked up at the second-floor windows, imagining Hannah safe and sound in her own room. I’d definitely say something to Tess if I saw her sneaking out again.
I spent the rest of the evening flipping through a book Rosie had loaned me about tussie-mussies, or Victorian speaking bouquets. Apparently the Victorians exchanged symbolic flower arrangements instead of letters, a way of subtly and gracefully expressing one’s repressed feelings. Oh, those daring Victorians.
I wondered if, back in the day, Michael might have sent me a dark and dreary breakup bouquet, which actually would have been a step up from just disappearing. Then I could have wandered my cutting garden in my long dress and button-up boots, shears in hand, carefully considering each bloom, and poking stem after stem through a hand-crocheted lace doily as I created my tussie-mussie answer.
* * *
TUSSIE-MUSSIE FUCKIE-YOUIE BOUQUET
geranium = you are childish
rosemary = remembrance
thyme = courage
sunflower = pride
ginger = strength
anemone = forsaken
harebell = grief
marigold = despair
dill = lust
candytuft = indifference
yellow carnation = rejection
meadow saffron = my best days fled
bittersweet = truth
dark crimson rose = mourning
ice plant = your appearance freezes my heart
* * *
Day 21
10,556 steps
“ISN’T THIS THE MOST DIVINE LAVENDER?” MY MOTHER SAID as she greeted Kent Stockton’s bouquet with an early morning sniff.
“Mmm,” I said. Lavender usually meant devotion, but it could also mean luck—Victorians were as cryptic as they were repressed. Either way, I guess it wasn’t a bad first-date message.
I followed her outside and watched her hang our freshly washed sheets and towels on my clothesline. I took a sip of the coffee she’d made for me, even though she only drank tea.
“So, how’d your date go?” I asked. I’d tried to wait up for her, which seemed only fair, since she’d always done it for me, but I conked out sometime right after ten. Must have been all that walking.
My mother took a wooden clothespin out of the little basket. The sheet she was holding flapped in the wind. I grabbed one end and looped it over the line. I held it steady until my mother pinned it down.
“Thanks, honey.” My mother tucked some hair behind her ears. She had earrings on already, panda bears this time. I didn’t quite get this wild animal motif. Maybe she’d been to the zoo lately. “Kent is a delightful man and quite the dancer. We had a grand time.”
I wondered if I’d ever have a grand time with a man who was quite the dancer. Or quite the anything. I walked over to check out my tiny lavender plants. There were only a few stray flowers left, but I could see shoots of new, paler gray-green growth where I’d pinched the spent blooms back. I rubbed my fingers along the leaves and then held them under my nose. The scent was as intoxicating as ever.
“This is a marvelous clothesline,” my mother said. “You’ll have to get me one just like it for Christmas. Though I think I’d prefer one that’s a little bit jazzier, if you can find it.” We both looked up at the beige retractable plastic case Tess had screwed into the side of my house. “Maybe you could find one with a touch of animal print on it?”
At least that meant she wasn’t planning on still being here at Christmas. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll look around for some penguin clothespins, too.” I mean, better on clothespins than on her ears, if you asked me. “Wait, are you allowed to have a clothesline at your complex? It’s actually illegal around here—some kind of community ordinance.”
“We passed a law in Florida not too long ago. The entire state can let it all hang out now.”
“Wow,” I said. “That must be quite the sight.”
My mother grinned. “Well, I have to admit, we’ve gotten a bit competitive at my complex. We’ve all been upgrading our intimates.”
I burst out laughing. “So, that explains it. I thought you’d just turned into a wild woman.”
“Nothing wrong with putting a little spice in your undies,” my mother said. “You should think about it. There’s a woman in my complex who does home lingerie parties. I’ll have one next time you’re down.”
“Great,” I said. “Can’t wait.” I hoped this didn’t mean my mother had been going through my drawers when I was out.
I pinched off a little sprig of lavender and handed it to my mother. “Did you think about Dad last night?” I asked.
My mother held it under her nose and sniffed. “Of course I did, Noreen. I talked about him quite a bit, and Kent talked about his Rosalie.”
“Aww,” I said. “Her name was Rosalie? Rosie must have been named for her—her real name is Rosemary, you know.”
“Of course I know. We talked about our children half the night.”
My mother tucked the lavender behind her ear. Maybe the panda earring would think it was breakfast. She bent down and pulled a damp pillowcase from my laundry basket. “Lavender’s blue,” she sang, “Rosemary’s green….”
I wondered if she was thinking about my father or Rosie’s.
“YES, I’M FINE,” Tess said. “My daughter is grounded again, that’s all. And since she was already grounded for life, let’s hope reincarnation isn’t just a pipe dream. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tess walked up ahead of us on the sidewalk. Rosie rolled her eyes in my direction. “Good time?” she asked.
“Great,” I said. “How ’bout at your end?”
“He’s totally crazy about her,” Rosie said.
“Ditto,” I said. “Oh, and get this, my mother’s definitely not a hootchie mama. Apparently Florida has turned into a right-to-dry state, and everyone at my mother’s senior complex is buying slutty underwear to impress the neighbors.”
“Well, there’s no way I’m sending my father to Florida then,” Rosie said. “We’ll have to come up with something else. Did you hear they’re going bike riding today?”
Tess turned around. “What are you two, new best friends?”
“Sorry,” I said. Rosie walked up ahead and Tess dropped back next to me. “So where did you get my retractable clothesline again? I want to decorate one to surprise my mother. Sort of a bon voyage present when she goes back to Florida.”
“That’s subtle,” Tess said. “We gave our son a new cell phone and a check for the first month’s rent to get him out again the last time he moved home. The hardware store, right on Main Street. You know, you could star
t a nice little side business selling air-drying paraphernalia. Plus, you’d make a real difference in the world. Clothes dryer fires account for over fifteen deaths and four hundred injuries annually.”
“I’m not going to ask how many of them you were personally responsible for,” I said.
Rosie turned around. “No way. If you start any kind of business, I mean, take my lavender, please.”
The last thing I wanted to do was ruin this beautiful day by thinking about what I should or shouldn’t do next. Plus, I still had over seventeen months of full base salary coming to me. We turned left and spread out across our side street.
“Have you heard from Annalisa?” I asked.
“Nothing yet,” Tess said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of white paper. “But here’s what she posted Friday afternoon.”
I showed up at the hospital all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as my grandfather (a squirrel) used to say, but I didn’t get my chemo. A national chemo holiday, you might ask? No, my platelets and hemoglobin were too low for Kool-Aid (or chemo). But they didn’t send me away empty-veined. I got two units of blood instead, and I’m sure I’ll be feeling like Superwoman and leaping tall buildings in no time. I go back for a recheck next week.
The friend who drove me was kind enough to stop by my school. She sat outside while I went into the classroom. I found myself thinking about a student from a few years ago. Tough, tough life. He lost his mother, and not long thereafter his father ran off with a girlfriend and left him with his grandma. This little boy was hurting.
One day he finally got a math concept (converting between hours and fractions of hours, as I remember) he’d been struggling and struggling with, so I praised him up and down, and told him it was a good day, a day to remember.
“It was just one minute,” he said. “What’s the rest of the day gonna do for me?”
“Sometimes you only get one good minute a day,” I said. “You just have to make the most of it.”
So, I made the most of my one good minute today and wrote another note to my precious students.
“Ouch,” I said. “Someone should invent a sunscreen that doesn’t sting your eyes when you cry.”
We were all wiping our eyes with the sleeves of our T-shirts as we walked. “I wish my kids had Annalisa for a teacher,” Rosie said. “Or maybe I don’t. God, I hope she’s going to be okay.”
Tess folded up the paper and put it back in her pocket. “Maybe the e-mail I sent through her care site got lost in cyberspace. If I don’t hear from her by tomorrow or Tuesday, I think I’ll try again. I guess it’s too late for us to bring her with us, but maybe she can come with us next time. And I’d like to at least get those journals in the mail before we leave for Sequim.”
“Do you believe it’s this Thursday?” I said.
“Crack of dawn,” Tess said.
“Ohmigod,” Rosie said. “How am I ever going to get everything done before I leave?”
As soon as I got back from walking, I told my mother I was going over to do some weeding at Rosie’s. She invited herself along, big surprise. We changed into gardening clothes, and my mother followed me down the path.
“This is lovely,” she said. It felt about ten degrees cooler under the dense shade of the trees, and our feet barely made a sound as we walked along the carpet of pine needles.
The path ended, and we stepped into Rosie’s world. Her two sons, unmistakable in their resemblance to Rosie and her dad, even though they both had dark hair instead of red, were running around with a bunch of friends. They were all screaming and shooting one another with squirt guns. Rod and the Supremes were scratching away in the middle of the vegetable garden.
I looked at my mother. “Are you okay with the chickens being loose?”
My mother winked. “I think I’m feeling a bit faint. Kent may well have to rescue me again.”
Rosie poked her head out of the little lavender shed. She brushed some cobwebs from her hair and wiped her hands on her jeans.
She took a little skip toward us and held one hand out to my mother. “I’m so happy to meet you, Mrs. Kelly.”
“Lo,” my mother said. “Call me Lo.”
We followed Rosie inside the shed, and my mother oohed and awed over every little thing. “Lovely,” she said. “Just lovely.”
“More like overwhelming,” Rosie said. “I don’t even know where to start anymore.”
“You girls get out of here,” my mother said, as if we were ten and she was shooing us out to play. “Just tell your father I’m here, Rosie honey, if you don’t mind. We’ll have this little dollhouse in shipshape condition in no time. And after that, we’ve got a nice little bicycle ride planned.”
Rosie made a fist and pulled her elbow down as we walked away. “Yes!” she whispered. “Who cares if your mother buys her underwear at Frederick’s of Hollywood? I totally love her.”
“HEY,” MICHAEL’S VOICE said behind me. “You look great. I didn’t know you wore dresses, Nora.”
I turned around to make sure he was really standing there. He was wearing jeans and an old leather belt with a rusty metal peace sign. His shiny brown hair still didn’t have a single strand of gray, and his eyes were still the color of a chocolate bar. He was shirtless. And flowerless.
“I didn’t hear the doorbell,” I said.
“Your mother saw me coming,” he said.
“That makes one of us,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“I thought you were sick,” I said.
“I’m a fast healer,” he said.
“Must be nice,” I said.
He held out a bottle of white wine. “It’s cold.”
I pushed past him without taking it. “Let’s just get this over with,” I said.
He and my mother clinked glasses. Michael held his glass up in my direction. I ignored him and took a sip instead.
“Thanks for inviting me, Lo,” Michael said. “It was really nice of you.”
“Nobody calls her Lo,” I said. “Ever.”
“Why are you acting like this?” he whispered.
“What?” I whispered. “You actually have the nerve to ask me that?”
“I miss talking to you,” he whispered.
“Good,” I whispered back.
“There’s been lots of stress at work,” he whispered. “I really needed to focus more on the job.”
I just looked at him.
“And I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to stand in the way of a potential someone who could offer you a full-time relationship.”
I still didn’t say anything.
He sighed. “And I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Good-bye, Michael,” I yelled, so loud it hurt my ears. I gave him a little push, and my hand went through him and disappeared into the cold night air.
I sat up in bed. My dream pillow landed in my lap with a plop. I picked it up and lobbed it across my room. “Not helping,” I whispered.
Day 22
10,123 steps
BROCK CLOSED HIS EYES AND LET OUT THREE QUICK PUFFS of air. He opened his eyes again, tilted his chin up, and threw his shoulders back. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to all of you, and make that welcome back if you’ve been here before. My name is Brock…”
“…and I’ll be your Fresh Horizons certified small-group career coach for the next ninety minutes,” most of the class said.
“Before you know it, you won’t even have to show up,” the scruffy guy named Mark said. “We’ll be totally self-sufficient.”
“Ha,” I said.
“My second ex-wife was a ballbuster, too,” he said.
I shuffled the notes in my hand. I’d stayed up late last night, working on my story, and I’d gone over it several times in my head while we walked this morning. Today was my last small-group session until after we got back from Sequim, and I wanted to give it my best shot.
As soon as Brock finished setting up his video ca
mera, I put my hand up.
He looked at me without one iota of anything that could be even loosely interpreted as sexual attraction. “Yes?” he said.
“Can I go first?” I asked.
“Kiss up,” somebody said.
A man walked into the room and stood just inside the doorway. He was freshly shaved, and his hair was perfectly brown, without a strand out of place. Either I was still dreaming, or it was Michael.
“Nice suit,” the messy guy closest to the door said.
“Thanks, man,” Michael said. He sat down beside him.
“Ready?” Brock asked.
I licked my lips and nodded.
Brock pushed a button on the video camera. He lifted one hand over his head and brought it down like the clapper on a movie set. “Go,” he said.
It took a major effort, but I managed to pretend Michael didn’t exist. I looked right at the camera and smiled. “My name is Noreen Kelly,” I said. “I’m good at a lot of things. I’m smart and caring, and I have excellent problem-solving skills. I’m a good leader. My problem has been that I’ve been afraid to take risks, and I sometimes have a hard time figuring out what I want.
“What I do know so far is that I don’t want to be bored anymore. I think I want to do something more cutting edge than traditional, and it has to have an appropriate amount of stretch. Plus I have to feel energy and passion for it. And I also know I want more fun in my life.”