by Wendy Wax
“What’s wrong, Van?” Chase asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
She couldn’t seem to get past the fact that he’d consulted Deirdre and not her. Or that the only reason she’d gotten what she’d wanted was because he’d already decided to do it. Or that he’d called her Van. If she’d been able to reach it, her hands would be wrapped around Chase Hardin’s neck.
“You know,” she said, biting out the words, trying to hold her anger at a controllable level when everything inside her was dying to spew out. “If anyone had bothered to consult me or include me in the conversation, I wouldn’t have just wasted my time and energy trying to convince you to do something you’d already decided to do.”
She turned to leave, but Deirdre put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “You were dead on, Avery,” Deirdre said. “You know it, I know it, and whether he wants to admit it or not, Chase knows it. Does it really matter who decided first or who consulted whom?”
Avery looked at the mother she’d given up on so long ago and at the man who’d apparently given up on her. “Maybe it shouldn’t,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, insignificant as it might be. “But I’m tired of the insults. Whatever chip Chase has been carrying around on his shoulder, he needs to get rid of it. Now. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve his disdain, but it’s affecting the job and we don’t have time for that.”
She gave them both a nod and prepared to leave.
“Avery, honey,” Deirdre said, reaching out to her. “Don’t . . .”
“Don’t call me honey,” Avery said, shrugging her off. “We don’t know each other well enough for that.” She paused, considering the woman who’d abandoned her to pursue her own dreams, never caring what she did to her daughter’s. “And FYI, I’m not that wild about Art Deco anymore.” It was a lie, but it was the best she could come up with. “A lot about me has changed since you left us. So don’t go thinking you know the first little thing about me.”
Twenty-three
It was the middle of June and the days had grown longer and steadily hotter, the moderate temperatures of May already fading into distant memory. This made their lack of air-conditioning even harder to take. The duct cleaning and rerouting that Chase had scheduled while they waited for new units contributed to the chaos. The only relief from the increasingly oppressive heat was the afternoon rain showers—some of which could be seen moving in off the Gulf and others of which simply sprinkled down without much ado, lasting for ten or fifteen minutes before stopping, like a faucet that had been turned on and then off.
They woke early both by choice and because there were no window coverings to speak of—or doors for that matter. And because there was nothing that even resembled privacy once Chase arrived at seven thirty A.M. and the daily ebb and flow of workmen began.
Maddie would spend today just as she had spent yesterday, bathed in sweat as she sat hunched over a worktable Chase had set up in the empty dining room, polishing the door knobs and hinges that she and Avery had painstakingly removed from each door. The polishing was tedious and never ending, like pretty much every other task she’d tackled so far; but unlike the re-glazing, it required little concentration. Polishing was far too mindless for someone with so many problems on her mind.
It was seven A.M., the air already hot and heavy. Nicole had left for her morning run. Someone was showering in the bathroom—Maddie assumed it was Deirdre, the only one of them who spent any real time on her appearance. There’d been a few bumps and thumps from Avery’s bedroom directly overhead, but nothing that signaled a full awakening.
Maddie set down her scissors and sorted the grocery coupons, slipping them into the alphabetized holder she kept in the minivan. She spread the articles she’d clipped from the paper in front of her: “How to Find Yourself After You’ve Lost Your Job,” “Mind Over It Doesn’t Matter,” “Male Depression and Its Toll on the Family,” “Winning Outcomes and Positive Visualization.” She slipped several in the envelope she’d already addressed to Steve but wasn’t sure why she persisted in these long-distance motivational attempts.
Every day Madeline debated whether she needed to go back to Atlanta and try to light a fire under Steve personally, but it took everything she had to do what needed to be done here. She couldn’t even imagine taking on Steve and Edna, who protected her son’s right to wallow with the same zeal the U.S. military guarded the gold at Fort Knox.
Thinking she might slip by the gatekeeper with an early call, Madeline dialed the house phone. While it rang, she braced herself for whoever might pick up. As luck, or the lack of it, would have it, her mother-in-law answered.
“Hi, Edna,” Maddie said brightly, channeling the article on favorable outcomes. “It’s great to hear your voice.” She tried to project the positive, but suspected she just sounded loud.
Edna’s hello was very small.
“I’d like to talk to Steve,” Maddie said. “Please put him on.”
“He’s still sleeping,” Edna said. “I’ll tell him you called when he gets up.”
Edna’s voice was low. Maddie pictured her standing guard in front of the master bedroom door or, possibly, the family room couch. “Or maybe you should try again later.”
The articles on the table stared up at her accusingly. “No!” Maddie replied quickly before Edna could hang up. “Maybe you should shake his shoulder until he wakes up.”
Edna gasped with indignation. “Well, I never!”
“But you should,” Maddie said, tired to death of the pretense that Steve was just resting, when in fact he was hiding. “You’re his mother and you need to tell him it’s time to get up and start getting it back together.”
“Hmmmph!” Edna said. “Why don’t you come back here and tell him that yourself? Unless you’re too busy vacationing at that beach house.”
The injustice of it made Maddie’s eyes sting. Her heart felt too large for her chest. She reached for one of the articles she’d clipped with its Every important journey begins with that first step intro and crumpled it into a ball.
“Edna?” Maddie said. “Put him on. Now.”
“I told you, he’s asleep, Melinda!” her mother-in-law replied then thumped down the phone.
Maddie’s tears dried in mid-blink. The hurt, which had lain so heavy, went hot and liquid. She barely recognized the anger coursing through her; it was an emotion she rarely allowed herself. Quickly she hit the speed dial for Andrew’s cell phone. “Hmmm?” Her son’s voice, that misleadingly adult baritone, sounded thick with sleep.
“Andrew, it’s me. Mom.”
There was a long yawn and the rustle of sheets. “Um-hmmm?”
“I need to know what’s going on there. Are you making progress on Grandma’s house?”
Another yawn. The creak of the bed. “I’m sleeping.” He yawned again. “Can you call back later?”
His words grew softer and the phone farther from his mouth.
“Andrew!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare hang up!”
Unlike his grandmother, he listened. “Why can’t we talk later? I . . .”
“Because I need to talk now. And you need to hear me,” Maddie said, her anger building. She was down here fighting to save their lone asset, the one thing that might keep their collective heads above water, and none of them could be bothered to support her, let alone help.
“You call Mrs. Richmond and get the referrals for subcontractors and ask her to pull those comparables on Grandma’s house. And you do it today.” She drew a deep breath, trying to calm down, but her whole body quivered with hurt and anger.
“As soon as the house is ready for the Realtor to list, I want you and Dad to come down and help us finish here.”
“Dad’s not going anywhere. Not if it means getting off the couch.”
Maddie flinched at the disgust and disappointment in her son’s voice, but there could be no more sugarcoating or evading the reality of their situation. She could not be in this alone. “Andrew,” she said.
“Carry your cell phone to your dad and tell him I need to talk to him.”
“He won’t talk. He hardly even moves.” His tone remained sullen with a hint of whine, and she had no idea whether he simply didn’t want to get out of bed or couldn’t face seeing his father that way.
“He doesn’t have to talk at the moment,” Maddie said. “I’m going to do the talking. He just has to listen.” She clung to her anger; if she let the wave of helplessness swamp her, they were lost. “Hurry up, Andrew. This won’t take long.”
She held on while he did as she asked. She could hear the sounds of home melding with the sounds of Bella Flora: Chase and Robby’s trucks pulling up out front. The whine of a wave runner motor out in the pass. Upstairs, the bathroom door slammed. The scramble of feet and a shout of irritation followed. If Robby didn’t get another bathroom up and running soon, blood would be drawn. The only question was whose.
“Mom, he says he can’t talk right now. Grandma says . . .”
“Andrew,” she said, hating that her son had to be put in this position. “Put the phone up to your father’s ear so he can hear me.”
“Here, Dad,” Andrew said. An unintelligible murmur from Steve followed. And then she heard him breathing.
Maddie hung on to her resolve. Steve didn’t need any more pity, and he certainly didn’t need even one more second of enabling. “Steve,” she said clearly and forcefully. “We can’t afford for you to lie around feeling sorry for yourself anymore.”
There was no response.
“I get that a horrible thing has happened. I know you feel guilty about all those losses and that not having a job has thrown you. But you have to get up and help.” She paused, concentrating on not letting her voice break. Crying would be pointless; if ever there was a time for tough love, it was now. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes.” That was it. Nothing else.
“You need to get up off that couch and get back in our life,” she said. “We need you.”
The breathing stopped for a second; there was the slightest hitch before it resumed, but he didn’t speak. She had no doubt Edna was hovering protectively nearby. The image of their son being forced to crouch next to his father, holding the phone in place, summoned back the anger that she needed.
“You know what?” she said, no longer weighing each word before she uttered it. “The man I married was not a quitter. He was not someone who would abandon his wife and children in an emergency.” She drew a breath, forcing herself to continue, giving free rein to her hurt and anger so that there could be no doubt in his mind that she meant what she said.
“And in case you need something to think about, you can think about what I’ve been doing down here. I’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor and fighting complete strangers for bathroom time in the only bathroom that works. I’ve worked ten-hour days scrubbing and cleaning a seven-thousand-square-foot home that hasn’t had a two-legged resident or a lick of attention in years. I’ve been on scaffolding re-glazing windows and removing doors and hardware and polishing them until my hands are numb. I’ve been pinching our pennies so tightly that Abraham Lincoln’s face is imprinted on my fingers.”
There was no response, but she could feel him listening. His breathing sounded labored in her ear.
“And you know what the worst part is?” Emotion clogged her throat and turned her voice ragged. “I sat alone at the doctor’s office with our pregnant daughter who wouldn’t even let me go in with her and insists on believing that Daniel Deranian is going to show up here and carry her off to happily-ever-after land.” She swallowed again, but her throat burned with all the words that spewed out. “She barely talks to me anymore because I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”
She sat for a moment staring out the window through the sheen of tears, gathering herself, waiting once more for a response that never came.
“I love you,” she said, a new resolve growing inside her. “And I love the life we’ve shared. I’ve always assumed we’d be together until the end. But you need to get your shit together now and help our family get back on its feet. I’ll expect you down here ready to help put the finishing touches on Bella Flora by early August. Or . . .” She barely hesitated as the ultimate ultimatum formed on her lips. “Or I’m going to file for divorce.”
Both of them stopped breathing then as they absorbed the threat. But still he said nothing. Even in her shock at what she’d said, she recognized that the threat could not be an idle one. Quietly she hung up the phone.
Maddie’s hands shook as she made a fresh pot of coffee, refilled the sugar bowl, and set out a new carton of nondairy creamer. The kitchen began to fill up with coffee seekers—first Chase and Robby, then Avery. Deirdre came down dressed and made-up and settled at the table with the morning crossword puzzle. Nicole returned from her run.
Normally, Madeline enjoyed everyone congregating around the coffeepot before the workday began, but she still felt raw and uncertain in the wake of her conversation with Steve. “Please, God,” she murmured to herself as she set out a bowl of fruit. “Help him get it together. Don’t let me have to carry out my threat.”
Kyra was the last one down. Ignoring Maddie, she set her video camera on the table then went into the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice. Maddie pushed the fruit bowl, which she kept stocked, toward her daughter, but Kyra ignored that, too.
“How’d you sleep, Ky?” In the wake of the ob-gyn visit and the whole YouTube debacle, Kyra had not been overtly nasty but maintained just enough emotional distance to let Maddie know she’d screwed up.
Kyra spent a good bit of time surfing the Internet architectural salvage sites when some knob or pull or another needed to be matched, and putting together a Bella Flora “sales piece.” Maddie had made it a point not to look for her postings on YouTube, but Avery, who did, said Kyra was honoring their ban on extreme close-ups and had dialed back the sarcasm to an acceptable level.
“Fine.” Kyra moved toward the table where Nicole sipped a morning smoothie.
“Look, Kyra, I’m sorry.” Maddie had lost track of the number of times she’d tried to apologize; she was so tired of being made to always feel in the wrong.
“I said I slept fine.” Kyra kept her back to Maddie, plopping down into a seat next to Avery, who was peeling off the wrapper from a granola bar. “What do you need me to do today?”
“I was thinking we could get more of the doors out of the way if we set up an actual assembly line. Nicole strips,” Avery said, nodding Nicole’s way. “I sand and repair. You apply the finish. We’ve got plenty of sawhorses and we can set up in the shade of the reclinada.” She nodded out the window toward the triple palm to the west of the pool. The doors waiting to be refinished were stacked on the loggia. “I’ve got a mask you can wear and some heavy gloves.”
“Sure,” Kyra said at the same time Maddie said, “No, she can’t.”
Chase sighed as he reached for a granola bar and Maddie waited for him to object to Avery organizing his grunts, but all he said was, “I was hoping someone else had made the doughnut run. These bars are way too small.” He held up the shiny wrapper with pastel script lettering. “And . . . girly.”
“Feel free to eat before you come,” Avery said. “But just for the record, granola bars are not gender specific.” She turned to Madeline. “Why can’t Kyra do the finishing?”
“Yeah, Mom.” Kyra taunted. “Why not?” She threw her an angry look, but it was laced with hurt.
“Because Kyra can’t work with chemicals right now.” Maddie wished she could simply walk out the front door and head out to the beach, which she’d discovered was far more soothing than the “downward dog” she’d practiced in yoga. She’d hoped to keep Kyra’s pregnancy to themselves for at least another few weeks; could she face this conversation on top of the ultimatum she’d launched at Steve? They all stared at her expectantly. Did she have a choice?
“Because she’s pregnant,” Madeline said into the questioning
silence.
“Oh!” Avery and Deirdre exclaimed.
“Wow,” Nicole said.
Chase reached for and unwrapped another granola bar.
“It’s not a good idea to expose the baby to chemicals,” Maddie said. It was her turn to stare at Kyra. “I imagine the doctor must have mentioned that.”
“Congratulations,” Chase said easily. But then he was not only male but the father of sons.
“Yes, I guess congratulations are in order?” Avery looked between Kyra and Maddie.
“Yeah, that’s, um, really great,” Nicole said. “When are you due?”
“In November,” Kyra said, accepting hugs from both of them.
Maddie frowned. Where would they all be at Thanksgiving? Would this chapter be over? The house finished and sold? The money deposited and their debts paid off?
“As you can see by her expression, my mother’s not too excited about the whole idea.” Kyra was going for flip, but her voice wobbled.
“Oh, Kyra that’s not fair. I just think . . .” Maddie began.
They all waited to hear what she thought, but the right words, if they existed, didn’t come. She so didn’t want to introduce Daniel Deranian’s name into the conversation or mention that her daughter was living in the land of denial. “It’s just that she’s not married and she’s so young.” Maddie was no longer sure who she was trying to convince. “And she has no idea what she’s in for.”
Chase snorted. “No one ever does.”
“No,” Deirdre agreed. “It can be so overwhelming. I was twenty-one when I got married and twenty-two when Avery was born. I wasn’t ready for . . . any of it.”
Avery’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t realize there was an ‘optional’ clause in the parenting contract,” she said. “But Deirdre always did know how to work the fine print.”