by Erynn Mangum
He laughs. “I can just see that as rule number twenty-one on your list.”
“Actually, it’s twenty-eight. Twenty-one is to avoid toxic substances at all costs.” I grin up at him. “So we’re painting today.”
He smiles at me. “I noticed your clothes. But your hair’s not pulled back. You’ll get paint in it.” He pokes at it in emphasis.
I wave my hands. “Trust me, Ryan. Lexi will make sure I don’t. She’s a stickler about my hair.”
“Good.”
I start up the sidewalk. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome.” He crinkles his eyes at me and walks beside me to the front door.
Lexi opens it before we knock. “Hey, guys.”
“You’re a peeper,” I accuse her. She is decked out in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt that says, “A TRUCKER HONKED AND I FLATTENED HIS CARCASS. ROUTE 66. 1996.” A bright polka-dot bandana covers her hair Aunt Jemima style.
“And proud of it too,” she answers me. “Hi, Ryan,” she croons. “Good to see you again. Thanks so much for doing this. Nate’s been practically hopping he’s so excited.”
Ryan laughs. “I hope I don’t let him down.”
“Honey, the fact that you actually showed up is enough to make his day.” She touches his shoulder as she talks to him. Lexi has always been very touchy-feely.
“He’s out back?” Ryan asks.
“Yeah.”
“Have fun painting,” he tells me. Winks and leaves.
Lexi waits until the back door closes behind him. “He’s a keeper,” she declares.
“You know, Lexi, sometimes I wish you’d just come right out and tell me exactly what you think of people.” I go into her living room, which has been attacked by plastic sheeting.
“I’ll try to do better.” She grins. Almost immediately, the grin is replaced with a frown. “You are not ready to paint.”
I kick off my shoes and spread out my hands. “Yes, I am. Look, I’ve got my old sweats on. Got my shoes off. Set my coffee down.”
“Your hair is not properly protected. You will get paint in your hair and won’t be able to get it out for a week.” She puts her hands on her hips in lecture mode.
“I couldn’t find anything other than my lucky Goofy baseball cap at home.”
She sighs dramatically. “There’s another handkerchief on my bed.”
“Ha! I knew you’d look out for me.”
“What are older sisters for? Go get it so we can start. The boys are already sawing their hearts out.”
I ponder whether or not that would make a good song as I go down the hallway to Lexi’s blue-and-white-checked room and swipe up the purple and silver bandana, tying it gangster style on top of my head, only covering my forehead and the hair above my ears. There’s a huge bouquet of red roses and daisies on her bureau. Aw!
“How’s this, Lex?” I ask, going back into the living room.
She turns to look and rolls her eyes. “More than half your hair is hanging out the back.”
I fluff my hair, which is curling out of control because once again I skipped the hair fixing in favor of sleep. “See, but that adds feminine appeal. You’ve already caught yourself a husband. You don’t need to have appeal.”
She frowns. “I don’t think that was a compliment.”
“Me, neither, actually.”
She picks up one of the heavy-duty cans and swings it around in an odd little dance I think is an attempt to mix the paint. “And I think the kid outside with my husband would find you appealing even if you were in a toga with an olive branch on your head.” She wrinkles her nose. “And the sap from the branch dripping down your forehead.”
She uses both hands now, turning in a huge circle, twisting the can up and down, up and down, barely missing the crammed together, plastic-swathed furniture in the center of the room.
“A toga?” I question, grinning.
She giggles and smacks the can on the plastic-covered couch. Oogumph, the can gurgles.
“Honey! You made me throw off my balance.” She comes to a stop.
“That is probably a good thing. You looked ridiculous.”
She giggles again. “Ah, but I’ve already caught myself a husband, so I can look ridiculous anytime I want, right, Baby?”
“Right.”
She schlumps the paint can to the floor and produces a screwdriver from the back pocket of her jeans. Deftly she plugs the business end of the screwdriver into the lip of the paint can and yanks down.
Rather than hearing the squwaksug sound a paint can makes when opening, we hear absolutely nothing. She pulls down farther, eye level with the floor now.
“Uh, Lex?”
“HushI’mconcentrating,” she says through gritted teeth.
“Lex, it’s not opening.”
“Shutuporyou’regoingtodothisnext.” Her veins stand out in her forehead.
“I’m sure that one of the guys could do this easily.”
She lets go of the screwdriver, huffs out her breath, and backhands her unsweaty forehead. “You would make a very bad suffragette.”
“Lucky. ’Cause I’m not one. I don’t understand that movement. If someone can do something for me so I don’t have to do it, I’m willing to let them.” I step to the back door and open it, letting in a jet stream of cold air. “Hey!” I yell. Nate and Ryan each have one end of a plank. They both look up.
“Need something, Laur?” Ryan asks.
“Can one of you come get this paint can open?” I rub my arms, trying to keep them from getting frostbite.
“Sure!” they both say at the same time.
I go back inside.
Lexi stands frowning at the paint can, screwdriver in one hand.
“Trying to open it with the power of your brain?” I ask. “That only works in Star Wars.”
“No, I’m lecturing it.”
“Silently?”
“In paint-speak.” She narrows her eyes. “Glug-glurp-blug-blug,” she exclaims, shaking the screwdriver at it.
I fall over and conk my head on the plastic-coated love seat.
Lexi grins.
The boys come in, breathless. Ryan frowns at the tears rolling from my eyes. “You okay?”
I nod, my lungs hurting from laughing so hard.
“She just had a bonding moment with the paint,” Lexi says. Then she chuckles. “Get it? Bonding? Paint?”
Nate and Ryan exchange glances that say, Are these women crazy, or have they simply reverted into mindless acts of near catastrophe and should we leave them in this state of being?
Then Nate shrugs, takes the screwdriver from his bonkers wife, and cranks the paint can open.
Ryan kneels on the floor beside me as I sit up, heave a breath, and swipe at my cheeks.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Do you think a song titled, ‘I’m Pining for Maple Syrup by Sawing Your Heart Out’ would make it on CMT’s top ten?”
He blinks and looks back at Nate and Lexi. Lexi goes into gales of laughter with me, and Nate shrugs again.
Ryan pats my shoulder in his annoying yet kind of cute way. “I wouldn’t get my heart set on it.”
“‘Would You Love Me If My Wood House Would Sing’?”
Ryan grins and leaves me on the floor. “Nate, I think we should get out of here fast.”
“I’m with you, bro.”
They hightail it out the door and in two seconds flat have the plank back in their hands.
Lexi snickers. “Great songs, Pumpkin. How about this one?” She gestures toward the guys and sings the title. “You Built Me a Board Deck and Then I Decked Your . . . Sword.”
“Awful, Lex.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Come on, let’s paint.”
By lunchtime we have the cranberry wall finished and two of the cream walls done. Half a wall and the trim over the kitchen counter remain.
Lexi sets her paint roller on the tray and puts her hands on her hips. “Guess we should get lunch r
eady.”
I use my wrist to rub the itchy bandana. “Uh-huh.”
She marches into the kitchen and starts scrubbing her hands. I collapse on the couch, my arm sore from rolling and my toes sore from gripping the ladder rung with them.
I hate ladders.
The back door jerks open and Nate and Ryan come in loudly, accompanied by cold air and sawdust.
“Wow, girls, looks great!” Nate exclaims, waving to the walls.
“Thanks!” Lexi yells back, though they are two feet apart.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Hey, Ryan had a great idea. We’re taking you two out to lunch,” Nate yells. The boy has the biggest lungs I have ever heard. He can’t whisper to save his life.
“Aw, that’s so sweet, Ryan!” Lexi squeals. “I’ll call Dad.”
Lexi can’t whisper to save her life either.
Suddenly I find myself praying fervently that any children the two of them have take predominantly after Dad. Or I am never babysitting.
Ever.
“Let me get my coat.” I yawn, standing.
“Better not, Laur. You’ve got paint all over you,” Ryan says.
“I do not! I was careful!”
He comes over and swipes his finger over my shoulder blade and shows it to me. Cranberry covers his fingertip.
“Told ya.”
I moan. “Lexi Holbrook Kennedy, did you paint my backside while I was on the ladder?”
“Come on, kids, I think Nate’s starving.” She calmly ignores me, following her husband through the laundry room to the garage.
I send a glare her way.
Ryan smirks. “Sisterly love.”
“Ah, yes.”
He points. “It’s on your face too.”
“Well, that was my fault.”
“How’d it get on your face?”
“I was pretending the brush was a microphone and it hit my cheek.”
A wrinkle appears between Ryan’s eyebrows. “You were pretending the brush was a microphone and — you know what? I think I’d just rather not know.”
I smile at him. He has sawdust caked into the creases on his jeans and filtered through his hair. He uses two fingers and pushes me toward the garage.
I twist, trying to see the back of me. “I’ll get paint on the car.”
“Where does Lexi keep her paint rags?”
I frown. “I don’t think she does.”
“Does what?”
“Keep her paint rags.”
“She buys new rags every time she needs to paint or change the oil?” he asks incredulously.
I bite my lip. “I don’t think she does that either.”
“Buys rags?”
“No, changes the oil.”
He slaps his forehead, not realizing the cranberry paint on his finger hasn’t dried yet, and gets a nice bullet-looking dab up there. “Women,” he mutters.
I grin at him. Widely.
“What?”
“When did you get shot?”
“I beg your pardon?”
I touch his forehead. “You have blood. Figured you’d been shot.”
He looks at me, at his finger, back at me, and sighs.
“Does Lexi have a towel we could mess up?”
I nod. “She keeps Barbie towels in the garage to dry Muffin off after she’s had a bath.”
“Barbie towels?”
I laugh at his tone. “Oh come on. It will be a new experience.”
I open the garage door and find Nate spreading the aforesaid towels all over the backseat of his Nissan.
“I wouldn’t want my wife sticking to the seats.” He pinches the cream-colored back pocket on Lexi’s jeans. She yelps.
“So you’d rather my rear end stick to a towel with Barbie’s big-busted figure instead?”
Nate kisses her. Probably as a way to get out of explaining his true reason for coating the entirety of the back end of the Nissan with towels.
Lexi pushes away. “You just don’t want your precious leather marred up.”
“Aw, now, Honey, it’s so cute when you’re mad and use a word like mar.”
“Oh, go be smug in the driver’s seat.”
We pile in, girls in the back, guys in the front. Nate turns the key and grins at Lexi in the rearview mirror. “You know what they always say, pookums. Behind every great man is a great woman.” He waves to us in the backseat. “Physical proof, wouldn’t you say?”
Lexi crosses her arms and tries unsuccessfully to bite back a smile. “Just drive, Nathan.”
He backs the car out of the garage.
“And don’t ever call me pookums again.”
Ryan snorts in the passenger seat and then tries to cover it with a cough. “Uh, right, um, so where are we going?”
“Subway. Oh, and Sweetie, I called Dad and he’s going to meet us there,” Lexi tells me.
I make a face. “Oh boy. I’m going to get a lecture about getting toxic chemicals on my face.”
Ryan starts laughing. “Rule twenty-one?”
I use the corner of a towel with a particularly cheeky Barbie to try to rub the paint smear off. Nothing happens. It must have already dried.
“I’m toast!”
Lexi leans over and checks her face in the rearview mirror. “It’s on my face too, Butternut. You’re not the only one in poor sorts with our father.”
I’m scrubbing now, panic rising in me. “But you don’t live with him.” One time I was cleaning the bathroom without gloves and Dad nearly grounded me because of it.
“Very true,” she concedes. “Here. Let me try.” She licks her finger and rubs my cheek. A little comes off on her thumb. “I’m going to run out of saliva before I’m done.”
Ryan watches us and gags. “Lexi, Lexi, Lexi. Stop, please. Look.” He grabs a water bottle from the front cup holder. “Wet the towel with this.”
“We’re here,” Nate announces, pulling into a parking space.
“Quick, Lexi,” I fret.
She’s got her bottom lip between her teeth. “I can’t get the bottle open.”
“You must have really done well in Phys. Ed.” Ryan grins. “First the paint can, then the bottle.” He holds out his hand and she gives it back to him. He breaks the safety ring easily.
Nate turns off the engine and hops out. Ryan gets out and then opens my door.
“Let me have one of those extra towels,” Ryan says. I give it to him. He soaks the corner of it, closes the bottle, and tosses it over the car to Nate, who stands beside Lexi’s side, ready to do the same.
“Look at me,” Ryan commands.
He holds my chin with one hand and drags the towel over my face with the other. I can feel my heart starting to beat faster and I don’t look at his eyes, sure he’s laughing at me.
He finishes scouring a minute later and bends down, smiling into my eyes and tightening my bandana. “You look like a home girl.”
“Thanks.” I take a breath, trying to be nonchalant, but doggone it, it’s hard with him standing three inches away and tying something around my hair.
“Heavens, woman, did you get any paint on the walls?” Nate bursts.
I sneak another breath.
“A few flecks, I think.” Lexi twists away from the towel he holds. “You’re scraping that down my face! Babe, Dad’s going to think you dragged me across the parking lot with how red my face is.”
Ryan’s eyes twinkle as he finishes with the bandana and moves so I can slide out.
Air. What a marvelous thing!
“Okay, okay, okay, that is enough!” Lexi yells, pushing Nate’s futile towel away and jumping out of the car. “Dad will just have to get mad, because I don’t care anymore.”
“But then he’ll suspend your allowance, and what will we use to buy the new table saw?” Nate whines.
She laughs and smacks his chest. “You are nuts! I married a cashew!”
Ryan closes my door and leans down next to my ear. “Are they always this crazy?”
“Amen.”
I spot Dad’s car in the parking lot, and he already has a table for us when we walk in.
“Over here, kids!” he says and waves.
I step around the tables and chairs and smile at him. Dad wears a nice but casual sweater and slacks.
The other people in the restaurant probably think he’s a nice older man who has compassion on a bunch of street hoodlums. And my bandana isn’t helping matters.
“Laurie, you have paint all over you,” Dad chides, his frown lines creasing on his forehead.
“Yeah, well, blame your middle daughter for that one.” I am good at shifting blame.
He raises his eyes to his middle daughter. “Lexi?”
She is immediately running for the counter. “Uh, we should probably order before they run out of cucumbers. Can’t have a good sandwich without cucumbers, Dad.”
Got to hand it to Lexi. She’s a smooth one.
Dad stands. “We should save this table. The girl who works here told me every hour on the hour a huge group from the gym next door comes in and crowds the whole place up.” He looks at his watch. “We’ve got ten minutes.”
“I’ll stay, sir.” Ryan touches my elbow. “Hey, order me a ham with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cucumbers. And oil and vinegar on six-inch wheat.”
I nod. “Okay, so a turkey sandwich with cheese, jalapeños, and honey mustard on white.”
He sighs.
I join the others at the counter and give our orders to the annoyingly perky sandwich maker.
We beat the crowd by a good four minutes. Two bites into our sandwiches, the door bursts open and easily thirty people push and squeeze their way into a semblance of a line.
Dad watches them, finishes chewing, and clears his throat. “Hmph. Girl was right.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I glance at the clock on the dashboard as I climb out of the Tahoe. Six forty-five.
Precariously balanced in my hands are my Bible, my notebook, and my ever-present coffee. Ruby told me to be about fifteen minutes early for small group on Tuesday so I can be here when the kids come in.
It is Tuesday. I’m fifteen minutes early.
I walk through the glass doors leading to the youth side of the church and find Ruby and Nick.