by Susan Schild
But Ruby sounded cheery. “Hi, sweetheart. Hope you’re just walking on air now that you’re freshly married. You tell that handsome hunk of a husband of yours that I said hey.” Ruby had been a looker in her heyday and still had a flirty streak.
Linny breathed out. This wasn’t a meet-me-at-the-emergency-room call. She called to Jack, “Ruby says hey, you handsome hunk of a husband.”
Jack shook his head, but his mouth crooked up.
“We’re at your mama’s house and you need to talk to her,” Ruby said. “For weeks now we girls have been planning to go to the RV show at the Civic Center to make a final decision about what kind of camper or RV we want to rent for our trip. We’re fixing to get in the car to go and now she’s making all kinds of excuses for staying home. This is the last day of the show,” Ruby said, sounding exasperated.
Since coming to terms with learning that her late husband had had a longtime mistress, her mother had shaken off her dour, church lady demeanor and blossomed. She’d given up the yard sale habit that bordered on hoarding, taken a two-week Caribbean cruise with her girlfriends, and was now seeing a charming older man named Mack whom she’d met on the ship. Oh, and Dottie—a card-carrying Baptist and member of the Sisters of Dorcas ladies’ prayer circle—had won $250,000 on the nickel slots on the ship. So, emboldened with her first big vacation, Mama and her two friends had cooked up this RV adventure they called their “trip to see the US of A.” It was all the three of them had talked about for months.
“Let me talk to her,” a woman’s voice said insistently. Linny heard a fumbling as the phone changed hands. “Dessie here,” said her mother’s other best friend, in her usual brisk tone. “This is the second time she’s backed out of the RV show. Yesterday she said her feet were hurting her and today she’s claiming her sugar’s high.”
Linny paused a beat, baffled. “She doesn’t have bad feet or sugar problems.”
“We know,” Dessie said drily.
“Can you put her on the phone?” Linny asked, rubbing the spot on her temple that had begun to throb. What was going on?
More fumbling sounds, and the phone clattered as it dropped to the floor. Dessie picked back up. “Your mama doesn’t feel like talking right now. She and Curtis are going in to take a little lie down.”
Linny wondered again how her mother could get any sleep at all sharing her bed with Curtis, her 170-pound Great Dane. But maybe Dottie really wasn’t well. “Dessie, does she seem sick? Should you run her by the urgent care?”
Dessie said, “We ate lunch at Captain Finn’s Seafood and she had the First Mate’s Special with an extra order of shrimp and lemon chess pie for dessert.” She chuckled. “So her appetite’s fine and her color is good, too. You ask me, I think she’s just got a case of nerves.”
“Nerves about what?” Linny asked, coming up empty when she tried to think of any stressors in her mother’s peaceful life and remembered all the unexpected happiness that had been showered upon her over the last year.
Dessie’s voice was back at a normal decibel level and extra bright. “Well, we’re real glad you had a good visit to the mountains and we can’t wait to hear all about it.”
Her mother must have come back within earshot. Scanning the highway for signs, she saw they were almost to Greensboro. “Dessie, you and Ruby go on to the RV show yourselves and do reconnaissance for your trip. Jack and I are coming back early from the mountains and we’ll be home in two hours. Tell Mama I’ll stop by to see her this evening.”
“I will, honey, and you two drive safe.” Dessie ended the call.
“What’s wrong with your mama?” Jack asked, his eyes lit with concern.
“Not sure. The girls don’t think it’s anything serious, but I’ll run by and check on her. Dessie said it could be nerves.” She turned her hands palms up. “About what I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
* * *
Back home, after they’d unpacked Jack left to pick up Neal at his ex-wife’s house and Linny hopped in her trusty old Volvo to drive the ten miles from their farmhouse to her mother’s house. She bumped down the long gravel road lined by rows of bushy tobacco plants thriving on the land her mama owned and leased out to other farmers. Rolling down the window, she breathed in the country fragrance of loamy earth, mown grass, and honeysuckle. She caught a whiff of skunk and it didn’t bother her a bit. It just smelled like her childhood.
Slowing, she approached the driveway of the aqua blue trailer—the one her mother had let her stay in for free when Linny’s second husband had stolen her money and then died on her. The trailer had become such a haven for her while she’d rebuilt her life. She peered down the driveway, but it was too overgrown for her to see much. She spied a clothesline strung with brightly colored T-shirts and dresses that danced gracefully in the breeze and felt better. Mama said the new renters were a real nice young couple who adored the trailer Linny had turned into a little jewel box with new drywall, fresh paint, and reclaimed wood floors from Habitat Re-Use Center.
Linny pulled in to the driveway of her mother’s tidy ranch, right beside the carport that housed her mother’s Buick. Trotting up the front walkway, Linny knocked on the screen door and looked inside. “Mama? Mama?” she called. In the background she heard a man’s voice on the TV, which was turned up to her mother’s usual blare level. Linny rapped harder and peered in the crack between the door and the frame. Her mother had a hook and eye holding the door shut, her version of home security. Linny pulled her cell from her purse and dialed Dottie but heard the ring and ring of the phone from inside the house. No one picked up. Her heart fluttering faster, Linny cupped her hands and called more loudly, “Mama! Mama!”
A clatter sounded and Curtis barreled down the hallway, woofing a baritone bark that would have sent burglars straight into cardiac rehab at Raleigh Memorial. Her mother followed, cooing to the dog, “Now, sugar, you just hush. That’s just our Linny.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Linny broke into a smile. Though she’d always loved Mama, she’d only recently begun to really like her. Once Dottie shared the truth about how empty her marriage had been to Linny’s father, some weight had been lifted from her. Dottie had become sunnier, warmer, and more real—and Linny wanted all the time she could get with her. So if Dottie had a cold, Linny worried it was budding pneumonia. If she had a headache, it was a sign of an impending stroke. Dottie was a fit fifty-nine with no real health problems. And ever since she’d met the dapper Mack and begun to play pickle ball and dance the tango with him, she’d lost ten pounds and started doing a Jane Fonda DVD every morning. She could probably lap Linny in a 5K. Trying to hide how rattled she’d been, Linny waved too animatedly and made a big show of fussing over Curtis whose face was now pressed to the screen. “How are you, baby dog?”
Curtis began to wag his long, thick tail—the one that could clear side tables and buckle you if he clipped your knees.
“Sorry for not hearing you sooner, honey. I was snoozing with that Inspirational Living channel on in the background to keep me company,” Dottie said.
Linny tried to be surreptitious in sizing up Dottie as she shooed away the dog and unlocked the door. Her hair was bunched up on either side like she’d slept on it funny, but she was steady on her feet and her eyes were bright. “Hey, Mama.” Linny wrapped her mother in a hug, comforted by the familiar smell of Jergens hand cream and baby powder with a hint of Aqua Net.
“How are you, shug?” Dottie asked, motioning Linny to follow her back into the living room. “How was your trip and why are you back early?”
Dottie sank into her velour chair and reclined and Curtis gracefully curled into a loop on the carpet beside her. Linny filled her in on the honeymoon, omitting the part about Vera’s dramatics and talking instead about Jack needing to get back for a work issue. As her newly tech-savvy mother scrolled through the trip pictures on Linny’s phone, Linny noticed she was wearing a faded, polyester pink zip-up housecoat and those awful white Velcro-shut sandals
that she thought had been relegated to the Goodwill box. Those were remnants of the bad old days when disappointment had made Dottie dress like a frumpy woman twenty years older than her actual years.
These days, Dottie had a nice lady at Belk who helped her pick out sassy but age-appropriate clothes. So why was the frumpiness back?
After her mother’s final so pretty! and that looks so sweet, Linny settled back on the couch and cocked her head. “How are you feeling, Mama?”
“Oh, I’m bumping along,” Dottie said, not meeting Linny’s eyes.
Trying to sound casual, Linny persisted. “So you didn’t feel up to going to the RV show?”
“It’d be real crowded, plus my stomach was bothering me.” Dottie picked an imaginary piece of lint from her housecoat.
“I thought it was your feet and your sugar,” Linny said, raising a brow.
Flushing guiltily and probably trying to remember her original ailments, Dottie nodded her head vigorously for emphasis, “It was all three. Stomach, sugar, and feet.”
The poofs on her mother’s hairdo bobbed as she nodded, and Linny pictured Precious the poodle with the faux tummy-toothache-itching issues. Linny was such a bad person. She bit the inside of her cheeks and tried to keep a straight face. “What’s really going on, Mama?”
Her mother blew out a gust of a sigh. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe I’m just getting cold feet about the whole trip.”
“Why, Mama?” Linny asked. All Mama and her friends talked about was Graceland versus Dollywood, interstates or secondary roads, and how to find the most accurate reviews of campsites on the internet.
Dottie paused and blurted out, “I’m scared. What if we have a flat tire or pick up a murdering hitchhiker or fight with one another the whole way? What about beavers with rabies coming after us? That happened in a campground in Arkansas just last weekend. Dragged the man under while he was swimming at the lake. What if we drive over a steep ravine?” She made a swooping downward hand motion to simulate driving off a cliff.
Linny hid her smile. She’d had the same awful visual of the motor home flying off a cliff when she’d first heard about the US of A trip. Clearly, Mama was the genetic link to her own worrywart streak. “Anything else on your mind?”
“Well, none of us are world trotters.” She glanced at Linny and smoothed the lace doily on the arm of the chair.
Linny suppressed a grin. World trotters. Globe travelers. Dottie could mix an idiom, mash a metaphor. But it was a big deal that Mama and her girlfriends, who had been homebodies for most of their lives, were taking this trip. Travel could be daunting, especially when they were all in their late fifties and early sixties and planning on driving a giant bus of a motor home/camper thingy.
Her mother went on, her words rushing as she let them go after penning them up for so long. “I’d never been out of the state before the big cruise and the girls had only been to South Carolina. Ruby went to Myrtle Beach once and Dessie went to Dillon, South Carolina, because she was underage and wanted to marry her first husband, who . . .”
Linny raised a hand to try to head off the inevitable spelling, but it was too late.
“. . . turned out to be G-A-Y.” Her mother nodded, looking proud of herself for being so wildly progressive as to know a G-A-Y person. “Anyhow, what if we can’t handle it? What if we get lost? What if Mack finds another lady friend while I’m gone? What if Curtis forgets all about me?” Looking stricken, she leaned over to scratch under the giant dog’s chin and stare at him soulfully.
“You’ve been worrying about this a lot, Mama,” Linny said softly.
Dottie nodded, poodle poofs bobbing again. Linny felt like reaching over and gently smoothing them down but didn’t. Dottie was feeling inadequate enough right now, the way her husband Boyd had made her feel for most of their marriage.
“All of you are smart, competent women, and you did so well on that cruise,” Linny said in a soothing tone. “And you went to all of those islands and had different languages to deal with, and you flew in and out of some of the busiest airports. That’s pretty impressive.” Linny didn’t think she needed to mention that none of them had ever even flown before.
Her mother considered this, a little smile playing at her lips. But after a moment doubts must have crept back because she threw up her hands and shook her head wearily. “I don’t know, sugar. I don’t think I’m up for this.”
“What could make you feel more comfortable about taking this trip, Mama?” Linny’s mind was in high gear, sifting through options. Was there a Triple A deal for RVs or campers? Could the three women pool their money and hire a driver or . . .
Her mother didn’t miss a beat. “I’d feel better if you came with us on the first week of the trip.” Dottie’s gaze was steady. “You can help us learn the ropes.”
Linny opened her mouth and closed it again. Her big mouth. But she watched her mother patting Curtis and saw the thin gold band she still wore despite her husband’s betrayal. Linny understood every one of her mother’s fears and was so proud of her for all her courage. But Linny’d been married less than a week. She breathed out a sigh. “I can’t, Mama. Jack and I are just getting settled in and Neal’s coming to stay with us for a while.”
“I shouldn’t have even asked.” Her mother nodded, but her lower lip trembled and she looked as though she might cry. “I’m afraid I need to cancel on the girls, then.”
CHAPTER 2
Big Plans for Grand Adventures
At the farm, Linny walked in and saw Jack and Neal sprawled on opposite ends of the huge L-shaped sofa in the living room engrossed in their binge favorite, Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks. Neal’s big tennis shoes and socks were in the middle of the floor. Sharing the couch with the Avery men were three of their six dogs, including Roy, the lab mix rescue dog Linny had brought into the marriage. Wedged in between Jack and the arm of the chair, Roy looked at Linny coolly and didn’t even bother to get up. He was so smitten with Jack that Linny was old news. She looked at the traitor reproachfully but gave his silky black head a quick scratch. “Hey, men,” she called. Still nursing some irrational resentment toward Jack for the abbreviated honeymoon, she didn’t go to him for her usual kiss, just stood there with her purse still on her shoulder, feeling like a guest.
“Hey, Lin.” Jack sat up, muted the TV, and gave her a smile. He shot a glance at Neal. “Son, Linny said hello.”
Neal glanced at her as coolly as Roy had. “Hello.”
Though she was tired of trying to be so mature all day, Linny still decided to ignore the boy’s standoffish behavior and leaned over to kiss the top of his head. “Hey, buddy. We missed you.”
“Me too,” he mumbled. Neal scratched the ears of Wilbur and Orville, their Border Collie mixes, who were snoring on his knee, and turned his gaze back to the television as the wind-buffeted crew members baited hooks.
Linny perched on the ottoman, took her purse off her shoulder and looked at Jack. “Mama’s getting cold feet and is talking about calling off the whole trip.”
“Whoa. That would be a shame,” Jack said, raising his brows.
Linny gave herself a mental shake, trying to dispel the guilt she felt for her mother’s adventure possibly falling apart. “What’s new around here?”
“Oh, not too much,” Jack said but had a hangdog look about him.
“Nothing except our trip.” Neal pushed the glasses up his nose, his eyes still on the television screen. “Chaz was going to take me out to Tucson for a few days on a camping and astronomy trip, but he might cancel. Mama asked Dad if he could take me and he said yes. Tucson is called the astronomy capital of the world. Did you know that?”
“I did not.” Linny gazed at Jack and crossed her arms. Without even bothering to run it by her, he’d agreed to pinch-hit for Chaz and take off with Neal just because Vera crooked a finger. And Linny hadn’t even let herself seriously consider riding along with Mama and her friends for a few days.
Jack gazed at h
er, his eyes lit with worry.
Neal pulled his eyes away from the screen and looked at her. “We’re going to see the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter and the Whipple Observatory. It has the eighth largest reflecting telescope in the world and the research on black holes is done there.”
“Sounds like you all have the whole thing planned out nicely,” Linny said evenly.
Lulled into a false sense of security by her calm demeanor, Jack looked proudly at his little astronomer. “We thought it’d be cool to camp in those high mountains and see the stars under the open sky, right, buddy?”
“Right.” Neal’s eyes slid back to the screen as a woman fisherman in a fighting chair almost got jerked overboard as she struggled to reel in a big fish.
Abruptly, Linny stood and walked into the kitchen, her shoulders hunched and her pulse raucous.
Jack trailed along behind her. “I’m sorry, Lin. I should have talked this over with you beforehand.”
“I wish you had.” She leaned against the kitchen counter, crossed her arms, and eyed him. “It seems like Vera can say jump and you say how high.”
“It’s not like that,” Jack said, his eyes flashing. “When I got to the house she was still crying, and Neal was upset.” He shook his head, looking grim. “I just wanted to get his bag packed and get him in the truck. Then Vera announced Chaz had gone to stay with a buddy. Said he needed some time. Neal started to cry and talked about this astronomy trip the two of them had planned.” Looking weary, Jack scrubbed his face with his hands. “So I told him I’d take him. It’s only four days.”
Linny softened but was still bugged by his tendency to rescue Vera and clean up her and Chaz’s messes. “You wanted to keep Neal from being disappointed. I get that. But maybe we should talk things over before we commit to time away from each other.” Over and over, guest bloggers to the Bodacious Bonus Moms’ blog wrote about how the first year of marriage in a blended family was always the hardest, probably even for someone who’d been married as many times as Linny had. Negotiations and compromise, she reminded herself. She cocked her head and gave him a crooked smile. “We’re a team, right?”