One More Time

by Deborah Cooke

  It was gone.

  And it didn’t take ten years of post-secondary education to figure out where.

  Or more accurately, with whom.

  The sliding glass door to the patio was left slightly open, testament to a passing teenager. Leslie noticed because of the cold draft swirling around her ankles. She braced her hands on the counter beside the sink and peered out the window, muttering “aha!” under her breath.

  Annette was sitting in one of the plastic lawn chairs in her winter coat, snow around and undoubtedly under her, the carton of ice cream clutched in her arms. She was eating it with a tablespoon, eating right out of the carton in an outright violation of household cleanliness standards. She stared across the limited expanse of the backyard, almost certainly in open defiance of something.

  Leslie admitted to herself—silently, because that was the only way she could face this particular truth—that the last thing her daughter needed was a carton of ice cream. Slow metabolism was the legacy Leslie had given to her daughter, maybe the only one she had to share, but while Leslie still fought the good fight, Annette had surrendered the battle early.

  She watched her daughter for a moment, noting for the umpteenth time how long Annette’s legs had suddenly grown. The girl was sprouting, almost before her eyes: she must have grown a foot taller in the past year.

  But it wasn’t enough. Annette would have to become nine feet tall to outpace her so-called baby fat, and Leslie couldn’t see that happening.

  Everyone was comparatively short in her family, after all.

  Leslie snagged herself a tablespoon, retrieved her coat, and shoved open the sliding glass door. Her daughter gave her the look of loathing she was starting to get used to.

  She was never going to like it. That was another reason to not talk about Annette’s weight—the last thing they needed was another barrier between them. They had lots as it was.

  “Hi,” Leslie said cheerfully and fetched herself a plastic lawn chair from the stack by the wall. She plunked it down beside Annette and dropped into it with a sigh.

  Then, precisely because Annette expected something more from her, Leslie ignored her daughter.

  Let her ask for a change.

  It wasn’t bad outside, a bit chilly. Even though the houses were kind of close together in this particular neck of the woods, patio use was low on this particular night. Funny how that happened in January in Massachusetts. And here Leslie had thought New Englanders were supposed to be tough. She and Annette had the collective expanse of snow-covered lawn to themselves and it was blessedly quiet. Oh, there was the muted tinkle of people in their kitchens, maybe with a window open a crack, the muffled sound of distant laughter and car engines. The sky was that pretty shade of turquoisey-indigo it turns just before sunset.

  “Want to share?” Leslie suggested when Annette didn’t offer.

  “No.” Annette averted her gaze as she took another mouthful.

  Leslie twirled her tablespoon, fighting the urge to match defiance with anger. That would only make it worse. “Do you know that some mother mammals, like rabbits, eat their own young?” She hadn’t expected to say that, but once it left her lips, she decided it was the perfect thing to say.

  Her daughter looked only momentarily alarmed. “Only domesticated ones. Not wild ones.”

  “And do you think I’m domesticated or wild?”

  “You’re no rabbit.”

  “That’s for sure. There’d have been a lot more kids in this house if I’d been the kind of woman who gets pregnant just thinking about sex.” Leslie waggled the spoon in the face of her daughter’s astonishment. “But that’s beside the point. Wild or domesticated? What’s your call?”

  Annette looked at her mother, really looked, so clearly ill at ease with this conversation that Leslie was tempted to try out a maniacal laugh. “Grandmother called. Do you know what she said to me?”

  Ah, so the foul mood was due to an exchange between Beverly and her granddaughter. At least some fixtures in the universe remained in place: the hostility between these two was legendary. “No, but I can guess.” Leslie frowned into the distance. “Eeny meeny jelly beanie, the spirits are about to speak.”

  “Just listen,” Annette supplied.

  Leslie pretended to be a fortuneteller, gazing into her crystal ball which was, in fact, an awful lot like the back of a tablespoon. “Yes, yes, it’s becoming clearer now, not the exact words, but I’ll guess that you had your mouth full when you answered the phone.”

  “She shouldn’t have been able to tell.”

  “She is frighteningly clever. Especially when she’s sober.”

  “I’m not sure she was sober. She didn’t make much sense.” Annette rolled her eyes and sucked back another spoonful of ice cream.

  Leslie considered that information for a moment, then dismissed it. Beverly was duct-taped on to the AA wagon and wouldn’t be falling off anytime soon, if ever. After all, she’d have to answer to James if she did, and Leslie wouldn’t wish that confrontation on anybody. “She can’t have been drunk if she managed to say something to tick you off.”

  “So, I admitted that I was having some ice cream. It’s not a crime!”

  “And I’ll guess that she made a comment that had something to do with it being inappropriate for you to inhale a carton of ice cream before dinner.”

  Annette blushed. “I was hungry.”

  “So am I. And it’s your lucky day. I’m here to save you from the pending wrath of Beverly Coxwell.”

  Annette was suspicious. “Why?”

  “Because I want some of that ice cream. And I want it right now.”

  “You don’t eat sweets. They’re not on your diet.” Annette said this last word with a sneer.

  “I’m getting over that.” Leslie tried out her maniacal laugh and it wasn’t bad. Her daughter took a beat longer than usual to hide her surprise. “Hand it over or die, girlie. I’m feeling like a wild domesticated bunny tonight.”

  Annette giggled then, as if she didn’t want to, but she surrendered the ice cream. A good two-thirds of it was gone, but Leslie didn’t care. She made a couple of heaping tablespoons disappear fast under her daughter’s incredulous gaze and her mood improved almost instantly.

  “So, what? You’re going to skip all meals for the rest of the month now?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because you always do stuff like that when you eat ice cream or cake.” Annette rolled her eyes. “You’d think a hundred calories threatened world peace or something.”

  “There’s a lot more than a hundred calories in this carton. Or at least there were.” Leslie shook her head when her daughter didn’t reply. “But I’m not going to do anything like that, not this time.”

  Annette’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just doing this to make me feel better.”

  “Au contraire. I’m doing it to make myself feel better. You’re on your own.” Leslie softened that last comment with a wink and offered the carton to Annette again. She dug in, then licked the ice cream off the spoon with an inscrutable look in her eyes.

  Leslie figured she didn’t have a lot left to lose, so she leaped in where angels would fear to tread.

  Smart angels would, anyway. Leslie was tired of being the smart one. She decided to try on ‘the impulsive one’ for size.

  She gestured with her spoon at Annette. “You probably don’t know that this easy-weight-gain thing was my gift to you. I would have really liked to have not come up with that particular genetic present, but it’s not as if anyone called me in to sign off on your DNA string.”

  “As if.” Annette looked pointedly at Leslie’s butt, which was a good bit smaller than hers. “I don’t think so.”

  “Denial goes a long way to managing it. I don’t know when I last ate more than a teaspoonful of this stuff. It’s dangerously good. How did I forget that?” Leslie treated herself to another mountain of 30-plus-percent dairy fat, studying its chocolate swirled and studded perfection briefly
before popping it into her mouth. “You know, we could save time and just smear this all over our butts right now. It’s headed there anyway.”

  Annette snorted with laughter. “Wouldn’t taste as good.”

  “There is that.” Leslie remembered with sudden clarity an evening very early in their marriage during which she and Matt had taken turns licking ice cream off each other. The sheets had been sticky but, oddly, neither of then had cared. Where had those horny people gone?

  Well, one of them was still present and accounted for.

  “How come you’re blushing?”

  Leslie didn’t bother to hide her thoughts as she usually did. Truth be told, she was getting a bit giddy, which wasn’t surprising given how much sugar she’d just dumped into her empty stomach—which had only had chocolate bars today anyhow.

  “Thinking about your dad.” Leslie smiled at her daughter. “Thinking about some fun we once had with ice cream.”

  Annette burrowed in the carton with her spoon, letting her hair fall over her face. “I seriously don’t want to know about it, if it has anything to do with you two having sex.”

  For once, Leslie couldn’t let it go. She decided to tease her daughter a bit. “We did it at least once, Annette. You’re the living proof of that.”

  “I could have been adopted.”

  “Think so?” Leslie smiled mysteriously, then sucked on her ice cream while Annette thought about that.

  “Deposited by aliens, then. Left on your doorstep by envoys from a more intelligent planet.”

  “You watch too much Star Trek.”

  “It’s not a crime.”

  “True enough. There are worse things you could be doing, but you’ve always been a pretty good kid.”

  Annette glared at her. “Don’t try to butter me up. Is this going to be some talk about the birds and the bees? Is that what you want to talk about: sex?”

  Well, yes, Leslie did, but not with Annette. “No, that’s not what this is about. You know that you can ask me anything you want, but you probably know more about sex than I do.”

  “Is that an accusation?”

  “No, it’s just an observation on the way of the world.”

  Annette turned abruptly to face Leslie, her cheeks rosy and her lips glistening from the ice cream. “So, what’s this all about? You’re supposed to be the tough guy parent, the one who never lets me see you sweat. You’re the enforcer. What are you doing out here, being all chatty? What’s going on?”

  Leslie winced at this description of her role, because it was probably a fair call. “Well, that would be the million dollar question. Just for interest’s sake, who’s your dad in the role-playing lottery?”

  “The soft touch. The buddy parent. The one who understands.”

  “Is that an accusation?”

  “No, but he’s…easier sometimes.” Annette sat back, satisfied with her assessment, then cast Leslie a glittering look. “So, how come you’re out here, trying to be my pal?”

  “Maybe I figure it’s time we redistributed assignments.” Leslie grabbed another spoonful of ice cream. “Maybe I didn’t know the limitations of my job description when I took it on.”

  “Maybe you don’t think Dad is coming back.”

  Bang. Out of the mouths of babes. Annette made this assertion in a tone that revealed that she expected Leslie to refute it. Leslie rolled ice cream around in her mouth before she leaped in to do just that.

  Maybe it was time that she and her daughter had a different relationship.

  Maybe it was time she stopped protecting Annette from every stray vestige of truth, especially when the truth was looking ugly.

  The girl was thirteen going on thirty, after all.

  Leslie turned and saw the fear that had been conjured by her hesitation. “I don’t know what your father’s doing, Annette. He said that he was going to New Orleans to help Uncle Zach get out of jail, which would imply that he’s coming back.”

  “He has to come to Grandfather’s funeral.”

  Leslie thought about that over another bite of ice cream. “He doesn’t have to do anything, Annette. He might be too angry with your grandfather to come to the funeral.”

  “You would make him go to it if you could.”

  Leslie looked away, less certain of her persuasive abilities than her daughter. “I’d be concerned that he might have second thoughts about not coming to the service later. It’s not something that you can rewind and do differently, and I expect there will a lot of people at your grandfather’s funeral.”

  “You mean Dad should come for the sake of appearances.” She curled her lip, looking suddenly a great deal like Matt when he had a truth-on. Mr. Tell-it-like-it-is.

  Could she really have been proud of him if he’d defended his client successfully? Leslie was shocked to realize that Matt was right. She hadn’t thought it through, hadn’t thought past her own burden of obligation, but he was right. She would have hated being married to someone like his brother, James, who was more concerned with winning than with a pesky detail like truth.

  She set down the spoon, seeing her own role in his departure, wondering how she could make this right.

  “Well?” Annette prompted.

  “Um, I mean that if he makes an unconventional choice, he needs to be absolutely sure that he won’t later regret it.” Leslie looked at Annette and, in the fading light, saw her wariness. It had probably been fed both by recent events and her choosing to sit with her out here. Leslie chose to push her daughter a little. “Why do you think I would worry about such a thing happening?”

  “Because you think of everything?”

  Leslie shook my head. “Nope. I never claimed that.”

  “Well, you didn’t have to. You’re the most organized person on the planet. You’re like one of those androids.”

  “Except androids don’t reproduce biologically, do they?”

  Annette studied Leslie for so long that Leslie thought she might not say anything. Finally, she did. “Okay, maybe you’re worried about it because you once didn’t do something that you later regretted.”

  “Bingo.” Leslie saluted Annette with her spoon. “The incisive Coxwell legal mind nails it. It’s in your genes, Annette. That alone proves you weren’t adopted.”

  “How come Daddy lost that big case yesterday?”

  Leslie frowned and considered the merits of her stainless steel tablespoon. It had, in fact, gathered a few stains in its lifetime of service, as well as a few dings and scratches. Kind of like herself. “He thought it was more honest,” she said slowly, appreciating the nobility of his decision. “He thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he didn’t think he could live with himself if the bad guy didn’t get what he deserved. Because he didn’t want the bad guy to get away with the bad things he’d done.”

  “And you don’t agree with him?”

  “I didn’t. I just wanted him to win.” Leslie admitted then shrugged. “I guess I just wished that I hadn’t been as surprised as everybody else.” The carton was empty and Leslie was getting cold. Apparently eating ice cream outside in the winter will lower one’s body temperature. Who knew?

  It sounded like something a mother should know though, didn’t it?

  Maybe she was a lousy mother, as well as a lousy wife. She stood up, uncomfortable with the part she had played in creating her own marital disaster.

  Annette meanwhile was looking as if her mother had suddenly been replaced by an alien, maybe a more interesting alien than she knew her mother to be.

  “Come on, let’s go inside,” Leslie said. “I’m getting cold and there’s no more ice cream anyway.”

  “I’ll just stay here.”

  Leslie paused at the door and looked back. “I’m going to get take-out tonight, but I don’t know what kind. If you want a vote, you’d better come in soon.” Annette hunkered down lower in her coat, clearly having no intention of moving. “Of course, if you don
’t, you’ll just prove your grandmother right about ice cream spoiling your dinner. Maybe I’ll phone and tell her that. You know how she likes to be right.”

  No response. Leslie tipped her head back and considered the first stars. “Maybe I’ll just order a pizza from Macetti’s,” she said idly, fully expecting a reaction. “I mean, if you’re not hungry, I might as well get what I want.”

  “Gross!” Predictably, Annette was on her feet in a flash. “You can’t order from there.” But instead of protesting that she hated their pizza, which was what Leslie expected, Annette had a completely different issue. “Scott Sexton does their deliveries now, so you can’t order from there! I’ll die! Scott Sexton!”

  Scott Sexton. Leslie didn’t know why she was shocked that her daughter knew the name of a boy who had to be a good three years older than her—given that he even had a job which required him to drive around—much less that she knew where he worked.

  This was puberty. Be still, my intrepid heart.

  “So?” Leslie said, pretending to be unaware of the reason for Annette’s objection. “Was he mean to you at school or something?”

  Annette flushed crimson. “No, he doesn’t even know…you can’t, you just can’t,” she insisted, unusually furious. “I won’t let you. I won’t even be here if you do.”

  The devil in Leslie was tempted to order from Macetti’s and insist that Scott did indeed make the delivery—just to see what he looked like, maybe assess her daughter’s burgeoning taste in teenage boys—but for tonight, she’d let it go.

  The La Perla bra had already done more than double duty. It was owed a nice soak in her gentle washables detergent.

  “Well, if you don’t vote, you can’t count on anything,” she said and returned to the kitchen. “That’s what my father always said.”

  “I thought he said that if you didn’t vote, you couldn’t complain.”

  “It’s pretty much the same, don’t you think? And I like pizza.”

  Annette was right behind Leslie, fuming. “Not Macetti’s, then. Get Domino’s.”

  “But we should support a local business over a big chain.” Leslie couldn’t resist teasing her, as Matt would have done. “That’s what your father always says.”