by Dawn Atkins
“We said breakfast, not lunch,” Aurora grumbled when Christine met her in the kitchen for their visit to the clay works barn.
“It’s only seven-thirty, Aurora,” she said on a sigh.
“Well, let’s go then,” Aurora huffed.
Christine grabbed a slice of fruit bread and joined her mother, who was walking so slowly it seemed painful. Worry tightened Christine’s chest. Twice, she reached to support her, but gave up, knowing her mother would slap her hand away.
The barn that housed Harmony House Clay Works was cool and dim and smelled of moist earth. Sunlight slanting in from windows lit wide swaths of thick dust in the air. A crew of four young men shifted items from potter’s wheels to shelves that already held drying pots, bowls and bells.
“Hey there.” A woman in a red-paisley do-rag left the clay she was kneading, wiped her hands on her overalls and came close. “You must be Crystal,” she said, holding out a callused hand. “I’m Lucy. Pleased to meecha.”
“Happy to meet you, too.”
“Lucy runs the show when I’m not here,” Aurora said. “She’ll tell you what she needs you to do. Lucy?”
“Mostly you’ll handle the orders. Also make sure I got crew and clay. Help us load and carry when we’re in a bind and such. I’ll show you the books.”
Lucy led Aurora and Christine to a makeshift table at the rear of the barn—plywood resting on sawhorses with beat-up bar stools for chairs. On top were a ledger, a small invoice pad, an index-card box and a clay-grimy calculator. Not much of an office, Christine thought with dismay.
“Is the income steady?” She flipped through the handwritten ledger.
“About half the year,” Lucy said. “Trouble is we turn down jobs when it gets too busy.”
“We get backed up,” Aurora said, shrugging. “No big thing.”
“That’s a shame,” Christine said, hating the idea of inefficiency or lost profits. Maybe this was an area she could help. “Do you have a Web site?”
“No. And no computers,” Aurora said. “We’re not a factory, Crystal.”
“I’ve been telling her we could do a lot better with a Web site,” Lucy said, her eyes lit with energy.
“That’s absolutely true,” Christine said. Aurora snorted.
“Take this order for wind chimes.” Lucy motioned at a cardboard box full of ceramic bells. “This guy has a gift shop in Sedona. He looked for our Web site but no luck. He stuck to it and tried the phone book, but who knows how many sales we lose that way?”
“The kiln only holds so many pieces,” Aurora said.
“Not if we add more shelves,” Lucy insisted.
“And what about the crew? Huh?”
“We hire more when we need them,” Lucy said. This was obviously an argument they’d had before.
“Maybe I could help with that,” Christine said, not wanting Aurora to get upset. “I can probably get the design guy at my agency to put up a simple Web site for free. If we buy a cheap computer, you could see how it would work.”
“Let’s just get through a week or so,” Aurora grumbled, shooting her a look. “Bogie’s not up to much in the gardens and someone should supervise the animals—feeding, milking, collecting eggs. Plus, you have your own work, don’t you?”
“If I can help your business, I want to.” Aurora’s dismissal of her ideas hurt, but she refused to let that show.
“We’re fine as we are, Crystal.”
Behind Aurora, Lucy shook her head. No, we’re not.
“We were fine before you came, we’ll be fine after you’re gone. Because you are going…right?”
Before she could answer, the plea in her mother’s question stopped her cold. Her mother wanted her to stay?
Christine felt her jaw drop. That made no sense. Aurora was as uncomfortable around Christine as Christine was around her. They’d be lucky to survive the summer without tearing into each other and Aurora wanted her to stay? She must be more frightened than Christine realized. Her heart squeezed at the thought.
“How about this? Before I leave, I’ll be certain any change is dialed in tight. What do you say?”
“I don’t know….” Her mother’s pride surely would keep her from admitting she needed help.
“Marketing is my profession, Aurora,” she said gently. “I’m good at it. Why not let me see what I can do for you?”
Aurora heaved a sigh. “No changes without approval from me or Lucy. We can’t have a bunch of crazy stuff disrupting our operation.”
“Of course not,” she said, irritated by her mother’s insult. Crazy stuff. Really. Enough already. She wanted to say so, but then she remembered what Marcus had said.
Focus on the work. He was right. The important thing was that there were improvements she could make here. And Aurora was feeling weak and out of control in the place she usually ran. “I won’t do anything you don’t approve of, Aurora,” she said.
“As long as we’re clear, then all right.”
Behind Aurora, Lucy did a yes fist pump, which made Christine smile. Aurora lowered herself onto one of the benches, her breathing shaky. Was she too tired? “Lucy can show me the operation from here,” Christine said. “Maybe you need to head back inside.” To bed, to rest. Please.
Aurora waved off the idea. “You ever throw a pot, Crystal?”
“Throw a…?”
“Work with clay. Create something with your own two hands.” Her mother’s eyes were bright now, and full of mischief. “You want to see the operation, you gotta get your hands dirty.”
“Okaaay…”
“I didn’t start in until after you left, you know. It took a while to develop my style. Better late than never for you.” Her mother pushed to her feet, arms trembling, and led Christine to a half-dozen pedal-powered potter wheels and motioned Christine onto a clay-splattered stool. “Now sit.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Christine thought, sitting. She’d have to share that with Marcus, when she told him his advice had worked.
“BUT I CAN’T do MY homework,” David whined as Christine drove him into New Mirage for his first appointment with Dr. Mike. “Dial-up’s too slow. It freezes all the time.”
“You don’t need the Internet once you’ve downloaded the assignments. Look, do you want to be a junior when school starts or not?” She gritted her teeth and twisted her hands on the steering wheel. Losing her temper wouldn’t help a bit. “You made a deal, David.”
“I’m sick of the deal. Let’s go home. I hate it here. It’s boring and stupid. There’s nothing to do.”
“There’s plenty to do. You’re just not doing any of it.” He’d been assigned to work in the garden with Marcus and help Bogie in the greenhouse, but he was constantly wandering off. Sullen with her, full of complaints, he stayed mostly in his room, except when he talked to Brigitte, and he was sneaking in extra calls, Christine was certain.
David showed no improvement, but at least Christine had made progress at the clay works in the past week. The agency’s designer was putting together the Web site using digital shots Christine had sent of Aurora’s most beautiful pieces and Christine had been contacting previous clients about new orders, as well as generating new business with cold calls to tourist boutiques around the state. Maybe boosting the commune’s income made Christine a slave to the capitalist overlords, but she didn’t care. Aurora and Bogie must have huge medical bills to handle. This was a way Christine could help.
Aurora came out to the barn each morning to issue opinions, question everything and generally slow things down. The first two days, Christine steamed with annoyance, barely holding her tongue. But she gradually saw this was Aurora’s way to hang on to the place a little. She looked so relieved when Christine would suggest Aurora head back to “handle things in the house,” which was code for lying down.
Christine had downloaded heart surgery postoperative instructions and read them out loud to Aurora, over her strenuous objections. She was supposed to rest every da
y, take breaks between activities, avoid stairs, not cross her legs, not lift anything over five pounds and not drive.
The good news was that if she followed the rules, in six to eight weeks, she’d be back to normal, with decades of life ahead of her, which relieved Christine immensely.
Christine parked in front of Dr. Mike’s office, which used to be a Laundromat, crossing her fingers that this visit would change things.
Dr. Mike wore an Indian tunic and flowing pants, and his office smelled of patchouli and was ringed with shelves of crystals, stoppered bottles of herbal remedies and books on alternative medicine. Okay, so not traditional therapy, but if the man helped David, Christine didn’t care if he used a Ouija board and danced under a full moon.
Leaving David in his hands, Christine headed to Parsons Foods to pick up a few things. She saw that Susan Parsons was “filling in” at the register again and she reminded Christine of the dinner at her house Saturday night.
On her second day, Christine and Marcus had gone on a grocery run together and Susan had insisted they both come to supper and bring David to meet her twin sixteen-year-old sons. To get David friends, Christine would endure a night of Susan showing off her husband—she’d mentioned that he was the mayor at least five times before the groceries got bagged—and her, no doubt, perfect princess home.
Back at Dr. Mike’s office, Christine wrote a check and walked a smiling David out to the car. Her hopes soared. Maybe this would help. In the car, she asked, “So how was it?”
“He looked into my eyes and told me my nutrition is bad.”
“He what?” Christine’s hopes dropped like stones. “Didn’t you talk about your problems?”
“I don’t have any problems. He said my irises were muddy, which means my bowels are blocked.”
“Just great.”
“He gave me some breathing exercises to clear my heart chakra.” He demonstrated, huffing while patting his stomach. “Then we talked about the Phoenix Coyotes. He likes hockey.”
Dammit, Aurora. Dr. Mike was no more capable of counseling David than he was of doing Aurora’s heart surgery.
“You’re not going back there.”
“Why not? It’ll get the principal off your back.”
“More roughage is not going to help us here. We’ll have to find someone in Preston.” Which meant a two-hour round-trip.
“Come on. He said he’d hypnotize me next time.” David was clearly loving this. Christine shook her head. Now what?
“NOT THAT PLATTER, the swirled glaze one,” Aurora ordered Christine, whose only wish was to keep the couscous as moist as her own skin in this boiling-hot kitchen.
She and Marcus had kitchen duty, instructed by Bogie and Aurora, who were supposedly resting, though Bogie had been up and down seasoning things and Aurora had been barking commands.
“If you’d keep the trays in the same place, it would be easier,” Christine said, forcing herself not to snap at her mother. She was dying to say, Go lie down, for Pete’s sake.
“Here you go.” Marcus handed Christine the tray. It was one of her mother’s surreal creations in green, blue and turquoise. “And the serving utensil and leftover pita she’s about to tell you about.” He winked. “Saving you time.”
“Thanks,” she said, vividly aware of how close he stood.
After a week of seeing Marcus, mostly at meals, Christine could no longer deny how attracted she was. Whenever he was near, she felt a low electric hum start up inside. It was delicious. She wasn’t going to do anything about it, it was just…fun.
She rarely dated, but when she did she kept it casual and mostly physical. She had David and engrossing work, of course. Plus she’d been burned the few times she’d gotten serious by charmers who let her down—like David’s father, Skip—or pursued her relentlessly until she fell for them, then disappeared or went cold on her.
Not good. Her judgment when it came to relationships plain reeked. Short-term hookups were fine for now. Maybe some day, when she got smarter, less emotional or developed better mating instincts, she’d go for more, the whole picket-fence deal.
Marcus felt the attraction, too, she could tell. It was thrilling to get a man as restrained as Marcus all charged up. She liked making him laugh, too. And talking to him. She realized she didn’t spend much relaxed social time with men, so this was a nice change.
It was all good fun. She enjoyed the tease and retreat and he seemed to, too. She had too much on her hands with David, her mother and her work to even think about sex. Well, she could think about it. But that was it.
Marcus seemed equally reluctant, pulling back from any accidental contact, when they brushed hips in the entry to the dining room or tangled fingers over the dishes they washed.
Marcus had the goulash pot in both hands and gestured for her to pass in front of him. She did, then glanced over her shoulder to catch him watching her backside.
She got that roller-coaster dip in her stomach. “Watch your step,” she said, nodding at the bump in the floorboard, but she was grinning and he cleared his throat.
This was such a kick.
At the entrance to the dining room, Christine paused to admire the rough-wood table holding the ceramic plates in her mother’s singular style, the pewter flatware and Mason jar water glasses. Bogie had let David choose the cuttings for the bouquet of fragrant herbs, river bamboo and exotic amaryllis in the center of the table. There were ten people at the table tonight.
Aurora and Bogie emerged with the salad and bread and Christine handed the couscous to the wife of the hiking couple, Lisa Manwell, who loaded up, then passed to Carl, a scary guy with the smeared ink of a prison tattoo. Aurora said he was a teddy bear and Bogie declared him a wizard of a mechanic who kept the school bus purring. If he didn’t murder them all in their sleep, Christine would be grateful.
The good karma here is too strong for anything negative, Aurora had told her. Lord. No wonder her mother liked Dr. Mike.
“Enjoy the bounty of the earth through our hands,” Aurora said, head down. “May we all find here what we need.”
Carl mumbled an amen. Silently, Christine put in her own request: Please bring David back. Make us a family again.
The commune food was grainy and dense, made with whole grains, lentils and beans, with Middle Eastern spices, fresh and healthy and there was always plenty. It had taken Christine forever to get the dirt off the tender lettuce and celery Marcus had picked for the salad that afternoon.
“So you’re in high school?” The question for David came from Gretchen, across the table, a pretty twenty-something poet on retreat. Beside her were two college students, Mitch and Louis, researching sustainable living for a college project.
“I’ll be a junior,” David answered, his face aflame, “but school’s bullshit.”
“David!” Christine said, embarrassed by the swear word. The Manwells exchanged disapproving glances.
“Creativity can suffer in school, for sure,” Gretchen said.
“That’s what my girlfriend says. She writes poetry. Also political pieces. She’s really good.”
Christine’s heart clutched at his wistful tone and love-sick look. A week hadn’t eased his feelings for Brigitte at all.
“Do you drive?” Gretchen asked him.
“Not yet.” He glared at Christine. Learning to drive had been a sore subject. She’d said no permit without a B average.
“Hell, you can learn while you’re here,” Aurora said.
“He doesn’t have a permit,” Christine said.
“Who cares?”
“I care. It’s illegal.”
“We rarely see a deputy, so who’d write the ticket?” Aurora waved away the issue like a gnat over her plate.
“Aurora…”
“I might as well learn. I’ve got nothing else to do.”
“Now isn’t the time to talk about this,” she said quietly. “It’s never the time with you,” David blurted. He’d been in a bad mood since his
call to Brigitte. He looked around, clearly aware of how rude he’d sounded, jerked to his feet, knocking off his knife and loudly scraping his chair before he stomped away.
“Teenagers,” Christine finally said into the awkward silence. Heads nodded. Forks clicked, water glasses clinked.
“Kids are so out of control these days,” Lisa Manwell said. “It’s shameful. My sister’s teens rule the house.”
Christine bit her tongue to keep from suggesting Lisa try a stroll in her sister’s Free Spirits before she criticized her.
“Since Socrates, adults have thought kids ran wild and parents were lax,” Aurora said, winking at Christine. “That’s how you know you’re old, when you start saying, kids today….”
Lisa sniffed at the insult.
“David’s a good kid,” Aurora said.
“Thank you.” Christine was touched by her mother’s kindness. Aurora really was trying to do what they’d agreed—support Christine’s parenting of David.
“He’s at loose ends out here in the country,” she said. “So let him drive, Crystal. Where’s the harm?”
Lord. So much for Aurora’s good intentions. “How about if I get the dessert?” Christine said, happy to escape to the kitchen. Marcus stood and began gathering plates.
Taking a knife from the cupboard to slice the cinnamon carrot bread, she noticed the phone was missing its handset. The cord stretched around the corner into her office alcove.
David sat on the floor there, knees up, back to her, his voice low and fervent. “I’ve got to see you. I’m so alone here. Christine’s such a…she’s so… Exactly. Controlling. I hate her.”
Christine’s cheeks stung, as if she’d been slapped. He didn’t really mean that, but it still hurt. She tried to back away without being seen, but when he saw her, she knew she had to say something about the rule. “You already called today. You need to hang up.”
He covered the phone and gave her a desperate look. “This is all I have. Do you want me to go psycho?” He said into the phone, “Yeah, she’s making me hang up. I’m sorry. ’Bye.” He jerked to his feet, charged around the corner and slammed down the receiver. “Are you happy? You made my life a complete hell.”