I push my hair back behind my ears, wishing I’d worn it up. He points toward his office down the hallway. I follow his orange and black golf shirt. I’d almost bought that same color last week and am elated I didn’t, as it looks far better with his hair coloring than mine. When we arrive at his office, he holds the door open and motions for me to enter first.
The smell of pizza almost knocks me over.
An open box waits on his desk with two large sodas on either side. He motions for me to sit while he goes around to the other side of the desk.
“I thought you had a lesson?” Once again, my voice lets me down, making me sound like I’m twelve.
“He cancelled, so we’re on.”
“And it includes lunch?” The inviting smell of roasted garlic and pepperoni makes me salivate.
Drew reaches for a large piece and pushes the box toward me. “Eat up. You’re wasting away.”
I do as ordered and munch on the crispy crust. Pizza has turned into a delicacy for me here in Florida, whereas back home I’d shared one weekly with friends. I stuff it down as politely as I can and reach for a second piece the same time he does.
I have yet to ask Drew about his past and consider this might be the right moment. After all, he seems more relaxed than I’ve seen him all semester. He wipes his mouth with his napkin and smiles at me, causing me to choke on my last bite.
I reach for my soda and suck half of it down. So I’m not completely at ease with him. I doubt I ever will be considering the way his eyes sparkle and the adorable way his face crinkles when he smiles. I can’t help but compare him to Dan, whom I ended going out with only three more times. His taste in movies and music bored me, and his endless parade of golf fanfare had been the end for me. I kept the necklace though (it was a gift) and tucked it away in a box that I kept in my bottom drawer so my mother wouldn’t find it if she decided to snoop.
Drew shoves the pizza box away from us. “So tell me why you’re really here, Bobbi. It isn’t about the golf, is it?”
My eyes widen. If I could have, I would have gulped, but instead set my soda down and try to come up with a plausible answer. “What do you mean? I told you my plans are to go on tour.”
His eyes narrow.
I’ve been found out. Maybe I’m not as good an actress as I’d hoped to be. Maybe Mrs. Tarpon, my sixth-grade teacher, had been right when she’d put me in the choir instead of giving me a part in the Pirates of Penzance. I’d cried all night that I wouldn’t get to wear those pretty petticoats like my best friend, but as it was, I came down with the flu opening night, anyway.
My mother kept me home while Dad went with Robert, since he played one of the main pirates. Moustache and all.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
A plan forms as I contemplate how much to share about my family’s problems. “I’ll tell you if you tell me why you quit the tour to work here.”
He frowns like a child who has been told they are leaving the playground.
Touché.
Now I’m not normally the kind of person who wants to hurt anyone, but I have my reasons for wanting to keep parts of my life private. I assume Drew does, too.
“Where did you hear that?” he says, eyebrows rising.
“I met your brother on the range. How come you didn’t mention we’re from the same area?”
I’m not sure which part of my sentence floors him more. That I know his brother or that I know he comes from my hometown.
“So you met Mark? Quite a talker, isn’t he?”
The office is getting too warm for me. If someone doesn’t keep the weight room doors open, this half of the school overheats. I wipe back hair that sticks on my face. “He’s a nice guy. We discovered we’ve met before at a hardware store.”
“Really? What a coincidence. So I guess you’ve been wondering if we’ve met before, too.”
I shake my head. “At first, but then I knew if we had, I would have remembered you.” My hand flies to my mouth. Did I really say that?
“And I’m certain I would have remembered you, too, Miss Bobbi-with-an-I.”
A shudder runs down my spine, to the dead-center of my stomach. I think of moonlit nights, dancing under the stars, and holding hands on the front porch swing. I think of swapping stories until daylight and plucking strands of long grass from his hair after lying in the dewy morning grass by the river. I let my brain spin all forms of romantic fantasies while I shrink under Drew’s steady gaze.
I do the only thing I can do. “Do you like movies?”
6
After my lesson, I drive straight home past the row of century-old oaks and into my development. I slow down to let a golf cart pass driven by a man wearing plaid Bermuda shorts, a collared shirt, and loafers with white socks. He nods his thanks and putts toward a trailer where a matching woman with tightly permed silver hair and a sundress that shows her flapping underarms waits. I’m surrounded by old age, but then much of Florida is filled with the retired.
A block of mailboxes sits near the clubhouse. I use the word clubhouse loosely. When I went to investigate it my first day here, all I found were outdated magazines stacked side-by-side next to a broken treadmill and a set of used barbells. The owner stayed in his office watching TV the entire time I was there. Mattie told me later the building’s main usage is as a shelter in the event of a tornado or hurricane. I dread the thought of being trapped for days with people who smell like menthol rub.
After finding my key, I unlock my box and smile when I discover three letters from home. Amanda must have sent a pre-baby announcement already as the pink envelope and her fancy cursive is covered with rattle stickers. I finger the next two letters and decide to wait until I get back to my place to open them. My stomach growls in agreement. Drew’s pizza didn’t last through nine holes of golf.
My cheeks heat again. Do you like movies? Pretty forward. I’ve never asked a guy out before, and here I ask my own teacher. I put the car in gear and drive around the corner to my place. Good thing a student came into his office before he answered. I’m not sure I would have followed through.
A quick glance at Mattie’s place assures me she isn’t around and won’t be bringing over any leftovers tonight. I look forward to my twenty-nine cent box of macaroni and cheese. I might even have some stale bread I can toast.
My meal takes only minutes to make. With a cold glass of milk, toast with peanut butter, and a plate of the blue box’s finest imposter, I sit at my kitchen table with the two other letters waiting before me. My mom writes me almost every day. She sends recipes and notes about the robins coming and going and how high the river is. Robert is more lax so I grin when I pick his up first.
A minute later, I set down his letter.
My mother needs me to come home.
My fingers shake as I slit open her letter and a check falls out. I race through her neat paragraphs written in her favorite purple ink but can’t find anything to substantiate Robert’s claims. The money is for my birthday if I want to fly up—if I can get time off—but she knows it might be difficult for me and doesn’t hold out any expectations.
I drop my head in my hands. “Oh, God,” I pray. “Oh, God, please help us.”
****
Maybe it’s because I’m a new employee or maybe such a fine worker, but my manager gives me the time off when I ask for it the next day. I wait now in my seat at the Orlando International Airport for my plane to take off. I’ve been fortunate to get a direct flight, but not so fortunate to get a good seatmate. The woman who sits next to me has already pulled out her knitting needles and clicks them while we wait for runway clearance. I’m not sure if I will be able to stand hearing that sound for the next two-plus hours.
I study the other travelers on the crowded plane. A young man and his wife (I can tell by the shiny new wedding bands) sit across from me holding hands as though they’ve just come off their honeymoon. A set of black plastic mouse ears sticking out of her bag give me a
good clue. In front of me, I watch two small children and a tired-looking mother climb in after a tussle about who will sit where.
Normally, airplane rides intrigue me. We took a trip out west to Arizona for a vacation when we were in our teens. Dad thought it was important that we viewed the Grand Canyon, though when I got there I asked to go to a mall instead. Not that it was so boring I wanted to cry; it wasn’t. It was just the same everywhere I looked. How many pictures could I take of rocks? Robert had agreed and we took to snapping our new cameras at tourists who were chasing their kids away from the steep edges.
When that got boring, we edged closer ourselves to take in yet another view.
“Watch this,” Robert said as he stepped on a rock ledge and dangled one long leg over it. “Ta-da!” I laughed and imitated him from where I stood on my own rock four feet away until I felt the back of my shirt being yanked so hard I stumbled backwards.
“Get back from that ledge!” My father next went for Robert, who had been wise enough to see Dad grab me first and knew better than to wait for him to get there.
We sat in the hot car for over an hour while he and Mom went through the gift shop (now I was bored) and took more pictures. I don’t think they ever developed half of what they took, but that wasn’t my business.
Later, I tried to paint from my photos but couldn’t get them right. It seemed my mountains and river were my muse.
After takeoff, I reach into my backpack and pull out my headphones and a book I’d been meaning to read ever since I arrived in Florida but hadn’t had time. Golf. That’s what I do in all my free time. Day in and day out. I actually shot a seventy-nine last week, and it seems I’m getting more and more consistent with my swings. I still need to do better, but I’m improving.
“Are you going home?”
I can’t help but hear my seatmate’s question since I have yet to turn on my music.
“I am. What about you?”
I don’t realize being polite means I will be connected to this stranger for another thirty minutes. I actually hate that she intrudes on my time to think about what lies ahead of me, but I decide to be sorry for her instead. She can’t help it if her mother just died and she’s headed home for a funeral. Can I blame her that she’s seated next to me who has my own set of problems to deal with? After losing my grandmother so recently, I understand grief.
So I try not to hate her and instead listen politely until she runs out of words and tears.
In the silence that finally shows itself, I close my eyes and think about my father. I will need to speak to him soon. My heart races as I consider what I will say. I want to tell him how much he hurts the family, that his actions are cowardly, and that Mom deserves better.
I dab my eyes with my napkin. My mother’s letter didn’t give a hint to her pain. She isn’t that way at all, so I’m not surprised. One Christmas, she surprised my father with a new rifle. He’d wanted to hunt small game on our back property for a few years but never took the time to get a license or a gun.
“It’s a beauty,” he said as he fondled the sleek metal. “It’ll come in handy.”
“Will you teach me to use it, too, Dad?” Robert moved closer and his eyes practically bugged as he took in my mother’s gift.
She smiled from across the room and reached for the discarded wrapping paper.
“Better yet, this gun will be yours. I’ll teach you to shoot those old squirrels that keep ruining our roof.” He handed Robert the gun.
My mother’s smile froze. “But I thought you always wanted one, dear.”
Dad tossed his shoulders and scooped up the rest of the Christmas wrap. “Not anymore. That was last year. Robert will make good use of it.”
Her expression tipped downward, but she hurried to the kitchen to make us blueberry pancakes. I never saw her cry, but I know he broke her heart that morning. He breaks her heart almost every day but that particular memory has stayed with me the longest. Maybe because it was Christmas, or maybe because of what he did with that gun a few years later.
He didn’t always own his own business. He worked as an accountant for a firm in the next town. But the economy slumped, or so Mom told us, and Dad came home one day jobless. Too old to do much else except accounting, his mood quickly turned ugly.
I twist in my seat and tighten my seatbelt as the plane bumps with my memories.
“Never did like turbulence.” My seatmate clutches her drink tighter.
I don’t like turbulence in my family, but my father is determined to give it to us. A week after he lost his job, he and Mom got into a huge fight.
I was upstairs at the time but couldn’t help but hear their words as my father’s voice grew louder.
“It’s entirely your fault. If you hadn’t pushed me to study accounting, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation now. I’d be doing something I really want to do.”
I hid back on the stairs and motioned to Robert to wait next to me when he came up behind me. We were old enough to understand the rage that came from my father. And the accusations.
“You needed to do something. You know that. I was helping.” My mother fairly whispered her reasons, and hearing her do that made my skin crawl.
“Stand up to him just once!” I wanted to scream. Robert placed his hand on my arm and pulled me up two steps.
“We shouldn’t be listening.” His color had reddened. He hated it as much as I did when our parents fought, but I was powerless to leave my place of hiding.
“You don’t have to, but I am.” I slid back down and trained my ear. Nothing but silence greeted me until I heard mother’s broken sobs. It took everything in me to not run down and rush into her arms. A burst of air hit me in the chest as my father flew past the bottom of the steps to the closet where he kept his gun.
“Don’t, Rick. Put it away, please.”
“I should shoot all of you and then myself. That’s what I should do.”
“Give it to me. You’re upset. We’ll work it out.”
Robert pulled me up to his room, his hands gripping my shoulders. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s just mad. In a few minutes we’ll go downstairs and everything will be OK.”
I didn’t believe him then, and I don’t now.
I open my eyes to see the attendant leaning over me. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“Not long now. I can’t wait to get my feet on the ground again.” Click. Click. My seatmate’s needles move faster.
I reach into my backpack and bring out the bag of pretzels I’d thought to bring. I’m sure I can wait.
7
My mother looks the same wearing her T-shirt and Mommy jeans and a pair of white sneakers. Her hair needs highlights badly, but at least it’s still shaped around her head, not all wild looking as it tends to get some days like mine. I don’t know what I expect; it has only been a few months since I left. Maybe I expect to see more sorrow painted on her familiar features. But no, she smiles widely when she catches sight of me coming from baggage claim.
When I reach her, she grabs hold of me and pulls me into her strong arms, hugging me as though I might disappear from her grip. Only then does she give away any of what she is feeling. I hear the sniff and grab on tighter.
“I missed you, Mom.”
“I missed you more.”
I grin at the silly game we played whenever I returned home from school. She’d be standing at the kitchen sink with a red and white checked dishtowel wrapped around her waist waiting for us.
Robert and I always tried to outrun each other to the back steps after the bus dropped us off out front. I usually lost, but I think Mom held onto me a fraction of a second longer when I finally arrived and Robert moved away.
Now I step back and look into her eyes, wrinkled around the edges with age, or stress. I am never sure.
“What’s happened?”
She hooks her arm through mine and turns me toward the parking garage. “It can wait unt
il we get home. I want to know every little detail about what you’ve been doing.”
I know better than to argue, and maybe this is her way of keeping some sort of control in her life. I understand because I’m so much like her when it comes to certain things. I need to know that my life isn’t going to fall down around me if I can stop it somehow. I let my mother have her time for now.
I love Pennsylvania in the summer. We drive past field after field of blazing corn ready to be picked and boiled, roasted, or grilled. I hope we will still smoke some. It isn’t summer without our fire pit and racks of corn.
“How’s Grandpa doing today?” I ask when we turn down the country road that leads home. So far, my mother has managed to stall my peppering her with questions by asking me questions. What grocery stores do I shop in? How about the Laundromat I use, and is it safe enough? Do I take my pepper spray with me when I go (I say yes, of course) and have I met any female friends (not yet, because my attention is on Drew)? And do I mind the humidity on my hair?
“Grandpa’s fine. Just like he usually is. Moving around a little less, but that happens with age. Mom got the same way.” It’s my mother’s turn to lie or refuse to see the truth.
“And Robert?”
A side of her mouth turns up. “Robert’s doing well too. He misses you and wanted to ride down to the airport to get you, but I hated to have him wait in the hot car. Tonight we’ll play cards like we always do.”
“Sure. I haven’t played any since leaving. I met a neighborhood woman—I think I wrote you about her. She tried to teach me how to play pinochle with some of her friends. I couldn’t get the hang of it.”
“I’m glad she took a liking to you. That makes me feel better. It’s always nice to know your neighbors.”
We turn into our driveway. I almost make her stop the car and let me out so I can stand out front and steady the ache in my chest from seeing home. Has it only been a few months since I left? It could have been years by the dizziness that overtakes me. Honestly, I didn’t think leaving home and returning would cause me so much emotional turmoil. I want to bury my head in my lap and cry. I don’t because I need to save my tears for what lies ahead of me.
The Mulligan Page 5