Isabel Sharpe

by Surprise Me. . . (lit)

  “He is.” She laughed and smacked his forearm gently. “All of that and more.”

  “Good. You know I just want you to be happy, Melanie.” His voice turned low and husky; for some reason she was reluctant to look at him.

  “Your brother makes me happy. At least he did that night. Really happy.”

  Then she did look at Edgar, because for another reason she didn’t understand, she couldn’t not. And then she couldn’t look away, because his eyes darkened and became warm and somewhat thrilling. “Then I hope he’ll make you even happier tonight.”

  7

  “TRICIA?”

  “I’m up here, Alana.” Tricia took a break from frowning at her reflection in Melanie’s mirror. She was having lunch with Jim and nothing she put on worked with her mood. Probably because her mood kept changing. One second she wanted to show him the years hadn’t taken away her sexuality; the next second she wanted to make sure he knew this was lunch between friends and not a date; the second after that she wanted to show she’d finally matured out of her party-girl stage, but that she was still young at heart; and then and then and then…

  Maybe Alana could help her decide. A good bonding moment.

  “Knock, knock?”

  “C’mon in,” Tricia called. “The door’s only closed so I can see the mirror.”

  “Hi.” Alana poked her head around the door, then came into the room almost reluctantly, not seeming able to figure out where to stand or what to do with her hands. Tricia immediately tensed. A weird vibe was coming from her daughter. Very weird.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “No. No.” Alana shook her head a second too long. “Just stopped by. To…talk.”

  “Okay.” Tricia sighed inwardly. The way she said talk meant serious emoting ahead. Normally the idea of her eldest daughter reaching out to her would have been thrilling, but did she have to pick now? Tricia was due at lunch in less than an hour and she was plenty rattled already.

  “Trying on outfits?” Alana glanced at the discarded clothes strewn on the bed. Apparently she could tell it wasn’t Melanie’s usual mess.

  “I’m having lunch today. With a friend. An old friend.” Tricia pasted on a smile, wishing she hadn’t sounded defensive.

  “Yeah?” Alana picked up on her nerves immediately, narrowing her eyes. The woman was smart. “Someone I know?”

  “Um…no. From before Melanie was born. You were too little to remember.”

  “Oh.” She drifted into the room, arms crossed over her chest, picked up a black miniskirt discarded because it showed too much thigh. “A guy?”

  “Yes. A guy.” Tricia cleared her throat, feeling as if she were the daughter, and Alana her disapproving mom. “A guy friend.”

  Alana’s jaw set. “Well.”

  “What, I’m not allowed to have lunch with a friend?” She spread her hands, laughed to keep the mood light.

  “Of course you are. Sorry.” Alana dropped the skirt as if it were on fire. “Reflex reaction to you going to meet a man, I guess.”

  Tricia wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be as cruel as it sounded. “Alana, I’m not—”

  “Mom.” Alana held up her hand. “I came over because we need to talk.”

  As if Tricia hadn’t been trying to get her to talk for the past week? And been met at every turn with resistance? “That’s what I came back for.”

  “I know. But I’ve…well, to be honest, Sawyer insisted I come over.” She started the barest beginnings of a smile. “He’s tired of me being all uptight and grumpy about you being here.”

  “Me, too.”

  Luckily, Alana took the comment in the right spirit; the smile turned wider. “Okay. So now what?”

  Tricia sighed. This was not the greatest time. But the outfit she had on, a midcalf black knit skirt and a scoop-neck turquoise top, looked as good as anything else she’d tried on, so it would do. “So now we talk. First I need to be dressed. How do I look?”

  Alana examined her carefully. “You want me to be honest?”

  Tricia froze in apprehension. “Yes.”

  “Terrific. Younger than your age. Slender, classy, and I’d say…yes, beautiful.”

  Tricia burst out laughing. “Whew. Had me going there for a second. I still need earrings…”

  Alana tipped her head to one side. “Gold. Something small and tasteful.”

  Tricia grinned. “I was thinking silver and dangling.”

  “Of course.”

  Tricia picked out a pair, twisted bars of silver that hung two inches past her lobes. “These.”

  “No.” Alana shook her head. “Too flashy. Too formal for lunch.”

  Tricia put them on, studied the results. They were perfect. “I’ll wear them while we talk, then we can reevaluate. Want to go downstairs and get something to drink?”

  “Sure.” She slipped out of the room.

  One more glance in the mirror, a bracing breath, and Tricia went after her, not looking forward to this discussion, but recognizing that it was necessary. Sawyer was obviously a smart man, well up to the task of coping with Alana.

  There. She’d managed one positive thought.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she headed for the kitchen.

  “Juice? Soda?” Alana held up a can of Diet Coke and a bottle of cran-raspberry juice. “Or water?”

  “Water. The soda will make me jittery and the juice will spoil my appetite.” Which was pretty much nil right now from nerves. She poured herself a glass in silence that felt brittle and threatening, sat on a counter stool, then changed her mind. This felt like a courtroom, with her the defendant, and Alana the prosecutor. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Good plan.” Alana followed her out into the summer air, cool for early August, but humid. They chose chairs opposite each other, which made Tricia feel as if she were on a job interview. Or in this case, most likely a job review. Which she’d fail.

  “What does Sawyer think you need to say to me?” Given that her body was tense and nervous sweat was starting, she guessed it was not going to be pretty. She’d show up to meet Jim already wrung out emotionally.

  But this was not about Jim. This was about beginning the difficult task of repairing the relationship with her daughter. Tricia remembered her vividly as a big-eyed, serious girl so hard to please, while her sister would take every opportunity to cuddle anxiously whenever Tricia was home. Which was probably more often than the girls realized. Though as her therapist told her, what mattered were feelings more than facts.

  “Sawyer thinks I need to get angry at you.”

  Tricia nodded, sipped her water. “You probably do.”

  “I’m just not sure how you walk up to someone and say, ‘I’m angry at you and have been for the past twenty-five years.’”

  “That works.” She expected it, but her daughter’s painful words still stole her breath for a second. “I guess now you tell me why.”

  “I think you know.”

  “I think I do. Your words are what’s important, and your feelings.”

  “Since when?”

  Tricia gazed up into the beautiful green leafy tops of the trees around them. Breathe. “That’s a start. I was a terrible mother, I don’t deny that.”

  “How could you be that terrible?” Alana’s voice had changed from flat to shaking. The change was welcome, made her more human and more vulnerable, someone Tricia might be able to reach. “How could you abandon us like that so often? Spend so much time with such horrible losers? How could you do that to yourself, for that matter? Where was your pride?”

  “Lost. Gone. In drugs, in neediness.”

  “Why?” She was pleading now, for answers Tricia didn’t have. “Gran and Grandad gave you everything you needed. Love, discipline…it’s not like they abused you.”

  Tricia nodded, throat tight, trembling, trying to stay calm and be the good parent she hadn’t been before. “I learned in therapy that not everything in this life can be analyzed in neat cause-and-effect
diagrams. Look at you and Melanie. Same parents, same upbringing, very different people.”

  Alana hunched her shoulders, then released them. “Yes. True. I’m probably just being a control freak wanting neat answers on a neat list. Even though I know life isn’t like that I can’t help wanting it to be.”

  “I get that. I do. Maybe you should try meditating or taking yoga. Both help you get into a zone of peaceful being, of accepting more about you and your life and whatever happens.” Tricia hid a smile at the open skepticism on her daughter’s face. “As for your anger…I don’t blame you, Alana. I’m angry, too. I wasted a large portion of my life, and my relationship with the two of you. I can’t fix the past, but…I can offer us the future. If I blew off the privilege of being your mother, at least I would like to try now and be your friend.”

  Alana looked down without responding. Not exactly heart-warming, but at least she didn’t say no, which Tricia knew she was capable of doing.

  “I do have one other question.” She lifted her head.

  “Shoot.” Tricia raised her glass to her lips, feeling parched.

  “Where is our father?”

  Tricia put the glass down without taking a sip. “I don’t have any idea, Alana.”

  “Tell me.” Alana leaned forward, hands folded. “The truth. No matter how ugly.”

  Tricia sighed, wishing she’d been able to talk to Jim before this conversation. Or to her parents. Or Dahlia, or her therapist. So she could know what to tell and how.

  But she was a big girl now, and this was her responsibility. No more shirking. “Tom left when I was pregnant with Melanie. He told me one day that he hadn’t planned on being tied down with a family that young and that he had to find himself. He went to India on a spiritual quest. That was the last I heard of him.”

  Alana sat up, took a swallow of her Diet Coke. So repressed, so held in. Such a contrast to free-spirited Melanie. “Did you love him?”

  “As much as I could at that age in that state. Though he didn’t deserve it.”

  “You must have been devastated.”

  The comment came out of the blue. Tricia hadn’t been asking for sympathy. “I was, but that’s no excuse for how I treated you.”

  “Were we planned? He didn’t make it sound like we were.”

  A lie came readily to her lips—how could you tell a child she wasn’t wanted? Tricia pushed it away, finished with lying. “When you have your own children you’ll understand. I loved both of you the second I knew I was pregnant, and celebrated both your arrivals. It didn’t matter to me that you weren’t planned.”

  “Maybe it mattered to us.”

  “If you mean that your lives might have been more traditional, maybe. But I probably would have been just as bad a mother. That’s the horror of addiction.”

  “Was he into drugs also?”

  Tricia nodded sadly. “Worse than me.”

  “So this guy you’re having lunch with knew our dad.” She frowned thoughtfully when Tricia nodded. “I’d like to meet him sometime.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Tricia blew out a long breath of relief. She wasn’t sure what bomb she’d expected, but it hadn’t come.

  “Thanks for…talking, I guess.”

  “Anytime, Alana. It’s what I’m here for.”

  Alana stood up. Tricia stood also, and after the excruciating moment when it was obvious a hug was in order, but too uncomfortable for either of them, they both laughed. That was something. If she couldn’t have acceptance yet, laughter with her eldest daughter was the next best thing.

  BY THE TIME TRICIA WAS on the road to meet Jim at Beans and Barley, she was a bundle of nerves. Just how she wanted to be on a date!

  No, not a date. Lunch with a friend.

  Traffic was light, wind blew recklessly around the interior of her old Chevy Malibu, Louise, named after a friend who’d lived many years longer than the doctors told her she would. The car also, against all odds, was still getting Tricia places. The drive from Berkeley to Milwaukee had had her on edge, but Louise had persevered as she did today, onto I43 and up to North Avenue.

  Tricia parked in the restaurant lot and hurried toward the door. Arriving late, flustered and overheated hadn’t been her plan, but the Jim she knew wouldn’t care.

  The thought warmed her through the doors, past the small grocery area toward the restaurant, where her heart stopped. She swore it did.

  Jim. Smiling at her, his gray eyes as vivid and young as ever, the gray at his temples flattering his features. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how imposing, how she felt girlish and small next to him. Tom had been five foot nine and slender. Jim was well over six feet and solid.

  “Damn, Tricia, look at you.” That solid body wrapped itself around her in a hug that brought tears to her eyes. “Jim.”

  He didn’t let go, even when he loosened his grip enough to search her face.

  “You’re still so beautiful. I can’t tell you what this is—” He broke off, cleared his throat, and she realized with a shock that he was only just holding back his own tears. “Look at me, ready to bawl like a baby.”

  She was glad to be a woman; her tears were able to roll down her cheeks without shame. “It’s so good to see you, Jim.”

  He wiped his eyes. “I feel like something I didn’t realize was missing has been given back to me.”

  She had no idea what to say to that. His words made her feel secure, treasured and slightly bewildered.

  “Well so.” He released her, grinning. “I think we can just calm down and have lunch now. What do you say?”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  They sat at a table by one of the tall windows looking out onto North Avenue. Tricia buried herself in the menu, overwhelmed by how familiar and strange it was to be here again with Jim. Without Tom. The place had started serving food a couple of years after they’d graduated high school. She remembered coming with her hippie friends soon after the restaurant opened, drawn to the quality vegetarian options the rest of this bratwurst-loving city hadn’t offered.

  Now the place was still around, and vegetarian and organic had become mainstream and trendy. Go figure.

  “It’s good to be here.”

  “The building burned down in ’93, did you know that? It was rebuilt from nothing.”

  “Really?” She glanced up, then had to look back down at her menu. The expression on his face could be her undoing. The warmth in his eyes, the light… “I thought it looked different.”

  “I recommend any burrito or the tempeh Reuben. But everything’s as good as you remember, or better.”

  The waitress appeared and Tricia ordered the Reuben, too scattered to be able to concentrate.

  “I’ll have the same. And iced tea.” He handed his menu over, folded his hands on the table. Tricia felt naked in front of that gaze without her menu to hide behind. “So, Patricia. Tell me everything. Catch me up.”

  She leaned back in her chair, overwhelmed. “Oh, wow.”

  “I know, too big a question. Start smaller. How are Melanie and Alana? How are they liking having Mom back in town?”

  She was touched he remembered their names. So long ago, so many damaged years in between. “Funny you should ask.”

  “Uh-oh.” He quirked his eyebrow, a habit so familiar she nearly cried again. “Better tell me.”

  She told him, awkwardly at first, then gradually more and more coherently until she was pouring out the story, embarrassed when their food arrived and the poor guy hadn’t gotten a word in.

  “God, I’ve been blabbing forever. I’m sorry.”

  “I asked because I wanted to know.” He reached across the table, took her hand in his large one and gave it a squeeze. “The girls need time. I had the same trouble with my nephews—hell, with everyone I knew who wasn’t part of the problem in my life. Give them time, and show them by living clean that you mean it when you say you’ve changed. They’ll come around.”

  “Thank you, Jim. I hope so.�
�� The rush of pleasure was almost sexual. He understood. Jim had been through it all. Talking to him today was like coming across someone of your own species after living for years among aliens.

  “What are your plans?” He released her hand, started eating. “You said you were here only for a few months. You going back to California?”

  “No.” She took a bite of her sandwich, salty and rich—she didn’t miss the meat at all. “California and I are through. I’m moving to Florida.”

  “Florida.” He looked startled. “You are kidding me.”

  She didn’t know whether to be amused or irritated. Was it that hard to believe? “No, not kidding. My parents are there.”

  “I’ve been thinking of…anyway. How are Edith and Edwin?”

  “Wow.” Tricia shook her head in awe. “You have an incredible memory for names.”

  “Only of people I care about.”

  She smiled, and had a hard time tearing her eyes away from his so she could remember what he’d asked, and form a response. “So far, my mom and dad are doing great. I think they’re finally letting their hair down, now that they’re released from raising me and then having to raise my children.” She tried not to let the guilt show in her voice. “Eventually they’ll need me. I thought I’d try being dependable for a change.”

  The warmth in his eyes showed his admiration. “You’re a good woman, Tee.”

  The nickname made the moment too intimate; their chemistry made it too tempting. She had to become one with her sandwich or risk leaping across the table and kissing him. “I try.”

  “What will you do down there?”

  She shrugged. “Get a job, I suppose. I started painting several years ago. I’d love to do something with that, but it’s a pipe dream. Most likely I’ll go back to hairstyling or waitressing.”

  “What kind of painting?”

  “Illustrations for kids’ books. I had an author I worked with in California, but she couldn’t get published. Tough market.”

  “I have a friend here in Wisconsin who writes children’s books. I can see if she knows anyone who could use you.”