Detours

by Vollbrecht, Jane

  “Mrs. Moss—” Ellis said, but before she could say another word, young Kendall pushed his chair back from the table.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he said.

  Naomi leaped to her feet. “Come on, son.” She took him by the arm and started out of the room. “I knew you ate too many cookies this morning.” She picked up the pace as the sounds of the first heave of his stomach escaped Kendall’s lips. “Run, Kendall. I don’t want you throwing up all over Gramma’s hall.”

  Barry turned to his mother-in-law. “How many times do we have to tell you not to let the kids eat junk the whole time they’re here?”

  “Oh, Barry, don’t start in on me. It’s Christmas. They like my cookies. He didn’t have any more than Natalie or Ashley had this morning.”

  “So what? I’ll bet they ate a dozen each. He’s not like the others, Anna. Sweets get to him. You know that. Now he’ll be sick for a week.” Barry’s chair scraped on the hardwood floor as he shoved away from the table. He slapped his napkin down on the seat. “Matthew, go see if your mother needs anything.”

  “I don’t want to go back there if Kendall’s sick.”

  “You don’t have to go into the bathroom. Just stand outside the door and ask your mother if he’s all right.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes. Now go.”

  Matthew turned to Natalie, sitting beside him, and poked her in the arm. “You’re so lucky to be an only child.”

  “I’m not an only child. I’ve got Swiffer and Sam and one day, Mom’s going to give me a baby sister. You’ll see.” Natalie set her jaw and glared at Matthew as he left the table.

  “That about ruined my appetite,” Adam said as he moved his half-eaten pie away. “Maybe I’ll run over to the dealership for a while.” He turned to his wife. “You and the kids could catch a lift home from Naomi or Mary, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure. Go on before you’re sick yourself.” Gloria gave Adam a push. “Big strapping man can’t handle a kid’s upset stomach.” She accepted Adam’s quick kiss. “Who wants Daddy’s pie?” she asked.

  “Not me,” Ashley said. “My tummy hurts.”

  Gloria put her hand on her daughter’s forehead. “Uh-oh, she’s feverish. I think we might have a flu bug about to make the rounds here.”

  Anna shoved her palms flat on the table to help herself rise from her chair. “Happens every Christmas. You’d think the Moss family was cursed.” She smoothed her hair into place. “Take her upstairs and put her to bed, Gloria.” Anna reached for the bowl of collards still in the middle of the table. “I’ll clean up down here.”

  “No, if she’s getting sick, Amber and Erin won’t be far behind. We need to get home. Maybe I can catch Adam before he gets gone.” She raced out of the room and was back in a moment. “He’s halfway to Cornelia already. Mary…?”

  “Sure, I’ll run you and the kids to your place.” She looked at Ellis, white as a ghost and equally as quiet. “Want to ride along, El?”

  Ellis shook her head. “Uh, no. I’ll stay here and help your mother.”

  “Okay. Nat, what about you?”

  “I’m staying with Ellis.”

  “Fine.” Mary scooped up Erin and braced her on her hip. She addressed her sister. “I’ll grab the spare car seat from the laundry room and get her buckled in while you round up Amber and Ashley’s stuff.” Mary dragged her free hand over Ellis’s shoulder on her way past. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, and then we can head home ourselves.”

  Twenty minutes. As far as Ellis was concerned, it might as well have been a life sentence. A sick child in the bathroom and a solo stint with Mary’s mother. Could it get any better?

  “Hey, Ellis,” Natalie said as she slid from chair to chair around the table to get next to her. “Do you think maybe you and Sam could sleep in my bed instead of in Mom’s room when we get home tonight?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  Ellis held the bowl of leftover salad. “Do you have a storage container big enough to hold this, or should I put plastic wrap on it and put it in the refrigerator?”

  From the icy look on Anna Moss’s face, Ellis wondered if there’d be any need for stowing the greens. If she kept it up, in a matter of moments, the entire kitchen would be a deep freeze.

  “I’ll take care of things here. Why don’t you go outside and wait for MaryChris?”

  “I’m happy to help, Mrs. Moss. After all, I was hungry and you fed me.”

  Anna smacked the pot she was holding on the kitchen countertop and wheeled around to face Ellis. “I will thank you not to use words from scripture in that mocking tone.”

  Ellis dropped back a step. “I wasn’t mocking anything. I wanted to show my appreciation for the meal you served by helping clean up.”

  The menacing glint in Anna’s eye only intensified. “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” She squared her shoulders and scowled at Ellis. “Leviticus twenty, verse thirteen.”

  Ellis nearly dropped the bowl she was holding. She dared not speak for fear that both the wrong words and her partially digested lunch would fly out of her mouth.

  Anna’s fury picked up steam. “I heard what Natalie said to you about how you’ve been forcing your perverted attentions on my daughter by sleeping in her bed as a man does with a woman. I will not stand for it. And I’m warning you, if I find out you have so much as set foot in Natalie’s bedroom, I’ll have you arrested.”

  Ellis thought back to Natalie’s actual words. Time for some quick footwork. “Mrs. Moss, you misunderstood what Natalie said. Your daughter is such a gracious hostess that she insisted I take her bed while I’ve been staying there. As I recall, what your granddaughter said was that she’d like me to spend the night in her room instead of in her mother’s room. Who knows why she thought that would be a good idea? Maybe she’s had so much fun spending nights with her cousins she doesn’t want to sleep by herself tonight. Whatever conclusions you might have drawn from Natalie’s comment, I want to set the record straight. Mary and I have not—to use your words—lain as man and woman in her bed.”

  Okay, so it was tomato/tomahto. No, they hadn’t done the deed in Mary’s bed… yet… they’d only done it in Ellis’s bed. And under other circumstances, using the expression “setting the record straight” would have made her snort at the irony, but this was her first verbal skirmish with Anna, and she had precious little hope it would be her last.

  Anna’s furor ratcheted down a notch. “I see.”

  Ellis wedged her weapon in the chink in Anna’s armor. “Mary, or MaryChris as you call her, is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met. She was the only person who stopped to see if I needed help when I fell and hurt my ankle back in November. She put all her plans for the day aside and took me to the emergency room, and when she found out I didn’t have any family or friends to lean on, she went the extra mile and opened her home to me.” Ellis forced herself to smile. She hoped it looked genuine and heartfelt. “She and Natalie have become two of my best friends. I don’t know how I’d have gotten through the mess with my ankle without them.”

  “Well, yes, her father and I did try to raise her to be mindful of the needs of others.”

  “From my own experiences with her over the past month, I can definitely confirm that you and Joe succeeded on that count.”

  Anna’s surprise registered on her face. “You know my husband’s name?”

  “Mary talks about him, about both of you, several times a day.”

  All right, so another serving, this time potato/potahto. So what if almost every comment Mary made about her mother was prefaced or appended with, “She makes me crazy”? She did talk about her a lot.

  Anna fingered the hair at the nape of her neck. “That does my heart good. Sometimes I worry that she’s forgotten all about me and the rest of her family.”

  Ellis smiled again. This one
came a bit more naturally. “Absolutely not. You’re never far from her mind.”

  “Well then, let’s get this kitchen cleaned up. I’ll get you something to put that salad in.” Anna busied herself digging in a cabinet for a suitable plastic tub with a lid.

  Lies, damned lies, and statistics. If she gave herself credit for the “several times a day” remark being a statistic, Ellis had used every one of them in the past few moments. I may have scraped by in the first round, Ellis thought, but the real confrontations are yet to come. Now, what the hell is taking Mary so long to get back so we can get out of here?

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  The drive back to Atlanta seemed to Ellis to be taking forever. Yet again, she looked over her shoulder at Natalie and repeated a question she’d asked more than once.

  “You’ve already asked me a hundred times how I feel.” Natalie scooted as far forward on the backseat as the shoulder belt would let her and tickled her fingers along the back of Ellis’s head. “I feel with these, just like everybody else does.” She laughed at her own joke. “Don’t worry about me, Ellis. I won’t holler for Huey on the way home.”

  “Holler for Huey?” Ellis asked.

  “You know.” Natalie leaned over and shouted “Huey,” as though she were throwing up.

  “Okay, got it. But are you sure your stomach isn’t bothering you?”

  “I just told you no.”

  “But if it does, you’ll let me and your mom know, right?”

  Mary said, “I’m guessing you haven’t spent much time around sick children.”

  “No, not much time, sick or otherwise.”

  “You get used to it.” Mary gave Ellis’s thigh a reassuring pat.

  Getting used to children—sick or well, getting used to Mary’s family, getting used to having to drive two hours to see Mary. Too many adjustments. Too many impossibilities. She never should have given in to her hormones yesterday. Was it really only yesterday that they’d made up and made love for the first time? Ellis had the feeling she’d been trapped in a low-budget remake of The Brady Bunch movie for at least two years.

  “I don’t get sick much, do I, Mom?”

  “No. You’re like your dad that way. You picked the right parent to take after.”

  “I wonder if my baby sister will be that way, too.”

  “Nat, we’ve been through this a thousand times. You’re not getting a baby sister.”

  “Maybe not right away, but I know I’m going to get one.”

  “Not unless you build one in science class.”

  “That’s not how you get babies, Mom.”

  “It’s the only way I’ll get another one.”

  “But—”

  “Enough, Nat.” Mary looked in the rearview mirror and gave her daughter a stern stare. “Either pick a new topic or put your earphones on and listen to some music.”

  “Kendall has Matthew, and Amber and Ashley and Erin have each other. How come I have to be an only child?”

  “I said that was enough.” Mary looked briefly at Natalie. “I mean it.” She returned her attention to the road.

  Natalie fiddled with her iPod and grumbled something unintelligible.

  Mary took her hand from the wheel and touched Ellis’s cheek. “Next time we go to Clarkesville, I promise it won’t be this much of a production. Christmas is always way over the top at Mother’s, and this year was even worse because of Nathan’s big announcement. It’s not always the three-ring circus you saw today.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Are you okay, Ellis? You haven’t said much since we left.”

  “I guess Adam and I react the same way to someone getting sick.”

  “I’m sorry. It never occurred to me Kendall’s upchuck bothered you.”

  “Let’s not talk about it, please.”

  “Sure. Now that Nat’s lost in whatever track she’s picked on her iPod, we can talk about anything you want to.”

  “I need to tell you about my conversation with your mother.”

  Mary gave a cautionary glance in the rearview toward Natalie. “Hmm. Maybe better save that topic for later.”

  “Then maybe we should listen to some music, too.”

  Mary regarded Ellis’s profile. “Help yourself.” She gestured to the in-dash CD player. “Discs are in the console.”

  The remainder of the trip was spent with old Melissa Etheridge tunes in lieu of conversation.

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  Shadows filled the backyard at Mary’s house. Ellis leaned on the fence while Sam sniffed all her favorite places. Natalie and Mary busied themselves hauling everything from the loadbed of the Xterra into the house. Twilight gave way to darkness. Ellis opened the door to the kitchen and stepped inside.

  “My mother sent tons of leftovers,” Mary said as she crammed containers into the refrigerator. “What would you like for dinner, Ellis? Ham and scalloped potatoes? A sandwich?”

  “I think I’ll skip dinner.” She patted her abdomen. “Lunch still lingers.”

  “I’m sure Nat will want something.” Mary swung her head to shift her hair back from her face. “I’ll go see how she’s doing with unpacking.”

  Sam followed Mary out of the room. Ellis edged one of the chairs farther under the kitchen table. Her thumb stuck to a spot on the back. She looked at her thumb. Peanut butter and grape jelly. Disgusting. Ellis dampened a sponge from the sink and wiped the chair.

  On her way to the living room, she kicked Natalie’s sneakers over to the doormat. She grabbed the unzipped backpack to move it from the sofa, and a cascade of Natalie’s treasures spilled onto the floor: two half-eaten candy bars, four pencils with broken leads, assorted bracelets and hair clips, one sock, a word puzzle book, a rubber-banded stack of two-inch square pictures of kids Ellis assumed were Natalie’s classmates, a box of colored pencils, homework assignment sheets, a zip-top bag of raisins, her new digital camera, and three small spiral-bound notebooks.

  Ellis stuffed things back into the pack. One of the notebooks fell open. The caption under the hand-drawn picture caught her eye. Uneven penciled letters, some in caps, some in lower case, spelled out “My old family.” No one would mistake it for museum art, but Ellis found the drawing itself rather well done. A man stood off to the far left side, holding his arm at a right angle. Wiggly lines in front of his hand seemed to indicate he was waving good-bye to a tall, long-haired blonde woman and a nearly-as-tall female child on the opposite side of the picture.

  Ellis turned the page. “My new family,” it said. The picture there was of the same tall woman, but this time, she stood beside another woman, who was wearing a cast on one foot and leaning on a crutch. The girl child was there, too, with a black dog lying at her feet and a baby in a blanket in her arms.

  Thoughts of Becky Blumfeld flooded Ellis’s mind, threatening to sweep her out to the desolate sea she’d struggled to escape for the past year. She slapped the notebook shut and stuffed it in the backpack.

  Mary’s voice startled her. “Looks like Nat is coming down with whatever hit Kendall at lunch. I put her to bed in my room. We’ll have to make do with the double bed in her room tonight.”

  Ellis looked at Mary standing in the arched doorway. Backlit by the hallway light, Mary was beautiful, like a golden maternal angel whose wingspan Ellis could never equal. Conflicting emotions tumbled through her—intense desire to stay coupled and become part of that new family she’d seen in Natalie’s notebook argued with the need to flee and keep her freedom. “Maybe Sam and I should spend the night at my place.”

  “You don’t need to leave just because Nat has a touch of the flu.”

  “It’s not that. I’m not feeling a hundred percent myself. I don’t want you to have to take care of me, too.”

  Mary crossed the room and came to a stop in front of Ellis. “I’ve had some practice. I’m pretty good at it.” She put her arms around Ellis. “A little TLC might fix you right up.” Ellis resisted fleetingly, then melted into Mary’s
embrace. Their lips met.

  “Mom! I’m gonna be sick. Come hold my head.” The urgency in Natalie’s voice was unmistakable.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” Ellis said as she scanned the room, searching for Sam’s leash. “Your kid needs you.”

  “Okay,” Mary called over her shoulder as she hurried down the hall. “I’m coming, Nat. Get in the bathroom!”

  At Ellis’s whistle, Sam hustled into the living room as if she were as repelled by the child’s barfing as Ellis was. “C’mon, pooch. We’re going home.” Just as she had done two days earlier, she let herself out of Mary Moss’s house and wondered again why she’d ever been fool enough to think she had any hope of building a future there.

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  Her call to Mary the next morning lasted less than two minutes. Mary had succumbed to the intestinal virus, too, and was frequently paying her respects to the porcelain god. Ellis offered to come over and take care of Mary and Natalie and was flooded with relief when Mary insisted that she stay away.

  Ellis and Sam spent New Year’s Eve going for long walks—for as long as Ellis’s not-quite-healed ankle would permit—and wallowing on the sofa at her apartment in front of the TV while football droned as background noise.

  She phoned Mary again midafternoon on New Year’s Day, but Ellis’s hopes for an auspicious start to the year were dashed when she learned Mary and Natalie were still feeling the effects of the illness. After offering the appropriate get-well comments, Ellis snapped her cell phone shut and buried the twinge of guilt that poked at her for failing to ask if she could bring them anything.

  A cold rain spit against the apartment windows. Ellis sat at her small desk in the corner of her living room and reviewed her ledgers for the past year. If she could line up a few more steady clients for the coming season, she’d have enough income flow to give her a comfort margin. Presuming Mary would make good on her stated intentions of moving up to the foothills, Ellis decided to focus on building up her client base. She wouldn’t have anything else to do on weekends, anyway, so she might as well edge driveways, fertilize shrubs, and keep the monkey grass in check.