by Ranae Glass
Before I even opened the door to my childhood home, I could smell Mom’s homemade lasagna. The house was a modest one, by Charleston standards at least, two stories tall with gray-and-white siding and a burgundy door. It had nothing on the massive, old plantation houses or the towering homes in the downtown area where I lived. My parents lived a few miles outside of town in a place called Ridgeville. Out in the boonies, my mother always joked. It wasn’t that far from the truth. The yard was enormous, five acres fenced in, the only opening a large, iron gate at the head of the driveway that opened by electronic keypad. It was the home my great-grandparents had moved into just before they died, and it’d been in the family ever since. My Great-Grandpa Thaddeus hadn’t been rich by any means, but his wise investments had bought this house and still managed to bring in enough, when combined with my father’s pension, to at least pay the taxes and monthly utilities.
I’d barely stepped over the threshold when my younger sister Sarah launched herself at me, wrapping me in an enthusiastic hug. I squeezed back, grateful that her time at UCLA had left her exterior, at least, unchanged. In a family full of dark-haired, short-ish Italian women, Sarah looked out of place. Thin, straight, strawberry-blonde hair was twisted into a bun at the crown of her head. Even without makeup, her face was flawless and pale, compared to her light blue eyes. When we’d been little, I’d teased her that she was adopted. Sarah had cried for hours. So did I… after my dad got through tanning my hide for it.
“When did your flight get in?” I asked as I squeezed my little sister.
“This morning.” Clinging to me, she whispered, “Please help me,” into my ear.
I rolled my eyes. Mom must be in one of her moods again.
“Sarah,” Mom called from the kitchen, “run and get the good salad forks out of the china hutch, will you, dear?”
“Sure thing, Ma,” she called back. Turning to me, she confided in hushed tones, “Mom hasn’t shut up for five seconds, and I think Phoebe is about to go postal with the salad chopper.”
I winked. “Don’t worry, as soon as she sees me, she’ll forget all about you guys and go into her ‘my poor spinster daughter’ number.”
Sarah nodded, a bright smile spreading across her face. “Thanks, Isabel. I’ve missed you, ya know.”
“Yeah. Same here, Shorty.” I smiled back though Sarah had been taller than I had since eighth grade. “Now go get those forks before Mom calls in the National Guard.”
My mother’s kitchen was exactly how it’d been since I was a toddler. The stark white cabinets locked it into a 1980-esque theme, which my mother had only exaggerated by choosing to decorate with gaudy, fake greenery. The whole room was littered with grape vines, pictures of grape vines, and towels, rags, and oven mitts with you guessed it—grape vines on them. Mom liked themes. And wine.
Mostly wine.
When I pushed open the door, she was bending over the stove, commenting on the bread sticks as Phoebe stood over the sink slicing carrots with more force than was completely necessary. When she saw me, Phoebe smirked.
“Hey Isabel. Glad you could make it.” She tossed the abused carrots into a big salad bowl.
Mom looked over her shoulder at me before sliding the pan of bread out of the oven and onto the top of the stove. “Only twenty minutes late,” she scolded in her typical passive-aggressive tone.
I shrugged, picking a piece of cucumber out of the salad and popping it into my mouth. Like lightning, Mom reached over and slapped my hand with a wooden spoon.
“Ow,” I mumbled around the food in my mouth.
“You weren’t raised by wolves. Wait ‘til dinner.” Then she turned on Phoebe, who was trying not to laugh. “And you, why don’t you make the bruschetta? Actually, wait.” She paused, looking over Phoebe like she was a cut of lamb at the supermarket and Mom was trying to judge her freshness. “Better yet, why don’t you go put on some makeup? Blush, I think. You look a bit pale. And change your shirt. Pink really isn’t your color, dear. Isabel, you can make the bruschetta, if you remember how.”
I silently counted to five. “Yes, Mother, I remember how.”
“Good.” Handing me the basket of tomatoes, she pointed toward the cutting block.
As soon as Phoebe was out of the line of fire, I started talking. “So, I did that thing you wanted. Duke is squeaky clean. No red flags.”
“Good. Thank you for checking for me. It’s such a dangerous world we live in nowadays. I feel so… vulnerable without your father here to keep an eye on you girls.”
I stopped chopping. “Yeah. I miss Dad, too.”
“Well, you girls have always been two handfuls, all of you. I mean, look at Phoebe. Twenty years old and still hasn’t had one stable relationship. I was beginning to worry she’d end up…” Mom trailed off.
It wasn’t hard to fill in the blank.
“Like me?”
“I was going to say alone, but since you brought it up, yes. I worry about you, Isabel. You can’t keep clinging to Shane. That ship has sailed. You need to move on, meet new people. Have you considered online dating? Suzanne Wheeler’s daughter found a very nice young man that way.”
“Really? He didn’t, like, want to wear her skin as a suit or anything?”
Mom stopped what she was doing, put her hands on her hips, and glared at me. “It wouldn’t kill you to try to meet someone.”
“It might, in fact,” I mutter, calling to mind some news story about a man taking a lady he’d met online to Mexico and telling the police she’s been eaten by alligators or something. “Besides, I work a lot. I have to, remember? Sarah’s college isn’t going to pay for itself.”
That sounded harsher than I’d intended. Mom didn’t say anything for a minute, which told me I’d scraped a nerve. I opened my mouth to apologize, but she cut me off.
“You work a lot. Yes, I’m aware of that. And I appreciate you doing it. I’m not heartless. I know you gave up quite a bit to come home and take over the business. But you don’t have to work every minute. Surely, you’ve met some suitable prospects.”
Prospects. Like men were gold nuggets to be panned out of the river.
“I meet plenty of men.” I shrugged. “Most are criminals or adulterers, but I suppose I could bring one of them home.”
She slapped me with the spoon again, this time across the shoulder. “Don’t give me lip, girl,” she ordered, expression stern. “This is not a joke. You don’t want to spend your life alone.”
I rolled my eyes and resumed chopping, garlic this time. “Ma, I’m far from an old maid.”
At that minute, Phoebe walked into the kitchen wearing a clingy, lightweight sweater that accentuated her, ah, assets nicely. I whistled. Mom frowned and motioned to the stairs with her spoon.
“Phoebe! Go find something else to wear. That’s barely decent and not appropriate for a family dinner.” Phoebe rolled her eyes but turned to obey. Before she could step foot out of the door, Mom called out to her. “Remember, dear, no man is gonna buy the cow if he can get the milk for free!”
“Ma!” I chastised.
She looked at me flatly. “What?”
I blinked. “Did you just call Phoebe a cow?”