by Robyn Carr
“I feel bad putting your beautiful furnishings in our old house with the uneven floors and peeling paint.”
Justine smiled at her and pinched her chin. “We’ll fix that.”
Amber held up a multicolored glass vase and matching plate. “Mom, I found these for you at the market. Can we take them?”
“I think so,” she said. “Write them down. We can take your bedroom furniture and the kitchenware now, but everything else should stay until the house sells. But we need to get rid of some things. There’s stuff here we never use.”
“What about all the stuff in the garage?” Addie asked.
“Hello?” came the sound of Scott’s voice.
“In here,” Justine called. “We were just talking about you. What are we doing with all the sports gear in the garage?”
“I hooked up the trailer. I’ll take that stuff out to clean up and will sell anything we don’t keep. I assume you want your bikes.”
“Yes, I think so, but not all that dune racing or water sport stuff. I assumed you would take all that.”
“Yes, I’ll take it. And you can have the books. But I want the couch.”
“What? You hated the couch. You complained about that couch for years.”
“You did, Dad,” Amber said.
“I like it now,” he said.
“No, he doesn’t like it,” Livvie said. “Someone else likes it. Right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
“Red flag,” Justine said. “Whenever he says don’t be ridiculous, it’s because he just got caught in a lie. Has she been here, Scott?”
“Don’t be—” He cleared his throat. “I really like the living room furniture. You can take the master bedroom, dining room, kitchen furniture and the bar stools.”
“She wants the living room, doesn’t she?” Justine asked.
“I want the living room furniture, Justine.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “This has to be equitable. The sports toys are worth thousands. And you have no use for books. How about I take the toys and you take the books.”
“This is going to be a very long day,” Addie said.
There was a little more arguing and give-and-take until Justine told the girls to go pack up their rooms since there was no dispute there. Addie went to help them. Justine and Scott sat at the breakfast bar and worked things out on paper. Fortunately, there was not a lot of extra room in Addie’s old house so, from a practical point of view, Justine was able to let a lot of things go. She tagged a few books she wanted to keep and claimed the dining room table and chairs but not the breakfront. She didn’t want or need the master bedroom furniture. “I have a feeling there could be unknown DNA on that,” she muttered.
Scott admitted he was planning to sell all the toys from the garage, minus the girls’ bikes.
“We can have an estate sale after the house has sold,” Justine said. “But I am taking the living room furniture and the decorator pieces that I chose and bought. Buy your girlfriend a new living room set.”
“It’s not for my girlfriend,” he insisted. But he blushed slightly and didn’t argue.
Later, Addie helped Justine box up some dishes, pots and serving platters from the kitchen. Scott did the same with glasses, a few countertop appliances and some flatware. He had his trailer, but Justine had a truck coming at two to transport the girls’ bedroom furniture and her boxes to Half Moon Bay. The main rooms of the house remained furnished, that furniture tagged either red for Justine or blue for Scott. The house looked almost model perfect. After the cleaning ladies made a run-through, it would be show-ready.
“How are you holding up?” Addie asked her sister.
“It’s very strange,” she said. “This doesn’t feel like home to me anymore. I don’t know that man anymore. The Scott I loved and trusted is gone. If his lips are moving, he’s lying. I don’t actually want that living room furniture, so I’ll sell it and we’ll get something new for the living room, but it was so obvious that his girlfriend wants it, I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. But I’m anxious for a clean slate. A new beginning.”
Addie put an arm around Livvie when she came to join them. “You doing okay?” she asked her niece.
Livvie nodded. “This place just makes me want to cry,” she said. “The last few months with Daddy hardly here for us were just terrible. I felt like an orphan. I don’t want to live here anymore.”
I hate him for what he did to my nieces, Addie thought. What a selfish, cruel bastard.
The men on the rented truck quickly loaded, drove and unloaded in Half Moon Bay. They set up the beds for the girls and left everyone to unpack. As there was no room in Addie’s kitchen for boxes full of dishes and platters, those boxes went to the enclosed back porch until they could make some choices, keeping the best and discarding the worst. There were boxes everywhere—against a living room wall, at the top of the stairs, in the kitchen and bedrooms. There was a freestanding garage, but it was already full of stuff that had belonged to their parents. Another project for another weekend. “I promise to help with the kitchen after I get the bedroom settled,” Justine said.
Addie looked around at the crunch of boxes and furniture and felt claustrophobic. Sleepovers were one thing. Even spending almost the whole summer together it had never felt too crowded. But this—giving her house over to three more people and their possessions... She suddenly felt as if she was disappearing.
“I’m getting some ideas,” Justine said. “We should resurface the beautiful hardwood floors, get some new area rugs, forget reupholstering and shop for some good furniture deals. How do you like peach for the kitchen and beige accented by navy blue walls in the living room—that would be stunning, I think. The bathrooms should be redone from the tile up. And I’d love to texture the walls in the entry and hang a large silver framed mirror and maybe an understated chandelier. We can talk about all this later... For the dining room—”
“I can’t concentrate right now,” Addie said, feeling as if she might suffocate.
“I’ll get this confusion cleared up and things put away quickly, Addie,” Justine said.
“No worries,” she said. “I think I’ll go out for a while, maybe meet up with Jake. Can I bring you back something to eat?”
“You go out and get away from this mess. I know it’s stressful, and I’ll make something simple—grilled cheese maybe for me and the girls.”
Addie stepped out onto the porch and called Jake.
“Well, hey! You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said with surprise in her voice, just realizing she almost never called him, only when she needed something. “Are you working tonight?”
“If I have nothing better to do,” he said. “Do I have something better to do?”
“I wonder if I could see your house?” she asked.
* * *
Adele hadn’t truly been that interested in Jake’s house when she called him. She really wanted to talk about the conflict she was feeling. She wanted Justine and the girls to live with her; she didn’t want Justine redecorating her house so that it reflected Justine and not Adele. Not that Adele had come up with any good renovation ideas in the eight years she’d had to think about it.
When all the boxes started stacking up, it felt like the walls closed in on her. When Justine started picking out colors for the walls, she began to feel as though Justine was the parent and she was the child, and she had to get out. Now she was standing on Jake’s porch waiting because he wasn’t home from the market yet.
She remembered when Jake bought this old house six or seven years ago. He said he bought it because he liked the look of the stone porch and the slanted roof with dormer windows. He had said it was a bloody awful mess that he looked forward to renovating. When she questioned the wisdom of buying a run-down house when his mother lived
in a perfectly nice house, a paid-for house where Jake could live for free, he’d said, “An investment is a good idea, and one that I can take all the credit for is an even better idea. The trees around the yard are mature, the frame is solid, the wiring and plumbing are still sound and very little has to be done on the outside. Besides, how long should a single man live with this mother?”
Another complication of living with his mother was every time Marty had a marriage or romance fall apart, which seemed to happen with regularity, he moved home to their mother’s house, and he was the kind of force of nature that sucked all the air out of a room. Jake and his mother had lived quietly. There was not a quiet bone in Marty’s body.
Jake pulled up and got out of his truck. He had a grocery sack in one arm and a bunch of cellophane-wrapped flowers in the other.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have...”
“I didn’t,” he said. “They were going to be thrown out so I grabbed them. I do that all the time. Most of my diet is made up of expired food. I might not spend a lot of time here, but when I do I like it to be nice.”
He unlocked the door and motioned for her to step inside. When he came into the entry behind her, he flipped on a light. The foyer was small so the light shone into the living room. As the house wasn’t big, she could see the living room and dining room in an L-shape, and she assumed the kitchen was behind the wall on her right. She walked into the living room and looked around. The kitchen was separated from the dining room by a breakfast bar that could seat three. On the living room wall to her left was a large stone fireplace, the stone matching that on the front of the house and porch.
It was beautiful. Masculine with the dark velour sectional and recliner, heavy side tables and coffee table, chunky wood dining room table with six chairs. He had a buffet over which hung a painting of an antiquated lean-to surrounded by wildflowers with a mountain in the background.
The thing that impressed her the most was how clean it was. It wasn’t just tidy. There wasn’t a thing sitting out, not even a stack of mail. Not a speck of dust or a streak on the windows.
“Wow,” she said.
Addie was, admittedly, a little on the messy side. She tended to leave dishes in the sink and let the laundry pile up until it became an emergency. She wasn’t good about putting away her shoes, and she had far too many jackets or sweaters draped on chair backs—and that was before Justine and the girls added to the clutter.
While she was looking around, Jake went to the kitchen. He pulled some aging and tired looking flowers out of a vase, dropped them in the trash and rinsed out the vase. He snipped off the ends of the new flower stems right into the trash and created an instant centerpiece.
“How about a glass of wine,” he said, unpacking his groceries.
She watched as he put away a half dozen eggs, two oranges, two apples, two bananas, some bacon and a loaf of bread, suspecting they were past their sell-by date.
“That sounds great,” she said. “I had a tiring day. I went with Justine and the girls to their San Jose house to help them with dividing the furniture. Scott was there, too. I’m not sure, but it seemed like it was more taxing for me than for Justine.”
“How’d the girls do?”
“They were fine. Livvie said it made her very sad. They’re saying goodbye to a way of life. But I think my sister is glad to let it go right about now. She thinks her ex-husband is an idiot.”
Jake laughed. “Everyone thinks he’s an idiot.”
Addie burst into tears.
“Hey now,” he said, pulling her close, stroking her hair. “What’s got you upset? Was it the ordeal of dividing the property?”
She shook her head and wiped impatiently at her eyes. “Jake, Justine is going to take over my life. She’s going to pick the paint colors for my house, choose the furniture, probably select our meals. To her I’m no different than one of her daughters.”
“You might be worried about that, but it doesn’t have to happen,” he said. “I’m going to pour some wine and light a fire. Sit down and relax and tell me about your day.”
She watched from the sofa while he puttered in the kitchen and brought two glasses to the coffee table. Then he got to the task of lighting a fire, a real fire. He pulled logs from the caddy on the hearth and stacked them neatly on the grate. He added some starter pine cones.
She was reminded of something she’d always taken for granted—Jake was an attractive man. He was tall, fit, had a full head of dark hair and his dark eyes glittered when he smiled. His butt in those jeans was a perfect fit, and they were neither tight nor loose. He always wore a greengrocer’s shirt, and there was no belly spilling over the belt. He had big hands, and she imagined those hands on her and realized that he was patient and kind and quite sexy.
“I take you for granted,” she said to his back.
He glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t feel that you do.” The fire began to take life from the starter cones, and he sat on the couch beside her.
“Why do you suppose you never remarried?” she asked him.
“And exactly who would I marry, Adele?”
“Oh come on, you know half the women in town would leave their husbands for you.”
“And regret it, I’m sure. I think after a bad marriage and worse divorce, you get real picky about who you hang around with. I’d probably try it again if the right person came along. What’s your excuse?”
A huff of laughter escaped her. “I was a shut-in for eight years.”
“Not really. When you were helping with your dad, before your mom’s stroke, you didn’t get out a lot but you got out. I remember you worked at the Ridgemont Hotel for a couple of years.”
“Part-time,” she said. “But the last four years before Mom died I didn’t get out much at all.”
“You’re sure on the go now.”
“I’m almost too busy. And I’m going to add school to the schedule.” She sipped her wine. “I’m pretty excited about that. Except that I suppose I’ll be running into Hadley regularly.”
“The professor,” Jake said.
“But I’m thoroughly over him,” she said. “At last.”
“How do you know?” Jake asked.
“He was coming on strong, suggesting we give it another go. The nerve of that ass, after leaving me alone, pregnant, never once even calling to see if I was all right, after never offering to help in any way. If I see him walking across the campus, I might run him over with my car.”
“This is a change,” he said. “For a long time you were brokenhearted and grief-stricken, wishing things had worked out differently, that you’d met before he was married or after he was divorced.”
“I know. I should have gotten out more. It might have been lack of fresh air, all my common sense dried up. Brain atrophy. In fact, I’ll be honest. When I first ran into him and we sat down for a glass of wine and clearing the air, I had a slight relapse. He made good excuses for never reaching out. And he even seemed to be remorseful. The second time I saw him, he was all about getting busy. He used all the same lines that won me over the first time!”
“Ouch,” Jake said.
“Nah, no ouch. I was angry. I don’t know if I was angrier with him or myself. But I’m glad that’s out of the way. He’s no longer tempting. There’s a lot of freedom in that.”
“I remember the feeling,” he said.
“Mary Ellen?”
“Sure. At first I was shocked, which I shouldn’t have been. Then I was hurt. Then I was depressed. And finally I was pissed off.”
“But were you tempted for a while? Even a little while?”
“No. Because she tried to get my business. Half of it, anyway. That just crushed me. And then it really pissed me off.”
“We’re a pair,” Adele said, sipping her wine.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, not a workday for you. I
go in for a while in the afternoon. I have an idea. Why don’t I meet you for your beach walk then take you to brunch? How’s that sound?”
“That sounds very nice, thanks.”
“Now tell me about Justine. Tell me why you were crying. I haven’t seen you cry in so long, I don’t know when. There were times I wished you would just cry. I cry easier than you do.”
“The Descaro women came without tear ducts,” she said.
Adele talked for a while about how fun and yet overwhelming her house was. She loved not being alone all the time, felt she was developing a real relationship with Justine, but at the same time she was crowded, things were always put away where she couldn’t find them, there was never complete quiet and they were four women in a two-bathroom house. Sometimes she thought she would explode. And other times she felt she was finally a part of a family. It was very frustrating and confusing.
She had a second glass of wine and Jake pulled a deli prepared chicken parmigiana dish from the refrigerator to warm it up.
“Is it expired?” she asked.
“Only by a day. Or so. Don’t worry, I have good insurance.”
By the time she was ready to leave, it was getting late. She had walked over so Jake drove her the few blocks home. He jumped out of his truck and went around to open the door for her.
“I had a really nice time. I can’t believe it took me so long to see the inside of your house.”
“Well, you were pretty occupied...”
“Now that I know the way, I may need to escape to your house regularly.”
“I’d like that.” Then he cupped her jaw gently with one of his big hands and brought his lips down on hers. This was not his usual chaste kiss on the forehead or peck on the cheek. This was the real deal. His kiss was powerful and delicious. All of him was. Had it been at any other time in her life, surely she’d have fallen in love with him.
