The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  But the purse—and the deeper lecture about how to google meme references—would have to wait.

  “Oh, Mom,” Bianca said casually. Low pressure, sunny voice. “Could you come hang out with Lita Sunday night?”

  Head tipped back, Bonnie threw up her arms. “Who could have seen this coming?” she loudly asked the ceiling. “Bianca needs a favor!”

  Bee crossed her arms, self-hugging hard to keep from skittering off to a corner. “Mom, please. This isn’t for me. It’s for Birdy. He’s been cooped up, and he just wants to go down the hill to Flo’s house after family dinner. We need you to do bedtime duty.”

  “She’s a grown woman,” Bonnie said, keys jingling against her knuckles. “Does she really need to be tucked in?”

  “Are you going to stay up with her when she gets too anxious to wind down and refuses to sleep alone?” Bee dug her nails into her elbows. Lita wasn’t a grown woman; she was an old woman. The difference wasn’t just hours already clocked but her health, her cognition, her emotional age. Bee didn’t know why her mother didn’t know this when she had so clearly seen it up close.

  Bonnie’s lower eyelid vibrated. She had labeled it a stress twitch, but Bianca was pretty sure it was eye strain from working without glasses. Bonnie was young to have an adult daughter, but no longer young for her industry. Especially when trends were swinging toward smaller needles and delicate lines.

  Bonnie swept the twitch away, dragging the pad of her finger over her deepening crow’s-feet. “I’m sorry, Bianca. I have plans this weekend.”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for Tony,” she parroted Bianca, the impression dopey and mush-mouthed. “Sunday is Tony’s son’s birthday. We’re going down to Coos Bay to see him.”

  Bianca’s mouth fell open. “Coos Bay is hours away! When were you going to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you right now. We’ll probably stay for a few days.”

  “But what about family dinner? What about Lita?”

  “I have more than one family now, muñeca,” Bonnie said with a withering look. “And I thought you weren’t hosting dinners while your husband was injured.”

  Bianca had sent off a blanket cancellation of all plans over the weekend. Written on her watch after Jo had reminded her that she had responsibilities—other than rescheduling all of Birdy’s appointments, rearranging furniture, and making crack-of-dawn trips to Fred Meyer—the message had come off Wren Vos brusque.

  “What if I had needed your help and you were just gone?” Bianca asked her mother. “Why wouldn’t you tell me earlier so that I wouldn’t make plans counting on you?”

  “Why would you promise away my time without consulting me?” Bonnie snapped. Bee checked to make sure that Mo was wearing headphones. Bonnie had no qualms with public disputes. They were easier for her to win. “I have my own life, Bianca. Not just making yours easier.”

  “Easier?” Bianca hissed. “You think this is easy?”

  “Do you call me to chat?” Bonnie asked with a regal wave of her hand. “Do you take me to lunch or come see me and Tony? No. You only call when you need me to sit with Lita. Drive Lita somewhere. Pick you and Birdy up from the hospital in the middle of the night.”

  “When,” Bianca growled, “between running your father’s store and wiping your mother’s butt would I take you to lunch?”

  “Bianca!” Born with her father’s pop eyes, Bonnie went from naturally scandalized to cartoonish prig with one blink. Her chest puffed, she minced in an offended circle. “It’s my turn to do the girlie romance stuff.”

  “There’s nothing inherently feminine about falling in love, Mother.”

  “When you came home to live with Lita,” Bonnie said, planting the tip of her index finger in the tender underside of Bianca’s upper arm, “you called me almost every night so you could see Birdy, talk to Birdy, think about Birdy. When you were going out every weekend until late-late-late, who was home with Lita then? Me! When you went home to meet his family, who was home with your family? Me! When you were planning a wedding—Have you even congratulated me on getting engaged, Bianca? Did you send a card that I didn’t see? I’ve never been married before. How would you have felt if when you got engaged, I said nothing?”

  Bianca’s eyes stung with hurt tears. Nothing made her cry faster than being wrong. “Because I am the kid! It was my turn to fall in love and get married. You and Tito and Lita kept me like an indoor dog until college! And in college I was working to pay my own way because you never gave me a college fund!”

  “A college fund? That money was the roof over your head in high school. Grow up, Bianca,” Bonnie said, unmoved by the sight of her daughter’s tears. She dumped her heinous bag on the counter. “Haven’t you figured out that parents are just people, too? We didn’t map out life just to disappoint you. You think I wouldn’t rather have found love before my child? You think I didn’t spend my whole life and yours waiting for someone to be my partner? We don’t choose when we hit our milestones. We don’t have all the answers. We make do.”

  Bee let the tears leak down the sides of her face, rivers and lakes of mascara and eye shadow pooling. That’s what she got for bothering to get dressed today. “If you don’t have all the answers then why do I have to run everything by you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bonnie asked, not looking up as she rummaged through the detritus of her bag for a tube of beeswax balm, undoubtedly made by a middle-aged white woman who smelled like palo santo.

  “You and Lita,” Bee explained. “You check my work. I have a degree in business management and literally ran a store for three years, which is more experience coming in than anyone else who ever managed this place. You really do think I’m just a stupid baby doll. You double-check my bank deposits and run my artists. Lita plans flash events behind my back.”

  “I know you think you learned the whole world making pizza and going to college, but we’re your family, Bianca. We check on you—”

  “No. No, you run me,” Bee said, shaking her hands in the air to keep the ball of the conversation in her court. “You gave me your shop, your mother, Tito’s rules. And I’m just supposed to keep it all running. Then what?”

  “Then what…what?” Bonnie asked, exasperated.

  “After I do everything on the Bianca Is a Good Daughter list—like running the shop, taking care of Lita, propagating the species—then what? Do I just wait for you all to die? You know I’m not actually a doll, right? No matter how much you call me muñeca, I’m not a toy! I’m a person!”

  “I’m not going to stand here and listen to you talk like this,” Bonnie said. “You’re not making sense. I’m sorry if all of a sudden you just hate the nickname we’ve been calling you since you were a little baby—”

  She tried to storm past but Bianca got in her way, too hungry for information to stop now.

  “I’m not being mean, Mom. I’m asking you a serious question. If you’re all making do and I’m doing whatever you throw together, then what’s the long-term plan? What happens if Lita needs more in-home care than we can give? What happens if she needs a nurse? What happens if she already does? What happens when she dies and you die and I have the shop and the house? Is that when I get to change the paint? Is that when Birdy can get a dog?”

  “Don’t be selfish,” Bonnie said, frustration making her extra dismissive. As though she could wave away all of Bianca’s bullshit with a roll of her eyes and flick of her wrist. “There is more to life than paint and dogs.”

  “Is there?!” Bianca shrieked. She was tired of being waved away. Questioned but never answered. She tugged at the sides of her hair. “If I have a kid, will they also have to do all this, too? Because if I have to tell my daughter that the hideous, chipped, cheap-looking paint on the front door is so precious to this family that covering it up is the same thing as spitting on Tito’s grave—then I fucking swear that I will never, ever, ever bring another person into this world!”

 
; “Good!” Bonnie shouted back. “You’re not ready if you’re throwing tantrums like this.”

  “You throw tantrums all the time and yet I have to buy you a Mother’s Day card! What happens when you’re as old as Lita, Mom? Did you even think about the fact that you’re going to ask me to do this twice? What happens when you fall down?”

  Purse in hand, Bonnie broke for the door. The necklace in her hair rippled in the breeze she made. “When you are ready to apologize, you can call me.”

  “You’ll be waiting.”

  Bee marched upstairs. She could see Mo in their stall, eyes focused determinedly on the ocean outside and certainly not on the owners’ screaming match. Bee owed them a raise. If only she could afford it.

  After the glitter fight with Wren, Jo had moved the shoji screen over the window again. Long shadows crept across the scuffed floor. The hardwood could use refinishing. There were deep-carved grooves where Lita and Tito’s bistro table and chairs had been—the wrought iron wasn’t meant for indoor use but Lita thought it was too beautiful to be left outside.

  Rather than feeling sad about the fight, Bianca was electrified by the possibility of living a different way. She had never considered how well formulated the decisions that laid the track of her life were.

  Bianca had grown up in a world where the rules were literally posted on the wall, framed for customers, quoted from artist to artist. Laws were debated before ratification, not after—at least, that was what Schoolhouse Rock! had taught her.

  But life wasn’t an oversimplified—if musically genius—seventies cartoon.

  Some of the rules were arbitrary. Some of the rules were guesses thrown out in an attempt to stop a fight, like Birdy asking her to return her honeymoon clothes. Some of the rules were built on prejudice, like Tito telling Bianca to put on a one-piece. There were rules for vanity (Bonnie’s unfashionably long hair with sad scraggly ends) and rules for self-preservation (Lita’s sleep schedule). If the rules were changeable, then Bianca would be changeable.

  What if all her life needed was a fresh coat of paint? What if she could preserve what was precious and still move forward?

  As expected, the red candle was lit on the desk. It was a fresh candle from the supply in the kitchenette cupboard. Bonnie hadn’t trimmed the wick. It bloomed into a smoky mushroom cap, tangling black threads into the air.

  Back when everyone in town called him Captain Kelly, the Chief used to come to Sandy Point Elementary once a year to talk fire safety.

  “And remember,” he’d say, mustache quivering with smoldering ginger intensity. “Never walk away from a candle. You turn your back and it could burn you up!”

  Bee had thought about it every day since Bonnie had showed up with a crate of glass pillar candles from the dollar store.

  “You wouldn’t thank us for burning the place down either, would you?” Bee asked Tito, giving him one last chance to protest.

  He didn’t.

  She blew the candle out.

  BIANCA: Have you guys found a sledgehammer yet?

  AUTUMN: We can borrow one from the Chief!

  JO: I was thinking about breaking open a Bratz piggy bank I found in my room. It swishes like there might be paper in it.

  BIANCA: I have a better idea

  Can you meet me at the Salty Dog early Saturday morning?

  And maybe bring the Chief’s truck?

  AUTUMN: Hell yeah, mystery item!! I’ll call Dad!

  The Chief’s truck was triple the size of Autumn’s Saturn, and the squeaking suspension bounced up and down the road. Autumn tried to make the most of it by singing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” on the short drive from Waterfront Cove to the Freemans’ house, where Jo was waiting for her.

  “Watch out for the sledgehammer on the floor!” Autumn warned as Jo took a second try at climbing up into the cab. “I didn’t want it sliding around in the back.”

  “Good looking out!” Jo puffed, setting her feet neatly on top of the hammer as she reached back for her seat belt. “I could hear you coming from three blocks away.”

  “My singing or the engine?”

  Jo laughed. “First one, then the other.”

  “If you’d like to join me in whistling a happy tune to make the ride more fun, there’s a pitch-pipe app on my phone!” Autumn pulled the gearshift and the truck lurched forwardly with slightly less grace than intended. “Whoops!”

  Jo not-so-covertly tightened her seat belt. “Do you really have a pitch pipe? You aren’t planning an elaborate a cappella coup against Mrs. Markey, are you?”

  “No way. A cappella is so ten years ago.” Autumn snorted. “But Pat is very territorial about the Point High piano—”

  “There’s only one?” Jo asked.

  “I mean, yeah. A piano isn’t something we can just tack onto the Staples order,” Autumn said. She held her breath as the truck pitched over what she prayed was a pothole. “If Broadway Club wants to learn music at the same time as Pat’s afterschool choir, then we have to use a pitch pipe.”

  “Broadway Club must be going well. Eden has been step-clap, step-clapping all over the place. Which was mildly embarrassing while we were waiting for a table at the new Mexican restaurant in Tillamook.”

  “Aww, inappropriately rehearsing in public is a theater-kid milestone. She’ll treasure that forever.” The Broadway Club had tripled in size since the seniors had dropped in to learn 9 to 5 with Jo. They mastered the spring carnival routine so quickly that Autumn had ended up teaching them the rest of the dances she had planned for the Senior Showcase. “Eden and her friends brought the finished dances to Pat all on their own. It wasn’t even during my class period! They told her that they wouldn’t do the Senior Showcase if it didn’t actually showcase all of their talents.”

  “How dramatic of them,” Jo noted.

  Autumn beamed. “They are my babies with whom I am well pleased. We have four official dance numbers in the Showcase. Five if I can figure out what to do with ‘It’s a Grand Night for Singing,’ the most boring song ever written.”

  The boardwalk came into view, each storefront like the false front of an old Western movie set. When Autumn was little, she would try to hoard all the Lego bricks so that she’d have enough to do a full replica of the boardwalk. The buildings were just so perfectly storybook square and brightly colored set against the blue-gray endlessness behind them. Flo always ended up needing bricks to make more towers or swords or whatever. She wondered if there were any Legos left in the Main Street house. With the truck, she could definitely rescue more boxes before the dumpster deadline.

  “What do you think Bianca wants to smash this morning?” Jo asked, tapping her toes against the head of the sledgehammer. “I didn’t think she was that interested in participating in the on-camera stuff.”

  The boardwalk parking lot was fairly full, which made the process of turning into it much more dangerous than Autumn had anticipated. She slowed down to a crawl and started hunting for two spaces next to each other. “I assume she really needs something smashed? Like a mug she hates.”

  “Or the prom-queen crown so we can show Jen G?”

  “Oh, I hope it’s that one!” Autumn giggled.

  The truck squeezed tight into a space and a half. Autumn set the parking brake just in time to see a red door approaching the side view mirror, possibly closer than it appeared.

  “Is that the front door to the shop?” Autumn asked Jo as the red door bobbled to a stop in front of the tailgate. She repeated the question when she jumped down from the truck and darted forward to help Bee heave the door into the truck bed.

  “It was!” Bee said, not seeming to notice the help. “I just had a new one installed that will actually open and close. This is going home, where it will be safe from the seawater. Things can be precious or they can be functional, but I am tired of treating functional things preciously. Jo, do you think your dad would help me mount this on the wall at my house? The way they have the surfboards up at Surf & Saucer?
”

  “I can ask him,” Jo said.

  “Great! Follow me in,” Bee said, dusting off her hands. She stopped short, checking first the heavy sledgehammer Jo carried and then Jo’s footwear. “Good, you got my message about closed-toed shoes. Bring the sledgehammer and your camera!”

  The three of them walked into the Salty Dog through the new glass front door. Bee lovingly stroked the gold handle. “Isn’t it gorgeous? It latches clean every single time.”

  “Doors are supposed to,” Jo said.

  “Around here, you’d be surprised!” Bee said.

  She started up the stairs. Autumn and Jo tripped over each other in an attempt to keep up.

  Inside the room upstairs, however, there was nothing out of place other than the nostril-ringing smell of fresh paint. Bee herself was spotless, if underdressed—by Bianca standards—in sneakers and black overalls, leading Autumn to assume that Bee had paid someone else to do the painting. Which was good. Manic wall painting could lead to manic paint huffing, something firmly warned against at the spring carnival.

  Bianca passed out filtered face masks. “From Florencio’s emergency kit,” she said. “So you know it’s good.”

  Autumn strapped on her mask and looked around the room. “What are we gathered together to smash, Bee? Is it metaphorical?”

  “No! We’re getting rid of the kitchenette!” Bee said, motioning to the back wall. “All of it! The cabinets, the counters. I hired a permanent-makeup artist and I’m turning this whole upstairs into an aesthetician’s studio. I’m abolishing the no-permanent-makeup rule! Instagram has really blown up the demand for microblading. The girl I hired even has me considering it. I do spend a lot of time on my brows. Scabby eyebrows during the healing week in exchange for three years of perfection? By the time I get the chair up here, I’m sure she’ll have me sold. I haven’t told Lita about my plan yet. She’s going to try to disown me, but then I’ll call her bluff and go back to business school!”