by Regina Duke
Timmy said, through a stuffed up nose, “She thinks the brown ones is Tootsie Rolls.”
“Are,” said Zinnia as she began peeling potatoes. “Show me your fractions.”
“Third grade is hard, Zin. What will I ever need fractions for anyway? I got a calculator.”
Bernard was clicking through football games on the TV at the other end of the room. The dining and living room shared the same four walls, separated only by a floral runner Lily had found at a thrift store. He paused to call over his shoulder, “Where’d you get a calculator from?”
Timmy pulled it out of his pencil case. “Rowdy gave me his old one from high school because he needed a fancy one for college.”
Chrissie spoke without looking up from her magazine. “Junior college.”
Lily set a glass of iced tea in front of Zinnia. “College is college, Chrissie. Everybody has to start somewhere.”
Zinnia held her breath, but no one told her that was what she should be doing, too. For a change.
“Thanks, Mom.” She drank half the glass at one go.
Lily said, “Chrissie, them clothes is mostly yours and the babies’, so no one else is going to fold’em for you.”
“Got it, Mama.”
Lily went back into the kitchen, and Chrissie said quietly, “Timmy, go tell Percy I’ll give her a quarter if she’ll take this laundry up to my room.”
Timmy leaned his head back and shouted, “Percy! Chrissie needs you!”
Zinnia had already peeled two potatoes. She took a third one, set it on a paper napkin, and cut it in half.
“Timmy, what don’t you get about fractions?”
“They don’t make sense. And why’s there a line in the middle?”
Zinnia cut the two halves into quarters. “We had two halves, we cut those, and now we got four quarters.”
“Any doofus can see that,” snarked Timmy.
“Write down a four on your paper. Now draw a line over it so it’s wearing a hat.”
“Okay. Stupid hat, just a line.”
“You can draw any kind of hat you want on the side, but to save space, we’re letting the bottom line of the hat stand for the whole thing.”
“Oh. What does this have to do with potatoes?”
“You have four quarters of potato. We cut one potato into four equal parts. Now we have four parts. That’s what the four under the hat stands for.”
“Teacher never said nothing about potatoes,” he complained.
Zinnia continued. “Now, how many of these parts do you need to put the potato back together?”
“All of’em, dummy.”
Zinnia suppressed a smile. “So you need four quarters, right? Put another four on top of the line.”
Timmy did so. “Now what?”
“You had one potato.” She wrote the number one on the paper. “You cut it into four quarters. That’s the bottom four. Then you need all four pieces to put the one potato back together. The bottom one is how many you need to make a whole potato. If we put a one on top, that is one quarter or one of four parts you need to make the whole. So if we put a four on top like this”—she drew a fraction for four fourths—“you’ve got all your parts and this stands for one whole potato.”
“Oh!” His expression brightened. “That’s not a hat. That line is a knife.”
“There you go,” said Zinnia, dropping another peeled potato in the bowl.
A skinny twelve-year-old girl thumped down the stairs and appeared at the table. “What do you want this time, Chrissie?”
“Don’t give me your smart mouth if you want this quarter,” said Chrissie, holding one up between two fingers.
Percy snatched the coin.
Chrissie smirked. “Just take this here clean laundry up to my room, please.”
Percy clamped her mouth shut and jammed the quarter into the pocket of her jeans, then left with the laundry.
Zinnia talked fractions and peeled potatoes. She loved her sister, Percy—Persimmon—and fought the urge to tell Chrissie to carry her own laundry.
The old wall phone rang and Chrissie ran to answer it. Her giggles after “Hello” told Zinnia it was a guy.
Timmy asked, “How come Chrissie always has money?”
Zinnia shrugged. “I don’t know, baby.”
Bernie bellowed, “She’s on the welfare, boy.”
It felt to Zinnia like dinner took forever. As usual, Chrissie depended on her mom and dad to help feed the babies. Percy seemed unusually quiet at the dinner table, and Zinnia wondered why, but she was busy helping Timmy add and subtract fractions in between bites, so she let it go.
After dinner, she said to Lily, “Mom, I’m going up to my room to change clothes before I do the dishes. Be right back.” As she left, she thought she heard Percy mutter, “Here we go,” but it didn’t register until she opened her bedroom door and stopped cold, flabbergasted by what she saw.
* * *
There was no way Bart would have turned to his father in his time of need. Pembroke Hazen managed to aggravate all of his children, but Bart couldn’t help feeling that he had been his father’s favorite target for teasing, complaining, grumbling, and generally being a paternal jerk. If he wanted advice and encouragement, he would have to go to Colorado, where two of his siblings now lived. Darned inconvenient of them to move halfway across the country. Smart, yes, but inconvenient for him. He toyed with the idea of going to a high-end men’s store in New York, but he preferred to borrow a few things from Don, who had become quite the snazzy dresser in San Francisco. Besides, his sister Taylor was a mother now, and he hadn’t seen the baby in person. In addition, Taylor might have some suggestions about a local girl who could play his wife.
Now here he was, on a plane, heading for Colorado. He resented having to fly commercial, but at least in first class, it was bearable. He chuckled to himself as he mentally ticked off how much of one commission he’d spent so far. The art world is funny, he thought. You immerse yourself in study, practice your skills, learn different techniques by copying the masters like Velasquez and Rockwell. You spend years bartending at night so you can buy paint and canvas. You solicit small jobs as a portrait artist. You work yourself to the breaking point perfecting the glow of light from behind the clouds over the Grand Canyon. And what finally sells? An impressionist slap-dash canvas generated by a bottle of vodka and a forgotten deadline.
Whatever works, right? He still had all his other canvases, but after the first paint-by-instinct-and-booze canvas sold, that was all the public wanted. It was somewhat annoying to leave his favorites in Europe while he traveled to New York with his finger paintings, but his irritation faded when he cashed those six-figure checks.
Fine. He’d never told his father what kind of painting he would be famous for. Besides, Pembroke was only interested in how much money Bart could earn by smearing paint on canvas. He’d never really cared about art, and he’d freely ridiculed Bart for his dreams of making an important mark in the art world. Some day when he was financially comfortable, he would blow his father’s mind by confessing that his biggest sales came from the kinds of work he used to do at prep school, when he would sit up all night before exams and paint the distress of his soul on a canvas before he could start studying.
His biggest distress at the moment was the awful excuse for a meal he was being served in first class. “Excuse me, miss,” he said to the flight attendant. “What kind of fish is this supposed to be?”
“Salmon, sir.”
“Hmph. It’s the palest salmon I’ve ever encountered. Are you sure they didn’t slip in a trout or two? Or maybe a halibut?”
“I’m sorry you’re disappointed, sir. May I offer you a replacement?”
“Yes, you may. What else do you have?”
“Beef Wellington?”
Bart circled a finger in the air. “Next?”
Her pleasant expression was growing strained. “Roast chicken.”
“Of course. Fish, meat, and fowl. Anythin
g vegetarian?”
She looked askance at his rough appearance and announced in a supersweet voice, “Malai Kafta with naan and jeera rice.”
Bart grinned up at her and wagged a finger. “You think I don’t know what that is, don’t you?” He spread his arms to indicate his Bohemian affect and lifted the porcelain plateful of mystery fish. “I will gladly trade this for Malai Kafta.”
She took his teasing good-naturedly, although he was sure that was exactly what she was paid to do. But she also eyed him with new respect. “Coming right up, sir.”
“Well, well, well,” Bart murmured under the roar of the engines. “There may be something to this whole civilized man concept.”
When she delivered his Indian feast, she said, “You must fly first-class on a regular basis, sir.”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “But my pilot has pneumonia.” He unfurled his linen napkin.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope he recovers quickly,” she said politely.
“So do I. Pilots with top gun training are hard to find.” He pretended he didn’t see her eye-roll, but when she turned away, he allowed himself a satisfied smirk. The truth was that he eschewed the private jet for the most basic of reasons. It was significantly expensive, and frankly, he grew weary of being the only passenger on a long flight. Not that he wanted to talk to strangers. But in first class, he had flight attendants he could harass at will, and there was very little they could do about it, as long as he was polite and sober.
During the flight, he had time to play mind games with himself. Was he avoiding his father because this small setback would make him look like a failure? Or maybe because Pembroke would throw a fit upon seeing his scruffy appearance? Or was he looking forward to seeing his siblings in Colorado? Taylor’s baby was already ten months old, a little boy, Jackson. He gave her credit for naming the child after her horse. In fact, it made him chuckle. Evidently they all had issues with their father. The old man had berated Taylor for her fixation on horses all her life, and she got even by naming her son Jackson. Pembroke was relegated to second place as the child’s middle name.
In addition, his older brother Don had bought a house in Eagle’s Toe. Bart hadn’t met Don’s wife yet. Were they all getting older so fast that marriage had become their priority? Or had it been his father’s priority, and Taylor and Don were either pushed or deceived into it as a result of Pembroke’s quest for grandchildren? Bart had a sneaking feeling that their father wanted babies in the family so he could pass over his own kids when the time came to inherit. He would have to mention that to his siblings and see how they felt about it.
Once they arrived in Denver, he took his time wandering to the rental car office. All he had was a carry-on, just a few things, because the rest of his luggage contained his Bohemian look. No point in hauling it all to Colorado. Maybe Don could solve his so-called sartorial problem. That brightened his spirits. He doubted he’d get any help from Taylor’s husband…what was his name?
“Wonderful,” he muttered as he climbed into a black SUV. “Proving once again that I’ve successfully ignored any and all family ties. I can’t recall my brother-in-law’s name.” Maybe that was why he’d chosen to come to Colorado: his siblings were there, and they’d probably help him if they could. And his father couldn’t surprise him by showing up unannounced unless one of his companies had perfected a Star Trek transporter.
The GPS directed him to I-25, and he headed south. The car was big and new and roomy, but he felt like something was missing. Then he grinned at himself in the mirror. He felt naked traveling without art supplies. Denver International was so far out of town that he had plenty of time to play with the GPS and locate a major art supply house. Then he laughed at himself. Here he was in Colorado, and he was still using his sales income to buy paint and canvases.
CHAPTER THREE
Zinnia stood stunned in the doorway of what had been her bedroom ever since they moved into the house. Gone was her dresser, gone was her single bed. Instead, the baby’s crib was pressed against the near wall and Melmac’s toddler bed occupied half of the far wall. It wasn’t a big room, but it was Zinnia’s private place, and she stared in confusion at the door that led to Chrissie’s room. That door had been locked tight ever since she started high school, but it stood wide open now, and the chaos of Chrissie’s unmade bed and unfolded laundry could be seen from where she stood.
She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and turned to find her mother looking worried and embarrassed. Before Lily could speak, Chrissie came bounding up the stairs.
“What do you think? Isn’t it great? The babies will have the room next to mine. It was so crowded having all their stuff in my bedroom. I asked Dad, and he said it was a good idea. He even helped me move your things.” She flounced through the door and into her own room.
“Mom?” Zinnia was horrified. “Did you agree to all this?”
“It’s going to be fine,” said Lily, not sounding at all certain about that. “They’ve moved your room, that’s all.”
“That’s all!?” Zinnia felt anger burning inside like a hot flame. “The babies were sleeping in Chrissie’s room so she could take care of them! Where did my stuff go?”
Lily tilted her head toward the door at the end of the hall.
“The storeroom?”
“Don’t worry, all your mementos that were stored in there before are in the attic now, and your bed and dresser fit in there just fine.”
Zinnia stomped down the hall and opened the door. The bare light bulb had been left on, and yes, her bed and dresser fit, but barely. If she was careful, she might be able to get dressed without bumping her elbows on the walls. The ceiling sloped a good two feet between the dresser and the foot of her bed. “Where’s my mirror?”
“Bernie put it on the wall for you.”
Zinnia was fit to be tied. The mirror only fit on the other side of the bed, so she would have to stand by the door to fix her hair.
Lily sounded truly sorry. “I’ll make this up to you, dear, I swear.”
“They didn’t even ask me,” said Zinnia.
Lily paused at the door. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” Unspoken was, Waiting for you to help me clean up.
Zinnia had no more words, so her mother left. Alone in the tiny room, under the too-white glare of the lightbulb, she made a decision, and once made, put it into motion. She had a rolling backpack, a Christmas gift from Rose. She saw a strap sticking out from under the bed and was glad to see her father had stuffed it under there and not relegated it to the dusty attic. She stuffed it full of clothes, tucked her hairbrush into her purse and sat on the edge of her bed to check her wallet. She had fifty dollars and change. She wondered if her parents planned to give her a refund on the two hundred she’d given them for room and board at the first of the month. She had no idea where she was going, but it was very plain to her that she could no longer live at home. Home. This tiny closet of a storeroom.
She took a moment to determine which was greater, her anger or her pain. She wanted to go downstairs in a rage and demand an explanation, but her father had been hinting at this ever since Chrissie got pregnant the second time. It all seemed so unfair. But as Chrissie delighted in reminding her, the children shouldn’t suffer just because their mother wasn’t the good daughter, or as she was wont to tease when no one else could hear, the goody-two-shoes daughter. And even though Chrissie’s words stung and her tone was even more cutting, Zinnia didn’t want the babies to suffer either. She just wanted the room she was actually paying rent for.
She decided the wisest thing to do was take her things and leave without a word. Yes, that was what she should do. If she opened her mouth, she might scream at everyone. She opened her top dresser drawer and stuffed two of her small sketch books and a pencil box into her purse. She also took two CDs and a book and stuffed them into the back pocket of her backpack. She put on the only coat she owned, a gray felt with black buttons, then lifted the backpack so the wheels
wouldn’t bounce on the stairs. She’d almost made it to the front door when Timmy called out, “Where you going, Zin? Can I come?”
She should have ignored him, but she loved Timmy and she’d miss him horribly. “I’ll see you soon, baby. No worries.” Her hand was on the doorknob.
Bernard stood up from his chair and clicked off the sound on the football game. “What’s the matter?”
Zinnia bit back a dozen mean-spirited things and said instead, “You could have asked me before you moved the babies into my room.”
“Oh hell, you would have said yes, right? Where you going? Put down that backpack and go help your mother with the dishes.”
Zinnia stiffened her spine and asked, “Is Chrissie going to pay two hundred a month extra for the babies’ room?”
Percy gathered up her homework and ducked around Zinnia to run up the stairs and out of the line of fire. Chrissie, holding Wedge, did not appreciate her comment. “Two hundred extra?! No way.”
Lily appeared at the door to the kitchen, wiping her hands on a grimy dish towel. She seemed unable to look Zinnia in the eye.
Bernard roared, “You get back in here and help your mother.”
Zinnia tipped her chin in the air and snapped, “I guess that’s your job now, isn’t it? Because I seriously doubt that Chrissie will.” She opened the door and pulled it shut behind her, moving quickly across the porch and down the walk. She half expected Bernard to come after her. When she was a little girl, he’d done so on a regular basis, spanking her bottom as he dragged her back inside. But no one came. At the mail box by the gate, she could hear him raging, but she was too far away to hear what he was saying, and that was just as well. She steeled herself, picked a direction, and hauled her rolling backpack down the street.
She walked with no destination in mind, but after a lifetime of friendship with Rose, her feet carried her to Rose’s parents house. Mrs. Stigliano answered the door. “Hello, Zin. I’m afraid Rose isn’t home right now.
