by Annie Jones
All she wanted was one day where she didn’t have to endure a lecture on her shortcomings. Or face an uphill battle or downhill slide into humiliation brought on by her shortcomings. Or…or go through a day where she would be called upon to demonstrate her shortcomings.
Apparently, today was not that day.
She smoothed her hands down the legs of her pink Capri pants but the bumps and ripples and imperfections she saw there were not in the fabric. “Can we just drop the whole hearing and listening analogy for now and suffice it to say that Tessa is almost seven months old and I still haven’t lost all the weight I gained.”
“Fine. Yes. Fine. Let’s not quibble.” Phiz raised her age-spotted hand, setting her stack of silver bracelets clattering as she gestured in staccato movements with each word she spoke. “That brings us back to my question, though.”
It took a full three seconds for Hannah to realize that her aunt expected an answer. “What question?”
“Dietary needs?”
“You want to know if I’m on a diet?” She folded her arms over tummy.
“Or have allergies or have any special restrictions, preferences or dislikes. Not just you, but the whole family. If I am going to be cooking for you I need to know.”
“Cooking?” She unfolded her arms and dropped her feet to the floor with a thud.
It boggled the mind to imagine what exotic dishes Aunt Phiz might concoct. And how her family might react to them. What if they actually liked Aunt Phiz’s Roasted Rack of Yak or Cream of Octopus Soup? Hannah couldn’t even flip a decent flapjack, much less start off each morning serving up crêpes flamingo flambé. Hannah didn’t even know where to get a flamingo in Ohio!
“That’s so sweet of you to offer, Aunt Phiz, but I think we should stick with my brand of simple but nourishing style of cooking for the family.”
“I’ve seen your handiwork.” Even partially obscured by soft, crinkly skin, the older woman’s eyes still sparkled.
Hannah raised her head. “I manage.”
“And your family? They like these cakes with spackling for frosting?”
“No. They like…” They liked eating out. In fact they vastly preferred it to Hannah’s effort in the kitchen. “Look, Aunt Phiz, I know I’m not the world’s best cook but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn, that I don’t want to get better at it.”
The senior tented her plump fingers over her chest and leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve waited so long for the chance to do just that, to take care of my very own family.” Hannah gazed into her secondhand mug and swirled the dregs of her coffee around. “Surely you understand?”
Her aunt lifted her teacup and sipped her aromatic, anise-flavored tea. Her eyes searched Hannah’s face for a moment before she set the cup back on its saucer with a decisive click. “Not only do I understand, but I think I know precisely how to help you realize that very thing.”
“Help?” she asked weakly, when deep down inside she wanted to fling open a window and scream it. Help! Help!
“Never fear, Hannah, my darling. Aunt Phiz is here, and she is going to teach you to become a first-class gourmet cook!”
Cooking lessons. She guessed she could squeeze those in, somewhere between mothering, writing, running the nursery and…
Aunt Phiz pushed up from the oversize floral wingback. Everything from her hair to her boot laces swung into the action as she waddled off to the kitchen, her precious teacup in hand. “Get the kids ready. We are going shopping!”
Who knew?
All these years everyone teased her for being a lousy cook when they should have teased her for being a lousy shopper!
Okay, it wasn’t quite that simple, but standing in her own kitchen now piled high with a shiny new collection of pots, pans and gadgets filled Hannah with a soaring sense of unlimited potential.
She could study the recipes in her new cookbook.
She could listen and learn and do her aunt Phiz proud.
She could make…meat loaf!
“Turkey meat loaf.” Aunt Phiz waved her hand over the ingredients strewn along the cluttered countertop.
“Turkey? You sure about this?”
“Considered a healthier alternative by some.”
“Some as in someone whose name rhymes with Shyllis Shamaryllis?”
“Humor me.” She slapped the meat, wrapped in bright white paper, into Hannah’s palm. “And get cooking. We’re burning daylight.”
“Okay, but do me a favor. Don’t use the words cooking and burning in the same breath around here.”
“You’ll do fine. Just follow my instructions.”
8
Subject: Nacho Mama’s House column
To: [email protected]
Last week the hardest questions I had to answer were:
“How do you know when the meat loaf is done?”
“Do you want extra cheese on that pizza, lady?”
And “Why, when Aunt Phiz said she came here to help us, do we have to wait on her?”
The answers:
“You can always tell when my meat loaf is done by the sound of the kitchen smoke alarm going off.”
“You’re asking Nacho Mama if she wants extra cheese?”
And—
“Because, son, your foster mommy is a wimp.”
Oh, for those simpler times when the only thing anyone expected from me concerned the Aunt Phiz factor and the proper way to dispose of flaming turkey meat loaf. I’m afraid those days are long gone.
The days of the DIY-Namic Duo have begun.
Sort of.
Let’s just say that they’ve begun to begin.
We’ve moved the cribs and rockers and toys into the fellowship hall. It’s a short-term thing—meaning I’ve come to terms with having my meager authority usurped, but if the sisters don’t move things along I’m going to get a little short with them.
Especially if they don’t stop asking me questions like “Runners or puzzle mats?” I said runners. I have no idea what they were talking about, but as a longtime wearer of panty hose I have some experience with runners. On the other hand, while I don’t know this Matt fellow, I have no desire to sic the sisters onto the poor man with the express purpose of puzzling him.
Kidding. Honestly. Don’t write to explain that runners are strips of carpet and puzzle mat is spongy safety flooring. I do know the difference. If you have to write to offer your help, please, please, tell me how to encourage two highly enthusiastic women that actions speak louder than words. Even their words.
Their lots and lots of words.
Especially when those words are aimed directly at me, asking me the kinds of questions that I am totally unprepared to answer.
NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING
“Canary or Kumquat? Canary?” Jacqui pulled one four-by-four-inch square slowly back, then whipped a second one up and demanded, “Or Kumquat?”
Hannah blinked at the two paint-sample cards held inches from her nose. She chewed her lower lip, trying not to let the pressure steer her toward the wrong answer. She felt the way she did at the optometrist’s office when he said, “Better like this? Or better like this?”
But at the eye doctor she only ran the risk of getting the wrong prescription and spending the next year trying to look at the world through glasses that she didn’t really need. Flub this choice and who knew how many infants might spend their Sunday mornings in a nursery that could fail, as Jacqui put it, “to stimulate their minds and generate feelings of creativity and security.”
Yikes!
At least she only had one DIY sister to deal with on this. Cydney had staked her claim in the toddler room and at this very moment stood sketching a mural of Noah’s Ark on one wall of the adjacent room. At least Hannah thought the rough pencil lines would eventually represent Noah’s Ark.
Though she had to admit she got that idea more from the singing going on in the next room than from anything Hannah sa
w on the wall.
“C’mon, Sam.” Cydney’s voice carried through the partially opened door between the two rooms. Loud as she spoke, it could have carried through walls. “One more time, but this round give it all you’ve got. Throw in a little oomph!”
Sam obliged, belting out at the top of his lungs, “‘The Lord said to Noah, There’s going to be a floody, floody…’”
“Hannah!” Jacqui snapped her fingers.
The song faded to a background buzz.
“Canary or Kumquat?”
Hannah studied Jacqui’s face for some hint of what she expected. Finding nothing but intense anticipation, Hannah finally sighed and blurted out, “Um, Canary.”
“Canary?” Her voice cracked.
“Did I say Canary?” Hannah glanced at both squares again. Squinting, she pushed her fingers through the fringes of red hair that had escaped her once neat little ponytail. “Kumquat. Definitely Kumquat.”
“You don’t think it’s too…?” Jacqui crinkled up her nose, exposing the deep lines in an otherwise flawless face.
Hannah involuntarily crinkled her own nose. She squinted, trying to determine the problem with the deeper tone of the two colors. But she couldn’t see it. “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”
Jacqui held at arm’s length the color sample Hannah had chosen. “What about Lemongrass?”
“What about it?”
“Do you like it?”
“As what?” She’d had nightmares like this. Where people spoke to her and she had no concept of what they meant or of what they wanted her to say.
“A color.” Jacqui darted to the paint-spattered tarp bundled against the wall, seized another small card and flipped it around to show Hannah. “How do you like it as a color?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Jacqui exhaled in a short, sharp blast.
No one could describe either of the sisters as tall or, upon first glance, physically commanding. But when one of them wanted to get her point across, she had the presence of a giantess. And the gestures to match.
“Lemongrass. It’s a color. A very lovely color. I showed it to you last week.” She bent at the knees, arched her back and waved her hand over her shoulder to indicate the past.
“Last—” Hannah waved, too, though weakly and lacking any real direction, much less conviction “—week?”
“We thought it veered too much to the green.” On the word we, she made a circular motion, as though some unseen committee had come to this conclusion.
Hannah copied the movement Jacqui had made with both hands but used only one finger in a very halfhearted whirl that ended with her finger pointed to herself. “We did?”
“Too institutional.” Jacqui bobbed her head as if nodding for the whole invisible team. “We opted for something that trended toward gold.”
Hannah struggled to recall such a discussion.
Flooring? She remembered that.
Window treatments? Yes. She’d even made a bad pun about needing treatments to get over the trauma of looking at all those window treatments.
But trending toward gold?
She tipped her head to one side and winced. “Gold?”
“Not Goldenrod or American Heritage Mustard, not that deep of a hue. More of a hint of gold. Kissed by gold, as it were.”
“Kissed?” Hannah rubbed her forehead.
“That’s what you wanted. A vibrant, warmer tone.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did. You wanted a warmer color. So I brought warmer colors.” She raised the sample squares. “Now you tell me you can’t decide?”
Got it. Hannah exhaled. Message received. In Jacqui’s eyes, Hannah clearly had created all the problems. And she knew just how to fix that. “Okay, I can decide right now.”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. So which is it? Kumquat? Or Canary?”
Hannah shimmied her shoulders in triumph and smiled, ready to accept her accolades as she said decisively, “Lemongrass.”
Jacqui threw up her hands.
The paint samples somersaulted through the air.
Kumquat, Canary and Lemongrass dotted the floor at her feet.
“What did I do?”
Jacqui shut her eyes. “Perhaps—”
Hannah licked her lips.
Jacqui cut herself off with a broad, slashing motion through the air between them.
Hannah cleared her throat.
“Hannah, I—” Jacqui pressed her lips together. She held her index finger over her mouth as if it took that measure of control to prevent a regrettable outburst on her part.
“What?”
“Excuse me a moment, would you please?” Jacqui spun on her heel to leave. Every last thing about her, from the soft click of the heels of her turquoise loafers to the swish of the dark curls at the back of her head, told of tightly reined-in fury.
But why? Clearly Jacqui had wanted the Lemongrass shade all along.
“I wanted to be accommodating,” Hannah told Tessa as she scooped her up from the baby seat.
A door slammed down the hallway.
Hannah jumped.
It opened again with a whoosh of air.
Crisp, clipped footsteps came toward her, then stopped cold.
The singing halted midphrase. Just “‘Rise and shine and give God—’”
Then nothing.
A quiet commotion next door followed, rapid-fire murmurings.
Hannah bristled. She clenched her jaw. “If I weren’t the world’s most accommodating person to work with, why would I even be here this afternoon? Much less have hauled you and Sam along? He only has another week until school starts—we should be out doing something fun.”
Tessa gurgled and slapped her hand lightly on Hannah’s cheek.
“Don’t you start in on me, young lady.” Hannah smiled and kissed the pudgy pink fingers. “At this point you and Sam are the only people in the whole world I know who without a doubt still think I am not a total disaster. And I’m not too sure about Sam.”
“Not too sure about me about what?”
“Not too sure if you saw that steam coming out of Mrs. Lafferty’s ears or not.” She motioned to the side of her head and hissed to lighten the moment.
Sam tiptoed fully into the room, whispering, “She sure is mad.”
“Sssssss.” Hannah drew more invisible heat waves in the air shooting from her ear and laughed, but inside she felt anything but jovial. Tears stung the rims of her eyes. She chewed her lower lip to keep from sniffling.
“Why is Mrs. Lafferty so mad?”
“Because…” Hannah had gotten herself into this because she couldn’t tell these sisters what she really thought. Did she dare share that unbecoming little tidbit with Sam? She gazed into his earnest, sympathetic eyes. “Oh, honey, I can’t say for sure why someone else feels what they feel. Or even if they feel what I feel they feel.”
“I feel dizzy.” He put his hand to his head and wobbled his way down to sit on the floor.
Hannah laughed. “Okay, let me try again. What I think happened is that Mrs. Lafferty thought I was not putting enough thought into her project. So I thought I’d try to make her happy by telling her what I thought she thought I ought to think was the right choice.”
He scratched the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “You thought she thought you thought what?”
“It doesn’t matter what I thought, Sam. The end result is that I tried to think of how to please someone else by telling them what I thought would make them happy so they would think better of me, and now I’m sunk.”
She sighed, her shoulders slumping.
“Awww.” Sam wiggle-walked on his knees over to put his arms around her legs. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I should never have dragged you and Tessa in here today to quibble over Kumquat, Canary or Lemongrass.”
“Huh?”
“Paint colors,” she explained, poi
nting to the squares lying on the floor.
“They all look yellow to me.”
You want to see yellow? You should look at the streak down my back. Hannah withheld the comment. Sam didn’t need to hear her insecurities spilled out for a laugh.
Listen to yourself. Payt and Aunt Phiz’s words echoed in her mind.
And she had heeded them. She had listened, really listened.
She had spoken to herself and in the same instant caught it and paused. If it wasn’t the kind of thing fit to say to Sam, why would she consider it suitable to say to herself, about herself?
Somewhere in that convoluted reasoning, the seed of change had just been planted.
She knew it even as she knew she had no idea how to nurture it. Only that she must nurture it. For her children’s sake. For her own.
She would start doing that by stopping this nonsense with Jacqui. Now.
“What do you think, kids? Do you have an opinion about what color we should paint the toddler room?”
“You know they all look the same to me.” He got to his feet, plucked up the pieces of paper and offered them to the baby. “But why are you asking Tessa?”
“Well, of the three of us, she’ll spend the most time in here.” Hannah swiped her thumb over her daughter’s damp chin. “What do you say, sweetie? Shall we see which one you drool on the most and go with it?”
That process would make about as much sense to Hannah as Jacqui’s did. Who cared if the room ended up with a greenish tint or a golden one?
The baby fisted her hands around two of the cards and let the third fall away.
It tumbled down and down and landed color side up.
“Bye bye, Lemongrass,” Hannah muttered.
“She’s picking!” Sam hopped from one foot to the next.
“Okay, this is it, Tessa. Kumquat or Canary?”
