“I checked your horoscope this morning,” Pamela said. “The moon is in exactly the right spot for a Pisces to meet her soul mate.” She gave me a hard look. “What month was Luke born? Make sure he isn’t another Gemini. Pisces and Gemini are like oil and water. He should be a Cancer, or best of all a Scorpio. With a Scorpio you’d have a wonderful sex life.”
“His birthday didn’t come up in casual conversation,” I said. “But the wonderful sex life sounds good. Are you sure his astrological sign really matters?”
“Good grief, wasn’t one disastrous marriage enough? It’s critical for us to know his birthday. Even better, find out what year and where he was born. The location’s important, too.”
“Only my mother could work such a topic into a conversation,” I said with a wry smile. “Except she wouldn’t converse, she’d interrogate.”
“Your mother isn’t planning on spending this coming Saturday at your house, is she?” Magda stopped, dipped a tortilla chip into salsa and shot me a horrified look. “You know that I absolutely adore your mother, she’s such a fascinating character. But maybe you shouldn’t introduce her to Luke just yet.”
“Don’t introduce your kids either,” Carmen piped in. “My third husband left because he couldn’t stand my children.”
“I’m not planning on marrying the guy,” I said. “Anyway, if someone can’t stand my family then they’d be wrong for me.”
“Of course he’ll love your family,” Magda said. “Just don’t introduce them to him on the first date.”
“It’s not a date,” I reminded her. “He’s fixing the roof. I’m paying the guy to come over. If you’re thinking “date,” that’d make him a gigolo.”
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a pot of chili or something ready, in case he got hungry,” Carmen said. “You make killer chili.”
Their Royal Majesties continued discussing Luke in great detail. Magda wanted to know how large his hands and fingers were. That indicated penis size, she said. Pamela longed to read his palm, and Carmen wanted to know if he’d ever read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.
After various ribald comments, the general consensus was that I should get rid of the kids on Saturday and make sure that Mother didn’t appear on my doorstep that day. The last directive shouldn’t be too hard. After Mother’s last car wreck the police took her license away.
Saturday morning went pretty smoothly if you don’t count the fact that I was up at five o’clock to shower, blow dry my hair into that studiedly casual set that takes an hour to get just right; the one that looks as if you did nothing at all to achieve it, but are just naturally gorgeous. Ditto for makeup. Glamour doesn’t come easy. Or cheap. I spritzed myself with Vanilla Spice spray, pulled on my best pair of shorts and newest yellow tee and stared critically at the result.
Then panic hit.
Was this overkill? Wouldn’t it be obvious to Luke that I was making a play for him? That I was trying to vamp him, as my grandma would have said? A Pamela-like voice sounded in my head saying not to worry, that he’d like it. But the very thought humiliated me. What if he laughed at me behind my back? (Now that was a phobia just resurrected from junior high years!) I’d already had about all of the rejection I could stand for one lifetime.
I was reaching for a pair of ragged cutoffs and my hairbrush to ruin the coif when the doorbell rang. Oh crap. No time to fix the fluffing, primping, and painting. I stared at my reflection, paralyzed with indecision.
The doorbell rang a second time.
“Somebody answer the door,” my eighteen-year-old son called from his bedroom in a sleepy voice. Zack was the only kid in the house since the girls were both off to part time jobs at the mall. Just out of a pot-smoking/beer-drinking phase, he was still looking for part time work. Zack had just recently dropped the requisite teenaged look: bored, insolent, and pissed-off. But he still had the hair which was unfashionably long. No threat, bribe, or pseudo-psychology could convince him to cut the stuff. Beloved beyond belief, he was the child I least wanted Luke to meet.
“It’s the roofer,” I called out, passing his door. “Go back to sleep.” A groan answered.
“That means he’ll be pounding nails,” Zack said.
“Most likely,” I answered. Bedsprings squeaked and the sound of my son’s feet hitting the floor reached me just as I snapped the deadbolt and pulled open the front door.
I sucked in a hard breath. Luke looked even better today. He shot me a friendly smile and a sheen of sweat glistened on his tanned face. A thin, white cotton tee melted against his chest, showing well developed arms and shoulders. Wow. Jeans, softened by a hundred washings, curved around his hips and molded the muscles of legs. This guy worked out. It was all I could do not to salivate.
“Am I too early?” Luke asked, jarring me back to life.
“No, no, not at all.” I opened the door to let him inside, but he shook his head.
“I’ll unload my stuff,” he said with a gesture back to his Blazer parked beside Zack’s beat-up 1989 Camero in the driveway.
“Great,” I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. “Can I help with something?” In those jeans I’d have followed him anywhere.
“No thanks, this stuff’s too heavy.” He strapped a tool belt with a hammer and other impressive looking widgets around his waist and reached for a ladder. His jeans slipped downward just a tad. The sight caused my lips to curve into a smile and my breath to come a little faster.
Then the nightmare of all nightmares happened. A hot flash attacked me. Heat whooshed through my entire body and sweat beaded my face. I resisted the urge to fan myself by flapping my T-shirt.
“It’s going to be a scorcher today,” I said to hide the menopausal inconvenience. “I’ll make us a big pitcher of iced tea.”
But my secret was safe because Luke was already striding around toward the back of the house, the ladder balanced under one arm and a box of nails in his other hand.
“Sounds good,” he said looking back and grinning at me.
Walking ten paces behind a good-looking man is not to be underrated or disparaged, even by a feminist like me. The soft denim left nothing to my imagination. I didn’t even want to strip him naked. The view was too perfect exactly the way it was.
Then the insecurity I always carry around hit me with a vengeance. This guy was too good looking. He’d never be interested in someone like me.
Not that I was exactly a dog. I’d lost weight since the divorce, even with the Round Table food orgies. My friends said they were jealous of my skin and thanks to Clairol my hair was the same honey-gold color it had been when I was twenty. But carrying and delivering three, eight-pound plus babies, sitting before a computer for ten or more hours a day, and consuming the amount of chocolate required to anesthetize the pain of life, had taken its toll. Would a hottie like Luke want to date an ordinary somebody like me?
Luke arranged equipment and then climbed up to the roof. I admired the view as he moved upward.
“Like I told you, I have leftover shingles in the garage. You want me to get them for you?” I asked.
“No, they’re too heavy for you to carry. I’ll just take a look up here, then I’ll get them.” Luke began to pry some of the shingles away from the roof. “You were right about the guy who worked on your roof. He did a lousy job. There are nails in all of the wrong places. What could he have been thinking?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if Luke knew where the right place might be, but I kept my answer squeaky clean.
“That I was a woman and wouldn’t know the difference?”
Luke’s soft chuckle drifted down and turned to music in my ears.
The back gate slammed and Zack walked around the corner, a bundle of shingles hoisted over one shoulder. Bare shouldered, my son wore a pair of old cut-offs and scruffy Nikes. White Jockey shorts peeked up at his waist and his long blond hair touched his shoulders.
“I figured you’d need these,” he said l
ooking up at Luke.
A mixture of pride and consternation warred in my heart. A year ago Zack wouldn’t have been out of bed at this hour. He’d have been hung over and surly and angry acting. His one-eighty-degree turnaround was the delight of my heart. But I knew that fifty-year-old men usually disliked long haired boys.
I didn’t want Zack around today. Not with Luke here. Pamela could speculate on birth dates all she wanted, but there was one thing I was dead sure of: this guy was a Republican if I ever saw one. Almost everyone in Tulsa was a Republican except members of the Royal Roundtable and me. Luke would likely turn rabid at the sight of my long-haired kid.
I weighed my priorities. A boyfriend might be nice, but children are forever. I walked over to Zack and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks sugar,” I said and he gave me a happy grin.
“Want me to carry them to the roof?” he asked Luke.
“No, just drop them on the patio until I get this cleaned off.” He stared down at my son, giving Zack an appraising look. “Thanks for bringing them,” he said, his voice neutral.
So far so good. A breath I didn’t know I was holding whooshed out. Like I said, if forced to choose between one of my kids and anyone, even a prospective date, the kids would win hands down. But it was still nice to have this particular guy look at my son in a half way civil manner.
Zack’s next words sucked all of the air right out of my lungs.
“Grandma called. She wants to buy groceries so I’m going over to pick her up. When she’s through she’s coming by to cook dinner for all of us.”
Chapter 7
Just the thought of Mother visiting today was a disaster. Mother cooking dinner would be a calamity. Her theory of food being: if it tastes good it can’t be nutritious. But how could I tell her I didn’t want to see her? It wasn’t just a matter of hurting her feelings, which was serious enough. My mother had years ago trained for the stage, and even though her career as an actress had never gone anywhere, she still knew how to create major drama.
Saying that I had an interesting man on my roof and needed privacy so I could charm him with my killer chili, would bring out the worst in Mother. Even a hint that her thoughtless remarks and eccentric behavior embarrass me would make things worse. Sensitive to the point of neurosis, she seemed unable to control these oddities. For sure she never tried. At least not with me.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother and appreciate all the sacrifices she has made for me. At least I think I do. I’d appreciate them more if she wasn’t constantly reminding me.
I walked Zack back into the house. Since my son had morphed from a quasi-delinquent into a human being I could mostly depend on, perhaps I could appeal to his new found judgment. Yet I wasn’t sure how he’d react to my wanting to date. Sons are said to be protective toward their moms. After a moment’s thought I decided it would be safer to lie.
“Today is just a bad day for Grandma to come over.” I patted his back and he grinned down at me. A flood of maternal pride swept through me. A year ago Zack had been distant and cold. It was wonderful to have my son back.
Parenthood is forever. I didn’t know that when I got pregnant. I thought (if I thought at all and wasn’t just celebrating Saturday night) that I would have this cunning baby who later on would turn into an enchanting child. I never listened to those sour older women who said, “When children are young they walk on your feet, and when they’re older they walk on your heart.” I figured they belonged to that same group who, upon learning that I was pregnant, told me about a friend of theirs who had just given birth to a two-headed baby.
What could they know? They were over 40 and no doubt sexually frustrated. They weren’t loving, clever, and resourceful like me. Anyway, at that particular moment I was busy with my head in the toilet hoping I wouldn’t throw up the baby.
I hugged a lot of porcelain in the ‘80s. It seemed as if I had been pregnant forever when my third child was born. Sharon was three-and-a-half and Jeannie was 18 months. Why would any sane person ever want to have sex again? But guess who did?
Zack was born on a Sunday and on the exact date charted by the doctor, February 20. My mother lived out of town back then and had just arrived the night before in anticipation of the baby’s birth. Pains that I was certain were false labor began at five in the morning, and I wrote down the time intervals on the back of a grocery slip, just in case. I didn’t mention the contractions to either Mother or Garry Ray. They were busy arguing about who had suffered the most anxiety during this pregnancy, him or her, while I flipped pancakes and dressed the girls.
I closed my mind to the absurdity of this altercation. After all, everyone needed a hobby and sniping at each other kept them entertained while I lumbered around the kitchen with a belly the size of a Kenmore washing machine.
Another pain hit me. The last five had been a steady fifteen minutes apart, but even at twenty-nine, I was an expert in the art of denial. False labor, I assured myself, no baby is ever born when expected.
At eleven o’clock I was rinsing syrup off breakfast plates when another pain hit. Mother saw me stop to scribble the time (now ten minutes apart) and came to read over my shoulder.
I don’t even want to describe the hysteria that followed. My explanation that babies are never born when they are scheduled didn’t seem to impress her. At her insistence Garry Ray, with a bored and martyred expression, picked up my suitcase, (if it was my mother’s idea it had to be wrong) and we arrived at St. John Hospital at ll:30. Zack was born at noon.
Like everyone else, I hate it when my mother is right.
From that time until his thirteenth birthday the word that described Zack was fun. I don’t even remember potty-training him. At the beginning of his second summer, he was about 16 months old, so I put him in training pants and by the end of the summer he peed in the bathroom like everyone else. (And yes, I was a cruel mother and potty trained early. What do you expect with kids so close together?)
Fascinated by the world in general, Zack talked non-stop. When he was about ten he would follow me around the kitchen talking with such speed I would stop in exasperation and say, “Zack, be quiet for a minute and let me get my head together.”
“Okay.” Zack stood poised with his mouth closed for about twenty seconds. “You got it together?” He’d ask, and then begin chattering again. Later I would bitterly regret the times I stifled the entire script to Jungle Book, which Zack could recite almost word for word. How could I have known that at thirteen my son would disappear and a sullen, silent, stranger would take his place?
I’ve never understood how people don’t know when their kids begin using drugs. I knew the day Zack started and I knew the day he stopped, his personality changed so radically. The days between were a nightmare blur of fights, scenes, and late nights of sleeping on the couch so I would know when he came in. If he did.
Sometime during this period the kids began calling their dad by his first name. Thinking back I know Garry Ray must have encouraged it, although at the time it seemed insignificant. But I know that it did nothing for family unity.
When Zack was sixteen his father wanted to throw him out of the house. “Tough love,” Garry Ray called it.
“The kid acts like he wants to flush his life down the toilet,” Garry Ray shouted at me. “He can go down if he wants to, but don’t expect me to join him.”
It seemed a cop-out to me and I said so. If my son flushed his life down the toilet I would go down with him. We’d either both stay in the sewer together or we would come up together. That kind of love seemed pretty tough to me.
Mother was in Tulsa by this time in an assisted living center. The move had been necessitated by her dicey heart and radical surgery to remove her parotid gland in a fight against cancer. Her body was disintegrating, and her mind sometimes seemed confused, but her spirit never gave an inch. Her long war with Garry Ray intensified as our marriage fell apart. But the more trouble her grandson gave, the more she def
ended the boy.
“Zack will be all right,” she’d insist. “There’s more than one hour in the day. If he has to sow wild oats, at least he’s picking the right time of his life to do it.”
Funny how comforting clichés can be when you have nothing else.
“I never liked Garry Ray.” Mother always spoke of my husband in crisp tones, carefully enunciated in spite of a mouth that screwed to the right, deformed by surgery.
At that particular moment we were walking down the hallway of the almost-institution where she lived. Our usual routine so she could parade me past other residents, a competitive glint in her eye while showing off her visitor to prove her worth over theirs.
“So you’ve mentioned,” I answered as was my habit.
“He’s a good looking man, but he has no personality.” Mother nodded at me as if pleased with this information. “Silent men are always selfish.”
It was one of the laws of the universe my mother had written, along with, “People who buy things in drug stores never have any money,” and “Women who are good housekeepers are also dull company.” I could have posed an argument against any of these theories, but was afraid to try. I’d never won an argument with mother.
“Zack’s the most mature of all your children,” Mother said, speaking like a true grandmother about a kid who had just been suspended from high school for three days for cutting class. “He will be just fine. You’ll see.”
And so he was.
When his father moved out Zack gave up drugs. It seemed almost as if the divorce took away my spouse but gave me back my child. Perhaps Zack, at seventeen, decided that there should be one adult male in his mother’s life.
Garry Ray left on Saturday. On Monday morning a week later Zack caught me before I left for work.
“You think Garry Ray’s ever coming back?” he asked.
I looked at him. He had been gradually looking better. Now his eyes were clear and focused, his speech unslurred. This was real communication. My son was back. It was a minute before I could speak.
Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens Page 17
