by Jane Porter
The dull panic in the back of my brain becomes a constant roar. How in God’s name will we be out of here by the end of the weekend? How will I have the house empty (or empty of “us”) before escrow closes?
The next morning I get up an hour earlier than usual and pack until the girls need to get up.
Fortunately, on Wednesday, Z Design empties out by noon, and Marta tells us all good-bye for the weekend. Everyone’s rushing off for their holiday weekend. Mel’s flying out to Dallas. Allie’s meeting her boyfriend’s family in Gig Harbor for the first time. Robert and his partner are going to Santa Barbara to be with Robert’s partner’s family.
Marta, however, is home. She’s cooking Thanksgiving for her family. Apparently, Luke wanted her and Eva to go home with him for their first real Thanksgiving together, but Marta was too worried about her parents.
“It’s probably Mom’s last Thanksgiving at home,” she tells me as she walks me out of the office and down the drive. At my car, she says good-bye and continues on to the mailboxes to check for today’s mail.
It’s just a couple of blocks to my house, and as I drive, leaves swirl and blow. I glance at my watch—Nathan will be home in seven hours—and then at the sky. It’s mostly gray, but here and there I see glimpses of blue.
I want the clouds to blow out. I want clear, dry skies for the next few days. I want Nathan to arrive and wrap his arms around me and hug me and never let go.
It seems like forever since he touched me. Forever since he loved me. I can’t even remember the last time we did make love.
Did I like it? Was it good? How did it feel to be close to him then?
As I enter the house, I find Annika already set to leave, even though I’m home hours earlier than I expected. “Mr. Young called,” she says, handing me a notepad with the phone messages. “And if it’s okay, maybe I could go now before the traffic is really bad?”
While I write her a check for the last two weeks of work and add in a $200 bonus as a thank-you gift for her eighteen months of help, the girls crowd around Annika with good-bye hugs. Tori’s in tears as Annika slips out the door.
“I don’t want her to go,” Tori cries, racing for the door. “I don’t want Annika to leave.”
I catch Tori in my arms and swing her up onto my hip. “A new family needs Annika,” I say, kissing her cheek, her nose, her neck. “You’re a big girl, and you don’t need Annika as much.”
“Yes, I do. I need Annika. And I’m not a big girl. I’m still your baby—”
“Yes, you are a baby,” Brooke sighs, walking by.
“I’m not!” Tori shrieks, wriggling out of my arms.
“You are, too,” Brooke calls back as she walks out of the room and up the stairs, “because you still wet your bed!”
“Girls, enough,” I plead wearily as I climb the stairs, picking up scattered coats, sweaters, shoes, and socks as I go.
I’m at the top of the stairs when the phone rings. Dropping the girls’ clothes in the hall outside Jemma’s room, I head for my bedroom for the phone on the nightstand.
It’s Nathan on the line. “Hey,” I say, pulling the elastic out of my hair and shaking my ponytail loose. “Shouldn’t you be boarding about now?”
“There’s no plane to board.”
“What do you mean?”
“O’Hare’s in lockdown. It’s so cold and the ice is so bad they’ve canceled everything. Planes aren’t getting in or out.”
“But you’re flying into Minneapolis—”
“Our plane is trapped in Chicago.”
I sit on the edge of our bed, our big king-size bed that will fit in our room at the rental house only if we dismantle the headboard and footboard and use just the metal bed frame. I chew relentlessly on my thumb’s knuckle.
“I’ll call you if things change,” he says, sounding even worse than I feel. “But right now it’s unlikely.”
Nathan’s not coming home. I should have known. I should have expected this. I should have learned by now not to get my hopes up anymore.
“Taylor?”
I pull my knuckle away from my mouth. “Yes?” My voice is husky. I’m close to tears.
“I wanted to be there.” He sounds like hell, his voice strained. “I wanted to get you all moved. I wanted to see the girls.”
I swallow the disappointment. It’s so thick that I can feel it choking me. “Let me know what happens.”
“I will. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Chapter Twenty
It’s a hard night. A long night. Nathan phones me every three or four hours with updates, his last being midnight my time to say there would be no way he could get here tomorrow. His best hope would be a Friday night arrival. If then.
He’s not the only one stranded, and Chicago isn’t the only airport hit. Most of the Northeast is frozen shut, and I can imagine the thousands of families frantic and disappointed that their Thanksgiving plans are ruined.
I don’t cry after hanging up at midnight, but my insides are heavy, my heart like a lead weight.
I’m getting good at disappointment. I’m getting good at not having my way.
It doesn’t mean it’s easy, and I can’t imagine it’ll ever feel nice, but what is, is, and I’m going to make the best of it. I’m going to count my blessings. Even if it kills me.
I wake early on my own. No alarm clocks needed. After changing from pajamas into sweats, I make coffee and start boxing up the family room, trying not to notice that it’s still pitch black out and the house is nearly as dark and cold. After taping two boxes closed, I turn on a few more lights and take a big gulp of coffee.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I can do this.
I can move the girls. I can take care of us. I can manage just fine.
But my eyes burn and I’m so unbearably sad that I use my sleeve to wipe at my eyes. No tears. No crying. No pity parties allowed. I’m a woman, not a child. What’s the big deal about moving us myself?
With a hard mental kick, I return to the wall of built-ins that line the family room. Books and photos and knickknacks everywhere. I have to use the smallest-size U-Haul boxes for the books since they’re heavy, but I pack them carefully and stack the filled boxes in a tower along one wall.
At seven-thirty, Brooke races downstairs in her pajamas covered with little red-haired girls playing soccer. “Is Daddy here?”
I fold down the cardboard top, tape it tightly closed. “No. The storm’s too bad. There aren’t any planes flying out.”
Brooke throws herself on the couch and grabs a pillow to her chest. “But he said he’d be here. He said he was coming home.”
“He can’t help the storm. Weather is out of our control.”
“He promised.”
I sit back on my heels and rest the massive roll of sealing tape on my thigh. “I’m upset, too.”
She kicks the pillow at her feet. “I’m not upset, I’m mad. Dad is supposed to be with us.” She kicks the pillow again. “I hate that he’s in Omaha. I hate that we’re moving. I hate that you’re working. I hate that Annika’s going to take care of someone else’s kids now. I hate everything. I even hate Thanksgiving.”
“Me too.” I reach for another box and fold it into shape. “I agree. To everything.”
Brooke stops kicking. She lies still for a minute before sitting up. Carefully she wipes a tangled strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. “Did I hurt your feelings?”
I stop taping the bottoms of boxes and look at her, see her, this middle daughter with her long hair and her fierce, competitive spirit. She’s my fighter. Dear God, don’t ever let me break that fighting spirit.
“No.” I smile at her, and my eyes have that itchy, burning feeling again. “I’m glad you tell me what you think. I’d hate it if you thought you couldn’t.”
“Even if I’m mad at you and Daddy?”
So that’s where all these hates come from. She’s struggling just as much as Nathan and I are struggl
ing. “Especially if you’re mad at me and Daddy. We’re your parents. We’re a family. If you can’t tell Daddy and me how you feel, who can you tell?”
She smiles then, and the shadows lift from her expression, and it’s as if the sun has come out. “Love you, Momma.”
“I love you, too, Brooke Young.”
I’ve just returned from the garage with an armful of flat boxes and more packing paper when the doorbell rings. My heart leaps and I think, Nathan. But then I glance at my watch and realize it’s impossible. It’s eight-fifteen in the morning, and at two a.m. his time he was still stuck at the Omaha airport. There’s no way he could be here now.
Running my fingers through my hair, I head for the door, unlocking the dead bolts even as I slide a thumb beneath my eyes, trying to catch any mascara smudges. Opening the door, I freeze.
Mom.
Mom and Ray.
I can’t speak. I can’t move. I just stand in the doorway and stare at her. It’s been years since I’ve seen her. A decade or more. At least.
“Hi, Tammy,” she says.
“Taylor,” I correct her, thinking she looks even more like Ali MacGraw than ever. When I was growing up, people always did a double take when they saw Mom running errands or at the grocery store. More than once when I was a little girl people approached her, asked for her autograph. No one believed her when she said she wasn’t the actress.
She nods. “Sorry.”
I look at her and then Ray, still unable to find my voice. She sees my bewilderment. She’s never shown up at my house before.
“We came to help you move,” Mom says, making it sound as though it were the most normal thing in the world. This from my mother, whom I haven’t seen in a decade or spoken to in maybe eight years.
I reach for the door, and I don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t know if I’m going to close the door on her or I need support, but suddenly the past is huge and dark between us.
Mom deserted us. Mom left. She found herself a better life, one more suited to her liking, leaving the rest of us to whatever shit life kicked our way.
I pull the door toward me, shutting my house from her view, thinking there’s no way in hell I’ll let her through. “I don’t—”
“Nathan called me. He said he couldn’t get back, storms had closed the airport, and he was really worried about you not having help. . . .” Her voice drifts off, and she shoves a small hand in the pocket of her faded jeans.
I just look at her. Her dark hair is streaked with gray, but it’s still thick and long, hanging in dark waves past her shoulders. She’s remarkably lean for her age, and her plaid button-down shirt looks like a boy’s, stretched across her shoulders and breasts.
So this is my mom at fifty-seven. If she weren’t my mom, I’d think she looks damn good. But she is my mom, and she’s not part of my life for reasons she and I both understand.
“I’m good at packing, Taylor,” she adds quietly. “At least let me do the one thing for you I know how to do.”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing back the bitterness. I don’t want to be bitter, not now, not anymore. The last few months have been too hard. I’ve felt as though I’ve lost everyone and everything.
But Mom came.
And that little whisper inside me makes my heart seize up. I swing open the door and step aside. “Come in. The girls will be thrilled to see you.”
“Thank you,” she says gravely, passing me.
I make eye contact with Ray as he approaches the door. I’ve met him only twice, and both times we didn’t talk. Ray looks like the actor Sam Elliott from the movie Mask. Tall, weathered, and lean, with thick gray hair that reaches almost to his shoulders and one hell of a handlebar mustache. I’m sure he has tattoos, too. I just haven’t been around him long enough to see them.
Ray nods at me. “Taylor.”
“Ray.” I can’t even fake a smile. Ray is probably my least favorite person in the universe. There’s so many things I don’t like about him that I don’t know where to begin: My mom ran off with him, he’s a professional truck driver, he’s a gambler, he’s a fighter, and he’s a convict.
And he married my mom.
While in prison.
I don’t know which bothers me more: that my mom ran off with him, that he’s a truck driver, or that he’s a convict.
But Mom and Ray are inside my house now, and I start to shut the door, but not before I see an enormous big-rig truck parked in my drive.
“You brought an eighteen-wheeler?” I mutter as I close the door.
Ray shoots a glance at me over his shoulder. “Your mom said you had a big house. I figured you’d have a lot of stuff.”
I suddenly feel like shit. “Thanks,” I say awkwardly.
He just tips his head my way.
Introducing the girls to my mom and her husband is uncomfortable, but then everything in my life is uncomfortable right now. Fortunately, the girls are less freaked out than I am. They’re definitely curious, though, even excited, and they bounce around the family room regaling Mom and Ray with anecdotes about their lives.
I break up the share-fest after about an hour, telling everyone that I’ve got to get to work. That pretty much ends the party.
Mom tackles the dining room with the tall glass-paned hutch Nathan and I bought in Ireland on our seventh-anniversary trip, visiting an enormous antique warehouse in Rathkeale, a village in the west. The mahogany wardrobe is filled with china and crystal, every shelf weighted with more dishes than we ever needed. The wardrobe is one of the things I’m leaving behind that I will miss. I wish now I’d thought to ask Monica for it.
Ray is in Jemma’s room, and he’s breaking down the bed. He’s already broken down the other two girls’ beds and carried the pieces out to his truck.
I’m struggling to disconnect the last of the stereo’s elaborate surround sound when Mom passes me, carrying more boxes to be put together, and sees me red-faced and thin-lipped with pliers and a screwdriver.
“Leave it for Ray,” she says calmly. “He’s good with things like that.”
“Okay.” Relieved, I drop the tools next to the stereo and watch her return to the dining room.
I rise and tug down my T-shirt. I’m hot and grouchy, and it’s not even noon. There’s also still mountains of house, rooms and rooms, and this will take forever. Panic builds in me, and my throat feels too tight.
I’m about to climb the stairs to head for the bedrooms where I started packing the closets earlier, but first I step into the dining room where Mom is working.
Her dark head is bent, the long hair falling on either side of her face, as she carefully wraps stemware after stemware in thick wads of packing paper before adding each piece to the box.
Mom must know I’m there behind her watching, but she doesn’t speak, she just focuses on her job.
“I thought you lived in Santa Rosa,” I say, my voice tight.
She carefully wedges the paper-wrapped flute in the box. “I do.”
I fold my arms across my chest, feeling increasingly jittery. “What time did Nathan call you?”
“Four in the afternoon.”
“It’s an eleven-hour drive, Mom, and that’s without stopping.”
“Ray drove all night.”
I stare at the back of her head, and I’m flooded with intense emotion, emotion so strong that it nearly buckles my knees. The only thing that goes through my head is I love you I love you I love you
And you left me.
You left me. And you left Cissy, too.
I want to ask her how Lawrence, her first lover, or Ray, her second, could have been more important than Cissy and me.
I want to ask her why she couldn’t have waited five years, ten years, to leave Dad, as Cissy and I would have been out of the house by then.
I want to ask her if she’s been happier with Ray than she was with us.
But I don’t. I can’t. She made her choice. We didn’t have a choice. We had no say, no power,
no voice.
No wonder I’m such a control freak now.
Gritting my teeth, I turn and climb up my elegant circular staircase to the second floor, determined to get the kids’ rooms emptied today.
I’ve managed to get only half my closet boxed when the doorbell rings. After opening up another huge wardrobe carton, I tape the bottom, slide the hanging bar into place, and head back into the closet for more clothes. I’m not going downstairs. I’m not answering the door. It’s probably one of the girls’ friends, and they can do something around here for a change.
I’m just grabbing an armful of hanging slacks, blazers, and dresses when Marta Zinsser appears in my bedroom doorway. I nearly trip over a dropped hanger in surprise. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She glances around the room, sees the disaster around me. “Having fun?”
“Not my idea of a fun Thanksgiving. What brings you here?”
She smiles, a wry, lopsided smile. “I was hoping I could have some fun, too. Pack. Lift. Work. Carry.”
I look at Marta, this disgustingly confident woman I never wanted to like because she was everything I thought I wasn’t and couldn’t ever be. I wasn’t independent, wasn’t brave, wasn’t strong, and yet I’m finding my feet and my bones and I’ve got more muscle—and gut—than I expected. Her gaze meets mine and holds. She’s not the enemy. I’m not my own enemy, either, anymore. “You’re so twisted, Marta, you’re scary.”
Her expression doesn’t change outwardly, but there’s something in her eyes, something almost like affection, and I feel a rush of warmth. Love. Hope.
It’s going to be okay.
We never make it to McCormick & Schmick’s for dinner. Marta has invited us—all of us—to her house for Thanksgiving dinner, and when she asks us, I hardly even protest. I think I just asked if she was sure.
She was sure. I accepted gratefully, and Marta went home to finish preparing Thanksgiving dinner.
