Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  Jon kept the small restaurants on Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, which is where we lived, next door to his best friend Victor and his wife Kaia. Glen and Celeste kept the two restaurants on the Big Island, and Chana.

  Chana ended up living with Jon not too long after the divorce. She was in college on the mainland by the time we were married. Soon after we married, Glen and Celeste sold their restaurants back to Jon and moved to Santa Barbara. Celeste said she wanted to be closer to Chana. Chana said her mother was upset that Jon was having more children. Apparently Celeste was still burnishing some old reality, and blanking on the booth part.

  Jon came in and watched his life spool forward as his baby floated around.

  “Your phone has been buzzing like crazy,” I said. “Are your parents coming?”

  Jon’s parents, and his younger brother Jack, lived in Santa Barbara where Jon grew up. His parents would come for a few weeks to help out with Meggie.

  “Few days,” he said. “He looks just like you when you float.”

  “Chana okay going to lunch?”

  “Totally. Megs sneaked a bag of gummy bears. She’s out of her mind on sugar. Let’s hope she doesn’t try to kill him.”

  “She wouldn’t do that, would she?” I asked.

  “I tried to kill off Jack.”

  “Maybe it’ll make a difference that he’s a boy.”

  “Doubt it. I’m pretty sure our bed is going to be crowded for the next year.”

  “Are we going to end up in her room in a pile of stuffed whales?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “We still have the Durango.”

  “Oh brother.”

  “We’ll lock the bedroom door and ignore them,” he said. “They can claw around under the door until they pass out.”

  “The way I look now, you probably won’t even want to.”

  He looked up at my insecurity.

  “Hand him over, H. Sounds like you need a nap.”

  I handed him Chance, then we climbed into clean sheets with a blonde fuzzy head and pursed, nipple-ready lips between us. Baby arms were at the ready, fingers curled in fists. Jon wrapped his arm around us. Chance was startled, his legs kicked straight, his fingers opened and closed, and then he settled again. We made a tent of warm air over him. His half-open eyes peeked their first look at the voices he’d been listening to underwater for nine months.

  “Seventeen inches,” I whispered. “We didn’t make a basketball player.”

  “Figures.”

  Even at a whisper, Jon’s voice had a beautiful rumble. Chance looked at him. Jon opened one new hand and closed five translucent fingers around the tip of one of his. That’s right lucky little bug, that’s your old man.

  “You okay with this?” I asked.

  “I’m way beyond okay. You?”

  “I didn’t expect two. You really can’t leave me now.”

  “Can I go to sleep?” he asked.

  Our drifting dream world of baby breath mingled with our own was interrupted by Jon’s phone buzzing. Chance jumped and made his first unhappy baby squawk. Jon frowned.

  “That was fast,” he said. “I was counting on a couple of hours.”

  He looked at his phone and his frown deepened to tension. It buzzed again, he ignored it, but Chance squawked. I soothed Chance while Jon stared at his phone and then put it on the nightstand.

  “Maybe you should answer it,” I said.

  He stroked Chance’s head.

  “Nope. It’s not important.”

  “They think it’s important. There might be a problem.”

  “It’s Celeste,” he said. “Probably looking for Chana.”

  We looked at each other across our new son.

  “She has Chana’s number,” I said.

  “I guess she’s not answering either. Let’s take a nap while we can.”

  “Why is she calling?”

  “No idea.”

  “Then turn it off. Chana will call Johanna if she needs us.”

  He turned it off and wrapped around us again.

  “I think he looks like you out of the water too,” he said.

  “He’s got your hair. That’s exactly how Meggie looked. Fuzz bomb.”

  “I hope he looks like you,” he said.

  ∞

  We slept until Meggie burst through the door with a huge smile on her face.

  “Papa!”

  Chana was in hot pursuit. Meggie climbed halfway up on the bed before she saw Chance naked between us. Her face crumpled into a look that will haunt me to my last breath. She understood in an instant that she wasn’t the center of the universe. Four years of our undivided attention, of storing up all that sureness, was crushed out of her. She started sobbing from the bottom of her feet, the middle of her heart, the core of her existence.

  Jon sat up and reached for her but she slid off the bed and rolled into a sobbing mass on the floor. He put on pants, picked her up, and wrapped her in his arms. She stuck her thumb in her mouth for the first time in a year. Her legs were tucked up against him in the fetal position, only the bottoms of her truly filthy little feet showed. She looked like she’d shrunk. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. He kissed the top of her springy curls and said, shush shush shush.

  “It’s okay, my Megs,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  He sat in the rocking chair and rubbed her back and kissed her curls. I handed Chance to Chana, got dressed, and then opened the curtains to let the breeze sweep in sunshine and more cheerful light. I switched places with Jon. His chest was covered with tears. He put on a shirt while I rocked the sobbing Meggie. Her hair smelled like French fries, and she still had telltale ketchup between a couple of her fingers. Chana sat on the edge of the bed with Chance and watched Meggie. We were all heart broken for her. She thought she was the It girl. Oversleeping had blown our careful plan to be up, dressed, and feigning mild indifference during their first meeting.

  “I’m sorry, she got away from me,” said Chana. “I couldn’t get a hold of Johanna, so I left you a voicemail.”

  “It’s okay, CC,” I said. “Your mother was calling nonstop, we had to turn off the phone to get some peace.”

  “She’s so crazy,” she said. “I told her what was happening.”

  Meggie was running out of steam. I kissed the side of her wet eye.

  “Did you have some lunch, Angel?” I asked.

  She nodded her head.

  “French fries and ketchup?” I asked.

  She froze. We’d been trying to wean her off a mild addiction to fries and ketchup.

  “She had ketchup and a nap,” said Chana.

  Meggie rubbed her snotty nose back and forth on my top, sighed a heavy sigh, and put her splotchy cheek on my shoulder so she could suck her thumb with some air, look at Chance, and brood.

  “We have a baby brother, Magsie,” said Chana. “Now you’re a big girl like me.”

  Meggie just stared at them.

  “Adam is here,” said Chana.

  “He on a break?” I asked.

  “Where’s he staying?” asked Jon.

  “Yeah, between projects,” she said. “We pitched a tent in the yard. I might stay out there. Be quieter.”

  “We can make a bed in the house,” I said.

  “For you,” said Jon.

  Chana rolled her eyes. Adam was an interesting situation. He was my nephew so, in theory, Chana’s cousin, but not blood cousin. They’d become good friends after the families joined forces. He went to UCLA the same year she went to Cal Poly to study engineering. They’d spent quite a bit of time together surfing up and down the coast. Sometimes they stayed with Jon’s parents, sometimes in La Jolla with Adam’s parents, my brother Eric and his wife, Anna. Now that they were over twenty-one Chana visited him in L.A. where they went to music clubs. She used to stay with my best friend Karin or my assistant Amy. Lately we weren’t clear where she stayed. I had a feeling it wasn’t in a tent. As Jon said, it was a new one.

&n
bsp; Meggie struggled her steamy self out of my lap, climbed-up next to Chance, and took his hand with the one she didn’t have stuck in her mouth. He played possum.

  “What do you think?” asked Chana.

  “It’s okay,” she said around her thumb.

  Johanna came in with tea and peanut butter coconut Boogie Balls. Jon handed us cups of tea and passed out balls.

  Chance squawked a protest and Meggie jerked her hand back from poking him in the eye. Chana handed him back to me. He smelled of her ginger body butter and had a smear of ketchup on his cheek. I looked at Jon’s raised eyebrow.

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  Meggie climbed into Jon’s lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her head in his shoulder. She was crying again; a wet spot spread out on his shirt. Chana took his cup out of one hand and was reaching for his Boogie Ball when Meggie’s hand flashed like lightning and grabbed it. Jon stroked her head and smiled at me across her springy blonde hair and ketchupy sundress.

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  His eyes squinted into a deeper smile.

  “It was,” I said.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  “Is this going to be like Uncle Jack?” asked Chana.

  “Yep,” said Jon.

  “No,” said I.

  Meggie peeked at Chance, and Jon caught her foot just as it accidentally shot toward his hours old head. She whimpered.

  “Okay, then,” said Chana.

  She went to find Adam who was going to set up his laptop for a Skype call with Eric and Anna.

  My older, now deceased, sister Bettina never really warmed up to me, but big brother, Eric, liked me. Unlike my unflappable Jon, Eric had catapulted out of the delivery room in a blind panic during his son’s birth. Anna banished him from their daughter’s birth. It was a rare loss of control and earned him five stitches in the forehead. They must have pulled the thread too tight. He has faint X scars. I called him Cinco Equis until we both got tired of it. Still, it’s not the kind of thing a younger sister opens her jaw over. He’d have to whack me dead and use big ass pliers, like you do on a moray eel clenched to a scuba diver’s foot, to get me to stop reminding him one way or another.

  Jon is a different story. He is more inclined to run at things. Like a raptor, he just keeps coming. He’s sure he can handle what he finds. It took me a while to find him, but I was sure about Jon the same way I was sure that it’s more fun to get a baby in, than it is to get it out, and that geckos don’t blink. I was also sure that life, like Jon, is relentless.

  Adam came in and met Chance but, for Meggie’s sake, he was careful to act like Chance was just okay. Maybe even a pain-in-the-ass. Eric and Anna were sitting at their kitchen counter when we connected.

  “So is this it?” asked Eric. “Or you guys going for a volleyball team?”

  “This is it,” I said. “We did the shoulders thing again, Anna.”

  “You there, Jon?” asked Anna.

  “Yep,” said Jon. “I worked up a sweat.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, man,” said Eric.

  “He got me into it, Eric,” I said. “It’s the least he can do.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Eric.

  “How do you like your new brother, Meggie?” asked Anna.

  Meggie was managing to eat the Boogie Ball with her head still buried in Jon’s neck. She shook her head.

  “You just wait,” said Anna. “Adam loves Grace.”

  Meggie stopped chewing, but didn’t lift her head. She wasn’t a happy camper.

  They’d had dinner with Ed and his new woman, Nancy, when they were down to play golf at Torrey Pines. They were both golf fanatics. I hadn’t met Nancy so asked for their take. They exchanged looks. Uh oh. Their takeaway was that Nancy wasn’t Margaret, and that she would prefer to ignore that Margaret had ever existed. Eric said she was a bitch; Anna went softer and called her retro.

  “So, what’s her back story?” I asked.

  “She’s a widow,” said Anna. “Seventy-three, so they have that in common. I think he’s a little confused by it all.”

  “Ed’s confused? This makes me so sad,” I said. “He sounds so happy when I talk to him.”

  “Maybe we read it wrong,” said Anna.

  “We didn’t,” said Eric. “Mom wanted to be here for the call but Arthur got sprung today. A couple of stents and he’s ready to hit the Viagra again.”

  Arthur had a heart attack a few days earlier. Mom had been difficult to reach.

  “You get any more details about how it happened?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Eric. “It was the fourth tee. He dropped his driver, clutched his chest and said he was having a heart attack. I guess it was a really lousy tee shot so his buddies just thought he was joking around. When he hit the deck in a hundred percent cashmere they knew it was for real.”

  We heard about the heart attack when Mom called Anna from the hospital to have her fax over Arthur’s advanced directive. Anna handled all the family law matters. Eric thought she should skip family law and open a mixed martial arts venue. Get some ring girls, serve bad beer in plastic cups, and let couples settle it with slugging and kickboxing. Maybe throw in some chains and staplers for color. I could do the production design.

  “I didn’t think you could use Viagra with heart problems,” said Jon.

  “It started out as a heart medication,” said Anna.

  “It’s good medicine,” said Eric.

  “Not according to some of my clients,” said Anna. “They want restraining orders against their old roosters.”

  “Hey, Chana,” said Jon. “Would you guys take Meggie out and wash her off? I think she’s stuck to me.”

  Meggie dug in when Chana tried to detach her. Adam grabbed her around the waist as Jon pried her fingers loose from his shoulder. The fabric was damp and wrinkled. Her cheek was sweaty and embedded with bits of coconut. She loved Adam so didn’t put up much of a struggle, just a few kicks in Chance’s direction. She lasered a look of betrayal at Jon as the door closed. He raised his eyebrows at me and smiled. We turned back to the grown up conversation.

  “Was Adam mad when Grace was born?” I asked.

  “He couldn’t care less about Grace, he was jealous of the cat. Cat fought back. It was a fast truce,” said Eric. “So what are we looking at with Adam and Chana?”

  “We don’t know,” said Jon.

  “Here either,” said Eric.

  Jon and I signed off and packed up while Meggie was distracted.

  “Meggie broke my heart,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ll keep her close for a while.”

  She came back with clean hands, but she’d obviously had shave ice. Her face was rainbow tie-dye. If I could figure out a way to market her face at the end of each day, she’d make more money than Jackson Pollock.

  ∞

  We loaded the car. I was in back with Chance, Meggie was in front looking smug.

  “I’m only sitting back here once,” I said. “You need to build a barrier.”

  “It’ll work out,” said Jon.

  “How long did it last with you and Jack?”

  “I stopped hitting him a few years ago. It’s going to be okay.”

  “You always say that.”

  TWO

  Home. Jon threw open windows and started a bath for Meggie. His assistant had dropped off a passion fruit pie with his mail. I lay down on the couch with Chance and woke up two hours later to him snuffling for attention. Jon had taken Meggie to work for a while. I stood at the kitchen counter holding Chance, forked pie, and scanned the refrigerator door. When Jon and I first met it had been covered with photos of him with other women, now it was covered with our family. He’d used Meggie’s magnet letters to spell I LOVE YOU H.

  I went in the bathroom. The tub was full of toys with a sopping towel slung over the curtain rod. Meggie’s panties were on the floor next to the toilet with delicate dirt footprints wa
lking away from them. I swished them around, then tossed them in the hamper, accidentally tapping Chance’s head against the windowsill. He started to cry.

  I lay down on our bed and stroked the mark on his head. Bamboo shades ballooned out in the breeze, then knocked softly back against the window trim. I pulled Jon’s pillow over and buried my nose in his scent until I fell asleep.

  The door was closed, but I was eased awake by the smell of Victor’s famous lamb and red onion dish sliding under it on a fragrant carpet of jasmine rice. Meggie was in the kitchen sing songing a story to Jon.

  Chance slept while I wandered out to the kitchen. Meggie took note of my empty arms and went back to coloring. I hugged her and kissed her all over, then nibbled her ear.

  “Oh my gosh!” I said. “You taste so big!”

  She smiled at her drawing. I hugged Jon around the waist and licked his ear.

  “And you taste like butterscotch,” I said.

  “You get some rest?”

  “After I mopped the bathroom floor with her underpants and banged his head on the windowsill.”

  He was drinking a Luna’s, a beer labeled for his restaurants. Mike, one of his old friends, had a brewery in Portland. They’d finally produced a passion fruit beer Jon approved. Mike and I had had a tiny bit of passion fruit between us, before Jon made his move. Jon never came right out and asked me what went on between Mike and me. Nothing would have been the answer, but I kept that to myself.

  We had a family dinner with Chance in a basket by the table. Meggie eyed him but made no attempt to drown him with her milk or stab him with her fork. I read her a bedtime story and tucked her in without any drama. Jon rocked on the lanai with his son between his knees and talked to Chana and Adam who had turned up after going surfing and stopping at the shrimp shack.

  I took Chance to bed. Jon came in a few minutes later, ran his hand over the curve of my hip, and kissed my shoulder.

  ∞

  Low morning light filtered in on wind chimes. Meggie was lying crosswise across both our pillows, flat on her back, lips parted, sound asleep with fingertips touching Jon’s temple.