Multiple Listings

by Tracy McMillan

  “Stop taking credit for it,” Nicki says. She’s joshing me, but only sort of. “You are not the reason he passed.”

  Cody jumps to my defense. “No, Mom. He is. If it was up to you, I wouldn’t even have my permit yet!”

  “Are you saying I’m a bad mom? I would have gotten you down there eventually!”

  “No, Mom. I’m saying I’m lazy as shit,” Cody says with a laugh. It’s true. Cody wasn’t motivated enough to deal with the DMV. “Ronnie deserves all the credit.”

  “Thank you, son,” I say. “You don’t know, but that means the world to me.”

  I can’t even show him how much it means. It would scare him. He’s on to thinking about more important things anyway. Like where he’s going to drive first.

  “Can I drive to Magic tonight?” Cody says. “Please? Please please please please?”

  At least he’s predictable. Nicki makes an ugh sound. The place where he plays Magic is all the way out on Sandy Boulevard. At least twenty minutes from here—and despite the fact that the kid just got his license, I can tell Nicki is about to say she doesn’t want him driving that far. This is one of those times I have to jump in before she can burst Cody’s bubble.

  “Of course you can!”

  Nicki glares at me. “Why, that sounds perfect!” I say. “Doesn’t it, Nicki?”

  “Not really,” she says. She opens her mouth to say something else; I’m guessing it’s about the car, but I cut her off—

  “The question is,” I say, “what car are you going to drive?”

  We both look at Nicki. “Please, Mom?” Cody’s pleading. “Pleeeeeease?”

  “Wait a second. I have an idea,” I say. “Come over this way.”

  I head across the testing area toward the main parking lot. I’m walking fast, not because of the raindrops, but because I want Nicki and Cody to follow me. Fortunately, they do.

  “What are you doing?” Nicki skips a step to catch up.

  “Right over here,” I say. “Just a couple more steps.”

  We round the corner, stepping past a small bank of bushes. There, right behind the bushes, is parked a 2005 silver Toyota Corolla. With a big bow on it.

  “Right where I left it,” I say. And I dangle a pair of car keys in Cody’s face. “These are for you, son. Congratulations.”

  “This is for me?” Cody is shocked. “You bought me a car?”

  “This car is for him?” Nicki asks. She’s shocked, too. “You did this?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  This might be the proudest moment of my life.

  “Oh shit, yeah!” Cody grabs the keys out of my hand, opens the car door, and gets in. He grabs the steering wheel like he’s still a little boy pretending to drive, bobbing up and down in the seat. Cody rolls down the crank-style window. I purposely got a very basic car, without any bells and whistles—because you can’t drive very recklessly with only four cylinders. “This is dope!”

  “Go ahead, start it,” I say. “It has automatic steering, transmission, air-conditioning, and only eighty-six thousand miles on it. This car is going to go for a long, long time.”

  Nicki still hasn’t recovered from her surprise. She’s wide-eyed, just walking around the outside of the car, checking it out. “Can I ask where you got the money?”

  She says it in a low voice, like she’s accusing me of something.

  “I’ve been saving, girl.” I’m not going to try to talk her out of her suspicion. I know I got the car on the up-and-up. First of all, it didn’t cost that much money. And second, I planned this a little while ago and got Alex to give me a little advance on my paycheck for a down payment. Now that the restaurant’s open and doing well, making the $127-a-month payments is not going to be hard. “And, I have a job.”

  “This is awesome,” Cody says. “I’m going to Magic right now. Can I go right now? Just take it by the comic-book shop and show everyone?”

  “Ronnie still has to take his test, ” Nicki says. Sometimes that girl doesn’t know when to quit with the control. I think too much excitement scares her.

  “We’ll figure it out. It’s okay, the boy can go ahead.” I do have a couple of ground rules for the car, though, that I need to get out before he starts driving. “No driving buzzed or drunk or high,” I say. Cody nods. “And no friends in the car for a while, a long time, until I say so.” Studies show kids get in accidents ten times more often when there are other kids in the car. “And, last of all, we’re going to be sharing this thing sometimes, so you have to go along with that. You got that?”

  “Totally! I totally got it.” Cody starts the engine. It turns over like a dream and purrs like a kitten. A four-cylinder kitten. Cody puts the car in reverse and starts backing out of his spot.

  “You got it, kid!”

  “Roll up your window, you’re going to get all wet!” Nicki says.

  She’s standing very still, her hand balled up in a little fist at her mouth. This is probably a really scary moment for her, watching her son get his independence. It hits me that this is where childhood really ends. With the car keys. No one tells you that. You think it’s high school graduation. Or going off to college. But I can see it happening right now in front of my eyes. These car keys are going to change everything.

  “It’s okay, baby. Look at him,” I say, as he drives off. He goes the twenty feet to the exit of the parking lot and puts his turn signal on. Good work. “He’s as happy as a boy could be.”

  Nicki’s shaking her head at me. She looks like she might be tearing up. I put my arm around her shoulder, but not too hard. I know she can be skittish, especially when she’s feeling vulnerable.

  “Ronnie Daniels.” The sound of my name comes over the loudspeaker.

  “Sounds like it’s my turn,” I say. I give Nicki a kiss. “Wish me luck, little girl.”

  “Break a leg,” she says. She smiles as I walk toward the tester. The same guy Cody had.

  * * *

  The following Tuesday I drop Cody off at school so I can use the car. I have a mission today. Something I’ve known I needed to do ever since the day we found out Gio was dead.

  I can’t stop thinking about Beth.

  I can’t stop thinking about how Nicki said she’s only got one picture of herself as a baby. I can’t stop thinking about how she has a mom out there somewhere—right in the same town—and doesn’t speak to her or want to know where she is. I can’t stop thinking about childhood trauma and attachment issues and repetition compulsion and corrective experiences and how everything I’ve read about in my psychology books comes down to who raised you.

  I can’t stop thinking maybe there’s some way to bring them back together.

  Beth is talking with a client when I walk in the door. She’s an interior decorator now, a successful one, and has an office downtown on Southwest Taylor. I just typed her name into Google and boom, there she was. Not only was she not hard to find, it turns out she’s actually kind of famous. Portland famous, but still. Like with Nicki, this has to be a surprise visit. There’s no way Beth would take my call and make an appointment with me. It was either show up unannounced or forget it. And I didn’t want to forget it. I might be fifty-seven years old, and I might have missed half my daughter’s life (and all of my grandson’s life), but I’m finally out now, and if I can do something—anything—for Nicki or Cody, I’m going to do it.

  Of all the things I did wrong in Nicki’s eyes, nothing was more devastating than leaving her with Beth. Nicki blames me for that. Even though Nicki doesn’t want to be close to Beth, I know Beth’s silence feels like a rejection. So if I can broker some sort of gang truce between the two of them, I’d feel really good about that. Beth always loved me. I’m thinking maybe I can soften her up some. Make her see things with her daughter a different way.

  Beth spots me the moment I step into the office. The am
azing thing about Beth is that her game is so on-point not a muscle on her face moves an inch when she lays eyes on me. She doesn’t do a double take. Doesn’t even flinch. She simply turns right back to the woman she’s talking to and continues showing fabric swatches. And she hasn’t seen me in thirty years.

  I’ll say this, too: she looks good. She always did, so I’m not surprised. Five feet, eight inches, and still got her shape. She must be, what, sixty-­one? And pulling off a tight (but not too tight) red suit, three-inch heels, and long curly hair. She’s stunning. Just like Nicki.

  “Hello, there,” I say. She pretends to see me for the first time, looking at me without a shred of recognition. It gives me chills. I’d almost wonder if she knows who I am, except I’m certain she knows who I am. She’s just refusing to acknowledge it. Maybe I spoke too soon about the love she had for me.

  I turn to the client. “I beg your pardon,” I say. “But I’m here on something of a very urgent matter. I need to talk to Elizabeth privately.” I turn to face her. “Beth, right? Is it okay if I call you Beth?” Two can play this game.

  “Excuse us for just a moment,” Beth says to her client. The expression on Beth’s face is placid but furious. “This will just be a moment.”

  Beth leads me to a side office area, curtained off from the showroom.

  “What kind of stunt is this?” Her eyes are on fire. Her arms are crossed. It feels like she would hit me if she could.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello?” I say with a smile. “It’s been a long time.” I observe the feeling of wanting to flirt, but this definitely isn’t the time, and besides, I don’t do that anymore. I also notice that when I just stand there, I feel very tiny. Like a boy.

  “No, I’m not going to say hello. I’m going to say, ‘What do you want?’ ” She has her hand on her hip. This is how she stands when she’s not having any of what you’re giving. “I’m not interested in you, or how you are.”

  “Okay, fine. I’d like to talk about our daughter,” I say.

  Beth drops her arm to her side. “She wouldn’t want you talking to me about her.”

  “You’re right about that. I came here without her knowing,” I say. It’s like there’s something in Beth that steals my thoughts right out of my mind and my mouth. I have no idea what to say, and I feel like even if I did, I wouldn’t have the right to say it. She still affects me this way after all these years.

  “Just as well you leave it that way.” She glances out to the main room, I guess to make sure her client is still there. “I have to go.”

  “Why would you say that, Beth? She’s your daughter. Aren’t you even curious? Don’t you want to know how she is?”

  “She doesn’t want a relationship with me. And even though it makes me sound like a bad mother, I’m okay with it,” she says. “I’m just being honest.”

  I wince. What would ever lead me to choose this woman? She is missing something so key, so crucial to being human. She’s missing the ability to put another person before herself. She’s missing the ability to open her heart—at all. I want to cry for the twenty-two-year-old man in me who went to this woman to get love. I want to cry for my daughter. My heart aches for her.

  “You have a grandson,” I say.

  “Save the sentimental face, Ronnie. I’m not mother material. Or grandmother material. That’s been obvious since the very beginning. I did my duty for Nicki. I raised her. She seems to be having a fine life without me. And I’m living a fine life without her.”

  My stomach is sick with shame. Because back then, it wasn’t about love. It was about sex. I didn’t really care about anything else. Or anyone. I created this.

  I did this. This was my doing.

  My selfishness, my bad choices—they cost me, yes, but they cost Nicki even more. All those years, I tried to convince myself that Beth would treat Nicki better than she treated me. I don’t think I could have survived my first prison sentence if I didn’t think that. But standing here, it’s clear I was in denial. Beth is a broken person.

  For years, I have punished myself for my choices—you could even say (at a spiritual level at least) I put myself in prison and I threw away the key. Beth was a bad mother. In many ways I was a bad father. The great unfairness of life is that ultimately our failings were Nicki’s problem to deal with. Just like I had to deal with my parents’ shortcomings, and Cody will have to deal with Nicki’s.

  Parenting is the world’s best worst thing. Your baby is born and you think she’s perfect—she’s going to be everything she could ever possibly be. Even more crazy: you think you’re going to be perfect. Slowly, it dawns on you that your child isn’t perfect—which you can accept. But then you realize that you’re not perfect—which is unacceptable. Then you have the most awful realization of all: your child’s biggest challenges come as a result of you. You cause them, but you can’t cure them. Your child has to do that for herself. The only thing you can do to help her is to trust that she will figure it out. Trust that she will choose to heal herself of the things you did to her. Everyone has to make meaning out of their own mistakes, disappointments, failures, triumphs. All of it.

  Nicki’s doing that.

  But I still want Beth to pay. I’m sorry, I do. I want Beth to feel guilty. I want her to feel remorse. I just want her to fucking feel. I want her to own what she’s done to our child.

  “She told me she’s only got one picture of herself as a baby,” I say.

  Beth looks at me like I’m a beggar on the street. She pulls back the curtain and peers into the main room. Her client is still there, sifting through upholstery options.

  “I think we should leave well enough alone,” she says finally. “I’ve made my peace with it. Now you have to make yours.”

  She’s right.

  Without another word, she disappears onto the other side of the curtain. Behaving as if nothing just happened. Because I guess for her, nothing did.

  30

  * * *

  NICKI

  The restaurant is taking over my life. In a good way. We’ve settled into a routine where I arrive after getting Cody out the door to school, usually around 8 a.m.—although now that I don’t have to drive him, I could actually be here even earlier. The minute I show up, I hit the ground running, and today is no exception. There are four or five tables in progress, and the moment I walk in, Peaches starts barking orders.

  “Thank God you’re here!” She’s using her nice voice, so I take it things are going pretty smooth. Our server, Felicity, is clearing dishes from table 12, and it looks like she just dropped the check at table 5, which Peaches is about to pick up. “Can you bust out two cappuccinos to go? And the banana nut muffin. I’ll run this tab.”

  “Sure,” I say. I give a little yell toward the kitchen—which is basically open at the back part of the main room—where Ronnie is flipping his specialty: the goat cheese omelet. “Morning, Dad.”

  “Morning, baby!” Ronnie sounds chipper, too. Boy, does he love his job! You’ve never seen a more enthused chef. He waves and winks and sings and claps his hands all day long. Chef Ronnie is so energized by engaging with the customers and the kitchen staff it makes the guy we’ve known at home for the past two months look like he was on Thorazine. “It’s a real good one today!”

  Ronnie busts into the hook of “Here Comes the Sun,” probably because today is the first day we’re seeing full sun in more than two weeks—always cause for celebration in the middle of Portland winter.

  I step over to the cappuccino machine and grab two white paper cups. As one of her first management decisions, Peaches declared we should open at 6:30 a.m. so we could do a coffee business for people who don’t want to go to Starbucks. She came up with the idea of Curbside Coffee, where people text their orders on the way over, then we make the cappuccino or whatever, and she runs it out to the curb. It’s a flat five bucks and she has one
of those little doohickeys on her phone to take credit card payments. Genius. Then she added a muffin option, which makes the total almost ten dollars a person. We are doing almost sixty of those a day on weekdays, and it’s growing. A lot of them come back on the weekends for the full brunch.

  I pour in the foam, secure the white lids (that was a whole ordeal: white vs. black plastic lids, I won), and put them in a tray along with the two banana nut muffins. Peaches glides by and sweeps them off the counter. “Thanks, lady. Love you, mean it.”

  Ronnie’s kitchen is going strong, too. He does breakfast and lunch from 7:30 to 2 p.m. Then we close until 5:30, when we do dinner until 9 p.m. on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends. Sundays we’re closed. Ronnie insisted on having a Lord’s day. He said he didn’t care which lord the employees chose, he just wanted them to have one day to tend to the spirit.

  Oh, Ronnie.

  I don’t mind, though, because it’s crucial to have a day off. The restaurant is more a stream of income, and a way to be part of our community, than it is a means of financially supporting ourselves. We’re making enough to pay Peaches and Ronnie and the staff and turn a small profit—but we don’t need the restaurant to pay my mortgage or Cody’s college. I have my job for that. I plan to keep my appraisal business going. I really do love it, and as money goes, it’s easy.

  I’m about to head back to the office to take care of some ordering when the door opens and Alex walks in. It seems like forever since I told him to go away, and I’ve done everything in my power to stop myself from texting or calling. I just couldn’t take the risk that he would reject me. I figured if he wanted me, he would come back for me. But now, even though he’s walking toward me, and he’s smiling, I don’t dare believe that that is why he’s here.

  “Hi,” I say. This seems like a weak opener, but I don’t know what else to start with. I can’t very well launch into I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I don’t know what I was thinking. For one thing, we have customers. And for another, it seems presumptuous. Maybe he’s just here to say hi. “How are you?”