by Jane Porter
I blink, turn to look at Shey, who is still smiling, but the curve of her lips is faintly ironic. We both know it’s not easy. Never has been, never will be.
For a moment, neither of us says anything, and the only sound is that of metal clanging and the shouts of the ferry workers down below.
“I am going to get more involved,” I say, breaking the silence. “I’m going to volunteer to help out at Eva’s school—”
“But it’s not just for Eva, it’s for you, too. It’s so you can have friends here and be included—”
“With the Bellevue Babes? The Eastside Barbies?”
Shey laughs, and it’s low and throaty and very Texan. “Now I remember why we became friends.” She looks at me sideways. “You needed me. No one else could handle being your friend.”
“We’re off!” Eva cries from the railing, and I can feel the deep vibration from within the ferry. We are indeed moving.
Shey and I rise from our bench and join Eva at the railing. The water churns blue green with foamy white, and as we move we gradually begin to pick up speed.
The wind blows our hair, and the sun shines down, hot, bold, reckless. The sun doesn’t have anything to worry about. It’s old, it’s strong, and it’s seen everything.
Eva, I think, circling her shoulders with my arm, is still just learning everything for the first time.
And as I stand behind Eva, my arms around her shoulders, her heart beating beneath my hands, I think I am, too.
After we disembark from the ferry, Shey catches a cab to the airport, and we grab one to take us in the opposite direction, north to Lake Union, where we left our car at the terminal for the seaplane.
Once I’m at the wheel again, I drive to Bellevue and stop at the grocery store to pick up what we’ll need tonight for the barbecue.
Eva wants to stay in the truck and read one of her magazines she found stashed behind the bench seat. It’s a tattered issue of Town & Country Weddings, but she’s delighted to reread an old friend.
I park near the front, tell Eva to lock the doors and if she gets nervous at all to come inside and find me.
Eva just buries her head in a Mexico beach wedding layout, and I finish talking to the top of her head.
I shop quickly, knowing exactly what I need: chicken, barbecue sauce, corn on the cob, some cans of baked beans I’ll doctor to make taste even better, and some garlic bread. Eva wants to make a cake, she’d mentioned it earlier, so I’m hustling to get all the shopping done so we can go home to get the cake made on time.
I’ve just grabbed four white husked corn when I step back and ram right into someone. I was moving quickly, so I hit hard, a slam of bodies and red baskets that sends me reeling backward.
“I’m sorry,” I exclaim, certain I’ve just run over a little old lady. But it’s not a little old lady.
It’s him.
The real him, the guy who passed me in the fog on Saturday, the man who literally took my breath away.
I stare at him, and he’s even bigger now, up close. “Are you okay?” he asks, putting out a hand to steady me.
I feel the warmth of his hand on my arm even as his deep voice registers somewhere inside me. He’s big, thickly muscled, with a wide chest and long legs and an intense gaze. I can’t tell if his eyes are blue, green, or both.
“Yes,” I answer, dazed, far too fascinated by everything about him. I’m tall, but he’s huge. He’s a mountain. His shoulders would fill my truck.
“That was a pretty good hit.” His gaze meets mine and I can’t read his expression, but there’s such an intensity in his eyes that I don’t look away.
I exhale hard even as I grow warm. He intrigues me on so many different levels. He’s big. He’s powerfully built. And he’s flat-out gorgeous.
Just as I process that he’s not like anybody I’ve ever met before, and certainly not like the men around here, I also realize I’m staring openly.
I’m blushing now, all the way from my chin to my forehead, my skin so hot that I’m grateful when the water in the produce section kicks on, misting the vegetables. “You’re really okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m fine, too.”
I see a flash of white, straight teeth as he smiles. “That’s good.”
He’s teasing me, and flushing, I shove the ears of corn into a plastic bag. “Well, have a good day.”
“You too.”
I rush off then, my legs not entirely steady, but knowing that Eva’s in the car keeps me hurrying. I grab a pint of strawberries and then look for the right selection of chicken breasts, legs, and thighs. Scooping up the chicken, I see him from the corner of my eye. He’s picked up a case of beer—Alaskan Amber—and now he’s selecting steaks, a pack of big, thick New Yorks.
I’m so afraid of being caught staring that I head for the checkout line. Honestly, I haven’t felt this gauche in years. You’d think I’d never been with a man before.
I’m standing in line when I realize I forgot garlic bread, but as I still have time before it’s my turn, I leave my basket on the ground to hold my spot before dashing to the bakery for a loaf of French bread.
He’s behind my little red basket when I return.
I peek into his basket as I slide back into my spot in line. Steaks, beer, potatoes, and lettuce. My kind of meal.
My kind of guy.
I can feel him behind me in line, too. I can tell he’s looking at me, watching me, and I want to say something to him, want to turn and speak to him, but nothing comes to mind. What would I say, anyway? Nice day. Great weather for a barbecue. Looks like you’re eating steak tonight.
Ridiculous. I’m feeling very ridiculous, yet when the young female cashier takes my basket to start ringing up my items, I glance over my shoulder and end up looking him right in the eye.
Crazy, I think, this is crazy, but I totally dig this guy. I’ve been thinking about him ever since my run on Saturday morning, and here I am, feeling practically dizzy with desire.
I’ve always thought how clichéd romance novels are. Around the hero, the heroine’s pulse races so fast that she can hardly think, much less breathe, but that’s exactly how I am right now.
It’s exactly what I feel.
Dizzy, breathless, dazed.
“Are you a QFC Advantage member?” the clerk asks, and I jerk myself back around, force myself to finish the transaction, my hand trembling as I input my home number, which is also my Advantage number, and then swipe my debit card.
The cashier’s phone rings, and as I wait for her to finish the call, to push whatever buttons she must push to let me escape, I just grow warmer.
I’m so aware of the man behind me that my nape, back, and hips burn, my skin hot and sensitive everywhere. I’m also now aware that my jeans are frayed and my red tank T-shirt is faded and has some bleach marks near the hem. In short, I’m a mess, and my hair needs washing, and I wish I looked better, wish he weren’t so close.
Then like that, the cashier’s call is ended, she pushes the approval button, rips off my receipt, and hands it to me. “Have a good day,” she chirps.
“Thanks.” I smile self-consciously. “You too.”
I’m leaving now, exiting through the sliding glass doors, and as I go, I feel a whoosh of disappointment, the same disappointment I felt in Friday Harbor when I spotted the man who wasn’t the right man.
But this one—the one I bumped into in the store, the one who stood behind me in line—this one has done something to me, and my body’s acting as though he is the right man.
My body’s acting as though he is my man.
I leave the store, searching for my sunglasses in my bag, as I walk out into the late afternoon sunshine, and then my keys. I’m still digging around in my bag when Eva leans out the truck window.
“Mom,” she calls to me, holding out the cell phone. “Grandma’s on the phone.”
As I near the truck, she covers the phone and adds, “And
I think she’s mad at you.”
I drop the bags in the back of the truck and take the phone from Eva. “Hi, Mom, it’s Marta.”
“Where are you? What happened? I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
“We’ve been gone just two days, Mom.”
“It’s not been two days.”
“It has,” I say, leaning against the truck, the door smooth and warm against my back. It’s as I’m leaning there that I see him again, and this time he’s climbing into his own truck, a battered Land Rover.
His Land Rover isn’t the typical Range Rover driven in Bellevue. No, this is a proper Land Rover, an old beat-up beige four-wheel-drive vehicle that looks as if it’s really seen service in Africa, bouncing up and over rain-gutted roads, tracking big game, logging serious miles beneath a blazing sun.
He drives past me, his window down, his tan left arm resting on the sill, and as he drives past, his gaze meets mine once again. Our eyes lock, and for a moment I forget my mom, I forget Eva, I forget everything but those intensely focused eyes of his and that firm, not quite smiling curve of his lips.
“Marta? . . . Marta,” my mom repeats, trying hard to get my attention.
“I’m listening, Mom,” I say quickly, pushing dark, heavy hair back from my hot face and watching the Land Rover disappear from the parking lot.
He’s hunky, too hunky, with a body to die for and an ass and legs that look perfect in faded Levi’s.
“So where were you?” Mom demands.
“With Shey, on Orcas Island,” I answer, gathering my wits and climbing into my truck.
“Shey?”
“My friend from St. Pius.” I start the truck and back out slowly, the phone wedged between my neck and collarbone. “The one who’s the model.”
“Her husband died in Afghanistan.”
“No, her husband is still alive. Shey’s husband’s a photographer.”
“So who died in Afghanistan?” Mom’s voice quavers.
“Tiana’s husband.”
“They’re both photographers?”
I merge with traffic and head down Bellevue Way. “No. Tiana’s husband was a journalist. He worked for CNN. He died just a few months after their wedding. You went to their wedding. It was in Carmel, at the mission. Remember?”
Mom sighs, her tone increasingly cross. “I can never keep them straight.”
“The point is we’re home now, Mom, and you’re coming for dinner tonight. We’re having you over for a barbecue.”
“You’re not coming here?”
“No, Mom, you and Dad are coming here.”
As I jump onto the 520 to take a shortcut home, I think there are days when Mom sounds like herself and we talk about normal things and then there are days like today, when we talk and I feel like a parent with a very young child. God knows how Dad deals with it. He was never very patient, not while I was growing up, but somehow he has found an extraordinary gentleness, as though Mom’s illness has made him not just an officer but a gentleman. I picture Richard Gere lifting Debra Winger and swinging her in his arms, carrying her away from her factory job.
“I get tired,” Mom says. “I’m tired right now.”
“I know, Mom, which is why we’re going to eat early.”
“I don’t like being out late. I don’t like your father driving late.”
“Mom, it won’t be late, and Dad can drive just fine.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have dinner. Maybe it’s not a good night.”
I wish for more of my father’s patience. I’ve never been strong on patience. “Eva’s looking forward to seeing you, Mom. She’s even making a cake for you.”
My mother, who once had impeccable manners, the sort of manners that ensnared a southern boy, snaps irritably, “All right. But I want to be home early.”
Five-thirty on the dot and the doorbell rings. Dad and Mom are here, and Eva rushes to the door to let them in.
Dad, who never, ever used to enter a room before Mother, steps forward first, and Mom trails after him obediently. This is how they go places now. Dad leads. Mom follows. And if Dad doesn’t walk, Mom doesn’t move.
I watch Eva hug her grandparents, noting that she’s up to my mother’s shoulders now. Eva’s going to be tall, probably as tall as me.
Mom actually looks good today, more like the mom I grew up with. Despite her disease, she’s still slim, and she’s wearing her favorite pink dress with the starched polo collar and the fabric belt tied at the waist. In her pink poplin dress, she looks like my mother with the trim ankle, the high-arched, narrow instep, the mother who loved shoes even more than she loved clothes. But as Eva moves away from my mom, Mom just stands there. No motion, no movement, just still. Lost.
I have a thousand stories I could share about my mom, and in not one is she lost.
To cover my unease, I go forward quickly, hug my father, kiss his cheek, and then go to my mother. She stands semialoof in my arms, as though enduring my hug and kiss. Then, just as I’m about to pull away, she pats my back, once, twice, so absently that I wonder if she even knows who I am.
Despite my wild, rebel ways, I’ve always loved my mom—well, maybe not so much when she tried to turn me into a debutante, but that was years ago, and I eventually escaped to New York, the half dozen cotillion classes ostensibly forgotten. And now I’m back, and I’ve brought Eva with me. I thought it only fair that Eva should have a chance to know her only grandmother before her only grandmother won’t know her.
As we separate, my mom takes my hand, her fingers thin around mine. She smiles distractedly. “Marta.”
“Hi, Mom.” I dread the day she will not know me. Mother is young for Alzheimer’s. Since she was diagnosed, even before we moved back to Washington, I read everything I could on the disease, ordering every book I could from Amazon, researching endless nights on the Internet, even going to a clinic on Long Island that treated Alzheimer’s patients.
The cause of Alzheimer’s might not be known, but the outcome is always the same.
“Come sit down,” I encourage, taking my mother’s arm and walking her slowly toward the patio, which blooms red and purple and orange with late summer roses, zinnias, and dahlias.
I point out the State Fair zinnias and roses to my mother, who smiles kindly, blankly, as though she were asked the time by a stranger.
“Those were your favorite combination,” I remind her as Eva emerges from the house with my father. “The dahlias and roses are constants, but every year you had to plant your zinnias as seedlings. One year you were furious when Molbaks didn’t order State Fair but another zinnia. You said you’d never go back to them again.”
Mom, Dad, and Eva all look at me, listening to the story, but Eva can’t believe that’s all there is to it. “Did Grandma ever go back?”
Mom blinks, and her lips lift. “Yes,” she says triumphantly, “I did. But I made them wait a week.”
We all laugh, and no one looks happier or more relieved than Mom, whose blue eyes crinkle mischievously, her elegant gray hair with the thick white strip at the brow—all natural—dancing.
Dad has made sure she still gets her hair done once a week, and she’s just been, on Saturday.
I never understood my father growing up, didn’t like him very much when I was a kid, and his relationship with my mom was equally perplexing. Yet I have nothing but respect for both of them now. Life isn’t for the faint of heart, and Dad embraces the aging future the same way he approached Korea and, later, Vietnam.
Cool, calm, courage, conviction.
I disappear into the kitchen to retrieve the pitcher of strawberry lemonade that Eva and I made earlier while the cake was cooling. We used fresh lemons and nearly the entire basket of organic strawberries I picked up at the store earlier.
Dinner goes well, and the night’s a success, at least until dessert time, when Eva proudly carries in the cake she baked by herself.
This afternoon, I stepped in to help her only when one of the round la
yers broke coming out of the still warm pan and I showed her how to press the pieces together and then glue it all with frosting. No one will know, I told Eva as she heaped more frosting over the broken layer. Once a cake is frosted, it’s impossible to see the cracks and flaws.
Kind of like us women and our makeup.
Now Eva slides the glass cake stand onto the table, placing the cake in front of Mom.
“Eva, where’s your watch?” Dad asks, leaning over to tap her bare left arm.
Eva casts a reproachful glance my way. “I lost it.”
“Lost it?” he booms, suddenly the military man.
I can’t help sighing. “It’s not lost, Dad. It’s at a friend’s.”
My dad crosses his arms, puffs out his cheeks. “It’s an expensive watch.”
“We know where it is, Dad. It’s at the Youngs’ house, and we’ll get it back tomorrow.”
But Dad ignores me. “Why did you take it off in the first place, Eva? If you don’t take it off, you can’t lose it.”
Eva hangs her head. “I was just showing my friends.”
“Showing off, were you?”
“Dad.”
“That was your grandma’s and my present to you.”
“Dad . . .” I rise, put out a hand to Eva. “She understands.”
But he can’t seem to shift gears. “Kids nowadays don’t respect anybody or anything—”
“Go inside, Eva.” I give her a push toward the house, wait for her to close the door before I turn on my father. “What are you doing? Why are you talking to her like that?”
“It was a two-hundred-dollar watch, Marta.”
“I don’t care if it was a two-thousand-dollar watch, Dad. You don’t talk to my daughter like that.” Even as my temper flares, I realize that for my dad, this isn’t about Eva or the watch. It’s about me.
He still doesn’t approve of me. He doesn’t approve of how I dress, what I drive, what I do. He doesn’t approve of how I parent Eva, either. “If you have a problem with me, Dad, then talk to me. But don’t humiliate Eva—”
“This isn’t about you—”
“Yes, it is. You don’t think I’m raising her properly. You even said so last year. You said, quote, Eva would have been better off in a normal family. But Eva and I are a normal family. We’re our family—”
