“Now that’s a thought.” He considers me, the side of his mouth ticked up, a look of admiration. “I grew up in Nashville, and my favorite memories are when we visited my grandparents on their farm. It was an hour’s drive south from our home. I was named after my granddad.”
“When does your class resume?” I say, smiling ear to ear. I have to admit, I love to show off my dimples.
“After Labor Day. Ten weeks or so.” He finishes his soda in a gulp. “That was refreshing. Lavender. Hmmm. Who knew?”
“We harvested it from a clump out back. Their lilac blossoms are just beginning to appear. Let me show you around.” I wave him toward the back door. “Follow me.”
Addie and I cross paths as she exits the office. I touch her arm. “Addie, this is Sun Beam’s math teacher. He’s going to use our garden for a school project.”
“Nice to meet you,” she says, extending her hand.
“You, as well,” he replies, taking her hand to shake it. He’s a fox, yet she barely registers his presence. Her jaw is clenched, and thin lines crease her forehead. She’s been holed up in that office awhile. I’m glad I don’t have to do payroll.
I open the back door leading to the garden. Uriah places his fingertips in the small of my spine, and my tailbone feels as if it’s being zapped by a cattle prod. Hormones. Pheromones. Will he be another addition to my history of making bad choices about men? Man, oh man, am I in for trouble.
Chapter Five
Addie
“I’ve never seen you wear that,” David says, toying with the tiny cap sleeve of my dress. His fingers slide down to trace the piping at the top of the fitted bodice.
“Mom bought it for me last summer. The last time we were shopping together. Pink and green, somehow, does not seem right in this city.” I eschewed my dark shade of lipstick, as well, selecting a pale-pink gloss. It complements the shiny ribbon, tacked around the seam at the waist.
“The girl wears only black in The D.” Howling like a wolf, he runs his hands down my torso.
I smile, fluffing the bell-shaped skirt. A subtle pattern of roses and vines are printed on the silk and cotton blend. It feels soft and cool as it billows around my calves. It’s odd how a dress can be transformative. Today I feel both modest and sexy.
“Mom will be happy to see me wearing it.”
David’s staying home today to work on the roof, so I’m borrowing his truck. He thinks shopping and lunch with my mom are all that’s on today’s agenda. I figured it best not to tell him the real reason I’m going to Grosse Pointe.
“Dad’s dropping off the shingles,” he says, taking a sip of coffee. “He has no problem with me taking off work today. But he’ll be sorry he missed you.” David appraises me head to toe. “I’d love to watch his expression seeing you in that outfit.”
“I’ll wear it next time we get together with your parents. Give him a kiss from me.”
He pulls me into his arms and plants his lips onto mine. I pull away, giggling. “But not like that.”
“Ha. Dad would die of shame if I even gave him a man hug.” He laughs, but I can see the pain in his eyes.
My hand explores the side of his face, rubbing my fingers across his three-day stubble.
“I love your dad, but he is a pretty stern dude. Even when we’re just spending time together.”
His parents have a cottage on Higgins Lake, which is three hours north of Detroit. On past vacations, when everyone’s hanging on the deck sipping beer, his dad rarely cracks a smile. So unlike his son, who can’t get through a couple of sentences without making a joke.
“Dad’s saving all his strength for his backhand.” He rolls his eyes.
He’s referring to his father’s tennis game. Nationally ranked, his father’s a tournament competitor. Back in his college days, he led Michigan in a series of consecutive-season wins.
I lean into him, stroking the hairs on his bare chest. “I know, I know. Daddy issues. I understand firsthand what that emotional distance feels like. But you know he loves you. He shows it in other ways. Like paying your college tuition. Like giving us supplies to help fix this house. He’s a good guy, David.” I try to catch his eye, but he stares off into the space above my shoulder.
“Hey,” I say, snapping my fingers at his face. “When things get settled at the diner, I’ll invite your mom and dad over for dinner.”
He gives me a sad little half smile and shrugs. “That would be nice. But it won’t be easy to cook for him. Since his bypass, he’s cholesterol-free.”
David’s face falls, as it does every time our conversation circles around his dad. Several months ago, his father was having severe chest pains. It was discovered he had a blocked vessel leading to his heart. He had open-heart surgery, which scared the hell out of us. But his dad’s a healthy man and made a speedy recovery.
I place my forefinger on his lips. “No worries. I’ll let your mom dictate the menu.”
“She’d do that anyway,” he remarks, his features blank. I refrain from comment. His mother has to be the most controlling person I’ve ever met. She even makes me seem laid-back. Through the years, David and I have found it best to just go along with her dictates. David’s sister left home after high school and remained in Ohio after graduating from Ohio State. She told David she needs distance from their mom. Who could blame her?
“Seems you need some cheering up. I’ll make breakfast for us before I leave.” I pour us each a second cup of coffee, feeling guilty about the day I’ve planned.
“OK, baby girl. Lemme hop in the shower.” He flashes a broad grin. “And I’m not on any special diet, so don’t forget the bacon.” He yelps, “Bacon, bacon, bacon,” as he scampers toward the bathroom.
I smile. I know my man. I know how to make him happy. I want us to be dancing this way for the rest of our lives. I open the fridge and remove eggs, bacon, and butter. The oatmeal and berries can wait until tomorrow.
As I’m slicing a loaf of bread, my eyes wander to the faded, floral wallpaper and then to the window frame peeling with curls of paint. Four shades of color—white, yellow, green, and blue—I counted them once. Eastern Europeans who immigrated to America built the house in 1910. A patchwork of ethnicities has lived here since. If walls could talk.
A couple of blocks from our home, there was once a thriving open-air market, Chene-Ferry. It was one of several such markets established in Detroit in the 1850s, which still influence our city’s dynamic food culture today. The market was vacated in 1990, when the north end of Poletown was demolished for an automobile factory. Soon after, the factory itself was abandoned after the collapse of the car industry. Once a Polish oasis, and now a burned-out wasteland. Way to flatten a culture.
I take the breadboard to the sink, brushing the crumbs into the drain. Some say our neighborhood sums up Detroit: a city of blight run by a government caring more about corporate greed than it does its own people. But it’s not productive to focus on former city politics. Yesterday is over, today is where I’m standing, and Detroit is on the brink of something grand, something transformative.
You can taste it in the smoke and tartness of the Grilled Quail with Pickled Cranberries when dining at Selden Standard, the latest darling in The D. You can smell it in the air at the Eastern Market, in the wafts of roasted garlic and yeast at a new upscale Italian restaurant, where there’s always a wait. You can see it in the brows of young people—like David, Sam, and me—who are rehabbing old homes and turning urban prairies into organic farms. Neighborhood by neighborhood, our dreams are turning Detroit into a leaner, greener city.
More than one hundred years of families lived in this house, painting, scraping, and repainting this windowsill. It’s the one part of our home I don’t want David to restore.
As I place the bread in the toaster, the bathroom door opens. I turn. David looks so hunky leaning into the frame of the doorway, his naked body blanketed in a fog of steam. Desire hits me like a crashing wave. We lock eyes. I moisten my li
ps.
He grins. “Do married people ever look at each other this way?” The spell is broken.
Driving onto the expressway, I head east to Grosse Pointe, rationalizing today’s agenda. So I called Graham. What of it? He has something of mine, and whatever it is, I want it back. I dared not meet him in The D, which is like a small town. David and I are an item. Everyone knows everyone’s business, and if anyone saw me with another man, tongues and texts would fly.
On the phone, Graham’s voice sounded just as I remembered: Grosse Pointe prep, which is a nasal tone, unenthusiastic with a hint of irony. It’s a voice that sounds perennially bored, a voice particular to the Great Lakes elite.
I’d thought serving time would exhaust a voice, render it tired, gravelly. Maybe he’d copped some weird prison lingo—Hey, girlfrien’, I got jigs while you make that juice card. But his speech had the same confident cadence as always, as if he’d returned from Princeton and recently passed the bar instead of exiting the gates of Michigan State Prison.
That voice annoyed me then, and it annoys me now. It’s as carefully cultivated as the street look he copped when he was a kid. Graham’s hardly Mayflower blue blood. He’s Ukrainian. Second-generation Ellis Island. The grandson of a car salesman who capitalized on the irony that selling foreign cars in Detroit’s Made in America culture might prove to be a profitable niche.
His grandfather changed the family name from Palamarchuk to Palmer before opening his dealership. An exotic name, especially in sales, can be a liability. Graham’s dad took over the business after his father retired, with hopes his own son would one day carry the torch. Ten years of lockup cast a cloud over that dream.
Mom has her issues, but she knows my history with Graham, has never cast stones, and only voiced relief I had the sense to break up in time—that I didn’t go down with him. Besides, it was party drugs, not armed robbery. And she and my stepdad, Max, belong to the same club as his parents.
Mom is curious as to what Graham wants to return. I also suspect she’d like sticking it to the controlling asshole to whom she’s currently married. Max would be outraged to know she’s allowing a convicted felon into the sacred gates of his enclave. He’ll be at work across town, so the coast is clear until late afternoon.
Mom plans to keep to herself, a safe distance away in her bedroom, but the acoustics are excellent in the open floor plan of their contemporary home. You won’t even know I’m here, she told me. And there’s plenty to keep me busy. Here it is almost July, and I haven’t sorted my summer wardrobe from the spring.
These days Mom is proud of me and has collected every article written about the diner. On a couple of occasions, she’s even braved the city, stopping by with her lady friends to lunch, our restaurant now trending even in Mom’s social milieu.
Neither Bio-Dad (my biological father), Band-Aid Dad (another ex, Mom’s temporary fix), nor Douchebag Dad (zillionaire Max, to whom she is currently married) has shown any interest in stepping foot in Welcome Home. I couldn’t care less about my stepdads, but it hurts that Bio-Dad, Michael, hasn’t stopped by. I want him to see his mother’s photograph in our place of honor.
My father and Sam’s father are brothers. They were born and raised in Ann Arbor, which is a lively, colorful town. Small businesses and fast-growing tech companies flourish on the capital the university brings to the city. The town hosts an eclectic cast of characters and ethnicities. You can find a place, whether your thing is writing a thesis on biomedicine, getting high at the annual Hash Bash, or painting tribal stripes down your cheeks to cheer the Wolverines at Michigan Stadium.
Because of his PhD in archeology, Dziadek was granted professorship at the university, and Babcia found a welcoming niche at St. Thomas the Apostle. Polish tradition was strong in the Jaworski home, and the parents kept their Catholic and gustatory customs, reminding their sons at evening meals that they were the lucky ones.
My father, Michael, kept a watchful distance from his parents, as if they carried an exotic disease he was terrified of catching. He was embarrassed by their fierce Polish pride and ethnic eccentricities, and shaken by their stories of poverty during the war.
He believed his salvation lay in wealth. His grades at Huron High were exceptional, ensuring him a full ride through Michigan’s undergrad program, followed by the university’s prestigious business school. Majoring in finance, he met my mom, Teresa, at a frat party. She was a student in the School of Nursing.
The dazzling daughter of an Illinois farmer, Mom believed in beautiful things. Like my father, she also believed wealth would secure happiness. The end of her senior year found her pregnant with me. They were married just out of college and would have been splendid partners had their love not been crushed by materialism.
Dad became a stockbroker, and his career blossomed during the eighties era of Reaganomics, followed by the roaring nineties and the soaring Dow. He was the brother with a Midas touch, and when his portfolio began to reach well into seven figures, his touch began to reach well beyond my mother.
Their divorce was brutal and swift. I was the fallout, the neutral country in their world of astonishing bitterness. Growing up, I was despondent, yet anxious to please and to control. Or so says my therapist.
The drive from Detroit to Mom’s new house in Grosse Pointe is less than twenty minutes, but driving along the glistening waterfront of Lake St. Clair on this bright summer morning is like tunneling from a war zone into Oz. The diesel smells of Detroit have been replaced with the intoxicating fragrance of lilac. The palatial estates with their ethereal landscaping of flowering trees, rose bushes, and rhododendrons merge into one collective bliss.
Mom told me she had to sign a prenup with Max before she married him, and if they were to divorce, her settlement would be small. This had been Max’s home before he met my mother. As I pull into the driveway, I feel Mom, like myself, is just a visitor. More apt, an accessory.
The flat-roofed, four-thousand-square-foot home looks like brown cardboard boxes randomly stacked in the back of a grocery store. Not that it’s unattractive—the architect won several awards for his design—but that was my first, and lasting, impression.
She stands inside the open door, waves me in with an exaggerated swoop, and gives me a hug, brushing a kiss against my cheek.
“I was just telling Max how much I missed seeing you, and then you called. Serendipity, right?” Grinning ear to ear, she stands back to regard me appraisingly. “And look at you. You’re wearing our dress. I’m so glad we bought it. The cut accentuates your silhouette to its best advantage.” She places her hands on my shoulders, rotating me in a circle. I feel like the ceramic ballerina executing a pirouette in my old music box. “It’s timeless. It could be vintage or a design just released.”
“Oh, Mom, thanks again. The detailing is exquisite.” She beams as I bend to lift the hemline; the fabric feels fine and thin beneath my fingertips. Now that it’s summer, I’m going to start wearing dresses more often. Maybe I can find something less expensive at the resale shop; all of our clothes take a beating at the diner.
“Pastels are so pretty on you, honey. You should wear them more often.”
I straighten, smiling at Mom but tired of this conversation. “It’s good to see you. I’ve been working nonstop, and it’s nice to take a break. Business has improved quite a bit since the latest blogger attentions.”
“I’m so proud of you. Stress must become you, sweetie. You look radiant.” She ushers me into the living room.
What’s most appealing to me about Mom’s latest abode is the floor-to-ceiling windows exposing the vast beauty of the lake in every corner. It’s as if you aren’t confined by walls, but floating over an infinity pool.
I never developed nostalgia for our previous homes, as my visits with her were sporadic. I boarded at the school and on weekends alternated between her, Bio-Dad, and my grandparents. I spent a good chunk of each summer helping out on my aunt and uncle’s farm.
Lately
she’s said she was done with the clutter of traditional decor—the uncrowded style of midcentury modern suits her. She traded her Victorian mahogany armchair for Eames, the scrolled, slue-footed dining table for the clean lines of Arne Jacobsen. The teak kitchen, sleek and stainless, is three times the size of Welcome Home’s, yet only the microwave’s used. Where are the wastepaper baskets, the paper towels, the pepper grinder? Where are the pictures of me, of Max’s children?
My opinion is she’s watched too many episodes of Mad Men. She identifies with, and strongly resembles, the main character, Betty, Don Draper’s wife. Take away Betty’s cigarettes, pour another martini, and there you have my lovely blonde mother. Even at fifty-three, with a bit of surgical assistance, she’s retained the same anxious, yet delicate, beauty of a Betty Draper.
Also, like Betty, Mom put up with Bio-Dad’s philandering ways for only so long before divorcing him, and had trouble understanding her desolate daughter—that would be me. But we’re mining the mess in therapy. I get to select the baggage I want to bring from my past into my life as an adult. I chose the suitcase filled with her love. But I worry she doesn’t love herself. There’s a thing as too much beauty, and her beauty crippled her feelings of self-worth.
She picks up a Dwell magazine, fanned open on the sofa, and places it on a side table next to a bulbous, tangerine vase. Sitting down, she arranges her skirt and then clasps her hands together, thrusting her head toward mine as if hoping I’ll share some juicy gossip.
“So tell me. How’s Sam? Did you tell her about today’s bit of espionage? I’m sure you didn’t tell David.” Her lips twitch into a smile, as if reminded of an inside joke.
I’ve got to hand it to her. She did teach me a few tricks about handling men—what to tell them, what land mines to avoid.
“No. There was no reason to tell Sam.” I glance at her. “And you’re right. Certainly not David.” She gives me a conspiratorial wink.
The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel Page 9
