by Lee, Terry
~~~
Astros season tickets had been in the family for years. More times than not, they’d end up keeping the grandkids and hand the tickets over to the girls and their husbands. But tonight would have been her dad’s 95th birthday. She and Ben always made it a point to get to Minute Maid Park for that special day if the Astros were in town. The ball team had been in a slump for quite a while, but that never deterred Allison from honoring her dad, doing the one thing the two of them loved to do together…watching the Astros.
She’d just purchased two overpriced draft beers in souvenir cups and stuffed a bag of peanuts under her arm. Ben had made the first beer run. She turned to head back to their seats.
He must have seen her first, because he just stood there, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans with that half-smile on his face. An invisible wall, like something out of a Harry Potter movie, slammed her to a halt.
Okay. It was bound to happen. Living in a city with over two million people, you’re bound to run into the one person you thought for absolute sure you’d be with for the rest of your life. Right?
“I saw you in line,” Kevin said.
“Oh yeah?” For some reason she turned around to make sure the concession stand was still behind her and she hadn’t just stepped into some looking-glass time machine. Strangely, she felt she had been zapped back to standing outside her high school gym. What was that? Damn, forty years ago.
“Yeah.” He nodded to the souvenir cups filled to the brim. “You want me to hold those?”
“Oh…no, I got ‘em.” Heaven forbid he should take the beers from her. Whatever would she do with her hands?
“It’s good to see you.” He glanced at the overhead monitor, which signaled the Astros had just ended another scoreless inning. “We’re not doing so well.”
“Yeah…well…you know.” Yeah, well, you know? She was approaching sixty and had used the word “yeah” twice in the last five minutes. Get it together moron. “Are…are you back here now?”
“No. No…we’re still in Boston. The kids are living on opposite coasts, but we’re still in Boston.” He shrugged in a way that seemed all too familiar, even after all these years. “Just made a quick trip to see my folks.”
“Oh well, that’s nice. So, your parents—”
“You look good, Allison.”
If her hands sweated any more, she’d drop the beers.
“I mean it. In fact, you look great.”
Okay, this has to stop. What he was saying was perfectly okay for the situation. She just needed to call on her grownup self. How many times had she reminded the BAGs they weren’t eighteen anymore?
Her legs stabilized by some unknown force. Air returned to her lungs like an inflatable doll. She wasn’t eighteen anymore. She’d gone through the death of both her parents, raised two daughters, and loved the hell out of her grandkids, not to mention her husband. She could do this.
“Thanks, Kevin.” Allison’s shoulders leveled. “Here.” She handed over one of the beers. “If the offer still stands.” He took the beer while she rearranged the bag of peanuts. Reclaiming the adult beverage, she smiled. “You look good, too.”
“You…um, here with your family?” Kevin folded his arms across his chest.
“Just my husband.”
“Ben,” they both said.
“He’s right down there.” Allison pointed one of the beers toward the nearest aisle. “You want to meet him?”
Kevin glanced toward the aisle, as if considering the offer. “Ah…no. I’ve got to be getting back.”
She looked him directly in the eyes. “It’s good to see you, Kevin. Really. You look great.”
He opened and then closed his mouth, as if struggling to find his voice. “It’s been a long, long time.”
Her eyes softened. “Sounds like a Willie Nelson song.” They both laughed.
“Well, I don’t want to hold you up.” His eyes seemed to be studying hers.
She held up the sweating souvenir cups and shrugged. “I’d give you a hug, but….”
“That’s okay.” He squeezed her elbow for a brief moment. “See ya.”
“Yeah…see ya.” There was the yeah again, but she didn’t care. It really had been good to see him. She’d always wondered how it’d be if she ever ran into him. Funny how an old memory could time-warp you back to a precise time and place. She’d always expected it to hurt. But it didn’t. Wow. She never would have believed it back in the ‘70s, but her life had turned out good…without Kevin Leeves. Really good.
The roar of the crowd brought her attention up to the mounted monitor above her.
“Damn, I just missed a double-play.” Souvenir cups in hand, Allison made her way back to her seat.
“Thought you got lost.” Ben reached for the peanuts and one of the beers.
“Nah, just ran into an old friend.” She grabbed back the bag of peanuts. “You’re not getting all these this time.”
“You missed a double play.” Ben took a gulp of beer. “Most action we’ve seen tonight.”
Chapter 28
Frannie - 2012
Jury duty. Why did she find this so difficult? She’d already postponed the date twice. No more get out of jail free cards…no pun intended. This summons was for the City of Houston. Her experiences in the past had to do with Harris County, which meant sitting in a large assembly room filled with people waiting to see their juror number flash on an electronic screen. Harris County had tons of judges, and offenders waiting for their day in court. Her civic duty. Everyone had a right to a trial. Trials needed jurors, which meant thousands of people received jury summons every day.
“My civic duty, my civic duty.” She switched half a dozen times about whether to ride Metro or drive downtown to a parking garage designated for jurors. She asked Derrick, betting he’d suggest Metro’s Park ‘N Ride.
“Depends on where you have to go,” he said. “Just make sure you get on the right bus.”
Well, that helped…not. She decided to drive and put the address of the assigned parking garage in Google Maps on her iPhone.
Now she was a writer. She no longer had to deal with the traffic while Houstonians fought to get to different destinations along many congested freeways. Houston’s transportation system sucked. More modern cities actually had rail systems.
“But not Texas.” She checked to see if she could move a lane to the right after Siri announced she’d be exiting on Shepherd Drive. “Noooo, we’ve got to have mammoth freeways, twenty lanes across. No rail system for this state. Okay, deep breaths.” In her corporate working days, she’d driven forty-five minutes to an hour into town and back every single day. Funny how quickly she’d let that go.
“Take the Shepherd exit and turn left.”
Siri had the good sense to give her directions with right and left turns instead of the north and south stuff. Directions were not her forte…she needed specifics.
“Continue on Shepherd Drive to Memorial Drive and then turn right.” Listening to Siri reminded her of a Big Bang Theory episode where Raj had a crush on Siri. Poor Raj. He was such a doofus, but an integral part of the whole nerd squad which made the sitcom so popular.
“Damn it, Siri.” Construction on Shepherd had her following orange signs with arrows pointing down paths weaving back, forth, and around torn up chunks of ancient asphalt. “Why don’t they just work on all the roads in Houston at the same time?” So much for the deep breaths. “Who makes these decisions anyway?” She knew several areas of Beltway 8 were being repaired. Hwy 290 had been construction-cluttered almost as long as the Gulf Freeway, which had actually been her entire life.
“Speaking of civic duty, I need to write a letter about this mess.”
The construction had her well-planned timing already ten minutes behind, and she hadn’t even reached Memorial Drive. She finally saw a sign reading Memorial Drive/Allen Parkway next exit. However, the next exit sign only said Allen Parkway. Quick, quick.
&nbs
p; “Do I take it? Where’s Memorial Drive?”
She tried pulling from her memory bank. She knew Memorial and Allen Parkway ran parallel, but what the…? Okay, now she’d started to think like Dena. But you know what? Sometimes it just worked.
Settling on “crap,” she pulled off at the Allen Parkway exit, which quickly forked. Allen Parkway to the right, Memorial Drive to the left. “Well, what the hell. Why didn’t they just say that?”
Sitting at the weird three-way intersection, she reached for her EOS lip balm and tried the deep breathing again. Once she turned onto Memorial Drive she actually felt the muscles down her spine relaxing, making her realize she’d been gripping the steering wheel, keeping her back so rigid it had not even touched the seat.
“Ahhhh….” She actually loved Memorial Drive.
“Your destination is on the right.”
“What? There’s no destination on the right!” Yeah, there was sort of a veer just a split second ago, but…what the hell? Having nowhere else to exit, Frannie came to the next red light, which put her in downtown Houston. In the rearview mirror off to the right she could see the police station, adjacent to 1400 Lubbock…the City of Houston Courthouse.
“Bitch. You are so screwed up.” Once Siri had sent her to a Valero gas station, five minutes away from the intended destination, which was a Mexican restaurant. Frannie ended Siri and her ridiculous directions by throwing her cell phone in her purse. She took the first right and then another right. She spotted her destination and a not-free parking lot directly across the street. Ten dollars later she power-walked to the courthouse, directly across from a row of Bail Bond establishments with flashing neon signs that read Open 24 Hours.
“Take your keys, watch, and cell phones out and place them on the conveyor belt. Shoes and belts are optional.” The no-nonsense woman in uniform did not look like she enjoyed her job. “You’ll know if there’s a problem.”
Frannie pulled her keys and cell phone out of her purse and laid everything out to go through security.
“Problem!” the woman instructed. “Your watch…put it in your purse.”
“Oh, sorry.” Frannie unstrapped her Academy $9.99 watch, tossed it on the conveyor belt, and walked through the metal detector.
“You were supposed to put it in your purse.”
“Oops. Sorry again.” Frannie offered an apologetic smile that got her zero Brownie points. In fact, she had a mental image of this unhappy woman in uniform sneering while she ripped a merit badge from little Frannie’s Brownie sash.
As she sat in the assembly room she thought about her now fulltime vocation. From what she had learned, if people who write weren’t actually writing at a computer, they were thinking about writing. Constantly. She glanced around. Such a diverse group, and each with a story.
All prospective jurors arrived at 10:00. By noon no one had been called, so the large group was released for a lunch break. At 1:15 the assembly clerk rose.
“This is a highly unusual situation.” She seemed to pause for effect. “But all one hundred and fifty cases have been settled. Which means…,” another hesitation, “you are all released for the day.”
With all her angst about the jury summons, the drive, not to mention Siri, she was free for the afternoon and a bit embarrassed by her overreaction. Although now she had a couple of hours to blow before meeting the BAGs for dinner. All in all, not bad.
Once back in the car, she sent Derrick a text saying she was through for the day and then called Emily. She loved her boys dearly, but she and Em were especially close. They talked daily.
About eight years ago Frannie had received an unusual call from Emily. Not unusual for her daughter to call, but unusual for Emily to want to come to see her…then…in the middle of a work day. A disciplined and highly ethical worker, taking time off during the day wasn’t like Emily. She didn’t sound like anything was wrong, but Frannie did pick up on a slight sense of urgency. Her “mom” radar immediately came to attention.
“Mom?” Emily let herself in with the house key still on her keyring.
“In here.” Frannie finished typing the thought in her head before pushing back from the computer.
“Hi.” Emily pulled the red modern chair in Frannie’s office up close to the desk.
Frannie’s eyes studied her daughter’s body language. Excited? Scared? Nervous? She guessed all the above, yet Emily wore her usual beautiful smile.
“Hi sweetie. What’s up?”
Never one to beat around the proverbial bush, Emily locked her hands together and leaned forward. “I’m having a baby, and Ladd and I are getting married.”
Emily, twenty-five, was hardly a child. She and Ladd had been off and on for the past couple of years. However, as far as Frannie knew, they had been “off” for quite a while. Therefore, nothing could have shocked her more. Actually, everything Emily said past the word baby sort of blurred in her mind. Her Emily, her baby girl Emily…okay, twenty-five year old baby-girl Emily…having a baby?
She grabbed Emily’s hands. Happy tears sprang to her eyes. “A baby?” She pulled her daughter in for more than a tight hug. “Oh my gosh! A baby?”
“Are you happy? I was so scared to tell you. You really didn’t know? I thought for sure you did.” Emily rattled off one sentence after another in nervous excitement.
Frannie’s mindset ran more along the lines of, “How are you feeling? Have you been to the doctor yet? Do you have a due date?”
Even as a writer, she found it impossible to accurately describe her emotions that day. Her daughter was getting married and having a baby. The first feeling she could identify was love, which was quickly followed by support…not really a feeling word, but you get the picture. After that, nothing seemed to matter, except for the one thing she knew for sure…her heart had just enlarged. Yes, times were different now, but she still remembered her words from long ago.
Don’t you worry Emmy-girl, if this ever happens to you, I’ll make sure you don’t feel ashamed.
She’d be able to give Emily all the love and support she needed. Probably too much, Frannie thought at the time. She was right.
Olivia Dianne, born three weeks early, had been delivered by C-section due to her breech position and Emily losing amniotic fluid. Ladd stayed with Emily in recovery while Frannie posted guard outside the nursery. Nose against the window, she watched her granddaughter receive her first bath, her first hair comb, and first diaper. Frannie sighed. A love filled her heart like nothing she’d ever felt, and then she remembered Allison’s words.
“It’s addictive,” Allison had said. “Just fair warning.”
So true. After Ladd went back to work, Frannie spent every day for two weeks with Emily and Olivia. Emily was just as fascinated by the new life she’d brought into this world as her mother. Sometimes they’d just watch her sleep. Frannie helped with the housework and cooked meals. What a joy. Then she realized, with a gentle nudge from her daughter, the time had come to back away and let the new family of three be just that…a family of three, not a family of three plus one.
Being a grandmother only provided Frannie with a whole new depth of emotions as a writer, yet her third book remained unfinished. She chalked it up to the distractions of wallowing around in her new role as a grandma.
“Get over it,” she said, but then made a quick correction. “No, don’t get over it…just get on with it.” Okay, that sounded better. She remembered the feeling of clutching her first published book to her chest. Her book. Her name. Her story. Besides holding Olivia for the first time, that was the next best thing ever. She’d always wanted to be a writer, majored in English, but then got sidetracked with bartending and tattooed bikers.
“Geez, I ought to write about that sometime.” She’d always heard write what you know, but yeah, nah, that probably wasn’t going to happen. The BAGs would have a hay-day with that little life detour.
After the first year with her publisher, Frannie ended the contract and decided to
self-publish. The publishing industry had taken a huge blow with Amazon and the evolution of the e-book. Smaller publishers began to pop up and many writers decided to self-publish, knocking out just one more hand in the pot of royalty money. She learned there were pros and cons to publishing. Unless you were already a big name with the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, or a well-known figure in society, the chances of being picked up by one of the top five publishing houses was pretty much a whistle in the wind, which made self-publishing a viable option.
Some writers took the path, which Frannie considered the smart path, to have their work professionally edited. Yes, a fee was involved, but well worth the price of producing a good piece of work. Sadly, in Frannie’s opinion, some writers threw books out there with so many glaring typos, the world of self-publishers had become tainted.
“You should get on Oprah!” This was something she heard often after her first book had been published. Hilarious, but well-meant.
Gee, why hadn’t I thought of that? And, of course, before Oprah went off the air she had checked into that, only to find there were actual classes for writers to take in order to properly present their book as a sacrificial lamb to Oprah’s famous book club.
The publishing world was a living, breathing giant. After becoming a published author, Frannie walked into a Barnes and Noble and thought about the enormous number of books covering every square inch of the store. And every author, just as herself, poured everything they had into each one of those stories. What were the chances of making it big? Well, it could happen…she’d still do her marketing, which was definitely not her forte, but she wouldn’t count on hitting the big screen anytime soon. She would, however, settle for a Lifetime Movie. Thank goodness her writing meant more to her than the dollars of her royalty checks. J. K. Rowling she was not. But she was Frances Bennett Weiss, author of two, almost three books.
