Life On Hold

by Karen McQuestion

  “Nothing’s wrong, I hope.”

  “Nope, just got my teeth cleaned.” Say it enough times and it feels like the truth. “So, Grandma, how are you?” My grandparents rarely called my mom because it pissed her off if they did it too often. She felt they were trying to manipulate her. She didn’t know I talked to them on my cell phone at least once a week. I relied on their calls. They kept me grounded.

  “I’m good,” she said and then filled me in on their most recent activities. They’d just re-roofed the house, there was a potluck dinner at their church—everyone raved about Grandma’s lasagna—and Grandpa’s arthritis was giving him some grief so they’d installed a hot tub on the deck. “For therapeutic reasons,” Grandma emphasized. This was the kind of thing that would have killed Gina. She’d say it was so Midwestern of them to have to justify every luxury.

  “But here’s the reason I’m really calling,” she said. “My sister Dorothy and her husband Bill are here visiting from Florida, and I thought it would be so nice if you and your mom came down for the weekend.” My heart leapt and then sank. I ached to see them, but I also knew my mom wouldn’t go for it. “We’ll make a vacation out of it.” She was campaigning now. “Go out to eat, maybe drive down to Chicago and see a show on Sunday. Grandpa said he could order matinee tickets to see the Blue Man Group on Sunday, if you want.”

  “That sounds great,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure my mom works this weekend.” Mom used the work excuse often to avoid them. If you didn’t know better, you’d think her job was as important as an emergency room doctor or a homicide detective.

  “You don’t have to give me an answer right now.” Grandma’s voice sounded less hopeful. “Talk to your mom and get back to me.”

  I said I would.

  “And Rae,” she added, “if your mother can’t make it, maybe she’ll let us have you for the weekend. Grandpa would be glad to come and pick you up.” They were less than an hour away, after all. So close and yet so far.

  After I’d hung up the phone, I cleaned up my Doritos crumbs, rinsed out my glass, and then headed out the door to Studio 64, the salon where my mom worked. She was more likely to say yes to any request when other people were around. With any luck, I’d be spending the next weekend in Madison.

  Chapter 24

  Snooty 64

  Studio 64 was located in a strip mall that also housed a gourmet wine and cheese store, a specialty bakery, a teeth-whitening boutique, and an upscale dress shop called Martina’s. The shop carried sequined tops for four hundred dollars and dresses that cost triple that. Rumor had it that Oprah had been spotted in Martina’s with relatives who lived in the area, but Gina had never met anyone who had actually seen her there.

  The salon was by far the most high-class place my mom had ever worked. In the past, her salons had names like Shear Delight and Bonnie’s Cut and Curl. Sometimes she was the only manicurist. One place, Big Jean’s Beauty Palace, I remembered fondly because they’d let me come in with my mom on my days off school. I’d help by sweeping, straightening the magazines, and taking out the trash. The customers gave me loose change as tips, and predicted a promising career for me in the beauty business. I was about seven or eight at the time, and Big Jean’s felt like my second home. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed in that small town in Arkansas forever.

  Gina felt that Studio 64 was the ultimate, the top of the employment ladder. The clientele was upper class and tipped accordingly. The only problem so far, she said, was her micromanaging control-freak boss, Francine. It was always something.

  I paused at the front desk where Ashley, the nice receptionist, talked on the phone while entering something on the computer. She smiled and waved me toward the area in back.

  When I walked into her cubicle, my mom got a huge grin on her face. “Rae!” she cried out. She got up and gave me a hug, then pulled a chair over for me. “Sasha, this is my daughter, Rae.”

  “So nice to finally meet you,” Sasha said. Impeccably dressed in business attire and pearl earrings, she looked like a news anchor. “Your mother is always bragging about you and your good grades. No classes today?”

  “It was a half day.” This lying thing got easier each time. “I got out after lunch.”

  Gina nodded. She could never keep track of my school schedule.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but we got an important phone call from Grandma.” My mother rolled her eyes, but I continued anyway. “She wanted to know if we could come down for the weekend.” I filled her in on all the details while she applied crimson polish to Sasha’s nails.

  Gina looked irked. “We’re not going to be dropping everything to go running down to Madison on a moment’s notice. For one thing, I have to work on Saturday. And afterward I have plans for the evening.”

  “I thought you might be scheduled to work, but Grandma said if that was the case I could just come by myself. Grandpa would drive up and get me.”

  Gina stopped to address Sasha. “Isn’t this exactly what I was telling you about?”

  Sasha nodded sympathetically. “Mine are the same way. If they can’t control you, they’ll go right for the kids. It’s so underhanded.”

  Gina sighed. “We’ll talk about this when I get home, Rae.”

  This wasn’t looking good for me. “It’s just that I haven’t seen them since we moved here, and they’re so close now—”

  “I said we’d talk about it later.” Her voice was steady, and the look she gave me could have cut through glass.

  The unfairness of it hit me solidly. Just because she was mad at them, I had to suffer? “You’re just going to say no. Admit it.” I stood up, and my chair scraped loudly against the tile. “You never give them a chance. You’re so full of yourself, you automatically assume everything Grandma and Grandpa do is aimed at controlling you.” I was getting louder, but I didn’t care. “Maybe they just want to see us—is that so hard to understand?”

  “Keep. Your. Voice. Down.” Gina held the nail polish brush midair. Sasha looked down at the table. “I said we’d discuss this at home.”

  “I’m not going home,” I yelled. It came out without any thought, pure reflex on my part. I turned on my heel and rushed out of the salon, pushing past the owner, Francine, who came to see what all the commotion was about. I saw her curious, frowning face and the way the other customers lifted their heads to watch as I ran out, but I didn’t look back. I had to get out of there.

  Chapter 25

  Now What?

  The problem with making a dramatic exit is that sometimes you say things that just screw yourself. I couldn’t be at the apartment when my mom got home. And yet, where was I going to go?

  My timing was off. If it were a little earlier, I could have caught Mason or Kylie on their way out of school and rode the bus home with them. Once I was at their house, I could have left a message for Gina saying I was spending the evening with a friend and I’d be home by eight. By the time I got back things would have cooled down, and we could have talked calmly. This whole thing was her fault. If only she wasn’t so impossible when it came to my grandparents.

  The weather wasn’t cooperating either—a little on the chilly side. Autumn was a fooler with its beautiful leaves, apple harvest, and pumpkin farm hayrides. Sweatshirt weather, Grandma called it. Football season, was Grandpa’s take on it. But to me it was the death of summer.

  I stepped off the curb and headed away from the strip mall. Walking was so overrated. Once I got my driver’s license and had my own car, I was never walking anywhere again. Except maybe through parking lots to get to my car.

  I flipped open my phone to look at the time. Quarter to three. Yep, my guess was right. Kylie and Mason would already be on the bus, not walking aimlessly like some people. Lucky them.

  I closed my phone and it rang, or, to be precise, I should say it started playing “We’re Not Going to Take It” by Twisted Sister. Sometimes eighties music was a perfect fit. “Hello?”

 
“Hey, Rae.” It was Nick. He sounded happy. “Are you all through with the dentist?”

  “I’m all through with everyone.” To counteract the bitterness of my words, I laughed a little.

  “That doesn’t include me, I hope.”

  “No. You would be the exception.”

  And that was how I wound up riding in Nick’s truck on what turned out to be a beautiful autumn afternoon after all. I gave him my coordinates, the corner of Oakland Road and Petrie Street, and he came and picked me up. Seeing Nick’s pickup driving toward me was a beautiful sight.

  “So,” he said, once I got my seat belt clicked into place, “any cavities that need drilling?”

  “Ha! Just one. His name is Blake.” I found myself telling him all about my afternoon—from Blake calling in for me, right up until my blow-up at the Studio 64 salon. “And the worst part is I know she won’t let me go see my grandparents. When we moved here I thought I’d get to see them all the time since we’re so close, but my mother has such issues with them they might as well be across the country.”

  He whistled. “Quite an afternoon you’ve had, Ms. Maddox. Sounds like you could use a distraction.”

  “Are you offering?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He pulled away from the curb, and I didn’t even ask where we were going. It was nice to let someone else take care of things.

  Sitting in the passenger seat, I could look at him without feeling like a creepy stalker. He glanced my way and smiled, and I flashed one back. How was it that one week ago he was Crystal Light’s boyfriend, and now here I sat in her spot and it didn’t feel weird at all?

  “Don’t you wonder where I’m taking you?” he asked.

  “Somewhere far away, I hope.”

  He laughed. “Not too far. But you’ll like it, I think.”

  We turned off the main street and onto the highway. I watched as we drove past clusters of new subdivisions and headed toward wide-open spaces—farm fields and meadows.

  “Big sky country,” I observed, quoting my grandfather. I think it really applied to cattle ranches out west, but he used it anytime we were away from the city.

  “My neck of the woods.” Nick pointed. “I live just ahead on the left.”

  A sign along the road showed the outline of an apple with the words “Dunstan Orchards.” We drove past it and turned onto a long unpaved driveway, the truck’s wheels perfectly aligned with the ruts in the dirt. Ahead I saw a white farmhouse and behind that, a red barn. “Your family has an apple orchard?”

  “Yeah, it’s been our family business for four generations.” He grinned. “This time of year we’re all about the apples.” He parked the truck, and we walked up the path to the enclosed porch. He opened the door and walked through, holding it open for me to follow. “My mom’s car is gone. She must be out making deliveries.”

  Inside the screened porch, a large note was tacked to the inside door. Nick, 2 Honeycrisp, 4 Jonathan, 3 McIntosh. Love, Mom. This, he explained, is what he came home to every day during apple season. The orchard used to be a full-scale operation, but his family had sold off most of the land over the years. His father worked as an engineer, and he and his mother did the apples in the fall. “When my brother and sister were at home, we had a roadside stand,” he said, “but once they went off to college, we lost half our labor force. Now Mom just takes orders over the phone. She delivers for a fee. Sometimes people knock at the door and want to do the pick-your-own thing, and we’re cool with that.”

  I snuck a glance around the porch, taking note of the white wicker furniture with floral cushions. A large orange tabby slept on the chair closest to us, and Nick reached down and stroked its belly as he talked.

  Four generations of Dunstans had lived in this house, this warm, cozy place. Year after year, Nick’s family walked up the steps to the porch, celebrated Thanksgiving in the same kitchen, watched the sun set over the same horizon. While I, on the other hand, was lucky to finish two years in one school. It seemed that Nick Dunstan had gotten the childhood I’d always wanted.

  “So, are you ready to pick apples?”

  “We’re picking apples?”

  He held up his mom’s note. “Two bushels of Honeycrisp, four of Jonathan, and three of McIntosh.”

  I waited in the truck while he went and got nets and empty bushel baskets from the barn. I had no idea how someone picked apples, other than just reaching up and pulling, like Dorothy did in The Wizard of Oz. Come to think of it, that strategy didn’t go so well for her.

  Nick gave me a crash course in apples. He drove underneath the appropriate tree, and then we stood on the bed of the truck and used the metal teeth on the inside rim of the nets to pull down the apples. We filled each bushel until it was full to the brim and went on to the next. It was surprisingly fun. I wasn’t cold anymore—moving around seemed to fix that—and we talked and laughed as we worked. He told me that Crystal’s friends had come out to the orchard once to help, but they lost interest right away and started throwing apples at each other. “Bunch of idiots,” he said.

  As the bushels multiplied at our feet, there was less space for us to maneuver. When we bumped backsides, he said, “Whoa, we were cheek to cheek there for a second.” I blushed but didn’t say anything, and he held up an apple. “Your face is as red as this.” He moved closer and looped an arm around my waist and held the apple next to my cheek. “Exactly this color.” I didn’t say anything. I could feel my heart pounding and my entire body tingling. I didn’t have much experience in this department, but instinctively I moved toward him until we were pressed together.

  Before I knew it, we were sitting and then lying down, our legs overlapping and our lips doing the same. We were making out like crazy, only pulling apart to look at each other in wonder like I can’t believe this is happening. “I’m so glad it’s you,” he said at one point, touching his forehead to mine. His words didn’t quite make sense, but I knew exactly what he meant because I felt the same way. I’d always thought that girls who did this kind of thing were a little on the slutty side. Sitting in my room at night, giving the subject of relationships careful thought, I’d always thought the smart thing to do was start slow, meet for coffee, or go out for burgers. Maybe the first time there’d be a goodnight kiss or some hand holding. I never imagined I’d be lying in the back of a pickup truck, apples rolling against my head, not caring about anything but Nick Dunstan and the moment.

  I could have gone on like that forever. I could have lived in the back of the truck, subsisting on Nick and his apples and the autumn breeze on my face. If my phone hadn’t rung, we’d be there still, I think. But my phone did go off, the very loud strains of “We’re Not Going to Take It” ruining the moment.

  “Nice ring tone.” He smirked, a look I usually hated, it was so smartass-ish, but on him it worked—totally cool.

  I sat up and smoothed the front of my sweatshirt, then pulled out my phone. It was my mother. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hello, Rae.” Oh, but she was furious. Her pissed-off tone gave it all away. “Were you planning on coming home sometime soon? Or are you going to stay mad over nothing forever?”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m not mad. I just went to a friend’s house. I meant to call. I guess I forgot. I’m sorry.” I shot a look at Nick and rolled my eyes.

  She ranted a bit more about me making a scene where she worked. Her boss was not pleased, she said. “And where are you, anyway? Which friend?”

  “Um, I’m at Nick Dunstan’s house.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met anyone named Nick. Are either of his parents home?” Now I knew she was really mad. This was the kind of question other people’s mothers asked, not mine.

  “No, I don’t think his parents are home.”

  Nick shook his head and held out his hand. “Let me talk to her.”

  I reluctantly handed him the phone.

  “Ms. Maddox?” I watched as he put his head in the lion’s mouth voluntarily. “Th
is is Nick Dunstan. My parents own an apple orchard on Highway 47, and Rae is just helping me pick apples. I hope that’s okay.”

  There was a long pause before she answered. I couldn’t make out the words.

  “You’re right. She should have called. I take full responsibility for that. We had a pretty big order to fill today, and we got so caught up filling the bushels I think it slipped both our minds.”

  More sounds from my mother’s end, but softer this time.

  “Okay, sure,” he said. “I understand. No problem. I’m looking forward to meeting you too.” He handed the phone back to me.

  “Pretty slick maneuver having him cover for you.” She’d lost her edge, defeated by Nick Dunstan’s charm. “I told your friend to bring you home. It’s important. We really need to talk.”

  Chapter 26

  Turn and Face the Strain

  The ride home was way too short. I was quiet most of the way, anticipating my mother’s “talk.” Any time she phrased it that way it was something big. I didn’t think it was just about me going to Nick’s without calling first.

  Was she planning on cutting all off all ties with my grandparents? She always threatened to do that, but every Christmas we went back—me because I liked seeing them, and Gina to collect the envelope filled with cash. I didn’t know why she couldn’t talk to her own parents. Why not just clear the air and tell them she was still suffering from the time they’d had her committed? It seemed easy enough, but whenever I mentioned it she shut me down. Just like the subject of my father, the matter was off limits.

  Maybe it wasn’t even about Grandma and Grandpa this time. Maybe she was just mad at me for causing a ruckus at the salon. If she was pissed about that, it would be easy enough to fix. I’d apologize nonstop for a day or two, and then we’d move on. That’s the way it always worked.