The Real Thing

by Tina Ann Forkner

  “Sis, you have your whole life for romance. Don’t worry, it’ll rekindle itself. Right now, what’s important is your family, and, as weird as it is, you have a new member in that family.”

  “A new member?”

  Marta shrugged. “Now you’re going to worry about Judy’s well-being, too. You already do. And you like her, admit it.”

  “I do,” I said. “And do you know what’s even stranger? Keith still loves her, and I don’t care. If he loves her, then so do I.” Even as I said it, I felt the truth shock through me.

  I didn’t think I could ever fully accept Violet. It was just too hard. But Judy was different. I found that I could view her as a different person, apart from Keith’s wife. With Judy, everything had changed and because I’d never known anyone else who’d gone through this, I was making my own rules.

  Marta had hugged me then. “Sis, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of, but I am so proud of you for handling it so well.”

  “It’s not too awkward? I’m not crazy?”

  “No, and yes. You have to be a little bit crazy to deal with a shock like this.”

  “True,” I said. “So, tell me about your love life?” Marta had managed to bump into Quentin all by herself when he brought Keith’s RV back from Pillar Bluff.

  Marta gave me a secret smile, but didn’t say anything.

  “Sis, is there something I need to know?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do tell.”

  “For now, all I can say is that Quentin keeps coming around in those boots and Wranglers.”

  We squealed together and for a minute I felt the way we had in the past, lost in fun adventures involving boys and laughter.

  “I miss life not being complicated,” I said.

  “Oh, sis. It has always been complicated. That’s life.”

  “But for me, it’s going to be more complicated forever.” I gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry. I keep going back to the same stuff. You are probably sick of hearing about Judy.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “It’s serious business. How’s Keith doing with all of it?”

  “At first, all he wanted to talk about were practical things like how we were going to get up there to visit Judy, making sure she is being taken care of, coordinating with her brother, etcetera, etcetera, even though her brother has been doing okay without us, before we knew.”

  “That’s a man for you,” Marta said. “Problem solvers.”

  “But I’ve also sensed a change in him, sis. I thought he would be freaking out, you know? Beating himself up forever and all that, but lately he’s been calmer, like he accepts it.”

  “It must be hard for him, to find out after all this time that she left him and the kids out of love, and not because of the opposite. I would feel so guilty for moving on, at first.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, too,” I said. “But you know what? I think it’s the other way around.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Think about it. All this time Keith hasn’t had a word from his ex-wife. She divorced him, humiliated him even, by leaving no trace or reason, only those divorce papers and an agreement to give him the kids.”

  “Sounds hard to me.”

  “Yes. But now he knows that she really didn’t abandon them, at least in her heart.” I sighed. “Of course, she might have considered that the kids might need to know their family health history someday, but maybe she thought it was best not to know. Whether it is right or wrong now, she thought she was doing a good thing, the right thing.”

  “I’m not sure if she did the right thing,” Marta said.

  Marta wasn’t the only one who had offered her opinion on Judy’s decision.

  Daddy told me, “It seems wrong to us, but at least she is alive. Who’s to say why she thought it was best. Who knows why your mom decided to do what she did? It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve lost her. Keith and the kids lost Violet, but now they have Judy.” I’d hugged Daddy on the spot.

  Keith didn’t talk much about their marriage, but he’d confessed in the past that although they’d had a good relationship, sometimes they had their differences. Now I wondered if their differences were related to Violet’s symptoms. I’d been reading as much as I could find, and sadly, people with the disease changed, often becoming completely different in personality.

  “But it turns out that she really did love him,” I told Marta. “He needed to know that.”

  “Sis, you amaze me with that big ole heart of yours. Come here now.” I didn’t think my heart was big enough, to tell the truth. I found myself whispering a prayer for help more often than anyone would believe of me.

  Marta sat me down in one of the chairs at the nail station.

  “You need a makeover.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I fluffed my hair and glanced in the mirror. “We don’t do makeup.”

  “Let me rephrase that,” she said. “You deserve a makeover, and you know I keep a bag ready just in case some poor soul needs more than nail polish. You never know when there might be an emergency. Now, you just settle back and let me do my thing. I’m going to get you a Diet Coke and some peanuts, and when I’m done with you, you’re going to feel like the Top Model.”

  Diet Coke and peanuts were our mother’s favorite treat, even after she was sick. She’d said her mom had taught her to love them, too.

  I think my queasiness started with the peanuts, but it got worse that night when we were all sitting at the big farmhouse dinner at the ranch. I was basking in the glow of having Keith home from the rodeo, all of my family together, and, to top it all off, we were seated around a new, but antique, table Keith had bought me along with new place settings in yellow and cobalt blue. Everyone was having a great time enjoying dinner, until everything spilled out. And I do mean everything. The mashed potatoes, the steak, and even the homemade bread that Dad and Marta brought over with them. All that food gone to waste.

  Keith looked panicked. Even Peyton ran to my side, gently taking my arm.

  “Are you okay, Mandy?”

  I noticed Marta looking at dad and the two of them were oddly smiling as they quickly lay several towels over the mess and ushered everyone away from the table and out onto the back deck. I sat in a cushioned deck chair.

  “And how is this funny? Why are you two smiling?” I heaved again, but thank goodness there was nothing left inside my stomach.

  “Don’t talk.” Dad brought me some 7-Up from the fridge and a package of saltine crackers.

  “What are these for?” Keith asked. “She’s tossing her cookies.”

  “Just give her a couple.” In the meantime, Peyton dabbed my forehead with a damp rag, worry playing on her face.

  Dad and Keith went back inside to clean up, the sweet men that they were, while Stephen, Marta, and Peyton sat beside me.

  “That was gross,” Peyton said. “I’ve never seen anyone throw up like that. There was so much!”

  I gave her a weak smile, but felt too tired all of a sudden to laugh.

  “It was wild,” Stephen said.

  “Kids.” Marta chided.

  “Well, it’s true,” Peyton said.

  “It’s true,” I said. “I’ve never been that sick, except for when I was…”

  I calculated time in my head and thought it might have happened in the RV in Pillar Bluff when I surprised Keith at the rodeo, or in Hawaii, or maybe even before that. Keith had been away at so many other rodeos we’d barely managed romance lately, although I don’t think we’ve ever been closer.

  Marta leaned in and stared, her eyes shining.

  The memories, the booties, the soft fabrics and yarn all rained down in dream bubbles, settling around my waist. The moodiness, the fact that my period had stopped coming and I hadn’t even noticed because I was always so irregular anyway. And I didn’t even take the pill anymore because of the doctor’s sad prognosis that the chances of my ever getting pregnant again were slim to n
one.

  But doctors are sometimes wrong.

  “Pregnant,” I whispered.

  Peyton’s face lit up, and the most magical thing happened. She smiled, laughed. “A baby!” She even hugged me.

  “Oh, baby,” I said. I kissed her face and she didn’t even care. She kissed mine, too, and then she ran in to tell her dad the good news.

  So much for my sharing it with him first. Of course, if that girl was happy, then it was fine with me.

  Marta squeezed my shoulders, careful not to jostle me as Peyton had in her joy, which was good because I was still nauseous. In fact, now that I thought about it, I’d been nauseous several times lately, but I’d paid little mind to it even though I should’ve known. Sadly, I had a lot of experience at being pregnant and already knew that I was one of those women who threw up well past the first trimester, sometimes throughout the whole pregnancy. It wasn’t related to my complications, according to the doctor, but it had felt like a cruel trick on top of everything else.

  I placed my hand against my tummy, aware that the night’s nausea was proof of a miracle. And was I imagining it or was my tummy already starting to puff out?

  “If I could just have one more miracle,” I whispered to Marta.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, knowing the full implications of a pregnancy for me, the worries and the precautions we would have to take. “I’ll be there for you.”

  “I know.”

  “So, right now, it’s all joy.”

  “It is,” I said, and then Keith was gently pulling me out of the chair and hugging me ever so softly like I might break, and truth be told, I thought I might. The look in his eyes was filled with wonder, and with fear. He knew all about my earlier pregnancies, and about Sarah, my sweet baby I got to hold for a short time before she slipped away.

  “I love you,” he said. And the way he said it, strong voice hoarse, his face vulnerable and filled with the same wonder Stevie had on his face, made me think, why did I ever feel I couldn’t trust this cowboy of mine?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Even though my nausea hadn’t subsided much, just as I expected, I didn’t let it stop me from helping during harvest time at Daddy’s orchard. This was my favorite part of the year and I always pitched in to help outside, but my dad and Keith still put the kibosh on that one. I was relegated to the kitchen with Marta.

  “When are you telling Peyton about Judy?”

  “Soon,” I promised, even though every time Keith and I talked about it, we thought of a new reason she might not be ready. “We’ve just been so busy getting ready for this little surprise.” I patted my belly.

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” Marta said. “It worries me to think that she won’t know Peyton even a little bit if you don’t tell soon. Who knows how long Judy will have any memories left at all?”

  I knew Marta was right. It worried me, too. Judy’s flashes of memory were so unpredictable, and always scattered. One could never be sure what it meant to her when she seemed to recognize someone. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, but Keith thought she could still remember him somewhere deep inside and that she might recall the kids. Many of the things she said were too specific to be anything but a memory, but how much she connected her memory of Keith to the visitor whom she called Cowboy Man, was anyone’s guess.

  “I’ll tell her soon,” I told Marta. “I promise I’ll talk to Keith about it tonight. Let her enjoy another day without having to worry about it.”

  “She worries about it every day,” Marta said. “She’s still waiting for her mom to show up. Have you forgotten about the phone calls?”

  I hadn’t forgotten. It had turned out that occasionally, during a clear moment, Violet would manage to find a free phone at Cottonwood Manor and call people she used to know. Naturally, one of those people was Peyton. She hadn’t called since summer, but Peyton didn’t know it was because we had requested that the Manor be extra careful about phones around Violet.

  “I will tell her, soon.” I promised.

  I felt terrible that Peyton still didn’t know, but Keith and I had good reasons for waiting. There had been a lot to work through with Judy’s appearance in our life, not to mention the new baby.

  “Good.” Marta rolled pie crust into a perfect sphere. “Because if you don’t, I will.”

  My heart leapt. She sounded serious. I would talk to Keith about it tonight, for sure.

  To prepare for the special harvest celebration we had created for the community and tourists a decade ago, we made pie after pie, jam after jelly, and anything else we could make with apples from tarts to bread. We lined the shelves of The Southern Pair and invited everyone who came in to join us. The family day at our farmhouse was designed to sell apples and promote orchard farming and organic practices, but it had evolved into much more over the years, offering an excuse for the community to come together. Dad, the pushover that he was, even let local fruit farmers and bakers sell their own produce and other foods at tables spread with red and blue tablecloths in the sprawling front yard.

  Keith, wanting to add his own touch, since I was part orchard farmer and part ranch woman now, brought over his gentlest horses and he, Peyton, and Stephen gave the children rides for free. I loved seeing my family take part in the festivities in that way. It was like a marriage of my two halves. But the best part of the day was Peyton, who when she wasn’t giving rides, took photos of everything to add to the website she had created for her grandpa. She was excited to have an excuse to post pictures and blog on the Internet since Keith had made her take down her own website for the time being – and I don’t even want to tell you about how mad Peyton was about that.

  At first he’d had her take it down because of the whole random call from her mother business, but once Keith and I knew the truth, we’d agreed it might do her good to stay off it for a while, especially if she was attempting to contact her mother via that blog. Violet had been an intelligent woman, and it wouldn’t have surprised us at all if on a good day she managed to figure out how to use the Internet and search for Peyton. It sounds crazy, but after accepting that Violet had an elderly person’s disease, nothing about it could surprise us anymore.

  Keith didn’t think there was any rush to tell Peyton, but I knew better. Marta and I both knew not to underestimate how deep a daughter’s longing for her mother could be, so I did what I could to let Peyton know we all loved her. Letting her help us with selling apples and peaches on her website was small, but it took her mind off her mom a little bit, at least she seemed to like it.

  With my much more sophisticated camera, Peyton took pictures all over the orchard during the harvest. The best pictures were of Marta and me baking, men harvesting the fruit, and of the apples themselves. A few days earlier, Marta and I had prebaked most of the items. Peyton had taken extra care photographing the baked goods and produce as we packaged them for the big day. In twenty-four hours, she designed the site, managed to get it listed in various search engines and whatever else they list Internet stores on, and there it was, getting hundreds of hits a day and almost as many orders. Many of the customers were local, living in Castle Orchard or Pillar Bluff, so they either picked them up or we delivered them. We had a fruit stand, too, like all the farmers in the area, so it served as a pick up site. We also had commercial fruits that were loaded into trucks and delivered professionally, but as long as we were local, Peyton and Estefan, the son of one our long-time employees, helped out.

  Estefan, dreamy Estefan, had a license and a truck, so we let him, Peyton, and Pia deliver many of the orders. At first I noticed Peyton was shy and quiet around Estefan, but eventually she opened up. I could see he was as smitten as she was. Peyton had a beautiful personality, when she wasn’t being a haughty, ill-tempered teenager, and for the first time, Keith was made aware that a boy might think she had a beautiful little figure. This was made apparent when she walked into the kitchen of the ranch house one morning, ready to meet Estefan, who waited in the driveway
with a truck full of products to deliver, and Keith went ballistic. I’ll tell you right now that I fell deeper in love with that man for the kind of parent he was. I recalled the conversation very well.

  “What?” Peyton had demanded.

  “Those shorts are too short. Go change.”

  “They are not. I wear them all the time.”

  “Around the house, but you aren’t wearing them on a date with a boy.”

  “It’s not a date!” She looked shaken at the thought, but not all together uncomfortable with the idea.

  “Peyton,” I said. “Go change them.”

  “You’re siding with him? He’s a man. Dads don’t know anything about style.”

  “I’m siding with him on this one. Not on style, but on the degree of skin you are showing in those shorts.”

  “But you let me wear them all the time.” She gave me an imploring look and Keith gave me an accusatory one.

  “Those are at-home clothes,” I said. “They aren’t appropriate to wear around a boy when you are a teenager.” I watched her stomp, huff, and spin around, eventually reappearing with another slightly longer pair of shorts that were deemed appropriate by her dad.

  Keith and I smiled at each other. Since we’d learned the truth about Peyton’s mother, this parenting thing between Keith and I was starting to be a team effort. No more did we mistrust each other’s motives when it came to the kids. I also appreciated Keith’s efforts to be more involved when he was at home. He had even started doing those video chat things with the kids when he was gone, and they loved it. We all felt more connected than ever, and I have to hand it to him. A cowboy can be a good dad. That didn’t change Peyton’s longing for her mom, but she finally started to blossom in the sunshine of her dad’s attention, smiling more, and being less of that haughty, ill-tempered girl.