Much Ado About Mother

by Bonaduce, Celia

  Virginia introduced Dymphna to the crowd.

  “Ladies, this is Dymphna,” Virginia said. “She lives in my daughter Erinn’s guesthouse and is raising Angora rabbits to make yarn. She is new in town and I thought she’d like to be part of our community.”

  Everyone in the room seemed interested in her story. Shy Dymphna tucked her head into an intricate scarf she was wearing. It was light blue with flashes of darker cobalt and had a chunky texture accented with tiny pearlescent beads. Suzanna found herself mesmerized by the scarf and by the time she was listening to the conversation again, Virginia was catching Dymphna up on the petition and the idea that everyone should bring a dog as an icebreaker.

  “But we don’t have dogs for everyone,” Clare said, firmly putting herself back in the dogless camp.

  “What about rabbits?” Dymphna asked softly.

  Everyone in the room strained to hear her. Suzanna saw Erinn lean in, caught up in the discussion.

  “What was that, dear?” Virginia asked. “Could you speak up so the class . . . I mean, so everyone can hear you?”

  “My rabbits are very friendly and they are all leash trained,” Dymphna said again, although still very softly. “Maybe they could go out and help.”

  “That is a great idea.” Erinn’s booming voice shot out of nowhere. She joined the group, leaving Suzanna at an outer table by herself. “As a matter of fact, every one of you should lead a rabbit on a leash. We’ll get some press that way. It will be our signature look.”

  Suzanna almost laughed out loud at her curmudgeonly sister using the expression “signature look.” Must be Blu’s influence.

  Virginia was beaming at Erinn.

  “I can’t help it,” Erinn said to her mother. “It’s the producer in me.”

  “It’s a wonderful idea,” Babette, another of the dogless women, said. “I think the rabbits will get us a ton of attention.”

  “We need a catchy name, too,” Erinn said. “I propose Cause Courtyard.”

  Suzanna was about to say that the word tree should perhaps be in this catchy name, but the group seemed perfectly happy with Cause Courtyard, and Erinn was practically glowing from the murmurs of appreciation.

  As Dymphna explained how best to walk an Angora rabbit in order to keep it healthy, calm, and knot free, Suzanna took the opportunity to slip out of the room. She peeked in on Eric in the Nook. His feet propped up at the counter, he was reading some sort of document. Lizzy was sound asleep on his shoulder. She leaned against the door frame, taking in the sight of her family. Eric looked up and she smiled at him but he didn’t smile back.

  “Are you OK?” Suzanna asked.

  “I’m just worried that this whole thing is going to blow up,” Eric said. “Your mom seems to have taken over as lead tree advocate, and I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay out of it.”

  He sounded like he was running for office.

  “She just wants to be part of things,” Suzanna said, feeling silly that she was defending her mother when she was as annoyed as Eric. “She’s all stirred up about the petition.”

  “The petition is just the first step,” Eric said. “If they get past that, they’re probably going to have to go to court to fight Mr. Clancy—which will be bad for community relations and cost money nobody has.”

  Suzanna wanted to stand in solidarity with her husband. They really hadn’t had anything to bond over in such a long time (well, after Lizzy, of course). She was a little confused as to how you became an activist when the point was to remain neutral, but she would think of something. OK, so her mother and sister were movers and shakers—each in her own way—but Suzanna could be, too (she hoped). She could be so easily knocked out of orbit by the other women in her family. It was time to stand up and be counted. Suzanna studied Eric, who had gone back to his reading. She wondered if he’d miss her if she did get knocked out of orbit.

  Time to go over to Mr. Clancy’s Courtyard and scope out the situation for herself. She’d been immobilized because of the Rio situation. Frankly, she was hoping he’d show up again at the Bun, begging to see her, which had not happened. She now had a higher calling. She would prove to Eric that she would be his helpmate and find a way to keep the peace. She just wouldn’t tell her mother. . . .

  Donell, on his phone, silently offered her a bouquet of sage as she walked by. She declined. The Wolf women walked the fine line of accepting just enough of his offerings so that he was not insulted but leaving him with plenty of sage to sell. It was late afternoon and the merchants of the courtyard were packing up their sidewalk tables. She wanted to go look at a green-and-orange skirt that Mr. Clancy had thrown over his shoulder but thought better of it. Would doing business with Mr. Clancy be fraternizing with the enemy? Whose enemy? Certainly not Eric’s! Her mother’s? She tried not to catch his eye but he caught hers.

  “Hi, Suzanna,” he said, continuing to pack up his wares. “I wanted to talk to you, but I’m pretty sure I’m not welcome at the Bun any longer.”

  “That’s not true, Mr. Clancy!” she said, although now that she thought about it, maybe it was true! “I’m sure everyone on the block is going to be able to work this thing out!”

  Mr. Clancy waved her soothing words away.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I was just wondering how involved your mother is in this whole thing.”

  “What whole thing?” Suzanna asked. “The tree thing?”

  “What other thing is there?” he groused. “I was thinking about asking her to go get a beer, but if I’m the bad guy . . .”

  “I’m sure my mother does not see you as a bad guy,” Suzanna replied, although she wasn’t sure of that at all. Maybe her mother would be horrified by the idea of getting a drink with a man who would chop down a helpless tree. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  Mr. Clancy stopped packing and looked straight at Suzanna. She was shocked to see the wariness and fear of rejection in his blue eyes.

  “But . . . my mother doesn’t drink beer. Better make it wine,” she said as she turned into the courtyard.

  Let Mom fight her own battles!

  Christopher was leaning against the outside wall of his art gallery. Suzanna realized how tiny the courtyard actually was. She had just turned away from Mr. Clancy and here was Christopher, just ten feet and yet a thousand miles away from Mr. Clancy.

  “Hi, Christopher,” Suzanna said. “Good day?”

  “Not bad. My uncle sold a lithograph and I sold a birdcage, so we’ll have the rent. Can’t ask for more than that.”

  Suzanna felt guilty. She could ask for more than that. She always did.

  “Hey, listen,” Christopher said. “I’m going to check out that new art installation at Willow Station tonight. I was wondering if your sister might want to go.”

  Suzanna hoped she didn’t appear as surprised as she felt by this question. Before she could formulate any words, Bernard came out of the gallery and locked the door.

  “I was thinking about heading over to Willow Station myself,” Bernard said. The look he gave his nephew had a definite challenge to it, Suzanna noticed. “I thought I might ask your fine-looking mama if she wanted to go.”

  What the hell is going on?

  “Well,” Suzanna said, “they were both over at the Bun a few minutes ago, whipping up support for the cause. They’re probably still there.”

  The men grinned at each other. Suzanna watched them leave the courtyard. It suddenly came to her. Willow Station! That woman . . . what was her name? . . . Alice . . . were they going to see her show?

  Mr. Clancy was still on the sidewalk. He didn’t exchange any sort of greeting with his tenants. Suzanna felt bad about this turn of events. Mr. Clancy and Bernard were always sparring but until recently it had been good-natured. She worried that Eric was right, that the animosity would sour the neighborhood long after someone declared victory about the tree. And now to have Christopher asking her sister on a date (was it a date? Or just one artist alertin
g another to the wonders of a local art installation?) and two old codgers vying for her mother’s attention—it was too much to contemplate!

  She thought of a country song from a few years back about “Viagra in the water.” It made as much sense as any other explanation.

  Suzanna turned around and regarded the tree. Frankly, she wasn’t feeling any goodwill toward the thing that was disrupting the peace in her neighborhood. She walked around it several times, dipping under unwieldy branches and getting her footing on the uneven cement. She was lost in concentration when she heard salsa music. She stood riveted to the spot. It was the music Rio always played at the dance studio. She realized she was standing right outside his new venue. She tried to command her feet to walk away but her feet were not going anywhere. Her body turned toward the music as if she had no will of her own.

  There was no denying it. She missed the music and the dancing. In a weird way, she missed the woman she had been before she became a wife and mother, when she had no one to worry about but herself. Her mistakes were hers alone. She knew she could no longer make that claim—her mistakes would echo through the Bun like a shotgun blast. But she walked through Rio’s door anyway.

  The rhythm of the music quickened Suzanna’s pulse as she looked around the room. This group was a far cry from the fashionistas that made up most of Rio’s past clientele. Rio was showing a boy the quick-quick-slow steps that made up the foundation of salsa. Rio was not a small man, but he was dwarfed by this scowling adolescent, with his enormous tattooed biceps. Suzanna tried not to smile as she watched the two men grasping forearms as Rio tried to force some rhythm into the kid. The music stopped and Rio saw Suzanna in the mirror.

  She had never exactly envisioned this moment. She was glad she hadn’t because it wouldn’t have gone anything like this. Rio merely turned around and looked at her. No smile, no shining eyes, no sign that he was happy to see her in the least.

  “Suzanna,” Rio said. “Come in.”

  She could feel herself lifting off the ground. She tried to grab onto the ballet barre but it slipped through her fingers. She bobbed around the class of sneering teenagers, three boys and two girls covered in tattoos and piercings—she remembered three of them, Ray, Miles, and Winnie, but Rio seemed to have added two more students. He really seemed dedicated to his new venture. The kids were all too cool to take note that a neighboring shopkeeper was floating near the ceiling.

  Rio spoke to the class.

  “Suzanna was a former student of mine,” he said. “She was not very good when she started, but tried very hard. You could learn from her.”

  POW! Suzanna was back on the floor. Rio put on a song she knew by heart. It was “La Ruñidera,” one of his favorites. She used to listen to it over and over but deleted it from her playlist after the fantasy of Rio ended. It had all been the imaginings of a lost and lonely woman, but she had to admit, she had felt one hundred percent alive in those days before peaceful marriage and motherhood.

  With the teenagers feigning boredom and the music pounding around them, Rio put out his hand. Suzanna didn’t hesitate for an instant and he walked her onto the dance floor.

  Although it had been three and a half years since she’d gone to a dance class, Suzanna had kept dancing. She danced in the Bun kitchen or in stores or on street corners when a Latin beat became too much to ignore. At those times she was glad she’d studied salsa. There really would not have been any way to waltz or tango effectively by herself. She’d also been dancing with Lizzy since before the baby was born. As Suzanna let herself be escorted to the dance floor, she said a silent prayer of thanks that she would not be totally rusty. But dancing by herself, or with Lizzy, was not the same as dancing with Rio.

  Is there anything like dancing with Rio?

  Suzanna put her left hand on his shoulder and forced herself to look into his eyes. She could hear all his instructions from years ago tumbling around in her head: “Don’t let your foot slide,” “Don’t look at the floor,” “Tilt your body forward, not backward.” But she decided not to listen. She would listen to the music instead. The tree could wait. Her husband’s obsession with the community could wait. Two old guys fighting over her mother could wait. She was dancing with Rio, who was even hotter now that his shiny black hair was tossing around his head.

  She would play out this three-minute romance for all it was worth.

  It was over in a heartbeat. Applause filled the little studio. Rio, who was still Rio even with a new cause, stood unsmiling as he applauded languidly along with the students. She tried to accept the applause graciously and not like a sponge begging for water. If she were Cinderella, the clock would be ticking. Midnight would strike as soon as she walked out the door. She tried not to feel disloyal to her life. She often thought that if she were her ten-year-old self looking at her adult self, she would be more than satisfied with what she had become. She had the best husband, the perfect child, a wonderful business, loyal friends. She missed her father but her vibrant mother was still stirring things up. But fantasy had always played a part in Suzanna’s life, and she found she missed it more than she knew.

  Things were different now, she told herself. She would walk out, accepting the closure that this dance afforded. She felt so light and happy, she gave Rio a spontaneous hug.

  “I still need to see you, Suzanna,” he said.

  Cinderella had nothing on her. Suzanna raced out the studio door as the clock struck midnight in her heart. She had to get back to her life before anyone knew she had been to the ball. As she ran through the courtyard alone, her toe caught on something and she sprawled on the cement, skinning her hands.

  As she sat collapsed on the ground, looking at her bleeding palms, she was feeling less than neutral about just about everything.

  CHAPTER 14

  ERINN

  Willow Station was a strange place. An old railroad station that went the way of old railroad stations, it was turned into a local museum in the 1980s. Although it was a remodeled, cavernous space that never seemed to have enough artwork to fill it, new artists from all over the country vied for its attention. In the up-and-coming art community an exhibit at Willow Station carried bragging rights, not to mention much-needed exposure and offers to be hung in art galleries of varying reputations.

  The art exhibit currently causing a stir at the little museum was called POP! Culture. It featured various artifacts made from the pop-tops of soda and beer cans and ribbons of aluminum cut from the cans themselves. The artist, Alice Albert, billed herself as an environmental-fiber-and-metal artist, which Erinn found gratingly pretentious. But Erinn was on her best behavior. It wasn’t every day a handsome neighbor asked her out, and it certainly wasn’t business as usual to be on a double date with her mother.

  Virginia put on her glasses and peered at a shawl made from the pop-tops. The shawl draped and folded as if it were made of cashmere.

  “We’ve got to get Dymphna up here to see this,” Virginia said to Erinn. “I think she would find this fascinating.”

  Erinn tried to shake off the feeling that her mother found raising Angora rabbits a much higher calling than following Blu Knight around with a camera.

  Or maybe I’m just projecting.

  “Virginia, come look at this,” Bernard said.

  Virginia went to stand next to Bernard as they studied a miniature train set, every tiny detail made from pop-tops and aluminum ribbons. Erinn considered herself an expert on body language and tried to read the signals, but when her mother leaned into Bernard to whisper something and he laughed and put his hand on her mother’s waist for an instant, Erinn turned quickly away. Body signals were one thing, smoke signals another.

  Erinn looked around the room for Christopher, who was standing in front of a large aluminum moose head, complete with mounting board. Erinn shot her mother a quick backward glance; maybe her easy chemistry with a member of the opposite sex would rub off on Erinn. She stepped lightly into the spot next to Christopher.
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  “She’s really an incredible artist, isn’t she?” he asked, although he sounded gloomy.

  “Well . . . yes . . . she is,” Erinn said. “Although I don’t understand why she would choose this particular medium. With her talent, it seems as if she’s limiting herself.”

  Look who’s talking.

  Christopher turned to her, his intense eyes looking into hers.

  “I disagree. I think she took a medium that inherently puts confines on an artist and stretched the boundaries. I mean, she made a shawl and a moose head. How can you call that limiting?”

  This is why I don’t go out.

  Erinn was more than comfortable in heated debate—and she did think that this Alice Albert was wasting her time in such a frivolous medium—but had learned from sad experience that trouncing an opponent on a first date wasn’t usually the best-laid plan. Although she wasn’t quite sure she could trounce Christopher anyway. He certainly had his own viewpoint.

  Virginia and Bernard were suddenly at their side. Erinn gave a soft sigh of relief. Mother as backup was always a good idea.

  “I love, love, love this exhibit,” Virginia said. “What a talent.”

  “I agree,” Christopher said, looking coolly at Erinn. He turned to his uncle. “Do you think we could ask if she wants to put some of her work up in our studio?”

  “We can ask her,” Bernard said. “She’s heading our way.”

  The group turned to watch a severe-looking woman in her forties walking toward them. She wore a black turtleneck tucked into fatigues, which in turn were tucked into black combat boots. Her stern look was offset by a wide, toothy grin.

  “Shit,” Christopher said. “It is her.”

  “I told you,” Bernard said, shaking his head.

  “I know you did. But I didn’t believe it.”

  Erinn and Virginia looked at each other, mystified. Did they know this woman?