She shrugs noncommittally. “I’ve felt better.” She nods towards the flowers. “Did I ever tell you how your father courted me with flowers when we first met? Used to bring me fresh ones every single day.”
The mention of the story I’ve heard a million times before makes my eyes sting with tears. “Yeah. You might’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
She smiles at this. “That’s right. We’ve told you kids that story, haven’t we?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My dad gets up. “Maybe I can find something to put the flowers in?”
Momma hands him the flowers. “Cut the stems down while you’re at it,” she says, pointing to the place she wants them cut.
He heads for the nursing station.
I sit down. Clear my throat. “Momma? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Hmm?”
“I put my house in Phoenix on the market. The one Jenny and I lived in? Only listed it on Wednesday, but we’ve already had a few bites. I think I should make a nice profit on it.”
My mom knows me way too well. She frowns and cocks her head. “Why you sellin’ the house? You need money? I thought you had it rented, and you were making a profit from the rent?”
“I was making money from it, yeah. But listen, I’ve thinking… With your… hip, and with Dad spending so much time taking care of you… and…” I bite down hard on my tongue right before I say with the debt the restaurant’s in because she already made it clear once that topic isn’t up for discussion. “And with you guys getting close to retirement age anyway… and given that this was probably my last season playing basketball…”
Her frown gets skeptical as I trail off.
I’ve never been good at asking things of my parents. I love them. I know they love me. But it’s like Gerry told me when I came back to town — I’m not exactly the black sheep, but I’m pretty dark fucking grey. Positive communication, especially with my mother, hasn’t always been my strong suit over the years.
“Spit it out, girl,” is what she says. She’s giving me a real stink-eye now. “What you need to sell that house for?”
“I want to — I want to use the money to buy Soul Mountain,” I say in a rush, my stomach exploding with unexpected butterflies. No one but my mother has the power to turn me into a stammering, nervous idiot. “If you guys would be open to it…”
My dad picks that moment to walk back into the waiting room, tulips cut down to size and drooping out of a plastic cup he’s filled with water. Picking up on the tension immediately, he glances from me to Mom.
“Open to what?” he asks.
Momma heaves a big sigh, reaches for the tulips. She takes them and sticks them right under her nose, inhaling their fresh scent deeply before placing them on a stack of health and women’s magazines on the end table beside her. She pats the seat next to her.
“Sit down,” she orders.
I take a step forward, prepared to fit my big awkward body into yet another hospital waiting room chair, but she waves me off.
“Not you. Your father.”
Chastened, I retreat a few steps, make room for Dad. Clearly he’s wondering what’s up, because he sits down in the chair slowly and carefully like there’s a frigging bomb beneath it that he might set off if he moves too quickly.
My mother turns to him. “Our second daughter just offered to buy Soul Mountain.”
Dad looks up in surprise, from me back to her. “Buy the restaurant?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You guys deserve a real retirement, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but with the shape the restaurant’s in now, you’re not going to be able to afford to retire until you’re both, like, fucking ninety or something.”
“Watch your language,” Momma says, lips puckering into a sour frown.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“I am surprised you would ask, Anika,” my father says. “You’ve never particularly liked Soul Mountain.”
I anticipated this question, so I already have an answer ready. “I’m surprised, too. But over the last week… I’ve realized a few things. I’ve missed being part of a family. Seeing the progress that Gerry’s made… seeing how big Sherry’s gotten…” I pause. “Seeing you guys. Seeing how much you love each other — and your kids, and this town, and…” My mind flashes to Jenny, to the daughter named after me, to the things I opted out on that now I have second thoughts about. “I haven’t been a part of this family — or had a real home, actually — in a really long time. And life’s short. So… I think I should do something about that. While I still have a chance.”
My last sentences fall into an abyss of pained silence, a silence that contains within it my mother’s unknown future. A future that might be shorter than any of us wanted it to be.
She’s the first one to speak. “And what if you change your mind? What if you start running the restaurant, only to realize it’s not what you want to do after all, hmm? Owning a restaurant… that’s not the same as a normal job, Ani. You do something like this because just you feel obligated, you’re settin’ yourself up to be unhappy later. And then Soul Mountain suffers.”
“I know it’s not like a normal job. But basketball’s going to be over for me soon.” I shrug. “I have to do something. But it’s not — I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like I want to own Soul Mountain just because I don’t have any better options. Being back here this week, it made me realize… there’s something special about Soul Mountain. It’s a part of this community, of Marcine. It gives something to people. And it should stay in the family. Gerry’s going back to school, Dutch is busy raising her kids, and PJ… PJ could do it, but he’d have to manage it from afar. So that leaves me. And… I’ve thought about it. A lot. It’s what I want to do. Really.”
Instead of responding to me, my parents meet eyes, stare at each other for a long few seconds in silence. After a lifetime of watching them do this, I know they’re having an entire, complicated conversation in those few moments of subtle eye flickers and twitched lips. But I’ve never been a part of their psychic inner circle, so all I can do is stand there and wait for an answer.
Momma turns back to me. “We’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing that We’ll think about it was the best possible outcome I could’ve hoped for, and much better than the outright No I halfway expected.
It ends up taking them two weeks and five more radiation treatments before they give me a definitive answer. By then, Mom’s losing weight rapidly. She has no appetite, and what Dad’s able to force into her she often throws back up, anyway. Life in my basement room is punctuated by the sound of my father’s words drifting down from the kitchen —
“But you have to eat, rani.”
When they get home from the hospital after the fifth treatment in six days, they call me at the restaurant.
“Anika?” my father says. “Your mother and I have thought about your offer on Soul Mountain. We agree. We will sell it to you.”
Chapter 45: Did I mention that I fucking hate airports?
Seven weeks later
As if God or Buddha or the fucking Universe or whatever was waiting for my parents to finally make a decision, everything starts happening really fast once they say they’ll sell me the restaurant. My house in Phoenix sells in less than two weeks; Gerry ends up getting into community college; PJ announces he’s getting married; Dutch turns up preggo with Baby Number Three.
Another month goes by. Kiersten quits before I have to fire her, which is fucking awesome, and I hire two new servers I really like, one a new friend of Gerry’s from the community college, one a friend of Katie-the-high-school-hostess. Without the weight of debt dragging the restaurant down, it starts doing pretty well. I buy a condo; Gerry moves in as my roommate.
Jodie and Ben come in every Tuesday to play Scrabble, and Jodie updates me on all the gossip in town. Every week she asks after my mother, and every week I tell her the same thing: “The doctors say it’s too s
oon to guess yet.”
I settle into a comfortable routine. Gerry takes classes at the college during the day — all prerequisites so he can get into an actual four-year degree program at Ohio State. He relieves me at the restaurant around five every evening, and I let him handle the dinner rush but make it back in time to help him close.
The kid’s in school, after all. I don’t want him staying up too late.
After a drunk driver almost takes Gerry out when he’s walking home from the restaurant one night, Dutch takes it upon herself to buy us a car. It’s a compact that neither one of us even really fit in, but we start driving it home every night, and I let Gerry take it to school each morning.
It’s not an exciting life. But it’s a good life, a quiet life.
Jenny comes to the restaurant about once per week. A lot of times, she comes with kids in tow; once in a while, she comes by herself. I sit and talk with her on the days that I have time. Things are… as normal as they will ever get between us, I suppose.
She comes in by herself one day, and I bring her a menu, but she says, “Two menus, actually, Ani.”
I give her a curious look but she won’t meet my eye. Five minutes later, I find out why. A woman walks in the front door, gazing around like she’s looking for someone. She’s on the tall side (shorter than me, obviously), with a lean, athletic build and short-cropped dark hair. I don’t have to look at her twice to know she’s gay as hell.
When she sees Jenny, her whole face lights up, breaks into this huge smile, and she strides across the restaurant without so much as noticing that I’m standing there. Jenny is her sun; this girl is a planet that’s fallen inside her gravitational pull.
I glance at Jenny. She’s smiling just as broadly as the short-haired girl, and when the short-haired girl reaches her, Jenny stands, and the girl gives her a peck on the cheek.
I smile. I’m happy for Jenny. I really am.
But the peck on the cheek is a glaring neon sign pointing to the one thing still missing in my life: I’m as alone as I was the day I left her.
Maybe I should just get used to it. Maybe it’s going to be like this from now on. Or maybe I should try some online dating or some shit.
Yeah, right. I want to try online dating about as much as I want to try a root canal without novocaine.
#
“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” I ask Gerry one last time. “You aren’t going to get stressed running things on your own? Don’t skip any classes — leave Soul Mountain with Becker if you have to.”
He laughs. “Sis, it’s going to be fine.”
“So you say.”
He smirks at me. “You’re a better businesswoman than you give yourself credit for. Which means that Soul Mountain is going to be fine without you. Okay? So get going.”
I hesitate; he raises an eyebrow. “Alright, alright,” I huff, picking up my duffle. I follow him into our ridiculous compact car outside. “I really don’t want to go back to Switzerland, Ger,” I say once he gets in and starts the engine.
The little fucker just laughs some more.
“You’re going to sit there and fucking laugh at me?”
“I can’t help it. It’s funny. I’m just thinking that the Anika who came home a couple months ago. She never would’ve said something like that.” We roll to a stop at the end of the street, and he gives me a sideways glance before he speaks again. “Amazing how quickly life changes sometimes, right?”
I slouch down in the seat. “Don’t try out your future social worker techniques on me, asshole.”
Gerry chuckles. A few minutes later, we’re on the highway, heading for the Cleveland airport.
#
I have a long fucking flight path. The first leg is a little puddle-jumper from Cleveland to Chicago O’Hare. Then it’s Chicago to London — an overnight flight in which I’ll be guaranteed to get absolutely no fucking sleep and be surrounded by babies screaming in British accents — and from London, it’s an hour and a half to Basel.
Once I get to Basel, I’ll have a lot of cleaning up to do, starting with my basketball contract. I know the whole organization’s already pissed at me, but whatever. If I didn’t take myself out of the game this season, they would’ve done it for me next season. Or the season after that. Or I would end up injuring myself and wind up needing surgery and being gimpy the rest of my life. The way things worked out might just be for the best, in the end.
I contemplate all this over my eight-fucking-dollar salad in the Chicago airport, feeling ripped off because it was labeled “gourmet” and yet the lettuce leaves are tinged with brown and the dressing tastes like somebody mixed in some ranch powder and corn syrup with water and squeezed it into a plastic ramekin.
God. Owning a restaurant is starting to making me a fucking food snob.
A few minutes after I finish my salad, I’m walking onto the plane to London, navigating my duffle bag in front of me, stooping occasionally to avoid whacking my head on overhead bins and protruding suitcase wheels.
I settle into my aisle seat at last, splaying my knees wide around the seat back in front of me, wondering, not for the first time, why airlines seem to think all passengers are the size of fucking African pygmy people. At least I got an aisle seat. And so far, the window seat next to me is empty. Maybe it’ll stay that way and I can turn sideways or some shit and manage to almost sleep for an hour or two.
I pull out the magazine from the seat pocket and start flipping through it. Glossy pages tell me about places that I absolutely must visit before I die, foods I should try, bike paths I should ride. I pause for a second at an article about an NFL guy who loves traveling to Asia, skimming through the interviewer’s questions and wondering idly if I could ever afford to take my family on a trip to Nepal.
The daydream is interrupted when a voice next to me says, “Hey. Anika.”
I glance in the direction of the voice. The window seat that had been empty a moment before is now filled. With Marty McFly.
I groan. “What are you doing here, McFly? I thought I told you I didn’t want to go on any more head-trips to the past?”
He shakes his head, keeps his voice low. “That’s not why I’m here.”
He points up the aisle, and my eyes follow his gesture. Four rows ahead of me, sitting in the center row in the aisle seat, there’s a dark head of hair, cut Jane Lane-style. A row of silver earrings glints in the light.
“Guess who else is flying to Heathrow today?” McFly says.
“No fucking way,” I say, and although I usually speak to McFly only in my head, I accidentally make the statement out-loud this time. A British woman my mother’s age (but about half of her size) catches my cursed mutter, purses her lips in my direction.
“You should go talk to her,” my imaginary seat mate says.
“No,” I say quickly, and this time I manage to keep my conversation with him silent. “She’s made it plenty clear that she doesn’t want to talk to me.”
Now McFly is the one pursing his lips at me. “What kind of attitude is that? You’re an Olympian, for chrissakes, Anika, not a quitter.” He makes a curt gesture up the aisle. “Get up. Go over there. Talk to her.”
“Not only does she not want to talk to me,” I say, “but also, after what happened at Grace’s reception, I think it’s pretty fair to say she doesn’t ever want to lay eyes on me again.”
“Okay, so you have some explaining to do. Some begging for forgiveness, maybe.”
“I begged on at least five separate voicemails. I texted her an apology every day for a week. She didn’t answer any of them. She wants me to leave her alone.”
Marty McFly considers this for a few seconds. Then he says, “Maybe she does. Maybe she just wants you to try harder. To demonstrate that you’re not ready to give up on your relationship with her.”
I roll my eyes. “What relationship, McFly? We met on a plane a couple of months ago. We had all of a fucking week of hanging out together before I screwed up an
d kissed Jenny right in front of her.”
McFly shrugs. “Yeah, it was only a week. But it was a good week. A special week. You both thought so.”
“Yeah, and we also both thought I was over my past,” I mumble. I stare at the dark hair a couple yards in front of me and heave a heavy sigh. “Besides, if she’s on the plane for London, it probably means she’s going back to Basel. What are we supposed to do, enter into a long-distance relationship when we haven’t even really dated yet? Fat fucking chance of that working out. And ever since Jenny, I’ve pretty much had it on long-distance relationships.”
McFly stares at me a long moment. “Anika. Just go talk to her.”
I shake my head. “Nuh-uh. No way.”
“Go. Talk. To her.”
“No.”
“You’re being a baby.”
I hesitate. Unbuckle my seat belt. Glance over at McFly. “If this ends up totally sucking, I’m sending you back to fucking 1955. Permanently.”
“Go,” is all he says.
Against my own better fucking judgment, I stand up.
One of the few good things about my height is that I’m like a fucking watchtower. I can scope things out from my vantage point without making myself known, getting a bird’s eye view on everything below me. That’s what I do now, checking out what’s happening in Amy’s aisle a few feet ahead of me.
On the far side of her row of seats is what looks like a mother and daughter pair. The girl’s about eleven, twelve, with crazy carrot-top red-orange frizzy hair. She giggles over something her mother’s showing her, and I catch a hint of a British accent. Next to the mother, there’s a balding man reading a newspaper. At first, I assume he’s the father of the carrot-top girl, and I think, well, fuck, I guess that’s it — there’s no way I can switch seats with one-third of a family of three. But as I watch him read the newspaper, his body language — and the fact that he’s completely fucking ignoring both the women sitting on either side of him — makes me realize that he’s not with the mother and the middle-school girl.
Anika takes the long way home up soul mountain: A lesbian romance (Rosemont Duology Book 2) Page 28
