Random Acts of Love (Random Series #5)

by Julia Kent

  Except this time he hadn’t gotten as far as Ohio.

  CHAPTER 9

  Darla

  Josie dropped me off at the trailer without a word. Not one fucking word. I thanked her and she just drove right off, a bundle of fury.

  I got it. I really did. She was coming home to a mama with a brain injury and facing her old demons, with her new life about to massively clash with the old.

  Trust me.

  I got that.

  I stomped up to the trailer and did a double take. There was a porch light. Two, in fact. And both of them lightbulbs worked.

  The porch had a floor. A sturdy one, like a deck. The screen door opened properly and was fully screwed in to the exterior wall. It didn’t squeak.

  I knew Mama had replaced all the plumbing under and in the house ’cause I’d sent her the money to pay for it after I got a big paycheck for the Island of Eden concert the band had done. But what I found was so surreal.

  The furniture was the same. The scarred linoleum in the kitchen was the same. But all of Mama’s piles of winnings and junk was gone. You could walk a straight line from the kitchen table to the couch. You could see actual pictures of me as a kid on the bookshelves. And the bookshelves were all there; someone had carefully fixed all the diagonal, broken pieces and made it all line up nice and neat.

  “Darla Jo!” Mama cried out, standing and limping over to me.

  The biggest change of all was my mama.

  She’d gone and shrunk.

  Now, Mama was a big woman. Had always been soft as a pillow, and the scent of cigarette smoke and baby powder was the scent of comfort in my inner child’s brain. It’s not as if any diet or exercise was gonna turn Mama into a lithe marathon runner, you know? (Or me, for that matter).

  But she looked like she’d lost a solid fifty pounds or so.

  And she fairly glowed.

  Her hug was strong and long, her embrace shifting me left and right as if our bodies were a metronome and she could reset the beat of life with our rhythmic hug. I smiled and laughed and suddenly I was crying, tears of happiness and relief, of nostalgia and grief, of something I couldn’t name infusing me.

  She kissed my cheek and pulled me back to arm’s length. “You look wonderful. Sight for sore eyes.”

  “You too, Mama, except there’s a lot less of you!”

  She just waved her hand as if I were talking nonsense, but her smile showed me how pleased she was that I noticed. “It ain’t nothing. Jane’s been good with helping me keep my sugars right, and Calvin likes to walk a lot. He also hates pop, so there’s that. When you don’t keep that shit in the house all the time, it’s amazing how much you don’t drink it.”

  “You stopped drinking pop? What do you drink?”

  “Beer.” She laughed, her smile showing more wrinkles than it used to.

  I hadn’t seen my mama smile like that except in photographs from back when my daddy was alive.

  “Where’s Josie?” she asked.

  I made a funny face. “She dropped me off and went straight to her house.”

  Mama sighed. “Poor Josie. She got a world of hurt to face. Marlene’s been extra...well, extra lately.”

  “Extra what?”

  “Extra Marlene. Mean and nasty when you don’t agree with her, and whoring herself out at Jerry’s bar like she’s a parking meter and a drink’ll buy you fifteen minutes of her slot.”

  “Mama!”

  “What? It’s true.”

  She pulled out a weird little metal thing that glowed red at the end and put it up to her mouth.

  “What’s that, Mama?”

  “My cigarette.”

  “I thought you quit.”

  “It’s an e-cig. It’s safer.”

  “I know what an e-cig is. Just didn’t expect you to use one.”

  “You put juice in it and it’s called vaping.”

  “Vaping?” I knew what vaping was, but this conversation was strange. Mama was a vaper?

  She chortled. “You mean I know something you don’t know? Your mama’s more hip than you for once.”

  “You look like you’re giving Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer a blow job.”

  “Darla!”

  “What? Hey, Mama, you said you wanted to be hip. That’s how I talk with my friends.” But my cheeks burned.

  “Speaking of blowjobs,” she said. My brain cracked in half, because no young woman ever wants to hear those words come out of their mama’s mouth unless it’s a history lesson about the Clinton presidency.

  “Any words of wisdom for the nervous bride on her wedding night?” Mama asked me.

  “Never store your toothpaste in the same drawer as your lube. Trust me on this.”

  She laughed and took a long drag on that metal stick thing. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I’ll bet he liked the taste after—”

  “I am done, Mama. No more sex talk. You’re freaking me out.”

  “Why?” She took a big gulp from a can of beer. “You’re a grown up now, Darla. We can talk like friends. You’re a sexual being and so am I.”

  “No. You’re my mama who sits on the couch and watches television and plays sweepstakes and...” My voice trailed off. “And you’re just there. Here. Like I paused you with a remote control or something.” My eyes filled with tears and I looked at her. One eyebrow was cocked and she was looking back.

  A sharp knock on the front door made us both jump.

  “Hello?” said a tentative female voice.

  “Jane?” I gasped as she walked in the front door, followed by two toddler boys and, my word—Davey. My ex-boyfriend. That’s one thing about living in Boston—I don’t accidentally run into anyone I know, and if I do, I haven’t slept with them.

  And they do know how to spell my name.

  I was across the room in seconds, hugging my old friend. We’d grown apart right before I’d moved to Boston on account of her crazy (now ex) husband, a storefront preacher who had a taste for beating her and who, it seemed, had been run off. Mama said Davey and Jane were a good couple and as I gave Davey a wave and watched him pick up Jane’s youngest boy, a shy little thing with brown hair and panicked eyes, he seemed soothing. Like a nice dad.

  Davey as a dad. The man was a bad caricature of a podunk local townie and a mall cop, but he was good people underneath.

  Jane pulled away from me, all smiles. “You know Davey,” she said, “but let me re-introduce you to my boys, Lucas and Dominick.”

  Her oldest came over to me and gave me his hand. What a little man. I respected her youngest’s need to cling to Davey like a spider monkey.

  “Hey buddy!” I said.

  “He’s not Buddy. He’s Dominick,” his older brother piped up.

  We all laughed.

  “Come on in!” Mama insisted, shoving over at the table and motioning for us to sit.

  “We’re not here long,” Jane said in an apologetic tone. “Just wanted to stop in and see Darla for a few minutes before we go to the ice cream social at the school.”

  Lucas’ eyes lit up. “Ice cream!” he chanted.

  “You look great,” I told Jane.

  “You, too. Where’s your hot lawyer rock star boyfriend?” she teased. Davey’s face was slack, like a mask. He’d met Trevor two years ago. Trevor had been going down on me at a rest area off I-76 and was, uh, decidedly underdressed when Davey had interrupted us.

  “And is he wearin’ clothes this time?” Davey asked under his breath.

  “Ha ha.” My turn to get uncomfortable. “We, um, broke up.”

  Jane’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Darla. I wouldn’t mention him if I’d known.” She gave mama a pointed look.

  Mama just took a long drag off her e-cig. “I didn’t know neither, so don’t give me that face, Miss Jane.”

  Jane put her hand on my shoulder and gave me a compassionate look. “You okay? Did this just happen?”

  “About a week ago,” I sai
d, fighting tears. I hadn’t had anyone to really talk it through with, unless you counted my anal mold session with Amy, Charlotte, and Maggie, and that wasn’t so much a confessional as a trippy clusterfuck.

  The road trip out here with Josie was about as shitty, too.

  (Pun intended).

  So when I felt the tears starting to clog my throat, I widened my eyes with alarm to fight them off. I had no desire to cry in front of Davey, for fuck’s sake.

  “Eye keem!” Dominick declared, burying his face in Davey’s shoulder.

  We grown ups laughed again. Aw, hell. I was a grown up, wasn’t I? My best friend had two kids and was buying my childhood home, my mama was getting married, Josie was engaged and me?

  I nearly shat in a bag by the side of the road. That was my biggest accomplishment recently. Not shitting on Josie’s passenger seat. What a week.

  “Darla?” Jane asked uncertainly. “You okay? You went a little green there.”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. Just tired. It’s been a long car ride out here and... you know.”

  She smiled, not quite convinced. “Let’s try to catch up before the wedding? I know you’re busy and all.” She stood and gave me a long hug. It felt good. Last time I was home, we were on shaky ground. Then she became Mama’s personal health aide and it had felt good to know I was leaving Mama in compassionate hands. Looked like Jane had found her way out of something awful into something better.

  Davey cleared his throat and gave me a bashful look. “You, uh, planning to clear all your stuff out this week? I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but if you could get the shed cleared out, me and Jane could use it for storage.”

  I froze. Mama, Davey and Jane just looked at me. For them, the sale of the trailer was an ongoing process, something they’d obviously talked about at length. It wasn’t an event, so much as a series of steps. For me, though, reality was hitting all at once, and it felt like someone was dropping a boulder on my heart.

  “Uh, yeah. I can do the shed first. No problem.”

  He relaxed visibly and shared an unreadable look with Jane. “Thanks. We’re just getting the mortgage paperwork cleared up and soon we can move in and Cathy can move on with her new, married life at Calvin’s house.”

  Another boulder.

  “Right.” I plastered on a fake smile. I was getting a little too good at this.

  “You seen Calvin yet?” Jane asked pleasantly while I had a complete meltdown on the inside. My brain buzzed and my hands went cold and suddenly, I had to be alone. Completely alone.

  I was alone. No more Trevor and Joe.

  “She has now!” said a soft, friendly male voice from the front door. He tapped on the wall at the same time, his head poking in. Familiarity poured through my veins. Mr. McMasterson.

  Er...Daddy.

  Stepdaddy.

  A golf ball appeared in my throat. Out of nowhere. I guessed this was how we’d meet. Or, re-meet, as it were. How can you meet someone who’s lived in the town you grew up in? Might not’ve been how I’d choose it, but nowadays I didn’t have much say in anything about how my life rolled out, now did I?

  “Hi there,” I said, plastering on another fake smile. At this point, I should just buy ’em at Big Lots by the twelve-pack.

  “Darla,” he said, offering me his smooth, dry hand to shake. I appreciated that he didn’t grab me and bear hug me, or try to be all extra congenial like we were best buddies. He was the quiet type, with thinning brown hair, a long, straight nose, and eyes the color of something hard to pinpoint, like they’d look different in the sun.

  He stooped a bit, and hovered near the door, uncertain but smiling and nodding at everyone.

  “Well, Calvin, come give your honey a kiss!” Mama said with a giggle.

  I nearly blew chunks.

  Guess I needed more of them fake smiles, because this one fell off me and smashed on the floor like an old mercury thermometer, the pieces rolling into something dangerous.

  Calvin crossed the room and leaned down to give Mama a sweet kiss on the cheek, while she patted his hand and smiled at me.

  Message received.

  Not sure what the message was, but Mama was trying to convey something. Nothing threatening, but I felt the sea change right then and there.

  Life had gone on without me.

  And now Trevor and Joe were, too. Moving on. I hadn’t heard a peep from either of them since Trevor’s text about that crazy party.

  “You ready for the ice cream social?” Calvin asked Mama.

  “You’re going, too?” I squeaked.

  All eyes were on me. “Yeah. You never turned down ice cream in your life, Darla Jo,” Mama said as she stood and smiled at me. “I figured this would be a great way to welcome you home. It’s a fundraiser for the school. Something about getting some new swings for the playground. Not much better than doing good and eating ice cream at the same time.”

  And at that exact moment, the second she stopped talking, my gut made a sound like a bunch of wet marbles being gargled by a troll.

  “She gonna make a stinky,” Lucas announced.

  Davey burst out laughing but the other adults managed to be more polite.

  “I’m not feeling very well,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

  “If I had gas like that, I wouldn’t, either,” Davey said. Jane elbowed him. Mama just rolled her eyes.

  “Suit yourself. We’ll bring you back some if you like,” Mama said.

  “My treat,” Calvin added with a smile.

  “You treatin’ us all?” Davey joked. Jane elbowed him again and shared a look of exasperation with Mama.

  Calvin just shook his head and headed out.

  “You gonna be okay?” Mama asked me, tilting her head and watching me with narrowed eyes.

  My gut answered for me.

  “Maybe it’s best if we ain’t here for whatever’s diggin’ its way outta your ass, Darla Jo,” Mama said as she left. “Love you!”

  “Love you too, Mama,” I said as I sprinted for the bathroom.

  And that was how I re-met my stepdaddy for the first time.

  * * *

  The next morning I woke up feeling like I’d shat my brains out and traveled six hundred miles in a car driven by a homicidal troll.

  Oh. Yeah.

  I had.

  My phone buzzed with a call from Josie. Now there was a pleasant surprise. I figured she was done talking to me for the next, oh, forever.

  “Hey!”

  “Check your email. I just sent you something.”

  “Email? No one checks email anymore. Can you just Facebook or Snapchat me?”

  “Darla,” she growled.

  “Fine.” I pulled up my email on my phone, then saw her link. “The link in this email?”

  “Yeah. I’ll hang up. You watch the video and then call me back.”

  “What kinda cloak and dagger—”

  Click.

  Well, now.

  I tapped the screen and watched the video start up, titled “Trevor from RAOC with a chicken in Nashua, New Hampshire.”

  What?

  “There’s a new chicken video?” I muttered, wondering why Josie would link me to a video that features Trevor when she knows my heart’s been broken—

  Oh.

  Oh!

  Oh, hell. What the fuck? What is he doing with – oh, hell no! He did not just put that chicken up for president in the 2016 elections!

  And he kissed Mavis.

  I read the first few comments on the YouTube video. They were predictably vulgar with references to Trevor’s amorous ties to fowl. Two offering ways I could make $81 per hour on Google. One offering to marry Trevor.

  And there were about one hundred and seventeen other “related videos” as well, most of them Trevor at the Nashua gathering or prying a giant snake’s jaws off Mavis.

  I paused the video on a freeze frame of Trevor’s face, mid-grin, the sun shining behind him and the chicken out of the frame. I kne
w that face. Those eyebrows. Those bright eyes. How he had a little chicken pock mark on his eyebrow. The way those muscles lifted when he smiled at me after hot morning sex. How his frown made his eyebrows touch, how he looked tenderly at me whenever I was in pain.

  And I was crying.

  Sobbing. Big, wretched twists in my throat and gut over how much I missed him. Missed Joe. Missed us. This was like having them surgically removed without anesthesia. Like being alive for your own burial. Like having each artery systematically snipped and cauterized and feeling all the pain as my heart reorganized itself.

  I missed that pseudo chicken fucker so much. And his quiet, angry, model-perfect sidekick.

  I tapped out of the video and called Josie back.

  “You see it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Do, Josie?” I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “What am I supposed to do about it? Go to Nashua and dig him out of jail myself? Go get him another chicken so he can file campaign papers to get federal funds for her to run in 2016?”

  “What do you want to do? You have to do something. You’re still technically the band manager. I know Charlotte and Amy are trying, but...”

  I hadn’t really thought that part out. She was right, and yet...

  “I’m on vacation,” I answered, suddenly sure. “It can wait a week. The rest of them can see what it’s like not to have Darla running interference for them.”

  “So far that seems to mean Trevor steals chickens again.”

  “Then so be it.”

  “Darla,” she said, drawing out my name. “What about personally? The guy has clearly lost it.”

  “Ya think?”

  “And I expect to see him naked, by the side of the road, down by Jerry’s Bar pretty soon.”

  “That was two years ago, Josie. He won’t do the same thing again.”

  “Um, did you see that video! He’s just repeating the past!”

  “No. Last time he wanted to marry the chicken. This time he wants to see her in the White House. Big difference.”

  “It is not a big difference! Trevor has a serious problem dealing with stress. He eats drugs, gets naked, steals chickens and falls for them.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s still a better love story than Twilight,” Josie added.