Healing Tea

by Sheila Horgan

  I soaked her.

  She yelped and grabbed for the hose. Out of pure reflex, I jerked the hose up.

  Which sprayed water directly up her nose.

  She sputtered but never slowed down.

  I met my neighbors to the right, as they were leaning over the fence, trying to figure out if two grown women were fighting or having a water fight.

  I will leave that determination to the professionals, but I can tell you without hesitation, I haven’t laughed so hard in months and months.

  By the time A.J. got home, we were dried off. I was wearing my regular clothes, and Teagan was in a pair of his gym shorts and a t-shirt while her stuff was banging around in the dryer.

  To his credit, all he said was, “Hey, Tea.”

  And then to me, “I’m in the shower.”

  Suzi got home about twenty minutes later. Teagan took over baby duty while Suzi took a quick shower, and an hour later, Jessie joined us for dinner out in the backyard.

  It was a good night all the way around.

  I felt peaceful for the first time in a long time.

  My mom always said that laughter was the best medicine.

  Right, again.

  I heard a baby laughing at about three in the morning.

  I went out to the kitchen, and sure enough, right there on the kitchen table was Evelyn. She couldn’t be more pleased with herself if she were floating in air.

  Suzi turned as I entered the room. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I could have left Evelyn upstairs when I came down to get her something to eat. She must be headed for a growth spurt. She never seems to get enough.”

  “Don’t be silly. This is her home, too. She can be in any room in the house. Besides, hearing a baby laugh is about the best sound you can hear.”

  I walked over and played with Evelyn while Suzi made her some cereal.

  A.J. joined us a few minutes later. “I’m hungry.” He gave me a silly smile.

  “Jealous? Evelyn gets fed and attention, so you need some, too?”

  “Exactly!”

  “You hungry, Suzi?”

  “Don’t go to any trouble for me.”

  “How about breakfast?”

  Breakfast in the middle of the night is always really good. We had pancakes, bacon and eggs, orange juice, and I had tea.

  “How can you drink that stuff and go right to sleep?”

  “We had tea in our baby bottles. Literally. I’m immune to caffeine.”

  “That’s probably not a good thing.”

  “You aren’t the first to say that.”

  Suzi started to clear the table and do dishes. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll get it in the morning.”

  A.J. and Suzi flipped around and looked at me like I’d grown another head. “You’re kidding!” They said it at the same time.

  I had to laugh.

  I’m getting older.

  Wiser.

  More tired.

  Suzi scooped up a sleeping Evelyn and started for the stairs. “I’ll help you with them in the morning.”

  A.J. whispered in my ear. “I hope that doesn’t mean you’re too tired.”

  Life seems to be getting back to normal.

  I’m not sure if I like that.

  It seems too soon.

  The next morning, Daddy showed up with Liam and Jordan in tow. I was on the porch with a cup of tea when they pulled up. “You guys hungry?”

  “Nope, stopped on the way over.” Daddy seemed chipper.

  Jordan was bubbly. “The lady at the restaurant was hitting on Grandpa.”

  Daddy chuckled. “She was just being nice, looking for a good tip.”

  Liam laughed. “Dad, she was interested.”

  “I well and truly doubt that, but the truth of it is clear. Interest or none, I’m not on the market, as the young ones say.”

  Liam smiled. “The young ones haven’t said that in a while. I’m not saying you should be out dating. I’m just saying that the lady was definitely interested.”

  “We have work to do.” Daddy put his head down and headed for the backyard.

  Jordan is a good little worker, and Liam worked him hard.

  We carried those huge cement bricks — they are about a foot long and six or seven inches high — into the backyard. Some of them are kind of straight, and some were curved and had a little more character. We placed them where Daddy pointed, and by the time our arms were ready to fall off, we actually had what looked like the beginning of a retaining wall and some cascading flowerbeds.

  “You guys want lunch?”

  “Jordan will help you make something.” Liam sounded more firm than usual. Something must be up.

  When we got into the kitchen and washed our hands, I asked Jordan what sounded good. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s not like you, sweetie. What’s going on?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Yeah, I figured that much out. What happened?”

  “You know that big huge window in front of the building?”

  I assumed he was talking about the condo complex they lived in. It has a huge window in the front. “What about it?”

  “I broke it.”

  “How did you break that?”

  “My friend and me were riding our skateboards, and we had this little ramp, and it was all good, and then it goes flying off, and it hit the window so hard the whole thing just broke.”

  “Sounds like an accident.”

  “Oh, it was. That’s not why I’m in trouble. ’Cause when it all happened, I acted like an idiot.”

  I knew those words had not come from Morgan and Liam. His mother is a kind soul, and my brother was raised better. “Who told you that?”

  “Me. I know what I did. I just didn’t think about it at the time.”

  “You’re not an idiot, Jordan.”

  “I said I acted like an idiot. Mom got mad when I said it, too.”

  I gave him a hug. “What did you do?”

  “I went running in after my skateboard. I still don’t know why. There was this huge piece of glass that had kind of broken, but didn’t really break, and when I went running through, it fell and almost hit me. Pa said it would have taken my head off.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Then I ran back through the hole.”

  “That’s not good, either. Were you afraid you were going to be in big trouble?”

  “Pa says you never get in trouble for an accident.”

  “Yep, that’s the way the O’Flynns roll.” I loved that I could make him smile. “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I just panicked. Pa said I need to figure it out, because he doesn’t give a flea’s fart about broken windows or anything else, but if I got hurt, he would never recover, and my mom would be worse than him.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, although O’Flynns have a gift for that, but there is nothing in the world that is as important as a person, and there is no person in the world who is more important than you.”

  “That’s what Pa said.”

  “Grandma said things like that. She meant them, and so do your Pa and I.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’re over here doing hard labor?”

  “Oh, no. I wanted to come over and work with Grandpa and Pa. My punishment is doing things I hate, and I hate doing stuff in the kitchen.”

  “I see. Well, I can’t back off a punishment from your parents — then we’d both be in trouble — but working in this kitchen can be kind of fun.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “How long do you have to do this stuff?”

  “Until I figure out why I did what I did.”

  “Have you figured it out?”

  “Nope.”

  “You want some help trying?”

  “Mom and Pa and Grandpa have all tried, but if you can think of a good reason, that would be good.”

  “I can’t think of a good reason for yo
u, but I might be able to help you figure it out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Think back to when it happened. What was going on?”

  “We were just skateboarding. We built a ramp.”

  “Were there any adults around?”

  “We were inside the gates. My mom lets me play as long as we stay inside the gates, and as long as there are three or more of us.”

  “Three or more?”

  “She figures if there are three of us, someone is less likely to mess with us, and if they do, one is messed with, one is a witness, and one runs for help.”

  Knowing that Morgan is the survivor of a horrendously violent rape, I could understand her paranoia. Unfortunately, things have changed since we were kids. I don’t think I ever thought about anything like that when I was out playing with my friends.

  I figured if there was going to be any harm that came to me, it would be at the hands of Teagan.

  It happened more than once.

  Let me tell you about the time she decided we should jump into the pool down at the park. Two problems. First problem, the pool wasn’t open for the summer yet, and we were trespassing just by being inside the fence. Second problem, we didn’t realize they had just shocked the pool for the summer season. Being a public pool, it always had enough chlorine in the water to peel the skin right off your body, but when they shocked it, they put in a whole lot more. I don’t know if it was chlorine or something else, but what I do know is that two girls should not have jumped in there.

  We jumped in at the same time. The water was freezing. Everything was great till we opened our eyes, and then after breaking the water coming up, we tried to breathe.

  We went home looking like we’d been on a three-week weed-smoking binge, with bright red eyes and more than a healthy flush to our skin.

  I’m not sure what Mom thought, or if maybe she’d experienced it before — there are, after all, a lot of O’Flynns.

  She took us in and put us in the bathtub with something that smelled really good — maybe that is what started my smelly-good-stuff baths — and brought us cold, wet tea bags to put on our eyes.

  It was a bad afternoon, but other than our hair being completely dried out for weeks, no harm was done.

  Anyway, back to Jordan and his problem. “Sweetie, when everything went sideways, what were you thinking?”

  “My friend’s little sister was there, and she said that she was going to go get the board, and I just didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, so I went and got my board.”

  “Did you tell your parents that?”

  “And get in more trouble? It was bad enough that we were stupid, but to let a little kid get in the middle of it?”

  I didn’t point out to Jordan that he qualified as a little kid himself.

  “I think you should tell your Pa why you did what you did.”

  “I guess. I’m in trouble anyway. I’ll carry this out to the table in the yard.”

  Poor guy. He tried so hard to act like an adult, but he was still just a kid.

  We got lunch out on the table, ate, and then cleared the dishes.

  My dad took Jordan with him to the store. Turns out Daddy uses little things that look like hair clips to hold plants onto sticks, and we were out of them.

  “Jordan told me what happened.”

  “I can’t believe the association had such shitty glass in such a big window. You would think code would require them to have safety glass. I’m just glad he and his buddy didn’t get hurt.”

  “Did he tell you everything?”

  “What’s to tell? He and a friend are fartin’ around, the skateboard gets away, they break the window, and then turn something dumb into something stupid by running through the window to get the damn board. My neighbor said she saw him go for it. She said if he’d been three seconds late, that huge shard would have come down right at the back of his neck. It would have killed him, Cara.”

  Liam went pale as a ghost at the last statement.

  “I get that, but do you know why he went for the board?”

  “’Cause I’m a terrible father who hasn’t taught his son how to stop and think before taking an action?”

  “Give me a break. You’re a great father. The problem was, a young girl was there, and she was going to run in and get the board, and Jordan went and got it so she wouldn’t get hurt.”

  Liam shook his head. “While I applaud the gallantry, I question the wisdom of his not simply stopping her instead of putting himself in danger.”

  I laughed. “So says the man that once — if I recall you were about the same age as Jordan — jumped on top of a firework that was about to go off, because the stupid thing had tipped over and was about to go into the crowd. You could have just kicked it in the opposite direction, but you pulled a World War II, B-movie, stop-the-loose-grenade move. Still have that scar near your belly button?”

  “Damn, that hurt. I still remember that day.”

  “Jordan deserves to know that story. Teach him, Liam. Don’t punish him because of your fears.”

  “I know. We had to do something to get his attention.”

  “Show him your belly button, and tell him the story. It will get his attention. I promise.”

  “I’ll talk to Morgan.”

  “Good.”

  “On another subject, I think I’m gonna take Morgan and Jordan away for a couple of days. I read this thing in the paper about a girl finding a diamond in a national park in Arkansas. Jordan was talking about it in school. It happened to coincide with something they were studying. I think I’m gonna throw all our stuff in the car and have a road trip. It’s like a sixteen- or twenty-hour drive each way, but I think it will be fun. We can stop and do stuff on the way there and on the way back.”

  “That sounds great. You guys could use the break.”

  “We can. Morgan’s been working so much I rarely see her anymore. Jordan has been great about it, but he went from having a mom that worked pretty much nine to five and the rest of the time it was just the two of them, to having me around and her working sixteen hours a day. It’s not right.”

  “Half the solution is recognizing the problem.”

  “You sound like Mom.”

  “Thanks.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent planting, stacking heavy cement bricks, and then planting some more. We have most of the drip water system in. We had everything lined up perfectly. All the little plants in very specific patterns. Then Daddy stood back, smiled, took handfuls of seeds, and tossed them everywhere.

  He smiled at me. “My girl, there is nothing more depressing than a life without surprises.”

  He’s right.

  Isn’t that what Mom said just before she died? She said Teagan and I had become negative. We were doing the same type of thing we’d always made fun of other people for doing. We were fun and had adventures until we got involved with guys. No matter how wonderful the guy is, if you go to that weird place where you are no longer yourself, it’s not pretty. Is that what Mom was trying to tell us?

  Mom never just sat us down and told us stuff. She would tell us a little, let us simmer with that for a while, and then she would tell us some more.

  She always said explaining things to daughters was just like making stew. You start off knowing the end result is going to be tender, comforting, and familiar, but the creating might be a little messy.

  She didn’t live long enough to have the second and third conversations with us.

  Am I really becoming a negative, boring person?

  Me?

  The only time I hear from Teagan anymore is when she needs to vent about something Jessie did or didn’t do or something to do with Joynessa.

  What happened to us?

  I called Teagan. “Hey, what you doin’ for the next six days?”

  Teagan started to answer like it was a real question. The old Teagan would have just asked, “What’s up?”

  “Stop being you. I meant that as a
rhetorical question.”

  “What’s rhetorical about your question?”

  “Shut up and listen to me.”

  “Dingleberry, I think you’re getting worse.”

  “I have a business trip I have to go on for Adeline. You want to run away from home with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. If you’re off to some little Podunk town to sit in an office all day, with me in a mom-and-pop hotel that doesn’t even have good cable stations, so that we can eat at the local greasy spoon at night, and then off to bed so you can get rest before your next meeting, then I’m not interested.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. Be ready tomorrow morning. I wasn’t going to leave until next week, but I’ve made an executive decision, and I’m going tomorrow. I’ll make all the arrangements. All you have to do is show up here at my house tomorrow morning, say, eight.”

  “What do I pack?”

  “A little bit of everything.”

  “That’s really helpful. I’ve gotta ask Jessie.”

  “Ask? You? Really?”

  “You’re right. I’ll be at your house at eight.”

  “I’m excited.”

  “And, Cara?”

  “Hmm…”

  “Thanks. This is a great idea.”

  “It’s Mom’s idea.”

  I hung up the phone before she could ask any questions.

  When I do things for Adeline, I’m very aware of budget. When she’s involved, no dollar is spared, but when it’s just me, I would make the biggest penny pincher proud.

  Those special little snowflakes that bring mountains of coupons to the grocery store or haggle with the assistant junior manager of a discount store because a button is loose know my superpower.

  Adeline always points out that I should be a little more extravagant with my expense account. That a large fries and soda does not a dinner make.

  I never thought I’d have an expense account, so maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I am not the kind of person who will stop in a bistro and buy a six-dollar cup of tea.

  I’m a Lipton girl. A tea bag costs less than five cents. Why would I pay six dollars just because it’s Adeline’s money?

  I say all that to say this: this trip will be a little different.