Mother in Training

by Marie Ferrarella

  She couldn’t put this off any longer. She could take Jackie tomorrow, but that would definitely put a crimp in Emily’s day, and the little girl deserved to enjoy it without having her rambunctious brother in tow. Although Zooey loved Jackie as if he were her own, she knew he could be one huge pain when he wanted to be.

  Not for nothing did they call it the terrible twos, she thought.

  Zooey frowned. Time to get with it.

  She turned in her seat to look at the little boy in the car seat behind her. “Well, I guess we can’t stay here all morning, huh?”

  “No,” Jackie declared, using his newly acquired favorite word.

  She laughed at him, shaking her head, then turned around again and looked back at the building as she released her seat belt. How had so much time managed to slip by? she wondered, still mentally dragging her feet.

  “Okay, here goes nothing.”

  “No.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  With her fingers on the door handle, ready to open it, she still hung back a second longer. This was a first, she supposed. She’d never felt nervous before, not about seeing her own mother. But then, she had never teetered on the edge of estrangement, either.

  Getting out of the car, Zooey rounded the back and went to the rear passenger side, where Jackie sat strapped in his car seat.

  It was chilly this morning, she thought, hunching her shoulders. Or maybe she just felt cold because she was nervous.

  The second she opened the door, Jackie’s waving feet went into double time. He really wanted to get out, Zooey realized. “Settle down, Jackie,” she soothed.

  The feet went faster as he grinned, looking like an angelic little devil. “No!”

  She sighed. “Have it your way.”

  Unbuckling him, she took the boy out and planted him firmly on her hip. She knew that taking his hand and having him walk on his own would have been better for the boy, but she was in a hurry, and the only time those little legs of his pumped fast was when he was fleeing the scene of his latest crime.

  Zooey walked through the front door of the building and looked slowly around the lobby. There were a handful of paintings on the wall.

  It looked, she thought, just as she remembered it. Of course, not a whole lot of time had gone by, but somehow, part of her had expected that it would look different. Because she felt different. Wiser.

  She nodded to the guard at the front desk and crossed to the elevator. She could tell by the old man’s expression that he was trying to place her and was unsuccessful. She hadn’t exactly been a regular visitor here even when things had been going fairly well at home.

  When she’d actually thought she had a shot at being the person she felt everyone in the family wanted her to be.

  The elevator car arrived and she stepped into it. A second later, it was time to step off again. The aluminum doors opened onto a plush, airy second floor. There was a receptionist sitting at a desk that seemed to run half the length of the hall.

  It all looked so classy. She could remember when everything had been operated from their garage. She couldn’t have been more than Emily’s age. Seventeen years had brought about a lot of changes.

  Her parents had done very well for themselves, she realized. The rush of pride was a surprise, and she savored it.

  “Excuse me, do you have an appointment?” the young woman called as Zooey walked right by her toward the offices in the rear of the building.

  “Don’t need one,” Zooey stated over her shoulder.

  “No,” Jackie sang out.

  “You tell her, kid,” she laughed.

  The receptionist was on her feet immediately, hurrying after her. “Wait,” she cried. “You can’t go in there without an appointment.”

  Zooey made it to her mother’s office door and smiled to herself. For a young thing, she certainly wasn’t in very good shape, Zooey thought.

  “Mrs. Finnegan, I’m sorry,” the young woman panted breathlessly, “but she—”

  Frances Finnegan looked up from the computer monitor and last quarter’s financial statements that she was reviewing. Surprise washed through her as the sight of her daughter registered. Zooey was the last person she’d expected to see walking in. And what was she doing with a baby?

  She looked at the child carefully. There was no resemblance. Not to Zooey, or to any of her other children when they were that age. Did he look like his father?

  Had Zooey gotten married to a man with a ready-made family?

  “That’s all right, Liz.” Frances slowly rose to her feet, her eyes never leaving her daughter and the little boy riding her hip. As an afterthought, Frances waved the receptionist away. “This is my daughter, Zooey.”

  “Oh.” The woman looked as if she could have been knocked over with a sneeze. “Then it’s all right,” she murmured, backing away.

  “Is it?” Zooey asked, gazing at her mother. Her mom made no answer as the receptionist left, closing the door. “You look good, Mom.”

  “You look thin,” Frances responded. “You’re not eating enough.” It wasn’t a criticism, it was an observation. By now, she was standing in front of Zooey. “May I?” she asked.

  “Sure. Careful,” she cautioned as her mother took Jackie into her arms, “he’s a live wire.”

  Frances glanced at her daughter. She did love Zooey. Very much. And she’d missed her these past months. It had almost killed her to give Zooey the space she’d wanted. “And you weren’t?”

  Zooey shrugged carelessly. “I can’t remember that far back.”

  “Trust me,” Frances assured her, her voice now warm, “you were.” A wide smile replaced the cautious look. “What’s his name?”

  “Jackie. Jack Jr. John, Junior, really,” Zooey corrected. Since Jack never used his legal name, she tended to forget what was actually entered on their birth certificates.

  Frances nodded. It had been a long time since she’d held a child in her arms. Every maternal bone in her body woke up and rejoiced at the contact with this soft bundle of perpetual motion. She made the boy comfortable against her. He cuddled close and she savored the feeling.

  “Jackie,” Frances repeated. The little boy began to wiggle again in response to his name. “Hi, Jackie,” she murmured with a smile. She looked up at her daughter again. “Whose is he? Not yours, right?”

  There was a hint of longing in her mother’s voice. Zooey felt a smattering of guilt. Had she married Connor the way her parents had both hoped, she might have been well on her way to giving them their first grandchild.

  Zooey banished the thought from her brain. No point in thinking about things that mercifully never came to pass.

  “No, he’s not mine.” She stroked the boy’s hair. It was getting rather long, she thought, absently. Time for a haircut soon. “I’m just responsible for him.”

  There was no emotion in Frances’s voice, but her eyes gave her away. “You’re babysitting now?”

  Long ago, when she’d left college, Zooey had tried to make peace with the fact that she was going to be a disappointment to her parents. Still, it hurt to be in the same room as that disappointment, to see it take form.

  “It’s a little more professional-sounding than that, Mom. I’m a nanny.”

  “A nanny,” Frances echoed. “With a near-genius IQ.” She supposed it was a step up from dog walking, and tied with waitressing, but when she thought of the hopes she’d had for Zooey, the dreams…

  Frances caught herself. This wasn’t the way she wanted things to go with her daughter. “Sorry. I swore the next time I saw you, I wouldn’t be judgmental.” She looked down at Jackie. “Is this your way of trying to reconcile? Bringing me a baby to hold?”

  “No baby!” Jackie declared.

  Frances raised her eyes to Zooey’s in barely suppressed amusement.

  “He’s two,” Zooey told her with just a hint of exasperation.

  Frances smiled, remembering. Relieved that those years were long gone. And yet, i
n hindsight, things had been simpler back then. And the world a great deal smaller.

  She nodded, looking at the boy. “That would explain it.”

  Her mother was a natural at this, Zooey thought, watching her. Funny how she’d never realized that until now. “I was wondering if you could watch him for me.”

  “Now?” Her tone indicated that it wouldn’t have been out of the question, even if the answer was yes.

  “No,” Zooey told her quickly. She peered at her mother’s face. “It would be just for a few hours. This Saturday.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the best person for the job,” Zooey told her honestly. There was more she needed to say. Years to apologize for. She wasn’t sure just where to start. Taking a breath, she plunged in. “Look, Mom, I’ve been doing this for a while now—”

  Curiosity got the better of Frances. “What’s ‘a while’?”

  “Ten months.” Her momentum breached, Zooey began again. “And it’s taught me something.”

  Frances offered the keys to her Porsche to Jackie, who was immediately fascinated. His eyes sparkled as he took them in his chubby hands.

  “Patience?” Frances guessed, looking over his head at her daughter.

  “Among other things,” Zooey allowed, veering back on track again. “Mainly it’s taught me that you and Dad went through a lot raising me. Raising Kim and Ethan and Tyler, too,” she added, lest her mother thought she was singling herself out. “And…” Oh, what the hell. She could go on for hours with this. In the interest of brevity, she got to the bottom line. “Look, Mom, I’m sorry.”

  Puzzled, Frances stopped making funny faces at Jackie, who was a very receptive audience, and looked up at her daughter. “Come again?”

  “I’m sorry,” Zooey repeated, this time with more feeling. “I’m sorry for the grief I gave you, and for all the hard times.”

  Frances could hardly believe what she was hearing. This didn’t sound like her headstrong, stubborn daughter. She treaded lightly.

  “Does this mean you’re coming back? That you’ll work in the business?”

  That was a little further ahead than she’d intended on going right now.

  Zooey smiled. “No. It means I don’t want to be estranged anymore.”

  Shifting Jackie to her hip as easily as Zooey had, Frances laced her free arm around her daughter’s shoulders, bringing her closer and kissing her forehead. “I never was. Your father and I just let you have that ‘space’ you kept clamoring for.”

  “And I appreciate it,” Zooey told her honestly. “I also don’t want as much of it as I thought I did.” Her mother stared at her, surprised and pleased. “I know that you just want the best for me.”

  Jackie had latched on to her necklace. Gently, Frances disengaged his fingers and held them. She was nothing short of astounded at this epiphany her daughter had gone through. “That must be some job you have.”

  “It has its moments,” she admitted.

  Zooey went to take Jackie from her mother, thinking that she’d probably had enough for a first dose. To her surprise, she shook her head. Her mom had more endurance than she’d remembered.

  After being cut off for over ten months, Frances was hungry for details. “How many children are there?”

  “Two.” Zooey knew better than to say, “just two.” At times Emily and Jackie seemed more like an army. “Jackie and his sister, Emily. She’s seven and very shy. I’m trying to get her to come around a little.”

  Frances shook her head. “Can’t force these kinds of things.”

  “I know.” Zooey was working from memory here, realizing what it was like to be seven. She couldn’t remember what it was like to be shy because she’d never been that way a day in her life. “But there’s a little girl across the street who’s in Emily’s class. I’m taking the two of them shopping tomorrow. That’s why I need someone to watch the baby.” She stroked Jackie’s hair again.

  “What’s wrong with leaving him with his parents?” Frances asked matter-of-factly. Seemed to her that parents should want to spend time with the children they’d brought into the world. She’d had a career and still managed to make time for four children in various stages of growth. Never once did she think she was doing anything out of the ordinary. “I can’t see them not wanting to be with this huggable sweetie.”

  “Parent,” Zooey corrected. “There’s only one.”

  She saw curiosity in her mother’s eyes. “Divorced?”

  Zooey shook her head. “Widower.”

  “So then you’re working for a single father?” Frances asked with interest.

  “Yes.” She knew her mother. She needed to give Jack’s credentials quickly before Frances Finnegan allowed her imagination to run wild. “He’s a partner at a law firm—a criminal lawyer,” she added, not knowing if that was a good thing in her mother’s eyes.

  A slight frown flickered across Frances’s face. Obviously not a good thing, Zooey thought.

  “I certainly hope he doesn’t bring his work home.”

  Zooey sighed. “He rarely brings himself home.”

  Frances made the natural leap, given the information. “Then you live there?”

  “Yes,” Zooey said slowly, wondering if that was going to be a problem for her mother. She’d once thought of her mom as an extremely closed-minded woman—before she’d realized what it was like to worry about someone you cared about.

  Jackie threw down the keys. Frances scooped them up and set them aside, jiggling the child ever so slightly to keep him quiet. It was second nature to her. “And what’s this criminal lawyer’s name?” she asked.

  Oh, God, she wasn’t going to sic a P.I. on Jack, was she? “Mom, don’t get all maternal on me—”

  Frances gave her a serene smile. “Isn’t that why you came?”

  Zooey paused. “I came to mend fences and to ask for help. Limited help,” she stressed. “He’s a very nice man, Mom.”

  Now just a hint of suspicion appeared in her eyes. “Exactly how nice?”

  “Up to your standards nice,” Zooey told her. And then, because she could see her mother needed a little more convincing, she added, “Like Connor, except without the greed.”

  Frances had always been quick to defend those she’d taken a liking to, and she was not yet disenchanted with her firstborn’s ex-fiancé.

  “Connor wasn’t greedy.”

  “You never knew the real Connor, Mom.” Zooey’s engagement had long been a thing of the past, and she wanted to keep it that way. “But I didn’t come here to talk about him—”

  Frances looked at her. There was something Zooey needed to be told. “He’s dating Kim, you know.”

  The information caught Zooey off guard. Kim had always been competitive, wanting everything her sister had. There were times when Zooey thought her sibling didn’t have the sense to come out of the rain—not if she was trying to beat someone out. Zooey also knew that there was no way Kim would listen to anything she had to say.

  Kim was at that age, Zooey realized. How did their mom stand it?

  “Tell her to run for the hills,” was Zooey’s only comment. And then she smiled brightly, getting back to the reason for her visit. “So, will you do it? Will you watch Jackie for me tomorrow?”

  “How could I say no to such a handsome young man?” Frances laughed, giving Jackie one last hug before she surrendered him back to Zooey. “Come to the house and leave him as long as you like.” She paused for a moment before adding, “On one condition.”

  Zooey knew better than to say yes before she knew all the details. Uncle Andrew had taught her that, too. “And that condition is?”

  “You say hello to your father.”

  Well, that wasn’t really a hardship, especially seeing as how she wanted to get back into the fold. “Done,” Zooey declared.

  Frances took the hand she offered and shook it. “Done.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Look, Daddy, look!” Emily cried exc
itedly as she erupted through the door like a stick of TNT that had just been discharged.

  Standing in the living room, Jack swung around to peer at his daughter, not quite knowing what to expect.

  He had gotten in from the office less than half an hour ago and had been surprised to discover that no one was home yet. The silence was deafening and he found himself feeling restless. For more than one reason. Restless because he was accustomed to the feeling that his children were somewhere in the house, sleeping or causing havoc, and there was an odd sort of comfort in that knowledge.

  Restless, too, because of the evening that still lay ahead of him.

  He wasn’t really comfortable about this “adventure” he was embarking on.

  Jack’s social skills began and ended in his professional world, where there was a safety net in place and where whatever went on could touch him only so far and no further. He had control over his professional life. Felt in control.

  On a personal level, however, a completely different set of boundaries and parameters came into play. He felt as if he was out in the open, exposed. He didn’t like that feeling, and that was exactly what dating did to a man—it put him out in the clearing, away from any sort of protective covering. Like a buck at the height of deer hunting season.

  If he’d had a choice, Jack knew he wouldn’t be going through this.

  But he didn’t have a choice. Not really.

  He needed to find some sort of outlet for these pent-up feelings or else something regrettable could happen. Something that, once done, couldn’t be undone or taken back.

  But right now, for this small segment of time, he focused his attention exclusively on his little girl, who was pirouetting in front of him.

  Emily looked like a little doll, he thought, and yet there was a hint of the young woman who was to be.

  He had no idea where that strange, unexpected ache in his heart came from.

  “Who is this vision?”

  He addressed his question regarding his daughter to the woman coming in behind her. Glancing up, he saw that Zooey was herding his son before her. Both of her wrists were adorned with a multitude of rope handles attached to several shopping bags.