Kate Jacobs (26 page)

* * *

One hour and several wrong turns later, the
women were long past any moment of shared understanding.
"That's the twenty-third car to pass us," moaned Cat from the back.
"I think my legs are going to be permanently cramped in this tiny back
seat. When are we going to be there?"
"I think that's my line," said Dakota, peering around with a grin.
Georgia stared straight ahead, ignoring both of them, white-knuckling the
wheel. Goddamn it was hard to drive on these tiny little roads! Hadn't the
public works heard of shoulders on a highway? Though you could barely call
these compact lanes a highway, could you? Just winding, swerving lanes flowing
through the countryside, the farms on either side overflowing with a billion
sheep, some with their fluffy butts painted a mysterious red or blue in some
secret Scottish sheep code.
In a rare moment of solidarity, Georgia felt a new appreciation for her mother,
Bess, and how she had dreaded all those trips to visit Gran. The journey was a
heckuva
lot easier when none of the responsibility rested
on you, she thought, as Dakota kicked off her shoes and put her feet up on the
dashboard.
Vroom! Another car passed them as she slowed prematurely, wary of driving
through yet another country village with its compact houses and stern churches
built right up to the side of the road. Most of the time she thought of all of
New York's rules and regulations for renovations to be just an excuse to keep
more paper pushers in their jobs; now she had the evidence right in front of
her for the need for building codes. Some of these homes must be unbelievably
old, she realized, feeling a sense of déjà vu and pride as she thought of her
people, her ancestors, toiling it out and getting on with things.
"I wonder if these people can sleep at night, worried that someone might
drive right into their bedroom?" she commented lightly.
"I'd think the car would probably be pretty banged up before it got too
far into these stone walls. And you'd need to be going a great deal faster than
you're going right now…" Cat let her sentence trail off.
Georgia glanced over the dashboard. SLOW DOWN TO 30 was painted in large
letters on the asphalt. She looked quickly at the speedometer: 15.
Ack
! Cat was right; it would be nighttime before she made
it to
Gran's
. She accelerated slightly, caught sight
of a young couple coming out of a doorway, and hit the brakes—though the man
and woman were in no danger and well enough off the road.
"I didn't know they had such stop-and-go traffic in the Scottish
countryside," said Cat dryly. "We'd have done better to travel by
sheep."
Georgia didn't reply directly.
"Dakota, did you know that Cat failed her driver's test four times when
she was in high school," said Georgia, her eyes still glued to the road,
feeling slightly guilty for calling Cat out in front of her daughter but mostly
wanting to let Cat know she hadn't forgotten.
Dakota's eyes grew wide as she swiveled around to view the scrunched-up figure
of Cat, rumpled and fuming, in the back.
"You failed?"
"I passed it on the fourth try," Cat responded curtly. "Which
means I only failed three times. And failure, if you want to know, Dakota, is
just another opportunity to try again."
"Touché," said Georgia.
"So like what did my mom do in high school? Did she ever get in
trouble?"
"You mean like the time she climbed out her window and down the big oak
tree in front of the house to go to the biggest party of the year at Rich
Holloway's house?"
"Mom! You snuck out?!"
"Should I really be copping to this? Thanks for bringing it up, Cat."
Georgia focused on the road for a second before she replied.
"I guess I thought my mother was being too strict—it was summer, after
all, and I'd done all my work around the farm." Georgia waited a beat.
"But now I realize I should have listened to my mother because she
probably knew best. Because someone who shall remain nameless tripped over a
tree root and screamed to high heaven because she sprained her ankle. Just as
we were almost home free. Literally." She leaned over and stage-whispered
to her daughter: "The culprit is in the back seat."
"Did you get grounded?"
"No, she did not, Dakota—and you want to know why?" Cat leaned up
from the back, not that she had too far to go.
"Man, I'd forgotten all about that part of it," said Georgia quietly
as Cat continued, Dakota hanging on her every syllable.
"Because I told her to sneak on up to her room and I told Mr. and Mrs.
Walker that I was just arriving to convince Georgia to come with me to the
party. And she got into her
nightie
, and by the time
they came up to her room, she was totally acting like she was asleep."
"Wow. So did you get in trouble, Cat?"
"Trouble
schmouble
. There was a consequence,
though. That's when Mom and Dad insisted I get the job at Dairy Queen to keep
myself busy."
"Didn't you live on a farm?"
"No, we lived in town. Dad worked at the bank and Mom worked at throwing
dinner parties for his boss." Cat gave a little snort. "I guess the
apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
Dakota, though, was more intrigued by the idea of an ice cream shop.
"So could you just eat whatever you wanted? Did they let you invent your
own sundae flavors?"
"Not anything so grand, I'm afraid. A lot of ringing up soft-serve and
cleaning out the Blizzard machine."
"And you couldn't run the cash register! Oh, man, do I remember this
now!" Georgia was laughing so hard she was very near relaxed; her foot was
easing into the gas pedal so that the Vauxhall was almost—not quite—going the
speed limit.
"You couldn't run the till?" Dakota, who had grown up above the yarn
shop her entire life, was absolutely incredulous. "I could run one when I
was, like, seven."
"They were harder to run in those days. Lots of buttons."
"They still have lots of buttons."
"Okay, okay, it's true. I couldn't operate the cash machine, and I was put
on probation."
"On her first day," added Georgia.
"On my first hour," corrected Cat. "So I spent the entire time
flipping burgers in the back. And then I called Georgia, who scammed out on the
hay-baling to drive into town…"
"And showed up right at closing to ask the boss for permission to help her
figure out how to run the register."
"Did you work at the Dairy Queen, too, Mom?"
"No, sweetie, I was either at the farm or at school working on the
paper—with Cat as my star columnist, no less."
"So how did you know what to do?"
"I just jumped in there and kept at it until I'd figured it out. And you
never know when a skill is going to come in handy—I was awfully glad I didn't have
one more thing to learn when I started the shop. I had enough on my hands
raising a genius baby!" Georgia reached over to give Dakota's cheek a
light pinch.
"Someone read the signs—I think we're coming up to the M74."
"Righty-ho," announced Dakota with glee, then looked at her mother
with concern. "It's a big roundabout."
"Well, then, we'll just go around and around until I can get us out of
it."
"Hmmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, about fifteen minutes
ago—" Cat's sniping was cut short by an insistent buzzing sound.
"What is that?"
"Is that your cell phone?"
"Your cell phone works here?"
"It's GSM—very pricey." Cat looked at the display. "Oh, shit,
it's Adam."
"Hey, watch your language!" said Dakota. A little surprised to hear
Cat swear, a little thrilled by it, too.
"Yeah, not in front of my wee lassie," said Georgia, more keenly
focused on the coming lane switch.
The buzzing continued.
"Should I answer it?"
"Up to you, Cat," said Georgia.
"I don't know. I didn't tell him I was going. Do you think he's calling to
yell or woo me back?"
"Didn't receive a memo on that one while I've been driving around all
these Scottish roads, Cat, so I don't know," Georgia replied. "Maybe
the credit card company called him."
"Oh, shit!"
"Hey! Not in front of me!" Dakota wagged her finger at her mother's
flustered friend.
The buzzing stopped.
"It's gone to voice mail. Okay, what a relief," said Cat. "He
could be mad. Should I pick up the message now, you think? Or maybe
later?"
She felt a rush of excitement at the idea that Adam was trying to reach her.
Maybe he realized that she was pretty damn great, after all. Then again, he
hadn't cared enough to keep her on his credit cards. The phone began to vibrate
again, startling Cat into dropping it on the floor of the car and having to paw
around her feet to find it again.
"Shit! Shit! It's him again! Georgia! Should I pick up?"
The roundabout was directly ahead and a steady stream of traffic was hurtling
into the triple lanes, all the other drivers knowing exactly how to navigate
the circle to get to where they needed to be. Shit.
"Here, give it to me," said Georgia, reaching her hand back without
removing her eyes from the cars ahead. Cat passed forward the noisy, pulsing
handset, still shrieking and muttering. Georgia took a quick glance, saw ADAM
clearly displayed, and leaned on the window button to roll down the glass and
drop the mobile phone onto the roadway.
"Oops," she said, without even an attempt at sincerity.
"Charge!" Georgia accelerated a bit into the roundabout. There were
angry honks as she crossed all three lanes at once. "Oops," she said,
really meaning it this time, ignoring Cat's swearing and Dakota's eye-rolling
as she successfully made her way out of the circle and onto the roadway.
With any luck, they would be at Granny's by teatime.
After passing by, oh, another million sheep—Dakota was counting "one lamb,
two lamb" all the way—Georgia was relieved to pull up to her granny's
house, a compact brick cottage with a trim around the windows, painted a sunny,
canary yellow. The same paint decorated the rounded front door, which looked to
be taking up a full third of the front of the house. Funny, she'd always
remembered the house being bigger, thought Georgia to herself as she parked the
car and released the newly cell-free Cat from her backseat bondage. They'd
walked barely a step when the massive door opened and onto the front concrete
landing came a petite elderly lady in a collared white blouse and a red
buttoned cardigan over black slacks, laced-up oxfords on her feet and her back
as straight as a ruler. An orange tabby beside her on the step meowed a
greeting. Funny, Gran was tinier than Georgia remembered, too.
"The Walker family together at last!" called out this five-foot-five
dynamo with the tight white curls, holding out her arms to greet her
five-foot-five counterpart with tight dark braids. Dakota was grinning from ear
to ear even as Granny used all of her ninety-year-old strength to hug the
stuffing out of her.
It felt good, truly awesome, to be back in the place she loved so much. Why had
she stayed away so long?
Slowly she walked up to the front walkway, staring down at the ground as though
not to seem undignified in front of Cat and run into her grandmother's arms as
she had when she was Dakota's age.
"Hello, Gran," she said to the wee old lady with the bright blue
eyes, arm in arm with Dakota already.
"Ach, Georgia," replied the woman, her face positively glowing.
"The heart of my heart."
And then the older woman reached out to give her adult granddaughter a tight
squeeze and in that moment all of Georgia's fears and responsibilities faded
away, back to that other time and place across the ocean. For now, all that
mattered was Gran and all the days and nights ahead, drinking tea and knitting
or walking around the fields and showing Dakota all the history that was theirs
together.
And Cat Phillips? She was seeming more like Cathy Anderson every minute.

* * *

Not too much later, the guests were settled
into their rooms—Georgia and Dakota to share the big bed in the guest room, Cat
(who'd realized her plans of a country-house hotel might not work out once her
credit had been nixed) set up in the daybed in the corner of
Gran's
sewing/knitting room. They'd had the grand tour: a
peek into the lounge with its matching navy loveseats and coal-burning stove;
the wallpaper of roses and vines in the dining room; and the tidy, efficient
kitchen with its gleaming white appliances and painted cupboards, a
wall-mounted plate rack displaying
Gran's
wedding
china (intertwined leaves and a gold border on a cream background). The rooms
were cozy, but somehow they didn't feel small, mainly because the furniture was
just the right size.
Gran's
house was the anti-
McMansion
.
"It's like a dollhouse for people," said Dakota, admiring the
colorful striped afghan on the wide iron bed, the knitted cozy on the teapot,
the cotton dishrags that Gran had stitched together and actually used. (A good
texture gives better scrubbing action, she told Dakota conspiratorially. A
pattern should be, at its core, a practical plan for achieving a goal.) Georgia
was comforted somehow to see the advice-giving had started already. Gran was
not one for idle chitchat about what was on television or the last book she'd
read. No, her grandmother had always been one to say what needed to be said to
get a job done, or to pass along important wisdom. Which could, of course, be
anything from how to get an extra meal out of leftovers to choosing a husband.
Advice, thought Georgia, thy name is Gran.
She sat down at the old wooden table in the kitchen—the breakfast nook—in the
same spot she'd sat at every visit, with a view out the back window to the yard
and garden and the farm fields beyond. The tea things had already been laid
out, the cups and saucers, spoons, a generous pitcher of milk, the sugar bowl,
and a plate of still-warm shortbread and another of homemade bread and jam.
Gran was swirling around just enough hot water to warm up the teapot, then
dumped it into the sink. She dropped in three spoonfuls of loose-leaf tea and
filled the teapot near to the brim with just-boiled water from the kettle,
brought it all over to the table to steep.
"Hands washed?" she asked.
"Yes, Gran! I'm thirty-seven years old."
"Never too old to be looked after, I say."
They sat down to wait for Cat, hearing instead the sounds of the water being
turned on in the bathtub.
"Most unusual." Gran had the gift for few words that said much.
"Gran, about Cat coming here. It's just that…"
"Happy to have her, dear. Any friend of yours is more than welcome. Even
if they do take a bath at teatime."
"Well, it's just that she's not really, well, I don't know if I ever told
you."
"I may be old, Georgia, but my mind is clear. I've kept every letter you
ever sent and enjoyed rereading them on occasion, to be honest. Keeps me
company. So I know very well who Cathy Anderson is, whether or not she's
calling herself by the name of a domesticated animal."
"I don't think she's very domesticated," Dakota chimed in. Georgia
shot her a look.
"I think you're right about that, my dear. This one is growing up quickly,
Georgia; she's seeing the world as it is," said Gran, catching Georgia's
look of exasperation quite well. She reached out to tap her grown granddaughter's
hand. "I know, dear, I know. It's always hardest on the mothers."