Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (19 page)

“Do you have Christmas plans?” Rose asked. “My sister is supposed to come, but we’ll still have plenty of room if you can join us.”

“Thanks, but the boys and I are going skiing in Colorado with
Dad and my brother’s family.” We had made these plans last spring before Cami and Jeremy had gotten engaged.

“What about New Year’s? Will you be in Colorado for the whole holiday? Would you like to come here for New Year’s?”

I could feel myself drawing back. This invitation seemed a little too urgent, a little too intense. Did Rose see me as her chance to have a friend again, a sister?

Other women had needed me. I was certified to drive one of the motorboats in the crew-team regattas; I could be counted on to stop a Cub Scout’s spurting blood; when the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon Committee wanted entrées that didn’t need to be refrigerated or reheated, they knew I could come up with something great.

Until my mother’s last illness, I hadn’t seen the difference between people needing me and needing the things I could do. But my mother hadn’t wanted me because I was a nurse and knew my way around a hospital. She had wanted me at her bedside because I was me, her daughter.

And now that she was gone, I probably did want someone to want me that way again. Rose wanted something; I wanted something. Maybe it was the same thing.

“It’s sounds like fun. I’ll try to make it work,” I promised. “I really will.”

When I told Rose that we were coming, there was no trace of the desperate relief I expected to hear. Maybe I had read too much into the tone of her invitation. Maybe she had simply been tired. Maybe I had been the needy one, and that’s what I had needed to hear.

A few days later she called me back. “I need to apologize and explain. After I heard from you, I tried to get reservations for Mike and Claudia—”

I blinked. I hadn’t known that she was going to invite them. She didn’t need to. New Year’s Eve was not a ‘must do’ holiday in our family.

“—And there is nothing anywhere close. They’d be driving for miles and staying in a very ordinary motel. So I had to ask them to stay at the house. It would look so inhospitable not to. They have to know we have the space.”

So she had already invited them. She wasn’t asking my permission.

And why should she have to? It was her house, wasn’t it?

“I hope that this won’t be too awkward for you,” she finished.

“For
me
? Oh, goodness, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

But this year was different. I couldn’t invite him without Claudia, and I didn’t want to invite her. I didn’t have room to store twelve metallic-thread quilted placemats with a matching table
runner. So I said nothing, and eventually Mike invited Zack to go to dinner with Claudia and him that night.

A few days before Mike’s birthday, Rose called me to apologize for the “Christmas trip,” but Cami needed to spend the entire holiday on wedding plans.

“I know. That’s what Jeremy said. I never thought that she was coming to Colorado with us.”

“Oh, no, not that trip. Hasn’t Claudia called you?”

“No.”

Apparently Claudia had a notion to surprise Mike on his birthday with a trip to one of the Virgin Islands before they went to the Hamptons for New Year’s. She’d called Rose to see if she could get a ticket for Cami.

“She wasn’t planning on taking my boys, was she?” I asked.

“She said Mike has them for Christmas.”

“For Christmas Day. And Christmas Eve too if he wants. But on the evening of the twenty-fifth, I’m taking them to Colorado to go skiing. We’re meeting Dad and my brother Chuck’s family.”

“Oh, I was supposed to know that, wasn’t I?” Rose sighed. “I can’t keep track of my own plans anymore, much less other people’s.”

“And Mike knows about the Colorado trip too.”

“He doesn’t know anything about the Virgin Islands. It’s a surprise. I assumed that Claudia had cleared it with you.”

“Well, she didn’t. I wonder if I should tell her about it.”

“That’s totally up to you,” Rose said. “I didn’t mean to be the intermediary.”

Rose had called me as I was walking out the door for work, so I couldn’t have called Claudia then. My shifts were particularly grueling, so I didn’t think about Rose’s call again until the morning of Mike’s birthday when I was reminding Zack that he was to meet Mike and Claudia at the restaurant.

“Will Dad pay if I have to put the car in a lot?”

“Of course.”

I watched him hoist his backpack and trudge out the door. I wondered what I would have done if I had remembered Rose’s call. Would I have gotten in touch with Claudia? I didn’t know. Surely it would have been her place to call me. I double checked my e-mail inbox—the messages accumulated while I was working—and there was nothing from her. She must have dropped the plan.

I spent most of the day in the kitchen. A giant blue plywood stork had appeared in the front yard of a family down the street. Although I had spoken to them only a time or two, I prepared three different entrées for them to put in the freezer. The new mother was desperately grateful. The baby was asleep, so I didn’t get to hold him, but the mom told me to stop by anytime between one and four a.m.; he was always awake then.

Sooner than I’d expected, I heard Zack’s car in the drive, followed by the sound of a second car. I went to the door. Mike had followed Zack home.

Zack started talking right away. “We’re going skiing at Christmas with Grandpa and Uncle Chuck, aren’t we?”

I nodded. “We leave the night of the twenty-fifth.”

Mike followed him up the steps. “May I come in for a minute?”

In the living room, he looked tired and harassed. “When I told Claudia that I’d have the boys for Christmas, she misunderstood. So she made some travel arrangements and hoped to include them.”

“Then she’s going to be disappointed. She hasn’t made any definite plans, has she?”

“Well, actually, yes. She didn’t buy their plane tickets, but she has rented a large house in St. Thomas and arranged some activities.
She booked us on a private charter boat for a couple of day trips. She’s put a lot of effort into this.” He did not look at all excited. “Believe me, Darcy, I knew nothing about it . . . so I was wondering if just this once you could be flexible.”

I’ve never known anyone to stick with a “just this once” pledge. “Mike, my dad paid for our tickets. You know there’s no way I’m going to tell him that the boys aren’t coming.”

“What about if they came a few days later? On the twenty-seventh or so. I’d pay for all the ticket changes.”

It would probably take them much of a day to get from St. Thomas to Colorado. “Chuck only has the house until the thirtieth. And then we’re going straight to Rose and Guy’s for New Year’s. Mike, this is not going to work. I am not going to truncate my dad’s time with the boys . . . or theirs with their cousins.”

“Just this once, Darcy . . . please.”

“No.”

“Dad, I told you this is what she would say.” Zack sounded a little triumphant. “There was no reason for you to follow me home.”

I winced. Zack should have kept his mouth shut.

“You may be right about that, Zack,” Mike said too slowly, too patiently, “but you could have been more considerate of Claudia’s feelings.”

“Me? What did I do wrong?” The triumph drained from his voice. He turned to me. “Mom, I was fine. Okay, I didn’t like it when I saw her sitting there all puffed up—you know how people get when they think they’re about to give you the treat of a lifetime and they can’t wait until you’re groveling with joy—I admit that that rubs me the wrong way.”

I knew that about him. He was always surprising me— completely, even deliberately failing when I expected him to do something, but coming through when it never occurred to me that he would. He hated having people expect something from him.
The minute he started to smell expectations, he went running in the other direction.

“So I looked inside the envelope,” he continued. “She had given them to me and Dad at the same time, and once I figured out why I was looking at a picture of a big house on the ocean, I thanked her, and I was really nice, saying that it looked like a great trip, but that Jeremy and I couldn’t go.”

I couldn’t see anything wrong with that.

“But you didn’t have to say it right then,” Mike said. “You could have waited and let me handle it later.”

“I could have,” Zack answered, “but I didn’t.”

“Let’s not make this about Zack,” I said. “Claudia made a mistake. I can understand her wanting to arrange a surprise for you, but she should have checked on the boys’ schedules first. She should have talked to me.”

“It wasn’t anything personal,” Mike defended her. “She wasn’t deliberately ignoring you. She’s never had to deal with family situations before.”

“She knew enough to call Rose to see if Cami could come.”

He paused. “You knew about this?”

Oh, Darcy, why can’t you keep your mouth shut?
“Only through Rose.”

“Then why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you call Claudia and stop her?”

“For all I knew, once Rose said Cami couldn’t go, Claudia bailed on the whole idea. Why was it my responsibility to get involved?”

“Oh, come on, Darcy. You’re not afraid of getting involved. Didn’t you call what’s-her-name’s mom when you were afraid that she and Jeremy were going to start having sex?’

Zack had been trying to ease out of the room, but he was suddenly alert. “You did what?’

“It was a long time ago,” I answered, trying to keep the conversation from hopping down this particular bunny trail.

“Have you ever called a girl’s mother about me?”

“There’s no right answer to that,” I replied. “Either you will be mad at me if I did call or offended if I didn’t.”

He grinned. “That’s true, but which is it?”

“I hover less with you than with him.”

“You just think I can’t get laid.”

“Zack!” Mike exploded. “That’s no way to talk to your mother.”

“Oh, come on, Dad. I haven’t done anything wrong here. Claudia screwed up, not Mom or me.”

“And if Claudia’s really determined to have a happy-family-on-the-beach Christmas,” I put in, “why don’t you take your mother?”

But then I heard that Mike and Claudia were taking Marge with them.

I would not have wished that on anyone.

“This dish brings back so many wonderful memories,” he said with a sigh.

In the middle of our family harmony, I had to wonder about Claudia, Mike, and Marge, a threesome vacationing together in St. Thomas. What kind of time were they having? Any ill feelings I had for Claudia didn’t justify my sticking her with Marge for a week, and as the boys and I were flying from Colorado to New York, I decided that I wanted to apologize to her.