Mom Over Miami (11 page)

Sam wrinkled up his nose. “Tessa’s a baby.”

“But she likes you. Haven’t you seen the way her face lights up and her whole body wriggles when you come into the room?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Payt jiggled the pack on Sam’s back to shift the school supplies down so the thing didn’t throw the kid off balance. “And don’t forget, wherever you go, God goes with you.”

“I heard Aunt Phiz say that God isn’t allowed in schools anymore.”

“Some people want that, but that’s just because they don’t understand that they can’t tell God what to do or where to go. He’s everywhere.” Hannah fussed with the boy’s collar. “You just have to pray. And before you tell me prayer isn’t allowed in school, it
is
in this one.”

Sam whooshed out a long breath. “Good.”

“And that’s not all.” Hannah drew her shoulders up. “You know this school we picked out for you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know why we picked it?”

Sam looked at the blond brick building with the bright red doors. “Because it’s a Christian school?”

“Yes, that, and also because we got some personal recommendations about it.”

Payt had worried about the expense of private education but Hannah had put her foot down. They had no idea how much time they would have with Sam. They owed it to the child to give him as much as they could for as long as they could. That meant an education that exposed him to the values they shared in a clean, safe environment. It also meant helping him to feel less isolated. To give him the gift of not just being loved but the blessing of being
liked
.

“You know who recommended this place to us?”

He shook his head.

“Stilton’s mom.” Yes, Hannah had turned to her exemplary counterpart for guidance. If anyone knew the best, it would be Lauren Faison. “Stilton goes to this school.”

“Really?”

“Yup, and his mom says that a couple of the other boys on your team go here, too.”

His mouth hung open for a second before he narrowed one eye and cocked his head. “Just ’cause they go there doesn’t mean we’ll be in the same class.”

“Well, that’s why
you
are headed to school, young man.
You
don’t know everything. This school only has one class in each grade.”

He looked at the school, then at Payt, then Hannah, then the school again. “So I’ll be sure to have my friends in my class? For sure?”

“For sure.”

“Yeah!” Sam gave a little jump, then pivoted and ran off as fast as his legs would carry him.

“Sam, aren’t you going to give me a goodbye hug?” Hannah called out.

“I don’t have time now. I want to go to school!” He never looked back, just charged on through the doors and down the hallway.

“Bye, Sam.” Hannah sniffled. “I’ll be here to pick you up at three.”

Payt put his arm around her and nuzzled her cheek. “Now what’s wrong? I thought you wanted him to want to go to school.”

“I did. But I didn’t want him to want it that much.”

NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING.

“C
an I count on you then?” Everybody needed somebody who could always be counted on. And today Hannah needed everybody she needed to count on to come through for her. Starting with her aunt. “Aunt Phiz?”

“Yes, dear, go right on talking. I’m listening. I’ve done this so many times, I can do it blindfolded.”

“Blindfolded, huh?” She studied her aunt.

Wearing a blue-and-orange kimono, Phiz massaged her freckled fingers through a crop of brilliant red hair—a shade not normally found in nature, much less on a seventysomething-year-old woman.

Hannah plunked her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand, musing, “Beauty treatments done blindfolded. That explains so much, Aunt Phiz.”

“Oh, you.” She waved off the gentle teasing and padded barefoot through the kitchen clutching to her chest a grocery bag full of permanent wave curlers. “Run through your schedule for me again, dear.”

“Mmm.” She sat straight and shimmied her upper body then lifted her shoulders left then right, to try to release some of the tension that never seemed to entirely leave her
body. When that didn’t work, she sighed, poked a spoonful of mushy cereal into Tessa’s mouth and said, “I have a morning meeting with the DIY sisters.”

“The
D-A-F-F-Y
sisters if you ask me.” Aunt Phiz fixed a towel around her neck with a big yellow plastic clip they usually used to keep potato chips fresh in an open bag. “Have they ever finished their takeover project?”

“It’s called a
make
over, Aunt Phiz.” She watched her baby for a reaction to the new taste sensation.

The baby’s whole body tightened. She made a face.

Hannah braced herself. “And no, no progress to speak of yet. Every time we talk, they have one teeny more thing they want to add.”

Tessa swallowed. Her eyes grew wide. She stuck her feet out, toes pointed, and poked her arms out straight to ask for more.

Hannah thought she must have given birth to the single most adorable baby on the planet.

She fed her daughter another spoonful. “They must be nearly done by now. Why else would they want to meet with me?”

“Maybe they want you to approve them wallpapering over the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary.”

Tessa gobbled down the cereal and thumped both hands on her high-chair tray.

“Very funny. Your aunt Phiz should go into comedy full-time, don’t you think, Tessa?”

“I’ll do that when your mama goes into the travel business.”

“Travel?”

“Why not? You’ve become a whiz at herding those little ones into new and more exotic places every Sunday, all the while smiling and asking sweetly when the cruise directors on the good ship Follypop think the decorating will be done.”

“When you put it that way, it does sound like a takeover.”

“Does it?” She hummed lightly while she dunked her tea bag in her favorite cup, one hand still holding the bulging bag of curlers.

“You know it does but…wait a minute! You sidetracked me. The subject was you sitting with Tessa, not the sisters walking all over me.”

“Of course I’ll sit with Tessa, dear.”

“Terrific. I won’t take more than two hours. Three if they don’t want me there.”

Aunt Phiz laughed and gave Hannah a quick hug in passing. “How could anyone not want my Hannah Banana? Just let me finish doing up my hair.”

“Now?”

“Well, yes. Now. What did you think I was up to with all this?” She held the grocery bag aloft and shook it like a cheap maraca.

“Aunt Phiz, I almost never know what you’re up to. Or when. Why do you have to do your hair now? Can’t it wait until I get back?”

“Hair waits for no woman, my dear.” She jumbled the frayed mass of red sticking every which way on her head.
“I’d love to oblige you, but the lady from across the street has kindly agreed to come over and help out.”

“I thought you could do it blindfolded.”

“Not the back anymore. Can’t keep the old arms up like I used to.” She yanked back the delicately decorated kimono sleeve to reveal a pale, aged arm. “Perhaps I should take up weight lifting?”

“Maybe you could start with lifting some of my load.” She shouldn’t have snapped, but with Sam in school and Tessa getting her eating and sleeping habits sorted out for the first time in weeks, Hannah had actually looked forward to getting out by herself. “It’s not like I ask you to pitch in very often.”

“I know, dear. And that’s precisely why I’m unavailable to you so often.”

“There’s some logic swimming around in that murky pond of your reasoning. I just know it.”

“Yep.” Aunt Phiz tipped the bag up and sent a cascade of colorful plastic curlers clattering over the tabletop.

“You going to share it with me, or do I have to go fishing for it?”

“Always the first to take action.” The older woman began sorting the curlers by color. “You never could wait for something to come to you—you had to go and get it.”

“This is no mere pond of confusion. It’s a whirlpool. Round and round.” Hannah swirled her wrist, and rotated her head to illustrate her point. “You’re trying to make me so dizzy I can’t remember the favor I asked you. Is that your plan?”

“The only twirling round I plan includes these and this.” She held a pink perm rod up to a strand of hair to demonstrate. “I planned to do this days ago. I had time to make these plans because despite my having come here to lighten your load around the house, you never ask me to do anything.”

“Now. I asked you
now
.”

“And when I offer to do anything, you refuse to let me.”

“When?”

“When I asked you to let me get up with Tessa sometimes at night.”

“She’s my first baby. Her crying wakes me up anyway. Why should I put you out?”

“Fine. Then how about when I made those cookies for Sam’s team and suddenly you’re there sticking raisins and apples on them and taking over the whole project?”

“Just trying to live up to my title of Snack Mom.” She held her hands up to frame her face.

Aunt Phiz
tsked
.

Hannah dropped her hands into her lap. “It’s not like that worked out to make me look good. They ate your cookies and left my finishing touches…untouched.”

“You wouldn’t even let me clean up the raisins.”

“My mistake. My responsibility.”

“Mine, mine, mine. I think that might have been your first word.”

“Doesn’t anyone in my family have something nice to say about me?”

“Everyone in your family has wonderful things to say by you.” She pursed her lips as she spoke, the same way they talked to Tessa when she pitched a fit over a dropped toy or fought off an onslaught of strained peas. “But none of that would mean a thing if we never spoke the truth to you, as well.”

“Okay. Fine. Speak the truth, Aunt Phiz.”

“You sure?”

“You flew from China to Loveland for my benefit. I’d be stupid not to take advantage of your input.”

“
Stupid?
Pretty strong word to use about yourself.”

“You going to lecture me about how I talk to myself, too?”

“Just taking note, dear.” She took a sip of tea, waggled her head, made a silly face at Tessa, then focused on Hannah again. “And by the way, I flew here from India, not China.”

“I knew that.” She bumped the heel of her hand to her forehead. “You probably think I’m so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t realize I kept saying that wrong.”

“I don’t think you’re wrapped up in yourself, Hannah.”

“Mine, mine, mine?”

“Your first word. Simple. Innocent, really. Your way of declaring your independence…and your insecurities. Your whole life, I’ve seen those forces at war within you.”

At six years old, Hannah’s sister Sadie had pushed her off the monkey bars and Hannah had had the wind knocked out of her. This felt a lot like that.

“But you know, sweet girl, insecurities and the driving desire for independence—they stem from the same place.”

“Really?” She didn’t want to hear more, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself from asking, “Where?”

“You tell me. Close your eyes.”

The spoon full of pasty-smelling cereal froze in midair. Hannah’s hand trembled slightly.

“Close your eyes,” Aunt Phiz urged again, this time slipping the spoon from Hannah’s hand and taking up the task of feeding Tessa herself.

Hannah swallowed. If she leapt up now and pretended she had to go, she might make her getaway. But get away from what? Independence and insecurities stemmed from the same place—within her. No matter how fast she ran, she’d never get away from that.

So she obeyed her aunt and shut her eyes.

“Your fear that nobody wants you and your need to prove that you don’t need anybody come from…” She took Hannah’s hand and waited for her to finish.

“My mother’s leaving.” No surprise there. Then why did the hurt of saying it feel so fresh?

“Honey, she’s been gone all your life. Isn’t it time you finally found a way to make peace with that? With her? With yourself?”

“I’ve tried. And every time I think I just may have done it—”

“Knock, knock!” A woman’s voice wafted through the house from the front door.

Aunt Phiz flinched, then started to lumber up from her chair. “That’s the neighbor lady. I’ll send her on and stay and take care of Tessa.”

“Phyllis? Just poking my head in to say I got all the way over here and forgot my glasses. I’ll be right back.”

Phiz turned to call out, but Hannah stopped her.

“It’s okay. You made these plans long before I sprang this Tessa deal on you.”

“But you deserve some time alone to deal with the destroy-it-yourself sisters and maybe do a bit of soul-searching.”

Soul-searching? Destroy-it-yourself? Hannah shuddered to hear them both so closely phrased together. “No, thanks, Aunt Phiz. You get your hair done. Tessa can tag along with me this time.”

“Or you could pack your bags and fly away.”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Hannah rolled her eyes. Of course she remembered.

But Aunt Phiz was going to tell it anyway. “When you girls were little, I’d come and stay as often as possible. But my work made demands. And there were those times when my husbands were still alive and expected the wifey to put in the odd appearance at home.”

“Odd appearance. Have you ever made any other kind?” Hannah chuckled kindly.

“I’d like to think that sometimes I made a welcome appearance?”

“Yes.” She could still recall the excitement that ruled
their house when word came that their aunt had scheduled a visit. “But then you always had to…you always had to fly away.”

“And you used to ask if you could come.”

Hannah shut her eyes again. She took in a deep breath, and with it the familiar scent of tea and baby food and home. “Pack me in your bag, Aunt Phiz, and fly me away with you.”

“I’d do it now if I could, but you’re too big to fit in my bag.” She touched the tip of Hannah’s nose. “And you have your own husband and family expecting you to make the odd appearance around the house.”

“True, and right now I have two sisters who want me to appear at the church in a few minutes—only I won’t be the odd one in that scenario.”

“One phone call and I can cancel my hair.”

“Oh, no, Aunt Phiz. How could I ever live with myself if I were the cause of you canceling your hair?” Hannah smiled, kissed her aunt on the cheek and started taking the baby out of her high chair.

“The baby won’t get in the way?”

Hannah pressed her lips to the child’s chubby, cereal-slimed cheek. “Never. Besides, it’s just two very well-intentioned women slapping some paint on a nursery wall. Nothing I can’t handle. Nothing we can’t handle together—right, Tessa?”

The baby giggled.

“What a happy, happy girl you are!” Hannah cooed. “Ready to go out and take on the world?”

Tessa kicked her legs and laughed some more.

Hannah had barely gotten the first hint of chuckle out when the smell hit her.