Seeing Things (27 page)

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Authors: Patti Hill

BOOK: Seeing Things
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Before Suzanne arrived home, we rolled the great-room rug back into place and replaced the furniture. Fletcher returned to his room to catch up on missed homework, and I retreated to my room to listen to a book on tape, but mostly to pray. Quite frankly, I can't remember a time when I'd prayed so much, but then I'd never felt so helpless before. The topic of Fletcher and boarding school seemed to come up regularly.
On a Monday, ten days after the accident, Fletcher returned to school with the skin under his eyes a sickly green and an eye-catching bandage over his nose. He hefted his bag to his shoulder and walked out the door. I admired his courage, especially since he'd announced the night before that he'd be attending youth group with Mi Sun that evening. He'd dismissed Suzanne's arguments handily, saying he had always wanted to learn snake charming. I closed the bedroom door and prayed for him most of the morning, lowering him through the roof to Jesus. I pushed my head through the hole and hollered, “Make him invisible to bullies! Knock on the door of his heart. Harder! Remind him how to waltz! Prepare a loving bride for him! And I wouldn't mind a dozen great-grandchildren either!”
Since it was Lupe's day off, I wandered into the kitchen to throw together a sandwich for lunch. That's when I conceived the worst possible plan of my life, even more ill-fated than painting Grandma Foster's false teeth black.
I made donuts.
Chapter 28
I sat on the patio with my daughter, Diane, freshly arrived from a bridge-building project in Dublin. She sat with her legs splayed out before her. Her hair hung limp over her shoulders, completely platinum as mine had been by her age, only straight as a ruler. I hadn't seen her in five years, even though we had vowed to visit one or the other at least once a year. And here she was on a mission of collusion. A pair of robins I'd come to know from their chittering sounded the alarm. A neighborhood cat on the prowl? A duplicitous daughter?
From inside the house, the whine of power tools and the pounding of hammers thudded against my chest. I promised myself to call Emory once Diane headed back to Ireland. I'd made enough of a mess; it was time to go home.
“Ma, Andy thinks your behavior has been a little . . . erratic. And, well, he's concerned about your safety.” Diane's voice, fatigued from hours on jets and in stale airports, made me want to pull her into my arms and sing her a lullaby, but I knew better. Diane, of my two children, was most like me—independent and self-contained.
“Is that Andy talking or Suzanne, the great protector of order and perfection?”
Diane pulled her hair into a ponytail and let it fall down her back. “They say you've been talking to yourself, that you've been agitated.”
“It's very sad what passes for a family here, Diane. They never laugh together. Fletcher walks on eggshells constantly.”
“You nearly burned the house down.”
“I charred some cabinets.”
“Perhaps some changes are in order.”
“I would have gone home weeks ago, but honestly, Diane, I'm enjoying Fletcher more than I can say.” I squinted down, trying to take in my daughter's expression. Her face was a blank. “I think it's Suzanne's idea to put Fletcher in a boarding school, to get him out of the way.”
“You can understand why she's upset, can't you? She came home to fire engines parked outside her home.” My daughter? My Diane, pleading for me to understand Suzanne?
“No one cooks for the boy. They give him a credit card to order takeout. A boy can't eat that way. How is he supposed to fill out?”
Diane sighed.
“Do you want to hear the story from my point of view?”
“Of course,” she said, but her voice packed the emotional punch of a stale dinner roll. I trudged on anyway.
“Do you remember your youth group days? You always had something to do, wonderful friends, adults who cared about you. You acquired a passion for travel on your missionary trips to Central America and Africa. It scared me to death, your going to third-world countries, but you always came back impassioned to make a difference. You refused to buy anything new to wear for a whole year after spending spring break in Guatemala. You sat down with a JCPenney's catalog to list out what you would have spent on clothing and cajoled your father into donating that and more to the orphanage you'd visited.”
“What does that have to do with what happened here?”
“I want that for Fletcher too, and this lovely girl has been inviting him to attend her youth group. Only Fletcher wasn't too keen on the idea, mostly for the grief Suzanne dished out. So when he made his stand to go, bandages and all, I was so excited.” I would have added that God had answered my prayers, but Diane would have pooh-poohed that.
“And the kitchen?”
“I made donuts for your group every Wednesday. The boys loved them. Remember? Cooking on Suzanne's highfalutin stove is like cooking over a blow torch. The oil got a little hot. Honestly, this could have happened to anyone.” I prayed Diane would believe me.
Instead, she buried her face in her hands. “I'm on your side, Ma, but I need to know more than you're telling me.” Diane expelled a sharp breath and straightened. I braced myself for what was coming. “Who's Huck, Ma? And don't give me a cock-and-bull story about a reformed huckster.”
I rubbed the spot where my glasses dug into my nose. So this was the reason for her visit. I recognized the tone of her voice—she sounded just like me. Had we switched places when I wasn't looking? I'd raised her, so now, I supposed, she felt justified in returning the favor. She needed reminding of who was the mother and who was the daughter.
“Remember when you wanted to go to a concert in Bishop with the Mohawk kid?”
“Jason?”
“I thought his name was Greg. Oh well. We invited him over for dinner. He surprised the dickens out of us with his manners and his appreciation for classical music. If I remember correctly, he brought his flute and played a lovely aria while we ate our dessert.”
“He played the cello.”
“Are you sure?”
“I held the case on the back of his motorcycle everywhere we went. I was better than a bungee cord.”
A bubble of panic bounced in my gut. “He rode a motorcycle.”
“Would you have let me go?”
“Never. That boy scared me to death.”
“He's a middle school science teacher in Yorba Linda.”
“No kidding. I pegged him for an art dealer in New York. Or maybe Santa Fe.”
“Your point?”
“I need you to trust me on this Huck thing. He isn't nearly as menacing as Greg—”
“Jason.”
“Never mind. When I've got things figured out, I'll tell you everything.”
Diane sniffed. I felt my way up her arm to her wet face.
“You're crying! This isn't necessary. I'm fine! I feel great. I'm the same woman who beats you at Scrabble.”
She sat at my feet and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her hair away from her face.
“I loved your donuts more than anything, especially the holes,” she said, her voice clogged with snot. “You said they tasted better, and they did.”
“Of course they did. I rolled them in extra cinnamon and sugar, just for you. It isn't easy being the youngest.”
We sat that way until Diane's shoulders stilled. She raised her head to blow her nose. “Have you ever considered living closer to Andy?”
“There was a time when I thought living closer would be better for my relationship with Andy and Suzanne, and, of course, I miss Fletcher terribly in Ouray.”
“Andy says you're still baking pies for the diner, that you fell and broke your ankle hurrying to get the pies out of the oven.”
“What are you trying to say, Diane?”
“I'm sorry, Ma. I promised myself to be grown-up and forthright, and here I am blubbering again.”
“Diane?”
“I think . . . well, Andy and I think you should consider a living situation that wouldn't require you to cook.”
I stood. “A nursing home?”
Diane clutched my hand. “Never! You will never live in a nursing home as long as I'm your daughter. But they have alternatives—assisted living, private cottages with amended services.”
I spoke through clenched teeth, “You've done some research.”
She stood to face me. “I always believed you were supermom, exempt from the things my friend's parents were going through. Who else had a ma who hiked up vertical cliffs and tripped the light fantastic, all with limited vision? You're a rock—my role model. I'm so proud of you.”
“But . . .”
“You're scaring us. First the broken ankle, the accident, and now you're talking to make-believe people and causing house fires. What are we supposed to think? You took amazing care of us. Never once did I feel unloved, even though I may have told you so a time or two. Now, I want—
we
want—to do the same for you. There are some fabulous places near here that are anything but institutional.”
I threw up my arms. “You've been checking into places?”
“Only on the Internet.”
“And Andy?”
“He talked to a lady at some cottages in Lakewood.”
“You two sure have done a good bit of talking about me behind my back.”
“You're angry.”
I walked to the edge of the patio, anxious for Diane to see how well I moved about. “You want to park me in a padded cell. How would you feel?”
Diane fell to her knees in front of me, took my hands in hers, and smothered them with kisses. “No, Ma, never. This is so hard. I never wanted to hurt you. Please believe that. Think of the cottages as a stepping-stone back to Ouray. Let's see how you do once the boot comes off, and you can return to your normal activities.”
She stood, drew me into her arms, and laid her head on my shoulder. I responded the only way this mother's heart knew: I squeezed her to my chest.
“I'm getting too old to kneel on concrete,” she said.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I hate being so far away.”
“You're not responsible for me.”
“Not responsible, just invested. I worried about you before all of this. I was sure some crazy tourist wouldn't see you crossing the street. Now . . . maybe I should accept only domestic assignments. Being closer—”
“Don't you—”
“Let me finish, Ma. Being closer would ease my mind.”
“Would it ease your mind if I looked at those cottages?”
“Maybe.”
“We'll go tomorrow.”
DIANE STOOD AT RUTH'S small kitchen table, looking out the window. “It's like living in the shadow of the Great Wall of China. What hubris! My own brother. This room must be as cold as—”
I jumped in, knowing Diane's vocabulary had gained color from working around welders and the like. “Diane, darling, Ruth and her husband were on the building committee of the church I'm attending.”
“Building anything by committee is never fun.” She turned back to the window. “I imagine this was a lovely place to sit on a winter's day before my brother built that monstrosity.”
Ruth joined Diane at the window, looking up at the imposing wall of Andy and Suzanne's home. “This is where I waited for the children to return home from school, especially in the winter. I had a plate of cookies and hot cocoa on the table, but they had to hang up their jackets and pin their wet mittens over the register before they sat down.”
“That sounds familiar. Marshmallows?”
“Is it hot cocoa without marshmallows?”

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