Tending Roses (3 page)

I took a deep breath and swallowed what I was going to say. Instead, I calmly falsified the truth. “It’s just a little hard right now with Ben new at consulting and me on unpaid leave with Joshua. There were some hospital bills that the insurance didn’t cover. It’ll be better next month when I get started back at work.”

Grandma huffed an irritated breath. “It isn’t right that mothers these days have to give over their children so quickly to go back to work. In my day we women waited at least until the children were school-aged—if we worked at all.”

Her out-of-date philosophy only tightened the knot of maternal guilt inside me. I felt the perverse need to defend myself and my whole generation. “Well, Grandma, things aren’t that way anymore. These days it takes two incomes to have a nice place to live, and cars, and money for retirement funds, college funds, and a meal out or a vacation once in a while.”

Grandma huffed, sticking her chin out like a wooden Indian. “In my day, we didn’t
expect
vacations.” She was clearly determined to pick a fight.

Looking at her, I was reminded of the other reason why I didn’t come back to the farm anymore. For most of my life, all I could remember was her picking fights. She had a talent for stirring up unpleasantness, she was an expert on every subject, and she felt the need to control everyone. Which was probably why my father was that way, too. I switched to the defensive to keep from being eaten alive.

“Well, these days that’s what people want, and—” I snapped my mouth shut and forced myself to take a breath.
One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. . . .
I didn’t finish until I’d counted all the way to ten and calmed myself down. “It’s not that I’m dying to send Josh to day care, Grandma, but there’s a lot to consider. I’ve worked hard to get where I am with the Harrison Foundation. It’s an important job. We fund a lot of critical environmental research, and I’m the one who raises the money that funds the projects.”

She turned her face away, impatient with my explanation. “I don’t know that I believe all the malarkey about hairspray killing the fish in the world anyway.”

I smiled and rubbed my forehead, unsure of whether to laugh or get a headache. “I don’t think we’ve ever funded a research project on hairspray killing fish, but my point is that I can’t put off going back to work forever. Ben’s income isn’t steady yet. Next year we want to sell our town house and buy a bigger house with a yard for Josh.” The list went on, up to and including paying off the hospital bills, of which Grandma didn’t even begin to know the extent. “If someone can tell me how to do all that without working, I’d like to hear about it.”

I looked at the deer, and my mind continued whirling with the problems that would face us when we returned home—day care, work, hospital bills, payments on cars, payments on the boat, payments on the house . . . My stomach started to churn, and I felt my pulse going up as it did every time I considered how we were going to keep so many plates spinning at once.

“So these are the things young people want these days?” I heard her ask, but her voice seemed far away, coming from somewhere beyond the din in my head.

“Um-hum,” I muttered.

I could feel Grandma watching me, and when I turned to her she met my gaze with an extremely lucid look—as if, just for a moment, all of her mind was in the present. “Maybe you should start wanting less.”

The whirlwind inside me stopped. I sat there looking into her eyes, the soft, clear blue of a robin’s egg, and whispered, “Maybe so.”

We sat for a long time in the quiet of the waning afternoon, watching the deer come into the wheat field on the river-bottom land below. Finally, the sun fell below the edge of the blue, tree-clad hills, and the feeling of winter came into the air.

Josh woke up, and I took him out of his carrier, snuggling him inside my jacket.

Grandma patted my hand and smiled. The hints of her former ire were gone, and I wondered if she even remembered our conversation. “Don’t you two look sweet?” She sighed, rocking forward and rising slowly to her feet. “There’s nothing more precious than a mother with a baby in her arms.” After shuffling to the screen door, she started down the steps. “I have a few things to do out in my little house. I’ll be back in a while.”

I stood up and caught the door before it slammed. “Grandma, you don’t have to stay out there. There’s plenty of room in the main house for all of us.”

She paused on the steps and craned her neck as if I were speaking gibberish. “No, no. This is better. I don’t want to put too much strain on that sewer pipe in the basement. The little house has its own septic. I’ll just stay out there until everyone goes back home again. Then I’ll have to get back in the big house and wax the floors after everyone . . .” She turned and started down the stone path, still muttering about how the gathering crowd of family would put us all in danger of ruined floors and a sewer-system meltdown.

I let the door close and watched her go, thinking that there wouldn’t be any
after Christmas
. She didn’t seem to have an inkling that Aunt Jeane was looking into nursing homes in St. Louis and my father couldn’t wait to sell the farm.

The whirlwind started in my head again.

I went inside to see if Ben had locked down the Randolph contract. He was sitting in front of his computer in the second-story bedroom that had once been Aunt Jeane’s. Seeing him surrounded by the white French-style furniture and the pink ruffled curtains and bedspread made me laugh.

“Nice digs,” I said. Even the flowered wallpaper went back as far as my memory could reach.

Ben glanced sideways at me and grimaced. “I feel like Thumbelina.” He tapped the keyboard impatiently, waiting for a file to download. “But this is the only phone jack in the whole place. All the rest of the phones are hard-wired in. Not that it matters much, because I can’t get the stupid phone lines to cooperate. I keep getting bumped off the server. If this thing doesn’t straighten up, I’ll have to—”

“Good-bye,” the computer said, sounding gleeful.

Ben slammed his hand against the desk and closed his eyes. “Oh, shoot!” He stood up, scattering architectural blueprints onto the floor. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! I’ve been trying to get that file for an hour.”

Josh whimpered on my chest, and I bounced him around to keep him quiet. “Well, maybe it’ll be better in the morning,” I suggested. “It’s always hard to get on this time of the evening.”

Ben went back to the computer as if he hadn’t heard me. I hated it when he did that, and he knew it. He wasn’t in the mood to be social, and he was hoping Josh and I would leave. When we didn’t, he finally sighed and said, “I think it’s something with the phone exchange out here.”

“Oh.” It occurred to me that, if he couldn’t get his computer to log on to the Net, there was no way we would be able to stay for the next three weeks. “Well, we can call the phone company in the morning. Come downstairs and have a sandwich with us. Josh is ready to have a bottle, play a little, and go to bed.” I turned Josh around, hoping he would lure Ben in. As usual, it didn’t work.

Ben shook his head, looking grim and determined. “I’d better stay here and try this file again. I wanted to look John’s specs over tonight so I can talk to him about the Randolph job tomorrow. He was already out of the office this afternoon.”

As usual, it was hard to argue with his logic. “All right,” I said. And, as usual, we said good-bye to the back of his head and left him to his work. “Don’t stay up here all night,” I called back, but I knew he probably would.

He was still there grumbling and trying to get his computer to cooperate an hour later when I went upstairs to bathe Josh. After the bath, I stood in the doorway with Josh while Ben told the computer exactly how he felt about it. No love lost, that was for sure.

Ben combed his fingers through his hair irritably and swiveled in his seat to look at me. “This thing is a piece of junk.”

I shook my head. “Sounds like you’d better give it up for a while.”

He grumbled something about not letting it beat him and turned around to face the dragon again. I left. I could tell Joshua was about to descend into his usual evening crying hour, and Ben had enough aggravation already.

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, Josh had worked himself into a full-scale colicky fit, as he always did in the evenings. Nothing, but nothing, ever distracted him from it. Gritting my teeth, I walked him up and down the dogtrot, mentally reviewing the advice of pediatricians, baby magazines, and the child psychologist on the evening news.
Colic is harmless. . . . Don’t let yourself get aggravated. . . . It’s just an underdeveloped nervous system reacting to too much stimuli. . . . Some babies need a crying hour to relieve their frustrations. . . . Colic is harmless. . . .

Joshua’s cries echoed through the house like the blast of a trumpet, and my head felt as if it were swelling with every wail. Then Grandma appeared suddenly around the corner from the living room, startling both of us.

She smiled and reached for Josh. I, quite gladly, relinquished him. During crying hour, I would have given him to almost anybody.

Grandma Vongortler, it appeared, had the magic. She held him close under her chin, whispered something in his ear, and apparently a bargain was struck. He took his pacifier, and the two of them went to the living room to rock in her recliner. I went to the kitchen to put away the dishes, and suddenly all was right with the world.

Silence, at last.

Later, I found them asleep in the chair. They looked so right together, Joshua’s head tucked beneath the stubborn line of Grandma’s chin, her glasses hanging askew on her nose, his tiny fingers gripping and releasing the pale blue fabric of her dress, his lips pursed as if waiting for an invisible kiss.

I stood in the doorway watching them, afraid that if I entered the room I would break the spell. Finally, I turned and left them there, curled up together.

B
EN and I finally went to sleep in our first-floor bedroom sometime close to midnight. Joshua was settled upstairs in a room that had once been my father’s, and, after sleeping for several hours in the living room chair, Grandma finally padded off to the little house, complaining of insomnia.

In the dark hours of the morning, I heard the low shuffle-creak, shuffle-creak of her walking the floors, then rustling in the kitchen, then progressing slowly up the stairs. A small squawk came over the baby monitor sometime later, followed by the dim sound of Grandma rescuing Josh from the crib and settling into the rocker nearby.

With the true devotion of a mother who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in three months, I rolled over and closed my eyes again.

The sun was streaming through the tall east windows when I awoke. Ben was gone from his side of the bed, his suitcases opened and clothes strewn around so that I could tell he’d already dressed. I couldn’t believe I’d slept right through his usual morning racket, and I couldn’t believe the mess he’d left behind. The bedroom looked as if a hurricane had just blown through.

His attempt at damage control was on the bedside table in the form of a note:

His attempt at sounding like an autocratic husband made me laugh, even as I fished through his jumbled clothes for mine, then proceeded to tidy up because I knew Grandma would have a fit about the condition of the bedroom. Ben still had a lot to learn about vacationing at Grandma Vongortler’s.

The smell of brewing coffee tickled my senses just as I was hanging the last few shirts in the closet. After closing the suitcases, I stuffed them under the bed, pronounced the room reasonably in order, then headed to the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast.

Something wet sloshed into my shoe as I rounded the corner into the kitchen. Looking down, I stared in disbelief at the huge dark stain on the toe of my shoe, then at the puddle of brown liquid that ended at my feet, ran upstream across the kitchen floor, and originated at the coffeemaker, which was happily spewing coffee onto the counter. The coffeepot sat nearby filled with water. At the sink, the faucet was running, and bubbly dishwater was gurgling from the full side of the sink into the empty one and disappearing down the drain.

“Grandma?” I muttered, staring at the coffeemaker cord dangling in the puddle and marveling that no one had been electrocuted. “Grandma?” I called louder. No answer. No sign of Grandma.

Confused, I tiptoed around the coffee puddle and turned off the coffeemaker and the sink faucet, then grabbed a bunch of kitchen towels and threw them on top of the burgeoning oil slick in the center of the room.

A movement caught my eye outside the window, and I saw Grandma in her old brown overcoat, calmly hanging towels on the line beside the little house, completely unaware that the kitchen was being flooded. I suddenly had a very clear picture of how she had left the iron turned on next to a stack of clothes and set the utility room on fire a week before.

Carrying the wet towels to the washing machine, I surveyed the damage to the utility room. Not as bad as I had thought. Just smoke damage and a hole in the wall where the old ironing-board cabinet had been. It was fortunate that Oliver Mason had been there when the fire started, or it could have spread to the rest of the house.

I glanced out the window at Grandma as I walked back to the coffeemaker. I didn’t suppose it would do any good to tell her she’d just flooded the kitchen. It would only make her nervous and upset to know that she was doing things she couldn’t explain. Besides, she would probably deny it anyway. She still vehemently denied responsibility for the fire in the utility room. Grandma’s version of the facts was completely different from everyone else’s. And, as usual, she was sticking to her story.