Wife-In-Law (4 page)
“Y
ou
what
?” Greg hollered so loud, I had to pull the receiver away from my ear. “Good Lord, Elizabeth,” he scolded, “have you lost your mind?”
ou
what
?” Greg hollered so loud, I had to pull the receiver away from my ear. “Good Lord, Elizabeth,” he scolded, “have you lost your mind?”
That stung, in light of Mama’s mental illness, which I prayed daily wasn’t hereditary. “Calm down, honey,” I soothed. “I couldn’t very well just drive right past them when they were camping out in the hundred-degree heat under a
funeral parlor
tent in their front yard. It wouldn’t be Christian. The mosquitoes would have eaten them alive.”
funeral parlor
tent in their front yard. It wouldn’t be Christian. The mosquitoes would have eaten them alive.”
“And probably gotten high in the process,” Greg snapped. “Honestly, Betsy, this makes me wonder how I can leave you alone. Letting those people into our house was absolutely reckless.”
“Well, I had my panic button,” I defended. “And anyway, it was fine.” I explained everything I’d learned, finishing with, “So you see, the police chief was right. We don’t have anything to worry about. They’re really very nice. A college student and an Ivy League–educated plumber.” A thought occurred to me. “Heck, he might even play tennis, after all. I should have asked.”
“No you shouldn’t,” Greg bit out. “He shouldn’t have even been there in the first place, much less talking to you.”
“But honey, it all worked out fine,” I coaxed.
“Lucky for you,” he said. “What if it hadn’t? The police would have had to break in to find your body.”
I could tell he was really shaken. Greg was so protective of me, he didn’t even like my going to my old neighborhood alone—in broad daylight—to see Mama. “Honey,” I said, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry.” How could I make it up to him? “I invited them on impulse. I promise I’ll never ask anybody to spend the night again without talking it over with you first.”
That seemed to mollify him. “Good. And stay away from that Zach guy, okay? He’s still a hippie. He might slip you drugs, then ask you to do a threesome or something.”
“I promise you, he’s harmless.” I was flattered by my husband’s jealousy, but Zach didn’t seem to be the underhanded type, and he definitely wasn’t a swinger. In my old neighborhood, I could tell by the time I was twelve who was and who wasn’t a swinger, which was why I’d been so drawn to Greg when we met. I’d liked that he was older, already settled with a great job, and so protective of me.
“I mean it, Betsy. Keep your distance from that guy,” he repeated.
He was just worried about me. It had been reckless, inviting them over without knowing anything about them. “Okay,” I conceded, “I’ll steer clear of Zach. But is it okay if I have Kat over, by herself? She doesn’t know how to cook, and it would be fun to teach her.”
Greg hesitated, then said with reservation, “Okay. As long as she’s alone. But make sure she doesn’t put anything into the food. Those hippies try to turn people on all the time.” As if he knew, which he didn’t. So far, the closest my husband had gotten to a hippie was when we drove within three blocks of Tenth Street to see the opera at the Fox. Still, it was sweet of him to worry about me.
“I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Okay. And keep an eye on things across the street. If you see anybody suspicious over there, write down their license numbers.”
Oh, really. “What if I can’t see them?” I asked.
“Use the binoculars in the top drawer of my dresser.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. But only because it’ll make you feel better.”
A pregnant pause followed, then Greg said, “I almost hate to bring this up now, but there’s been a change of plan. The client’s board wants me to give a report on our progress at their regular meeting Monday, which means I’ll have to work all weekend to put it together.”
So he wouldn’t be able to come home on schedule. My heart sank, but I resolved to remain upbeat. He couldn’t help it, after all, and he’d warned me this might happen. “I’m sorry, honey. I’d planned a special celebration, but it’ll keep. When will you be able to come, or do you know?”
“Oh, the weekend after, absolutely. And I’ll get to stay till Wednesday this time, so I can turn in my paperwork and bring the office up to speed.”
“That’s fabulous.” That would give me five whole days with plenty to do, and my husband back in my bed. I hadn’t realized how horny I was till I thought about it. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“You sure are a wonderful corporate wife,” he complimented, his voice warm.
I smiled, missing him intensely. “You sure are a wonderful corporate husband.”
“I love you,” he said, the first time in quite a while. The fact that he didn’t say it often made it even more precious.
“It sure feels good to hear that,” I mooned. “I love you too.”
“Bye. I’ll call tomorrow.” The line went dead.
I lay back in the muted light of the TV, happy that I was married to a man as good as Greg. And happy that I’d gotten past telling him about the hippies. “Dodged a bullet there,” I said aloud.
But I’d be alone this weekend. And bored.
Maybe it was time to start teaching Kat to cook.
Wide awake, I got out of bed and headed for my cookbooks to find some simple recipes to start with.
Greg’s warning resurfaced on the way to the kitchen:
But make sure she doesn’t put anything into the food.
But make sure she doesn’t put anything into the food.
I mean, really.
Somehow, I had to figure out a way for Greg to meet Zach and Kat on level ground. I knew he’d like them, if he just gave them half a chance. Especially if Zach played a decent game of tennis. The courts were coming right along.
Maybe Zach could braid his beard to play.
I always hate coming home from a trip. I hate good-byes. And returning to reality.
Normally, Kat would have taken me to the airport and picked me up, but ever since Greg had started filling her head with lies about me, I hadn’t felt comfortable asking. My younger daughter Emma had up and moved to Alaska when her father refused to support her after she finally graduated two years behind her class, and Mama was useless, of course. I wasn’t close enough to anybody else to ask, so I’d driven myself and parked in the cheapest long-term lot I could find, miles from the airport.
My flight landed in Atlanta on time, but we were stuck on the blazing tarmac forty minutes, waiting for a gate. Once we finally deplaned, I went to baggage claim, where it took another forty minutes for my suitcase to come up. Then I wrangled my luggage out into the afternoon heat to get to the long-term parking shuttle. Fifteen minutes later, I got out at my white Infiniti SUV and popped open the back for the shuttle driver to load my suitcase and carry-on. “Thank you so much.” I tipped him five as he closed the hatch. “I really appreciate that.”
“Thank
you,
ma’am.”
you,
ma’am.”
I always overtip. It’s a compulsion.
The metal roof overhead radiated heat like an oven as I walked to the driver’s door and opened it to a blast of stale heat.
I cranked up the car and set the air to high on recirculate. Mama always insisted I should roll down the windows as soon as I got in, to let out the worst of the heat, but on days like this, that was like opening the door of a blast furnace, so I didn’t. Till I had to give the cashier my ticket at the gate.
“That’ll be a hundred and forty dollars, please,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like a cold drink?” As if it would make up for the outrageous rates they all charged.
May as well. I handed her my Visa. “Diet Coke, please.” I usually avoided canned drinks but one drink wouldn’t kill me, and I was still parched from the long flight.
She handed me the cold can and the receipt to sign. “Thank you for using Park N Pad.”
I scribbled my name and handed back the receipt, anxious to get the window back up, then drove away.
Once I’d navigated the maze to the connector, I settled back for the slow, congested ride up to the I-75 cutoff and the Howell Mill exit to see Mama, consoling myself that at least I wasn’t coming home to Rhomboid Avenue. I loved my house, even if it was across the street from my ex and my future wife-in-law.
I remembered the delicious idea that had occurred to me when I heard about the wedding, and brightened. Might as well have a little fun with the situation.
Buoyed, I called Mama with my cell to see if she’d eaten. “Hey, Mama. I’m back. Amelia and Sonny and the girls send their love.”
“I’ve practically starved to death since you went off and left me,” she complained. “That Meals-On-Wheels crap is inedible. All I can stomach is the milk. Who eats plain baloney on trash bread?” she said for the hundredth time. “Who in their right mind eats baloney, period?”
I overlooked the irony of the “right mind” comment, and reminded myself that this was her way of saying she’d missed me. “I missed you too, Mama,” I said. “How about I bring you Varsity for supper?”
She cheered right up. “Oh, now, that would be wonderful. I’ll have two regular burgers, a chili dog, and fries and rings,” she rattled off, as if I didn’t know the drill. “And a brownie. And a Big Orange. Not an orange frosty, a plain Big Orange.” The same thing she’d always ordered for as long as I could remember.
“Comin’ up.” I was feeling so mellow, I didn’t even ask her to pick something out for me to take home. She wouldn’t do it, anyway. “See you in thirty or so. Bye.”
I flipped the phone closed, then got off the freeway just before the North Avenue overpass, then drove to Atlanta’s favorite melting pot and went in to pick up the food. Watching the red-capped servers put two orders of rings into the box, I remembered what Kat had told me about onions that long-ago time they’d spent the night, and chuckled. One nice thing about going back to my empty house: I could eat all the onions I wanted, then “pass wind” at will, and nobody would ever know.
The cooking lessons turned out to be a disaster. I couldn’t tell if Kat just wasn’t interested in learning, or she had some kind of disconnect when it came to the whole process.
She laughed a lot when her efforts went awry, but she was clearly embarrassed.
Two weeks into our sessions at my house—after a particularly frustrating morning of trying to make biscuits—I took her tray and mine out of the oven. They didn’t even look like the same food group.
Kat braced her dough-stuck hands on the island and sighed. “This is hopeless. Yours come out floatin’ and melt-in-yer-mouth, and mine come out like hockey pucks. With freckles.” She sighed heavily, then ventured, “I swear, Betsy, I ’preciate you tryin’, more than I can say. But this ain’t gonna work. Maybe it’s my aura or somethin’.” She leveled a frank gaze at me. “Truth is, I got school comin’ up, so maybe this idn’t the exact right time fer me to start cookin’, anyhow. Way I see it, cookin’s kinda like sewin’. Once people find out you know how, they ’spect you to do it, don’t you know?”
So she didn’t really want to learn. “Oh. I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to press.”
Kat reacted to my disappointment. “Now, don’t go gittin’ yer feelins hurt,” she cautioned. “You’ve been a real good friend, doin’ this fer me, and I’ll never fergit it. I’m
lucky
to have a friend like you, right across the street ’n’ all. I just think we need to find somethin’ else to do together, maybe.”
lucky
to have a friend like you, right across the street ’n’ all. I just think we need to find somethin’ else to do together, maybe.”
Well, if she really didn’t want to cook … Different strokes for different folks. I looked at Kat’s biscuits and laughed out loud. “Maybe you ought to stick to vegetable soup, after all.”
She sagged with relief. “Thanks. Yer the best. I knew you’d understand.” Happy, she went to scrub the last of the overworked dough from her hands.
“C’mon, then.” I put some of my hot, fluffy biscuits on a plate and headed for the butter and jam on the table. “Bring our tea. We can figure out what you’d like to do while we eat.”
Kat brought over our iced teas and sat, her expression intense. “Whut I’d really like is fer you to take me to museums and teach me about culture. Most of the other students at Oglethorpe probly know about all that stuff, but we didn’t have any museums where I come from back in Kentucky, so I never learned any of that stuff.”
“I learned all that from books,” I confessed. Georgia State wasn’t big on the fine arts when I was there. “But it would be fun to see the museum collections.” I could find out everything about the local museums from the reference department at the library. “Which one would you like to go to first?”
“That High Museum, downtown,” she said. “Way I figure it, best to start with the biggest, then work our way down.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I told her. “Maybe they have guides who can tell us about the paintings.”
“Perfect.” Kat glowed.
Regardless of the differences between our politics and lifestyle choices, Kat and I both came from humble backgrounds, and we both wanted more out of life. It was as good a basis as any for a friendship.
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