A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 (26 page)

Cici said, “You spend every weekend with him. You can have
lunch
with him whenever you want. I see you twice a year!”

“Now, Mom, you know that’s not true. Besides, he’s gone to so much trouble, arranging the trip to Aspen—”

“Aspen?”

“At Christmas. He’s got this great condo there, and he’s going to teach me how to ski, and we’ve got invitations to all the A-list parties. Say!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I’ve got it! Why don’t you come, too? No kidding, Mom, this condo is huge, and there’s plenty of room. That way I’d get to spend the holidays with both of you!”

And not miss a single A-list party
, Cici thought, but didn’t say. She couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of her voice, however, as she replied, “I’m sure your dad would love that. Isn’t he bringing his girlfriend?”

Lori hesitated. “Oh,” she said, slightly subdued. “I guess that wouldn’t work.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I really will miss you. But you understand, don’t you? If he hadn’t gone to so much trouble . . .”

Cici swallowed hard. “Yeah, sweetie. I understand.”

“And don’t be mad at me about school, okay? I promise to buckle down next semester.”

“I love you, baby.”

“Love you, too, Mom.”

Cici punched out another set of numbers while she pushed back her bangs with her other hand, leaving a swipe of soot across her forehead. She had been cleaning out the fireplace when the mail arrived. Outside her window a tame deer munched on bright red sassafras leaves while a wild border collie raced around and around the sheep meadow in endless circles for no apparent reason. A squirrel hung upside down from the bird feeder, and Bridget, with her hair tied up in a yellow paisley scarf, rushed outside to chase it with a broom. And on the other side of the continent, in the land of palm trees and movie stars, a man who smelled of expensive cologne and silk sheets answered the telephone with a brusque, “Yeah, this is Richard.”

She didn’t even bother to pretend to be calm. “I have to get a letter from the freakin’
university
to find out my daughter is flunking out of college?”

“Who is this? Cici? How did you get this number?”

“I gave birth to your child. That entitles me to your cell phone number.”

“Listen, babe, this isn’t a very good time—”

“Don’t you ‘babe’ me! What in the hell are you
doing
out there? Did anyone ever explain to you that the word
parent
is also a verb?”

“Okay, sweets, I’m about to lose you. Coming up on a tunnel here—”

“There
are
no tunnels in Los Angeles!” she screamed. Lindsay came in through the front door, and gave her a look of undisguised concern. Cici turned away, lowering her voice. “I swear to God, Richard, if you hang up on me—”

“Okay, okay, let’s just do this. I’ve got lunch at Spago in ten minutes and Mel Gibson waiting in my office.”

“Jesus!” Cici blew out an explosive breath and turned around again. Lindsay, sorting through the mail that remained on the entry table, raised both eyebrows in question. Cici fanned her face with her hand and tried to sound—and, for Lindsay’s sake, to look—calm. “That kind of talk might impress a twenty-year-old but it does nothing for me. Did you even
know
she had two incompletes and one failing grade last semester? Doesn’t it bother you that you just paid for half a year of exactly zero course credits?”

Lindsay patted her arm sympathetically as she left the room, and Richard replied, “Oh, come off it, Cici. Like Lori is the first kid to ever have a little trouble with school.”

“She was an honor student when she lived with me. Did you know she changed her major?”

“Again?” But before Cici could even question that, he said, “Last I heard, that was not grounds for expulsion from UCLA. In fact, some people actually encourage young people to explore their options in college. Some people even think that’s what college is for.”

“I happen to think college is for getting an education!”

“Remind me again why we’re not still married?”

“Did you know she’s in love with one of her professors?”

He chuckled. “Not exactly the kind of thing a girl tells her dad, sweetheart. Although from what I can tell, Lori’s in love with a new guy every week.”

Cici felt a stab in her heart because she did not know this, and because Richard didn’t even care, and because even though she knew perfectly well that this was all a part of being young, she didn’t want her baby to grow up without her.

She said, “And you’re letting her go to Italy with this guy in the spring?”

That piece of information apparently gave him pause. Obviously, he had not bothered to make the connection between the professor, the change of major, and the trip to Italy. And that was exactly the problem.

Then he said, “Come on, Cici, by spring she won’t even remember this guy’s name. Could you lighten up just one time?”

There were a dozen things she would have liked to have said in response to that; no, a hundred. It was with the greatest possible effort that she let it go. She said instead, “I want Lori to come home for Christmas.”

“So tell her.”

“I did. She said you had made other plans.”

“What can I tell you, babe? Sounds like she’s made her choice.”

“You call that a choice? Aspen, celebrities, skiing, A-list parties? She spends her entire life without a father, and all of a sudden there you are, offering her the world. What’s she supposed to do? For crying out loud, Richard, it’s the damn sports car all over again!”

When Lori got her driver’s license, Cici had promised to match dollar-for-dollar the money Lori had saved from her after-school job toward the purchase of a car. On her sixteenth birthday they had gone shopping for a used Honda, only to arrive home to find a brand-new sports car sitting in the driveway. Happy Birthday from Dad. Worse, Cici had had to be the one to tell Lori she could not keep the car. Lori had eventually forgiven her, but Cici had never forgiven Richard for once again making her the bad guy, and forcing her to ruin her daughter’s sixteenth birthday.

Richard sighed into the phone, managing to sound both impatient and sympathetic at the same time. “I don’t know what you expect me to do. I can’t make Lori want to spend Christmas with you.”

“No, but you can give her a better choice. Cancel the Aspen thing.”

He laughed.

“I’m not kidding, Richard. I need to see Lori, to talk to her. She needs to be with me, in the real world. You’ve got her so turned around and upside down out there she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.”

“She knows enough to realize she’ll have a lot more fun in Aspen with me than in the middle of nowhere with you. Sorry, babe. She’s made up her mind.”

Cici was quiet for a moment. “All right, you leave me no choice. Lori invited me to spend the holidays with her at your condo in Aspen. I’ll be there on the twenty-second.”

Now it was his turn for silence. “Not funny, babe.”

“Oh, and if you’re worried I might cramp your style—you know, all the hot-tub parties, the clubbing, the après-ski with Heather or Tiffany or Brittany—don’t give it another thought. I promise you to dedicate every waking moment to doing
nothing
but cramping your style. After all, what kind of man would invite his daughter on a Christmas ski vacation and expect to have anything but family time? Lucky for you, I’m going to make sure it’s all family, all the time, for you this Christmas.”

His voice was cold. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Her voice was colder. “You were married to me for four years, Richard. You want to rethink that?”

Silence. Then, quietly, “You had her for twenty Christmases, Cici. All I’m asking is one.”

Almost, she felt a stab of remorse. But this was their only child they were talking about, and her future was at stake. “Not this one,” she said firmly. “Call off Aspen. And not one word to her about this conversation.”

“You are a cast-iron bitch, you know that?”

“Thank you. I’m glad to know I’ve still got it.”

She hung up the phone, and was surprised to see her hands were shaking. But she had done the right thing. She was almost certain of it.

 

 

“I’m out of practice being mean,” Cici sighed, and held out her glass as she took her place in the rocking chair. “It’s not as much fun as it used to be.”

“The first of the merlot,” Lindsay announced, filling each of their glasses. “And I don’t see what’s mean about looking out for your daughter’s best interests. That’s your job.”

“I don’t like the person I turn into when I’m dealing with Richard.”

“It’s probably a good thing you divorced him then, huh?” said Bridget.

“If Richard had any balls at all, he’d drag that Professor Jeff out behind the science building and beat the shit out of him.” Lindsay sat down in her rocker and stretched out her legs.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to do that in California,” Bridget pointed out.

“I’m not sure blackmail is the best way to deal with a dispute over child-raising approaches,” Cici said unhappily.

“Darling, your child is already raised,” Lindsay said. “I think that’s the problem.”

And Cici agreed, “I think so, too.”

They were silent for a while, rocking.

“Umm, I love merlot in the autumn,” Bridget murmured, tasting it. She was bundled up in a thick chenille sweater, a mohair scarf, and a wool throw against the chill of the dying day, but none of them was willing to miss the last few rays of the brilliant sunset.

“To everything there is a season,” agreed Cici. “Chardonnay in the summer, merlot in the autumn, cabernet in the winter.”

“Hot chocolate before you know it.” Lindsay shivered elaborately and buttoned the top button of her fleece jacket as she sank into her rocker. “Boy, the temperature sure drops once the sun goes behind the mountains, doesn’t it?”

“We won’t be able to do this much longer,” Bridget agreed regretfully. And then she brightened. “But we’ve got plenty of fireplaces. And there’s nothing better than sitting by a fireplace with a good book in the winter, is there?”

“How cold is it supposed to get tonight anyway?” There was a worried note in Lindsay’s tone. “Do you think Noah will be warm enough?”

“He has a fireplace, too,” Cici reminded her.

“We should have sent him more blankets,” Bridget said.

“If we do that, aren’t we encouraging him to stay?”

“Well, we can’t let him freeze!”

“Kids,” Cici said and sighed again. “Whoever knows what’s right?”

“I should have brought it up this afternoon,” Lindsay said unhappily. “I really blew my chance. There he was, talking to me, practically opening up to me . . . I should have found a way to talk to him about school, about his home situation, about what he was going to do with winter coming . . . I let him slip through my fingers.”

“I don’t know what you could have told him,” Bridget said, “except to go home. And knowing what we do about his home, I wouldn’t feel right about that.”

“Me either. That’s the problem.” Lindsay sighed. “I’m a teacher. I’m trained in crisis intervention. I should know what to do.”

“I’m a mother,” Cici said glumly. “I’ve
lived
in a constant state of crisis for twenty years. And I still don’t know what to do.”

Lindsay leaned across and clinked her glass with Cici’s.

“Richard’s right, you know,” Cici said after a moment. “I can’t make Lori come home for Christmas if she doesn’t want to. She’s over eighteen, an adult.”

“I’d love to know who decided that,” Bridget said.

“Some man, probably.”

“Up until about four hundred years ago,” Lindsay pointed out, “boys in Europe were considered adults at age thirteen.”

“Yeah, that was when they only lived to be twenty-five.”

“Before dying of syphilis,” added Cici.

“In some tribal cultures today, girls can get married at age nine.”

“That’s sick.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself an adult until you prove yourself to be one.”

“By building a log cabin?”

“Or making a quilt?”

“Or going to war?”

“Or having a baby?”

And Lindsay said quietly, “Or living in the woods all by yourself because you’ve got no place else to go?”

Bridget said, rocking gently, “Our children are so very lucky.”

Cici sipped her wine silently for a time. Then she said, “I don’t think you should be allowed to be an adult until your mother says you can.”

The other two laughed softly. “I’d vote for that.”

“Me, too,” Bridget said. “I would have emancipated my two at age twelve.”

Cici said, “What if she doesn’t want to come home?” “What if,” Lindsay said abruptly, “we let him sleep in the dairy?”

Cici said, “What?”

And Bridget said, “Who?”

Cici said, “There’s no heat in there!”

“It’s better than what he’s got now.”

Bridget added, “What about your art studio?”

“It would be just for a little while. Until he finds something better. We’d take it out of his wages.”

“Heaven knows, there’s plenty for him to do around here,” Bridget admitted.

“He’s an awfully good worker,” Lindsay agreed, a little anxiously.

“I have to admit, I’d sleep a lot easier myself, knowing he wasn’t freezing to death out there in the woods,” Bridget said.

“Maybe we could even get some space heaters out there,” Lindsay said.

“I say we do it,” said Bridget.

They both looked at Cici.

She said, choosing her words with obvious care, “This isn’t the 1920s, you know. You can’t just pick up a hobo off the road and let him sleep in your barn.”

“I think if he was a serial killer he would have done something about it before now,” Lindsay pointed out.