Spring Tide (13 page)

“I don’t blame her. I wasn’t easy to be with.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? She left you in your hour of need. She should have stood by you.”

“That’s for committed couples, Mom,” Stef said with irritation. “Erin and I were just dating. It wasn’t that serious. I was a bitch, so she moved on.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself. Of course you weren’t yourself
under the circumstances. A person who cared about you would be patient and understanding.”

“Mom, please, let’s not talk about Erin. It doesn’t matter.”

“I just don’t want you to be alone.”

“I know, but Erin was never going to be that woman for me anyway, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, till death do you part.”

She heard her mother sigh. “I wish you could find somebody like that.”

“And I wish
you
could find somebody like that too.”

“Oh, Stephanie,” her mother laughed. “I’m glad to see you still have a sense of humor.”

“Love you, Mom,” Stef concluded. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

She hung up and glanced at the photograph of herself and Molina, thinking about her mother’s desire for this nightmare to be over. Which she apparently thought would happen on Monday. But it wasn’t that easy. The nightmare haunted her every day and every night and would continue to do so no matter what she was told on Monday. She didn’t know how long that would be true. At the moment, she felt it would always be true.

She felt grief returning as Molina’s grin in the photo reminded her of how she would never see that expression again in real life. Another of his expressions was seared much more brutally into her memory—the last one, as he dropped to his knees and his gun clattered on the asphalt. It had been a look of disbelief. It had happened so fast. Neither of them realized what had happened in that moment. It was only later, as she replayed the scene over and over in her mind, that she fully understood what she’d done. How one muscle contracting in one split second had caused so much devastation.

“Dammit, Molina!” she whispered, then opened a drawer and put the photo inside, slamming it shut.

How could her mother expect Erin, who had known her only a few weeks when all this went down, to put herself through this ordeal? Stef wasn’t acceptable company for any woman. They had never been about that anyway, the whole building a future together scene. When Erin had said she couldn’t take it, that she hadn’t signed up for this, Stef had let her go without reproach. She didn’t want anybody near her now anyway. She didn’t want anybody to see her coming apart at the seams.

“Are Ben and Rosa here yet?” Jackie asked her mother, hoping she’d beaten her brother to the house so she’d have a chance to smooth ruffled feathers over the food truck incident. She knew they were coming. She’d been afraid they might not, but when Jackie called her brother earlier, he said, “We’ll be there. For Grandpa’s sake, Rosa says, but don’t be surprised if she doesn’t have much to say to Mom.”

Ida stood at the sink snapping the ends off a colander full of green beans. She wore an absurd pair of pink shorts with yellow ducklings on them. A huge pot of potatoes simmered on the stove.

“Not yet,” her mother reported. “You want to finish these beans for me? I’ve got to put the chicken on the grill.”

A platter of raw, marinated chicken parts rested on the counter, three chickens worth, easily enough to feed their family of ten. The baby didn’t count, as she was still on a bottle. On the other counter, a pink bakery box beckoned intriguingly. Jackie lifted the lid to observe a sheet cake decorated with white frosting and an image of a man in a rowboat fishing under a smiling sun. At the end of the fishing line was a green fish leaping out of the water in a vain effort to escape.
Happy 75th birthday, Grandpa!
was written in red gel script over the scene.

“Nice, huh?” Ida said, digging a pair of tongs out of the utensil drawer.

“Uh-huh. Cute.” Jackie closed the cake box and stepped up to the sink. “Before you go, Mom, I want to talk to you about Rosa.”

“What about her?”

“About yesterday.” Jackie picked up a green bean and pulled the string off in one motion. “The argument you had over the jerky.”

“Can you believe that woman?” Ida shook her head. “Stubborn as hell!” She picked up the chicken platter. “I’ve got to get these on or dinner will be late.”

“But, Mom—” Jackie called as her mother opened the back door. It was no use. Ida waved her off and hurried outside to the grill.

Standing in front of the kitchen window, Jackie watched her mother on the patio. Smoke rose and hung over the backyard as she put the chicken over the fire. Her father was on the lawn playing catch with Adam with a plastic wiffle ball. Adam wore a T-Rex T-shirt and a baseball mitt too large for his hand. He turned it awkwardly to allow the ball to fall into it. Becca and her husband Sean watched from lawn chairs in the shade of an old willow Jackie used to play under as a child. Becca laughed when the wiffle ball fell into the glove and Adam looked at it with astonishment. Grandpa, bare-headed and wearing the same denim coveralls he always wore, wandered between the tomato rows in the garden beyond the lawn, gingerly stooping now and then to pull a weed. She didn’t see Granny. Maybe she was out on the dock. She liked to be close to water. So everybody was here already but Ben and Rosa.

Jackie stringed and broke the beans into pieces, waiting for her mother to come back inside. Her anxiety was mounting, fearing the potentially loud confrontation that might erupt between Rosa and Ida. If she could just get her mother to apologize for running them out of the parking lot, she was sure that would be enough to let the whole thing blow over.

As Ida returned with her empty platter, letting the screen door slam behind her, they heard the front door open. Almost immediately, the sound of a screaming baby rang through the house.

“What a racket!” Ida declared and started toward the hallway.

“Wait, Mom!” Jackie cried, grabbing a towel to dry her hands.

Her mother ignored her and kept going, on her way to greet her son and daughter-in-law. Jackie dashed out of the kitchen after her, realizing she’d squandered her opportunity to be the voice of reason, and it was too late to prevent the clash of the Titans.

Rosa and Ben were just inside the front door. Rosa held little Lena, swathed in a pink onesie. No longer crying, she sucked on a pacifier, her eyes half closed. Ben had the diaper bag slung over his shoulder. With his free arm, he hugged his mother and kissed her cheek. Rosa stood stiffly, unsmiling, then turned to Jackie and said, “Hi, Jackie. How are you?”

“Good. Let me take Lena to the bedroom.”

Rosa handed the baby over. As soon as she was out of Rosa’s arms, Ida reached for her.

“Let me see that little darling!” she cried, lifting Lena from Jackie’s grasp. Ida cradled her gently, putting her head close to Lena’s and making a face at her.

“She’s so sweet!” said Ida, addressing herself to Ben. “And growing so fast. I swear she’s bigger than she was last Sunday.”

Lena’s face was scrunched into a series of wrinkles from chin to forehead, her version of a smile, and both her hands were in the air reaching toward Ida’s face.

Ida cooed at her, then said, “You two go outside and say happy birthday to Grandpa.”

“I hope there’s cake,” Ben said, turning the diaper bag over to Jackie.

“Of course there’s cake!” Ida affirmed.

Rosa gave one cool glance at Ida before following Ben through the house to the backyard. Jackie followed her mother to the bedroom where a crib for the baby was kept, along with a baby monitor with a direct line to the kitchen and patio. Lena’s pink face peered over Ida’s shoulder, swaying mildly from side to side as they walked. Jackie made a face at her and touched her index finger to her tiny button nose and was rewarded with another scrunchy smile.

“You and Rosa are just going to ignore one other?” Jackie asked. “Is that how you’re going to handle this?”

“How do you think we should handle it?” Ida asked distractedly, settling Lena in the crib.

“You can sit down and talk about it. It needs to be resolved. If you apologized, I’m sure it would be all over in a minute.”

“I have nothing to apologize for.” Ida faced Jackie solemnly. “Do you think it’s right that my own son should be kept from doing his mother this tiny favor?”

“It’s not a tiny thing to Rosa.”

“So you’re on her side?”

“No, I’m not on anybody’s side,” Jackie objected. “I just don’t want a rift in the family over something so easy to resolve.”

“My point exactly. All she has to do is put my jerky on her truck, and everything’s hunky-dory. Until she agrees to do that, I have nothing to say to her.”

“But, Mom, it’s Grandpa’s birthday.”

“All the more reason for us not to discuss business today. Don’t worry, nobody will notice anything, least of all Grandpa. Now run into the kitchen and make sure the potatoes aren’t boiling over.”

Jackie left her mother talking baby talk to Lena and returned to the kitchen, checking the potatoes before resuming her bean chore. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe the whole jerky battle was merely a business issue and had no place here at a family gathering. She was also right that Grandpa wouldn’t notice a little cooling of affections between Rosa and Ida. He would be too distracted by everything else going on and would likely be asleep as soon as dinner was over.

The game of catch in the back yard, she noticed, was now a three-way affair between Dad, Rosa and Adam. Ben tended the grill, turning the chicken over. Granny had appeared and taken a chair on the lawn. Sean came over and gave her a kiss before putting a stool under her feet. Despite the unresolved conflict between Rosa and Ida, peace and harmony reigned over the Townsend household. It was a Sunday afternoon like any other Sunday afternoon.

Jackie didn’t blame anyone for the feeling of loneliness that swept over her sometimes on days like this. In fact, she felt guilty for having that feeling, surrounded as she was by loving family members. But there were few situations that highlighted her singleness so starkly as this one. She was the only one without a mate. The last time she’d come to Sunday dinner with someone had been two years ago. She’d been dating a woman for a few weeks and had decided it was time to have her meet the family. It hadn’t worked out. They didn’t like her and she didn’t like them. In fact, it was that Sunday that had informed Jackie that she didn’t much like the woman herself, not enough for a real relationship. She’d broken up with her a few days later, justifying herself with the idea that the woman had failed the Townsend family test.

She could see, in her memory, her mother’s almost imperceptible left eye twitch, along with a tiny droop on the right side of her mouth that gave away her disapproval, despite the apparent look of congeniality she conveyed to the stranger in their midst. Without her saying a word, it was obvious that Ida didn’t like Jackie’s date. Neither did her father, but Ida’s opinion was the one that mattered more, the one that would determine the course of the family as a whole, whether they would embrace someone or not.

Jackie couldn’t remember what it was exactly that had irritated Ida about the woman, but she did remember them cutting one another off during dinner conversation. They were two people competing for the center of attention, not talking to one another, but talking over one another so the rest of them hadn’t known who to listen to.

Jackie drained the potatoes in the colander, holding her head clear of the burst of steam rising from the sink. Through the window she saw her mother run over to the grill and grab the tongs from Ben’s hand, making shooing motions at him.

Mom would love Stef
, Jackie thought with a small chuckle.
You can hardly get a word out of her.
Then she shook her head, wondering why that thought had come to her. There was no reason her mother and Stef would ever even meet one another. There was no reason to consider whether or not her mother would like Stef. Besides, if that was the only thing in her favor, that she didn’t have much to say, her mother wouldn’t like her at all. She’d probably think,
What a gosh-awful unpleasant woman, Jackie! What the hell did you drag her over here for?

Jackie shook her head again, realizing her thoughts were going in circles. Realizing too that she was still trying to imagine what her mother would think of Stef. Which could be helpful to know because for some reason she couldn’t explain, she herself still wanted to like Stef.