In the Stars (15 page)

My heart beams. I already feel luckier.

A bird does not sing because it has answers.
It sings because it has a song.
        —Chinese Proverb

Chapter Twenty-Five

W
hen I get home the first thing I do is call my mom. I need a hug and the love that only a mother can give. She won’t understand all the legal crap going on in my life, but at least she will listen and provide me with refuge for a day or two. I have a lot to think about. I need some unbiased advice.

She answers on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Hey Momma, are you on rotation at the hospital today?”

“No, I’m off until Friday. Are you back in town?”

“Yes. Can I come home?”

“Of course you can come home. What’s going on? Is your car still broken? I can come pick you up.” Her spidey-senses must be tingling because she tells me she’ll be on her way and see me in half an hour. I write a quick note for Heather, telling her that I’m going home for a day or two, and then throw some clean underwear, my pajamas and a toothbrush into a bag.

My mom’s Ford Fusion pulls up out front and I hurry to meet her. I climb in the passenger side and buckle up.

We chitchat about my brother who is finishing up his undergrad at the University of Lethbridge and she fills me in on typical family gossip. My auntie Marge is dating again. The last guy she dated ended up going to jail after robbing a convenience store, so hopefully this new one will be better. Uncle Bert had another breakdown and has decided that his calling in life is to be a bus driver. Two of my cousins have had babies. The usual chatter carries us the twenty minute drive down Deerfoot and back to my childhood home, a bi-level split nestled in the heart of Midnapore.

It is an old community. Years earlier it had been its own little town, but has long since merged with the ever-expanding city of Calgary. The quiet streets are lined with towering poplars and evergreen trees that have seen better days. The community backs onto Fish Creek Provincial Park, a massive wildlife preserve that stretches farther than the eye can see in every direction.

We pull into the driveway and my mom parks the car. I have so many memories here . . . memories of my Grammy baking cookies with me and my brother after school, the sound of my dad laughing when he came in the door from work, the feel of my mom wrapping her arms around me when I drove my bike into the neighbor’s fence and skinned my elbow.

“How’s Dad?’ I inquire as we enter the house. The scent of fresh laundry assails my nostrils and I follow my mother into the kitchen. There is a huge pot of soup boiling on the stove and the bread machine whirs on the counter.

“He’s doing well. The last surgery he performed had a few complications, but they are cleared up now. The girl developed a bit of an infection in her right eye, but with the correct antibiotics, he managed to get it under control.”

Two years ago, my dad decided that his life as a laser eye surgeon had no purpose. He retired from his thirty-year practice and volunteered for United We See, a program that helps kids in underdeveloped nations who have trouble with their vision. Most of what he deals with are cataracts and astigmatisms, and he has helped hundreds of people who were diagnosed as legally blind receive their sight.

“That’s incredible. When does he get home?”

My mom looks at the calendar hanging on the far wall, right underneath a ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ sign my Grammy cross-stitched. “He should be back by the first week of June, provided they don’t run out of medical supplies sooner. We’ll have a big family dinner. I know he’s missed my cooking.”

“He’s making such a huge difference in the world,” I note, sitting at the kitchen table. My mom stirs the soup and tastes a spoonful. “When are you going to brave the wild and go out in the middle of nowhere with him?”

My mom smacks her lips and joins me at the table. “One day I’m sure I’ll tire of the demanding hours at the hospital and join him, but for now, I feel my place is here. My kids are my priority, and even though you’re grown up, I still get the sense that you need me.”

I trace the swirly designs on the table with a finger. “I’m trying to figure some things out right now, Momma, and I don’t know what to do.”

She rests her head on her hands and watches me. Her hair, always in a chin length bob that she’s had for as long as I can remember, sways just a little. Her forehead wrinkles in concern. “Tell me. Is it about Drew? How was your reunion?”

I can’t bring myself to tell her everything, especially not the part where I cheated with him on his fiancée, or where I crashed their wedding and derailed the entire thing. Instead, I tell her the basics. We met up, we learned we weren’t right for each other and that was that.

“That’s good. It sounds like you have the whole thing figured out.” Mom gets up from the table and ladles the soup into two bowls. She carries them to the table and sits down again. “So if Drew isn’t the issue, what’s the problem?”

I raise the spoon to my lips and sip the piping hot liquid. It is delicious, a creamy seafood chowder with little chunks of corn and crab and salmon and shrimp. I take another bite and swallow before continuing.

“Josh told me that he’s in love with me on our last day out there. He said he’s loved me for years and finally now he’s managed to get up the nerve to tell me.”

I am not sure what reaction I expect, but certainly not for my mother to merely nod and take another bite of soup. “Of course. This wasn’t a bombshell for you, was it?”

My mouth falls open. “You knew too? Why did nobody tell me?”

“It was obvious, I always thought you knew but were just playing it cool. He hung around you like flies on manure. He treated you like a queen.”

I remain quiet and eat more of the soup. I shovel it in like a starving person and I can sense that my mom is watching me.

“What did you say to him, Charley?” Her voice has an edge to it. I remember when I was invited on a date when I was fourteen. It was a neighbor boy down the block and I couldn’t stand him. He was nerdy and didn’t wash his hair. He phoned one evening and my mom answered. She called me to the phone and before she handed it to me, had hissed viciously that if I hurt his feelings, she would ground me for a week, never let me go to the mall with my friends again and would give every penny in my college fund to my brother. I grudgingly accepted the date, and, to my surprise, enjoyed myself immensely. We remained friends all through high school until his parents transferred for work out of province and we eventually lost touch.

My mom has always insisted that I never hurt a guy’s feelings. “It takes a lot of nerve for them to ask a girl out. Don’t you ever crush them on a first date.” She’s going to kill me when I admit what happened with Josh.

“I was taken aback.” It comes out defensively and my mom glowers. I eat another few bites and almost choke on a bit of crab.

“So you shot him down, did you?”

“Sort of. I, well, I had just figured out that Drew and I were over for good, and it was bad timing. Besides, I didn’t want to ruin the friendship we have. People who are friends never date. It doesn’t work that way.”

My mom’s eyebrows raise. “Oh really?” She has a dangerous quality to her voice but I am in too deep now. I have to defend my actions.

“Anytime friends date it ends up with a friendship ruined and both of them avoiding each other for years. Only in
How I Met Your Mother
do people who once dated remain friends. It doesn’t happen in real life.”

“So how’s your friendship now?”

I look away. “It’s . . .” I search for the right word. “It’s complicated.”

“Why would it be complicated? You didn’t date.” I hate it when my mother throws my own faulty logic back at me.

When I don’t respond immediately, my mother reaches across the table and places her hands on my own. She holds them tight, stopping me from fidgeting. “Your father was my high school sweetheart. I’ve told you that story many times before.”

“So?”

“So hear me out. We started dating when we were seventeen, but you know what? For two years before that, we were best friends. We hung out, went to football games together, played basketball at the YMCA and had all the same friends. It was a natural progression for us to date.”

“I suppose.”

“It is the most wonderful feeling in the world being able to be yourself with a boy. Not pretending, knowing they love you for you.”

“Well, that works for you and Dad, but I know myself. Relationships don’t last with me and I like Josh as a friend too much to let us go down in flames.” My chin juts out and I grind my teeth in frustration.

“You have always been the most stubborn child. I remember once on a science test when you were in grade school, you wrote that neutrons, not electrons, had a negative charge. You argued with your teacher for an hour after you saw that you got that question wrong. You hauled out your class notes, swore up and down that your teacher had told you this. Even when the evidence was right in front of you, you still clung to your silly belief that you were right.”

“Stop with the neutron/electron thing, Mom,” I complain. My mom sees fit to bring that story up at least once every few years and I always cringe with embarrassment at how stupidly stubborn I had been.

“The point is, you rarely back down from a fight. That’s why you are such a good lawyer.”

“If I were a good lawyer, Carter Clinton wouldn’t be trying to get me disbarred,” I mutter.

Mistake. My mom’s ears perk up and she grabs hold onto this new piece of information. “Why? Because of that mistake the intern made?”

“Yeah. They claim it was an ethical violation, or something. I’m going to have a hearing and everything.”

My mom shrugs it off. “Sweetie, lawyers are always jumping on the bandwagon of suing others or fighting within their ranks. Disbarment is rare, and really quite a drastic outcome. It’s like losing your medical license. I would imagine it is quite hard to get disbarred. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

“That’s what Josh told me.”

“Well, Josh is rarely wrong, from what you’ve said in the past.”

We both finish the last few bites of soup and my mom gets up from the table and carries our bowls to the sink. She rinses them and sets them down. Then she turns and leans against the counter.

“Charley, there is nothing better in the world than being in love with your best friend. That’s what your father is to me. I could not imagine life without him.”

“But I’m not in love with Josh,” I protest. “I love him, but not in the way I’ve loved boyfriends in the past.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. You keep blaming fate and bad luck for you never being able to make a relationship last. What if your relationships always end in flames because, plain and simple, you aren’t friends with those guys.”

I think back to all the boys I’ve dated, all the men I’ve met at the pub and gone out to dinner with, guys I’ve gone out for drinks with from school. I was never perfectly at ease with any of them. I always worried about what clothes I would wear and what I would say. Even Drew, my supposed soul mate, I could never be fully comfortable with. I watched what I said. I never told him the whole truth. He never saw me vulnerable. He never saw me crying with snot running down my face and makeup smeared across my eyes.

My mom observes me with compassion. “Imagine life without Josh. You won’t have to dig too deep to find those feelings.”

“I’ve felt lost without him,” I grudgingly admit. “Empty, lonely. He was the first person I would call when I had good news or bad news. Today when the stuff with Carter Clinton went down, he was the one I turned to, even though it was awkward as hell.”

“Don’t say that word,” my mom says automatically, and I giggle and throw my hand dramatically over my mouth.

My mom comes over and crouches down in front of me. She places her hands on my knees and turns my face to hers. “Your dad fixes eyes, sweetheart. He makes blind people see color and shapes and the whole vibrant world. Remember what he always said, that when people take in how the world looks for the first time, they cry? They are so overwhelmed at how beautiful it is that there is no room for logic, no words to express what they feel. They just
feel
it.

“Charley, you kept saying that your life was in ruins due to the one who got away. Don’t be too blind to see the beauty that is out there. What if it’s not the one who got away, but the one right in front of you that you were too blind to see?”

The tears flow. “I was such a fool, Momma,” I sob. She cradles my heaving shoulders in her arms and rocks me like she did when I was little. We stay like that for a few minutes and I finally understand.

My mom lets go eventually and straightens up. Her knees pop and she stretches with a groan. “Mmm, I’m getting too old to be kneeling on the floor like this.” She pulls me to my feet and we wrap our arms around each other. “I’m making a new quilt for Mrs. Bunnage down the street. Do you want to see it?”

“Yeah, I do.” And I mean it. Little things in life can be the most important of all. And perhaps friendship really is the catalyst to happiness. We walk down the hall and I know that I did the right thing by coming home.

When two agree in their desire,
one spark will set them both on fire.
        —English Proverb

Chapter Twenty-Six

I
sleep that night in my childhood bedroom where not much has changed. Most of my stuffed animals are still around. The wallpaper is the same light yellow with dainty pink and green flowers. My bed mattress is hardened now, packed down through years of use. Even the pink and purple quilt with fringes on the edges has been on my bed for as long as I can remember. My Grammy made it when I was born and it has comforted me through many a dark night. I snuggle into it, take a deep breath and close my eyes. The blanket brings her closer to me, makes her seem real again.

“Grammy?” I whisper into the dark room. “Grammy, are you still out there?”

It’s been five years since she died. We didn’t see it coming; she was so healthy and full of spunk and energy. The day she was diagnosed with a brain tumor was the same day she baked twelve apple pies for the Drop-In Center. She had been complaining of headaches and finally got it checked out. There was no history of cancer in the family, she had never smoked or used a cell phone or anything. It came out of nowhere and we were a family in shock.

The family fully expected that she’d recover. Surgery, chemo, it would work and she would be fine. Nobody expected that three weeks later she would be dead. The hardest part is that doesn’t give you enough time to say goodbye. Three weeks isn’t long enough to let someone know how much they meant to you.

My eyes fill with tears and I reach blindly across the bed to my now-falling-apart baby doll, Noelle. Her body is duct-taped together to keep the stuffing from falling out. My brother cut off a portion of her white blonde hair in a fit of rage when we were younger, but she is still my dolly.

I cuddle up to her and then continue my monologue to the sky. “Grammy, I miss you. I miss your advice and your cookies. I miss you being here. It seems so empty in this house without you. I know Momma misses you too, even though she doesn’t say it. I think it hurts too much to admit it.”

My prayers to Grammy are sort of a tradition now. Ever since her funeral, whenever I am alone in this bed, with so many of Grammy’s things around as a mini shrine, I find that I can talk to her. I end up spilling my soul every time, saying things that I wasn’t aware I felt.

“I think I’ve been clinging to the things you taught me for too long, Grammy. I hold on to them because it makes me feel like you are with me. I know that astrology can’t tell the future and that Tarot cards are about as legit as the king of diamonds being magical. I also know that superstitions are more of a tradition with me than anything else, but I still try to make them as real as you made them seem. I believed in them enough to go out to Victoria. I tried to find love out there, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

I’m rambling.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Grammy, is I have to let go. I have to stop letting others dictate my life in the name of fate. I know there is a power out there, I have felt it. But I need to rely on myself more than on that mystical energy.”

Now the tears pour and my nose gets stuffy. I sit up so I don’t gag and finish. “I’m not dishonoring you by having to let go of some of my superstitions. I love you so much. I hope one day I can see you again and tell you this to your face. But tonight I needed to tell you that if you don’t see me tossing salt over my shoulder or rubbing tomb water on my face, it’s not out of disrespect for you. It’s time I find my own path, and I am beginning to know what that is.”

I draw my knees to my chest and cradle Noelle tighter. “Grammy, I love you. I don’t blame you for teaching me all these things, because they made me into who I am today. And I’m starting to figure myself out. I guess the biggest thing I needed to tell you is I’ve found someone that I think you would approve of. You never met him; he came into my life right after you left us. But I’m going to give it a shot, if I can. I’m going to give it my all. I think you’ll be proud.”

I say the last words in a choking whisper and bury my face in my hands. My shoulders shake until eventually my tears dry. I can’t explain it, but I feel peace. I know she’s nearby.

“Bye, Grammy,” I whisper into the night. “I love you.”

I put my head down and am asleep almost instantly. The next thing I am aware of is the delicious aroma of pancakes and bacon sizzling. I leap out of bed and pad down the hall to the kitchen. I squint at the light. My mom, wearing red flannel pajamas and pink slippers, is flipping the pancakes as I wander in.

“Morning, Momma.” I pull out a chair from the table and stretch. “Bacon? Really? What happened to ‘bacon is the devil’s food and it will destroy you one fatty strip at a time’?”

My mom, as a doctor, has been on one health kick after another as long as I can remember, but the one that she’s been on the longest has been her anti-grease in meats. We eat the leanest beefs and chickens she can find, and for a while forced my dad to go hunting every fall so we could have deer. A small part of me is grateful that she instilled healthy habits into my life from a young age; a large part of me always craved bacon.

“You’re too skinny,” my mom replies, peeking into the oven where the bacon is cooking on a cookie sheet. “When I tell you to be healthy, I don’t mean starve yourself. Are you dieting? Is Heather doing a cleanse again for something?”

I smirk. “Yeah, I’m dieting. It’s called the Poverty Diet and consists of me eating instant noodles and only instant noodles because I can’t afford anything else.” I get up and grab two plates, cutlery and mugs from the cupboard and set them on the table. I open the fridge and pull out a jug of orange juice, no pulp, just the way I like it.

“So you’re fattening me up and clogging my arteries at the same time?” I have to tease my mom a little more.

My mom carries a steaming pile of pancakes to the table, gets the bacon out of the oven and places it in a serving tray. Then she joins me. I grab three pancakes, load a pile of butter on top and drizzle it all with maple syrup. I steal about half the pan of bacon and pour a bit more syrup on top of it. Then I take a huge bite, close my eyes and enjoy the moment.

“You seem different,” my mom comments as she cuts the one lone slice of bacon she took and stabs it with her fork. “You went to bed very distraught, but today you seem at peace.”

I think back to last night. To my ‘conversation’ with Grammy and my decision to stop relying on dumb superstitions that I know deep down are silly fallacies. The knowledge that I miss Josh and that it would be better to risk a relationship with him rather than lose him altogether.

“I guess I came to terms with a few things,” I say, stuffing pancakes into my mouth and speaking around them. I swallow and continue. “I thought a lot about what you said yesterday, how my former relationships never worked because they were just men I found attractive and weren’t people I was friends with. I am going to try to apologize to Josh. I don’t know if it’ll work . . . I saw him yesterday downtown hug some gorgeous woman after asking her on a date. But he told me when I called about Carter Clinton that he wants to get together for dinner with me later, so maybe I haven’t ruined everything.”

It’s difficult to admit I was wrong, but my mother doesn’t rub it in. She watches me then has another bite of bacon. “Well, I think it worked. You seem calmer and happier than I’ve seen you in a while.”

The remainder of breakfast we spend talking about the newest books we’ve read. My mom informs me that she just got a Kindle Fire and I welcome her to the twenty-first century. When we finish, I help clear the table and load the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher.

I go back to my bedroom and get dressed. I toss my toothbrush back into my bag and search for my hairbrush. It’s time to go home. Time to buckle down and find myself a job. Time to call Josh and have a real conversation with him.

My phone interrupts me. It’s a number I don’t recognize. I hesitate as my nerves kick in. It could be Carter Clinton or maybe the Law Society. It could be one of the jobs I’ve applied for, requesting an interview. I lick my lips and bring the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Charley?” It is a woman’s voice, very perky with a hint of a British accent.

“Yes.”

“Charley, my name is Natasha. Josh Mahoney gave me your number.”

“Okay.” The wheels are turning in my brain. Her voice . . . I know I’ve heard it before, but I can’t place where.

“I work for the Calgary Justice Services at the Court of the Queen’s Bench. We have been looking for new legal counsel to assist high risk children in family court. Specifically you would be representing children who are in the foster care program and their families. I know you haven’t applied for this position, but I was given your résuméand a glowing recommendation and I feel you might be a good fit. Would I be able to meet with you?”

“Josh,” I murmur. He did this for me. After I turned him down and probably crushed his heart, he not only looked into the mess at Carter Clinton for me, but also sent off my resume to some contacts with a ‘glowing recommendation’. I don’t deserve this! I don’t deserve him.

“Excuse me? I didn’t catch what you said,” the woman says.

I forgot I am still on the phone. I clear my throat and respond rapidly. “Yes, definitely we can meet. When is good for you?”

“Well, I’d like to chat with you, tell you a bit about the job and get to know you. It won’t be a stuffy interview or anything, so why don’t we meet at a coffee shop around four o’clock today. Does that work for you?”

Seeing as my calendar is a big, blank page of nothingness, yeah, I think I can swing it. “Yes, four o’clock would be fine.”

“All right, do you know the Coffee Café on 4th Street? It’s down from the courthouse about half a block.”

I don’t know the place, but I am sure I can find it. “Sure, I’ll meet you there.”

“Lovely, it will be great to meet you and see how you’ll fit into our team. Have a nice day.”

“Thanks, you too.”

We hang up and I throw my head back and laugh. It sounds like I have the job! She hasn’t even met me and yet it seems like this interview at the coffee shop is basically a formality. And what a job too! Making a difference, working with children. This is why I went to law school.

I run into the living room, squealing with excitement at the door that has just opened. “Momma! I need a ride back to my apartment! Hurry!”