Soaring (50 page)

I closed my eyes and leaned a shoulder against the wall at hearing my brother’s pain.

“During your counselling, she gave you nothing?” I asked.

“Once the dread sock situation was outed, she’s hardly said anything in our sessions. Once a week she sits there barely moving with her arms crossed on her chest and her eyes to her knees. Her expression doesn’t even change. I lay it out. I even throw out the ugly just to see if I can get her to react to
something
. Nothing, MeeMee. It’s so bad even our counselor suggested a trial separation, and I think she did in an effort to put me out of my misery. The fuck of that is it’s humiliating. In fact, the whole fucking thing is humiliating.”

I hated that.

I hated that for my glorious big brother Lawrie.

He was not short like me. He was tall and straight and lean and commanding, like my dad.

But he had great, thick, dark hair that now had silver in it that was attractive (which was like mine, without the dye job and highlights, obviously).

And we shared our hazel eyes.

He got my father’s cut, angular, masculine bone structure that started forming and defining when he was fifteen. So since then, to when he met Mariel, he’d had to beat them off with a stick.

He loved his sons.

He was the youngest attorney in the history of his firm to make partner.

He made a ton of money and just
had
a ton of money.

He was smart. He had a great sense of humor.

And I remembered. I remembered the way he used to be with her. How she’d walk into the room and everything about him would change. The way he told her she was beautiful, and it wasn’t a throwaway compliment she could settle into, but he did it, each time I heard it, like he meant it and he wanted it to mean something to her.

I also remembered the way he stood at the altar at the church and watched her walk to him with this look of happy, expectant certainty like he just
knew
their lives would be beauty from that day until they left the earth.

This was why I hated her.

Because she became my mother when he did
not
become our father, and then she became worse than my mother and doing it, proved him wrong.

“You’re welcome, with the boys, without them, with her, or without,” I assured him. “You’re welcome anytime, Lawrie.”

“Thanks, MeeMee.”

“And I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

“I lived for years stupidly hoping she’d snap out of it or just snap. Let fly what was causing her to be the way she was being. And maybe I should give it longer. But I’m not twenty-five. It isn’t that I didn’t try to talk to her. Take her away for the weekend. Adjust things I was doing in case I hit on the right one. She gives no indication it’s anything but over. The boys are old enough to get it and the fuck of that is, I think for them it’ll be a relief. They love their mother but she isn’t what I want for them because she gives them less than Mom gave you and me. And that’s my biggest fuck up, MeeMee. I should have gotten them away from that a long time ago.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I told him.

“And hope is as blind as love,” he told me.

God, but the two men I loved most in this world had taken a licking by the women they gave their hearts to.

I straightened from the wall at that thought because I’d admitted to myself I was falling in love with Mickey.

I’d never admitted I was there.

Since in that moment my brother needed my attention, I shook this off and said, “Come for Thanksgiving and let me, Auden and Pip take care of you.”

“I’ll be there, MeeMee, and I’ll let you know what Mariel and I decide about the boys.”

Whereas I couldn’t wait to have my kids with me for a holiday, she’d probably shrug and say, “Whatever you think is best, Lawrence.”

Lawrie took us off that subject by asking, “Since you brought up Auden and Pip, things still going good with that?”

They were. It had been three days since Mickey and my fight. It was now Monday, his kids were back and as for my kids, the TV visits were continuing. Not to mention Pippa and Polly had a sleepover on Saturday night at my place (Pippa having a sleepover I was happy about, her bringing Polly, who, when she wasn’t being negative she was being mean, not so much).

And that evening, both of my kids were coming over and Auden had said they were spending the night.

We were definitely back. Things were Mom and Kids. It was a different brand of Mom and Kids that meant they had two homes and a divided family, but it was working for us.

I still had concerns there was something not right about it, but they didn’t seem to be cagey about anything. It was just like they wanted to spend time with their mom.

So I was taking it.

I shared all that with Lawrie and ended it, asking, “By the way, have you heard from Mom and Dad?”

“Mom called this weekend. She wanted to know when Mariel was taking her next spa weekend so she could come up. Since every other weekend is a spa weekend for Mariel and we’ve hit that rotation, she’s coming up on Friday. Why?”

Mom and I agreed on very few things. Our mutual dislike of Mariel was one of them. And a shocking twist to this, we both disliked her for the same reason.

Not that Mariel wasn’t the appropriately styled, turned out and behaved wife to a prominent attorney who also was a Bourne-Hathaway (because she was).

But that she didn’t make Lawr happy.

Mom avoided Mariel like the plague.

“I haven’t heard from them for a while. I’ve been emailing but I get nothing,” I explained.

“Neither of them are big on email,” Lawr reminded me.

“I know but they also haven’t phoned or anything. Not in weeks, or, Lawr, maybe even
months
.”

“They disagreed with you moving across country, MeeMee. Maybe this is your penance. But I’ll talk to Mom when she’s up this weekend. See if I can find out where she’s at with that.”

I knew he’d get nowhere with that. If Mom didn’t feel like sharing, and with her silence she obviously didn’t, she wouldn’t share.

I still said, “I’d appreciate it.”

“Consider it done.”

I smiled and asked, “You going to be okay?”

“In the stages of grief, I’m past denial, anger and bargaining. I’ve hit depression. One more to go and I’m good,” he joked.

I didn’t laugh.

“I’m here, anytime you need me, Lawrie,” I told him.

“I know, sweetheart,” he replied.

“I’ve gotta get back to the residents.
Jeopardy
is after
Wheel of Fortune
and the staff try to stick close in case a fight breaks out.”

I was relieved to hear the smile in his voice when he said, “I’ll let you go.”

“Lawrie?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you lots and lots,” I whispered words I’d say to him when he was there for me when we were kids. Putting a Band-Aid on my arm or calamine lotion on my poison ivy or listening to me after a boyfriend broke up with me. In that house with zero love and affection, he was the best brother there could be.

“Love you lots and lots back, MeeMee.”

“See you soon.”

“You will. ’Bye, sweets.”

“’Bye, Lawrie.”

We disconnected and I stared unseeing out the windows of the fire doors at the back of the hall.

I wanted to invite Robin to Thanksgiving.

I knew it would be too soon, maybe for both of them.

So I couldn’t invite Robin to Thanksgiving.

That didn’t stop me from really,
really
wanting to.

Then, suddenly, I found my hand lifting and my finger sliding across the screen of my phone.

I put it to my ear and heard it ring twice before I got, “Hey, baby.”

“Hey back,” I greeted Mickey then blurted, “I wanna go away with you.”

“Uh…what?”

“Whenever, wherever for however long you want to go. I don’t care. I want you to know I want to go with you. I want to take Pop Tarts and squirtable cheese and crackers, and other food we don’t have to cook that we can eat with our fingers so we can stay in bed naked all day together. I want to go, whenever, wherever, and I want it to be just about you and me.”

There was a moment of silence before he replied gently, “I love that, Amy, I love that you gave that to me. But gotta ask what brought it on.”

“My brother’s marriage is disintegrating.”

“Shit, Amy,” he muttered.

“So you need to know I want that. Not this weekend. Or next. No pressure. Whenever we can do it. Whenever we can fit it in. Whenever we have a day or two or five where we can do that. I just need you to know I want that. I want that with you.”

“We’ll find our time, darlin’,” he told me.

“And,” I swallowed, gathering the courage to go on, “if this keeps growing, I don’t ever want you to forget no matter how many weeks or months or years pass, all you need to do is tell me to pack a bag and I’ll do it, happy to go away with you.”

“Love that too, Amy,” he said softly and he sounded like he did. He sounded like he loved that.

And I loved that sound.

I closed my eyes. “Okay.”

“You okay?”

I opened my eyes. “I hurt for my brother,” I told him. “But I’m fine.”

“Life sucks. But if he’s getting out of a bad situation, it’s his first step to finding some happy.”

“I hope so.”

“It’ll happen. Won’t know when it will happen. But mine moved in right across the street.”

I drew in a sharp breath.

Mickey kept talking like he didn’t just gift me with something precious.

“I got work, babe. Hate it when you’re hurtin’ for your brother, but I gotta go.”

“Okay, Mickey. I’ll let you go.”

“Talk to you later.”

“Yeah. Later, honey. ’Bye.”

“’Bye, babe.”

We disconnected and I drew in another breath.

Mine moved in right across the street.

I let the breath out, smiling.

“
Bonnie and Clyde!
” I heard shouted in two voices.

Then I heard, “I said it first!”

“You did not!”

“Tell her, Ellen! I said it first!”

“I knew on the
n
. I didn’t even
need
the
d
!”

“Then you should have said it on the
n
!”

“Ladies—” I heard Mr. Dennison say calmingly.

“Shut it, Charles!”

At that, knowing with brief but alarming experience it was time to take action, I stopped thinking about Lawrie, Robin, Mickey and Thanksgiving and rushed to the lounge.

* * * * *

“It’s all right.”

That came from Auden.

“I think it’s the bomb. Get it, Mom.”

That came from Olympia.

We were in the back den, gathered around the PC and I was showing them the dining room table I was considering purchasing from the New Hampshire furniture company.

When they replied to my email, I found they had a small showroom but none of those pieces, although lovely, were big enough for the space I had. And the one I’d seen on their site had been purchased and was unavailable.

Mostly, however, they did custom designs and builds and the one we were viewing was a build that the people who ordered it had reneged on.

If I wanted it, it would be all mine.

“It works. It’s perfect,” Pippa went on. “And you need to get something. Uncle Lawrie is coming and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.”

I had time but my girl was right. We weren’t going to eat Thanksgiving dinner sitting on the sectional.

“Okay, I’ll get it,” I decided.

“Great. Can I stop looking at furniture now?” Auden asked.

He wasn’t in a surly mood. He was just a boy who didn’t give a fig about dining room tables.

“No,” Pippa answered for me. “We need to look at couches. And Mom, you need to get hopping on the other guest bedroom and get a pullout for in here so Hart and Mercer don’t have to share a room.”

I was looking at her, thinking she was right. I had the desk and chair but there was vast amounts of space in that room that needed filling and the whole room needed decorating.

However, when she quit talking, I reminded her, “Sweets, I explained the boys might not be coming.”

“If they have a choice between Uncle Lawrie and Aunt Frosty, they’ll
so
be here,” she returned.

My kids called my brother’s wife “Aunt Frosty.”

It was funny.

But it wasn’t nice.

“Aunt Frosty isn’t nice,” I rebuked gently.

She didn’t look contrite. “It isn’t but it’s real.”

I couldn’t argue that.

I still didn’t want my daughter being mean.

“Sometimes we should be careful about calling them as we see them,” I advised. “And especially when Lawr, or if the boys, come. They may be at the beginning of going through something you know from experience is unpleasant, so let’s help them do that better than we got through it, shall we?”

That was when she looked contrite, licked her lips and rolled them together.

“I care less about the guest bedroom, couches and pullouts,” Auden put in. “So
now
can I stop looking at furniture?”

I rolled my chair slightly back so both kids, gathered around me, moved back too.

After I did this, I said, “Actually, I need you for another little bit to talk to you about something.”

They both donned expressions of wary.

I ignored that and launched in.

“A while ago, we had a discussion about me dating.”

“Yeah, and now you’re dating some Neanderthal,” Pippa declared. “We know.”

My back went straight as I fought a quick retort and instead asked, “How do you know?”

“Dad told us,” Auden answered and my eyes looked to him to see his expression was now carefully blank. “Said we should know in case we see you two in town.”

“And your father called Mickey a Neanderthal?” I queried, my voice thin.

Pippa looked out the window.

Auden shifted but held my gaze and said, “Yeah.”

I fought the itch that was covering every inch of my skin, screaming to get scratched, me doing that meaning I marched to my car, got in it, drove to Conrad’s and shrieked at him for being such a huge…fucking…
dick
.