Soaring (64 page)

And he’d just told me that Aisling had told him that she wanted me to go shopping to decorate her room.

The twist was that she wanted me to do this with her
and
Rhiannon.

And the twist to
that
was, Rhiannon had agreed.

So far, it had been a good week in a variety of ways. One of which was the discovery that Aisling was now showering regularly.

This was positive but not exactly surprising. Rhiannon had phoned Mickey and told him they’d had not one but three chats. The first one was reportedly dramatic, much like experienced by Mickey. The second one was surly.

Rhiannon didn’t give up and the third one was beneficial.

Apparently, Aisling wasn’t adjusting to high school very well. There were some girls she didn’t like, who she never really liked, but it was difficult to avoid them like she used to do as unfortunately they shared a number of classes. Classes that, also unfortunately, Aisling’s friends didn’t share so she had no one “at her back.”

According to Ash, “it wasn’t that big of a deal” and that “they just don’t get me, I’m not into the same crap as they are.”

Rhiannon then cottoned on to the fact that they were possibly picking on her and pointed out that she should give them less to pick on, in other words, having a shower and taking care of herself better.

She also asked if she and Mickey needed to contact the school.

Aisling had flatly refused this and before any headway that was gained could be lost, Rhiannon backed down. However, she asked for Mickey to keep an eye out when he got the kids back just to make sure that Aisling was still improving.

It seemed she was. She not only showered, she also helped me with dinner. She wasn’t back to her quiet but present self, but it was something.

Mickey was relieved. Mickey also communicated this to her, taking every opportunity to do that he could, without making it obvious or overbearing.

He’d also started calling her his “pretty girl” or his “gorgeous girl,” things he used to say but he said them now still infrequently but with greater regularity.

These were from her dad, not some cute boy, but it was plain to see she was responding. When he said them, her face would change in a way that was good, not bad. Or she’d hunch her shoulders like she was trying to hold the subtle compliments to her.

It didn’t hurt that Cillian, as if he sensed all this was happening (when, at his age, I was sure it was flying right over his head), got in on the act. He praised her cooking. And the first time she said she was going to watch TV with us instead of slinking to her room, he’d cried, “All right! What should we make Dad and Amy watch, Ash? I’m totally thinking
Arrow
.”

“Someone kill me,” Mickey had murmured, and both his kids had laughed (both of them!).

We’d watched
Arrow
. I’d never even heard of it but it was pretty good, even if I wasn’t into superhero kinds of things.

What was great about it was that Cillian and Aisling kept up a running commentary, catching us up on back stories we could have no idea about.

And Aisling was almost as into this as Cillian.

So the efforts of the three adults in Ash’s life were obviously working. It wasn’t a miraculous change but the silence, isolation and gloom seemed to be lifting.

And now she wanted me to go shopping with her and her mother.

“She’s not drinking,” Mickey announced rather than repeating the insanity of me shopping with his daughter and ex-wife.

“I’m sorry?” I whispered.

“She isn’t drinking.”

I stared.

“Ash told me. Not the whole week she had them. Not a drop. And when Rhiannon wasn’t around, Ash looked and there’s no liquor in her house. Not wine, which is what she drinks, but not anything and she keeps other shit there for when she has company.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

This was incredible.

“I don’t know,” Mickey stated. “Don’t got my hopes up, don’t want my kids’ up. But she’s spoken to me on the phone and I can tell, in the evenings, when she’s slidin’ toward gone, slurrin’ her words, losing track of the conversation. She’s all there. She hasn’t been all there in ten years. Now, she’s all there.”

Could it be that
everything
was going to turn out right?

Mickey kept going, “So, Ash wants you and Rhiannon to bond. Rhiannon knows this and she wants our daughter to have this. She said you were cool when you answered the door. She knew it was a surprise for you when she showed, not a good one, but you were nice to her. Offered to let her see the kids. Told her it was nice to meet her. It wasn’t good why we got divorced and we didn’t agree on why we got divorced. What we agreed on is that we’d do what we could to make us bein’ apart as easy as possible for the kids. She’s nice. Doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, unless she’s in denial and fuckin’ up her life. That means she will not do you dirty. I don’t suspect she wants you in her crew. I think she just wants her daughter to have somethin’ solid and real. Folks around her who give a shit and also get along. And babe,” he moved closer to me, “it’d mean a fuckuva lot you did this for me too.”

Shit, I had to do this.

Shit,
I had to
do this
.

“I’ll do it.”

His grin was not easy.

It was warm and beautiful and utterly amazing.

“Thanks, Amy,” he whispered.

For that grin, I’d do anything.

Then again, I’d do anything for Mickey.

And Aisling.

“Do anything for your girl, Mickey,” I replied.

That got me more grin until I lost it when he was kissing me.

“You guys gonna stay in there until Armageddon or what?” Cillian shouted and Mickey broke the kiss. “Spaghetti’s ready!”

“Cill! Shut up!” Ash yelled on the heels of Cillian shouting.

“Comin’!” Mickey bellowed on the heels of Ash yelling.

Then he took my hand, pulled me out of his room and we had spaghetti.

* * * * *

“This is beautiful,” Rhiannon decreed.

“I like it,” Aisling said quietly, but from the look on her face, she didn’t like it. She loved it.

It was late Saturday morning. Rhiannon had come to Mickey’s to pick up Ash and me. It was awkward for Rhiannon and me from the get-go but I was working, and knew she was too, at hiding this from Aisling.

I just hoped we were succeeding.

We were now in Bed Bath and Beyond, our first stop.

And I was staring at bed linens that were sophisticated and grown up and I wouldn’t mind having them in my house.

The problem was that I worried they were expensive.

The comforter was a muted green with an equally muted sheen, two wide strips of pretty beading up the sides. The sheets were cream. The green euro pillow shams also had a wide strip of beading down the middle. The standard shams had two strips to the sides. The toss pillows included a neckroll in an embroidered cream, a green rectangle with two stripes of beading to its sides, and a square with beading at the corners.

“We’re getting this,” Rhiannon announced and Ash turned wide, happy eyes to her. “All of it. Even those toss pillows and the euros.”

I started panicking.

“To get it all, we’ll need another cart,” Rhiannon decided as I sidled to the shelves behind the bed display in order surreptitiously check the prices. “Can you go get one, honey?”

“Sure,” Ash agreed, giving her mom a small smile, giving me one, then moving away.

I looked to the price tags on the shelves where the linens were. I did a quick calculation and continued to panic.

Mickey had given us a budget. It wasn’t excessive, it wasn’t skimpy. But if we bought the entire ensemble, it would be more than half of what he gave us.

The linens would clash in her room now with all its other accoutrements. So we needed paint. We needed new lamps (all her lamp bases or shades were purple or pink). Her floors were wood and it was highly unlikely under that layer of clothes that the rugs were green or cream or beige or mushroom or oyster or anything that would work with the sophistication of those linens.

The decorator in me screamed. The mom in me screamed louder. Blowing more than half our budget on bedclothes meant the job would end up not right, half-assed, and Aisling would have to live in that until it could be sorted. Christmas was weeks away and I probably could get away with a lamp, a rug, or maybe some knickknacks, but Mickey wouldn’t want me to go all out.

This meant we’d have to piecemeal her redecoration efforts and that didn’t say,
We love you. We know you’re growing up smart and responsible and beautiful and we want you to have space that reflects that.
It said,
We’re doing what we can do. Deal with it.

“Isn’t it pretty?”

The question came from Rhiannon.

I looked to her and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t contribute to the cause because that might upset Mickey. I couldn’t allow us to blow the whole budget on sheets, comforter, shams and toss pillows because that would mean we’d either have to get super cheap stuff for the rest or defer it. And I couldn’t say Aisling couldn’t have it because Rhiannon already told her she could and it was obvious Mickey’s girl loved it.

“You don’t like it?” Rhiannon asked, reading my face.

“I…well…” I drew in a deep breath. “It’s gorgeous. She loves it. So I’m really sorry to say this but this stuff is going to blow half our budget and this is the first store we’ve been to. I’m worried about—”

“This is from me.”

I wasn’t thinking that was any better.

She read that too, turned her face away and it looked like she was deciding something.

I let her, watching her and seeing Mickey did have a type.

His type was me.

Sure, Rhiannon had dark blonde hair, but she also had hazel eyes, a pretty face, she was my height (maybe an inch taller) and she was very curvy in a nice way. She wore classy clothes that were a bit edgy. She took care of herself.

In fact, watching her, I noted that now, miraculously, she didn’t look five years older than me. She looked my age. Her skin brighter, healthier, the flush from the cold outside still on her cheeks.

She interrupted my musings on Mickey’s type when she looked back to me and declared, “It’s time for honesty.”

Oh God.

We’d been together for less than an hour, Ash was off getting a cart, I wasn’t ready for honesty.

I braced.

She noticed it and her voice softened. “Not bad honesty, Amy. But honesty for me, after a while where I wasn’t honest at all, is a good thing.”

“I…okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say and not saying what I wanted to say, which was that I didn’t know what she was going to say but I still wished she wouldn’t say it.

I didn’t get my silent wish.

She started talking.

“I know it seems weird, me buying my daughter sheets and stuff for her room at her dad’s. But I have a feeling Mickey’s told you about me so I have a feeling you know I haven’t been mother of the year. Not this year, or the last, or any for a while.”

When she meant honesty, she wasn’t kidding.

I decided it best not to respond, however, I kept my expression open for her to continue.

She did.

“I have a problem,” she declared.

I fought against my mouth dropping open.

Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

“I’m working on it,” she went on. “I’ll be working on it forever but at least I’ve started working on it. When they were with me, the kids were talking about you and I knew the way you were around, knowing Mickey, that you meant something. I didn’t…that didn’t…” her voice dropped to a whisper, “that upset me.”

“Rhiannon.” I was whispering too.

She lifted her chin slightly. “They liked you. I…you were…it seemed like you were making a family. And I…I…” she shook her head, “I didn’t handle that very well. Then I missed Cill’s birthday—”

“Mickey and I weren’t even together then,” I told her quietly.

“Yes you were,” she replied.

We were. We were in the throes of a bizarre mating ritual but we were into each other. I just didn’t know it and he was fighting it.

I made no reply.

“That was…” she held my eyes, “a mother doesn’t do that, Amy. Miss her boy’s birthday.”

“No,” I agreed carefully.

She straightened her shoulders. “So I missed Cill’s birthday. Ash was slipping. And I was wallowing. Mickey and I got into it and I didn’t even know how some of the stuff I was saying was coming out. I knew he wasn’t like that. I knew he’d never do the stuff I was accusing him of doing. And when he gets angry,” she smiled a melancholy smile, “I’m sure you know, he lets loose. So, even still angry at me, when he phoned about his scene with Aisling it was dawning on me I had to wake up. Everyone was being adult about the situation, even the kids. The only one who wasn’t was me. Then I came to the house and saw you.”

I kept eye contact, unsure of what was coming.

She kept speaking.

“You were nice. You seemed comfortable there. That didn’t sit well with me either. It hurt. But you were nice. You weren’t cold or mean. You were…you were…
nice
.”

“I’m divorced too, Rhiannon, I have kids. I know it’s important to try to keep things good with all involved, doing that for the children. Saying that, my ex and I haven’t actually accomplished that feat,” I admitted.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she replied. “I hope that gets better. I’m actually surprised to hear it because I walked away from meeting you and I thought, if that woman could stand in the home that used to be mine and be friendly and welcoming, which had to be hard considering all that was going on, but it would always be awkward, and you did what you could not to make it that way, then what was wrong with me?”

“Rhiannon—” I started.

“I went right from there to Reverend Fletcher.”

I blinked.

She continued, “There’s a meeting at the church, Wednesday nights. I started going.”

Oh my God!

She
was
saying what I thought she was saying!

She shook her head, looked over my shoulder, then back at me. “It’s not enough. But there’s a community center in Fullham. It’s a drive but they have meetings on Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons. I don’t have a sponsor yet or anything, but there are folks who go who’ve been in recovery a lot longer than me who have given me their numbers so I can call if things get…if they get…
hairy
.”