Warts and All

Tring, tring, tring…. Tring, tring, tring…. Tring, tring, tring….
“What is that noise?” I ask my pillow and roll over to look at the clock on the bed table.
4:25 A.M. it reads. Then my brain finally comes full awake and I realize that annoying sound is my cell phone and the ring pattern is my daughter’s ring.
I fumble for the thing and push talk hoping that she’s okay. “Hello? Annie?” I mumble into the mouthpiece.
Dead silence; I’m about to hang up thinking she must have fallen asleep with the phone in bed with her again when a young man’s voice says, “Um, hello? Is this Annie’s mom?”
I sit up in bed and feel my heart try to jump out through my throat and say, “Yes, yes I’m Annie Redman’s mother. What’s wrong? Is she alright?”
“Uh, she’s okay but she had a lot to drink and I think maybe you should come get her.” The young man mumbles.
All of the horrid things I was thinking that have happened suddenly change into other horrible things if she’s passed out somewhere. “I’ll come right over. Where is she?” I ask trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
The young man hic ups and says, “Umm… the frat house.”
I want to shout at this young man; but he’s been drinking too and may not realize I haven’t a clue what frat house he’s talking about.
“Son, which frat house? Do you know the street address?” I ask while I pull on a pair of sweat pants.
He burps and sighs one of those long drawn out sighs you heave when you’ve had a couple of drinks and try to remember your second grade teacher’s name.
Finally he says; “Umm. 425 Filbert Street, by the college.”
“I’m on my way, it will take me about 15 minutes. Will you wait with Annie until I get there?” I ask thinking that if he’s a nice enough boy to call her mother, he isn’t the type to take advantage of her; or at least I hope he isn’t!
“Yeah… we’re sitting on the front porch right now and gonna stay here, the air is good for her I think.” He mumbles.
“That’s a good place to be, I’m leaving right now.” I tell him as I grab my glasses and car keys.
“Okay, I’m gonna hang up cause she’s startin to tip over and I need both hands to keep her from fallin over. Bye Annie’s mom.” He says before hanging up.
I drive like a maniac and break every known traffic law ever written on my way over to collect my daughter from the frat house.
When I screech to a stop in front of the house a bunch of kids are milling about on the front lawn and there are about twenty of them on the roof of the porch. At first I think they’re having some kind of group seizure but then realize they’re dancing.
I walk up the porch steps and no one seems to notice I’m even there. Over in a corner I see two people slumped together and recognize one of them as my daughter.
Her lovely strawberry blond hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail and her make up is all smeared.
It looks like she’s thrown up at least once because there’s evidence of it all down the front of her once white tee shirt.
The boy who is holding her is cute; I think he has dirt on his chin but then see it’s one of those goatee things guys wear now.
I tap the boy on the shoulder; he shakes himself awake and looks at me. His dark brown eyes take a second to focus and a frown knits his brow, “Huh… Mom?” he says.
I smile at him and say, “No, I’m Annie’s mom.”
The boy still looks confused so I point at my daughter in his arms and say, “Her mom. You called me to come get her… remember?”
He tries to stand but Annie’s weight holds him down.
I grab my daughter under one of her arms and say to the young man, “I’ll take one arm and pull her up, can you try and do that with her other arm?”
He nods and together we lift my daughter, then we stand there like a broken tripod with Annie’s limp body between us.
The boy says, “I’ll help you get her to the car. Where are you parked?”
“Down in front of the house, the white pick up.” I tell him and try not to notice how Annie’s head is lolling around like her neck has no bones to support it.
We carry Annie down to the truck and as we pass the other kids they hoot and cheer, as if Annie has mastered some great achievement by drinking herself stupid.
The boy and I manage to get Annie into the front seat of the truck without banging her head too many times. Once the door is closed I turn back to the boy, he looks very tired but I resist the urge to tell him to go home and get to bed.
He reaches over pulls on my arm and says, “I really like your daughter… She hangs with the same crew I do but tonight is the first time we really got a chance to talk. Hope she remembers.” He turns and sleepily walks over to a group of kids on the lawn.
I get into the truck and as I start the engine tell the dashboard, “I hope she remembers him too.”
While driving back home at a much slower speed Annie starts to stir, burps very loudly then sits up saying, “I’m gonna hurl!”
I hit the window button and she leans over to spew out the window.
She sits back and wipes her mouth with her hand and burps again.
I shake my head and tell her, “If that boy still wants to see you after tonight he must really like you, princess.”
Annie blurts out, “I’m hungry, lets go get pancakes!”
“No.” I say as firmly as the time when she was eleven and wanted to shave her head.
“Aww, you sound like my mother.” She mumbles and flops back in her seat.
We arrive home and pull into the garage; Annie looks over at me and asks, “Are we at the restaurant?”
I smile and tell her, “Yes dear.”
She opens her door and almost falls out of the truck but catches herself saying, “Whoa who lowered the ground?”
She hangs onto the door and crawls out of the truck much as she did as a toddler.
For some reason I’m struck with the thought that maybe that’s why adults drink, so we can act like little kids again…
With me hanging onto her arm I guide Annie up to her old room and when I get her laid out on her bed, Katie our Labrador comes to investigate what all the noise is.
The pup takes one whiff of Annie’s breath and backs away sneezing, then looks at me as if ask what the heck has the young one got into and when am I taking her to the vet for a shot to make it go away?
I rub the dogs ears and assure her that Annie won’t need a shot to get rid of the nasty smells but if there is a God she will feel horrible when she wakes up, and will never want to repeat what she’s done to make the smells happen.
I turn out Annie’s bedroom light and Katie proves her loyalty to her smelly younger mistress by guarding her from the safe distance of the hallway.
I yawn and head to my own room; the bedside clock cheerfully tells me it’s 5:37 A.M.
I look longingly at the messy covers on my bed and wish I could dive back under them; but the alarm is set to go off at six and I have an important breakfast meeting with a potential new contractor at seven thirty.
Cursing the first idiot that thought of breakfast meetings especially on Saturday mornings I head for the master bath and get ready to face the rest of the day.
I suppose now would be the time to tell you what it is that I do for a living.
My father started Webster’s Restaurant Supply Company after he graduated from college and I worked part time for him after school and during the summers all through high school.
When I graduated from college he turned running the business over to me, but stayed on as a salesman.
Now I could go into all the boring and mundane aspects of the restaurant supply business but saying that Webster’s can supply your restaurant with everything from a walk in freezer the size of the average family room down to those little paper umbrellas some bars put in pina coldas should cover it.
This morning I’m meeting with John Blandings at a local cafe, he is a refrigeration contractor based in a small town not far from here who wants my installation and service business. We’re currently using a local company that was owned by a friend of dad’s, this friend’s son took over that business and hasn’t been giving us the same service as we got from his father.
The son is too cheap to hire enough service help and the ones he does have like to spend their time drinking beer instead of keeping up with week end service calls.
I can’t afford to tell another customer that their entire stock of fresh food will have to do without refrigeration simply because their equipment had the bad manners to break down during Super Bowl week end.
Before I leave I stop in to check on Annie, she is sleeping somewhat peacefully and Katie has moved from the hallway to the foot of the bed. I tip toe out of the room and leave the pair in the hands of providence.
I take the time to use the garden hose and remove the biggest amount of my daughter’s mess from the side of the truck. It somehow doesn’t seem to be a good idea to meet someone for the first time with sick all over the side of one’s vehicle; at least I think that’s what the good manners gurus say.
I’m a little early for the meeting and wait for the contractor in a booth near a large window over looking a small garden and birdbath.
This morning there are a mother robin and her hatchling bathing. I must be tired, because it seems like the mother robin is being very patient with her chick; but still wishes she could hold it’s head under the water until it does what she wants.
The waitress brings me a carafe of coffee and is followed by a very handsome muscularly built middle-aged man. I’ve been divorced from Harold my ex husband for close to fourteen years and after the hell I endured with that snake I had thought I’d closed the door on all erotic feelings… however let’s just say looking at this man kicked that door wide open and ripped out the hinges!
His warm hand shake and hazel eyes only add to the desire for me to slide over and do things with him in that booth that would make a porn star blush; but his first words cool my passions and bring me back to reality, “Good morning Mrs. Webster, will your husband be joining us?”
I calmly detach my hand from his and inform him, “My name is Ms. Elizabeth Redman and Mr. Webster my father, hasn’t had anything to do with the business since his death eight years ago.”
The man stands there awkwardly not knowing how to cover his mistake.
To get this meeting over with as quickly as possible I tell him, “Please sit down. We have a lot to discuss and I’m sure your wife has plans for your afternoon.”
He sits and says, “I’m not married and I apologize for being such an idiot. I asked my secretary to find out who owned your company and she must have seen that Webster’s is family owned and didn’t dig deeper. She thinks family means just a husband and wife. I should have double checked.”
I stir creamer into my coffee and think that he’s not married but must be sleeping with the secretary/girl friend.
If my friend Marti were here we’d bet that the gal Friday is a tall, youngish blonde, with a size thirty two double E chest, a twenty two inch waist and a head so empty she has to stuff a cotton ball in one ear to keep the wind noise down.
The only thing I could offer in comparison to all that is a moderately fit middle aged body and the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time without crib notes.
I smile at the man and say, “Oh well no harm done really. After my divorce dad suggested I change my name back to Webster but for the sake of my daughter I didn’t.“
I sip my coffee and ask, “What can your company offer me that my current refrigeration contractor can’t?”
The waitress comes to the table and asks if we’re ready to order, the man thankfully understands that I want this meeting to move quickly and tells her we’ll just have some sweet rolls to go with the coffee.
After the waitress has left he launches into his pitch, “First of all I should introduce myself, I am John Blandings. Now I know that Blandings’ Refrigeration is based in Hutchinson but that is only a twenty-minute drive away. Plus either my brother Steve, myself or one of our service men are on call twenty four seven.”
I won’t go into the boring details of the meeting but at the end of the hour Mr. Blandings and I have struck a deal that should prove to be mutually beneficial.
Business wise at least, if only there was a way to knock that girl friend out of the picture with out the fear of twenty to life in the state pen.
He walks me out to my truck and waits while I unlock the door then John opens it for me saying, “On Monday I’ll start inspecting all the refrigeration equipment your company has out and let you know what we find. This will be at no charge because it’s mainly to what find out what’s out and where it is. Besides it’s the least I can do for calling you Mrs. Webster.”
The twinkle in his eyes and the way the sun highlights his hair make my heart flip into my stomach and back again.
I manage to keep my cool while I climb into the truck and tell him, “I think that would be fair. There are a couple of customers who will want me to introduce you personally though, I’ll highlight those on the list when we fax it over to you Monday.”
He shakes his head and says, “I understand, why don’t you come to my shop Tuesday morning around nine o’clock and we can go and see them?”
I smile and tell him, “That would be fine, and it’ll give me a chance to check out your operation too.”
He notices one of Katie’s large chew toys on the floor and asks, “What kind of dog do you have?”
I move the toy away from the gas pedal and toss it in the back with the rest of the dog supplies I seem to cart around with me everywhere and tell him about my pup. The longing in his eyes while I tell him about her is hard to miss so I ask, “Do you have a dog?”
He grimaces and says, “My girlfriend has a miniature poodle.”
Everyone knows that in the dog world other breeds look at those toy things and wonder why someone took the time to come up with something so butt ugly and nasty tempered.
John’s cell phone starts to ring and he checks the incoming number, looks at me and says, “It’s a call from my girlfriend… she said something about going boating today so she can work on her tan and I’m sure she’s calling to remind me.” He lets the phone ring and holds out his hand saying, “It was a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to a long relationship.”
I shake his hand and strongly defy the urge to pull him into the truck with me so he can start fulfilling that wish; instead I smile and lie as I say I hope he and his girlfriend have fun boating.
On the way back home I stop at the grocery store to pick up some food, right now the only thing in my house my daughter would like is a bag of chocolate bits covered in candy shells she brought over last Christmas.
I normally keep my cupboards stocked with the ingredients to make low fat yet gourmet meals and the refrigerator is bulging with things to make salads. But the light meals I have to eat to maintain my weight only make Annie hungry for what she calls real food.
My daughter has the metabolism that allows her to eat a plate filled with fried cheese bread and wash it down with a couple of double thick chocolate malts as an appetizer to a rack of ribs the size of which would challenge a pro running back. Two hours later you’ll find her standing in front of the open refrigerator complaining because there’s nothing to eat and she’s starving to death.
While I’m pushing my cart of calorie laden foods out to my truck and wondering if they charge per each calorie and that’s why the stuff is so over priced my cell phone starts to ring. From the tune God Save The Queen coming from the phone I know it’s my friend Marti.
I steer my cart around a driver that must think because they have a handicapped sticker they are entitled to drive like an idiot and fish the phone out of my purse.
I have to tell you about my friend Marti.
Growing up I thought my family was rich, until I met Marti.
Her parents lived in the big house on the hill and we lived just a bit further down from them.
Marti was born in the same hospital on the same day I was but she had a nanny until she was old enough for first grade, then went to live with her grandparents in England and attended a private school.
At Christmas time Marti and her parents would fly to Switzerland and ski; in the summers they would tour the Mediterranean or go on Safari in Africa.
The summer I turned ten I was riding my bike through the park and saw some boys teasing a girl. The girl was crying and telling the boys to bugger off in a funny sounding voice.
I couldn’t understand why the boys didn’t leave her alone and go bugger off, thinking that it had something to with bugs and boys like bugs.
But the boys started to tease her more and started calling her boogie nose.
That made me mad so I yelled out that Charlie Poke still wets the bed.
Why? Because Charlie Poke was the main one of the boys teasing this new girl for talking funny, and the last time my brother had a sleep over he peed in his sleep so hard my mother had to throw away the sleeping bag!
Charlie could have laughed off my comment, but ol’ Charlie has never been too swift upstairs if you know what I mean, and he just sat right down on the ground and started bawling.
Hard to believe that Charlie was a semi professional football player and that today he runs a very successful luxury car dealership in North Grange.
But back then his gang didn’t know what to do with their leader sitting on the ground doing a pretty fair imitation of a lawn sprinkler so they just wandered off.
I ignored Charlie and walked over to the funny sounding girl and told her my name Elizabeth Joan Webster, but to please not call me ‘Dizzy Lizzy’.
She told me her full name was Martha Augusta Plowman, but if I ever called her Martha she’d give me a swirlly.
I didn’t know what that was but figured it couldn’t be something good so vowed I’d never call her that unless she made me really mad.
We have been thick as thieves ever since.
When Marti was fifteen she was attending a very strict girls boarding school and was unable to go with her parents on their annual Christmas skiing trip. The head mistress of the school was disappointed with a term paper Marti had turned in and convinced Marti’s parents that she should be forced to miss the holiday spree and rewrite the paper.
It was a punishment that may have saved Marti’s live because on that trip her parents passed away when they were swept off a mountain in an avalanche.
Shortly after that her grandparents moved from England thinking it better for Marti to go to an American public high school and have a little more stable surroundings then the Jet Set of Europe.
I hated the reason Marti came home for good, but loved having her around to help ease the burdens of being an ugly duckling.
I wasn’t a good-looking teenager, in fact I’ve always been somewhat short and have had to fight the scale my entire life. During my teens it was a battle I often lost… it sort of helped that Marti was just the opposite, tall and rather gangly.
She and I would spend hours driving the ladies at the make up counters in the elite boutiques crazy doing makeovers on us.
We would think we were more glamorous than Cher, until we walked back out on the street and caught a glimpse of ourselves to discover that we were just a couple of dorkie looking teenagers with a ton of goop on their faces.
In spite of the fact that our families were two of the richest in town, the teen elite deemed us nerds.
Many of our weekends were spent pillaging Marti’s grandparent’s liquor cabinet with our fellow outcasts, Phil and Pete.
Today Phil and Pete are still completely devoted to each other and are the owners of the trendiest bistro in town, uncle P’s. Their home has been featured in more than one architectural magazine; it has even been showcased on one of those cable television home decoration programs.
A guilty little pleasure we four share now is to have dinner at uncle P’s and watch the aging high school has-beens that called us unacceptable as they try to deal with the fact they are the ones no longer ‘cool’.
But I was telling you about my high school days.
Once in biology I was paired as a lab partner with one of the hunky football players, his comment to one of the cool girls at the table next to us of ‘which dizzy toad am I suppose to dissect’ has stuck with me.
Even to this day I hear that echo in my head when I go to try on new clothes, meet someone new or look at myself in the mirror every morning.
The summer between high school grad and college freshman year was a good one because Marti and I finally blossomed, and learned how to talk to boys without getting tongue-tied.
When Marti left to study art and literature in London and I went to study business at state college we would write each other letters on reams and reams of paper every few days.
Shortly after college grad Marti had a romance end in heartache and decided to move back home. Her grandparents were getting quite elderly and she felt she should spend their last few years with them.
Once her grandparents passed on she found out she was very happy to rattle around that big house on the hill by herself as long as she has me to talk to.
To keep busy she stays on the look out for her next ex-husband.
Marti has been married four times; each time she’s left a marriage she’s dramatically increased her already large families fortunes.
She’s a devastating beauty but has a wit that can cut diamonds.
Men hear that she’s been to private English schools and think they’ll be served a high tea every afternoon precisely at four.
What they get is an order for them to refill of her martini glass and to bring her another bowl of pretzels.
This morning I push the talk button on my phone and say; “Good morning… it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday. Either you haven’t been to bed yet or you’ve got some hair brained idea and are looking for me to play Ethel to your Lucy.”
“Very funny, dear.” Marti’s slight accent is more evident when she’s sleepy, “I was sleeping but was woken up by a phone call from your ex looking for you. Big H said he was worried because he saw Annie at some party last night and she was very drunk. What’s going on, do you need me to come over?”
I stop pushing my cart and almost get run over by an elderly driver, isn’t sweet to know that when we reach that age we will still be able to flip someone the bird?
“Harold told you he saw Annie at that party? She was drunk, in fact so drunk she passed out and some strange boy called me to come get her! If her father was there why in the name of heaven didn’t he help her?” I yell into the phone forgetting that I was killing the messenger.
Marti and I have known each other long enough that she doesn’t bother getting offended and tells me soothingly, “Calm down sweetie, I was just telling you what that human garbage called me for.”
She yawns and asks, “So how is Annie this morning?”
I start to push my cart again so the traffic jam behind me can dissipate and explain, “Annie was really drunk when I went to get her at 4:30 this morning and she was sleeping when I left for a business meeting. I stopped at the store to get some food she’ll eat and haven’t been home yet. I’m guessing she’s still sleeping and didn’t hear the phone if Harold called there… wonder why he didn’t call my cell phone?”
I can hear her stretching and the springs of her antique bed squeak as she gets up saying, “Big H must have tried to squeeze in a few minutes to call around while the bimbo he’s sleeping with this week was in the bathroom or picking gum out of her braces. What did you buy at the store, some chocolate decadence covered in chocolate with chocolate sprinkles?”
I sigh and wonder what is this obsession most woman have with chocolate, yeah it’s good and all that but if there was a blight that wiped out the coco bean plants I don’t think I’d lose the will to live because of it.
I chuckle and tell Marti, “You know my daughter, when she’s not feeling well the only thing that makes her feel better is chocolate. I think all the chocolate stocks went up at least twenty points from what I had to shell out.”
Marti laughs and says, “I’ll have to call my broker. I’m getting dressed and coming over to your house, Annie needs some help getting rid of all nasty chocolate. And besides I want to hear how your meeting with the Adonis of refrigeration went this morning.”
I dodge the last of the parking lot demolition drivers to finally make it to my truck telling her, “I’ll be home in about twenty minutes, see you there.”
It’s while I’m waiting at a red light that a call from Harold makes my cell phone erupt in the funeral dirge. I hear the tune and almost let the call go to my voice mail but that would be cowardly.
“Hello?” I say into the phone using my ‘talking to Harold’ voice; it lacks any emotion, Harold hates dealing with emotional woman over the age of twenty-five.
“Well it’s about time I found you! Where the hell have you been? I’ve called the house about a million times!” He rages at me.
The light turns green and I maneuver the truck over to side of the road, while talking to Harold it’s better to keep focused.
“I had a business meeting this morning then went to the grocery store. You should have tried to reach me on my cell phone.” I tell him.
He ignores that last fact and fumes, “What the hell was my daughter doing at a frat party last night? She was prancing around drunk as a skunk! I never should have agreed to you having complete custody of her if this is how you let her act! Do you know what can happen to a young girl at one of those parties?”
I sit silently for a moment and he snarls, “Hey Toad! Are you still there?”
The fact that he saw our daughter in such distress last night and didn’t do a damn thing to help her is the last straw and I finally let some of the pent up anger I’ve been hauling around for the last decade and a half loose by roaring at him, “You tell me you were at that party and watched as our daughter drank herself comatose without stepping in to stop her then call me a bad parent?”
I take a deep breath and continue my rant, “You total piece of shit! What’s the matter, were you too afraid that if you admitted that you’ve got a college aged daughter in front what ever bimbette you’re bedding it would spoil the illusion that you try to pull off?”
I laugh coldly and say in the bitchest tone I can muster, “Come on Harold! You are fifty-one! Do you really think that your face-lift, pec implants and Viagria can turn you into a twenty-one year old stud?”
I don’t hear anything on the other end of the line and think he’s hung up until in the background I hear a woman’s voice calling for ‘Harry’.
In response to my tirade he simply growls, “Whatever!” and hangs up.
I toss the phone into the passenger seat and wonder how the sex drive can make such piece of walking cow dung like him seem like something you just gotta have.
During college I dated, but the toad comment was still pretty fresh and it affected my ability to really trust any guy other than my brother or father so my love affairs were very short lived.
Until the day I met Harold Redman.
He was student teaching a course on acting at the local Junior College. Today he is still there, and using it as a way to meet and bed girls who foolishly think he can help them in their acting careers.
Harold was able to put on a convincing act during our courtship and the first few years of marriage.
I really thought he loved me because he was constantly calling me beautiful and saying how he’d be devastated if I ever left him… should have realized he was talking to my bank account.
I accepted his lame excuses of having to teach special ‘workshops’ and the constant weekend ‘seminars’ he needed to attend as legitimate reasons for being away from home so often.
The last three years of our marriage he stopped bothering to make excuses, and simply came to our apartment to eat, shower and collect his mail.
I finally woke up and went to talk to my lawyer.
After the divorce Marti was there to hand me a tissue, a slice of pizza, or another one of Harold’s photos to destroy.
She offered to hire a hit man but I didn’t think Annie would understand why mommy would constantly jump up screaming I confess! I confess! Every time we heard a loud noise.
I sigh and pull back into traffic, Marti has a key to my house and she has dealt with people in Annie’s condition before so I don’t need to hurry home.
I drive past the car wash and decide to pull in and wait patiently for my turn.
While the truck moves through the car wash I try an exercise one of the headshrinkers I saw in an attempt to rid myself of the toad image taught me and turn the rear view mirror to study my reflection while reminding myself of the positives in my life.
I’m forty-eight but am often guessed at forty three, I know it’s only five years but at this age you take what you can get.
I am five feet six inches tall and for the past year my weight has stayed right between one forty and one forty four; depending on the time of the month. The symptoms of Menopause visit quite often; and I look forward to it staying around full time so I can be finished with all the wonder and mystery of womanhood every month.
I know my body and how to dress it, what brands fit true to size and what ones to avoid like the plague.
I look okay in a business suit, casual clothing or hiking clothes. Dress me in anything with a designer label and I will receive hate mail from that designer and every fashion magazine in the universe.
My business is doing well, so well that I can take a two-week vacation in the spring and another two weeks in the fall.
Annie works part time for me like I did for my dad and discovered she likes restaurant supply. After she earns her BA in business and if she still feels the same she’ll become a full partner.
I would stay working with her for a couple of years after that but once she was comfortable I’d step away from working full time and travel.
I don’t want to do like my dad did and spend my last years in the store. It’s not that dad didn’t trust me to run the business; he was just an old warhorse that couldn’t think of getting up in the morning and not going down to the office.
I had hoped to talk myself into feeling better during my time in the car wash but instead I’ve started thinking about my father, which starts me thinking about my mother.
Thankfully before that whole cycle can be completed my truck is clean and I have to concentrate on driving the rest of the way home.
I pull into my circle driveway and see my mother’s Cadillac blocking the garage doors.
I fight the urge to pass on through but mother is looking out the kitchen window and saw me pull up.
I park half way down the drive way, I could pull closer to her but I want to make sure mother will have plenty of room to maneuver her big boat in when she leaves. With luck that will be soon, but today my luck is in the dumpster.
I enter the kitchen and see Marti pouring coffee from my coffee press; mother hates this type of coffee, in fact it is on the list of the things she describes as ‘weird food’.
Eating out with my mother is a challenge; her description of Mexican food is taco chips and a salsa made from unseasoned stewed tomatoes. Asian is white rice with a microbe of soy sauce and Italian is elbow macaroni with tomato sauce seasoned with a tiny pinch of oregano and lightly sprinkled with canned Parmesan cheese.
Mother was raised on a large remote cattle ranch in the wilds of Montana and has memories of going through the Great Depression of the 1930’s, which sort of explains her stunted taste buds.
In spite of all his efforts dad couldn’t teach mother the fine art of first-class dining, but mother did take to exotic liquors and can almost tell you what time of year a jigger of vodka was bottled just by the aroma.
When dad passed away we should have tossed mother in the grave with him.
She’s turned widowhood into a type of religion, which she is very diligent about practicing.
The friends she and dad made over the years were quite good about calling mother and including her in their social circle; until they grew tired of mother’s dissolving into tears at even the slightest suggestion that she allow some of her grief heal.
Mother found a group of six other like-minded widows to hang around and cry with.
They call them selves the ‘Happy Matrons’ but the only thing happy about that bunch is the tip they give the deliveryman from the liquor store when they get together for their weekly meetings. They meet at mother’s house because she has enough rooms for them all to sleep off the effects of the ‘meeting’ and nobody has to drive home.
I set my first load of goodies on the kitchen table as mother greets me by shrieking, “Oh my god! I was just about to call the police!”
I look at her and quietly say, “Hello mother, when did you get here?”
She puts her hand on her chest and complains, “Harold gave me such a fright when he called me this morning! He told me Annie has been going to those parties at the college!”
Mother sits down at the table and whines, “I wish your father were alive so he could talk to about keeping a better watch over his granddaughter!”
She sniffs loudly and dabs at her eyes with a delicate lace hankie then wails, “Oh what am I saying? If he were alive this would kill him all over again, then where would I be? Without my husband and it would be the fault of my crazy daughter!”
She throws herself full heartedly into her lament and to give her the space she needs I turn to Marti and ask, “Would you help me with the rest of the bags?”
As we walk down the driveway Marti tells me, “Your mother was already in the house when I got here. If I had gotten here first I would’ve pretended nobody was about.”
I sigh and remind my friend, “Yeah but she has a key and would have let herself in”
I turn to Marti and ask jokingly, “Would it be wrong to change the locks and not give her a new key?”
Marti chuckles and says, “Knowing your mother she’d just pick the lock.”
We get to my truck but instead of taking the bags and going back to the house we let down the tailgate and sit chatting under the huge oak tree growing on my front lawn.
The tree is the reason I bought the property; it’s big enough to shade the drive way and most of the house during the heat of the summer and the riot of color it shows off in the fall is enough to make you cry. I want to get up the courage to hang a couple of swings from the braches, but so far I’ve only bought the supplies to do it.
Marti digs in one of the grocery sacks, finds a package of cookies and a six-pack of bottled pre-mixed coffee mocha drinks. She hands me one of the drinks and tears into the cookies.
After she’s munched a few cookies and washed them down with the lukewarm coffee she asks, “So is
John Blandings as handsome as I’ve heard he is?”
I start to swing my feet as I sit on the tailgate and tell her, “Yeah, he sort of looks like that character Mel Gibson played in Braveheart. But only with shorter hair and dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt.”
Marti sips more of her drink then says, “And older, he’s got to be older.”
I nod my head and tell her, “He’s older then the character would have been, but not much older than us.”
Marti swallows another cookie and asks, “We’re not talking Sean Connery but almost as sexy, right?”
I just nod my head and sip my coffee before saying, “Yeah, but to be sure we’d have to have them both
here dressed in only a kilt just so we could compare.”
Marti looks off dreamily and says, “The tests could take hours.”
I shake my head and disagree by saying, “Weeks, we’d have to be definitely positive who was sexier.”
Marti chuckles and leans towards me and asks, “So if John is so hot why are you here and not out inspecting some nice big walk in freezer with him?”
I put down my empty bottle and tell her, “He’s got a girlfriend that he took out boating so she could work on her tan today. Oh yeah I forgot, ‘Barbie’ has a toy poodle who probably went along too.”
Marti is a cat person; she has a very large gray tabby named Mr. Snuggles that she spoils more than I thought it possible to spoil a cat. Marti likes Katie but you’d have to have a stone for a heart to not like Katie.
Marti leans against the side of the truck bed and says, “Look on the bright side, maybe John has a speed boat and the mutt will fly out into the water and be eaten by a fish.”
I reach for another bottle of coffee drink and add, “And Barbie will forget she can’t swim but jump in to save the mutt …”
Marti smiles and finishes the thought, “Leaving you to console Mr. Braveheart Refrigeration Man in his hour of loss. How humanitarian of you.”
We clink our bottles together as tribute to my make believe act of kindness.
We hear the back door bang shut and see Katie running full bore down the driveway to the truck.
My pup has always taken the open tailgate as an invitation to hop in; Marti and I move things out the dog’s way and allow her to jump up.
Annie walks down the driveway towards us, her hair is wet and she’s dressed in a pair of my sweat pants and one of the extra large men’s tee shirts I wear to sleep in.
When she’s reached the back of the truck she grumpily asks, “Why is grandma here?”
I hand her one of the coffee drinks and say, “Your dad called her and told her some things so she came over to check us out.”
Annie frowns a little and tells us, “I saw dad last night he was with some red headed chick. I went over to tell him hi but he just walked away from me…jerk.”
Whenever Annie makes a comment like that about her father I bite my tongue to keep from agreeing with her, the last thing I need is to have something I’ve said come back to haunt me later.
Instead I ask, “How do you feel?”
She shakes her bottled drink and says, “Tired, and I have a little head ache but mostly I’m hungry!”
She takes a cookie from Marti and asks, “What time did Marcie drop me off here?”
“Marcie didn’t drop you off, a young man called me using your cell phone and asked me to come to the frat house to pick you up.” I tell my daughter.
She stops mid chew and says, “Ugngh?”
I repeat the story of how she got here while she finishes chewing and swallows, she then asks, “What guy and which house? Where was Marcie?”
I shrug a shoulder and say, “I didn’t see Marcie, I don’t know the guy’s name and it’s the house over on Filbert Street.”
Annie moans and tells us, “Oh god! Marcie kept whining all night how she wanted to go to that party… I can’t stand frat parties because only jocks and assholes go to them. Marcie has a thing for Josh Mercer and he told her he’d be there, she drove us over there then must have left with him. She’s starting to get serious but I don’t think Josh will change his mind about going to K&N after grad and to go to State to study law to be with her while she finishes her teaching studies.”
She eats three more cookies then moans again and asks, “The guy who sitting by me, did he have sort of brown curly hair and a goatee?”
I nod and she moans once more and says, “Geez! That’s Vick Stevens, what a pain in the ass! The last thing I need right now is Jenny Rush in my face about trying to steal Vick from her!”
Marti and I simply sit and listen to Annie as she fills us in on the private lives of her friends and fellow students; even Katie sits down and cocks her head waiting to hear more.
Annie shakes her bottle of coffee drink again and says, “This Vick guy has dated almost everyone in the crowd … he dated Karen for awhile but they broke up after Karen got pregnant by Bill Krutz. Bill was dating Jenny but she dumped him for Greg Phillips when she heard Greg was studying to become a doctor. Greg is going to wait on med school for a bit and join the Army so Jenny dumped him and is trying to get Vick Stevens to notice her.”
Annie reaches for another cookie and between bites says, “Vick is going to be a vet. He wants to go into practice with his dad over in Hutchinson. He wants to turn Steven’s Veterinary Hospital into one of the biggest around… how in the world do I know that?” She asks and I tell her Vick’s comment about hoping she remembered talking to him last night.
Annie rolls her eyes and as if to change the subject asks, “Where’s my phone?”
I shake my head and tell her, “I forgot to get it from Vick, I’m sorry. Why don’t you try calling it and see if he still has it.”
She makes a face and whines, “Mom! What if he doesn’t?”
I remind myself that she’s tired and hung over otherwise she wouldn’t be acting like a spoiled self centered eight year old and assure her, “If you’re phone is lost it will be my fault because I should have asked Vick for it so I will pay to replace it. But go in and try calling to find out where it is.”
She sticks out her lower lip and says, “You come with me.”
Knowing we can’t hide out from my mother any longer I help Katie out of the truck and we all head back to the house.
When we come back to the kitchen mother is over her crying jag and doing her second favorite thing to do, rearrange my cupboards. Marti and I sit at the table and watch my mother go about her assault on my kitchen as Annie heads for the study to call her missing cell phone.
Mother always puts my spices in the top most cabinet over the broom closet… how she gets them there is a mystery. Mother is three inches shorter than I am and I have to climb on a chair to get them back down. I’ve never heard her dragging a chair and I don’t have a step stool, yet there are; neatly standing in alphabetical order like little sailors waiting for their turn at liberty.
Today mother is also removing the pasta from the glass canisters I keep it in and placing it in zipper top plastic bags, she putting the flour and sugar I keep in the bags into the canisters because that’s where normal people keep such things otherwise they wouldn’t make canisters that say ‘flour’, ‘sugar’ and ‘coffee’.
I store my cooking pots and pans in specially built drawers that have been designed to be in easy reach of both the range and dishwasher. In mother’s mind this is inefficient and she likes to take them out of there and carry them across the room to the storage pantry, then take the canned goods that were neatly stacked on the shelves and put them in the deep drawers.
The cooking utensils she moves from the wide drawer next to the range and puts them neatly into an empty vase, this she of course places in an empty spot on the counter that is furthest distance from any possible vantage point. Mother was taught that cooking must be a chore; anything that makes it easy is just plain laziness.
Satisfied that she’s caused enough material confusion, mother turns towards the table and places one hand on her hip the other she points at me and says in her ‘your gonna get it now’ voice, “Tell your friend she has to go home, we need to have a talk.”
Marti snorts quietly and covers her mouth with her hand to hide her smile, I sigh and ask Marti to please help her self to some more coffee and tell mother, “Mom, we can go talk in the study.”
From the look on my mother’s face as we walk towards my study you would swear the woman has just sucked the juice from a bushel of lemons.
Mom and I enter the study as Annie hangs up the phone, she looks grouchy and I ask her if she was able to locate her cell.
Annie scowls and tells me, “Yeah, I’ll pick it up tonight…. The person who has it wants to buy me dinner.”
Mother brightens up a little and says, “Well how nice, and here I was starting to think you young people today didn’t have manners but this person wants to re-pay you for using your phone by buying you dinner. You make sure you send them a nice thank you card.”
Annie gives her grandmother one of those stunning fake smiles she learned from her father and says, “Oh, I will grandma!”
The image of that robin at the birdbath flashes in mind as my daughter turns to me and asks, “Mother, may I please be excused so I can go help Aunt Martha make us all some brunch?”
I nod and watch my daughter almost skip out of the room. Mother just loves it when Annie pulls that little girl crap; if Annie were go up and put her hair in braids mom would slip her a hundred bucks just for being so darn cute.