Liesel sighed and put a hand on the wall, her head ducked for a moment before she pushed past Sunny to head for her bedroom. In the doorway, she paused to murmur, “Good night,” before closing the door behind her.
Chapter 34
“W
elcome to the world of motherhood.” Becka winked as she said this, then pulled out a bottle of tequila from behind her back. “Look. The good stuff. Patrón, honey, not some cheap-ass bottle of Cuervo or whatever that swill is you think counts as booze.”
Liesel had been hanging over the sink, gripping the stainless steel and fighting back a scream or sobs—she still wasn’t sure which—when Becka let herself in through the back door. She turned now. “Oh. God. I can’t drink that.”
Becka frowned and looked at the bottle. “Huh? Why not? It goes down like silk, I promise.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” Liesel pressed the heel of her hand to her eye socket, just briefly, then cocked an ear to listen for any sounds coming from the den. The kids had been quiet for the past ten minutes. Too quiet, too long.
She couldn’t face going in there just now.
Becka set the bottle down and helped herself to a couple of glasses from the cupboard. She looked at Liesel over her shoulder. “Does not compute.”
“If I get started—” Liesel’s laugh came out more like a growl “—I might not stop.”
“That sort of day, huh?” Becka sounded sympathetic, but she gave Liesel another wink as she poured a finger of tequila into each glass. She handed Liesel one, kept the other. Lifted it. “Cheers. Down the hatch.”
That sort of day? Talk about that sort of year. Liesel looked at the glass. “I don’t think—”
“Listen. Some days a shot of tequila is the only damn thing that kept me going. Drink it. One isn’t going to kill you. It won’t even make you drunk, unless you’re a pansy lightweight, and girl, I know you can handle your booze a little better than that. By the way, love the new hair.”
Liesel clinked her glass against Becka’s, and before she could stop herself, she tipped it back. Oh, that was good tequila, smooth like gold. It left a line of fire down her throat and into her gut, but it was a good kind. She licked her lips.
“Thanks. At least you noticed it. Christopher didn’t say a damn word about it.”
“Typical male. Are you surprised?”
Liesel held out her shot glass for another, but for sipping this time. “Pissed off, more like it. I should know better. Any time a woman does something to her appearance for a man instead of herself, it’s always a wasted effort.”
“Deep. Very deep. A little bitter, but deep.” Becka put the cork top back in the bottle and pulled open the drawer of Liesel’s freezer to tuck it in behind the bags of frozen green beans. “There. My gift to you. Keep it in there, nobody will find it.”
Liesel’s laugh was only a little better this time. “I can’t be drinking tequila every day.”
“I’m not kidding, hon, that stuff saved my sanity.”
Liesel paused before pouring. “You’re not kidding?”
“Nope. Children are seven kinds of pain in the ass.”
“Only seven?” The words came out before she could stop them, and Liesel shut her mouth tight before anything else could slip out.
“Maybe it should be sevenfold. It’s a lot, that’s for sure.” Becka laughed and shook her head. “Your hair’s super cute, by the way, though I have to say I never pictured you as a blonde.”
Here it was, the moment of truth, but if you couldn’t admit your stupid motivations to your best friend of forever, who could you admit them to? “
She
was blonde.”
Becka’s brows lifted. “The first wife?”
Liesel nodded, ashamed. “Yeah. Blonde and tiny and pretty, just like her daughter, who I’ve been so encouraging my husband to spend more time with. He took her out driving last night. I mean, she needs to practice so she can get her driver’s license, of course she does. But he takes her out, they’re gone for hours…”
Liesel stopped, even more ashamed. “I sound like I’m jealous of her.”
“Are you?”
There were some things that couldn’t be admitted to.
Becka didn’t push. From the grocery bags she’d brought along, she pulled out a loaf of frozen garlic bread, a jar of spaghetti sauce, a box of pasta. Some bagged salad.
Earlier, Peace and Happy had been jumping on the couch in the living room, even after being told not to. The collision of their heads had resulted in a bloody nose, two screaming kids and a woken-from-nap baby. Liesel had spent forty minutes getting them all cleaned up and calmed down. She’d be able to shampoo the rug, but the white couch was probably ruined. She wasn’t thinking too hard about it now because she might just cry. That couch had been the first piece of “real” furniture she’d ever bought.
Becka had called somewhere in the middle of everything and had listened for half a minute to Liesel’s description of the scene before simply saying, “I’ll be over in half an hour.” True to her word, here she was, with booze and food.
Liesel still wanted to cry.
“How’s she doing with the GED?”
“Good. She needs some tutoring. There’s only so much Chris and I can do. I mean…new math, forget it. They have math so new I don’t even know where to start.” Liesel found another laugh. This one hurt her throat. She thought about another shot of tequila…but no. That was trouble. “She’s a bright girl—”
“Oh, that’s obvious,” Becka said.
Liesel sighed, watching as her friend made herself comfortable with pots and pans and the oven. She should step in and at least offer to help, but she’d known Becka so long she also knew it would be a wasted effort. Becka was in full-on caretaker mode, and frankly, Liesel was in the mood to be taken care of.
“And she’s motivated. I guess it had never occurred to her that she might actually deserve an education. We haven’t talked about college yet. That’s too much at this point. But she could go, Becka. She should go.”
Becka slipped the garlic bread onto a baking stone and put it in the oven. “Of course she should.”
“Anyway. Her job’s been good for her, too. Gives her some experience. Some spending money.”
“Some time out of the house. That’s good for her, too, I’m sure.” Becka turned to face Liesel. “But what about you, hon?”
Liesel pretended she didn’t know what Becka meant. “What about me?”
Becka gently moved Liesel to the side so she could fill a pot with water. She didn’t look at Liesel, though they were practically shoulder to shoulder. “Is it good for you?”
Liesel waited until Becka had put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner before she found the words to answer. “She needs this, Becka. The girl’s been through… I can’t even begin to imagine everything, and that’s with knowing some of what she’s had to deal with.”
“Sure, she’s had it rough. That’s for sure.” It wasn’t like Becka to be so deliberately neutral. She leaned against the table to look at Liesel. “How’s the counseling going?”
“It was great. Dr. Braddock was fabulous. Sunny really liked her.”
“Yeah, Jean is great.” Becka’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “But she’s not going now?”
Liesel hesitated, but it wasn’t as if she’d never bitched to Becka about Christopher before or listened to her friend complain about Kent. “I think she should go back. She’s just not quite…right.”
“Are you afraid she never will be?”
That was it, right there. Liesel let out a long, hissing sigh like air from a balloon. “Christopher says, why should we force her into some Judeo-Christian box that neither of us believes in ourselves?”
Becka’s brows rose. “Wow. Heavy.”
“Who knew, right?” Liesel was tired of trying to force laughter, so didn’t bother. “I didn’t know he had such an opinion about religion. I mean, at first he was all over me for making accommodations for her with the food stuff, the meditation, whatever. Now he says we shouldn’t expect her to just drop everything she ever believed just because it’s different.”
“But you think she should?”
“Not entirely. Some of the stuff she says makes sense, I can see where she’s coming from. But other things…”
“Like offing yourself in order to get to heaven.”
Liesel looked at her. “That. Of course that. And this thing she does with the listening. It’s more than meditation, which I always found interesting, how people can lose themselves in their heads like that. But she does something else. I mean, she really…listens. And I think she hears things.”
Becka’s mouth pursed. “Like what kinds of things?”
“I don’t know. She told me the problem with so many people is they don’t take the time to listen to silence, or something like that, and I get what she’s saying. God, there are days when I’d kill for some quiet. I get it, I totally do. But it’s more than that. Maybe…” Liesel laughed, embarrassed. “Maybe I
am
jealous. That she can just find someplace inside and go away, even for a little while.”
“Hell, sign me up for that, too.” Becka smiled.
“I should check on the kids,” Liesel said suddenly. It had been quiet for too long.
“Sure, you do that. I’m not going anywhere.” Becka cracked open the sauce jar and found a pot for it.
Liesel shouldn’t have worried. Peace had passed out, thumb in her mouth, legs sprawled. She still had the bloody twist of tissue stuck up her nose. Happy was quietly coloring in the jumbo drawing pad Liesel had picked up at the dollar store. He bent over the picture, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration, pudgy fingers gripping the cheap crayon so tightly it was no wonder that it snapped as Liesel watched.
“Oh!”
“It’s okay,” she said hastily, hoping Peace wouldn’t wake up. She’d figured on another half an hour or so for Bliss’s interrupted nap, and that wasn’t even guaranteed. The longer both girls slept, the more likely it was that Sunny’d be home by the time they woke.
“But I broke it.” Happy frowned, brow furrowing, serious like heartbreak.
“You have so many, Happy. Crayons break. It’ll be fine. I can buy you more.”
He studied the broken crayon, then peeled off the paper from the broken end. He held it up to her with a small, shy smile. “I can use this side!”
The tears she’d been fighting rose again to the surface. As a child, she’d tossed broken crayons without a second thought and had never been made to feel guilty for it. Broken crayons were part of…well, just a part of life. Breaking was what they did.
This small boy, at four, knew all about how things broke, too. Throwing them away, now that was something he hadn’t yet learned. Liesel passed her hand over his shorn curls.
“Yeah,” she said. “You can use that side. You hungry, buddy?”
Happy shook his head. “Not dinnertime.”
She didn’t argue with him. Bliss still ate mostly on demand, and Peace was glad to eat at any time, especially if she was offered sweet treats. Happy, on the other hand, clung stubbornly to the schedule he’d grown up with, and though he could be persuaded to break out of it, it was never his first choice.
“Okay, well. Soon. My friend Becka’s making spaghetti.”
Happy had already bent back over his drawing. Liesel left him there and found Becka in the kitchen, the long table in the breakfast porch already set and the good smell of sauce and garlic bread wafting all around.
“Such service. I owe you,” Liesel said.
“Hey. When I had Annabelle, you came to my house and did my freaking laundry. Do I even need to tell you how much more helpful that was than a basket full of baby booties?” Becka shook her head. “I owed you, big-time. So shut up.”
“This is hardly the same as having a baby.”
Becka gave Liesel a soft look. “No, hon, it’s kind of like you had quadruplets without even knowing you were pregnant.”
That was it. Liesel lost it. She burst into racking, helpless sobs that burned worse than the tequila had.
Becka enfolded her without hesitation. She patted Liesel’s back, and what was better, handed her a box of tissues. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Liesel wiped her eyes, still leaking, and blew her nose. “God, I’m a mess.”
“Well…duh.” A faint wail came from upstairs, but Becka held out her hand before Liesel could get up. “Sit. I’ll get her. You just sit.”
Liesel sat.
Becka was back in fifteen minutes with a smiling, cooing Bliss on her hip. “Look at this big girl, she woke up soaking wet. I stripped the crib and hung the sheets over the tub. I didn’t know where you kept fresh ones, but I wiped everything down.”
“Of course.” Liesel sighed. The fifteen minutes of silence had settled her a little bit. “It’s the cloth diapers. It’s like she’s wearing a sieve.”
Becka laughed and chucked the baby under her double chins. “Still can’t get Sunny to go for the disposables, huh?”
“She has a point about them being bad for the environment. And about the cost. She does the laundry…when she’s here,” Liesel added and took the baby so Becka could stir the sauce and add the pasta to the now-boiling water. There was no way she was going to tell Becka about the fluff. Christopher’s reaction had been bad enough. “It’s her kid, Becka. Who am I to tell her she has to put the baby in disposables?”
“It’s your house,” Becka pointed out. “You take care of those kids as much, if not more, than she does. Right? If disposable diapers would make it easier for you, I think you should just tell her you’re going to use them. What will she do, throw a tantrum?”