Authors: Nina Howard
Even before her father had died, the Patterson's had always lived in the ‘have-not’ side of town. Tenaqua, an old Indian name that Victoria had always been convinced meant ‘snobby’, was a town built on strong shoulders and old money. It didn’t have the great estates of Lake Forest, which was 20 miles farther north, yet it had plenty of pedigree all its own. There were gracious houses built all through the 20s, 30s and 40s that still had an elegant presence today. Tudors, Georgians and Colonials stood side-by-side on neatly landscaped lots, with tall trees forming a canopy over the streets.
Growing up, Victoria always felt she was lacking. Lacking a big house, domestic help of any kind, even trips to Florida seemed exotic. Other families had hordes of children, and often they were all dressed in identical outfits, like the Von Traps, the girls sporting enormous red bows atop their towheaded pig tales. Their mothers drove them around in their Country Squire wood-paneled station wagons and spent their days playing golf and tennis at the club. Her mother worked, and Victoria took the bus. Now here she was driving a rental van with everything she owned inside. She had come full circle, back in full force to the ‘have-not’ side of town.
She had thought about calling when they crossed into Illinois, and couldn’t find a single pay phone. Not only had the FBI frozen her assets, they had sentenced her to a life of non-communication. Pay phones just didn’t exist anymore. Even the homeless had cell phones! So with a fair sense of dread, she rang the doorbell. Her stepfather, Bud Brewster, answered the door with delight.
“Vicky! How wonderful to have you here,” Bud grabbed her in a big bear hug. “Come in! Come in!” He ushered them into the tiny living room. “You must be Posey. Nice to meet you. I’m Bud.”
Bud Brewster was a genial 70-something retired insurance agent who had lived in Tenaqua his entire life. He had been married and raised two boys in town, and then after his wife died, he met Barbara and they married within a year. He wasn’t rich, although he was the perfect antidote for Barbara. Victoria remembered his boys who were a few years older than her at high school. They were champion swimmers, and the Brewsters were your basic Preppy Presbyterian Perfect family.
“Hello young man. You must be Parker,” Bud formally put his hand out for Parker to shake. Victoria had always been relentless with the kids about their “company manners”, and even though they looked like they just walked out of a trailer park, she was gratified that they held steady on the manners front. Parker shook his hand with a firm grip and looked him in the eye as he answered him. “Wow, that’s some grip you’ve got there!” Bud said with good cheer.
Victoria looked around. “Where’s mom?” She asked.
“Oh, she had to run a few errands. We didn’t know when you’d get here,” he said. If that statement had come out of her mother’s mouth it would have sounded like an attack. From Bud, it was just a fact. “She should be back any minute. Let’s get you settled.” Then he noticed that they didn’t have any bags. “Boy, you sure travel light!”
Victoria just wanted a hot shower and a cold martini. Couldn’t they get someone else to empty the damn truck? Bud was being so accommodating, though she was sure that he was halfway to a heart attack if he even carried in a bag of groceries. “I’m parked around the corner - it can wait.”
“Do you guys want to get washed up?” Bud asked diplomatically. She knew they looked like a train wreck. Even her pants were wrinkled and there was a splotch of ketchup on her sleeve. Somewhere along the Indiana Toll Road she should have thought about what she’d look like to her mother when she arrived on her door.
“Give us a minute - we’ll be right back,” she said as she ushered the kids out the door.
Victoria opened the back of the truck and started looking though the boxes for something decent to wear. She didn’t think to pack an overnight bag, which was unlike her. Every time she took a private jet ride she’d deplane in a different outfit than she boarded in. They didn’t have a large number of boxes, not one of them was labeled. Didn’t the movers usually do that? The kids were tearing through boxes, dragging out every sort of toy or book that they didn’t need. Finally, they found the box with clothes.
“Take off your pants, honey. Let’s put on this pretty dress,” Victoria told Posey.
“Mommy, I can’t be naked!” She looked at the door open to the street. “We’re outside.”
“Oh, nobody will see you - I’ll hold up this scarf.” Victoria grabbed an Hermes scarf which was almost large enough to cover her entire child. “Hurry. Parker, have you found your clothes yet?”
Parker had found a handheld game and was engrossed in playing it. He didn’t respond.
“Parker Vernon!” Victoria shrieked. “Put that thing down and get dressed! Posey, take off your clothes!”
It was just then that a little head popped into the back of the truck. “Well there you all are!” It was Barbara.
Victoria stopped just long enough to assess the scene that her mother was taking in. She was in a U-Haul truck, with a half-naked child, another child zoned out playing video games surrounded by almost everything she now owned strewn around the back of the truck. One hell of a homecoming.
“Mom!” It was more of an exclamation.
“Bud told me you were parked just around the corner. I couldn’t miss you,” she said, knocking on the side of the truck. “No one could.”
Victoria gave up. She was too tired, too emotionally beat up to even try to put on a good face with her mother. “Hey guys, say hello to your grandmother.”
###
They got the bulk of her stuff in the house, although most of it had to go in the garage. Victoria and Posey got the guest room, and Parker was in the “den” which was a first floor bedroom with Bud’s old desk from the insurance agency, a plaid fold-out couch and a 13” TV with six-foot long large rabbit ears. Parker thought the sofa bed was the coolest thing he had ever seen, and spent about twenty minutes opening and closing the bed. He’d get over that after one night, Victoria thought. There was no place for his clothes, so he had to keep them in Victoria and Posey’s room, which was cramped as it was.
To make matters even more dismal for Victoria, there was the issue of her mother’s new “baby”. Her mother and Bud had gotten a little daschund, which they named Fritz. When she first walked into the house, Victoria almost stepped on the dog, and more than once nearly kicked it across the room. Almost always on accident. Of course, the kids adored the dog. Victoria refused to get a dog in Manhattan, even though so many of her friends had little malti-poos, schnoodles and puggles. She didn’t know what annoyed her more, the fact that they spoke the dogs in the most insipid baby voices, that they dressed them like little people, or that they took the dogs everywhere they went. Everywhere. Out to lunch, to the salon, Lanie Scott even showed up at a Friends of the Library meeting with an overstuffed Chihuahua peeking out of her bag. Of course they had the labs at the Connecticut house, but they slept in the stables. Where they belonged.
Thankfully, Barbara and Bud addressed Fritz in adult voices, though that was as far as the reasonable behavior went. He was like their tiny tot. They had to microwave his dinner because he didn’t like cold dog food, and they served dinner to him at the same time every night so they could all dine together. They let the dog on the sofa. They brought him in the car on errands. They even slept with the dog in the bed. Between them. With his own pillow.
The entire time they were getting settled, Barbara never once asked about Trip. Victoria didn’t know if she was being sensitive, or just wanted to avoid any unpleasant conversation. Probably the latter. After they got the kids to sleep, Victoria finally got the hot shower she had been craving. No martini though. Bud didn’t believe in keeping alcohol in the house.
“Really?” Victoria asked with disbelief. Alcohol was one of her four basic food groups.
“He’s been sober for sixteen years, and I don’t really miss it,” Barbara explained.
I’d sure as hell miss it, Victoria thought. I miss it now.
“How about some tea,” Barbara offered. She busied herself getting the tea together as Victoria sat in the kitchen and began to relax. It was funny being in her mother’s house again. There were a few things she recognized, like the floral plates that they used while she was growing up, the clock that was shaped like a teapot and the potholder Victoria had made in kindergarten. She briefly wondered if kids were still making those. They certainly didn’t at the Chapin school.
“All I have is Lipton,” Barbara said as she poured the hot water into a Public Radio mug. “But it’s decaf. I can’t have caffeine after 9 am. Just another perk of getting old.”
Victoria cupped the warm mug in her hands and looked at her mother. Barbara hadn’t been out to see them in a couple of years, and Victoria could see that she had aged. Barbara had always been a very attractive woman, and was aging gracefully, if there was such a thing. Victoria was surprised that she hadn’t remarried sooner. Come to think of it, she never even dated until Victoria left for college.
Her mother was taking inventory of her as well -- she could sense it. Victoria was sure she didn’t hold up as well. The stress of the past month or so had really taken it’s toll. She hadn’t seen the inside of a beauty salon in weeks, and she was sure that it showed. She grabbed her hair and tied it in a knot behind her head wiped invisible soot out of her eyes.
“Thank you Mom,” Victoria hated owing anyone anything. “I wouldn’t have asked if there was any other way.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Barbara said. She started to say something else, but stopped herself. Instead, she stood up. “Oh dear, it’s time for bed. Don’t stay up too late, Vicky. You and the children have a big day tomorrow. It’s a school night after all.”
CHAPTER 7
The next morning, Victoria got out of bed exhausted. She kept waking up in the middle of the night in a panic and had no idea where she was. When the dim realization that she was sleeping in her mother’s twin bed with the poly-blend Joan Walsh Angland sheets, the panic deepened. Her heart started racing. She kept going over the series of events that got her here, and tried like hell to think of a way to get out. She would try to listen to Posey’s steady breath, focusing on the rhythm like she was at a yoga class back in Manhattan. When she finally fell asleep, she’d wake up again an hour later and the entire cycle would start again.
She got the kids up and dressed, in their best go-to-school outfits. Posey looked adorable in a Papa d’Anjo pastel smocked dress, with white anklets and polished Mary Janes. She finished it off with an white bow on Posey’s blonder than blonde head. Parker was wearing a Thomas Pink button-down with a pair of khakis that she had begged her mother to iron. (That was one skill she had no interest in acquiring.) He was wearing a darling Jacquadi quilted barn coat in a navy that really set off his blue eyes. She had wanted him in a blue blazer, although her mother had vigorously argued against it. The entire time she was engrossed in choosing her children’s outfits, she was cheerful and engaged. For a few minutes, she had forgotten where she was and what she was doing there.