Improvisation (20 page)

Tina clenched her hands into fists. She had been trying to explain to Jan how she felt, how much she wanted to—for once in her life—stick around to see if they could strengthen the temporary bonds they had made during the night. She understood Jan being concerned about her long list of past lovers, but bringing her family into the mess was too much. “I
never
ran away from my family.
They
abandoned me and my mom after Dad died. And when Mom was sick, I was left all alone to take care of her.”

“No,” Jan said. “
I
am all alone. From what Peter has said, and what you yourself admitted, you had offers of help but you turned them down because you were still angry over stupid fights from your childhood. Right now, I’d give anything to have the kind of support you have.”

“Careful what you wish for. That support comes with way too many strings.” Tina was furious. How could Jan misinterpret her, her family, her past so badly? “I’d rather have my freedom than any help from them.”

“Oh, right. Your precious freedom. But ask yourself, do you really want to be free, or do you want to be alone? Because you carry your family, your past with you everywhere you go. You say you don’t want to be tied down or confined by obligations, but you wear your anger and resentment like chains.”

“And you claim to want a real home with people who care about you, but you refuse to let anyone close enough to intrude on your self-pitying solitude,” Tina said as she picked up her keys and shoes. She had thought Jan was the one person who had been able to really understand her, to see past her fear of getting close to someone, only to lose them. She had been wrong. She paused before opening the door. “And don’t insult your dad by pretending you didn’t have any stability in your life. The background might have changed a lot, but the love and security he gave you never did. Sometime, ask him what sacrifice he made for that to happen.”

*

Jan slowly trailed down the stairs after Tina. She knew she had damaged their friendship beyond repair, and even if she had wanted to call her back, to try to make amends, Tina would never forgive her. Bringing Tina’s relationship with her family into the fight had been unacceptable, and although Jan firmly believed she was correct about Tina being bound by her anger, she never should have brought it up in the heat of an argument. But Jan had been too angry herself—and too hurt—to stop.

“Good morning, pumpkin,” her dad said when she entered the kitchen. He was struggling with the top of a milk carton he had braced against his sling. Jan took it from him and opened it.

“Thanks,” he said, pouring some into a measuring cup.

“How much did you hear?” she asked.

“Just voices, no words. Are you okay?”

Jan sniffed and nodded. “It’s for the best.”

“Whatever you say. I thought you might want some of my famous blueberry pancakes. They always cheered you up when you were little.”

Jan smiled. Memories of skinned knees, elementary-school traumas, and lost toys—all made better by a big stack of pancakes and syrup—played through her mind. This problem was too big to be fixed by a sugar high, but the batter
did
smell good. “Can I help?” she asked.

Her dad emptied a pint of fresh berries into the bowl. “You could get the frying pan off the shelf for me,” he suggested. She gave him a teary kiss on the cheek and went over to the cupboard.

“Tina said something about you making sacrifices for me when I was a kid,” she said as she carried the heavy pan to the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Do you know what she meant?”

“Choices, not sacrifices,” her dad said. “But I suppose we shouldn’t put off talks any longer, should we. Why don’t we talk about it over breakfast?”

“You look like hell,” Peter said. He wedged past a boisterous group of kids wearing Gonzaga shirts and sat on the red vinyl-covered stool next to Tina.

“Gee, thanks,” she said. She was sure he was telling the truth, but she’d been avoiding looking in mirrors since her fight with Jan. The dark circles under her eyes and the frown lines curving around her mouth only reminded her of how different she felt now than she had when she’d first woken up in Jan’s bed. Then, she had been exhausted after making love all night but had been unable to stop smiling. Now, she felt and looked—as Peter had so politely phrased it—like hell.

“This place makes a great burger, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of privacy,” Peter said, “You said you needed to talk. We could go somewhere quieter.”

“This is fine,” Tina said, moving out of the way as one of the college boys gestured wildly and nearly hit her in the head. The dive, crammed on a corner lot, was tiny and only had room for an L-shaped Formica counter that wrapped around its questionable-looking grill. But Brooke and Jan had raved about it, recounting a series of stories about eating here when they were students at Gonzaga. This was the place they had originally planned to visit for lunch the day they had driven to Wenatchee instead. Tina wondered if she and Jan still would have spent the night together if they’d stuck to their original idea. Or had the challenge of adapting to a reformulated plan been the catalyst for Jan’s suggestion they spend the night together? The day had been out of the ordinary, so why not the night as well?

“Double cheeseburger, onion rings, and a cherry malt, please,” Tina said, when the kid who was acting as fry cook came over to take their order. Apparently, he performed every job in the place.

“Ugh, how can you eat all that?” Peter asked. He sighed and put the paper menu back in its metal holder. “Same for me. And I hope you have a cardiologist on call. Now, what’s up?”

Tina watched their waiter dump a pile of onion rings into a vat of oil. She doubted it had been cleaned since Jan had been a freshman in college. “How do you remember our childhood?” she finally asked. “I mean, the times when my parents and I would come visit.”

Peter hesitated. “I don’t think my memories are as bad as yours,” he said, sounding as if he was treading cautiously.

Cautious or not, Tina felt her anger simmer. Rage seemed so close to the surface these days. “Are you saying I just imagined all the fights? The bitterness?”

“Oh, I think the bitterness is very real,” he said. He nudged her with his elbow. “A joke. Sorry. And no, I don’t think everything was perfect.”

“Not perfect,” Tina said with a snort. “There’s an understatement.”

“But it also wasn’t as bad as you remember,” he said. “I guess I had a different perspective. First, my dad stayed here in Spokane while yours moved away, so Gran wasn’t angry with him. Most of the time, she seemed like a fairly normal grandmother. Never affectionate, but at least not hostile.”

“What an accomplishment. She should have it engraved on her Grandmother of the Year trophy.”

“Second,” Peter continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “You were a child. You were caught in the middle of a very emotional situation, and you couldn’t understand any of the subtext. I grew up around the family, so eventually I was either told or I figured out what was going on in the background, what emotions made Gran lash out in anger.”

Tina had a sudden vision of her and Jan arguing. Jan’s words had stung, but Tina had been able to see Jan’s pain and fear behind them. Jan just hadn’t trusted her enough to let her get close, to give Tina a chance to prove herself. “So, please tell me, what excuses did Gran give you for yelling at my mom?”

“No excuses,” Peter said. He paused while the cook set their food on the counter. “But my dad, Gran, everyone—they loved your father. Uncle Pete was always the favorite in the family. He moved away soon after our grandfather died, and Gran was very upset. She had a lot of built-up resentment because she had never wanted to move to the States in the first place, and I think she felt abandoned when she lost both of the men she loved in one year. She was probably angry with your dad, but no one ever seemed to get mad at him, so Gran took it out on your mom, instead. He was caught in the middle.”

“Not just on my mom,” Tina said. She yanked a straw out of its paper sleeve and stuffed it through the plastic lid on her malt. “She had plenty to say about me, too.”

Peter took a huge bite of his burger and wiped ketchup off his chin. “Well, you were a horrible little brat.”

Tina stared at him. “How dare you. Do I need to kick your ass? Because I can, you know.”

Peter groaned as he shoved an onion ring in his mouth. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten,” he said dramatically. “Okay, you win. You were a perfect little angel.” He paused, and then gave a snort of laughter. “But remember the snake incident? Gran still won’t get her own mail out of the box. She picks it up at the post office.”

Tina laughed along with him and took a bite of her burger, suddenly feeling hungry. “Thank God, Lindsay was there, so we could blame her. Not that she’d ever have been brave enough to pick up a snake. You weren’t either, as I recall.”

“You were something,” Peter said. “Never afraid of anything.”

Tina wiped grease off her fingers with a paper napkin. She had been brave back then. But the transition from wild child to adult, after her dad died and her mom was diagnosed, had been too abrupt to handle, without replacing some of the bravery with caution. She had learned how to protect herself.

Peter lifted his paper cup and tapped it against hers. “But we’ve had a chance to get to know one another again, and I’m glad about that.”

“Me, too,” she said, without reservation. “I know Dad would be happy about it, too. He probably would have dragged us to Spokane every damned year if he hadn’t died. Maybe, eventually, he would have forced us to get along through sheer stubbornness.”

“Yeah, Dad always said Uncle Pete was as mule headed as Gran.” He patted her on the arm. “Luckily, the trait skipped a generation and left you so tractable.”

Tina swiped one of his onion rings. “Hilarious. But thanks,” she said, sobering a little. “For talking this out with me. I might have liked seeing you and Lindsay more as we got older, but Mom really didn’t want anything to do with the family after we lost Dad.”

“That’s not quite true,” Peter said, his voice soft. “She and my dad communicated quite often. She had a lawyer in Seattle, but she turned to him for legal advice all the time. That’s how Gran knew when she needed hospice care, and why she contacted you about helping pay for it.”

Tina stared at him. “But why didn’t Mom…”

He patted her arm awkwardly. “She was making preparations, writing her will…She probably didn’t want to upset you.”

After a pause, Peter started talking about some of the handmade planters he had ordered for his new farmers’ market booth. Tina listened as he talked, adding her advice for how to market the artisanal products, but part of her mind was preoccupied. Traveling back in time and reevaluating what she’d seen through the eyes of a child.

*

Jan leaned on her desk and watched her student struggle through a theorem at the whiteboard. It was always a challenge to keep the kids interested in math and learning, but the last two weeks of school were especially trying. Polygons and postulates couldn’t compete with prom and graduation and the lure of summer breezes just outside the window. But she could barely keep her mind focused on work, so she couldn’t fault the restless teenagers for their inattentiveness.

She finally gave up the pretense of teaching and told her class to study quietly for the last five minutes, until the bell rang. While they pretended to read their textbooks, she sat at her desk and pretended to write something of great importance. They were actually whispering and passing notes—clearly not geometry-related, and she sketched a series of interlocking hexagons on a piece of paper—clearly not important at all. Shapes and forms. They had always seemed so comforting to her. Well-defined. Easily measured. Even the shapes on a woman’s body attracted her. Circles and triangles, begging to be traced and studied and appreciated. Jan’s first impressions of Tina had been defined by the planes and angles of her face, the proportions of her measurements. But the simple, clear shape of Tina had changed, had gained dimension and depth, and suddenly there was more to her—more complexity and variability—than Jan could handle.

The bell finally rang, and Jan dismissed her class. She headed to the break room and aimed for the coffeepot. She needed a caffeine boost if she hoped to make it through her next few classes. Chloe was sitting in the corner of the room, at a small round table, and Jan took her heavily sweetened coffee and joined her.

“Mind if I sit?” she asked. Chloe was reading, and she started when Jan spoke. She blushed and quickly stuffed the magazine in her briefcase, but not before Jan saw a picture of a bride on the glossy cover.

“Oh my God! Are you engaged?”

Chloe shushed her and glanced around the room. It was empty except for the two of them.

“No one else is here, so I think we’re safe,” Jan said with a laugh. “So, did Peter propose?”

“Not yet,” Chloe admitted. “But he’s been acting strangely, and I think he’s planning something. But, please, don’t say anything in case I’m misreading him.”

“He won’t hear a word from me,” Jan promised. Tina might claim she didn’t want any ties or obligations to others, but she had somehow managed to snare Jan in a web of relations. A growing friendship with Chloe, more contact with Andy and Brooke, a sense of belonging with Peter and his musical friends. But her only real connection to Peter was through Tina, so she doubted she’d be seeing him much, from now on.

Chloe went on to prove her wrong. “If he does ask me, I’d want you…I mean if you wouldn’t mind…to be my maid of honor.”

Jan stared at her. “Me?” she finally asked. She liked Chloe, but she was surprised by the request. “I’d be glad to, of course, but if you’re only asking because I was there when you met—”

“Jan, I’m asking because you’re my closest friend,” Chloe said with a shake of her head.

“I am?” Jan blurted out. She realized too late how rude the words sounded, but Chloe laughed.