Chapter Nine
Mom called first thing the next morning to announce she’d had an offer on her house, for $285,000. “It’s not what I expected, Kelly. I said $300,000.”
“What does your realtor say?”
I could hear the scorn in Mom’s voice. “She says to take it and run. But I don’t like to compromise.”
“Mom, I think it might be the best offer you’ll get. When do they want possession?”
“Thirty days. That means I have to pack everything in thirty days. I should have started a year ago.”
No, Mom, because you’re not bringing it all with you.
“Mom, I’m coming up next weekend to help you. We can get you out of there in less than thirty days.”
“Oh, Kelly, that’s wonderful. Thank you, darling.”
“Mom, would you get all your bank statements and investment statements—everything you have about your finances—together so I can look at it?”
Caution crept into her voice. “I don’t know, Kelly. Why do you want that?”
I couldn’t say “because I will not be responsible for you.” So I soft pedaled. “I just want to make sure what you can afford. Do you have a financial advisor?”
“No. Never did trust them. Neither did your father.”
I could understand that a bit. “Well, just get the information together for me, and start sorting.”
Indignation was strong in her reply. . “I have, Kelly. You’d be amazed at how much I found in the kitchen that I don’t need.”
“Good. We’ll give it all to Good Will, and you’ll get a tax deduction.”
A call to Mom’s real estate agent reassured me a great deal. Hennie Thompson—I didn’t dare ask where she got that name, but I wondered if she and Keisha had hair color in common—told me she thought Mom got a fair price for the house. Best of all, she knew a group from Mom’s own church whose outreach program included helping the elderly pack for moves out of homes in which they’d lived for years.
“Mom’s not elderly,” I said, thinking I should be honest about it.
“Kelly, elderly is a state of mind. Your mom is pretty helpless about this move. She tells me you’re coming to help, but I know you can’t do it all in a weekend.”
“No, I can’t. And I think what’s most important for me to do is make the financial transition. I don’t have any grasp of what she has, where she is financially.”
Hennie agreed. “You’ll need to be here on a business day then. And I can arrange the closing for that day.”
Great lady, I decided. Of course I needed to be there to walk Mom through closing on her house. I agreed and tentatively planned to fly to Chicago next Friday night and stay until Tuesday morning. We would plan to have movers come the following Friday, and Mom could fly down Saturday. The new owners wouldn’t have to wait thirty days.
“Thanks, Hennie. You’ve been a real help.”
“Hey, my mom’s in her sixties too and alone, and I know I’ll have to do this someday.”
“Where is she?”
“San Diego. Maybe I’ll just go there instead.”
“Good idea,” I said. No need to tell her what Mom thought about my neighborhood in Texas.
I hung up the phone feeling a bit of relief. Keisha of course watched me like a hawk, and I turned to her, explained the timetable.
“So your mom’s coming in a little less than two weeks.”
“Right.”
“Let’s go see Anthony.”
We locked the office and did just that. In a few days, Anthony had worked miracles. Fresh paint from stem to stern. Appliances were installed. The floor men would start the next day, and by the weekend the house should be livable.
“Come on, you two. I’m buying you lunch at Nonna Tata.”
Anthony looked at his paint-stained overalls. “I can’t go someplace like that.”
“Honey,” Keisha drawled, “if I can go like this,” she twirled once so that the huge peasant skirt she wore billowed around her and then she pointed to her new “do,” “you can go like that. Come on, now.”
And so we went. In Fairmount, no one notices a trio like the three of us. But this day I noticed diners giving us wary looks—the mood of the neighborhood unsettled even on this tiny Italian oasis.
“I have a plan,” I announced. Both of them looked startled—and I swear Keisha looked a little alarmed. “I’m going to Chicago Friday night….Keisha, can you stay with the girls?”
“Sure. But what’s with ‘I’m going’? What happened to Mike?”
“He’ll stay here and move his stuff into my house.”
Keisha’s fork fell on the floor with a loud clatter, and Anthony uttered, “Mother of God,” so loudly that everyone at the few tables turned to look at us again, some with alarm. Calmly I asked the waitress for another fork for Keisha.
“Does Mike know this?” she asked.
“No, but he will tonight. We’ve been talking about it, and I just decided it would be better to have it a done deal before Mom gets here. I’ll…well, I’ll try to prepare the way while I’m in Chicago.”
Anthony, who almost choked on his pasta, asked, “Miss Kelly, what you tell the girls?”
I hesitated. “I guess I tell them that Mike and I love each other and he loves them as much as I do and we want us all to be a family.”
“What if they ask about a wedding?” He ran his hand through his hair again.
It’s not to say I didn’t think of that, even worried about it, but all I said was “Later.” I wouldn’t tell them it was a trial thing, because in my heart I didn’t believe that either.
“Anthony, this week and while I’m gone, I know you can’t get the house ready, but get it as close as you can, enough so that Mom and Keisha can stay there a week from Friday night. And be sure the alarm system is working—wired doors and windows.”
He nodded. “I can do that.”
Keisha, a forkful of salad held in the air, stared at me.
“Keisha, with the girls’ help, can you move some of your stuff in? I guess I’ll rent beds for a couple of nights. I want Mom to stay there the first night she’s in Fort Worth, so she’ll never think of anything else. You may have to get a ton of keys—Mike has a key to my house but you need keys to Mom’s house. You have one to mine, don’t you, from the last time you kept the girls?”
Keisha nodded, but she still looked at me as though I’d sprouted horns or something. “You’re something’ else,” she said, “but I think you’re right. We can do it. I got a bed for me, and a couple of other pieces of furniture I can bring so we’ll have a place to sit and all ’til her stuff arrives. And I got a TV.”
“Great. This is going to work. I know it is.” And the three of us high-fived over the small restaurant table. People stared at us again, and I suspect the owner, a lovely Italian woman, breathed a sigh of relief as we left. I left a generous tip.
I didn’t feel right about doing all this without telling Mike, but then again, I wanted to make it a big personal announcement when we were together. I compromised by calling him just before he went on patrol to say, “Mike, come by as early as you can tonight. I have a surprise for you.”
His voice was cautious, and I had to admit not without reason. Some of the surprises I’d sprung on him before were doozies. “Kelly, I got a hard day on patrol, with all this panic. I’m not sure I’m up for a surprise.”
“You’ll like it, I think,” I said. “I…I’m busy today making some arrangements, and you may nix them all tonight if you want, but I don’t think you’ll want to.”
“Okay. Now I won’t have my mind on my job the whole shift.” But he chuckled, and I laughed out loud.
The girls came first. I took them to the Neighborhood Grill and let them choose whatever they wanted. Maggie wanted a cheeseburger—”No turkey, Mom, a real burger.” Em chose a strange mixture—mac and cheese, corn fritters, black-eyed peas, and stewed apples. Fine with me. I joined Maggie in a cheeseburger, with those good curly fries. We sat in a booth in the back room.
Once we had our food—with iced tea for me and 7-UP for the girls (I wouldn’t go so far as to let them have Coke), I said, “Girls, I have a question.”
The both looked at me expectantly. “How would you like it if Mike came to live with us?”
Em clapped her hands and said, “Mike? Every day? At our house? I’d love it.”
Maggie was slower. “Where would he sleep?” she asked, the question I’d been dreading.
“With me. We’d share my bedroom.”
“Does that mean you’re getting married?”
Damn! Why was she so smart? “No, it means we might get married, but we love each other very much.”
Em was practical now. “What if I get scared and want to sleep with you?”
I grinned. “We may have to get a bigger bed, but you can do that.”
“It would be like having a father, wouldn’t it?” Maggie asked, and I said yes, a loving father.
“I think I’ll like it,” she said.
“Me, too” Em echoed.
So I explained the whole plan to them. It was a lot to put on two young girls—their mom going away for a long weekend, her boyfriend moving in, their grandmother moving from Chicago to their neighborhood. They were troopers and took it all in. But that night, at bedtime, they both clamored to sleep in my bed.
Mike came in about ten-thirty. I had on a pair of silk lounging pajamas that were left over from what period of my life I don’t know—newlywed all those years ago?—but I thought they’d create the right mood. Wrong.
I’d been going so fast all afternoon, putting the various parts of my plan into action that I didn’t stop to think. When I heard Mike at the door, I had serious doubts. Maybe I’d presumed too much, taken too much of a lead. The man was supposed to ask, wasn’t he? Well, he’d asked. But did men like to do the planning? Was this surprise a good idea?
“Where’d you get that outfit? It…well, it doesn’t look like you, Kelly.”
Great way to start the conversation. “Well, maybe I tried to be something I’m not. Go get a beer, and I’ll be right back.” I reappeared in stretchy cotton workout pants and a big T-shirt, and he said, “Much better,” as he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me soundly. “What’s the big surprise? Do I need to be worried?”
“No, you don’t need to worry. I’m doing it for both of us.” I took a deep breath. “How long will it take you to sell your condo? Of course, I know a good real estate agent.”
“Sell my condo?” He looked at me a long time, and then he grinned and said, “Really?”
“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve made some weekend plans for you,” I said, perching on his lap, my head against his chest.
He stroked my hair. “Like going to Chicago? I may need more notice to get enough consecutive days off.”
“Nope. I’m going to Chicago. You’re staying here to move.”
He did squawk then. “Move?”
“Yep. Can you move most of your stuff into my house while I’m gone? Keisha will be staying with the girls, and they may be some help, but they’ll be moving Keisha into Mom’s house.”
“I feel like Rip van Winkle. Have I slept so long I’ve missed something?”
“Nope. I just moved fast today. I’m going to Chicago Friday, be back Tuesday. While I’m gone, you move in here, Keisha moves into Mom’s, and Anthony finishes up Mom’s place.”
He looked stern, and my heart sank. “Do I have any say in this?”
I pulled away from him. “Of course. You can say no deal, you can say too fast, you can say whatever you want. The Mom and Keisha part goes on.”
He pulled me close to him. “I say let’s go for it.” And there was another of those wonderful kisses.
“Mom?” It was the ever-alert Maggie.
“Yes, sweetie. Come here.”
She burst into the living room, closely followed by Em. Both of them ignored me and threw themselves at Mike, so that I moved out of the way. “Are you really going to live with us?”
He reached out, tousled heads, laughed aloud, and said, “Yeah, I am. Are you glad?”
Both girls shouted, “Yes!” and hugged him tight.
“I’m going to be a disciplinarian,” he said sternly. “So now you two get on back to your beds.”
“We’re sleeping in Mom’s bed,” Em said indignantly.
Mike looked at me. “Just for tonight,” I said.