Summer Snow (7 page)

“I can help,” Simon said unexpectedly. There was a ring of childish self-importance in his voice when he added, “I'm a good helper.”

“Mm-hmm …,” I mumbled, averting my eyes from his sweet face. I heard rather than saw him approach me, and I glanced his way only when I felt him tug the plates from my white-knuckled hands.

“What's your name?” he asked, pulling the dishes to his chest.

I stole a glance at his arms and saw stout little fingers peeking around the blue delft rim of Grandma's ancient dinnerware. “Julia,” I muttered absently, unable to tear myself away from the eight digits curled upward in some sort of accidental supplication. I was close enough to touch him. I could have reached out a finger and stroked the smooth, brown skin of his hands. His fingernails were half-moons, marred only by ragged white edges—evidence that he bit them. Something we had in common.

“That's a very nice name,” he said and the hands disappeared. I looked up to watch the back of his head as he drew away from me. He nodded curtly and laid a plate on the table with an air of satisfaction. “A nice name,” he repeated, as though my name required his approval.

For a moment, I almost grinned at him because I was filled with the certainty that there was no way under heaven he was Janice's child. She had to have kidnapped him, stolen him from some sitcom family that functioned according to the textbook and said things like “I love you” every single day. But even as the thought tried to take root, it wilted. He was hers and I knew it. It almost killed me.

“Thank you,” I managed after a moment. “I like your name, too.”

“Simon Eli Wentwood,” he said proudly, situating the last dinner plate in front of an empty chair so it was perfectly centered. I wasn't surprised to hear that he bore Janice's maiden name. He continued, “I'm named after my dad and my grandpa, but I don't know my dad—he died when I was little. Grandpa, though—he sends me cards sometimes!”

“What are you talking about, Simon?” Janice's voice crept into the kitchen followed immediately by the rest of her. The only thing whiter than her face was the gallon of milk I was bringing to the table.

“Nothin' much,” Simon confessed. “Hey, did you know her name is Julia?” He smiled between the two of us and began to make introductions. “Julia, this is my mom. Her name is Janice.”

Oh, dear Lord
, my soul exhaled.
He has no idea
.

Grandma's face was flint when she swept into the kitchen. She commanded the room, quashing our conversation and moving to the stove so she could stir the simmering pot of rice. Lifting the lid with a bit more than her usual flourish, she let a cloud of fragrant steam into the kitchen and muttered appreciatively as though everything was exactly as planned. “Do you like Chinese food?” she asked cheerfully, directing the question at Simon.

He wrinkled his nose, slipping into a chair. He had to perch on the very edge to rest his tiptoes on the linoleum floor. “Only fried rice,” he stated. “Once I tried some orange chicken, and it almost made me throw up.”

“Sweet-and-sour chicken,” Janice clarified quietly. She glanced at me awkwardly and sank into the nearest chair as if she had been reprimanded.

Grandma struck the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot with a few hard cracks. “Good,” she said firmly. “You'll like this, then, Simon, because it is nothing like sweet-and-sour chicken and quite a bit like fried rice. There are eggs in it and everything.”

“If I don't like it, do you have PB and J?” Simon gave up on trying to be the big boy and slid onto his chair so that his feet dangled. He absently kicked his heels against the beveled legs. “I like PB and J, and most people have it.”

“PB and J?” Grandma asked.

“Simon!” Janice chided.

“Peanut butter and jelly,” I explained.

Both women blushed. “Well,” Grandma said noncommittally, “you have to try this first.”

I finished setting the table as Grandma approached with the pot of steaming rice. Avoiding her gaze, I placed a trivet for her and backed away. My chair was directly across from Janice, and I was excruciatingly aware of her proximity as I took my seat. I blinked in her direction and was unsettled to find her looking at me.

She mouthed,
I'm sorry
. It could have meant anything. She could have been apologizing for horning in on our supper for two. Or maybe she wanted forgiveness for something more. I looked away.

“It smells okay,” Simon commented, sniffing the air. He took his dish and reached for the ladle, ready to scoop his plate full. So he wasn't perfect after all.

“Hang on,” Grandma alerted him, reaching across the table and putting her hand over his. “We pray before we eat in my house.”

“Oh,” Simon replied innocently. “Okay.” He dropped the spoon.

I was thankful then that we had never been the kind of family to hold hands when we prayed. The Walkers were hand holders, and at every meal—even an impromptu lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese—we reached beside ourselves to grasp the hands of our neighbors, no matter who they were. When I was young and in love with Thomas, nothing made my heart beat harder than finding myself next to him at a meal, my clammy hand held tight in his. But most of the time, it just felt strange to me. I never knew if my hand was supposed to be on the top or the bottom or how I should respond if someone gave me a little squeeze at the end of the prayer. It was unnecessarily intimate. I thought about Simon's small hands and chewed fingernails and was grateful that I could clasp my fingers tight in my own lap. I dropped my head so I didn't have to watch them fumble around uncomfortably.

There was silence for a moment, a little shuffling, and then Grandma began softly. “We thank You, Lord, for this day. For its blessings, its trials, and Your hand in it all. We pray now that You will bless this food to our bodies. Bless us in this night, in all … in all we … in …” She stopped. “Amen.”

I echoed her in an inaudible whisper. At first we didn't talk about much—at least, nothing of importance. Although I half expected it all to come out in a torrent of things unsaid and feelings unearthed, we all kept our heads and spoke in placid tones about everyday things. We were polite strangers excelling in the art of small talk as though we had nothing more significant to say to one another.

Simon regaled us with stories of his exploits on the soccer field, though I doubted he often made contact with the ball much less took part in epic battles between the teams in the peewee league of the small town he said they were from. He breezed over the name of the town, and when I asked him to repeat it, Janice cut in and explained that it was a very tiny place near Chicago—we would surely have never heard of it. I just shrugged and let it go. We were, after all, being civilized.

Simon liked Grandma's Dutch-Indonesian, but he ate around the pickles and left a neat little pile of green on the table beside his plate. I watched him periodically make sure Janice wasn't looking and then slowly ease a piece of diced pickle over the edge, under the rim, and out of sight. All he had to do was offer to clear the dishes and slide the pickles into his hand for deposit in the garbage on his way to the sink. A foolproof plan. It was hard not to smile wryly; I clearly remembered doing the exact same thing.

Grandma studied Simon as he ate and looked very little at Janice or me. I could see the strain in her profile and the plastic smile that was beginning to get brittle. More than once, I touched her foot lightly under the table and tapped it comfortingly—a reminder that it would all be over soon and an olive branch to let her know that I wasn't about to hold a grudge. She had done the only thing she knew to do; who was I to blame her? Besides, the meal was almost over and then Janice could disappear from our lives for another decade. Maybe more. We could go back to forgetting. We could pretend there was no Simon.

Toward the end of the meal, it was Simon who mentioned his dad in a voice filled with the naive pride of someone who had not been told the entire truth. He clearly adored his allegedly deceased father, and he sat up straighter in his seat as though he was entreating us to ask him more.

Janice looked uncomfortable as her son beamed unreservedly. She obviously did not want her former lover to be a part of our conversation.

“My dad was a …” Simon looked confused for a moment and then quickly turned to his mother. “What's that word again? What did Dad do?”

Janice smiled a narrow, placating smile. “Nothing, honey; they don't want to hear about your dad right now.”

“Yes, they do!” he insisted, and because I was gripped with a sort of morbid curiosity, I was glad he did. He ignored his mother and turned back to Grandma and me. “He built big buildings,” Simon bragged, sweeping his arms up over his head. “Really big ones—like the giant ones in Chicago. But he didn't
work
on them. He
thought
of them. He...” Simon struggled for the right word. “He …
drawed
them.” The little boy grinned, triumphant.

“He was an architect?” I suggested.

“Yes!” Frowning at Janice, he added, “See, I told you they were interested.”

She dragged her fork across her plate, displacing more rice as though she could hide the fact that she had barely eaten a bite.

“That's very interesting,” I told Simon, to fill the silence. He positively glowed. Then, though I hadn't planned on saying it—and as the words were escaping my mouth, I found them outrageously rude—I asked, “Was your dad from Chicago, Simon?”

Grandma's heel bounced off the bridge of my foot in shock and warning. I tried not to cringe.

But Simon didn't realize anything was amiss. “No, he was from
Casablanca
.” He said the word slowly, carefully, as though he had practiced it with loving concentration many times before.

“Simon is half-Spanish,” Janice interjected tiredly.

I couldn't help gawking at her. “Janice,” I said evenly, “Casablanca is in Morocco. You know, the country in northern Africa? He's half-
Moroccan
.”

Her face flushed an unbecoming pink from the apples of her cheeks to the very tips of her ears, but she didn't say a word.

All Simon said was, “Cool,
Morocco
.” He seemed to like the way it rolled off his tongue. But there was a hint of a lisp left over from toddler years in his young voice, and it came out sounding slightly like
Mowocco
. He practiced it again.

I was about to ask more when Janice saw fit to change the conversation before it became far too personal. “We really lead a very boring life,” she admitted. “Not much to tell.”

Grandma and I both nodded in sync, effectively blocked from pursuing that particular vein. I focused on my plate and tried to phrase the questions I was longing to ask.
Why are you here? What are you doing in Mason? Why did you show up on our doorstep? When are you leaving?
Each variation burned in my throat and refused to pass my lips.

But Janice had been practicing her own careful inquiry, and she cautiously threw out a showstopper. “What are you up to these days, Julia?”

It was my turn to blush. Obviously I worked at Value Foods, but the question implied much more. She knew I was out of high school; she wanted to know if I was in college, if I had a significant other, if my life was advancing through the official and approved stages of young adulthood.

“I work at Value Foods right now,” I answered with what I hoped was dignity. “I plan to go back to school in the fall. Or maybe next year.” The last part was a lie. I hadn't given school a second thought since I drove away from Brighton over three months ago. It was hard to think about anything beyond the baby right now, and though I hated to admit it, I couldn't be sure that once I was a mother I would have the time or money to ever return. It was a sobering thought. I felt Grandma staring at me, thinking the same things I was. Maybe she was mourning for me.

“Julia went to Brighton for a semester and took engineering,” Grandma offered, asserting my intelligence and trying to bolster my self-worth a little. I immediately wished that she had said nothing at all.

But Janice bit. “Really?” Her voice was peculiarly soft. “You always were a smart girl...”

My head jerked up at the unexpected praise, but Janice had a faraway look in her eyes. I exhaled slowly, grateful that the topic was going to be dropped, and self-consciously got up to start clearing the table. I was capping the milk when Janice stopped me in my tracks by asking the question I feared.

“Why did you drop out, Julia?”

It shouldn't have been a difficult thing to say. I mean, Janice had obviously been in my position more than once. And yet, admitting to her that I had made the exact same mistake she had made was somehow excruciating. I couldn't help feeling that it lessened my ability to be angry with her and gave us something in common that I didn't want to acknowledge. It stripped me of my identity and reduced me to little more than the object, and now subject, of generational sin—a fallen child of a fallen mother, capable of doing nothing more than what had already been done to me. It was cyclic and shameful. It made me feel unworthy. Small.

I shrunk, knowing that I would have to tell her.

Grandma broke in and tried to save me. “Julia is taking a little time off, Janice. She's working a few things out.” It wasn't an outright lie, but it wasn't entirely honest, and I was surprised that my legalistic grandmother was bending the truth to salvage a shred of my dignity. The selfless gesture made me want to lay a kiss on the top of her silver head. It also made me achingly aware that I could not let her compromise any of her values for me. She had already given enough.

My frustration quickly found a target in Janice and began bringing up years of long-buried anger before I had any opportunity to accept that she wasn't the only person to blame on this bewildering night. All I could think was that it wasn't fair for Janice to believe she could march back into our lives and throw everything off the delicate balance we had worked so hard to restore. It wasn't fair that she sat at our table like a treasured guest instead of the cowardly deserter she was. It wasn't fair that she waltzed up to our door with my unheard-of half brother and expected to smooth things over without the years of penance and petition she deserved. It wasn't fair that she had come at all. I had been fine without her. The anger inside me that had been pushed down to make room for the  anesthesia I needed to endure the night was rising furiously to the surface—a hot, roiling blast of self-righteous wind. It was time for her to leave my house.