Whole Latte Life (36 page)
“A bad sprain. The bandage comes off Friday.”
“At least it’s not broken.” She inches back out of the driveway. “Sorry I can’t make the concert,” she says out her window.
“Another time,” Sara Beth calls out. And then comes the worst part, getting back into her car and putting her purse on the empty passenger seat, where Rachel should be sitting for a ride with her out to the country to visit Slinky, all the while planning their girls’ night out at the bandshell. It’s always disappointing when you turn back to your life and it’s not what you wanted it to be.
The next morning, Rachel writes out a check to her daughter to cover the cost of the brake work. “Deposit this in your account. Then you can pay the shop yourself.” She sits at the desk in Ashley’s dorm room.
“Thanks. What’ll you do while I’m in class?”
Rachel likes observing her daughter in her own college space, seeing who she is growing into. Ashley wears a frayed denim skirt with a fitted tee and flip-flops, her hair pulled back, big gold hoops in her ears. “I guess I’ll do some shopping in town.”
“I’m cutting my second class, Mom.”
“Not on my account you’re not. I’ll be fine poking around the shops.”
“Oh just this once. It’s only Sociology. Which I still can’t understand why I have to take to be a nurse.”
“It gives you a wide reaching education, Ashley. That’s all.”
“Well I can skip it. We’ll have lunch and by then my car will be ready. That way you won’t have to drive home too late on the highway.”
“I don’t mind,” Rachel says, but sees the way Ashley is worrying about her driving at night. “Okay, we’ll have lunch.” Ashley breathes a sigh of relief, tucks the check into her purse and gathers her books in a pile. “Ash?”
Her daughter steps to her dresser, pulls out her elastic and quickly brushes her hair.
“Do you ever think about transferring to a local college? I’ve got plenty room for you.”
Ashley turns, elastic in her teeth, regathering her ponytail. “Mom. Why would you ask me that?” She pulls her hair through the elastic.
“I worry sometimes. Maybe you miss the whole family thing, especially with Dad gone.”
“I do, sometimes. But I worry about
you
, more. All the time.”
“Me?”
“If you’re okay. If you can take care of that house alone.” She sits on the bed. “It’s the anniversary this week, Mom. I can’t believe Dad’s been gone two years.”
“I know.” Rachel moves beside her. “Time goes by so fast. Sometimes I think of him like he’s still here, you know, having a coffee in the kitchen, outside raking. A part of me always misses him.”
“That’s why I worry, Mom. About if you’re lonely, or sad.”
“Sometimes? I guess I am. Boy, what a couple of worry warts we are.”
“Well. I
am
your daughter. I can’t help it.”
“I know the feeling. But I was just thinking that if you wanted to, you could take a semester off.”
“I would if you needed me to. But I’m okay. Really.” She stands and goes to her dresser. “And we’ll
always
worry. It’s what we do, you know? It’s our thing?”
Her daughter is right. They would check up on each other even living in the same house, their
How’s it going?
or
How’d you sleep?
really a gauge measuring their daily emotions. She slips her checkbook back into her purse and tells her about Sara Beth suggesting a girls’ night out at the bandshell.
“She’s trying to fix things, Mom. Give her a chance.”
“I would love to have that old friendship back. But we never find the time. She jokes about needing to go away on some boat where no one can reach us.”
“What you probably need is another weekend in New York. Just to fix the first one.”
Inspiration comes at the oddest times, like right now, sitting with her daughter, thinking of boats, and Sara Beth, and a difficult promise to Michael about friendships and chances. Maybe another New York weekend would do it.
“How’s Michael?” Ashley asks over her shoulder.
“Oh he’s fine. He asks about you, too.”
Ashley rummages through a dresser drawer. “It seems like he really likes you.”
“It happens when you least expect it.” She watches Ashley for a reaction and gets a doozy.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?”
“You’d be the first to know, but honestly Ashley, we haven’t discussed it.” She doesn’t tell her about Michael’s personal demon, doesn’t open that door to Ashley’s life with those words. “We’re good company for each other right now.”
“Oh.” Ashley sits heavy on the bed. Rachel gets the feeling she is seeing Carl somewhere in her mind, wondering what he would think, wondering if he would want her mother happy and safe. Wondering if this anniversary is a time to let go. “Well, it would probably be okay if you ever did marry him,” her daughter says.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. How about you?”
“What about me?”
“Any cute guys you’re interested in?”
She winks at Rachel and stands with a little jump, ready to leave for class. “A couple hot TA’s who make tutoring worthwhile. That’s why I can miss my second class.”
T
his is hers. Becomes her. With a spiral notebook tucked beneath her arm, she lifts a painting from the wall and finds its corresponding notes in the pad, logging the title, artist, date of painting, and condition. Her hand lingers on the heavy wood frame when she rehangs it. Possessiveness is funny like that, making you keep your hand on objects,
mine, mine, mine,
you say, trying only to believe it.
After seeing the historic house earlier, Tom seemed unsure of making a move. So she’s possessive of that, too, of the possibility of moving to an antique home. It’s up to her to keep that hope alive.
Earlier she pulled out her cell phone. It felt necessary to know which hope was really on her mind. Another Google search brought up the small museum north of Paris, listing Claude as curator. She took a deep breath and placed the international call, alone, from the carriage house. Her voice, it sounded foreign, too. Like it wasn’t really her, the way she scared herself going back two decades asking for Claude, identifying herself first to his office.
In the silent seconds when she was put on hold, she wondered if
this
was her new beginning. If it was too late to find out if she’d chosen wrong. And then, his voice.
“Sara?”
He sounded faraway, unsure.
“Sara Beth? Is that you?”
Her eyes closed, her heart beat fast.
How do I do this?
she wondered.
What am I looking for?
Her hand pressed the phone close and she heard him say something, in French, to someone in the room. The carefree, footloose old boyfriend with whom she’d traipsed through Europe on a wing and a prayer, speaking fluent French. And the picture came to her then. His dignified stature, his knowledge and prestige. His dream demanded it and he gave.
“Sara Beth? Êtes-vous là?” Then in a moment, “Are you there?”
Slowly, she pulled the phone away from her face. Years ago, his artsy ways and open thinking took her on one long magic carpet ride through France and Italy, through ancient cities and untamed countryside.
But for her whole life, to have that kind of wanderlust? Maybe it was more a freeing journey delivering her here. More a wanderlust to remember, to brush the dust off of sometimes, to know she’d once had it. In a piece of art, the stress of light or dark is the accent. Her time with Claude was her accent, necessary, but nothing more.
She disconnected the call.
Claude would wonder now, too. If it was really her or a misunderstanding in the translation. But placing herself in France with only a phone call, she stopped wondering. So there was that now.
She slips an index card into the metal box, her hands shaking at how close she’d come to putting a new layer of paint on her canvas. Far better to change the nuance of the existing layer. Maybe over tonight’s champagne and candlelight, with the written appraisal of their home and her approved loan in front of them, Tom will reconsider that colonial. So there’s that possibility, too. Sometimes it all comes at once like that. The whole
When it rains
thing.
She pulls the chain on her desk lamp. Even that is antique with a brass base and original label on the shade showing a 1916 patent. With the lights off, she locks up the carriage house doors, glancing up at the stars emerging in the twilight sky. How many people have stood along the riverbanks, ship captains and farmers and children and lovers, looking at the same starry sky? Wondering about their choices. There’ll always be wonder. She is comforted by that, by the familiarity, by sharing the same questions with so many others.
She glances at her new diamond ring. In the constellations, stars connect time.
Early Thursday morning, Sara Beth’s world shifts. She parks across the street from the old colonial right as the morning sun reaches the front windows. But it’s different from all the other times she’s stopped because the pretty paned windows could be hers by day’s end. Tom, with some convincing, had rethought the possibilities of this house and agreed to submit an offer on it today. It’s out of her control, really, the way she drove here. It’s her everything, her own North Star.
But the house isn’t all that has her smiling. Rachel called before her morning walk.
“July’s half gone and we haven’t talked in weeks,” she said. “How about we get a coffee this morning and try again?”
The longer they didn’t talk things out, the worse it got. All she wanted to do was tell Rachel about the colonial, but she couldn’t, not with that New York weekend still unresolved. Their relationship was like a van Gogh painting: a yellow rose of friendship and pansies of tender thoughts and red tulips of admiration and wisteria of welcome and goldenrod of encouragement and even Queen Anne’s lace of protection. But the vase broke one weekend, the flowers littered between them. They could try to patch their friendship up, but over a cup of coffee?
“I don’t know, Rach. We’ve been there, done that.”
“Well so what? Who hasn’t? You game, girl?”