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Mae’s phone began ringing in her backpack as she walked from the fitness center to her father’s office on the opposite end of the small campus. In early September, Marty’s schedule was light enough that he and Mae carpooled. After a long day of classes, labs, and work, she looked forward to the quiet, companionable ride home with him, a badly needed chance to unwind. She hoped the call was nothing urgent.
By the time she managed to dig her phone out, it had stopped ringing, but she could see she’d missed a call from Hubert. Probably about the twins. They’d been acting up since they’d returned home.
Marty’s office was in an old building that housed the basketball court and the athletic department. As Mae headed up the narrow stairs from the back entrance near the track, she returned Hubert’s call.
“What’s up? The girls settling down any?”
“No, they’re not.” There was an edge in his voice, a level of stress Mae seldom heard in him. “The problem’s getting worse. I don’t know if you’re encouraging this whole Jen-is-not-our-mama thing, but we’ve got to put a stop to it. They’re breaking her heart.”
The accusation stung. “You know darned well I’m not encouraging it. I’ve done everything I can to help them get past it.”
“Have you? They were fine with her before they went to visit you.”
“She didn’t live with y’all before they visited me. And they were worried about her moving in by the time they got off the plane. Didn’t Arnie have a talk with them?” Mae had hoped her stepfather could guide them through the adjustment.
“Yeah, and with us, but I swear spending time with him just makes ’em worse. I don’t know if they need to visit him less, or call you less—seems like they’ve always been on the phone or Skype with you whenever they go to his place.”
Mae stopped in the hallway outside Marty’s office. His door was open, and so was the door of the head track coach’s office across the hall. She moved to the end of the corridor with a window overlooking the athletic fields. “You wanted them to keep me and Arnie as family. Don’t you dare think of cutting us off.”
“I wouldn’t do that. But I’m at my wit’s end. My kids aren’t happy, my wife’s not happy, and it just keeps getting worse.”
Mae was at a loss, too. She took a moment to think.
Brook and Stream had called daily for the first week when they got home in late August. A full year earlier, Hubert had asked Mae not to call the twins daily anymore, so they would transition to having Jen as the new adult woman in their lives and adapt to Mae’s smaller role. Mae had cut back to five and then four contacts a week, as he’d requested. Normally, she initiated calls or Skype chats at scheduled times, and it was always while Hubert was at home. But since their return from New Mexico, the girls had taken to calling during their after-school time at their grandparents’ house. Complaining about Jen. Telling Mae how much they missed her.
Whenever Mae had asked to speak to Jim or Sallie, the girls said their grandparents were busy, and Mae began to suspect Brook and Stream were running up the phone bill on the landline without permission. She confronted them and they confessed. After that, the twins went back to their scheduled calls. They still griped about Jen, but only when they were at Arnie’s house.
Mae wondered if they’d told Hubert one of the big things that still troubled them. “You know they’re upset that y’all didn’t change bedrooms?”
“I let Jen decide and then I told them it was settled. The children can’t outvote her. She has to take on some decisions in the family.”
“I’m sure she should, but they don’t like the way she does it. They say she was okay before you got married, but ... Don’t take this wrong, I’m using their words, okay? They say that now she’s ‘all weird.’ That she’s ‘either gooshy or bossy.’ And that she stopped ‘being normal’ with them.”
Mae knew what the twins meant. Though Jen was naturally perky and bubbly, she lost her personality when she had to fill a role she was anxious about. She had been Mae’s supervisor at Health Quest and had worn authority with an insecurity that made her fluctuate between rigid rule enforcement and strained artificial warmth.
Hubert sighed. “I’ve told them to give her a chance to relax and get used to living together.”
“So did I. And I reminded them they had a bug up their behinds about her moving in before it happened. They probably stopped being normal with her, too. I remember how awful I was to Arnie when Mama married him. It took me a year to come around to liking him. He was so patient. He understood I was missing Daddy. He says the girls probably feel like I did then, like they’d be betraying the parent they lost to divorce by accepting the new one.”
“Yeah, he told us all that, too. But what good does it do? It’s an explanation, but it’s not a solution.”
No, it wasn’t. Mae listened to her father’s voice drifting from his office, talking with one of his players. Her parents’ divorce had been abrupt and angry, and she had gone years without seeing him. With Mae and Hubert’s amicable divorce, it seemed Brook and Stream should have had an easier time accepting a stepparent than she had, but maybe being so young made it harder. Jen wasn’t as mature as Arnie had been, either.
Mae finally said, “Since we’re all stuck, maybe a family therapist?”
Hubert grumbled, “Can you help pay for it?”
The question stunned her. Hubert knew she only worked part-time. Was he holding her responsible for the girls’ problems? “Why did you say that? You know my situation.”
“Sorry. Rhetorical question that came out wrong. Family therapy is a good idea, but it’s going to be expensive.”
“Aren’t y’all on Jen’s insurance yet?”
“We’ve only been married a month. We didn’t get around to it yet. The girls and I are still on that crappy cheap high-deductible plan you and me were on.” He sighed. “Which seemed fine at the time, since we’re healthy. Last thing you expect, getting married, going into counseling already. Guess we’d better fill out the paperwork, though, get on Jen’s plan.”
They wound up the call with pleasanter topics, such as her studies, the progress of fall crops at his parents’ organic farm, and a little light gossip from Tylerton. The player Marty had been talking with left his office and Mae went in.
“Hey, Daddy.”
He stood, put an arm around Mae’s shoulders, and called to the girl who’d just left. She came back, and Marty said, “Samantha, this is my daughter, Mae.”
Samantha was a pale, round-faced blonde with a suggestion of strength under her soft surface. She smiled. “Nice to meet you. Coach says you used to play.”
“I haven’t for a while, though,” Mae said. “I miss it.”
“Take her down to the field, would you, Sam?” Marty sat at his desk. “Get in some of your practice time. See if Mae can hit a Sam Special. And run after those long balls if she does. I need to make some calls, finish up some paperwork.”
The mental focus and physical effort of aiming for Samantha’s stunningly high-speed pitches brought Mae home to herself in a way that nothing else could have. The impact when her bat smacked the ball was better therapy than talking, especially about a problem she was powerless to fix.
On the ride home, she thanked Marty for the chance to hit some balls.
He kept his eyes on the road as they passed through a residential area near the campus. “I had a feeling you needed it. I heard you as you came toward my door—not that I listened in—just that tone. And the look on your face. Problems with Jamie?”
“No, everything’s fine with him. We don’t fight much when he’s a few thousand miles away. It’s the girls. Jen was like their friend until she moved in, but she hasn’t figured out how to be their stepmother.” Mae updated her father on the twins’ continued resistance to Jen. “And she’s easy to upset. When we were on the softball team together, people used to play tricks on her during trips for away games, dumb stuff like hanging her bra out the motel window. She got embarrassed and hurt and mad. She didn’t tease back or know how to stand up for herself.”
“Did you stand up for her?”
“Maybe not very well, but I tried. I told the girls who were doing it to grow up and that it was a joke that belonged in nineteen fifty-five. Who’s shocked by a bra anymore? The point is, Jen’s ... I don’t want to say she’s weak, but she’s insecure and she doesn’t want to admit it.”
“Brook and Stream wouldn’t try to make her unhappy, would they? They’re kind of bold little girls, but they don’t strike me as mean.”
“Not mean on purpose, but they can be thoughtless. They don’t understand her. How she puts on an act when she’s not sure of herself. Jamie’s insecure and anxious, but he knows it and doesn’t hide it, and they adore him. Of course, he’s not trying to be their daddy, either. It’s more like they want to take care of him. Stream, especially. He’s like a grown-up kid to them.”
Marty guided his truck onto the highway. “You ever think about what he’d be like as a father?”
Mae gazed out the window at the pink and red rocks, the stubby desert shrubs, the empty space. “You’ve known him longer than I have. What do you think he’d be like?”
“That’s a tough question. In some ways, I can picture him being wonderful, but ... he’d need time, I think. To get more stable emotionally.”
“I’ve thought that, too. He doesn’t see it, though.”
“You two have talked about marriage already? You’ve only been dating for—what is it, three months?”
“Closer to five. But it’s not long enough, I know. He’s the one that brought up marriage and kids. I told him I’m nowhere near ready. I didn’t feel like I had to mention that he’s not.”
“Or that Brook and Stream aren’t ready for another stepparent.”
“They’re glad I’m not getting remarried. But no, I didn’t pass that on to him.”
––––––––
That night, Mae had her laptop set up on the kitchen table for a Skype chat when Jamie called her cell phone. “Hey, sugar.” She logged out and closed her computer. “I thought we were Skyping.”
“I’m couch-surfing tonight. They don’t have wireless.” A door closed. In the background a baby cried, and a woman crooned comforting sounds. “Going outside so they can have a little family time. Nice of them to put me up, but the place is tiny.”
“They must not mind or they wouldn’t have invited you. When the young’uns were little, me and Hubert were thrilled to see adults besides his parents or my mama and Arnie. People our own age. You don’t get much of a social life when you have babies. All you get is family time.”
“Reckon. It’d be all right, though. Being home with your family a lot. Like this couple I’m staying with. She’s a Celtic fiddler and he works in a bookstore. She plays local gigs, a few weekend festivals. Not much money, but they make it work. They’ve got a good life, y’know?”
Mae heard his longing and loneliness. Wandering into the living room, she was drawn to her children’s pictures on the wall above Niall’s sheep sculpture made of springs and horseshoes. She’d had that life once, the one Jamie envied. “It’s harder than it looks. I loved being home with the girls, but I was happy when they got old enough for school. It meant a lot to finally get out and work.”
“Delia works. Just not much. No long tours like what I’m doing.”
“I thought the tour was going well.”
“Yeah. But I could live without it. Do like she’s doing. Less money, less fame, but that’s not as important as a family, y’know? It hit me in your motel room the night before I left. Hit me hard.”
“Is that why you were crying?”
“Yeah. Didn’t want to explain, though. We always fight when I talk about marriage and kids. Didn’t want that to be our goodbye, y’know?”
“That was thoughtful of you.” Mae’s words sounded as awkward to her as they felt.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. Jamie finally broke it. “Your girls doing better with Jen?”
“Not really.”
“Fuck. Y’think they’d have a problem with me, too?”
“Sugar, they like you a lot, and that’s all that matters for right now.”
“But we’ll be together eventually. You’ll move to Santa Fe when you graduate.”
“I ... I might need to move back East then. To be closer to them.”
“What? Bloody hell.”
“Calm down, sugar. It’s just a possibility. I have to give it a lot of thought.”
Jamie didn’t calm down. His words exploded from him. “You won’t give any thought to our future, you always put it off and put it off, but you’ll think about this?”
His anger rubbed off on her, and she snapped more than she meant to. “They’ve been in my life a lot longer than you have.”
“I know. I didn’t mean you could compare. Or maybe I did. Jeezus. Dunno.” His tone softened. “Would you ...” A long pause. “Would you want me to move with you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”
“When my parents had known each other this long, they got married. We don’t have to leave it up in the air for three years.”
“I thought we’d agreed you’d stop pushing me for a timeline on our relationship.”
Mae sank onto the couch. Had that agreement been fair to Jamie? She wasn’t ready to commit, so he had to wait.
“Sorry.” His voice was quiet and tender. “It’s just hard sometimes, y’know? I love you so much. I miss you. And you’re such a good mum. I love being with you and your kids. But I can wait. I will wait. I always told you I would. You’ve got my heart. Forever.”
“I love you, too, sugar.” His promise brought tears to her eyes. He was so easy to love and so hard to live with. He would marry her tomorrow if she said yes. And with two divorces in her past, she might never want to marry again. In July she’d tried, painfully and unwillingly, to break up with Jamie so he could find someone who wanted marriage and children. He’d refused to even consider it. Now, here they were again, back at the impasse. What should she do with his heart and his forever?