sixty-seven

Tuesday, Day 8—after the shooting

The phone rang earlier the next morning than I would have liked.

“Come on over for breakfast,” boomed the voice of Robbie Holmes.

“Be right there. Can I bring Clancy?”

“As long as she doesn’t eat anything. Hey, I’m pulling your leg. You can bring anyone you want,” and he hung up.

Boy, someone was in a good mood now that his honey was home!

No one makes better breakfasts than Robbie. He’s great with eggs, hash browns, pancakes, biscuits and gravy.

I called CALA and told them Anya was taking a mental health vacation for a day or two. Fortunately, the receptionist didn’t press me for details. Margit was scheduled to open the store at eight, and Dodie would come in soon after. Robbie’s timing was perfect, even if Clancy and Anya weren’t happy about getting up so early. I reminded both of them that Robbie was an excellent cook, and they grumped a little less.

I sniffed the armpits of my gray dress and pronounced it clean enough for another day’s wearing.

A short time later, I tapped on Sheila’s front door. It flew open and there stood my mom. As we tried to come in, she blocked our entrance. “Well! It’s about time, Kiki. You haven’t called. You haven’t been by to ask how I am. Here I am, all alone in this strange city and you haven’t made an effort.”

She swept her eyes up and down, studying me. “In that gray dress, you look like a whale.”

“Son of Blubber, huh? Or Daughter of Blubber as the case may be? Nice to see you too, Mom,” I pushed past her. “Robbie? Sheila? Hello!”

Clancy and Anya also edged their way past my mother, who continued to complain while following them into the kitchen.

The Sheila sitting in a kitchen chair was much, much smaller than the woman I knew. Pain diminished her, although her bright blue eyes snapped with intelligence. Leaning over, I gave her a kiss on the cheek. On the trip here I’d warned Anya that her grandmother might be fragile.

“I know, Mom,” said Anya. “I saw both of you in the emergency room, remember?”

My child’s face was suffused with love as she approached her Gran and slipped her arms around Sheila’s neck so lightly, she could have been a butterfly landing on a petal. “Gran! It’s so good to have you back. I missed you.”

“Harrumph,” my mother fussed in the background.

Amanda came in and I gave my sister a hug. She’d met Clancy at my house during the welcome home party, but I reintroduced my friend to my sister and started to introduce her to my mother when she interrupted.

“My daughter has forgotten her manners. Of course, I am Lucia Montgomery, Amanda’s mother. Kiki’s as well,” said my mother stiffly, extending her hand the way Henry VIII must have done for Thomas More to kiss before he had him beheaded.

“Mom, Clancy is the nice person who’s renting us the house in U City,” said Amanda. “Remember? You liked that place a lot. Very large. Great location. Nice yard.”

“Then I need to talk to you. Those windows haven’t been cleaned in a long time. That simply must be done. And you need to get a water softening system, as I have very delicate skin,” Mom patted her own face as if Clancy might need visual reinforcement to get the drift.

“Tell you what,” said Clancy. “Why don’t you make me a list?”

As Mom toddled off to find notepaper, Clancy leaned close to me and whispered, “So I can tear it to shreds and forget it. How’s that working for you, girlfriend?” And she gave me a high-five.

I snickered. “Really well. You might be able to keep her busy for weeks writing it over and over.”

Without my crabby mother, the kitchen was a warm and happy place to gather. Robbie’s hash brown potatoes with onions and green peppers gave off a tantalizing aroma. An accomplished sous chef, Robbie had all his ingredients for omelets at hand so he could take our orders and whip them up in no time.

“I filled the French press with coffee from Kaldi’s,” Robbie said to me as he slid the first omelet onto Sheila’s plate.

“Oh, you doll you.” I hugged him. I filled the eight-cup coffee maker with hot water from the special spigot at Sheila’s sink.

Mom walked back in. I watched her look around and I read the expression on her face. She was a deeply, deeply unhappy woman—and her sour disposition caused everyone to want to avoid her. Robbie and Sheila were joking and stealing kisses. Amanda and Anya talked about U City. Clancy caught me up on what had happened when she closed the store the night before. An empty chair sat open, waiting for my mom, but she simply stood there, staring at all of us. When no one immediately dropped what they were doing to cater to her, Mom pouted. “Well, I can see I’m not wanted,” she sniffed before leaving again.

The conversation turned to light-hearted matters. Sheila’s sling. Local news. The annual appearance of moles in Sheila’s lawn. Visitors who wanted to come by and wish my mother-in-law well. A few had dropped off packages at the house, leaving books and chocolates and magazines.

After an hour or so of chit-chat, Anya wandered into the great room to read her grandmother’s fashion magazines. We could hear the television in that room booming, which I rightly assumed was a passive-aggressive statement from my mother.

“I’ll take Mom a plate,” said Amanda. “You know she’s pouting because she isn’t the center of attention.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “How do you put up with her?”

“By ignoring her. Look at it this way, Kiki. She doesn’t have much of a life, does she? She’s run off most of her friends. She creates imaginary dramas with people to have a reason to be put out. She’s too insecure to simply ask for what she needs. Instead, she twists things and manipulates people. Although she wouldn’t call it that. It isn’t a conscious act. It’s just the way she’s learned to view the world and her place in it. This is all she knows. And she’s too old to change. Pretty pathetic isn’t it? By acting helpless, she exerts her power. My therapist calls it the tyranny of the weak.”

I thought about that a minute. “I call it sick.”