The stale stench of cigarette smoke lingered in the air of her parents’ house, even though they smoked outside. It followed them in, permeating everything. In school she’d been teased for smelling like an ashtray, so she’d walked instead of taking the bus, letting her clothes air out, even in the rain.
She dreaded the day she’d get a call that the decades of smoking had caught up with them. But she’d tried everything she could to get them to stop. They simply didn’t want to.
“Grab me a beer, will ya, kiddo?” her dad asked from the living room.
“Sure thing.” She kept her voice cheery, though she wanted to tell him to drink water instead of his cycle of coffee and cheap beer.
“Mari, you have to eat more. You’re too skinny.”
“I’m fine, Mom.” She decided to bring in dinner next time and be spared her mom’s canned corn, box stuffing, and turkey loaf. Her mom had a handful of great dinners, but Thanksgiving wasn’t one of them.
“Mari, Mari, always contrary.” Her mother filled a jelly jar with box wine, then carried her plate into the room with the television.
Marissa took a deep breath, but there was too much tar in the air to clear her head. They’d done their best with her, but they had nothing in common but their last name. After the fallout with Chris, she’d never even considered coming back here. She might not know exactly what she wanted from life, but it was not this.
“Girl, do I have to get that beer my damned self?” Her father laughed, but he was not amused.
“Coming, Dad.” She tucked a cold can of beer into the crook of her arm and carried her plate to the waiting TV trays. When she was younger, she’d done homework and had dinner on a folding card table, but one of the legs had come unhinged and it had been leaning against the wall ever since.
Her dad took his beer with a wink, before popping it open and draining half of it, then belching a thank-you. She couldn’t help but laugh. There were certain things that brought her back to when the good times had outnumbered the bad. Burping words and armpit farts with her dad, Rockette kicks and celebrity gossip with her mom. Other people might not get their particular brand of crazy, but she appreciated it.
Football blared from the television, making her wonder if her dad was having issues hearing. Or maybe he didn’t want to hear anyone else talk. She took a few bites before realizing she’d fall asleep if she didn’t at least try to engage.
“So, Mom, how’s the restaurant doing?” Her mother had waitressed at the same place since high school—though the business had changed hands a half dozen times, her mother stayed on.
“I think they’d do better if they went back to Mexican. There are three Italian places already. But what do I know.”
“You know enough to run the place.”
Her mother waved her fork, knocking down the idea. “I don’t need that headache. Besides, I doubt I’d make more money than I clear now in tips. I’d wind up paying everything to the tax man.”
“I do enough of that for us both,” her father said. He’d finished his first plate and got up for another round. “The less Uncle Sam gets, the better. Hell, kiddo, you probably paid enough in this year to get the road out front paved, but they’ll never get to it. Damn politicians need gold-plated seats on their crapper, while the ruts are so deep I need four-wheel drive just to make it into town.”
She used to call him on his exaggerations, but the street outside her folks’ mobile home was almost falling apart. Not to mention the house itself. The ceiling had yellowed water stains and a draft blew in from somewhere. She’d tried to talk them into moving, but they always said they couldn’t afford it. A waitress and a school custodian didn’t bring in enough to keep up on the repairs, let alone buy something better. The bathroom shower had been broken since before she’d left for college. Marissa sighed, wishing she could help them more. But she barely made enough to cover her own rent on her current salary. Someday, somehow, she’d make enough to help.
Her mother leaned toward her on the couch. “Did I tell you Chris finally sent his uncle to a care facility in Minnesota? Had two nurses come out to fly back with him. He leveled the house though and is selling the land.”
She nodded, not surprised at all by the update. Chris was the golden boy of their town, every move he made was still news.
“I guess that means he’s not coming back.” Her mother let out a sad sigh. “His uncle was the last family he had here.”
“It must be nice for his grandmother to have everyone together again.” It always amused her how the whole town forgot Chris hadn’t been back a day since becoming a professional basketball player. His every highlight, every trade the most popular topic of conversation. They claimed him, but he’d washed his hands of them as soon as he could.
Being back never ceased to remind her how far she’d come. Not as bright lights and big city as the golden boy, but successful enough to be proud of herself. And looking back, she realized maybe she’d used Chris a little too. Not as badly as he’d done to her, but he’d been the one to encourage her to graduate early and go to the university. He’d had his own reasons for it, but she would never have dared if he hadn’t talked her into it. She never would have joined a sorority and gained that ready-made sisterhood. Never would have raced through college in three years so she wouldn’t be left behind when he graduated. Without him, she never would have gotten off the merry-go-round of this town.
She’d fantasized about leaving, chasing dreams the way characters did in books, but she hadn’t had the confidence to act. Not until he made her feel special. And then after, when she’d been lost and terrified, she’d had the education and support system to save herself. She knew where she came from, and where she was now, but what did she want in the future?
Maybe if Scott saw this, the quiet desperation her parents lived in every day, maybe then he’d understand why her career was so important to her. She didn’t know if he was even capable of understanding what it was like to have to wait until payday to buy groceries, or having to choose between gas and shoes, or not being able to go to the doctor because it cost too damned much.
“Mari, what’s wrong?” her mother asked, laying a hand on her arm. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I’m distracted.” She pasted on a smile. No, she hadn’t seen a ghost. Just reality. She and Scott weren’t only far apart geographically; economically they lived in different worlds too. “There’s a lot going on at work.”
“Did you get frequent flier miles for that trip to California?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Do you have enough for a free ticket?”
She shook her head as her father returned to his throne with another heaping plate of food.
“It’s a racket, I tell you.” The chair creaked under his weight as he sat. “All these points and shit. No one ever gets anything from them but a headache.”
She couldn’t argue, so she changed the subject. “Are you going to fish again this summer, Dad?”
“I don’t know. My knee has been acting up.” He leaned forward and rubbed the offending joint. “Might have to find a different way to make money.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
He gave her a you-already-know-the-answer look and she let the subject drop. He didn’t trust doctors any more than politicians or airline rewards programs. There was only one safe subject.
“So, who do you think is going to win this game?”
There were too many hours between now and Saturday. Scott thought about making a countdown on the wall, like some kind of person stranded on a desert island. Only he wasn’t trapped, just surrounded on all sides by family.
“I never sleep as soundly as I do when I’m here.” His mother sat beside him on the dining room bench, still in her pajamas with her short blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. “It’s so freeing, not having to follow a schedule.”
“Do you want me to make you some fresh coffee? It’s after noon, but you just woke up.”
“No, I’m fine. You boys have been so quiet this morning I didn’t even realize what time it was.” She cast a glance into the empty living room. “Where did they go?”
“Cross-country skiing. They didn’t want to wake you with the snowmobiles.”
“And you didn’t go with them?”
“I get bored with cross-country.”
“Me too.” She smiled at him and he wondered why even as he aged she never seemed to get older. All those years of modeling had taught her to be good to her skin, he supposed. That and her need to always be on the go, trying something new. Which they had in common.
“I put the turkey in earlier, so we’ll warm up the side dishes when they get back and we’ll be ready to go with dinner.”
“So tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What has you so moody you’re sitting at a table, staring at falling snow instead of getting out in it.”
“Just used to the snow, I guess. I have it all winter, so it’s not novel to me.” He shrugged and smiled and tried like hell to seem like himself.
“You’re a horrible liar. Horrible. Is it the business? Or, I guess businesses. Do you need a loan?”
“No, business is great. I’m in negotiations to take over a condo complex where we already own ten units. I lowballed them, but they need to raise capital for a new project they lost the financing on. We’ll upgrade the place this spring, rent it out all summer, and then sell it in the fall. It’s a great opportunity.”
“See, that’s the Scott I know. So if it’s not business, then it’s personal.”
“Mom.” He so did not want to talk about this.
“Please tell me you’re getting married and having my grandbabies while I am still young enough to enjoy them.”
And that was why. He rose from the table and took his empty mug to the kitchen, which smelled like rosemary and roast turkey.
“Oh come on.” She followed him like they were still having this conversation. “What’s her name? What’s she like?”
“Mom.” He turned and braced his hands on the countertop. With anyone else he was confident and determined. But she could reduce him to a six-year-old with a look.
“Who else are you going to talk to? Your brother is too busy building the business to focus on building a family, and you and Dad don’t speak the same language.”
Too true. He grinned in spite of himself. “There’s nothing to talk about. Yet.”
“Well, I’m not getting any younger.”
“Actually, I think you are.”
She rolled her eyes. “So, there’s a woman. How long have you known her?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Six years.”
His mother’s eyes widened. “You’ve been keeping this from me for six years? That’s just . . . just mean.”
“No. I’ve known her that long. She had a boyfriend, and then she lived in a different town. But she came out here for Matt’s wedding.”
“I’m sorry we had to miss it. Though your dad would have been a nut if we got stuck in that snowstorm. Oh, she had to stay in town because of the weather, right?”
He nodded. “She actually stayed here.”
“For how long?”
“Four nights.” Four sensual nights, but the days had been magic too.
“This may be the part you don’t tell your mother.”
He didn’t hide the laugh. “The power went out so I took her snowshoeing, played games, that kind of stuff.”
“And then she went home.”
“Yeah, that’s the G-rated version.”
“So your brooding is coming from . . .”
“I’m going to go see her on Saturday.”
“Oh, okay. Dad and Greg were going back on Sunday, but I thought I’d stay a few more days, unless you’d rather have privacy. I can have all of us out of here in two hours.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to see her in Portland. I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to leave her there when I come home. Letting her drive away was rough.”
“Ah. Long-distance relationships are full of goodbyes. Sometimes I think that’s why your father and I got married so quickly. He hated all those red-eye flights to New York.”
“How did he convince you to come here? To give up your career?”
She did a double blink. “You were always good at math.”
“What does that mean?”
“We got married in December. Greg was born in August.”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes and wondered how he’d never realized that before. His folks never seemed like they were together for the kids. In fact, they tended to be focused more on one another than parenting. “I can’t get her pregnant. She’s on the pill.”
“Scott, for goodness sake. I’m not saying that.” She reached up and tightened her ponytail, looking much more thirty than fifty. “I’m saying you should find out what she wants and give it to her.”
“She wants to live in Portland. I tried living there, and I hated it.”
“Why?”
“The traffic and the noise and the lack of opportunities. I have a finger on the pulse of real estate here. I’d be a fool to leave.”
“Not you, her. Why does she want to live there?”
He hadn’t asked, not really. “Her job is there, I guess. Her apartment, her friends.”
“But she was at Matt’s wedding, so she does have friends here. If she wants her own space, you can put her in one of your rentals.”
“I want her with me.”
“I would say you can’t always get what you want, but I’ve seen you do it time and again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time someone has told you that you can’t do something you turn around and do it. Your high school coach said you couldn’t play college basketball, you made it onto a championship team. Dad said you didn’t understand enough about business, so you started your own and are probably making more money than he is. I could give you more examples, but some of them involve potty training and things I’m not supposed to know about.”
“Like what?”
“Like kissing Katie Gordon when you were fourteen and your brother said you couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t know if kissing the prettiest girl in junior high is going to score me any points with Marissa.” He couldn’t help but laugh at how funny it was that his mother had a different perspective than he did on the same events.
“You always figure out a way to get what you want, even if you have to think outside the box. I wish I could do that. If I could I would have grandbabies by now, while I’m still young enough to teach them to ski and dance and shop.”
“Dial it back, Mom.”
She shrugged. “If I’d known you and your brother were going to take this long, I think I would have had more kids. We were so busy building the business when you boys were young, it went by too fast.”
The front door pushed open as his father and brother came in, snow dusting their matching gray beanies.
“Smells like dinner in here,” his dad said as he untied the coat from around his waist. “We made a great trail, but now I need a shower.”
“Don’t use all the hot water. I haven’t had mine yet.”
A sly smile crossed his dad’s weathered face. “Well, what’s stopping you?”
She grinned, then raced up the stairs, with his father hot on her heels.
“And that’s why we’re not married,” Greg said as he opened the fridge for a sports drink.
“Why’s that?”
Greg shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I want that. Not the bickering and resentment I keep seeing with my friends. I want that, a friend who is more.”
Scott nodded. He knew, and he couldn’t let it get away.