After my departure from Jack, I began having tea with Josia after he arrived home some evenings, sometimes saying little, sometimes chatting about the trivialities of our day, but never anything deep or profound. It’s as if he knows I’ve allowed my thoughts to consume me so thoroughly these past ten years, I don’t want to talk about them anymore.
On a rainy night in May, sitting cross-legged on his bed across from where I sit on his desk chair, he confesses he is itching for another project.
“What about the kitchen?” I ask. “I mean, since you’re allowed there anyway.”
His eyebrows rise. “The kitchen. Really? Good. Yes, I think I can come up with something you’ll like.”
“What about welding?” I ask.
“Yes?” he asks, reaching for the remainder of the Nutty Bar he started at the beginning of our teatime.
“Do you know how to do it?”
“Yes. It’s quite a satisfying experience gluing materials together that don’t seem like they should be glued.”
I laugh. “Yes! That’s it.”
“Why do you ask?”
I tell him about Randi’s suggestion for the entry arch to the Bizarre.
“Oh yes. That sounds good. Very good.”
“So I think I’ll take a new tack on clearing things out. Keep the things you need a blowtorch to glue together.”
He raises his mug. “I like it.” Then takes a sip.
I want him to offer to help me learn but realize the fences I erected in our relationship prohibit him from doing so.
Drat. And I thought I was being so smart.
I’ll ask later, though. Since the rift with Jack, I just haven’t been in the mood to change things, and that interview is coming up sooner rather than later. I’ve been walking more to get in shape, but how much difference is it really going to make?
So far, for the trip to New York for the interview, I’ve got a thousand dollars saved. I want to stay at the St. Regis because that trumps all other hotels there, as far as I’m concerned. And I’ll need to arrive in a limousine in a fabulous designer outfit because this isn’t just about the interview; this is about playing a role from the moment my high heels descend in the city to the second they leave. I have to be fabulous on the interview set as well—which is yet another outfit—and I have to be convincing. It’s the only way to trump Jessica’s book.
I figure another three thousand dollars and I should be set. I wish Lila were here. She’d walk me through it all. And she’d make it fun.
After our tea is finished I head upstairs and clear the clothes off of my bed, trying as best as I can to put them away. I whisk up the dress I wore to dinner with Jack’s mom, along with the red high heels, and head into the Hollywood Room. And there it still is, Lila’s coat, hanging in the closet.
I throw down the clothing and rush over.
The sudden freshet of grief scours off the scab long covering past pains, revealing how sharp it all still is. I reach out and run my fingertips down the beautiful ivory coat she once owned, the coat the EMTs pulled off of her body, yanking it open to expose her chest. Have you ever seen an overdose?
I truly hope you haven’t.
Wrapping it around me, I hug the fabric, hold the collar up to my nose, and breathe in deeply. Please, I ask the soft, brushed wool. But her aroma is gone. Ten years is such a long time.
Lila’s coat still around me, I’m standing in front of my worktable looking at my button strings arranged in two lines of eight buttons each. This is the best arrangement yet.
In fact, this is the arrangement.
Right?
Now, what it will be arranged upon or with, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure a blowtorch will be unnecessary.
I place my hands on my hips and twist my waist as my eyes scan the front of the stacks of boxes and supplies.
Yes, they should definitely be mounted to something, okay. I remember those remaining crib ends, but shush the idea because for some reason my brain has moved on from the baby idea, and like a woman who wasn’t all that keen on having children finding out she’s barren, I realize it’s no big deal.
Well, the mounting surface will reveal itself. With all these things around me, how can it help but do so? I’ll just have to remind myself to keep my eyes open and looking around because you never know when something unexpected will come your way.
Hopefully that’s a good thing.
I take off the coat and drape it over the back of my work stool. Maybe Lila, in her own way, will lend a little inspiration.
Randi swirls a cleaning rag, shaking her head. “Wow, that’s a lot of work he’s doing. And for free?” She squints, her mouth dropping into a grimace.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs.
My shoulders mimic hers, but with less skepticism and some apology for my apparent naïveté adjusting the slant a tad. “I think he’s just a workaholic, but doing it in a completely lovable way.”
Randi places her hand on her hip, the rag flowing back over her curled fingers like the bustle on a lady’s ball gown. “To be honest, Fiona, I think it’s a little odd. Who does that sort of thing for someone? I mean, he’s got to know he’s not going to live there forever, you know?”
“Maybe he’s just a nice person, Randi.”
She laughs. “Maybe I’m too jaded for my own good.” Then she finishes up the counter, shining it with a towel in broad strokes from the front edge to the back.
My phone rings and the word Brandon lights up the screen.
“My dad,” I whisper. “That’s odd.”
“Take it away!” Randi says, grinning at the prospect of listening in.
“Hi, Brandon.”
“Fia, hi. I’m coming to Baltimore for a benefit luncheon for Center Stage.”
“So why are you calling me, then?”
I want to bark out a snotty little laugh, but the truth is, he’s never asked for my help before.
“What is it?”
“Would you come with me to the benefit, not tomorrow afternoon but the next? Center Stage is where I got my start. It would mean more to me than I could say if you accompanied me.”
“Okay.”
A moment of, I presume, stunned silence ensues and he says, “Well, great. Are you sure? You know a photographer is likely to snap us together.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but even if I had, I’d like to think I would have made the right decision and say, “That’s okay too.”
Talk about something unexpected coming your way. I didn’t mean this. I didn’t mean a family loyalty scenario at all. I meant winning the lottery, or helping someone on the street and finding out he was a monk from Tibet with the wisdom of the ages tucked inside and sent on a mission to teach the first person who helped him in America the secret to peace and happiness, and you’re the lucky winner, Fiona Hume.
Something like that. Not the father I divorced sixteen years ago.
“All right, Fia, thank you. I’m going to hang up before you can change your mind. I’ll call you when I land tomorrow evening. Plane gets in at 7:35 p.m. but I’ll be renting a car. And thank you again.”
True to his promise, the line goes dead before I can say even a quick good-bye.
“Well, way to go, Fiona,” I say to the phone, then proceed to relate the conversation to Randi.
“Really? You’re going to appear in public with Brandon Hume? I really will have to see it to believe it.”
“Oh, you’ll see it. You can believe that completely.”
She stifles a laugh with her hand. “Is he anything like his character in Galaxy Goons?” she asks, then, “Hold up,” as she attends to a customer just approaching the counter, a younger man wearing skinny jeans even goofier than Galaxy Goons.
Galaxy Goons. The goofball comedy came out when I was fifteen. Everyone called my father a fool for starring in what turned into a summer blockbuster and an immediate, quotable classic all at the same time. “When Airplane! collides with Spaceballs and Heathers, Galaxy Goons is the result,” one prominent reviewer said, and he was right.
It’s Brandon’s one comedic standout, a hilariously shining departure in an otherwise serious career, and he’s taken it pleasantly in stride. “Here’s to something being better than nothing!” he said in his interview on Good Morning America.
“No,” I say. “He’s a little smarter than Captain Quirk.”
“Are you putting him up at your place?” she asks.
“Oh, sure. Yes. I’ll just kick Josia out of his room.”
“I’m sure that would go over big.”
My heart begins to pound, thinking of seeing my father again. “The sad thing is, Josia probably wouldn’t mind.”
Merely the thought of that gentle man slows the pace of my anxious heart.