Oh My Stars, page 10
“General things?”
“Smartass.”
“I come by it honestly.”
She muttered under her breath, then added, “I suppose you still have me and Holly on all of your paperwork?”
“Yep, and I’ll see about a daycare, too.”
“Is the state going to watch the baby if all of the daycares are full?” Mom asked.
This wasn’t a possibility that I’d considered. “Well, I was hoping you and Holly could help me since it won’t be for that long.”
“Don’t ask me,” Holly said as she breezed back through the kitchen to put her cup in the sink and then head out the door for work. “My schedule is all over the place.”
I opened my mouth to ask Mom, but she cut me off. “I’m too old to babysit.”
She’d signed the paperwork. This couldn’t have been that much of a surprise for her, and it wasn’t like I was asking her to watch the baby so I could go take a mud bath and then get my nails done.
“I bet you’d watch a baby for Holly.”
Mom gave me the arched eyebrow of doom, her mouth a thin line and her nostrils flaring. When she spoke, her voice was dangerously calm. “What would make you say a thing like that?”
I laid Zuzu down in the bassinet to avoid her stare. Might as well go ahead while we were airing our grievances despite the fact it wasn’t yet December twenty-third. “You let her get away with everything.”
“I do not!”
“Mom. The other night you ripped me a new one when you thought I’d bought icicles. Then Holly fessed up, and you told her to remember the tongue lashing you’d given me.”
“I didn’t see the need to repeat myself.”
“But I got in trouble for something I didn’t even do, and that has been happening around here forever—especially since we were teenagers.”
She cleared her throat. “I want you to think about what happened when you and your sister were teenagers.”
As if I could forget. The year Holly turned sixteen, she had complained about a sore throat, and our pediatrician had taken Mom aside and whispered his suspicions. Sure enough, Mom caught Holly throwing up after supper when she thought we’d both gone out for a walk. Holly and Mom yelled at each other from one end of the house to the other, and I sat on the front porch cringing at how well their yelling penetrated the brick wall behind me. Holly ended up going into rehab for bulimia. Mom cried the whole time she was gone, and I avoided her as best I could.
Then when Holly came back, she could do no wrong because Mom was afraid she’d relapse.
Honestly, I was afraid my sister had recently transferred her bulimia to excessive exercise based on the late-night elliptical sessions that had become more and more frequent. But even if she had, she was a grown woman. What was I supposed to do with her?
I cleared my throat. “Mom, I understand that you don’t want to upset her, but don’t you think it’s time to take off the kid gloves? Is it fair for you to yell at me for the same thing you didn’t yell at her for?”
“I didn’t see the need to repeat myself,” Mom said, failing to see the irony in how she’d just repeated herself.
“Well, you didn’t even apologize to me, and I told Holly that morning that I would get everything she wanted except those icicles.”
“Did you?”
“I do pay attention, you know.”
Mom grabbed my hand. “I know. I’m sorry I yelled at you last night.”
The apology should’ve made me feel better, but it didn’t. I felt a little worse, to tell the truth, because Mom might be apologizing for the night before but she wasn’t apologizing for any of the years that had come before.
“Mom, taking care of Zuzu means a lot to me. I don’t know why, and I don’t know for how long. Could you please help me?”
She sighed. “I suppose I can help you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.”
“Look, little miss, I did not ask to have a baby in the house. I am old, and I do not feel well.”
Her response surprised me. Mom didn’t feel well? “But you’re only sixty-six.”
“Well, I feel like I’m ninety-six. That’s part of the reason why I want you to quit smoking.”
And we’re back to me.
“I know it’s not easy, but you don’t want to be this out of shape, do you? And you need to find a job where you don’t have to stand so much so your feet don’t aggravate you. After all those years as a nurse, my heels are killing me. I can hardly walk—”
“The doctor said—”
“I do not care what that doctor said. I’m not going under the knife unless I absolutely have to. You forget: I used to work in a hospital and would like to avoid any kind of open wound there if at all possible.”
“Fine. I’ll talk Holly into watching Zuzu,” I said with a sigh.
“Don’t you overburden your sister. I’m already worried about her exercising too much.”
So, Mom had noticed. Not only had she noticed my sister’s overboard exercising, but she was still more willing to help my sister than to help me.
You don’t have to take this.
But I did. Where else would I go?
I had to swallow my pride and ask for help until I could find a better job.
“I wish Holly had gone into something other than nutrition and personal training. It keeps the girl stewing,” Mom said, running her hands one over the other as she stared at some point well beyond me.
Holly, Holly, Holly. It was always all about Holly.
Funny, really. In the Christmas song, they mention the holly first. For years, my little sister couldn’t understand how I was the oldest. If her name came first in the song, then she should be the oldest. At least she was the most important—that much she had already figured out.
“Mom, Holly will be fine. Maybe it will give her something else to think about other than exercising.”
“That would be good,” Mom said, her expression brightening. “Well, maybe it will be nice to have a baby around the house again.”
Resentment rose like bile. Oh, sure. Now taking in the baby was a good idea. If babysitting would benefit Holly, then Mom was all for it. Taking care of Zuzu for me wasn’t enough.
Heck, Mom might’ve mentioned how having the baby around the house might be an inspiration for me to quit smoking. Or to get that better job. Or to cannonball into the dating pool.
I thought of the look on Gabe’s face when I backed out from under the mistletoe. I didn’t need to get back into the dating pool because I’d obviously forgotten how to swim.
I couldn’t do anything about the dating or the job, and today didn’t look like the day to quit smoking.
Funny, I’d missed last night’s smoke in all of the drama and hadn’t thought about my morning cigarette until I started talking with Mom about my sister.
Now, I craved it almost as though I needed two to make up for last night, too. “I’m going out for a smoke. Watch the baby, will ya?”
“This is how it begins,” she grumbled, but she didn’t recite her litany of all of the reasons I should quit smoking, one of her favorite diatribes.
I should be glad, but her silence screamed that she didn’t love me as much as she loved my sister, which was a crazy thing to feel, but there it was. I grabbed my purse and walked quickly outside, careful not to let her see the tears sliding down my cheeks.
Chapter 18
Gabe
“Morning, Bubba.”
“Do you have to call me that?” Julian pulled the truck on the main road and headed toward home. Well, toward that place where my father lived anyway.
“As long as you call me City Boy, then you will be Bubba,” I said through a yawn.
“Fine.”
“I guess I should be glad I have someone else to do dear ol’ dad’s bidding now.”
Julian snorted.
We rode in silence the rest of the way and even sat in the truck for a few seconds after he killed the motor. Interesting. He didn’t want to have this discussion, either. Good to know.
“Might as well get this over with,” Julian said.
“Sure. Just as soon as you help me milk the goats.”
He muttered under his breath but helped me get all of the goats up and milk them, and I had the pleasure of knowing both he and Dad were stewing in their own juices. I still wasn’t quite sure how I felt about all of this, but at least it made sense for Julian to be hanging around.
Or it would’ve made sense if he and Dad had told me the truth right off. Finally, we’d taken care of the goats and checked on the other animals, so we headed inside to the little farmhouse I should’ve called home. Dad sat at the Formica table, his walker to the side. He’d been through a ridiculous amount of cigarettes.
His bottom lip trembled with rage. “Look here! I don’t need to worry half the night—”
“Dad, I’m over forty. Save it.”
His mouth snapped shut, and I half regretted what I’d said because he’d actually admitted to worrying about me, and that was new and exciting. Julian and I eyed each other. Who was supposed to sit where in this dysfunctional family dynamic? Growing up, Aunt Vi, Aunt Lois, and I each had our own seat, more through habit than declaration. I’d never had my own seat here.
Maybe it’s high time I pick one.
I chose the seat across from my father, and Julian sat on the end.
“Dad, you have some explaining to do.”
The old man squinted as he took a drag on his cigarette, looking from Julian to me and back again. “So, I’m guessing you’ve figured out that Julian here is your brother.”
“Figured it out? I had my niece tell me last night. Kinda hurts that the two-year-old found out before me.”
“She’s three,” Julian said.
“I don’t care if she’s thirty-three. The least you could’ve done was tell me before you told her.”
Julian studied the floor.
“Oh, don’t be so hard on the boy. Didn’t either of us know until three years ago. Came as a bit of a shock,” Dad said.
I slammed my hands down on the table. “You’ve both known for three years? Unbelievable.”
Julian shrugged. “He didn’t want me to tell you yet.”
I stared at the younger man and now I couldn’t see anything but family resemblance. Dammit, I looked a lot like these two jackasses. Maybe I’d keep this beard forever so no one else could see the similarities around the mouth and chin. Not much I could do about the nose. At least I had red hair instead of Julian’s blond or Dad’s white that was once almost as dark red as mine.
“I wanted to see if you two would get on before I told you.” Dad stubbed out his cigarette with his left hand while his right fingers danced nervously in front of the pack.
“What difference does that make? If we’re related, we’re related!”
Dad shrugged his shoulders. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
I started to say, “Like the goats?” but I didn’t. The goats actually had been a good idea at the time.
“I don’t even understand how any of this is possible. I thought Adelaide didn’t have any children and Mom died not too long after I was born. What the hell?”
“Well, I, uh, got . . .” Dad paused to clear his throat, and his leathery face took on a reddish tinge I’d never seen before. “It’s complicated.”
Complicated? According to Adelaide, it wasn’t complicated. During the summers when I stayed with them, she’d entice me into the kitchen with cookies or cake or pie. I listened to all of her stories somehow understanding that she was trading sweets for companionship. She knew no young man could resist food.
One of her favorite stories to tell was the one of how she and Dad had met. She’d gone to Burger Paradise with her friends, and a group of guys had gathered there. Lester walked up to the cash register while she was paying for her burger and fries and said, “You’re the woman I want to marry.”
She’d taken one look at the wiry man with the already wizened face and laughed.
He’d said, “You can laugh now, but I’m not joking.”
He’d brought her flowers, talked her into going to the fair with him. One night he’d even serenaded her, singing Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while strumming a guitar beneath her window. They’d married a month later.
Surely he didn’t.
As unlikely a romantic hero as Dad was, I’d clung to Adelaide’s story, inwardly smiling at the twinkle in her eye as she described Dad’s off-key singing complete with her own warbly imitation. I didn’t want that homespun love story to have been sullied. “Please tell me you didn’t cheat on Adelaide.”
“I would never,” Dad sputtered. “I was kinda lost there for a while before I met her, though, I will tell you that.”
Well, I couldn’t toss stones at that particular glass house. I’d been a bit lost when I found out Brittany was cheating on me with the orthopedist. Oddly enough I hadn’t missed her much recently—the idea of her, sure, but not her.
I leaned back in my chair and tried to imagine how I would’ve felt in Dad’s shoes.
I couldn’t.
Losing Brittany had left me lost for about ten weeks, not ten years, and I guess that should’ve told me how much he loved my mother versus how little I’d loved my first wife.
The first two weeks I’d spent all time not at work on my couch. The next couple of months I’d made up for lost bachelorhood by going out with several women, some of whom had come home with me. When that last one asked for a drawer after only two dates, I was over playing the field.
And I hadn’t run around impregnating women.
“Now, son, if you’re worried about your inheritance—”
“Whoa. Stop right there. I’m not concerned in the least with any inheritance. But I do have a question: If you’re so keen to take in Julian, why didn’t you send for me when you remarried?”
Dad’s eyes bugged out.
“Just thought I’d ask while we’re spilling family secrets.”
Julian, who’d had the good sense to stay quiet up until this point, said, “It ain’t like he raised me. Like he said, we only found out three years ago.”
“Look, I come home and all of a sudden the two of you are awfully tight. He treats you more like a son than he’s ever treated me.”
Up until I said the words, I hadn’t realized that even more than the deception, the feeling that Lester Ledbetter could be a father to someone, even though he’d chosen not to be mine, was what hurt most of all.
Sure I’d spent summers with Dad because Aunt Vi and Aunt Lois felt I needed a male influence, but Dad and I had never been close. Talking to Adelaide had always been easier. Quite a shame she’d passed on because she would’ve been able to unravel all this mess in such a way that didn’t leave us emotionally raw and disjointed.
A slice of her chocolate pie wouldn’t have been remiss, either.
“I guess Julian and I are more alike,” Dad said finally.
“Well, whose fault is that?”
We stared at each other, neither one willing to give an inch after my last comment.
Julian shifted in his chair, and the creaking noise reminded us he was there. “It took me and Dad a while to get used to the idea, so I kinda wanted to get to know you before we broke the news.”
“Ever consider how we could’ve gotten to know each other together? Maybe let me be surprised and awkward alongside the two of you?”
My half brother had the good grace to look away.
“There isn’t another brother, is there? Or should Julian and I prepare for a third stooge?”
Dad’s gazed downward, his eyes locked on his packet of cigarettes. He still hadn’t answered my question about why he’d never sent for me. I could only guess he was happy to finally have a manly man country boy for a son instead of the uppity doctor son who’d been raised by his sisters to be too soft.
At least he had someone to go hunting with since I’d never taken to the sport. They could haul hay and swat mayflies together, maybe go on a father-son bonding trip to the feed store to get a salt block. In the future, they could definitely rustle cattle at dawn together.
This is why I’d told myself to stay in Memphis. As much as I’d wanted my father’s approval, as much as I preferred country air to city pollution, I’d never fit in. Something about knowing the universe had sent my father a younger son who could do all of those country things, though, really chapped my hide.
“Keep your secrets, then,” I muttered, leaving both father and brother at the table to think about what they’d done.
Chapter 19
Ivy
Thank goodness it was one of my two days off. Since Zuzu was in foster care, I had help through WIC, but I still had to make some calls and run some errands to get everything set up. I happily bounced her while on the phone or bundled her up as we ran around town.
She seemed a little fussy to me, but I had to admit I wouldn’t be too pleased at having been abandoned, then poked and prodded in the hospital before being deposited with a stranger. Her forehead didn’t feel warm and she had only a little mucus—not enough for me to brave the bulb syringe.
Corey had wielded the syringe when Byron got a cold. If eliminating snot had been an Olympic sport, my husband would’ve medaled. I smiled at the thought and reached into my purse for his letter, but I only touched it. I couldn’t make myself open it.
When we got home from our outing, I fed her and put her down for a nap, thinking I might put myself down for a little nap, too. When I got my phone out of my purse, though, I saw I’d missed two calls, one from New York and the other local.
In my first voicemail, my beleaguered agent, Datya, had called to remind me that my final deadline was January third. I didn’t want to call her. The second message informed me a social worker, one Yolanda Gibbons, would be coming to see me soon and to call her in the meantime if I had any problems.
I didn’t want to call her, either.
Truth be told, I never wanted to call anyone anymore. After years of wrangling with insurance companies over incorrect bills—some of them the day after Corey’s funeral—I didn’t like talking on the phone anymore. Just as I’d nodded off, though, the traitorous device vibrated, and I saw that it was Datya calling me again.
