everyone existed.
“Tyler’s part monkey. Takes after you, big brother.” Phillip set down his beer and grabbed a handful of chips. “You’ve always been the live and hairy proof that Darwin was right.”
“You’re just pissed because I actually have hair.”
“I have hair. See?” Phillip bent over and rubbed his dark-stubbled scalp. “Keely loves this. Women go for men with the confidence to shave their heads. Think Willis…Think Agassi…”
“Think MiniMe,” Scott finished.
Mike set a box of Wheat Thins on the table and stood, stretching. “Remember the time Scott disappeared, sunshine? You were a climber, too, son,” he said to Scott. “We looked for you for almost an hour. Your mother was frantic, crying like crazy, certain you had somehow gotten out in the street and been kidnapped. Eventually we found you sitting on a ceiling beam watching us.”
“I was just glad you were safe,” March told him.
“So I guess that means I’m not going to get much sympathy from either of you.”
“Payback is hell,” she and Mike said at the same time.
“See?” Phil said laughing. “I keep telling you. I’m the perfect son. That’s why they like me best.”
Scott looked at Tyler. “Do you want to go to Uncle Phil?”
“Yes!” (Tyler’s favorite word.)
Scott set his son in Phillip’s lap, sat down in a club chair and picked up his beer. “Daddy is smarter than Uncle Phil, isn’t he?”
“Yes!”
He took a swig of beer. “And Daddy is more handsome than Uncle Phil, isn’t he?
“Yes!”
Phil just shook his head and turned to Scott, who said, “Uncle Phil has big, ugly, jug-handle ears, right?”
“Yes!”
Phillip smiled, familiar, a little wicked, the same way he had as a kid when he just passed Go, collected two hundred dollars and owned Broadway with a hotel. He glanced at Scott, then held up Tyler in front of him and said, “Your daddy likes to dress up in your mommy’s clothes, doesn’t he?”
“Yes!” Tyler said in perfect toddler Pavlovian.
“I’ll get the kid gate,” Mike said, laughing.
“It’s in the laundry room,” March told him.
Mike swatted her on the butt as he walked by. “I know.”
On the third Sunday of every month, like today, March cooked for the entire Cantrell clan, kids, wives, grandkids. Most of the year they met in the house in the city, except during the winter season, when they spent most weekends at their place in Tahoe. Years back, Cantrell Sports Inc. created the roving three-day week during the months of snowboarding season, so everyone from the top down could take advantage of the Sierra snow. They worked longer hours, a little harder in late summer and early fall to get ready for the new season, but when the lifts were running, at least one week a month the whole company worked three days and took off four.
Already into late fall, the past week had been crazy with Mike working fourteen-hour days, Mickey in the beginning of his senior year with college selection on the horizon, and an auction and benefit March was chairing coming in mid-October, all pre-snow season.
While she was still intimately involved in the family company, she didn’t spend the time there she used to. Other than the board meetings, and there was one this coming week, she had hired good managers for the graphics side of the business. The graphic designs for the new season had been selected months ago, so she had home time now, time for some charity work, her grandkids, and a gourmet cooking class she took from one of the top chefs in the city.
Tonight the menu wasn’t gourmet, just the kind of food her family liked on these evenings: salad, hot bread, lasagna and anything chocolate and gooey for dessert.
March was spinning lettuce dry when she heard her granddaughter, Miranda, chattering even before she heard the sound of the electric garage door closing.
“G-Mo! G-Mo! Look what I made for you!” Miranda came running across the courtyard from the open door to the garage, followed by her daughters-in-law, Renee and Keely, then her own Molly.
The kitchen was suddenly chaos, all of them talking at once, shopping bags on the counters, a long loaf of fresh Boudin’s bread and two bottles of Chianti suddenly in her arms, her granddaughter jumping up and down and tugging on her shirt, trying to tell her everything they had done in the last three hours.
“I think we got everything from the list,” Renee said. “Let’s see…You have the wine. I gave you the bread.” She looked up. “Did we forget the garlic?”
“No. I put it in the cart. It’s there somewhere. Here it is.” Keely handed it to her.
“Oh, we couldn’t find the nine-layer cake so we got chocolate banana from Henshaw’s.” Renee closed the refrigerator door. “Was the baby okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“Neiman’s has the most beautiful suede jackets, Mom. You have to get one. Look at Keely’s shoes,” Molly insisted. “They are to die for.”
March glanced at Molly. “What did you do to your hair?”
There was utter silence. The words had slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“I had it layered last week, Mother.” Molly shook her head defiantly and her deep auburn hair, once sleek and gorgeous, went every which way possible.
Keely checked her watch. “Two minutes,” she said to Molly and Renee. “You owe me lunch.”
March was at the kitchen island…feeling like one. The girls had bet on her reaction, which really should have been funny. She should have been laughing, but it stung a little instead. “It looks nice,” March lied, thinking her daughter looked as if she had a run-in with a lawnmower. “Change is good.”
For a few seconds no one spoke, so March opened a nearby drawer and took out the foil, which she might have rather chewed than stand there in the telling, heavy silence of generation gaps between women.
Miranda sidled up to her and tugged on her shirt. “I made this for you in art class, G-Mo. It’s a bird-feeder. Look. Look.”
For one brief moment March wished Molly were still six and their relationship were simpler. She squatted down to eye-level with Scott’s daughter. The bird-feeder she held was large, made from a milk jug, and awkwardly covered with silk leaves and sparkles. “Wow…Did you really make this?”
Miranda nodded.
“Let’s go fill it.” On the backside of the feeder, written in sparkles, was G-MO. In a strange new world reduced to initials J-Lo and BFF, “Grandmother” simply became G-Mo.
“I really didn’t do everything,” Miranda
