Carrie graduated from high school.
“I wish I could have a dog again,” she said, following her mother into the house.
“I understand that poodles don’t shed. If you ever do get one… Perhaps one of those darling small ones.”
Carrie wrinkled her nose. “You mean, the teacup poodles? The kind celebrities carry around in their handbags? Ugh. Those aren’t dogs. They’re… I don’t know. Hybrids, like your roses. A cross between a living, breathing animal and a Meissen figurine.”
“What would you prefer? A Great Dane?”
“A mutt, of course.” She laughed at her mother’s expression. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t subject a dog to apartment life. But someday.” She sniffed. “What are we having for lunch?”
“Just fruit salad and cold cuts. And yes, you do smell Ruth’s sourdough biscuits. I shouldn’t indulge, but I can never help myself.”
Carrie hugged her mother impulsively. “You worry entirely too much about staying a size eight. Honestly, Mom, would the world end if you became a teeny bit plump?”
“A teeny bit plump becomes just plain plump in no time, followed by much, much worse,” her mother said firmly. “Which I doubt you will ever have to worry about.”
They didn’t look much alike. Katrina St. John, blond and blue-eyed, was nearly four inches taller than her daughter’s petite five foot three. Carrie, in contrast, had wavy dark hair she now kept cropped short, dark eyes that dominated a pixie face, and a body that was so boyish, she’d shopped in the children’s department for clothes long past the time when her friends were wearing bras and junior styles. She supposed she looked like one of her dad’s ancestors. Although tall, he was finer boned than Mom, with the long, narrow hands of the surgeon he was. The almost-black hair had certainly come from his side of the family, although his eyes were gray, not brown like hers.
In personality, she was more like her mother. Her father was a quiet, reserved man who attended large parties only when hospital politics required it or his wife made him. His idea of a high time was a dinner with one other couple and perhaps tickets to the symphony or ballet. Mom had a bigger circle of friends, liked to travel and, Carrie suspected, would have entertained on a larger scale more often if her introverted husband wouldn’t have been so dismayed.
Somehow, they’d borne a daughter who possessed all the qualities most likely to horrify each. Carrie had thrown tantrums still legendary at her preschool, been a congenital slob and an extrovert who couldn’t concentrate without music blasting in her ears. She’d overrun the house with friends and with her clutter: fingerpainting at the kitchen bar, Barbies and their endless tiny paraphernalia spread around the den, mud from her boots during her horse phase tracked over antique carpets.
Honestly, she was surprised they’d ever had a child, and not at all surprised she hadn’t had a sister or brother. At the height of her teenage rebellion, she used to scream, “You wish I’d never been born!” Their exhausted, baffled expressions had confirmed her passionate belief that she was an embarrassment to them.
She laughed at the memory of her histrionics. “I was the world’s worst teenager, wasn’t I?”
Her mother, who had been removing the fruit salad from the refrigerator, looked at her in surprise. “What on earth brought that on?”
“Oh…” She reached into the bowl and popped a grape into her mouth. “The house is just so serene now that I’m not here. I was like a…a mini tornado.”
“A whirling dervish, I used to think.” Her mother smiled at her. “I have no idea what one actually is, but it sounds right.”
“It does.” She took the bowl from her mother’s hands. “Are we eating in here?”
“I thought on the patio.”
“Oh, good.”
They carried food out to the lacy iron table set under the arbor on the brick patio outside French doors. A clematis with long, deep green leaves and small white flowers screened one side; roses were tied to the other supports so that from May through October, their heavy blooms perfumed the air.
Over lunch, Carrie asked about her father’s work and his health. He’d recently had an angioplasty to open a blocked artery.
“Has he slowed down at all?”
“You know him,” her mother replied. “I’m working on him, though. It’s past time for him to start thinking about retirement.”
Floored, Carrie echoed, “Retirement?”
“He is seventy.” The reminder wasn’t as silly as it sounded; Carrie’s father didn’t look his age. He could easily have passed for being in his late fifties. “There’s so much we talked about doing that we’ve never managed, given the hours he works. A leisurely trip to Europe would be lovely, for example. And he used to say he wanted to take up a musical instrument again. He almost never even sits down at the piano anymore.”
Her mother still sang in the church choir, and her father had played the violin through school. The house actually had a music room, bare of all else but a grand piano, two comfortable chairs and a cabinet for sheet music. Unfortunately Carrie hadn’t inherited her parents’ musical ear; she’d taken eight torturous years of piano lessons, at the end of which she mechanically played concertos through which her parents smiled bravely.
“I used to love to listen to him,” Carrie said. “I’d sit and color and he’d play the most beautiful music.”
“While I embroidered,” her mother agreed. “I loved those evenings.” She sighed. “He’s got more energy than he did before the procedure, but still he tends to come home, eat dinner, read the newspaper and go to bed. Your father’s getting too old for twelve-hour workdays.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“Would you?” Her mother sounded so hopeful, Carrie wondered if this was why she’d invited her to lunch today. Not that they didn’t see each other regularly, of course, but this invitation had sounded more formal than most.
“Of course I will, Mom! I was hoping he was more himself.”
“I think he is himself. Unfortunately that self is seventy years old, and he doesn’t like to admit it.”
Carrie smiled. “Any more than you want to admit you’re sixty-six. Surely you’re hiding more than a few gray hairs.”
“Certainly not,” her mother said with dignity, then chuckled. “Actually I shudder when I see my roots. I suppose one of these days I should concede to nature. I can’t possibly go to a nursing home and not be gray, can I?” She slathered raspberry jam on a biscuit. “You haven’t said a word recently about Craig. How is he?”
The moment had come. Carrie had had her own agenda for today’s visit. Mom’s invitation had been perfectly timed.
Carrie took another biscuit herself. “I’m not seeing him anymore.” She made sure her tone was nonchalant, as if she didn’t have a minor ache under her breastbone every time she thought of their last fight. “He wanted to get married. I’m just not ready.”
“Carrie!”
