the plastic spatula, I reached for the newspaper, which crinkled as I folded it back. Pickings were slim, unless I wanted an exciting job in the field of selling condo time-shares to tourists. Would applying for the transfer to Boston really be such a bad choice?
For the last few days, my knee-jerk reaction had been that I didn’t want to uproot the kids. This was home, the place Tom and I had made our life together, a place full of memories.
He and I had met while attending the University of Florida, where he’d been offered a football scholarship. I’d been a freshman away from my Georgia home for the first time, enchanted with the good-looking Gator receiver. We were both only children, both raised by single parents. And now I was the single parent.
If the kids were going to be stuck with just me, maybe I should move somewhere where they had more family. They loved Dianne, but she dreamed of one day moving to Las Vegas or New York to perform. In Boston, Sara and Ben would be closer to their adoring grandmother. Unfortunately, so would I.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like my mother-in-law. We got along, particularly when we were in different states. But Rose had been raised in a patriarchal family where the men were revered and waited on—when she’d lost her husband, she’d transferred her devotion to her teenage son. Her pride and joy. The focus of her entire being. The first time he’d brought me home, during a semester break in college, I’d had the distinct impression that she’d wanted better for him. Maybe it wasn’t personal; maybe no mere mortal woman could have lived up to what Rose envisioned for him.
But that point was moot now. And the kids deserved people in their lives besides me.
Speaking of the children… I glanced around the corner into the too-quiet living room. Although it might seem counterintuitive to worry that silence signifies chaos, it was amazing what my cherubs could do covertly. They were like a little sneaky special-forces team, usually on search-and-destroy missions. For the time being, though, Sara was lying on her stomach on the floor, tugging at the carpet that needed vacuuming as she watched a video. Ben was stacking soft blocks in the corner, then knocking them down and clapping his hands. Gretchen was probably either asleep in the hallway or hiding under my bed from any geckos that had infiltrated the house.
If we moved to Boston, I definitely wouldn’t miss finding lizards in the tub. Nor would I miss palmetto bugs so large they flew into the outdoor electric insect zappers just for the head rush.
Not wanting to disturb the kids when they were behaving so well, I tiptoed back into the kitchen, where I followed the back-of-the-box directions to finish preparing our meal. I poured a cup of milk into the drained hamburger, then stirred in noodles and a powdered sauce mix. With dinner finally simmering on the stove, I picked up the cordless phone. All this pondering a move to Boston made me guiltily aware that I hadn’t found time to call Rose recently. Tom would have been disappointed in me.
What were the odds she wasn’t even home and I could just leave a dutiful “we’re thinking about you” message on the machine?
She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Rose, hi. It’s Charlotte. Charlie.” The informal name everyone else called me wasn’t quite as comfortable with her; it had taken me years just to stop referring to her as “Mrs. Smith.”
“What an unexpected pleasha to heah from you!” Though Rose and her tight-knit family were active in an Italian sub-community, a lifetime of living in Boston had my mother-in-law sounding more like a Kennedy than a Corleone—at least to my ears. “It’s so lovely you remembered, even if it is a few days late. But I always thought a birthday is better when you spread it out, anyway.”
“Um…absolutely.” Birthday. Last week. Damn. How could I forget when we were both September babies? Of course, I was in serious denial about turning forty later this month, so that might explain it. “Happy belated birthday! Did you do anything special to celebrate?”
“Had lunch with some friends, puttered in the green-house, spent the evening looking over old photo albums, thinking about the restaurant where Thomas Sr. used to take me on my birthdays. I don’t even know if it’s in business now. I don’t believe I’ve been since he passed on.”
The image of Rose alone in that big house, surrounded by pictures of her lost husband and son, made me feel like the worst daughter-in-law on the planet. The least I could have done was sent a card.
“While we’re on the subject of birthdays,” Rose said, “I saw something on sale I wanted to send you.”
“Oh, Rose, you don’t have to do that.”
“Nonsense. What kind of family would I be to ignore your birthday?”
Ouch. Direct hit!
“Just let me know what size you are, dear. Still carrying around all that pregnancy weight you gained?”
Yes. I’d thoughtlessly ignored her birthday and I was fat.
After a brief pause, I lied, naming a size two digits smaller than I could comfortably zip. It wasn’t as though I were likely to wear the gift even if it did fit. For herself, Rose has great taste in clothes. She knows exactly what colors and styles flatter her dark looks. Regarding my fair-to-the-brink-of-sallow blond complexion, she’s a little less successful. Last September, when she’d come to meet her grandson, she’d given me an early birthday present. A thick wool sweater unsuited to the muggy Florida climate, in a shade of unflattering army-green.
That night, in the privacy of our room, Tom had asked, “You are going to keep it, though, right?” My reply of “Sure, you never know when the bilious look might make a comeback,” hadn’t amused him, but when I’d promised to have the sweater on hand for future holidays with Rose, he’d pulled me into a grateful hug. He’d smelled like his favorite bar soap—a “manly” soap he’d always teased, telling me he’d leave the sissy moisturizing stuff to me. Sometimes I still caught myself reaching for his soap at the grocery store before I remembered no one in the house used it.
I sighed, missing my husband. He would have wanted me to make more of an effort with his mother. “Rose, I really am sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you on your birthday. Things have been so…” Description eluded me.
“Busy with that job, I imagine. How do you modern career girls do it, always on the go? It probably makes me something of a relic, but I was naturally the housewife type, with no outside ambitions. I believe a mother can do so much good at home with her children.”
Well, if your precious son hadn’t up and died on me—
Whoa. My heart was slamming and my vision swam in a red haze. I knew from the books on grief Dianne had badgered me to read that rage was just another expression of loss, but the unexpected flash of fury still sent waves of shock and guilt through me. Tom hadn’t asked to abandon us. And I’d come too close to verbally lashing out at Rose. So much for my theory that I was more balanced these days, moving on to the next stages of acceptance.
I spoke slowly, keeping my tone neutral. “Being a stay-at-home mom is certainly a noble choice.”
“I know it’s what Tom always wanted for his children.”
Since I had no honest response that didn’t seem cruel, I bit my tongue. I could manage that for one phone call.
But on a more permanent basis?
I’d forgotten how
