Margaret, standing at the sink, looked up at the noise and smiled. She quickly wiped her hands on her apron and opened the screen door.
“Hi, sweetheart.” She swung the door open and stepped back out of the way. Andrea entered and hugged her mother. She handed off the bag, and began with her usual statement. “I can’t stay long.”
“I know,” Margaret muttered, “but hopefully long enough to share a cup of coffee.”
Andrea smiled. “Sure, why not?” She glanced at the table and saw brochures spread out and neatly arranged. “What’s this?”
Margaret smiled with a genuine twinkle in her brown eyes. “Your father’s taking me on vacation for our anniversary. He told me to pick any place in the world I want to go.” She gestured to the pamphlets. “There are so many wonderful places, I can’t decide.”
Andrea smiled and took an empty seat. Payoff time, she thought. Trying to wrap her mind around something she’d accepted years ago.
Her mother at fifty-two was still an incredibly beautiful woman, and always had been. She’d married her college sweetheart thirty years ago, and after two miscarriages, gave birth to their one and only surviving child, a healthy baby girl.
Andrew Chenault had been born into a savings and loan conglomerate, and at the tender age of twenty-five, he’d been given the reins of his family’s largest mortgage firm which he’d doubled in size over the past twenty years.
On paper, her parents had the ideal marriage. A beautiful home in an affluent neighborhood; Margaret was active in several different charitable causes, and Andrew was a doting husband in public. They took several vacations a year and their friends envied them.
But then again, Andrea thought, their friends did not live in the house with them. So many times, Andrea had tried to convince her mother to leave her father, but all she ever succeeded in doing was driving a wedge between herself and her mother.
So she stopped trying, and now they both pretended like theirs was a normal family. After being an E.R. nurse for ten years, Andrea had come to realize that in many respects they were a normal family. And crazy as it seemed, despite the occasional late-night trip to the emergency room, her mother seemed satisfied with her life.
“How about a cruise to the Bahamas?” Andrea asked, trying to be supportive.
Margaret laughed. “You do realize it’s hurricane season.” She shook her head. “No, I was thinking something more exotic.” She held up a leaflet with a picture of an ancient ruin on the cover, grinning with all the enthusiasm of a small child, and Andrea found herself unable to help smiling in return.
She took the brochure and read. “A Mayan village in South America?”
“Just think, a civilization older than most of the world, and parts of it are still standing.”
Andrea put down the pamphlet. “Whatever makes you happy.”
Margaret sat at the table and her eyes flashed slyly over Andrea’s face. “Speaking of what makes us happy, would you care to explain why Cal was answering your phone at two o’clock in the morning?”
Andrea quirked her mouth. “Are you looking for a reason other than the obvious?”
“Andrea, I’m surprised at you. I would’ve thought you’d save yourself for your wedding night.”
Andrea’s eyes widened at the genuine shock in her mother’s voice. You have got to be kidding me. “Uh, yeah, well, we decided we didn’t want to buy the car without giving it a little test drive.”
Margaret’s mouth fell open and Andrea couldn’t help laughing. It seems she’d offended her mother’s delicate senses. “Just how many men have…test driven you?”
“Mom! I’m not going to answer that! Geez, what a question!”
“I raised you to be a lady.”
“I am a lady!” A sexually satisfied lady. “Can we talk about something else?” Andrea could feel herself beginning to blush. She shook her head—thirty-four and still unable to discuss sex with her mother.
Margaret pursed her lips thoughtfully, and Andrea knew she wanted to continue the interrogation, but instead she hopped up from the table and went to prepare two cups of coffee. “Two sugars and three creams, right?” she called over her shoulder, and Andrea confirmed it.
“Andrea…” Margaret began hesitantly, still facing the coffeepot. “Do you feel…safe with Cal?”
Andrea had been looking through the brochures, but her head came up. “Yes, very safe.”
“Are you sure?”
Andrea studied her mother’s ramrod straight back and realized that in her entire life, she could not ever remember seeing her mother slouch. “Yes, Mom, I feel safe and protected with Cal.”
Andrea had never told her mother about her concerns regarding Cal’s line of work. Andrea loved her mother, but there was something in knowing that her mother wanted to stay with her father, despite what he did to her, that made it impossible to completely trust her.
Margaret nodded vigorously. “Good, good. It’s important to feel safe.”
And what about you, Mom? Who’s going to make you feel safe? In past conversations, this was where Andrea would’ve questioned her mother regarding her reasons for staying. This was where she would’ve begged and pleaded with her to leave. She’d stopped doing that a long time ago.
No more was said about feeling safe. And although Margaret tried to steer the conversation back that way more than once, Andrea kept the line of conversation away from her sex life. The ladies spent the next hour looking through brochures and laughing at the possibilities of visiting each locale.
She was so enjoying herself, Andrea lost track of the time and did not realize how late it was until she heard the sound of her father’s Cadillac pulling into the driveway.
She froze in place and gently set the brochure for Bora Bora back on the table. “I’d really better be going.” She stood and quickly placed her coffee cup in the sink, then checked the table to make sure she had put nothing else out of place and watched as her mother did the same. Her heart sank. A lifetime of conditioning, she thought.
She kissed her mother’s cheek, but before she could slip out the side door, her father appeared in the entryway to the kitchen.
He smiled, seeming genuinely pleased to see his daughter. “Well, if it isn’t the prodigal daughter.” He held his arms opened for a hug, and Andrea resisted, but in the end she went into them, knowing somewhere in the back of her brain, the little girl in her was still looking for the daddy who would push her swing all the way to the top. The daddy who would bring home gifts from every business trip. The daddy who gave the very best belly tickles. Some part of her would always remember him that way.
She hugged him briefly. “Hi, Daddy.”
Andrew Chenault took in the kitchen with one sweeping glance, and seemed satisfied with what he found. He glanced at the brochures neatly stacked on the table. “Your mother tell you about our vacation?”
Andrea
