Karen Templeton - Playing For Keeps

“It’s lovely,” she said.

Smiling, even.

Joanna had been slamming things around in the kitchen for a good five minutes when her mother and Karleen came in, just in time to see her kick shut the oven door.

“She’s wearing her Kill Bobby face,” Karleen said to Glynnie, who nodded and said, “Things not going well, dear?”

It suddenly hit Joanna how much she’d really like, just once, to unburden herself to her mother. But she didn’t dare. So with a “Later” glance at Karleen, she said, “Nothing that won’t pass. Bad time of the month, is all.”

“Sweetie, I hate to tell you this,” Glynnie said, sliding up onto a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar, “but you’ve been having a bad time of the month for three years.”

“I have not!”

Karleen raised one hand. “Uh, yeah. You have.”

Joanna lifted her eyes heavenward. “Just one person on my side, God. Is that too much to ask?”

“But we are on your side!” Karleen said, then looked at Glynnie. “Aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” Glynnie said as Joanna tromped across the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator door, hauling out tubs of potato salad and coleslaw. “But then, maybe if you’d stop pretending things are always okay when they obviously aren’t…”

“Everything’s fine, Mom.”

“Tell that to the innocent appliance you just kicked. Here I am, giving you an opening to tell me what the problem is, but you clam up…”

“Oh, goody,” Karleen said, climbing up onto the bar stool next to Glynnie’s and snatching a carrot stick off the veggie tray in front of her, stopping just short of cramming it into her mouth when she realized both women were staring at her. “This brings back so many memories, when Mama and I used to fight. It just hasn’t been the same since she died. And besides,” she added when Joanna gave her the don’t-you-have-someplace-else-to-be? look, “if you tell Glynnie now, you won’t have to tell me later.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Uh-huh,” Karleen said. “And that little bauble twinkling on Tori’s left hand has nothing to do with your foul mood, I don’t suppose.”

Understanding dawned in Glynnie’s eyes. “Bobby gave Toni—”

“Tori,” Karleen said.

“—an engagement ring?” Joanna glared at Karleen as her mother added, “Well, I suppose that’s to be expected, if they’re engaged. Or am I missing something here?”

“My guess is,” Karleen said, carefully selecting a celery stick, “that our Joanna’s prickly mood has something to do with Bobby’s not having given Jo—”

“Karleen, that’s okay—”

“—his half of the roof repair money. What’d I say?” she finished as Joanna shut her eyes.

Glynnie looked at Joanna. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help with the house?”

“Karleen?” Joanna said.

“Yeah?”

“You just reached the last stop on Memory Lane.”

Karleen’s eyes bounced between Jo and her mother, then her mouth fell open in a little O. “Gotcha.” She grabbed a piece of broccoli for the road and click-clacked out of the kitchen. Joanna turned back to her mother. “Because I don’t need help, with the house or anything else.”

“But you just said—”

“Mom? This is between Bobby and me. We’ll work it out.”

Her carefully penciled brows drawn together, Glynnie reached over and selected her own celery stick, swiping it through the bowl of onion dip in the center of the dish. “What about the money you just got from that sale you made the other day?” she said, crunching.

Thinking about that sale led to thinking about Dale—again—which led to Joanna’s wondering when everything had gotten so damned complicated. Okay, more complicated. In her next life, she was coming back as a sponge.

“It’s already earmarked,” Joanna said.

“You want me to do my lawyer thing?”

“I want you to stay out of it.”

“And watch the house crumble down around your head?”

“See, this is why I don’t tell you stuff. Because you hear I’m having a problem and you immediately want to jump in and fix things for me.”

“That’s what parents do, Jo. Which I would think you would understand, now that you’re a mother yourself.”

“My oldest is eleven, Mom. Not thirty-two.”

“Since when is there a statute of limitations helping your kids?”

Joanna sighed. “That’s not the point. Not completely, anyway. I appreciate your offer, I really do. But if I accept it, Bobby’s off the hook.”

“And maybe it’s time you let him.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. Maybe it’s time to just chalk it all up to…experience and move on. Why beat your head against the wall?”

Momentarily forgetting who she was talking to, Joanna opened her mouth to defend herself, pointless though the gesture may have been since her mother kept going.

“And why do you think I don’t know what’s been going on? You may not say much, but I didn’t get where I am today without knowing how to read between the lines. We’ve got the money, why not let us help?”

“Because I don’t need—”

“Oh, Joanna—would you get over yourself? You’re driving a ten-year-old car, you haven’t bought any new clothes in a dog’s age and now your roof is about to cave in. I mean, those Santas you make are wonderful, honey, they really are, but you clearly can’t support yourself and the kids on what you make off of them. I just don’t get why you’re being so stubborn about this.”

Joanna’s stomach knotted. No, Glynnie didn’t get it, didn’t have an inkling how much baggage came attached to those offers of help. She could understand her mother’s disappointment in some of her choices over the past twelve years. But what she couldn’t deal with was the pity, that poor dear Joanna would probably never amount to much, that she was her parents’ cross to bear, they’d probably always have to support her so they might as well be cheerful about it.

“Mom,” she finally said, reaching across the counter and taking her mother’s hand in hers. “I like my old car. I’m perfectly happy with my wardrobe—”

Okay, so that part was a lie, but it wasn’t as if she had anyplace to wear fancy clothes, anyway, right?

“—and as soon as Bobby comes through, the new roof is a done deal. And I’m doing fine, financially. Well enough for me, anyway. Not everyone has to be wealthy to be happy, you know. So thanks for the offer, but no—”

Outside, male voices—one baritone, one tenor—rose in a fevered and not exactly pleasant duet. Dulcy pushed back the patio door and stood there, slumped against the opening, reeking of preadolescent disgust. “They’re at it again,” she said on a pained sigh.

After twelve years, one thing hadn’t changed: Bobby and her father still couldn’t agree on how hot the grill should be.

“I’ll be right out,” Jo said, thinking if Dale Mc-Connaughy had a lick of sense, he’d stay as far away from this family as possible.

In the past forty-five minutes Dale had changed his mind no less than ten times about coming. But somehow, here he was, standing under the portal in a more or less new pair of jeans and the first clean long-sleeved shirt he’d come across, a whole new bunch of cats giving him the once-over as he contemplated the ubiquitous chile ristra hanging by the front door and inhaled the luscious tang of seared beef wafting from the back, and then Bobby Alvarez opened the door and it was too late to turn back. From behind the house, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred kids were yelling their heads off.

“Hey, man—glad you could make it.” With the kind of grin that immediately made Dale suspicious, the other man stood aside to let Dale in. A couple of the cats darted inside, but the rest seemed content to stay out. “Party’s out back,” he said, leading Dale past the softly lit living room filled with mismatched overstuffed furniture, the scuffed wooden floor partially hidden under worn Oriental rugs. Looking forlorn, the dog lay on the sofa with his chin propped on the arm, thumping his tail in a halfhearted greeting when Dale passed.