My mom was all bags and boyfriend trundling up the walk. "Anyone home?" she called merrily as my aunt Jo peeked through the blue and silver streamers in the porch window.
"Oh, come in, come in," she laughed, hugging her sister-in-law as Peter haplessly chased after the scattering bags. "And this must be Peter," she grinned, taking in the lanky frame topped with frizzled brown hair. "You always go for the tall ones don't you?" Jo giggled. "Careful with this one, or Max and I won't last another 25 years,"
"Paul!" Mom turned and gave me a big hug. God, I love moms. "Paul, it's so good to see you."
"Good to see you too, mom." She looked great, a nose shorter than my chin, a tiny spray of gray giving her the kind of trustworthy demeanor one looks for in an investment banker. She'd worn a long skirt and a crisp red blazer for the road, a reasonably comfortable five hours in her little purple Neon.
I picked up a bag. "How was the trip?"
"Long!" she looked at Jo accusingly. "I think you people move this place farther away every time I come."
"She's onto us," Jo twinkled, and they both laughed as Peter and I stood awkwardly.
"Where can we put these?" I asked.
Jo said the upstairs guest room. "The yellow one at the east end."
Peter and I headed up as Mom beamed and clapped her hands. "My two strong men! My big and burly burden bearers, bundled o'er with burdens borne!" My mom is a freak. She laughed deeply and turned to Jo. "And I have such a cake in the car, dear," she said.
"Oh, we were just going to order one," Jo said.
"Nonsense," floated up as we trudged up the stairs. "Who can do a red marble like Auntie Em?" my mom giggled as Jo exclaimed, "Our wedding cake! You remembered!"
"And who made it in the first place?" drifted up as we hit the landing and found the little yellow room.
Peter had just started selling insurance when he met my mom. Now, some fifteen years later, he'd established himself well enough to keep body and soul together in some comfort, though ties to his estranged wife and their two kids kept things interesting down in Fargo.
Setting mom's garment bag on the bed and dropping his matching soft-sides on the floor, Peter turned to shake my hand. "How's it been going?" he asked.
"Well schoolwise things are fine," I said. "It's coming back to me better than I thought it would. Nice to get away for a couple days, of course."
"Emily was saying something about one of the teachers there? Jan, is it?"
"No, actually, Jan's at the high school," I corrected him. "She's one of the art teachers."
He leered. "Those creative minds, huh? Am I right? Huh, sport?"
I grimaced. One of the things that's always irritated me about Peter is his willingness to leapfrog right past awareness into intimacy. It's like a woman throwing a trenchcoat over a bra and a pair of panties fun in theory, but awkward in practice, and skips a step or two in good taste.
"And how's Gail?" I countered as he hung mom's dress and pantsuit in the closet. Slight shudder through the shoulders. Helpful to keep a thumb on that nerve.
"She's Gail. The kids are great though. They asked about you. Mike's backhand is coming up nicely, and Sara's swim team is looking really strong this year."
I'd finally met Mike and Sara for the first time a few Christmases back. Two more sullen teens would not have been available through Central Casting, and dollars to doughnuts they'd never in their lives asked about me. Still, impressively quick shift off that subject. Redirect.
"Gail's got them for the weekend?"
"Yep." He opened a suitcase and took over a bureau. "Nice to get away myself."
"If you call Minot getting away "
"Well, I can always argue we don't get cellular service out here," he said. "In case I needed to be completely gone from the office."
"Actually, cell phones work just fine here," I said. "Miss Kitty drives the service in by stage through the podunk telegraph station they keep open three afternoons a week in Bismarck."
Why do even North Dakotans pretend that once they're past Fargo or Grand Forks the mini-metropoli along the Red River at the eastern edge of the state that it's all dirt roads and endless prairie grasses? Where do they suppose all that federal interstate money goes, anyway?
As if proving a point, Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King" started with wild abandon in the area of Peter's pants. God, I hate these new cell phone rings. It's not, as it's meant, apologizing for its own interruption by at least being clever. It's all the more irritating, sharing in the cell phone user's jubilation that he or she is important enough to be bothering absolutely everyone else around them right now. It only makes me want to fling the irritant all the more violently against the nearest wall.
Or at least the cell phone.
Peter grabbed it mid-movement, and I left him to a claim complaint or whatever, heading back downstairs. " he still lets his bathroom go all to hell, though," Jan had been left alone with my mom for seconds seconds! and they were already in my bathroom.
"Jan!"
"Oh there you are darling," my mom bubbled, setting aside this enormous cake box. "We were talking about kitchens when Jan came in." She smooched my cheek and immediately smushed the lipstick away. "Apparently you can manage to keep yours spotless."
It was an accusation I never prepare anything much mealwise, so how messy can it get? I ignored it, looking to Jan. "Came in? I thought "
"It was too nice a day to stay downstairs," she said, holding her sketch pad. "I was getting some wonderful light and shadow play in the yard, and I went on the porch to catch it."
"Kristin is enthralled with her," said Jo, turning to my mom. "Jan was showing her some things with oil pastels yesterday, and she was so excited I didn't think I'd ever get her to bed last night."
"Just a little wet brush," said Jan as my mom unwrapped the enormous cake. "She's got a really good eye for light, and her brushwork is very advanced for her instruction."
"Jan has been doing amazing work since grade school," I said. "There's this amazing still-life in her front room she's still trying to convince me she did in second grade "
A cry arose from down the hallway. Before Jo could even call, though, Andrea's voice came from the basement. "I'm coming, mom."
"Somebody's up from his nap," Jo said, a confirming glance at the clock. "12:12, like clockwork."
Andrea appeared at the top of the stairs. "Aunt Em!" She hugged my mom.
"You must have been pretty engrossed down there," Jo said as Andrea moved to the hallway.
"You can shut out so much when you're sewing," she said, looking down the corridor. "But I'd hear that cry anywhere," she smiled. "Somebody's hungry. Come, Aunt Em; I'll introduce you."
Jo busied herself with the cake, which indeed went with the decorations blue and silver, frost and sugar. The whole house sparkled with tinsel, and the smell of pot roast underscored everything with an enduring sense of home.
Along with all the immediate betrayals. I turned to Jan.
"My bathroom?"
Jan snuggled up beside me. "Sorry about that."
"Ah, she knows," I said. When I moved out of my college apartment, my mom walked into my bathroom and walked back out again, refusing to go near it until a SWAT team cleared it first with a flame thrower.
I'm not a dissolute slob, exactly. It's just that I'd not really paid much attention to l'affairs domestique while drilling through my masters thesis, and during the last month of refinements and defense, the light was blazing so brightly at the end of the tunnel I'd never much felt like dealing with it. It's all it took to refresh the image in my mom's mind, however, so thanks, Jan.
"Who's all coming to this thing tomorrow?" I asked the back of Jo's head as she and the cake headed into the kitchen.
"Well, Matt, Carey and Andrea are going home tonight, but they'll be here." We heard her clinking around as Jan kissed my cheek, her attitude landing quizzically between apology and indulgence, as if to say, "Oh, things aren't that bad, are they?" I determined to fill her in later. "Kris and Jason are here, of course, and you're here. Max's folks are in town. And with Em and Pete here now, and Mags and Freddie coming in this afternoon " She poked her head back in. "Oh, someone's going to have to pick them up at the train station "
"Mom and I can manage that," I said, kissing Jan's forehead.
"Olive is coming in this evening as well," she shuddered. "I swear, my family can drive me up a tree sometimes."
"Olive?" Jan asked.
"Original fire-breathing Bible-thumper old as Methuselah to boot." Jo sat at the table, probably the first break she'd given her feet all day, and attacked the pile of blue and gray napkins, folding them in complicated shapes Euclid never dreamed of. From her blurring hands, abstract origami sculpture was forming, and the growing collection of completed pieces resembled nothing so much as an absurd Civil War scenario room. I imagined a hapless curator regaling bored summer tourists about the obscurely chronicled "Battle for the Gravy Boat," in which Lee's forces, heavily fortified around the salt and pepper shakers, were nevertheless ruthlessly hemmed in by a driving onslaught of Union soldiers forcing their surrender between the sugar bowl and some festive paper bells.
"Great aunt Olive is 93 years old," she said as Jan, watching the basic pattern Jo was following, joined her in crafting new troops. "She'll come to my anniversary to make sure we're still married, in the same way I'll go to her funeral to make sure she's dead."
"Oh, dear aunt Olive is never going to die," my mom twinkled from the hallway. "Somebody might start dancing, and she'd 'hahf "
Aunt Jo started laughing, "Oh, oh yes," as they said it together: "'Hahf to taek oom-brahj'"
Jan and I giggled at the synchronized parody. Jo brightly ticked off on her fingers: "Pot roast, onions, mashed potatoes, gravy oh my, I've forgotten to make any umbrage."
"No, no, no," my mom was giggling full steam. "'Umbrage' wouldn't do at all. You need 'oom-brahj'"
"The finest imported 'oom-brahj' we can find," Everyone was laughing, as Jo went on. "I believe there's a special at Miracle Mart "
"Oh, mom and I will get some after we pick up Aunt Maggie and Winnie," I giggled.
"Oh, now that will definitely do it," Jo said. Mom looked a question as Jo looked up. "Oh," she said. "Mags and Freddie are coming by train this afternoon, and Paul offered for the two of you to pick them up."
"Oh, no shortage of umbrage there," mom agreed. She smiled still, but the laughter had faded from her voice. "How's Max doing?"
"Oh, you know, once every 25 years is plenty for him," Jo smiled grimly. "Just once, you know, I'd like for my sister to visit without the Holy Inquisition springing up."
"Well, Connie's coming, isn't she?"
"Yes, Connie and her accountant," Aunt Jo didn't sneer, exactly, but her tone was cold.
"Oh yes. Fred." Mom sat down where Jo had the silverware out to be polished. She absently took up a chamois and started on the forks.
"With him, about once every 25 years is about plenty for me too." Jo grimaced.
"It's just so freakish how they got together," mom said, taking a bit of polish on her cloth.
"Well, she didn't wait at all, the little gold-digger."
"Jo!"
"Well, it's true, isn't it? I mean, after all, the doors barely clanged shut on Nick oh, sorry, Em."
"No, it's alright." Mom had dropped a fork, and it clinked noisily along the hearth. I moved to pick it up. "It's just this polish, I think. Slippery stuff."
"Well, I know it's just impossible," Jo said. "I always liked Nickie."
"That's the thing, though," mom said, taking the fork from me. "He was always so charming otherwise not to mention, I mean " She cleared her throat and resumed her Olive impression. "Ze Teufel hat charms to taek a pleesink forruhm."
Pete emerged from the kitchen with a briefcase clutched in his hand. "Everything put away, darling."
Mom took the tiniest fraction of a second composing herself. "Oh, Peter," she said. "I have the most beautiful grandnephew. And from the sounds of it" she gave Jo a look of empathy "all sorts of wonderful people are showing up for this 'do."
"It smells really good in here," he said absently, turning to Aunt Jo.
"Anything I can help with?"
"You know," she looked around her.
"I think I've got most of our immediate crises under control."
"Okay, then," he said. "I've got a little bit of business to attend to. Can I use your coffee table?"
"Oh, certainly," Jo said. "Just move all that stuff to the floor " she indicated the froth of tinsel, party ribbons and the crystal punch bowl, which seemed to be brooding in temporary exile while for the moment the mock Civil War/art project raged through its rightful place of honor across the dining room table.
"Thanks," he said.
"Actually," Jo looked to my mom, who was just starting on the knives. "I could use a little pineapple for the salad tonight."
"Oh, are you making that kind?" My mom's enthusiasm had officially returned.
"How could I forget your raving about it to everyone at the last family reunion?" Jo twinkled. "I just need it to be fresh, though. Marketplace Foods has a pretty good selection."
"Oh, then, why, absolutely," mom said. "Where is it?"
Jo gave the directions. "You don't have to leave now, though?"
"Actually, I think I'd like to take my mom out for some coffee," I said. "You be okay without her for a little bit?"
"Well, I've managed to so far " Jo trailed off in mock hurt.
"Oh brother;" mom laughed. "Passive, meet aggressive."
"Jan can fill in some, can't you hon?" I moved in behind her.
She looked up, clearly wanting to go with. "Well "
"Look, I need a little mom time just now," I said, running a finger along her jawline and giving her a kiss. "You can fill her in about the horrifying grout in my bathtiles when we get back." I winked at Jo. "Keep her busy, all right?"
"No problem," Jo said.
"Slave driver," Jan pouted.
"Actually, there's a coffee shop on your way over there left on Broadway," Jo said as I grabbed my keys from the mantlepiece. "The Daily Grind."