2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1) Page 4

  The door fell away beneath her hand. A half knock, more of a knuckle grazing, and her mother was at the door as if she had been stationed in the foyer, watching her through a peephole that didn’t actually exist.

  “Catherine Marie!” she gasped. Her hands went to her chest, the ever-present dishtowel clasped between them. She looked absolutely shocked and not entirely excited.

  “Hey, Mom.” Catherine tried to sound nonchalant, like she had been out buying milk and decided to make a two-hour detour.

  “To what do we owe this surprise of seeing you two weekends in a row?” Her mother jockeyed in the doorway, blocking her entry as if it was a private party and she wasn’t invited.

  “I just thought I would come by and see how you’re doing with the packing.” Her throat constricted around the words stubbornly, making her sound strained and uncomfortable.

  “It’s a long drive for a drop-in,” her mother pointed out, giving her an appraising look. But she acquiesced and stepped out of the way. Then she continued to chatter about the proper courtesy of calling first, how cell phones made that all the easier to do these days, how she could have planned for her if she’d had any warning—even just a quick word when she was five miles out for that matter. All of it was said to the house at large, for her mother was already marching toward the kitchen and back to her dinner preparations. Catherine dutifully followed, feeling the homeyness of the whole scene: the smell, the lecture—all of it.

  “Catherine!” her dad exclaimed, snatching her up into a hug at the mouth of the kitchen. His exuberance knew no bounds, unhampered by things like proper etiquette that her mother believed in.

  “William, your daughter just decided to drop by, isn’t that nice?” she asked—the choice of the word “your” was key here.

  “Kind of a distance for a drop-in,” he noted, hugging her tighter still. His concern, if any, was the drive. He’d never gotten comfortable with her out there alone on the road.

  “I thought so, too. Anything over a half hour is not a drop-in,” Elizabeth said definitively, like there was a hard-and-fast rule on just this type of situation.

  “No, it certainly isn’t,” her father agreed, chucking Catherine under the chin to show it was all in good fun, at least for him.

  “Well I hope you aren’t expecting anything fancy for dinner. Had I known you were coming I could have prepared something for you. As it is, it just so happens that Uncle Dick is here for a meal. With the state of his teeth the menu is limited, you know.”

  “I didn’t come for dinner,” she said quickly.

  Of course she had come home just in time for a home-cooked meal, but suddenly her stomach was caught between hunger and naked fear, at the thought of eating stuff like creamed corn or spinach, or clear broth—nursing home food.

  “I told your mother that I would go out to eat at the diner if she tried to serve me anything other than meat—meat with meat texture,” he warned, setting his stern sights on his wife. “Nothing blended or creamed allowed.”

  Catherine breathed a sigh of relief and gave her dad a grateful smile.

  “I made meatloaf you big babies,” her mother clucked. “Catherine, Uncle Dick is out on the deck resting. Why don’t you go say hello and call him to dinner; it could take him a while to make it to the table.”

  Uncle Dick wasn’t really her uncle or anyone’s uncle as far as she knew. Catherine couldn’t even remember how he came to be called Uncle Dick in the first place. Everyone in the neighborhood called him that; even Elizabeth Hemmings, who was not one for nicknames. After he lost his wife, her mother had taken to feeding him like a stray, worried that he wouldn’t eat a decent meal without his wife around to cook for him. And he just kept coming back. Ironic considering her mother had never let her feed any wayward dogs for that very same reason. Now it was going on three years of once-a-week dinners with Uncle Dick as the Hemmings’ guest. She could see the toll it was taking on her father. Perhaps that was the reason they were moving.

  As far as Catherine was concerned, Uncle Dick was just an ornery old guy who didn’t know that Rich or Rick were the proper nicknames for Richard. Dick, on the other hand, was an invitation to jokesters and pranksters and kids in general. And over time he had become his name. He never stopped complaining—when they cut through his yard to walk to school—when they egged his house on Halloween—when they used his lawn for sledding in the winter because everyone knew he had the best yard for it. If it weren’t for his wife, Sharon, who had a soft spot for the children she had never been able to have, Dick probably would have come out and beat them all back with a shovel long ago. Instead he stewed in his juices, watching them from his armchair and raising his fist occasionally in frustration and anger.

  Catherine went out on the deck where the sun shined relentlessly down on the slumped figure in the patio chair. His eyes were closed, face tilted up to the heat and light as if beseeching answers from it. For a moment Catherine wondered if maybe he was dead. He looked ancient enough. And she didn’t think she saw any movement in his chest. Plus, he looked sickly; yellow even—jaundiced and dead from liver failure.

  She approached carefully, not sure if finding him dead would scare her more than him suddenly jumping to life. “Uncle Dick?” she asked tentatively. “It’s me, Catherine. My mom says dinner is almost ready.” He didn’t react to her voice. She cringed as she reached out to nudge his arm, fearful that alive or dead he would grab her with his skeletal hand. “Uncle Dick? Are you awake?” She snatched her hand back quickly, feeling powdery residue left behind on her skin that she quickly rubbed on her jeans. He was definitely dead and decomposing in the sun. She crossed herself and mumbled, “Ashes to ashes, dust to—”

  “What?” he snapped.

  Catherine jumped.

  “What is it?” He peered at her accusingly. “I was just resting my eyes.”

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said over the hammering of her heart.

  “Oh, it’s one of you crazy kids.” His eyes were mere slits. “Am I in hell?”

  No, that would be me…. But at least he thinks I’m still young.

  “See you inside.” She turned back to the house quickly, not wanting to stick around and make small talk.

  Back in the kitchen Catherine went to the drawer to get the silverware and set the table—her job since childhood. Knives, forks, and spoons were to be set out at every meal, whether or not they were needed. Elizabeth Hemmings taught that a full place setting was always proper, even when serving hotdogs or tacos.

  “Did you get Uncle Dick?”

  “Yeah, I got him. He should be in eventually.”

  Her mother smirked in return.

  “You know, Mom, he looks pretty yellow. Is he sick?”

  “No,” she said, going to the window to have a look, like she could diagnose from a distance what a doctor would need a full lab workup to do. “That’s just a light dusting of pollen.”

  “Oh, that’s all,” Catherine snorted. “He’s covered from head to toe.”

  “Well, that’s what he gets for sitting around like some kind of statue,” her mother said with finality, her hands—always busy—plucking rolls off a cookie sheet. “It’s spring all over again, you know.”

  Her mother had an uncanny way of pointing out that life was outpacing her. Another year and nothing to show for it, Catherine Marie—not that she would ever say that; just gentle time checks—another birthday, the leaves are changing early this year, another Christmas, can you believe it’s the Fourth of July again?

  Elizabeth Hemmings wiped the crumbs from her hands onto the dishtowel she’d slung over her shoulder and bustled to the mudroom, coming back with the dustpan and hand broom. She shoved them into Catherine’s just-emptied hands. “Go out and sweep him off before he brings that stuff in here and starts your father sneezing,” she said, pushing her along toward the back door.

  Catherine looked at the tools dumbfounded.

  “For goodness’ sake, Catherine
Marie, now; he’s starting for the door.”

  “Remind me not to ask you to take care of me when I’m old,” she shuddered.

  “Very funny. I have every mind to put you in a home,” her mother countered.

  “Shouldn’t this conversation be the other way around?”

  *****

  Dinner was done and the dishes were already started. Her mother had meals down to a science. Cooking sent Catherine into conniption fits, so she used her own kitchen as additional closet space instead of mucking it all up with food stuffs. More than a storage scheme, it was a move at self-preservation. She was a complete spaz in the kitchen—cuts, burns, bruises. And even those things she successfully recreated based on her mother’s recipes came out less good, spicy, flavorful, moist, and sumptuous than her mother made without a second thought or any self-inflicted wounds. Elizabeth Hemmings would say it was the love that was missing, but Catherine suspected a few weights and measures or a spice here or there had not been divulged. Her mother was no fool, she knew that to ensure visitation she had to keep herself useful. So what the hell am I going to do when my dinner is in Wyoming?

  She eyed her parents across the chocolate cream pie that had come between them on the dining room table. Her mother didn’t usually serve meatloaf in the dining room, but it seemed Uncle Dick, who had already retired to the living room to rest his eyes some more, provided enough reason for upsetting the most sacred traditions and rules in the Hemmings family—first, that only holiday feasts were served in the dining room; second, that no one left the table until everyone was ready to leave the table.

  “Should I call him in for dessert?” Catherine asked, cocking her thumb in the general direction of the living room.

  “No,” her father said before her mother could even open her mouth. “He’s already going to get all the leftovers; I would rather eat my dessert in peace.”

  “William, he’s our guest,” her mother chided.

  “A guest who has long since expired,” her father grumbled.

  Catherine could hear the grudge in her father’s voice. The man loved his leftovers. He would dig around in the fridge after hours and poke his hands or a fork into Tupperware containers filled with cold meat and potatoes and everything else. It was sacred ground, and his wife was giving it all away, including the dessert. She followed her father’s gaze as it settled on her mother, and then watched her mother’s response in turn, cutting only three pieces of her decadent chocolate cream pie. Something about their whole crazy relationship worked. She took several quick and heaping bites of her pie, aware that she was basically in the middle of something—a third wheel.

  “So, Catherine, why did you come for a visit?” her mother asked directly.

  She should have been happy that her mother had let her go this long. She held a chocolate curled shaving on her tongue, letting it melt there; hoping the shot of pure semisweet goodness would give her the strength to admit that she was here about something as ridiculous as her lost toys. “I was going through my stuff again—you know, the stuff I took from here last week—and I just wondered if you guys know what happened to the old dolls I saved.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

  “Dolls?” Elizabeth Hemmings looked blandly across the table, fork poised delicately over her own pie—a study in self-control even in the face of perfection in a pie crust.

  “I had some stuff that I had packed away… to save….” Catherine let the words drift, her real meaning left unsaid—that someday she wanted to share her treasures with a daughter of her own. She averted her eyes so her mother wouldn’t read that truth, like every other truth her mother had been able to read over the years. She had always carefully avoided letting on that she wanted the husband and kids that her mother wanted for her so badly that Elizabeth Hemmings could taste it in the air she breathed every day of her life.

  “What stuff? What are you talking about?”

  “I had some toys that I boxed up a long time ago for you to put away for me.” She spelled it out slowly, looking from her mom to her dad, wondering if they had both gone senile somewhere along the way.

  Suddenly she saw guilt rising to the surface of her father’s features.

  “Oh, that stuff. We donated it to the Salvation Army,” her mother said dismissively, too self-righteous to worry about guilt.

  “What? When?” Catherine asked, alarmed.

  “Years ago,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  “What do you mean, years ago?”

  “After you graduated from college. When you didn’t come back for anything, we figured you didn’t really need or want that stuff cluttering up your life.”

  “But what about the boxes of stuff you just gave me? Why was that still here?”

  “A lot of that was personalized. Who would want that stuff other than you?” she pointed out practically.

  “So by years you mean—”

  “Long gone—a decade at least,” her mother answered.

  Catherine looked back to her father who had been known to collect things himself and had a few sacred locations her mother was not allowed to touch even when at her most frenzied to straighten and clean, and clean and straighten. He had been down a similar road before, losing several crates of his grandfather’s antique tools at her reckless hand, driven by her need to simplify and make order in the garage so the neighbors didn’t have to see an eyesore when the door was yawning open. He was no help at the moment, but at least she saw a glimmer of empathy at that end of the table.

  “What’s wrong? They were toys. If you have a little girl someday, she is going to want her own toys. New ones. Things she sees on TV and things the other girls have, just like you did. She’s not going to care about some old things from the ancient past.”

  Now I’m ancient and my stuff is useless? Her mother could be so callous about things. She definitely got her sentimental streak from her father.

  “Do you remember what exactly you got rid of?”

  “Everything I found.”

  “But what did you find?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to temper the pleading tone in her voice. She just wanted to know if everything really meant everything.

  “What does it matter?” her mom asked.

  “It just matters,” she said forcefully. “Do you know if Caramellie was given away?”

  Her mother stared at her blankly.

  “The doll in the sundae house. The last I saw it, it was on Josephine’s—” She stopped, realizing it had been years since she had even mentioned Josey in her parents’ presence. “It was on her bookshelf.”

  Her mother blanched. Her usual calm certainty wavered for just a moment. She coughed lightly, clearing something invisible from her throat, something akin to grief. “I gave those things away a long time ago,” she said, as if from far away.

  This was why she had come here tonight. It would have been so much easier to ask over the phone, not having to see the expressions on her parents’ faces change, twist, and contort in sorrow. But it would have been wrong to do it with a voice, from miles away, just so the carnage was out of her view.

  Josephine had been like a ghost presence in the house all those years after she died. For a while after the accident, everything was left as if she wasn’t gone at all. Her room became a shrine. But then one day when the pond froze again for the first time that next winter, the same pond that had stolen Josephine away on her way home from school, their mother emptied the room entirely. Everything vanished, just like their little sister had. By the time she and Connor got home from school, Josey’s room had turned into a guest room, though it still remained empty day after day and year after year. Not even the redecorating was able to put life back into the space.

  Her father spoke up to break the deadly silence. “I don’t know what happened to your things, sweetheart, but I know they aren’t here. I would have come across them by now.”

  She looked back at him with tears in her eyes, tears that weren’t for her lost toys but for Jos
ephine, who died alone, while she and Connor were on the middle school bus thinking about homework and what they would eat for an after-school snack. Josey must have thought she could cut across the pond to get home quicker. Her usual walking buddy had been sick that day so she was alone and following behind much bigger kids who thought nothing of skating in their sneakers across the weak ice. And when they were out of sight, she tried to slide across herself. That moment changed their lives forever. A piece of their family was missing. For a long time that empty space had been covered by other, mostly inconsequential things. Suddenly now it was exposed again, aching to be filled.

  -6-

  “What’s up with you?” Georgia challenged from across the bridge, where she was calmly and happily living the suburban American dream of a four-bed, two-and-a-half-bath home with a fenced-in yard and a basement. She was a half hour and at least half a world away.

  “What do you mean?” Catherine asked, distracted.

  “I said that I was pregnant. Hello? Anybody there? Anybody listening?”