Chapter Thirty
The wind cracked around the house. “The Willows” skies, tearing seams of dark and light. We whipped past the red beard brush by the long stretch of wildlife conservation. A little gray with the red.
Mom and Carrie had repainted the kitchen a pale shade of yellow. A fat 1200+ paged Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” sat on the table, witness to Joe’s past semester of increased reading materials. I indulged in half a dumbbell-heavy chocolate cake donut, remnants of Francis’ visit to Old Towne. Francis caught me up on the madrigals, English Country dancing rehearsals for Friday, swim meets, and life-guarding, while Mom called her best friend from high school now living down in Texas, who was going to be a grandma for the first time, and had also recently returned from the Panama Canal. Puck took this opportunity to assist her with the cleaning…
“I’m going to clean all of Grandma’s mirrors,” he cake-walked into the living room humming to himself with the dripping towel. “I’m an expert at cleaning.”
“Only the bathroom mirror, man.”
“No, Mom. I want to do the deckilate [delicate] ones.”
“Not those, bud.”
“Mom. I did not do damage. Because there might be a tiny blob of paint on them, you know?”
Earnest had been dumpster diving in Linnea’s room. Mom left to pick up an embossed border for the kitchen. Francis and Puck made tin foil boats for the sink. Snuggles was eating egg shells, lapping them up in a saucer of shallow milk. No one seemed very shocked by that. But maybe the chocolate donut he grabbed from Carrie and chowed on next was a little more surprising. As the rain roared in briefly again, Carrie took a black MUSE mug of tea back to Mom’s and Dad’s room to watch further flight instruction lectures. Joe was still asleep from another late night of digital track race with Annamaria’s fiance, and then up till five in the morning with a migraine.
“We did 57 laps,” Joe said proudly.
His weekly Tuesday night auto fix. He coaxed the kettle into a whistle for his coffee, still in his faded black-mocha plaid robe. He had another shoot with Izzy at noon. Mom got back with the roll of border.
“Grandma! Grandma! Let’s paint it red!” Puck suggested.
Then Grandma Combs rolled back into this side of town, walked up to the door with her Mellow Mushroom bag on one arm…
“We don’t want any! Go away!” Carrie teased.
“I don’t want to be a Mormon, tell you what!” Joe added.
Linnea ran from algebra to pull the bagel bites out of the toaster oven. Grandma had an afternoon appointment to discuss hearing aids; Carrie joined her after continuing to piece together Mom’s makeshift white school coat rack wall in the foyer. Light flakes of snow fell as Mom mixed together two boxes of macaroni and cheese for everyone else’s lunch. Linnea barely made off with the last scoop of it after a long conversation with Cherry on the phone. It was a snow day in Iowa City and the girls had plans for Linnea’s upcoming visit in March. I worked with her algebra lesson a little more while Mom napped. When I looked back into the living room, Puck was confidently sitting on Francis’ back on the couch, who was also asleep. I even had time to read a chapter of Kisses from Katie, the 24 year-old Tennessee girl who adopted fourteen children in Uganda, lived and worked there for almost six years. It was an unusual day as far as that goes; reading during the day is sort of unnatural. The snow switched to swift-falling ice pellets. Mom put on the chili early right as Grandma and Carrie returned with two amazing hearing aids and a sack of Culver’s. Grandma and Carrie demonstrated the improvement. While Grandma stood in the foyer, Carrie walked into the living room, turned away from her, and asked quietly…
“When’s your birthday, Grandma?”
“Why, it’s in June.”
We took our turns testing the apparatus, which was barely noticeable in the first place. Then I reviewed our updated adoption home study and helped Francis write up his life goals for his Eagle project while Puck finished his own studies. Consulted with Mom about volunteer work for Linnea in the area. Carrie was hard at work on the coat rack wall again, sawing boards and stuff. The pot of chili was bubbling on the stove. I pulled Puck a bowl and spooned out the beans, as usual.
“Why do beans bother you so much?” I asked him. “Are you saying that because Dad doesn’t like them either, or do you really not like them?”
“Yeah. I was just born that way. I’m serious.”
It was bitter cold. The cold that cuts into you with a knife. Fortunately as we drove out under the last of a pale sky, still gray, the church was warmed and waiting. Despite the, for lack of a better word, “drama” of Sunday morning’s congregational meeting [that ran way overtime, I might add], the usual crowd seemed to be in attendance, warming the grayish-blueish-greenish padded chairs of a church that somehow seemed much older than 13.33 years old. I like coming on Wednesdays, too. Maybe two hours for kids not even in grade school yet can be ridiculously long on a mid-week night [for their parents, too], but with a homily and “The Truth Project”, sandwiched between Linnea and Dad on a row of chairs in the library [heated for once]… Wednesday nights are still a good time.
And The Bear labored far into the night on work that couldn’t be squeezed into daylight.