“You okay?” I asked softly.
“I’m gonna sit down with Hope next week and hear her out. It’s what she wants and the woman goes all out until she gets what she wants. It shits me I gotta give her that, but if doin’ that might bring some peace to my family, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna freakin’ hate it, but I’m gonna do it. So right now, I’m pissed and feel like I’m trapped in a corner, but if all I gotta do is listen to her shit to get outta that corner and buy some peace for my kids, I hope like hell I’ll be better after it’s over.”
I nodded and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“I’ll get it done quick as I can and then, hope like fuck, this can be put behind all of us.”
I nodded again.
“I’m gonna do that and Mamie’s staying with us but I don’t want her to get the impression she can pull crap like she pulled this morning and get her way. This situation is extreme but I gotta have faith Hope will get her shit together and be the mother her kids need so they can stop lickin’ their wounds or tearin’ ’em open wider and start healing. If not . . .”
He let that lie and I shifted closer. “How about we cross that bridge if we come to it?”
“Good plan,” he muttered.
“We should go,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied and gave my hand a tug.
And then we moved out.
The bunkbeds were set up and they were great. A double on the bottom set perpendicular to the single on the top, made of wood painted white, a ladder with a little wardrobe to the side and a cute shelf off the top bunk that could serve as a nightstand.
The girls had picked a pretty green and white comforter with flowers and leaves for the double bottom, a matching, gorgeous matelassé quilt for the top, shams to match the comforter, white sheets and green toss pillows, with the addition of a nice strike of blue with green trim for another toss pillow to make it interesting.
Mamie shared with me this vision was Corinne’s and she had an eye.
We picked up the bed and mattresses from the store, but we could also fit in one of the desks (which was more like a vanity since it had a mirror) and a dresser so we put those in too and the guys set them all up. The rest of the furniture would be waiting for Corinne tomorrow.
While the guys were setting up, I offered Mamie a fifty dollar online gift card and we sat on our butts in the hall, going through Shaw’s laptop and ordering a lamp and a cute picture to go in the room. I told her Corinne would have the same, Mamie could tell her she had it, and she could help pick out stuff and email it to me and I’d order it.
But now, we were both on our knees on the floor in front of her dresser, finishing up putting her stuff away from the only boxes that hadn’t been unpacked, and although she’d gotten excited to buy her lamp and picture, she was quiet again.
I didn’t know what to do. The times when Andy was around that age and he could listen and retain (maybe, he had been a teen) what I said were long ago.
That said, even then I didn’t know what to do. I just went with my gut.
So right then, I had to go with my gut.
“She was frantic, your mom, when you took off,” I said gently as I handed her a folded leotard.
Mamie ducked her head and shoved the leotard in a drawer.
“Mamie, I’m not saying that to make you feel bad,” I told her. “Life stuff happens and sometimes it makes us feel so much, we don’t think before we react. We just gotta do whatever we have to do because we hope it’ll make us feel better. And then we learn and hopefully the next time we feel too much, we’ll have it in us to take a second and think. I’m just saying this because your mom is in a bad place right now, but you need to know that she loves you very much.”
She turned to me and declared, “See. Right there.”
When she said nothing else, I replied, “I’m not sure I see, sweetie.”
She gave it to me immediately. “You’re bein’ nice. About her. She’s not nice about you.”
“Well, I don’t know your mom and I can’t say why she does the things she does. All you need to know is, I speak truth. No matter all that’s happening, she loves you.”
“If she loved me she’d see it hurts me to watch her hurtin’ Daddy and she’d stop doing it,” she retorted.
She had a point.
So I just folded another leotard.
Her next came timid.
“Will you talk him into lettin’ me live here with him and Shaw?”
I looked to her. “No.”
Her face fell then it got hard.
I lifted a hand to the back of her head and gave her ponytail a little tug before I leaned close to her. “I want you to have what you want and I want you to be happy. And you don’t know it now but you need your mom and your mom needs you.”
“She doesn’t need me. She’s got Miss Julie to talk nasty to and help her stay angry.”
Another point.
“Things are gonna be happening with you—” I started.
But she cut me off. “Yeah. I know. Boys and maxi pads and blah, blah, blah. Dad’s lived with girls his whole life, I mean, he had a mom then he had my mom. When he went to the store, he bought her tampons like he’d buy a bag of potato chips and he didn’t catch fire or anything.”
I couldn’t stop my chuckling. Her lips quirked and she took the leotard from me and put it in the drawer.
Her mood shifted back as she muttered through quivering lips, “I wanna live with him.”
“And there’ll be a day a long time from now when you’ll look back and you’ll understand a whole lot more what your mom is going through and you’ll wish you had your share of time with her.”
Mamie looked at me and I kept going.
“I promise you that, Mamie. I’ll tell you straight, because I think you deserve it and I’m not sure you’re getting a lot of that with what’s going on around you because you’re the baby and they want you to stay the baby even though you aren’t a baby anymore, but I agree with you. Your mom is acting out because she’s upset and scared and hurting, and maybe she isn’t acting the right way. But just today, you took off and scared both your mom and dad like crazy. So if you think about all the things you were feeling that made you behave that way, maybe you’ll understand a little about all the things your mom is feeling that are making her behave in ways that aren’t right.”
Her mouth set, she jerked up one shoulder and she reached past me to get another leotard.
I just grabbed my own and started folding it.
Mamie changed the subject.
“I like Andy.”
“He likes you.”
“If . . . when . . . you know, say you and Dad get married, am I not gonna be the baby anymore?”
I was confused.
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“Because you and Dad will have babies.”
My hands stilled but my mind didn’t.
I’d told him I didn’t want to have a family and how that affected me and Keith. And Hix had already made a family.
But he hadn’t said then if he’d want more.
We were both no longer young. We were also both not old.
Damn.
“Greta?”
I pulled it together and looked to Hix’s girl.