My eyes swept over the quaint and cute once again. It was just that Bailey Falls was like quicksand to me. Like stepping into muck in your Wellies, and trying to get out of it left you with a cold, wet foot and your shoe behind you in the puddle. It was like a whirlpool, a black hole, a Norman Rockwellian SuckSpace that was nearly impossible to escape.
That small-town Americana that everyone seemed to want nowadays? I’d grown up in it. And for a shy, dorky, apt-to-trip-over-her-own-feet teenager, I was beyond ready for an adventure when it was time to leave home. And though I hadn’t lived there since I was eighteen, there was like a tiny rubber band tucked into the back of my pants, and no matter where I went or how far I traveled . . . Helloooo, Roxie . . . your past is calling . . . that small town was ready to snap me back eventually. And sure enough, here I was.
I certainly can’t say I had a bad childhood. But I grew up early and fast, and over the years the resentment grew. The classic child-becomes-the-parent scenario. Flaky parent and studious child: watch the disconcerting yet sometimes charming storyline unfold on tonight’s episode of What’d Your Parents Do to You? I knew it, I recognized it, I could see my issues coming a mile away. Especially when I was halfway through my twenties and my mother was halfway through her fifties, and I was still cleaning up her messes.
I was California Roxie now, but I was secretly scared to death that I’d morph back into Bailey Falls Roxie here. I’d defined myself in California, and I was extremely reluctant to live again in a town that defined me only as Trudy Callahan’s daughter, the one who blushes a lot.
This really couldn’t have come at a better time, though . . .
Okay—so I just wouldn’t let it get under my skin. I’d do this for her, but this was it.
“It’s good pie. Really good pie. Lard?” I asked my mother later that evening. She’d brought home the last of a pie from the diner for dessert.
“Pardon me?”
“Is there lard in the crust?” I asked again.
I’d come outside after dinner to clear my head, get some fresh air, and of course, she’d flitted after me like a moth. I realized shortly after I entered the house that my dream of going to bed with the sun was a pipe dream. But I had to admit, there was great air in the Hudson Valley—far better than that in Los Angeles.
“Oh, you’d have to ask Katie about the pie, dear; she makes it.” My mother scraped her plate clean with the back of her fork, getting the last little bit.
“Have you ever asked her why she only makes cherry?” I asked, also scraping the plate clean. It was really good.
“No.”
“Why not? Didn’t you ever think that maybe, since the cherry pie is so fantastic, she might make other pies? Just as good, if not better?” I asked, licking my fork.
My mom just shrugged.
I exploded. “But you run the place! It’s your diner! Why in the world wouldn’t a business owner ask the pie woman if she makes more pie?” I thumped on the arm of my Adirondack chair for emphasis, and my fork clattered to the porch floor.
She looked at me for a moment; my hand was still clenched in a fist. “Just how pissed are you?”
“Pretty pissed.” I sighed, setting my plate on the floor. So much for not letting it get under my skin. Evidently this was a splinter the size of a telephone pole. “I just — ugh.” I set my head down where my plate had been.
“Say it, Roxie,” she said.
“I’m here. And I’m going to hold down the fort while you’re gone. But like I said, I’m not bailing you out again.” I lifted my head to look up at her through tired eyes.
“I hardly think coming to help at your family’s diner is bailing out. Not when I have a chance to go on TV and try something really new and exciting,” she said.