Part 3 (2/2)
The delivery boy watched me. ”SHE'S NODDING. SHE REMEMBERS.”
”All right,” I said, finding my voice underneath a healthy layer of indecision and worry. ”I'm coming.” I eased the moving boxes through the door. ”Give me two weeks to wrap things up around here.”
Avery whooped. ”I'll give you one,” he said, and I could imagine the victory in his grin. ”One week, Charlie. We need our pastries out here, and you are the girl to do it.”
”SHE IS SMILING,” the boy shouted into the speaker. ”MISSION TOTALLY ACCOMPLISHED. BUT SHE DIDN'T TIP ME,” he called, seeing me turn away from the door.
I held a twenty through the door and saw his face light up.
”Thanks, miss. And bon voyage, or whatever.”
Exactly, I thought as I let the door shut behind me. It was the whatever that might prove to be interesting.
5.
AS I descended the escalator into baggage claim at Seattle-Tacoma International, I saw Manda's...o...b..of auburn curls before I could see her face. Her wild hair, her nemesis and the subject of many a late-night cry-it-out in junior high, had developed into a stunning and bountiful crop of s.h.i.+ne and body in adulthood. The curls bounced and quivered along with baby Polly on her hip, and then she caught my eye.
”Woo hoo!” she squealed, much too loudly for my taste, as everyone within the vicinity began to seek out the woman at the end of Zara's pointing finger. When I reached the bottom step, Manda pulled me to her, both of us tripping over each other and the stroller lodged between us.
”You look fantastic!” Manda said, checking me out from north to south. Typically this kind of behavior would have made me painfully self-conscious, but Manda had been the person who stuck her nose into my armpit in seventh grade to verify that, yes, there was finally a hair growing in there. She was also the one to rea.s.sure me that I was absolutely, positively going to get my period before I graduated high school. She was correct on both counts, so the appraisal felt completely natural and safe.
”Thanks. You, too,” I said, noting that underneath the graphic tee and jeans, Manda had reclaimed the pretty curves three pregnancies had distorted. I leaned over to kiss a babbling Polly and was struck by two things: how soft her little cheek felt on my skin and how big she'd grown since the last time I'd visited. I stepped back quickly and ducked my head under the stroller umbrella to deposit a kiss on a sleeping Dane's forehead. His mouth was agape and long eyelashes feathered out above his smooth toddler cheeks, but he still gripped what was left of a s...o...b..red-up granola bar in his pudgy hand.
”You're here, Auntie Charlie!” Five-year-old Zara buried her face into my hip until I crouched down and hugged her full on. Her hair smelled like lavender and vanilla, and I inhaled deeply.
”I'm here. Is that okay?” I pulled away to look into her face. ”Can you share Seattle with me?”
”Certainly,” she answered in a voice that reminded me of her attorney dad, Jack. ”And you can sleep in my bed. It has Barbie sheets.”
I raised an eyebrow at Manda, the former president of Edenton High School's Feminists for Change. ”I love Barbie,” I said to Zara and meant it.
Manda frowned as she herded our little group toward the baggage carrousel. ”Jack's mother,” she said in a low voice as we walked. ”She sent not one but three Barbies for Christmas, and the pink house, and the d.a.m.n convertible. I was completely ambushed.” She looked around as though making sure no one was eavesdropping. ”And then Zara started begging for the matching bedsheets for her birthday. I had to order them online. No self-respecting store in Seattle sells Barbie sheets, for the love of Pete. And I surely didn't want to have to go to Walmart. Might as well join the NRA.”
I decided there was no emergent need to mention I'd looked into cla.s.ses at the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range after the night Danny got slashed by Felix's favorite knife. Or that all the kids' presents I'd tucked into my luggage had come with free s.h.i.+pping from the thrifty folks at walmart.com. Instead, I hugged her around her waist as I walked, leaning down a bit in my heels. ”I'm so happy to see you, and I won't judge you just because your daughter loves Barbie.”
”I'm happy to see you, too.” She grinned at me. ”And before you know it,” she pointed to my feet, ”you'll forget all about crazy ideas like heels and black tailored jackets, and you'll feel comfortable in your own skin again.”
I rolled my eyes. ”I'm totally comfortable. These shoes have been begging to be worn since the day I purchased them four years ago.” I reached down to smooth away a streak of dust that I'd missed and, in the process, nearly fell to my death.
Manda steadied me with one hand while maintaining a secure grip on Polly and stopping Dane's stroller with one foot. ”You seem very controlled. And chic. And like you might break your ankle at any second.”
”I love your pretty shoes, Auntie Char,” Zara said, her nose near my new pedicure. ”My Barbie has pretty shoes just like these.”
”Have mercy,” Manda muttered.
I spotted my red suitcase b.u.mping down the conveyor belt and tottered forward to retrieve it, stumbling a bit to get past the wheels on Manda's double stroller. I hefted the bag up and off the carrousel and tugged it back to Manda and her entourage, concentrating fully on walking, not shuffling.
Manda looked triumphant. ”Birkenstocks before the week's end!” she declared, and I sighed. While a pair of cork-bottomed soles did sound pretty glorious right then, I wasn't quite ready to go all earthy just because I was on the west coast. Somebody had to wear heels, and it might as well be me and Barbie.
We made our way to the car and onto the freeway before Manda began her pointed questioning, machine-gun style.
”How did you do this so fast? Are you exhausted? Are you nervous? What is Avery saying? What is your mother saying? Is she thrilled to have you out of G.o.dless Gotham, or is she depressed you just flew over Minnesota without stopping? Hold on.” She put a hand out to stop me before I could respond. ”Zara Rose Henrick, you keep your hands to yourself. No poking your brother with colored pencils. I do not want Dane waking up yet. You know how cranky he is when he gets up before he should.”
”But I'm booooored,” Zara said in an impressively anguished voice.
”Only boring people get bored,” Manda responded cheerily. ”Plus, I don't speak Whinese, so you'll need to choose a different tone of voice.”
Zara didn't appear to want to dignify that statement with a reply, so Manda returned to our conversation. ”Tell me everything. And maybe quickly because Polly is going to need to breast-feed soon. I'm hoping we can get to your apartment before she wigs out, but there's no insurance policy on that idea.”
”Well,” I said, with the shrug I had employed often throughout the last week, ”Avery took care of everything. He got me out of my lease, he hired a moving company, he even found me the apartment here. I'm still in shock. I'm not used to making decisions so quickly.”
Manda snorted. ”Oh, really? Perhaps you are forgetting that I am the friend who waited with great patience while you deliberated for forty-seven minutes about whether to buy cherry red or cherry-berry red lip gloss for your first skating party in junior high.”
”That was so fun!” I remembered. ”We should go shopping again now that we're in the same city.”
With one eye on the traffic and one eye on the rearview mirror, she said, ”Fun? You thought that was fun?” She shook her head. ”I love you. But it's never going to happen. These days, I'm lucky if I can get out of a store with only one or two of us in tears.”
Polly began fussing, and Manda raised an eyebrow at me as if to say, ”See what I mean?” She groped under her seat and came up with a Mason jar packed with pacifiers. She plucked one from the top of the heap. Contorting her arm into a pose any yogi would admire, she fumbled for Polly's mouth until she heard an appreciative suck. ”Tell me about the apartment. Belltown is infinitely hipper and more chichi than I have ever been. I can't wait to see it. How did the photos look?” She signaled to pull off the freeway, and we merged into a pretty neighborhood with mature trees showing off the tender green of new spring leaves.
”He wouldn't send me any photos,” I said, craning my neck to find a street number on one of the buildings. ”Said he wanted to surprise me.”
”Unbelievable.” Manda shook her head. ”I don't remember Avery Malachowski being such a romantic when you dated him. Or such a big spender, what with all the moving trucks and special deliveries. Jack and I drove by his new restaurant, and it looks sw.a.n.k-o. Very posh.” She hit the steering wheel with her fist, appearing to tumble upon a distant memory. ”Wait. Wasn't he the one who would divide the gas tab evenly down to the last cent?”
”Oh, wow. He was,” I said, remembering ranting to Manda about that very issue right before Avery and I broke up. ”I guess he's changed.”
”Um, for the better.” Manda's voice was awe-filled as we pulled up to the address I'd given her.
The building looked like brand-new construction, though that might have been the gla.s.s talking. Twenty stories, I guessed, and all sides of the building s.h.i.+mmered with reflections of the clouds and blue skies above us. I pushed open the pa.s.senger door and let my gaze travel over my new home. I could glimpse the insides of a few apartments on the lower floors. Modern furnis.h.i.+ngs, lots of stainless steel, platinum finishes, colorful, abstract art against white walls.
Manda came to stand by me and handed off Zara's tugging hand.
”Can we go in, Aunt Charlie? Please? Can we go into your new mansion?”
My laugh sounded tinny and nervous. ”For sure. Avery said the concierge would have my key.”
”Oh, to have a concierge!” Manda moaned. ”I need one of those so badly. And a cook. And a nanny. And a ma.s.seuse.”
”How much do you think this place goes for?” I lowered my voice as we approached the front doors, Zara pulling us ahead. Manda pushed the stroller with a newly awake and irritated Dane and a hollering Polly.
”The real question is, when do you have to start picking up the tab?”
I held the door for Manda and the screamers and took a deep breath of the white tea fragrance that floated out from the foyer. ”He said the first six months were on him. Until I feel completely settled.”
Manda shook her head. ”Love it and live it up, girl. Tomorrow has enough troubles of its own.”
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