In an Instant(72)
My dad wants to go. He wants to have to go home for Easter.
I cheer and cheer and cheer.
84
Vance calls my mom from the restroom of the gas station where he and my dad stop to get gas to tell her they are coming, and my mom nearly drops the phone with her surprise.
The things I see now that I’m dead astonish me. My mom is like a schoolgirl. She does a pirouette, claps her hands together, then runs to her room and changes her clothes three times, settling on a tight sweater and a loose skirt that stops above her knees. She pushes up her boobs and pulls the cowl neck down, and I giggle.
She returns to the kitchen, and I watch as she mashes garlic and cloves into the potatoes, then slices pears for the apple-pear salad. My phantom mouth salivates, and my imaginary stomach rumbles.
She pulls the ham from the oven to add the carrots, and I imagine its smell, the delicious scent of the plum-and-ginger glaze. My mom laughs, the basting brush suspended over the ham, and then she laughs harder, and I know she is thinking of me and our plastic-covered ham. I watch as the dish of glaze sloshes with her fit, and I laugh with her, both of us cracking up until she manages to paint the ham and put it back in the oven.
When she is done, she goes to the living room. She fusses with the pillows and combs her hair with her fingers. She sits and then stands, looks out the window, returns to the couch. She’s skittish as a newborn colt, and it makes me smile.
The door opens, and she leaps up, her mouth unsure how to position itself. She tries for an expression that’s glad but not too glad, still slightly upset, perhaps a little pouty—a lame attempt not to reveal how giddy and thrilled she actually is.
“Hi, Mom,” Aubrey says, walking in carrying a pie. Ben is behind her with a bouquet of lilies and a garment bag slung over his arm. “What’s wrong?” Aubrey says to the screwed-up expression frozen on my mom’s face.
“Nothing,” my mom says, straightening the grimace and kissing each of them.
Chloe bounds down the stairs carrying Finn the Mighty, her new name, earned after she chewed through her box in the kitchen while Chloe was at the shelter and managed to scale the steps in search of Chloe and her brother and sisters.
“Ohhh,” Aubrey coos to the kitten. “Can I hold her?” She takes the little cat in her arms. “Mom says you’re working at the shelter?”
Chloe shrugs, but pride radiates on her face. She’s been there every day this week, arriving when they open in the morning and not leaving until late in the evening. She’d probably stay all night if they’d let her. The last two days, she’s brought Finn the Mighty with her to keep Brutus company, since Britney and Lindsay were adopted.
The door opens again, and this time my mom doesn’t have time to pose or worry about her smile. My dad gusts in like a burst of wind and is immediately engulfed in hugs and handshakes from Aubrey, Chloe, and Ben.
My mom stands back, a real smile filling her face and her eyes glassy at the sight of our family together. The moment, however, is short lived because behind my dad is Vance, so tentative at stepping over the threshold that I wish I could give him a nudge. Chloe spots him, and her eyes grow wide. Then an identical smile to my mom’s spreads across her face, and she leaps past my dad to hug him, burying her face against his collarbone. His arms wrap around her, his damaged hands splayed across her back. Fortunately Vance’s eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see Aubrey and Ben suppress their gasps.
Chloe pulls away, grabs his hand, not noticing the deformity at all, and pulls him back out the front door, not ready to share him.
My mom steps up to my dad, her arms rising to hug him but stopping, unsure. My dad is also uncertain. He wants to be bristly and tries to put on a scowl, but his eyes betray him, running over my mom from head to toe and causing my mom to blush. My mom chose her outfit well. His eyes slide to the sweater and her pushed-up boobs, and even I feel his pulse quicken. Aubrey and Ben scoot past them and into the kitchen, Bingo tight on Ben’s heels and Aubrey still holding Finn the Mighty, who is meowing up a storm.
My mom pats my dad on his freshly shaved cheek. “Much better,” she says.
I’m proud of him. Not only did he shave off his mountain man beard, but he and Vance stopped at a convenience store and picked up new T-shirts. He almost looks like himself.
Anyone who doesn’t believe in chemistry is wrong. And anyone who settles for less sells themselves short. The air is absolutely electrified, pheromones flying everywhere. Now there’s a great word—pheromones. The very sound of it makes you want to kiss someone.
“I’m glad you came,” she says.
Kiss her, kiss her, I encourage.
And he does. He wraps his hand around the back of her head, and his mouth comes down on hers, his pheromones defeating all the other stuff between them. Yay, pheromones!
When he releases her, he says, “I only came back for the cooking.”
Her hand shoots out and grabs his crotch, shocking me. “Liar,” she says, causing him to kiss her again, this time harder, almost violent. She melts against him, her lips succumbing to his as they open to let him in.
“Mom, I think the ham is done,” Aubrey yells from the kitchen, causing them to break apart. My dad winks, and my mom winks back. The whole exchange lasts less than a minute, a flicker of the heat and romance they once had, but it is grand.
My mom walks to the kitchen, her smile so wide I think her cheeks must hurt, and happy as I am for her, I am also scared. Pheromones can only put off the inevitable for so long. My dad is not who he was. Beneath the almost normal appearance, dark anger brews. Bob is two doors away, and a need for retaliation that borders on insanity lingers.