Once and for All(71)

“See that?” she said to me on Tuesday morning, as she sat in front of Daybreak USA with her coffee. Melissa Scott was narrating a segment entitled “Tourist Traps!” that detailed various scams crooks used on people while on vacation. Or, as it might as well have been called, Exhibit A. “They ask you for help, then they steal your passport, then you can never get home. It’s evil genius.”

“You can get another passport,” I pointed out, sticking a straw in the smoothie I’d just made. “You don’t have to, like, live there forever.”

Mom grumbled as Melissa held up the travel wallet the current expert recommended, which basically made it possible to attach your currency and documents to your body in a series of what looked like double knots. “I mean, really. I can’t wear something like that! I just shouldn’t go. This is ridiculous.”

I slid into the seat beside her, facing our kitchen TV. “Mom,” I said. “What’s your real issue, here? This can’t just be about an offsite wedding. It’s too crazy even for you.”

She gave me a look. “Oh, that’s nice. Thank you.”

“You know what I mean. Seriously, what gives?”

In response, she looked down at her coffee cup, running her finger around the rim. “I’ve just never been much of the vacation type. That’s it.”

“Because you didn’t have the opportunity,” I said. “Also, you were stuck with me.”

“I have never been stuck with you,” she replied. Then she reached over, brushing my hair back with her free hand. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you’re still not answering my question.”

Exasperated, she dropped her hand. “Look. I know it’s not a popular or common thing, but I like working. I prefer it, actually. If I’m not doing my job then I feel at loose ends. Which is bad enough here at home. But we’re going to be on an island. With no escape.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Are you serious? But you always talk about how much you hate your job.”

“I do not,” she replied immediately, clearly dismayed. “No, no. I say that certain aspects get on my nerves, and specific brides or circumstances. But the job itself? Never.”

I sat back, trying to process this. It did actually fit, now that I thought about it. “So what you’re saying is that all those times I wanted to go the beach, or the mountains, or the amusement park, we could have and you just didn’t want to?”

She bit her lip. “Well, maybe not every time.”

I shook my head. “Wow.”

“I’m sorry,” she told me. She squeezed my hand. “Look. There was a point in my life, when I was still married to your dad, when I was free to do whatever I wanted. I felt like I should have been so happy. And I wasn’t. Then everything fell apart, and I ended up at Linens, Etc. as a single parent, and didn’t expect to be happy ever again. But when I met William, and we started doing this business, it was like suddenly things just clicked for me. I’d found my thing, you know, my It. When you come to something like that late, you’re always afraid you’ll lose it again. It makes everything about it feel precious.”

“Mom, you were, like, twenty-two when you started this business,” I pointed out.

“Twenty-two, divorced from a trust-fund poet, and I’d spent the last few years raising chickens and making bracelets for a living.” She sighed. “Finding my calling felt like a blessing. And you don’t take blessings for granted.”

“You’re allowed a day off, though. Even God took one.”

“And like Him, I get my Sundays,” she said. “That’s enough.”

She got up then, crossing the kitchen to refill her coffee cup. On the TV, Dan Jersey, the news anchor, was somberly reporting on the stock market while a graphic of highs and lows hovered over one shoulder. I studied it, thinking about what she’d said. The calling part I couldn’t relate to, not yet anyway, and I loved vacations. But this idea of coming across something so right for you after feeling like you never would, and then being terrified of scaring it away—well, that wasn’t so hard to understand.

“We have four weddings left before Bee’s,” I said to her now, as she took her seat again, folding one leg up underneath her. “They won’t be affected by you relaxing a bit. I’ll make sure they’re waiting for you the minute you return. Promise.”

“Well, it looks like I don’t have a choice,” she said, sighing. “William already bought us matching hats and caftans. I’m going, like it or not.”

The way she said this, you still would have thought she was being packed off to work camp in Siberia. But you never know what you can do until you try, and if you’re lucky, what you love will always be waiting for you. That’s just how it is in most cases. Not all. But most.




“The thing is,” Julian said, leaning over the table, closer to me, “what most people don’t realize is that discounting alien life isn’t just foolish. It’s arrogant.”

I picked up my iced tea, taking a sip. In the first fifteen minutes at the Thai restaurant, we’d covered the basics—school, family, music—just like every other date I’d gone on so far. Then, suddenly, we were talking extraterrestrials. It hadn’t even been a natural segue, either. Julian, the nephew of one of the ladies who owned the stationery store beside our office, just plunged right in.