Shuffle, Repeat(52)

When Mom pulls up, I lope over to her car and slide inside. She’s scribbling on a piece of paper held against her knee. “Green apples,” she mutters. “Candied pecans.”

“What are you doing?”

“Marley’s coming over for dinner and I didn’t get to the store this afternoon…got a little lost in painting.”

“I can tell. Your right eyebrow is pink.” Mom hands me the paper and pulls into the street, absently rubbing at her face. “Is Marley coming by herself?” I say as casually as I can.

“Yes. Bryant’s at a conference in Atlanta.”

Just to be clear, Bryant isn’t who I was asking about…but of course Mom doesn’t know that.

I glance over the shopping list. “What else is on the menu?” It’s a reasonable question, given that all I see are salad ingredients and feminine hygiene products.

“Cash is grilling steaks and corn on the…Oh heck, can you write down aluminum foil, too?”

Good thing I asked.

Mom and I do a mad dash through the closest grocery store and manage to find everything except for the foil. Mom makes a solemn vow never to shop here again, because what kind of store runs out of something so basic? Then she sends Cash a text message to pick up some on his way over. “You know what’s great about Cash?” Mom says as we’re walking out to the car with our bags. “He’s stable. If he says he’s going to pick up an item from the store, I know he’ll do it.”

I’m not sure if it’s merely an observation or if it’s intended as a veiled slam against Dad, so I don’t answer. Mom and I have a much better relationship than most of my friends do with their mothers, but I sometimes think she’s jealous of the connection I have with Dad. He gets me in a way that she can’t quite understand, that she’s not really a part of. Like the note he sent with the flowers on my birthday. Sweet, but also specific.

Mom, with the way she bounces from thought to thought, and with wares from friend to friend…nothing about her is direct. Nothing is specific.

But we have a life together that works anyway, so I can’t complain.

? ? ?

Cash arrives right on time with steaks and corn and aluminum foil. Marley shows up half an hour late with three bottles of wine and a slow cooker full of zucchini soup. “I thought you were bringing dessert,” Mom says.

Marley sets the bottles on the kitchen counter. “This is dessert.”

“I’ll make brownies,” I tell them, and Marley gives me an approving smile.

“You raised her right,” she says to Mom. “Where’s your wine opener?”

Mom eyes the bottles. “I don’t think we need all three of those.”

“Probably not,” Marley agrees. “However, they’re the three best bottles in Bryant’s collection, so we’re going to at least taste them all.”

Mom laughs. “You’re terrible.”

? ? ?

By the time dinner is over and I’m pulling brownies out of the oven, all three of the bottles are open…and one is empty. Cash only had a glass and I was given a tiny sip of each flavor (although I couldn’t tell the difference between them). The rest was all Mom and Marley. Now they’re taking turns between the other two bottles while huddled over one of their phones, looking through photos on some sort of social media site and occasionally cackling.

Cash gestures to my pan of brownies. “I’ll take one to go. This is feeling more and more like a ladies’ night.”

“You can stay!” Mom calls out, and blows him a kiss.

“I know.” Cash winks at me. “But I’m still going to go.”

I can’t exactly blame him, especially when Marley leaps off her stool, knocking it over. “Indigo Girls!” she calls out. “Let’s listen to the Indigo Girls.”

As the moms start comparing playlists (apparently this isn’t something one grows out of), Cash swings around the counter and picks up the stool. He sets it in its place and looks at me. “My advice is go up to your room, close the door, and put on some decent music.”

“You got a suggestion?”

“Something loud,” Cash says. “I’d go with Petty, myself. Tom.”

“You and Mom belong together,” I tell him, and watch as his face cracks wide open into the happiest of grins.

“Thanks, June.”

“Have a good night, Cash.”

Cash kisses my mom and says good-bye to Marley. He’s almost to the front door—which I know because he’s a stompy walker—when he turns around and comes back into the kitchen. “Hey, June.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let them drive anywhere.”

“Closer to Fine” blares to life from the living room and I nod. “Good call.”

And it is a good call, because an hour later, while I’m up in my room listening to the Pogues, there’s a knock on my door. I open it to find my mother standing there, waiting to deliver a world of justification to me. “You should know that, yes, Marley and I are drinking, but it’s okay because it’s rare and because we are adults.” All her words are very clear and she almost wouldn’t seem drunk, except she points at me when she says “rare,” and her right elbow clonks into the doorjamb. “Ow.”