Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2)(32)
“Oh, as good as can be expected,” her mom replied. “The man sharing his room, though, is in terrible shape. All these tubes and what-not! He was giving the nurses such a hard time about the lunch today, too. It’s hospital food, I said to your father! Nobody expects it to taste good. But, no, the mashed potatoes were pasty, he said. What other texture would they be? Wait… are you on a landline?”
“Yes,” Liz lied.
“Call the phone company, then, and have them check it. It’s sounding staticky.”
“Maybe a storm is brewing. That can do that sometimes.”
“I didn’t see anything on the Weather Channel.”
“We might be in a radar blind-spot. Those exist. Anyway, about Dad…”
“Oh, he’s doing as well as expected.”
Liz waited for her mom to elaborate. She didn’t. At least they’d established he was alive.
“So,” Liz said, “Valerie Stinson stopped by yesterday.”
“Oh, good! She said she’d list the house ASAP, you know. Such a nice girl. Married that Dan O’Connell, I think, right out of high school. Remember him? His mother had that dead tooth from that skateboarding accident? If you ask me, she should have known better at her age. Or maybe they’ve divorced. Makes no difference, because she’s a hard worker, isn’t she? She’s really made something of herself. You’ve got to admire that.”
Liz stared at the phone for a moment before putting it back to her ear. Were they still talking about Valerie? What about Liz? Hadn’t she paid her way through college? Scraped by on ramen noodles and financial aid and strung-together work-study jobs? Where was her pat on the back?
“Yeah, Valerie’s something all right,” she said.
“I’ll say so. Her mother had bunions, you know. Horrible. They stuck out like nobody’s business. No surprise there. Comes from all that standing. But, she had those kids to support, so there was no getting around it.” Her mom tsk tsked and Liz frowned, completely confused. She’d never heard a word about Valerie’s upbringing except about how her dad was some big venture capitalist in New York or San Francisco or something, and every Christmas he used to send a giant FedEx box with video games and designer jeans for everyone.
It had sounded better then than it did now.
“You know, your dad will be so glad to finally have that patio done. What with his hip bothering him last fall—and the rain we had!—he wasn’t able to get to any of the painting or odd jobs he’d wanted to get done before we left.”
“I know,” Liz said. “I’ll do what I can.” She sank into a chair at the kitchen table and looked around, her conversation with Valerie from the day before replaying in her mind. The run-down, weary state of affairs around the place made her think of how her father used to look at the end of a long shift, sitting in his recliner and watching the news.
Maybe the house had been weighing them down more than Liz ever realized. It was probably good for them to let go of all the maintenance and worry and cash-out while they could still enjoy life.
Life hadn’t always seemed hard, but maybe she’d been too young to recognize the undercurrent of financial worry that seemed to dog her parents in later years. By her early teens, it was a constant refrain. “You have to apply yourself, John, or you’ll end up in some dead-end job with nowhere to go but the grave!” Or, “If you’re going to knock yourself up, Patricia, you’d better hope the father intends to support you, because they’re cutting back your father’s shifts again, and we won’t be able to help.”
“…it had a layer of mildew so thick you could peel it off,” her mother was saying. Liz had no idea what her mom was talking about, because she’d stopped listening after her mom’s neighbor pulled a rat out of her sink drain. Or maybe it had been a hair clog as big as a rat.
Liz sighed. She knew her parents were right to sell the house, but it depressed her to see it emptied of memories. Everything looked care worn and sad, as if the fa?ade of their lives had been stripped away leaving them standing around in nothing but old, dingy underwear for all to see.
The cookie jar that had graced the counter for decades? Gone. The photo display of their childhoods that had lined the stairwell? Nothing but countless nail holes to fill and repaint.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to sell?” Liz cut in.
Her mother stopped. “It never came up.”
“Never came up? That’s the kind of thing, Mom, that doesn’t come up in everyday conversation. Things like ‘we’re planning to sell the house’ and ‘your dad’s having surgery’ are the headlines you have to bring up to have a conversation about them.”
“We’re talking about it now.”
“That’s not the point.” Liz stared morosely out the back slider and tried to remember what her point had been. Ever since she could remember her family had been horrible at communication. Like the time she’d been at college and nobody had thought to call and tell her Grandpa had died—for a full week. She’d only found out when Trish called to ask if she could borrow a black dress from Liz’s closet because, I’ve still got that baby fat and can’t fit in any of my own.
“Maybe my point is I might have wanted to be informed that the house I grew up in, the one Dad gutted and re-built with his own hands, was being put up for sale. Maybe I might have wanted the chance to see it one last time before you handed the keys over to some stranger.”