Great Big Beautiful Life(66)
My grin is getting bigger by the second.
“What?” he says, an edge of oh, here we go to his voice.
“Nothing,” I say. “I just…didn’t expect you to be so…”
“Whimsical?” he says, reticent.
“Optimistic,” I correct him.
His brow furrows, his expression somewhat dour, but I’m not falling for it anymore. Below that stony face and beneath that equally stony chest, there’s a soft, thrumming, hopeful heart.
He clears his throat. “Are you sure your mom’s okay with me coming?”
“She’s excited,” I tell him.
It’s a classic example of the slippery nature of truth: Did my mother say she was excited when I told her I was bringing a friend?
No, she absolutely did not.
She said, and this is a direct quote, Okay.
But is she excited?
Certainly. There are two places my mother is most alive, most herself. The first is in her garden, with mud up to her shins and Dad’s hideous wide-brimmed hat atop her head, the chin strap tight and her cheeks red from digging.
The other place is more of a state of being. When she’s caring for visitors, when she can be a good steward of her little plot of land, she’s happy.
“Excited,” Hayden repeats to himself. “Not sure I can live up to that.”
“Just eat whatever she puts in front of you, and she’ll be happy,” I say. “And offer to help with the dishes.”
His knee jogs up and down, his jaw stern as he gazes out the window.
“Are you…nervous?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, then, “No. Should I be?”
“Definitely not,” I say. “She’s easy.”
Another example of the amorphous nature of the truth: She really is easy. Simultaneously, there are knots in my stomach.
Hayden nods but doesn’t say anything else.
I turn on the radio and Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia” fills the car.
* * *
? ? ?
The sun is setting by the time we pull into the long driveway to the single-story home where I grew up.
I try, as always, to see it how an outsider must, and as always, I fail.
This place is just home to me, the same way the opulent House of Ives was to Margaret.
There’s a chicken coop built out of repurposed boards and plywood, and at least one kitchen cupboard Dad had found years ago on a neighbor’s curb after a renovation, and a little fenced-in area surrounding it for the birds to wander as they so choose. There’s a shed that’s similarly haphazard in appearance and, I know, sturdy in construction.
Along the edge of the property on our right, a split-rail fence, repaired piecemeal as needed, runs through overgrown grass, a couple of blue rain barrels gathered together in a row, while to our left, garden beds in various states of growth spread out, a thicket of peach trees beyond the shed, the coop, the huge compost bins, and the outhouse Audrey and I helped Dad build around his and Mom’s prized possession (slash the bane of our adolescent existence): the composting toilet.
The house itself appears to slightly lean, but that’s only because of the strange grade of the ground. The paint on the shutters is peeling off in chunks, but the roof is fairly new, covered in solar panels.
“Wow,” Hayden says. An impressed wow, I think, and not a mortified one.
I can’t help but feel like he just passed a test, albeit one I hadn’t meant to set up.
As we rumble closer, I see Mom unfold from where she was crouched in the garden. Just as I predicted, Dad’s green khaki hat sits snug against her head, the chin strap all the way tightened, her worn-out and too-large overalls stuffed into her wellies and her bare arms disappearing at the elbow into her thick green gloves.
She waves one arm over her head as I pull up, squinting against the light.
“Oh,” Hayden says beside me. “She’s…”
I save him the trouble of finishing the sentence. “Beautiful, yeah.” I shoot him a teasing look as I put the car in park. “Don’t act so surprised, or I might finally start taking things personally.”
“It’s not like that,” he says.
“I know,” I promise, but the truth—the other version of it—is that I’m feeling a little raw and vulnerable.
My mom raised Audrey and me not to care about appearances. She and Dad never talked about how we looked. And I know why she did it—and for my sister, I think it even worked—but the truth is, without makeup and hair dye and nice clothes, my mom has always been stunningly pretty. And my sister looks just like her: big green eyes, gold hair, little pointed chin, petite with curves.
I’ve always taken more after Dad. Tall, lanky, with only the faintest strawberry undertone to my generally mousy hair.
Maybe it’s easier to say looks don’t matter when you look like Hollywood’s version of a hardworking, outdoorsy woman with a heart of gold.
Mom peels her gloves off as she comes toward us, and I unlock the doors and get out.
“How was the trip?” she asks, giving me a firm hug and one quick pat on the back before pulling away and wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.
“Great!” I pop open the back door to grab my bag, while Hayden does the same on the other side of the car. “This is my friend Hayden.”