Calamity Jayne And The Trouble With Tandems Part 8

"Don't think," Rick ordered. "Just feel."

"But I'm in training." I tried to reel my trash talk back in. "You know what they say about, well, you know, abstaining when you're training. It's bad for the legs, you know."

"You planning to go a few rounds with Rocky?" Rick teased, and reached out to switch off the light.

"Wait!"

"I've waited long enough."

"No. Hold on!" I grabbed Rick's arm and pointed at the sliding door to the patio. "There's someone out there!" I whispered.

A hand appeared at the window, followed by a face pressing up against the gla.s.s, trying to look in.

I gasped. What the- "Mom?"

I disengaged my fingers from Townsend's forearm, hurried over to the door and flipped on the outside light.

"What in the world? Mom?"

I unlocked the door and slid it open. I caught a sudden whiff of freshly popped corn.

My mother stood on the back deck. Dressed in light blue cotton pajamas, she held a bag of popcorn in one hand and what looked suspiciously like a jumbo bag of peanut M&Ms in the other.

"I come bearing gifts," she announced, and lifted her hands to show me the goodies.

I frowned.

My CPA mom. On my deck. At ten o'clock at night. In her jammies. Hands filled with junk food.

It's the end of the world, as we know it.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

I waved Townsend out the front door and waved my mother over to the sofa.

"Okay. Spill it. What is going on?"

"Can't I drop in on my daughter without something being wrong?" She asked, and dropped to the sofa, making an "eww!" face when she landed on the mushy bag of peas.

I made a "who are you?" face when she picked the pea bag up, looked at it, shrugged, and tossed it on the coffee table without saying a word.

"You've never just dropped in before," I pointed out. Unless, of course, it was to check up on the previous tenant, clean the trailer, check my fridge, or to remind me of a family function, funeral, or church event at which my presence was required. "And you usually come bearing sticky note reminders for that calendar you bought me, not peanuts and popcorn."

"What can I say? I'm a caring person. Sue me."

I blinked. We'd switched from Twilight Zone to the Scary Mary show.

"Did Dad...do something?" I asked.

"Your father? Mr. Agreeable?"

"You're mad at him because he agrees with you?"

"Oh, no. He doesn't agree with me. He just pretends to agree with me so he can avoid confrontation."

"And that's...a bad thing?"

"It's ethically deceitful," she said. "And emotionally dishonest."

"So you didn't have an argument?"

"It's hard to argue with someone when they just sit there like a lump and don't say anything."

Ouch. The mother had claws! Who knew?

"So, what was your non argument about then?"

"Just...things," she said, and tore open the bag of candy sending colorful ovals of chocolate in every direction. "d.a.m.n. I hate when that happens." My mother got down on her hands and knees and started collecting the colorful jots of chocolate.

I watched with growing concern when she blew them off and popped them into her mouth.

"Ten second rule," she snapped, catching my surprised look before taking a seat on the couch again.

"Okay, Mom. What's going on with you and Dad?" I took a seat in the chair across from her.

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing at all." Her voice sounded husky and, for a moment, I thought she might start crying. Instead, she tipped the bag of candy and poured reds, yellows, blues, browns, and oranges into her open mouth.

I could only stare.

"What do you mean...nothing?" I asked.

"Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nil. None."

Sweat beaded on my upper lip. Oh, G.o.d. She couldn't be talking about that. Could she? I'd always tried to keep thoughts of my parents...together...that way...out of my head. That's what all offspring do, isn't it? Think of their conception as just this side of immaculate?

"Are you saying-? Are we talking about-? Is there a problem in the, uh, er, um...boudoir?" I stammered.

Now it was my mother's turn to stare.

"This is not about s.e.x, Tressa." My mother opened the popcorn bag and dove in. "It's about closeness. A connection. Intimacy."

"I'm not exactly following-"

"We've become torpid. Moribund. Stagnant."

"Oh, G.o.d. Is it contagious?"

"We're in a rut, Tressa. Your father and me. He's grown complacent. Disengaged. Apathetic.

Unfortunately, he refuses to acknowledge the fact."

"I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary," I said.

A low-key, middle of the road fellow, not p.r.o.ne to extremes, my pop is a "come through for you" kind of guy who gets the job done without frills or fireworks. I should point out that my dad takes after his father rather than my grandma. Oh. You figured that out already? You're good.

"It's a progressive malady," my mother said.

Huh?

"So what happened tonight to send you on a junk food binge?" I asked.

"Really, Tressa. Popcorn and chocolate do not const.i.tute a binge. You'd have to have alcohol and something like pizza to const.i.tute a binge."

I shook my head. Seriously?

"To answer your question, I made a perfectly reasonable request of your father, and he refused to even consider it."

"Request. What request?"

My mother waved a hand. "That isn't important. It's your father's att.i.tude that is at issue."

Now who was being slippery and evasive?

And who was dying to know just what "perfectly reasonable request" Jean Turner had made?

You get three guesses, and your first two don't count.

"So, what do you plan to do about it?" I asked-not about to take sides in a parental dispute.

"I plan to sleep here, of course."

Not the answer I expected. Or, welcomed.

"Come again."

"I'm sleeping here."

"You're sleeping here?"

"You have a spare bedroom."

"Yes, I know. But, what about Dad? Won't he worry?"

"He'll likely never know I'm gone. Popcorn?" She held the bag out to me. "It's movie theater b.u.t.ter."

I took a handful.

"I'll grab us a diet soda," I said, and got to my feet, still freaked out by my mom's odd behavior.

"Thank you, Tressa."

I limped in the direction of the kitchen. The doorbell rang before I made it to the fridge. I frowned. What was this? Grand Central Station? I turned and headed back in the direction I'd come from.

"Open up. I'm getting eaten alive by 'skeeters!"

I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew that voice.

What I didn't know was what the person who belonged with that voice was doing on my front porch at this time of night.

Bam! Bam!

"Tressa! Open the door before these bloodsuckers get me!"

I bowed to the inevitable and opened the door.

My gammy stood on the porch. She wore a hot pink cotton nightie and baby blue fuzzy slippers. In one hand was a bottle of wine. And the other? I blinked. Was that...sticky rolls? A bright yellow taxi sat idling in my driveway.

"Uh, what's going on, Gram?"

"I'm moving back in. That's what's going on." She patted my hand and walked past me and into the house. "Pay the driver, would you, dear? I'm a little light."

I stared after her, shaking my head to clear it.

I could see the sign now: Tressa's Twilight No Tell Motel: Questionable ambience. So-so cleanliness. But four-star female bonding opportunities.

Bring your own chocolate.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"Consider this your prep talk, Turner."

I sat across the table from my employer in the tiny break room that also served as conference room and client meeting room and decided what I needed was a "pep" talk instead. Or "pep" period. I'd tossed and turned on the sofa the night before stewing over my mom and dad. Then this morning I'd had to convince my gammy that just because Abigail Winegardner gave Joe a plate of sticky rolls for helping hang her "lame" birdhouse, it didn't mean Joe was game for a little extra-marital bird-watching.