Family Affair (23 page)

"Let me think about it. Uh, no. They wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this."

"That's why you're a pre-adult instead of a kid. You never got the chance to be one," Lacey said.

Chase kicked her under the table.

"Ouch," Lacey said, bending over to rub her shin.

"No, she's right. I've tried, but I can't seem to be like the other kids."

Addison stared morosely at her empty pizza plate. Gitana took her hand. "Addison, you can't turn off your brain just to fit in or be the way the other kids are. You're really smart and you should never want that to go away. Being a kid has more to do with having fun, with laughing and playing. You did that today."

Addison looked at her. "That's good spin, but I do like the concept."

Lacey laughed. "I still hold my opinion of you as a pre-adult. But I wouldn't worry about it—look at Chase—she was never a child either. She's been a weirdo since the day she was born and she turned out all right."

Everyone laughed and had there been proper cutlery at the table instead of plastic knives and forks Chase would have done Lacey bodily harm. Instead, she kicked her other shin.

"I guess you're right. I could put my jovial pre-adult photo smiling and having fun on my MySpace profile and see what that gets me. There must be others," Addison said.

"You don't do that do you?" Chase said. She'd heard horrid things about kids and the Internet.

"No, it's stupid narcissism. I only use the Internet for research purposes."

"Of course," Chase said, inwardly sighing.

Chase and Gitana drove Addison home. She lived in a massive house in the Foothills. The Sandia Mountains made up her backyard. Chase pulled up in the circular drive. "Here, let me walk you up so your mom will know you got in safe."

"Sure." Addison pulled her backpack up on her shoulders and led the way to the front door with its elaborate white stucco portico.

Addison plugged in the code that opened the front door. A tiny gray-haired woman with a face wrinkled everywhere and the tightest bun Chase had ever seen came rushing into the hallway. She definitely spoke a language Chase had never heard before except on television.

"That's fine. I'm off to bed," Addison told the woman. The woman nodded. She disappeared as quickly as she appeared. Apparently aware that Chase was confused Addison said, "She told me my mother isn't home yet. It's all right. I'll leave her a note. Thanks for a really nice day."

"But you understood what she said."

Addison smiled slyly. "That's our secret."

"So maybe I could see you next Saturday," Chase said, peering down the hall at a large painting of black and brown mustangs running wild on the prairie.

"Sure. Could we skip the Hilda-part and go solo?"

"Good plan but would your mom go for it?"

"She'd be delighted. After all, in her eyes I'd have a new babysitter but that's not what it is." She set her backpack down and didn't look at Chase like she feared the answer.

Grown people must have truly abused her sense of trust. "Of course not. I was hoping you considered me a compatriot despite my having exited pre-adulthood."

"But have you?"

Chase smiled. "Well, perhaps not. That's why I have you as one of my few mentors. It's an elite club."

"Do I get one of those double-breasted blazers with the coat of arms on the breast pocket?"

"I'll get my tailor right on it."

"You know how your friends hug one another..."

"Yes?"

"Could I have one?"

Chase squatted down thinking she'd had some short friends before but not this short and gave her a hug. Then she pinched her. "Don't let the bedbugs bite."

Addison squealed. "Uck!"

"My sentiments exactly. Think of what you want to do next week."

"Oh, I will," Addison said, looking cunning.

"Nothing overly dangerous or toxic."

"We'll see."

Chase watched Addison walk down the marble-tiled hallway with the gold-trimmed walls and an eighteen-foot ceiling. She looked so small. Chase let herself out.

When she got in the car, Gitana said, "You're going to make a great father."

"I hope so. Addison is so like me at her age it's almost freaky." She drove out of the driveway, glancing at the house again.

"It is. You know, they say you have two chances in your life for making good changes—once when you're a child and the other when you're a parent. Or surrogate parent in Addison's case."

"What are you saying? That we could work on becoming normal together?" She turned on Tramway and headed toward the freeway. The twinkling house lights seemed homey against the black mass of the Sandia Mountains.

"Not exactly normal but maybe eccentric without the savagery."

"How boring."

Gitana pinched her.

Chapter Sixteen

Chase hosed off the seldom-used covered patio with a barbeque station that had been built in when they bought the house. It appeared the previous owner liked to entertain. She and Gitana had never used it.

"You actually invited your fucking mother to your First Annual Labor Day Picnic," Graciela said. She was supposed to be helping Chase. Instead, she was drinking beer and being incredulous at every opportunity.

"You might refrain from calling her my fucking mother." She hosed off the tile bar that flanked either side of the gas grill. Dust turned to mud and ran off the countertops in great brown streams.

"That's what you always call her," Graciela retorted.

Chase pointed to the large sponge and bucket of soapy water. Graciela got the hint and put down her beer. "I'm turning over a new leaf."

"When will Gitana be here?" Graciela said, as if Gitana's arrival might get her out of chore duty. She made broad swaths with the sponge across the tabletop.

"She's going to Home Depot for the grill parts before she picks up Jacinda."

"That's great."

Chase waited for it to hit.

"What! You invited that crazy woman?"

"This is a friends and family affair. Gitana promised that she would make Jacinda leave the holy water at home and as a concession will return your car radiator."

"Really? Do you know how much a radiator costs?"

"No, I do not. No one has ever taken mine." Chase surveyed their handiwork. "Now, we have to go pick some flowers."

"Pick flowers? Like I know how to do that."

Chase handed her a pair of pruners. "Cut some of every kind and leave a lot of stem." She pointed to the height of cobalt-blue vases that she'd placed in the center of the table.

"Ugh! I can't believe I volunteered for this."

"You're working off your bail money if I remember correctly."

She tromped off. Chase followed her to what was Chase's magnum opus of gardening. It took up a quarter of an acre with a meandering path leading through it and it appealed to her sense of Jane Austenian strolls in the shrubbery. Despite the constraints of the desert climate she had succeeded in growing flowers in the desert. Flowers of all varieties, penstemons, purple sage, bachelor buttons, cosmos, sunflowers of many kinds from mundane to exotic, calla lilies, rudbeckia etc.

Graciela stopped pouting long enough to look around. "Holy shit, this has come a long way. Are you sure you want to cut them down?" She fingered a white zulu.

"That's what they're for. I pick from inconspicuous places." She handed Graciela a wicker basket to collect the flowers and said a silent prayer that she wouldn't butcher any of her precious darlings.

She didn't. Graciela gingerly approached the flowers starting first with the purple asters and then moving to the calendulas, collecting almost with reverence. Boy, this is a new side, Chase thought. Graciela might be an atheist, but she was most certainly a natural pagan. Perhaps, we are all capable of change.

Gitana returned with the grill parts, her mother and two hot plates of tamales. Graciela sneaked a look in the back of the Hummer where her radiator sat propped up against the wheel well. Jacinda spotted her, clutched her rosary beads and mumbled a prayer. Graciela scowled at her.

"All I ask is that you two are polite to each other and for the sake of the other guests do not make a scene," Gitana said.

Jacinda nodded.

"For the sake of Bud, I will do this," Graciela said. She grabbed the grill and headed to the veranda.

Chase kissed her wife, complimented Jacinda on her tamales and then went to help Graciela with the grill. She relaxed and assured herself this was going to be all right. And for a moment it was—until her own mother arrived, followed by Addison and Peggy.

Stella was dressed to the hilt in a white linen dress and matching high heels which immediately sunk in the gravel driveway. Peggy grabbed her arm before Stella took a dive.

Regaining her composure, she introduced herself, "Stella Banter."

"I'm Peggy, Addison's mother. Addison is a friend of Chase's."

Addison stared at Stella like she might be an alien, a very tall alien.

Upon seeing her daughter, Stella said, "What's wrong with a little concrete?" She gingerly made her way to the front gate. She gained the steps only to discover that the front yard was a series of crushed rock paths lined by blue sage and maximillan sunflowers which opened up to the veranda that was brick rather than concrete. Her heels once again sank.

"Why are you wearing those stupid shoes?" Chase said. "Haven't you ever been to a... Addison cover your ears."

Addison did so obediently although she stared quite pointedly at Chase's mouth.

"A fucking barbeque?" She nodded to Addison who removed her hands from her ears. She was going to have to teach Bud that particular behavior as her anti-swearing campaign so far was a miserable failure.

"Not one that wasn't catered, in a normal yard with concrete, little tents and wait staff," Stella replied, looking around as if all that she wished for might appear.