Mom Over Miami (8 page)

NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING

“C
anary or Kumquat? Canary?” Jacqui pulled one four-by-four-inch square slowly back, then whipped a second one up and demanded, “Or Kumquat?”

Hannah blinked at the two paint-sample cards held inches from her nose. She chewed her lower lip, trying not to let the pressure steer her toward the wrong answer. She felt the way she did at the optometrist’s office when he said, “Better like this? Or better like this?”

But at the eye doctor she only ran the risk of getting the wrong prescription and spending the next year trying to look at the world through glasses that she didn’t really need. Flub this choice and who knew how many infants might spend their Sunday mornings in a nursery that could fail, as Jacqui put it, “to stimulate their minds and generate feelings of creativity and security.”

Yikes!

At least she only had one DIY sister to deal with on this. Cydney had staked her claim in the toddler room and at this very moment stood sketching a mural of Noah’s Ark on one wall of the adjacent room. At least Hannah thought the rough pencil lines would eventually represent Noah’s Ark.

Though she had to admit she got that idea more from the singing going on in the next room than from anything Hannah saw on the wall.

“C’mon, Sam.” Cydney’s voice carried through the partially opened door between the two rooms. Loud as she spoke, it could have carried through walls. “One more time, but this round give it all you’ve got. Throw in a little
oomph!
”

Sam obliged, belting out at the top of his lungs, “‘The Lord said to Noah, There’s going to be a floody, floody…’”

“Hannah!” Jacqui snapped her fingers.

The song faded to a background buzz.

“Canary or Kumquat?”

Hannah studied Jacqui’s face for some hint of what she expected. Finding nothing but intense anticipation, Hannah finally sighed and blurted out, “Um, Canary.”

“Canary?” Her voice cracked.

“Did I say Canary?” Hannah glanced at both squares again. Squinting, she pushed her fingers through the fringes of red hair that had escaped her once neat little ponytail. “Kumquat. Definitely Kumquat.”

“You don’t think it’s too…?” Jacqui crinkled up her nose, exposing the deep lines in an otherwise flawless face.

Hannah involuntarily crinkled her own nose. She squinted, trying to determine the problem with the deeper tone of the two colors. But she couldn’t see it. “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”

Jacqui held at arm’s length the color sample Hannah had chosen. “What about Lemongrass?”

“What about it?”

“Do you like it?”

“As what?” She’d had nightmares like this. Where people spoke to her and she had no concept of what they meant or of what they wanted her to say.

“A color.” Jacqui darted to the paint-spattered tarp bundled against the wall, seized another small card and flipped it around to show Hannah. “How do you like it as a color?”

Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Jacqui exhaled in a short, sharp blast.

No one could describe either of the sisters as tall or, upon first glance, physically commanding. But when one of them wanted to get her point across, she had the presence of a giantess. And the gestures to match.

“Lemongrass. It’s a color. A very lovely color. I showed it to you last week.” She bent at the knees, arched her back and waved her hand over her shoulder to indicate the past.

“Last—” Hannah waved, too, though weakly and lacking any real direction, much less conviction “—week?”

“We thought it veered too much to the green.” On the word
we
, she made a circular motion, as though some unseen committee had come to this conclusion.

Hannah copied the movement Jacqui had made with both hands but used only one finger in a very halfhearted whirl that ended with her finger pointed to herself. “
We
did?”

“Too institutional.” Jacqui bobbed her head as if nodding for the whole invisible team. “We opted for something that trended toward gold.”

Hannah struggled to recall such a discussion.

Flooring? She remembered that.

Window treatments? Yes. She’d even made a bad pun about needing treatments to get over the trauma of looking at all those window treatments.

But trending toward gold?

She tipped her head to one side and winced. “Gold?”

“Not Goldenrod or American Heritage Mustard, not that deep of a hue. More of a hint of gold. Kissed by gold, as it were.”

“Kissed?” Hannah rubbed her forehead.

“That’s what
you
wanted. A vibrant, warmer tone.”

“I did?”

“Yes,
you
did.
You
wanted a warmer color. So I brought warmer colors.” She raised the sample squares. “Now
you
tell me you can’t decide?”

Got it. Hannah exhaled. Message received. In Jacqui’s eyes, Hannah clearly had created all the problems. And she knew just how to fix that. “Okay, I can decide right now.”

“You can?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful. So which is it? Kumquat? Or Canary?”

Hannah shimmied her shoulders in triumph and smiled, ready to accept her accolades as she said decisively, “Lemongrass.”

Jacqui threw up her hands.

The paint samples somersaulted through the air.

Kumquat, Canary and Lemongrass dotted the floor at her feet.

“What did I do?”

Jacqui shut her eyes. “Perhaps—”

Hannah licked her lips.

Jacqui cut herself off with a broad, slashing motion through the air between them.

Hannah cleared her throat.

“Hannah, I—” Jacqui pressed her lips together. She held her index finger over her mouth as if it took that measure of control to prevent a regrettable outburst on her part.

“What?”

“Excuse me a moment, would you please?” Jacqui spun on her heel to leave. Every last thing about her, from the soft click of the heels of her turquoise loafers to the swish of the dark curls at the back of her head, told of tightly reined-in fury.

But why? Clearly Jacqui had wanted the Lemongrass shade all along.

“I wanted to be accommodating,” Hannah told Tessa as she scooped her up from the baby seat.

A door slammed down the hallway.

Hannah jumped.

It opened again with a whoosh of air.

Crisp, clipped footsteps came toward her, then stopped cold.

The singing halted midphrase. Just “‘Rise and shine and give God—’”

Then nothing.

A quiet commotion next door followed, rapid-fire murmurings.

Hannah bristled. She clenched her jaw. “If I weren’t the world’s most accommodating person to work with, why would I even be here this afternoon? Much less have hauled you and Sam along? He only has another week until school starts—we should be out doing something fun.”

Tessa gurgled and slapped her hand lightly on Hannah’s cheek.

“Don’t you start in on me, young lady.” Hannah smiled and kissed the pudgy pink fingers. “At this point you and Sam are the only people in the whole world I know who without a doubt still think I am not a total disaster. And I’m not too sure about Sam.”

“Not too sure about me about what?”

“Not too sure if you saw that steam coming out of Mrs. Lafferty’s ears or not.” She motioned to the side of her head and hissed to lighten the moment.

Sam tiptoed fully into the room, whispering, “She sure is mad.”

“Sssssss.” Hannah drew more invisible heat waves in the air shooting from her ear and laughed, but inside she felt anything but jovial. Tears stung the rims of her eyes. She chewed her lower lip to keep from sniffling.

“Why is Mrs. Lafferty so mad?”

“Because…” Hannah had gotten herself into this because she couldn’t tell these sisters what she really thought. Did she dare share that unbecoming little tidbit with Sam? She gazed into his earnest, sympathetic eyes. “Oh, honey, I can’t say for sure why someone else feels what they feel. Or even
if
they feel what I feel they feel.”

“I feel dizzy.” He put his hand to his head and wobbled his way down to sit on the floor.

Hannah laughed. “Okay, let me try again. What I think happened is that Mrs. Lafferty thought I was not putting enough thought into her project. So I thought I’d try to
make her happy by telling her what I thought she thought I ought to think was the right choice.”

He scratched the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “You thought she thought you thought what?”

“It doesn’t matter what I thought, Sam. The end result is that I tried to think of how to please someone else by telling them what I thought would make them happy so they would think better of me, and now I’m sunk.”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping.

“Awww.” Sam wiggle-walked on his knees over to put his arms around her legs. “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I should never have dragged you and Tessa in here today to quibble over Kumquat, Canary or Lemongrass.”

“Huh?”

“Paint colors,” she explained, pointing to the squares lying on the floor.

“They all look yellow to me.”

You want to see yellow? You should look at the streak down my back
. Hannah withheld the comment. Sam didn’t need to hear her insecurities spilled out for a laugh.

Listen to yourself
. Payt and Aunt Phiz’s words echoed in her mind.

And she had heeded them. She had listened, really listened.

She had spoken to herself and in the same instant caught it and paused. If it wasn’t the kind of thing fit to say to Sam, why would she consider it suitable to say to herself, about herself?

Somewhere in that convoluted reasoning, the seed of change had just been planted.

She knew it even as she knew she had no idea how to nurture it. Only that she must nurture it. For her children’s sake. For her own.

She would start doing that by stopping this nonsense with Jacqui. Now.

“What do you think, kids? Do you have an opinion about what color we should paint the toddler room?”

“You know they all look the same to me.” He got to his feet, plucked up the pieces of paper and offered them to the baby. “But why are you asking Tessa?”

“Well, of the three of us, she’ll spend the most time in here.” Hannah swiped her thumb over her daughter’s damp chin. “What do you say, sweetie? Shall we see which one you drool on the most and go with it?”

That process would make about as much sense to Hannah as Jacqui’s did. Who cared if the room ended up with a greenish tint or a golden one?

The baby fisted her hands around two of the cards and let the third fall away.

It tumbled down and down and landed color side up.

“Bye bye, Lemongrass,” Hannah muttered.

“She’s picking!” Sam hopped from one foot to the next.

“Okay, this is it, Tessa. Kumquat or Canary?”

The child squealed.

“Kumquat? Or Canary?” Hannah leaned closer.

Tessa stuck both arms out straight, waved them about for a moment, then poked one balled-up card into her mouth.

“We have a winner!” Hannah pulled the card away from Tessa.

The baby protested with a kick and a screech.

“Now she’s mad, too.”

“She’ll get over it.”

Hannah kissed the baby’s head, inhaling the sweet scent of her fine curls.

Tessa quieted—a little.

“She’ll get over it, and so will Jacqui. Tessa didn’t have any business hanging on to that paint card. Just like Jacqui doesn’t have any business hanging a paint color over my head.”

“Was Mrs. Lafferty mad enough to pour paint on your head?

“Maybe, but you know what?”

He shook his head.

“I am not going to let her do it. I wouldn’t let her actually do it and I refuse to let her do it metaphorically.”

“Metawhatically?”

“Vocabulary lessons later, son. Right now I have a job to do.” Hannah tweaked Sam’s nose. “Your mommy is
not
a wimp. She’s an intelligent, capable person who can speak her own mind.”

“What does that mean?” Sam blinked up at her.

“It means we’re done here today. Let’s go enjoy the last days of summer.” She nudged her son to get him going.