Raising Rain (38 page)

She heard a gasp and looked up. Bebe stood in her opened door with a look of horror on her face, holding Rain's mug at an angle that threatened to spill black coffee onto the white carpet.

Rain nodded at the mug. “Be careful.”

Bebe righted it but stood bewildered in the doorway.

“You'd better come in,” Rain said, sighing. “And close the door behind you.”

Bebe listened to Rain's account of her final trip to see Dr. Sykes and sat on the edge of her bed for a long time not knowing what to say. Poor Rain had carried this disappointment along with so many others, and not shared it with a soul all weekend. After promising not to tell the others, Bebe went out to the kitchen for an ice pack and some
aspirin. Rain said she wanted to sleep and Bebe went back out to the family room, to find Mare and Toni waiting expectantly.

“Is she all right?” Mare asked.

Bebe noticed that they had the fireplace going as she plopped down on the couch. “She's only bruised.”

“Body and soul, you mean,” Toni said, choosing a magazine from the coffee table. She tucked her feet beneath her on the couch. “That takes a lot longer to heal.”

Bebe quickly looked up. “You didn't hear that from me.”

“We didn't need to. Rain's an open book. She's miserable without Hayden and she may even be mourning for her mom.” Toni shrugged one shoulder. “Okay, she probably is mourning.”

Mare tsked and looked like she might cry. “How can we help her, Bebe?”

“We can't,” she said, thinking of Rain's baby woes. “When she makes up her mind about something, she's the only one who can change it.”

Mare smiled dreamily. “She was always stubborn like that. Remember when she went through that period when she refused to wear clothes?”

Toni looked up from the magazine. “She had the cutest little toddler tush. I hated to cover it with clothes, myself.”

Mare twirled a lock of her hair. “Remember when she insisted on joining a Little League team instead of girls' softball?”

“That wasn't her idea. That was Jude's,” Bebe said.

Mare stopped midtwirl. “But she was so proud of it. She was their best hitter.”

“She did it to please her mom, and she just happened to be more coordinated than boys at that age.”

“Hate to say it, but it makes me glad I never had kids,” Toni admitted.

Mare rolled her eyes. “For their sake, I have to agree. You would've enrolled them in beauty pageants, and had them in makeup and heels at five years old.”

Toni looked up with a tilt of her head, considering. “You're right. If I didn't, my mother would have.” She grinned lazily. “My kids would
have been beautiful, and we would've added on another room just for the trophies and costumes.”

Mare dropped her head back against the cushions. “I give up,” she said to the ceiling. “You are hopeless.”

Bebe listened to the fretful sound of the wind and rain against the house, and her thoughts returned to the conversation that she had with Jude at the aquarium. Were her wounds still “oozing” as Jude had suggested? And was it evident to everyone but her?

She thought about the coming evening when they would have to make some decisions. There was no seeking distraction away from the house that night. They were in it for the long haul.

“I don't suppose either of you has any ideas to offer for tonight,” she said.

Mare covered her face with a throw pillow like she was trying to suffocate herself. Toni stretched out on her end of the sofa and crossed her arms over her eyes. “I'll think about it tomorrow,” she said with a southern drawl. Mare tossed the pillow at her, and she threw it back.

“We have to have some ideas of our own,” Bebe insisted.

After a long moment of silence, Toni asked, “Okay, so what's the worst that can happen? If we can't agree on something that we're all willing to do that doesn't cause our families to disown us or career suicide, Jude takes her marbles and goes home.”

Mare huffed. “Very constructive, Toni.”

“She's right, to some extent,” Bebe said. They both looked at her in surprise. “Jude will go home angry and hurt and feel alienated, and probably die alone with only Rain and possibly William at her side. Probably William. But our relationship with Rain will be hurt beyond repair, and I'm just not willing to go there.”

Toni leaned up on one elbow. “But Rain is smart, Bebe. She knows we can't take those risks this late in life.”

“I agree. And she's probably thinking about her own career and how much she's willing to risk, herself. But the bottom line is that this is her mother's choice in lieu of a funeral. If we disrespect this, we leave Rain to do it alone.”

Mare hugged the pillow to her chest. “She would do it, too.”

“Yes, she would.” Bebe chewed her bottom lip. Then, she added, lowering her voice, “You know, Jude's not all bad.”

Toni's voice came from a dream state. “In what way? You mean in the way that the Chicago Seven weren't all bad?”

Bebe ignored her comment. “She had her issues in college, but we had some fun times, too.”

“Such as?”

Silence descended while they each tried to think of something.

“Oh, I know,” Mare said. “That time Jude got us free tickets to see Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at the Fillmore. That was fun.”

Toni twisted to relieve the tension in her shoulders. “Right. I wonder how the first half of the concert went.”

“So, I didn't know my way around San Francisco. It's not my fault I was the only one of us who could drive a stick,” Mare said.

Bebe smiled, remembering that night, which was only funny now, years later. “She shouted directions at you the whole way and you kept popping the clutch on those steep hills.”

Mare said, “You know, I almost parked it in the street and walked away.”

“Too bad we didn't have GPS back then,” Toni said.

Then a pleasant memory came to Bebe. “When we first moved in and it was just the four of us, we ate frozen pizza and watched old movies on that fuzzy black-and-white TV that Jude scrounged from somewhere.”

Mare said, “That was before Jude got involved with that radical student group.”

“Okay, that counts,” Toni said. She sat up in a lotus position. “I remember the old Victorian. It had such a wonderful, creepy-cozy feeling to it.”

“Creepy-cozy? Okay,” Mare agreed. “It was creepy because the plumbing was ancient and the toilet kept overflowing.”

“And we had to take turns plugging in our electric curlers or a fuse would blow.”

“That was you and Bebe,” Mare said. “I went for a less structured look.

“So that's what they called it?” Toni chuckled. “Less structured.”

Mare playfully stuck out her tongue at Toni, who replied in kind.

Bebe suddenly felt a rush of memories. “I remember when Rain took her first step.”

Mare smiled. “She walked straight to you.”

“As I recall, it didn't make Jude very happy,” Toni added. “And Rain called you Momma. That didn't sit well with her, either.”

“She called us all Momma until she could keep us straight,” Bebe reminded her.

Bebe smiled to herself. She could almost feel Rain's soft little body clinging to her, with her pudgy arms around her neck and a sticky cheek pressed against hers. The mixture of baby powder and Ivory Snow became Bebe's signature scent.

And now it looked as if Rain might never know that feeling for herself. Bebe felt an overwhelming sadness for this young woman and wondered whether they had all done her an injustice.

B
ebe woke up to a darkened room and checked her watch. It was only five o'clock—just two hours since Mare and Toni had fallen asleep in the family room watching
Out of Africa
and Bebe had had the good sense to climb into her own bed.

She washed her face and came out to the kitchen where Mare was in the midst of dinner preparations. A delicious-smelling pot of broth bubbled on the stove.

“Mind peeling these?” Mare asked, handing her a vegetable peeler and three large potatoes. “Vegetable soup is on the menu for tonight.”

Bebe washed the potatoes and started peeling the skins into the garbage disposal. Toni waltzed into the kitchen from the family room where the movie still played.

“That movie isn't over yet?” Bebe asked.

“No, it's a long one,” Toni said. “I just love to listen to the soundtrack. It's so inspiring.”

Toni sat down on a stool at the counter and Mare handed her two large yellow onions and a cutting board. “Here, get inspired with this,” she said.

Toni grunted at the onions in response. Bebe waved a potato at her. “You snooze, you lose, my friend.”

Toni's eye makeup was running by the time she had the onion sliced up. She scraped the onion into the pot of soup with the knife and rinsed off the cutting board. She wandered back toward her bedroom.

Rain came out moments later, yawning. She went to a dark window in the sunroom and looked out at the storm. “It's really coming down hard. If we weren't so high up, I'd be worried,” she said, coming back to the counter.

“It would take a tsunami to reach us up here,” Mare said, handing her a zucchini, a cutting board, and a knife. “Chunks, please, not slices.”

Rain got to work cutting the zucchini, making each chunk exactly the same size. When Bebe was finished peeling and cutting up the potatoes, Mare handed her three large carrots.

“Where did Toni skip off to?” Bebe asked. A second later, Toni returned with her makeup freshened.

“For crying out loud, Toni. It's just us,” Mare said. “We've seen your naked face before.”

Toni refused to answer, but sat down at the counter and Mare handed her a loaf of bread to spread with butter.

“This isn't soy butter is it?” Toni asked, checking the label.

Mare answered curtly, “You wouldn't be able to tell the difference if it was.”

They continued bickering until the soup was ready as though they'd awakened on the wrong side of the couch. Bebe set out the dishes buffet style and Rain went to wake Jude. Mare ladled out bowls of rich soup with tender-crisp veggies and filled a lined basket with slices of soft, buttered sourdough.

The mood was somber around the table, with the four cooks bending their concentration toward the hot soup. Jude was the only one who seemed energized, as though she anticipated the coming evening.

Jude and Rain retired to the family room when they were finished. Bebe, Mare, and Toni took great care in cleaning up after dinner until
every plate and utensil rested neatly in its assigned place and every surface sparkled. Finally, they shared a brief look of silent solidarity, and joined the others in the family room.

Jude sat in the recliner like an aging queen at the end of her reign.

“So here we are again. Next August marks forty years since we moved in together on 37th Street, and unfortunately, I won't be around to share it with you.”

A small movement made Bebe glance over at Toni. She had folded her arms across her chest with a bored look on her face. Bebe hoped Toni would keep a lid on her sarcasm.

“So we'll just have to pretend that it's August and plan something significant that you all can carry on when I'm gone. I've brought some suggestions, but let's hear some of yours first.”

An awkward silence descended on them. Finally, Jude said, “Well, come on. This was homework.”

Rain looked up at Bebe, silently urging her to speak. Bebe could only come up with the one idea that was close to her heart.

“What about setting up a pet rescue foundation for natural disaster areas to help people find their displaced pets? We could go in and set up a temporary command base where people can drop off stray pets, and maybe even join rescue crews to search for them.”

Silence followed, leaving Bebe feeling exposed.

Finally, Mare stirred. “I'm allergic to cats.”