Clean mug in hand, I filled the bugger to the tippy top, leaving just enough room for half and half and sugar. A survey of the fridge informed me that there was no half and half. No milk either. Both cartons stuck tauntingly from the trash proving that the house was lactose deficient.
Finally, I added a healthy—or rather unhealthy—dollop of French vanilla ice cream to the mug. About as close as I was going to get to a Starbucks anytime soon.
Coffee-cream in hand, I sat down to consider my financial situation. Maybe I could sell an organ on the black market. My liver was too pickled to be of value. Perhaps a kidney. Could you still drink coffee with only one kidney?
Frankie transitioned into Carol King’s “It’s Too Late,” and then the Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” before the studio door opened and my mother breezed out.
No paint and clay smudged blue jeans for Prudence Whitmore. She wore a blue twinset over charcoal slacks and her shoulder length gray hair was twisted up in an elegant top knot. She sailed into the room and then blinked when she saw me at the table. “Joey? Didn’t you have a shift today?”
I let out a sigh. “About that….” The words stuck in my throat.
No words were necessary. She shook her head and moved to the coffee pot. “You’re too old for this pity party, Josephine Louise Whitmore.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at her use of my full name but was afraid that I would only prove her point. “It’s not like I was trying to get fired, Mom.”
She put her hands on her narrow hips in her classic lecturing pose. “You know what your problem is?”
I nodded. “Yes, I am a forty-one-year-old divorcee with a bum wrist and no money.”
She waved my injury away like it was inconsequential. “These jobs are beneath you. I keep telling you to go back to school. Get a degree, start your own business.”
Like it was that simple. Of course, to her, it was. For forty years, my mother had been the driving force behind the high country’s tourism trade. Prudence Whitmore was a force of nature. A people person. A doer. Wherever she went, she made things happen.
“Doing what, Mom? I’m not like you. I don’t have any hidden talents or unfulfilled passions. What you see is what you get.”
She turned to face the snow-covered back garden. “I don’t know where I went wrong with you. You used to have so much self-confidence. You believed in yourself. Didn’t I always tell you that you could do anything?”
I pressed my lips together. Really, what was there to say? Here I sat in my mother’s kitchen, a giant midlife disappointment.
Turning away from the window, she reached for her mug and belted back the dregs of her coffee like she was doing a tequila shooter. “Well anyway, I need to get going. Paul’s taking me to dinner.”
This time the eye roll couldn’t be avoided. “You can just refer to him as Dad, Mom.”
She sniffed. “We don’t define ourselves by our relationship to you, Joey. We are autonomous human beings.”
It was an old argument. My parents didn’t believe in labels. Or marriage. Or living together. Though they still got together three or four times a week to go to dinner— which was also code for sex. I shuddered. No matter how unconventional their relationship, I didn’t want to envision my mom and dad making the beast with two backs.
“Anyway, I have a hair appointment. I was going to call Louisa to drive me into town but since you’re back, I won’t bother. Car’s all gassed up I presume?”
I scrunched up my nose, having forgotten about the car. “Yeah, that’s the other thing.”
Fifteen minutes later, I watched from the octagonal window in my bedroom as Louisa’s red pick-up truck putt-putted up to the curb and my mother climbed inside. With her went the heavy cloud of disappointment that her middle-aged daughter couldn’t get her act together. I took a deep breath for the first time since walking through the door.
My eyes slid shut and I was tempted to snuggle up on my window seat the way I had as a little girl in desperate need of comfort. The chenille cushions and padded bolster pillows were comfier than anything on my brass bed and the bench was long enough for my five-foot four-inch frame to curl in the fetal position. Instead, I turned away and retrieved my laptop before resettling myself in the window seat, tucking a bolster pillow behind my back for lumbar support. I was determined to find a job before my mother got home. Any job. I was past the point in life where I could afford to be picky.
Sadly, the want ads in the Blue Mountain Times weren’t much more promising than they had been the last time I picked through them. To my dismay, I saw the listing was already up for my waitressing shift at the diner. Rodney the Toad wasn’t wasting any time seeking my replacement.
I scrolled down through the listings, many of which were seasonal and wouldn’t start back up until spring. All of the nearby ski resorts were full up and things like ziplining and rafting were definitely warm weather-based. Plus, with my bum wrist, it wasn’t like I could tackle anything uber physical.
Story of my life.
Irritated, I snapped the laptop shut and stared out the window, massaging the ache in my wrist more out of habit than any real pain. My mother was right. At my age, not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up was just plain sad.
Maybe because the one thing I had truly wanted to be had been taken away from me at sixteen. My gaze fell on the 1st place ribbons, the trophies and newspaper clippings on the built-in bookcase across the way. Artistic gymnastics, first place. Six years running. A photo of me in midair, doing a back handspring off the balance beam. The headline read—Local gymnast is heading for Olympic glory.
It had been more than hope though. It had been my whole life for as long as I could remember. Fate might as well have minced up to me, cracked her gum in my face, and said, “Sorry, Joey. No gold medal for you. How about a lifetime of scraping by instead?” I’d been groping for a purpose ever since.
My cell chirped, alerting me to a new text message. I dug it out of my pocket and looked down at the screen. It was from my bestie, Darcy Abrams. Call me when you have a sec.
I hit the green phone icon and held the device to my ear.
“No,” Darcy barked in place of a greeting. “Parker Abrams, you take that pincushion out of your mouth this instant.”
Darcy was the quintessential stay-at-home-mom with a side hustle. She was a whiz with a sewing machine and had translated her skills into creating custom outfits for dogs themed after book characters. Mr. Darcy for Dachshunds. Gandalf for Great Danes. Sherlock Holmes for Shih Tzus. It seemed like a real niche market to me but her Etsy store was going gang-busters.
The internet was a weird place.
Her home life was something of a disaster though, what with five boys under the age of ten, all of whom were home on a snow day. Between feeding, bathing, and keeping her kids alive and orders that needed to be made and shipped, my friend had a full and boisterous life. Sometimes I filled in watching the rugrats so she could fill her orders promptly.
“Joey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Darcy asked when she finally refocused on the phone.
“Rodney let me go.”
She made a sympathetic sound. “Margarita Monday?”
“Can you get away?” I asked as something on her end crashed.