I put the empty bowl on my nightstand, slid out of my twin bed and stalked down the hall to the linen closet to grab a few things before I knocked at Aida’s door.
“Tiernanny?” she called sweetly.
I gagged at the nickname, unable to imagine Tiernan letting anyone call him such an atrocious endearment.
I vowed to call him by that name the next time I saw him.
“It’s me, Mom,” I called before pushing open the door.
The windows were open, a sweet breeze carrying through the room so that nothing of Tiernan’s masculine scent remained. It was all sweet, floral Aida, who lay in the middle of the unkempt bed on her side, one leg hiked up to showcase the roundness of her bottom, one hand playing with the edge of her lace nightgown. When she saw me, she blew an errant lock of hair out of her face with a loud huff and collapsed back against her worn pink silk pillows.
“Thank God,” she cried dramatically, throwing an arm over her forehead. “I don’t think I could have handled any more of that man.”
“Ew, Mom, please don’t talk about your sex life with that…” I trailed off, unable to think of anything nice to call him.
“That tall, dark, and handsome, drink of cool water?” she suggested, peeking at me from under her forearm.
I shot her an unamused look.
Simultaneously, we dissolved into giggles.
“Come here, sweet dove,” she beckoned through her dreamy smile, the same smile that had made countless men fall in love with her.
I was no different.
No matter her flaws, her self-centeredness, and her habitual neglect, I couldn’t do anything but love my mother when she shot me that movie-star smile. It didn’t help that she used the endearment my father had given me as a girl.
I hefted the sheets in my arms higher. “I’m not getting anywhere near the bed before we change the sheets.”
Aida’s delighted laugh rang through the room, as high and clear as music from a silver flute. I grinned at her and tossed the linens into her face. She sputtered dramatically as she pushed them off her face, then erupted out of the pale pink sheets to lunge at me. I yelped as she landed against me, stumbling backward. She righted me with both arms around my torso, clutching me so tightly for a moment that I couldn’t breathe. I held still as she pressed her nose into my hair, her sigh soft and dreamy after she breathed me in.
“My dove,” she murmured, squeezing me tight. “My sweet, sensible girl. What would I do without you?”
Truthfully, sometimes I wondered the same thing. I would graduate at the end of the year, and hopefully, I’d get accepted to the school I’d been dreaming about for years.
New York University.
It has a renowned Art History program and a seriously cool Sustainable Business program at the Stern Business School.
It had been my dream since I was six years old, and my dad brought me a purple NYU hoodie on one of his visits. I’d wanted to be an art conservationist at eight, when he took me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on a rare vacation together. He was an important man, so when I’d expressed curiosity over an empty frame with a placard that declared it was being treated by a conservator, he’d immediately secured us access to that department.
I could still remember the sharp scent of varnish and turpentine in my nose, the careful, steady hands of the man bent over a Gustav Klimt painting. I’d watched raptly as the man carefully peeled back the layers of dirt and the patina of time from the old canvas. One side was dull and grey-brown, the other slowly coming to life in vivid color the way it had looked at its inception.
It was magic.
The purest form I’d ever seen.
Something about it resonated with me then as it did now. The idea that with careful dedication, you could unearth your truest self even after years of brutal wear and tear.
It gave me hope.
Then there was the wider appeal, the more pragmatic pull of studying business with a concentration in sustainability and environmental science. I’d spent hours touring the Texas countryside with Dad, learning all about the family history as an oil and gas conglomerate, but also about his burgeoning desire to make a change. It was impossible to ignore the disastrous impact of global warming over the course of my life, even in the oil state that tried to disregard it. The Crosby chemical plant fire, the uncharacteristic winter freeze of 2020 that left thousands without food and water, the burst pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico that caused a massive ocean fire the press appropriately named “Eye of Fire” because it looked as hellacious as Sauron’s eye from Lord of the Rings.
These things made an impact on me because they made an impact on my dad and I idolized him from the first moment I could cogitate.
I organized recycling initiatives at my high school, protested the pipeline at the Two Rivers Camp and many others, while also winning a state-wide science fair for my research project on carbon emissions from cattle farms.
Making the world a green place became Dad’s mission at the end of his life.
And so it became my own.
Together, I had two wildly different dreams and I didn’t care much where I might land between them, because I knew I’d never be without passion for either. All I knew for sure was that I was unwilling to give up the opportunity to pursue either at New York University if I was lucky enough to get in and secure a full ride.
Not for Aida.
Maybe not even for Brando.
For once in my life, I wanted something for myself.
So yes, I wondered what Aida would do without me, because that time was coming whether she suspected it or not.
“You’d be fine,” I assured her, stroking through her cloud of soft, pale hair. “You were fine before I was born.”
“I had your father.”
I winced slightly, because that was true. Aida was not a woman who was good or happy taking care of herself.
“That’s why I’m so grateful I found Tiernan,” she said in that wistful way of hers. “He wants to move us to New York.”
“New York!” I pulled back from my mother in shock, my mouth as round as a bullet hole straight through my skull. “Mom, you can’t be serious. You don’t even love the guy.”
She frowned at me, then smoothed the crease between her brows with a finger because she was worried about wrinkles. “Don’t ‘Mom’ me, dovey. Of course, I’m serious. He has money. Loads of money. And he’s nice to me. I know you don’t like him because you think he is some threat to your father’s memory.” She paused to issue a long-suffering sigh. “But he wants us to be a family.”
“He wants you in his bed and Brando and me locked up out of sight in some attic,” I argued, shivering at the idea.
“You’ve always had a silly imagination.”
“If I’m silly, I got it from you,” I snapped, then watched as Aida’s wide, blue eyes filled with tears.
I sighed as she shifted away from me, stripping the sheets from her bed in jerky movements punctuated by sniffling.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I was. I’d learned a long time ago that I was more of the adult in our relationship. It was part of her charm; she was childlike with wonder and sweetness, excited to please and eager for affection and attention. She didn’t mean ill ever and so it felt churlish for me to get angry with her.