“Larry the furniture maker?” Lauren says. “Why him, of all people?”
Miriam smiles, taking a bite of pie. “He’s always been a bit smitten.”
“With me?” Gloria says, shocked and nearly choking on her bite of pie.
“Of course not!” Miriam says coyly. “With me.”
“He’s married,” Lauren says. “For like, forty-some years, right?”
“There’s always been a hint of flirtation,” Miriam says, taking another bite of her pie and sighing with delight.
Lauren looks at Gloria, who is using her index finger to circle her ear, and Lauren chuckles. “Miriam, I didn’t notice anything when we were at Larry’s together. As a matter of fact, he paid more attention to me than he did you.” Gloria coughs, choking on a bite of pie. “I think you’re reading way too much into everyday conversation.” Miriam’s eyes are wide with dismay. “If it was Larry, he’d drop off a wooden box or bowl, not food!”
The office is quiet, and Stacy and Gloria exchange glances before bursting into laughter. “Oh, shut up, Gloria!” Miriam says, reaching for another piece of pie.
“Well, if you’d said Jerry at Clauson’s, that would have made sense,” Gloria says. “He’s the bakery manager. But Larry the wood guy?” She thinks for a moment. “It could be Jerry! The last time we were in there together, he looked at you and said, ‘What can I get you, ma’am?’ If that’s not innuendo, I don’t know what is!” Miriam opens her mouth to argue with Gloria as Stacy and Lauren leave the office, ready to greet the kids for the day with Andrea, who is entering the front door.
“There’s fresh pie in Gloria’s office,” Lauren says.
Andrea grabs a piece and walks with Lauren out the front doors to wait for the children on the sidewalk. “So,” she says, taking a bite. “Who do you think is leaving the goodies?”
Lauren shrugs. “I just hope they don’t stop making deliveries. Did you cook with your kids when they were growing up?”
Andrea puckers her mouth, thinking. “Some. They were always so busy with sports and other after-school activities that I usually had dinner ready when they got home.”
“Was dinner important?”
Andrea looks at Lauren’s face. She’s so sincere about this and realizes, from what Lauren said about her childhood, that she wants to do the opposite of what her own mother did. “All the meals were important.” She takes another bite, watching the traffic at the stoplight in front of the building. “When the kids were little, we ate breakfast and dinner together with Bill. And when they got so busy as teens, we still ate breakfast and dinner together. Sometimes it meant that we ate at four thirty, before a game, or at eight thirty, after a game, but we made sure that we came together at those meals.” The first car makes its way up the driveway. “Do you and Travis like to cook?”
Lauren nods, opening the car door for seven-year-old Evan. “I’m trying to learn but yeah, we get in the kitchen together a lot.”
Andrea helps Brianna and Jacob from a car, smiling at them. “You could have your own cooking class here,” she says. “I bet Brianna and Jacob would love to learn how to bake cookies!” The kids hoot and cheer at the word “cookies,” and Lauren smiles at the thought.
EIGHTEEN
October 1972
Joan reaches for a scarf of autumn browns, oranges, yellows, and reds and ties it around her head in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. Besides the sickness following each round of chemo, looking at herself has been the hardest part of cancer. Her skin is pale, her hair is gone, the flesh on her body seems to rest closer to bone each week, and her eyes stare out from dark, hollowed-out holes. Her eyes fill with tears at the sight of herself, but when she hears Gigi’s and Christopher’s voices from the kitchen, she reaches for a tissue from the box on the counter, pressing it to each eye. She listens to her kids chatter for a moment and takes a deep breath, looking at herself again. “Today’s the day,” she whispers, surprising herself. The words plant themselves somewhere deep inside and once again, tears spring to her eyes. “Today’s the day,” she says, exhaling.
John enters the bathroom wearing his work uniform and smiles at her. “The kids are eating breakfast. I need to get to a woman’s house by eight. Fridge on the fritz.” He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Wow! Are you ever beautiful!” She shakes her head. “Crazy kind of beautiful.”
She laughs. “You’re the crazy one, John Creighton.”
“Today’s the day. Right?”
She smiles, nodding. “Today’s the day,” she says.
John thrusts his fist into the air. “Yes!” He kisses her good-bye and promises to call on his break.
She follows John to the kitchen and reaches for a skillet as he says good-bye to the kids; she wants to get at least a couple of meals prepared today before she goes in for chemotherapy tomorrow. While Gigi and Christopher eat some scrambled eggs, fruit, and toast that John made them, Joan pulls out two pounds of ground beef from the refrigerator. “What are you making, Mommy?” Gigi asks from the table.
“Chili.”
The little girl raises her head higher. “With little corn muffins?”
“I can do that,” Joan says, breaking apart the beef inside the skillet with a wooden spoon.
“I can help when I finish,” Gigi says. “I need to eat for strength.” Joan laughs. How many times has Gigi heard John or her mom, Alice, say those words to Joan over the last three months? “Have you eaten for strength today yet, Mommy?”
Joan laughs again. “No, I haven’t.”
Gigi’s face straightens like a prosecutor’s inside a courtroom. “Eat for strength now before you get weak!”
Joan raises her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. I’ll do that before I start the chili. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking,” Gigi says, taking a huge bite of toast.
Joan laughs again and reaches into the fridge for an egg to scramble for herself, along with some leftover salad from dinner last night. It sounds horrible to the rest of her family, but for some reason Joan has been craving greens and nuts and eats them throughout the day, even at breakfast. She sits down at the table to eat and smiles, watching Christopher maneuver his tiny fork, using it as a mini shovel to scoop up a piece of egg, which falls to the plate, but he perseveres, trying again until a bite reaches his mouth. “What a big boy!” she says, reaching over the table to squeeze his hand. The thought invades her brain that she won’t hear Christopher string a sentence together or run the bases at the local ball field, but as quickly as it comes, she shoots it down. “Today’s the day,” she says, looking at Christopher and then Gigi.
“For what?” Gigi asks.
“To believe,” Joan says. “Like Daddy.”
Gigi grins. “He says that a lot,” she says, happy to be sitting here at the table with her mom and baby brother. “Because it will make you strong.”
Joan thinks for a moment. “Saying it won’t necessarily make me strong. Daddy believes that saying it will create faith and help us believe.”