“It is. We need a new system,” I tell her just as I see Barrett walk into the room carrying two glasses of water.
“She’s right, Mrs. Cole. It is getting a little… cluttered in here.”
“Barrett Ryan. What did I tell you about the Mrs. Cole thing? It’s Debbie, Deb, or Mom, you understand me?”
Barrett smiles and looks down at his shoes. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, his tone teasing and light.
My mom giggles and shakes her head. “What am I going to do with you, kid?”
“I’m fun, right?” he asks before his tone turns a little more serious. “But seriously, Debbie. You need a better system than this. Your magazines and books are just falling over.”
“There’s a method to my madness,” she tells him, smiling, but I can see the wheels in his mind turning as he nods his head and continues to survey the bedroom and books and magazines.
It was the first thing he made on his own. No help from anyone. It had cubbies and slots of all different sizes and one large section on the right that was backed by corkboard so Mom could pin up her favorite pictures and ideas. I didn’t ask him to do it. My parents didn’t ask him to do it. He did it because he’s an incredible man who loved building things for people, even at a young age.
I look back now and wonder if that was part of the appeal to me for Barrett. When we were in high school, I took a shop class, and he was in it. We both loved designing, creating, building things. During the summer before our senior year, Barrett helped a local contractor, and he decided quickly that’s what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, seeing a person’s home being built from the ground up, or a room renovated to what they envisioned for their family.
I love being able to make someone smile just by changing a room to look the way they envisioned it, and most of the time, not even how they envisioned it, but better. He loves building something that is going to make someone’s life easier, better.
Just call us Chip and Joanna.
Barrett: Cole called me.
Me: And?
Barrett: Just telling you.
The little shit. He knows it will be bugging me all day long to not have a clue why Cole needed to call, and now he’s gonna hold out on me?
I don’t think so!
Me: Tell me tell me tell me tell me
Barrett: Oh you wanted to know what he wanted to talk to his dad about?
This conversation will be much quicker than our old-people hands can text out if I just call him. Not to mention the amount of deleting and retyping it takes. And don’t get me started on the autocorrect. When I told Cole to check my love box for a pair of gloves instead of the glovebox, I was certain that he would need therapy for life. And seriously, why does everything turn dirty? I honestly don’t use the words masturbate and penis in my texting endeavors, but my phone seems to think they’re words I use consistently. I need to hear his voice anyway. The last client I had has me in a tizzy, as he calls it, and Barrett’s the only one who can calm me down.
“Hi, babe.” I can hear the smile in his voice when he answers on the first ring. Like he was expecting my call and didn’t even have to look at the caller ID. Dang. Cole is right. We’re so predictable it’s a little ridiculous. I hope predictable doesn’t also mean boring.
“Don’t hi babe me,” I reply.
He laughs. Laughs!
“Barr-rret! Just tell me. You know it’s killing me, and those clients who took the day off? They were the definition of high maintenance. I need a distraction,” My voice almost comes out as a whine.
“Usually high maintenance doesn’t bother you.”
“Yeah, well considering that they both have separate — and I mean completely separate — ideas of how each individual room of their six-thousand, yes, six-thousand-square-foot home should be decorated, the level of high maintenance-ery is a little over the top. Now, tell me why our firstborn son had to talk to his dad and couldn’t talk to his mom. And please tell me he sounded good. I haven’t heard his voice in a week. I need to know he’s eating healthy. He’s not drinking — well, too much. I’m not an idiot. He did drunk text me the other night, which was funny, but I’m his mom and don’t need to read that, or see the video he accidently sent me of him doing some whip dance. And for that matter… damn texting. I should take it off our phones…” I’m rambling, and he needs to shut me up.
“Babe!” He chuckles into the line. “He’s good. I promise. He did have a couple questions for me and didn’t want his mommy to read too much into it.”
“A girl.”
“I swear. One day I’m gonna crack that mindreading code you have. No. Not a girl. The girl. Or at least, he seems to think it might lead in that direction. They’re only talking and dating casually for right now, but he sounds serious about her. Way more serious than in the past.”
“More serious than her?” I practically sneer the word her.
Her is in reference to Simone. Simone was nice. Pretty. Until she thought Cole was going to be her meal ticket, considering he’s pre-med. Then she hooked her nasty claws into him, announced a fake pregnancy — at eighteen — and tried to trap him. Luckily I’m an intuitive person. And no one messes with my kids. Simone isn’t in the picture anymore, but he had fallen hook, line, and sinker for her, so it was quite the blow to his heart when he found out what she was really like.
“Not even close. First of all, his eyes are wide open. Second, he said she’s not at all impressed about his pre-med status.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says in a weird Scottish accent.
“Ok, Shrek. What’s her name?” I grin at my own lame joke, and his. He’s such a dad, dumb jokes and all.
“He said he wasn’t ready to tell me her name, but that he will be bringing her home for Thanksgiving, if that was all right with us. Her family isn’t going to be around for the holiday, and he didn’t want her to be alone…”
Oh my heart. I know he’s still talking but the fact that my son is courteous enough to know that someone shouldn’t be alone for the holidays makes my heart swell — and apparently my ears to close up. Well, to some that might not seem like a big deal, but he’s twenty. He’s not necessarily intuitive yet.
“Yes,” I respond when I realize I’ve gone off into my own little world while Barrett was still talking, but now there’s silence, so I figure he must have asked if that was okay with me, and of course it is.
“Well, I never asked a question, dream girl.” He chuckles. The smart ass.
“Oh whatever. What did you say?”
“Nothing to worry about. We’ll talk tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” he assures me.
“Love you.”
“Love you.”
My afternoon and early evening consist of shuttling Harper to and from horse-riding lessons. Luckily, Grady has his license and his own car and can take care of getting home from football on his own. Typically, he picks up Maggie from volleyball as well, but since his coach asked the guys to stay tonight so they can watch game tape for the Friday night game, one of her friends is dropping her off at home.
By the time we all shuffle into the house, it’s a little after seven, and no one has eaten supper, started their homework, or managed to say more than a few words to one another. As we sit around the long, dark-stained, but well-used farmhouse table Barrett made for us when we first moved into our house, eating chicken tortilla soup I had put in the Crockpot that morning, we fill each other in on our days. The kids seemed to have fairly typical school days — a few months into their school year, and things are going smoothly for each of them. It’s still weird to me that Cole isn’t sitting in his seat, even though it’s been a while. We had just gotten used to him being home again this summer, and then poof! he was gone again.