Chapter 13
Bellini
“Pour yourself a drink, honey,” my mother said when I got home the next night from the bar. She was downstairs, lying back against her pink couch where she could put her feet up. She had been watching a romantic comedy.
Outside, it was dark, and snow was coming down hard.
We had strings of lights in front and back, colorful and bright, so we could see the snowflakes.
Inside, the gas fireplace was on, candles were lit, my four cats were curled up beside us, and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, my mom’s favorite, was playing.
“Very funny, Mom,” I said. “You know I do not drink.”
“Still?” she asked, but we both knew she was kidding.
She knows I don’t drink. She has—at most—two drinks a day, often none. And one of those drinks is always wine. Fine wine. She likes the good stuff.
She petted Claws and said, “Your momma likes to be sober all the time.”
“Alcohol makes my mouth feel like it’s on fire,” I said, digging into the chocolate cake, “and you know I don’t like the slightest chance that I won’t be in complete control of my faculties.
” Mrs. Books took that moment to jump up on the mantel.
She looked at me for praise. “Nice jump, Mrs. Books!” She meowed. Cats are part human.
“I cannot believe a daughter of mine uses phrases like ‘complete control of my faculties.’ It’s like you speak in a foreign language, filled with proper primness.”
I handed her a piece of chocolate cake. It was seven layers, made by Aunt Emmie. For fun, there were seven candy canes sticking straight up on top. I love Aunt Emmie. She knows I love candy canes.
“How are you feeling, Mom?” I jumped up and grabbed Petunia. She was climbing up the inside of the Christmas tree, and it was tilting. She meowed in protest as I straightened the tree.
“I believe that my body is going to forgive me for giving up my uterus.”
“Forgiveness is important.” I put my hands together as if in prayer, attempting to appear holy. “I try to be forgiving.”
“Oh, me, too, bless my heart,” my mother said, also clasping her hands together in a holy fashion. “Bless your heart, too.”
We laughed. We both have a hard time forgiving sometimes. In fact, it’s rather a family trait. Our personalities tend to be slightly vengeful.
She asked about my day at the bar. I did not tell her I was tired to the bone and starving, as I worked without a break, and that I still had more work to do. Running the bar is her life. She knows exactly how much energy it takes.
“Logan rarely comes to the bar,” my mom said. Petunia tapped her hand, as if she wanted a bite of cake. “He’ll come in now and then with friends, like Beck and Colt, or he’ll take his work team to lunch, but he never comes in as a regular.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve never seen him with a date in there.”
I nodded. Stab me in the heart with a candy cane and give it a twist.
“But…” she paused.
“Yesss?” But what? I thought, my breath catching. I dropped my fork onto my plate, suddenly not starving. Did he date? Did he have a series of dates? A series of girlfriends?
“I think you should be friends again, sweet cakes. You’ve been gone for years. You two were so adorable together. Like honey and bees. Like ice cream and chocolate. Like Bellinis and cheese. Like sexy bras and lacy lingerie from Lace, Satin, and Baubles.”
That was my favorite lingerie shop, too. Too bad I hadn’t bought anything there in many years. Hadn’t needed to.
“You two were like snuggles and cuddles.” Her voice was soft.
The bravado, huge personality, and bawdy laugh do not come home from work with my mother. She is herself at home, and my mother has a serious side. She has to. She didn’t grow up with money, and she’s worked forever. There has been no man there to “save” her.
“I don’t think so, Mom.” Sir Scott snuck up on Petunia and jumped on her. Petunia swatted him in the face. Twice. Sir Scott whimpered.
“Why?”
“Because.” I felt my shoulders sag. “Because I’m different now, Mom.” I heard the pain in my voice. “My relationship with Logan… Well, it’s over.”
“It doesn’t still have to be over, honeybee.”
Yes, it did. I’d never told her the truth. “It’s also the last few years. A lonely, hard marriage. The divorce. What a nightmare. The…” I choked. “The miscarriage.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she grabbed my hand. A few tears slipped out. I didn’t want Martin, but I had wanted that sweet baby, and so had my mother.
“I feel different than who I used to be. I know I’m different. I’m not the same Bellini Logan knew.”
“Painful times and grief and loss change us, darling girl, but you are still essentially you—deeply compassionate and temperamental when you see a wrong being done. Thoughtful. Unique. Self-reflective. A little absent-minded. A storyteller who is often in her head with Roxy Belle out on a farm. Efficient. Brilliant. Introverted. Cat-loving. Animal-loving. Chess player. Book lover. Unbelievably generous. Look what you’ve done for your ol’ mother!
You’re an artist. You wonder at nature. You are so funny. ”
“I’m not funny. I don’t feel funny at all. Too much seriousness in my life wrecked the funny part.”
She looked confused. “Oh, you are one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. You make everyone laugh with your dry sense of humor.”
“I feel like I’ve lost my sense of humor these last years. It’s like life beat it out of me. Things don’t seem as funny anymore.”
“It’s there, baby, it’s there. Your life needed to change, and you changed it.
You moved to a lovely cottage in Oregon.
” She glared at me sternly. “Curse Oregon! I hope you’ll move back here.
” Then she smiled to let me know she wasn’t mad and wasn’t trying to guilt-trip me.
“But your humor will come back, sugar. Sadness takes time to leave our aching hearts. It’s a thief in the night.
Grief comes and goes like a bulldozer. You have to get up after you’ve been steamrolled.
You have to let the sunshine in. Grab it with both hands, my love, whenever you see it. Grab the sunshine.”
I leaned against her, and she hugged me. We finished our cake, watched a home decorating show, and laughed at the cats, who were their own comedy show, as all cat owners know.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you with all my heart, dazzling daughter,” she said. She gave me a kiss. “Let’s have another piece of cake, shall we? Then we’ll go online and buy coats for the kids of Kalulell.”
That’s exactly what we did.
The cats helped, as expected.
When I finally went to bed, visions of Logan danced in my head. He was naked in all of the visions.
The funny thing about my mother is that though she is a flashy, entertaining extrovert at the bar who says outlandish things, does hilarious things, sings bawdy songs, and everyone thinks she’s a legend, at home she’s different.
Oh, she can still be outrageous and sharply blunt, but her personality dials down about ten notches.
She’s actually a homebody. She likes to stay at home, unless she’s going to one of her sisters’ houses.
She likes to knit, of all things. She likes to clean and organize.
She likes to bake. She likes to make homemade buttermilk pancakes.
She likes to read and sit on the porch and be quiet.
She likes to make baked Alaskas and light them on fire with the lights off.
She likes to watch the sunset, if she’s not at the bar, and she’ll often get up early to see the sunrise and think.
When she’s home, she does not wear makeup, though she wears a lot, complete with false eyelashes and glittery eye shadow and lipstick, at the bar.
She does not wear fancy clothes at home—jeans or sweats and sweatshirts with work boots make up her daily outfit.
She doesn’t do her hair up in an elaborate fashion.
Every morning, she drinks coffee and does the crossword, and she plays chess with me. We like to talk about books and the news and gardening. She likes to putter around and trim her plants and watch her favorite TV shows, like Marry Me.
Yes, Lady Whiskey is very different at work than she is at home, like so many people are between work and home. Everyone knows her as Lady Whiskey. I know her as Mom, the very best mother on the planet, even if she did have me making alcoholic drinks way too early.
She also has a comforting shoulder to cry on and a soothing voice filled with compassion, love, and—when you need it—a kick in the butt.
I dragged Christmas stuff out of the attic above the bar with Camellia, Marcos, and Javier. The bar was closed, but we’d be opening for lunch in about an hour, so the wait and kitchen staff, and our cleaning crew, were already running around.
I found the Coat and Glove Box, which used to be a box for a giant refrigerator.
It was wrapped in Frosty the Snowman wrapping paper.
The red bow around it was wrinkled, so I took it off and tied another huge red bow around the top, like a present, and we carried it to the side of the front door.
I hung a tagboard sign that said, “Santa Wants Help Giving Out Coats/Hats/Gloves to Kalulell’s Kids!
” I created a huge Santa hat out of construction paper and glued it to the top. Simple. But it would work.
“Can’t believe it’s Christmas again, and I still don’t have someone to kiss under the mistletoe,” Camellia said, tut-tutting.
“Maybe this will be your year,” I told her.
“I can hope. I nominated your mother for Marry Me.”
I put up my hands in surrender. “Thank you. She made me write that in the email. You know how she is. I can’t say no.”
“I nominated her, too,” Marcos said. “There is no other woman who would be a better bride.”
My mother hired Marcos when he was eighteen years old.
She was thirty at the time. By then, he’d had a tough life.
He had been in and out of foster care. He’d been homeless as a teen.
She’d literally found him leaning against the back of the bar in the middle of winter, starving.
She hired him. Now he had a home on two acres, a lovely wife, and five kids.
“Your mom would be perfect, but that Ruthie Deschutes O’Hara, she is my favorite reality show person ever,” Camellia said.
“She made me laugh so hard I had to dart myself to the bathroom. She’s bold.
She’s a rebel. She’s been through the wringer in life, but she still dares to live with gusto!
Gusto! I want to be her. I’m so glad she found her man.
He was steamy sexy! Good to know there are older men out there who can still make my heart pound and my nether regions feel alive. ”
We talked about Tony Beckett’s sexiness.
Marry Me with Ruthie Deschutes had been one of my favorite shows ever.
My mom and I would watch while we were on the phone together.
But I knew if my mom was on Marry Me, she would be just as much of a hit as Ruthie.
She would blow that dating show’s ratings sky-high.
Next, we got the bar decorated for Christmas.
We strung white lights through the open wood rafters, wound other strings across the bar, and threaded still more strings through the backs of booths and around the windows.
It positively sparkled in there. We brought out the eight-foot-tall plastic Santa my mom bought decades ago.
Santa holds a beer and looks a little drunk. She thought it was fitting.
We soon had three Christmas trees with ornaments and lights lighting up dark corners.
One had liquor bottle ornaments, one had various wineglasses and beer steins, and one white tree was decorated all in pink, my mother’s favorite color—because when I was a little girl, my favorite color was pink.
She told me, “There’s your tree, Bellini!
” and I remember looking at all the pink and white lights on the tree filled with pink and white ornaments and holding my mom’s hand in absolute wonder.
I had no idea that growing up in a bar and being able to name and make dozens of different alcoholic drinks was not something that most children did. I felt like I was making magical potions.