Chapter 8 #2
“I know what’s really wrong here,” Miriam said in that tone she got when she was going to lord her greater age and experience over her friends.
She always did it lovingly, and her friends were always amused by the smug delight their older friend got in doing so.
“You are experiencing what we in the business call ‘having an adult child.’”
“Bestow unto me your wisdom, Miriam,” Eleanor said, clasping her hands beneath her chin like a penitent. “How do I solve this worry inside of me?”
Miriam grinned at Eleanor’s silly performance.
“Ah, well, here is the bad news: you don’t.”
“Boo!” Cadence cried from behind her hand.
Miriam swatted Cadence’s knee.
“The problem with adult kids is that they don’t need you anymore,” Miriam said consolingly to Eleanor. “It means that you did your job as a parent well, but it still stinks. And that means that you don’t have very much control over things.”
Eleanor took a long sip of her wine for fortitude.
“So what you’re telling me,” she said, “is that I just have to accept my powerlessness in this situation?”
“Yup,” Miriam said.
“You are right,” Eleanor said. “That explanation stinks. Anybody got anything else in the advice department?”
“I can offer reassurance,” June said, raising her hand like a student. “Garrett is great and he loves you. I don’t know Jeremy, but he’s your kid, so I can only assume that he is great. And he definitely loves you. If nothing else, they’ll have ‘we love Eleanor’ to connect over.”
“I like that one better,” Eleanor said.
Miriam was unperturbed. “Age and experience, my friends. It cannot be denied.”
Cadence rubbed her hands together happily. “I love the part where we stop pretending that we’re talking about the book and get to gossiping,” she said. “Who else has got something?”
Nobody answered in words… but June blushed bright red.
Miriam, who could sniff out potential romance at a mile’s distance, leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees.
“Is there something you wish to contribute, Ms. Caldwell?” she asked eagerly.
“I… might have chatted with a guy at the last open mic night,” she admitted shyly, a becoming flush lingering on her cheeks. “This guy named Levi, Levi Hawkins, came over and complimented my singing.”
“Wait,” Cadence said, blinking in surprise. “Levi Hawkins said you were a good singer?”
June frowned, as did Miriam and Eleanor. But Diana’s excitement mirrored Cadence’s.
“Um, yeah,” June said. “Do you know him? I figured he was new to town.”
Diana and Cadence exchanged a look.
“Uh, yeah,” Cadence said. “I would say that Levi Hawkins is a very famous country singer.”
June’s face lost all its pinkness. Lost all of its color, actually. She went bone white.
“What?” she asked.
Diana and Cadence looked at one another again.
“That’s good though, right?” Diana asked supportively. “I mean, if he said you’re a good singer? He obviously knows what he’s talking about.”
June clapped her hands over her face.
“I offered him singing lessons!” she wailed from behind her fingers. “I thought he was flirting with me, and I don’t know what came over me! He said something about me being good enough to be a professional singer, and so I offered to give him lessons. But he actually is a professional!”
There was a pause as the women took this in.
“Wait…” Cadence said. “You offered him singing lessons and he still didn’t tell you who he was?”
“No,” June said behind her hands.
“What did he say about your offer?” she prodded.
“He agreed to the lessons,” June mumbled.
Cadence looked thrilled. “Juney, that’s so sweet!”
June parted two fingers and peeked out from behind them, revealing only one eye.
“How do you figure?” she asked.
“I’m with Cadence on this one,” Diana said. “If he agreed to take singing lessons from you, it was one hundred percent because he was flirting.”
June peeked out enough to show her other eye.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better,” she said.
“It definitely should,” Miriam said. “Famous singer hears you sing and wants to flirt with you? That’s a compliment if I’ve ever heard it. Also, I’m guessing he’s handsome. Please tell me he’s handsome.”
This seemed to make June feel worse. “He’s so handsome!” she wailed. “He’s so handsome, and he was nice, and then I made a total idiot of myself. And now I have to cancel, and that will be so humiliating.”
“Wait a minute,” Eleanor said. “You shouldn’t cancel.”
June dropped her hands entirely, apparently too shocked by this proclamation to hold her arms aloft any longer.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “He’s a professional musician. He won’t get anything out of singing lessons from me.”
“He might not be in it for the lessons though,” Eleanor reasoned.
“He wouldn’t have said yes if he didn’t want to spend time with you, whether to learn about music or not.
Which brings us back to flirting. So the question arises: do you want to go on what seems like it’s definitely a date and not actually a professional singing lesson with this guy? ”
June’s response came not in words but in a choked, anxious sound.
This sparked a flurry of debate among the women over which famous person they would most enjoy going on a date with, and then some gentle ribbing when Miriam’s answers were exclusively people who had been in the movies twenty or thirty years prior.
Eleanor listened more than participated, her worries drifting back to the forefront of her mind.
She watched June flicker between worry and optimism, thought back to Diana’s worries about confessing her love, and wondered when real life had intruded on her own honeymoon phase with Garrett.
Oh, things were still wonderful between them most of the time, but she couldn’t help but worry that the idyllic early stage would come crashing down if Garrett and Jeremy didn’t get along.
Whoever decided that falling in love was so complicated?
She didn’t dare put the question to the group, lest she get another answer like Miriam’s proclamation that she had to accept uncertainty in her life.
Uncertainty was the pits.
Even so, she couldn’t find herself longing for a simpler life, one where things were clearer.
Her marriage with her ex-husband had been characterized by very clear roles, for example, but she wouldn’t go back to that in a million years, not now that she’d been reminded what real love and closeness felt like.
So maybe she could manage it all.
Still, she would be happy when she finally had a few more answers about how her son and her boyfriend got along.