23. Mandy
No matter how much you love a particular food, if you eat it too often, you’ll probably get sick of it. If you really, really eat too much, you may find that your love of that food turns into hate. It’s a pretty simple concept for most humans to understand. I mean, we’ve all listened to our favorite song so many times that it started to make us cringe. We’ve probably also eaten so many Pringles that we had to avoid the chip aisle.
At least for a few days.
The harder lesson is that in life, no matter how good the day, that joy never lasts.
If I hadn’t been quite so happy about Tommy’s revelation that he had liked me all this time, I wouldn’t be so upset when he leans over, snatches the stack of paper at the end of my coffee table, and stands. “I think it’s time for me to call it a night.” His nostrils flare as he inhales, and his chest rises and falls.
Then he walks across my family room and out the front door.
I want to chase after him. I want to shout and beg and tell him how sorry I am, but the man I know wouldn’t be swayed by any of that. Or at least, the boy I knew wouldn’t have been.
He didn’t flip out on me, because that’s also not his way.
Tommy’s going back to his hotel, and he’ll read through the paperwork, and he’ll think about what I said, and he’ll make some kind of decision. He’ll have to decide how upset he was by my news, and how delighted he was by my other revelation, and then he’ll weigh out which one is more important. Until he has, all the arguing in the world won’t help.
But unlike Jed, he’s not pretending I’m not alive. He was polite, and he was calm, and he will remain that way. He’s been gone a few moments when a ding from my phone reminds me of something important. The message is from the principal, asking me to pass along an email he’s sending to Mr. Collins, and offering him the terms under which he could take over for Mr. Hammerly.
I waste no time forwarding the email, and then I take a screenshot of the message and the email and text it over in case he’s not consistent about checking his email. It could also get caught by his spam filter, since I’m not a very frequent email contact, and I’m quite sure Principal Miller has never emailed him at all.
I KNOW YOU’RE UPSET WITH ME, AND I DON’T BLAME YOU, I text. BUT IF YOU CAN SPARE THE TIME, PLEASE STICK AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO HELP EMERY AND THE OTHER KIDS.
Two very long hours later, he replies. I WOULD BE HONORED TO DIRECT THEIR PLAY, AND I’M WILLING TO TEACH THE ART CLASSES TOO, AT LEAST UNTIL THEY CAN FIND A BETTER REPLACEMENT.
And just like that, I have an ‘in.’
Of course, the very next day, I’m thrown into a panic. Amanda’s busy dealing with Maren, who’s now boycotting school entirely, and that leaves me to manage a reservation mix-up at the retreat while Helen flies across the country for some last-minute work thing.
When I hear that she’s spotting, I nearly break down crying.
How can all the good things in our lives be so precarious? My tears won’t help her, especially if they keep me from cleaning up the problems here, so I keep right on working, unraveling the nightmare of the clerk who apparently spent the two months she was working for us stoned, and by the next day, I hear that Helen’s been released and is coming home. I’m able to message back with a party emoji and the message that, ALL THE RESERVATION MIX-UPS ARE FIXED. AND THE NEW CLERKS ALL PASSED THEIR DRUG SCREENS.
Hallelujahs all around.
Only, I haven’t heard from Tommy, and it’s been a day and a half.
I’m not proud of myself when I text Amanda and offer to pick up Emery, but sometimes you have to take any chance you can get.
I miss Tommy’s face.
Which is pathetic.
When did I turn into such a dope?
“Hey, Emery.” I wave as I walk into the back of the theater.
She’s not the only face that turns toward me, and my stomach flips and then flops when Tommy meets my eye. He nods, and then he looks back down at the script in front of him, his little red pen darting across the page to change things here and there.
Emery jogged, so she’s already reached me in the back. “Mr. Collins is amazing,” she says. “He’s so funny, and everyone loves him. They’re so jealous that he’s dating my grandma.”
I can’t help darting a glance his way, but if he heard her, he didn’t react to it. “I’m not sure we are dating,” I whisper. Then I drop my voice even lower. “I told him the truth two days ago, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
Emery blinks. “But. . .”
“But what?”
“I introduced him at yesterday’s practice as my grandma’s boyfriend, and everyone cheered and laughed, and he didn’t say anything to contradict me.”
“What would he say?” I whisper.
If I could crawl into a hole right now, I’d do it.
The joy I would usually feel about her telling people that I’m her grandma evaporates at the thought that Tommy might have been irritated, or worse, furious. What was I thinking, picking up Emery? “It’s not like he’d renounce me in front of the whole cast.” He’s far too nice for that.
“I guess,” Emery says. “Or maybe he’s just taking time to think things over, but he still feels about you the same way he always has. That’s my guess.”
I shrug like I’m nonchalant, even though my mind is now spinning out. “Maybe.” That night at home, my traitorous fingers check my phone incessantly, hoping that she’s right.
But he never texts.
The next day, while I’m in the True Value shopping for more broccoli and green peas because my cardiologist insists I eat them daily, I glance down at my purse for one second, and when I look up again, I almost run into him. I expect him to ignore me, but he doesn’t.
“Mandy.”
He’s holding one of those pathetic little plastic baskets, and all he has in it are three sad-looking TV dinners.
“What are those?”
“I was worried I might run into you at Brownings or the Gorge,” he says.
That makes me laugh. “No chance of that. I’ve been hiding at home.”
He laughs, too. “I suppose fate had other plans this time around.”
“Listen,” I say. “The last thing I want to do is make your life miserable while you’re here. You are only here to help out my granddaughter.”
“But she’s not,” Tommy says. “She’s not related to you in any way.” He frowns. “She’s Jed’s great-niece, but you had nothing to do with him.”
“From the moment those two women came into town, they’ve been like daughters to me,” I say. “Sometimes the family we choose is dearer to us than the people we’re born to love.” Or at least, I like to think it’s true, since I don’t have any children of my own. It feels true.
“The gas station attendant tells me that you bought Abigail and her son Jed’s ranch back. Did he really leave it to a charity?”
“Worse. That idiot left it to an alien foundation like a complete crackpot.” I suppress my urge to swear. It’s not especially ladylike, which is fine because I’m not much of a lady, but it doesn’t seem like the best time to advertise that fact. “I was just repairing his idiocy.”
“Some things really never change.” Tommy’s half-smiling.
“I’m so sorry.” The moment I say it, I know it’s a mistake.
Tommy’s face darkens like the rolling clouds of an impending storm. “I can’t, Mandy.”
“I waited two years for Jed to forgive me,” I say. “He never did.”
“I’m nothing like him.” Now he looks even more upset.
Nice work, Mandy. “I know you aren’t. So when the play is done, if you’re still upset, please go home. Don’t feel bad about it, either. No hard feelings from me.”
“It’s not that I—” He sighs. “I’m not angry, or not just angry, anyway.”
“Your TV dinners are going to melt and they’ll be even worse than they already are,” I say. “You don’t have to explain anything to me right now. Just go.” I step aside.
“Oh, well, now that I know you’re hiding at home, I don’t have to eat these.” He chucks them back into the bin. “Thanks for suffering so I don’t have to.”
I gesture at my mounds of broccoli. “Actually, it’s years of delicious bacon I have to thank for my suffering. I’m supposed to eat these blasted greens with every meal, which is fine during the summer when my garden’s in full bloom, but it’s really obnoxious over the winter, when I’m stuck eating wilty junk they bring up from Mexico.”
“At least it’s not all canned.” He pulls a face. “I hated canned pears the most, I think.”
“It’s just that they’re so good fresh. . .”
“And so mealy and stringy and gross canned.” Tommy’s smiling. “You know, I didn’t even know I like pears until I was an adult and tried a fresh one for the first time. Why did our moms use exclusively canned fruit?”
“I think transportation was harder,” I say, just a little proud of myself for making him smile about fruit. I can’t help being optimistic as I turn to march up the aisle and pay. My cause can’t be totally hopeless if he can smile during an awkward exchange in the grocery store.
Or maybe the fact that he’s already getting over his upset indicates he didn’t feel that strongly about me in the first place. I pause, thinking things through slowly. Should I be hoping it takes him a long time? Deep feelings are harder to sort out, right?
“Mandy.” Someone grabs my elbow.
I’m pretty sure it’s Tommy.
I shouldn’t be so desperately hopeful, but I can’t help it. My heart swells with it as I turn and confirm that it is him.
“Yeah?” My voice is embarrassingly breathy, like I’m auditioning for the role of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.
“I’m not angry at you as much as I am at myself. Instead of pushing you to tell Jed how you felt. . .” He releases me and steps back, his head down, focused on his now empty plastic basket.
That’s when I understand. If he had told me how he felt, instead of writing to threaten me, we wouldn’t have wasted all this time. “I’m embarrassed,” I admit. “The whole thing is embarrassing.”
“It shouldn’t be. Your family taught you to lie,” he says.
My jaw drops.
“Your dad was kind of famous for it.”
That stings, but it’s not untrue. He never stole, but he’d boast about unbelievable things with the best of them. And when he got drunk, it was even worse. “That’s no excuse.”
“I ruined our lives, not you.” He steps closer, shaking his head. “I messed this up, and it’s hard for me to live with that.”
I look up at him, the stupid burgeoning hope soaring. “You—I told you I traveled.”
“I knew that part wasn’t true, at least not after you got married.” His lip’s twitching. “Jed wouldn’t even go on the field trip to San Francisco, and his mom kept offering to pay for half the class if he’d go.”
I forgot about that.
“He never went to see his brother, either. At least, not when his parents went out to visit Clyde at school. I asked him why once, and he said, ‘if it can’t be reached within one tank of gas of here, I don’t want to see it.’”
His impression of Jed is so spot on, I can barely handle it. Once I start laughing, Tommy does, too.
“If you can forgive me for being an idiot, I can try to forgive myself,” he says.
“I’m the idiot.”
“You overheard me trying to be a good friend to you,” he says. “If I could convince Jed I didn’t like you, I thought you had a chance of getting what I thought you wanted. And also, if I told him I liked you, when you did get together, he’d make you stay away from me. At the time, that felt like the worst of all possible options.”
“But you were never in the way of him and me.”
“Everyone in town thought you and Jed were star-crossed lovers. If you had any idea how many people told me your tragic story.” His hand’s clutched so tightly around the handle of the basket that I’m worried he’ll break the flimsy plastic.
“I’m sorry about that,” I say. “But we weren’t really star-crossed. We were just cross.”
His lip twitches with suppressed mirth.
“I don’t want us to be cross,” I whisper. “I was too happy the one day we were straight.”
He drops the basket then, and he yanks me away from mine, pulling me tightly against his body. I’m sure everyone in the store is covering their eyes or making puking sounds, but I’m giddy as a lamb in a field in springtime when he drops his head toward mine. “I love you, Mandy Saddler, and I don’t want to waste any more time eating television dinners alone. I want to spend the rest of my time right here.”
“In the grocery store?” I grimace. “Because that could be awkward.”
He’s smiling when he kisses me.
And it’s just exactly the kiss I’ve always dreamed about. I forget about the world around me, about where we’re standing, about why I’m here. Nothing matters except his arms around me, and his breath on my face. Until he finally releases me, and I realize that my top denture has come loose and is now falling down on top of my bottom teeth.
“I better go check out,” I manage to mumble. “Why don’t you pick up some food and meet me at my place.”
Ours may be the strangest romance ever told, but I like my romance with a side of laughter. So when he gets to my house with two burgers, one patty made with disgusting black beans he insists are heart healthy, I tell him thanks, and then I confess why I shot out of the store like a calf from its first hoof trim.
I know I picked the right man when he laughs so loudly that Jed squeals and heads for the back door. Sizzling chemistry is great, but someone to laugh with matters so much more, and I’m old enough to realize that.
Thank goodness that Tommy and I have both.