4. Delilah #2
Then, once a non-suspicious amount of time has passed, I venture into the dining room where she’s started working the good napkins through her favorite silver napkin rings.
“Your sister called me yesterday,” Mom remarks without looking up. “She was in a state. Some mix-up with her photos—the cloud, the storage, I don’t know how any of it works. She was very upset.”
I take a careful seat next to her and join the assembly line.
“Yeah?” I say. “Poor Viv.”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely beside herself. She takes things so hard. She’s got a big heart, that one. An artist’s soul.”
I close my eyes so she can’t see me rolling them. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“It’s got me thinking. Phones, photos, all this modern nonsense… Maybe we retire the slideshow.” She stops what she’s doing and gazes into the distance. “It’s so much fuss, and everyone has seen those pictures a hundred times.”
The blood drains from my face. This is exactly what I came here to prevent, but I didn’t think it would be such a direct and devastating assault on my plans.
Immediately, I want to protest. What? Cancel? No! We can’t!
But I know my mother. That would just make her dig her heels in more.
With Leanne, you have to play the long game. The sneaky game. Plant seeds and let them grow.
So I just say, “If that’s what you want. Seems a shame, though.”
She frowns. “Does it?”
“Yeah, I just mean… first year without Dad… He never missed it once, you know. He loved doing it.”
Her hands go still again. “He did love it.”
“Of course,” I add, “you can do whatever you want. It’s your house.”
“I know whose house it is, Delilah,” she snaps testily. “I don’t need you to remind me.”
“Right. Yeah. I know.”
She sighs and puts a hand to her cheek. Then she squints at me. “I suppose you went to a lot of trouble to put it all together already?”
I choke on a laugh. “Uh, yeah. ‘Trouble.’ You could definitely call it that.”
“Well.” She purses her lips. “I wouldn’t want that to go to waste then.”
Ha. That’s the first time in my whole life she’s cared about how much effort I’ve wasted.
I keep my nonchalant act going. We’re almost through the tough part, I think.
“Sure, Mom. If that’s what you want.”
“But it’s not long, is it? Your father did let it become such a bore some years, especially toward the end. You know, sometimes I wonder if the cancer was in his brain before it got to his liver and we just never knew.”
Oh, this witch. How have I tolerated her for this many years?
“Nope,” I promise her. “I’d say it’s short, sweet, and to the point.”
“Good. Good, that’s good.” She picks up a napkin, then puts it right back down and grabs my wrist suddenly. “But remember what I said, dear, okay?”
I blink. “That it’s your house?”
She raps me on the back of the hand hard enough to sting. “Don’t be fresh. I’m talking about Vivvy.”
“Oh. Right. Be nice to her.”
“That’s right. She’s having a hard week, and she deserves our grace.”
I’ve got a hotel receipt burning a hole in my pocket that says my week’s been harder. But hey, Vivian needs all the love and support she can get, right?
That’s why she had to borrow some love and support from my husband.
“Alright.” She picks the napkin back up. “Alright, then, it’s settled. We’ll do the silly show. Nobody has to look at it if they don’t want to.”
Having conceded one thing, my mother spends the next hour making sure I earn it.
I count and recount the guest list, then pull up thirty-odd folding chairs from the basement, repeatedly stubbing my toes on the uneven steps.
I lay out plates and trays for everything that all our family members have agreed to bring. Mom makes sure that I save the big sterling silver platter for “the desserts that Vivian is bringing. I’m sure they’ll be delightful; she has such an eye for these things.”
“She really does,” I grit out, sweating profusely.
She has me iron the tablecloth on the dining table with a towel under it.
She has me find the extra bulb for the hall lamp and put it in.
She has me hold one end of a garland while she decides it looks better on the banister, then better on the mantel, then better on the banister.
And for the entire two hours and ten minutes that all those tasks take, my mother does not ask me one question about me. Not about the bakery or the Christmas rush, my marriage or when I might be having kids.
She does not ask me how I’m doing on the first Christmas without my father, either.
She does stop twice to tell me about Vivian. Once to say that Vivian sent her a photo of herself in Tulum and she should be a model, she really should, it’s a shame she never went that route.
And once, at the ironing board, to say, “Your sister never should have left interior design. She’s the one who told me to put the tree in front of the window. Do you see how pretty it looks?”
What she neglects to mention is that I’m the one who actually put it there.
I dragged the massive thing over, heavy base and all, filled it with water and Sprite to keep the limbs fresh, and vacuumed up the needles.
“She really does,” I say. “I’m lucky to be her sister.”
At quarter past twelve, I load the empty tube and the tote back in the trunk, keep the laptop bag over my shoulder, and go back inside for the run-of-show.
Finally, after numerous tweaks and changes, Mom is mostly satisfied.
She walks me to the door. “And come back at six tonight, won’t you?” she asks. “Someone has to let the caterer in, and I’ll be upstairs getting ready.”
Six. On top of the run back here at four with the food. I told Connor that plan at dinner last night and he said, “Three trips? Is that a good use of your time?”
That just makes me laugh now. Even my cheating husband thinks this family overbooks me.
But again, I have to remind myself to bury my resentment just a little bit longer.
“Happy to,” I say. I fake like I’m leaving, then say, as if it just occurred to me, “Oh, and we’ll do the slideshow right after dinner?”
She’s already turning back into the house. “Sure, sure. After dinner. I don’t care either way, dear. I’m sure no one will be paying much attention anyhow.”
She’s wrong about that. But at least I got the answer I drove out here for.
It was a close call, though. One tear-stained phone call from Vivian nearly canceled the whole thing. Sheer dumb luck got it back, and I won’t get that lucky twice.
If the show doesn’t go on tonight, it never will.
And one thing’s for damn sure:
This show must go on.
I go from sweaty to frigid in just the time it takes to walk out to where my car is parked on the curb. Then, to compound my misery, my car heater decides to take its sweet time firing up.
While I wait, I sit with my hands on the wheel and go over everything.
The screen is up on the long wall.
The projector is cabled down and dialed in, with my laptop cued up and ready to roll.
We’ll eat dinner at seven and herd everybody into the living room after. Fifty people, all unprepared witnesses for the public shaming of a lifetime.
It all seems set.
One thing’s still bothering me, though.
My mom bringing up Vivian’s photo scare. Something about the way she did it was just wrong. After a moment of thought, I realize why.
She didn’t ask what the photos were.
That’s strange, right? What does a normal person say when you tell them you’re having a meltdown about accidentally sharing some photos on your phone? You’d say, What kind of photos, wouldn’t you?
But she didn’t. She didn’t ask me, and she didn’t ask Vivian, either, as far as I can tell.
Definitely strange. But it’s also very Leanne. I don’t know if she’s a narcissist in the strict psychiatric sense of the word, but for sure she’s mostly concerned with herself.
Honestly, if she’d asked a follow-up question, that would have been the alarming thing. I’d have checked her for a fever.
Which, fine. Today, it works in my favor. The fewer questions between me and that projector, the better.
At long last, the heat finally kicks in. I cup my hands over the vent until I can feel them again.
Then I put the car in drive and pull out.
Party’s in six hours.
I’ve got a slideshow to finish.