14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Benji
I don’t know what I expected from the house of a woman who ditched her daughter at an all-male revue in Vegas. It probably should have been a small house with a jungle of a wildflower garden and wandering chickens, though.
“And this is my mom,” Gina says with a sigh.
Her mom slowly turns, like she’s waking up from a daydream, and her smile widens when she sees Gina.
“Baby!” she yells, startling a chicken that had wandered close. She doesn’t drop the brush as she rushes over and wraps Gina into a hug like she hasn’t seen her in years.
“Can you turn the music down?” Gina asks, wiggling to avoid the paintbrush, which is dangerously close to her hair.
Her mother laughs. “Have to find my phone first.”
Gina glances around, spotting the phone in the too-long grass, the bejeweled case glittering in the sun. While she picks it up and drops the volume, her mother looks me over.
“So you must be the second cousin,” she says with a smile that immediately calls bullshit. “I’ve had three messages on Facebook about you,” her mother says. “But not from anyone I like, so I’ve ignored them. Since Gina doesn’t have any second cousins, this better be something juicy.”
“Benji, this is my mother, Dawn; Mom, this is Benji. We met at the show you stood me up at in Vegas.” Gina says this matter-of-factly, her lips twitching in what I hope is the start of a smile. “We got drunk and got married.”
“Holy shit!” Dawn says, covering her mouth with her paintbrush still in hand.
“You got mar—I’ve always wanted a handsome son-in-law!
” Dawn throws her arms around me, turning her head to talk to her daughter.
“Thank god you finally came to your senses about Milo, but for fuck’s sake, Gina, why didn’t you tell me you got freaking married in Vegas! It’s been four months.”
“Because I didn’t remember,” Gina says petulantly. “And what’s wrong with Milo?”
“Nothing is wrong with Milo,” Dawn says, releasing me and patting my cheeks. “Milo’s fine for someone else.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say brightly.
Gina rolls her eyes.
Her mom floats over and pats her cheeks, too. “Milo isn’t going to help you pull that stick out of your ass, baby girl.” She turns to me, her eyes sparkling. “But you” —she gasps as some of what Gina said about our meeting sinks in—“are you one of the dancers?”
“Yeah.”
Dawn raises her head to the sky. “Thank you, Jesus, for sending my daughter a hot young stripper and for somehow convincing her to marry him.”
“You’re not religious,” Gina says pointedly.
“And yet the heavens have answered my prayers,” Dawn says with a gleam in her eyes. “You’re an old woman before your time. Age doesn’t matter nowadays, but you’re old the way your grandmother was old—”
“Maybe if you’d grown up, I wouldn’t have had to,” Gina snaps.
Her mother doesn’t look offended, and I feel they’ve had this argument a lot. But as I look back and forth between them, it hits me how close in age they must be. Dawn must have been very young when she had Gina.
Dawn frowns when Gina tells her that our marriage needs to be a secret because she’s still engaged to Milo. She grumbles that it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard, and why can’t Gina ditch Milo and stay married to me?
“Because I’m marrying Milo,” Gina says, but that’s still not an answer. I don’t want to press her too hard and have it backfire, but maybe her mother will.
She doesn’t.
“Well,” Dawn says, reaching for her joint.
She pats the pockets of her jeans in search of a lighter.
“You had an adventure in Vegas, so I guess you’re my daughter after all.
” She gives up on the lighter, even though it’s sitting next to the ashtray, and drops the joint again.
“It’s lunchtime, and I’m starving. Let’s go inside and see what we can rustle up. ”
Dawn heads toward the house, but Gina grabs my arm. “Don’t eat anything she’s baked unless you want to spend the rest of the day staring at sunbeams.”
I laugh. “Bad experience?”
Gina gives me a wry smile. “Let’s just say she’s banned from school bake sales but is very popular at a handful of potlucks.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Funny now. Wasn’t funny when I was fourteen and puked my guts out for six straight hours from one brownie.”
“She didn’t tell you not to touch them?”
Gina’s lips flatten. “She forgot to tell anyone. Half the town was high as a kite. The police got involved.”
We step into the house, and I freeze in place.
Calling it cluttered would be generous. The table is covered in clear plastic trays of beads and spools of thin metal wire.
Dishes that haven’t been put away yet cover most of the small counter space, and there’s an old thriller paperback sitting on a stack of plates.
All the crafts—sun catchers, pottery, paintings—at Gina’s cabin must have come from her mother. The walls, windows, and shelves are full of them.
Dirty dishes fill the sink, and more cups peek out from behind leafy fake plants, sit atop stacks of magazines, or hide among more crafting supplies. The living room might as well be a wardrobe. There’s clothes everywhere, a large fluffy cat sleeping on a pile covering the sofa.
“I’ve been meaning to tidy up,” Dawn says, opening the fridge.
Gina is already putting clean dishes away. “Did you feed your hens today?”
Dawn closes the fridge. “Shit. Be right back.”
“At least they’re free-range. They won’t starve,” Gina says as she drops spoons and forks into a drawer. “She shares them with a neighbor, who helps her look after them. Let’s grab the groceries.”
We bring in the three bags for Gina’s mom, and Gina puts them away while I go over to the sink full of dirty dishes. There doesn’t seem to be a dishwasher. I pull out enough dishes to reach the drain plug and fill the sink with hot water.
“It doesn’t always look this bad around here, either,” Gina says, putting the last groceries away.
I don’t know if she’s filling the silence or trying to make excuses for her mom.
“When she gets sucked into something like her painting, or necklace making, or pottery, or whatever the hobby of the moment is, she loses track of time. Then she looks around and gets overwhelmed, or she starts to clean up but gets pulled away when she finds a lost paintbrush or something.”
Gina opens a drawer and digs around for a clean kitchen towel. “I love my mother. I accept that she’s eccentric and artsy or whatever. I just wish she’d accept that I’m not like her.”
“Baby girl,” Dawn says with a laugh as she breezes in through the front door, “You married a stripper in Vegas. You are more like me than you realize.”
“You cannot tell anyone,” Gina says, pinning her mother with a stern look. “I’m trusting you with the truth—”
“Because you have to after making up some ridiculous lie about being second cousins, not because you want to.” Dawn points out. “If I didn’t know and someone asked me, I could blow the whole thing apart.”
“You can’t tell anyone, Mom. I mean it.”
Dawn waves this off. “I won’t. Now, lunch. I’ve got hotdogs. And Cheetos. That okay?”
“I thought you were vegan now,” Gina says, taking the plate from my hands almost before I finish washing it. “How old are those hotdogs?”
“They’re fine. And I eat meat on Wednesdays.”
“It’s Thursday.”
“Fuck,” Dawn says, crossing her arms and looking irritated. “I just want a hotdog, Gina. Is that okay with you?”
Gina grumbles something but puts the plate away. Dawn fishes around on the top of the fridge and pulls down three long two-pronged sticks, grabs the packet of hotdogs out of the fridge, along with a beer, and heads outside.
I dry my hands with the towel Gina’s still holding. She looks as irritated as her mother. She all but jumps when I cup her shoulders. “She’s not going to tell anyone.” At least not on purpose.
Gina doesn’t look convinced. “Maybe I should’ve told her you were just a friend.”
“If I were just a friend , she’d be wondering why you told everyone we were second cousins,” I point out. “If it gets out, we’ll deal with it.”
“But Happy Lake—” she cuts herself off, then shakes her head. “This is such a mess.”
I test her with a little pull, and Gina comes to me, resting her head against my shoulder. “You don’t have to deal with it alone,” I tell her.
She takes a deep breath and nods. I plant a soft kiss near her hairline, happy she’s letting me hold her.
She doesn’t let me for long, but when she pulls back, she smiles at me. “Thanks.”
“Let’s go eat some hotdogs,” I say as she steps toward the cluttered table. I’m not letting her clean any more of her mother’s house.
She grumbles but leads the way to the campfire.
Lunch isn’t too bad. Gina settles down, and she’s not even sitting downwind of Dawn, who smokes her joint while cooking her hotdog over the campfire.
Dawn asks me questions—and not the usual boring ones, either.
She asks about manscaping and chafing and if we make our costumes.
Between her questions and my answers, we get a few smiles out of Gina—even a laugh when I tell her about the time one of the guys sewed my Velcro-ed seams shut before rehearsal, and I launched myself off stage trying to yank my pants off.
When the hotdogs are gone, Gina stands. “We have to get back to work.”
“Thanks for the groceries,” Dawn says. “You know you didn’t have to. There’s some money under the speckled hen on the kitchen counter. And Gina—”
Gina had been waving off the offer of money, but she pauses.
“You say you’re marrying Milo, but Benji makes you smile.” When Gina says nothing, her mother sighs. “Is it worth it?”
Gina shoots a panicked glance at me, then turns and storms off across the yard. “Thanks for lunch,” she calls back.
“Nice meeting you,” I say quickly to Dawn, hurrying to catch up with Gina, my heart sinking.
I can make my wife smile. I can make her happy. But what if that’s not enough?
I could ask her. Maybe I should. But I don’t think I can take it if she looks at me with those green eyes full of pity and tells me she could never be with me. I don’t want to hear what she doesn’t say out loud—that I’m not enough.
Maybe, every time she’s brought up divorce, that’s what she meant.