Man With A Mission

“No, but trying to pick her for me is.”

“I’m not picking her for you,” she insisted, apparently affronted that her good intentions were so misunderstood. “I’m helping you find some potential candidates. You don’t seem to be working toward it at all.”

“I’m building a business.”

“I’m going to be seventy in ten years!”

He laughed outright. “Mom, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Right now you’ve just turned sixty. And a youthful sixty. Relax. There’s lots of time.”

There was a moment’s silence, then she asked gravely, “What if I told you I was dying?”

His heart thumped against his ribs and he swerved to the side of the road, screeching to a halt. “What?” he demanded.

“Well, I’m not,” she said, tugging on her coat collar, clearly feeling guilty for having startled him, “but what if I was? Am I to go to my grave without ever holding a grandbaby in my arms?”

Hank put his left hand to his face and rested the wrist of the other atop the steering wheel. “Mom,” he said, “I’m going to drive you to your grave myself if you ever do that to me again!”

“I was trying to make a point,” she huffed.

“The point is you sometimes act like a lunatic!” He checked the side mirror and pulled out onto the road again, his pulse dribbling back to normal. “I’m trying to build a business, Mom. Relax about grandchildren, okay?”

“I’m thinking about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re alone.”

“I like it that way.”

He turned onto the short road that led to her driveway, and drove up to the house. He pulled to a stop and turned off the engine. He always walked her up the steps and saw her inside.

“I thought you came home because you realized that while you loved your work for NASA, you didn’t have a life. It was all future and no present.”

He jumped out of the van, walked around to pull out the step stool he kept for her in the back, then opened her door and placed the stool on the ground. He offered her his hand. “That’s true. And I’m enjoying my life here. I just need a little time to get all the parts of it together. Be patient, Mom.”

She stepped carefully onto the stool, then down to the driveway. After tossing the stool into the back of the van, he took her arm to walk her up the drive.

“You’re not still trying to prove something to your father with the business, are you?” she asked. “I mean, you were an engineer at NASA. You don’t have anything else to prove. You don’t have to expand Whitcomb’s Wonders until you have franchises all over the country and appear on the big board.”

He opened his mouth to deny that he was trying to prove anything, but he knew that wouldn’t be true. Every time he did anything, he could imagine his father watching him, finding fault.

“He always tried hard,” she said, squeezing his arm, “and he did well, but everything was difficult for him. Then you came along, all brains and personality, and he couldn’t help resenting that. I know I’ve told you that a million times, but I sometimes wonder if you really understand it. He loved you, he just resented that you were smarter than he was, that things would be easy for you.”

“I worked liked a dog to end up at NASA.”

“I know. But some people work hard all their lives and never get anywhere. He had dreams, too, but he never got out of that little appliance repair shop.”

Hank remembered that his father had little rapport with his customers and slaved away in the back room, taking no pleasure in his work.

“Anyway,” Adeline said, “sometimes old insecurities can come back to haunt us when we’re trying something new, or reaching for something we’re not sure we should have. You deserve to be happy, Hank. And if you won’t reach for that happiness, I’m going to keep working on it for you. So, when can you see Laural McIntyre?”

Hank drew himself out of moody thoughts about his father to the present and the urgent need to get out of meeting the visitor from New York.

“Actually, I’m meeting Jackie on Saturday,” he said, walking his mother up the porch steps.

She brightened instantly. He could see her smile in the porch light. “You are? Where?”

“Perk Avenue Tea Room.”

She looked puzzled. “Where?”

“It’s a new coffee bar, tearoom, desserty sort of place on the square.” She didn’t have to know that they’d be “meeting” because Jackie was cutting the ribbon for the grand opening, and he was helping with the wiring for the sign, which wasn’t expected to arrive until late Friday night.

His mother studied him suspiciously. “You were fighting the last time I saw you together.”

He nodded. “But you didn’t see everything. I ran into her later, we talked, and…I’m seeing her next week.” A slight rearrangement of the truth, but the truth all the same.

“Well, see now, that wasn’t so hard.” She gave him a quick hug. “Will you tell me all about it after?”

“The shop, yes,” he said. “Jackie, no.”

She shrugged, seemingly undisturbed. “I’ll just ask the girls at Sunday School. Thanks for dinner, sweetie.”

“Sure, Mom.” He ran down the steps as she closed and locked the door.

Great. Jackie’s girls were in his mother’s Sunday School class. She’d mentioned that once, but he’d forgotten.

When he’d been a kid, she’d had spies everywhere. It had been impossible to see a girl, cruise downtown, or sneak a beer without someone reporting him to his mother.

It was annoying that he was thirty-five, and nothing had changed.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE MET HIS MOTHER’S SPIES on Saturday. He’d been working at Perk Avenue for several hours when the crowd began to gather out front for the ceremony. He’d turned the sign on and it glowed brightly, a tall cup of neon mocha complete with a swirl of whipped cream standing beside a fat teapot. Underneath, the name of the shop was written in elegant neon script. The whole sign appeared to sit atop a triangle of neon lace.

The two matrons who owned the shop applauded their approval then wrapped their arms around him.

Hank went back inside as several people in the gathering crowd came forward to congratulate the women. He was collecting his tools when the front door burst open and a little girl in a flared red coat and matching hat ran in. Long straight blond hair fell to her shoulders. In her gray eyes was a desperate look. He recognized her as Jackie’s youngest. He studied her one brief moment, realizing that except for a slight difference in the shade of her hair, this was what Jackie had looked like as a child.

“Hi,” he said finally, coiling a length of wire. “Lost your mom?”

She shook her head, looking left, then right.

He took another guess. “Bathroom?”

She nodded.

He pointed to the little alcove directly to the right of the door.