Home to Harmony

What if he withdrew altogether? Christine would hate that. He provided the only spice and spark to her time at Harmony House. Dammit. For all its thrills, sex could be such a pain. If she lost Marcus’s friendship because of her stupid libido…

What did he think about her anyway? Men were a puzzle to her. Maybe because she’d never really known her father and had only Harmony House’s hippies and drifters as examples of manhood. There was Bogie, of course, who was sweet, but mostly a ghost in her life.

Her first sex with Dylan had confused and kind of scared her. After that came Skip, a smooth operator who’d promised much and given little, then one, two, three more screwups before she finally learned her lesson—hold back her heart, stick with short-term fun and friendship.

She didn’t blame her past or anything. She’d screwed up all on her own. But she wished to hell she was better with men.

Christine closed the last cupboard and sighed. Time to try to talk with David.

Outside the front door, the porch smelled of sun-scorched wood, reminding her of summer, returning wet and shivery from a swim in the river to dig into a slice of watermelon warm from the garden, spitting seeds at the other kids, letting the juice run down her chin, not caring about being neat at all.

The porch, with its rockers, wooden swing and cable spool tables had always been a popular hangout for talk, cards, music or watching people play Frisbee or dance in the yard.

“Nice night.” Aurora’s voice, from a rocking chair, startled her out of her reverie.

“Yes, it is.”

“Where you headed?” her mother asked, sipping iced tea, the ice cubes rattling gently in her glass.

“To check on David. We had an argument.”

“I’d leave him be if I were you.”

Christine bit back a sharp response. Aurora had hardly been Parent of the Year and now she was dishing out advice? Christine forced down her spike of outrage and sank into the fabric hammock for a moment. Now was as good a time as any to update Aurora on the clay works.

Organizing her thoughts, she ran her hands over the colorful braids that formed the hammock. “I recognize this cloth. Where’s it from?”

“It used to be my bedspread. Bogie made the hammock. He can make you one if you like. He does that for people.”

“Maybe we could sell them. Handcrafted at a commune? I bet the gift shops where we’re placing our ceramics would buy tons.”

Her mother chuckled. “You are a slave to profit. David’s right.” She was in a good mood at least.

“We all have our gifts.” Christine fingered the familiar cloth, lost in memory for a moment. She’d loved her mother’s bed, the smell of vanilla and patchouli, the orange light through the Indian-print curtains on the window.

“I liked your waterbed…the way it jiggled. You used to tell me stories sometimes.” When Aurora allowed it, Christine would cuddle up to her, toying with her mother’s thick braid while Aurora talked and talked.

“You and your endless questions,” Aurora said. “You were relentless.”

“They were mostly about my father,” she said, remembering vividly. “You would never tell me much about him.”

“It wasn’t relevant.” She locked gazes with Christine. “Do you tell David all about Skip?”

“Skip is a train wreck. My father was a good man.” A police officer who died in the line of duty when Christine was three.

“I told you he loved you. That should have been enough.”

“I wanted to know everything.” She remembered the gold buttons on his blue uniform, and the smell of leather and aftershave. “You didn’t even save a picture.”

Aurora shrugged. That was that. End of topic.

Christine felt a stab of the helpless feeling she used to get over Aurora’s stubborn silences—wanting so much to know about her father and having Aurora lock him away and toss the key. At least Christine had grown out of that pointless pain.

All she wanted now was to keep this fragile peace with her mother until it was time to leave. They were too different, her mother too shut down for them to ever be close, which had been her old stupid fantasy.

“You went ahead and bought that computer, didn’t you?” Aurora said gruffly.

“It was a good price, so, yes.”

“But you didn’t clear it with me. We agreed—”

“It was the one you chose, Aurora, with the features you liked, remember?” Her mother had pored over the catalog Christine had searched out on her laptop. “Tomorrow I want to show you the draft of the Web site. Also the PayPal account.”

“PayPal? This is the first I’ve heard of that,” she snapped, eyes sparking in the dim light of the porch.

“You wanted something easy to manage, remember? Lucy and I worked out the details. If you don’t like it we’ll change it.”

Her mother rocked angrily for a few seconds.

Christine took a slow breath and blew it out. Why did this bother her so much? She never got testy with clients when they second-guessed her. Only Aurora made her temper flare. “Also, I can get agency rates for some advertising at key venues that I know will generate more orders. If that’s all right, I’d like to set that up.”

“I told you before we’re not an assembly line.”

Calm, calm, calm. Lucy had asked her to push this issue with Aurora, so Christine would do her best. “Lucy and I worked out a plan. By enhancing the kiln, adding a second shift, plus some on-call part-timers, it’ll be easy. No worries for you or pressure. In your condition, you need low stress, so—”

“You let me worry about my condition.” Her mother glared at her. “You could stand to lower your stress, too. You act like if you hold still for one minute the world will stop turning.”

Christine closed her eyes to collect herself. She tried to rise above, but her mother’s digs and grumbles stung like sandpaper on a sunburn. “It’s your show, Aurora. If you don’t want ads, we won’t buy ads. But Lucy is getting frustrated. If you don’t watch it, you’ll lose her.”

Her mother stopped rocking and seemed to consider that. “Just be sure you stick around until every kink is worked out, like you said you would.” There was that underlying plea again: Please stay.

The request felt like a weight on Christine’s chest, making it hard to breathe. She couldn’t stay. No way. David hated it here, for one thing. He had school and she had plans to open her own agency. She had a life in Phoenix. Here was an awkward limbo.

She comforted herself with the thought that Aurora must be feeling weak still. As soon as she was herself again, she’d probably pack Christine’s bags herself.

“I’ll stay until you boot me out. How’s that?” she said, using the cheery voice of a nurse with a grumpy patient.

“See that you do,” Aurora said, as if she’d won a fight. “And do something with your room before you go. Paint it, replace that god-awful furniture with stuff from the spare room. That pink-and-gingham mess depresses the hell out of me.”

Great. Another mean zing to Christine’s heart. So much for Bogie’s claim that Aurora meditated about Christine in the room she’d kept the same all these years. The man lived in a sunny-side-up haze.

“Well, I like my old room,” Christine said just to be stubborn. “It’s darling. It makes me think of fairy tales.” She grinned.

“Good God,” her mother groused, looking off across the yard in the dark to where mesquite trees were silhouetted by moonlight. Was she smiling? Maybe.

Mission accomplished, more or less, so Christine rose from the hammock to go to David.

“You do need to cut David some slack,” Aurora said.