“You boys stop it,”
March said, half annoyed and half laughing. Scott and Phillip had invaded her kitchen and were tossing a wooden pepper grinder back and forth like a football, first over her head, then holding it out to her, acting contrite, only to snatch it back when she reached for it, crowing and using the granite island to block her from getting to them.
“Aw, Mom,” Phillip pitched the grinder to Scott and scooted around the island. “What happened? You used to be quicker.”
“She’s getting older.”
“Scott!” She stopped where she was, hands on her hips. “Give me the grinder.”
“Nah.”
“I’ll tell Renee you let Tyler eat dirt.”
“Don’t believe her, big brother. Mom never breaks a promise. Over here.” Phillip stood behind her, all six feet two of him, his shaved head shining from the recessed lighting, his long arms in the air waving like an open receiver.”
March jammed her elbow into his ribs.
“Ouch! Ma . . . ” Phillip waved a yellow dish towel. “That’s a foul.”
“You knucklehead. I guess that’s what I get for saying hand me the pepper.”
“Is that what you said? We thought you said hand-off the pepper.”
“You always were a lousy liar.” She pulled out a small pepper bottle from the spice drawer. “You boys can have your toy. I’ll use this.” She hammered a bottle of seasoned pepper over the Caesar salad a couple of times, then looked up just as Mickey came out of the garage and stalked toward the kitchen, head down, looking guilty and sullen and angry. Her stomach sank.
Mike followed on his heels and paused in the kitchen doorway. One quick, pointed exchange and a nod told her everything with the police was okay.
She put her hand around Mickey’s neck and kissed his cheek. “Hey. Rough day.”
“Yeah.”
“Good work, numb nuts,” Phillip said, then turned to Scott. “Look at that. He gets himself arrested wearing a company sweatshirt. Next time you’re going to do something stupid, wear Burton.”
“Phillip!” March said.
“I was only joking. Trying to lighten things up for him. The kid looks like he’s going to cry.”
Mickey spun around, the skin on his neck and face instantly bright red, eyes still moist, and pinned his brother with a hard look. “Good thing I’m not wearing your
SkiStar
logo, Phil, since everyone says your part of the company isn’t doing shit.”
For the longest, stunned few heartbeats, the room was dead quiet, the unspoken just spoken, and the family itself suddenly cracked in half. Two of her sons looked like junkyard dogs, facing each other and ready to pounce.
Scott grabbed Phillip’s right arm as he pulled it back, hand in a fist. “Don’t.”
Mickey started to move toward his brother.
“That’s enough, you two,” Mike said, stepping in between them.
March couldn’t move. Yes, the
SkiStar
division had been losing money for the past three years, but there was a longstanding, solemn rule that the family only discussed company business together at the office and in the board room. Mickey might be seventeen, but he knew the rules.
In family business lines had to be drawn to separate family from profit and loss, especially when the company and the strong-minded, strong-willed
Cantrells
were all tied so tightly together, with every one of them having a stake in the business, in its red and black, and its future.
“The table’s ready, Mom.” Renee walked in with Tyler, started to give him to Scott, then stopped, looking around. “What’s going on?”
March handed her the salad. “Put this on the table for me, dear, and get the girls to come eat.”
Renee left, but not without exchanging a questioning look with Scott who said, “Come on, Phil. Get your wife and let’s eat.”
Mickey stood in the middle of the room, alone on his battlefield after trying to cause a war when no one else wanted one. He was confused, angry, embarrassed, full of young male emotions that needed blowing off. “Go wash up, Mickey,” Mike said, talking to him as if he were ten years old without realizing it.
Mickey scowled at Mike, turned away and walked toward the heart of the house. “I’m not hungry.”
Mike started to go after him but March placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go. He needs to work things through and get the salt out of those wounds of his.” Through the wide kitchen archway, she watched her youngest run up the stairs.
“He’s trying to pick a fight with anyone he can,” Mike said.
“Did it work?”
“Close, but not quite. Not with me, anyway. And he called me an asshole. Phil almost took the bait, though.”
“Mickey’s embarrassed. He can’t control his emotions.”
“He’d better control his impulses pretty damn quick or I’ll show him what an asshole I can be.”
“Mike. Come on. That’s not how you do things.”
“I took the car away. No driving till he changes his attitude.”
She had seen the tears glistening in her youngest son’s eyes. Times like this were when she remembered that not even for a reflection without a wrinkle would she want to be seventeen again. March picked up the dish of lasagna. “Come on. Let’s eat.”
Four hours later, Mike flipped the light on in his wine cellar carved into the bowels of the three story house, found the bottle he wanted from the racks and headed upstairs to their bedroom. In the corner of the sitting area, near an original slate fireplace flanked by mahogany bookcases, he’d had a private bar installed. Over the years, for birthdays, Father’s Days, Christmases, his kids made certain it was stocked with any and all the high-end wine paraphernalia.
He was just pouring the red wine into stemmed bubble glasses from a Baccarat decanter etched with his initials when March came out of the bathroom, freshly showered, hair slightly damp,
makeupless
, creamed up and wearing something black and lacy and barely there, with a tiny pair of matching panties.
It seemed almost another lifetime ago, and perhaps only yesterday, when he’d first spotted her dancing to music loud enough to shatter the pricy wine decanter in his hand, under the flash of a Sixties’ psychedelic light show that captured every movement of her incredible body.
He had been raw, kind of half-finished in the way all young men were at some point, a kid in the Sixties, still hampered and driven by dark and uncertain coming of age edges, with a free heart and a ton of baggage, even more bravado that hid the fact that his father had killed any natural belief he had in himself.
Saved by a golden girl in a Golden State, Sunshine, amazing and dancing in a rapid squall of colored light that night. She captured his heart and became the woman who believed he could do anything, gave him his family and pride and would grow old with him, always still the single most beautiful thing in his lucky life.
She took the glass of wine he offered her and sat down on the sofa by the fireplace, settled back, her long legs drawn up beside her. All golden skin and black lace in the firelight, she patted the sofa pillow. “Come sit.”
He set the carafe on the coffee table as she took a sip of wine. She frowned slightly at the glass and looked at him first, frowning, then at the bottle sitting on the bar. “Is that Opus? What’s the occasion?”
“A really shitty day.” He sat down and put an arm around her, then added, “And those panties.”
A car horn honked in the distance. A truck changed gears up a nearby hill. But those were the only sounds around them after a day filled with noise: football, his sons, a sleepy, cranky toddler of a grandson and chattering granddaughter he adored, even though she could talk the ear off of an elephant. The family all talking at once. The sour words and fights started by his youngest and the empty place at the table that said more than stern words could.
At that moment, it felt so damned good to sit there next to March, saying nothing at all and not feeling like he had to. One of the things about a marriage of over thirty three years was you could live in long silences without either of you feeling like you had to fill them. “Our anniversary this year,” he paused. “It’s thirty four years, right?”
“Thirty five.”
“Is that one of those important ones?”
March started laughing. “What?”
“You know, tenth, twenty-fifth, thirtieth—the ones that mark some irrational, special numbers—the ones you get in really deep trouble for forgetting. Is thirty five important?”
“Every anniversary is important, you stupid fool,” she said. “You’ve never forgotten our anniversary.”
“That’s right. It was your birthday I kept forgetting. How many years was it before I realized it wasn’t in July?”
“About five. But I didn’t care. I always made out like a bandit those years, with two birthday gifts. The make-up present was a really, really good one. You should forget again, honey. I want that Cartier bracelet.”
“What bracelet?”
“The one I’ve been dropping large hints over for a good five years.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m waiting to surprise you.”
“I hate surprises.”
“No you don’t. You just hate not knowing the surprise.” He rested his head back and took a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling, the vagaries of his business running through his head after Mickey’s words to Phillip.
After a few minutes he said what was bugging him out loud. “I wonder now if buying
SkiStar
was such a great idea.”
“Don’t let what Mickey said get to you. He’s seventeen. He thinks he knows everything. He was embarrassed and angry at Phillip for pointing out he was going to cry, probably even more angry at himself.”
“Pissed at me, too, for taking the car away.” Mike poured some more wine. “He’s right, though. There’s a lot of talk.”
“I know
SkiStar
is struggling. But the brand was already failing when you bought it. No man can make a business turn around overnight.”
“Three years and counting isn’t overnight. Orders for the new line are in the toilet. Scott’s been making noises about all the money we’ve been pouring into Phillip’s side of the company.” Mike paused, staring at the dark color in his wine. “Just the other day Scott said something to me about how Phil is always just skating by. He was complaining that because he’s older, he’s had to pave the way and take harder knocks.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“But he thinks it’s true.”
“Children always think we ruined their lives. Those two operate so differently. Scott analyzes everything, thinks it through. He’s methodical. Risk adverse. Phillip makes his decision and that’s it. He’ll decide whether the risk is worth it quickly, then jump on it or walk away. He has a quick mind. He’s you.”
“But he doesn’t suffer fools and says exactly what he thinks, like someone else I know.”
She laughed. “Some of my better points.”
“I know Scott’s frustrated and I understand that,” Mike said. “
SkiStar’s
pulling a hell of a lot of money every year out of the board business, and with no sign of any gain at all.” He paused. “I wonder sometimes if I’m beating a dead horse.”
“Is it Phillip? Is he screwing up?”
“No. He told me tonight he has some kind of plan to present to the board Wednesday. I know he’s the doing the best he can. But Scott isn’t happy about it. I think the financial draw and constant losses are starting to create friction between the two of them, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I bought the
SkiStar
.”