Chapter Twenty Two

          Chapter Twenty two

If Kate could have paced, she would have. Why was the day taking so long to pass? She looked at the clock again. Nine thirty. Wasn’t it just nine twenty eight like an hour ago? She suppose she could have slept in a little longer, but her mother had made quite a lot of noise leaving the flat at six that morning, and after that she couldn’t make it back to sleep. Her excitement pushed her to the point of agitation. She needed a distraction.

She replayed and rehashed the conversation she'd had with her mother. She wished things had gone differently. She wanted to feel bad, she wanted to be mad, she tried for even a twinge, but she felt nothing. She assumed it was because nothing would really change. She realized that her mother had not been a huge part of her life. Most of her memories of her mother were disappointments. Disappointed when her mother had missed this, disappointed when she was late to that, disappointed when she forgot about something else. Her father, her rock, wasn’t going anywhere. At least not without her, and she took comfort in that. As for her mom, she tried again and still she felt nothing. Of course, it did creep into her mind that it could possibly be the painkillers and, once she no longer needed them, the emotions would explode out of her. At least she hoped so.

After her travels to and from the living room last night, she had acquired shooting pains up through her hip and she had been forced, by her father the rock, to take something harder than Tylenol for the pain. Perhaps it was the medicine that caused the slowing of time. She wished it would knock her out like it had done the first day, then she could take the fast route to the afternoon.

She picked up the remote and turned on the television. After surfing the channels several times, she loudly declared Scottish daytime programming worthless and turned off the set. She grabbed a magazine, flipped the pages, tried reading an article, exhaled sharply and tossed the magazine back on the coffee table. Nine forty, the clock insisted. She decided she hated the clock and it must be wrong.

“Dad, what time is it?” she asked her rock in the kitchen.

“A freckle past a hair.”

She heard him giggle to himself.

“Oh please. How old do I look? And how many times are you going to use that one? Really, what time is it? I think this clock in here is wrong.”

He poked his head around the corner. “You’re right. That clock is wrong. It’s five minutes fast.”

“Ugh!” Time was mocking her.

“So, you have a big day ahead. Your grandmother filled me in. This is huge. I can see why you are so anxious for the day to speed by. How about we get you into the kitchen so we have something to feed your guests. It will give you something to do and maybe the day won’t seem to be standing still.”

She agreed, pried herself off the couch and hobbled into the kitchen. Her father looked up from the counter where he was hand mixing some flour concoction. As she was settling into the breakfast nook, she saw he was making homemade turnovers. She loved them, but they took a lot of time when everything was made from scratch. She helped him peel apples and knead dough. The day did seem to go faster, but then the apple turnovers were in the oven and they had the rest of the day ahead of them. Eleven forty five!

“Well, that killed, like, no time.” she complained.

He finished cleaning up the pans and sat at the table with her.

“How about some left over chicken noodle?” he asked.

“That sounds great and then you can tell me all about what you and Mom did yesterday.”

He put the lunch in the microwave and turned it on.

“So, what do you want to know?”

Oh, she thought, how 'devil may care' he sounded. She considered how she wanted to proceed, as the microwave ticked down the seconds.

“Mom and I had a pretty blunt conversation last night,” she said, as the microwave beeped and he handed her a steaming bowl. She took a spoonful and blew on it.

“Yes, I heard. She gave me the short version when she came into the room to pack.”

Kate thought it weird they would share the same room after they had decided to divorce.

“I know that you two went to a lawyer and are getting...” she couldn’t say it. She didn’t want to hurt him.

“A divorce. It’s all right, Kate. You can say it.”

“So where does that leave us...?” she asked, her question incomplete.

“Do we stay or do we go?” he finished her thought.

“You know, I really never even thought about that part of it, at least not until she said something about it last night. When we left to come here I was scared and mad that I had to leave everything and everyone behind. But now, after being here, I don’t really want to leave. It’s like moving away from home all over again. I don’t know if I want to do that right now.” She held up her hand. “Not saying that I would never want to go back, but just not right now. I don’t know how to explain what I am feeling.”

“I know exactly how you feel. Having to leave everything that was familiar and comfortable. Leaving my friends and most of my family and that crappy part time job, which I suppose I have to thank your mother for that, at least. Yet coming here was just about the neatest thing I have done in a long, long time.” He looked so animated as he spoke of his new home. “I have met some really great people here and I love the city.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I don’t want to go back.”

Kate loved his enthusiasm but she wondered if it was covering up something else. Perhaps he viewed going back to the States divorced would be embarrassing, or a failure of some sort. She hated thinking of her father like that. She decided she would take him at his word.

“Dad, how are you?  I mean about this divorce.”

She wanted some straight talk.

“I won’t lie to you. It really hurts. But it’s like a tooth that needs pulling. It hurts, you wiggle it and it hurts, you wiggle it some more and it gets stuck at an awkward angle and hurts more than anything, then you pull real hard, it comes out and the pain stops. There is some bleeding but after it’s done it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“So Mom is the tooth?” she asked.

“Yes and I guess you could say, the other night by your bedroom door, I finally pulled it out,” he said.

“So the time you spent in your room yesterday you were, what? Rinsing?”

He laughed. “I guess you could call it that. I had to take a good look at what was happening and what I felt was the most important thing to me. And when it came right down to it, your mother wasn’t the most important thing.”

He let her think about that for a moment.

“It is really hard to live in the present. We are always making plans for the future or waiting for the next installment of Dr. Who. We hardly ever live in the 'now.' Of course, when we do, it is usually an emergency or when we are on a vacation. That’s why those memories are so sharp. Ask what we did last Thursday, and aside from you going to school and me doing general stuff, I couldn’t tell you. But ask about a sparring match you had last September and I think both of us could describe the whole day in great detail.”

She was beginning to understand what he was saying.

“Yesterday at the lawyers, and in my room, I had to live in the present. I found I didn’t like what I saw. I love your mom, but it’s no way to make a life.”

“Just keep moving on,” she said.

“She gave you that speech too?” He rolled his eyes.

“Chu ya. I hate it when she does that. Like I’m one of her lab assistants.”

“I’m sure she means well,” he said.

“You don’t sound too sure of that.”

“I wouldn’t say otherwise. I might think it, but I would never presume to know what is best for your state of mind. Only you can come to terms with all of this in your own time, in your own way.”

“Let me ask you. Did you never see this coming?” she asked.

“Well, there is that twenty-twenty hindsight, I believe now that I did, but I chose not to believe back then. I had dreams but I just chalked them up to nightmares. Sometimes I would have daydreams about it, but once again, I couldn’t see the truth to it. I always thought it was my imagination running away with me. I tried to talk to your grandmother but you know her, she refused talk to me about it. I see now that I probably wouldn’t have really listened to her either. I couldn't see the forest for the trees.”  She cocked her head at him quizzically. “I was too close to the problem to see it,” he explained.

“Grandmother knew. That’s why they came. Remember when she wouldn’t celebrate your engagement?”

He whistled. “Wow, that long? She sure knows how to keep a secret.”

“Like you said, you probably wouldn’t have believed her. You wouldn’t have wanted to. I know that feeling first hand.”

“Josh?”

“Josh,” she confirmed.

“I didn’t need an inspired vision to see that one coming. He just seemed, oh I don’t know, more into himself than you.” He patted her hand. “I am really sorry about all that.”

“I’m all right. I have new friends and I don’t think about him as much. Guess that says it all, huh?”

“So we stay,” he stated, abruptly coming back to the earlier conversation.

“We stay,” she agreed.

“Great! I have something I want to bounce off of you.”

“Shoot.”

“I want to open my own pub,” he smiled from ear to ear. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Okay, okay, I didn’t know it was going to be a pub. I thought it would be a diner, a restaurant, grill, something along those lines, but around here they call 'em pubs. I know you think it's ludicrous.”

“Are you kidding? Why did you think I badgered you all the time to write that stuff down?” she asked.

“Well, I want to make sure because it's going to just be the two of us now," Kate rolled her eyes and he shrugged his shoulders at her implication that it had always just been the two of them. "If this is going to work, I need to know your all in on this. It's going to be a lot of hard work and long hours to make it successful. I have been talking to Grandmother and Grandpa and we think it will work.”

“I think it's great. I can so see you in the kitchen of a great pub. But can we really do this? I mean we aren’t made of money.”

“That's where your grandparents come in. I managed to talk them into being co-owners. They are looking into some spaces today. That's what I was going to do today, but when your grandmother told me what you had going on here I thought I should stay. Besides I will need their input and my mom has pretty good taste. They will be over later to talk. Maybe, if you are up to it, we could drive by some of them tomorrow,” he paused, “If they find anything.”

“Are you sure you’re up to this? I mean is this some sort of rebound thing?”

He thought about it for a moment tapping his chin with his forefinger, staring off into space. “You could be right, except I have been thinking of this for a long time, I mean a really long time.” He grinned at her.

“What’s that grin for?”

“Hey, maybe you could get a job there? I know the owner, I could put in a good word for you,” he teased.

“Don’t you mean owners? Aren’t you forgetting Grandpa and Grandmother?  They might have a say about it. Besides, you don’t have a pub yet. Let’s not jump the gun.”

“I am pretty excited about it. Who knew this was all inside of me? Yesterday, in my room, I started making up menus and wine lists. I can talk to my friends at the other pubs and see what other drinks I need to have. I started sketching menu covers. I even came up with a name. Tell me what you think, ‘What Ale’s you?’”

Kate cracked up.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that name either. I bet some of your friends would have some ideas,” he said.

“I’ll ask Gavin when he comes over.” She looked around. “What time is it now?”  She looked at the clock. “Yes! It's already two-thirty.”