Terri Blackstock - Seaside : a novella

chapter one
V A a S' e Downing didn't like endings or beginnings. /\ /I She preferred to keep things somewhere in the middle, where she could build her momentum no jolting starts or screeching halts. Momentum was critical, she'd always told her daughters. Useful people didn't veer off course, and they never slowed at the hurdles.
But she had been wrong.
Why had it taken her fifty-five years to learn it?
She sat on the deck of her split-level condo, looking out at the faint, foggy outline of the Rockies. She had photographed them many times, and collected the prints in a book that adorned thousands of coffee tables now. The Tourist Bureau of Colorado used one of her pictures for their advertisements, complete with her signature in the corner. But that was just one of the many successes she'd had. She had the gift of turning beauty into bucks, a friend had once facetiously told her. Nothing was wasted.
The brisk wind made her shiver, and she pulled her sweater tighter. She longed for the warm air, the smell of salt on the wind, the sound of foamy waves whooshing onto the sand. She had moved to Colorado to escape the heat and humidity of die South, but by March, she was always weary of winter.
She knew her girls were weary, too, in their own corners of the world. But their fatigue had little to do with the cold.
She thought she heard the phone ringing, so she sprang up and went in. By the time she reached it, she realized that she had only imagined it. Probably, neither Sarah nor Corinne had gotten her messages yet. She had left one message with an unreliable machine, and the other with a less reliable grandchild. She hoped they would call back.
The Tiffany lamp across the little parlor cast a warm glow on the antique table on which it sat. She needed to pack away the pictures and memorabilia she had spread across it. Sarah and Corinne could help her decide what to do with all of them. The two girls might even enjoy seeing the pictures of themselves frozen in time, laughing and crying and staring and dancing and growing over the years. She had documented all of the awards, all the accolades, all the accomplishments ...
All the usefulness.
She wished just once she had spent quiet time with them, walking along abandoned beaches, sailing on quiet waters, fishing on a lonely pier. If she had her child-rearing to do over, she would take them outside at night and lie on a blanket, staring at the stars. She would teach them to breathe the breeze that caressed their faces, to savor the scent of jasmine, to walk for pleasure and not for exercise.
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But, until lately, those joys had somehow escaped her. Life had been a series of ventures, one deadline piled upon another. She had rushed through her life, building her momentum and chalking up her feats, and had taught her daughters to do the same.
She picked the phone back up; listened to make sure it had a dial tone. They would call back soon. Any minute now, one of them would get home and return her call.
She went into the kitchen. The scent of vanilla and cinnamon lingered from the rolls she'd baked for a friend yesterday. She had never baked much before, and had found in the last few weeks that it was one of those slow, simple pleasures she'd neglected in the past. She planned to do a lot more of it.
She walked to the coffeepot, an archaic percolator, and filled it with coffee grounds. She added the water and set it to brew, then took the water pot from her windowsill and began to water the ferns spilling over their hanging baskets.
As she did, she practiced the speech she had prepared for Sarah and Corinne. She had to be persuasive without being overbearing. Talking them into dropping everything and spending a week with her in Florida was not going to be easy. She had taught them well. Sarah's husband and two children had not shaken her free of the lessons Maggie had so carefully programmed into her. And Corinne's three businesses were testimony that the family way worked.
When the coffee finished brewing, she poured a cup and went back into the little parlor, accented with antiques and eclectic art pieces she'd picked up in her travels. Her hard work had bought her each valuable piece, from the polished secretary
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against the wall to the acrylic resin sculpture on a pedestal in the corner. But things held little meaning for her now.
She wanted to be with her daughters. The three of them needed a time for mending fences, for healing relationships, for explanations and exhortations.
She picked up the phone and called the airline. She would buy their tickets, and perhaps that would force their hands. She was willing to do whatever it took to get them there.
She hoped it wasn't too late to show them that time wasted is not always a waste of time.
chapter two
Corinne Downing sat at a red light holding the cell phone to her ear, growing more and more irritated. Wasn't it just like her sister to put her on hold for so long when Sarah knew she was on a cell phone in her car? That was the story of her life. Just put Corinne on hold. Let time tick by, minutes, hours, years at a time, while everyone else's life moved on.
Sarah clicked back on. "Sorry about that. It was the intercession speaker for the prayer conference next week. She canceled, so now I'm stuck finding another one. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Mom."
"She really wants us to go, Sarah. It's all about this autobiography she's doing. She wants pictures of us together like I really want my picture stamped on the cover of ten thousand books. I don't know what's gotten into her. This has become so important, she'll do just about anything. And
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she's already bought our airline tickets. How's that for confidence?"
"She what?" Sarah asked.
"She thinks if she has the tickets, we have to go. She just won't take no for an answer."
"Well, we're grown women, Corinne," Sarah said. "She'll have to take no for an answer."
"But then there's that 'Honor your mother' thing," Corinne said. "Part of me keeps thinking that I'd better do what she says."
"Or what?" Sarah asked. "Is she going to ground you? For heaven's sake, you're twenty-eight years old. I'm thirty-three. I don't have time for this." The phone beeped again, and she moaned. "Hold on, Corinne."
Corinne was certain her blood pressure climbed as she waited. She reached her tiny duplex with its termites and peeling paint, and pulled into the driveway, still holding the phone to her ear. As she got out of the car, she looked down at the spot on her jeans. What had she been thinking, adding a dog-walking business to her other struggling enterprises? Designing Web sites kept her swamped enough, and her jewelry business filled most of her free time.
And now look at her. An overzealous cocker spaniel had urinated on her today. She had about two hours before she needed to walk the dogs againnot nearly enough time to go in and work on the Web site that had cratered yesterday. If she didn't get it done today, she would lose the client for sure. And then she wouldn't be able to pay her car note this month, and they'd repossess it, and she'd have to go to her mother for a loan, admitting that she couldn't make ends meet...
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Yet here she was, on her cell phone longdistance waiting for her sister to come back to the phone. She went into the house and slammed the door, as if Sarah could hear.
As if on cue, her sister clicked back on. "Corinne, you still there?"
"Of course I'm still here," she snapped, "but I'm on a cell phone and these calls are expensive. I didn't call you to be put on hold. You're not some major corporation with automated phone lines, you know."
"Well, excuse me," Sarah said. "I have things going on, and I have people living in this house besides me."
"Look, just forget I called," Corinne spouted. "I thought you'd like to know that Mom bought the airline tickets. That's all I wanted to tell you."