"Uh, Mom?"
"Yeah Sweetie, what is it?" Theresa Johnson looked up at her oldest daughter while she fixed sack lunches for her two other daughters before they left for school.
Becca Johnson was profoundly uncomfortable facing her mother. She was sent to talk to her mother about an uncomfortable subject not because, at 19, she was the oldest of three girls but because she had drawn the short straw – two out of three times. She made her sisters redraw twice and she lost each of the redraws two out of three; maybe it was fate – or maybe her sisters had rigged the draw.
Becca fidgeted and felt herself blush. Her mother was too busy to notice, she was fixing the last sandwich. "What is it, dear?" Theresa asked without looking up.
"Um...Mom. It's been over a year since..."
When Theresa heard
It's been over a year since
she took a deep breath, put the top on her next oldest daughter Alison's sandwich and slowly looked up at Becca.
Becca immediately thought,
Oh, God.
Theresa smiled as she looked at her blushing daughter. "Go ahead, Bec. It's okay. I know what you're going to say; I heard Ali and Lisa talking, no," Theresa corrected herself," conspiring against you, the other night when I was putting the towels in the linen closet."
Becca's mouth was open in exasperation with her sisters and half in relief. "So...I, um, don't need to give you the speech about Dad wanting you to get out..."
"No Sweetie. Your father made it explicitly clear that I was to find someone," she paused, her eyes getting moist, but her voice did not falter, "if he didn't, you know, make it back."
Becca rushed to her mother and hugged her tightly. They both shared a sniffle in remembrance of Colonel Robert W. Johnson, U.S. Marine Corps, husband and father, who one week before rotating home from the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, was killed when a rocket propelled grenade shot down the chopper he was riding in to catch his flight home. Robert and Theresa would have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary just two months after he returned home. He was slated to retire in the spring of the following year.
Theresa and Becca broke their embrace, each wiping tears from their cheeks. Theresa reached out and held her daughter's face tenderly. "Bec, Sweetie, I'd had so much preparation when I saw those two Marines walking up the sidewalk that day in their dress blues with the priest. Your dad had been in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq the first time and Afghanistan and probably a dozen other places I'm not supposed to know about. We both knew someday his luck would run out and...well, baby, it ran out. Okay? Now it's us. And I am so grateful for you girls watching out for me but really, I'm okay. Okay?"
"Sure, Mom."
"Besides, your crazy aunt Victoria has set me up on some blind lunch date today with someone she knows."
Becca's face lit up. "And you're going?"
"Yeah. I figure what the hell, eh?"
Becca hugged her mother again and they both laughed though Theresa was less than enthused about blind dates. But then, she thought, it was lunch.
~~~~~~~~~
After Lunch and the Traffic Stop
The blind lunch date was not a total disaster, in fact, Theresa had a good time. It was a guy she had met at one of her sister's parties and she had a pretty good idea that her lunch date and her sister Victoria were sleeping together on a regular basis.
As Theresa raced from the Plaza, across the state line and west up Shawnee Mission Parkway, she reached for her cell phone and dialed her sister.
"I suppose the fact that you're calling me now and I hear automotive noises means you didn't get laid?" Victoria asked in a matter-of-fact tone.
"No, sweet little sister, I didn't get laid. But I'm not mad. I had fun. I needed some fun all right."
"Well, um, so what happened that, you know, you didn't have a nooner?"
"Well Vic, remember our pet Chihuahua Rod when we were kids at Cherry Point?"
"Yeah."
"And remember how Rod liked to try to mount the neighbor's German Shepherd all the time and how ridiculous that looked?"
"Um, yeah."
"Well, just about the time I was ready to let him take me for a roll in the hay I got this mental picture of my date as Rod and me as the German Shepherd and I started laughing and couldn't stop. Victoria, you do remember I'm almost six feet tall and your friend, my suitor for the day, was all of, what, five six?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then Victoria answered. "Look, sis, a cock is a cock and he knows how to use it pretty well. You should have gotten laid. Beggars can't be choosers, you know. But seriously, sis, he is very good in bed and I was willing to let him have you...I mean, my heart was in it."
Theresa laughed. "I know, you meant well."
Theresa turned south onto Antioch as she continued to talk to her sister. She had just crossed 75th street and was headed down into what most of the area residents knew as the "spider trap." Between 75th and 79th streets there is a small valley and in the swale of the valley usually sat an Overland Park Police cruiser, like a trap door spider, running radar and catching anyone coming down hill from north or south who was going over the 35 mph speed limit. Theresa was going 47 according to the ticket.
Theresa had crossed 79th before she heard the whoop of the siren and looked in her rear view mirror to see the police car in pursuit. Theresa swore softly, said goodbye to her sister and promptly pulled over. She suddenly had an outrageous idea. She giggled to herself; she'd seen it in the movies and thought
oh, why not
?"