CHAPTER 1
Driving a little too fast Nina Black spotted the radar trap up ahead.
Too late.
She slowed her pickup to within the speed limit. The cop got out of his car.
Oh shoot. Another nail in her hide from her mom?
The cop tipped his hat back as he reached her open window and said, "Hi Nina.'
"Hi Jerry," she said in surprise. "How are Cindy and baby?"
"Fine. You were a responsible chick at high school Nina. Keep your speed down and consider this a warning. Off you go."
Nina produced her million-dollar smile and said with feeling, "Thanks Jerry."
Well a driving citation would have been enough to send her mom through the roof. Her mom was pick-pick-picking at her these days, rarely saying anything nice about her.
Nina knew what it was. She'd come home with a law degree but instead of moving into law she was teaching art at the Seniors at the Boswell Community Center and had turned her bedroom into a studio and was back to painting again. Her mom had wanted her married and doing well in law. Her father, an attorney, reckoned Nina should do what she wanted and he certainly didn't want his daughter marrying just any jerk she fell into bed with.
"Our son married a bitch and look how unhappy he is?"
Of course that began a row that lasted two and a half days until Nina stepped in and said, "Listen you guys. Cut it out or divorce. You are both acting like spoilt kids."
Her shocked parents took her out to Sunday lunch and were still apologizing when they returned home.
Raymond her father said he'd buy her two tickets to the ballet and she'd said only if he also brought two more tickets and took his wife who loved ballet.
"You take your mother."
"No be romantic even if it's a pain dad. Be kind and more attentive and you'll get much better sex and it will get mom off my back."
He'd grinned and said the office required an attorney who cut ice as a negotiator.
"Up yours dad."
He went off whistling.
Her mother came into her bedroom and said, "Again I'm so sorry for behaving like a brat with your father and you having to listen to the shouting. Let me buy you a car to replace that clapped-out truck."
"No it was granddad's and he had it for almost thirty years and always told me he'd never quit it. There's something about the red pickup and I think it engenders love."
"You are difficult to understand. And why are you always rejecting me?"
"Mom you have had years and years of learning that you don't buy love through money. Buy me a nice bunch of flowers."
"Damn you. Why can't you be like other daughters?"
"What do you really know about other daughters and their true relationships with their moms?"
Jessie walked out and slammed the door muttering, "Bitch and your room's a mess."
Nina grinned, knowing to expect a bunch of unnecessarily expensive flowers. She took a call. It was Cindy asking her over for a drink and to see the baby.
"You don't drink."
Cindy sighed and said not for three more months but Jerry would have a Bourdon with Nina. "He said he saw you today and said you were looking great. Stay for dinner."
"Thanks."
Nina worked from 10:00 to 2:00 at the center Tuesday thru Friday each week and received a small salary paid by the center trust. She also sold creative landscapes she churned out as a sideline to paintings to some of her senior students and her friends for very good money. Women who really wanted to learn to paint or draw or to sharpen up on what they already did and who were sixty years plus, often very plus, were rarely short of money.
Nina locked the door and from her wardrobe took out a painting, a portrait of her mother. She'd been working on it for eight months and it was almost finished and she was on schedule to enter it in the Cameron City's annual art competition. The city was some three hours' drive to the east and the event was highly regarded.
Jessie hadn't a clue what her daughter was up to because she never went poking in Nina's space. Nina often took photos of her mom and Jessie would say, "You're wasting film", not having a clue about digital photography. She'd also catch Nina looking at her in certain light and would say, "Why are your staring at me like that?"
Nina would say, "Because your face is a picture mom," and her mom would sigh and say not that bullshit again. That exchange had almost become a ritual. Those 'stares' would embed little pieces of the jigsaw that Nina was building into something called portrait art of which her mom had little or no interest. When they were on vacation and doing things as a family Jessie would act as if she were ready to go to sleep as soon as she entered a gallery.
It was a pity her mother was wealthy but had wasted her education on a law degree. She only played at law sufficiently to keep registered to remain chairman of the law firm established by her father, Nina's rich grandfather and a real bastard. Not like her father's father who'd so adored Nina who had been a widower before she was born and had barely scratched a living off his small ranch. She'd always spent more of her school breaks staying with him than being anywhere else and continued that through her second-year of college when he died.
Granddad Ritchie had left the ranch to her and her mom had purchased the adjoining small ranch and given it to Nina and she now had a semi-retired guy managing the enlarged property. She went out there most Saturdays and worked with Ted on fencing, clearing drains, spraying weeds, drenching cattle or just sitting around jawing with Ted and his wife.
Tucked away in the wardrobe, already packed for taking to Cameron, was the painting of Granddad Ritchie painted in acrylics and using only two photos plus her great memories. It had been painted with so much love that Nina couldn't believe just how good it was, at least in her opinion. That painting was for her father for Christmas and the painting 'Jessica' would be given to her mom at Christmas.
Jessica had never liked Granddad Ritchie because he used words like 'shit', 'Jesus' and expressions like 'what a bastard' and his favorite used when really surprised, 'fuck me dead' as everyday language.
And yet, rather strangely, in church when the eulogies were delivered about Richard James Black, the only time Nina bawled was when her mother stood and talked about the remarkable and enduring relationship between her father-in-law and her daughter that began the first time Richard saw Nina in her cradle. She remembered how her mom had finished, 'The affection and respect between those two were a joy to behold'.
Her mother had said that? Yes in front of an almost filled church of mourners. Jessie had a habit of surprising Nina at times but that time she'd blown Nina away. However Nina remained unsure whether Jessie would allow Raymond to hang his father's picture in the house or even at the law offices.
She went to her mother. "Cindy Mason has invited me over to see little Carla and stay for dinner."
"That's fine. I've yet to start thinking about dinner."
"Take dad out for dinner. You know he likes doing that."
"Well I suppose so."
"Mom he also likes you when you're lively and interested."
"Well I'll have to say you're not wrong about that. Do you think your father and I still have sex?"
"Of course I do."
"You girls today know everything. I grew up thinking my parents stopped having it when I was born."
Nina had to grope with that. "Oh how sweet."
"Oh yeah? I know dad was still having an affair a year before he died."
"Oh mom, you have that behavior to look forward to; it will be in the genes."
"Funny girl," her mother smiled.
"Kiss me mom."
"What are you going now?"
"No but you don't have to have a reason to kiss."
They hugged and kissed. Just like normal mothers and daughters, Nina thought.
