Improvisation Page 3

  Back on the road, and about an hour out of Ellensburg, the novelty of the landscape began to wear off. Tina plugged in her MP3 player and cranked up the radio’s volume, tapping the steering wheel restlessly as she drove across miles of nothing much. She might have a beat-up car, but she had the highest quality speakers money could buy. She was thankful she had brought her own music along because she was certain the local programming wouldn’t be her style.

  For long stretches, the most interesting things to see were plastic bags and tumbleweeds caught on the barbed-wire fences lining the highway. A dilapidated house or broken-down tractor occasionally broke the monotony of her trip. How many manifestos were being penned behind those rusted front doors? The desire to be finished with the long drive warred with her reluctance to see her family again. Avoidance won a small battle, and she stopped for a latte and a chance to flirt with the barista at a Starbucks in the sadly misnamed town of Ritzville before she finally gave in and pushed over the speed limit for the last sixty miles to Spokane.

  *

  As she got closer to the city, the barren landscape began to look more like home, with more trees and greener grass. Instead of the urban sprawl around Seattle, though, the outskirts of Spokane were dotted with lakes and sparse residential neighborhoods. One minute she was on an empty stretch of highway with ducks soaring over her car to settle on a roadside lake, and the next, she was right in the middle of downtown Spokane with its strangely familiar skyline. She had been away far too long to feel like she recognized the city, with its old redbrick buildings that somehow managed to dominate the taller and more modern glass structures.

  Against her better judgment, Tina bypassed the exit leading to her hotel and stayed on I-90 until she reached the east edge of the city. Might as well get the family reunion over, first thing. She shuffled through the mess on her passenger seat, pushing aside music catalogs and spare fiddle strings, and found the directions Peter had sent. She felt grubby and irritable and tempted by the promise of a hot shower, a stiff drink, and some food at the hotel, but she wouldn’t be able to relax until she saw her grandmother and Peter.

  She drove past a mall and a series of chain restaurants. Anymall, Anytown, USA. How did her cousin’s small nursery and garden shop compete with these box stores? Advertising and web design could only do so much to attract customers, and Tina hoped Peter didn’t expect any miracles from her. Only a few blocks later, though, the bland familiarity of the shopping area gave way to a quieter neighborhood with older apartment buildings interspersed with boutique stores. Even with the family visit looming, Tina spotted several shops she wanted to check out while she was in town. She dug around for a pen while she was stopped at a light and scrawled the name of an Irish pub on the back of Peter’s directions. There was a sign advertising live music in the window, and she had brought her fiddle in the hope of finding some place to play. She dropped the pen while she was trying to screw the cap back on and missed the turn to the nursery.

  She finally made her way back to Nelson’s Garden Store and let her car idle while she sat in the parking lot. She checked her reflection in the mirror on her visor. A ratty beige fisherman knit sweater, torn jeans, and no makeup. The hasty ponytail she had made in Ellensburg had done little to protect her hair from the wind, and long brown strands hung loose around her face.

  “This was a mistake,” she whispered, not sure if she meant skipping a stop at the hotel or the entire summer. Or both. She used her fingers to comb her hair before she slipped the rubber band on it again. She was about to put the car in reverse, come back when she felt more in control of herself and her appearance, when someone tapped on her window. Peter.

  “Tina?” she heard him ask through the glass. She turned off her car and opened the door.

  “Hello, Peter.” She was unprepared for his smile and for the hug he gave her as soon as she got out of the car. She awkwardly gave his back a quick pat before she pulled away.

  “It’s great to see you. How was your drive?” He spoke quickly, barely stopping for answers, and Tina could see his nervousness as clearly as she felt her own. “Come see the shop. I’m glad to have you here to help pull us into the twenty-first century.”

  He laughed as if he was joking, but Tina felt pulled back in time the moment she walked through the door. “Oh wow,” she said as she skirted around some bags of fertilizer stacked near the door. Racks of seeds, rows of plants, and tall piles of paving stones competed for her attention. Mundane gardening tools and gloves sat on shelves next to ornamental metal hummingbirds and bejeweled frogs. She was assaulted by a mass of smells as well, from handmade soaps and flowering plants and what had to be the fertilizer she had seen by the door. The air felt thicker inside than out, textured with floral and musty, earthy scents.

  “It’s kind of cluttered,” Peter said. He fiddled with a display of canning supplies, wearing the expression of an indulgent and fond parent as he rearranged the Mason jars.

  Tina laughed at his understatement. “I love it,” she said, surprised by how much she really did. She had come prepared to hate her family and everything about them, but the cacophony of colors and smells and growing things was too irresistible. She could sell this place. “It’s like an old-fashioned general store.”

  Peter smiled at her, and the collage of ideas fluttering through her mind dropped out of sight, as if she had lost her place in a book she was reading. She had been picturing him as the young boy she remembered from childhood, with a vague overlay of the teenager who had come to her mom’s funeral and awkwardly expressed his condolences. But the man in front of her could have been her father, transported through time and back into her life. Sandy-brown hair and eyes the color of cool jade, just like Tina’s own. Pale skin and features that seemed designed for serious concentration until he smiled and his whole face lit up. Just like her dad.

  “Come see the greenhouses,” he said, apparently not noticing her sudden shock. She followed him through humid plastic structures, making appropriate comments about the potted herbs and veggie starts while she struggled to collect and control her emotions. This was exactly why she avoided family. Everything was too complex. Never simple.

  As if summoned by Tina’s thoughts, her grandmother appeared in the doorway, framed by some hanging baskets dripping with fuchsias. Tina felt another jolt of recognition as she saw her father’s features and build in her grandmother’s form. But Francine Nelson’s wrinkles weren’t formed by laughter, and she wore a frown instead of his usual intense and thoughtful smile. No. Her dad wasn’t here. “Tina?”

  Why did everyone say her name with a question mark attached? “Hello,” Tina said in response. She had expected her grandmother to seem smaller, diminished somehow by age, but she was as tall and imposing as ever.

  “I would have recognized you anywhere,” Francine Nelson said. She had come from England as a young bride, and Tina still detected a slight British accent when she spoke. “You’ve grown up to look exactly as I had expected.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tina asked before she could stop herself. Too many memories of her grandmother’s criticisms crowded into the greenhouse with the three of them. She was suddenly glad she hadn’t gone back to the hotel to change. She wasn’t here to impress anyone. “Oh, now I remember,” she continued, her voice thick with sarcasm. “You always used to complain to Mom about what a mess I was.”

  “I meant to say you’ve turned into a stunning young woman. You needn’t snap at me because I believed it was inappropriate for a child to come to the dinner table covered in mud.”

  “Nothing I did was ever proper enough for you.”

  Francine shook her head. “You and Peter could be twins. You look just like your father, but your temper is from your mother. It’s all Irish.”

  “Don’t you dare insult my mom,” Tina said, her voice sounding like a protective growl in her own ears.

  Only Peter’s hand on her arm kept Tina in place. She felt the warmth o
f his touch through the sweater’s wool. She didn’t know whether she was about to storm out or fling herself over the table full of tomatoes and attack her grandmother. She felt a sense of disconnect, as if she were standing apart and watching her mom and grandmother fight. And her dad, trying to restore some peace. She leaned slightly into Peter’s grasp.

  “Gran, let’s calm down and start over,” he said. He frowned toward Francine. Tina would never be able to refer to her by such an endearing and familiar term as Gran. “Without any insults or racial slurs.”

  “She started it,” Tina said at the exact moment as her grandmother. Jinx.

  “I admit, your mother and I rarely agreed on how a child should be raised,” Francine said after a short pause. “But, in spite of all our arguments, I cared for her. As the wife of my oldest son and the mother of my grandchild.”

  Tina heard the catch in her grandmother’s voice when she spoke of her son, but Tina chose to ignore it. She had lost both parents. She didn’t have room for pity. “If you cared so much, why weren’t you around when Mom was sick?”

  “I offered to move the two of you over here. She refused.”

  “She was ill. She needed peace and quiet, not someone nagging at her constantly.” Tina crossed her arms over her chest, pulling away from Peter’s hand. Her anger was only fueled with the knowledge that her grandmother was speaking the truth. And because she wasn’t mentioning the money she had sent Tina to help cover the exorbitant fees charged by the hospice center. For some insane reason, her grandmother’s refusal to defend herself by bringing up the one time she had been allowed to help Tina and her mom only made Tina more furious.

  A customer wandered into the greenhouse, and Francine stepped closer. “What do you want from me, Tina?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  It’s not what I want now, but what I wanted then. Tina pictured her teenaged self as she took care of the house, cooked dinner, nursed her mom. Scared and alone. Coping with medical decisions and funeral arrangements instead of Saturday-night dates or softball games. Doing homework in hospital rooms, driving her mom to chemo treatments before she even had a license. With no family to turn to for comfort or help. Her grandmother had thrown some money at them, but it wasn’t what Tina had needed.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m only here to help Peter because it’s what Dad would have wanted. Then I’ll go home.”

  “Very well,” Francine said, her face an unreadable mask. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “As usual,” Tina muttered as her grandmother walked away.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said. He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe we can sit down together for dinner sometime and—”

  “Hey, Pete, don’t worry about it,” Tina said, torn between wanting to comfort him and wanting to get the hell out of there. “Why don’t we just concentrate on the business? You said you had samples of the advertising you’ve done in the past.”

  “In my office,” he said, gesturing toward the back of the lot, beyond the rows of greenhouses, and started walking. Tina followed him wearily. Five hours of driving and thirty years of anger were too much to handle in one day, and she desperately needed to get to the hotel. Her fingers twitched against her thighs as she walked. She needed her fiddle.

  Peter unlocked a small shed and led her inside. It was dimly lit and barely big enough for the two of them and his small desk, which was as cluttered as his store and as messy as Tina’s own work space at home. What little Tina could see of the wood desk was chipped and unstained oak, as organic and rooted in this place as the plants in the greenhouse, but most of its surface was covered with junk. She and Peter seemed to share more than just her father’s looks. He pulled a file out from under several seed catalogs and balanced it on a chair.

  Tina stopped him when he started to show her clippings from local papers. “I’m sure it’s self-explanatory. Let me go over it this weekend, and we can get together Monday to review your budget and my ideas.”

  “Sure,” he said as he handed her the thick file. “Do I need to give you an advance, or do I pay—”

  “No,” she said before he could finish. No way would she take money from her family and be in any way indebted to them. She had joked with Andy about double charging Peter and calling it compensation for hazardous duty, but after seeing him and her grandmother again, she knew she had to keep the freedom to walk away any time she wanted. No matter how little she could afford a summer without pay. She’d manage to pick up some odd jobs while she was here, to cover the few months of double rent. She had refused Peter’s offer of his spare bedroom when she’d first agreed to come over, and she’d max out her credit cards at the hotel if necessary to keep her independence.

  “I’m doing this for Dad,” she said, to soften her sharp tone.

  He walked her to the front of the store. “If you have time this weekend, I’d be glad to show you around the city. Or we can catch a movie…”

  Tina held up the folder. “Thanks, but I have work to do. Plus, I have some projects I’m finishing up for other clients. But I’ll be here Monday morning.”

  She turned away and hurried to the door, nearly tripping over a pile of garden hoses in her rush to get away.

  *

  Tina barely paid attention to the opulence of the Davenport Hotel as she dragged herself and her bags to the registration counter. The recently renovated hotel was over a hundred years old and was the one bright and beautiful memory she had from all her childhood trips to Spokane. She paused by one of the huge, overstuffed maroon leather chairs in the lobby, tempted to snuggle into its depths like she had done years ago with her mother. But it looked too comfortable, and she looked too much like a vagrant. If she sat down, she’d either fall asleep or be booted to the curb.

  Tina maneuvered herself, her three suitcases, and her fiddle into the old-fashioned elevator and waited for several moments before she realized she needed to use her room key card to make the doors shut and the elevator move. She swore under her breath as she fumbled through her pockets for the slim card. She had eleven floors to rest before she had to half drag, half carry her luggage down the long hallway. Her old Corolla didn’t exactly rank with Fort Knox in terms of security, so she hadn’t wanted to leave any of her belongings in the car. She dumped three months of clothes and toiletries and art supplies just inside the door before she carefully laid her fiddle case on the luggage rack.

  She peered in the bathroom and groaned at the sight of the large waterfall-style shower. Elegant marble tiles and gold fixtures added to the ambience. She could almost feel the scalding water massaging her shoulders and rinsing the layers of dust and tension off her body. An oasis, private and waiting just for her.

  It would have to wait a little longer. She usually wasn’t a fan of delayed gratification, but she wanted to have her unpleasant to-do list finished before she let herself fully relax. She’d make the promised call to set up a meeting with Jan and then have a marathon shower and order one of everything from room service.

  “Hello?” The voice answering Tina’s call sounded harried and out of breath. She wondered briefly if she had interrupted Jan in the middle of sex. Would she be the type to stop and answer the phone?

  “Is this Jan? I’m Tina, Brooke and Andy’s friend.”

  “Oh, hi. I’m glad you called. Did you have a good trip?”

  Tina smiled. Jan didn’t sound glad. She sounded annoyed. Maybe she’d be just as willing as Tina to meet once, drink a sarcastic toast to Brooke, and then never see each other again.

  “Long and boring, thanks for asking. Hey, I have some free time this weekend before I have to settle into my job, so I thought we could meet for drinks tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night…That’ll be fine. I’ll make it work.”

  Try to contain your enthusiasm. “Great. About nine? In the Peacock Room at the Davenport?” Tina had spotted the bar on her way into the hotel. Fussy and formal and full of people in business attire. It seemed designed for cas
ual meetings between acquaintances and totally unsuited for long romantic trysts. The ideal way to set the tone for a hopefully brief meeting.

  “Sure…What? The Peacock Room?”

  “Yes. Is that okay?” Tina asked impatiently. She wondered how she’d make it through an hour with Jan when she could barely tolerate one short phone call. Maybe the alcohol would help.

  “Yes. It’s just not the kind of place I expected you to pick.”

  Tina heard the slight emphasis on you. What the hell was that about? “I’m staying at the Davenport for a few days, so it’s the only bar I know.”

  There was a long pause. Tina glanced at her phone to make sure she hadn’t been disconnected. “We’re meeting in a bar in your hotel?” Jan finally asked. Tina could sense some kind of emotion behind the words, but she couldn’t read it clearly. Horror? Disgust? What exactly had Brooke and Andy said about her?

  “You’ll be perfectly safe,” she said, her words clipped. “I promise not to ravish you in the lobby or lure you to my room.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Besides, I’ve invited my cousin to join us. He’ll make sure you’re safe from me.”