Shuffle off to Buffalo - 6. Prompt 6 - Needles Highway

Prompt - 6 – Needles Highway

My mother was doing that thing she did. That thing with the rag in the sink. It’s then I knew there would be trouble. I just didn’t know how bad . . .yet.

“Are you bringing someone to the wedding?” she asked as nonchalant as can be.

My mother was already devising a scheme to introduce me to someone. I could read it on her pinched forehead. She did the 'forehead thing' when she did the New York Times crossword puzzle on Sundays. She did it when my father was planning a trip and she wanted to twist the destination and point of a vacation to her preferences. It was the wrinkled forehead she got when organizing a possible romantic meeting for one of her six kids.

I knew it well, and until now had only been a witness to her setups. My three sisters had all met their soul mates through her, but it wasn’t always the first meetup she’d chosen, so I’d seen plenty of train wrecks in the process.

She’d introduced my brother to his now-ex-wife, and that had started off well. After four years, three kids, and a very expensive divorce, her track records wasn’t as good as it had first appeared.

I’d been lucky. As the third of the six kids and the gay one, I’d managed to escape her attempts to couple me with a friend of a distant relative or a relative of a casual friend. I thanked my lucky stars that the whole ‘gay’ thing threw her off her game. Also, I’d had a string of young gentlemen callers since college. That gave me the ‘plus one’ to keep her machinations out of my life.

I answered as honestly as I could, under the circumstances. “I think I’m bringing my friend Wade.”

My mother’s forehead lines didn’t soften, but instead seemed to furrow even more deeply and I realized she’d smelled a rat. That rat being the deception I thought I’d casually and stealthily crafted.

“Your work friend?” she said, her hands still scrubbing the porcelain sink a brilliant white. “The one with a boyfriend in every port?”

I couldn’t let a pause giver her time to dissect my storyline. “Wade has given up on polygamous relationships. He wants to make a go of a committed relationship.”

At first I thought I may have slipped the narrative past her, until she started to laugh.

“You, as an experiment in monogamy? Give me a break,” she finished wiping the sink, slapped the rag on the edge of the counter and turned. She crossed her arms triumphantly and continued. “So, your friend the bumblebee flitting from flower to flower collecting nectar has suddenly decided to settled down with a fox looking for his one true love.” Her laugh was long, hard, and dug deep into my core.

Okay, so I was a romantic at heart. I believed in love. I believed in the life-long commitment that eludes so many of us. And yes, Wade was a horndog at heart. He’d never be happy with a single guy. I’d never be happy with the worry and distrust of a Wade, and unfortunately for me, my mother knew it.

Knew me.

“Wade as your date,” she giggled, as she sloughed off her apron and hung it on a peg by the side door to the back yard. “You’re a funny guy.”

“I don’t want—” I began and got cut off immediately.

“I found something the other day in your grandpa’s old Lincoln. It reminded me of our trip to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Do you remember that vacation?”

“I’m not sure,” I said quickly, too quickly. My mother’s eyes twinkled.

“I remember it like it was just a month ago. Your dad and I took you and your sisters out to South Dakota and we stayed at that lovely inn near Custer, the place with the old railroad and the stores.”

“I vaguely remember driving in the Black Hills and fearing for my life as grandpa took those hairpin turns on the Needles Highway too quickly.”

“See, I knew you’d remember it,” she said expansively. “I was cleaning out the back seat in your grandpa’s old car because we found a buyer for it. It’s time we got it out of the garage.” Her pause was deliberate, and I pondered where my mother was going with this.

My maternal grandfather had died the year before. My mother’s disposal of his things had become a long, drawn out process. Only the right people could purchase or take his old, worn things. The car was his last possession that was about to be dispersed. What did that mean to me and her plans?

“There is a very nice young man who wants to fix it up and sell it. I wasn’t sure at first he was the right person to care for your grandfather’s beloved car, but the look in his eyes was magical. I couldn’t resist when I saw him looking under the hood and at that interior.”

“And?” I asked. “What does this have to do with Jenny’s wedding? (And me, I thought). That was the beginning of this conversation, was it not?”

“Of course, it is,” she said waving her hand dismissively. “So, I was cleaning out the back of grandpa’s car and I found this,” she stopped, opened up a drawer, and pulled out something. “It reminded me of that trip, what, about ten years ago.”

“What is it?” I asked, my curiosity, the bane of my existence, getting the better of me.

“It’s this,” she spread her hands and before me was a Black Hills rose gold bracelet with a series of tiny diamond chips embedded around a single buffalo head. I almost fell back in shock. My head was flooded with memories. My stomach tightened as I recalled that summer, that trip, those eyes.

“It’s an old souvenir from that trip,” I said, my mouth dry as the Sonoran Desert where I now lived. “That was a fun week.”

I wanted to stanch the flood of memories that cascaded over me. I felt drenched, suddenly, as my skin became more sensitive, my fingers trembled, and my leg bounced. All the non-verbal cues one could display; I was now experiencing. (What was this woman up to?)

All this in front of my mother, a woman who lived to read the non-verbal cues of others. Let me explain.

I was the psychologist in the family. I had a master’s in clinical psychology and a doctorate specializing in chronic anxiety disorders. I had hundreds of hours of therapy time and had done dozens of papers on behavior, especially involuntary responses masking behavior. I was at the top of my field in Arizona, and throughout the western United States, and mentored accomplished psychologists and psychiatrists in their practices with special techniques.

She was the person I learned the skills from ultimately. I knew she was reading me like a Harlequin romance in the magazine section of the CVS pharmacy. Something I should never had allowed to happen.

I was busted.

“That was a good trip,” my mother continued. She leaned around and called into the other room, “Do you remember that trip to the Black Hills, Derek?”

I turned and looked at my father, placidly sitting in his chair. He looked up, smiled and said, “I do remember that trip. Didn’t Travis make a friend?”

I watched in horror as my father stood up, stretched, and turned. “What about it?” He never interrupts his routines to discuss my mother’s schemes. But this time he was stopping his usual pattern and was about to join us.

However, my father is a creature of habit and I watched as he did the thing he does with the newspaper before joining us. His smile was innocent, but his eyes were gleeful.

(What were they planning?)