Swan for the Money(4)

“Thanks,” I said to Michael.

“My plea sure,” he said. “And now I really should be hitting the road.”

He folded his napkin and stood, pushing his chair back.

“You’re going to miss the great rose show?” Rob exclaimed.

“He’s going up to New York with several other drama department faculty members,” I said. “One of their former gradstudents is in an off-Broadway play—”

“Way off Broadway,” Michael corrected. “Somewhere in the Bronx, I think. But it’s legit, and he’s not just in it, he wrote it, and we all promised to come up and see it.”

“But does it have to be this weekend?” Mother said, with a long-suffering sigh.

“Meg and I were originally going next weekend, after the rose show was over,” Michael said. “But the inside scoop is that the play won’t last till next weekend. In fact, there’s an even chance we’ll get there and find out that last night was the last performance, but we have to try.”

“As long as you’re back by Sunday,” Mother said. “Remember, I’m having the family tea then.” And as I knew, she fully expected to have several trophies to show off by tea-time.

“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “It’s just an overnight trip. We’re driving up today, seeing the play to night, and we’ll probably be up late, letting the kid cry on our shoulders and rebuilding his confidence. But we’re heading back tomorrow morning.”

“Unless they all give in to the temptation to see a few more plays while they’re up there,” I said, just to tease Mother a little. “Important to keep up with trends in the field they’re teaching about.”

“If the others decide to stay over, I’ll catch a shuttle back,” Michael said, seeing the stricken look on Mother’s face.

I followed him outside to say a more private good-bye. I’d come over to Mother and Dad’s long before he got up, to get a start on my rose show-related tasks, so we hadn’t had a chance to talk yet today and wouldn’t again until tomorrow evening. Okay, it was only thirty-six hours, but I wasn’t looking forward to coping with the rose show without Michael.

Outside it was raining. Barely more than a drizzle at the moment, but since it had been either drizzling or flat-out raining almost continuously for the past five days, thanks to an unseasonably early tropical storm stalled off the Carolina coast, the whole yard was a sea of mud. We stopped on the front porch where it was merely damp and clammy.

“More rain,” I said. “I hate to think of you driving all the way in that.”

“Good for the roses, though.”

“Actually, right now it’s not,” I said. “The rain can cause spotting on the blooms, and if we get more high wind it will blow all the best blossoms to bits, and if this damp weather keeps on much longer I think there’s some kind of fungus that could take hold. This close to a show, all a rain does is cause the growers extra work and heartache.”

I gestured toward a nearby rose garden, which might have been beautiful if every single bush hadn’t had a trash can or plastic bag over it, to protect the blooms from last night’s wind.

I noticed that Michael’s face was twitching, as if he was fighting the urge to laugh.

“Good grief,” I said. “I’m starting to sound just like them, aren’t I?”

“I think it’s quite commendable that you’ve become something of an expert in such a short time,” he said, with a chuckle.

“I’m not an expert,” I said. “I’ve just had to learn a few things, in self defense. I was so relieved when they both got involved in this rose hobby. It’s taken Mother’s attention away from the whole idea of opening a decorating business, for one thing.”

“I still don’t quite get why you’re so worried about that,” Michael said. He leaned against the porch railing at my side, and I had the comforting thought that it wasn’t just the rain making him delay setting out to meet his fellow faculty members.

“Because you know if she starts the decorating business we’ll be the guinea pigs,” I said. “She’ll want to come over and do rooms in our house as show pieces, probably in styles neither of us can stand, like French Provincial or Louis Quatorze, and then she’ll expect us to keep them in perfect order so she can drop in at a moment’s notice with prospective clients.”

“Potentially annoying,” he said, but I could tell he didn’t really believe me. He’d see, if Mother ever did launch her decorating career.