When Kate's makeup was done she laid her lipstick on the vanity, folded her hands in her lap and bent forward to study herself in the mirror. There were so many changes. More than a year had passed since Toby went to college and left her nest empty. The house and the furniture were all the same, but the person in the mirror wasn't. Without her son around Kate was more introspective and slower to make friends, but she also had a counseling business of her own now as well as surgically restored boobs, a thinner body and longer hair.
"I did it for me." was what Kate said when Mary wondered why she changed her look. Certainly that was true, but she wasn't telling her younger sister the whole truth. She also did it for Toby. While Toby was a boy it was easy for her to be his ideal woman. Now that he was grown it was a struggle. Kate knew she would ultimately lose that battle, but the truth wouldn't stop her from trying.
An early spring storm howled outside and Kate glanced at the window where bare branches whipped in the wind. It was a good time to be somewhere south. The national conference of family counselors was coming up and this year it was going to be at a beach-front resort in Florida. While Toby was younger she might send him to his grandparents and use the conference as an opportunity to wake up with someone else. Now she was using it as an opportunity to spend more time with her son.
The wind swirled around Toby and made him pull his jacket tighter. He hesitated despite the cold. Spending a few days at the beach with his mother wasn't his choice. It was Granddad who insisted, "Work is slow here, go look after your mom." Toby had been away from home for more than a year, worked to support himself while going to school and yet Kate still treated him like a child.
Toby closed the door against the wind and left his suitcase by the stairs. He peeled off his scarf and jacket, then when he looked up to find Kate on the bottom step both of them caught their breath. Toby didn't really understand why Kate wanted to change her look -- he liked his mom the way she was -- but when she stepped into his arms he admitted to himself that he liked her new look too.
Kate leaned her head against Toby's chest and gave him a hug then stepped back, saying "I'm still not used to looking up at you, and you seem to get bigger all the time."
"Mom," Toby groaned, "you've been looking up at me since I was 14." Now Toby was nine inches taller than his mother and she still didn't get it. That was part of the problem.
"Don't settle down yet." Kate told Toby. "We need to find you a new suit and get alterations done today. I have a brand new evening gown for the awards banquet and I want a lot of heads turning when people see me on your arm." She squeezed his biceps while she spoke and was pleased to find that she would have a lot to hold on to.
"Shopping with Mom," Toby thought "could not be a good thing." He was right. Afterwards they sat silently in a steakhouse booth. They had argued over every detail of the suit and then again over the shirt, the shoes, the tie -- even the cuff links. Kate imagined a specific look and Toby finally gave her control of everything, telling himself "It's her money. I can wear it for her and then never again."
The server leaned over Kate to take her order and Kate started with "My son will take the..." and it was too much for Toby. He plucked the menu out of Kate's hand and folded it on his lap. Kate shut her mouth and glared at him, and the server stood back in surprise.
Toby completed the order. "We'll both take the prime rib, medium rare. Make hers a petite cut. We'll both have baked potatoes, loaded. Mom will have the succotash and I'll pass on the vegetables. And get her a new margarita, she'll be done with that one in a second." He handed the menus to the server with an air of finality, then turned back to Kate and raised an eyebrow.
"Thank you." Kate said. She sat up uncomfortably and gulped the last of her margarita. Clearly she had stepped over a line and a simple thanks seemed like the best response. They sat without eye contact until the server brought Kate's new margarita. She nodded to the server then turned back to Toby.
"Put your hand up." Kate said. She held her own hand up with her palm toward Toby and her fingers spread. Toby matched his palm to hers. It was a ritual that they performed at intervals while he was growing up, like measuring his height on the door frame. Now his hand dwarfed hers.
Toby slipped his thick fingers between Kate's and closed his hand over her hand. He whispered "I'm not a kid anymore, Mom. You need to let me make my own decisions." Toby didn't wait for her to reply. He pressed Kate's hand on the table and asked "Would you tell me about my father?" He asked questions when he was younger and always the answers discouraged more questions.
Kate cocked her head at her son without smiling. He was as old as she was when it all started, so it was finally time to tell him. "You were named for your father." She started. "We met outside my English 201 class during the summer semester after my freshman year. I was just your age and he became my one-and-only. It seems like so long ago, but the way I remember him now he looks like you -- tall, with wide shoulders and curly red hair. But his eyes are green, and you have Papa's blue eyes. You even have your dad's laugh, and I don't hear you laugh enough anymore."
A server interrupted to pour more water for Toby, so Kate paused before she went on. "We got pregnant that fall. It was hard for us because all the plans either of us ever had seemed suddenly impossible. We decided to marry and make a new future together."
"We were in a car crash about two weeks before our wedding. It was minor and neither of us were hurt in the crash, but Toby got out of the car to talk to the other driver and the other driver shot him -- shot him in the face and drove off." Kate's voice caught in her throat for an instant before she went on. "So we had a funeral instead of a wedding. I still visit Toby every year, but always alone."
"It was hard to see any future at first, when you were a baby. To your Granddad and Grandma you were their Toby all over again, and they were always willing to help -- even sometimes when I didn't want it. Papa and Nana helped too, and Mary was your constant baby sitter. Together we all managed to work things out."
Kate watched Toby's reactions while she spoke, and she kept watching him through the following days -- the way he protected her in crowds at the airport or on the beach, the attention he payed to her stories, and his ever-increasing annoyance when she tried to make decisions for him.
Kate was still watching Toby when he finalized his school work, laid his laptop on the coffee table and glanced into her bedroom. They had an hour and a half before the awards banquet.
Their bedrooms were separated by the sitting area where he worked, which now was flooded with the late afternoon sunlight off the gulf. Kate's door was open so they could talk and Toby watched his mother, wrapped in a hotel towel, drying her hair.
"You should be getting ready now." Kate called through her door. It was another instruction that Toby didn't need, and it wasn't even right. Maybe Kate needed an hour and half to get ready, but Toby didn't.
