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But, of course, they hadn’t as the beat from heavy metal music was already thudding from behind their closed door. “Just wait until their father gets back here,” she said through tight lips. “He’ll skin them alive!”
The timer had then gone off, and after sending one last, withering look down the hallway, Vera squared her shoulders and returned her attention to the jars in the water bath.
“They won’t get away with this,” she muttered beneath her breath as she reached into the canner with the tongs and touched the side of her hand along the rim of the hot pot. “Ouch! Dear Lord. Oh. Oh. Oh!” Sucking in her breath, she’d dropped the tongs, and they slithered into the steaming water. “Oooh.” She’d cradled her burned hand in the other. “Oh, for the love of Saint Peter, Remmi, get those jars out now! Now! You’ve seen me do it a thousand times!”
Before Remmi had been able to respond, Vera turned to the refrigerator, yanked open the freezer door, and pulled out an ice tray. Her face contorted in pain, she managed to twist some cubes out of the plastic tray. They fell into the sink, and she snagged a couple to hold against the injured side of her hand.
“I’m not sure—,” Remmi said, on her feet.
“Just get them out! Hurry, or they’ll be ruined.” Tears were filling Vera’s eyes, and Remmi didn’t know if it was from the pain or from frustration that all her afternoon’s work would be wasted if her niece didn’t pull through.
As quickly as she could, Remmi found a wooden spoon, fished out the tongs from the boiling water, and, after wrapping them in a kitchen towel, worked to pull out the jars without dropping or breaking any.
“Hurry!” Vera said.
Just then a door opened, an ear-blasting guitar riff screaming down the hall before it closed again and Jensen appeared. “Hungry,” he mumbled as he made his way to the refrigerator, then for the first time really looked at his mom. “Hey—you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” she threw back at him. “No.”
He’d opened the refrigerator. Peered inside. Called over his shoulder, “What happened?”
“Burned myself. It was stupid.”
“Oh. Uh. Why didn’t you wear gloves?”
“I just said it was stupid. Oh, for the love of Mike! Because I didn’t think I’d get burned!” She rolled her eyes and grasped the slippery ice cube even more tightly while Jensen, seemingly unconcerned about Vera’s injury, continued rummaging through the laden refrigerator shelves. As Remmi finished removing all the jars intact, he found some lunch meat and jars of mustard and mayo, then located half a loaf of bread on the counter and, with a knife he discovered in the sink, proceeded to make three sandwiches. He slathered mustard and mayo over all six slices of white bread, then plopped several rounds of bologna onto the thick glob of condiments.
“Don’t spoil your dinner.” Vera dropped the melting ice into the sink.
Fat chance of that. Remmi had kept the thought to herself. Aunt Vera could bad-mouth her husband and son
s all she wanted, and that was just fine, but if Remmi even dared to agree with her, Vera would turn on her with a vengeance as swift as a rattler striking. Remmi had learned to hold her tongue as much as possible, and it nearly killed her as she was used to speaking her mind.
“You and your brother are in deep trouble,” Vera told Jensen.
“Yeah? Why?”
“You were supposed to be home two hours ago, and you were supposed to be swimming, right?”
“We were.”
“Yeah, swimming in alcohol and tobacco.” She spat out the words as if they alone were vile.
“Nah, we weren’t.”
“Then . . . then pot.”
“Pot?” Jensen’s face split into a grin.
“Weed. Whatever you call marijuana or, um, reefer these days.”
“Oh, Mom, you’re so . . .” He shrugged his shoulders as he slapped the halves of the sandwiches together. Yellow mustard oozed brilliantly against the crusts. “Melodramatic. Calm down. Chill.”
“Are you kidding me?” she somehow shrieked through clenched teeth as Jensen, all three sandwiches stacked in one hand, sauntered down the hall and escaped to the bedroom.
“It’s just not fair,” Vera moaned, throwing a hostile glance at her niece. “Not fair.”
And she’d probably been right, Remmi thought now. But then, what in life was? All that BS parents teach their children about “being fair” didn’t add up to much in the adult world, which everyone eventually learned. Remmi was just thankful she’d escaped with most, if not all, of the money she’d saved and squirreled away. Since that time with the Gibbs family, she’d lived in dumps of apartments through college and during her early years after school, sometimes with roommates, mostly without. She’d hated explaining herself, or talking about her past, and as the weeks, months, and years had stacked up without any word from Didi, her hopes of ever seeing her mother again had shriveled and died. Until now. Here, in San Francisco.
