Title: Not Mine, but Ours
Raye did not miss her mother.
Really—she didn't. She never knew the lady. The last time they had met, Raye was four years old, and the person in question was dying a slow, heavily medicated death. She was too young to formulate a lasting memory of an adult woman who was unconscious most of the time.
Personally, she found it very annoying when people would discover this fact about her life, and automatically stumble all over themselves apologizing, like they were personally responsible for leukemia or something. "You must miss her terribly!"
They would crow, referencing the twenty plus years of memories they shared with their own mothers.
No. Not exactly.
Raye did not know her mother. She did not miss her mother.
She missed—no; you can't miss what you never had. She wanted a mother. It didn't have to be hers. Hers was dead, and that was that.
Because of that, for a long time, Raye didn't know how to act in front of Mrs. Aino.
The slightly disconcerting feeling didn't happen at first meet; in fact, for a long time, everything was perfectly fine. Mrs. Aino was Mina's mother: a blonde, still slim lady about fifty or so years old; a high school art teacher who wore white button down shirts and comfortable flats with her jeans. Nothing more than that.
When Raye would spend holidays or vacations at their home, Mina's mother was always buffered with the comfortable balance of Mr. Aino, and sometimes, Mina's brother, cementing her place as just one of the four other people that made up the small, wonderfully complete Aino family.
Mina's mother remained as a voice on the phone, a brief mention in conversation, and sometimes, a fussy presence when she would drop by their apartment, bringing groceries and toiletries to her oft-broke daughter. Sometimes she would stay for a day or two, and Raye would politely pass on their invites to lunches, museum trips, and shopping excursions, and was unyielding in the face of Mina's constant wheedling. The unspoken message, which Mina was too obtuse to pick up on, was that she wanted her friend to have that time with her own mother, without the extra presence to intrude on the memory.
It took a while, but Mina eventually deduced the reason for Raye's polite evasion. The next time her mother visited, she practically dragged Raye by her arm out of the apartment, blithely ignoring the other girl's protests and threats.
She hung back shyly during the shopping trip—very unlike her—and bought a blouse after Mrs. Aino reached over and adjusted the fit under Raye's arms.
She could not remember ever being touched like that.
She tried on several more shirts just to feel Mina's mother deftly plucking at the clothing. Later that night, alone in her room, she wept piteously, hotly ashamed of the childish longing she had felt when the older woman touched her.
Mrs. Aino remained a distant presence in Raye's life, until one night, she drank way too much, and let her suppressed crush on Mina's brother manifest itself in a sloppily executed seduction that almost ended in fatal embarrassment.
Thank God it did not.
Days later, she kissed Jason in the front seat of his Chevelle in the dead of night and changed everything about her life in a single moment, including her tenuous relationship with Mrs. Aino, who of course, in addition to being Mina's mother, was Jason's mother too.
Obviously.
On a Sunday in May, that Sunday in May, Raye was home alone, working through her usual routine of the Times, her coffee, and an entire afternoon free for her annual ritual of ignoring the conflicting feeling of wanting something that she had trained herself carefully not to care about. She was interrupted by a knock at the door, expecting to find Mina freaking out and flustered because she had forgotten her wallet—again—but a different Aino was waiting in the hallway.
"Oh, uh, hi," Raye said, opening the door wider. "You just missed Mina."
Jason's mother shook out her umbrella and set a rain-speckled paper sack on the counter. "It's coming down," she exhaled, pulling off her coat.
Raye shuffled her newspaper around nervously; she had never been alone with Mrs. Aino before, and she was thrown. The polite thing, she thought, would be to offer her some coffee, or tea, tea, because didn't middle-aged women like tea, better? She didn't think she had any tea; she was a coffee drinker. Maybe she could run our for some, and that could be her excuse to get out of Mrs. Aino's presence until she could locate Mina or Jason.
"I was going to make dinner tonight, you know, as a surprise. I told Jason about it."
"Oh."
"You wouldn't mind helping me?"
Raye rubbed her palms together nervously. "Oh, of course not."
"Thanks, dear. Do you have any lettuce?"
The crisper drawer was primarily used as an alcohol-storage unit, but Raye unearthed a ragged head of iceberg from the back. "It's a little wilted," she admitted apologetically, placing the sad green hunk on the counter.
Mrs. Aino made a small "humph" and started filling the kitchen sink with cold water. "I think we can save it." She started unpacking food items out of the grocery bag. "Do you like snapper?"
Raye stalled, not wanting to admit that she and Mina existed on a diet of Vitamin Water and Luna bars to keep in Sugar-form. Mothers didn't like hearing that kind of stuff, well, at least, she presumed they didn't. At least the ones on TV didn't. "I—yeah! I love it."
"Is seared OK? Or do you want to broil it?" She pulled out Tupperware containers full of different spices and lined them up on the counter.
"Oh, uh, either way. I like it both ways." She leaned against the counter and felt like the world's token idiot, silently furious at herself for not knowing how to converse with this lady. She had constituents come into the office all the time that were the same age as Mrs. Aino, and she had no problem charming the Talbots off of them. Why couldn't she just turn it on here, right now? The pressure was making her sick with unease; she wanted to run to her room and slam the door and remain there until Mrs. Aino went away.
"Seared, then. It's quicker." Mrs. Aino unwrapped a paper parcel, revealing several creamy pale fish fillets. "Do you have any olive oil?"
Actually, she did, but it was in the bathroom; Makoto had tipped them off to the trick of using it as an inexpensive, effective eye makeup remover. She ran to retrieve it, and when she returned, the radio that sat on the window ledge was turned to NPR, and Mrs. Aino was gingerly poking at the fillets. "Raye, feel this, tell me what you think."
"Uh." She looked down at the white, glistening flesh and hesitated. "Feel it where?"
"Oh here, like this." She picked up Raye's hand and pressed her finger on the fillet. Unlike Mina's constantly paint-splattered fingers, Raye's nails were always buffed and perfect, and long enough to accidentally leave crescent-shaped gouges in Jason's back in the heat of the moment.
"What am I feeling for?"
Mrs. Aino had her forehead wrinkled in concentration, her blond eyebrows kitting together, and Raye nearly laughed: she had seen that look before, usually in the final innings of a close White Sox game, or when the Chevelle's engine was making a mystery noise. "Not too squishy? If you fingerprint stays in the fish, it means it's going bad."
"I didn't know that," Raye said, giving the fillet another experimental tap.
"Hm. It was squishing a bit too much on this end. I wasn't sure. What do you think?"
Raye shrugged. "Will it kill us if we eat it?"
Mrs. Aino grinned, and she had definitely seen that smile before. She had never really looked at Mrs. Aino before, but now that she was in such close proximity, she could see how much Jason resembled his mother.
Raye wondered if she looked at all like the dead woman that she was supposed to care about. Her father had kept most of the photos.
"I doubt it will cause lasting damage." She popped open a container and started dumping spices into one of Mina's cereal bowls. "I've seen Jason eat things off the floor and he's still alive somehow. How's that lettuce?"
It was floating like a leafy buoy in the sink. "Um, it's still sort of wilted."
Mrs. Aino waved it off. "I have asparagus. Want to start that?"
"Um."
She was very good at picking up Raye's uncertainty. "Boil an inch of water. We'll steam it."
The asparagus was easy, as was chopping and cooking some red potatoes. They listened to the rest of "Car Talk" in near-silence, laughing together softly at the two men hollering on the radio. Mrs. Aino showed Raye how to sear fish without overdoing it, letting her do most of the handling. Only one ended up cracking in half. "Oh, shoot."
"Oh, don't worry about it. It won't look pretty, but you can't eat pretty. How's that lettuce doing now?"
Raye pulled it out of the sink with one hand. "Huh. It got kind of crispy."
Mrs. Aino smiled knowingly. "They perk up when you get them wet." She stopped suddenly, and her crystal blue eyes popped open to dinner-plate size. "Oh! Shoot, that didn't sound too good."
For the first time that afternoon, Raye's face stretched into an uncontrolled grin. "I won't tell."
"Good, if my kids were here, they wouldn't stop making fun of me. It's an unfortunate trait they get from their father."
Her laugh wasn't loud, but it was enough. "I know."
Mrs. Aino turned the heat on under a large skillet. "Well, just don't let Jason get away with too much. Push him back or he'll get out of control."
"Oh," Raye said, a glint in her eye. "I will."
"Good for you," Mrs. Aino moved the oil around in the skillet. "Do you like cooking, Raye?"
Busted. "I, um, I don't do a lot of it," she admitted, tearing the lettuce into salad pieces. "I never really learned."
Mrs. Aino shrugged. "Baking's more fun, I think. Everyone gets to admire your work for a bit longer. Next time we'll make snickerdoodles."
Raye methodically tore into the lettuce, and tried not to get too hopeful.
Jason's ringtone for his mother's phone was "Centerfield," which was funny, since for Raye's phone, it was the same song. His mother wiped her hands on a dishtowel before answering. "Jason's tied up with his band. He's not going to make it for dinner."
Raye frowned and made a mental note to chew him out later; that was pretty low to do to your mother on Mother's Day, especially since she spent the last few hours cooking. Her phone beeped with a text message from Mina.
Sry cant make it! Start w/o me
"Mina can't make it," she reported to Mrs. Aino, who was setting the table. "This is weird, but it looks like it's just you and me. They're not coming."
Jason and Mina's mother gave her a soft smile. "Honey, they were never coming." She pulled a bottle of wine out of the paper bag and started peeling the foil band off the cork. "Shall we eat?"