All familiar characters belong to Janet. Mistakes are solely mine.
"Whatever you do, don't fall for it, Steph," I heard through the phone.
"What do I have to warn my wife about?" I asked Valerie. "Your niece wanted to give her Mama a makeover, so Steph took a break from work and now I'm manning her cell until Olivia's finished. That should be shortly since you can't improve on perfection."
"Why are you looking at me with that face?" Albert was asking Valerie in the background of what I'd guess is their kitchen.
"Why can't you come up with sweet things to tell me like Ranger is always saying about Stephanie?" Val answered, no doubt narrowing her eyes at her pet husband.
I don't need to be in the Kloughn home to be able to accurately picture the scene. I've gotten to know Steph's family a lot better in the past year. And like my wife would if she were listening to them, I gave an imperceptible shake of my head at the couple's friendly squabble happening across town.
"Is that Val?" My wife asked while Olivia was scanning her stockpile of hair accessories that have exceeded the three-tier spinning stand Steph found in an attempt to corral them all. "Or a Manoso sibling? And I'm not perfect, by the way. Just perfect for you."
I put her cell against my leg so Valerie wouldn't penalize Albert further by overhearing my words. "It is Valerie. And you're both of those. Perfect and the only woman for me. My mother still claims credit for praying you into existence."
"That would prove the Manoso genes come with superpowers, because she would've had to cancel out all my mother's prayers for me to be completely different than I am, and for that Stephanie to marry someone the polar opposite of you."
I moved closer to where she was sitting on the living room carpet, lounging back against the sofa so Olivia could reach her. I bent down and she immediately tipped her face up to meet my mouth. A beat later, two hands started pushing on my leg with surprising strength.
"No Kizzies. I pained it!" Olivia explained.
I didn't need further explanation. I wiped my mouth and saw the telltale sheen of clear lip gloss coating my fingers. Stephanie knows not to let Olive 'paint' her with 'grown-up' makeup, so she's more shiny than colorful.
"Helllllooo?" Val was shouting from my side.
"Are you done yelling at Albert and ready to tell me what we need to brace for?" I asked my sister-in-law.
"I was NOT yelling at my Cuddle Umpkins, just suggesting he be a little more romantic sometimes."
That was a disturbing thought.
"The reason for the call?" I pressed.
"I wanted to warn Stephanie that Mom is at it again. While we were both standing in line at the deli, Mrs. Lambanisi told me that Mom is planning to say whatever she has to just to get Stephanie talking to her again."
"Because she heard that we're having the boy Helen has always wanted?"
"I'm not going to take offense to that. I'm married to a boy, and they can be overrated at times. But I swear if that's true … she didn't hear it from me. I keep Steph out of any conversation I have with our mother, not that we have many of those these days. I had to accept that I must've been just a means to an end or something to her. Once I took Steph's side, I wasn't important anymore. Steph has always said that I'm Mom's favorite, but the lengths she's going to just to have Stephanie back in her life says something completely different."
"Your mother isn't capable of feeling genuine emotions. She rations manufactured affection to get whatever she wants out of whoever can help her in that moment. She could suck up to you when you were boosting her standing in the Burg, but when you stopped playing by her rules … you were essentially dismissed. Do not take that personally, Val. That's part of Helen's psychosis. It has nothing at all to do with you. You, Stephanie, and Frank survived a modern-day monster and it'll do you good to remind yourself of that whenever you think of her."
"Now I understand why Stephanie did a one-eighty when you guys officially started dating. She was always a strong-willed person, but she finally used that stubbornness to start standing up for herself. We weren't close growing up, but she stood up for me if I was being targeted by our family or who I thought were my friends. I regret more than almost anything else that I didn't do the same for her."
"What's she saying?" Steph asked me.
"No talkie, Mama," Olivia said right after.
"You're twisting my hair into something, that shouldn't stop me from talking to Daddy."
"No more talkies," was our daughter's response. "Got stayz super don't move."
"It's possible that you use even more words than I do to make a point, Olive. It's also possible that Mama and Daddy made our baby girl too strong," Steph said, just to remind our baby who's boss.
"There's no such thing, Babe. If Olivia can take care of herself in any situation, she'll be less likely to change herself just to make somebody else happy."
"Can you come over and raise my girls?" Valerie asked me.
"No, but you can let them visit more often than once a week. My men will attest to how much they've learned just by watching how the others behave and do their jobs."
"Great. We'll call it camp and you can have custody for the summer," my sister-in-law suggested.
"Julie will be here for part of it, so that's not a bad idea."
"I was kidding, Ranger. I wouldn't do that to you and Steph when you have a toddler to keep alive and my nephew on the way."
"It's an open invitation. The girls are always welcome here."
"I know. That's part of the reason I wanted to warn Stephanie that Mom's circling again. I don't want her to get hurt if she believes Mom's sincere when she's only playing games … just crueler ones now."
"You can relax. No one will hurt my wife. Not only is Steph far more intelligent than Helen could hope to be, she'd have to get through me and every single one of my men to reach my girls. And once Atlas hears that Helen is on site, he'll have her in his sights. He's taken a particular dislike to her."
"Yeah, because he's taken a particular - and peculiar - liking to Stephanie. Or maybe he just enjoys having someone willing to needle him back. I was worried even though I know I shouldn't be. But if Mom showed up here telling me she's sorry and that she's changed, I'd really want to believe her. Thankfully, the Burg grapevine moves faster than the speed of light and I was told what's actually going on before I could fall for it. I can't thank you and Steph enough for getting me to see how messed up our family was while I still have some time to undo what Mom may have done to my girls."
"I wish I could've stepped in sooner."
"I know, Steph. So I get why you couldn't. And to be honest, I'm not sure I would've believed you if I hadn't seen her trash her relationship with Stephanie and my niece with my own eyes."
"Sometimes it takes something that extreme to flip on a light switch," I assured her. "Don't beat yourself up about it. Frank was with her for all those years, and he didn't see anything wrong until he was away from it long enough to gain a different perspective."
"Dad's like a completely different man. I didn't realize how miserable he was before he moved out and met Aideen. He TALKS now! Smiles even."
"I'd bet he'd tell you, like he has your sister, that he wouldn't trade those years because they gave him you and Stephanie and led him to becoming the man who was introduced to Aideen."
"Okay, I'm hanging up now before I say something to you that I'll regret or Stephanie will kill me for. Thank you for sticking close to her, keeping her and Olive safe … and also saving our family in the process."
"You all saved yourselves, you just needed the proper life raft."
I disconnected before I complicated Albert's day because he's who he is and is nothing like me.
"Am I done?" My wife asked our daughter.
"You boo ful," Olivia said after a careful, tipped-head deliberation. She came running over to me and tapped my leg this time instead of pushing it away from my wife. "Daddy! Mama BOO ful!"
I can't disagree. Stephanie's makeup remained almost skin-toned so Olive couldn't branch out and attract party clown clients. My wife's curly hair had mostly been secured into a ponytail right above her forehead with a skeleton hand hair clip.
"She is very beautiful," I told the duo.
"Even with a Halloween unicorn hairdo?" My wife asked, standing up and stretching her legs and her back after sitting still for longer than a few minutes at one time.
Like with Olivia's pregnancy, Stephanie has trouble finding a comfortable position to sit, stand, and sleep in. And the discomfort started much earlier this time around.
"Yes. Believe it or not, that makes you more attractive because you let our daughter do it. I can't say I'd be that brave."
"I'm the Guinea pig because you're perfect. There's literally nothing to improve. You even spoke for almost fifteen minutes to Val without flinching."
"Aside from your mother and maybe Shirley, your family isn't all that bad."
"Thank you for saying that. I think I'm more self-conscious about my relatives than I am about anything else. Was Val just checking in?"
"No. She was calling to warn you that someone your mother knows shared some information with her about Helen."
I watched Steph tense, which disturbed Mado who has only slept near or on Stephanie's stomach since she became pregnant. My wife sat up now that our cat moved off her lap, and I saw the raised blue dinosaur sticker Olivia must have stuck on the small baby bump - before Mado covered the spot - that can be detected now if she's standing or sitting in a certain way.
"What's she up to now?" Steph asked me.
"According to Valerie via a Mrs. Lambanisi, Helen is planning on making contact and saying whatever BS she can come up with just to gain access to our son."
As it seems to do any time my wife feels uneasy, her hand formed a protective barrier between our unborn child, his current sticker, and the idea of Helen being anywhere near him.
"She can try, but she's not going to like the outcome if she thinks she can mind-nap any of our children."
"Mind nap?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"Yeah. What she did to me and my dad for decades. Twisting our thoughts until they were mirroring hers."
I suppose 'Mind-nap' could also be likened to poisoning their minds against themselves.
"You and our children are safe, Steph," I reminded her. "I'm not about to let her upset my pregnant wife or my children. I just wanted you to know what's going in your mother's mind right now, so you don't think I'm trying to 'overprotect' you by not telling you."
"At this point, you can do whatever you feel you have to. I'm focusing solely on taking care of Olive, growing a healthy baby, and keeping up my consults with Julie until she's back with us. I can't let my mother piss me off. I'm done dealing with her. She may think she can play nice to get her way, but two days into being a BEA taught me that sudden compliance equals deception. I appreciate Valerie wanting to protect me, though."
"She loves you," I told her.
"She does … now. Thanks to you, I can feel the difference between someone using me and actually caring about me. Once Val saw the side of Mom that I did, she understood why I decided to cut myself off from Burg life. I wasn't being difficult; I was choosing to make myself and our family better."
"She's certainly getting the hang of the lookout position."
My wife smiled. "Feel free to tell her that. She's loving being the 'bad Plum girl' for a change."
"You were never bad. You were just in the wrong environment to support who you were meant to be."
"None of that matters now. I know my mother is never going to be one to me. But on Mother's Day your mom told me that I'm not just your wife … I'm her fifth daughter. So, I'm taking her up on that. Helen Plum can't use her DNA relation to me to get to our kids, because there's zero connections left between us. She wants to go back in time, and I've been busy building a solid future."
Cutting a parent out of your life is easier said than done, but I did note a slight change in her after that Sunday. I attributed it to the high she was riding from sharing the gender of our baby. Now I know the real reason was she finally let go of her mother and any hope of Helen receiving a full personality transplant.
Before I could respond, Olivia was tugging on my hand. "Daddy next."
"Daddy doesn't need to be any prettier, Olive. Oh … wait. I know what can make him even better," my wife said with a look in her eyes I'm very familiar with. "Can you get the lip gloss that has a red tube? You remember which color is red, don't you?"
After Olivia found the appropriate lip crap, Steph let our daughter put it on her. My wife then went up on her toes and pressed her mouth firmly against mine, transferring another layer of gloss from her mouth to mine. Her smile could only be called mischievous … and extremely tempting.
I ran my tongue over my lips knowing it'd been flavored lip gloss. "Mmmm. Strawberry."
Olivia's giggle drew our attention. What she did once she got her amusement under control deserves a two-dessert reward after dinner. Our daughter went back to her tool kit and pulled out everything that could be applied to someone's lips.
"Again!" Olive said with enough enthusiasm that it woke up Mo who was lying on the floor by Mado's armchair and a still-sleeping Gunny. She handed a tube of some other lip shit to her Mama. "Do the kizzie again."
"You heard the little lady," Steph teased.
My wife took the cover off something that also appeared to be red but was more of a tinted cream than a gloss, applied it to her own lips, and then came back to kiss me.
Our daughter laughed louder the second time we drew apart and then went for another color. "More!" She shouted, passing a pink lip tint to Steph this time. "Make Daddy rainbow!"
My wife added a coat of pale pink shit over the red and turned to me. "Pucker up, Batman. I'm coming in hot."
"You'll always be hot, Babe. But keep in mind … I will get even."
It'll be tonight. And even Stephanie won't be able to see over our second baby's growing bump where I'll be placing my kisses.
