LOVE BY CHANCE
Chapter Seven
September 8, 2001
The day that Rose had been dreading for the
past few months reared its ugly head all too soon. She found herself standing
by Jack at San Francisco Airport looking at several television screens that
showed the arrival times of the incoming flights and if they were on time or
not. Her eyes scanned the screens until flight 167 from Philadelphia stared her
square in the face. Regretfully, Rose mused, the flight was on time. She knew
it was an awful thing to think about regarding her mother, but she couldn’t
help it.
Jack, who had been sensing Rose’s uneasiness
all morning, tried to keep her as calm as possible, which meant absolutely no
coffee under any circumstances, and plenty of soothing words. He squeezed her
hand and gave her a reassuring smile. Rose didn’t look convinced.
"Everything’s going to be fine, Rose.
Besides, you told me yourself she’s not staying with you and you always know
I’m only a phone call away."
"I know, but I still wish she weren’t
coming, as awful as that sounds."
"Other people probably wouldn’t think it
were so awful if she was their mother. Come on. We’d better go and be there
early. I want to see the look on her face when she sees me here with you. I bet
she figures you wouldn’t have the guts to bring me with you."
"You’d think she’d know better than that
by now," Rose said, with a small laugh, as they walked off toward Ruth’s
arrival gate.
*****
Jack was right about Ruth’s expression when
she saw him. It was priceless. Her expression was even better when she finally
realized that Rose wasn’t kidding when she said she was putting her up in a
hotel. She tried to pout and mope about it, but as stiff and mature as she was,
it didn’t pull off so well. Jack and Rose dropped her off at the Best Western
just a few blocks from Rose’s home, telling her they’d be by to see her after
work.
Ruth lay on her hotel bed and dejectedly
flipped through the channels on the television. She couldn’t believe her
daughter, her own flesh and blood, had deserted her like that when she spent
all that money on a first class round-trip airplane ticket just to come and see
her. She had expected to spend some quality time with her daughter without that
boy, well, man now. That Jack sure knew how to ruin things, especially for her
lately, it seemed. That man was going to be trouble, and she was sure of it,
only Rose won’t listen to her with all her stubbornness.
"She definitely does not get that from
me!" she mumbled to herself as she flipped to another channel. Disgusted
with not being able to find anything worthwhile to watch, she turned the
television off and tossed the remote onto the other side of the bed. She looked
at her watch. Still five hours until Rose quit work. She pondered for a moment,
then decided to call back at her office and check on the sale that was in the
process of being closed yesterday before she left. Couldn’t hurt…
*****
Jack decided that he was going to take Rose
and Ruth out to dinner that night, hoping to maybe break the ice between all
three of them. The ride in the car was horrible; the silence was deafening and
the tension was so thick that it could have been deftly cut by any gourmet
chef.
Oh, the things you’ll do for the woman you
love, he thought. And he did love
Rose, a whole lot. He would find some way to make Ruth like him. He still
couldn’t figure out what she had against him, just as Rose couldn’t. He sensed
it was something about money or something of the sort, but he wasn’t sure. And
with this woman, he would not jump to conclusions, and assumed nothing. He was
walking on eggshells around her, and would continue to do so until the wall she
had around her came crumbling down and she was a little more...was open the
right word? He shrugged off that particular line of thinking and tried to focus
on having as good a night as possible. If he intended on having any sort of
future with Rose, which he most certainly did, he was going to have to get
Ruth’s approval.
*****
Her mother was being so annoying. They were
supposed to be having a nice relaxing dinner, and all she could talk about was
this real estate deal she was in the process of closing and some extra tidbits
of gossip she learned about the people selling and the people buying and so
forth. It didn’t surprise her in the least. Even when her father was still
alive and she wasn’t working she was a horrible gossip. When she was small she
always made sure to never tell her mother anything that she considered private
because sure enough, if she did, it would be around the entire neighborhood in
a matter of an hour or two.
She couldn’t take it any more.
"Jack," she said so suddenly, he looked at her surprised. "How
was your day today? Anything interesting or exciting happen?"
Ruth was so surprised that it took her a
minute to recover. It took Jack only seconds.
"It was all right. It was as boring as
anything you could imagine, though. I didn’t have any layouts or drawings to
work on, so I tidied up my office and sorted through stuff. How about you,
Rose?"
"The usual. Running here, running
there."
As Ruth sat there and listened to them talk,
she realized this was going to be harder than she originally thought. Her
daughter was becoming more strong-willed as she grew older, and it showed. What
to do? She’d think of something. She always did.