Page 25 of Road Queens
“Still fighting? You girls need to straighten this out for good or ill,” she ordered.
“What’s the ‘for ill’ part?”
Iris ignored Sidney’s relevant question. “At once. Five years is long enough.”
Not quite five. After the mess imploded all over their lives, Cass indulged in a three-week bender, spent another three weeks detoxing, spent the summer moping, then abruptly sold her bike to Sonny Manners and fell off the world.
Four years, ten months, two weeks.
“We’re working on it,” Cass lied.
“Very good. So then, what’s new with you two?”
“Not much,” Cass lied again.
“I see.” Iris’s perfectly penciled eyebrows lifted as she leaned back in her chair. “It was kind of you both to take the trouble to come see me to tell me there’s nothing of note going on in your lives at this particular time.”
“Are you setting up a this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email joke?”
Cass chuckled as her mother threw up her (manicured!) hands. “Never mind, then. On your own heads be it.”
Iris said things like that all the time, and Sidney should have been able to laugh it off, but this time, the words had weight. Like Mercutio’s dying shriek: “A plague on both your houses.” Much more impressive onstage or on screen than the written word. Which was probably blasphemy, but whatever. Like it was her fault the second she saw Harold Perrineau’s turn as Mercutio she was ruined for any other Mercutio?
“So your folks are looking into retiring, Sidney? Good for them.Gah, I cannot believe I am so old my contemporaries are retiring.” Iris leaned back, smiling. “I think it’s lovely that they’ll be driving around to parks together.”
“Lovely, inflicting, retiring, giving up ... tomato, potato.”
“Sidney Derecho, you stop that. You have a lovely family. Well, most of them are lovely. Is your husband finally an ex? Stop doing the slashing motion across your throat, Cassandra.”
“Might as well,” Cassandra muttered. “Since you ignored it anyway.”
“He’s the thing of whom we do not speak,” Sidney warned. “And no. He’s not an ex in the same way he’s not dead: that’s a temporary condition.”
“Did he truly use you to secure his Permanent Resident Card?”
“It was a green card—”
“Same thing, dear.”
“—and yes. For which he will pay. And pay and pay and pay.”
“He wanted you to come back to Canada with him,” Iris volunteered for some reason. “I remember that. And I remember Amanda and Cassandra were so relieved when you didn’t go.”
“Hewantedall kinds of things, some of which he got.”
“Did he want an ass kicking on the way out the door?” Cassandra asked. “Because that’s what he got.”
“It’s all water under the bridge he blew up. Change of subject, please.”
“Very well. In nearly all ways, you are terribly fortunate to have such a lovely family. The blood relatives, at least. And your parents are perfect for each other.”
“Iris, you’ve always tried to make it into this epic love story, and it wasn’t.” Small wonder, given that Iris and Cassandra’s dad had suggested the opposite of an epic love story. “My folks banged; my mom got pregnant; my dad stuck around. They put up with each other. Soon they’ll be trapped together in an RV. After that, God knows. The end.”
Cass pretended to dab away a tear. Then said “Ow” when Sidney smacked her on the arm.
“You wait, Iris. My folks will pull Amanda’s parents into their scheme too.”
“They still take vacations together?” Iris asked. “How sweet.”
