Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [165]
“I think Dad’s right; you should wear a bikini. You’ve got a great figure,” I tell her.
Six months ago I would have been horrified that my father actually had a preference for Fiona in a habit and wimple, never mind a bikini—or that she’d been about to refer to Chloe as her granddaughter.
My father looks at me, his eyes narrowing slightly as he squints into the sun. I smile at him, and he winks at me. He reaches over and pats Fiona chastely on the arm. “See, baby, what did I tell you?”
Fiona places her hand over my father’s and sighs. “For a woman of my age, maybe.”
Although she has never even hinted at her age, Ben once told me she is fifty-five. “For a woman of any age,” I say, and I mean it.
She smiles as she swings her tanned legs from the chaise, moving to help unstrap Chloe from the seat of her stroller. I sit down on the lawn chair next to her, fish Carlos’s things from the beach bag, and begin the arduous process of wrestling him into his water wings. Even though Carlos is afraid of water, Ruth had made me promise I’d put them on.
“How did the barbeque go last weekend?” I ask.
Fiona beams at me. “It was terrific, thanks to you, Mira.” I’d given Fiona the test batch of sauce I’d made, which had actually turned out to be excellent. “One of your father’s students recognized your name from the paper and asked him if you were related. Tell her, Joe.”
“Reads your column every week, she said,” my father says, looking up from his novel. “She said to tell you she’s cooking more, thanks to you.”
“Your father is very proud of you, you know. You’re kind of like a celebrity. Pittsburgh’s own celebrity chef.”
Fiona lowers herself into the baby pool and scoops Chloe onto her lap. Chloe instantly begins flapping her arms and splashing. Carlos and I sit on the grass, a couple of feet from the edge of the pool. “No waaer,” he says, burying his face in my arm, when Chloe’s flat-handed splash launches an arc of water that lands within an inch of us. I pull Carlos close and gently pat one water-winged arm. “Okay, buddy. We’ll just sit.” The last time Ruth and I had taken the kids to the pool, the furthest Carlos had gotten was submerging one of his big toes in the shallow end.
“How about I take Chloe for a swim in the big girl pool, give you and Carlos a little space?” Fiona says. I nod, and Carlos and I huddle together on the edge of the towel, watching as Fiona and Chloe head off hand in hand.
Fiona sets Chloe down on the edge of the pool, and, placing one hand gently on Chloe’s stomach, eases herself down the ladder until she is standing just underneath her. Then, I watch amazed as Chloe scoots herself off the edge and hops into Fiona’s waiting arms. The two of them bob easily around in the deep water, and I can tell by the way she allows Fiona to swing her around that Chloe’s not the least bit afraid. One day she will be a good swimmer, and I will have Fiona to thank.
“You know, it’s a mitzvah to teach your child to swim,” Ruth told me the last time we’d taken the kids here, when Carlos sat screaming by the edge of the kiddie pool. A mitzvah, Ruth explained, is a basic precept of Jewish law, somewhere between a good deed and a commandment. Fulfilling a mitzvah is considered a blessing. “Too bad, too,” Ruth said, turning to look at me, the helplessness in her eyes piercing. “It makes a lot of sense to me. You need to teach your child to survive in the world because one day you won’t be there.”
Based on a few offhand comments Ruth has made, I know her mother didn’t approve of her decision to adopt Carlos or raise him as a single parent. It makes me angry at this woman, whom I’d never met, for undermining Ruth’s confidence as a parent, when she needs all the building up she can get. It also makes me appreciate my father and Fiona who, incredibly, has managed to be just the right blend of friend, maternal figure, and doting grandparent.
I am blessed, I think.
A couple of hours later, when the sky clouds over and the rumbling of thunder is heard in the distance, we load the kids into the car and drive