Chapter 11

Tara’s turn:

We did it. Derek and I talked. He agreed, but honestly, I’m the adult in this equation, actually his legal guardian, and he would have had to go along with my plan. However, a certain pre-teen Jewish princess seems to have gained my little brother’s eye. I think that if we HADN’T decided to move, he might’ve hitched a ride back here.

The apartment. Cindy and her Dan used to live here. It belongs to the corporation. They told me I could paint it any color I wanted, but honestly, the paint is fresh and Susan’s mom did a great job of offering Cindy some great choices of colors.

Furniture? I couldn’t bear to bring the furnishings from Mom and Dad’s house here, except for a dresser that Mom had been given from her own grandmother. And Dad’s sofa. The rest of the old house’s furnishings went to a local charity. Alan had 3Sigma foot the bill to move things that we needed to move.

The house went on the market, much to the dismay of my uncle who thought I should stay in it. I told him of my plans for Auburn and that I most likely would not be coming back to Savannah when I graduated. He protested. I offered him a price for the house, ten percent below the price I was willing to accept on the open market. He declined. The house sold quickly.

That helps make us a lot less broke, even though we weren’t broke in the first place, Mom and Dad being big fans of life insurance.

Some of that money furnished our new apartment. We’re comfortable. We have good neighbors with something in common – each household has a connection with 3Sigma. The linchpin, of course, is Beck and Sim Weismann. Sim’s an Auburn professor. Beck’s the head of administration at 3Sigma. And they’re the parents of Rachel who can turn my little brother into a tongue-tied mess with a single one of her smiles. It’s cute.

Another apartment has Kara and Bert Williams. I think of them as the The Odd Couple. He ‘s shorter than her. He’s a mechanical engineer and has a position at 3Sigma and she’s an associate instructor at Auburn just because she loves her music. He sounds like he should be raising pigs in the Ozarks and she’s pure Houstonian. And Jewish, too.

Another apartment is occupied by Maddie and another Auburn student. Maddie’s part-time at 3Sigma. Another apartment is home to Dana and Ed. Dana’s fifteen. Married to Ed, an engineer who like the others thinks he’s fallen into a parallel universe and ended up with the adorable Dana. Two other apartments have technicians who work for Jason, husband of Susan, at 3Sigma as well.

Across the parking lot is the off-campus lab of the Munchkins as well as the study facility, locally referred to as the greenhouse. And there’s the Desai restaurant – wonderful Indian food, home of Cindy’s adopted grandmother.

My Dad would have loved this place. He had a shop out in the garage, where he was forever tinkering on one thing or another, and he loved to “fix things” -- small appliances, lawn equipment, whatever. Mom got a kick out of calling him “Mr. Fixit”, and simply thought it was a normal thing for men to do.

When I was a little girl, I used to enjoy standing up on a stool beside him, watching him work. He once said, “Tara, I don’t really fix things, I just replace broken parts, mostly.” As much as anything, that’s what attracted me to engineering. But if he’d ever had the chance to visit the Hogwarts lab, he’d have been delighted.

It gets a little noisy in there, with two or three small groups working on different parts of a project. Today, Vicki had Derek over at a whiteboard, explaining something about the new Bot’s arm articulation. Derek was partially paying attention to her, but making frequent glances at Rachel, who had a couple of engineering students running a small motor and making measurements.

And Mom. She would have been visiting Beck, kneading bread dough, greasing baking pans, and arguing some obscure point of the Torah, trying to keep kosher in the Deep South, or some such. Or more likely, worrying about the obvious mutual-admiration-society arising between Derek and Rachel.

Derek is simply delighted with it all, and has been since we first climbed into the little Cessna over in Savannah. And since he first laid eyes on Rachel, he’s been funny to watch. I think he’d wag his tail, if he had one.

And then there’s me. In some ways I’m delighted, and the pressure on me has been much reduced, since we’re now part of a larger community. Every problem we encounter gets resolved immediately and smoothly. Academic, legal, taxes, whatever -- just speak to one of the sisterhood, or to Beck, and it gets fixed immediately.

What I have, though, they call it “grief”, I think. Now that the daily worries are removed, I have too much time to think. And I think too much about Mom and Dad. And it hurts.

I try to immerse myself into the myriad activities around me. It’s best that my mind stays occupied. Cindy or Nikki, sometimes both, conspire to spin me up to speed in math. Mizz Lee, one of Cindy’s adopted grandmothers and Dana’s REAL great grandmother, is the Community’s link to language arts and she’s good at it.

At the end of the day, though, sometimes it’s just me and Derek and Derek gets off to himself, leaving me. I crack the books, study. I take care of the house, too, but the tasks are shared between me and Derek and I’m immune to the whining when I have to point out things he needs to accomplish in the interests of sanitation and habitability.

I try to settle into a routine, but there’s the time that something broke – a stupid blender, for heaven’s sake, and I looked at it and memories of Dad came flooding back. Mom, too. “Honey. We need a new blender. This one quit.” And Dad saying, “Lemme look at it, dear. Can’t be MUCH wrong...”

And I melted down. Hung my butt on a stool at the bar, put my head in my arms and cried.

Derek heard me. Yes, he’s an icky little brother at possibly the worst age possible, but he came to my aid.

“Sis? Tara?” he said softly, touching my arm.

I said nothing, just sobbed.

“I know, Sis,” he said. “It’s hard. You need somebody to talk to.”

“Who?”

“Somebody ‘sides me. Kara, maybe. Rachel said Kara lost her mom.”

“I dunno. It’s late. Just leave me alone...”

“No, Sis. I love you. I’m gonna help.”

He disappeared. I stayed there sobbing, darkness covering my world.

I heard the doorbell ring, answered by Derek. “She’s over at the bar,” Derek said.

“Tara?” Kara’s voice.

I looked up. She was standing there, clutching her violin case to her chest like an infant.

“It’ssssss badddddd...” I sobbed. “Just wrongggggg...”

“I know, Sis,” she said. She turned to Derek. “Little brother, why don’t you go see what you and Bert can get into. He’s got some kit thingie going.”

“‘Kay,” Derek said. “Help my sister...” and he bounded off.

“Come sit on the sofa,” Kara said.

“How’d you do it, Kara? I can’t forget...”

“Never forget, Tara. That’s first. Never forget. They loved you, right up to the end.”

“Your mom...”

“Poor, messed up Mom,” Kara told me. “I know she loved me. Life just got to be too much...”

“I didn’t know, Kara,” I said softly, realizing that what she said about Mom and Dad was exactly true and her revelation of HER mom was revelation of a different depth of sorrow.

“It happened, Tara. I went through the loss, and I locked myself in my room and cried, then it came to me that wallowing in the loss was not honoring her memory, that she didn’t want that. That’s when I got my violin out and played, and I promised myself that I would play like she was watching and I would play so she could be proud.” She opened her violin case, took the instrument out, put it under her chin. The bow touched strings, her notes, I can’t identify the song, but it started out in sorrow, then lightened up.

“Your mandolin?”

“I’m not that good, Kara.”

“Your mom and dad know YOU. They’re hearing your heart.”

“I’ll be back.” I got up, retrieved it.

“Chords,” Kara said. “We’ll do chords. Don’t do ‘em for me. Just do ‘em and let your mind go. Remember. Be thankful.”

She put bow to string. I let my fingers play familiar basic chords and pickings that I wouldn’t mess up. I remember Mom and Dad being fascinated that I’d chosen the mandolin to learn.

Kara could tell. “That’s it,” she said. “Remember. Simple, let your fingers play, let your heart feel...” She returned to playing along with me for a bit then, “Watch my fingers and follow me.”

That’s a little harder, but I do remember violin fingerings from orchestra all the way through high school. It started coming back to me in flashes of insight. I got a little more adventurous, adding a trill or an arpeggio.

When I did, Kara’s eyes flashed an understanding smile.

Finally... “Kara, you’re worth your weight in gold.”

She smiled. “Call it my mitzvah. For today, anyway.”

“Beck’s rubbing off on you,” I said.

“Yes, my Jewish sister – the older one. You’re the middle one. I’m the young one.”

“A sub-set of the sisters around here,” I said.

She smiled. “Yeah, they’re like that, aren’t they?”

“They all bring something,” I spoke.

“So do you.”

“I don’t know what I bring. I’m just restarting my college thing. I don’t have skills. I don’t have a mate. I hardly contribute...”

“You’re our first mandolinist,” she said. “That’s a start. You brought Derek. He upset the stability of the Munchkins. Keeps ‘em from getting complacent. You’re here, and Tara, seriously, you’ve just begun. This is where you’re meant to be.” She smiled at ME. “Really. It’s strange for any definition of ‘strange’ you can imagine, but you showed up. That’s no accident. And we’re all about family. You’re part of it. You never have to cry alone, Tara. I can’t replace. Nobody could replace Mom in my life and I don’t purport to replace your mom and dad in yours. I’m just here to help you remember what they would’ve wanted from you.”

I straightened my back. Felt strength return. Resolve.

“You’re right. That Munchkin lab, Dad would’ve been all over it, and I would’ve been right beside him. Now he gets to watch and Mom gets to kvetch about her daughter being a tomboy.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“I am.”

“Call and see what my husband and your brother are up to. Maybe hot chocolate will help them forgive us.”

“All you have to do is smile at Bert and he’ll forgive you,” I said.

“True. But hot chocolate validates his feelings. C’mon, sis. Let’s go.”

I’ll be okay. This is the Community and within it is the Sisterhood and I am part. I will be okay.