February, 1976
Cinnamon looked over her file. Jennifer was still engrossed in her math workbook. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, backs on pillows propped against the two arms, their legs stretched across the seat cushions, toes touching. Cinnamon turned to look through the open French doors to the patio. The sky had darkened and the wind was building. She reached for the cashmere throw on the back of the couch and tossed it casually over her legs and Jennifer’s.
“Thanks, Mom.” Jennifer did not look up. She had fantastic concentration for a six-year old.
“Cold, Sweetie?”
“Only my toes.” She snuggled them under her mother’s legs, unaware that her father had once done the same thing fairly regularly. Cinnamon felt a tiny pang of missing Rollin and willed it away.
“Should I close the doors?”
Jennifer looked up. “I really like it when it’s like this, Mom. I think it’s
going to get all blowy like
“I think so too.” Cinnamon was happy to leave the doors open. The air was charged and the wind refreshing. She noticed drops on the surface of the pool. So far no rain was blowing in. She turned back to her file, hoping to finish a stack of reading before she spent the next day in back to back meetings. Suddenly the lights flickered both inside and outside. “I think we may have a thunderstorm brewing.”
“Do you think it will be loud?” Jennifer asked, filled with curiosity and not an ounce of fear.
“Might be.” A distant rumble punctuated her reply. “Sounds far away.”
Jennifer smiled. “I like storms.”
“So do I. Especially when I’m snuggled up inside.”
“Mom, I like it when we do our homework together.”
“Me too.”
There was another dramatic flash of lightning. This time the thunder crash followed directly after and sounded like it was right overhead. Jennifer’s shoulders jumped involuntarily, then she laughed. “Now it sounds close, Mom. I wonder what’s going to happen next?”
"You can never tell with lightning.”
Jennifer nodded. “Kinda like Dad.”
Cinnamon was stunned. She thought she needed to tread carefully. Jennifer seemed to slowly be adjusting to the fact that Rollin was not living with them, but Cinnamon knew it was hard for her to understand. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she had given her daughter enough of a chance to talk through her feelings. “What do you mean, Sweetheart?”
Jennifer twisted her pencil. “Well lightning is really exciting and it gets your attention and then you have to wait to find out what happens next. And sometimes it’s really loud and sometimes it’s soft and sometimes you get a little scared about it and other times you know it’s going to be okay.”
“And that’s like Dad?”
“Well, yeah, ‘cause you just never know.” Her shoulders shrugged.
Cinnamon felt her daughter’s insight pierce her. How was Jennifer aware of so much? “Do you think that’s good or bad?”
“Kinda both.”
“Jennifer, you do know your dad loves you very much, don’t you?”
“Yeah, Mom. He loves us both a lot. He just can’t always be here right now.”
Cinnamon choked a little, but remained composed. “Yeah.”
“Do you miss him too, Mom?”
“I do,” she answered honestly. “Is that the scary part, that Dad’s not here?”
“Sometimes.” Cinnamon waited quietly. She felt that Jennifer would say more if she wanted to. “Mom, sometimes it’s scary when Daddy leaves and I don’t know when he’s going to come back.”
“Jennifer, Daddy will always come back. You can be absolutely sure of that. Come here, Pumpkin.” She held her arms open and Jennifer climbed across her legs into her embrace. Cinnamon adjusted the throw around them both and hugged Jennifer close. Another flash of lightning brought their eyes toward each other, watching and waiting. The thunderclap was loud and rumbled for nearly a minute.
Jennifer smiled, “Dad says those are the ones that sound like somebody’s bowling in the sky. He says that’s the pins rattling.”
“Your Dad’s a clever guy. When the lightning stops, let’s call him up and you can tell him about the storm.”
“Okay.” Jennifer placed her arms along Cinnamon’s, happy to snuggle in her mother’s embrace.
Cinnamon kissed her blonde hair softly. “Finish your homework?”
“Almost. I’m stuck on the last one. It’s pretty tricky.”
“Why don’t you leave it for now and give it a fresh look after dinner.”
“Okay. Can we call Daddy now? The storm stopped.”
Cinnamon reached behind her for the phone and passed it to her daughter. “Tell you what. I think you should call Dad yourself.” Cinnamon wrote out Rollin’s number on her pad and ripped off the sheet for Jennifer. “Once you do it yourself, then you can call Dad anytime you miss him.”
“Really?”
“Really! Here you go. Each number in order.” Cinnamon watched her daughter dial and prayed Rollin would be home to answer her call.
“It’s ringing, Mom.”
“You know what to do.”
Jennifer’s face lit up. “Hi Dad, this is Jennifer…Fine. How ‘bout you? … We had a storm…Yep, we’re all okay. The thunder and lightning were really exciting.”
Cinnamon gently extricated herself from beneath her daughter and moved through the French doors. The patio was wet, and the balcony overhead off her bedroom still dripped, but the rain had stopped. Cinnamon half-listened to Jennifer’s report about school. Part of her longed to hear Rollin’s voice; she knew it would still make her quiver. Her heart still ached from missing him. But she couldn’t imagine being with him either, not with the things they’d said to one another. Not knowing what she knew. How - she wondered - had they gotten from where they were to this unhappy place? Step by step.
THE END
Kristine Zensky
April 2002