An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach) Page 11

  Emma turned an excited face to the others. “Chris thinks the tattoo idea is very cool. He’s going to call Nicole and see if he can bribe her with concert tickets or something if she’ll fit us in together tomorrow.”

  “Great idea. I bet that works.” Maggie returned to the sofa.

  “He isn’t going to be able to get here in time to eat and get back to the arena, but he’s going to send a car for us. Also gave me instructions on where to go once we get there.” Emma laughed. “And he also sent someone out to find earplugs for us. I assured him we wouldn’t need them—it’s not like none of us has been to a concert before—but the thought was really sweet.”

  Maggie nodded. “It’s the thought that counts.”

  “Really sweet of him,” Liddy agreed. “But yeah. I’ve been to dozens of concerts in my time. I saw the Who a few years ago, and they were loud.”

  Emma’s phone rang and she glanced at the screen. “It’s Chris . . . hi. Okay. Oh, terrific. Thank you!” She gave Liddy and Maggie a thumbs-up. “That’s so nice of you. I will. Thanks. See you soon.”

  She held up the phone in a triumphant gesture. “We’re good to go for noon tomorrow.”

  “Did he have to promise Nicole his firstborn?” Maggie asked.

  “She extorted four tickets and backstage passes for tomorrow night, but he said no big deal. And he’s looking forward to seeing all three of us tonight.” Emma got up and went to the table and picked up the menus. “So how ’bout we look into a quick dinner. Something light, maybe. We’re getting picked up in about ninety minutes, and I’m going to need some of that time to get into my ‘rock star mom’ look.”

  “What’s a rock star mom look like?” Liddy asked.

  “We wear makeup and good jewelry.”

  Liddy looked at Maggie and deadpanned, “She’s going to do it. She’s going to wear pearls with her concert tee.”

  They pored over the menu before Emma called in their order. When she finished, she turned back to Liddy and Maggie and said, “So we need to decide where we want to have it.”

  Maggie glanced at the table, then back to Emma. “I guess the dining table.”

  Emma laughed. “Not dinner. I meant the tattoo. We should all have the same thing in the same place. Preferably someplace where it won’t sag.”

  “Honey, sooner or later, everything’s going to sag,” Liddy pointed out.

  “So we find some discreet place for this little tattoo where the sagging won’t be noticeable to anyone except ourselves,” Maggie said.

  “What’s the point in having a tattoo if no one sees it?” Liddy asked.

  “We’re not getting it for anyone else,” Emma said. “We’re getting it for ourselves.”

  “Good point.” Maggie thought for a moment. “How ’bout between our shoulder blades? We’ll always know it’s there—whatever it turns out to be.”

  Emma rose to answer the door. “I’d like to be able to see it. If it’s in the middle of my back, I’ll only be able to see it in a mirror, and what’s the fun of that?”

  Room service wheeled in a cart laden with dishes hidden beneath shiny covers as the three women gathered at the table. In no time, the women had devoured their omelets and fruit salad, and after they’d finished, Emma passed out the T-shirts her son had sent for them.

  The short-sleeve black cotton shirts bore Chris’s face front and center, with the members of his band behind him. DEAN was written in pale-blue cursive under the image. Maggie and Liddy both made a fuss over them before heading off to their rooms to change for the main event.

  “I love that Chris had this shirt designed and made special for you, Em.” Maggie stood in front of a mirror and fluffed her hair after they’d regrouped in the sitting room. “Makes me feel like I’m twenty-one again and on my way to a Bruce Springsteen concert with a sorority sister from Hartford. Her aunt worked for the promoter and got us great seats.”

  A bittersweet memory struck Maggie without warning, and she almost doubled up from the pain of it. She walked to the window and craned her neck, pretending to look for the limo while she tamped it back down. Brett had left for football camp in Ohio the week before, and she’d been crying on and off every day, even as she packed for her return to Pittsburgh for her senior year. He’d gone back early to get in some extra training, because word was there’d be several pro scouts at camp, and he’d wanted to make sure he was ready.

  “This is for us,” he’d told her before getting into his car and driving off. “For our future. If I sign with a pro team, we’ll have it made.” He’d kissed her long and hard, then set off on the drive to Columbus, the car radio blasting, his fingers tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. She’d stood at the end of their driveway until the car disappeared down the road at the point where Cottage merged with Front Street.

  “Where was that?” Emma asked.

  Maggie snapped back to the present. “Sorry. Where was what?”

  “The concert.”

  “East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Brendan Byrne Arena. It was August and hot as blazes. Like, ninety-five degrees. We were on our way back to school and the air-conditioning in my old car died. The concert was amazing, though. One of the best ever. After it was over, we went out for burgers. Then, since I drove us to New Jersey, she drove the rest of the way to Pittsburgh that night. Made it to school in time for breakfast.”

  The knock at the door saved her from sharing other memories.

  “That must be our driver.” Emma’s eyes shone with excitement as she picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Ready, girls?”

  “Let’s do it.” Maggie went to the door and opened it. The same young woman who’d driven them from the airport stood in the hall.

  “Lead on, Penelope.” Emma paused to lock the door behind them. “I’m so excited I can’t stand it.”

  “You’ve seen Chris in concert before,” Liddy reminded her.

  “Yes, but not with my two best friends.” Emma clutched their hands as they got into the elevator. “And I can’t wait to see my boy.”

  “Her boy.” Liddy elbowed Maggie. “Her boy who will have thousands of women screaming his name in about ninety minutes. Tossing him condoms with their names on the wrappers.”

  Penelope grinned without commenting and hit the button to send the elevator to the lobby.

  Charlotte’s Spectrum Center arena was mobbed from the parking lot to the brightly lit concourse. Maggie, Liddy, and Emma were whisked away to a guarded back entrance to the building and ushered inside and down a hall.

  “There are guards everywhere,” Liddy whispered.

  “So no one can sneak in and harass the performers. Chris told me we’d need to show our passes about four times before we got to him.” Emma held up her pass to the tall, beefy, bearded guard at the dressing room door.

  He reached behind him and opened the door, and Emma disappeared into the arms of her grinning son. Chris held her for a moment, then turned the grin to Maggie and Liddy, gesturing for them to follow him. The door closed behind them as Chris lifted his mother off her feet and swung her around.

  “Put me down,” Emma protested, though not, Maggie thought, very convincingly.

  “You look great, Mom.” He planted a loud kiss on her cheek, then turned to his visitors. “Mrs. Flynn! I’m so happy to see you.” He kissed Maggie, then leaned over to kiss Liddy as well. “Looking good, Mrs. Bryant.”

  Chris looked to Maggie like the kid who’d gotten an air rifle for Christmas. He was beaming, one arm around his mother. With his other arm, he reached out and hugged Maggie.

  “Mrs. Flynn, I was so sorry to hear about your husband. I wanted to come to the service, but—”

  Maggie cut him off. “Your mom told me you were out of the country, Chris. We didn’t expect you. But the flowers were gorgeous. Just perfect. Dahlias were Art’s favorites. And thank you for the centerpiece yesterday. It was lovely.”

  “You’re welcome. But I still would have liked to have been
there.” Before Maggie could again reassure him, he added, “How’s Natalie? I haven’t seen her in . . . damn, years.”

  “Nat’s fine. Teaching remedial English and creative writing at a community college. She hasn’t changed much,” Maggie said. “Same old Nat.”

  “And Grace? How’s Grace?”

  Maggie paused, wondering if she should tell the truth, then reminded herself that most of the time when people asked how you were, they were being polite and not really expecting much of anything beyond “okay.”

  Maggie opted for simplicity. “Gracie’s well, thanks. I’ll let her know you were asking about her.”

  “Mom said she has a daughter. Natalie, that is.”

  “She does. Daisy is three, and the smartest, most beautiful child on the planet,” Maggie told him.

  “I bet you’ve got pictures,” he said.

  “Of course I have pictures.” Maggie laughed. “What kind of a grandmother would I be if I didn’t have pictures?”

  He held out a hand, wiggled his fingers. “Hand ’em over.”

  “You don’t need to . . . ,” Maggie began to protest, thinking how nice it was for him to ask, but asking was sufficient.

  “Yeah, I do. I want to see what Nat’s kid looks like.” That grin again. Maggie remembered that grin getting him out of all sorts of scrapes when he was younger. She took her phone from her bag, scrolled till she found her photos of Daisy, then handed it over to Chris. “If you insist . . .”

  He swiped the screen several times, his smile spreading with each swipe. “She looks like Nat.”

  “She does. Hey, you don’t have to look at them all,” Maggie told him.

  He looked at a few more, paused at one or two, then handed the phone back to Maggie.

  “Nat looks good. Please tell her I said hi.” He gave Maggie a quick hug. “And give her that from me. Maybe we’ll all be in Wyndham Beach one of these days and we can get together.”

  “She’d love that. Both the girls would.” Then remembering that this wasn’t just their childhood friend Chris but Chris Dean, lead singer of DEAN, she added, “They’re hoping to catch one of your shows, one of these days.” She picked at the front of her shirt. “And they were plotting behind my back, trying to figure out how to get this away from me. Thank you for the shirts, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome, but tell Nat I’d love to see her anytime. She’s still in Philly?”

  “Outside of the city, but yes, they both are.”

  “I think we’re playing there in the spring. I’ll get in touch. And those shirts were designed and made just for you and Mom and Mrs. Bryant, but I’ll have a few more made up.”

  “That would be such a fun surprise for them.”

  “Mrs. Bryant, I was hoping to get a moment to talk to you . . .” He skillfully led her a few steps away, his arm around her as if to shelter her.

  Maggie couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she knew instinctively he would be speaking to her about Jessie, offering words of comfort even though Maggie knew he’d canceled a show to come home for her funeral.

  “You’ve raised a remarkable boy, Em,” Maggie said quietly.

  “He is that,” Emma whispered.

  A moment later, someone shouted, “Chris! It’s time, man.”

  Chris raised a hand behind Liddy’s back to acknowledge he’d heard but finished whatever it was he was saying before giving her one more hug. When Liddy turned back to Maggie and Emma, her eyes were brimming, but she was smiling.

  “Some kid,” she said simply.

  “And now that kid’s going to work.” Chris touched Emma on the shoulder. “Mom, I got you all earplugs.”

  “Earplugs? Pshaw,” Emma said dismissively. “I was going to concerts long before you were born.”

  “Maybe, but that was back in the day, before speakers and electric guitars, right?” he teased, nodding at someone behind Maggie.

  She turned to find two large, burly men, tattooed sleeves from their wrists to their shoulders, wearing black T-shirts with DEAN SECURITY in big white letters on front and back.

  “Ladies,” Chris was saying, “this is Turk, and this is Brando. They’re your guides for tonight.” He looked over Maggie’s head and said, “This is my mom and her two friends. Guard them with your lives, guys.”

  He turned back to Emma. “Have fun. See you after the show.”

  Liddy looked from one of the guards to the other, then back again. “Brando, huh?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded solemnly.

  “Well, I do see a slight resemblance.” Liddy rubbed her hands in anticipation. “Okay, let’s go, fellas. We’ve got a show to watch.”

  Chris had offered them special box seats from which to watch the show, but they’d declined because they wanted “the whole concert experience.” So instead of comfy box seats, Maggie, Liddy, and Emma found themselves dead center in the first row on the floor, “spitting distance,” as Liddy had said, from the stage. When the band appeared to take their places, the entire arena erupted in screams and shouts, and Maggie began to second-guess Emma’s blithe dismissal of earplugs. The level of noise was unlike anything she’d ever heard. When she slapped her hands over her ears, Turk—or Brando, she wasn’t sure who was who—offered her a small box.

  “Plugs,” he said, pointing to his ears. “Won’t block out everything, but they will make it tolerable.”

  “What?” She’d leaned forward to ask, then said, “Never mind.” She took the box and popped it open to reveal two small tan-color knobs, which she proceeded to slide into her ears. The effect was immediate. The noise level dropped dramatically, but she could still hear. She tapped her friends on the arm and pointed to her ears, then to the guard who’d offered the earplugs to her. Emma and Liddy nodded, Turk (or Brando) handed over the tiny boxes, and everyone was smiling just as the band began to play.

  As promised, Chris followed the set list he’d sent Emma. If members of the audience sitting around them were amused by the fact that the three older ladies in the front row knew the chorus of every song DEAN played, they gave no sign, even when the arm waving began and the ladies began to get into the spirit of the music, dancing and singing along. When the lights in the arena went low and the audience held up their lit phones, Maggie looked at Liddy and Emma, shrugged, and pulled out her phone as well. Laughing, Liddy and Emma followed suit. When objects began to fly past them to land on the stage, Maggie pulled a small box of Junior Mints from her bag and tossed them directly at Chris, who caught the box on his chest with one hand, then doubled over with laughter before tucking it into the pocket of his jeans.

  At the midway point of the show, he gestured for the crowd to settle down. When he began to speak, the arena went as close to silent as it ever would.

  “If you’ve been to our shows before, you know I like to take a little breather and share a little personal story with you all. Tonight, I have my most special girl with me. The woman who stood behind me—always—who took my part when I know how hard it was sometimes for her to do that.”

  Boy, was it ever, Maggie thought, recalling how Emma and her husband had fought over Chris’s rejection of a career at the bank, how Harry’d dismissed Chris’s love of music and his instinctive ability to play any instrument he picked up. The arguments had left Emma raw and gutted.

  Chris stepped to the edge of the stage, microphone in hand, looking down to the first row with much love in his eyes. “Guys, say hello to my mom, the ageless, beautiful Emma Dean.”

  Applause was swiftly followed by chants of Em-ma, Em-ma, which made Emma cover her face as she burst into tears. Chris nimbly jumped down from the stage and put his arms around his mother. After a few words meant only for her, he rubbed her back for a second before he hoisted himself back to the stage, signaled the band, and launched into the second half of the set list.

  After the show ended, Maggie, Emma, and Liddy were ushered back to the crowded dressing room, where bandmates, roadies, several importan
t-looking men in suits, and various women congregated.

  One of Chris’s bandmates, Todd, told them Chris had jumped in the shower to clean up and had appointed him to keep the dressing room decent—“no bad cursing, no nudity”—till he was dressed.

  “Good of him to appoint a chaperone,” Liddy muttered. “Like we don’t curse like sailors when it’s called for, and we’ve seen plenty of naked people in our time. Including Chris. Not since he was a baby, but still.”

  “Trust me, ma’am,” Todd told her, “you don’t want to be here during an all-out free-for-all. Bottom line, the boss said no one misbehaves while his mom is here.”

  And for the most part, no one did. Someone did bring in several large paper bags and dumped the contents on the floor. Maggie watched with some amusement as all manner of items fell out, everything from lacy bras to, yes, condom wrappers with writing on them. She was just about to comment when Chris emerged from the actual dressing area, grabbed a beer from a cooler as he passed, and made a beeline for his mother.

  “So whatcha think?” he asked as he approached.

  “It was great, sweetie. It really was.” Emma would have loved it even if Chris had sounded like a cat whose tail was caught in a closed door.

  He grinned and pulled the box of Junior Mints from his pocket. “Only you, Mrs. Flynn.” He kissed Maggie on the side of her forehead. “I can’t believe you remembered.”

  “Are you kidding? You used to live on those things. You and Ted . . . I can’t think of his last name, but his father used to be the barber down on Front Street.”

  “Ted Affonseca.” Chris opened the box of candy and shook a few pieces into his hand, then promptly popped them into his mouth. “These are still my favorite. And Ted’s dad is still the barber. I need to get back there soon and see him.” He ran a hand through his blond hair, which reached the top of his collar. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper something. Chris nodded and said, “Tell him I’ll be with him in one minute.”