“Relax, Max,” she purred, turning her face so close to his he smelled the lemon from the Atlantic cod on the dinner menu. “We’re going home, to where ‘our hearts have ever been’. Or, rather, to where our young hopes have been left dead and buried, like Danny Boy’s abandoned love. You think you hold my daughter’s name and location hostage. I certainly hold your sainted cousin Sean’s location hostage. All these years, and kin still separates us, and joins us. I’ll take you home as no set of ruby red slippers could, not even on the munchkin feet of Temple Barr.”
He leaned back and tilted the hat brim lower over his eyes, done with jousting. “Where do you wish to go first, my wild Irish rose? To meet my lost kin or your own?”
“To Hell, where Jack the Ripper claimed he was from.”
“Fair enough,” Max said. And yawned.
He knew the next step now.
He hoped those he’d left behind in Vegas were making the right moves too.
16
Off, Off and Away
“This certainly is a…squat…main terminal,” Matt said.
He turned in the car’s passenger seat to view Minneapolis-St. Paul airport through the rent-a-Ford’s rear window. Temple kept her eyes on the road as she drove around continually curving exit lanes.
“Don’t look back,” Temple said. “And I’m pleased you’re not nervous with me driving.”
“Why should I be? Glad we got some sleep on the flight, though. Even you, who doesn’t work nights.”
Temple swallowed an urge to lie and over-explain why she’d been shy of sleep the night before. In daylight, that midnight Araby Motel expedition with Electra looked even more loopy than it had at the time.
Matt turned to face front and the passing freeway flora. “I like the coolness, but it sure is hairy here, like in Chicago.”
He was right. Minnesota greenery was aggressive. Temple had forgotten that after living a couple years in a desert community like Las Vegas. Still, she was pleased. Most guys, even the best of them, had trouble relinquishing the steering wheel to a mere girl. Her brothers had been the worst at that.
“Don’t diss the terminal, Chicago boy,” Temple said. “My mother was an extra there when they filmed Airport.”
“Airport?” Matt repeated.
Temple sighed. Airport, yes, the major motion picture of 1970. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul had gone crazy at being the film’s site. For Temple’s mom, it was the highlight of her college life. One day she’d spent the afternoon hours until dawn “milling” left and right in the main concourse area, depending on whether her birth date was an odd or even year. Repeated examinations of the final film’s stopped frames had revealed no glimpse of her telltale fire-engine-red hair.
“Being an extra sounds hard on the feet,” Matt said after Temple explained.
“My mom felt no pain. She glimpsed star Burt Lancaster and even saw a scene-stealing cameo by the ‘First Lady of the American Theater’, Helen Hayes.” Temple cranked the steering wheel hard left as they glided under an underpass. “That terminal has been built onto since then. Back in that day it was considered ultramodern and exciting.”
Matt shook his head and faced forward. “All this greenery seems claustrophobic after doing time in Las Vegas.”
“It is pretty hairy around here.” Temple grinned as she spurted the rental car into the pulsing westward traffic flow.
“Do you mean ‘hairy’ as in masses of flowing leaves or scary ‘hairy’ as in what meeting your extended family will be like for me?”
“Both.” She spared him a glance from the crowded lanes. “Don’t worry. Your blond coloring will fit right in with all the Swedes and Norskys in Minnesota.”
“Your brothers too?”
“Kinda.”
“Where did your red hair come in?”
“Must be some Scots-Irish in the mix.” Temple smiled. “You don’t look too edgy for a prospective son-in-law. We’re on the Interstate and you’re still not nervous about me driving.”
“Why should I be nervous or driving? You know the terrain, and I don’t.”
“You’re just too logical for the average guy. I love it, but I warn you that logic won’t work with the Barr family Front Four.”
“Your…brothers,” Matt guessed. “I know they’re all older, but why do you call them the Front Four?”
“Football nuts.” Temple sighed. “Then they go to lakes and do horrible things to innocent fish. Even in the dead of winter. They’ve been teasing me since I was born and haven’t stopped yet.” Temple recalled the joke emails from her brothers popping up occasionally on her cell phone. She knew they missed her, but, being boys, didn’t dare admit it.
“So you escaped.”
Temple nodded, not taking her eyes off the road. “It was all ‘harmless’ stuff, but I was grown, moved out, and on my second great job before I left the Twin Cities, and I still never was able to shed their ‘Little Sister’ attitude. Their really little sister.” She made a face.
“So you’re more nervous than I am about what our reception will be?”
“You shouldn’t worry. Mom’s on our side. Or yours, rather. And Dad’s automatically for anyone who is not tall, dark, and Max.”
“Max isn’t so bad.”
“You say that?”
Matt shrugged. “Your dad only met me once in passing. How do I get a free pass?”
“He knows Mom watches The Amanda Show, and will probably run off with you if I don’t.”
Matt laughed. “I had no idea of the kind of pressure I escaped by being a blissfully ignorant of family matters during my sixteen years as a seminarian and priest.”
“Or you escaped by not meeting my whole family until now.”
“That Vegas hit-and-run dinner did its job in making me a ‘better than’ instead of an ‘also-ran’. Apparently the great and powerful Max Kinsella didn’t score too high with your parents and brothers.”
“Putting it mildly.”
Matt turned his head to view the neighborhood and hide a grin. Temple knew Matt, her Current and Committed, would always want to one-up Max, her Ex and…Exiled.
It was surreal to wonder if Max was in Ireland dodging stalker Kathleen O’Connor while she and Matt made a Romcom movie-like journey to her parents’ home to pave the way for their wedding.
“Pleasant neighborhood,” Matt commented.
Surprised, Temple surveyed the long and low sixties split-level homes that had always seemed bland to her as they glided past. “Compared to the close-packed two-story, nineteen-twenties brick two-flats your Chicago relatives live in, this is Super Suburbia,” she agreed.
Seen with new eyes, the expansive lawns were gently rolling and as green as envy. In fact, Minnesota’s lush emerald lawns were a prize asset. What a pain to mow all summer long! Temple wondered if her brothers helped Dad out these days, even though they were all married with children and lawns of their own to mow.
Oh, God. Children. She hoped that topic would not come up when her many nephews showed up tomorrow for Sunday dinner. Too much too soon.
A familiar string of brass numbers on a wrought-iron lamppost by the curb had her turning into the driveway in front of a two-car garage. Concrete stairs flanked by yew trees were now hosting a stream of large, looming, descending adults.
“The big question is,” Temple said, popping the trunk lid, tightening the combs on her zebra-print pillbox hat, and leaning in to give Matt a last, private comment as five tall male shadows surrounded the car.
“What sleeping arrangements will they assign us?”