The Cherry Blossom Tree

Cherry Chapter Five

Mom loosened up after about fifteen minutes of wandering through the crowd where nobody suddenly started accusing her of being an accessory to her husband’s crimes.  She even bumped into a couple roughly her age who simply smiled, apologised and continued walking.  This made her relax infinitely more and she even started to smile.

“Kaitlynn, stop that,” Annabel chided, smacking at my hands.

I’d been attempting yet again to make my blouse meet my jeans.  It was a futile battle, but one I wasn’t ready to give up on yet.  I scowled at Annabel and made a great show of yanking my top down.

She rolled her eyes and threatened to tie my hands behind my back if she caught me doing it again.  I simply made sure she wasn’t looking from then on out.

Summer in Montana was pretty warm, despite being later afternoon the temperature was still sitting in the high sixties.  A slight breeze brought with it the delicious aroma of cooking meat and butter popcorn, and on top of that I was convinced I detected a hint of cotton candy.

We stopped by a few food stalls and Annabel bought us hot dogs, fries, ice slushies, herself a jumbo popcorn, and me a stick of cotton candy.  Mom surprised us all when she declared she wanted to play a game, and so we followed her over to a stall with a teenage boy standing behind it.  A young couple was already playing to our left, and beside them was a man with his young daughter.

“Well, hello ladies,” the boy said, and gestured at the backboard behind him where ten pins were standing in a triangle formation on top of each other.  “The game’s simple.  Knock down the pins and get yourself a prize.  You get four balls.  The fewer you use to accomplish the goal, the bigger the prize.  So, who’s playing?”

Mom spied a giant blue plush dolphin sitting up high on one of the shelves.  She’d always been partial to dolphins and had even donated religiously to a charity  endeavouring to help protect the species.

“How many balls would I need to get the dolphin?” Mom enquired.

The boy looked behind him and whistled.  “For that guy there, you’d need to knock them down in one go.”

I barely resisted the urge to slap my palm to my forehead.  Mom’s hand eye coordination wasn’t exactly the best.  She’d definitely been no star athlete in her day, and she wasn’t now.  But I didn’t protest as she handed over the money and set herself up on the right with an anticipatory gleam in her eyes.

Four attempts later the gleam was gone.  Mom failed to knock down all of the pegs each and every time; they were a lot heavier than they appeared, and Mom lacked the arm power required.  It was actually the perfect couple’s game, where the dashing guy would come along to play, his girlfriend twittering madly over the pink pony she just had to have.  He’d throw like he was the Hulk’s cousin and smash the pins down, and his girlfriend would praise him madly like he was an unsung hero who’d returned from the war.

“Kaitlynn,” Mom said, breaking into my ridiculous daydream.

“Huh?”

“Come on, honey, we’re moving on,” she said, already taking a step away.