Chance Harbor (6 page)

Catherine rolled her eyes. “Commonalities? Like what? Like you were registering for the draft when she celebrated her first birthday?”

“Make fun of this all you want, Catherine, but it’s not a crush or a passing thing. What Nola and I feel for each other is real.”

“How did it start being real? As in, physical?” She would probably be sorry later, knowing these details, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking. This girl was a child and Russell was an idiot.

Russell hadn’t touched the sangria in his glass. She poured it into her own. The second pitcher was empty except for the soggy fruit, as colorful and limp as dead betta fish, lying in the bottom. “Come on. You owe me that much. How did the affair start? In your office?”

The flush, which had begun its retreat back down Russell’s neck, returned. “The first time, yes. Nola admitted that she was starting to have feelings for me. Powerful feelings.”

“Was this before or after you gave her an A?”

“Don’t be nasty, Catherine. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Maybe I’m trying on a new persona to match the new personality you bought at the Playboy Mansion. How many times did you do it in your office?”

“Jesus, I don’t know.”

“Was this going on all summer?”

He nodded. “I couldn’t leave her, Catherine,” he said. “Nola’s delicate. That’s why I didn’t go to Canada with you and Willow. I couldn’t. You don’t understand what it did to Nola, thinking about me being gone for so many weeks. I was honestly afraid she might harm herself. That’s how intensely she loves me.”

“Oh my God, Russell. Listen to yourself! Wasn’t our marriage even worth you trying to stop seeing this girl? I don’t understand. Are you trying to tell me you stayed with her because you felt
sorry
for her? Didn’t our relationship count for anything, compared to a few hours with a girl who’s barely old enough to
vote
?”

“I know it sounds awful,” Russell said. “I can’t explain it, except to say Nola’s young, but not really that young. She knows a lot more than I do about some things. Traveling, for instance! Nola has been all over Europe and Asia with her family. Places I’ve always wanted to see.”

“I don’t care if she’s been to Shangri-La. She’s a child! She can’t even order a beer in a sports bar!”

Russell glanced nervously at the other diners, every one of whom was watching avidly. “Please, Catherine. Keep it down. I’d hoped you’d be more reasonable than this.”

“Well, sometimes our hopes amount to nothing, don’t they?” she said, and dumped the pitcher of bloody dead fruit over Russell’s head before walking out of the restaurant and into the rain-drenched street.

O
n Sunday morning, Willow made up a story about meeting a friend for coffee in Harvard Square—as if she even liked coffee, which tasted like dirt—and headed out the door with her sketch pad. She needn’t have bothered lying. Her grandmother seemed as happy to see her leave as Willow was to get out of there.

They’d had fun together Friday night, eating at Willow’s favorite burrito place in Harvard Square and then sitting with cups of frozen yogurt on one of the curved walls near Out of Town News, where they’d watched some guy do wicked cool paintings with a spray can.

Later that night, they were watching a movie when Catherine called to ask if it was okay if she didn’t come home until Sunday. As Willow listened to her grandmother’s end of the conversation—“Of course. You know I’m always happy to spend time with her; just enjoy yourself”—she pictured Catherine and Russell going to a hotel, fighting about Nola maybe, if he told her about the kiss, then making up.

She didn’t like picturing kissing or anything like that. Not after the last boyfriend her mom had. Unfortunately, thinking about Russell and Nola made Willow remember him, something she tried never to do. She had to sleep with her light on. Otherwise she’d picture Tom, the guy who Mom called the Real Deal even after Willow said she didn’t like him, sneaking into her room.

“But why don’t you like Tom?” her mom had asked, frowning as they sat at the kitchen table waiting for Tom to come home to the fried chicken Zoe had bought at the grocery store to eat with a can of beans for dinner. “He’s so much better than Doug, don’t you think?”

If you’d asked her before Tom moved in with them, Willow would have said anybody would be a step up from Doug the Slug, who’d lived with them for two years and had kept saying his back hurt too much for him to get a job. Doug was the reason her mom went back to doing molly after she’d given it up for, like, a year. Doug was why Mom drank, too, and forgot to pick up Willow from school sometimes.

Finally, after Mom came home early from work one night and found Willow freezing on the porch while Doug did coke with one of the neighbors, she’d screamed at him and dumped the Slug. They’d moved out of the apartment that night, leaving almost everything behind so Doug couldn’t find them again.

“But how do you know he won’t, Mom?” Willow had demanded. She was seven by then and tired of moving. She had also learned that not everything her mom said was true, even if Mom believed it herself.

“Because he’s too freakin’ lazy,” Mom said, with an eye roll and her laugh that was like a thousand purple cartoon butterflies. You couldn’t help laughing when Mom did.

They’d moved in with Nana and Grandpa for a month and then to a new apartment, smaller but cleaner than Doug’s, and things were good for a while.

“I’m really getting my shit together now,” Mom had said, after she’d found a new job as a waitress. She’d dumped a heap of shiny silver coins onto the kitchen table, then grinned and pulled out a wad of ones and fives. People tipped great in the new place, and Mom didn’t even have to pool her tips like she’d done in the club where she’d worked before. Plus, now that Willow was nine and old enough to stay on her own, they didn’t have to pay a sitter.

Then the Real Deal came into their lives. Tom acted like Mr. Normal, and even Willow could see he was good-looking for somebody so old. Tom had a few teeth capped in gold, but most were white and straight. He had a nice haircut and long sideburns and he wore boots, like a country-western singer.

Tom even had his own car, a shiny red one that he drove fast with the sunroof open. Once, he’d picked Willow up from school and let her ride home standing on the front seat, her head out the window. He’d whooped and hung on to Willow’s leg to keep her from falling out.

But Tom didn’t want to touch only Willow’s leg. He wanted to touch her in other places. She’d been hearing “stranger danger” stuff in school since kindergarten and knew that wasn’t okay. But her mom was so happy and Tom gave her money. They finally had electricity all the time and plenty of food, too. How could Willow make her leave the Real Deal?

She couldn’t do it. Willow decided to just stay away from Tom. She got involved in after-school stuff and played soccer on weekends, making sure she wasn’t ever alone with him in the apartment. Tom wasn’t living with them; whenever her mom was working, Willow said she’d rather stay home by herself than have him come babysit her. “I’m not a baby, Mom,” she said. “I’m almost ten. It’s insulting.”

“You’re not scared here at night by yourself?” Her mom had looked doubtful, squinching her pretty blue eyes. She knew Willow was afraid of the dark. Always had been, since the fire.

“I’m fine. You like it when Tom comes to your work and picks you up, right? You could even spend the night at his house. I can get myself to school in the morning.”

So mostly that’s what happened. For months, things went on like that, Willow tricking herself into thinking things were okay and taking care of herself.

Then, one night, Tom had come to the apartment while Mom was at work, saying he had to use their Wi-Fi because his was down. Tom opened his laptop on the kitchen table and started “working the numbers,” he said after kissing Mom good-bye. “We’ll have our own place soon, a real house,” he’d said to Mom. “We’ll be a family. You, me, and Willow.”

Willow hadn’t said anything, just stayed in the living room doing her homework in front of the TV and planning how to run away if he actually did move in.

She tried to forget Tom was in the kitchen. Then he called her in there. “Willow, honey, can you help me with something on the computer? Just for a sec?”

Willow was good on the computer. Most adults were hopeless. She sighed and went into the kitchen. “What?”

“Here. Look at this,” Tom said.

She couldn’t tell what she was looking at right off, then realized it was a man and a woman. The man’s penis was in the woman’s mouth. The woman was skinny and wore bright red lipstick, but she wasn’t really a woman. More like a girl her own age. No hair anywhere.

“That’s disgusting,” Willow said.

“Oh, no, it feels real good, doing that.” Tom hooked his arm between Willow’s thighs before she could move away. “I could show you how to do it. I’d pay you twenty dollars, too. I know you and your mom could use the money, right?”

After a moment of frozen panic, Willow had felt his fingers moving like worms into her underpants. She kicked his chair so hard he almost tipped over; then she ran out of the apartment and down the street to her friend Morgan’s house. Morgan made her tell Mom, and they’d moved out of the apartment the next day to some crap house with, like, eighteen people sleeping everywhere, even on the floor. They’d never seen Mr. Real Deal again.

After that, of course, everything happened the way Willow had thought it would: Mom crying for days, saying she was sorry, then getting high and sleeping a lot.

The one thing Willow had never predicted was Mom giving up. Not just on her, but on life. She had, though, saying, “You’re better off without me, sweet pea,” when Willow cried at the bus station and begged her not to leave.

Now, as Willow walked down Mass Ave toward Harvard Square, she wondered why it felt so bad, having Catherine and Russell stay out all night. It wasn’t like she’d been abandoned in a bus station. Catherine had assured them she’d be home today, that she just needed a little break.

“Work was really getting to me,” she’d explained to Willow on the phone after talking to Nana. “You don’t mind, do you? I know it’s probably good for Nana to have some company, too. She’s lonely since Grandpa died.”

Catherine would come home, Willow told herself. She wasn’t Zoe. Catherine would never run away and leave her. Russell, either.

Would they?

At Cambridge Common, she stopped to watch a bunch of people playing Frisbee. Another group was setting up some kind of tightrope between two trees. Harvard students, probably.

She sank down onto the silky grass and took out her sketch pad and pencils. Really, what would happen to her if Catherine and Russell decided to split up? Would they even want to keep her? Catherine always talked about how Willow made them a family, but what if there was no husband? Would she spend part of the time with Catherine and the rest of the time with Russell, like her friend Kendrick did with her divorced parents?

Willow felt a tear sliding down her cheek and scrubbed at her face with one hand just as someone called her name.

She turned around so fast that she got a cramp in her neck and said, “Ow.”

“Well, ‘ow’ to you, too.” It was Henry. He trotted over like a redheaded giraffe and collapsed next to her. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Willow said, pointing toward Davis Square. “Down that way.”

“That’s weird. Me, too. I didn’t think anyone from school lived in Cambridge.”

“I didn’t either. Especially not a rich third!” When he looked confused, Willow added, “You know: named after your grandfather and dad.”

“Oh!” Henry reddened and tugged out a blade of grass, flattened it between his thumbs, and blew on it. The grass shrieked like a dying cat. “Being named after your father doesn’t exactly make you rich,” he said. “It just means your parents were probably too scared of making their own parents mad to give you an original name. We’re poor as dirt.”

“Good,” she said.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Hey. I don’t want to be the only pauper at Beacon Hill School. So if you live in Cambridge, why do you go there?”

“Better education, tonier colleges accepting our fine graduates,” Henry said. “Or so goes the lingo at home. My parents are both professors and I’m the youngest kid in our family, so they’ve been thinking about my college choice pretty much since I blew out the candle on my first birthday cake. Why are you there?”

“Because it’s free,” she said.

“Whoa. Presidential merit scholar?”

“No. My dad teaches there.” When she saw Henry frown, Willow added, “Russell Standish, history? He’s really my uncle. That’s why we have different last names. But he and my aunt have been raising me since my mom took off when I was ten.”

“Shit. That must have sucked.”

Henry’s brown eyes were so sympathetic that Willow turned away. “Yeah, well. Mom couldn’t keep things together. She’s probably dead now.”

“So you’re saying you’re better off? That’s good, I guess.”

Willow felt disappointed by his response. But what was he supposed to say?
Gee, you must be resilient and wonderful, going through hell like that?
She’d like to hear somebody say that just once. Though what Henry said was still better than that shrink Catherine made her see for a while, the one who said,
It would be normal for you to have trouble forming attachments, Willow
. Like she was some kind of Lego brick with the wrong number of holes.

“What are you not drawing today?” Henry was looking at her notebook.

“The trees,” Willow said. “Did you know that George Washington stood under that elm tree over there when he first took charge of the Continental Army?”

“I did, actually,” Henry said. “My dad teaches history at Simmons. Did you know that one of Washington’s favorite dishes was cream of peanut soup? Or that he had all his teeth pulled?”

Willow laughed. “I didn’t know about the soup, but I knew about his teeth. Russell says George Washington had a set of ivory teeth made.”

“Yeah. Ivory from hippos, set in silver.”

They high-fived. “So, where are you going now?” Willow asked.

“Anywhere but home, where my sister’s practicing her flute. Talk about ‘ow.’ Want to hang out?”

Willow nodded and gathered her things. Any distraction was a welcome one. By the time she got home, Catherine and Russell would be there.

•   •   •

The tomatoes had taken over. That was always the way with vegetables in September, Eve thought as she contemplated Catherine’s garden: some plants thrived, bullying their way through the August heat and September’s chilly nights while others rotted away, leaves tattered into lace by insects.

Why did Catherine even bother growing her own vegetables? So impractical. There were grocery stores and produce stands on practically every corner in Cambridge.

She’d probably put in a garden thinking this would be a good activity for Willow, something healthy and outdoorsy. A mother-daughter bonding activity. Catherine had always treated motherhood like a graduate school project, studying every aspect of parenting. Right now there were four books on her bedside table about teaching your child to be ethical, independent, happy, and unplugged. As if working mothers didn’t already feel guilty enough.

Gardening was an admirable impulse, but Eve hated to see food wasted. She got to work picking tomatoes, laying them gently in the basket she’d brought out from the kitchen. At least she could boil them down and freeze the tomato sauce for Catherine to use this winter.

As she picked them, Eve thought about that strange phone call on Friday night. Why had Catherine suddenly needed a weekend away? Was it really because she was exhausted from a tough week at work? Eve didn’t buy it, yet it was true that Catherine hadn’t sounded at all like her usual brisk, competent self.