Deep Down True (38 page)

They walked back to the kitchenette. “And what’s this business about knitting mittens?” he asked her. “The idiot’s got a yarn fetish?”

A laugh came out of her so suddenly that when she inhaled again, her nose made an embarrassing snorting sound.

“Nice!” He nodded admiringly. And she laughed even harder.

T
WO DAYS LATER, ON SUNDAY MORNING, ALDER asked, “When’s the last time you went for a walk?” She peered over a bowl of Bran ’N Flax cereal, eating quickly as if to minimize the time it spent with her taste buds. She had poured it for Dana, but Dana wasn’t hungry.

“I don’t know . . . weeks.” Dana cradled a cup of black tea against her chest. Except for the one spot where the heat from the mug penetrated her flannel pajama top, she felt cold and dull.

“Maybe you should go.”

I’m being pathetic,
thought Dana,
and she doesn’t want to watch.
She looked out the window. If it had been a blue-sky, zip-a-deedoo-dah kind of day, she would have gone back into hibernation. But it was hazy and gray, the late-autumn fog creating a lather of mist against the shrubbery. Good hiding weather. For Alder’s sake she thought she could manage a walk. A short one.

She did not go past Polly’s house, certain that Polly would somehow sense Dana’s nearness and come out and demand to talk to her. No talking. Not today. She trudged up the street in the opposite direction, skirting the long way around the edge of their neighborhood to get over to Nipmuc Pond.

Today is Sunday,
she reminded herself, as if the past forty-eight hours had reduced her short-term memory to that of an Alzheimer patient’s.
Six more days.

Dana had helped them pack Friday afternoon. Morgan had wanted some spending money to buy Rita a Disney memento. “How did you two become friends?” Dana asked her.

“She didn’t make the basketball team.” This was expected to be self-explanatory, and Dana had had to prod for details. “She was on the soccer team, and all those girls were her friends, but when she didn’t make the basketball team, she wasn’t part of the group anymore.”

“Just like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Morgan. “I guess. Also, she’s got those froggy eyes and crazy hair, and boys make fun of her. The soccer girls had to stick up for her a lot. That gets kind of tiring.”

Dana was incensed. “They dropped her because
other
kids’ behavior was tiring?”

“Jeez, Mom, I don’t know. One minute she was with the group, the next minute she wasn’t. The tiring part was just a guess, okay?”

They rooted through the bin of Morgan’s summer clothes, pulling out mismatched tankinis and wrinkled shorts. “But how did
you
get to be friends with her?”

Morgan hesitated, a secret mirth playing around her lips. “Okay, but you can’t repeat this!” She’d been sitting in earth science, pretending to work on her already completed wolf paper, trying not to make eye contact, so as to avoid any possible attention. “Rita’s seat is right next to mine, and since I was looking down, I saw it before anyone else.”

“What?”

Morgan started to giggle. “Her undies!” Hanging out from the hem of Rita’s jeans had been a pair of underwear. When she slumped into her seat, feet splayed out into the aisle, the brightly colored garment had flown clear of her pant leg and landed beside Morgan’s chair. “They had little pink pandas all over them. But the worst part was the tag! It said her name—like her mother had labeled them for camp or something!”

“Oh, my gosh! What did you do?”

Morgan had quickly set her backpack over them. At the end of class she convinced Rita to stay until the other kids left. Then she lifted the backpack. “At first she didn’t get it, and she was mad, like how did I get her undies and stuff. But then she remembered she wore those same jeans the day before, and picked them off the floor to wear that morning. The old undies must’ve still been in them, and slid down her leg until they came out in science.”

“Did she thank you?”

“Um, kinda. She called me her savior and hugged me till she nearly broke my neck. So I sat with her at lunch.”

Dana had given Morgan a twenty-dollar bill. “Get Rita something really nice,” she’d said, “like a stuffed Minnie Mouse or something.”

“Ew, no!”

Maybe she’s in a gift store right now,
mused Dana as the pond came into view, veiled in a somber drizzle. Maybe she was happily tormenting Kenneth as she took hours to make up her mind. Dana dearly hoped so.

Dana had also offered Grady money to buy a gift for Jav.

“No way, he’s a jerk.”

“What happened?”

Grady’s face went sulky. “Took my golf ball,” he muttered. That day, Friday, Grady had shown his private treasure to Jav on the playground. Jav had pronounced it “killer.”

“That’s not very nice,” Dana had commiserated.

“No, ‘killer’ is good. It’s like ‘sick.’” But then Jav had wanted to play with it. “I kept telling him to give it back, but he just kept saying ‘Why?’”

“Did you tell him it was special to you, that it’s from your father?”

Grady’s face squinched up in annoyance. “I’m not gonna tell him
that
!”

They’d been standing on the pavement next to the school, a sprawling, one-story, flat-topped building, when Jav had thrown it into the air. It had landed on the roof and never come down. “Now it’s there
forever,
” muttered Grady. “Jerk.”

Dana had given the twenty to Kenneth when he’d arrived to pick them up, in case Grady changed his mind. “I have money,” he’d grumbled, insulted by the gesture.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, just take it!” she’d told him.

And then the kids were hauling their duffel bags out to the car, scrambling back in for a forgotten cap or book, giving her one more extra squeeze, and scrambling back out again.

And then they were gone.

 

 

Later that night Jet had come over with Thai takeout and a DVD of
Young Frankenstein
. “This is one of the weirdest, funniest movies ever made,” she told Dana. “Couldn’t possibly remind you of
anything.
” Alder had given Jet a look. “What?” said Jet. “Like it’s not
obvious
she’s missing her kids?”

“Can you just zip it?” Alder muttered under her breath.

“It’s okay,” Dana told her.

“See?” said Jet. “Besides, her kids are lucky.”

It was true, and Dana knew she would do well to keep that in perspective. “A free trip to Disney World doesn’t come along every day,” she conceded.

“Not
Disney
World,” Jet responded with mild disgust. “They’re lucky they have a mother who likes having them around so much. My mother would be psyched if I
moved
to Disney World.”

Dana suddenly embraced the surprised teenager and murmured, “I still can’t thank you enough for rescuing Morgan and her friend the other day.”

Once released, Jet responded with a half-embarrassed, half-proud little grin. “Good times.” She nodded. “I might be thinking of a career in law enforcement.”

“You’d be wonderful.”

On Saturday, Dana had run errands and taken the girls to REI in West Hartford to research gear for winter camping with the Wilderness Club, and it hadn’t been hard to pretend it was just another weekend when the kids were at Kenneth’s. The day had passed. And after a call from Morgan and Grady to say they’d already found eight hidden Mickey ears designed into the decor of the hotel lobby, Dana had gone to bed—at seven-fifteen.

Now, as she rounded the opposite shore of Nipmuc Pond, she saw a boy, shaggy hair whipped into a tangle by the breeze, throwing a tennis ball to a beagle along the sandy spit of shoreline.
I should get them a dog,
she thought. A gust of wind raced off the water, and she burrowed her hands into her pockets, fingers balled against the cold and the unseemliness of her own desperation. Her empty stomach gurgled for food. She veered off course, away from the lake and out toward the main street. Maybe she could choke down a doughnut with a cup of tea.

She pulled open the door to Village Donuts and was met with a comforting blast of warm, sweet-smelling air. People sat in booths reading the
Hartford Sunday Courant,
tapping away at laptops, or chatting amiably with each other. Two women with graying hair tucked back under knit hats burst into melodious laughter. Dana wondered if her friendship with Polly would ever be so seamlessly mended that they could come here in ten years and giggle together like sisters.

The line moved quickly, and just as it was Dana’s turn to order, she realized that the five-dollar bill she usually kept in the little pocket of her exercise pants was gone. “Oh,” she said to the proprietor behind the cash register. “I thought I had money, but I . . . Could I just have a cup of hot water, please?”

“Unquestionably,” he said with an amused grin. “And as luck would have it, we’ve got a special going at the moment—with every order of hot water, we’re offering a free tea bag.”

Dana stared at him for a second.
A kindness,
she realized. She thanked him wholeheartedly when he handed her the tea. As she turned to go, she heard the man behind her say, “Hiya, Richie. I guess I’ll get in on that free-tea-bag offer.”

“Ahh, too late, my friend,” the proprietor said, guffawing. “Special’s over!”

 

 

When Dana got home, the dishwasher was running and Alder was wiping the kitchen counters.

“Uh, listen,” Alder said, face tense with apprehension. “I called my mother.”

“About your car?” asked Dana.

“Not specifically.”

“Then what, specifically?”

Alder scrubbed at a speck of hardened pad thai noodle.

“Alder?”

The girl gave her aunt a worried glance.

“Oh,” said Dana. “About me.”

Alder winced apologetically. “I was just worried, and I didn’t know who to talk to. I didn’t expect her to actually
come
here . . . But she’s coming . . . tonight.”

W
HEN CONNIE’S AGED VW VANAGON ROLLED up the street and into the driveway that evening, sputtering like an angry lawn mower, the entire neighborhood was effectively put on notice. Dana was dusting the dining room. She had started cleaning shortly after Alder’s announcement.

“Not like she’ll notice,” Alder had said as Dana tugged the vacuum from the hall closet.

“I know.” Dana had witnessed far too many battles between Connie and their mother over the “war-torn pigsty” that was Connie’s side of the bedroom she and Dana had shared. “Why does it
matter
?” Connie would moan at their mother. “I’m just gonna trash it again!”

Dana was cleaning because it felt good to do something so quintessentially normal. Tidying up for guests—wasn’t it the corner-stone of civilized society? Now, where would Connie stay?

“She’s not sleeping with me!” said Alder. But she agreed to move to Morgan’s room so her mother could take over the pullout couch in the TV room. By the time Dana had stashed the Lemon Pledge under the sink, Connie was clomping up the mudroom steps in her wooden clogs.

She looked different. Her dark hair had been blunt-cut just below her ears, and it bushed out from the sides of her head like the points of graying triangles. Her favorite batik-print quilted jacket with the Chinese-coin buttons hung loosely from her frame. Connie had always been lanky, but her narrow face now seemed almost gaunt. Dana reached for the coarse-woven bag hanging from Connie’s shoulder. “Here, let me take that.”

“Still polite.” Connie smiled. “Must not be so bad.” Her glance shifted past Dana to Alder, and it seemed to Dana that she was controlling herself, pedaling backward against her own tendency toward temerity. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” said Alder.

Connie’s self-control ebbed, and she reached out to touch Alder’s two-toned hair. The black at the bottom had continued to grow out, revealing more of the natural ginger brown. Connie lifted a hank from the ends and slowly let it cascade down across her daughter’s shoulder. “Haircut, maybe?” she murmured.