Authors: Joy Fielding
Another shrug. I get to my feet, follow my daughter toward the front of the house.
Sitting all afternoon in my air-conditioned den, the drapes pulled, the room dark save for the light coming from the TV screen, I’ve forgotten how bright the day is, how warm the July sun, how fresh the outside air. It almost knocks me over in its rush to embrace me as I approach the door.
She is standing in the doorway, her face partially obscured by the shadow of a nearby weeping willow tree. She brings with her the scent of freshly cut flowers. I see a bouquet, like a baby, resting in her trembling arms. “Hi,” she says simply, as my heart stops.
I open my mouth to speak, but no words come. What cruel trick of the imagination is this? I wonder. Have I been sitting in the darkness for so long that I’m starting to see ghosts, that I’m no longer able to differentiate between what is real and what is impossible?
“Mrs. Norman?” she asks, bringing me back to myself.
“Mom?” Whitney touches my arm. I feel the concern in her fingers.
“I guess you don’t remember me. I’m Montana,” she says, almost as if she isn’t sure. Her voice has a nervous, breathy quality, quite unlike her mother’s, but aside from that, the two women are almost identical. It is as if Chris has stepped out of my VCR, assumed solid form, run around to the front of the house, and now stands in front of me. It is as if I have pressed the wrong button and miraculously erased the last twenty-three years. “Can I come in?” she asks.
I step back to allow her entry. “Montana,” I murmur, unable to say more.
She smiles, tucks her long blond hair behind her ears in a gesture remarkably similar to her mother’s. “Actually, I prefer Ana. One
n.”
“Ana,” I repeat, savoring the simple sound.
“I was never very comfortable with Montana.” She looks at the flowers in her hands, as if noticing them for the first time, pushes them toward me. “These are for you.”
“For me? Thank you.”
“I’ll put them in water,” Whitney volunteers, sensing my inability to function at normal speed. “Why don’t you guys go into the living room and sit
down?” She points the way, as if I might have forgotten. Dutifully, I lead Montana—Ana, as she now prefers to be called—into the sun-filled room at the back of the house. From the kitchen, I hear water running in the sink.
“You have a lovely home,” Ana says, sitting at the edge of one of two floral-print wingback chairs on either side of the never-used black marble fireplace.
Neither Owen nor I have the slightest interest in fireplaces, which suddenly strikes me as odd. We
look
like the kind of people who would like nothing better than throwing a few logs on the fire and sitting back to bask in its warm glow. The image is, admittedly, lovely. The reality is too much work. Neither of us can be bothered. It’s easier to simply turn up the heat.
How often, I wonder, hesitating between a wing chair and the rose-colored sofa at right angles to it, are things what they seem?
Ultimately, I select the sofa. It takes several seconds to get comfortable. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Lemonade?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
Seconds later, Whitney appears with the flowers neatly arranged in a deep crystal vase, deposits them on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go back upstairs.” She looks to the ceiling, as if this is explanation enough.
“It was nice seeing you again,” Ana says as Whitney makes her exit. Then, lowering her voice: “I can’t believe how grown-up she is.”
I nod. I can’t believe it either. Actually, I’m surprised Montana even remembers my younger
daughter. It’s been so long since she’s seen her. “She’ll be a senior this year.”
Ana shakes her head with the kind of dulled amazement usually reserved for women decades her senior. She is only twenty-five, too young to be so aware of the passage of time. “What university?”
“Duke.”
“Is that where Ariel went?”
“Ariel chose not to go to university,” I say, trying to hold on to the smile in my voice. It still bothers me that my older daughter decided against a higher education, that she chose instead to marry a modern-day cowboy and move with him to a ranch outside Casper, Wyoming, where she is expecting my first grandchild in December. “It’s so strange,” I hear myself confiding. “I spent half my life working for a degree. I’m considered something of an authority on women’s issues. I give speeches all over the country. I’m even writing a book …” I stop. What does this young girl care about an aging woman’s résumé? “And I have this daughter,” I continue, despite my best efforts, “this throwback to another era, who thinks it’s romantic to be barefoot and pregnant.”
“She might go back to school later.”
“Easier said than done.”
“You did it.”
“You’re right.” I smile, feel better. “Anyway, what can you do? It’s her life. Gotta let her live it.”
“She’ll be fine,” Ana says with such certainty I find myself believing her. Then: “I hear Vicki’s become quite the star.”
My smile vanishes. “No surprise there.”
“Do you ever watch her show?”
I shake my head. Four years ago, Vicki and her family took up residence in Los Angeles. Lately, she’s become a fixture on Court TV and was recently anointed one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by
People
magazine. The accompanying article said she’d recently been reunited with her mother. There was a photograph of the two of them together, and even though the picture was very small, the family resemblance was unmistakable. They each have the same thin face, the same ferocious intensity around the eyes. Vicki’s hand was draped casually across her mother’s shoulder, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Vicki wasn’t subconsciously trying to keep her mother from running away from her again. Owen said I was reading too much into the picture, and he’s probably right. At any rate, I hope their reunion was everything Vicki wanted and needed, that her mother was everything she’d hoped her to be. I thought of calling her, wishing her well, decided against it. Some wounds are just too stubborn to heal.
“What about Tracey?” Ana asks. “Do you ever hear from her?”
“No, thank God. Last I heard she was acting in some off-Broadway play.” I pause, momentarily overwhelmed by one of life’s little ironies. “What about you? What brings you back to Cincinnati? Don’t tell me you got tired of French cooking.”
Chris’s smile radiates from her daughter’s heart-shaped face. “No, Paris is great. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. And there’s this guy I met …” The sentence stops, the words lingering like smoke from a cigarette. She rolls her eyes, laughs her mother’s laugh.
“Have you seen your father?”
A frown creases Ana’s forehead. “It’s my brothers I came back to see.”
“How are they?”
“They’re doing okay. It’s hard to tell. You know boys—they don’t say much.”
“I haven’t seen Tony in years,” I remark, speaking more to myself than the girl I once knew as Montana.
“He hasn’t changed. He was in this car accident last year. It slowed him down a bit. He walks with a bit of a limp, but other than that …” She stops, takes a long, deep breath. “Tell me about my mother,” she says softly.
I close my eyes, open them again, see Chris where her daughter sits. What can I say? “What do you want to know?”
Ana tilts her chin toward the ceiling, as if to prevent the tears growing in her eyes from releasing down her cheeks. “Everything.”
I shake my head, still angry at yet another of life’s bitter ironies. “About three years ago, I found a lump in my breast,” I begin, feeling its shadow still. “My mother died of breast cancer some years back. I don’t know if you remember that.”
Ana nods respectfully.
“Anyway, the doctor scheduled a mammogram. I was terrified. Your mother volunteered to keep me company, then decided she might as well schedule a mammogram for herself. My lump turned out to be a harmless cyst.…”
“My mother wasn’t so lucky,” Ana whispers.
“Everything happened very fast after that. In less than two years, she was gone.”
Ana stifles a small cry in the back of her throat. “I had no idea she was sick.”
“We tried to contact you, but your father gave us the wrong address. Our letters all came back.”
“Bastard,” Ana says clearly under her breath. “All I got was a phone call after she died.” She jumps to her feet, although once there, she doesn’t move. “Although I really can’t put all the blame on him, can I? It was
my
decision to cut her out of my life,
my
decision to take off for Europe.”
“You were a confused young girl.”
“I was a self-absorbed brat!”
“No,” I tell her, longing to take her in my arms, afraid to overstep the invisible boundary between us. “You mustn’t feel guilty. Your mother loved you. She was so proud of you.”
“Why? What did I ever do to deserve her pride?”
“You were her daughter.”
“Is that enough?”
Ariel’s face, in all its assorted transformations, appears before me, growing from jealous toddler to rebellious teen to expectant mother in a fraction of an instant. “Yes,” I say softly. “It’s enough.”
Ana wipes a tear from her cheek, sits back down. “Tell me about those two years. Did she suffer? Was she alone?”
“She didn’t suffer,” I tell Ana honestly. “She had wonderful doctors. They made sure her pain was minimal. And no, she wasn’t alone. Her friend, Donna, was with her.”
“Donna was the woman she lived with?”
“She met her when she worked for Emily Hallendale.
Donna’s a lovely woman. I think you’d like her.”
“Do you have her phone number?”
I nod. “It’s in the kitchen. I’ll get it for you.”
“Thank you.”
It takes a while to locate Donna’s number. My kitchen drawer is a mess of loose scraps of paper and old newspaper clippings. Of course there’s an address book, but it’s hopelessly out-of-date. I haven’t written anything in it in years. So I’m forced to examine every torn envelope, every change-of-address card, until I find Donna’s current address and phone number. Amazingly, it’s right near the top of the pile, but I missed it the first time around. I close my fist around it, carry it back to the living room.
Ana isn’t there.
A moment of panic ensues as I run to the front door. Has she left? Maybe I can still catch her.…
And then I hear her crying softly. I walk toward the sound, knowing exactly where I will find her.
She is standing in the doorway of my renovated den, now a full-fledged media room, with its impressive array of computers, stereo equipment, CD players, assorted speakers, and giant television screen. She is staring at her mother, only a few years older than Ana is now. I tiptoe into the room behind her, press the start button of the VCR, stand back and watch the women come to life. The camera pans jerkily from Chris to Barbara to Vicki. Barbara’s face fills the screen as she grabs the camera, waves it in my direction, then returns to Chris’s struggles trying to keep Montana on her lap.
Ana watches the child Montana kick angrily at her mother’s ankles before sliding off her lap, the toddler’s face awash with tears, as Ana’s is now. Chris extends her arms, waits patiently for her daughter to come back. But Montana refuses her entreaties, remains stubbornly on the edge of the frame. “Come on, baby,” Chris coos. “Be a good girl. Come to Mommy.”
“Oh,” Ana cries now, the word escaping her lips like a lover’s sigh. Her arms lift from her sides, as if she is being pulled by gentle strings. She sways, floats toward the screen. Instinctively, I reach over, press the pause button, watch as Montana folds into her mother’s waiting arms.
She’s been waiting so long, I think, approaching quietly, assuming Chris’s place, drawing her daughter close. I feel Ana’s legs give way, her body collapse into mine. We cry together, both of us embracing a memory, taking unexpected comfort in one another.
If life is the choices we make, as my mother once told me, then too much of life is spent bemoaning those choices. Too much time is wasted on regret. We can do nothing with the past but acknowledge and accept it. It is over. Done with. It is gone.
But if I am no longer the young woman I see laughing with her friends on my giant TV, I know she hasn’t disappeared altogether, that she is still a part of me. Sometimes I see her winking at me through tired eyes when I look into the mirror. Sometimes I feel her pulling my shoulders back when I’d rather slouch. She pushes my fingers when I write, selects the words I speak. She is the voice of my youth, of all I hold dear and close to my heart, and she is still whispering in my ear.
She is my friend.
Who says life has to make sense? That it owes us any explanations? Perhaps there is no such thing as justice. Perhaps there will never be peace. Or resolution.
But there is hope, I think, hugging Ana to me, embracing all that was and all that will be.
And there is love.
SEAL BOOKS
PROUDLY PRESENTS
WHISPERS AND LIES
JOY FIELDING
Turn the page for a preview of
Whispers and Lies.…
S
he said her name was Alison Simms.
The name tumbled slowly, almost langourously, from her lips, the way honey slides from the blade of a knife. Her voice was soft, tentative, slightly girlish, although her handshake was firm and she looked me straight in the eye. I liked that. I liked
her
, I decided, almost on the spot, although I’m the first to admit that I’m not always the best judge of character. Still, my first impression of the amazingly tall young woman with the shoulder-length, strawberry-blond curls who stood tightly clasping my hand in the living room of my small two-bedroom home was a positive one. And first impressions are lasting impressions, as my mother used to say.
“This is a real pretty house,” Alison said, her head nodding as if she were agreeing with her own assessment, her eyes darting appreciatively between the overstuffed sofa and the two delicate Queen Anne chairs, the cushioned valances framing the windows and the sculpted area rug lying across the light hardwood floor. “I love pink and mauve together. It’s my
favorite color combination.” Then she smiled, this enormous, wide, slightly goofy smile that made me want to laugh out loud. “I always wanted a pink-and-mauve wedding.”
This time I did laugh out loud. It seemed such a wonderfully strange thing to say to someone you’d just met. She laughed with me, although I doubt she knew why we were laughing, and I motioned toward the sofa for her to sit down. She immediately sank into the deep, down-filled cushions, her blue sundress all but disappearing inside the swirl of pink and mauve fabric flowers, and crossed one long, skinny leg over the other, the rest of her body folding itself artfully around her knees as she leaned toward me. I perched on the edge of the striped Queen Anne chair directly across from her, thinking that she reminded me of a pretty pink flamingo, a real one, not one of those awful plastic things you see stabbed into people’s front lawns. “You’re very tall,” I commented lamely, thinking she’d probably heard that remark all her life.
“Five feet ten inches,” she acknowledged graciously. “I look taller.”
“Yes, you do,” I agreed, although since I’m barely five foot four, everyone looks tall to me. “Do you mind my asking how old you are?”
“Twenty-eight.” A slight blush suddenly scraped her cheeks. “I look younger.”
“Yes, you do,” I said again. “You’re lucky. I’ve always looked my age.”
“How old are you?” she asked. “That is, if you don’t mind.…”
“Take a guess.”
The sudden intensity of her gaze caught me off-guard. She scrutinized me as if I were an exotic specimen in a lab, trapped between two tiny pieces of glass, under a microscope. Her clear green eyes burrowed into my tired brown ones, then moved across my face, examining each telltale line scratching at my flesh, weighing the evidence of my years. I have few illusions. I saw myself exactly the way I knew she must: a reasonably attractive woman with good cheekbones, large breasts, and a bad haircut.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Forty?”
“Exactly.” I laughed. “Told you.”
We fell silent, frozen in the warmth of the afternoon sun that surrounded us like a spotlight, highlighting small flecks of dust that danced in the air between us like hundreds of tiny insects. She smiled, folded her hands together in her lap, the fingers of one hand playing carelessly with the fingers of the other. She wore no rings of any kind, and no polish, although her nails were long and cared-for. I could tell she was nervous. She wanted me to like her.
“Did you have any trouble finding the house?” I asked.
“No. Your directions were great: east on Atlantic, south on Seventh Avenue, past the white church, between Second and Third Streets. No problem at all. Except for the traffic. I didn’t realize that Delray was such a busy place.”
“Well, it’s November,” I reminded her. “The snowbirds are starting to arrive.”
“Snowbirds?”
“Tourists,” I explained. “You’re obviously new to Florida.”
She looked toward her sandaled feet. “I like this rug. You’re very brave to have a white carpet in the living room.”
“Not really. I don’t do much entertaining.”
“I guess your job keeps you pretty busy. I always thought it would be so great to be a nurse,” she offered. “It must be very rewarding.”
I laughed. “Rewarding is not exactly the word I would use.”
“What word would you use?”
She seemed genuinely curious, something I found both refreshing and endearing. It had been so long since anyone had expressed any real interest in me that I guess I was flattered. But there was also something so touchingly naive about the question that I wanted to cross over to where she sat and hug her, as a mother hugs her child, and tell her that it was all right, she didn’t have to work so hard, that the tiny cottage behind my house was hers to occupy, that the decision had been made the minute she walked through my front door.
“What word would I use to describe the nursing profession?” I repeated, mulling over several possibilities. “Exhausting,” I said finally. “Exacting. Infuriating.”
“Good words.”
I laughed again, as I had done often in the short amount of time she’d been in my home. It would be nice having someone around who made me laugh, I remember thinking. “What sort of work do you do?” I asked.
Alison stood up, walked to the window, stared out at the wide street, lined with several varieties of shady palms. Bettye McCoy, third wife of Richard McCoy and some thirty years his junior (not an unusual occurrence in South Florida), was being pulled along the sidewalk by her two small white dogs. She was dressed from head to toe in beige Armani, and in her free hand she carried a small white plastic bag full of dog poop, a fashion irony seemingly lost on the third Mrs. McCoy. “Oh, would you just look at that. Aren’t they just the sweetest things? What are they, poodles?”
“Bichons,” I said, coming up beside her, the top of my head in line with the bottom of her chin. “The bimbos of the canine world.”
It was Alison’s turn to laugh. The sound filled the room, danced between us, like the flecks of dust in the afternoon sun. “They sure are cute, though. Don’t you think?”
“Cute is not exactly the word I would use,” I told her, consciously echoing my earlier remark.
She smiled conspiratorially. “What word would you use?”
“Let me see,” I said, warming to the game. “Yappy. Pesky. Destructive.”
“Destructive? How could anything that sweet be destructive?”
“One of her dogs got into my garden a few months back, dug up all my hibiscus. Trust me, it was neither sweet nor cute.” I backed away from the window, catching sight, as I did so, of a man’s silhouette among the many outside shadows on the opposite corner of the street. “Is someone waiting for you?”
“For me? No. Why?”
I edged forward to have a better look, but the man, if he’d existed at all, had taken his shadow and disappeared. I looked down the street, but there was no one there.
“I thought I saw someone standing under that tree over there.” I pointed with my chin.
“I don’t see anyone.”
“Well, I’m sure it was nothing. Would you like some coffee?”
“I’d love some coffee.” She followed me through the small dining area that stood perpendicular to the living room, and into the predominantly white kitchen at the back of the house. “Oh, would you just look at these,” she exclaimed with obvious delight, gliding toward the rows of shelves that lined the wall beside the small breakfast nook, her arms extended, fingers fluttering eagerly in the air. “What are these? Where did you get them?”
My eyes quickly scanned the sixty-five china heads that gazed at us from five rows of wooden shelves. “They’re called ‘ladies’ head vases,’ ” I
explained. “My mother used to collect them. They’re from the fifties, mostly made in Japan. They have holes in the tops of their heads, for flowers, I guess, although they don’t hold a lot. When they first came out, they were worth maybe a couple of dollars.”
“And now?”
“Apparently they’re quite valuable. Collectibles, I believe, is the word they use.”
“And what word would you use?” She waited eagerly, a mischievous smile twisting her full lips this way and that.
I didn’t have to think very hard. “Junk,” I said concisely.
“I think they’re great,” she protested. “Just look at the eyelashes on this one. Oh, and the earrings on this one. And the tiny string of pearls. Oh, and look at this one. Don’t you just love the expression on her face?” She lifted one of the heads gingerly into her hands. The china figurine was about six inches tall, with arched painted eyebrows and pursed red lips, her light brown curls peeking out from under a pink-and-white turban, a pink rose at her throat. “She’s not as ornate as some of the others, but she has such a superior look about her, you know, like some snooty society matron, looking down her nose at the rest of us.”
“Actually, she looks like my mother,” I said.
The china head almost slipped through Alison’s fingers. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” She quickly returned the head vase to its original position on the
shelf, between two doe-eyed girls with ribbons in their hair. “I didn’t mean …”
I laughed. “It’s interesting you picked that one. It was her favorite. What do you take in your coffee?”
“Cream, three sugars?” she asked, as if she weren’t sure, her eyes still on the china heads.
I poured us each a mug of the coffee I’d been brewing since she’d phoned from the hospital, said she’d seen my notice posted to the bulletin board at one of the nurses’ stations, and could she come over as soon as possible.
“Does your mother still collect?”
“She died five years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too. I miss her. It’s why I haven’t been able to sell off any of her friends. How about a piece of cranberry-and-pumpkin cake?” I asked, changing the subject for fear of getting maudlin. “I just made it this morning.”
“You can bake? Now I’m really impressed. I’m absolutely hopeless in the kitchen.”
“Your mother never taught you to cook?”
“We weren’t on the best of terms.” Alison smiled, although unlike her other smiles, this one seemed more forced than genuine. “Anyway, I’d love a piece of cake. Cranberries are one of my very favorite things in the whole world.”
Again, I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who felt so passionately about cranberries. Could you hand me a knife?” I motioned toward a group of knives slid into the artfully arranged slots
of a triangular chunk of wood that sat on the far end of the white tile countertop. Alison pulled out the top one, a foot-long monster with a tapered two-inch blade. “Whoa,” I said. “A wee bit of overkill, don’t you think?”
She turned the knife over slowly in her hand, studying her reflection in the well-sharpened blade, gingerly running her finger along its side, temporarily lost in thought. Then she caught me looking at her and quickly replaced the knife with one of the smaller ones, watching intently as the knife sliced effortlessly through the large bundt cake. Then it was my turn to watch as she wolfed it down, complimenting me all the while on its texture, its lightness, its taste. She finished it quickly, her entire focus on what she was doing, like a child.
Maybe I should have been more suspicious, or at the very least more wary, especially after the experience with my last tenant. But likely it was precisely that experience that made me so susceptible to Alison’s girlish charm. I wanted, really wanted, to believe she was exactly as she presented herself: a somewhat naive, lovely, sweet young woman.
Sweet
, I think now.
Sweet is not exactly the word I would use.
How could anything that sweet be destructive?
she’d asked.
Why wasn’t I listening?
“You’ve obviously never had a problem with your weight,” I observed, as her fingers pressed
down on several errant crumbs scattered across her plate before lifting them to her mouth.
“If anything, I have trouble keeping pounds on,” she said. “I was always teased about it. Kids used to say things like, ‘Skinny Minny, she grows like a weed.’ And I was the last girl in my class to get boobs, such as they are, so I took a lot of flak for that. Now suddenly everybody wants to be thin, only I’m still catching flak. People accuse me of being anorexic. They follow me into the bathroom after I eat to see if I’m going to throw up. You should hear the things they say.”
“People can be very insensitive,” I agreed. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Nowhere special. I wasn’t a very good student. I dropped out of college in my first year.”
“To do what?”
“Let’s see. I worked in a bank for a while, sold men’s socks, was a hostess in a restaurant, a receptionist in a hair salon. Stuff like that. I never have any trouble finding a job. Do you think I could have some more coffee?”
I poured her a second cup, again adding cream and three heaping teaspoons of sugar. “Would you like to see the cottage?”
Instantly, she was on her feet, downing the coffee in one seamless gulp, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Can’t wait. I just know it’s going to be beautiful.” She followed me to the back door, an eager puppy nipping at my heels. “Your notice said six hundred a month, right?”
“Will that be a problem? I require first and last month’s rent up front.”
“No problem. I intend to start looking for a job as soon as I get settled, and even if I don’t find something right away, my grandmother left me some money when she died, so I’m actually in pretty good shape. Financially speaking,” she added softly, strawberry-blond curls bouncing like coils around the long oval of her face.
I had hair like that once, I thought, tucking her disclaimer behind one ear along with several wayward waves of auburn hair. “My last tenant was several months behind in her rent when she took off, that’s why I have to ask.”
“Oh, I understand completely.”
We crossed the small patch of lawn that separated the tiny cottage from the main house. I fished inside my jeans pocket for the key to the front door, the heat of her gaze on my back rendering me unusually clumsy, so that the key fell from my hand and bounced on the grass. Alison immediately bent to pick it up, her fingers grazing mine as she returned it to the palm of my hand. I pushed open the cottage door and stood back to let her come inside.