Authors: Kristin Hannah
At last, they headed for the Holy Grail.
The Stanford booth.
Lauren heard Mrs. Haynes’s trailing voice as she marched ahead of them. “… the wing named after your grandfather …”
Lauren stumbled. It took pure willpower to keep her posture good and her smile in place.
David would probably go to Stanford, where his parents had gone, and his grandfather, too. The one school on the West Coast that matched the Ivy League for exclusivity. Stellar grades weren’t enough. Perfect SAT scores didn’t guarantee admittance, either.
No way would she get a scholarship from Stanford.
David tightened his hold on her hand. He smiled down at her.
Believe,
that smile said.
She wanted to.
“This is my son, David Ryerson Haynes,” Mrs. Haynes was saying now.
Of the Ryerson-Haynes Paper Company.
She hadn’t added that, of course. It would have been tacky and wholly unnecessary.
“And this is Lauren Ribido,” David said, squeezing Lauren’s hand. “She’d be a real asset to Stanford’s student body.”
The recruiter smiled at David. “So, David,” he said. “You’re interested in following in your family’s footsteps. Good for you. At Stanford, we pride ourselves on …”
Lauren stood there, holding David’s hand so tightly her fingers started to ache. She waited patiently for the recruiter to turn his attention to her.
He never did.
The bus jerked to a stop at the corner. Lauren grabbed her backpack off the floor and hurried to the front of the bus.
“Have a nice night,” Luella, the bus driver, said.
Lauren waved and headed down Main Street. Here, in the tourist hub of downtown West End, everything was sparkling and beautiful. Years ago, when the timber and commercial fishing industries had hit hard times, the town fathers had decided to play up the Victorian cuteness of the town. Half of downtown’s buildings had already fit the bill; the other half were hurriedly remodeled. A statewide advertising campaign was started (for a solid year the city government paid for nothing else—not roads or schools or services), and West End, “Victorian getaway on the coast,” was born.
The campaign worked. Tourists drifted in, drawn by
the bed-and-breakfasts, the sand castle competitions, the kite flying, and the sport fishing. It became a destination instead of a detour on the road from Seattle to Portland.
But the veneer went only so deep, and like all towns, West End had its forgotten places, its corners that remained unseen by visitors and unvisited by locals.
That part of town,
the place where people lived in apartments without decorations or security. Lauren’s part of town.
She turned off Main Street and kept walking.
With each step, the neighborhood deteriorated; the world became darker, more rundown. There were no Victorian-inspired curliques on the buildings here, no advertisements for quaint bed-and-breakfasts or seaplane rides. This was where the old-timers lived, men who’d once worked in the timber mills or on the fishing boats. The people who’d missed the tide of change and been washed into the dark, muddy marshlands. Here, the only bright lights were neon signs that advertised booze.
Lauren walked briskly, looking straight ahead. She noticed every nuance of change, every shadow that seemed new, every noise and movement, but she wasn’t afraid. This street had been her home turf for more than six years. Though most of her neighbors were down on their luck, they knew how to take care of one another, and little Lauren Ribido belonged here.
Home was a narrow, six-story apartment building that sat dead center on a lot overgrown with blackberry bushes and salal. The stucco exterior was grayed with dirt and debris. Light shone from behind several windows, giving the place its only sign of life.
Lauren hiked up the creaking steps, pushed through the front door (the lock had been broken five times last year; the property manager, Mrs. Mauk, refused to fix it
again), and headed for the tired steps that led to her apartment on the fourth floor.
As she crept past the manager’s door, she held her breath. She was almost to the stairs when she heard the door open, heard:
“Lauren? Is that you?”
Damn it.
She turned around, trying to smile. “Hello, Mrs. Mauk.”
Mrs. Mauk—
Call me Dolores, honey
—stepped into the shadowy hallway. Light from the open doorway made her look pale, almost sinister, but her toothy smile was bright. As always, she wore a navy blue kerchief over her graying hair and a floral housedress. There was a rumpled look to her, as if she’d just been unfolded from an old suitcase. Her shoulders were hunched by a lifetime of disappointment. It was a common stance in this neighborhood. “I went to the salon today.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your mom didn’t show for work.”
“She’s sick.”
Mrs. Mauk clucked sympathetically. “New boyfriend again, huh?”
Lauren couldn’t answer.
“Maybe this time it’ll be love. Anyhow, you’re overdue on the rent. I need it by Friday.”
“Okay.” Lauren couldn’t hold on to her smile.
Mrs. Mauk gave her The Look. “You can’t be warm enough in that coat,” she said, frowning. “You tell your mom—”
“I will. Bye.” She ran for the stairs and went up to the fourth floor.
Their door was ajar. Light spilled between the crack, slanted butterlike across the linoleum hallway.
Lauren wasn’t worried. Her mom rarely remembered to shut the front door, and when she did remember to close it, she never locked it. Lost her keys too often; that was the excuse.
Lauren went inside.
The place was a mess. An open pizza box covered one end of the counter. A collection of beer bottles stood beside it. Potato chip bags were everywhere. The room smelled of cigarettes and sweat.
Mom lay on the sofa, arms and legs akimbo. A rumbling snore came up from the tangle of blankets that covered her face.
With a sigh, Lauren went into the kitchen and cleaned everything up, then she went to the couch and knelt down. “Come on, Mom, I’ll help you to bed.”
“Wha? Huh?” Mom sat up, bleary-eyed. Her short, tousled hair, platinum this month, stuck out around her pale face. She reached shakily for the beer bottle on the end table. She took a long drink, then set it back down. Her aim was off, unsteady; the bottle thunked to the floor, spilling its contents.
She looked like a broken doll, with her face cocked to one side. She was porcelain pale; blue-black mascara smudged around her eyes. The faintest hint of her once-great beauty remained, like a glimmer of gold trim on a dirty china plate, peeking through. “He left me.”
“Who did, Mom?”
“Cal. And he swore he loved me.”
“Yeah. They always do.” Lauren bent down for the beer bottle, wondering if they had any paper towels to blot up the mess. Probably not. Mom’s paychecks were getting thinner lately. Supposedly it was the sagging economy. Mom swore that fewer women were coming to see her at the salon. Lauren figured that was half of
the story; the other half was that the Hair Apparent Beauty Salon was four doors down from the Tides tavern.
Mom reached for her cigarettes and lit one up. “You’re giving me that look again. The
fuck me, my mom’s a loser
look.”
Lauren sat down on the coffee table. As much as she tried not to feel the sting of disappointment, it was there. She always seemed to want too much from her mother. When would she learn? These continual letdowns were eating through her. Sometimes she imagined she could even see them as a shadow above her heart. “The college fair was today.”
Mom took another drag, frowning as she exhaled. “That’s on Tuesday.”
“This is Tuesday, Mom.”
“Aw,
shit.
” Mom leaned back onto the nubby avocado-green sofa. “I’m sorry, honey. I lost track of the days.” She exhaled again, scooted sideways. “Sit.”
Lauren moved fast, before Mom changed her mind.
“How did it go?”
She snuggled next to her mother. “I met a great guy from USC. He thought I should try and get recommendations from alumni.” She sighed. “I guess who you know helps.”
“Only if who you know will pay the tab, too.”
Lauren heard the hard edge come into her mother’s voice, and she winced. “I’ll get a scholarship, Mom. You’ll see.”
Mom took a long drag on her cigarette and turned slightly, studying Lauren through the filmy haze.
Lauren braced herself. She knew what was coming.
Not today. Please.
“I thought I’d get a scholarship, too, you know.”
“Please, don’t. Let’s talk about something else. I got an A+ on my honors history paper.” Lauren tried to get up. Mom grabbed her wrist, held her in place.
“My grades were okay,” Mom said, unsmiling, her brown eyes growing even darker. “I lettered in track and basketball. My test scores were damn respectable, too. And I was beautiful. They said I looked like Heather Locklear.”
Lauren sighed. She edged sideways, put a tiny space between them. “I know.”
“Then I went to the Sadie Hawkins dance with Thad Marlow.”
“I know. Big mistake.”
“A few kisses, a few shots of tequila, and there I was with my dress up around my waist. I didn’t know then that I was fucked in more ways than just the one. Four months later I was a senior in high school, shopping for maternity dresses. No scholarship for me. No college, no decent job. If one of your stepfathers hadn’t paid for beauty school, I’d probably be living in the street and eating other people’s leftovers. So, missy, you keep your—”
“Knees shut. Believe me, Mom; I know how I ruined your life.”
“
Ruined
is harsh,” Mom said with a tired sigh. “I never said ruined.”
“I wonder if he had other children,” Lauren said. She’d asked this same question every time her father’s name was mentioned. She couldn’t seem to help herself, though she knew the answer by heart.
“How would I know? He ran from me like I had the plague.”
“I just … wish I had relatives, that’s all.”
Mom exhaled smoke. “Believe me, family is overrated.
Oh, they’re fine till you screw up, but then,
wham!,
they break your heart. Don’t you count on people, Lauren.”
Lauren had heard all this before. “I just wish—”
“Don’t. It’ll only hurt you.”
Lauren looked at her mother. “Yeah,” she said tiredly. “I know.”
For the next few days, Angie did what she did best: She threw herself into a project. She woke long before dawn and spent all day studying. She called friends and former clients—anyone who’d ever been involved in the restaurant or food service business—and wrote down every word of their advice. Then she read and reread the account books until she understood every dollar that came in and every penny that went out. When she finished that, she went to the library. Hour after hour, she sat at the cheap Formica table with books and articles strewn out in front of her. After that, she parked herself at the microfiche machine and read the archived material.
At six o’clock, the librarian, Mrs. Martin, who’d been old when Angie got her first library card, turned off the lights.
Angie got the hint. She carried several armfuls of books to her car and drove back to the cottage, where she kept reading long into the night. She fell asleep on the sofa, which was infinitely preferable to being in bed alone.
While she was doing her research, her family called like clockwork. She answered each call politely, talked for a few moments, then gently hung up. She would, she
said repeatedly, let them know when she was ready to see the restaurant. At each such call, Mama snorted and said crisply,
You cannot learn without doing, Angela
.
To which Angie replied,
I can’t do without learning, Mama. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.
Always you were obsessive,
Mama would reply.
We do not understand you.
There was more than a little truth in that, Angie knew. She had always been a woman with laserlike focus. When she started something, there was no halfway, no easy beginning. It was this trait that had broken her. Quite simply, once she’d decided
I want a child,
there had been ruin on the horizon. It was the thing she couldn’t have, and the search had taken everything.
She knew this, had learned it, but still she was who she was. When she undertook something, she focused on success.
And to be honest—which she was with herself only in the quiet darkness of the deepest hour of night—it was better to think about the restaurant than to dwell on the losses and failures that had brought her here.
They were with her, of course, those memories and heartaches. Sometimes, as she was reading about management techniques or special promotions, she’d flash on the past.
Sophie would have been sleeping through the night by now.
Or:
Conlan loved that song.
It was like stepping barefoot on a sharp bit of broken glass. She pulled the glass out and ran on, but the pain remained. In those moments, she redoubled her efforts at studying, perhaps poured herself a glass of wine.
By Wednesday afternoon, she was exhausted by her
lack of sleep and finished with her research. There was nothing more she could learn from secondary sources. It was time to apply her learning to the restaurant.
She put her books away, took a long, hot shower, and dressed carefully. Black pants, black sweater. Nothing that would draw attention or underscore her “big city” ways.
She drove slowly to town and parked in front of the restaurant. Notepad in hand, she got out of the car.
The first thing she noticed was the bench.
“Oh,” she said softly, touching the wrought-iron curled back. The metal felt cold against her fingertips … just as it had on the day they’d bought it.
She closed her eyes, remembering.…
The four of them hadn’t agreed on a thing all week—not the song that should be sung at the funeral, nor who should sing it, not what his headstone should look like, nor what color roses should drape the casket. Until the bench. They’d been in the hardware store, looking for citronella candles for the celebration of Papa’s life, when they’d seen this bench.