Saving Phoebe Murrow: A Novel (13 page)

Sandy often found comfort cruising Westfield Mall, her second favorite place in the world, after her own home. Over the course of her fifteen years with Bill, she'd spent countless hours dipping in and out of stores, and so on Friday, still trying to erase the memory of the email from Mrs. Watson and that awful meeting with Isabel and Ms. Kendall, she decided to do the thing that most soothed her soul and took her mind off her troubles: she would go shopping.

Golf alone just wasn't any fun. Today, the mere thought of golf brought on the long ago memory of her final date with her stepfather, Les. But now was not the time, and so she chased this tangent from her mind.

After a quick coffee with a neighbor she'd recently befriended, Sandy spent several hours of concentrated effort poking through sale racks, searching for items on Jessie's wish list and making nearly a dozen purchases.

Around one o'clock, her arms weighed down by shopping bags, she decided to hunt for a place to have coffee, and maybe, just maybe, she'd treat herself to dessert. Sandy knew she ought to have a salad or a cup of soup, but just then the urge to satisfy her sweet tooth was winning out.

The habit had developed in her teens, when she'd slipped over to Mrs. Eddinger's Nantucket-style cottage across the street to escape yet another of her mother's dreadful silences, the occasional memory of which could still bring tears to her eyes. No matter the time of day, Mrs. E had welcomed Sandy, had had gentle words for her and something sweet to eat. Entering her home, Sandy would relax into the elderly woman's soothing voice, and the rich, sumptuous world of cakes, pastries, cookies, and pies.

Now, it was a habit she fought. If she didn't, she knew she'd end up like Margaret – what she called her mother on those rare occasions they talked, only twice since Jessie's birth – who'd eventually lost her pretty figure. She brushed away that memory too as she came upon the café outside Nordstrom's, where several people stood in line.

Sandy plopped her bags on the floor as her eyes took in the assortment of pastries: thickly frosted carrot cake, lemon meringue pie (fluffy meringue piled high), chocolate decadence cake (one of her favorites), vanilla-frosted cupcakes, a variety of scones, and a pear tart. Though the slice of chocolate decadence beckoned her, she chose the lemon meringue pie. Fewer calories, and she wouldn't eat the crust, or at least not all of it.

“I'll have a tall coffee,” she said to the teenager behind the counter, “and leave room for cream.” Pointing the long fuchsia nail of her index finger at the pie, she added, “And that. Yummy. It's fresh, right?”

The girl gave a disinterested nod as she went through the motions of preparing a cup of coffee. “For here or to go?”

Sandy smiled brightly. “For here. I can hardly stand up with all these bags. Need a quick pick-me-up, you know.”

“Yep.”

Sandy's enthusiasm refused to be diminished by the girl's tepid response. She chose the nearest empty table and seated herself so she had a view of the mall. She sighed audibly after taking a sip of the creamy coffee and tasting her first bite of pie. “That is sooo good,” she muttered softly. “Mmmm.”

Sandy had developed into a woman of indulgence only after she'd left home and after Bill began pampering her and making it his mission to make mounds of money for her to spend. He was the most generous man she knew. And, luckily, he harbored little jealousy. After a night of flirtation with other men at a party, she always made sure to be extra sexy for him. Made sure he knew she'd always be there for him. Made sure he knew that
he
was her number one.

She gazed at the shopping bags, several of which contained items for Jessie, who'd been out of sorts the previous night. After considerable wheedling, she'd gotten Jess to reveal how hurt and angry Phoebe had been because she'd invited Noah to the dance. To ease Jessie's confused feelings, she'd bought not just one but two dresses for the fall dance at Nordstrom's, jeans from J. Crew, a white t-shirt from Banana Republic, and a strapless black bra from Victoria's Secret.

She never tired of seeing the expression of happiness on Jessie's face when she bought her something, an item casually mentioned while she and Jessie chatted in the kitchen over a snack. Something that had ground to a halt at a critical moment in her own life.

She took a sip of coffee, dipped her fork into the lemon curd, and began running her mind over old memories the way others ran fingers over old scars. It wasn't often that she indulged or so subjected herself, but recent events prompted this train of thought. The way Isabel seemed to ignore and dislike her felt much like Margaret, who had, at times, spurned and envied her own daughter. For the natural curves of her youthful figure, because of Les's wandering hands. But what could she have done? Her mother should have protected her – thrown her stepfather out of the house, not her.

Adopting her mother's words, Sandy had told a few of her very closest high school friends, “It's a story as old as the hills.” She imagined that one or two had passed her account along, despite having sworn to secrecy.

Of course that wasn't the real story. And not the whole story that she'd kept to herself all these years. Even though Sandy hadn't been the smartest girl in her class, she was clever enough to understand human nature. And she knew that women tended to gossip, especially about something as juicy and salacious as this. Salacious wouldn't have been Sandy's word, but that's what it was.

Now, as she took another bite of the lemon custard, she thought about events that had transpired more than half a lifetime ago.

When Les—that was his name—had entered her life, she'd just turned fifteen. The first time she saw him, she couldn't believe that such a handsome man was interested in her mother. Of course she'd failed to recall her mother's once-upon-a-time beauty, by then a bit faded, but she remained elegant and attractive nonetheless. Besides, her mother had fallen into a small inheritance upon the death of her parents. Something that never hurt a woman, especially one with children, when it came to attracting a man.

Not only was Les handsome, but he also had that rare thing called charm. And it drew Sandy because she'd spent so much time in the company of a mother who'd lost interest in her. The divorce had been difficult for her mother, but afterward the fact that Sandy had been her father's favorite seemed to taint her. Never again would she have the same closeness with her mother as her sister Ashley, with whom Margaret often cuddled up to read bedtime stories. Perhaps for that reason, Sandy found herself hungering for attention, like a flower hungers for sun. Early to develop into a shapely and luscious girl, Sandy fell readily into boys' kisses. So many boys. And for a time, this had stemmed the tide of her needs.

One night, not long after Les married Margaret, which also wasn't long after Sandy's sixteenth birthday in May of 1993, her mother announced over the dinner table that she was going out with a group of women friends and that Les shouldn't wait up for her. Sandy glanced at Les to see what he would say. For the briefest moment their eyes met, latching onto each other like sky and sea, and his mouth turned upward into a glimmer of a smile.

Her mother left shortly thereafter, and the two of them went about cleaning up the dishes. Light banter, a bit of joking turned more serious when Les suddenly said, “So, tell me about your boyfriends.”

The comment took Sandy aback because she didn't know what he was after. “What do you mean?” she said.

He rubbed a dishtowel across a shiny metal lid and lifted it up to see if it was properly dried. Sandy imagined he was examining his own striking, dark haired, blue-eyed image. “Well, do you like what they do to you?” he asked.

“Do to me?”

“Sure,” he said with a half smile, “the way they – ” he paused then as if evaluating his choice of words, “the way they, uh, kiss you?”

She laughed at him. “Why, do
you
want to kiss me?” The words slid out smoothly, playfully. Daringly. She wasn't sure whether her question had been an innocent flirtation or an invitation, but regardless it led to the next thing, which was him leaning in to kiss her. And she kissing him back. A long, slow, delicious kiss.

The experience didn't resemble the inexpert kissing of most boys she knew. Nor did the sensations he aroused in her approximate anything she'd felt with any teenage guy. What happened that night ignited something. A sensuality that radiated throughout her body, a desire that beckoned from between her legs.

From that night on they met often, simplified by the fact that as a freelance writer and video producer, Les mostly worked from home. His sensitive touch drove her wild. And it hadn't taken long before they'd gone all the way. Despite everything else that happened, even now she relished the memory.

Still, it was the worst kind of wrong to know you wanted something you shouldn't have, and she thought he felt that way too. They never spoke of their taboo activity, and perhaps by not giving voice to it they were able to hang on to a fictional version of events.

Being a fast learner, Sandy taught many a boy to better love and satisfy her, but few came close to those times with Les. During the summer, he also began teaching her the finer points of golf, a sport she became increasingly fond of and good at. On the way to and from they'd stop in assorted places. A remote bathroom in the country club, the lavish basement of one of Les's friends, the backseat of his Range Rover.

She felt daring and each encounter thrilled her until she began to feel dissonance in the air. Between herself and her mother. Her mother and Les. What she couldn't know was that the sexual tension between herself and Les was palpable. It electrified the rooms they occupied. Her mother didn't need evidence to know of its existence. She sensed it with every cell of her being. And resented it. Began resenting Sandy even more than before.

This brought Sandy to the part of the story she didn't like to remember. And with practiced precision, she turned off the memory like a spigot stops the flow of water.

The idea that someone might uncover pieces of her past sometimes petrified her. Bill, especially, couldn't know the way she'd deceived him. Surely he'd leave her. Their recent move to Bethesda had helped. When asked about her roots, she remained vague. “Baltimore area. So boring I had to come live near the President. And yes, I have been to the White House,” she'd say, beaming. She didn't exactly lie, because she, along with hundreds of tourists,
had
visited the White House, but she certainly had no qualms about twisting the truth. The distinctions between the two had become malleable. “What's the difference as long as it doesn't hurt anyone?” she'd think. Though whether hurting someone truly bothered Sandy, well, that was questionable.

Sandy had gotten lucky when Bill entered her life; his timing had been perfect – she'd just turned 18 and things were rotten; in fact her whole life had fallen apart several weeks before. So now, she did her utmost to keep Bill happy, and really that was pretty easy. Give him a good meal, a few laughs, clean laundry, some steamy sex and he was good to go. Besides, in a sense, she'd given him Jessie and he loved the girl deeply.

That was the thing about Sandy, she never forgot the people she owed, nor did she forget the ones who'd slighted her. Like her mother. And that damn Isabel, she'd really gotten under her skin. She still couldn't believe the note from the headmistress about some stupid policy for the “appropriate use” of Georgetown parents' e-mails. If that didn't have Isabel Winthrop written all over it, she didn't know what did. Sandy took a giant bite of lemon meringue pie. Did Isabel really think she could get away with that?

The truth was, though, Isabel's consistent year-long rejection had wounded her, more deeply than she cared to admit. So when she thought of Isabel now, she didn't cry, no, she launched into an angry internal monologue, something Sandy was prone to, just like overindulging on sweets. And once she got going little could stop her.
That evil woman does not know who she's messing with
, she thought.
I'm going to make her suffer
.

She would make sure of that. But how?

Sandy sucked a thick mound of meringue off her fork. Oh, God, that's good. Another bite followed a long sip of coffee. She wound her tongue around another spoonful of lemon custard, drew it into her mouth, and sat there thinking. How to get to that woman? Really get to her.

Then, part of the answer materialized, as it always did. It had been sitting right there in her brain since her earlier memory of Les; in fact, she'd already made a start without fully being aware of it. Ron!

The delightful hum of shoppers buzzed around Sandy as she sat there, smug and cat-like, polishing off the last of her dessert.