The Deep End (5 page)

And for a while they had been right: she had grown up essentially as planned, had married, the way it had been predicted, and had borne children of her own, children who had then looked to her as the established adult and keeper of wisdom. And she had become part of the secret conspiracy, which, while it never overtly lied, never really told the truth. Hearing a key turn in the lock, aware of Robin’s footsteps on the stairs, Joanne fell asleep with the memory of the smell of her mother’s perfume.

In her dream she saw the sun shining, unimpeded by clouds, causing the concrete squares of the narrow path before her to sparkle like bright diamonds, warm against
her bare feet as she walked toward the small white cottage ahead. She was perhaps five years old. Her brother, two years her junior, was taking his afternoon nap. She could hear laughter coming from inside, knew that her mother and grandmother were already in the kitchen preparing supper for when their men returned from the city, as they did every Friday afternoon during the two months of summer that the extended family shared this cottage in the country. The child Joanne skipped toward the front door, glancing sideways at the driveway, projecting ahead an hour or two when, one after the other, the two cars would pull into the driveway, and first her grandfather, a huge, robust man, and then her father, smaller but with a strong, hearty laugh, would appear, their arms loaded with fresh breads and blueberry buns and cherry danishes, enough to tide them over until the following weekend. Her father would bend forward to kiss her before disappearing inside the cottage, but her grandfather would linger, throwing down the paper bags of baked goods, and scooping her up into his mammoth arms, twirling her around again and again. When you’re older, he would tell her, I’ll teach you how to play gin rummy. And each week, Joanne would wonder if she was older yet. She reached the front door of the cottage, eager to embrace the warm darkness of the interior rooms, hearing her mother’s high, girlish giggle ringing through the heavy wooden door.

The phone was ringing. Joanne groped for it in a daze, her eyes unwilling to open, her mind clinging to her child’s body, her mother’s laughter luring her back to sleep. “Hello,” she said, not sure for the moment who she was, only that she was no longer a little girl.

There was no one there. Not even silence, she realized slowly, coming fully awake. A busy signal only. Had the phone rung at all? She lay back down, her heart thumping wildly. Joanne spent the rest of the night trapped somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, wondering whether the ring that had awakened her had been the telephone or her mother’s laughter, finally telling her the truth.

T
he girls were still asleep—or pretending to be—when Joanne left the house at just before noon the next morning. She was tired, her eyes swollen from a combination of tears and lack of sleep. She rubbed them, hearing her mother tell her that would only make them worse. What would you say to me now, Mom? she asked the cloudless sky as she crossed from her front lawn over to Eve’s. Shoulders back, stomach in! she heard her mother answer and she smiled. Her mother’s answer to everything.

You always liked Paul, Joanne continued silently, feeling her mother’s presence beside her as she mounted the steps to Eve’s front door. What wasn’t there to like? her mother responded simply. A smart, good-looking boy from a nice family, he wanted to be a lawyer, he loved my daughter …

Loved, Joanne repeated in her mind. What do you do, Mom, she questioned, knocking on Eve’s door, when someone suddenly stops loving you?

No one came to the door. Joanne knocked again, then rang the bell. The sound of the chime reminded her of the phone ringing in the middle of the night. Had it rung or
had she dreamt it? And what kind of sick mind got its kicks from phoning other people in the early morning hours and frightening them half to death? She had tossed and turned for the rest of the night, unable to find a comfortable position without Paul’s body to act as a guide. She was going to need all the sleep she could get if she was going to make it through the next little while without falling apart, if she was to maintain a calm exterior in front of her daughters. Don’t worry, darlings, everything will work out.

In the meantime, she needed to talk to Eve. Eve would put everything in its proper perspective. She would help Joanne understand Paul’s point of view. “There are always two sides to every story,” she could hear Eve declare. “Yours—and the shithead’s!” Eve would make her laugh, and if not, at least they could cry together. Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering the door?

Eve’s husband, Brian, appeared just as Joanne was about to give up and go back home. A tall man who had always seemed vaguely uncomfortable with the strong, imposing image he naturally projected, he had surprisingly gentle eyes which betrayed nothing of the daily horrors to which his job regularly exposed him. The perfect policeman’s face, Joanne thought as Brian Stanley, looking exactly his age at forty-five, ushered Joanne inside, smiling but obviously preoccupied. Normally a man of few words, today he said even less. “You talk some sense into her,” he said, indicating that his wife was in the kitchen.

Joanne walked through the front hall of the house, which was the mirror image of her own. She found Eve sitting at her kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. Something was out of place, Joanne felt as soon as she saw
her friend. (What’s wrong with this picture? she heard echoing in the back of her head.) “What’s up?” Joanne asked, realizing that her friend was still in her bathrobe and that her usually perfect hair was uncombed.

“Nothing,” Eve told her, making no effort to disguise her annoyance. “It’s a lot of fuss over nothing.”

“Sure, it’s nothing,” Eve’s mother chastised, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere to stick a thermometer into her daughter’s reluctant mouth.

“Hello, Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne said, surprised to see the woman, whose strawberry blond hair was several shades lighter than Joanne last remembered. She wondered what Eve’s mother was doing here. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” the woman repeated, “is that my daughter collapsed last night and had to be rushed to the hospital.”

“What!”

Eve whipped the thermometer out of her mouth. “I did not collapse. I am perfectly fine.”

“Put the thermometer back in your mouth,” her mother instructed as if Eve were a child of four. Eve looked imploringly toward the ceiling but she did as her mother said. “You didn’t have pains last night and have to leave the party? Brian didn’t take you to the emergency ward at North Shore University Hospital? He didn’t call me first thing this morning and ask me to look after you because he has to go out?”

“I had a few pains,” Eve corrected, once again removing the thermometer from beneath her tongue, “and everyone overreacted.”

“What kind of pains?” Joanne asked, temporarily forgetting her own problems.

“Just a few small pains in my chest.” Eve indicated the precise area with the tip of the thermometer. “I’ve been having them for a few weeks.”

“Just a few small pains,” her mother repeated incredulously. “Did she tell you that the pains were so bad she couldn’t stand up?” she asked Joanne.

“Were you there?” Eve demanded.

“Would somebody please tell me what is going on?” Joanne implored, remembering countless such scenes she had witnessed between these two throughout her girlhood. She felt transported back in time, and despite the fact that Eve now towered over her mother’s squat, plump frame, they remained as they had always been, the overbearing mother confronting her rebellious daughter.

Brian spoke from the doorway. “We were at a party being hosted by someone from my division …”

“I told you about it,” Eve interrupted.

“She tells you everything,” her mother added immediately. “Do you think she tells me anything?”

“Mother!”

“Look, ladies, I have to go. I’m late already.” Brian’s voice was past the point of exasperation. “The facts are that Eve started experiencing some pains in her chest at around midnight and that she had trouble standing up, so I took her to the hospital.”

“Where they gave me some tests and decided that everything was all right,” Eve stated.

“Where they gave her an EKG and whatever else they give you if they think you might be having a heart attack …” Brian tried to continue.

“And they found out that I wasn’t.”

“And they recommended that she have further tests later in the week.”

“For what?” Joanne asked, concerned.

“Ulcer, gall bladder, that sort of thing,” Brian answered. “But she’s refusing to go.”

“It was a little indigestion, for God’s sake. I am not going to put myself through a battery of unpleasant tests just so some doctor can get some admittedly much-needed experience at my expense. I have seen all I want to see of hospitals, thank you very much.”

“Talk some sense into her,” Brian repeated. “I have to go.” He kissed his wife reassuringly on the top of her head, a gesture which brought a small stab of pain to the vicinity of Joanne’s own chest and the threat of tears to her eyes. Before they could form, Joanne turned and quickly swiped at her face with the palm of her hand. Now was obviously not the time to announce Paul’s sudden departure.

The three women listened in silence as Brian closed the front door behind him. When Eve opened her mouth to speak, her mother automatically thrust the thermometer back inside it.

“For God’s sake, will you stop doing that!” Eve exclaimed, angrily hurling the thermometer to the floor and watching it break neatly into two pieces, mercury spilling out onto the tile, immediately forming into groups of small gray clusters.

“You never listen to anyone.” Her mother picked up the broken glass and expertly scooped the balls of mercury into a tissue. “That’s always been your problem, and where does it get you?” She waved the broken thermometer in front of her daughter’s face.

“Mother, go home,” Eve said gently, the chuckle in her voice becoming a sudden gasp of pain, her body caving inward against the kitchen table.

“What’s the matter?” Joanne and Eve’s mother asked together, the two women instantly at her side.

“Where does it hurt?” Eve’s mother demanded, though her voice was weak and her hands shook.

“It’s all right now. The pain’s gone.” Eve straightened her shoulders and sat back in her chair. “Stop worrying—it wasn’t that bad.”

“It
was
that bad. Look at you—you’re as white as a ghost.”

“I’m always as white as a ghost. You’re the one who keeps telling me to wear more makeup.”

“Maybe you
should
see the doctor,” Joanne urged, trying to sound casual. “What can it hurt to have a few more tests?”

Eve’s eyes moved from her mother to her oldest and closest friend.

“All right,” she agreed after a lengthy pause.

“Sure,” her mother pounced. “For her, you’ll go. When I ask you, what kind of answer do I get?”

“I said I’d go, Mother. Isn’t that what you want?”

Mrs. Cameron immediately turned her attention to Joanne. “How are your daughters?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject and almost managing to sound interested.

“They’re good kids,” Joanne smiled. “Like Eve.”

Eve laughed. Her mother did not. “Sure, stick together like you always have. You tell me—am I wrong to be concerned because my daughter has to be rushed to the hospital by her husband, who we all know is not exactly an alarmist? If anything, he doesn’t pay
enough
attention to Eve.”

“Mother …”

“Yes, I know, it’s none of my business. Do your daughters tell you that things that concern them are none of your business?”

“Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne began, “if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll take Eve to the doctor myself.” She turned back to Eve. “When’s your appointment?”

“Friday morning.” She winked. “So we don’t miss our tennis lesson.”

“Tennis,” her mother scoffed. “It’s too soon after the miscarriage to be playing tennis. That’s probably what brought on the pains in the first place.”

“Oh, let’s not start that again,” Eve pleaded. “The miscarriage was six months ago, and I had one tennis lesson yesterday afternoon. Not even a private lesson, for heaven’s sake. I don’t think I have been exactly overexerting myself.”

“You work too hard, you take too many extra classes, you do too much.”

“I’m a teacher, Mother.”

“A professor,” her mother corrected, looking at Joanne to check that the distinction was not lost. “A psychologist.”

“A psychology professor, okay? A teacher. I don’t work too hard. I have Fridays off. I’m taking a few extra courses at night.”

“What do you need more courses for? You’re forty years old. You need children, not Ph.D.’s. Am I wrong to want grandchildren?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Eve said, banging down hard on the table. “You are making me crazy, Mother.”

“Sure, blame the mother for everything. Tell me, Joanne, do your daughters say such things to you?”

Joanne thought back to the previous afternoon, after Paul had packed his small suitcase and left her to confront her daughters’ confusion alone. “I’m sure we all say things to our mothers occasionally that we regret.”

“Tell me,” Mrs. Cameron continued, “how’s your grandfather?”

“He’s okay. I’m going to visit him this afternoon.”

“Now, you see?” Eve’s mother asked. “This is a responsible girl. Nobody has to remind her to show proper respect for her elders.”

Joanne rolled her eyes in her friend’s direction, and Eve stuck out her tongue in return.

“Sure, make a joke. I’m going to watch television. Call me if you need anything. Nice seeing you, Joanne.” She was almost at the kitchen door when she turned back. “Talk to her, will you? Remind her that I won’t be around forever.”

“Just long enough to drive me crazy,” Eve called after her as the woman disappeared into the other room. “Who’s she kidding? She’s already buried three husbands. She’ll outlive us all.”

“She hasn’t changed a bit,” Joanne marveled. “You should be used to her by now.”

“Some things you never get used to,” Eve told her, and Joanne knew instantly that would be true of Paul’s departure. “You look tired,” Eve remarked suddenly.