The Girls of Tonsil Lake (16 page)

Before I knew what was happening, I was crying. Oh, hell, no, I was blubbering like a baby. “Oh, Jeannie, you guys always helped me. God, that day around the pool, talking about—all I can remember is Suzanne being the only first grader with a bra—but it kept me from thinking my life was over.”

I tried to laugh, but it spluttered into a sob. “Vin, you sent me money, remember? And I sent it back. So you sent it again, the same bedraggled check, with lots of cuss words in a note, and you paid book rent and bought my kids’ school clothes that year because even with Jake helping beyond the limits of child support, I couldn’t do it all on a hostess’s salary.”

The blanket fell from my shoulders to my lap, and I left it there. I wasn’t cold anymore. “And the past two years, between Jake’s illness and mine,” I said, “I don’t believe I would have survived without the three of you.”

****

We left the house on Hope Island the next day without looking back. None of us wanted to cry again. Vin flew out first, after long, hard hugs all around, then Jean, Suzanne, and I got on the plane to Indianapolis. David met us at the airport and drove us home. Paul was waiting at my house with dinner ready. We invited Suzanne to stay, but she said she wanted to go and see Sarah.

It was almost dawn when the phone rang.

Jean

David took me through the house blindfolded, but he tickled me in the hallway and ended up walking me into a wall. By the time we finished laughing, my blindfold was askew and so were our clothes. Reunions, we decided, were great things.

He straightened the sweatband covering my eyes, turned me around in circles a few times, and led me on. I heard a door open and close, but I had no idea which one it was. “Are you taking me into the linen closet to have your way with me?” I demanded. “Because you wouldn’t need to. The hallway floor’s just fine with me.”

I felt so good today, so alive, that I truly thought I might be mistaken. Maybe it was an ulcer, or—never mind, I wasn’t going to think about it now. I was having too good a time.

“Hush, woman.” His breath tickled my ear, and he paused to kiss the side of my neck, little butterfly kisses that sent sensation curling through my whole body, before moving us forward again. “Okay, here we are.” He pulled off the sweatband. “Voila.”

We were in Carrie’s room, or what used to be Carrie’s room. The French provincial furniture was all gone, as was everything that had hung on the walls, the windows, and in the closet. Even the purple carpet Carrie had chosen, and I’d hated, had been removed.

“We were going to just move Carrie’s stuff out and bring yours in,” said David, “but when we were getting your desk ready to move, Laurie found this folder full of pictures and notes about what you wanted in an office. Since none of us had a clue what ‘BIBCIC’ meant, we decided we’d wait.”

I looked over at the closet, roomy enough to have been a playroom in bygone days. “Built-in book cases in closet,” I translated, “with a stepstool so that the shelves can go all the way to the ceiling. It would be my own little miniature reference library with a rocking chair and a little table with a lamp.” I looked up at him, not allowing the thought “too late” to come all the way into my mind. “What about Carrie?”

“She’s fine. It’s time for her to be a grownup. And Megan’s thrilled. She wants to sleep in Mommy’s bed all the time and give the puppy her crib.”

“She’s too little,” I protested.

“She doesn’t think she is.”

“And they don’t have a puppy.”

“They will have. Kelly and Brian’s dog got out and went whoring around.”

“Oh, David, it’s perfect.” I put my arms around his waist. “How did you know I was so upset about it?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t because you told me.” He scowled at me, but it wasn’t an angry look. “I just had a lot of time to think about what Andie said about listening to what you meant instead of what you said. And one time while you were gone, Josh and Laurie had a spat and he looked at me in total bewilderment and said, ‘Damn, Dad, why didn’t you tell me you had to be a mind-reader to be a husband? I thought that was the wife’s job.’”

I walked the perimeter of the empty room, mentally placing my desk here, the filing cabinet in that corner, a small table and two chairs under the window. I grinned over my shoulder at him. “And you said?”

“That I’d only just figured it out myself. You always did such a good job of reading my mind, I didn’t even know you were doing it. It’ll take me some time to acquire the skill. Can you be patient?”

I glanced over at where he leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. His hair, more gray than brown these days, flopped over his forehead, his eyes sparkling bright blue below. He was smiling at me, but it wasn’t a public smile. It was one of those looks Suzanne called a silent secret.

“I love you,” I said, “so much.” My chest ached with it, and it occurred to me that I couldn’t die; there was too much yet to do. I had to finish what was proving to be the book of my heart, put this office together, and weed the flowerbeds that had gone mostly untended in my absence. I wondered if my mother had felt that way, if everyone did.

David crossed the room, pulling me unresisting into his arms. “Me, too, Mrs. O’Toole.”

I was sitting at my computer in the corner of the dining room when the phone rang the next morning. It was five-twelve.

Suzanne

I didn’t really want my Camaro anymore. It was a pretty car, and a convertible, but it sat so close to the ground that it didn’t ride very well. If it snowed more than a teaspoonful, you could forget it, because it would rear up on its wide back wheels and say it wasn’t going anywhere. It was hard to get into, even harder to get out of, and no amount of plastic surgery changed the fact that my hips were starting to get arthritic. I’d been more comfortable sharing the back seat of Jean’s Buick with Andie and Jean’s laptop than I was in the flashy little car I’d once loved so much.

Sarah lived on the edge of Lewis Point. It was just a little shotgun house, but she had a small barn and a few other outbuildings that made it easy for her to keep and care for the stray animals that gravitated to her.

I wondered, as I pulled into the carport beside her SUV, if I’d be welcome. Or would she be “on her way out” or “just going to bed” or “too busy to talk now, Mother.”

She was busy—being the junior partner in her veterinary practice kept her on call more than off—but I knew it wasn’t the busyness that kept her from wanting to see me. The time had come to find out what it was.

She eyed me from behind the wooden screen door that led to her front porch. “Mother. I was just—”

“You weren’t ‘just’ anything,” I interrupted. “You ‘just’ want to avoid me.”

She was silent. God, how that silence hurt.

“I’ve lost your brother,” I said baldly. “I don’t know any way I can get him back, or any of us can get him back, for that matter. I’ve pretty much lost my job, my condo’s all white and boring, and I hate my car. I’m not losing you, too—whether you like it or not.” I glared at her through the screen. “And if you think you’re already lost, you can just think again.”

She pushed open the screen. “What do you mean, lost your job?”

I walked past her into the cozy living room. “I’m too old,” I said briefly.

She gestured toward the couch, and I sat down, jumping back up again when a kitten squealed in protest. “Sorry.” I made sure the seat was clear this time, and sat with the small black cat in my lap. “There, there. You’re not hurt.”

“Want some lemonade?”

“Thank you.” I held the kitten up to my face, relishing the soft feel of its fur. “What’s its name?” I called.

“Elmer.” Sarah came back into the room with two frosty glasses and handed me one before sitting in the recliner at right angles from me. “Your job?” she urged.

I started to tell her, surprised by her interest, then stopped abruptly. “That’s not why I’m here.” I took a long swallow of lemonade and met her eyes.

She looked like me with darker, not-so-round eyes. Her streaky blonde hair was almost the same color as mine, but hers was natural, as were the extremely long eyelashes that no one ever saw because she flatly refused to wear makeup.

“You have the most beautiful skin,” I blurted.

Sarah grinned, and I saw vestiges of my little girl in the expression. “Cowshit, Mother. It does wonders.”

I grinned back at her. “You talk like Andie.”

“Thank you.”

I hope I didn’t flinch. “You’ve spent a lot of time making sure you’re not like me, haven’t you?” I asked slowly, setting my glass down because my hands were suddenly so cold.

“Sure, I have.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “But that’s not just me, Mother. Miranda tries not to be like Andie—I swear, she has as much makeup as you do. Carrie and Kelly never even considered being like Jean. Everybody does that.”

“It’s not because you hate me?”

Elmer was tired of being stroked, he was ready to go to sleep, but I kept my freezing hands buried in his fur.

She leaned forward in her chair. “I don’t hate you,” she said. “You drive me crazy, but I don’t hate you. Did you hate your mother?”

“Yes,” I said instantly, thinking of the woman who had sat in that filthy trailer for years on end, hearing voices and seeing shapes and screaming out in the night.

“Only when you were young, when you just knew she wasn’t like other mothers. Not when you found out she was paranoid-schizophrenic and couldn’t help it.” Sarah smiled, but there was an unkind edge to the expression. “Then she just drove you crazy.”

“Is that how I lost your brother, by driving him crazy? Is that what pushes you away from me?”

She hesitated, and she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I followed the line of her vision and saw that it rested on a picture on an end table. It had been taken the day she graduated from high school. Phil and I had reluctantly posed with Sarah and Tom standing between us. We were all smiling dutifully for David’s camera.

“It should have been that way,” said Sarah.

I looked from the picture back to her, seeing the sheen of tears in her dark eyes. “What way?” I asked, although I knew.

“We were a family, but you tore that apart without ever looking back. It’s always all about you, and you never gave a damn what the divorce did to Tommy or me, or even Daddy. At least you never appeared to, and that’s more than a kid can understand.” Sarah gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “I guess I still don’t understand.”

“Don’t you know why we got divorced?”

She shrugged again. “Because of your job, because your needs always came before everyone else’s.”

“Is that what your father told you?”

“Not in so many words. That’s what I observed on my own.”

“Do you remember Ben and Kate Rivers?”

She rolled her eyes. “The infamous picture of you and Jean on the front page of the paper. Of course, I remember. Jean’s kids and Tom and I were popular for a whole week because of it. Kate and Ben bring their dogs to our clinic now. They still have Dalmatians.”

“Do you remember your dad’s reaction?”

“You fought about it,” she said, “but you guys fought a lot, so it was no big deal, was it?”

“Sarah, think about it. Why would we have fought about something like that? Jean and I did the right thing, didn’t we?”

“Well, sure, but—”

A knock at the door interrupted her, and she got up to walk across the room, looking back over her shoulder at me with a puzzled expression. The watch on my wrist, a gift from my company as part of a bonus one year, said it was five minutes past midnight. In my lap, Elmer rose to a sitting position and eyed me expectantly. I stroked his head.

Later on, I would play this scene over and over in my head, till I felt like screaming. Maybe if the plane from Maine had been late into Indianapolis instead of early. If I’d stayed away from Sarah’s and minded my own business the way she preferred. If I hadn’t been there, young Jake Logan might have come earlier and no one would have said what he came to say. There was nothing in it that could have warned me, nothing I could have changed, but I still felt responsible.

I heard him murmur, “Hi, hon,” as he stepped inside, pulling Sarah into the curve of his arm.

He was in his state police uniform, which only added to the movie star looks he’d inherited from his father. I could see his side and part of his back, and I noticed he’d just gotten a haircut; his tanned skin was lighter at his hairline.

“Mother’s here, Lo,” said Sarah.

I wondered why she called him that.

He turned toward me then, and my greeting was halted in the middle by the stricken expression he wore. I said, “No.”

But he told us anyway.

Vin

I heard the telephone, but rolled over and ignored it. That was, after all, why God had invented answering machines, wasn’t it? And if God hadn’t done it, surely he’d intended to, to make up for allowing the emergence of telemarketers.

Then there was a knock on my bedroom door. I muttered something unintelligible into my pillow and rolled again so that my back was to the door. The prescription Lucas had given me was working—I hadn’t been awakened by night sweats in over a week—so why wouldn’t outside forces let me sleep?

The door opened. I supposed I couldn’t ignore that. Since only Archie and I were in the house and she never disturbed me needlessly, I’d better open my eyes.

Archie held a cordless receiver in her hand. “It’s Andie,” she said. “You’d better take the call.”

I took the phone and watched Archie go into Mark’s office and turn on the light. A moment later, as I tried to absorb what Andie was telling me, I heard Archie’s voice from the other room, speaking softly but authoritatively on the other line.

When I said, “Thanks for letting me know, Andie,” and laid down the phone, Archie came back into the room.

“Do you need me to pack for you?” she asked. “Or will you just take what’s still in the bags?”

“I’ll just take that,” I said, pointing at the smaller of the two bags that sat in front of the closet doors. If I needed more, I could buy it there.