The Girls of Tonsil Lake (23 page)

Suzanne

“Mom?” Sarah stood in the middle of her bedroom, clad in a silky white slip with scallops around the bottom. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. “Would you maybe do something with my hair? And put some makeup on me that I won’t rub off halfway through the ceremony?” She laughed, sounding self-conscious. “I’d kind of like getting married looking as if I had eyelashes.”

My first impulse was to get all maternal and teary, but I knew that wouldn’t fly with my daughter. “Sure,” I said briskly. “Go on in the bathroom. I’ll get the makeup.”

I got us each a glass of wine while I was at it, even though it was only nine-thirty in the morning.

She looked askance at the glass. “Mother, I just finished my coffee.”

“Hey, you don’t get married every day, kiddo.” I put my hand on my chest. “Even
I
don’t get married every day.”

She laughed, but when she met my eyes in the mirror, hers were worried. “What if we’re making a mistake?” she said. “I don’t want to be in the situation you and Andie were in, divorced with two little kids. What if this is the wrong thing?”

“There aren’t any sure things, honey,” I said past the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the kind of home and life that Jean and David gave their kids, but things just didn’t work. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to work for you. You and Lo were friends before you were anything else; you’re still friends. Good heavens, your dad and I were never friends. Trent and I weren’t until...until recently. It would have been so much better if we had been.”

I worked my fingers through her soft blonde hair. “Up or down?”

“Down but out of my face,” she said. “Lo likes it down, but it drives me nuts if it’s in my eyes. Jake and Andie were always friends, though, and look how that turned out.”

“That’s what I mean by ‘no sure things,’ ” I said, “but they’re still friends, they still love each other. They just couldn’t be married.”

I put white clips in her hair to hold it back from her face. “This is a compromise, leaving your hair down but holding it back, and compromise in marriage is at least half the battle. You can’t do that with everything. Andie couldn’t with Jake’s lifestyle, I couldn’t with your dad’s...uh...views on things. But Jean and David and Vin and Mark had it down, and had Trent and I been more mature, we probably could have survived.”

I tugged at a lock of hair. “But then I wouldn’t have you, so I certainly wouldn’t want to change anything.”

She turned toward me, pulling her hair out of my hands, and put her arms around me, her face pressed against my breast. “I love you, Mom.”

There was no stopping the tears then, and we both cried a little before I gave her a last hug and said, “I love you, too. Now, we’d better hurry, or you’re going to be getting married in your slip. Lo would probably like it, but your dad’s a little stodgy about things like that.”

She rolled her eyes. “My dad’s a
lot
stodgy about things like that.”

We laughed together, and it was like dancing when you feel the music instead of just hearing it.

Oh, she looked lovely. I almost cried again after I dropped the simple white sheath over her head and zipped its back. She’d bought it off the rack, but it looked as though it had been made for her.

She wore the strand of pearls that had been Phil’s mother’s and a slender, twinkling gold chain Tommy had given her for Christmas one year. Her earrings matched the pearls, a gift from Andie and Jake, and in the second hole in each ear she wore the tiny diamonds I’d bought her when she graduated from vet school.

She’d said, “Diamonds, Mother?” in a voice that indicated she’d really rather have had some heavy-duty rubber boots.

I’d countered with something idiotic about how every girl needed diamonds sometimes and had bawled all the way home.

“You were right,” she said suddenly, touching the little studs as though she knew what I was thinking. “Everybody needs diamonds sometimes.”

“But you don’t,” I said. “You sparkle just fine without them.”

She grinned. “You bet I do. I look just like my mom.”

Their ceremony was short and very sweet. Jake was able to stay awake through it and hand the ring to his son to place on Sarah’s finger. Lo kept staring at his bride with a tender smile on his face that warmed me right down to the toes of my black suede pumps.

Andie and I didn’t look at each other until Phil said, “Normally, I would ask who gives this woman to be married, but in this instance, we all give you to each other, as your lives have been intertwined since before they even began. This we do with our love, and by the authority vested in me by the State of Indiana, I pronounce you husband and wife.”

I felt my eyes brimming and when I ventured a glance at Andie, she was mopping her cheeks. She caught my eye and we both began to laugh, albeit damply, then turned to hug our children.

We settled Jake to sleep and went into the kitchen. Jean and David were on their way out the door, moving covertly and wrapped in raincoats like two suburban Columbos. They waved. Jean ran back to kiss Sarah and Lo, then they were gone before we could stop them.

The kitchen counter was set up like a buffet, with platters of turkey and ham along with all the accompaniments. A lace-covered card table sat in the corner holding a miniature wedding cake and several bottles of chilled champagne. Two wicker laundry baskets, decorated with ribbons and lace, were full of envelopes and wrapped gifts.

I sniffled, and Andie said, “Leave it to Jean. She never fails.”

Miranda laughed. “Those laundry baskets have made the rounds. I think they’ve been present at every bridal shower, wedding, and baby shower since I got married.”

“Just like Jean’s friendship,” said Andie, “only it’s far too big to fit into two baskets.”

Her voice was wobbly when she went on. “I’ve found it so difficult to be thankful. It’s like losing Jake is bigger than all the good things that have happened, and I just couldn’t be grateful. But today, with one marriage and two fussied-up baskets, I’ve figured out that you can hurt and be grateful at the same time.”

Phil opened the first bottle of champagne, pouring it into the glasses that waited beside the cake. “Andie,” he said quietly, “would you like to make the first toast in Jake’s stead?”

“I don’t think I can,” she said, shaking her head. “Suzanne?”

Good heavens, no one ever asked me anything like that. Phil should—no, he shouldn’t. I raised my glass.

“To all of our sons and daughters, from all of us. May you know as much happiness as we have known, and have fewer troubles. To the bride and groom in particular, may your friendship and your marriage be long and prosperous. To Jake, because we are all so glad he could be here for this day. And to…” I stopped, looking at Andie.

Her glass touched mine. “And to the republic, for which it stands.”

Vin

I had Thanksgiving dinner with my mother in the big dining room of her assisted living facility. We sat alone at a table, which I regretted because we had so little to say to each other, but the people she considered her friends were out for the day.

When I got there this morning, standing in her small living room with my raincoat drizzling on the carpet, I’d offered, “We could go out if you’d rather.”

“I like it here,” she said. “Hang that coat over the tub, Vin. You’re dripping.”

There was nothing wrong with my mother. She was in the assisted living portion of the upscale apartment complex because she’d never taken care of herself in her life, and didn’t want to start.

At seventy, she looked no older than her late fifties. I kept her supplied with the kind of makeup Suzanne used to represent, and she had a healthy allowance in addition to her Social Security. She shopped a lot, getting on the facility’s bus and spending days on end at the mall.

She liked being able to flash her credit card at the big department stores that had been laughably beyond the means of any of my stepfathers. I used to cringe when her bills came in, but Mark only laughed. “Just pay them, darling. It keeps her happy and out of your hair.”

Her greatest concern when he died was that her allowance would stop, that her credit card would be cut off. “Will you marry again soon to someone who can take care of things?” she’d asked. “Will I have to move?”

“My friends and I will shop tomorrow,” she said now, as we sat at our table for two. “It’s such a fun day. What will you do?”

“Sit with Jake. And Jean and I will watch Carrie’s and Miranda’s children so their mothers can go shopping.”

She frowned. “Why don’t you hire nurses to sit with Jake? For that matter, why didn’t Andie just put him in a home? It’s not safe, having someone in the house with
That Disease
.”

I noticed that a lot of people called AIDS That Disease. Did it make them feel immune, as though refusing to give it its name put them above such things?

“We’re very careful,” I said. “Andie didn’t want nurses, and she didn’t want him to die without family around him.”

She sniffed. “It would surprise me if Andie doesn’t have it. All those men that aunt of hers had in and out of that trailer, and then she died of that mysterious thing in her head. How could some of that wickedness not have passed down to Andie?”

Rage made the turkey stick in my throat. I picked up my glass of ice water and drank half of it. “Rosie took care of all of us. She kept us safe. How can you talk that way about her?”

“Kept you safe?” Mother said scornfully. “By giving you girls a place to run to every time things didn’t go your way?”

For the first time in a very long time, I remembered the night my stepfather raped me. I could usually swing my mind away from it, but this time it caught me unaware, like someone opening the bathroom door when your hair’s full of shampoo.

It was as it had been during the years of reliving it every single day; I could recall every second of an event that seemed to go on for hours. I could smell the mildew that climbed the paneled walls of the trailer, feel the gritty sheets beneath me, see the place I forced my mind to take me to in order to survive. I remembered my mother’s voice—“Don’t fight him, Vin. What will we do if he leaves us? How will we live?”

Rosie had taken me to a doctor she knew the next morning. She’d sat with me and held my hand and chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes. “Just make sure she’s not hurt, Fred.” Her eyes had met Fred’s over the table where I lay with my feet in stirrups.

I had been too numb to be humiliated or frightened. Too numb to understand her next words. “Make sure she doesn’t have any little reminders of that asshole.”

To this day, I don’t know who Fred was, only that he was kind and that he didn’t hurt me. And that there hadn’t been any “little reminders.”

On the way home, Rosie bought me a chocolate malt and told me quietly and succinctly what to do with my knee, where her gun was kept, and that there was nothing wrong with running like hell.

The day my stepfather’s car was pulled out of the lake, Rosie went to the sheriff’s office. We rode along with her, but she made us wait in the car. It seemed as though she was gone a long time, but when she came out, her bright smile was in place.

Afterward, we sat at the ice cream shop, with vanilla shakes this time, and Rosie said, “This part of you girls’ life is over. You don’t have to look back on it, remember it, or worry about it. You are safe and you’re all together and I’ll do my damnedest to keep you that way.”

If there was any further investigation of my stepfather’s death, I never knew about it, and there were no charges filed. Rosie’s gun was never found and none of us ever talked to her about that day again. I don’t know if I ever even thanked her.

I drank the rest of my water and refilled the glass from the crystal pitcher that sat on the table. “Yes,” I said, “she always gave us a place to go.”

Mother sniffed delicately. I propped my chin in my hand and looked at her. She was a remarkably pretty woman, beautifully made up and elegantly coiffed. Her nails were perfect, her clothes tasteful and expensive. I thought of Suzanne, with her fear that there was no depth of character behind her beauty, and realized my mother didn’t even have enough substance to have that concern.

Then I thought of Jake, who had more grace dying of That Disease than the woman across from me had ever had. I thought of Mark, of Andie, of Jean and David. Of the wedding surprise I’d been unable to help with because I’d come here instead. I thought of Archie, puttering happily in the house on the island. And of Lucas, whom I loved.

What in the hell was I doing here?

I reached into my purse, pulled out all the cash I had with me, and laid it beside Mother’s plate. “For Christmas,” I said. “I have to go now.”

I was all the way outside before the frigid air reminded me that my raincoat was hanging over the tub in Mother’s apartment. I looked back at the front of the building. Then I got into my rental car and drove away. I didn’t look back again.

Chapter Sixteen

Andie

I came awake suddenly, my eyes popping open in the darkness like those of the star of a made-for-television thriller. I had slept hard and dreamlessly, an unusual occurrence these days, and felt strangely rested even though I’d gone to bed only four hours ago.

“Mom?” Lo’s voice came from the doorway. “Mom, wake up.”

“I’m awake.” I sat up, reaching for the robe on the end of the bed. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but something’s changed. Dad’s different. Sarah already called Miranda.”

Jake was awake. He smiled when I sat beside him, and the expression eased the lines of pain from his skeletal face. “Close now,” he said.

“I know.” I took his hand, wanting to rub some warmth into it but knowing it was too late for that. Already his fingertips were turning blue.

“The kids know...how much...I love them?”

“They know. They love you, too.” I touched his face. “And I do, Jake.”

“You, too. Always...my best girl.”