The Girls of Tonsil Lake (8 page)

Martha Mary Archibald had been Mark’s housekeeper when I married him. Although she’d never been less than gracious to me, I knew she had not approved of his marriage to a woman twenty-five years younger than himself. We had been married several years before I realized that she was as in love with my husband as I was.

I had understood that, and respected it, and life had gone on. Her grief at his death had been sharp and sustained. We had stayed out of each other’s way. When the dust settled and Mark’s children had returned to their accustomed pretense that I did not exist, Archie had stood in my bedroom doorway just as she did today.

“Would you be wanting me to leave?” she had asked.

“No,” I replied.

And that was that.

“You don’t need to come, Archie,” I said, slipping the makeup case Suzanne had sent into the side of my bag. “What will you do while I’m gone?” I’d never inquired into her personal life before; minding our own business had been part of our unspoken agreement to live in the same house and love the same man.

She hesitated. “If it would be all right with you, I would like to close the house and go to Ireland to visit my sister. I haven’t seen her in all these many years, and I believe I have enough money saved.”

“Of course. And you must stay as long as you want. I’m sure we owe you months in unused vacation time.”

“A month will be enough,” she said impassively, dipping her head. “Thank you, ma’am.”

She turned to leave, and I said impatiently, “Wait a minute.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“We’ve shared this house for twenty-some years, Archie. I’d like for you to call me Vin. No more ma’ams, no more Mrs. Stillsons. Now, do you have your passport up to date?”

“Yes, ma—Vin. I’ve always kept it up in case I needed to go home quick-like.”

“And when would you like to leave?”

She looked surprised, and I all but tapped my foot waiting for her to answer. “A week,” she said definitely. “That gives me time to close the house and prepare for the trip.”

“Fine. Come with me.”

She followed me into Mark’s office, where I got on line and procured a plane ticket to Ireland and arranged for a car rental. “You’ll leave in six days,” I said, getting up from in front of the computer and handing her the confirmation and itinerary.

“I will write you a check for this cost,” she said sturdily, waving the printed sheets at me.

“You’ll do no such damned thing. Come with me,” I said again, and went back to the bedroom with her following in my wake. I could feel her antagonism smacking me right between the shoulder blades.

This was fun. I felt strong again.

I opened the door of Mark’s closet, nearly going to my knees when the unique and distinctive scent of him assailed me. So much for feeling strong. “Oh, God,” I muttered, and looked over my shoulder in time to see Archie crossing herself. “We need to do something about this,” I said, touching a cashmere sleeve.

“Yes.”

“Soon, but not now.”

“Thank you.”

I looked over my shoulder again, and we exchanged small, tentative smiles, then I walked into the closet, coming out with three pieces of luggage. I set them at her feet and delved into the closet again.

It had been so long since I opened the safe that I no longer had any idea what all was in it, but I knew there was cash. There was also jewelry in a black velvet bag. I tucked the bag under my arm.

I brought out three thousand dollars and slapped it into Archie’s hand. “If he were here,” I said flatly, “he would do no less.”

She was pale. “Are you firing me?”

“No.” I touched her hand. It was the first time I’d ever touched her in any way. We hadn’t even shaken hands when we met. “Please don’t think that. Is there any coffee?”

“I can make it. I’ll have it up here in ten minutes.”

“No, I’ll come down. Here.” I thrust two of the suitcases at her and picked up the third, keeping the black velvet bag in my other hand. “You can keep these bags,” I said on the way down the stairs. “God knows you’ve packed and unpacked them enough times to know every fold in the leather.”

In the kitchen, I took a seat at the bar while Archie made coffee. I noticed that she tucked the money carefully into her purse and was glad she hadn’t refused to accept it. While I waited for the coffee, I poured the contents of the velvet bag onto the marble counter in front of me. “Forny.”

“Mr. Stillson’s mother’s,” said Archie, bringing sugar, cream, and a spoon over to where I sat.

There were sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, all in old-fashioned, ornate settings. They were extremely valuable, I knew, and uniformly ugly.

“You should have them reset and wear them.” She brought my coffee.

“Bring yours over here, too,” I ordered, “and sit down. Today, Archie, we are two women, not lady of the house and housekeeper. Okay?”

“Yes, ma—Vin.”

When I’m grown up, I’ll be rich, and I’ll wear jewelry like all the rich people do in the books, like Queen Elizabeth and Princess Grace, like Jackie Kennedy did at the inaugural documentary thing that was on TV. I’ll have servants and three houses and a car with a chauffeur who wears a uniform and calls me ma’am. And no one will ever be able to make me do anything I don’t want to. No one.

The memory rose up unexpectedly, attacking me in the same manner as Mark’s scent had when I opened his closet, but with a very different kind of pain. I’d been ten, and my stepfather, the second of four, had just shown me in graphic detail exactly what he could make me do.

Mark had always been careful to let me do whatever I wanted. When, as it often happened, I didn’t know what that was, he led me in what always turned out to be the proper direction. When I wanted to go back to work even though I didn’t need the money and he didn’t really want me to work, he had called Liam Gunderson and told him his wife was looking for a job. Could Liam help?

Now, without Mark, I knew I no longer wanted the brownstone, the house in Miami Beach, the hideous jewels that splattered the counter with jarring colors. Princess Grace and Jackie Kennedy were dead and Queen Elizabeth hardly ever paraded around in jewels anymore.

I didn’t want to be “ma’am” to a woman who was no less than I was just because I’d loved and married a wealthy man and she had only loved him. For right now, I wanted—no, needed—to go to Maine with my three best friends and just be one of the Tonsil Lake girls.

“If you’d like,” said Archie, helping me scoop the jewelry back into its bag, “I could drive you to the airport.”

I met her eyes across the cups and the black bag and the years of our acquaintance. “Thank you, Martha,” I said. “I’d like that.”

Part Two

“There was no getting around it—she was lost.”

Jean O’Toole

The Price of Pride

Cupid’s Bow Books, 2009

Chapter Five

Andie

“Do you have any concerns that we should talk about?”

Carolyn Murphy, who’s been my gynecologist since our kids were in kindergarten together, never sat behind her desk. She always came around it and sat in a chair beside me. When I’d been too sick to drive myself to see her, she’d dragged a chair from the corner for the person with me rather than sit behind the desk.

“I’m still tired,” I admitted. “I thought I would have bounced back by now.”

“Your body’s been attacked from all angles. And, truth to tell”—she shrugged, with a rueful smile—“we ain’t twenty anymore. Your counts are all in good shape, but you’re bouncing back like a fifty-year-old, not a teenager.”

“Well, it kind of pisses me off.”

“I hear that. Did you see the new associate in the practice? She’s twenty-nine. Looks like she should still be in elementary school. She’s very good, but I’m having to really work at liking her.” She leaned forward in her chair, pinning me with her gaze. “Are you scared, Andie? That it’ll come back? That we’ve missed something?”

Deep breath. Another. In. Out.
Where are you when I need you to help me breathe, Jean?
“Yes.”

“Good. It’ll keep you vigilant.” She looked down at the notes in her lap. “Maine, huh?”

“Yes, with Jean and Suzanne and our friend Vin. Maybe you should give me a quadruple prescription for Prozac. I’ll just pass it around when we start fighting.”

She laughed before an expression of concern crossed her face. “Jean doing all right?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, thinking positively. Then I frowned. “Shouldn’t you already know that?”

“I just haven’t seen her for a while,” she said. “Maybe she’s changed doctors, although no one’s called for her records. At any rate, give her my best when you see her.”

I did, hissing at her in the hallway of her house so that David wouldn’t hear. “Why aren’t you going to Carolyn for your annual checkup? What did your mother die of, Jean? Do you remember? And who discovered my cancer? It wasn’t me.”

Jean’s mother had died of ovarian cancer. At the age of fifty-one. And Carolyn had discovered the lump in my breast.

“What’s that?” she’d said.

“It’s nothing. I think you have this thing for women’s boobs,” I said. She pressed harder. “Ouch.”

There were a lot more ouches before we were done.

Jean stopped at her bedroom door and glared at me. “I’ll take care of it,” she promised in a loud whisper. “Now please shut up. We’re going to Maine. We’re going to have a good time. We’re not going to fight.”

“The hell we’re not.”

The telephone rang, and a moment later, David called, “Andie, it’s for you.”

We met halfway and he handed me the cordless phone. “It’s Paul,” he said. He raised his voice. “Tell him we’re on for the women tonight.”

“I heard that, David O’Toole,” called Jean from their bedroom. I heard her laughter when he went in, closing the door behind him.

“Did he say we were on for the women tonight?” asked Paul, after I’d said hello.

“Yes, he did, but you’re out of luck. The women down at the Senior Center are on to you guys.”

He laughed, and the sound ran along my nerve endings in a way I found altogether too pleasant. I was fifty-one, not seventeen, which meant I was no longer prepared to deal with that kind of feeling. Except maybe in my stand-up breast, which doesn’t have much feeling at all but does look like it’s seventeen. Oh, I already said that, didn’t I?

“I just wanted to say goodbye again,” he said, “and to tell you to have a good time.”

“Thanks,” I said, sounding as breathy as Suzanne at her worst.

He waited the space of the three loud heartbeats I was all but certain he could hear over the phone. “I’ll miss you, Andie.”

Jake had said those words the day our divorce was final. If I closed my eyes, I could still see him standing there outside the courthouse while his lover waited in the car. He’d traced a finger down the side of my face and tugged gently at the little gold hoop in my ear he’d bought me the day young Jake was born. “I’ll miss you, Andie.”

I had turned and walked away. I’d gotten into the car and driven to Lewis Point to Jean and Suzanne. Miranda had ridden beside me, young Jake in the back with the dog. We did not speak until I stopped the car at Suzanne’s house.

“We’ll be all right,” I said, looking from one of them to the other. “We all will.”

It had taken me a year to convince them, longer than that to convince myself. The dog never had come around.

“Is it okay if I call you once a week or so?” asked Paul, bringing me back to the present.

“I’d like that. Did I give you the number?”

“Last night.”

Thinking of last night made my blood start rushing around crazily, and I knew beyond all doubt he could hear my heart beating then. “Oh,” I said, “yes. Last night.”

I am not prepared to write about last night, even in this coil-bound journal no one will ever see. Let it suffice to say that losing one breast does nothing at all to lessen the pleasurable sensations that can be felt in the other.

I don’t know whether I am getting prudish in my old age or simply paranoid, but that’s absolutely all I’m going to say on the subject of last night. God knows, if I chose to tell the whole story, Jean would probably send this journal off to her publisher.

My blood was still thundering. I could hear it.

David walked past, carrying Jean’s luggage, and I looked at the grandfather clock. “I have to go,” I said.

“Have fun.”

“I will. Thanks for calling, Paul.” I waited a second, maybe two. “I’ll miss you, too. Bye.”

I hung up before he could answer.

Jean

Dear David:

As I said on the phone, the trip was uneventful except for my motion sickness, which took us all by surprise. I’m fine now, although it left me a bit weak in the knees for a while.

Vin looks well. She’s thinner than she was when I saw her last, and maybe she has some new lines around her eyes, but so do we all except Suzanne. She still has those wonderful cheekbones and the longest legs this side of the NBA.

It was quite a scene when we all came together at the airport in Bangor. I think we all ended up crying, except maybe Andie. You’d have been appalled! *smile*

The house is wonderful. We each have our own room, and we share two bathrooms. There are wraparound porches, upstairs verandas and everything is very light and cozy with mismatched beachy-looking furniture and plenty of old-fashioned lamps so that you never have to look around for a bright spot.

I don’t know why I’m writing you when I’m sure we’ll talk nearly every day. I guess I need the written word. That’s not bad as vices go, being a written word junkie.

I love you, David. Be safe.

I slipped the letter into an envelope on the little white desk in my room and climbed into bed, leaving the windows open. The sea breeze was wonderful, soothing, and cool, and I was exhausted. I fell asleep immediately, with the bedside lamp still burning and Elisabeth Ogilvie’s
Rowan Head
lying on my chest.

I woke before dawn with tears on my face, burning up even though the room was cold. I thought about going downstairs, but was reluctant to move in case I got sick again. This was not a good beginning to a vacation.