The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again (4 page)

Aubrey sat on the sofa, pulling his new wife next to him. “I’m sure you’re wondering how we met.”

“Um, yes.”

He patted Heather’s thigh, looking dotingly at her as he spoke. “I stopped in at a bank in Arlington three months ago to cash a check. Heather was the teller. Our eyes met. When she handed me my money, our fingertips touched. The next day I took her out to dinner, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.”

“I had no idea.”

“I’m well aware of that, darling, and it’s not your fault.” Aubrey’s voice took on a patronizing tone. “You were so preoccupied with your morning sickness, and I know how important this baby is to you and Hank. I thought it best not to intrude.”

Preoccupied?
Carolyn thought wildly. It was more as if morning sickness had tackled and thrown her to the ground. And wasn’t this baby important to her father?

“And quite frankly, we enjoyed our little secret,” Aubrey was saying, looking terribly pleased with himself. “We were able to spend time together, far from the madding crowd.” He wrapped his arm around Heather, cuddling her.

Carolyn felt the room tip. When had her father become
cuddly
? He’d never cuddled
her,
not even when she was a little girl.

“We knew we were in love from the moment we met,” her father rhapsodized, “and since I’m not a young man—”

“Oh, Aubrey.” Heather giggled. “You act like a young man.”

“That’s because you inspire me.” Aubrey nuzzled his bride’s ear.

“So you got married,” Carolyn prompted.

“Yes. We couldn’t wait. I want to live with Heather. We decided to get married without any fanfare, so we organized things and were married yesterday by Judge Lawrence,” Aubrey concluded triumphantly.

“Wow,” Carolyn said weakly. “Amazing.”

With a gentle roll of her shoulder, Heather loosened herself from Aubrey’s embrace and leaned forward, her hands on her knees, which, Carolyn noticed, were plump and led straight down like tree trunks to thick ankles. “This must be such a shock for you,” Heather said. “I know you must have a million questions. It’s really important to me that you understand how much I love your father. I’m going to do everything I can to make him happy.”

“What would make me happy right now would be to take you out to dinner,” Aubrey told his wife. Rising, he said to Carolyn, “Let’s coordinate our schedules and find a time you and Hank and Heather and I can have dinner together, here at the house, so we can have a nice long family evening.”

“All right, Father,” Carolyn agreed. She stood, too, grateful to find the floor steady beneath her feet. Her father looked at her expectantly. Usually she could interpret his slightest facial twitch, but this look was new.
Oh,
she thought, and leaning forward, gave her father’s new wife a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome to the family.”

“Thank you, Carolyn. I hope we’ll be great friends,” Heather replied.

Turning, Carolyn kissed her father’s cheek, noticing how he smelled, for the first time ever, of some really terrible men’s cologne. “Congratulations, Father.”

He smiled, pleased. “Thank you, dear.”

Dear,
Carolyn thought. When had he ever called her
dear
? Obviously Heather was having a softening effect on her father. Was that a good thing? Carolyn looked at her watch, wondering if it was too late to phone her lawyer.

4

Okay, lean mean beauty queen,” Julia chanted, “let’s get this show on the road.”

Belinda stood quietly by the kitchen table. She was small for her age, and Julia, who was tall and made even taller by her fabulous black boots, had to squat down to be on eye level with the girl. Julia was aware of what a striking contrast they were: Julia, thirty, her short black hair sliced and shaped against her skull like a cap of raven feathers, her black eyes intense as jet, her long, lean body clad in tight black jeans and a sleeveless black tee. And Belinda, seven, a slight elfin princess with long honey-brown curls, large blue eyes, and a penchant for fuss and ruffles that would have thrilled Queen Victoria. A stranger, seeing them, would wonder what they had in common. The answer: Tim Hathaway, Belinda’s father, Julia’s husband.

“Teeth brushed?” Julia asked.

Obediently, Belinda curled her lips back, exposing tiny, gleaming white teeth.

“Hey, those are some sweet mini-marshmallows!” Julia joked. “Backpack? Okeydokey, smiley-smokey, let’s put your lunch pail in.” She opened the pink plastic Barbie box and pointed to each item in turn. “Peanut butter and banana sandwich. Check. Carrot strips. Check. Apple juice and straw. Check. Two Oreos. Check.” She slid the lunch box into the backpack, then, with great care, slipped Kitty Ballerina into the backpack, zipping it just to the stuffed animal’s neck, so she could see out. “You okay, Kitty Ballerina?”

Julia answered in a high, squeaky Kitty Ballerina voice, “Okay!”

Belinda grinned. A major victory for Julia.

“Bye-bye, sugar pie,” Julia said to Kitty Ballerina. “Here’s your morning kiss.” She smacked Kitty Ballerina on the cheek.

“Thank you, Julia!” Julia squeaked in Kitty Ballerina’s voice. “Love you!”

“I love you, too, Kitty Ballerina,” Julia said as she helped Belinda into her pink fleece jacket. Taking Belinda’s hand, she led her out to their friends’ big red SUV. She lifted Belinda up to the seat and carefully buckled her in. “Buckled in, henny-pin. Here’s your morning kiss.” She smacked Belinda on her soft pink cheek. “Love you, Belinda. Thanks, Paula. You’re good to go! I’m picking you both up this afternoon, Belinda and Sarah. I’ll be waiting!” Sliding the door shut, she patted the SUV and headed back to the house.

Inside, the morning spilled before her like sunshine through the windows. Downstairs, the Burrill wedding video lay on her desk, where it had to be edited, cut, matched with music, and spliced together into one seamless perfect hour that would capture for the newlyweds and their loved ones the magic of their day. Before Julia could turn to that, though, she had to put the house in order. So much had changed in the little girl’s life,
too
much, and if, by setting the chairs at familiar angles and arranging Miss Mouse perfectly on Belinda’s bed, Julia could make the world seem less frightening and more stable, well, she could do that, and gladly.

But as she cleaned the kitchen and tidied the house, Julia was accompanied, as she often was, by a shadow, a gray, gloomy specter of her parents’ disappointment at the way she was spending her time. Her parents, both liberal lawyers, had hoped she’d do something meaningful with her time and intelligence. She was fortunate, her parents had reminded her daily; she could—she
should
—make the world a better place.

In college, Julia had majored in political science, even though she hated it, and taken every photography course offered, because that was what she loved. She’d wanted, someday, to compile a book of photographs of the impoverished and marginalized that would bring tears of pity to the jaded wealthy, causing them to spill open their bank accounts and address the wrongs of the world. After college, she’d worked at odd jobs—Starbucks, Tower Records, Filene’s—and, on her time off, roamed the darker streets of Boston, taking photographs.

Then her best friend had asked her to be the official photographer for her wedding. Julia took the formal, posed shots that would be secured in silver frames, and she also videotaped the wedding and reception, edited it imaginatively, and created such a gorgeous, effervescent record of the event that people watching laughed and cried and shouted with joy. Julia loved this kind of work, and almost at once she found herself in demand as a videographer. Her days were packed with birthday parties, retirement parties, weddings, anniversaries.

Nice,
her parents thought, but hardly
significant
work.

She’d met Tim Hathaway at a party. Tim was a dentist, the non-suicidal kind, he joked, an orthodontist, actually. As a boy, he’d had terrible buck teeth, and the skill of an orthodontist had changed his life. He enjoyed his work, how the precision of infinitely small procedures could work miracles of enormous personal magnitude. He was thirty-five, widowed, with a five-year-old daughter, Belinda.

Tim’s wife Annette had died tragically young, of a swiftly moving cancer. Tim, burdened with sorrow and anxiety, was also, secretly, fraught with guilt, for only a few days before Annette was diagnosed with the cancer, he had asked her for a divorce, and she had heartbrokenly agreed. They had gotten married because it had seemed the right thing to do at the time. All their peers were getting married. Tim had finished the grueling years of school and was setting up his own orthodontic practice, and being married seemed the next logical step. Annette had finished college and tried a number of jobs, none of which had really caught her fancy. They’d been pleased when Annette was pregnant, adoring of their infant daughter. Annette lovingly performed the outward duties of homemaker. Tim came home every night to meals scrupulously made from the newest cookbook. His clothes were always clean and ironed, the house decorated to its furthest inch. But when Belinda was tucked away in bed at night and the dishes were done, Annette and Tim sat in the living room watching television with the warmth of strangers at an airport, and when they went to bed, they were both always too tired to do more than fall asleep.

Annette’s illness brought them close again. They stopped speaking of divorce and spent their energies trying to make joyful memories for Belinda. They explained to Belinda that Mommy was ill, that she might have to go away for a while, that this would be hard for Belinda, but that she should know her mother would always love her, would always be there, somewhere, in the universe, like the wind or the sunshine, loving her. They did the best they could.

The day after Annette died, Belinda, who was five, stopped speaking.

For the first few months, Tim was patient. The loss was so devastating, so unfair, he seldom felt like speaking himself. Why shouldn’t a child react to such injustice, such a loss, with some kind of powerful, life-altering emotion? She would speak again, he was sure, because Belinda had been a normal and, for the first few years of her life, even a slightly advanced child. Because Annette and Tim read to her so much from the moment she was born, Belinda had developed a large vocabulary. She’d loved preschool and kindergarten and had plenty of friends, including a best friend named Sarah, with whom, during the last weeks of Annette’s illness, Belinda had continued to play. So the sudden muteness was obviously psychologically based. In a way, it had a rightness to it. Belinda would speak again in her own good time.

But after three months, gradually, Tim began taking Belinda to a round of child psychologists. Nothing worked, not puppets or play-acting or music. The experts assured him this was not unusual, a kind of selective mutism that would eventually resolve itself. They advised him to simply give her time. After all, Belinda was continuing to attend school, where, her teacher said, she seemed alert and engaged. She could hear well and took orders with alacrity. Her penmanship was clear and firm. She did all assignments involving pen and paper. She was learning to add and subtract, and at recess she continued to join the little clique of girls she’d always been with. The other children had, during the first weeks of first grade, taunted Belinda, but receiving no reaction, quickly accepted her eccentricity and, somehow, in the way of children, included her in their games.

Tim dated Julia for months before introducing her, gradually, to Belinda, and Julia, who by nature was impulsive, gave the child the space and time to get used to her. Before long, Belinda gladly snuggled up in Julia’s lap when Julia offered to read her a book. After a few months, Tim sat down with Belinda to tell her he wanted to marry Julia and have her live with them all the time. Belinda hadn’t raged or cried; she’d simply nodded. At the intimate wedding at a friend’s home, Belinda had been Julia’s flower girl, admiring her mirrored reflection in her flouncy pink dress and flowered circlet, and smiling during the wedding.

When Tim proposed to Julia, he asked whether she might be willing to live in the house where he had lived with his first wife. He wanted to provide his daughter with as much stability as possible. Julia was so crazy in love with the man she would have lived in a root cellar if he’d asked her. She told him of course.

They married, and Julia moved into Tim’s sweet little saltbox with its picket fence and wild-cherry tree. Julia, who had decorated her own apartment in cool teak, natural hemp, and ivory linen, became chatelaine of the home daintily, and in Julia’s view, gaggingly, decorated by Annette, Tim’s first wife. The wall-to-wall carpets Julia vacuumed were deeply plush rose-silver. The dishes she washed were white, adorned with roses, and the kitchen wallpaper had roses twining up a green trellis. Belinda’s room was a symphony of lavender. Julia turned the pink-and-gold, blossom-bedecked master bedroom into a guest bedroom for Annette’s parents, who lived in western Massachusetts and often visited. She redecorated the former guest bedroom for herself and Tim, stripping away the chiffon, scarf-valanced, rose curtains, brocade spread, and floral sheets. She painted the walls a warm cream and hung thirty of her favorite framed photographs. She chose a bed with a plain teak headboard, and a dresser of matching wood. Now, when she needed to catch her breath or escape from the smothering flowers, she had a place to come.

Tim cleared a space in the basement for Julia’s workshop, and she did work there, but not as often as she’d intended. Running a home and taking care of Belinda took a lot of time, and she wanted to do it right. She wanted very much to help Belinda feel safe with her. She knew it was crucial to provide a nurturing, familiar environment for the child.

On the other hand, Julia mused now, as she folded Belinda’s clean clothing into the drawers exactly as Belinda liked it, sometimes Julia felt she was ruled by a mute, midget tyrant who could have given Gandhi a few lessons in passive resistance.

If Belinda didn’t like something, she stuck out her lower lip, dropped her eyes to the floor, and looked pathetic. She refused to leave the house unless her clothing was put on in an inexplicable order. She wouldn’t eat unless the food was presented to her in a specific sequence, and vegetables she wouldn’t eat at all. When Tim suggested she stop watching television and get ready for bed because she had school the next day, tears threatened, with the result that most nights Belinda fell asleep in front of the TV.

Recently, it seemed to Julia that Belinda’s compulsions were increasing. This week at the grocery store, when Julia refused to let Belinda take a pack of Oreo cookies off the shelf and eat them right then and there, Belinda had burst into tears and refused to walk with Julia, slumping down in a dead weight. Julia had had to leave her loaded cart, carry Belinda to the car, drive back to the house, and return to shop at night when Tim was home. Yesterday, at the mall, Belinda had imperiously pointed at an expensive Madame Alexander doll. “Sorry, sweetie, not today,” Julia had said. Belinda sagged, weeping like an abandoned angel. Again, Julia had had to curtail her shopping.

She’d been so embarrassed, carrying a seven-year-old, sobbing girl through the mall. People cast curious and sometimes critical eyes her way. Julia was terrified that Belinda would throw a similar fit in front of Agnes, Belinda’s maternal grandmother, Annette’s mother, who disliked Julia and watched eagerly for signs that Julia was making Belinda unhappy. One of the difficulties was that Agnes’s path to complete happiness was paved with sugar—
lots
of sugar, the same nutritional monster prohibited by all the savvy moms of Belinda’s peers. Whenever Agnes came for a visit, she brought a jar of Marshmallow Fluff. No matter the time of day, she’d bustle into the kitchen to make Belinda and herself peanut-butter-Fluff sandwiches. “Mm-
mm
!” she’d gloat. “Isn’t this delicious!” Belinda would happily nod, slurping away at the gooey mess, while Julia kept herself busy preparing tea or coffee, valiantly keeping her mouth shut. If Marshmallow Fluff were the Elmer’s glue of Agnes’s bond with Belinda, Julia would not interfere, especially since Tim, a dentist, and wildly cavity-conscious, didn’t try to intervene.

Fortunately, Agnes and her retired, rather passive husband, George, lived three hours away in the western part of the state. Unfortunately, Agnes and George visited often, seldom notifying Julia in advance, but swooping down like a pair of turkey vultures hoping to spot a carcass.
Julia’s
carcass.

Agnes wanted Belinda to live with them;
they
knew how to raise children. Julia, they pointed out loudly and often, had no experience. Clearly Agnes thought Julia was a snaggletoothed evil stepmother from her worst fairy tale, a judgment that could only get worse if Belinda went into one of her pathetic crying spells.

But Belinda cried when she had to go visit her grandparents. Agnes insisted Belinda spend two weeks of every summer and two or three days of every major holiday with her grandparents. During the ride to the western part of the state, Belinda reverted to infantile behavior, sucking her thumb and rubbing her cheek on Kitty Ballerina’s. She had to be lifted out of the car and carried up to her grandparents’ house, and when Tim and Julia arrived to bring her home, she was waiting, nose pressed against the window. Couldn’t Agnes
see
all that? Julia tried to respond to Agnes’s dislike with tolerance and kindness—she did feel great sympathy for this woman who had lost her beloved daughter. But it was difficult, especially since Julia’s best efforts never pleased Agnes. Tim’s own mother had died a few years ago, and his father had retired to Florida, so Agnes and George were really the only grandparents Belinda knew, and Julia longed for a smoother, more cooperative relationship. Julia had asked Tim whether they should see a family counselor. Tim reminded her that none of the therapists he’d seen before had helped Belinda come out of her spell of muteness. Patience, they’d all advised. Patience, and the healing powers of time.