The Way Back to Happiness (3 page)

So why was she digging in her heels at
not
taking care of Alabama? Why was a demented voice in the back of her mind howling that this was all wrong? That Alabama belonged with her.

The reason was there, reaching out to her, but her conscious mind bobbed and weaved away from it.

“Just leave her with me,” her mother said.

Bev made one last appeal to reason. “Mama, how can you take care of a teenager? You’re recovering from pneumonia.”

“I’m fine,” Gladys insisted.

Not fine enough to attend your favorite daughter’s funeral,
Bev thought, but said nothing. Part of her wondered if Gladys would have made it to the funeral even if she’d been in tip-top shape. With one glaring exception, she’d always recoiled from moments of high emotion, which had made her particularly ill-equipped to deal with two squabbling daughters.

“What if the management won’t let her stay?” Bev asked.

“Leave that to me.”

The past week, grisly and sorrowful, pressed down on Bev. There had been so many sad, mundane details of life and death to tend to during the day. Funeral home, insurance company, van rentals, police reports with blood-alcohol levels . . . And each night thoughts of Diana, worries about Alabama, and contemplating how her life was about to be upended, had drained all of her leftover energy. Having someone snatch the reins from her hands for a little while felt . . . good. A niggling voice in the back of her mind tried to get her attention, but Bev knew she couldn’t fight her mother now. Better to give in. Chances were, she would simply be dropping Alabama off in Dallas for a week, or two at the most. Doing so would allow her some time to get her house ready. It might actually work out well, in the long run.

“Bev?” Gladys prompted.

“All right,” she agreed. “We’ll see you in about five or six hours, Mama.”

After she hung up, she took a deep breath and tried to focus herself as she did during the hectic school year.
One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. Think about the next thing, not the last thing.
Maybe a breather for a week or two would enable her to get Diana and all that messy stuff out of her head. She hadn’t really spoken to her sister in fifteen years, but these past few days, with her sister and the past clinging so ferociously to her thoughts, it was hard to remember that Diana hadn’t been her whole life.

It was still impossible to accept Diana’s life really was over. Gone in a flash. And suddenly, out of the blue, Bev remembered not the Diana of high school and beyond, but little Diana decked out in a yellow dress that matched Bev’s, with a crinoline that itched like mad, squealing with glee because she’d found more Easter eggs than her big sister.

Another crying jag threatened, and she wobbled back to the table where Alabama was gulping down her cold drink. Bev gasped in a breath. Sitting there with the sun on her, she looked so much like—

No.

She mustered a cheery voice. “Are you ready to hit the road? It’ll be late when we get to Dallas, but at least we’ll miss the worst of the traffic. Once I drop you off, I’ll take the van back to New Sparta and unload everything so I can return it in the morning.”

Alabama lifted her head. “I’m staying with Gladdie, then?”

“That’s what Mama wants.”

“Then I’ll need all my stuff. My mom’s stuff, too. You can’t just take it. It doesn’t belong to you.”

“But—” Bev stopped herself and tried to tamp down the instinct to point out again the wrongheadedness of Gladys and Alabama’s scheme. They were both grieving, not thinking straight. Gladys would see things differently when the reality of a teenager and a van’s worth of moving boxes hit her apartment, and then she’d talk sense into Alabama.

“Okay.” Bev’s brain felt limp. “We’ll unload it at Mama’s.”

Back at the van, the inside of which now gave off heat like a furnace on wheels, Bev gritted her teeth as she slid onto the scorching vinyl seat. She tried to pick up as if they were resuming a normal road trip.

“You feel like listening to music now?” she asked.

Alabama tilted her head, considering the question, and then nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

Finally. She actually seemed willing to entertain the idea of being sociable. Maybe the second leg of the trip wouldn’t be as excruciating as the first.

“Find something you like,” Bev told her.

As she backed out of the parking lot and maneuvered toward the interstate, she heard Alabama rooting around her backpack, stashing away her chips, candy, and gum. Maybe they were making progress. Sharing music was often a tentative first step in making a connection with someone.

But when Bev next looked over at Alabama, the girl was pulling out her Sony Walkman and clamping the orange foam headphones over her ears. Then she slumped against the passenger window and closed her eyes. A faint, tinny, rhythmic thumping—all the music Alabama was going to share that trip—filtered through the headphones into the cab of the van.

A
ccording to her grandmother, Alabama wasn’t the youngest soul at the retirement home. That honor belonged to a balding old guy in bright golf pants named Wink Williams, who lived upstairs from her grandmother and loved jokes. Hokey, harmless practical jokes, usually—but as the director of The Villas was reported to have said after one ill-considered prank, a whoopee cushion on a wheelchair was no laughing matter.

Alabama liked Wink. In those first awful weeks, having someone joking with her was better than the long faces she was growing used to—better than the inexpressibly sad expression she glimpsed when Gladdie thought she wasn’t looking, and a million times better than Aunt Bev’s sorrowful lip nibbling, constant nervous chatter, and eyes red-rimmed from crying.

Wink was also the first person who’d ever asked Alabama to marry him. Repeatedly.

“What do you say we elope today?” he’d ask in the mornings over scrambled Egg Beaters and reduced-sodium toast.

Too bad he was seventy-nine, or she might have taken him up on it. Then again, she felt as if she were fourteen going on eighty. The old ladies around her, stooped and slow-moving, a few shrouded in permanent gloom and lonely dejection, didn’t seem alien to her. In her heart, she was one of them.

Some days she woke up and couldn’t believe she had to function for another fifteen hours, talking to people and eating and brushing her teeth.
Mommy,
she would think as her eyes blinked open. Mommy, a name she hadn’t used since the days of nap time and
Romper Room
. Her mother had been Mom since Alabama started first grade. But if she could have her mom back, squeeze her thin body one last time, she knew what word she would cry out.
Mommy.

How sad could a person feel before the heart just stopped? She faced every day feeling weak, wrung out, wondering why she was here. Why she was anywhere. Some days Wink’s stupid joshing seemed the only good thing in the whole wide world.

His one-sided banter with her was met with laughter by all the other residents, except her grandmother. From time to time Gladdie would give him a brusque smackdown, especially if she worried he was embarrassing Alabama. “Once she found out those pearly whites of yours were removable,” Gladdie would say to him after his usual proposal, “the honeymoon would be over.”

Gladdie always seemed lukewarm toward Wink. “There’s an operator if I ever saw one,” she would say, eyeing his loud clothes and louder smile with suspicion. Everybody else, even the whoopee-cushion victim, adored him as if he were the resident mascot or pet. They could usually work up a chuckle or two for even his worst joke, and the time he’d brought his ukulele to the lounge and belted out “Paddlin’ Madelin’ Home,” you’d have thought he was Mick Jagger. He’d had every lady there in thrall. And everybody—including, she bet, Gladdie—knew his attention to Alabama was his way of trying to cheer her up.

Alabama thought she fit right in at The Villas. Unfortunately, the place had a one-week guest policy. After Alabama had overstayed that limit by a week, Brenda Boyer, the director of the complex, made the trip up to Gladdie’s apartment to serve them notice that Alabama would have to leave. Soon.

Her words panicked Alabama, but Gladdie stayed cool, responding in an icy, polite tone that clipped the soft edges off her Texas drawl. “We’ll see about that.”

Brenda always wore a shell-shocked expression, as if she were stunned to find herself stuck in midlife in a constant tug-of-war between “the management” and a building full of dentured malcontents. Her trouble was, she had a heart. During this particular conversation, she took in Alabama, the boxed piles of Alabama’s belongings stacked nearly ceiling high in a corner of the living room, and then Gladdie’s implacable expression. “I’m so sorry,” she said, already backing out the door in retreat. “Naturally, we understand that sorting out these situations takes time. . . .”

During their next conversation, a few days later, Brenda suggested that perhaps she should speak to Miss Putterman about the issue. Meaning Aunt Bev. Evidently, even people who had never suffered through one of her home economics or freshman health classes addressed her as Ms. Putterman. Aunt Bev’s unflattering homemade clothes and never-fashionable hair screamed old maid as plainly as if the sexual revolution, the seventies, and
Cosmopolitan
magazine had never happened.

Alabama loathed Aunt Bev. Always had, always would. She’d grown up hearing stories about her from her mom—about how Bev narked on Diana for sneaking out past midnight. About Bev being the A student to Diana’s C’s and D’s, even though anyone could tell Bev wasn’t all that smart. (“She studied all the time, was all,” was how Alabama’s mom dismissed the disparity in their academic performances.) Bev was the diligent, worthy ant to Diana’s grasshopper. Even at the age of seven, Aunt Bev had saved all her Halloween loot, portioning it out so it lasted till Christmas, while Diana had immediately scarfed down every popcorn ball, Baby Ruth, and Tootsie Roll until she was ready to burst.

When her mom and Aunt Bev were older, something really bad had happened, a final bust-up that Diana never wanted to talk about. The few times Alabama tried to find out about it, her mom had ended up stopping before she could explain, as if the incident still upset her so much it shorted out her brain. Even though it had taken place before Alabama was born, The Really Bad Thing was always there in the way her mom’s voice tightened and quavered when she spoke of her sister. Whatever it was, it framed her and her mother’s life, separating them from Gladdie, who lived in Dallas.

“I can’t live in the same state with
her,
” Diana would answer, meaning Bev, when Alabama questioned why they’d never lived in Texas. God knows they’d moved everywhere else. Alabama always liked staying with Gladdie, who doted on her the few times Alabama had visited her. Well, as much as Gladdie doted on anybody.

Even Gladdie wouldn’t enlighten Alabama about The Really Bad Thing. Whenever the subject of the rift between her daughters came up, she would start talking about how maybe she’d been too old to start a family when she did. Her husband had died when Diana and Bev were in elementary school, and while Gladdie had been scrambling at a bank to make a living, she’d “lost control of the girls.” Alabama assumed she meant that she’d lost control of Diana. It was impossible to imagine Aunt Bev out of control, and it was no secret that Diana had been a wild teenager—she’d been temperamental all her life. And reckless. Nobody knew that better than Alabama.

But no matter what had happened, it was easy to see how Bev had jumped on Diana’s nerves.

Alabama had experienced her fill of Aunt Bev back in St. Louis, during those days following the worst day of her life—the day she’d been called away from a last swim in the pool and arrived dripping in a towel at Camp Quapaw’s main office, where Gladdie was on the other end of the phone line, waiting to break the awful news about the accident. The police had traced Gladdie through their apartment’s superintendent—she was the reference Diana had given on the rental application. Gladdie also informed Alabama that Bev was on her way to fetch her from camp and would be there in a matter of hours.

For about two seconds Alabama was almost glad to see her aunt, until she realized what her being there meant. After Gladdie’s call, she’d retreated in a funk to her upper bunk in the rustic cabin, where all her cabin mates were filtering out to catch buses or be picked up by parents. Packing up her things, Alabama convinced herself there had been some mistake, or that she’d dreamed the conversation with Gladdie. Her mother couldn’t have died while she was here, horseback riding, canoeing, and swimming. She couldn’t have died, period.

But Bev’s arriving to pick her up confirmed that the worst had happened, and the following days were a nightmare. Aunt Bev was so bossy, so judgmental of how she and her mom had lived. Back in the apartment in St. Louis—which, granted, seemed a lot messier than when Alabama had left it—her aunt’s face puckered in distaste every time she looked around. Worse, she kept bursting into tears, and when she wasn’t weeping outright, she was nattering on about how brave Alabama was, and how she must have been very strong to endure Diana’s moods, Diana’s troubles.

Alabama finally exploded at her. “We were
happy!
”

Which, obviously, wasn’t the whole truth. But they had been a little happy a lot of the time.

And a lot happy some of the time.

And then Bev had started going on as if it was a given that Alabama was going to move to New Sparta with her.
As if.

The woman was delusional. There was no way that arrangement would work, and what’s more, Alabama couldn’t figure out why Aunt Bev would want to live with her. Alabama never made the tiniest effort to pretend she liked her. Bev’s own mother knew that the two of them together would be a domestic train wreck, and Gladdie couldn’t have been happy about having moving boxes stacked ceiling high in her living room and Brenda Boyer breathing down her neck.

The next time Brenda broached the subject of “talking to Miss Putterman,” Gladdie declared, “Alabama is not moving in with my daughter Bev,” with a finality that Alabama found comforting, even if Brenda didn’t.

 

What changed everything was the tapioca incident. One night in the dining room of The Villas, Alabama made the fatal error of taking the last tapioca cup. She grabbed it from the dessert buffet, sat down, and then, three spoonfuls in, she caught sight of an old woman named Penny making her torturous route toward the buffet. Penny had suffered a stroke a few years back, and now she moved in slow, tiny steps that always made Alabama think of Tim Conway in a Carol Burnett skit. Having painstakingly loco-moted her way to the dessert table, Penny stopped, collapsing against her walker when she saw that the only thing left was orange Jell-O.

Disappointed, the old lady turned back. That’s when her gaze locked onto Alabama’s tapioca.

Now, as a guest at The Villas, Alabama—or Gladdie—paid seven dollars for the evening meal. Highway robbery, Gladdie called it. The sum was more than what the normal residents paid, and probably ten times what the food was actually worth. Occasionally Alabama didn’t even bother going down for dinner, preferring peanut butter crackers in front of
Jeopardy!
to noodles Stroganoff and diverticulitis discussions. But never mind that she was paying through the nose. At that moment, Penny Beauchamp glared as if Alabama was a freeloader. A tapioca thief.

The next day, a hesitant tap at Gladdie’s door announced Brenda again. “I’m sorry to bother you, Gladys.” She edged into the room. “We’ve had complaints.”

Gladdie’s guard went up instantly. “Who complained?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information, but—”

Gladdie cut her off. “You don’t have to. Everyone with working eyeballs still in their heads saw the look Penny sent Alabama last night.”

Brenda’s gaze skittered toward Alabama. She hitched her throat. “Yes, well, the fact is, Gladys, we
do
have the one-week guest policy.”

“Tough tiddlywinks,” Gladys parried. “We also have a no dogs policy, yet there’s Bonnie Tucker on the second floor with her ridiculous poodle. Who I like, by the way. I like the dog better than Bonnie, to tell you the truth. I’m
happy
an exception was made for Noodles.”

“Yes, but . . .” Brenda clearly hadn’t anticipated Gladdie’s drawing a comparison between her granddaughter’s situation and a poodle’s. “People . . . that is, many residents . . . are beginning to ask how long this can go on. It’s against policy,” she insisted. “I need to be able to tell them something. . . .”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Gladdie said. “You might tell them
that
.”

When Brenda was gone, Gladdie aimed a scowl at the living room rug. Anxiety about her future shook Alabama. If she couldn’t stay with Gladdie, what would happen to her?

“Do they still have orphanages?” Alabama asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gladdie said. “You’re not an orphan.”

Maybe she meant that Alabama still had relatives. But so did Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, that girl in
The Secret Garden,
Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz . . .
All those characters had a grandparent or an uncle or something, but it was the no-mother-and-no-father thing that made them orphans. Alabama’s father had died before she was born, and now she was motherless. She couldn’t have been any more an orphan if she’d clapped a red wig on her head and started belting out “Tomorrow.”

“Well, technically, maybe you are,” Gladdie allowed. “Ever since Diana . . .” Unable to finish the thought, she tottered toward her cabinet of solace and pulled out her crutch reserved for moments of high tension—her jar of candied orange slices. Those and her ever-present rolls of Tums were all she ever snacked on.

She tore open an orange slice with her razor-sharp nails and bit off half. The gumdrop consistency of the candy caused her jaw to pop as she chewed, and Alabama sensed that the effort of keeping all her dental work in place helped hold Gladdie’s tears at bay.

“If only Diana had said something to me about how bad things were . . . maybe I could have done more.”

“You know how Mom was,” Alabama said, automatically wanting to comfort her, even though she didn’t like the implication that her mother’s accident was caused by their financial situation. She’d walked in front of a truck. What did that have to do with money?

“I thought I
was
doing more,” Gladdie continued. “When she called me and asked for money to send you to that camp, it sounded like a good thing—get you out of the city for a week, and let Diana have some time by herself to unwind.”

Alabama had relived that week a thousand times. Her mom alternating between overblown excitement about the camp and catatonic depression. The ever-present prescription bottle on the coffee table. Her own fear, mixed with irritation. At times she wanted to scrap the whole idea of going. She was too old for camp, wasn’t she? But in the next moment the desire to get away, to breathe fresh air, and to not worry about anything for once in her life would overwhelm her.