The Year Everything Changed (26 page)

I’m convinced we would have made it—if our lead star had left the premier party and gone home instead of to a park where he was arrested for exposing himself to a twelve-year-old boy.

Chapter Forty-one
Elizabeth

“Are you busy?” Stephanie asked.

Elizabeth put the sweater she’d just finished folding into the suitcase. “Not too busy to talk. What’s up?”

Stephanie came into the room, kicked off her shoes, crawled onto the bed, and propped herself against the headboard. “I got my first paycheck today. It was so pathetic, I thought it was wrong. The accountant went over it with me. Talk about embarrassing.”

“You’ve only been working a couple of weeks.” Sam had arranged an office gopher job with one of his suppliers. It was perfect for Stephanie, temporary and unskilled.

“I can’t believe people actually live on this kind of money. I went to the mall to look at maternity clothes and couldn’t afford
anything
I wanted.”

“Did you try one of the chains?”

“You mean like Nordstrom?”

“Like Target or Sears.”

She looked horrified. “I wouldn’t even know where to look in a store like that.”

“Perhaps it’s time you learned.”

“Why?”

“Options, Stephanie. You should give yourself as many as you can.”

She grabbed a pillow and hugged it. “How long are you going to be gone?”

“Three days.” Elizabeth had checked the weather report for Grants Pass in October and decided to take things she could layer. It was hard fitting everything into a small suitcase, but she knew Christina would pack light and she didn’t want to come across looking like one of those women who empty the closet every time they go somewhere.

“I talked to Sharon today.”

That was never good news. Sharon triggered emotions Stephanie couldn’t handle, and the repercussion could last for days. “How is she?”

“Fine. Dating a guy she met in a chat room.”

“That’s scary.”

“He wants her to go skiing with him in Colorado in November, so she won’t be coming out here after all.”

“That’s too bad,” Elizabeth said, working hard to hide her excitement. Thanksgiving would be the first time in almost a year that the whole family would be together. Having Sharon a part of the mix, especially with Michael and Eric there seeing the physical evidence of Stephanie’s pregnancy, had all the ingredients for one of those god-awful family holiday movies.

“Nice try, but I know you didn’t want her here.”

Stephanie was crying; it happened a lot lately. Elizabeth wasn’t sure how much was hormonal and how much was depression. “Maybe she can come out at semester break after Christmas.” Stephanie would be eight months along by then, big and uncomfortable and unlikely to want to do the things that Sharon considered necessary parts of life, like checking out the local singles scene.

“She won’t. And I don’t care.” She rolled to the side, snatched a tissue from the box on the nightstand, and blew her nose. “I told her I felt the baby kick. She said it sounded gross.”

Slowly, as her body changed and she became more and more aware of the child she carried, Stephanie was developing a protective instinct that made Elizabeth happy and sad at the same time. “If she acknowledges what you’re going through she has to accept it could happen to her.”

“I wish it would.”

“No, you don’t.”

She grabbed another tissue and wiped fresh tears. “I don’t belong anymore. No matter what I do, it won’t be the same. I’m different.”

Elizabeth moved the suitcase to the floor and sat with Stephanie. “If I could, I would make this all go away and let you go back to being the girl you were. But I can’t. From the moment you got pregnant that girl was left behind. Whatever choice you made, the consequences became something you had to live with forever. There were no easy answers, Stephanie. There never are.”

“You think I should have had the abortion,” Stephanie said flatly.

They were back there again. Stephanie simply couldn’t let it go. “Just because I believe in a woman’s right to choose doesn’t mean I believe it’s the right choice.”

“What would you have done?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I want to know.”

“I’m not going to tell you. Whatever you do has to be your choice. All you need from me or your father is to know that we will support you whatever you decide is right for you and your baby.”

“Why do you always say
your
baby instead of
the
baby?”

“You can’t distance yourself from what’s happening with words. Next week when you find out if you’re carrying a boy or girl, then the baby will become he or she.” After months of insisting she didn’t want to know, Stephanie had changed her mind.

Stephanie turned sad, haunted eyes to her mother. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making it so hard?”

Elizabeth put her arms around her daughter, her baby, the child she loved beyond reason. “Because it is. I don’t want you to live your life wondering if you made the right decision. When you’re my age I want you to be able to look back without question.” She purposely didn’t say anything about what Stephanie would tell the child who grew up and came looking for her, how she would explain that her life was too complicated to include a child. Women had fought for the right to have choices, but they still hadn’t found one that didn’t leave scars.

“I don’t want to be a mother. Maybe someday, but not now. I’m not ready. Is it so wrong for me to want to give it away?”

Yes
, she ached to tell her. This baby wasn’t just Stephanie’s child, it was Elizabeth’s grandchild. How could she be there for the delivery and hold a baby with Stephanie’s eyes or nose or chin and know she would never see her again? Did Ginger’s mother regret giving her away? Did she look into the eyes of the children she saw on concert tours and wonder if one of them was hers?

Elizabeth lovingly tucked a strand of hair behind Stephanie’s ear. “No, it’s not wrong.”

“God, how could I have been so stupid?”

“It’s done. Stop beating yourself up.”

Stephanie leaned her head into Elizabeth’s shoulder. “If I do decide to give it away, I hope it gets a mother like you.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes against the tears burning to be shed, her heart breaking that she could not give Stephanie what she needed.

Elizabeth was in bed reading when Sam came home from the Fresno State University football game. She slipped a bookmark in to save her page and put the book aside. “Who won?”

“We did. A blowout.”

“Where’s Stephanie?”

“Lu called. They went to a movie.”

“Did you remind her not to drink if they went out afterwards?”

“Give her some credit, Lizzy. She knows what she’s not supposed to do.”

“If that were true, she wouldn’t be in the shape she’s in.”

She was tired and not in the mood for moral pontificating. “Just what do you think your sons were doing on all those spring breaks they attended in college? How do you know we don’t have a whole raft of grandchildren out there who look like Michael and Eric? Nothing’s changed, it’s still all the girl’s fault, she’s the slut, and she’s the one who has to take care of the
problem
if something happens. I’m sick of it. Stephanie didn’t get pregnant by herself. But where’s the boy? He’s still in school working on his degree, going out on weekends and having sex without a condom because they cramp his style.”

“Bad day?”

He knew her so well. “I just have this gut feeling that Stephanie is going to ask us to adopt her baby.”

“I’ve been waiting for this.”

“Me, too,” she admitted.

He sat on the corner of the bed. “What did she say?”

“That she wanted her baby to have a mother like me.”

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you going to say if she just comes out and asks?”

“Don’t you think we should talk about it before I say anything?”

Sam shifted position to sit with his back to the headboard. “Are you asking me how I feel about it?”

She was, but she already knew his answer. Sam didn’t have it in him to refuse her anything. He was fifty-two. By the time the baby was through college, he would be seventy-four. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “Not to us or to the baby. I know there are women in their fifties having babies, but every time I hear about it I cringe. We were damn good parents the first time around, but we’re not those people anymore. We don’t think or act the same, and we’ve seen too many news broadcasts and been through too many presidents to look at the world in the same optimistic way.

“And we don’t eat pizza. How can you have a kid in any kind of sport nowadays and not eat pizza? Every end-of-the-season game, every award ceremony takes place in a pizza parlor.”

“Now there’s a winning argument.”

“I’m serious in my ass-backward way.”

“I know you are.” He reached for her hand.

“She’s never going to understand. She’s going to think we don’t want the baby because it would get in the way of me going to school and you retiring.”

“It would.”

“But that’s not the point.”

“Why not? When did our lives become secondary to hers? This is her baby, Lizzy, not ours.”

“But it’s our
grandchild
.” Damn, she was crying again. “I keep asking myself what we would do if Michael or Eric had a family and something happened to them. I know what we would do, Sam. We would take their children and raise them and do whatever it took to make their lives the best they could be. Why is this any different?”

“Because if something happened to Michael or Eric, the choice to walk away from their children wouldn’t be theirs. I grant you it won’t be easy for Stephanie if she decides to keep her baby, but we’ll be there to help her as long as she needs help. I know things are different now, but when you had Michael you were even younger than she is.”

“I had a husband who loved me.”

“She has parents who love her.” Sam put his arm around Elizabeth and drew her into his side. “How do you think this kid would feel being raised by us and seeing his real mother meet someone and get married—I sure as hell hope that’s the way it happens next time—and have children that she keeps?”

“The same way I felt when I saw my sisters for the first time.”

Sam handed her a tissue. “Multiply that by three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year every year for the rest of your life.”

“There’s a perverse kind of comfort in the fact that Jessie didn’t keep any of us.”

“Equal opportunity abandonment.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Speaking of which, you didn’t say much after your last meeting.”

“I’m still thinking about it. Jessie’s version of his marriage to my mother doesn’t sound anything like hers—especially the part about her being the one who wanted to end it. It’s not as if he tries to make himself sound blameless. It’s more that he seems to think what happened was his fault because he went through with the marriage in the first place and then hung on as long as he did.”

“It surprises you that your mother ‘remembers’ things differently?”

“Why would she lie?”

“I’ve never understood why your mother does a lot of the things she does. Maybe you should ask her.”

“I will—but not yet. I’m starting to remember things on my own, and I don’t want her version getting in the way.”

“What kind of things?”

It hurt to say it aloud. “How happy I was when I was with Jessie. I thought I’d made up all those early memories when it was just my dad and me and Frank. Now I know they’re real. They happened when my mother was in the hospital.

“So many things are coming back.” She burrowed deeper into Sam’s side, pressing her face into the soft cotton of his shirt, breathing in faint traces of deodorant and aftershave. “Just the other day I was at the grocery store and this image came to me of Jessie starting my orange. He’d take a bite out of the peel and run his thumb under the circle until it was separated enough that I could finish it myself.

“Then on the way home last month I started thinking about the time I was sitting in the back of the truck watching him and Frank throw a football. I saw a huge spider on the truck window. I was convinced it was about to attack me and let out a scream that scared the birds out of the cherry tree. Frank threw the football where I was pointing. It ricocheted off the truck and sailed through the kitchen window where my mother was putting the finishing touches on the cake she’d baked for her Bakersfield Beautification Committee meeting. Daddy laughed so hard he was wiping tears. Frank and I knew better. We took off for the neighbors’.”

“How long did you stay?”

“I don’t remember that part.”

“You were that afraid of your mother?”

“Everyone was.” She frowned. “Our friends didn’t respect my mother, they feared her. She was never overt when she went after someone, she was intractable.”

“What else do you remember about Jessie?”

A flood of warmth washed over her. “So many things now that I let myself,” she said softly. “Like how small my hand felt in his.” She sat up to look at Sam. “How could I remember things like that and forget how much I loved him?”

Chapter Forty-two
Elizabeth

Christina pulled the Mustang to a stop in front of a log-cabin-looking lodge. “How did you find this place?”

“On the Internet,” Elizabeth said. “Clark Gable used to stay here. I thought it was fitting.”

“And you used that as a recommendation?”

“Give me a little credit.” Elizabeth had expected Christina to be edgy, not bitchy. So far she’d had more fun on Eric’s fifth-grade outing to a sewer plant.

“Looks a little pricy.”

“Actually, it wasn’t bad.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“Six-hundred-and-eighty dollars.”

“
For one night?
 ”

“I got separate rooms.”

“I don’t care if they’ve got Gable propped up in the bed, there’s no way I’m going—”

“You’re rich, what do you care?”

“I’m not rich yet.”

Elizabeth smiled slyly. “And it didn’t cost that much either. Loosen up, would you?”

“You bitch.” It was said with a return smile and an odd affection.

“Stop worrying. This thing is going to go down like a fireman on a greased pole.”

Christina glanced at Elizabeth before she opened the car door. “You’re showing your age.”

“Bitch,” Elizabeth mumbled.

“I heard that.”

“You were meant to.”

They checked in, cleaned up, and met in the lobby. Christina arrived first. Elizabeth found her talking to the desk clerk. She gave Elizabeth a toothy smile. “You’ll never believe this. Joey here”—she nodded toward the clerk—“has a film in the festival. He says a lot of the film people who came in early have been meeting at the Wandering Moose Bar and Grill. What do you think? Doesn’t it sound like fun to go there and listen in?”

“Yeah . . . I guess.” They weren’t supposed to see Randy until the next night, after the awards. She took Christina’s arm and steered her away from the counter. “What if we run into Randy?”

“Then we serve him the papers a day early.”

“I thought you wanted to—” What difference did it make when Christina confronted him? “Never mind. Just give me a second. I forgot something in the room.” Elizabeth couldn’t fit the pepper spray in her purse without taking everything else out, so she’d left it in her suitcase.

The Wandering Moose was big and dark and noisy, although not even half full. Christina looked around. “I don’t see Randy. Let’s take that table over there so we can watch the door.”

Now
she was having fun—which made it even harder for Elizabeth to appear blasé. She told herself this was as close as she would ever get to being in a detective novel, her all-time favorite kind of book, and she was going to make the most of it, even if only in her imagination.

A tall bleached-blond girl with thighs that looked liposuctioned and breasts that looked like the depository of the fat came up to them. “What can I getcha?”

“Coffee,” Elizabeth said.

“Decaf?”

What was it with this under-thirty crowd? Elizabeth wasn’t even fifty and felt like she’d been labeled. “No, regular. Black and strong.”

“Whoa,” Christina said. “Impressive.” She looked at the cocktail waitress. “I’ll have the same.”

“So, what are we looking for—tall, short, skinny, fat?” Elizabeth asked when the waiter had gone.

“Tall, dark, shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, an athlete’s build.”

“Careful, you’re sounding wistful.”

“He’ll show up with a girl. She’ll be beautiful. If she’s not,” Christina added, “she’ll have money.”

“Hindsight?”

“What?”

“I’m assuming you wouldn’t have stayed with him if you’d figured this out earlier.” The waitress brought their coffee. Elizabeth put a ten on her tray and told her to keep the change. When Christina shot her a questioning look, she said, “I thought she could use it. Her roots are starting to show.”

Christina burst out laughing. “You go, girl.”

Elizabeth settled deeper into the corner of the booth. Fresno had bars like this—rough-and-tumble, located on the seedier side of town, guys coming and going wearing Levi or leather vests, the women in tight clothes and big hair. Fresno, Bakersfield, and all the surrounding small towns in between were pockets of country—music, attitude, and style. The region had as little in common with its liberal neighbors in Los Angeles and San Francisco as George Bush and Al Gore. When she finally talked Sam into taking her to a bar like this at home she was a little disappointed at how ordinary it was—a little like a roadside diner only with less light and more junk sitting around.

Someone young and good-looking appeared in the doorway. She touched Christina’s hand to get her attention. “Is that him?”

Christina’s eyes narrowed against the light pouring in behind him. “Nope.”

“Close?”

“Not even.” She studied his companion. “But I know the guy with him.” She scooted out of the booth. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“For crying out—” Christina paused to rethink what she was about to say. “No, it’s okay. He’s an old friend from school.”

The waitress appeared. “You ready for a refill?”

“Sure,” Elizabeth told her. She watched Christina approach the guy, saw him pull back in surprise, grin, and give her a quick hug. They talked for several minutes, his facial expression going from surprised to serious to commiserating. After several more minutes they hugged, Christina gave a little wave, and she returned to the booth.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, reaching for her purse.

“Why?”

“Randy pulled out this morning.”

“Why?”

“He found out the film didn’t place.”

Elizabeth couldn’t tell whether Christina was more disappointed that she’d missed Randy or that her film had been rejected. “I thought they weren’t going to announce the winners until—”

“He knew one of the women on the panel.”

“Well, shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Now what?”

The waitress came by holding the coffeepot, giving them a questioning look. Changing her mind about leaving, Christina sat down again. “Screw the coffee. I’ll have a beer.”

Bailey’s over ice, Elizabeth’s usual bar drink, seemed embarrassingly quaint. “I’ll have a Cosmo,” she said, having no idea what it was, only that her kids talked about them.

The first sip of the innocent-looking drink took Elizabeth’s breath away. The second went down easier. To keep from drinking on an empty stomach, she started shelling and eating the peanuts the waitress had brought with their drinks.

“How long were you and Randy together?” she asked, looking for something to distract Christina from her disappointment.

“Two years. I was still in school when we met.” She ran her finger down the icy glass in a zigzag pattern. “We started dating and discovered we were both fired up about doing an independent film. I wanted it to be something with social conscience. He didn’t care, so we settled on
Illegal Alien
.”

Elizabeth caught the attention of the waitress and motioned to her empty glass.

“Thirsty?” Christina asked pointedly.

“Yeah, a little.” More than that, she needed something to do with her hands, something to hang on to. “Have you noticed that guy at the bar keeps looking at us?” she said, changing the subject.

“That’s what guys in bars do,” Christina said. “He probably thinks we’re here looking to hook up with someone.”

“You mean he’s flirting with us?”

“Oh, please,” Christina groaned. “When was the last time you had a night out with the girls?”

“I go out with ‘the girls’ all the time.” To afternoon teas and movies and shopping, never anything like this. “None of them are like you, of course.”

“Meaning?”

What
did
she mean by that? “All of my friends are pretty much like me.”

“Oh—you mean boring.”

“Why do you do that?” Elizabeth shot back, disappointed. Every time she thought they were past the sniping, Christina hit her with a zinger.

Instead of snapping back the way she usually did, Christina took her time and glanced around, looking at everyone except Elizabeth. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.

“Does your mother talk to you that way?”

“My mother? Where did that come from?”

“I see my mother in myself sometimes. It kills me when it happens, but there it is. I figure you had to have gotten your defensiveness from somewhere—or someone.”

“My grandmother once told me that my mother and I didn’t get along because we were too much alike. I thought it was the meanest thing anyone had ever said to me.”

“Are you? Alike, I mean.”

“If she’s had any influence over me it’s my determination to be nothing like her. Every decision she makes is based on how it’s going to look to others. My whole life everything revolved around what will Grandpa think, or Enrique, or the neighbors. When I came home with the broken jaw, she had a whole story worked out about how I fell off the stage during rehearsals. I didn’t have any choice but to go along with a lie that just kept growing.”

Elizabeth wasn’t going to say anything, then thought what the hell and stuck her neck out. “Was it her idea to let me and Ginger and Rachel think that was the way it happened, too?”

Christina glared at her. “And your point is?”

“Maybe she was just trying to protect you.”

“She was ashamed of me.”

“How can you be so sure?” Elizabeth asked gently.

“She’s always been ashamed of me.”

The waitress came by to check on their drinks. Elizabeth nodded that they would take another round, even though Christina wasn’t half through her first beer. “Why do you think that?”

“I’m not going there with you. It’s none of your business.”

“Give it a rest, Christina. What possible harm could it do to open up a little? You think there’s some big reward waiting for you at the end of your life because you kept everything inside?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope.”

“All right—I’m lighter-skinned than anyone else in my family.” When Elizabeth didn’t respond, she added, “That makes it obvious I don’t belong. It’s like flashing a great big neon sign that Enrique wasn’t my mother’s first husband.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“In a Catholic society? Are you kidding?”

Their drinks arrived. “So why didn’t she just give you to Jessie?”

“Probably because he didn’t want me either.”

The pain in Christina’s voice stopped Elizabeth cold. “Fuck.”

Christina laughed. “Well put.”

Elizabeth finished her drink and motioned for another. “I’m surprised you turned out as well as you did.”

“Thanks—I think.”

“Oh, I mean it in the best way.”

Ten minutes later, when Elizabeth had finished her third drink and started on her fourth, Christina stared at her and asked carefully, “Do you always drink like this?”

It was one of those have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife questions that Elizabeth wasn’t sure how to answer. “No. Never. But don’t worry, I’m fine.” She grinned. “My kids drink these all the time. How strong can they be? Besides, they’re really good and I’m really thirsty.”

“Personally, I think they taste like lighter fluid.”

Elizabeth laughed, a little too long and a lot too hard, a sure sign she was relaxing. Plainly she hadn’t realized how tense she’d been over the prospect of confronting Randy. She was actually having a good time just sitting and talking to Christina. “I’m beginning to think I might like you after all.”

Christina groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re a sloppy drunk, aren’t you? Maybe we should order something to eat.”

“Not for me. These peanuts are plenty. And I’m not even close to being drunk.” Only the peanuts were gone. When she held up the empty bowl the waitress assumed she was asking for another drink, too, and brought both.

“Last one,” she told Christina. “Soon as I’m finished, we’ll find someplace to eat.” But first she had to go to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back. If one of Randy’s friends should happen to come in while I’m gone, don’t do anything. Wait for me.”

“And what am I supposed to do if they see me?”

If it wasn’t sarcasm Elizabeth detected in Christina’s voice, it was something close to it. “Cover your face.”

Christina shook her head. “Oh great. I’ve got a drunk for a bodyguard.”

“I’m not drunk,” Elizabeth insisted. And she wasn’t, or at least she didn’t feel like she was. Until she stood up. Then it was as if the room had tilted one way and she’d gone the other. Her hands and feet felt numb, her lips nonexistent. When had that happened?

She’d never experienced anything like this. With concentrated, towering effort, she grabbed hold of the part of her mind that still functioned with some lucidity and directed her feet to transport her to the bathroom.

Her hand on the back of the seat for support, she stood very, very still, plotting her course across the room. She could do this. One step at a time, threading her way around the tables. No. She’d never make it that way. Too many obstacles. Around the room then, booth by booth. That way she could hang on to the backs of seats and no one would notice. It was dark in the bar. People held on to things in the dark. Normal. Natural.

She started. She could do this. She had to do this. Christina couldn’t know. She’d never hear the end of it.

She made it, only weaving once or twice, covering the seemingly odd steps by stopping to study butchered, dusty heads of deer and elk and moose hanging on the walls along the way.

Once safely inside the bathroom, she stumbled to the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. “
Ohmygod
,” she murmured to the stranger looking back. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”

“Do something,” the stranger demanded. “Christina can’t know.”

She soaked paper towels in cold water and plastered them to her face, then slapped her cheeks and wrists. It didn’t help.
Oh-mygod
. She wasn’t getting better, she was actually getting worse. Now the room was spinning. How could that happen? She closed her eyes. Bad idea. More water, more slapping, still drunk.

She had to get back before Christina came looking for her. She took one last look in the mirror. Her hair was wet and looked scary. She opened her purse to dig for her comb and remembered she’d taken everything out to accommodate the pepper spray. The hell with her hair.