“You’ll what?” Buddy challenged her.
She spotted the half-full plastic pitcher on the table and reached for it. Suzanne could practically see her mother thinking, This could do in a pinch.
“Get out of the way, sweetie,” she said calmly, swinging mightily. Suzanne managed to catch it just before the makeshift weapon hit its mark.
“Give me that, you crazy old lady.” She wrenched it out of her mother’s grasp. “I already told you I don’t have bail money.”
“Fine, then. If you’re going to take his side, then, well, just fine.” Ava smiled sweetly. “I’ve got more tricks than that up my sleeve. I didn’t graduate college in three years and outlive all of my sorority sisters without having a where-to-dispose-the-body plan or three in my back pocket.”
“So, where is this plan again?” Buddy wanted to know. “Up your sleeve, or in your back pocket?”
“You know,” Suzanne whispered furiously to him, “you’re supposed to be the mature one, here.”
“Who the hell told you that?” His blue eyes were sparkling with mischief, and Suzanne had to bite down on her lip to keep the laughter back. Those dancing eyes ignited dozens of other happy memories.
Ava lost her confident Cheshire cat grin, and then she stamped her foot.
“You . . . you!” She cried, frustration stealing her words from her. “You are the most frustrating man!”
“You’re not the first woman to tell me that.” He leaned over to tamp his pipe a bit. “Only thing is, usually they tell me over breakfast.”
Suzanne stood up and made a great show of dusting off her hands.
“Okay, that’s it for me.” She pointed at both of them sternly. “You’re digging your own grave. If you’re not going to stop pushing her buttons, then you leave me right out of it.”
She walked huffily up the stairs, opened the door, poured a cup of coffee, and settled down at the kitchen table, right next to the window. It afforded a decent view of the courtyard, where she could easily spy on them.
After all, if she wasn’t there, she couldn’t be asked to take sides, which was a favorite trick of Ava’s during arguments. But there's no way I'm missing this conversation, she thought with glee. Plus, there was a huge hanging plant she could hide behind if she was spotted.
She hated to admit it but some of her mother's nosiness had trickled down the family tree to her. Buddy and Ava were eyeing each other warily. Two old foes, sniffing each other out, each cautiously waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Look, Ava.” Buddy was the first to break the piercing silence. “I know I’m not your favorite person in the world.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s the understatement of the new millennium.”
“But,” he went on in that same annoyingly reasonable tone, “if we’re going to be neighbors, I think we should try to be friends.”
“Friends? Friends?” Ava shrieked. “I’d sooner befriend a snake. No, make that a serpent. I’d sooner eat a live puppy. I’d . . .”
A little excessive, don’t you think? Suzanne winced. Moderation had never been her mother’s strong point.
Buddy waved off any further declarations of vile deeds done in his honor. “Fine, fine. I get it. You’re saying that it’s . . . just not likely.” He puffed again.
Suzanne felt a pang as the smoke wafted up from the courtyard. The smell of his Borkhum Riff, which Suzanne and Ava had both hated during Jimmy’s lifetime, had been one of the things that they’d been surprised to find they missed most when her dad died. On really low nights, she and Ava would light his pipe and let it burn itself out. It was a cheap sensory trick, but it cheered them up all the same. With the wafting scent of Borkum Riff, home seemed more like home again.
“Well,” Buddy was saying now, “maybe if we both really tried, we could eventually learn to tolerate each other.”
“After you destroyed my James and subsequently my entire family?” Ava asked incredulously. “I’d sooner learn to tolerate arsenic.”
“Frankly, I’d just bet you could, you tough old bird,” he told her, shuffling back to his own side of the courtyard. “Fine, then. We’ll simply ignore each other. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.”
“And,” she hastened to add, “if we happen to come out to the courtyard at the same time, you have to leave until I’ve done my business and moved on.”
“That’s a bit extreme.” He bowed to her, just slightly. “But, just to prove to you I’m a gentleman, I’ll agree to that, even if you’re just walking to your car. But, just out of curiosity, where do you suggest that I go? While I’m waiting for you to take your sweet time idling your days away with courtyard business, that is?”
She eyed him coolly. “Crawl back under the rock you came from, for all I care.”
Give it a break, Mother! Suzanne almost shouted; she caught herself just in time. After all, she wasn’t supposed to have a bird’s eye view to this exchange.
“Why, Miss Ava!” he beamed. “You used the word ‘care’ and me in the same sentence! I think you’re warming up to me. Is it my cologne?”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Ava snorted. “You’re probably the only person in the universe who still wears Old Spice. That’s such an old man’s cologne.”
He looked down at himself incredulously and then back up at her.
“Excuse me,” he pointed out, “of course it’s an old man’s cologne. Just what in the hell do I look like to you?”
“Oh,” she remembered suddenly, “and I get first dibs on all the activities.”
“Activities?”
“Oh, yes, there’s a lot to do here at Lakeside Retirement Village,” she told him with pride. Suzanne nodded. Ava would know. Her life was a series of activities and meetings. Every last one designed, Suzanne knew, to keep her from being the old woman she was so afraid of becoming. “Last month alone I won fifty dollars’ worth of Tom’s of Maine products in a Texas Hold ’em contest. And,” she noted proudly, “last March it was standing-room-only when I played the ‘Phantress of the Opera.’”
There had been only three shows, and two of them had been canceled due to health issues, but Suzanne wasn’t surprised that Ava didn’t mention that. “The Senior Moments Players,” as they called themselves, had gone for the “no set” look, and her costume had consisted of white mask cut right down the middle and a child’s black Halloween cape. Suzanne figured that Ava knew Buddy wouldn’t be privy to that.
“’Phantress’?” he asked, impressed. “I’d have paid good money to see that.”
“I just bet you would have,” she replied haughtily, arching her eyebrows. “At any rate, I get first choice. If I don’t want to pursue an activity, then by all means, it’s all yours.”
“You get first dibs on everything?” He raised an eyebrow. “That hardly seems fair, Ava.” He put up a hand to ward off the searing look she was giving him.
“Fair,” Ava glowered, “would be your burning in hell to make up for what you did. And I’m determined to snag the lead in Josephine and Her Amazing Technicolor Dream Raincoat. I don’t know if you recall how much I love the theatre.”
“I remember, I remember, always popping show tunes into the tape player during cleanup.” He surrendered. “Fine, fine, take the damn musicals. I’m not much for singing, as you’ll recall.”
“I’m not surprised. Singing is an expression of the soul . . . and if your soul is made of solid crap, it’s better to keep your songs to yourself.”
“Listen, Miss Zippedoodah,” he said firmly. “I’m trying to be patient here, but now that you bring it up, you ain’t exactly Betty Buckley yourself. We could hear you all the way from the bus stop. We thought someone was torturing a cat.”
Suzanne groaned again. If Buddy was going to get in on the mudslinging, they truly would be there for hours.
“These pipes are good enough to have played the three wise men in the Christmas pageant, for three years running.” Ava looked down her nose haughtily at him.
“The proof, after all, is in the pudding—the pudding happening to be a brilliant production. Ask anyone who attended.”
“All eight of them?” he asked, smiling. “I already said you could have the theatrical events. But, just out of curiosity . . . how does one woman play three men?”
“It’s quite easy—puppet heads.”
“Puppet heads? Hmm,” Buddy pretended to think. “Judge’s ruling on this one is that I’m going to need more information.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “God, are all men so slow, or is it just you? Puppets, you dolt, puppets. I’m in the middle, with one male head in each hand.”
“That image,” he replied dryly, “is going to wake me up screaming on many a night.”
“I hope that won’t bother your wife. Actually,” she brightened. “I hope it does bother your wife and she divorces you over it.”
Buddy took a pouch of tobacco out of his valise and tamped more into his pipe as she spoke. “Actually, I’m not married.”
“Dead?” Ava inquired hopefully.
“No,” Buddy answered.
“Damn,” Ava sighed.
Suzanne looked down at her mother, mortified. Ava’s sense of humor had always been bordering on the acerbic, especially during her drinking days. Suzanne hadn’t dared bring friends home, because God knew what would come out of Ava’s mouth if she didn’t like their outfits, haircuts, attitudes, or all three. Now that Ava had been sober for such a long time, she seemed to have gotten hold of her runaway tongue. But making fun of someone’s dead wife . . . that was going too far even for Ava. It was really lucky that Buddy hadn’t been . . .
Wait a minute, Suzanne realized. She knew that; she knew that all along. As much as she hates him, even she wouldn’t cross the line of celebrate his wife’s death.
Death had become too much a part of Ava’s life to not pay it its proper respect. But Ava also rarely threw a punch without throwing her full weight behind it. Suzanne looked at her mother sideways, wondering what that was about.
“If you have to know the truth, you old busybody,” he said, rolling the pouch back up and tucking it into his back pocket, “I never married.”
“How tragic.” Feigned concern dripped from Ava’s voice. “Not one woman you could dupe into spending her life with you? I find that sad.”
“I just worked too hard in my younger days,” Buddy said in that same easy tone, just as if Ava wasn’t saying such awful things to him, just as if it were any old conversation. As Suzanne peered through the plant, her heart swelled with even more admiration for him. “Suddenly I was middle-aged, and everyone was already married, divorced, and remarried, with kids coming at them from every which way.” He shrugged again, seemingly philosophical after all these years. Suzanne knew everyone had some sort of regrets, and she supposed those were Buddy’s. “I never could figure out how to get in the game.”
“So at least one of my prayers has been answered,” she realized happily. “You’ll die a virgin.”
“I got off that train in my teens, thank you very much.” He puffed on his pipe gently. “I’ve had my fair share of companions over the years.”
“I’ll just bet you have.”
He grinned again. “Hey, I never heard any complaints. I just never met . . . her.”
“Her? Who’s her?”
He looked her squarely in the eyes. “Someone I could look at,” he said casually, “the way that Jimmy used to look at you.”
Suzanne couldn’t see her mother’s face, but she could tell by the way Ava sputtered that she was cursing Buddy for knocking her off her game—anything to keep the anger she insisted on hanging onto alive. “Don’t try to get on my good side,” she responded at last, once she’d regained her composure.
He raised an eyebrow. “You have a good side?”
And here we are, back at square one.
“Why am I even wasting time talking to you? I’m a busy woman.” Ava sniffed and turned toward the safety of her kitchen. “I’ve got places to go, people to see.” She started off, then looked back pointedly. “Houses to bulldoze.”
“Then I’ll live amongst the rubble!” he called after her. “I told you, all the activities are yours, and I’ll make myself scarce when you want your privacy out here. But I’m not moving, and that’s that.”
“We’ll just see about that!” Ava snapped with as much vehemence as she could muster. “Oh, you’d better believe we’ll just see about that!” She turned on her heel and climbed the stairs, tossing her hair primly over her shoulders. When she reached the screen door, she slammed it as hard as she could. Almost at once, it bounced open again, but her point was nonetheless made.
Suzanne hastily picked up the paper and pretended to concentrate as her mother came in, but her efforts were wasted.
“The next time you eavesdrop, dear, try to find a place that isn’t right behind a lace curtain.” Ava advised. Her heels clicked all the way to the living room, where she would spend the remainder of the afternoon watching her House DVDs, a gift from Molly last Christmas, while taking out her aggression on a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Those who knew her would easily recognize just how upset she was.
Suzanne snuck one more look outside. Buddy was looking somewhat forlornly at the stairs where Ava had disappeared. Then he chuckled, picked up his valise, and began sorting through the dozens of keys that had taken up permanent residence on his key chain to find the one that would let him into his new house.
“Oh, yeah,” he said loudly enough for Suzanne to catch, “she fucking hates me.”
THREE
Molly grasped the railing at the bus terminal tightly as she frantically searched the face of each passenger, the knot of fear in her stomach growing bigger, darker, harder, and sicker, until she was certain she would throw up or faint.
Not that I’d particularly mind, she thought. Either one, while gross as all hell, will at least get my mind off things.
And then there he was, ambling up the carpet to the terminal: her gangly, bleached, baggy-pantsed knight in shining armor. All the breath came out of her with a giant whoosh, and she gripped the railing even harder.
Don’t faint, don’t puke, don’t faint, don’t puke, don’t faint, don’t puke.
They’d met in June, at her orientation at Vassar. She was an incoming freshman; he was a junior advisor who had welcomed her in front of Rockefeller Hall.
“Cool backpack,” he’d remarked.
“Thanks,” she’d replied, hugging the overstuffed, graffiti-scrawled, partly torn, and much-loved bag she’d carried through four years of high school—not to mention summers of art camp, autumns of model student legislature, and spring shifts at the homeless shelter where she volunteered. (The Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools, her guidance counselor had advised her, just loved volunteer work.)
“You mug a graffiti artists’ homeless brother for it?”
Molly had laughed much harder than the comment warranted—and somehow the tension that had followed her from Portsmouth melted away as Brandon watched her, amused, and then slung the filthy backpack on his own shoulder.
That had been eleven weeks ago, and now when he wasn’t around, after a while, she began to feel, well, panicky.
She knew why, of course, but it still bugged her that in so short a time, he’d become such a part of her life. It bugged her that anyone could get under her skin that far, let alone that fast.
Grade school, junior high, high school, it was all the same—she was everybody’s buddy but nobody’s best friend. Life had taught her two things: you look out for yourself, and you take care of yourself. Letting someone else do either one was like an invitation for them to wipe their muddy shoes on you. Watching her mother take care of her father had emblazoned that on her brain.
So meeting Brandon, and having him rise with meteoric speed until he was easily the closest friend—by quite a large margin—she’d ever had, was unnerving, to say the least.
“Don’t think you’re spe
cial, or anything,” Brandon said often. “People often worship me upon first sight. It’s my cross to bear.”
From the time she was young, she watched her parents’ marriage, which seemed different from her friends’ parent’s relations. The way her dad seemed to think the world owed him something. She had seen her mother work her fingers to the bone, trying to make them all into a family.
But to Molly’s great relief, her mother finally gave up trying to fix her jalopy of a marriage, and let it die in the scrap heap. She didn’t know how much she’d had to do with it, but she did remember how important the conversation had been to her, the morning after graduation, when she’d come home “disappointingly early,” as her mother teased her.
Her mother had looked alarmed at the thought that her daughter hadn’t had a good time at this rite of passage, alarmed that something terrible had happened, alarmed in general—and exhausted as always. If Ava was the scale by which you could measure the Applebaum women’s aging chart, then Suzanne would always be a beautiful woman. But her face was so thin, her skin so taut, her eyes so weary it made Molly want to cry. It was time for it all to stop.
She’d had a whole speech prepared, but as she held her mother’s worried hands in her own, across the kitchen table, she found she could only say one thing.
“Leave him, Mom,” she’d whispered. Her throat was so tightly constricted she could barely breathe; she forced herself to swallow hard and repeated herself. “Leave him.”
Her mother had looked stunned, but far worse than that, Molly would remember for the rest of her life, she had looked humiliated.
“Why do you think I should leave him?” Suzanne asked. Molly figured that her mom already knew anyone in her right mind would want to pull off a parasite that was sucking the life out of her. She just wanted to hear Molly’s point-of-view, and Molly knew it.
The reasons were legion, and Molly could have listed them all backwards and in alphabetical order.
“Because I’m leaving,” she said finally. “Because if there was ever a reason for you two to be together, I was it, and I’m leaving. Because it was one thing to take care of him—cook for him, clean up after him, pay his bills, do his laundry—when you were doing it coincidentally with taking care of me. But now . . .”
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