Summer Secrets

by Jane Green

Other days she is warm and sunny, her arms reaching around me for hugs, as they are now, and I could melt with love and gratitude at those times, my little girl still my little girl, able to forgive me for all I have done.

  “Can I maybe keep her tonight?” Jason asks. “It might be late, and I thought it would be easier.”

  I hesitate. I don’t particularly like last-minute changes, and I am not sure if Annie wants to go, for she isn’t always thrilled about sharing her father with Cara, but one look at her face and I see she does.

  “Sure,” I say, giving her one last squeeze. “I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They leave, the flat settling into the silence. In the old days, I would dread the silence, the times Annie would be with her father and I would be alone. After all those years of living by myself you would think I would have gotten used to my own company, but I was never entirely on my own when alcohol was involved.

  Sober, without my daughter, without my husband, I had no idea who I was anymore. I had no idea what to do with myself without anyone around, without the ability to drown my fears in drink.

  I became, in those early months, a television addict. I had never been a big telly watcher, but suddenly it became my salvation, allowing me the ability to lose myself by binge-watching an entire series, sometimes numerous series, without having to think about my life at all.

  Whole weekends would pass with me lying on the sofa, consuming giant bowls of popcorn and endless cups of tea as I glued myself to the small screen. I had no idea how life should be, how to live a life. I just knew I needed to get through the days, one day at a time. I went to a lot of meetings, and met program friends, and tried to keep busy, but in my flat, on my own, it was the television set that saved me.

  Today, things are different. I cook. I listen to the radio instead of the TV—plays on Radio 4, the show Desert Island Discs, which is the highlight of my week. I garden. I have a small garden but have discovered a love of planting things, the rigorous discipline of learning the Latin names of the plants I buy, learning what they need to survive. My happiest moments in the last eighteen months have largely been spent at Clifton Nurseries, where I can browse for hours, testing myself with my plant knowledge, daydreaming of the day I might have a garden big enough for everything.

  I go out to the garden now, with a glass of iced tea. In the old days, it would have been a bottle of wine, but as long as I have something cold, I am fine.

  I dug up the old paving stones that made the terrace, and created a Japanese zen garden with gravel, a water feature, and long exotic grasses. A large stone Buddha reminds me to be mindful, and even though I am not a Buddhist, not an anything other than a recovering alcoholic with faith in a Higher Power, I take enormous comfort in my serene, beautiful Buddha.

  There are two wicker chairs out there, where Annie and I often sit with our books, where I try to meditate a few times a week, although I am still a work in progress. More often than not, just as I close my eyes to meditate, I will have spied a few weeds, and how can I possibly relax and meditate until I have pulled those weeds out, and nine times out of ten, before I know it, an hour of weeding later, I no longer have time to meditate because I have someplace to be.

  Tonight I have no place to be. Tonight it is just me, with the evening stretching ahead of me. I put my drink down, take a few deep breaths, settle into the chair, and close my eyes, focusing only on the breath coming in through my nostrils, cool and sweet; going out, warm and soft.

  And I feel hopeful that life can be good.

  Nineteen

  The buzzer rings and I go to the door, expecting Sam, only to hear my mother’s voice ringing through the intercom.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask when she walks through the door.

  “I was just passing on my way home from Hampstead. I saw a scarf there that I thought you’d love.” She passes me a bag, and I pull out a beautiful shimmery blue scarf that I do, instantly, love.

  “Mum! You didn’t have to do that! It’s gorgeous!”

  “Of course I didn’t have to do it. I wanted to do it. Where’s that delicious girl of mine?”

  She isn’t talking about me, she’s talking about Annie, and I call for Annie, who whirls down the corridor and into her grandmother’s arms.

  One of the gifts of my newfound sobriety has been my relationship with my mother. It was always good, but when I was drinking, when I was married, it was marred by the disappointment and judgment I saw in her eyes.

  For a very long time I would try to avoid her. No one could have hated me more than I hated myself, and I really didn’t need to see that reflected back at me. I knew I was a terrible wife, a terrible mother; the more I felt judged by someone, the less inclined I was to see them.

  Now, not only do I delight in my own relationship with my mother, I delight in Annie’s relationship with her. I never realized how much my mother loves children, how warm she can be. For most of my childhood she was in a deep depression, but now, as a grandmother, and despite having lived in the UK for years and years, her American warmth comes out.

  I know that sounds odd, but I have always felt that the English love children as long as they are polite, quiet, and well behaved. Americans seem to love children however they behave. There have been plenty of times I’ve been in restaurants and seen American children run screaming around the room, and all the English people are filled with horrified indignation, while the Americans just smile indulgently as if to say, oh, aren’t they cute?

  However Annie behaves, my mother adores her, and accepts her. If Annie is in a bad mood, my mother still loves her, is still loving and affectionate, waiting for it to pass. I, on the other hand, am a disaster. If Annie is in a bad mood, I struggle not to take it personally, not to strike back, not to berate her for not being happy.

  “Something smells good,” my mother says, poking her head into the kitchen, where she sees the table set for three. “Oh! You have dinner plans. I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I pull her into the kitchen. “Sam’s coming for dinner, and there’s more than enough for all of us. Why don’t you stay?”

  “Really? You’re sure you have enough?”

  “Absolutely. Stay.”

  * * *

  Sam adores my mother. Everyone adores my mother. Sure enough, when he walks in, as handsome as ever in his slick shorts and polo shirt, his face lights up as he spies her.

  “Audrey!” He envelops her in a hug, pulling back to give her the traditional double kiss. I have become accustomed to hugging, me, who never liked anyone to touch her. It’s a program thing, hugs being doled out at the end of meetings like candy. It took me a while to get used to, the all-embracing hugs. I have come to not only accept it, but actually welcome it.

  “Sam! So lovely to see you! It has been much too long.”

  We take the pitcher of iced tea outside to the terrace, as Annie tempts the neighbor’s cat to come and roll around on the gravel with us.

  “You look gorgeously tan,” says my mum to Sam. “Have you been somewhere dreamily exotic?”

  “The spray-tanning place off South Molton Street,” says Sam with a smile. “Not quite dreamily exotic, but I can’t seem to get my act together with a summer holiday this year. I wanted to go to Lamu, but I’m worried it’s not very safe anymore. Also, summer’s not really the time to go to Africa anyway, even if I decided to risk it.”

  “There’s always the South of France,” says my mother.

  “There is, always, the South of France.” Sam rolls his eyes, which I find hilarious because only Sam could find the South of France boring, which he does; he says everyone he has ever met is always in the South of France and it’s the most stressful place he ever visits.

  “What about you?” Sam turns to me. “What are you doing this summer?”

  When Jason and I were married, we did great holidays. Winters saw us in the Caribbean, and summers renting lovely old stone houses in Provence or Tuscany. N
ow my budget is something I’m constantly aware of, and even though we are always fine, we are just on the edge of fine, and I never think I have enough money for extravagant things like holidays.

  “I’m hoping to find a travel piece,” I say, for I am friendly with the travel editor of the Daily Gazette, and every now and then he will send a piece my way, often a fabulous and free hotel, and sometimes even free flights too. Last Christmas, Annie and I left on Boxing Day for Antigua, an all-inclusive, all-paid-for holiday. I had to write a thousand words on how fantastic the place was (which it was), and we had a brilliant time, with yacht trips and spa treatments provided to seduce us into writing a decent piece. As if we needed seducing. “The travel editor often knows of a villa somewhere knocking around.”

  “What a great idea,” Sam says. “I should ask our travel editor if they have anything going. Why don’t we go away together?” I nod enthusiastically as he turns to my mother. “Audrey, you should come too!”

  “I’m already going to Greece,” says my mother. “A friend’s boat. If there was room I’d invite you.”

  “We’ll miss you,” he pouts, “but I love the sound of you, me, and Annie going somewhere together. Let’s both speak to the travel people we know and see what we can come up with.”

  “Deal,” I say, and pour them all some more tea.

  Twenty

  I try very hard to have something punctuate my day so I have to leave my house. If I don’t have something, even a coffee at the dingy little café next to the tube station, it is quite possible that I would never get out of my pajamas, and that isn’t healthy or productive for anyone.

  Often I go to a noon meeting, and today I am on my way when Maureen’s number flashes up on my cell.

  Maureen is my sponsor. She’s one of the all-time great sponsors, at least that’s what I have heard: the kind of sponsor that everyone wants. I knew, as soon as I heard her talk in a meeting, that she’d be perfect for me. I never thought in a million years she would say yes. I was newly sober, struggling, and here was this woman my mother’s age, who had years of recovery and, I’d heard, tons of sponsees. Why would she ever say yes to me?

  Walking up to her after the meeting, I felt sick at the prospect of having to ask, but I also knew I had to do it. “Look for someone who has what you want,” they said. And Maureen seemed to radiate serenity, calm, and wisdom. She was everything I aspired to be.

  “I was wondering…,” I said, turning beet red, my heart beating faster, “whether you might have any availability to sponsor me.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I do have some requirements,” she said. “Working the steps, going to a minimum of three meetings a week, and talking every day, the same time, no matter what. If you can do that, I would be happy to sponsor you.”

  I almost cried with relief.

  Maureen is a therapist. Talking to her every day is like having my own personal 12-step therapist on call. She has brought such wisdom and support to my life that I wonder how on earth I managed without her. I credit her with the reason why my sobriety has stuck this time. She warned me off the pity pot when I felt sorry for myself, and taught me to live in the moment, to accept my life as it is, not dwell on where I thought it should be.

  “I’ve missed your calls, Cat. I’m wondering what’s going on that you’ve been texting rather than calling. We need to speak on a regular basis, you know that. Texting isn’t enough. Is now a good time for you to talk?”

  “I’m just on the way to the noon meeting. I’m so sorry, Maureen. I’ve just been crazy busy.” This isn’t quite true. There is a reason I’ve been avoiding calling her, even though I knew it couldn’t go on forever. “I have a few minutes.”

  “Good. We need to talk about your amends list.”

  “Yes.” It’s why I haven’t called her. Why I have hopefully buried my head in the sand, thinking she might forget; thinking I might forget.

  “You know what I’m going to say, Cat. There are two more people left on the list before you can move on to the next step, and we have to talk about how you’re going to do this.”

  Of course I knew what she was going to say. I knew she would eventually call me and force my hand. Ellie and Julia are the last two names on my amends list, the two women who are technically my sisters, who have refused to have anything to do with me since I slept with Julia’s boyfriend in a drunken haze.

  I did stay in touch with Brooks until he died. I didn’t see him again, but we wrote to each other sporadically. He was a kind man, a good man. And I was able to confide in him in a way I really couldn’t with anyone else. It has always been easier for me to write my feelings rather than express them in person, and I wrote to him about my life. Sometimes about my drinking. He got it. As a drunk himself, he knew that I was powerless over alcohol, that I sometimes, often, behaved in ways that were shocking and shameful. He was disappointed in me, I think, in what happened that night all those years ago, but he didn’t hold it against me. He understood, I think.

  But his daughters cut me off. I wrote to them, in the beginning, letters filled with remorse. I have no recollection of sleeping with Julia’s boyfriend. To this day, I have no idea if we had sex. I was on the pill, so pregnancy was not an option, but I honestly don’t know what happened, if anything, only that he kissed me and we woke up naked. I have to presume we did, and that has haunted me to this day.

  I thought I had apologized in writing, immediately after the trip, but making amends is more than an apology. It is restitution for the wrongs we have done, and I have always known that I would never be able to make up for this transgression by letter. This needed to be done in person. So I have worked my way through my amends list, leaving these two until last, knowing I am not going to like what I have to do, avoiding the topic with Maureen, avoiding calling her, in fact, because I know she will tell me exactly what she is about to tell me.

  “You know this is the big one. This is the one you have to do in person, and we have to figure out how to do it.”

  “How am I supposed to do this in person?” I say, which is what I said last time, although as I say it, I think about Sam asking his travel editor for a holiday destination. What if we asked for Nantucket? What if I wrote a piece about revisiting Nantucket? Maybe we’d get a house, or the flights, for free.

  As soon as that thought enters my mind, I realize I always knew this was going to happen. I knew Maureen was going to phone and tell me to do this in person, and I knew, as soon as Sam brought up the idea of a discounted holiday, that this would be where we would end up going.

  And suddenly it doesn’t seem quite as overwhelming, quite as terrifying, as it once did. It seems exactly right.

  “They’re on Nantucket,” says Maureen. “It’s summer. Surely you could find a way to take Annie to Nantucket this summer. It sounds like the dreamiest place in the world, and you’ve written travel features before. Why not write a travel piece?”

  I start to laugh. “Are you actually a witch, or just psychic?”

  “A little bit of both,” says Maureen. “And I’m also, as you know, a particularly hard taskmaster when it comes to working the steps. We need to get this done. You need to keep moving. Do you know where they live now? I imagine it won’t be hard to find them.”

  Of course I know how to find them. I used to Google them on a regular basis. There were tons of pictures of Ellie, who was as glamorous as ever, who had barely aged since I was there all those years ago. She was always smiling into the camera at fund-raisers on the island, flanked by equally gorgeous women. Her crowd seemed to be city people, out there for the summer, bejeweled, with blown-out blond hair, always at Galley Beach, sunbathing at Cliffside, tea at the Wauwinet.

  Julia, on the other hand, is an island girl through and through. There wasn’t much about her, although I think she had a small store selling handmade jewelry and clothes on Straight Wharf. I think back to all those years ago, to how everyone on the island seemed to have around ten jobs, and I know she has
to do other things. The season is only summer; everything shuts up at the end. I wonder if she goes out scalloping like she used to, shucking her scallops at Charlie Sayle’s and selling the meat; I remember her talking about bartending at the Anglers’ Club, and wonder if she still does that.

  And I wonder if she’s married. With children. I wonder if she ever saw Aidan again, if she found happiness with someone more stable, someone perhaps who didn’t drink, who didn’t fall into bed with her sister.

  I have thought, often, about whether or not she would forgive me. It was a very long time ago, and I was a different person, a person so selfish, so wrapped up in herself and her drinking, that I never thought about the impact my behavior made. Maureen describes alcoholics as tornadoes: leaving a path of destruction wherever they land. It even says this in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil.

  My life back then was in turmoil, but I’m not sure Julia would understand that. I’m not sure I would understand it if it had happened to me, if someone, anyone, had slept with Jason.

  They say that when you make amends, you have to detach from the result. This isn’t about gaining her forgiveness but about owning my behavior and doing my best to make restitution. How she deals with it, with seeing me, with hearing me, has to be put in God’s hands.

  Even though that’s the thing that terrifies me most.

  “Start looking into travel,” advises Maureen. “And call me tomorrow. The usual time.”

  * * *

  I have just filed the piece on women’s infidelity when Sam’s number flashes up on my screen. I texted him earlier, telling him to think Nantucket, and to see what he could do.

  “I spoke to Daniel Emory, our very own travel editor, about Nantucket, and he says yes. He found a house in town ready for us on July sixteenth, for two weeks. Apparently they had a last-minute cancellation, because it is literally impossible to get something decent on the island at this late stage. The magazine will cover the cost of the house, thank God, and it’s in dollars so it’s cheaper for us. All we have to pay for is the airfare. I have a friend at BA who might be able to swing something.”