An American Tune

by Barbara Shoup

  Resolutely, she closed the Newsweek and threw it in the trash. She would not think about what a mess the world was in on this last morning with Claire or worry about sending her out into it. Near dawn, the birds began their agitated chatter in the tall pine outside the kitchen window. Nora sat, watching the meadow and forest beyond emerge, first in silhouette, then in full color. Upstairs, Claire’s alarm went off; moments later, Nora heard the sound of the shower.

  She roused Charlie, then put the coffee on, and began to fix the blueberry waffles she’d promised. Soon there was the crunch of Dylan’s truck in the driveway. Claire burst into the kitchen, flushed with excitement, and met him at the back door, throwing her arms around him.

  “I’m here to kidnap your daughter,” he said, with a grin.

  When they’d finally gone – when Claire had picked a bouquet of wildflowers from the meadow and wrapped it in wet paper towels for her dorm room, thrown one last stick for Astro, run back to give her parents one last hug – Nora and Charlie went back to the kitchen and sat in silence, emptiness humming all around them. Even Astro looked sad, sniffing the air where Claire had been.

  Nora was glad when Charlie got up to go out to the clinic. She sat awhile, imagining Dylan’s red truck on a map, heading south toward Indiana. She cried a little. She went upstairs to the computer Claire had left behind in favor of her new laptop and sent her an e-mail: I miss you already. Then pulled up Google and typed in the swim mom’s real name: Carole Matthias.

  But it was her assumed name, Laura Ann Pearson, that popped up as the first entry: a brief biography, some background on the so-called crime she had committed in the 1970s, information about her life as Carole Matthias, and an account of her arrest, as well as what had happened to her since then.

  The arrest had occurred in January, and she had pled guilty and accepted a plea bargain. Weeks later, though, she had withdrawn it, stating that she had agreed to it only because she had been convinced by her lawyer that the events of 9/11 made it impossible for an accused bomber to receive a fair trail. She told the judge that she had pleaded guilty in what she thought was in her own and her family’s best interest. But it wasn’t the truth and she realized she couldn’t live with the fact that she had lied.”

  She added that she had not made the bomb, nor had she possessed or planted the bomb. It was under the concept of aiding and abetting that she pled guilty.

  The judge offered to let her testify under oath about her role in the case, but she refused, stating that she wanted a trial. He denied her request, and sentenced her to serve ten-years-to-life, as opposed to the three-to-five year sentence she had agreed to in the plea – and the life she’d known as Laura Ann Pearson was over.

  Her family and friends supported and continued to believe in her, and most media were in agreement that she’d never have been arrested in the first place if 9/11 hadn’t given the Bush administration a rationale for pursuing the radical right-wing agenda they had wanted to pursue all along. Those who spoke out about the hijacking of civil rights and the invasion of privacy were considered not only unpatriotic but potential “domestic terrorists,” which had given the FBI grounds to reopen cases from the sixties and seventies that had long been abandoned – and to fan the flames of fear generated by the attacks.

  “Laura Ann Pearson, the wife, swim mom, painter, gourmet cook, aka Carol Matthias, the accused terrorist and former radical fugitive, has pleaded guilty to possessing bombs with intent to murder police officers in San Francisco,” one article read. “Her story represents two very different lives. To Pearson’s friends and champions, she is a symbol of passion and conviction. To many law enforcement officials and others, this woman – whomever she claims to be – committed serious crimes and owes an accounting.

  “Which do you think she really is?”

  Both, Nora knew.

  18

  “Teach Your Children”

  It worked sometimes to talk softly to Jo about things that had happened in the past, going back in time to when Charlie was a little boy and then reeling her in toward the present, story by story. But today, Nora did not have the heart for it. The stories would lead to Claire; they always did – memories of her infancy and childhood – and it was just too painful to remember those years and years when the demands and pleasures of caring for Claire had occupied them all so completely that there was rarely a moment for contemplation or regret.

  How bright and funny she had been! “Songs!” she would cry out, in the car. But she did not want just any song on the radio. At two, she sat in her car seat, her eyes closed, listening to Mozart or Bach. “Mama, more!” she said when a tape ended and silence fell. “No yike,” she said to the easy listening music Jo played in her car, which always made Charlie laugh.

  She missed Claire so much. She read the e-mails Claire sent over and over, imagining her daydreaming through comp class in Woodburn Hall, walking back to the dorm on the wooded path that ran alongside the creek that wound its way through the old part of campus.

  “It’s called the Jordan River,” Claire wrote. “Someone said the water used to run black behind the Journalism Building, because they dumped the ink there. Is that gross, or what?”

  Nora remembered the inky water washing over the stones, how it grew lighter and lighter the farther away it got from Ernie Pyle Hall. She remembered, too, an unseasonably warm, rainy afternoon in March of her freshman year when she and Bridget had taken off their shoes and waded the Jordan River from Ballantine Hall all the way to the SAE House, where days and days of rain had caused the creek to swell into a little pond. Drenched and laughing, cheered on by a bunch of boys watching from an upstairs window, Bridget set her soggy book bag on the sidewalk, walked in to her knees, her shoulders – and finally submerged herself completely, invisible but for her long red hair floating out around her. Then she burst forth, grinning, splattering water everywhere.

  She ached, knowing she could not write back to Claire and share these memories. Instead, she kept her up-to-date on news about Jo, Monique and Diane, and what was happening around town. She wrote about Astro, who thoroughly sniffed Claire’s room each morning, as if determined to find her there, then curled up and slept on the old sweatshirt of Claire’s that Nora had put there to comfort him. About the leaves in the forest turning toward fall.

  She printed Claire’s e-mails for Charlie, who read them and wrote letters in return. What was in them, Nora wondered? He looked embarrassed if she came upon him, writing, and cupped his free hand to make a little wall around the script. She was tempted by the crabbed handwriting on the envelopes, the heft of the folded paper inside the sealed envelopes he left in the mailbox by the side of the road. She felt, not exactly jealous, but . . . left out, extraneous somehow, when she thought of Claire opening and reading them in her dorm room.

  Still, Nora had her own small private life, which included following the news about Laura Ann Pearson and about Iraq. Charlie’s lack of interest in Claire’s old computer had made it her province. She’d let Diane install the accounting software she’d been trying to talk her into for over a year, making Claire’s room an extension of the clinic office, so there was nothing unusual about her climbing the stairs and settling in at the computer each morning after her walk. Overseeing the business end of Charlie’s veterinary practice went more quickly, as Diane had promised it would, and there was time before lunch to read the New York Times online; then, from there, to check the website Laura Ann Pearson’s friends and family maintained to keep her supporters abreast of any news and, ultimately, to Google through a series of political sites, each of which deepened her understanding and alarm about what seemed more and more like an inevitable war with Iraq.

  Of course, she said nothing to Charlie about Laura Ann Pearson – and she had resolved to stop talking to him about Iraq. But she could not seem to help herself from trying to startle him from the vague, complacent world-view formed mainly from the five-minute, top-of-the-hour news spots on the classica
l music station he listened to and the occasional foray through Newsweek.

  “Are you aware that our new national security strategy relies on pre-emptive strikes?” she had asked him last night at supper. “All they have to do is call it – call anything – terrorism and they can do as they please. Doesn’t that concern you?”

  “You can’t change it, Nora,” he said. “Why worry about what you can’t change?”

  “So we’re supposed to just trust them?” she said. “Like we trusted them about Vietnam?”

  But he wouldn’t argue, and they finished the meal in silence. This morning he had been wary, gawky, and tentative as a teenage boy in his eagerness to please her, asking if she might like to drive to Traverse City for a movie on Saturday afternoon, offering to help her plant daffodil bulbs along the edge of the forest, and she felt defeated by such vulnerable stubbornness, despairing and ashamed.

  “What should I do?” she whispered to Jo, now.

  But Jo did not answer, just sat there in her recliner, watching Nora, a curious expression on her face, her eyes bright with concern.

  Here was someone she knew she was glad to see – though, clearly, she couldn’t quite remember why. Maybe she was confused because it was someone who usually spoke cheerfully but today was teary and silent for some reason. Instinct or perhaps a vague memory made her lean over to pat Nora’s hand reassuringly. A few days ago, when Charlie visited, she had tilted her cheek for a kiss exactly as she used to do each morning before he left for elementary school. “You be a good boy now,” she said.

  Telling Nora, Charlie shook his head, perplexed. “The thing is, she looked so happy.”

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing, Nora had said to him: to let reality unravel you back to the happiest, most real time in your life. Then realized that, for him, that time was almost certainly when Claire was a little girl. Considering her own happiest time, she had had to get up from the dinner table, busy herself clearing the dishes because the image that came immediately to mind was not Claire as a little girl, but herself – Jane – at eighteen, dancing with Tom.

  She had thought of him too much in the time since Claire had been gone. Just last night, sleepless, she had gone to the computer in Claire’s room, pulled up Google and typed his name into the little box: “Thomas Gilbert.” Then “Bloomington Indiana.” She had sat a long while, her hand poised on the mouse, looking from the letters she’d typed to the AOL icon that, simultaneously, had begun to bounce at the side of the screen: an e-mail from Claire arriving from cyberspace as if to remind her who she was now. Finally, she clicked to make Tom disappear, guilty, a little breathless – as if caught.

  She had not looked up Tom’s address, maybe she never would. But she felt different since she had begun to think of him and knew it would be impossible to forget him again. Worse, despite her resolution to be kinder and more patient, she’d begun to compare the young, intense Tom she remembered to shy, bumbling middle-aged Charlie. She’d become more rather than less irritable with Charlie as a result – and about things she’d gotten used to years ago. The way he whistled tunelessly when he went about his work, the way he anal-retentively lined up the shoes and boots along the wall in the mudroom and constantly reorganized the kitchen drawers. The Museum of Charlie aggravated her, his refusal to consider any music composed after Gershwin worthy of his attention aggravated her, ironing six nearly identical plaid flannel shirts in a row drove her wild.

  “She’s probably just missing Claire,” she overheard Monique say to Charlie, stepping into the clinic to retrieve a file she needed after their silent breakfast the day before. She had wanted to throttle Charlie for confiding in her and Monique for giving such a simplistic explanation for her behavior. Honestly, Charlie should have married her, Nora had thought, bitterly, stepping out again before they realized she was there. What a big, beautiful bubble of a life the two of them could have made together. Then instantly felt remorseful, flooded with countless memories that reminded her of what a good friend Monique had been to both of them.

  Jo continued to observe her curiously, unselfconscious as a child, and Nora wondered if, losing her grasp on day-to-day concerns, emptying her head of attachments and responsibilities, she might have gained some silent, incommunicable intuition that allowed her to see the heart of things. Could she know that thinking about Tom as she had in the past weeks made Nora feel as if she were somehow cheating on Charlie? Was she cheating on Charlie, living so much, secretly, in the past?

  She half-seriously considered talking to Jo now, telling her everything. Whether Jo responded or not, maybe the simple act of speaking the truth would relieve some of the weight in her heart. But the moment passed. Jo had turned her attention to the television and did not even notice when Nora stood and slipped away.

  Outside in the bright sunshine of an Indian summer day, she breathed deeply, grateful that the next days would be filled to overflowing with the final preparations for Diane’s daughters’ arrival and then the visit that would last through the weekend. Diane had planned endlessly, obsessively, determined to strike the right balance of private and group time, activity and relaxation. Carah’s pregnancy must be considered, of course. She mustn’t overdo. It wouldn’t be good for her to become overly emotional. And Rose could be so prickly. If certain charged subjects came up, would it be better or worse to try to steer away from them and remain in the moment or go ahead and tackle them head-on? Should Diane move the gallery of their childhood photos she kept on the dresser in the bedroom she shared with Monique? Would they be touched to see how close she’d kept them to her all these years? What if they were offended to see them there?

  She looked like a wreck, Nora thought, walking into Diane and Monique’s kitchen: dressed in jeans and a tattered denim shirt, pale as a wraith, her hair unkempt.

  “You should know right off that I put all of Claire’s photos away this morning,” Diane said. “Just for, well, you know. I was afraid –”

  “It’s okay.” Nora set the coffee she’d brought from the Hummingbird Café on the table.

  “It’s not okay,” Diane said. “I know that. I know it’s a sign of how whacked out I am. But is the fact that I know it and did it anyway good or bad?”

  “Just a fact,” Nora said. “Listen, if putting the pictures away while they’re here makes it easier, I’m all for it. Claire would be, too. You know she adores you. Here, drink this.” She pushed Diane’s coffee toward her. “Calm down.”

  “Right, caffeine’s just what I need for that. On the other hand, how can it hurt?” Diane ran her hands through her hair, deepening her dishevelment. “God. Nora, this is so totally lame, but right now I wish Carah and Rose weren’t coming at all, and I could just go on being Claire’s indulgent co-godmother.”

  “You do not,” Nora said. “You’ve been waiting for this moment ever since I’ve known you. It’ll be fine. It’s a start.”

  Diane sighed. “Maybe they’ll like you. Maybe I’ll get some points for that.”

  “Maybe,” Nora said. “They’ll like Charlie, for sure. You know you can count on that.”

  “Yeah.” Diane raised an eyebrow. “Unless, like Betty, they decide he should have married Mo.”

  They drank their coffee, watching the occasional red leaf from the maple at the edge of the yard fall and settle in the grass. The trees atop the dunes hugging the arc of shoreline as far as they could see were more red and gold than green now; in a few weeks, there would be nothing but glorious, fluorescent color, the last gasp of tourists winding up M-22 in a slow parade to look at it. Then it would be winter, Nora’s favorite time of year, when she could walk the beach and never see another human soul, curl up in her favorite chair and read whole days into oblivion.

  Distractedly, Diane picked the copy of Newsweek amidst the clutter on the table and leafed through it, holding it so that Donald Rumsfeld, on the cover, seemed to be casting his smug gaze in Nora’s direction.

  “Oh, my God,” Diane said. “Can you belie
ve this? Here’s what that asshole’s got on his desk: a bronze plaque with this Teddy Roosevelt quote that says, ‘Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.’ Sport. Like this is some kind of game. Plus, ha! Would that be fighting for the right . . . wing?

  “Nora!” She dropped the magazine and straight up in her chair. “Fuck! What if they’re Republicans? Their father’s a Republican. Why wouldn’t they be?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Can you believe I don’t know that about my own girls? I don’t know anything about their lives now. Seriously, what if they show up wearing those rhinestone American flag pins, like those dreadful patriotic ladies from Grosse Pointe who are always coming into the shop? I’ll tell you one thing –” She laughed, a little wildly. “You can bet Bob’s mother would be wearing one even as we speak – if she weren’t dead.”

  “That’s it,” Nora said. “Good! Look on the bright side.”

  They were laughing when the phone rang, and Diane went to answer it.

  “Oh,” Nora heard her say. “She’s not? She can’t?” Then, after a moment of silence. “Of course, I want you to come anyway. No. You definitely shouldn’t drive alone. Honey, of course, it’s okay if Seth comes with you instead. I’d love that. I know. I can’t wait to see you, either. Well, yes. I’m disappointed not to see Rose. Of course I am. But it’s not your fault she has to work. I know. I know. You absolutely shouldn’t have to. You don’t. Sweetie, don’t cry. Really. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. We’ll have a good time. Okay, then. Tomorrow.”

  Nora waited a moment then went to Diane who was standing, stock-still, the telephone receiver still in her hand. Nora took it, returned it to its cradle. Gently, she touched Diane’s shoulder and Diane sank into a kitchen chair and put both hands to her face.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nora said.

  Diane looked up. “Rose doesn’t have to work,” she said. “She never wanted to come in the first place. Never planned to come. I think I knew that all along.”