The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  Paul comes down the stairs behind his father and I feel a rising pride. He’s so handsome in his suit, so professional and accomplished with his briefcase in hand and those rolled-up plans under his arm.

  “Ready?” he asks. “You sure you want to sit through this?”

  “Of course!” I hop down from the kitchen barstool. “I can’t wait to see my man in action.”

  The meeting room is surprisingly full, and for a moment I start to panic that everyone will start waving signs and protesting, but the room nearly empties out after a proclamation for the Boy Scouts. They were just a crowd of proud parents.

  That’s when I spot Anna, dressed in a suit with these really tall heels on. Her hair is up in a bun. As the room empties out, she looks around and notices me sitting next to Paul. I give her a wan smile and she looks away. It doesn’t seem rude; rather, like she didn’t really register me. Her face looks very still and calm, like it did that day in the store when I apologized.

  I squeeze Paul’s hand. He glances at her, then looks at me and rolls his eyes. That’s unbecoming to him, the professional man, pulling a face like a surly teen.

  The city council goes through a bunch of boring stuff, and finally they invite Paul up front to discuss the site plan for the redevelopment project.

  I’m probably beaming like a First Lady gazing at her president. He sounds polished; the project looks wonderful; the councilmen are nodding, sitting forward and engaged. When he wraps up his presentation, he gives me a little wink.

  The council asks for public comment, and there’s a rustling as Anna rises.

  “Gentlemen,” she begins. “I have some concerns about this project I’d like to raise.”

  I swallow hard and steal a look at Paul, who’s got that same dark, angry face that he wore that day he told me about Will fighting his family.

  Anna is impressive, too, I must admit.

  “I notice that Becker Development has requested and received from the zoning board a variance for the height of the building, and I maintain that . . .”

  The councilmen at first seem bored, then they sit forward with deepening frowns as she continues. Paul scribbles notes on his legal pad, pressing so hard the pen comes through the paper in spots.

  “And so, I submit to you that the building codes and ordinances must not be applied capriciously, and that the applicant can surely alter his project to suit the law instead of asking for special exception. And further, we should consider whether displacing a longtime business that has a loyal customer base for an unproven business model whose prices are likely out of reach for this community is truly a wise decision for maintaining the character of our downtown business district.”

  The councilmen are tapping their pens and staring hard at Paul, who is rising and returning to the podium.

  Paul rests his notebook on the podium and frowns down at it for a moment.

  “In that impassioned speech, what the speaker failed to inform you is that her name is Anna Geneva, and her mother is the operator of that store, so her motive here tonight is hardly altruistic; rather, it’s a self-interested desperation move in the eleventh hour.”

  I keep my eyes trained on the back of Paul’s head, the only view of him I can see from my seat. He grips the sides of the lectern hard.

  He goes on, “I don’t dispute the longevity of the Nee Nance Store, but I submit that its ‘character’ no longer suits the neighborhood. Other businesses up and down Washington Avenue have maintained and improved their facades, while this liquor store has let its sign fall into disrepair in recent months, and Mrs. Geneva has been cited by the building department for having beer signs in her window that are too large. Haven is changing, gentlemen, and if we want to keep moving forward and increasing our tax base, so we can continue to provide the services on which our citizens depend, we need to be on the leading edge, not playing catch-up, and to do that we need to make tough decisions.”

  Paul stands up straight and sweeps his gaze over the councilmen as he sums up: “Don’t let one woman’s attempt to sabotage this project for the sake of a family member hold up the forward progress of our community.”

  When Paul turns around, I try to smile at him. He seems a little breathless, and he fumbles his notebook when he picks it up off the lectern.

  I risk a look at Anna. She rises to her feet again as the mayor says, “I’ll now entertain a motion.”

  “Mr. Mayor,” interrupts Anna, walking to the front. “I have a response.”

  “Miss Geneva,” the mayor says wearily. “You’ve had your say. It’s time to start deliberating.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, he made several accusations in that speech of his and I believe I should be allowed to respond.”

  “You get one turn at the podium,” the mayor says, holding up his finger like a parent talking to a stubborn child. “And you had yours.”

  From my vantage point, I can see Anna’s right hand ball up into a fist. She says, “Mr. Becker was given two chances to speak.”

  “He first presented the information on his project and then he gave public comment, two different things. Now please sit down or we will ask you to leave.”

  Anna pivots on her heel and walks out slowly, her head erect, the picture of grace.

  She does, however, push the swinging door hard enough that it slams into the wall behind it. The door hisses itself back closed slowly, and everyone in the room stares at it, waiting for it, and through the door I can see Anna’s retreating form growing smaller down the hall.

  I look at Paul and he’s smirking. He meets my eye and shakes his head. It seems like it’s all he can do not to laugh out loud.

  The councilmen begin deliberating. There is no discussion about any of the points Anna raised. The only concern is about off-street parking.

  As carefully as I can, I rise from my seat. I shake off Paul’s hand on my arm and take the long way to the back door and slip out into the hall.

  City hall is small, and for all I know she’s outside and driven home already. But maybe she walked, in which case . . .

  I almost trip over her. The foyer of city hall is only dimly lit with some faint security lights—everyone came in the back door for the meeting. Anna sits against the wall, her legs out in front of her, ankles crossed. Her handbag and heels rest next to her. Her hands are folded loosely in her lap.

  I stop in front of her, and she looks up at me and says nothing for what seems like a very long time.

  Finally, she says, “Don’t apologize for him again. Because he himself is not sorry, so it’s meaningless, and you can’t do anything about it, so, no offense, your sympathy doesn’t exactly help matters.”

  I sit cross-legged in front of her, and for a moment I savor a flash of gratitude I can do this at all.

  “I just wanted to see if you’re okay.”

  “I’m swell.”

  “Anna . . .” I falter, not knowing exactly what to say. “What’s wrong?”

  She inclines her head in my direction. I can’t read her face exactly in the poor light, but her demeanor seems to indicate, What are you, an imbecile?

  “No, obviously. I mean, you seem so different from back when I knew you.”

  “Aren’t we all?” she says dryly.

  I chuckle at this. “Okay, point taken. But you used to be optimistic. Well, maybe not optimistic in a cheerful sense, but you had such . . . confidence that everything would turn out right.”

  “Hmmmm. Yeah, I guess I did. Life happened is what.” At this, she rises to her feet, slips back into her shoes, and picks up her purse. We both turn at the sound of the council chamber’s door opening, far down the hall.

  “When are you going back?” I say. “I want to say good-bye before you leave. Don’t sneak out of town.”

  “I don’t know when I’m going back, exactly,” she says. “I just don’t know.”

  She steps out the front door and I stand there for a moment. I hear footsteps behind me, and without turning I know
it’s Paul. He slips his arm around my waist and nuzzles my neck. “Where have you been? We got it. It’s all systems go. Demolition can start in September and we should be open before the end of next summer.”

  I step away from his embrace and start walking briskly back down the hall, toward his car. “I’ve got to get home and let Frodo out,” I tell him, walking a little faster when he tries to catch up.

  Chapter 20

  Anna

  The Nee Nance is dark when I pull my car into the alley. It takes me three tries to get my key in the door, and then the door sticks so I have to slam it open with my hip. It hurts, but I find that distracting and not entirely unpleasant.

  I hit the door again, just because, with the flat of my hand.

  I restrain myself from doing it once more, though, as my mother must be sleeping.

  I step out of my heels and go on tip-toe up the steps, flashing back momentarily to the few times I snuck in late after a date with Beck, once a little drunk on punch that we’d snuck out of the “grown-up” punch bowl at a Becker family party. I decide to get a drink of water from the kitchen before heading off to my room.

  What I see when I flip the kitchen light switch makes me gasp and flatten myself against the back wall.

  A half second later I realize it’s just Sally.

  “Aunt Sally!” I try to keep my voice to a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “I let myself in with that key your dad gave me, you know, when y’all went camping? Remember that, doll?”

  I put my hand to my head, thinking. That had to have been . . . a quarter century ago. Of course my mother has never changed the locks; we’ve never had a reason.

  “I guess I remember, but . . . Aunt Sally, why are you here? Mom’s asleep, isn’t she? And I was out, so . . .”

  She’s sitting in front of a cup of coffee, and I do notice then the smell of Folger’s. But surely she has a coffeemaker in her trailer.

  “I’m waitin’ for your daddy. He said he’d pay me back and I need to fix my truck. Thought he’d be coming back anytime now.”

  I wait for her to laugh. I search her face for that twinkle in her eye, the slight crinkling of her nose that always lets us know she’s putting one over on us.

  She stares back at me and finally says, “What?”

  I try to remember any article I might have read about people with dementia. Are you supposed to tell them the truth? Or do you play along, like guiding a sleepwalker back to bed without waking them?

  “Sal? Um, Dad’s not here. You know he . . . left. A long time ago. Right?”

  She bursts out laughing. “Oh, honey! You should see your face!” She slaps the table and I shush her. “You thought I was off my rocker, didntcha? Ha! I had you going for sure. Well, missy, I better be off. Just wanted to say hello, but it’s late, doll. I’ll let myself out the back.”

  She pats my shoulder as she cruises on by, gliding down the stairs and humming.

  “Not funny,” I say out loud, though she’s gone. “Not funny at all.”

  I get myself the water, shut off the coffeemaker, and dump Sally’s cup out, then go back to my room.

  I pause for a moment as I close the door. My room. Not my old room, as I’d been calling it since I first got back.

  I start to pull off my suit and my eye catches that old magazine clipping. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams . . .

  I rip it off the mirror and wad it into a ball before throwing it into a dusty corner.

  The morning dawns cool and the sky is masked by cottony clouds in a dingy gray. Now and then there’s a spitting rain, and it’s enough to keep out the tourists running in for snacks. We only get the regulars on days like this: Carla for her Lotto tickets and Virginia Slims; later Randy will come by and pick up a forty-ounce, or maybe just a Coke, depending whether he’s punched out for the day.

  I’ve just said good-bye to Carla when my cell phone rings, the caller ID indicating Shelby.

  “Shells!” I answer. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Annie G,” she says. “How’s Smallville?” Her tone has a forced cheeriness.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was going to ask you that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know how to bring this up exactly, but . . .” She turns her voice to a stage whisper. I can picture her cupping her hand around the phone to try to be sneaky. She must be at the office. “Are you crazy?”

  “Crazy for what?”

  “Dorian is going around hinting that you’re mad with grief and too shattered to come back to work, and going on about how she has to pick up all your slack, and she is picking up your slack, too. She’s running to Jenison all the time and ‘offering’ to do your work and complaining about having to do it. Meanwhile she’s basically stealing all your clients and, like I said, trying to make everyone think you’re shopping for a rubber room.”

  I recognize that I should be shouting into the phone, throwing my clothes into a suitcase, and driving as fast as I can down I–94. Instead, I say, “That does sound like Dorian.”

  “The worst part is that she’s making it seem like an act of charity on her part, like she’d do anything to ‘help’ you. She’s going to help you right out of making partner and, if you don’t get your butt back here, out of a job, too.”

  I find that I have a hard time remembering what I was even working on when I left.

  Shelby drops the whisper, her voice strained. “What’s going on with you?”

  “My mother collapsed and could have had a stroke, and it might happen again, especially because she’s under a lot of stress right now. And that’s not the only thing going on . . .” I pause for a moment and weigh how much to tell her.

  In the background I can hear the sounds of Shelby’s office. Her radio is tuned to NPR, volume almost to nothing. Her e-mail dings to alert her to a new message. That’s when I hear typing.

  “This is important, Shelby.”

  The typing cuts off. “I was listening; I heard every word. It sounds rough, but Anna, how will you be able to help her if you lose your job, too?”

  “They have lawyers in Michigan, too, you know.”

  “Hold on,” she says, and for a few beats there’s silence until I hear her slam her office door. “You’ve got to be kidding me. After all the hours you’ve put in at Miller Paulson, as hard as you’ve worked to make partner, when you’re almost there, you’re going to give it all up? Maybe Dorian’s right, maybe you are going a little crazy.”

  “All I did was take a little time off, and I might point out Jenison insisted I do it, and now that I took him up on it . . .”

  “A couple of weeks, and it’s going on a month, now.”

  “Did you call just to harass me?”

  “I called because you’re brilliant and you’re my friend and I hate to see you screw yourself because August died. Anna, did you . . . Did you have a thing with him?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Were you having a relationship with him?”

  “No!” I stand up from the office chair. “Is that what’s going on? People think I’m pining over my dead lover? Who’s thirty years older than me?”

  “Okay, okay, I didn’t really believe it, either, but since you’ve been acting so strange, I didn’t know what else to think. And yeah, Dorian’s dropping hints about that, too.”

  “People are so sick. Two people of opposite gender treat each other nicely and everyone assumes they’re fucking. Nice.”

  “If you don’t come back and perform like your old self again, Dorian’s version of the story will get more traction, and pretty soon it might as well be true. And if the partnership committee thinks you were sleeping with him and are now too addle-brained and emotional from his death to work, you’re done for.”

  “I just told you, it’s my mother’s health. Her business is closing. And my . . . there’s a lot going on.”

  “I believe you. Bu
t right now I’m the only one who does.”

  “I just can’t leave right now.”

  “Just get back here as soon as you can, and come out swinging, okay? Also, I want to buy you a drink or six and tell you all about Simon.”

  “You’re not still seeing him, are you?”

  “I think it might work this time. See, last time we were together . . .”

  I can’t follow the thread of her conversation. Randy comes into the store, and I smile at him as he wanders the aisles, killing time on his break. My mom comes down the stairs, looking a little pale but otherwise about normal. Maybe if I can just buy her some time in the store, time for a proper back-up plan, then I can get back to work.

  Randy approaches the counter.

  “Shells, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” I pocket my phone and ring up his purchase. “You feeling okay, Mom?”

  “Fine,” she says, wandering over to the newspaper stand. “A little tired. Who was that on the phone?”

  “Shelby.”

  Mom picks up a Courier and then gasps, slapping it down on the counter like it just bit her. “I can’t believe you did that!” she shouts.

  I pick up the newspaper to see the headline: Site plan approved for Washington Ave. redevelopment. The smaller headline beneath it reads: Daughter makes stand for mother’s store.

  She jabs the newspaper with her finger. “We look pathetic!”

  “I was just trying to help, and for what it’s worth I had some legitimate questions to raise about his project; there’s no precedent for the exceptions they granted him, and according to the town’s planning—”

  “I don’t care! I didn’t ask you to do that, and you knew I wouldn’t want it so you snuck behind my back.”