Maybe I’ll tell him that. He was right after all. I know he was tired of being wrong all the time. Almost as tired as I was of being right. It’s no fun being right about everything going to hell.
I sure wish he’d hurry up and write me back.
Sally is quiet through the check-out at the hospital, and for most of the car ride home, for which I am thankful but also disturbed. A quiet Sally is something out of a parallel universe.
“Can I smoke, sister dear?”
“Just don’t set the car on fire.”
“Well, aren’t you funny, Miss Robin Williams.”
Sally’s wig is back on, but it’s tangled and ratty-looking. I should offer to wash it for her. It reeks of the fire, which is a different kind of stench than her cigarettes’. Sitting next to her is like standing downwind from a burning trash barrel.
“So, you okay?”
She nods, tipping her head back on the seat. “As long as I’ve got my health,” she says, hacking suddenly and so hard I worry she’s going to ram her head into the dashboard and we’ll have to turn back around to the hospital. When she settles, she laughs again, her voice sounding like it was scraped by sandpaper. “My health, right.”
“You know, didn’t I always say those things would kill you? You didn’t have to try and prove me right.”
She’s turned away from me. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
With the back of her head facing me like this, ageless, I can almost imagine we’re on our way to the drive-in with Sean and Robert and the gang.
I bring my eyes back to the road. We’re almost back to the store, and traffic is heavy, the streets clogged with people who can afford to take a week off from work around the Fourth.
Sally’s voice is jarring when she speaks again, louder than necessary in the confines of the car. “Why are you still wearing that ring?”
I drop my hand away from my chest. I’d been touching my wedding ring through my shirt without noticing it. “Since when do you pay attention to what I do?”
“Oh, I’ve known for ages you have it, doll. I just never thought to ask until now.”
“Why do you ask now?”
“Why don’t you answer?”
“Because I don’t feel like it.”
Sally taps her fingers on her knee to some beat in her head. “My brother was such a jackass, leavin’ you like he did.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No, you never did like this subject.”
“Why would I like it?” We’re at the store now, and I pull into our alley parking space.
Back when Robert first left, Sally tried to be consoling and I’d always push her away, make her drop it. I didn’t want it in my face all the time, is all. I didn’t want her in my face, either, with those dark brown Geneva eyes. So she quit talking about it, and eventually I let her come around again.
I always wondered why she wasn’t more upset herself, her only brother taking off like that. But I never wanted to raise the subject, once she’d finally dropped it.
“Do you need help out of the car?” She had remained still while I took the keys out of the ignition and zipped them back in my purse.
“Nah. I just can’t believe this is all that’s left of me,” she says, looking down at her own purse, which slouches in her lap, half open and ready to spill its contents at the slightest nudge.
Chapter 36
Cami
I dial the shop and a young kid answers, maybe nineteen years old, whose voice still has that scrapy echo of adolescence. I don’t know who he is, but I pity him because having Tim Drayton for a boss is no trip to the candy store, I’m sure.
“Can I talk to Tim?” I ask, pitching my voice unnaturally high.
“Um, he can’t come to the phone right now.”
“Is he working or what?”
“He’s rebuilding an engine. He’s gonna be a while. Can I take a message?”
“No, that’s okay.”
I hang up and smile. Good. He’ll be out of the house all morning, at least. And for once Sherry isn’t here.
I walk out of our now-clean kitchen with its fresh white cupboards onto the dirty hall carpet, past my sunny yellow room, and turn into the cave where my father lives. If you can call this life.
Piles of clothing dot the room. I don’t know which ones are supposed to be clean and which are dirty. I’m not sure he knows, either. I did his laundry when I first came back, along with mine, but then he thundered at me about not being able to find his shirts, which were hung up on a clothesline in the laundry room. So I quit doing it.
Even if there were clean clothes in here, they wouldn’t smell that way long. The room’s odor is something like a zoo crossed with the Nee Nance’s bottle-return bin. I spy an ashtray and some crushed cigarettes. My hand clenches as I stare at the ashtray.
He never used to smoke in here. Mom wouldn’t allow it. So he’d suck on his cigarettes on the back porch, glaring across the yard. Sometimes, if he were really upset, Trent and I could see his face flash up bright and yellow in the light of another match struck for another cigarette. The night Mom told us about her cancer, I think he smoked half a pack, one after the other. His beer, then, was still a relatively moderate habit.
Now he’s smoking in here. He could torch the place in a pickled stupor, just like Sally and her trailer. My mother’s house, where she raised us.
She used to spend Saturday mornings cleaning, all the windows open in the spring and summer. Trent and I would wake up to the sound of disco on the stereo and the scent of lemon in the air, and Mom would be bopping along, humming and scrubbing and dusting, a kerchief tied over her hair.
And look what he’s done to it, the smelly, drunk old bastard.
I pick up the ashtray and walk out the back door, across our squeaky porch, and stand in our yard, feeling the weight of the ashtray in my hand. We’ve got a wooden fence around our scrubby patch of grass; Mom insisted on it for us kids, worried because this isn’t the greatest neighborhood. It used to be painted a rich brown. Now it’s faded to a color like weak tea.
I fling the ashtray, discus-style, into the back fence. It only cracks once, alas. I’d been hoping for a satisfying shatter.
He’ll not likely notice it. Or if he does, he’ll think he misplaced it himself.
I go back into his room and crouch down by the stack of photo albums in his closet. With one ear cocked toward the front door, I leaf through them.
This is harder than I thought, watching myself and my family regress in age as I work my way from top to bottom in the stack.
A picture of Trent and me at the beach, arms around each other, stops me short. I gaze at it for a minute or so. I look at my watch: It’s four o’clock in London. I wonder if he’s having tea.
Then I slam the book. No time now.
Here’s one. It’s smaller than the rest, visibly older, too. I whip through the pages and notice that in this one, someone has written dates and names under the photos.
Part of me cries out to stop and linger on these pictures of my mom as a girl, but that’s not my goal now, to wallow in what I can’t have anymore. I need to—
There. That couple again.
Alice and Richard Gray, 1968
Though I’m sure I’d never forget this, I jot it down anyway on a slip of paper I’d brought in with me just for this purpose.
Also, though I know rebuilding an engine takes all morning, my adrenaline cranks up and I begin stacking the albums again, not taking particular care to get them in order; Tim Drayton is not a detail man, as a rule.
When I put the last one on the stack, something curious draws my eye.
In the very back of the closet is a perfect square that had been cut out of the wall, replaced, and sealed over. But never sanded or painted. I tap around the square and onto it: hollow.
The sound of an engine outside the house causes me to jump upright, jam the off-track closet doors back closed as best I can, and sprint over the
laundry out into the hall. I dash into the living room and then concentrate on breathing evenly.
When I look out the front window, I see only the mail truck, rumbling away.
I sit for a long time, cross-legged on my bed, trying to remember a Richard or Alice Gray in our lives. I call Trent again but only get his voice mail, so I leave him a message to call my cell phone and I give my next working hours, translated to UK time. The last thing I need is to get a call from Trent in front of my dad.
I resign myself to calling Aunt Clara.
“Hello?” she answers, suspicion already tingeing her voice. She has caller ID, I’ll bet, and it probably says C. DRAYTON on her little screen.
“Hi. It’s Cami.” Silence. “Your niece.”
“Oh, Camille! Heavens. I wasn’t expecting you.”
I’m sure she wasn’t. “Could I just ask you something?”
“Yes.” She draws the word out slightly.
“I mean a question, not a favor.”
“Of course,” she answers, sounding a little offended. As if I had no reason to doubt she would help me, the hypocritical old wench.
“Do you know Alice and Richard Gray?”
“Them? Why on earth . . .? No, I don’t know them.”
I can hear her tapping her long nails. She’d make a lousy gambler. “If you don’t know them, why did you answer, Them? Don’t lie to me, Clara.”
She always preferred for me to call her Aunt Clara, and she wanted me to pronounce aunt to rhyme with want.
“Well, I don’t know them. We weren’t friends.”
I choke down an exasperated scream. “You’ve heard of them, though.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I found a photo of them among your sister’s things.” I throw the sister in her face deliberately.
“That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all.” What else could there be? I don’t press her. She might hang up if I don’t play this right.
“Mrs. Gray was Pamela’s violin teacher.”
“My mother played the violin?”
“Oh, yes; she was very good.” Clara doesn’t say this with pride—rather, as if she’s got something sour in her mouth.
“So why does she have a photo of her violin teacher and her husband?” And why was it inscribed with such affection? I hesitate to give Clara this information, sensing I’ve crossed into sensitive territory.
“They both took a liking to her. Mr. Gray played piano and he would accompany her on her solo pieces. The Grays used to include her in their family events, having had no children of their own.”
“What happened to them?”
“Same thing that happens to everyone. They died.”
I flinch at this, not realizing until that moment I’d been hoping to find them, to quiz them about my mother’s youth, her musical skill, which I’d known nothing about. I never even saw her hold an instrument.
“Is that all?” Clara asks, her voice weighted with a display of boredom.
I grip the phone a little tighter in my hand. “I’ll just say thank you for the only useful thing you’ve ever done for me, answering this simple question, however grudgingly you did so.”
“You’re still so angry.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I lost my mother, and my one female relative acted like I was dead, too.”
“We were never close. It was a bit late to start acting like best friends, I thought.”
I snap my phone shut and place it gently on my bed to keep from slamming it into the wall. Then I stand up and punch my mattress, again and again, until my fury sputters out amid daydreams of my mother playing a song on her violin, something sweet, just for me.
Chapter 37
Anna
I ring the bell at the Becker house and wipe my palms on my skirt. It will take some time for the housekeeper to answer, so I suck in a breath and puff it out.
I made a mistake. I don’t intend to make that mistake again. I’m only human.
I say this so I can forgive myself before the door opens and I’m confronted with Beck’s wife.
Magda answers and greets me with glee. “Oh, Anna! Mr. B and Miss Sam are so excited to see you, and wait until you see Maddie! She’s as good as new!” She pulls me by my hand into the foyer.
I force a smile as she leads the way to the family room, where Mr. Becker, the elder, is standing. Samantha sits on a chair with Madeline in her lap, looking at a picture book. She looks up as I enter but flicks her eyes back to the book.
Mr. Becker steps forward and wraps me in a hug. “Our hero!”
I didn’t want to be here, but Mr. Becker invited me to this little thank-you lunch, and what was I supposed to say? Sorry, I can’t face your daughter-in-law because right after I rescued her daughter, I screwed her husband.
My attempt to let myself off the hook on the porch failed utterly. I’m torn between a desire to run out the door and never come back to this incestuous hick town, and an unsettling urge to scream out the truth: I’m no hero, that’s for damn sure.
“Sit, sit,” he tells me, and I do because one does what Mr. Becker says. It’s the way of Haven. “I’m sorry Will can’t be here. He got caught up with something at work and he really couldn’t get away. He’s such a hard worker; I’m so proud of him. I remember that of you, too, Anna. You two were always working. Or, at least I think it was working!” At this he winks and booms laughter. I don’t dare look at Sam.
“I want a snack!” shouts Maddie, jumping off her mother’s lap.
“It’s almost lunch,” Sam says mildly. I look at her fully for the first time and stifle a gasp. Her hair hangs in matted strings like that of a neglected doll. Her face is waxy and pale.
“I want a snack!” bellows Maddie, her body going rigid.
“I’ll get you a string cheese.” Samantha sighs as she starts to rise.
“I want Grandpa to do it!” Maddie shrieks.
Grandpa leaps to his feet and happily leads the way to the kitchen, leaving Samantha and me alone in the spotless family room.
“How are you holding up?” I ask, to fill the silence.
Samantha shrugs. “She’s going through an ‘anyone-but-Mommy’ phase right now. I suppose when we’re together all day, every day, that’s to be expected. But it isn’t easy to be rejected by her. Especially now.”
I can’t add anything to this, so I say nothing. I glance out the picture window at the lake beyond.
“I have to thank you,” she tells me, which forces me to face her again. “I almost lost my life that night. It’s scary to love one fragile thing so much you feel you’d die if . . . I’ve been trying to get Will to have more babies, but he doesn’t want to. Which is funny, because he used to say he’d have ten of them, as many as I could squeeze out.”
The sound of my swallowing seems loud in the room. Samantha’s staring at me, expecting me to respond. “Well, maybe he’ll come around.”
“I doubt it. He moved out.”
I gasp before I can stop it. Samantha raises an eyebrow at me.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.
“Are you?” She turns toward the kitchen. “Where are they? Honestly, he’s probably making pancakes, if she asked him to. I swear it’s like I just donated the uterus sometimes, and none of them would notice if I wandered off.”
“The Beckers can be intimidating, as a group. I used to feel that way myself.”
She turns back to me, two bright pink spots flaring on her cheeks. “Are you comparing your little high school thing to my marriage?”
“No! I was just commiserating, I mean—”
My fumbling is interrupted by growling sounds and shrieks, as Maddie runs back into the room, her face purple with jelly, and William Becker behind her, making like some kind of animal, hunched over and chasing her. Mr. Becker pauses in front of me as Maddie does a loop around the room and takes off again. He rests his hands on his knees and pants out, “See? In perfect health. Aren’t you glad you came over
to see that everything’s okay?”
He can’t see Samantha behind him, glaring at me, her mouth forming one hard line.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask Cami as I come back in the front door of the Nee Nance, toting my fast-food lunch in a paper bag because I couldn’t eat a thing at the Becker house.
“Upstairs watching TV with Sally. Paul Becker called. He said your meeting date is fine.”
I nod. “I should have brought you lunch. Do you want me to run out and get some?”
“Nah,” Cami says. “I ate already. What’s up with Paul?”
I fill Cami in on my plan to get my mother a reprieve, at least temporarily. “I think he’ll go for it. I hope so, anyway. I know it’s not what she wants forever, but she has to do something while we figure out the rest of her life.”
“What does she want to do?”
I pop a fry in my mouth. It’s too salty; I have no appetite, anyway. Beck left his wife, I keep thinking. “She’s oddly detached from the fact that this store as she knows it will be gone. Maybe she’s distracted by Sally and her blood pressure and everything. Maybe she can’t accept it. It’s been part of her for so long, she just can’t believe it’s going to be really gone.”
My phone rings and the screen says W. BECKER. I just left there; what does he want?
“Excuse me, Cami, I’ll take this in the office.”
“Hello,” I answer, dusting fry salt off my hands as I step behind the metal desk piled with invoices and balance sheets.
“Hi.”
“Beck! What’s going on?”
I glance out into the store, and then I close the office door, slowly. I catch Cami’s eye as I do this and she raises an eyebrow.
As he speaks, a crack runs through his voice. “Sam and I split up. I moved out.”
“What happened?”
“It was ugly. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“She doesn’t . . . You didn’t tell her, did you?”
The Life You've Imagined Page 18