The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  “I wouldn’t say ‘nothing.’ ”

  “Honey, in some ways you are just like your father. Now, listen to me, don’t go getting all upset. In the good ways. He dreamed big, dreamed of getting the hell out of here. See, you got the dreaming, but you also got the brains and the discipline to do it right. Anyway.” She takes her hand out from under mine and pats my arm. “Like I said, you go ahead and sign me up for a home. Soon enough I won’t know the difference between that and a sock hop anyhow.”

  With what money? I’d like to ask her.

  “So, how else am I like my dad?”

  She sits back in her chair, frowning at me like she would a complicated sudoku puzzle. Silent seconds tick by, and I think maybe she’s forgotten what I asked her and maybe that’s just as well.

  “You’ve got the Geneva nose, for starters. And when you’re upset about something, you bring your jaw forward and tip your chin up, just daring the world to knock you silly.” She demonstrates, and the effect is eerie, not only because I can see myself doing that so clearly but because I saw my father do it so recently. “When you were a kid, you were a fidgeter, and that was just like Robert. I think he took up smoking because it was an easy way to fidget, flicking that lighter and tapping his cigarettes. Sometimes he’d pack the tobacco down so hard he couldn’t light it.” She smiles, for a moment seeming to be lost in the fog of memory. Then she looks up at me again. “But you don’t fidget so much anymore. And that’s the big difference, like I said before. Discipline. And that you got from Maeve and all them Callahans. Your uncle Mike, rest his soul, running that bowling alley, even your grandma Callahan. And though you may not show it, you love like a Callahan, too. Hard and life-long. Not just when it’s convenient, running hot and cold.”

  I open my mouth to protest, remembering Marc and the keys left on the table.

  She stops me by raising her hand and saying, “I know you’re not married yet, but maybe this is why. You’re gonna wait for just that guy you can love hard and for life. That’s not just anybody.”

  I picture Beck’s solemn face during the dance, then his inscription in the book. I imagine life with you.

  “What’s eating you?” She takes a sip of her coffee and stares at me over the rim.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie to me, doll. Anyway, I’ll probably forget in the morning.”

  I chuckle at this. “It’s nothing, Sal. It’s just . . . I’m a little confused, is all.”

  Sally leans in. “Ain’t we all? Look, honey, I waited half my life for a man that wasn’t mine.”

  “What . . . What makes you think I’m talking about a man?”

  “I don’t know nothing about nothing. But I do know that waiting around on someone else is no way to live. It wasn’t my choice not to have babies, honey. By the time I gave up on him, I was too old.” She heaves herself up out of the chair with a dramatic show of stretching and creaky bones, as if to drive home the point. She pats me on the shoulder as she passes and plants a kiss on the top of my updo. “But it was sure a pleasure watching you grow up, Anna. You sure are something special.”

  She walks down toward the darkened bedroom she shares with my mother, softly whistling “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

  Chapter 54

  Cami

  It’s impressive, watching Anna suited up for battle. She’s in her severe, chic black suit and she’s wrangled her hair behind her head into a bun. She’s perched at the edge of her narrow childhood bed, one leg crossed over the other, her foot tapping slowly in her dangerously sharp heels as she stares down at the settlement document in her hands.

  Per my instructions, it says that my father gives me the house in exchange for my not suing him over stealing my trust money. According to my watch, our meeting starts in a half hour.

  As Anna pointed out, such a document does not, however, protect him from criminal proceedings.

  Down the hall, I can hear Maeve rustling in her room. She’s packing things, though none of us know if she’s joining Anna in the apartment she picked out or if she’s made other plans. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for two people to ignore each other in such a cramped space, but they have not exchanged words beyond “Excuse me” since their fight.

  Anna tells me that she encountered her mother in the kitchen yesterday, the day after the wedding, and they just stared at each other and walked huge circles through the room to avoid actually crossing paths.

  Part of me wants to shake Maeve, but I know I’m the one who stayed half the summer with a man I was afraid of, pretending I was too tough to be worried, too savvy to be at real risk.

  So yeah, I’m not one to lecture about delusion. Also, I know she won’t believe someone else anyway, no matter how reasonable and right that other person might be. Even her own daughter.

  Anna looks up. “You ready? And you’re sure this is all you want?”

  “I just want his drunk ass out of that house.”

  “Well, then. Let’s go.”

  My dad insisted on meeting at the house, saying he didn’t want our business all over town, and seeing as Anna doesn’t have an actual office, this was the best we could do.

  “So much for neutral territory,” Anna had grumbled, but I told her no territory was neutral in Haven.

  Anna manages to walk smoothly up the gravel driveway in her heels, her briefcase swinging at her side. She skips the doorbell and hammers on the door with her knuckles.

  When my father opens the door, the first thing I notice is that he’s clean shaven and smells like soap. His tie is crooked and his shirt is stained yellow at the armpits, but it’s an actual buttoned-up shirt.

  Maybe he looked something like this when my mother fell for him. It had to be something.

  “Mr. Drayton.” Anna sticks out her hand. “Thanks for meeting us.” She shakes his hand hard, hard enough to surprise him. I stifle a smile. He wasn’t expecting much, I can tell. “Is your attorney on his way, then?”

  My father clears his throat roughly. “He, uh. He can’t make it.”

  Anna looks around the front of the house and settles on the kitchen table, which is only marginally cluttered. I can see the house has already begun its slide back to squalor in the short time I’ve been gone.

  “Do you need to reschedule, Mr. Drayton? Or, I could schedule a court date if you prefer, and we’ll let a judge hash this out. We don’t have a great deal of time.”

  Actually, we have nothing but time, really, since she doesn’t have a job. Technically I could go back to tutoring, but I don’t have any money of my own, and Steve won’t have me back. My pitiful salary there isn’t enough to pay rent by myself, so I’m starting over, too.

  My dad just grumbles and indicates a chair. I’m sure he couldn’t find an actual lawyer to take his case.

  I lean against the kitchen wall, preferring to stand.

  Anna launches into her legal speak, explaining that he stole what was mine and never even told me it existed, and how much interest he would owe if she took him to court to pay it back now.

  “But this could all be solved, right now, today. You just have to do one thing.”

  He slumps in his chair like a kid in the back room of math class, ready to throw a spitball. “What?”

  “Only one asset of yours comes even close to the amount of this debt to your daughter.” Anna waves her hand to indicate her surroundings. “This house.”

  “My house? She wants this house? Bullshit. It’s mine.”

  I can’t take it anymore. “It was my mother’s!”

  He wheels on me but stays seated. “She was my wife! And what was hers then is mine now. I deserve it after what she put me through.”

  “She put you through?”

  “Do you know how much hospitals cost? You think I had any insurance, running my own shop? That little life insurance policy we had on her was enough to bury her and didn’t even cover half the debt she left me with.”

  “You act like she got sick on purpose,
you miserable fuck.”

  He slams his hand down on the table and uses it to prop himself up to stand. He stares at me with the clearest eyes I’ve seen in months. “I won’t have you disrespecting me.”

  “I won’t have you insulting my mother.”

  I step closer, my heart going wild in my chest, my hands itching for something heavy and blunt to hold and swing.

  “I needed that money. Not you. I needed it because I had debt, and a business, and little kids to feed and a mortgage. So yeah, I got the hospital off my back, and I paid off this house so I wouldn’t have to worry about it no more. Pam wouldn’t let me touch a dime of those rich assholes’ money the whole time she was alive, so yeah, I took it when I needed it, and I needed it because of her.”

  “It wasn’t her fault.”

  “It wasn’t mine, neither! She’s the one who died and went off to heaven or whatever, and I’m the one who had to stay here and listen to you kids bawl and tell you she wasn’t coming back. You kept asking me! You kept asking, even though you were old enough to know! You killed me every time you asked!”

  My dad crumples down in the chair, keening and roaring and pounding his fists.

  I never saw this, not once, after Mom died. I heard slammed doors, I heard cans being opened behind those doors, and I watched him chain smoke for hours.

  I glance at Anna. She has her phone in her hand, thumb on the buttons.

  We both wait, until his wailing loses force like the air hissing out of a tire.

  He sits back abruptly. “Gimme the paper.”

  Anna slides it over. “I think you’ll find, Mr. Drayton . . .”

  “Shut the fuck up and tell me where to sign.”

  He signs in all the required places and stands up so roughly his chair knocks over behind him.

  I clear my throat. “Dad, I . . .”

  “I suppose you’re gonna sell it and give half the money to your fruit brother and that fag boyfriend. Or maybe you’ll just use it to do your whoring. It’s still my house for a week. Get out or I’ll call the cops.”

  He yanks open the fridge, knocking over bottles inside.

  Anna has to pull me out by my elbow as my father roots around in the refrigerator, cursing into its cold interior.

  The drive back to the Nee Nance is silent and slow.

  “Thanks,” I tell Anna when she parks in the alley.

  ”You’re welcome. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  “For what? We won, yeah?” I swing my legs out of the car and try to feel triumphant. If I feel anything right now, it’s relief. I’ve just snatched something precious out of danger, like a vase that was teetering on the edge of a mantel.

  He’s stirred up memories I haven’t considered in years and would rather not think of now. The tears and the clinging, the massive hole left by mother.

  Anna follows me inside the dim store interior, and I prop myself against the front counter, my eyes unfocused on the brown, waxy floor. We did both keep asking my father about Mom’s death. We couldn’t believe it after so many relatives had assured us our mother was “a fighter” and we just had to keep hoping. We did hope, Trent and me; we even prayed the way my aunt told us. And she died anyway, and we’d been so believing of those grown-ups, but then they didn’t have answers; they all drifted away, in fact, after the funeral and the sorting through of her affairs; they all floated away until it was Dad, Trent, and me, and Dad didn’t have any good answers, either.

  It was his job as a father to answer those questions, though, as best he could. To take care of us, not to drown himself in booze and scream obscenities and knock me down the stairs when I got in his way and then tell the school I fell.

  Maeve appears at the top of the stairs, and we both turn to her. “How did it go?” she asks.

  Anna shrugs. “She got the house.”

  Maeve nods, seeming to read the air in the room and understand that congratulations is not the word.

  “Cami, I hate to ask you this, but could you excuse us, please?”

  Maeve seems pale and a little shrunken. Anna sets down her briefcase and folds her arms.

  I say, “Of course. I need some air, anyway.”

  I leave them to their own trials and walk out on the summer-baked sidewalk, trying to let the sun burn dry my freshly turned grief.

  Chapter 55

  Anna

  It takes my mother some time to drift down the stairs. As she does, she holds her own arms tight, as if she’s cold.

  “I got a call,” she says. “While you were out.”

  I wait, not daring to guess.

  “It was your father. He said . . .” She lowers her gaze to the floor. “He said he wanted to check on me and to find out what you had to say about him. He’d wanted to call earlier but said he was giving me ‘space.’ ” She chuckles darkly and looks around at the bones of the store. “As if I need more of that. Anyway. He said there was a change in plans.” My mother laughs, again, slightly hysterically. She steadies herself on an empty shelf. “The land? The trailer? Turns out Charley sold it to someone else with actual money and income, but not to worry! He says, babe, don’t worry, I’ve got another spot all picked out . . .” She winks and assumes a stance very much like my dad would: all big arms and big smiles, trying to take up more space, as if to puff up his sorry little idea.

  She walks across to me and holds out a hand. It’s an odd gesture, to shake the hand of one’s own mother, but out of reflex I offer my hand. She takes it and turns it palm up. From her pocket she takes out something small and places it in my palm, folding my hand over it.

  She smiles, but her eyes are crinkled up in grief.

  I open my hand and her wedding ring sits there, looking so small in my palm, the diamond little more than a chip of stone.

  “I don’t want this,” I say. “What would I do with it?”

  She shrugs. “ Do whatever you like with it. Sell it, throw it in the lake. It’s over. It took me twenty years to say it, stupid broad that I am, but it’s done.”

  I slide the ring onto my pinky finger for safe-keeping, until I get upstairs to put it somewhere safe, and consider its ultimate fate. I look back at my mom, and she seems withered and wrung out. I’ve felt this way at work, when I’ve won a tough battle, but both sides—the people, not the lawyers—look drained and white-faced in the aftermath. Victory is not always a pleasure.

  “I’m not happy or anything, Mom. In fact . . .” I swallow hard and approach her, finding the words hard to conjure, even to my mother, who has already seen me as vulnerable and exposed as I’ve ever been in my life. “In fact . . . deep down I was hoping he was coming back for real.”

  I embrace her and let a couple of unfamiliar tears fall into her hair. I’m too tall with my shoes on. I step out of them so I can be smaller again, more like the child she raised by herself. “Maybe you were the braver one for daring to hope out loud,” I tell her.

  She chuckles sadly. “Let’s not get crazy here. No, I was just blind. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Mom.”

  For once, it’s my mother who tries to step back first. But I don’t let her. Not just yet.

  I help my mother clean up her room after I change out of my suit and put her ring, wrapped in tissue paper, inside a small box of childhood mementoes: certificates, medals, awards. Evidence of my early potential, which so far has brought me right back here, and a future no more clear than the horizon in a morning fog.

  Mom has three piles going: keep, donate, trash.

  She puts her hand on her sewing machine. “Will we have room in the apartment?”

  I consider it. “Sure. More room than we have here, right? And it fits here.”

  “Well, you’ll have your things from Chicago.”

  “I’ll be getting rid of a lot of that. Pretty stupid to have a cappuccino maker and a wine refrigerator.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that!” calls out Sally as she passes, her wig back on but crooked. She’s been
digging trash out of the kitchen, in merry spirits. Mom told me she’s going to sit Sally down tonight and let her know all about Robert.

  The phone rings, and my mother and I exchange a look. “I’ll get it,” I say.

  I trot down the hall, and to my immense relief, it’s Agatha from the boutique. “Hello, Maeve.”

  “This is Anna. But don’t worry, everyone makes that mistake. I’ll get her for you.”

  “Great,” says Agatha. “Because that great-niece of mine thinks we oughta talk.”

  Amy? Talk about what? I’d like to ask, but Agatha doesn’t appreciate nosy types, so I give Mom the phone with a shrug and go back to my own packing.

  Twenty minutes later, Mom finds me in the kitchen, stacking pots and pans in a Seagram’s 7 box. Our moving supplies make us look like drunkards.

  She wanders in, looking lost and perplexed.

  “What is it, Mom? What did Agatha want?”

  “She’s thinking of giving me a job.”

  “Really?” I abandon the packing and wipe beads of sweat off my head with my forearm. “You don’t look happy.”

  “It’s not final yet; she’s thinking about it. She said she was all set to retire because of her arthritis, only Amy’s insisting she hire me instead to be her seamstress in the shop. She might even let me manage it.”

  I remember Mom sewing some things for Amy back in school, when Agatha’s didn’t have anything suitable, and certainly nothing in the mall would have fit. Good of her to remember that.

  “Well, if that works out, it would be nice.”

  “I’m just so shocked. First, Veronica pitching in to help me watch Sally, when I . . . Anyway. They actually had fun, Veronica said. And the other day Doreen came in to tell me her daughter wouldn’t mind spending some time with her, either. Rhonda would take Sally with her for her church food pantry volunteering, said she’d enjoy the company because it gets boring sometimes.”

  My mother’s color comes back a bit, and her face gets more animated. “If Agatha gives me this job, you can go back!”