by Unknown
Images came to her of her mother’s seasonal decorations: miniature haunted forests with wisps of ghosts in a long container filled with twig trees and mosses of different colors for Halloween, sparkling white winter fantasies under domes in their living room with colorful birds and glistening holly leaves and bright berries for Christmas, delicate arrangements of forced blooming branches in the early spring that were Zen-like in their simplicity.
Daniel said, “They’re quite a gang – it was fun meeting them. They’ve been friends since they were kids?”
“Yeah, they’ve been friends forever. They’re really amazing people, too. Ben is always saying that there’s no one like my mom, but, really, there’s no one like any of the Barefooters. They’re just special.”
“It must have been great having them for aunts growing up. Didn’t you say they babysat you a lot?”
Hannah laughed a little. “Constantly – I mean, they were definitely my main babysitters. Especially Aunt Zo. Mom really couldn’t afford even the neighborhood girls. Yeah, they were around a lot and definitely always on Captain’s. It was a party!” she said, smiling.
Daniel looked down at her. “Well, there it is. Your next book.”
“What?”
“Why not write something nonfiction this time. Write about your mother and her friends. Honestly, every story you tell me about them is fascinating. Maybe that’s your next book.”
Hannah had started feeling unmoored and anxious a week after she finished Wait Another Day and the feeling had only grown over time. She missed writing. Yet she couldn’t figure out what was next. Every idea she had felt wrong. But the Barefooters?
Hannah shook her head a little. “I don’t know. After everything that’s happened…, I don’t know. It seems wrong. Invasive.”
Daniel propped himself up on his elbow to look at Hannah. “Invasive? Wouldn’t your mom be thrilled to see a book about her and her friends? They must all be so psyched to have each other. Damn, I haven’t stayed in touch with one of my friends from high school or college. And these were guys I hung out with constantly!”
Hannah could see what he was saying. The Barefooters were a phenomenon. But it felt oddly like trespassing, even though it was her life too. No, she’d find stories elsewhere, off of her mother’s turf. Wasn’t it always this way? Wasn’t she always stepping all over her mother’s turf, getting in her way by being born in the first place? She felt something hot and acidic in the back of her throat, a pulse of nausea.
She swallowed, fighting the rising bile. “No. I’m not – I don’t know. Can we talk about something else?”
A week later, another letter was on its way to her mother. No reply had come in the mail and her mother’s phone continued to go straight to voicemail.
Hannah’s innocently written and maliciously reviewed novel had managed to deeply hurt her wonderful loving but flawed mother, causing the first significant rift between them. And there was no one she could turn to. Her maternal grandparents were deceased and there were no other relatives that she knew of. Daniel loved her, but what could he do? The Barefooters loved her too, but with the reserve of women who knew full well that this was not their child but the child of their best friend, invisible do-not-trespass signs everywhere. Aunt Zo was the only one to breach that barrier, occasionally calling Hannah after Keeley had declared war, reassuring her that the review was obviously false and slanderous and that, somehow, everything would work out eventually. But even as she reassured, she begged in the next breath not to be outed to Keeley for calling.
Hannah knew she had to find a way back in, that the labyrinth of her mother’s heart had secret entrances and one entrance that was not a secret at all: the Barefooters. Daniel was right, but it would be a novel.
September 19, 2010
Dear Mom,
You’re so angry. I wish I could talk to you, to explain, but the fortress is locked and the walls are high. The moat is filled with piranhas and even the Barefooters won’t return my calls. I wrote a novel, not a memoir. That reviewer was wrong, but what she said still hurt you horribly. I’m so sorry.
Anyway, I would keep on apologizing, but I’m pretty sure you’re not interested in hearing it. The reason I’m writing is I need your help. You know from my telling you one billion times that all I want in life is to be a writer. The kind of writer that can live off of her earnings, not wait tables or be a secretary to earn a living, scratching out a few words on a page here and there. My next project, with or without your blessing, is about women’s friendships. I want to write a novel about a gang of girls, ones eerily like the Barefooters. Of course, it wouldn’t be a memoir and I wouldn’t name names. I would change it up so much you’d probably barely recognize yourselves.
But I need your help to write this. I witnessed your four-way friendship all of my life, but I know nothing about your childhood except that you and Grandma never got along. I do know that you Barefooters met on Captain’s Island as children. I’ve overheard a few stories here and there from those days, but they’re not enough.
Please help me, Mom. Help me write something beautiful and honest about your friendship with the Barefoot Girls (fictionalized). You have something remarkable that women around the world would love to hear about, something I think I can put on paper and make breathe. And I can’t write it without you. As you know, I’ve always been a loner. I’ve always prayed for just a drop of the people-magic you have by the bucket.
I hope hope hope that you’ll call me, or just write me about this. If you don’t want to do it for me, do it for all the women in the world who crave great girlfriends and would be touched to their very cores by your story.
Love,
Hannah
Two and a half weeks later, Hannah woke with a start from a dream where something huge and dark with catlike eyes was whispering to her, telling her she was hateful, that everyone hated her, but kept it a secret. The creature slithered cold and shiny against her, furry and serpentine at the same time, its red raw mouth inches from her ear.
In the dream, there were people in the next room trying to break down the door to the darkened room she was in with the creature, but the door wouldn’t open, only pulsed and swelled as they pushed at it. The huge creature had wrapped around her and was squeezing. “Everyone hates you. Hates you!”
Falling back on her pillow, Hannah blinked in the solid darkness that was unbroken by moonlight. She looked in the direction of Daniel’s side of the bed. It was so quiet over there. She listened. No sound, not even gentle breathing. She reached over and felt the empty cold sheets. He was gone.
Suddenly, the sweat coating her chest and arms felt icy. He was gone. Daniel had left her. Because she was horrible. Hateful. She was all alone. Her mother would never speak to her again. She had rescinded her mother’s stormy but brilliant love, pushed it away, leaving nothing.
Daniel knew. Keeley had called him and told him the truth: that Hannah was despicable, an ungrateful and blindly cruel person. He had been warned and had wisely left.
Hannah’s breath started to hitch. She would die. She didn’t want to live. Write a book about friendship! What a laugh! She didn’t have a friend in the world and didn’t deserve one.
Hannah curled up on her side, her knees against her chest and felt that old feeling, one she felt often as a little girl. The one where the world was either growing bigger, or she was growing very small. The walls rising up, ceiling stretching away. Oh, God, help me.
Then she heard a creak on the stairs, and jolted. Another creak. She sat up. Someone was there, on the stairs. She tensed her muscles, straining not to run. Let it happen. Let whoever it was kill her. Let it be over.
The door swung open revealing an even deeper darkness beyond. Hannah’s control faltered and she let out a little squeal.
The black hallway said, “Honey?”
It was Daniel.
Of course.
Hannah breathed out a sobbing gasp. “Oh, oh, God!”
; “What? What? Did I scare you?” Daniel said as he crossed the room and set down the glass of water he was holding on the bedside table before climbing into bed with Hannah and putting his arm around her. They lay back down together.
Hannah couldn’t get her breath back and she gasped at the air, feeling as if her lungs were cinched by something and unable to expand to take in oxygen.
“Oh, honey, I did scare you. I just went downstairs to get something to eat. That apple pie you got at Whole Paycheck was calling my name; I couldn’t resist anymore,” he said, laughing a little. “I ate three slices!”
Hannah couldn’t speak, laugh, respond. She was suffocating. He hadn’t left this time, but he would. He would find out about her, and then he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. She couldn’t stand it, knowing this. She pulled off her engagement ring. Tears sprang into her eyes.
“What, you’re not going to tell me what a pig I am? There’s only one slice left of that pie!”
Holding the ring tightly in her right hand, she reached to turn on the lamp with her left. The room flooded with light. The room was how it always was when Daniel slept over, piles of clothing scattered on the floor, his overnight bag open and spilling out in the corner. She pulled away from Daniel and sat up in bed, hugging her knees and still holding the ring. She couldn’t look at him.
“Oh, no! Now I know I’m in trouble!” Daniel said, laughing. When she didn’t turn to face him, his laughter died.
A pause. “What? What’s up?”
She glanced back at Daniel as he propped himself up on his elbow and then looked back at her clenched hand in her lap.
“Daniel…,”
He sat up more fully, sitting next to her and looking first at her face and then down at her fist which she was staring at. She opened her hand slowly, revealing the ring in her palm.
His breath caught.
“Daniel, I need to...I know-,” she said and stopped. What could she say? The truth, at least some of it. “I’m scared. I mean, I want to marry you, more than anything. I just…, I’m just scared.”
Daniel’s voice was suddenly very deep and it wobbled a bit. He sounded scared, too. “I don’t…, why didn’t you say anything before? What…, why now? We haven’t even picked a date?”
And it was Hannah who had resisted picking a date. Or a place. Or anything. Whenever he brought it up, she managed to get out of answering, sidling out of the conversation as subtly as she could.
She said, “I just need to stop. Stop everything. I just had one of the worst, the worst panic attacks I’ve had in years.., and it’s not your fault! It’s everything. It’s my mom, it’s my book and that review. I’m all backwards and I just can’t – I just need some time.”
“So, fine…you need time,” he said and sighed. “Maybe I do, too. I mean, don’t think I didn’t notice you avoiding the subject of our wedding for the last three months. Maybe we rushed into this too quickly.”
A falling feeling swept through Hannah. She had destroyed it all! “So, so you don’t want to get married anymore?” Her voice was so small, she could barely hear herself.
There was a pause. Hannah looked over at him and saw that he was looking down, shaking his head slowly. “No, I didn’t say that.”
She waited for him to elaborate. The room had grown horribly quiet.
“What then? I don’t understand. I mean, can’t I tell you I’m scared?” The tears that had been welling in her eyes fell now, dripping down her cheeks.
Daniel looked up at her and softened, wrapping his arms around her. “Of course you can.”
Crying now, unable to hold back, Hannah choked out, “Do you want your ring back? I understand, I do.”
Daniel shook his head and hugged her tighter. “No, never,” he said and loudly swallowed. “I want you to be my wife.”
Slowly, Hannah’s tears abated. She put her ring back on and it felt good, better than it had ever felt before. Daniel saw her put it back on and squeezed her tight, pulling her down to the bed. She reached for the lamp and switched it off.
He kissed her and his mouth felt wonderful and warm, welcoming. She kissed him back and felt herself melting as their hands searched and then hungrily touched each other, stroking and then reaching for their most sensitive areas. They came together with perfect knowledge and deft skill, growing hot, sheets thrown back. Then they were pressing into each other deeply, both crying a little and then laughing before finding their release.
As they fell back asleep, tumbled in each other’s arms, morning light slowly stole under the pulled shades in the bedroom, sifting onto the floor and walls and revealing everything.
The next day, wearing her ring for his sake, she drove Daniel to the train station, kissing him over and over to soften the fact that she wouldn’t plan their next visit. She just couldn’t think that far ahead all of the sudden. A subtle darkness seemed to be closing in on her, filled with seething invisible things she feared seeing.
She didn’t tell him about something she’d realized the night before: something that all the kisses and hugs and love he could possibly give her would not erase the knowledge of. She knew he was going to leave her, and that by leaving her, it would be the last straw. She would die if she was left again.
Her certainty that she would be abandoned by him felt as solid and immovable as a mountain within her, and no matter how much her psyche tried to weave and dodge, she could feel the blow coming.
Chapter 2
Keeley, feeling exuberant from her run in Central Park, bounded out of the elevator that opened into the foyer of her apartment with Ben and stopped to smell the roses - literally. Huge English tea roses, heady with scent, filled a silver bowl that sat on the cherry-wood table she and Ben had selected in an antiques shop in Paris last May. The table sat in the center of the foyer, highlighted by a stream of sunlight from the overhead skylight, and the pink flowers seemed to glow hotly in the light.
“Ahhh, now that’s a rose!” Keeley said, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply again, the rich sweetness of it something she could practically taste. She took one last whiff and picked up the folded cotton towel she had left for herself on the table, using it to blot her moist face and neck.
There was nothing like a run to cleanse her of bad feelings, especially on a gorgeous late September day in New York when the heavy moist air of the summer has left for good and is replaced by a crisp freshness that made living in the city almost bearable again. She felt good finally, her daughter’s betrayal still stinging, but pushed to the corner this morning. She would leave it there and just enjoy this happy alive feeling, her “blue-sky” as she liked to call it.
Looking around the huge foyer of the apartment, once again she was struck by her bizarre situation and felt the same mix of jingly-jangly happiness and disbelief she’d felt the first time she’d seen it. What was she doing here? How had this happened to her?
Ben, of course. Big Ben, her savior, her biggest fan – except for the Barefooters. Well, the Barefooters loved her, but they didn’t worship her. Ben worshipped her and Keeley reveled in it. She had to be worshipped. Her daughter had worshipped her once-
Keeley shook her head. “No, I will not think about that person today!” she said, and reached for the mail that Maria, their housekeeper, had brought in with her that morning and put in the tray they kept on the foyer table for mail. Next to it was a smaller tray for Ben’s change, which he hated to keep in his pockets, and keys. A place for everything and everything in its place: that was Ben.
Keeley had never been organized and found it impossible to follow his lead. She always forgot to use the tray, throwing her keys and purses down without thought in her rush to the next thing, and then spending frantic minutes tearing around the apartment searching for them later, always running late.
“Why don’t you use the tray, and that shelf I put in the hall closet for your purses?” Ben would ask, checking his watch again and trying to keep any strain out of his voice that wo
uld only make her panic more. Keeley thought of that shelf for her purses and smiled. That was Ben for you, always trying to help.
“Junk, junk, Ben, junk. Hello, a letter,” Keeley murmured, going through the mail. Then she saw the return address. Hannah.
Not again. What did she want now?
Keeley felt her blue-sky deflating. “Damn it!” She used the letter opener that was also kept in the mail tray and stabbed at the envelope, ripping it open. “What, Hannah? What do you want?”
September 28, 2010
Dear Mom,
I don’t know what to do. All I do is make a mess. The question has become: what am I doing getting married? Won’t I just make a mess of that, too?
I’m putting my marriage to Daniel on hold until I can figure out if what’s wrong with me is repairable, or if it runs to the core of who I am. Do I even know how to love? You always knew how, even if you made mistakes, you knew the essence of it.
Right now I’m certain that Daniel doesn’t know me at all, and when he does, he’ll leave.
Please wish me well – your good thoughts always seem to make things better. I’d sign this letter “love”, but what do I know?
Hannah
Keeley read the letter through again. “Shit! Shit! Shitty shit!”
Her daughter’s novel, still unread, sat on her bedside table. Keeley had never been a reader or a writer, though she had fantasies of writing a memoir: bestselling, of course. Now Keeley couldn’t bring herself to read Hannah’s book, ever since that jagged-toothed bitch at the Fairfield Tribune wrote that awful point-and-sneer review and made it impossible to even look at it. “Alcoholic” was overstating it – she simply adored her wine and margaritas like many people did. “Abuse and neglect” was another thing altogether. No one had been more loved and coddled than her daughter, the Barefooter’s own baby girl. If only Keeley had enjoyed such a blessed and cushy childhood.