by Unknown
“Yes, why? Have you heard something else?”
“I, well, my mother and Michael-“
Mrs. McGrath slapped her fingers down on the table hard, her rings making a muffled rapping noise as they hit the tablecloth-covered plastic table. “Now, Hannah. It’s time. Time to tell truths. No more lies. Your mother isn’t very honest with you about herself.”
Hannah’s hands fell off of the table and into her lap and a zinging feeling swept through her. Suddenly, she didn’t know if she wanted to be here. Part of her wanted to leave, leave immediately, before she heard what this woman had to say. What kept her rooted in her seat was the dark vine of jealousy that had been growing in her heart for years, its spreading tendrils everywhere now, rampant.
“I just want to help you,” Mrs. McGrath continued, nodding with her head tilted slightly, looking thoughtfully at Hannah. “The truth shall set you free, the Bible says. I truly believe that. It’s clear your mother and your mother’s friends are only going to tell you what serves them. But does that serve you? Like this nonsense about Michael and your mother. The truth is that Michael was doing your mother a favor. He was being kind to her when no one else would be, forgiving her wicked ways. He was a saint, that’s what he was.”
“A saint…” Hannah murmured. It was the same word the Barefooters used to describe him. A saint, a sweetheart: that was Michael. Of course, that was the end of the revelation every time; they clammed up if queried further, glancing at each other, at Keeley, and changing the subject. For the first time, right now, she could finally get some answers. She cleared her throat. “What do you mean, he was doing her a favor?”
“Oh,” Mrs. McGrath said, smiling and shaking her head. “Michael felt sorry for Keeley. She was like a…, like an orphan. She never went home. Her parents were barely around. She looked like a mess most of the time. She just ran around the island like a wild animal with those friends of hers. She never learned how to behave properly, like a civilized person. Michael took pity on her. Tried to be kind to her. And that was his biggest mistake.”
“Mistake?” Hannah repeated. She tried to imagine this strange wild-animal version of her mom. It was so different from what the Barefooters said and what she knew: that Keeley was popular, that she was athletic, that she was always the good-hearted Pollyanna of the bunch, smoothing things over between the friends and making everyone laugh with jokes and pranks and silliness.
“Yes, because she killed him, you know,” Mrs. McGrath said, her voice wavering and tears popping into her eyes in spite of her plastered-on saccharin smile. “Her whorish ways are what killed him. I’m sorry, Hannah, but it’s the truth. Your mother is a whore. Michael was just trying to help her, but she broke his heart. I’m one hundred percent sure that she told him that night, the night he died, that she was pregnant from rutting with some boy. When he heard that, his heart just tore apart. He couldn’t stand it: how low she was.”
“He was running from her words, her despicable hateful words, when he lost control of the car. Those words, Keeley’s announcement of the existence of her bastard child, were the last thing he heard. He found out about you, it was you she was carrying, and he realized that all his care and kindness couldn’t make the world right. The reality of this sick sad world was too much for him. In a way…”Mrs. McGrath said, trailing off. She had turned away from Hannah, face going soft and slack as she stared off in the distance.
Hannah sat perched on the edge of her chair, her muscles clenched. This was the truth? But it couldn’t be! No, she couldn’t be a product of some one-night stand. Her mother wasn’t like that, was she? Of course, Keeley loved attention, but she wasn’t promiscuous. Or had she been back then?
“She didn’t want you,” Mrs. McGrath said in a faint voice, still staring off into the distance. “She was going to have an abortion. One of her friends must have talked her out of it. The whole thing is so sad. It’s all a tragedy, a terrible terrible tragedy. Oh, Michael-” Mrs. McGrath moaned, covered her face with her hands and started crying, her sobs raw-sounding, agonized.
Hannah stared at Mrs. McGrath feeling a numb weight drop within her. Her mother hadn’t wanted her: the product of some fling. That was it. It explained everything. The wall of silence about the past, her mother’s distance at times, the way she caught Keeley staring at her as if she was thinking about something, considering. Keeley might have loved Michael, but their “relationship” was made up, a way of legitimizing what Keeley had done, making her baby a product of love rather than one of lust and poor impulse control.
Mrs. McGrath’s crying became louder, like the crying at a funeral, beseeching God, needing to be heard. Her hands dropped from her face and she turned it up to the sky and wailed, black mascara coloring the tears that coated her wound-striped cheeks.
Hannah couldn’t stand it. She stood, the chair tipping back from the suddenness of her movement and falling back on its side with a clattering crash.
Jerking at the sound, Mrs. McGrath looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, her wail gulped back. She stared at Hannah. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice squeaking. She glanced around the deck. “Where’s Michael? He was just…Mrs. Ferguson?” she called toward the back screen door as if she knew someone was just inside, nearby. She looked up quizzically at Hannah, “I’m sorry, did he invite you, too? But this is our time.”
Hannah looked at the woman, who was talking in a high-pitched girlish voice, with dawning dread. “I’ve got to go.” She backed up a few steps.
“Yes. Go. I’ll tell him you had to leave. This is my time with Michael. My time,” Mrs. McGrath said the last with a pout, her breath still hitching.
Hannah turned and left, walking at first and then running down the boardwalk toward Pam’s, the woman’s words repeating over and over in her head.
Chapter 35
Amy closed Hannah’s novel and placed it on the bedside table. Beside her in bed Gus was a snoring hump under the covers, having fallen asleep only moments after kissing her on the cheek and turning over to face away from the glare of Amy’s small reading lamp. She envied her husband’s ability to do that, the way he easily shut on and shut off, when she had to wind down slowly, watching a silly sitcom or sitting outside to look at the stars until she was calm enough to fall asleep. Otherwise, lying down, her brain went into overdrive: spitting out ideas and lists and reviewing every problem in her life, searching for solutions.
Like now. And this time, she couldn’t let it spin on in her head. She had to do something. Because something was very wrong, and she hadn’t let herself see it before tonight.
She eased out of bed, slid her feet into her slippers and shrugged on a robe over her pj’s. Who knew how long this would take? Would she sleep at all tonight? She reached for the light switch on the reading lamp and flicked it off, plunging the room into darkness. She knew her way and she didn’t want to chance forgetting it was on, Gus waking to its shine on the crumpled but empty sheets beside him. She reached for Hannah’s book and, feeling its still-warm silky cover, grabbed it.
She padded quietly through the bedroom, pulled open the door to the hall just wide enough, and slipped out. The hallway was bathed in the soft rosy light of a small shell-shaped nightlight plugged in halfway down the hall. Sam was still openly afraid of monsters in his closet and under his bed, so there were nightlights in his room, in the hallway, and in the bathroom. Elliot, at six, was young enough to still believe in them, but worshipped his year-older brother, Ryan, who adamantly declared that there were no such things as monsters. Only babies believed in monsters. So, no monsters! Amy hoped that Ryan would continue being so innocently skeptical. She remembered when she was young and also vocally and with great conviction “knew” there weren’t any monsters. Until she met one or two, that is. The only thing was that monsters didn’t live under the bed, or lurk in dark closets. They walked right up to you in the bright light of day looking like everyone else.
She resisted the temptation t
o check on the boys, a favorite hobby of hers, particularly when they were asleep. Their open relaxed faces and unaffected poses as they slept reminded her of what they were like as babies; she loved how pure and simple and good they were, how tender and vulnerable. She felt love for them all the time, but when they were awake she had to deal with their demands, measure out discipline as needed, and keep a watchful and protective eye out at all times. Asleep, she could just appreciate them, revel in them. Had her ever-practical mother felt this luscious love for her and her brothers?
Clutching the book in one hand, she went downstairs and into their large farmhouse kitchen that had been made enormous by knocking out the walls that had led to the dining room and the living room, making the room an everything-room with space for casual entertaining by the fireplace, socializing at the bar they’d created along one side of the kitchen’s island, and eating family-style meals at the long pine table that stood them for Cheerios and scrambled eggs in the morning as well as candlelit three-course dinner parties with the Barefooters and other friends.
She flicked a switch at the door and small soft built-in lights in the ceiling illuminated all of the surfaces in the kitchen but left the rest of the room in shadow. Her room, her domain – that was her kitchen. The boys had their playroom and bedrooms of their own, Gus had his cluttered dark den and his office over the garage and his tool shed. The boys’ and Gus’s rooms, though monitored to keep the chaos at a dull roar, were usually a mess. But this room was like her and her mind: nearly military in its neatness and spare in décor. Clutter was dismissed quickly; much the way Amy dismissed people who she felt weren’t worthy.
It bothered her at times, the way she wasn’t able to embrace everyone wholeheartedly like Keeley and Pam did, the way she wasn’t full of creativity and artistic visions like Zooey and Keeley were. But, at 41, she had come to realize that this was who she was, whether she liked it or not, and though she could be restrained and judgmental with outsiders, her love for her family and her friends burned fierce and eternal and there were no bounds to her determination to fight for them. Nothing would stop her but her own death. Often, she was sure that even that wouldn’t stop her; that she would return even then, wreaking vengeance as a poltergeist until justice was done.
The 40’s style round yellow clock on the wall above the dual sinks was revealed, too. She stopped and looked at it. Really? Was it that late? There was a snuffling sound in the mud room and she heard Molly’s clicking toenails as she crossed the wooden floor from her basket to the glass-paned door that separated the room from the kitchen. Molly did not whine, and that made Amy smile a little. Good, they were getting somewhere.
Molly, a golden retriever they had adopted to train to be a seeing-eye dog, had been a tougher dog than the last few ones, resisting discipline and showing a willful streak that Amy knew required an even firmer hand than she usually used. Resisting the urge to look at the mud room and acknowledge Molly, Amy walked over to her small desk nestled in the corner next to it and put down the book. Okay, let’s get to it. No more waiting. In the morning the sunlight and normalcy would reassure her too much, make her doubt her gut feeling tonight, the one that hit her like a speeding train as she read Hannah’s book. If she didn’t have warm-heartedness or creativity on her side, she did have excellent spot-on instincts.
Looking at her desk chair, she contemplated sitting down to make her calls. No, like battle, you have to go into some things on your feet. She picked up the phone and dialed.
Keeley’s cell’s voicemail picked up. “You’ve reached Keeley O’Brien Cohen. I’m sorry to have missed your call. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
“Key, it’s Amy. I said it before and I’ll say it again. That message doesn’t sound like you at all, chickie. I know, I know, if you can tell what time I called, you probably think I’m insane, but I’m not. Listen, I read Hannah’s book. Or, most of it anyway, up until where the grandma made yet another cherry pie. Then I had to throw in the towel; enough with the baking. I’m not much of a reader, so maybe that’s a big thing in novels. Lots of baking and cups of tea. I don’t know.”
“The point I’m trying to get to is that I read it and we need to talk. Something’s going on between you and Hannah, that’s clear now. It’s time to put everything out on the table. If it’s rotten and stinky, oh well. We’ll deal with it. I’ve stayed out of it, the whole thing, just trying to be helpful. I didn’t want to meddle. FYI - those days are done. And stop ignoring my calls. This is my third and last message. You better call me back. Don’t doubt that, if I have to, I’ll come up to that penthouse and drag you all the way to Captain’s to talk to your daughter. Me and the girls are going out there tomorrow; just come as soon as you can. N-kay? N-kay. Love you.”
She hung up and stared out the window at the inky darkness, seeing Hannah in her mind’s eye. A thousand memories were bombarding her. That time and that time and that time, and they all clicked into place. A tingling feeling went up her arms and back, and tears started again in her eyes. She was glad she got that call out of the way before the sadness hit her and transmitted over the phone line. Why hadn’t she believed Hannah, had been so quick to dismiss her? Of course Keeley hadn’t been able to shed her horrible childhood like an ill-fitted coat. Of course some of it had to leak out all over Hannah. But she hadn’t let herself see it, and living in that world of stubborn hope, had neglected her promise, their promise, to parent Hannah together.
She picked up the phone again and dialed. Pam picked up her cell on the last ring, and then there was a clatter that made Amy hold the phone away from her ear.
“What? Hello?” Pam’s voice was thick with sleep.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s Amy. I know it’s late, but it’s important.”
There was a pause. “Oh, no problem. I fell asleep on the couch. Tsk. I missed it! Again!”
“What?”
“Celebrity Bitch. I love that show. It’s on too late, though. I keep falling asleep.”
“Yeah, um, well I need to talk to you. Actually, I need more. We’ve gotta go out to Captain’s and see Hannah.”
“What? Is she okay? I was going to surprise her with a visit, but I wanted to read her book first.”
“I read it.”
“Really? How was it? Oh! I can’t believe you beat me.”
“That’s the thing. Reading it made me realize that this whole thing, this thing between Keeley and Hannah, it’s not about the review.”
“Wait, what?”
“Listen, I’ll tell you in the car. And we’ll have to talk to Hannah, of course. But I need you to come with me tomorrow, go out to Captains. We’ve got to go see her.”
“What, why? You’re talking too fast.”
“Please, Pam. Can you come?”
“Of course, I…I can move stuff around. I’ll call Ruth next door and see if she can come over and stay with Jacob. She’s probably still up. Is Hannah okay?”
Amy swallowed hard. “I hope so. I don’t know.”
That got Pam going and Amy spent the next fifteen minutes alternating between calming her down and clarifying when she would pick Pam up. After finalizing the details, she hung up and dialed Zooey’s number. She didn’t bother with Zo’s cell, which was more of a car phone than anything. Now, Amy wished she could dial it and know that Zo would get the voicemail. Calling this late meant not only waking up Zo and having that confrontation; it also meant waking up her controlling third husband, Neil.
The phone rang only once before being picked up, Zo answering in a bright cheerful voice that made it clear that they were awake, probably just back from a party or a show or something.
“Amy!” Zo said, once she realized who it was and obviously trying to communicate that loudly to Neil before he assumed it was some phantom lover. “It’s nearly midnight! I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a call from you this late. Is everything all right?”
“No, it’s not. That’s why I
’m up. I read Hannah’s book.”
“Oh, you did, too? Wasn’t it wonderful? Okay, I’m a little invested in that answer, so tell me what I want to hear, or let’s talk about something else. No raining on my parade, please.”
Amy paused and then said, “I’m sorry, Zo, but rain is in the forecast. You didn’t notice anything? I mean, didn’t it ring any bells?”
Zo laughed a little, sounding relieved. “Oh, you mean Hannah’s ESP? She has it, it’s so obvious. Isn’t that amazing? I wonder where she got it from. Still, I really wish I’d been the one to tell her about Keeley’s mom if she wasn’t going to hear it from Key directly.”
“Uh…,” Amy said, utterly confused. “What?”
“ESP! Hannah has the second sight! She knew all about Mrs. Maggie O’Brien and no one, I mean no one, told her. Definitely not Keeley. Of course not me.”
Amy sighed. This was the downside of creativity: nuttiness. “ESP, really? Seriously? No, Zo, I think this is more real than that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s talk about it later. You and me and Pam are going out to Captain’s. I don’t care about whatever charity crap you’re doing, either.”
“I’m not doing any ‘charity crap’, for your information, so stop with that. But…, what’s going on? We’re going to Captain’s? It would be nice-“
“No, this isn’t a visit, Zo, it’s an intervention. It’s about Hannah.”
“What? What’s the matter?” Zo’s voice started to take on a hysterical edge. Amy heard Neil’s deep voice in the background saying something unintelligible. There was a rustling of a hand going over the phone’s handset and then Zo’s raised voice, muffled, saying, “This is important. Can I have a minute? Just one little minute by myself?”
Amy sat and listened to their argument. How long before this marriage ended? Why hadn’t Zooey listened when Amy tried to warn her about Neil? Zo was hopeless when it came to men; she consistently picked the wrong guy. She watched six minutes tick past on the wall clock and then, finally, after the loud thud of a door slamming, Zo was back on the line.