“Have I really been that sanctimonious and smug?” I said.
“No. Just perfect. Just selfless. I used to wish you’d do something so sleazy and slutty that you could never jump on me again; I used to daydream that I’d come home and find you screwing the UPS man. And now you’ve screwed the caretaker and I find that I love you even more for it. It’s turned you into somebody who knows what it means to want the wrong person so bad that your fingers curl and your teeth ache. And that there’s a whole, greedy female woman in there. That’s what’s been missing all along.”
I said nothing, but bowed my head in case the stinging tears ran over. They didn’t, though. There weren’t enough left. Presently I said, “He wasn’t the wrong person, Pie. There’s never been a righter person for me. It’s just that the me he was right for isn’t the one who’s going back home today. I know that’s not rational or consistent. But I know that it’s okay, too. If I could have stayed that woman, I might not be going home, but in the end you go home, because it’s your place and it never works for long when you leave your place. Just like he might have come back with me if he could have, but he couldn’t because this is his place. So what we had was us, here, now. Like he says, ‘Carpe diem.’ I wish there could have been more of it, but what we did have was as near perfect as I’ll ever know about. Laura, I didn’t know how on earth I was going to get us home. Since I woke up this morning, I’ve thought I simply couldn’t do it. But you’ve made me see that maybe I can, and even a little bit of how to start. And you’ve made me see that maybe, just maybe, I haven’t driven my daughter away permanently. If I can find the right words when I talk to her—”
“The hell with the right words,” she said, fishing a cigarette out of her pocket. “Use the words you feel like using. Don’t lie to her. Don’t ever do that. Let her see you whole. It’s your job now to drive her away; it’s what comes next, I think. How else will she get out into the world? She needs that real bad, Met.”
I smiled at her. It was a watery smile.
“You’d make a wonderful mother, Pie. You know that?”
“No I wouldn’t,” she said heavily. “I can talk it but I can’t do it. I’d probably let my daughter catch me screwing the UPS man; that’s the difference between you and me. I can’t be a mother. I just can’t. Don’t start on that. What it boils down to is that I flat just don’t want to do it. The thought bores and horrifies me. You’d probably get stuck with it, and then I’d hate you and me, too.”
We sat silent for a while. I knew that I should get up, get dressed, get going. Time was bleeding out of the morning. I knew that it was useless to try and persuade her to keep the baby, to come home with us. But I could not seem to move. I was reluctant to let her go. She was, in this moment, well-loved friend and peer, as well as my sister. I did not know if I would ever get that back.
“Are you going to leave Pom?” she said presently, and I said, before I even thought about it, “Of course not.”
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“I had an idea he had a little something going on the side,” she said. “I thought that might be one reason you hooked up with T.C.”
“He may,” I said slowly. “I keep hearing about a doctor who used to be with the clinic. Amy, of course, told me she’s back in town. And when I called home the other night, she answered.…I know it was her. But it could have been nothing; I don’t know about that. Pom has brought colleagues home before. It’s not really the reason for T.C. and me, but I guess it…hurried things along a little. How did you know?”
“I’ve always thought he would, eventually. Men like Pom are superglue to women. I never thought it would amount to anything, but I’ve always thought it would happen.”
“I never did,” I said. “I may be stupid, but I really never did.”
“Are you going to tell him you know about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell him about T.C.?”
“I don’t know…no. That didn’t have anything to do with him. That had to do with me, and it’s over now. I don’t want Pom to turn it into something it wasn’t, and I don’t want to use it for a club or something. No matter what happens with Pom, I’ll never do that again. I couldn’t. There isn’t anybody else like…him.”
I could not say, T.C.
“You really are in love with him.”
“Yes, I am. All of the me I am now is. I don’t think it will be that way when I get home, not after a while. Or I would die. Speaking of which, I have to get going, darling. We have a noon flight. I’ve got to wake Glynn and get her started.”
“How are you getting to the airport?”
“He’s going to take us. T.C.”
The name cut like glass on my lips.
“Isn’t that going to be awful?”
“Beyond imagining,” I said.
“Oh, hell, I’ll drive you,” she said. “I can make better time than that Jeep. Don’t put yourself through that. I’ll go up and tell him. You get it together with your daughter.”
“Where will you go after that?”
“Home, I guess. Palm Springs. Then I have to close up Stu’s place and get it listed. I’ve got a bunch of loose ends to take care of, before…I go to Santa Monica. I’ll call you.”
“How can I let you go through that alone?”
“I won’t. I’ll take a friend with me. There’s one who’s gone through just the same thing. It really isn’t bad this early, Met. This guy keeps you overnight, puts you up in a very pretty little bed and breakfast next door, and sends a nurse with you for the first night. Just like a facelift. It’s not back streets and coat hangers anymore, you know. It’s been legal a long time.”
“Oh, Pie, I hate this,” I said, and swallowed the bitter, scanty tears and went, finally, to wake my daughter. Behind me, I heard Laura get up and walk slowly to the door, heard the click of her boot heels as she went to tell T.C. that we did not, after all, need him.
It was a monstrous, killing lie.
Glynn and Curtis were still mounded under the covers, but they were not asleep. Glynn lay staring into space and slowly stroking his blunt head, and he lay on his back, eyes closed, as blissful as a sybarite in the sun.
“You two look like an old married couple,” I said, with what normalcy I could muster, and she looked at me. Her swollen eyes filled with tears and she began to cry again. Curtis stirred and looked up at her and sat up and began to lick her face.
I sat down on the bed beside her.
“Don’t cry, love,” I said. “No matter how either one of us has behaved, nothing calamitous is going to happen.”
“Oh, Mama!” she wailed, and threw her arms around me, and I held her very tightly while she cried. I had been right last night; the ribs were not so sharp. She had washed the excelsiorlike frizz out of her hair, too; it was still damp under my fingers and smelled of apple shampoo and stood up at the back of her head like a rooster’s comb. It was still thick and silky, and beneath it her neck felt so vulnerable and young that I wanted to wrap it swiftly in something to protect it, like a thick muffler. The nose ring cut into my shoulder.
Curtis jumped down from the bed and looked at us, and whined.
“I think you better dismiss your roomie,” I said into the damp hair. “He hasn’t been outside since last night, and he must have to go awfully bad. He’s just too shy to tell you. He probably wants to go home to breakfast, too. And you need some yourself.”
“Oh, poor Curtis,” she gulped, still sobbing. “Go on, Curtis. Go home. Carpe diem. I love you.”
Curtis woofed softly and trotted to the back door, looking back at her. I got up and went to let him out. Behind me I heard her sniff loudly and go into the bathroom and turn on the water. Curtis put his nose into my hand and then loped out into the morning. It was just like the last two: white-bled and hot and still. Only inside the lodge did the chill of night linger. Curtis stopped still and sniffed and looked back at me and then toward the trail
that led to the tower. He held himself rigidly, as if he might come to a point.
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of her. Go home, Curtis. Carpe diem, dearest dog.”
He trotted away springily, still stiff-legged, looking into the woods on either side of him as though he smelled something in them. Perhaps he did. T.C. had said there were deer often, and once in a while bear…T.C. Curtis.
I closed my eyes and stood very still against the sickening wash of pain, and then it receded and I went back into the lodge and started breakfast for my daughter.
She came into the kitchen a little later, red from scrubbing, mouth still quivering. She looked so strange to me for a moment that I simply stood staring, and she began to cry again.
“I know it looks awful. I don’t know why I let Marcie and Jess talk me into it.”
“For the same reason I dyed my hair red when I was a sophomore,” I said. “It turned out fuchsia. I thought my father was going to kill me. Yours is different, but it’s not bad, sweetie. The color can be toned down with a rinse, and the length is becoming, very smart. You have the features for it. You might even want to keep it short. As for the ring, well, if you get tired of it, Dr. Pierson can take it out in a second. Nothing’s broken that can’t be fixed.”
She came to me and put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder. Once again I held her.
“Really, really?”
“Really, really. I told you that.”
“I was awful to you. I said terrible things. Aunt Laura is furious with me. How can that not change things?”
I took a deep breath into her hair.
“I did things you thought were awful, too. I did sleep with T.C., and more than once. And I can’t ever be sorry for that, Glynn. But it ended last night, and it won’t happen again. We’re going home this afternoon, and unless you want it to, the way we live at home will not change.”
“You aren’t going to leave Daddy?”
“No. Not because of this. Things between daddy and me probably will change some, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what happened up here. And they won’t change between you and Daddy, or us as a family. At least, I don’t think so. To be very honest with you, no, I would not leave your father, but I am going to have to insist on things he may not be able to do, and he may not be able to stay. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I can’t say for sure. I do know that we both love you more than anything in the world. And that will never change.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“I wouldn’t be going home if I didn’t,” I said simply.
She pulled back and looked at me blearily. The nose ring jarred, but the scrubbed, shiny face was Glynn’s. I had told her the truth; the short, soft hair around her face was striking. It was just the cut they probably would have given her for Arc, without the unspeakable curls.
“You love him, then.” She jerked her head toward the tower.
I nodded.
“I do. I can’t tell you I don’t. But I can tell you that it doesn’t mean I can’t love your father, too. It’s a totally different kind of love.”
“Sex, you mean.”
“No. Much, much more than that. But that, too, yes.”
She shut her eyes.
“I hate all of this,” she said. “I don’t see how you can love two people. I just don’t see how you can do those things with two people at the same time. I don’t see how it can not change things.”
“Glynn, you can love a great many people at the same time, for a great many different reasons. I don’t know how to explain this, because it’s new to me, too. But I think love makes more love. To love, to love anything or anybody, is to start some kind of engine that makes more. The only thing is, you do have to choose what you will do about the loving; in the last analysis, I think you have to do that. I chose to have this time with T.C. for as long as I could, as deeply as it was possible to go. But I never meant to try and take it home, and he agreed with that. In fact, he’s the one who made me see it. It is quite apart from what I have always had with your father, and will not spill over into that. But you should know that I will always keep this time up here in my heart, and I will always treasure it. As far as I am concerned, it will not change our family life, but it will probably change me some, and I will need to act on those changes. I know this is hard. I don’t understand it yet, either. But I’m not going to lie to you, and I’m going to try very hard not to hover over you anymore. You are your own person, and I’m going to try to see you that way, and it is going to be hard because you have been my little girl for all of your life. I will ask you to try and see me as my own person. That will probably be hard, too.”
“I want…I want you just to be my mother,” she said, beginning to sniffle again.
“I won’t stop being that. I couldn’t. It’s just that you get a woman friend along with the mother. Two for the price of one. At least, I hope you’ll let her be a friend to you.”
“Will you tell Daddy?”
“I don’t think so. Will you?”
“What if I did? What would happen? Would it matter?”
“Probably, to him. I don’t know what would happen. Do it if you have to. I’m not going to let you hold me hostage with it. I can’t do that.”
“I can’t promise I won’t get so mad at you sometime that I’ll just blurt it out.”
“Yes, you can. You very well can promise that. You can and will get angry with me; I think we’ve just started with that. But you can decide not to blurt it out. That’s your call. Like I said, it’s up to you. You stopped being a child up here, much as I regret that. You’re accountable to yourself now.”
“I won’t tell him. I never would have done that.”
“I think it’s good that you won’t. But that’s probably more for his sake than mine. We’ll renegotiate things as we go along.”
She looked startled, and then grinned. Some of the old Glynn was in it. Someone new and rather fine was, too.
“Can you do that? Is that allowed?”
“It better be,” I said. “How on earth would people live together if it wasn’t?”
“Do you and Dad do that?”
“We will now.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“Probably not, at first. But I think he’ll come to see that it’s necessary. Things just can’t go on being all one person’s way. I need some things for myself that I don’t have yet. So do you. That’s what I’ll start with.”
“Like Mommee.”
“Like Mommee. God love her, I hope you’ll be able to remember her the way she really was. All that life, and spirit…She can’t help what she’s become, Glynn. But she needs to be in a place where they can concentrate just on her and help her, and we need a place just for ourselves. That’s one of the first things Daddy needs to see.”
“Will he?”
“I have no idea.”
“What about…you know, you said we could look at Lab puppies.”
“You’ll get your dog. Even if it and I have to sleep in the doghouse. That I can promise.”
She fell silent, and I put my chin down on the top of her head and we stood like that for a while.
“I’m sorry about Arc,” I said. “I know that was hard to give up.”
“Yeah. But Aunt Laura made me see a lot of things about that. It’s not a good life, is it? She told me about Pring. I wouldn’t have believed it. Mama, she told me about the baby, too. Isn’t there something we can do about that? I don’t think she ought to just…kill it.”
I felt her wince at her own words. I flinched away from them, too.
“Me either. But only she can make that decision. That’s very much her own to make, any woman’s own. That’s one thing we don’t butt into.”
“She could have it and we could take care of it.”
“Who? You? You want to raise a baby instead of finishing school and going to college and making your own life? Or do you want me to do it?”
“Well, you’ve done it before. Twice. Once with Aunt Laura, and once with me. You know how. We could get a nurse—”
“No. As you say, I’ve done that. I have other things I need to do now. The baby is Aunt Laura’s responsibility.”
“She isn’t going to take it.”
“No.”
“That’s awful.”
“Don’t judge, Glynn. You just don’t know enough yet. It will be a while before you do.”
“You said we’re going home—”
“Yes. In about an hour. So let’s get you fed and packed up. Aunt Laura’s going to take us to the airport.”
“Are you…are we going to stop by at the tower?”
“No.”
“So I won’t see Curtis again?”
“You can walk up and say good-bye, and we’ll pick you up on the way out,” I said. “And I’ll bet T.C. will send you a picture of Curtis. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I don’t see how I can talk to him.”
“It’s easy. Just open your mouth and let ’er rip.”
“What should I say?”
“How about, ‘Good-bye, T.C.’?” I said, and felt the tears again, and turned quickly to the refrigerator to get out the eggs and bacon.
She came close behind me and touched my shoulder.
“Mama, I’m so sorry. About what I said, and about…T.C.,” she said, and vanished into her room.
“Me, too, my little girl, who never will be that again,” I whispered.
She had finished her breakfast and gone to repack her duffel when Laura came back. I had put on the blue traveling suit from a faraway life, stacked my bags at the back door, and was putting our bed linens into the washing machine. Laura had said she would come back to the lodge and spend the night and make sure all traces of us were gone before she started for Palm Springs.
“I can’t stand the thought that his next…whatever…might find something I left behind and put it on,” she said. “On second thought, maybe I should hide my dirty underwear where he’ll never find it. Make him smell me every time he turns around.”
Fault Lines Page 36