“Nope, something old.” She cackled. She looked witchy with her grizzled gray hair loose on the pillow. “Old as the hills, old as time. You coming to my program?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“You can bring that dog man.”
“No, I told you. I don’t see him anymore.”
“Damn, I forgot.” She squinted up, forehead furrowing with sympathy. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table.
Caddie didn’t want to be seen better. “Gotta go.” She leaned over and gave her grandmother a quick kiss. “Night, sleep well. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Nana wasn’t the only one turning in early. Soft snores came to Caddie clearly as she passed Mrs. Brill’s door. Doré was singing in the shower, and Maxine was watching television. The canned laughter sounded harsh and personally derisive, but Caddie told herself she was just in a mood. She was always in a mood lately, and not always a bad one. Sometimes she felt euphoric, for no reason at all. Hormones, she’d read in a book. Her face was breaking out, too; this morning she’d woken up with a pimple on her chin. Lovely.
A corridor off the main second-floor hall led to a private staircase, one of two entrances to Thea’s tower room; the other was on the third floor. Seventy years ago her room was the Wakes’ master bedroom suite, the finest in the house. Thea always rode the elevator, but Caddie took the private stairs. Heat lightning through the window on the landing lit the way, illuminating the ancient striped wallpaper in flashes. The door at the top of the stairs stood half open, probably for a breeze—it was a stifling hot night, and by the time the air-conditioning got to the third floor it wasn’t what you’d call robust.
The sitting room was empty, but a light shone from the bedroom. Caddie knocked on the wall. “Thea?” she called, soft-voiced. “It’s me.”
“Come in!”
Thea sat under a tasseled floor lamp in her big Morris chair with a book in her lap, her legs stretched out on a leather ottoman. She’d banished Wake House’s sturdy but plain furnishings to the basement and decorated the tower suite with all her own things, a comfortable couch covered in rich scarlet velvet, an old rocking chair, enormous pillows scattered on the floor, everything soft and warm and always smelling of flowers. Caddie loved Thea’s rooms. They were like the fantasy dorm digs of the coolest, most sophisticated coed you’d ever known.
“Aren’t you hot?” She plopped down on the edge of the great four-poster bed. “This room is boiling. Oh, you’ve got your window open, no wonder.” And Thea was still fully dressed in gauzy pants and an orchid silk shirt, the tails tied in a knot around her waist. She didn’t look hot, though.
She wriggled her bare feet on the ottoman. “Don’t move, that’s the secret. And I’m getting the sweetest little breeze. Much better than air-conditioning.”
“What are you reading?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
“Oooh. Something racy?”
“Definitely not.” She brushed at rust-colored specks on her lap. “This book’s so old, the cover’s disintegrating.”
“What is it?”
“Freckles, by Gene Stratton Porter. Who was a woman, not a man. I read this book first when I was about ten.” She made a face. “So it’s finally happened, I’ve regressed to childhood.”
“Nana only likes Jane Austen these days, she won’t read anyone else.”
“See? The slow infantilization of the mind. Very sad. But I don’t care, I’m rereading all the old books I used to love, and it’s making me happy.”
“Nana says she likes knowing how they end.”
“Well, there’s that. Freckles finds out he’s not a penniless orphan after all, he’s the son of a nobleman, and everyone lives happily ever after. Oh, it’s a lovely book.” She marked her place with a nail file and put the book down. “How are you? You look a little fagged out.”
“I guess I am.”
“Anything wrong?”
“No. I don’t know. I’m just all…I don’t know.”
Thea waited, but when Caddie couldn’t do any better than that, she pulled her feet off the ottoman and stood. “If you feel like talking, I know a terrific place. But it’s a secret, you can’t tell anybody about it.”
“Is it cool?”
“Cooler.”
“Lead on.”
Down the hall past the men’s bedrooms, past Bea and Edgie’s room, past the staircase and around the corner, along a dark, unused corridor to a door Caddie had never seen before. It wasn’t locked and it led to two short, narrow flights of stairs covered in black rubber or linoleum, lit by one dusty bulb Thea flicked on at the bottom. “Are these servants’ stairs?” Caddie asked, whispering for some reason.
Thea paused, holding on to the railing to catch her breath. “No, just attic steps. That’s where we’re going.”
“Oh.” She followed after dutifully, thinking, How could it be cooler in the attic?
At the top of the stairs, they stopped again. “Whew,” Thea said, patting her chest. “I need more exercise. Look at this place, Caddie. Wouldn’t it be fun to explore? You could get an American history lesson right here in the attic.”
“Or an allergy,” Caddie said nasally, right before she sneezed twice. She could only make out shapes under the rafters in the semidark, trunks and wardrobes, cast-off furniture, things covered up under sheets. Everything smelled of dry wood. “Wow, it’s huge. Is this where we’re, um…”
“No, silly.” She laughed and took Caddie’s hand, leading her confidently along a twisty path through piles and clumps of this and that. Pale light shone around the edges of an enormous old cabinet or armoire against the raw, slanted, uninsulated wall. Not flush against it: Thea dropped Caddie’s hand and slipped around the back of the heavy piece of furniture. A click; a shrill creak. More light. Caddie peered around the corner and saw a long, open casement window. “What in the world?” She squeezed through behind Thea, and a moment later she was looking out over a low stone balustrade at a sky of rushing clouds and a cityscape of roofs, black treetops, and winking lights. “Where are we?” she cried, delighted. “I didn’t even know this was here.”
“Isn’t it fabulous?”
“There’s the alley, so we’re on the north side, but where?”
“We’re between two sloping roofs, all but hidden. That’s really the only place you can see us from.” She pointed to a faraway house in the next block. “I told you it was a secret.”
“How did you ever find it?”
“Exploring.”
“This window wasn’t even locked? There could be others—”
“There’s one directly opposite, I’ll show you when we go back, but it won’t open. Why you’d build two invisible little balconies off the attic, I can’t imagine, but I’m grateful. Sit, Caddie, these stones are nice and cool at night.”
There was room for them to sit on opposite sides of the tiny porch with their backs against facing walls and their legs stretched out side by side, but not for much else. “Are we sure this is safe?” Caddie knocked on one of the balusters, half joking, half not.
“Oh, this house will be here a long time after we’re gone. Me, anyway.”
“Nana says she knew the Wakes. Knew of them, she means. I guess they were the big deals around here. Did you know them?”
“I was pretty young when the bubble burst and they wandered away. The Wake diaspora.”
How sad to lose everything, even your home. Sad for anybody, but worse if you were famous and the whole town got to watch. Caddie heaved a deep sigh.
“What’s going on with you? You look heavy. Hearted,” Thea clarified when Caddie looked down at her flat stomach, “heavyhearted. What have you been thinking about lately?”
“Nothing, really, my head’s empty. But I’m kind of on this ride, this emotional…up and down. I’ve just about settled on a couple. The Benedicts. They’re perfect,” she said gloomily. “The wife is a veterinarian and the husband’s a social worker. Ther
e’s nothing wrong with them.”
Lightning flickered, closer, revealing the surprise outline of clouds. Electricity prickled in the air, and the dull rumble of thunder was almost constant. Storm coming.
“Oh God, oh God. I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve had an abortion.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because. Eventually she’s going to find out I gave her up.”
“She?”
“He, she. I think it’s a girl—that’s what we always have.”
“So…” Thea spoke slowly, as if feeling her way, “it would be better for this baby not to be born than to find out she was adopted.”
“No, not find out she’s adopted, find out I gave her away. I’m not saying this makes sense.”
“Oh, good.” Thea leaned her head back against the wall. “When exactly is she due?”
“Late March.”
“Right before spring.”
“Yeah.” A drop of rain fell on her wrist. “It’ll be nice weather, she can go outside and lie on a blanket in the shade.” Caddie folded her arms over her eyes. “I’m trying not to think about it, the details. If I make her a real person, if I put myself in the picture—but sometimes I can’t help it. Which do you think is worse,” she asked, lowering her arms, “losing your mother because she died—or because she left, she didn’t, you know, want you, didn’t care very much about you. Which is worse, do you think?”
“Which one of us had it harder, you’re asking?”
“No. Okay, yes. Your mother, at least you always knew she loved you. But Thea, which felt worse to you, her dying or your father—going out west?”
“That’s an excellent question, but what difference does it make? It was a lifetime ago.”
“I know, but how did you get over it?”
“I never did. But I stopped letting it follow me around like a lost dog.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “By facing the alternative. And also by looking around and seeing how short life is, Caddie,” she said intensely.
“Facing the alternative. You mean turning into somebody like me.”
Thea smiled in the dark. “Plenty worse things than turning into someone like you.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“No, what I meant was, being afraid takes too much energy and it’s hardly ever worth it. I’ll take pain over fear of pain any day. My worst mistake, and I’ve made more than you think, was marrying Carl, and I did it to try to correct the past. Which you cannot do. What a waste of time, two people’s short, precious time.”
Caddie said, “I thought I fell in love with Christopher because he was so normal, and he could make me normal. And invisible—that’s always been a goal of mine. But…maybe the real reason I fell in love with him is because I knew I couldn’t have him. Maybe what I really want—wanted,” she corrected hopefully, “was nobody. Peace and quiet. Just me and Nana, because then I’d be safe. Nobody could ever leave me. Thea…”
“Hm?”
“How did you get to be so brave?”
She laughed, dropping her head to ruffle her hair with her hands. “One of the things I love about you, Caddie, is your…what would you call it…cluelessness.”
“Oh, thank—”
“Over how nice you are. And how much stronger you are than you think.”
“You say that, but I don’t feel strong.”
“You just haven’t had enough practice. You need to start asking for what you want. And sometimes not asking.”
“But there are things about ourselves we can’t change,” she argued, “don’t you feel that? Sometimes, yes, I want to keep the baby, but I know I shouldn’t. It’s like—I’m a child and there’s something I want very badly, but I know my parents can’t afford it, but I want it anyway. So then I’m ashamed.”
“Because you’d like to keep your own baby? Ashamed?”
It was so hard to explain. “Listen. Once, I was inside my mother, the same way this baby is inside me.”
“Yes?”
“I tell myself that, but I can’t make it real. On any level. If my mother could leave me, if my father could leave me—” She held out her hands. “Who are we, Thea, if we’re not the people who made us?”
Thea took hold of Caddie’s shoe. “Well, now, you do whatever you have to do, for whatever convoluted reasons you’ve got for doing it, but listen to me. First of all, being ‘normal’ is a false goal, a child’s goal. So is being ‘invisible.’ ”
“I know.” She hid her face against her bent knees. It was starting to rain; she felt the heavy drops thud on her back like little slaps.
“You know. Good.” Thea gave the shoe a shake. “Do you also know you’re not your mother? You’re the opposite of her, from what I can gather. You’ve made yourself her opposite—that’s your accomplishment. My dear Caddie, you would be such a good, loving mother to this baby.”
Sudden stinging tears burned behind her eyes. Her chest ached, as if her heart had a crack in it. “I would?” was all she could say. Otherwise a dam would burst.
“Oh my, yes. Lucky, lucky baby. Too bad for Mr. and Mrs. Benedict, but if they’re that perfect, they’ll find another one soon.”
“But it’s so scary. It’s so scary. For a million reasons.”
“You won’t hear me deny that life’s scary. But so is avoiding it. You can set yourself free any time you like. Everything you’re looking for, everything you need, it’s already inside you. If your life were ending instead of beginning—if you were as old as I am, or older, if you can imagine such a thing—if you had a terminal disease—and let’s face it, we all have a terminal disease—what would matter most, what would make it all worthwhile? Do you think it’s that you managed to stay invisible?”
“No, I know.”
“I know you know, I’m not saying anything wise. No, this is wise—you don’t love yourself enough, Caddie, and that’s a little bit of a sin, I think. That’s a little bit petty of you. It’s that shame business again. What do you call it when two words always go together?”
“You mean like—”
“Like hardy mums; you never see mums for sale, they’re always hardy mums. Well, senseless shame, that’s another pair in my book. Shame is almost always senseless. Being a better little girl would not have made your mother stay. Or my father. It wasn’t our fault.” She leaned close and looked into Caddie’s eyes. The message wasn’t as intense as it could have been, though, because at that moment the rain turned into a downpour.
They scrambled up. Caddie stood back to let Thea go ahead of her through the latticed casement, but instead Thea flung her arms up and put her head back. She stuck out her tongue. “Mmm, tastes like nothing. Pure. God, don’t you love a storm? Will built us a dock on the creek and we used to lie down on it in thunderstorms. Flat—so we wouldn’t get electrocuted.”
“Weren’t you scared?” Caddie didn’t care much for the nearness of the jittery lightning stabs over their heads or the powerful claps of thunder coming one after the other.
“Yes! And thrilled—we’d get soaking wet, like this—”
“Thea, that blouse is going to be ruined.”
She looked down, as if she couldn’t remember what blouse she had on. “Right you are.” She untied the tails, unbuttoned her silk shirt, stripped it off, and pitched it through the window. “Much better.” She laughed at Caddie’s face. “Much!” She lifted her arms again, cupping her hands to catch the rain. She wasn’t daring Caddie, she wasn’t even looking at her, she had her eyes closed and she was catching raindrops on her tongue again—but all at once Caddie reached down and zipped off her own T-shirt. For a second she thought of flipping it over the balustrade onto the roof below, but that was a little beyond her. She threw it in the attic after Thea’s blouse.
Thea laughed. She looked glad but not astounded—Caddie loved that. They stood in the cool, hard rain, twisting, pirouetting in their cramped space, two women in white brassieres that flashed
lavender-blue in the lightning, their laughter audible only in the watery roar between tremendous cracks of thunder.
“We’re beautiful!” Thea crowed.
“We are!” Water pelted her face and streamed in her eyes.
“I used to be a dancer! I gave it up to marry Carl.” Suddenly she seized Caddie’s slippery shoulders and gave her a long, fierce shake. “Don’t you dare stop playing your music. Your music.”
“I won’t!” Caddie promised.
Later, drying off in Thea’s room, Caddie would’ve liked to keep her friend’s high opinion of her daring and joie de vivre a little longer, but she also needed to tell her the truth. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do. For sure, about the baby. It’s a big decision.”
“Of course it is.” Thea was bent over in half, fluffing her hair with a towel. “Whatever you decide, I’m for it.” She straightened. “I mean it, whatever you decide. I only want you to make the decision from the right side of your heart, that’s all that lecturing was about.”
“You weren’t lecturing.”
“You’re sweet.” She went in the bathroom and came out presently in a short, sassy robe of lime satin. “New. On sale. Like it?”
“You could be the godmother,” Caddie realized.
“Put this on,” Thea said, tossing over a dry T-shirt. “It’ll fit, we’re both small up top. Pants, I don’t know.”
“Thea, you could be her godmother. If I kept her.” Thea didn’t say anything, so Caddie turned around modestly, took off her wet bra, and pulled the T-shirt over her head. She turned back. “What do you think?”
“What about Frances?” Thea went to her dresser and rummaged around in the bottom drawer.
“She’s the great-grandmother, I’d still need a godmother. If I kept her.”
Thea stood up, empty-handed. “No pants.”
“What do you think?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Are we making a deal? Some kind of a bargain?”
“No.”
The Goodbye Summer Page 27