A Good Woman

by Liz Cronkhite

  It was true, Aly realized. She measured Erika by who she was as a person, but herself by what she hadn’t accomplished.

  “What I saw in you was someone with the same values as Erika. That’s why I thought you two would fit.”

  Aly remembered how intimidated she was by Bianca initially, but then realized she fit in Erika’s home and Bianca didn’t. Not anymore, anyway. “And we do,” she said quietly. A happy sensation bloomed for a moment in her chest, but faded before she could grasp it.

  Anita gave a little laugh. “You know she only interviewed you to please me? She didn’t expect anything to come of it. But you handled her girls so well and they responded well to you. She say’s you’re the best nanny they’ve had.” This was a stab in the heart to Aly. Her resolve to leave, which had held since she made the resolution, wavered. “But more than that, I sensed the other day that she values you as more than a nanny.”

  “Yes, we’ve become friends." Aly looked down because so many painful emotions were passing through her and she didn’t want to be read. When she left Erika’s, what would she tell others?

  “That’s the best foundation,” Anita said, but Aly didn’t really hear her. Instead, she changed the topic to Anita’s next Thing, which was overdue, and they discussed some ideas.

  Throughout the day she received on her phone pictures from Lu of Bianca and Aziza’s home: White tents being raised on rolling green lawns. White marble statues of half-naked goddesses decorated with colorful flowers. Floats in a deep blue Olympic sized pool that she assumed would hold decorations the next day. And the hazy view of the city below.

  Later in the day Erika sent a picture of the house from a distance. It was a huge white marble box tucked into drought browned hills. She texted “The Mausoleum”. Aly texted back a laughing emoji.

  She was working in her room in the late afternoon when she was surprised by a call from Whitney. She knew the rehearsal and dinner were that evening.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Whitney said in a petulant voice. “Bianca doesn’t care about us. We’re just for show: ‘Look, I’m a mom’. We’re like the things in her house she likes to show off.”

  “Have you talked to your mom - Erika - about this?” Aly asked.

  “No. She won’t understand. She’ll just say I have to do this. I have to be a role model for Lu. But Lu doesn’t mind. Let her do it. Why do I have to do it if I don’t want to?”

  “I think you sell her short. I think she’d try to understand. What about Bianca? Have you ever told Bianca about your feelings?”

  “No, she’d just say of course she loves us, blah, blah, blah.”

  Aly realized Whitney was probably calling her because she knew she had problems with her own mother. So first she commiserated with her over having a mother who disappoints. But then she told her that she needed to respect Bianca as her mother even if she didn’t like her. Outside of the days she and Lu were born, tomorrow would be the most important day in Bianca’s life. The time to back out was when she was asked to be part of the wedding party, not the day before the wedding. For Whitney’s own self-respect, she needed to uphold her commitment.

  Whitney was so quiet that after a while Aly asked if she was still there. She was. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll do it,” she said reluctantly.

  “Good. I’m proud of you.”

  Dammit, she thought when they hung up. I better go see Mom.

  Sunday was beautiful and crisp, and that afternoon she took herself up Charleston to Red Rock Canyon to enjoy the view of the snow covered, red, brown, grey, and black stratified Spring Mountains. She didn’t take the scenic drive or hike, but parked at a viewing lot, got out of her car, and leaned against the hood. There was only a smattering of others there, and some young children tried unsuccessfully to make snow balls from the ice remaining in the shadows of the bushes on the desert floor.

  For Aly, there was something about being up close to mountains that quieted her mind. They weren’t permanent, of course, but they took so long to erode and her life passed so quickly that they put her problems in proper perspective.

  She sent pictures to the Miltons and a minute later Erika called. “Are you there now?”

  “I am.”

  “It’s just up the hill and I never think to go,” she said. “We’re at the airport. We’ll be home in a few hours. Look, I want to thank you. I just found out from Lu about Whitney wanting to back out and Whitney told me what you told her.”

  “I didn’t want her to make a mistake she’d regret.”

  “I really appreciate it, Aly. It would have been a disaster if she hadn’t been there. It was very important to both Bianca and Aziza that the girls were part of the wedding.”

  “How was it?”

  “You know, it was beautiful…” She described how, yes, it was extravagant and over the top, but the ceremony was surprisingly moving. There was not a dry eye in the place. “I wasn’t expecting to be so moved. For all of their materialism, they really love each other.” She laughed. “Or maybe that’s the basis for their love, who knows? But it was real and evident.”

  For Aly, Erika speaking with her this way again was like water on the parched desert of her heart. Her resolve to leave, wavering after speaking with Anita, wobbled further. She wanted more and drew her out. “How was it for you? To see Bianca marry someone else?”

  The first day Erika spent in a flood of memories. “You know how they say a person’s life flashes before their eyes when they’re dying? I relived our whole relationship from meeting through, well, now. You said that once, didn’t you? That divorce is a kind of death.”

  Did I? Aly wondered as she paced before the mountains, listening.

  As the ceremony began, Erika had a moment of shock when she wondered why she was watching her wife marry another woman. “Seven years after our divorce I felt this way!” It was as if her marriage to Bianca didn’t end with the divorce, it just transformed into a new stage. “No, that’s not it. The marriage died, but our relationship transformed.”

  As the ceremony progressed, she was truly grateful that Bianca had found someone to love who loved her. “We might not have the same values, but she deserves to be happy in hers. It set me free in a way. Maybe her values are not wrong, but just different. So maybe our divorce wasn’t a failure, but inevitable under those circumstances.”

  “It sounds like a profound experience.”

  “It was. I was not expecting this.” She was quiet for a moment. “That seems to be a theme with me lately. Ronnie says I’m so into my head that I miss what’s going on with my heart.”

  She fell quiet again. After a while Aly said, “I’m glad you called.” And then she felt this was a mistake. It was too personal. She should have said something neutral like, “I’m glad you had a good time” or “I’m happy it was so moving for you”.

  But it was Erika who put the space back between them. No warm “I’m glad I called, too” as she once would have said. Her voice had been open and animated throughout the call. Now she sounded almost professionally detached. “Thank you for listening. We’ll be home soon.”

  42

  On the Tuesday after the wedding, Erika called Aly with news about Toy. “I didn’t want you to find out from the news so I’ve asked for updates. Toy’s got a deal where she will do some prison time, there will be probation at the end, and treatment is required. I think with her debt they figured they’d never get their money back, so they settled on her never working for the school district again.”

  Aly, at her desk, sat back in her chair. “I didn’t know you kept up. Thank you.”

  “Of course. She’ll be formally sentenced on Thursday and go from there. So if you want to see her…”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  And that was pretty much all she did that day. Neither Toy nor Calista had reached out to her again after she refused to help when Toy was arrested. Should she try to see Toy before she was locke
d away? If Toy wanted tha, wouldn’t she reach out? At dinner that night she brought up her conflict.

  “What do you need to do for yourself?” Erika asked.

  What would be the point in seeing Toy again? She wondered that evening as she sat on the bed with her television on but unseen. She thought of the last time she saw Toy, at the Halloween party. She had shrugged and said she was okay when clearly she was not. Well, did Aly expect her to say, “I’m stealing from the school district to fund my gambling habit”? No, but that was the point. Toy needed help and didn’t reach for it. She meant to deceive again. She hoped Toy was getting help somewhere, but she clearly didn’t want anything from Aly. So Alywas done. Except for paying Toy’s debt every month, that part of her life was over.

  Even after sleeping on it, she was clear about her decision. In fact, she felt a sense of closure as she headed out for her morning run.

  At breakfast she told Erika about it. Erika smiled and said, “I’m glad.”

  In the past, Aly thought, she would have rubbed my back or given me a hug. And then she thought, I have to stop thinking about the past.

  She was out running errands when she thought of her conversation with Whitney about their mothers. She decided to go by Linda’s and get her mail. This time she called ahead and Linda said she would be home.

  Right away she told her mother about Toy. All Linda said was, “Ah.”

  Dave wasn’t home. He would have been interested. He would have had sympathetic words about Toy.

  She was sorting through her mail, all junk again, when Linda said, “We met your boss.”

  My boss. “Yes, she told me.”

  “She seems to think highly of you.”

  Normally, Aly would have replied something like “everyone has their illusions.” But this time she stated what she knew was a fact. “I know she does.”

  “She and Dave spent quite some time talking about you.” She didn’t know where her mother was going with this and didn’t pursue it. She learned long ago to not take the bait, especially when she didn’t know what Linda was trying to catch.

  “She’s very successful, isn’t she?” Linda continued. “Lawyer with her own practice. Mother. She must have money, looking at her office.”

  “She’s well off, yes.”

  “How old is she?”

  Aly bit. She looked up at Linda. “Forty two. Why?”

  “Just thinking what she’s done in her life in that time.”

  Was Linda comparing Aly to Erika? Aly didn’t know, but she felt her mother missed the point of Erika, anyway. “Oh, she’s done more than that. She’d be successful even without those things. Everyone she knows loves and respects her.”

  She walked past her mother to Dave’s cave to shred the junk mail.

  “Huh,” was all Linda replied for a while. And then, “She said similar things about you. You two sure seem to think a lot of each other.”

  “It’s true,” she said, realizing it as she said it. “We do.”

  “She’s a very attractive woman. I hope you’re not...” Linda let this hang with a smirk.

  Aly’s reflexive, “Don’t worry, she’s out of my league” didn’t seem like the right thing to say. Instead she just looked directly at her mother and said, “You hope I’m not what?”

  Her face was neutral and Linda returned the look for a moment before she shrugged and turned away.

  Aly looked down at a flyer she was about to shred. It was addressed to “Alyssa Wong or Current Resident”. Clearly junk. Is Dave right? Does she hold onto this because she wants to see me? She thought of Whitney and all that was unsaid by her to Bianca.

  "Mom, you raised Mark and me and I respect you for that. It’s hard work.” Linda, who was walking away, stopped. “But what was it I never did that you were always so disappointed in me?” Linda turned and began to demur, but she stopped her. “Have the decency to be honest with me.”

  Linda pursed her lips, but answered. “I wanted you to be more than me.”

  “Why didn’t you live your own life? After we were grown?” When she didn’t answer, Aly said, “So you were disappointed in me because you didn’t do more with your own life?”

  “I didn’t have a mother,” she spat bitterly. “I did more than anyone did for me. We expect our children to do more than us.”

  "Why? Dad and Mark and Dave and the Wongs and Riveras and McMahons and Giannis and Miltons all love me. I must be doing something right. I’m a good woman. Why isn’t that enough?” Linda just stared at her. She didn’t seem to understand. “At some point, Mom, you stopped growing. You expected me to grow for you. In a way that you understand. But you missed how I did grow. Thanks to the people I mentioned.”

  Linda just stood in the living room, uncomprehending. Poor woman. All the love she can show is to hold onto my junk mail to make me come by every now and then. She went and kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’ll be back to shred more junk mail when it gets to be too much.”

  Linda was still standing in the middle of the living room when Aly let herself out the front door.

  43

  The following Monday began as any other school morning. Whitney was full of the Verkammer School Junior High Spring Social happening in a couple of weeks.

  “Social?” Aly asked. “Sounds like something from the sixties. Do they still call them that?”

  “They do at The Verkammer,” Erika said.

  It was a big event for the eighth graders because they were at the top of the junior high. It was their last chance to lord it over the sixth and seventh graders. The next year they would begin at the bottom again, as freshmen in high school.

  Whitney was no longer seeing Dana. Their little romance petered out after Valentine’s Day. She announced at breakfast that she planned on going to the Spring Social alone. “I don’t want to be attached,” she said imperiously. “I want options.”

  Erika cocked an eyebrow at her daughter, then looked at Aly, shook her head, and rolled her eyes.

  The Spring Social was attended by both the junior high and ninth grade faculty. It wasn’t just for the kids, but for their parents to get to know their next teachers as well. It was on a Friday of a Dad’s Weekend, so they discussed Aly and Lu hanging out at Julio’s during the dance. Aly would return home with Erika after the dance.

  Alone in a car with her, Aly thought. That will be awkward.

  Erika kissed her girls goodbye and was off to work. An hour later, Aly dropped the girls at school and went home to work.

  Late in the morning, though, it became a decidedly different kind of school day. She was sitting at her desk when she received a text. “Incident at The Verkammer School. Hard lockdown. Parents and guardians assemble at Red Rock Hotel. Incident tent west parking.”

  For a moment she didn’t understand. Incident? Hard lockdown. “Oh my god.” She leapt up and grabbed her wallet, keys, and phone, and ran through the house to the garage. When she got in Gigi she quickly synced her phone with the Bluetooth.

  Erika and Julio probably received the same text, but she couldn’t be sure. She called her and got her voicemail. “Erika, there’s an incident at the school. They want us at the Red Rock. I’m on my way. Call me.” It was the same with Julio.

  She called Thea, who said Erika was in court and she would get a message to her. She didn’t know where Julio was, but would find out.

  She was driving as she left these messages and was confused to find the onramp to the 215 blocked. The Red Rock Hotel was directly across the 215 from The Verkammer. To reach either she would use the next exit south, the Charleston exit. What was going on? She would have to circle around on surface streets.

  Her adrenaline was pumping and she had to concentrate to drive safely. What were the girls going through? This was not a lit or boring drill. Erika, as always, was in the back of her mind. What was she going through?

  She headed down Far Hills, impatient at stop signs, and turned right at Anasazi where she drove too fast to Town Cen
ter. There she made another right. Traffic was a little heavier on Town Center and there was a long wait to turn right onto Charleston to head up hill to complete the circle.

  On Charleston, which had two lanes and adequate turn lanes headed both east and west, traffic was notably heavy in both directions. There was an empty lot across the intersection and Aly knew up the hill there were businesses, a gym, a bank building, and, across from the sprawling sand and cream colored Red Rock Hotel, a shopping center with a Costco anchoring it. On weekdays, traffic flowed smoothly and easily in the middle of the day. This traffic had to be others heading to the hotel for the “incident”.

  As she approached the hotel she could see the Charleston overpass beyond was blocked by police cruisers. Traffic was being routed through parking lots to turn back down Charleston, which was causing the traffic in the other direction. Beyond the barricade on her side, past the overpass, and yards past the school up the hill, there was another barricade with what looked like police command center vans assembling.

  For a quarter mile west and east of the school no traffic was allowed. The Far Hills exit was closed. She assumed the Sahara exit to the south was closed. No traffic was being allowed near the school. With horror, she realized whatever was going on at the school was threatening to a wide area. She could only think of a sniper or an explosive.

  When she finally got the light to turn left into the hotel parking lot, she was met at the end of the driveway by a khaki uniformed police officer routing traffic. A tall white man, bald, with a powerful build looked through his reflective aviator sunglasses at the inside of the SUV as he spoke to her. “Ma’am, are you here for the incident or looking to turn around?”

  She had questions, but knew he wanted to move things along. “Incident,” she said. He directed her to the parking lot to the right.