by Laura Hankin
Now, in the Japanese restaurant, Marsha tucked a hair tendril behind her ear, then did the same for Ally. “Your father,” she said quietly, “doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
When Glen came back, Horatio and his waiter friends were with him, bearing a round of free green tea ice cream to celebrate the engagement. Everyone nearby cheered as Marsha climbed unsteadily to her feet and proclaimed, “We’re getting married! I love this man, and I love my daughter, and life is just a beautiful and crazy thing, isn’t it?” and Glen stood up and said, “Yup!” Then Marsha turned to Ally and put her hands on either side of her face.
“Aren’t you glad you came back to the city?” she shrieked, above the din of loud, happy diners.
“Yes!” Ally said, and meant it.
• • •
ALLY woke up the next morning even before her alarm rang. She was meeting her mother for breakfast in the city at ten (“Just you and me,” Marsha had promised the night before, when they were saying good-bye, “for some girl chat!”), but had time to kill, so she hung over the edge of her bed and reached for her old guitar. She pulled it out, squinting against the dust it stirred up, and brushed it off. She looked at it—the broken neck, the sprung nylon strings, the little scratches its deep red body had accrued over the years she’d carried it with her everywhere.
Then she carried it down the stairs, out the main door of her building, into the alleyway with the trash cans, and threw it out.
When she came back up, she pulled her new guitar out of its case and tuned it, twisting the knobs until the sound was right. She arranged her fingers in a C chord and, when she strummed, it reverberated against her body, beautiful and whole.
She started to play the song she’d written with Nick, but something about it took away the brightness of the day and allowed complicated feelings to creep in. She stopped and played through some of her older stuff instead. The familiarity of it cooled her down, so she stuck with that until it was time for her to leave.
She was late to breakfast, but so was Marsha, so neither one of them cared. They settled into a booth at a tiny French café and ordered matching lattes with pretty patterns drawn on them in foam.
“Don’t you just adore Glen?” Marsha asked.
“He seems nice.”
“He is, a total sweetheart.”
“He really seems to love you,” Ally said, taking a sip of her still-too-hot latte.
“Oh, he does,” Marsha said, and chortled. “It’s so exquisite to be worshipped like that. And he loved you too. He just raved about you all the way back to our hotel.”
Ally liked imagining monosyllabic Glen raving, her greatness enough to move him beyond his usual limit of talking. She and her mother chatted about nothing and nibbled on croissants, until her phone, sitting on the table, lit up with a text. Her heart started to pound, as she wondered if it was from Beth.
Hey, it said, under Nick Music Store. Ally had no idea how she was supposed to respond to it, but everything that had happened in the airport parking lot came rushing back to her. A sharp stab of lust ran through her body, followed immediately by the guilt and immense sadness. She rested her forehead on her fist and took in a deep breath.
“What just happened to you?” Marsha asked.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. Your face just fell faster than someone jumping out of a plane.”
Ally considered. She hadn’t told anyone about Nick yet, although she rarely allowed herself to digest the fact that she’d hooked up with someone new before texting at least three of her friends about it. The untold story of what had happened between them pounded on her from the inside, demanding to be let out. She looked at her mother, who was gazing at her firmly, and decided, Screw it.
“I did something bad.”
“Oh, honey, what?”
“I . . . um . . . I kissed someone I shouldn’t have. In Britton Hills.”
Marsha looked steadily at her daughter. “Who? Oh, was it Beth? I always thought maybe—”
“What? No, no, not that. I’ll tell you, but please don’t judge me. I feel terrible about it. It was a huge mistake.”
“All right. So tell me.”
“His name is Nick. He’s married.”
“Oh,” Marsha said solemnly. She looked down into her latte. “Only a kiss?”
“Well, no. More than that. We had almost-sex.” Marsha continued staring into her drink and, terrified by her silence, Ally started to prattle. “It was bad, but really was it that bad? I mean, he’s the one who’s married, not me. So he’s the one with responsibilities. I didn’t initiate anything, he did. And I’m not the head of the morality brigade!”
Marsha looked up. “Morality brigade, that’s a good one.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a clever turn of phrase.”
“Wait, so you don’t hate me for what I did. What I almost did?”
“Oh, absolutely not. Why would I hate you?”
“I thought—well, you weren’t even looking at me just now—I thought you were really disappointed in me or something.”
“Oh no, I agree with you one hundred percent—his responsibility, not yours. I thought you were about to get all defeated about it. You were building it up like you’d killed someone or something.”
“Well, it’s still not good. I feel a little like a . . . like a homewrecker.”
“You can’t beat yourself up about it forever. Don’t be masochistic, sweetheart. There’s no need to become some kind of self-flagellator. And you know, this sort of thing happens all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
Marsha leaned closer then, confidentially, and said, “And sometimes, good comes of it. After all, Glen was married when I met him.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yes, yes, it’s actually a little funny, I never would have met him if it hadn’t been for his wife. Rather, his ex-wife. She adores supporting artists, not that I think she actually appreciates art, mind you, but she likes to be out and about, feeling like she’s important. Anyway, she dragged Glen to a pottery exhibition one night, and some of my bowls were on display. And Glen wandered over to my section, and he told me later that one of my bowls just spoke to him, that he’d never seen a piece of pottery so full of meaning. It unlocked the artistic soul inside him, and made him realize what he wanted his life to be. He just offered to buy it from me for some ridiculous amount of money, and that’s when I decided I’d like to get to know him better.”
“Know him better how? Like as friends, since he was married?”
“Oh, you know. Know him better intellectually and spiritually and artistically. And in a biblical sense too.” She smiled at her own wit.
“And what about his wife?”
“Well, sweetheart, it was clear that he was unhappy with her, and that he and I were much better suited for each other. My bowl spoke to him! Did she ever make anything that unlocked his artistic soul? No. All she ever made were casseroles.”
“Is she okay?”
Marsha nodded. “She’ll get over it. People do. We’re a remarkably resilient species. And this opens her up to opportunities that are better for her! So you see, punishing yourself for this sort of thing is pointless.”
Ally imagined herself sitting at a table in a café twenty-five years from now, blithe and chatty, pushing away the responsibility for all her mistakes, convincing herself that all she had done was right and good. She watched herself excusing the hurt she caused others because her actions served her own personal narrative so well, not allowing herself to feel the pain and guilt that came along with tricky decisions and mistakes. This future self of hers went for the easy love every time, pushing away everything when it became too much of an effort. And then she wasn’t looking into the future, but into the past, the night before last, watching herself tell Beth that puni
shing herself for something had no purpose, and then packing her bag and flying away.
She looked back at her mother, who evidently considered the subject closed. “So Glen and I are thinking an April wedding, with the flowers just starting to bloom. Or maybe a destination-type of thing, in which case we could get married earlier because it’s always warm in the tropics.”
She pushed back her chair from the table and stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to go.”
TWENTY-TWO
Grandma Stella heaved out a large breath, then began to talk.
“Well, as you’ve gathered,” she said to Beth, “Penny Joan was my best friend and I was hers—except for our husbands, of course. We met when she and Louis—that was her husband’s name, he died about ten years ago—moved to Britton Hills as newlyweds. Almost from the instant we first met, at a town hall meeting, we just couldn’t get enough of each other. I remember seeing her from across the room and thinking she was just so stylish—she’d grown up in Boston, you see, and had gone to Radcliffe and all sorts of fancy schools before that, and she had the right clothes and the right hair and the right lipstick, and for little old me, who had barely ever traveled outside Maine at that point and hadn’t even attended college, it was thrilling to meet someone like her. But more than that, she was so friendly, not stuck-up like you might think a city gal plunked down in Britton Hills would be, and we made each other laugh like none other, and I just thought nothing would ever change that.
“And for a very long time, nothing did. We had children, and our children grew up and moved away, and your grandfather and Penny Joan’s husband were close too although they always said that they’d never be as friendly with each other as we were. But then your grandfather died. He had that heart attack out of nowhere, and I came undone. I was . . . I was just devastated. He was the electricity in my life, and without him, I felt completely alone and in the dark.
“And because Penny Joan was my best friend, I expected a lot of her. Too much, I think. I wanted her to fill up the emptiness that Grandpa had left. I thought she should drop everything she was doing if I was sad, and run over to comfort me, and for a couple of weeks she did. She was very good, but of course she had her own life, and she couldn’t be with me all the time. I didn’t know that back then, obviously, or else I wouldn’t have acted the way I did. Right now I’m feeling very wise, probably because I’m so ancient and wrinkled, but at the time I was absolutely certain that she wasn’t doing enough, and as she began pulling away more and more, trying to get back into the swing of her normal life, less able to come running every time I called, I started to get resentful. I was scared of being alone, and I was jealous that she still had Louis, and that her children lived in Boston while your dad and your mom and you lived all the way down in Delaware.
“So I grew more and more insistent, calling her in tears at eleven o’clock at night, asking her to come over and stay with me when she had other things to do. And one of those evenings when she was here, I was crying, telling her the same things I’m sure I’d told her a hundred times before about how sad and alone I felt, not listening to any of her suggestions about how to maybe feel a little bit better. I just had to get all of my grief out, I thought, or else I would die. I remember that on that night, my missing your grandpa all felt particularly sharp and painful. Penny Joan kept checking her watch. She was trying to be sneaky about it, but I noticed. And then she asked if she could use my phone. She went into the kitchen to make a call, and I put my ear to the other side of the wall, where she couldn’t see me, to listen in. She was talking to Louis, telling him that she’d be home soon, that she was just trying to ‘extricate’ herself. That’s the word she used, ‘extricate.’ She said something like, ‘Oh, just another situation to handle here, same as yesterday and the day before’ in this exhausted, somewhat sarcastic tone of voice. Like my pain meant nothing to her. Like I was being ridiculous. Which I wasn’t and was at the same time.”
“Then what happened?” Beth asked.
“Oh, I confronted her, of course. I yelled at her about how she was making a mockery of my feelings, and how she had better just wait until something horrendous happened in her life because now I wasn’t so sure I would be there for her one hundred percent. At first she tried to apologize, but then she told me that I was overreacting, and she understood that I was grieving but that I was also being a real pain in the you-know-what. We said a lot of horrible things to each other that night. I told her I didn’t need her anymore, that I would take my grief to someone who wouldn’t treat it like it was rotten. She left, and told me to call her when I had cooled down. But I never did.”
“And she just gave up? She didn’t reach out to you?”
“No, she did. She called me the next day, and the next, but I just didn’t return her calls. I ignored her when I saw her in town too, and finally she stopped trying.”
“Well, that’s not that bad, Grandma. You were grieving. People do crazy things when they’re sad.”
Grandma Stella nodded, her lips pursed tightly together. “But that’s not the worst of it, darling.” She paused, and looked away from Beth’s eyes. “The worst thing is that, when Louis died, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t call her. I didn’t go visit, or send flowers. I never even went to the funeral. After everything she’d done for me. And that was years later. I should have cooled down by then, but I just had this grudge and it blocked my front door every time I thought about reaching out to her to see if she was okay. I knew that she’d be sad, that she’d need a friend, but I didn’t try to help her. I was punishing her because she wasn’t a perfect friend to me. No one is a perfect friend all the time. I certainly wasn’t. So now you know. Your grandma is a mean, prideful, ungenerous old lady.”
Beth looked at her grandmother. “You’re not all of those things,” she said. “You’re a wonderful old lady, who has her mean, prideful, ungenerous moments.”
Grandma Stella cracked a smile. “Ah, so you admit I’m old. And that’s the one I was most worried about!”
“Besides, it’s not too late. You can still make things better.”
Then Grandma Stella started to cry. “I tried. She doesn’t want to speak to me. I called her this afternoon after what you said to me. I thought I might try to apologize, finally, or at the very least ask her to come to the party. And as soon as she heard my voice, she said, ‘Trying to make a fool of me again? I have nothing to say to you,’ and hung up the phone. I don’t know why she thinks I’ve made a fool of her.”
Beth looked at her, surprised. “Well, probably because you didn’t go to Monroe’s on Wednesday.”
“What do you mean? Why would I do that?”
“Um,” Beth said. “Because of Dear Valerie. Didn’t you read it yesterday?”
“Darling, I haven’t been reading the Bugle at all over the past few days.”
“But you always read it. You love the Bugle.”
“I know. I love that silly little paper even more than I love the Times. But it’s a self-preservation thing. I’ve been trying to wean myself from Britton Hills a little bit at a time, so I won’t miss it so much when I’m not here anymore.”
“Oh,” Beth said, realizing how careless she and Ally had been. “Oh no.”
“What in the world does Dear Valerie have to do with me and Penny Joan? And what is this about going to Monroe’s?”
• • •
“WELL, darling,” Grandma Stella said after Beth had finished explaining how she and Ally had meddled, “I appreciate how much the two of you care about my happiness, but this has put me in a real pickle, hasn’t it?”
“I know. We really didn’t intend to screw everything up for you.”
“You know what?” Grandma Stella asked, throwing off the covers and stepping out of bed with more vigor than Beth had seen since she and Ally had arrived. “Get the car keys. Make yourself presentable, and I�
�ll do the same. We’re going over to visit Penny Joan.”
“Really?”
“Yes! I know what I want to do, and I’m going to do it. But you’re going to have to drive because I’m so nervous I’d probably steer the car into a ditch.”
Twenty minutes later, Beth pulled up outside Penny Joan’s house, a pink gingerbread Victorian, its front yard bursting with azaleas. Next to her, Grandma Stella trembled. She’d overcompensated in the makeup department, and with her obscenely red lips and overly rouged cheeks, she resembled a clown with stage fright.
“All right, here I go,” she said, but she didn’t move. “I look ridiculous. What am I doing? Let’s go back home.”
“Absolutely not,” Beth said.
“Absolutely yes, let’s go.”
“I’m not driving you away until you do what you came here to do.”
“Well then, give me the keys and I’ll drive.”
“Nope,” Beth said, and threw them out the window. They landed with a swish in one of the azalea bushes, disappearing completely between blossoms. “Sorry.”
Grandma Stella stared hard at Beth for a long moment, then broke into a nervous laugh. She kissed her, leaving a thick lipstick print on her cheek. “Have I told you enough times how much I love you, darling?”
She squared her shoulders, marched up the flagstone walkway to Penny Joan’s door, and knocked. Beth leaned up against the side of the car and watched. For a long moment, nothing happened. Grandma Stella knocked again. Then Beth noticed a face peeking out the window. Grandma Stella saw it too. But when she turned from the door to look again, Penny Joan ducked back behind the curtain.
“Penny Joan Munson, I know you’re in there!” Grandma Stella chucked her polite knocking in favor of an insistent pounding. “Open up this door right now, you stubborn coward!”
“I have nothing to say to you,” came the retort through the walls.