Bella waved a hand in front of her face. “Can I open a window?” she asked. “It’s so stuffy in here.”
“They’re jammed.”
“Don’t you even have a fan?”
“No,” Clara said. “One of my housemates has one. But she’s at work and her door is locked.”
Bella frowned. She wondered if the girl had locked her door because Clara was in the habit of “borrowing” her stuff, like she had borrowed her housemate Julie’s Diet Pepsi. “You should tell your landlord about the windows,” she said. “What if there was a fire in the hall? You’d need a way to get out.”
Although, Bella thought, the windows were so small only the skinniest person could squeeze her way through. Even Clara, who had clearly lost weight in the last weeks, wasn’t that thin. Bella wondered if this bedroom was legal; she remembered her father talking about rooms needing to meet certain safety requirements if they were to be used as bedrooms. But Clara’s landlord wasn’t her problem.
“Let’s at least go outside,” Bella said. “I’m suffocating.”
“What?” Clara looked at Bella directly for the first time since Bella had entered the room. Her eyes looked a little unfocused.
“What’s wrong?” Bella asked. “You seem kind of out of it.”
“I took a pill,” Clara said.
“Oh.” Bella nodded. “When my sinuses act up I have to take a Benadryl. I hate how loopy it makes me feel.”
Clara smiled. “It wasn’t a Benadryl.”
“Then what was it?” Bella asked. “Are you sick?”
“Not at the moment!” Clara laughed.
“What’s going on, Clara?” Bella demanded.
“What’s going on is that I feel pretty good right now. You know, if you want I could probably . . .”
Bella’s heart began to beat loudly and she felt her stomach knot. “You took something way stronger than a Benadryl, didn’t you?” she said. “I mean, something illegal.”
Clara shook her finger at Bella. “Now, now, prescription painkillers aren’t illegal, Bella.”
“Are you saying a doctor prescribed something for you?” Bella asked. “Why? Did you have an accident at work or something?” It was possible, she thought. You could pull a muscle carrying heavy trays of food and drinks. You could trip over someone’s foot and fall. You could cut yourself on a kitchen knife.
Clara laughed again. “I didn’t have an accident or go to a doctor. I got it from this guy who hangs out at The Flipper.”
“What guy? Who is he? Is he a local?”
“Jeez, you sound like my parents! Anyway, I don’t really know anything about him.”
“Wait, let me get this straight. You don’t know anything about this guy and you bought drugs from him?”
Clara shrugged and her shoulders slipped a little down the wall. “I know the name he goes by. Hades. Anyway, he’s cool. Everyone thinks so.”
“Hades? Really?” Bella shook her head in disbelief. “You bought drugs from a guy whose nickname is basically Hell? What did it cost? How much did he make you pay?”
“He didn’t make me pay,” Clara argued. “He told me what it cost and I paid him.”
“How much?”
Clara shrugged. “Fifty dollars.”
Bella’s eyes widened. “For one pill?”
“He said it was a fair price. Something about market competition, I don’t know.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Bella put her hands to her head. “Clara, what that guy is doing is illegal. He’s a criminal. He could be violent! You could get into serious trouble with the law—if this idiot doesn’t hurt you first!”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Clara asked. “It’s just that I’ve been so unhappy. This is the only thing that makes me feel okay. And I deserve to feel okay after what Marc did to me.”
Bella took a deep breath. “What happens when the effects wear off?” she said. “You’ll want another pill and then another. That’s how it works, Clara. We learned about it in school. One pill leads to another. It’s called addiction. And the longer it goes on the harder it is to stop.”
“Why are you being such a pain about this?” Clara cried. “You smoke pot. You’re not anti-drugs. You’re being a total hypocrite.”
“I—” Bella couldn’t argue with Clara on that point, but she could argue with herself. I am against drugs, she thought. I always have been. I wouldn’t even take an antidepressant when Colleen advised it. I was too scared of no longer feeling like me. Then what was I doing smoking dope? “All right,” she said finally. “I won’t tell you to stop and I won’t tell anyone. Just . . . Just be careful, Clara. I mean it.”
“Yeah.” Clara yawned hugely. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she said, rubbing at her eyes, “I’m so tired!”
“I’m going now,” Bella said suddenly. “You’re not going to drive or anything, are you?”
Clara huffed. “I’m not stupid!”
Bella didn’t know about that. “Bye,” she said, turning to the door. She couldn’t get out of that stifling room soon enough.
Chapter 51
Bella rode straight home, barely noticing the profusion of colorful wild flowers along the roadside basking in the summer sun. The house was empty and she went immediately to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
Pills. It had never occurred to Bella that Clara would get involved with anything stronger or potentially more dangerous than pot. And if smoking pot wasn’t all that dangerous in the scheme of things it also wasn’t glamorous or exciting. In fact, it was kind of pathetic. At least, she thought, I didn’t bring anything illegal into Grandma’s house. That would have been seriously wrong and seriously disrespectful.
Bella sighed. But why had she smoked in the first place? A thought occurred to her. Could her decision to indulge in self-destructive behavior have anything to do with Survivor Guilt? Colleen had explained that Survivor Guilt was a defense against pain; by overwhelming yourself with shame, you could avoid having to deal with the more complicated emotion of grief. Grief was hard work, but you could wallow in shame like a pig in a puddle of mud. You could sink into shame and not have to do anything but feel bad, and that required very little effort. After a while feeling bad became normal and it was that much more difficult to choose to crawl out of the mud and to shake off the shame that had comforted you in such a bizarre and perverse way.
Too bad I stopped seeing Colleen, Bella thought. I wish I could call her now. Slowly she got up from her bed and opened Ariel’s dresser drawer. She took her sister’s diary gently in her hand. She remembered the time she had been tempted to open the diary in the hopes of finding words of consolation. “I’m sorry, Ariel,” she whispered to the room. “I’m sorry for taking such a risk with my life when you taught me just how wonderful it is to be alive.”
Bella heard the front door open, followed by the slightly uneven footsteps that indicated it was her grandmother who had come home. She slipped the diary back under the T-shirts and ran downstairs, where she found her grandmother in the kitchen unpacking a bag of groceries.
“I’ll help you put stuff away,” she said.
Her grandmother smiled. “Thanks, Bella. How’s your day off coming along?” she asked.
“Okay.” Bella opened the fridge and put a head of lettuce in the crisper. “I was out riding around for a while.” It wasn’t a lie; it just wasn’t the whole truth.
Ruby handed her a bunch of carrots. “Better you than me. It’s pretty sticky out there. Oh, I meant to tell you earlier, but I missed you. Ariel came to me again last night.”
“She did?” Bella asked, placing a bunch of bananas in a bowl on the counter. “What did she say?”
“What she usually says. That she’s happy and safe and that your father is, too.”
“I wonder why Dad doesn’t come to one of us,” Bella said. “You or me or Mom.”
Ruby shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t
think anyone can know how or why this sort of thing happens. Maybe we’re not meant to know.”
Bella continued to stow boxes of cereal in the cupboard over the microwave and a plastic container of dishwasher liquid in the cupboard under the sink, and all the while her mind was busy. She had told Clara once that she didn’t believe in God. But she believed that her grandmother talked to Ariel. Didn’t that mean that God was real? Could an afterlife exist without God? And if you believed something you didn’t have to prove it, right? Belief was supposed to be enough to make something real. Bella almost laughed. It was all too complicated for her poor brain. Ariel had been the intellectual of the family. What would Ariel think of her decidedly not intellectual sister struggling to figure out stuff way beyond most people’s ability to comprehend? Wait, Bella thought. If Ariel is still around, coming to Grandma, maybe she does know what I’m going through, trying to figure out these big and important things. And maybe if I believe hard enough she’ll be able to help me.
“Grandma?” Bella said suddenly. “I was thinking. Maybe we could try to make ice cream again.”
Ruby smiled. “I think that’s a great idea. Blueberry? Or are you sick of blueberries? We’ve been eating an awful lot of them this summer.”
“No, blueberry is cool. Mom says they’re good for you. Antioxidants or something.”
“I think I know where we might have gone wrong the first time.”
Bella laughed. “You think? You mistook the salt for sugar.”
“Hey,” her grandmother said with a shrug. “It happens.”
Chapter 52
“Out, damned weed!” Ruby yanked a dandelion from the soil and tossed it onto a pile of its mates.
Frieda laughed. “Feeling particularly like Lady Macbeth today, Mom?”
Ruby thought about that for a moment. “I guess not,” she admitted. “It just felt like the right thing to say.”
It was a beautiful day, sunny and hot but not humid, and Ruby, digging in the dirt of her garden, felt a sense of relative peace and optimism—at least regarding her granddaughter. Bella had gone off to work that morning with a fairly cheery good-bye. These days she was less likely to complain about morning hours or even the occasional overtime at the shop, and that had to be a good sign, an indication of a returning interest in the world around her.
“I’m glad George does most of the heavy lifting for you,” Frieda said, on her knees about a yard from Ruby, spade in hand. “You don’t want to be putting unnecessary strain on that leg.”
Ruby was glad, too. Sort of. Considering the situation she had put George in this summer, she felt more than slightly guilty accepting his significant amount of help with the garden and, for that matter, with the house. She felt more than slightly guilty about the state of her judgment, too. For one brief moment she had considered suggesting to George that he go to Monhegan on his own or with a colleague—why should he miss out on a few days away from the hospital? Ruby shuddered now at the memory. Talk about insulting; she was shocked she could even think about being so careless of George’s feelings.
What had Phil said to her recently? That the time to turn to a friend was when you were feeling conflicted about an important issue. Well, Ruby thought, glancing to where her daughter was working, if Frieda didn’t count as a friend, who did?
Ruby got off her knees and eased herself to a relatively comfortable sitting position on the freshly mowed grass. “Frieda?” she said. “The other day you asked me if something was wrong between George and me and I said we’d had a spat. I was lying, as you know. The situation is more . . . It’s more delicate.”
“What is it, Mom?” Frieda asked, sticking her spade into the ground and wiping her hands on her shorts.
“Before you and Bella came to stay for the summer, George asked me to marry him.”
“Mom,” Frieda cried, “that’s wonderful news! Why didn’t you tell me before? You accepted his proposal of course.”
Ruby plucked a blade of grass and began to roll it between her fingers. “The thing is I haven’t accepted. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Frieda asked. “You can’t think I’d be upset by your getting married again, and especially to someone as wonderful as George. What am I missing?”
Ruby pushed her hair behind her ear. “What you’re missing,” she said, “is the fact that I’m scared stiff.”
“Of what?” Frieda asked. “George is a great guy. You love him. We all do.”
“I know. I do know. But I’m also insanely scared of having my heart broken again. More specifically, I’m afraid of a husband breaking my heart again.” Ruby smiled ruefully. “Phil told me I’m being sexist by assuming that all men are rats and that George will inevitably do what Steve did and leave me high and dry.”
“Phil has a point, Mom,” Frieda said.
“I know. And the very fact that I’m in a relationship with George should prove that I’ve got the courage to risk having my heart stomped on. It’s just . . . It’s just that the idea of having a second marriage end in disaster, well, I’m not sure I have it in me to go through another divorce.”
“Oh, Mom. You poor thing.” With the ease of relative youth, Frieda got up from her knees and came to sit close enough to Ruby to give her a one-armed hug.
“I’d be grateful if you kept this to yourself,” Ruby said. “Besides you only Phil knows.”
“Sure. And as long as we’re being honest . . . I told Jack I couldn’t spend time with him anymore.”
“I figured something had happened between you two,” Ruby admitted. “It was because of Bella, wasn’t it?”
“She threatened that if I didn’t stop seeing Jack she would do something horrible, something that I would regret. I was scared. And I also felt that by spending time with Jack I was betraying Aaron. So it wasn’t entirely because of Bella that I ended our friendship before it really even began.”
Ruby took her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry, Frieda. I really am.”
“The worst part is I can’t tell if my cutting Jack off has resulted in anything beneficial for Bella. It certainly hasn’t for me.”
“Did you tell Bella what you did for her sake?” Ruby asked. “Did you tell her what you sacrificed?”
Frieda shook her head. “No. I’m afraid of sounding like a martyr. I don’t want to make her feel guilty. But I’m sure she knows what happened, just like you did. Very little gets past teenaged girls. They have a sixth sense when it comes to emotional matters.”
“Do you want my opinion?” Ruby asked.
Frieda winced. “I’m not sure that I do, but go ahead.”
“I know I have no right to preach,” Ruby said, “not when I’m behaving like such a coward. But I believe it’s wrong to allow someone to get away with an ultimatum. Bella acted like a spoiled child demanding you behave a certain way. I understand that she probably feels scared of losing you. And I understand your fearing she might go through with her threat, however vague. But coddling her hasn’t gotten her anywhere. My advice would be to remind her that you love her, assure her you’re not going to abandon her, and continue to live your life.”
Frieda laughed. “Easier said than done, Mom.”
“Don’t I know it?” Ruby sighed. “You love her so much, as I love you so much. All we ever want for our children is for them to be happy. But sometimes in trying to ensure their happiness we do us and them a disservice.”
“Look at us, two frightened souls sitting in the grass bemoaning our lack of backbone!”
“That may be,” Ruby said, climbing once again to her knees, “but this bed won’t get weeded by itself, so let’s take our minds off our troubles and get back to work.”
“That’s Ruby Hitchens for you,” Frieda said, moving with far more grace than Ruby had managed. “Never a slacker!”
Except, Ruby thought ruefully, when it comes to accepting a proposal of marriage.
Chapter 53
Frieda smoothed the top sheet on her bed and then laid the cott
on coverlet over it. She was one of those people who felt that an unmade bed led inevitably to chaos in the larger world. Ariel had been the same. As for Aaron and Bella . . . Frieda considered checking her daughter’s room to assess its current state and then decided against it. If Bella didn’t mind occasional messiness . . .
The house was empty but for Frieda. Bella was out on her bike and Ruby had gone to see Phil. Frieda so hoped that Phil could persuade her mother to accept George’s proposal. Only weeks ago she had remarked on how sure of herself her mother always seemed; now she had proof that even Ruby Hitchens was vulnerable to fear and doubt. For a brief moment Frieda had even considered speaking to George about the situation, but just as quickly as the idea had come it fled. It wasn’t Frieda’s place to take on the role of go-between. In matters of the heart it was better to let the lovers communicate directly. Lovers might need guidance at times, but they never needed interference.
Frieda looked around her bedroom and realized she felt at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. Sure, there were other household chores she could tackle or work she could finish, but she just didn’t feel like doing either. A thunderstorm was brewing; maybe it was the change in the atmospheric pressure that was making her feel distracted and indecisive.
And then it occurred to her. In the smallest bedroom her mother kept the photos of the eleven years the Hitchens family had lived under one roof, sharing meals, celebrating the holidays, falling asleep together in front of the television, making pancakes on Saturday mornings. Frieda hadn’t looked at the photos since her sophomore year in college when she had showed them to Aaron.
Now seemed as good a time as any to revisit the past. After all, there wasn’t much point in trying to avoid it, not when the past in the form of her father had sought her out this summer. Frieda walked down the hall to the spare bedroom, selected an album from the small bookcase, and brought it over to the couch. She opened the album to find that the photos inside had been taken before she was born. Ruby and Steve holding hands at the beach; Steve with his arm around Ruby’s shoulders in a restaurant; Ruby and Steve dressed to the nines on their wedding day. Frieda felt a great tenderness for the couple in those photos. How young her parents had once been, how young and, if pictures didn’t lie, how in love.
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