by Dee Ernst
A Different Kind of Forever
Dee Ernst
OTHER BOOKS BY DEE ERNST
Better Off Without Him
Copyright © 2010 Dee Ernst
All rights reserved.
Kindle Edition
ISBN: 9780985985417
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER ONE
DIANE MATTHEWS CAME out of sleep as one swimming upwards, a slow brightening, an awareness of sound. Dog barking, slow ticking, a long deep breath. It was Tuesday morning, so no classes till after lunch. Tuesdays were her mornings to play, run errands and sometimes write. She sighed, moving deeper into the covers. Her first challenge: sleep another half hour, or get up now and get an extra jump on the day? She opened her eyes: empty room, quiet, pale curtains, alone. The cat, Jasper, a long, rangy calico, leapt lightly onto the bed. Good morning.
She rolled out of bed and stepped into the shower. She could hear the girls upstairs, the faint footfalls coming through the sound of water. Emily would have gotten up first, rousing her younger sister with her own bathroom noises. A school day, the regular routine.
“Mom, you need to sign this.” Emily stood before her in the kitchen, holding a sheet of paper that looked vaguely official. Diane sipped coffee, squinting. Emily let out an exaggerated sigh and reached for Diane’s reading glasses on the counter, handing them over with a small shake of her head.
“Some day, you’ll be old and I’m really going to enjoy it,” Diane grumbled, putting on the glasses and reading. A permission slip for the Science trip in June. She signed quickly, then marked the calendar. Megan came up behind her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and a mumbled, morning, while reaching for cereal. Then, both girls froze. The sound of the radio, coming from the living room, caught their attention. They both grabbed for their cellphones and waited as the DJ droned on. Tickets for the concert. Of course. They had been in a frenzy for weeks, trying to win free tickets for NinetySeven, local boys made good, for their last show of the current tour. The question hadn’t been asked yet, but it didn’t matter. Between the two girls, they knew every bit of trivia about the band there was to know.
“This one’s easy,” the DJ was saying. “How did they get the name NinetySeven?”
“Oh God, I know that, I know that.” Emily had her cell phone to her ear. Diane looked at Megan and raised an eyebrow.
Megan had her cell phone in one hand and poured cereal with the other. “That’s the number they came up with when they added up all their ages, right after Mickey Flynn joined the band. He was the youngest, only 15.”
Emily was shaking her head. “How do people get through?” she howled. “It’s impossible. This is so unfair. I mean it. Mom, you should go down to the radio station and complain. It’s totally impossible.”
Diane studied her daughter’s face. Long, thin, deep-set eyes. Not a beauty, but arresting, intense. Completely different from Megan, who was so open and sunny. Emily was scowling now. She slammed the phone onto the counter as the DJ announced they had their caller. Megan shrugged and turned off her own phone, but Emily, as always, was taking it personally.
Diane winced as Emily stormed around the kitchen. Was she that self-involved at 16? She didn’t think so, but it was quite a while ago. Her oldest, Rachel, had been very quiet and self-assured, focused on becoming an actress since the age of ten and never wavering. Emily was flighty, over-dramatic and irrational in reacting to perceived slights. As for Megan, at 14 she was following Rachel’s footsteps, thank God.
“Mom, did you get Dad’s okay?” Emily asked suddenly.
Diane frowned. “For what?”
A heavy sigh. “If we get tickets. Did Dad say we could go to the concert?”
Diane sipped more coffee, thinking quickly. Her ex-husband had the girls on weekends, picking them up every Friday evening.
“No, I didn’t say anything to him yet, but he knows how important this would be to you. He wouldn’t give you a hard time. Why don’t you call him yourself, and give him a heads up?”
Emily cocked her head at her mother. “He’d let me go, but not alone. You’d have to come with me. So what about Megan? If we win this contest, it’s only two tickets.” Emily started pacing again. “It’s not fair, Mom.”
Megan raised her eyebrows at her sister. Diane took a deep breath.
“Em, why don’t we wait until you actually have tickets before we start to worry about your sister, okay?”
Emily turned abruptly and left. Diane turned and looked at Megan.
“Is there really a 15-year-old in the band?”
Megan put her bowl in the sink. “He’s not 15 now, Mom. That was like, ages ago.” Megan lifted herself onto the counter and sat, legs swinging slightly. “See, Joey Adamson and his two cousins and his best friend had this band, and they were, like all twenty or twenty-one or something, then Joey’s brother met Mickey’s sister, and Joey heard him sing and asked him to be in the band, and he was only 15, but really good, you know? So then Mickey started playing with them and they changed the name to NinetySeven and then they became really known, and got a record deal and stuff, and now they’re, like, famous.” Megan smiled. “He’s cute.”
“Mickey?”
“Oh, yeah, him too. But Joey? He’s the drummer? He’s really cute, but old, you know? Like thirty or something.”
Diane put down her cup. “Yeah. Old.”
Megan hopped off the counter and headed out as the house phone rang.
Diane checked the caller I.D. and grinned. “NinetySeven Central,” she answered.
“If I never hear about this stupid band again, I’ll die a happy camper,” Sue Griffen said over the phone. “I may have to lock both kids in a closet.”
Diane laughed. Sue’s daughters were the same ages as Emily and Megan, and were close friends. “Have yours put the radio station on speed-dial?”
Sue snorted. “Oh yes. Thank God for cell phones or I’d never see my landline. I should have let them camp out and get the friggin’ tickets. This is way too much aggravation.”
“Hey, there’s only what, three more weeks of this? Then we can relax till the next round. I remember Rachel doing this to me last time these guys were on tour, what, five years ago? I think it was the same radio contest - maybe the same DJ. Can you come over for coffee? I’ve got the morning free.”
“Nope, not me. That’s why I called. I’ve got the dentist in like 20 minutes. Ask Megan to swing by and get Becca, okay?”
“Sure. Later.” Diane hung up and grabbed a yogurt from the fridge. Sue Abbot lived two doors down. They had moved into the neighborhood within months of each other, and had their youngest in the same week.
Diane went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up. “Megan, you’ve got five minutes. Pick up Becca on the way to the bus stop, okay?
Diane sat on the couch and stared out the window, listening to her daughters get ready. She was pretty, with dark, intelligent eyes and a shy, lovely smile. Her hair was dark, curling brushing her shoulders. She had been divorced for almost five years.
“Mom?” Emily came down the stairs, her face set. “Can you listen to the radio for me?”
“Emily, what the hell do I know about these guys? You’re the NinetySeven expert, not me.”
Emily rolled her eyes and pushed out the front door. Seconds later, Megan came d
own. She bent and kissed her mother’s cheek.
“She’s just really worked up about this, that’s all.” Megan made a small face. “You know how she gets. She wants to be the one to go, ‘cause nobody else got tickets and it would be a big deal.”
“I know.” Diane smiled at her youngest and watched her leave, listening to the vague squawk of the radio. She spent the rest of the morning quietly, doing laundry, straightening books. She didn’t often venture upstairs, but as she carried a basket of towels into the girls’ bathroom, she threw a quick look into the two bedrooms. Megan’s room was a mess. Clothes on the floor, bed unmade, a pile of shoes spilling out of the closet. It always looked cluttered, even when clean, because there was not an inch of white, empty wall. All the flat surfaces were covered with posters – television and film actors, bands, and unicorns.
Emily’s room was slightly better – she took care of her clothes and they were never left on the floor. Her room was dominated by a single, life-sized poster of the band, NinetySeven. Diane looked at the faces. They are all so young, she thought. Well, maybe not. They have been around for a while. They might even be over thirty. She stepped closer. Except Mickey Flynn. She remembered the poster that Rachel had of the same group, years ago. Mickey Flynn had been a kid, small, innocent-looking, with big blue eyes and a sweet smile. He was taller now, lean and wiry, brows heavier, his face all angles. Behind him was, she assumed, the handsome drummer. Joey. Very handsome and muscular in a tight black tee shirt and jeans.
“I’d do him,” she said aloud. Jasper the cat wrapped around her ankles, purring.
“What do you think, baby,” she asked him. “Could I get a rock star?”
The cat sat and began to lick his front paw.
“Didn’t think so,” she said, and got ready for work.
She drove through the early afternoon. Her first class was not until two. If she was lucky, and no one saw her sneak into her office, she could have almost an hour alone to work on her play. It had been accepted for production at Merriweather Playhouse, a small, private theater connected to Franklin-Merriweather University. She taught at Dickerson College, a liberal arts college whose campus adjoined the University.
She had gotten the idea for “Mothers and Old Boyfriends” five years before, when she went to Ohio without her daughters to attend the wedding of her college roommate. She had been invited to spend the night before the wedding at Judy’s, with two other women, Judy’s sister and her childhood friend. Diane had not met the other two women before, but they all clicked immediately, and after the rehearsal dinner, they sat in Judy’s living room and talked about their younger college days, and about their mothers and all of their old boyfriends.
When Diane decided to take Sam French’s playwriting class a few years later, she wrote about the four women coming together: but in addition to those four characters, the four different mothers and all those ex-lovers became part of the story, stepping in and out of conversations, and having discussions of their own that ran counterpoint to what the women had to say. Only in theater could the line between fantasy and reality be so easily crossed. Diane wrote steadily, her fingers tripping over each other in her eagerness to get the words down, and Sam French loved the result, doing the piece the following year as a read-through in a Master’s workshop. Then he asked if he could direct it in full as part of the winter schedule. Franklin-Merriweather had never done an original work before. This would be a first.
It would be a busy summer for her. In addition to the play, she would be teaching a graduate level class the following year, beginning in January. Normally, she would spend at least part of the summer traveling, but this year she would be home with her daughters for the whole three months, working.
She was lucky when she got to work. She slipped into her office unnoticed and began to read through the notes Sam French had left for her. Act 1’s second and fifth scenes were dragging. She made the changes, working on the hard copy before putting changes into the computer. She lived in terror of the computer losing everything, and would print out any and all changes in addition to saving them onto a disk.
Marianne Thomas poked her head in a few minutes before class. She was 50, almost six feet tall, and the most beautiful woman Diane had ever known. Part Chinese, part African-American, Marianne was brilliant, a lesbian, and had been Diane’s good friend for years, besides being her boss.
“Can I have a minute?” she asked.
Diane nodded, hit the save button, and turned to her friend. “Ten minutes. What’s up?”
“I’m thinking of using Torino’s for the picnic. You’ve had their food, what do you think?”
Diane pursed her lips. Every year, at the end of spring term, Marianne invited all Dickerson’s faculty to a picnic at her old farmhouse. It had become something of a tradition, and Marianne took it very seriously.
“They’re good, but they’re kind of a small operation. Can they handle that many people?”
Marianne looked thoughtful. “Good point. I’ll have to think. I may get a country western band to play instead of a DJ. I think it would be a hoot. Can you imagine Peter Ferrell trying to line dance? It might be worth the thousand dollars for that alone.”
Diane grinned. “You’re awful. He is a perfectly nice man, why do you pick on him so much?”
“Because he honestly believes the spaceship is due back any day now. Isn’t that why you stopped dating him?”
“No. Well, maybe. He was a little too cerebral for me.”
Marianne snorted delicately. “And this from a woman who reads Tibetan poetry for fun. How about a movie this weekend? Something in English, please?”
Diane nodded. “Sure. Saturday night. But we’ll have to make it late. Megan’s car-wash fundraiser is Saturday, and I’ve got the afternoon shift.”
“You’ll be washing cars? In public? Lord, Diane, surely you could just write a check?”
Diane began to gather up her books. “I’m a single parent, remember, trying to live on a professor’s salary. I don’t have the disposable income of certain, unencumbered people. Besides, it’ll be fun, out in the sunshine, playing with hoses and soapy water.”
“Playing with hoses? God, I could never be a parent.”
Diane smiled. “Maybe not. Can you walk with me? I have an issue, I think, with my class.”
They walked across campus, Diane explaining her problem with trying to get an outline together. Marianne agreed to get a meeting together next week, they picked a movie for Saturday, and parted. Diane had two classes, both senior seminars. They were her favorite classes, and they sped by. Afterwards, she ran into the grocery store and then hurried home to her daughters.
The week went by quickly. On Friday morning, Emily mentioned that her father would be picking the girls up early. Diane looked at her suspiciously.
“What? What are you cooking up now?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “He just needs to talk to you, okay? It’s not such a big deal.”
Diane looked at Megan, who lifted her shoulders and shook her head. “Sorry Mom, not a clue.”
Emily huffed and ran back upstairs. Diane looked back at Megan, who was putting her cereal bowl in the sink.
“Megan, tell me,” Diane asked. “Please? Whenever she gets that look in her eye, I know there’s trouble.”
Megan twisted her lips together. “She was talking to Alison about the shore this summer.”
Suddenly, Diane knew. “Okay. Not a problem.”
She was on good terms with Kevin, her ex-husband. Theirs had not been a dramatic divorce. They had just grown apart. He would have probably been willing to go on indefinitely, but Diane found herself increasingly unhappy, and they finally separated. He had since re-married, to a much younger woman, who was expecting their first child in September. He had also been talking about buying a house on Long Beach Island, and spending the summer there. Diane could imagine that the idea of spending the entire summer within sight of the ocean, not to mention all those
boys, would be irresistible to Emily. Diane smiled ruefully to herself. She would have loved it at that age. Hell, she’d love it now. Diane chewed her lip for a moment. It would be interesting to see how Emily would approach her.
That afternoon, when Kevin came to pick up the girls, Emily sat beside him on the couch. Diane looked at him fondly. He was a quiet, attractive man, just over fifty, who still had a great deal of affection and respect for his ex-wife. Kevin put his arm around Emily’s shoulder.
“Well, I want you to know that Victoria and I have gone ahead and bought a shore house. It’s small, just a summer bungalow, but it’s on the beach block. Victoria is going to be living there all summer.” He smiled at Megan, then at Emily. “So, Em, do you have something to ask your mother?”
Emily’s jaw dropped and she looked at her father, stricken. “Dad, I thought you were –“
Kevin shook his head. “You stay with me every weekend and for three weeks in August. If you want anything else, it’s up to your mother.”
Diane raised an eyebrow. Emily glared daggers at her father, and then turned to her mother, carefully re-arranging her face.
“Mom, I’d like to spend all summer at the shore - with Dad and Vicki. Is it okay with you?”
Megan jumped up. “Wait, what about me?”
“Honey,” Kevin said soothingly, “of course this includes you. It’s just that Emily brought it up a few weeks ago, so she and I have been discussing it.”
“Well,” Megan sputtered, “what about Mom? I mean, she’ll be here all alone. I don’t want to leave Mom alone. What would she do? She’s not even going away this summer. She’ll have nothing to do without us here.”
Diane tightened her lips to hide a smile. “Megan, thank you for thinking of me, but I’ll be working all summer. I’ve got a new class to prepare, and there’s the play.”
“Then it’s okay?” Emily asked.