Cameo Lake

by Susan Wilson

  Finally, I picked out the headlights of the Volvo. As it pulled up alongside the curb I got up from the stairs and went outside. I stood on the porch as the backdoor opened up and the kids emerged. As the interior light went on I could see both Sean and Eleanor. Sean and Eleanor dressed in costume. In three strides I was at the car and shooing the kids into the house. “I need a word with your father.”

  “Night, Dad, night, Eleanor.” Much too friendly for me, much too comfortable.

  I went around to Sean's side of the car. “Where have you been?”

  “We took them to Eleanor's neighborhood to trick-or-treat.”

  “Was that your idea or Lily's?”

  “They needed some real trick-or-treat experience.”

  “Sweet Mary Mother of God, how stupid can you be? You let Lily manipulate you into doing something we both agreed they shouldn't do?” I was spitting angry.

  “Cleo, my neighborhood is a very safe one. You don't need to worry. They had a good time.”

  I stared in at Eleanor, dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein, the makeup contorting her smug smile into a freakish parody of friendliness. “This is none of your business, Eleanor. My children aren't your concern.” I know my voice was loud in the quiet street and I was momentarily embarrassed.

  “Cleo, don't make a scene out here.” Sean was fingering the keys and I knew then he'd drive away before I could say another word. Make a scene. I wanted to heave a rock through his window. I wanted to scream epithets at them both. I didn't. As I had ever done, I didn't make a scene.

  I stepped away from the car. The kids had lingered on the porch and I was glad of my control.

  Lily was in the shower and Batman was in bed when I confiscated their bags and dumped it all into the garbage. I'd replace it with new stuff tomorrow. They'd be mad as hell, but they'd get over it. The fact is that this went way beyond taking chances with our kids, it was Eleanor's latest volley in the war for their affection. Convincing Sean to give them a forbidden treat, letting Lily get her way. Getting Alice's tacit approval.

  I could hear Tim in his bed, making airplane noises as I, too, lay awake in my bed, wondering how much longer I could take this.

  Thirty-eight

  Grace was right. At least about the supermarket rags. I stood in line and stared with fascinated horror at a blurry photo of a recumbent figure in a hospital bed. It might have been Talia, it might have been an alien. The banner headline read:TALIA BRIGHTMAN ALIVE BUT BRAIN DEAD, HUSBAND KEEPS YEAR-LONG VIGIL . A different tabloid read:POLICE INVESTIGATE MYSTERIOUS ACCIDENT, BENSON TURNER SUSPECT.

  I turned my face away, as from a car crash. I wondered how long Ben could keep a low profile with these sorts of things being written. The tabloids had indeed latched on to the story. One expressed it as romantic, Ben Turner's bedside vigil and all. The other spun it as an unsolved mystery—how did she fall and who was responsible? Both were determined to keep the story alive as long as Talia was.

  In the week since I'd sent the letter, Ben hadn't contacted me. Part of me wasn't surprised, most of me was very disappointed. I only wanted to say I was thinking of him, I only wanted to hear that he was all right.

  Halloween past, Thanksgiving loomed. The first official “family” holiday to be contested on the field of emotional football. Without any family of my own, the holidays had never before needed planning. For nearly twenty years it had been simple, Alice had as many as could gather at her house. Sometimes all the daughters and their husbands and their many children descended from all parts. Sometimes the husbands kept the daughters from coming, proclaiming other family obligations, and only two or three of the daughters would come. But always the McCarthys were there, the mainstay family. Sean was the only son, lived closest in proximity, and had a conveniently orphaned wife. No other claims on holiday visits could be made. There were Margaret, Mary Alice, Siobhan, then Frances, named for her father after all those sonless pregnancies, then Sean, apple of his mother's eye and delight to his sisters, followed by a last stillbirth and finally, late in life, the baby, Colleen, never in the world a more spoiled little girl who managed to grow up selfless and sweet.

  To them, I was another daughter, another sister. Sean and I had been so young, barely in our twenties when we married, that it seemed to all of us I had always been a part of the family. It was this which kept me tied to Sean.

  Only Colleen remained unmarried, a career Navy nurse stationed in Bethesda. She was coming home on leave for this Thanksgiving and in honor of that fact the whole family had earmarked the date last March, in the time before my world fell apart. Each of us women promised to bring our specialties, mine being the pumpkin pies. Alice would only have to cook the turkey and set the massive dining room table. Her current house had been chosen as much for its old-fashioned formal dining room as for its proximity to us.

  The kids, numbering now eleven with Margaret's surprise fourth baby, ranged in age from the six-month-old baby to a fifteen-year-old girl, Margaret's oldest daughter, Rachel. The children would sit together at the collapsible metal table and folding chairs in the adjacent living room, separated from the adults only by the low mahogany room dividers on either side of the wide archway where Alice kept her display of the children's school pictures. The furniture would be pushed aside for the occasion. The combined volume of the two rooms would be loud. Some child would cry, some adult would get angry at another and then, just as quickly, forget about it.

  That had always amazed me about Sean's family. They argued right out loud. In mine the arguments were stifled, then drowned in alcohol. Don't make a scene.

  Even the year Francis McCarthy died, the Thanksgiving celebration went on as before, but the absence of the Patriarch, as we jokingly referred to him between ourselves, subdued us. The laughter was still loud, but the arguments were stilled. That was the year Sean was elevated to Francis's position at the head of the table. Alice remained at the foot, closest to the kitchen. I sat on Sean's right and the sisters and brothers-in-law alternated around either side. There were twelve of us that year, but I can't recall who was missing.

  I remember it as a moment of mythic significance, when Sean held the familiar carving knife, the bone-handled knife carried over from Ireland by Francis McCarthy's father. There was a moment's hesitation, like a child might take when he first attempts to do a man's task. Then the long blade of the knife touched the crisp brown skin of the turkey and the first cut was made. Sean looked up from his task and looked at me, a proud, slightly self-conscious smile on his face. An overwhelming comfort suffused my body and I felt as though this was where I had always been. Where I would always be.

  “Joanie and I are having a gathering of loose ends.”

  “And I'm a loose end?”

  “You're at one, aren't you?”

  “Grace, whatever are you talking about?”

  “Surely you don't have Thanksgiving plans?”

  It was a continual source of amazement to me just exactly how perceptive Grace Chichetti could be. I don't know how she could have known before I told her that the kids would have dinner at Alice's, with Sean. I suppose it was a logical assumption, but I might have said we were spending the day together, to hell with the McCarthy traditions. Evidently Grace assumed there was little chance of that. I asked her anyway.

  “How do you know I wasn't planning on having you and Joanie to my house for dinner?”

  “Because you live in a state of denial and you haven't mentioned the holidays once since you got the official separation. Please note: Thanksgiving is next week.”

  “I know that. I've been busy.”

  “Okay, let's say it's that. Now, for the record, will you come?”

  “Yes.” I hurried to qualify my answer, “but only for dinner, I'm to have dessert with Alice and the clan when I go pick up the kids.”

  “With Sean?”

  “God, no. He'll have left by that time. Alice is unhappy about things, but growing more tactful. She's pretty much given up ge
tting us in the same room”

  “What about Eleanor?”

  “Who?” I couldn't help myself.

  “You know who. What are her plans?”

  “Oh, you mean Bride of Frankenstein.”

  My story of the Halloween argument had struck Grace as funny. As I described Eleanor's own big blond hair raised into a pyramid on her head it suddenly struck me that way as well.

  What I didn't say to Grace was that Alice had not specifically said Eleanor wasn't coming. But in my heart of hearts I knew she'd never allow that to happen, at least not while there was a chance, in her view, of our reconciling. As long as our divorce wasn't final, Alice held out hope like a weapon.

  Thanksgiving morning I tumbled my kids out of bed and made them a real breakfast. Alice's dinners were always at two o'clock. I knew the kids would be so hungry at noon, they'd be both grouchy and picking at the pickles and olives, stuffed celery and pitted dates until they'd be full by the time dinner was served and everything piled on their plates would go to waste. So I made them French toast, scrambled eggs and bacon and hoped that that would hold them until dinner. We ate breakfast in the TV room just off the kitchen, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Just as Santa and his reindeer appeared on the screen, the phone rang. Automatically, Lily jumped up to answer the kitchen phone.

  “Mom! It's Ben!” Lily called as matter-of-factly as had it been Grace or Alice on the phone.

  I was on my feet and into the kitchen in a shot. The thumping of my startled heart threatened to deafen me. I know my voice was a little tentative as I spoke. “Ben?”

  “Cleo, hello.”

  I was nearly speechless. “Ben. How are you?”

  “The better for hearing your voice.”

  “No, tell me if you're all right or not.”

  “You mean with my newfound celebrity?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I've had better PR.”

  “Stop kidding around.”

  “Cleo, I'm all right. I'm keeping a very low profile, and an unlisted number, which I want you to have.”

  I scrambled around looking for a piece of paper within reach of the wall phone.

  “And how are you, how are the kids doing?”

  “We're okay. I won't bore you with the details, but Sean and I are separated, the kids are beginning to accept it, and my mother-in-law insists I forgive him.”

  “Can I see you?” It sounded blurted, as if he hadn't planned on saying that. “I mean, if you want to.”

  I made sure the swinging door between the TV room and the kitchen was shut. “Ben, is that a good idea?”

  “No, probably not, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see you.”

  I felt a rise of tears, “I can't think of anyone I would like to see more.”

  “I have to be in Boston in a couple of weeks. Could you come up for the day? Or maybe we could have dinner?”

  I appreciated Ben's subtlety, he wasn't asking for more than what our friendship had been based on.

  “Lunch would be best. Yes, I could do that.” Yes. Now I could. All the holding back, the fear that to speak to him or see him would be corrupted by my state of mind, had dissipated with the first words out of his mouth. He was Ben, my lakeside friend. We were friends, irrespective of our personal upheavals, not because of them. Even as I thought that, I knew it wasn't quite true. Our personal upheavals had formed us into the people we now were.

  “I've got to go. I'm having dinner with Talia's parents and I'm only halfway there.”

  “How is Talia?” It seemed so odd asking that, as if all the publicity-would have affected her somehow.

  Even over the poor-quality pay phone, I could hear him sigh. “We're losing her slowly. We're losing the battle against the contractures in her legs. She's starting to draw into a fetal position.”

  “Oh, Ben. I'm sorry.”

  “Cleo, I wish it was over.” It was a cry from the heart. I knew what he meant, and that he meant it in the most loving way.

  “I know, Ben. I know. It will be, and you'll have done everything you could have for her.”

  “Almost everything.” His voice was suddenly hardened and I knew he meant he hadn't stopped her from jumping. He pulled himself back from that abyss quickly. “Cleo, give the kids a kiss for me and have a nice holiday. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.”

  “Ben, I'm glad you called. I was worried.” I felt a little shy saying it, but it needed saying.

  “Thank you.”

  Thirty-nine

  Bathed dressed in their best non-jeans pants, hair restrained in a barrette for Lily and combed into submission for Tim, my children made their way down the street and over two blocks to have Thanksgiving with their massive family. I was still in my grungy jeans and sweatshirt, flour and bits of pie dough stuck here and there. Grace and Joanie had said three-thirty was early enough. I had a couple of hours to get myself presentable and the pies for both occasions done.

  Ben's unexpected call had cheered up a day when I had fully expected my primary emotions to be depression, alienation, and grumpiness. I actually hummed as I rolled out the pie dough. I had our date to look forward to, two weeks hence, and it felt like spotting a life ring while drowning in a choppy sea.

  Typical of Grace, she filled their second-floor flat with the homeless waifs from her classes. Students whose families were too far away to make going home feasible, foreign graduate students who enjoyed the American feast without completely getting into the conceptual significance. Besides the turkey, there was an array of vegetarian, Chinese, Turkish, and Greek foods on the trestle tables built with sawhorses and doors. Lacking enough chairs, many of us stood or sat on the floor in a quintessentially sixties fashion to eat. It was loud, crowded, and lively. At some point I cornered Grace and whispered that I'd heard from Ben, that he was pretty much okay. I left out the part about going to Boston to see him. I had no use for a lecture today.

  I enjoyed meeting the students and sampling the odd array of foods, but it wasn't my tradition and I was glad to slip away. On my way out Grace caught my arm. “If you talk to Ben again, tell him I'm thinking about him too.”

  “I will.”

  It was a nice evening, brisk and dry. No wind. I parked the minivan at home and walked to Alice's with the pies in the special basket Sean had given me one Mother's Day. They were heavy and cumbersome, but still I liked the idea of arriving on foot, Thanksgiving basket in hand. Off to Grandmother's house I go.

  I recognized the variety of minivans and Hondas Sean's siblings drove. I picked out Connecticut, that was Frannie; Rhode Island times two, Margaret and Siohban; Pennsylvania, Mary Alice; and a rental car, must be Colleen's, I thought. I felt a slight flutter of nervousness in my chest, it would be the first time I'd been in the whole company since Sean and I split. But I trusted Alice's welcome and thought I could depend on my sisters-in-law to be happy to see me.

  Sean's blue Volvo was in the driveway. The pies felt very heavy at that point and I didn't stop to grumble about his being late to leave. I knew it would be hard for him to pull himself away from the gathering, so I kept moving toward the back door with a tolerance I might not have ordinarily felt. As I approached, the back door opened and Sean quickly stepped out. Automatically I handed him the pie basket. Reflexively he bent to kiss my cheek. I let him. Then we both stepped back, remembering ourselves.

  “Mother sent me out to look for you.”

  “I'm not late, am I?”

  “I think she harbors hope that if we're left alone for a few minutes we'll . . . well, I suppose the correct word is reconcile.” He made a sound through his nose which might have been derision, or maybe it was just against the weight of the basket, which he then shifted to the other hand.

  “Is that what you want, Sean?”

  He shook his head sadly, not looking at me but beyond, toward the street. “No, not really.”

  “Me either.” Even to myself, I sounded like a little kid.

&
nbsp; “Cleo, you have to understand something. I'm happy. I haven't been for a long time and it's not that putting you through all this hasn't been painful to me. But, I know that it's best. We haven't made each other happy for a long time.”

  “Sean. I wasn't unhappy.”

  “No. But I was.” Sean hefted the basket and opened the screen door to let me go in first.

  I didn't move. “You bastard. How did I make your life so unhappy?” Sean's words were so hurtful to me that I felt physically weakened by them. “Tell me how?”

  “Cleo, look, just drop it. We can't go into it right now.” He stood there, the door still held ajar. “Are you coming in?”

  “Yes. Yes I am.” I pushed past him, bumping the pie basket painfully against my hip.

  The kitchen was exactly as it had been every other Thanksgiving in my twenty-year memory of McCarthy holidays. Redolent of cooking, half cleaned up, half still filled with the dinner dishes which couldn't fit into the dishwasher, voices loud and cheerful coming from the dining room, laughter. I stood in the dining room archway. The evening's dark was warmed by the light of the chandelier over the massive, cluttered dining room table, a perfect setting for this close-knit family. With Sean's words I understood for the first time that I stood outside of it. I was in danger of losing my place in the family. The only family I had.