Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Kathleen watches Maeve’s pretty blond daughter trying to conceal a yawn behind a manicured hand. “She takes after her mom,” she says with a laugh.

  “Yeah, without the caffeine habit,” Maeve agrees, lowering her sunglasses again. “Not that I wasn’t tempted to give her a shot of espresso this morning to get her out of bed. You’d have thought I was torturing her. She’s the one who insisted on playing soccer, but you’d think it was my idea for us to be out here in the cold at this god-awful hour on the only morning of the week I can sleep past nine.”

  Kathleen nods, but the hour is hardly god-awful, and she has little genuine sympathy for Maeve, whose existence seems as stress-free as a single mom’s life can possibly be.

  Maeve’s ex is a dentist; her two-year-old four-bedroom Colonial and two-year-old Lexus are entirely paid for; she doesn’t have to work, thanks to her hefty alimony and the child support she gets for Erin.

  The girls take off down the field again, chasing the ball toward the opposite goal.

  With an uneasy twinge, Kathleen glances back toward the trees, about to point out the lone spectator to Maeve.

  The spot by the woods is empty.

  Startled, she scans the perimeter of the field, expecting to see someone striding away, coat or dress flapping about their legs in the gusting wind.

  But there is no sign anywhere of the person she saw earlier. It’s as though he—or she—has been swallowed by the dense woods once again.

  A chill slithers down Kathleen’s spine, and this time it has nothing to do with static electricity or ragged fingernails.

  Naturally, the moment Lucy stops pacing the floor to perch on the edge of a hard-backed kitchen chair, the phone rings.

  Heart pounding wildly, she leaps to her feet again and hurries across the worn linoleum, snatching up the receiver before it can ring again. Henry’s working the night shift this week, asleep in the bedroom upstairs.

  Lifting the receiver, she utters a hurried, hushed, “Hello?” and holds her breath, waiting.

  The male voice is familiar, uttering a mere two words. But they’re the two words she was half-hoping, half-dreading, she’d hear.

  “It’s her.”

  TWO

  “So did you see him at the edge of the field again this morning, Jen?” Erin asks, flopping her long-limbed self on Jen’s rumpled bed and unzipping the cosmetics case she brought with her.

  “Did I see who?”

  “That creepy guy we saw lurking around last weekend before the game, near the woods. I think he’s some kind of religious freak. He’s all huddled in some kind of long robe.”

  “I never saw a guy lurking last week,” Jen points out, looking up from the manicure she’s giving herself. “You and Amber were the only ones who saw him—or thought you saw him.”

  “We definitely saw him last week. And he was there again today. I think he’s some kind of pedophile or serial killer. I bet he got that girl April.”

  April. The girl who ran away from the apartment complex back when school started. Jen didn’t know her. Erin didn’t either, but she said she was trashy.

  “I thought you said that girl April ran away,” Jen points out.

  “That’s what my mother told me, but I don’t believe her. I bet that creepy guy kidnapped her and raped her and killed her.”

  “I think you’ve been watching too many episodes of CSI,” Jen tells her friend.

  “It’s not just me. Amber and Rachel saw him lurking today, too.”

  Lurking. It’s such a dramatic word. Jen rolls her eyes.

  Then she remembers something.

  “Just because he was hanging around the soccer field doesn’t mean he’s some psycho stalker.” Jen’s voice is steady but the brush trembles slightly in her right hand, smearing wet red nail polish over the cuticle of her left thumb.

  A few days ago, when she was leaving her after school babysitting job at the Gattinskis’ home, she could have sworn she was being followed.

  It was probably just her imagination.

  Or maybe not.

  Either way, the boogeyman didn’t get her.

  Not that time, anyway.

  Maybe she was just lucky because the ladybug had landed on her arm just before that. Ladybugs are good luck. Mom always says that.

  “Too bad you have to babysit tonight, Jen,” Erin is saying as she files her own nails. “Me and Rachel are going to see He Calls at Midnight. It’s supposed to be really good.”

  “My mom wouldn’t let me go even if I didn’t have to babysit,” Jen points out. “It’s rated R.”

  Erin tosses her long blond hair. “You want me to tell my mom to talk to her? Maybe she can get her to stop being so overprotective. My mom thinks your mom’s kind of ridiculous.”

  Jen frowns down at the nail on her index finger as she paints it red, bothered, for some reason, by Erin’s comment.

  Not that it isn’t true. Jen’s mom doesn’t let her do a lot of things the other kids are allowed to do. She won’t even let her have a cell phone, which everyone else has, or a pager. She won’t even agree to getting call waiting so that Jen can talk on the phone with her friends without her parents nagging her that they might be missing calls.

  Nor will Mom let Jen get her own computer. She has to use the one in the family room, and it feels like somebody is always looming over her shoulder, especially when she’s trying to IM with her friends.

  Even worse, Jen’s parents insist on kissing her goodbye whenever she leaves, even if she’s just going to school or off babysitting.

  It’s frustrating, not to mention embarrassing. Especially being relatively new in town. The last thing she wants is for the other kids to think she’s some kind of sheltered loser.

  Still, Jen doesn’t like the thought of Erin’s mother talking about Mom behind her back that way—even if it’s on Jen’s behalf. Mrs. Hudson is one of Mom’s best friends. They grew up together and went to Saint Brigid’s all girls Catholic school together, then lost touch after graduation.

  But as soon as the Carmodys moved to the Buffalo area last spring, Mom and Mrs. Hudson took up where they left off when they were kids. Which was lucky for Jen, because she found a built-in new best friend in Erin Hudson, one of the most popular girls in the ninth grade.

  It was Erin who introduced her around, and Erin who got the coach to bend some rules and let Jen try out for the town’s dive team after the registration deadline last spring.

  But Jen won the MVP medal entirely on her own. She was even on Eyewitness News—only for a few seconds, but a camera crew and reporter were there, covering the regional meet. It must have been a slow news day in Buffalo.

  “Jen?” Erin prods. “You want my mom to—”

  “No, don’t say anything to your mom.” Jen dips the brush back into the bottle of polish. “I’m totally used to my mother. And anyway, she’s not going to change. She says she wants to keep me from making the kinds of mistakes she made when she was a kid. She said nobody ever cared where she went or when she got home.”

  “Lucky her,” Erin mutters.

  “Oh, like you’ve got it so tough.” Jen shakes her head. “Your mom lets you do whatever you want.”

  “She won’t let me go out with Robby.”

  “Well, duh. That’s because he’s a delinquent.”

  “He is not!”

  “He does drugs.”

  “Not drugs. Weed. And everyone smokes it, so—”

  “I don’t. You don’t.” Or does she? Sometimes, Jen gets the sense that Erin is a couple of giant steps ahead of her.

  “That’s different. Robby’s a senior. That’s, like, practically an adult. And I don’t see why everyone had to make such a big deal about him getting high.”

  “He wasn’t just getting high, Erin. He got caught selling.”

  Erin rolls her eyes. “Well, I don’t know how my mother even found out about it. You didn’t tell your mother, did you?”

  “I told you I didn’t.” Jen shak
es her head. “It was probably in the paper.”

  “Not his name. They don’t put your name in if you’re not eighteen.”

  “Well, it’s not like people don’t gossip around here. Things get around. Like, the other day, I heard . . .”

  No. Jen shouldn’t say that. It wouldn’t be nice.

  After all, she really, really likes Mrs. Gattinski. She always gives Jen extra money and makes a point to buy special snacks whenever she’s babysitting.

  “What?” Erin asks, a cuticle stick poised in her hand like a cigarette. “You heard what?”

  “Nothing.”

  It’s probably not even true, anyway, Jen tells herself, reaching for a cotton ball and the plastic bottle of nail polish remover to wipe away the red smear on her hand.

  A red, she finds herself thinking with a shudder, that is precisely the shade of fresh blood.

  “Do you think she’s babysitting too much?” Matt asks as the front door closes behind Jen Saturday night as she heads out to Kurt Gattinksi’s car at the curb. “She’s too young.”

  “She’ll be fourteen in a few weeks.”

  “That’s too young. She’s never home anymore.”

  “She was home all afternoon,” Kathleen points out, looking up from the latest issue of People. “Riley’s the one who was out at a play date.”

  “For that matter, I think he has too many of these play date things for a little kid.”

  “He’s popular.” Kathleen shrugs, smiling. “And like I said, Jen was home, so I don’t know why you’re—”

  “She was home, yeah—but in her room with Erin, and the door closed.”

  “Teenaged girls need privacy.”

  “What do you think they were doing in there?”

  “Their nails. Their hair.”

  “Is the object to look like twins? Because when I saw Jen coming around the corner earlier, I swear I thought she was Erin. She was wearing the same outfit and her hair was parted in the middle in the same exact style.”

  “That’s what teenaged girls do, Matt,” Kathleen assures him with a laugh. “They like to copy each other and try to fit in.”

  “So it’s just about looks?”

  “And gossiping about their friends. And discussing boys they like. You know . . . the usual female stuff. At least she’s here where we can keep an eye on her.”

  Matt sighs, aiming the remote control at the television. The college football game gives way to a home improvement show.

  “Remember when we used to have family game night on Saturdays last winter?”

  Kathleen laughs. “We did that once. Maybe twice. And it was total chaos. Did you forget how Riley insisted on moving his own piece and knocked over the entire board? And Curran kept accusing Jen of cheating . . . you really miss that, Matt?”

  “I miss having all of our kids home with us on a Saturday night. Next thing you know, Jen is going to be going out on dates. And then away at college . . .” He shakes his head, reaching down to pull the lever that reclines his leather arm chair with a jerk.

  “Then she’ll be married . . . having babies . . . asking us to babysit her kids on Saturday nights . . .” Kathleen licks her forefinger and turns a page. J-Lo beams up at her, wearing a low-cut beaded evening gown. Kathleen shakes her head, imagining what she herself would look like in that outfit.

  This tired thirty-two-year-old body has carried three babies and has the sagging stomach muscles—and breasts—to vouch for it. It isn’t that Kathleen’s overweight—she wears the same size as Jen, who has taken to “borrowing” her clothes and shoes lately, much to her frustration.

  But Jen is taller and longer limbed, and she looks different in Kathleen’s wardrobe. Her body is taut and lean; Kathleen’s is flabby. She isn’t motivated to get rid of the flab at the gym, as Maeve is. Nor is she motivated to give up fat grams or calories or carbs, or whatever it is that Maeve and the others are counting these days.

  Banishing J-Lo—and thoughts of dieting—with a swift turn of the page, she asks Matt, “You hungry?”

  “Are you?”

  She shrugs. “I could eat.” A few hours ago, after a late lunch of leftover beef stew and egg noodles reheated in the microwave, she swore she wouldn’t be hungry again until tomorrow. Now, however . . .

  “Want me to order some Buffalo Wings?” Matt asks.

  She makes a face. “If you promise to stop calling them that. Only out of towners say Buffalo Wings. Around here, you just say—”

  “Wings. Just wings. I know. Okay, I promise I’ll make more of an effort to sound like a local.”

  “And I promise I’ll get some groceries into the house and start cooking again tomorrow.”

  “I never said you had to cook dinner every night, Kathleen. And I keep telling you that you can hire help around the house if you want. This place is bigger than you’re used to. You don’t have to do all the cleaning yourself.”

  “I know, but I want to. I want the kids—and you—to have . . .”

  She trails off. She’s said it enough times for Matt to finish her thought promptly.

  “What you didn’t.”

  “Right.”

  “They have a mother, Kathleen,” Matt points out gently.

  “I know they do.”

  So did she, long ago.

  She closes her eyes and inhales, imagining the hauntingly familiar scent of tea rose perfume wafting in the air; glimpsing a pair of green eyes, twinkling, coke-bottle-green eyes—her own eyes, set in the face of a woman who died three decades ago.

  Dad has green eyes, too. A murkier, mossier shade of green, and his have never twinkled. Not, for as long as she can remember, at Kathleen; not at his grandchildren; not at the few attractive nurses at the Erasmus Home for the Aged.

  The twinkle, if ever there was one in his eyes, was snuffed out on the blustery November night that a tractor trailer jackknifed into oncoming traffic on ice-slicked Transit Road.

  Kathleen was in the car with her mother; buckled in the backseat on the passenger’s side of the car, she was pulled from the accident without a scratch. Barely eight years old. So young; too young, really, to remember. Surely the images—flashing red lights, flames, grim-faced strange men, whirling snow against the night sky—have been conjured by her imagination. She was in shock, after all—so traumatized after witnessing her mother’s death that she didn’t speak for weeks.

  This she knows because Aunt Maggie told her. Mom’s twin sister came from Chicago after the accident. There was a wake; a funeral, too. But no open casket. Pinned behind the steering wheel, Mollie Gallagher had been incinerated when the gas tank exploded as rescuers worked to free her. Burned alive, fully conscious, Kathleen later found out. By the grace of God, she doesn’t remember.

  Aunt Maggie claims she wanted to bring Kathleen back to Chicago with her. But Dad wouldn’t allow it. Dad, a middle-aged steelworker, insisted that Kathleen stay with him. Why, she’ll never understand. As the years unfolded, he rarely looked at her, rarely spoke to her.

  “It’s because you’re the image of your mother, Katie,” Aunt Maggie would say in her faint brogue on the rare occasions Dad allowed her to visit. “It hurts him to see all he lost every time he looks at you.”

  Then why wouldn’t he let me go? Why wouldn’t he let me live with Aunt Maggie and Uncle Geoff and the cousins?

  That she could have been raised in a loving home with four children, hugs, and laughter still stings after all these years. A home where somebody tucked you in at night when you were little—and cared what time you came in at night when you were older.

  If Dad had let her go, so much would have been different.

  But if things were different, she wouldn’t have Jen.

  “So . . . wings?” Matt asks, his recliner squeaking as he raises it to the upright position again.

  “With extra blue cheese,” she tells him, smiling as he walks into the kitchen.

  I’m so lucky. Lucky to have him, and the kids, and this house. Kathleen
looks around the cozy family room, which she spent two hours cleaning this afternoon. She admires the burgundy leather sofa and chairs, the butter-colored rug with fresh vacuum marks in it, the creamy, textured beige walls she painted herself using a rag technique she saw on one of those cable decorating shows.

  Maeve laughed when she popped over that day and found Kathleen on her hands and knees, covered in paint.

  “You can hire somebody to do that, you know.”

  “I don’t want to. It’s fun.”

  Fun, for Maeve, involves salons and personal trainers.

  She’s always trying to get Kathleen to pamper herself more. Lately, she’s been telling her that she needs to hire a housekeeper, though Kathleen protests that she finds cleaning therapeutic.

  “That alone is evidence that you need therapy,” Maeve declared.

  Somehow, though, they’re friends. Still friends, or friends again, depending on how you look at it. There were a few years when Kathleen lost track of her, along with everyone else from her old life in suburban Buffalo—Dad included. But you can’t run away forever.

  Rather, you can . . . but you might discover that you don’t want to after all. You might conclude, when enough time and distance have buried the old hurts, and your husband has been offered his dream job at a Fortune 500 corporation in, of all places, your hometown, that it’s time to stop running.

  So.

  So Matt accepted the job, and here they are. And everything is fine, after all.

  She doesn’t face unpleasant memories on a daily basis. She’s stopped worrying that somebody is going to look at her and know.

  What about Jen?

  What if somebody—

  But that’s ridiculous. That can’t happen. It won’t happen. Nobody could possibly . . .

  She frowns then, unsettled by the sudden memory of this morning’s soccer match, and the person she saw—or thought she saw—standing on the edge of the field.

  “Want another white wine?”

  Stella glances at her husband, then at the half-full glass in her hand, and the empty one in his.

  She contemplates a playful wink, but settles on a suggestive grin. “Are you trying to get me drunk so you can have your way with me later?”