Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  This time, when she reaches the message center, the robotic voice drones, “You have one . . . new . . . message.”

  It’s from Jen.

  Surprised to hear her daughter’s voice, Kathleen listens intently, her eyes narrowing as she realizes why Jen called.

  “Mom, hi, it’s me. I’m, uh, using Erin’s cell phone. She and I and Amber are staying after school to get extra help in biology. Amber’s mom will bring us home when we’re finished. Okay? Um, that’s it. Bye.”

  Bullshit.

  Seething, Kathleen tosses the phone aside, certain her daughter is lying.

  “When is Jen coming over?”

  “She’s not coming today, ’Kenz, remember?” Stella tells her daughter for the tenth time in an hour. “Here, try the blue for the sky.”

  “I don’t want to,” comes the stubborn reply. Shooting her a defiant look, MacKenzie seizes a brown crayon and begins to scribble over the top third of her coloring book page, obliterating the one-dimensional outlines of clouds and a smiley-face sun.

  Stella shrugs. “It’s your picture.”

  With a groan, she pushes against the couch behind her to lift herself off the floor. She’s been sitting cross-legged for so long that her knees are killing her.

  I’m getting old. Old and stiff and . . . and fat.

  “No! Mommy, where are you going?” Michaela protests.

  “You said you’d color with us!” MacKenzie shouts.

  “Well, neither of you will let me have a page to color, and I think you can both take it from here without my coaching.”

  “But Mommy! We need you! ’Kenzie is making her sky all dark.”

  “It’s nighttime,” MacKenzie says with a logical shrug.

  “Then it should be black. Not brown. Tell her, Mommy.”

  “It’s her picture. The sky can be brown if she wants.” Stella brushes the Goldfish cracker crumbs off her jeans and glances at her watch, wondering how many hours stretch ahead between now and bedtime. Too many.

  “I want Jen to come,” Michaela declares.

  Breaking news, she isn’t.

  Stifling a primal scream, Stella repeats her mantra through clenched teeth. “Not today. Jen isn’t coming today.”

  “But Mommy—”

  “Not today! Now finish coloring or I’ll put the crayons away and make you . . .”

  Make them what? Sit in time out? She doesn’t have the patience to enforce the punishment and the squirming and whining that inevitably go with it. She doesn’t have patience for much of anything today.

  “I’m hungry,” Michaela announces.

  “I’m making dinner right now, so—”

  “I’m starving,” Mackenzie chimes in.

  “You’ll have to wait. I just said I’m making—”

  “Can’t we have a snack, Mommy?”

  “A healthy snack.”

  Stella sighs. It’s easier to comply than argue. “Fine,” she says. “You can have an apple.” God knows they have plenty of those. Kurt’s mother brought them a bushel last week, suggesting that Stella make Kurt his favorite homemade strudel. She even brought the recipe, neatly copied on an index card, as a major hint.

  Stella takes two apples from the crisper and hunts in a drawer until she finds the red-handled corer and a paring knife. The girls used to eat apples whole and unpeeled until her mother-in-law started babysitting. She does everything for them, just as she did everything for her son when he was young. Hell, she still coddles and waits on Kurt hand and foot, and she’s made no secret of the fact that she thinks Stella should follow suit.

  She holds an apple steady on a wooden cutting board and centers the corer over the stem, then pushes it down into the crisp flesh.

  To think that Kurt frequently complains that the girls are spoiled rotten, implying that it’s Stella’s fault. If anyone is spoiled rotten, it’s Kurt.

  After coring, peeling, and slicing both apples into a plastic bowl, Stella plunks it down in front of the girls. Luckily, their whining tapers off fairly quickly and they go back to their coloring books, munching happily on apple slices.

  Stella pads back to the kitchen in her socks, rubbing a knot in her lower back.

  Other than the cutting board, the counters are spotless, and so is the sink. The entire house is, actually. Sissy was here while she was at work.

  When school started again in September, Kurt finally agreed to let her get some help around the house. She knew just where to find it, having received Sissy’s flyer in the mailbox, complete with neighborhood references and a special offer for 50 percent off the first few cleanings.

  Kurt couldn’t argue with a bargain like that, though he still grumbles about paying a cleaning lady once a week. Still, he grudgingly agrees that it’s worth it. Stella was never much of a housekeeper in the first place—another sore point with her mother-in-law.

  It’s not even four yet, she notices on the microwave clock. The apple will hold the girls over for a while. Still, she might as well see what she can throw together for dinner. It’s going to be just the three of them again tonight. Kurt told her when he left this morning that he has another late meeting.

  It’s just as well. Things have been chilly around here ever since Saturday night when he had to catch a ride home from the Chamber dinner with a colleague.

  She can’t understand why he didn’t feel compelled to rush home with her after Jen called to tell them about the prowler.

  Okay, so there’s no evidence that there even was a prowler in the first place. Even Matt Carmody seemed to chalk it up to his daughter’s imagination. Still . . .

  April Lukoviak is still missing as far as Stella knows.

  There was no way Stella was taking any chances with her daughters’ safety, or with Jen’s. And Kurt . . .

  Well, Kurt just didn’t seem to give a damn.

  She was asleep when he showed up. She found him, still dressed, on the couch in front of the television yesterday morning. They didn’t even discuss what happened Saturday night. She took the girls to church, and by the time they got back, Kurt’s brother Stefan was there to watch the Bills game with him. Newly divorced and in no hurry to go back to his crummy apartment, Stefan lingered until late last night.

  Not that Stella knows what she’d have said to her husband if they had the opportunity for private conversation. Certainly, there’s nothing she hasn’t said a hundred times before.

  She removes a package of breaded chicken cutlets from the freezer and one of baby carrots from the crisper.

  The bottom line is that her marriage is in trouble because Kurt’s priorities are screwed up.

  With a sigh, Stella dumps the carrots into a colander. This is the one vegetable the girls will eat—as long as they’re steamed with plenty of butter and brown sugar.

  Standing at the sink, she aims the sprayer over the carrots to wash them, telling herself that she should set half of them aside and eat them raw. Or at least, set half aside after they’re steamed, before she glazes the rest.

  She shouldn’t be eating breaded chicken, either. She should buy plain, fresh cutlets, then bread and fry a few for the girls—and Kurt, if he’s ever home for dinner again.

  She should . . .

  But she won’t. She hasn’t the energy to diet right now.

  Gazing out the window into the backyard, with its sparse, newly planted shrubbery and towering wooden swing set, she tries to imagine somebody hiding there. Who on earth would do such a thing? A would-be robber? A neighborhood Peeping Tom? A serial killer?

  Poor Jen. She looked more embarrassed than shaken when Stella rushed through the door on Saturday night. She kept apologizing for making her leave the dinner early.

  “You did me a favor, sweetie. It wasn’t any fun anyway.”

  “But what about Mr. Gattinski? He has to stay all by himself now.”

  She wasn’t about to tell Jen that Mr. Gattinski probably preferred it that way.

  Turning off the water and shaking the car
rots in the colander, she finds herself almost wishing there really were some kind of prowler creeping around the neighborhood at night. Then maybe Kurt would be worried enough about her and the girls that he’d start spending more time at home.

  She bites into a raw carrot.

  Sure, she thinks wryly, munching, and maybe butter and brown sugar will be declared the next magic bullet for weight loss.

  Kathleen’s keys tumble from the pocket of her barn coat when she snatches it from the kitchen chair, realizing she’s going to be late meeting the boys. She grabs the key ring and tosses it onto the counter, then hurries to the door. She never bothers to lock up the house when she’s just going down to the bus stop at the end of the cul de sac.

  As she steps out into the crisp fall afternoon, the breeze catches the door, slamming it behind her.

  She wishes she’d slammed it deliberately herself. Lord knows she’s in the mood to slam something.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  Jen isn’t staying after for schoolwork.

  There isn’t a doubt in Kathleen’s mind. She knows, courtesy of pure instinct—the same maternal instinct that sent her speeding over to the Gattinskis’ house Saturday night.

  As she strides along the cul de sac toward a cluster of other moms, she wonders what the hell she’s supposed to do now.

  All her life, Jen has been trustworthy. Responsible.

  As far as Kathleen knows, the only lie her daughter ever told—until now—wasn’t even a verbal one. At seven, Jen scrawled Curran’s name in crayon on the dining room wallpaper—clearly a hasty afterthought, as it was below a row of meticulously drawn stick people and flowers. At the time, Curran could barely scribble, much less create actual art complete with a signature.

  That incident has become a family joke.

  This one, Kathleen suspects, will not.

  She sighs, slowing her pace as she nears the chattering neighborhood moms, envying the ones whose daughters are giggling toddlers or pink-bonneted infants safely tucked in their strollers. It will be years before they’re out of their mothers’ sight, free to sneak around and lie and take all the risks teenaged girls take in their growing independence.

  Not all teenaged girls . . .

  But look what happened to me.

  The big yellow school bus pulls up, flashing its red lights.

  As Kathleen welcomes her younger children into her arms, her hug is more fierce than usual.

  “How was school, guys?”

  Curran shrugs. “Fine.”

  “Stinky.”

  “Stinky? Why was it stinky?” she asks Riley.

  “Somebody threw up on the rug after snack.”

  “Oh. That is stinky,” she agrees, thankful that she still has a kindergartner, allowing her a moment’s reprieve, whenever she needs it most, in a blessedly uncomplicated world.

  “I hope you don’t catch it,” Curran tells his little brother.

  “Catch what?”

  “The throwing up thing.”

  “Mommy, am I going to catch it?” Riley’s eyes widen with worry. “I don’t want to throw up.”

  “You won’t.”

  “You might,” Curran tells him.

  “Curran!”

  “Well, he might.”

  Kathleen sighs, wishing Curran would leave Riley alone. There are times when he teases him unmercifully, preying on kindergarten fears of throwing up, the monster under the bed, the evil pirate in the closet.

  As an only child herself, she’s no expert at sibling rivalry. And Jen longed for a baby brother, so she was thrilled when Curran was born. Curran was outraged when Riley was born, usurping his position as baby of the family. He has yet to outgrow his disgruntlement.

  Matt, who has three brothers, assures Kathleen that the intense jealousy is a normal reaction, especially with same-sex siblings who are five years apart.

  When Riley was a newborn, Kathleen didn’t dare leave him alone in a room with Curran for fear that he’d harm him. Even now, the boys inevitably end up scuffling if they spend too much time together.

  “Riley, you aren’t going to throw up,” Kathleen tells her youngest child, ruffling his hair. “And Curran, cut it out.”

  “I’m just worried about him. I don’t want him to get sick or anything.”

  “Gee, that’s big of you,” she says dryly.

  “Hey, Riley . . .” Curran breaks into a run. “I’ll race you home.”

  “No fair! You got a head start!”

  Watching her sons scamper ahead of her, Kathleen wonders again where Jen really is.

  Maybe she and Matt should have given in on the cell phone issue. After all, it would work both ways. If Jen carried a phone, Kathleen would be able to track her down any time she wants to.

  A feeling of helplessness seeps in. Instinctively, she does what she was taught to do all those years ago at St. Brigid’s.

  She prays.

  She prays that God will bring her daughter home safely.

  And she prays that He’ll give her the strength to do whatever it takes to make sure it never happens again.

  FOUR

  Hearing the front door slam, Maeve hastily returns her half-full pack of Salem Lights to the drawer of the end table. Damn. After fighting off temptation for the past hour, she was just about to light up at last.

  As far as she knows, Erin thinks she quit smoking last spring. Maeve isn’t about to start smoking again in front of her. After all, her daughter is at the age when she might decide to pilfer a few cigarettes to sample.

  That’s how Maeve herself got hooked—about twenty years ago. You’d think seeing her own mother wasting away from lung cancer would destroy her own recent craving, but it hasn’t.

  “Mom?”

  “In here,” she calls, frowning as she notices a film of dust covering the table. Sissy was here all day yesterday. For what Maeve—ahem, Gregory—pays her an hour, you’d think the place would be spotless.

  To be fair, Sissy is far more efficient than Marta, who broke her leg in a car accident back in—when? September? August? Time has been rushing by, as usual.

  And unlike Marta, Sissy doesn’t eat Maeve out of house and home while she’s here. She never even touches the Atkins-friendly store-bought tuna salad Maeve keeps on hand and offers the cleaning lady weekly for lunch. Marta used to devour it, along with whatever else she could find in the fridge and cabinets.

  Erin pops her blond head into the den.

  “How was the biology tutoring?” Maeve turns down the television volume with the remote.

  “It was good. What are you watching?”

  “Judge Judy.”

  Erin rolls her eyes. “I’m going up to take a shower.”

  “Why don’t you wait until later? I thought we could go out for salads at Ernesto’s.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re not?” That’s a switch. Erin is usually starved when she gets home from school at her regular time, let alone more than two hours later.

  “Nah. I had a big lunch. It was spaghetti day.” Her daughter disappears, her footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  Damn. Maeve craves a chicken Caesar salad almost as much as she craves a cigarette. She could always drive over to the restaurant alone . . .

  No, she can’t. There’s something pathetic about a divor-cée dining out solo. Especially in a trattoria filled with couples and young families.

  The phone rings just as she turns up the volume again. She presses Mute and trades the remote for the cordless phone on the end table. It strikes her that if she weren’t so hungry, she could spend the rest of the night in this spot without having to get up.

  “Hello?”

  “Maeve?”

  “Kathleen. Hey, want to go get chicken Caesar salads? It could be girls’ night out.”

  Ignoring the invitation, her friend asks, in a low voice, “Is Erin home?”

  “You want to talk to Erin?” Maeve asks, puzzled.

  “No, it’
s just . . . Jen got home a few minutes ago . . .”

  “So did Erin.”

  “Where did she say she was?”

  “At school, getting extra help with biology. Amber’s mother brought her home.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “Who?”

  “Amber’s mother dropping her off.”

  “Kathleen, I did back-to-back spinning and Pilates classes this afternoon. I haven’t moved from this chair since—”

  “Maeve, I think they lied to us. Jen said the same thing Erin told you. But I was watching for her to come home, and I didn’t see a car dropping her off. She walked down from the main road. She said Amber’s mother left her at the end of the cul-de-sac but why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know . . . maybe she’s lazy?”

  Kathleen is silent.

  Maeve shakes her head. “Kathleen, they’re fourteen.”

  “Jen’s not.”

  “She will be in a few days.”

  “Weeks.”

  “You’re nitpicking, you know that? Maybe they did lie. But how are we supposed to prove it? And what could we do about it? Anyway, who are we kidding? We did the same thing at that age. Worse.”

  All right, Kathleen wasn’t that bad. Her father was too strict, and she just didn’t have it in her to break rules the way Maeve did. Not back then. Kathleen’s rebellion came later.

  “Jen’s not going to lie to me.”

  “Don’t let yourself get all worked up over it, okay, Kathleen?”

  “Too late,” comes the bitter reply, followed by terse “bye” and a click.

  Maeve stares unseeingly at the television. Oh, cripes, should she be more concerned about Erin? It never even occurred to her that her daughter wasn’t at school working on her biology. But Erin wasn’t hungry when she came in . . . so okay, maybe she went someplace to get something to eat.

  And maybe somebody other than Amber’s mother dropped her off.

  Maeve isn’t about to call the woman. She’s only met her once or twice, and got the impression that she’s one of those uptight family values types who frown upon divorce. The last thing Maeve wants to do is call someone like that to check up on her own daughter. That would give the impression that she’s one of those single parents who has no idea what’s going on in her child’s life.