The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  She tapped out an e-mail to Tasha Clurman, her editor in New York, in which she explained her reasons for wanting to defect from the Jane Seymour book, and offered Ruth Blay’s story in its stead. Attached to the e-mail was a brief proposal and these new pages, so fresh and immediate that they felt wet.

  After hitting send she was too restless to work, so she set out for a walk around the pond. The sun was out, but the temperature was only in the twenties and there was a sharp wind coming off the water. She drew her parka more tightly around herself and kept going. Maybe she would meet Alice again; she actually was hoping that she would. Cally said Alice had wanted to invite her over, and yet so far that hadn’t happened. But she’d invited her daughter—more than once. Susannah felt an irritating little pinch of something—was it jealousy?

  She stepped up her pace. And look—up ahead was Alice Renfew wearing a fringed red poncho that stood out like a traffic light against the subdued grays, whites, and browns of the landscape. The ever present dog was by her side.

  “Hello, neighbor!” she called. And when Susannah was close enough so that she no longer had to raise her voice, she added, “You have the most charming daughter!”

  Do I? Susannah wanted to ask. But all she said was, “She really enjoyed meeting you too.”

  “Oh, we’re way beyond that stage,” said Alice cheerfully. “She’s been over several times. I find her so bright and engaging. And she’s a natural with Jester. You don’t see that very often.”

  “She was horse crazy as a kid and used to take riding lessons. Now she can do it again if she wants; it’s so much easier up here.” Clearly, Cally was showing Alice a different side of her personality than the one she presented at home.

  “She certainly will. I’m going to try her on Jester if she’s game. But she’s got so many interests. That cape she made—it’s extraordinary!”

  “Yes, it certainly is.” Cape? What cape? Susannah realized with a flash of disappointment and jealousy—no use pretending it was anything else—that Cally had shown Alice whatever she was sewing up there behind the closed door of her room.

  “. . . all those interesting colors and patterns together were so original. And the workmanship is quite good considering she’s still such a novice. She said she only just got the machine, which is hard to believe. I told her she could borrow pieces from me to use as inspiration. I’ve got so many clothes!”

  Susannah just nodded. Where was this extraordinary garment? When would she get to see it?

  A squirrel scampered quite close to where Alice stood and Susannah saw the dog look longingly in its direction. Alice noticed too. “Ah, Emma, you are so very, very good! I know how hard this is for you.” Alice scanned the ground until she found a good-sized stick. Emma must have known just what was coming; her ears lifted and her snout seemed to quiver in anticipation. As soon as Alice tossed the stick, she was off. Alice turned to Susannah. “We’ll have tea again very soon. And maybe I’ll see you at the town council meeting? I’m assuming you got the flyer.”

  “I did and I was planning on attending.”

  “Good! It’s an important issue and we need to present a united front. Every voice, every body will count.” Emma came running back with the stick, which she deposited at Alice’s feet. Alice picked it up. “Well, I’m glad I ran into you. Bye for now.” She began walking again, the dog keeping pace beside her.

  Susannah continued her own walk; she’d grown cold while standing there and made an effort to pump her arms to get the blood flowing. Laced with the jealousy was pride that her daughter had impressed their neighbor. It made the beer-drinking episode seem like an aberration rather than a part of an alarming new pattern.

  Cally had seemed subdued and even somewhat chastened these last few days. She had not been drinking—Susannah made a point of sniffing every chance she got—and there had been no evidence of the unsavory Megan either. She had come home alone right after school and spent the late afternoons and evenings doing homework, or working on the “extraordinary” cape that Susannah had yet to see. All right. So she’d warmed pretty quickly to their neighbor and was still giving her mother the cold shoulder. It hurt, but Susannah told herself she was strong enough to take the pain. Then another fierce blast of wind seemed to go right through her parka and all the layers she’d piled underneath. Enough. It was too cold to be out here anymore. She didn’t know how Alice did it; she’d have to get her exercise some other way.

  Susannah turned around and increased her pace until she saw the back of the house peeking out at her through a tangle of bare bushes. She was home—or at least the imperfect facsimile she had chosen.

  FOURTEEN

  Nearing the house, Susannah saw the red flag sticking up from the side of the galvanized-steel mailbox. She gathered the letters and let herself inside. The phone was ringing; cell phone service was spotty out here, so she maintained a landline. Leaving the mail—mostly bills, it seemed—on the table, she went to answer it.

  “Mrs. Miller?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t bother to correct the mistake. They were still so new in town; maybe it was better to share a name with her children.

  “This is Antoinette Benoit. I’m the grade adviser for the junior class at the high school. I’m just wondering if you’ve been getting my e-mails.”

  “E-mails? No, I haven’t gotten anything from you, but if you can wait a minute, I’ll go up to my computer and double-check. It’s possible they ended up in the junk folder; I don’t look in there as often as I should.”

  “I understand,” said Antoinette. “And I don’t mind waiting.”

  But there were no e-mails from the school in Susannah’s junk folder or anywhere else. “Are you sure you have the right address? SJGilmore@gmail.com?”

  “That’s what I’ve been using.”

  “Well, it seems like one of those inexplicable cybermysteries,” said Susannah. “I’d certainly like to know why you’ve been e-mailing me, though. Is Cally having a problem at school?”

  “Cally has been cutting school, Mrs. Miller. Over the last three weeks, I can document at least eight unreported absences—”

  “Eight! But she’s been getting on the bus every morning.”

  “Well, she might be going to school in the morning,” said Antoinette Benoit. “But I can tell you for a fact that she’s not staying there. Do you have any idea of where she might be going? That’s why I was e-mailing you—I wanted to find out how much you knew.”

  “And I wasn’t getting those e-mails . . .” Could Cally have had something to do with that? Susannah was not computer savvy enough to know if anything had been deleted without her knowledge. “Is she in school now?”

  “Yes, I checked before I phoned. And I’m going to talk with her later and tell her we’ve spoken.”

  “Good. Then I can speak to her when—”

  “I’m afraid there’s more,” said Ms. Benoit. “She was very rude to Mr. Pearley, the history teacher. She told him his class lecture was so boring it should be bottled and sold as a sleeping aid. I’m sure you can understand how unacceptable that is.”

  “Of course,” murmured Susannah, her mind shooting off in a dozen different directions. Where did Cally go when she cut classes? Was she seeing that girl Megan? Anyone else? What about the drinking? Had she been too lax about it?

  “. . . I know she’s a recent transfer, and that she may be having adjustment issues. And we know about her father—very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Miller—which could also compound the problem. So we are asking—well, insisting really—that she see Ms. Lanigan, the school psychologist.”

  “Yes, that sounds like it would be a good idea.” Would it? Last year, right after Charlie’s death, Susannah had suggested Cally see a therapist. “I’m not crazy!” she had shouted. “I’m in mourning, don’t you get it? The only thing—and I mean the only thing—that would make me feel better
is for Dad to be alive. And seeing some stupid shrink isn’t going to make that happen, is it?”

  At the time Susannah had felt it would be best not to press, but clearly she’d been wrong. In fact, right now she felt she had been wrong about a lot of things, the most significant of which was trusting Cally to sort things out for herself.

  “Talk to Calista and then call me back tomorrow,” Ms. Benoit was saying. “Then I’ll ask you to come in so we can all have a meeting.”

  After getting off the phone, Susannah fixed herself a sandwich but was too rattled to eat it, so she wrapped it in foil and went upstairs. She was also too rattled to work—and besides, she did not want to return to her fledgling manuscript until she had heard back from Tasha—so she busied herself online, answering e-mail and replying to the occasional reader who contacted her through her Web site. After about forty minutes of digital housekeeping, she was still rattled and thought about trolling the Web for the kind of diverting trivia that the Internet served up so well, like pictures of cosmetic surgery gone horribly wrong or pregnant celebs in bikinis. No—maybe a cute animal site was better: baby bunnies small enough to fit in teacups; puppies snuggling adorably with other puppies, with polar bears, or in one case a monkey.

  She got up. This was a colossal waste of time. Even if she couldn’t work, she could at least get back to the business of unpacking. Every box she emptied was a small triumph, another step in the direction of making the house on Primrose Pond an actual home. But instead of opening a box, she opened a door—to Cally’s room.

  She could try to fool herself by pretending there might be a box or two in here she wanted to unpack. That was a big, fat lie. She was snooping, pure and simple. Might as well own up to it. Besides, after the phone call she’d just gotten, she had a right, didn’t she? Maybe even an obligation.

  The room was very neat—bed made, surfaces uncluttered. Susannah knew that if she looked in the closet, it would be neat too. Cally was an organizer, and she hung her clothes like the spectrum on a rainbow, grouping all the similar hues together. The flower-sprigged wallpaper she remembered from that long-ago summer was covered with pages pulled from the fashion magazines Cally had bought on the drive up here. There was no desk, but there was a table on which the sewing machine sat. The fabric they had brought down from the attic was underneath the table, folded in piles on the floor or in a couple of large baskets that had come from Cally’s old room.

  Susannah opened the dresser drawers. Socks, underwear, T-shirts all in tidy groupings. No hidden bottles of beer or booze, no evidence of drug paraphernalia either. The most damning thing she found was a pack of Camels, which was upsetting but not a total surprise. She’d smelled smoke on Cally’s hair and clothes before, but when she’d asked about it, Cally insisted it was other kids who were smoking—not her. Then she saw it. Hanging on the back of the door was the cape that Cally had made, the one Alice Renfew had been exclaiming about. The one her daughter had not shown her.

  Susannah went over to inspect. The cape comprised four different panels, each of a different material—heavy wools, from the look of them, in black, gray, navy, and a surprising golf course green. The inside was similarly constructed, with fabrics of different patterns making up the lining. Some of these had come from the box in the attic; Susannah recognized them. At the neck was a spherical orange button that looked like a gumball, and each of the other four buttons was different: one looked like an Indian-head penny, another was a pearl, a third was made up of glittery red rhinestones, and the last was square and carved from wood.

  Susannah had to marvel. Here was Cally’s coat of many colors, an apt physical representation of everything her mother believed was inside her. The colors, the patterns, and the careful construction reflected the equally complex construction of her daughter’s soul. Susannah felt momentarily overjoyed that this was who Cally was—and then, on the heels of that, sorrowful that she was not permitted to see this creative, expansive Cally, only the shut-down, sullen girl.

  The phone rang again and Susannah actually jumped. Her first—wholly irrational—thought was that Cally knew she was snooping and was calling to upbraid her. Then she thought it was Antoinette Benoit again, calling to inform her of some new transgression. But when she ran downstairs to pick it up, she was relieved to hear the voice of Polly Schultz, possibly her very best friend from New York.

  “I tried your cell but your mailbox was full.” Polly was crunching audibly on the other end of the line. They knew each other well enough for this to be acceptable behavior; they called it “eating lunch together.”

  “I’m sorry; little details like that are just eluding me right now.”

  “So how’s it going? I miss you. We all do.”

  “I miss all of you too.” Susannah had met Polly at Body by Baby, a prenatal exercise class she’d signed up for when pregnant with Cally. She’d formed close friendships with several of the women in the class but always felt a special bond with Polly, who had already had a girl and was expecting twins. The twins turned out to be girls too, and Susannah considered Polly the resident expert on raising daughters.

  “It’s been hard,” she said, and told her about the trip up and the slow, bumpy process of adjustment. But she did not say anything about the note she’d found; she was not ready to share that yet, not even with Polly. Besides, there was so much else to say, especially about Cally. “I just found out that she’s been cutting classes.”

  “Have you talked to her about it?”

  “Not yet. I want to do it in person.”

  “Absolutely.” Polly continued to crunch.

  “Any advice on how to deal?”

  “You know my theory: don’t blow up right away, because if you do, there’s no dialing it down. See if you can find out why she’s cutting—what about the school is bugging her.”

  “Pretty much everything: the kids, the classes, the physical look of the place. Did I mention the kids?”

  “Look, I get it,” said Polly. “It’s tough to be uprooted in the middle of high school. And she’s probably not over Charlie’s death—”

  “Over it? She’ll never be over it! And she blames me for it too.”

  There was a pause and then Polly said, “Why does she blame you?”

  “It’s the helmet,” Susannah said. “He didn’t like to wear it so I had to nag him about it. Only that day I didn’t nag him. I was working when he left; I was distracted.” The tears came suddenly, a fresh flood running down her face.

  “Oh, honey,” Polly soothed. “You can’t be beating yourself up about that forever. You can’t. Charlie wasn’t some two-year-old you left alone in the bathtub while you ran into the kitchen to fix a cocktail; he was a grown man and he knew what he was doing.” Susannah kept crying. “Not that I’m blaming him. Not a bit. But for you to blame yourself—that’s flat-out crazy. And you’ve got to give up that kind of thinking; it’s no help to you or your kids.”

  Polly’s defense of her actions just made her cry harder. She had to put the phone down for a second; she was crying too hard to talk. When she picked it up again, Polly was saying, “. . . all that guilt is getting in the way of your moving ahead.”

  “Maybe.” Susannah plucked a tissue from a box on the counter and blew her nose. “But it’s been eating at me just the same. So when Cally starts in, it completely undoes me. She won’t give it up.”

  “Cally needs to blame someone. And who’s the safest person? You. That’s because she knows how much you love her, and no matter what she does, she can’t alienate you. Not permanently, anyway.”

  “You’re right. She’s trying to push me away, but I won’t be pushed.” Susannah took another tissue to blot her eyes.

  “No, you won’t, because you’re a good woman and a good mother and you love that girl like nobody’s business. And you’re going to find out what, if anything, about the school situation you can fix, and
if there isn’t anything, then you’ll find something outside of school that she can relate to. I know you, Susannah. You’re resilient. Look at how you took stock when Charlie was killed and came up with a plan for moving your life forward without him; I admire you for that. So do we all.”

  “There’s something else I’ve been wanting to tell you about,” Susannah said. She hadn’t told anyone about the note she’d found, and just hearing Polly’s warm, reassuring voice made confiding in her absolutely urgent.

  “I’ve got time,” said Polly. “What’s up?”

  The story came out quickly: stumbling upon the note, the hunt for clues, the discovery of the poems, the meeting with two men, one of whom might or might not have been her mother’s lover. God, but it felt good to unburden herself. How had she been keeping this in for as long as she had?

  Polly listened quietly. “Why are you doing this now?” she asked.

  “Because I found that note, and I want—no, I need—to know what happened, what it was all about—” She was suddenly frustrated by Polly’s response. “What do you mean, why am I doing this? Isn’t it obvious?”

  “You didn’t hear me. I asked, why are you doing this now?” Now Susannah was the one who was quiet. “Look, your world has already been turned upside down—Charlie getting killed, moving to a new house, new state, new life. Now you’re upending your past too. Your parents are dead; whatever you find out isn’t going to change anything. Wouldn’t it be better to leave it alone, at least until you’re more settled?”

  “It doesn’t matter if they’re dead. I’m the one who’s going to be changed by all this.”

  “Sweetie, don’t you get it? You already have.”

  “That’s right. I have. Which is why I have to pursue it.”