Margaret was babbling, as usual. “Robin’s dad built her a tree-house! Really, it’s for Robin’s older brother, and we have to wait till Robin’s mother comes out to stand by the ladder when we climb up, but that’s silly, because we are very careful climbing—”
“Margaret,” Cisco said bossily, “you need to fold the napkins while I put the silverware around.”
“Okay.” Cheerfully, Margaret skipped into the dining room. She loved folding napkins.
“Russell,” Annabel called melodically. “Could you open the wine?” She marshaled her troops. “Everything’s ready. I’ll have Russell help me carry in the turkey. The platter is heavy. You can each take a bowl of vegetables.”
“This is like Thanksgiving, Nana!” Margaret cried as they gathered around the table laden with Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes and gravy, the girls’ favorite food.
“Well, every day is Thanksgiving, I think, when our family is all here together,” Annabel said quietly, and a shadow fell over the table as they all looked at the empty chair where Gus once had sat.
Russell broke the spell. “Tell me, everyone! Who wants white meat?”
Conversations at Annabel and Russell’s house were always lively. They invited the children to talk about the news of their school—what was the school play this year? Peter Pan? Fabulous! Had they heard about the foghorn? Cormorants had pooped all over the fog sensor, so the foghorn thought it was perpetually foggy and the horn sounded constantly, even on sunny days. Cisco and Margaret almost fell off their chairs laughing.
Carley ate and chatted and felt calmed. It was as if she could actually feel the spin of her molecules slow. She loved the way Annabel’s face glowed whenever she looked at Cisco or Margaret. Annabel adored her granddaughters. She doted on them. The house, old and weathered, showed signs of Annabel’s love and attention: she had painted the dining room trim and woodwork herself, just last year. On the old mahogany sideboard, among the heirloom silver, Annabel had set a vase of green holly. The cranberry sauce they ate with their turkey had been made by Annabel last fall. And on the far wall, among valuable if dreary oil portraits of Winsted ancestors, Annabel had hung a large photograph of her granddaughters swimming at Jetties Beach, laughing, gleaming in the sunshine like the treasures they were to Annabel.
The girls. They were what mattered. She needed to keep them safe.
She cleared her throat. “The girls and I are going to hold a tag sale.”
Annabel’s fork halted halfway to her mouth. “Really.”
“In your yard?” Russell asked.
“And inside the garage. On the drive.”
“Carley, I’m not so sure—” Annabel began.
In her excitement, Margaret interrupted her. “I’m going to sell my old Legos, I never play with them anymore, and the little toy barn with the animals, the silly little pig and cow and the horse and the—”
Carley put her hand gently on Margaret’s leg. “No wiggling at the table, please.”
“Are you selling …” Russell began, frowning. “How can I put this? Are you selling family items?” His voice was raspy, a sign of his emotional state.
“None of the real heirlooms, Russell,” Carley hastened to assure him. “I wouldn’t do that. Most of it will be the sort of thing Gus and I acquired during our marriage. All the baby stuff, for example, car seats and clothing, which is always needed. And,” she continued bravely, her heart thumping in her chest, “I’m going to sell some of Gus’s stuff.”
Both her in-laws were silent.
Perkily, Carley continued, “Honestly, Gus collected so many gadgets. I think there’s some kind of electronic weather monitoring device in every room of the house. He’s even got—he even had—a mirror in the shower that electronically reported the weather. And the electronic putting machine and his electronic language translator—for thirty different languages!” For a moment, a terrible sadness overwhelmed her to think that Gus might once have dreamed of traveling to thirty different countries. But this was not the time for sorrow.
“And my things, too!” Carley chirped on. “My maternity clothing. Sweaters and other unfortunate gifts from years ago that I’ve put away and never used. And perhaps one of the tea sets, when Gus and I were married, we got at least four different tea sets, which is ridiculous, no one gives teas anymore—” She was chattering like a monkey. She forced herself to stop and take a breath.
Annabel touched her napkin to her lips. She laid her napkin in her lap and folded her hands over it. “Carley. I understand how grief can derail your logical thought processes, but really, my dear, this idea of a tag sale is just all wrong. It is not appropriate for a Winsted to hold a tag sale.”
Carley struggled to keep her voice level and mild. “Annabel, I’m afraid it is terribly appropriate for this Winsted to hold a tag sale. I won’t sell anything of importance to the family. But we do have so much stuff. And we can use the money. I apologize for discussing financial matters at the dinner table. I know you like to talk about more pleasant things.” She looked steadily at Annabel, smiling.
Annabel looked steadily back, not smiling.
Carley turned to Margaret. “Sweetie, would you like more mashed potatoes?”
Margaret nodded enthusiastically. As her mother spooned them onto the plate—making a “pond” in the middle for the gravy—Margaret chirped, “And Mommy’s going to make cakes and cookies for the tag sale, and I’m going to help her!”
Russell could not resist his granddaughter’s excitement. “Well, then, I’ll have to stop by and purchase something.”
“Oh, Granddad,” Margaret laughed. “You know we would always give you and Nana our cakes for free!”
Everyone at the table laughed, too. In the face of such sweetness, Annabel backed away from the subject of the tag sale, asking both girls about school. But when she glanced at Carley, her eyes were dark as thunder.
9
• • • • •
Monday, as soon as the girls were off to school, Carley climbed the narrow stairs and opened the door to the attic. She could tell, instantly, that something had changed. Things had been moved around. There was a very slight smell … of tobacco? She shook her head. Couldn’t be.
Still, she closed her eyes and let her nose lead her. Past the drop-leaf table with the broken leg. Past the cardboard wardrobes of clothing old enough to be called vintage. Past one of the boudoir chairs … There. In the corner was a kind of nest. Cushions and pillows were piled around Cisco’s CD player and a pile of CDs.
Carley smiled. Cisco and her friend had been up here in their own private aerie, listening to music, discussing life, love, and boys. Cisco had a new friend these days, a sloe-eyed girl called Polo who had just moved to the island. Polo was shy, but polite. She didn’t seem to talk much, but Carley had heard her and Cisco giggling, and that gave Carley great hope that when Cisco finally realized she was not going to be a ballerina, she wouldn’t be devastated. Polo had no interest in ballet.
So, good. Carley liked that about the house, how it provided hiding spots and private nooks for conversation.
She turned to search out the other boudoir chair, and her foot hit something. She looked down.
There on the wide old floorboards was an object of heavy glass, so wrong here in this place that for a moment her mind wouldn’t make sense of it. Then she did make sense of it.
A glass ashtray. Full of cigarette butts.
Suddenly she was so angry she could have slammed her fist into the wall.
She and Gus had warned and warned the girls about the connection between smoking and cancer. They watched Thank You for Smoking together on a DVD. Cisco knew better than to smoke!
And to smoke up here in the attic! She might as well light matches in the middle of a haystack. All this old dry stuff, newspapers, books, photo albums, hats with feathers …
“Cisco, you idiot!” Her hands shook as she bent down to pick up the ashtray. She wanted to throw it ha
rd against the wall. Instead, she carried it down to the kitchen and plunked it in the middle of the table: Exhibit A. When Cisco got home from school, Carley would have the evidence ready. She needed to decide on a suitable punishment. It really was a serious offense, smoking in the attic! How could Cisco, usually so intelligent, do something so stupid?
The smoking wasn’t so very awful, Carley decided as she paced the room. All kids tried it sooner or later. It was almost a rite of passage. But to smoke in the attic! She didn’t want Annabel or Russ to find out about this. As much as they adored their granddaughter, they were emotionally, symbolically, personally attached to their houses. They would freak out.
She couldn’t focus on the tag sale now. She was too upset. She concentrated her energy on routine tasks: laundry, vacuuming, mopping the kitchen floor. She could do all this without thinking, which allowed her mind to rampage around the problem. She needed to find the right way to react to this. It had been a long time since she’d had a real confrontation with Cisco. She could tell that her older daughter was changing—her period had started just last month, and she was beginning to develop breasts, which had Cisco nearly ill with embarrassment. Carley wanted to handle this just right.
“Hi, Mom!” Cisco banged in through the back door as she always did, dropping her backpack on a kitchen chair and heading directly for the refrigerator. Another issue—diet soda—was an ongoing problem for Carley, who didn’t want to buy the empty calories for her children, but who felt sympathy for Cisco, who begged and pleaded for them. They’d compromised. Cisco could have one a day.
Cisco’s new friend Polo came in, curvy and smug, exuding a lazy sensuality. Polo had breasts, for sure. Carley told herself she ought to be thankful for Cisco’s new friend—Polo was anything but anorectic.
Carley stared at them, feeling like a witch with a hairy wart growing on the end of her nose, gnashing her teeth and rubbing her hands together as she prepared to roast a child. Yet her children’s safety was her responsibility and being a parent meant setting limits.
“Hello, Mrs. Winsted,” Polo purred.
“Hello, Polo.” Carley was sitting at the head of the table. “Cisco, Polo, sit down. We need to talk.”
The girls exchanged glances. Cisco handed Polo a can of soda. The girls sat down as far away from Carley as they could get.
“What’s up?” Cisco asked.
Carley nodded toward the ashtray in the middle of the table. “That.”
To her surprise, Polo giggled. That made Cisco’s mouth twitch. The girls shared a brief conspiratorial glance.
“Oh, Mom,” Cisco said, as if she were bored.
Cisco’s attitude took Carley’s breath away. How had this happened? How had her daughter changed so enormously without Carley even noticing? And why did this make Carley feel so violently angry?
She kept her voice cold and in control. “This isn’t some silly little prank, Cisco. You were smoking in the attic. You could have burned the house down.”
“But we didn’t.” Cisco lowered her lids and slid a look over at Polo, who seemed to be stifling a laugh.
“No, you didn’t, not that time. But you could have, easily. That attic is a tinderbox, dry and full of old materials. Oh, Cisco, you don’t need me to spell it out, you know it’s dangerous to smoke in the attic. And for heaven’s sake, you shouldn’t even be smoking at all! It’s terrible for your health. Your father and I have warned you about it, and they’ve warned you about it in school, too.”
Cisco stared steadily at the surface of the kitchen table. Her attention had switched away from Carley. Polo’s hand was on the tabletop. Her index finger was moving in a definite beat. Da da da da da da. Cisco wasn’t looking at Polo, her gaze was fastened to the table, but her index finger began to move in the same beat. Cisco’s mouth curved in a slight smile. Polo didn’t smile, but she looked smug. She looked sly.
In a flash, Carley understood. The girls were beating out the rhythm of a song by The Ting-Tings, which actually was a song Carley loved to dance to. Shut up and let me go.
Like prisoners, Cisco and Polo were tapping a message to each other.
Cisco and Polo against Carley.
Carley knew her mouth was thin-lipped as she spoke and she hated herself for it. But she knew, rationally, this was the right thing to do. “Since you two girls were the ones smoking together, the most sensible punishment I can see for this is to prevent you from spending any more time together. Cisco, you are not to bring Polo home for a week, and you can’t go to her house for a week. No phone calls between the two of you, either.”
“Mom!” Cisco erupted from her chair, her face red, her hands clenched at her side. “That’s not fair!”
“It’s my decision, Cisco, and I’m not changing my mind. It’s obvious that you two think you’re clever and cute with your smoking and your tapping, but smoking is a serious problem and it has to—”
“I won’t smoke anymore, Mom! I promise! I won’t smoke!” Cisco had tears in her eyes.
Polo looked bored. She sat very still, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, as if anything there were more interesting than what was in the rest of the room.
“Polo, perhaps I should phone your mother and explain why I’m imposing this restriction,” Carley said.
“Go ahead,” Polo countered smugly.
“Mom, NO!” Cisco was almost screaming.
“I’m out of here,” Polo said. In one smooth move, she rose, shouldered her backpack, and loped out the kitchen door without another look at Cisco or Carley.
Cisco watched her friend go with amazement. When she turned to face Carley, her eyes blazed with disgust. “I hate you,” she hissed. “You have no idea how much I hate you.”
“Cisco, calm d—”
“You have just ruined my life.”
“Oh, Cisco, I doubt that—”
“You know nothing about my life, nothing. You have no idea what you’ve just done. I hate you. I wish I didn’t have to live with you. I wish I never had to see you again.”
“Cisco, honey—”
“Don’t touch me!” Cisco ran from the room. She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door, but the noise of Cisco’s furious crying carried through.
Carley clasped her own hands together to try to stop them from shaking. If only Gus were here to help her make the rules. To help her take the force of Cisco’s fury when Carley enforced the rules. At times like this, she felt alone and hopeless. The loneliness of her adult life would, like a river finding a crack in a dam, break through, flooding her with misery. She went into the living room, intending to curl up on her side on the sofa, just for a moment, just to catch her breath.
The front door slammed and two little giggling girls skipped in, Margaret and her best friend Molly.
“We’re going to have tea with our babies,” Margaret informed her mother.
As fast as Superwoman in a phone booth, Carley transformed herself into a calm and smiling mommy. “Great, girls. Do you want to take some juice and cookies up to your room?”
“Yay!” Margaret jumped up and down, then caught herself and stood quite still. “We’ll be very careful not to spill,” she promised solemnly.
Carley put together a doll-size picnic basket of cookies and juice in a thermos. She followed the little girls to the bottom of the stairs and waved to them as they went up. Really, she was listening for sounds of Cisco. The wailing had stopped. There was silence. Perhaps Cisco had fallen asleep, exhausted by her emotions. Or perhaps she was talking to Polo on her cell phone. Fine. Carley would phone her own friend.
“Maud, can you talk?”
“For a while. I’ve got to get the monsters from The Boys and Girls Club. What’s up?”
Carley explained about the smoking, the insolence, Cisco’s tantrum.
“Oh, sweetie, and you have to do this by yourself.” Maud sighed. “My mother used to say to me, ‘Just wait until your father gets home.’ All I can say to my boys is, ‘Just wait till your fat
her gets home—oh, never mind, your father is three thousand miles away and doesn’t give a shit.’ ”
Carley laughed, and relief flowed through her. “It’s easy for me to fool myself into thinking Cisco and I are friends, equals, and sometimes we really seem to be. Other times, and this is definitely one of them, I’ve got to stand up and be a parent, even if she does hate me.”
“Tough love is the best kind, especially with the smoking issue. Cisco’s peers are going to be sampling drugs and alcohol pretty soon.”
“Oh, Maud, don’t even say that. It’s terrifying.”
“Yeah, but settle down. Cisco’s got ballet. That will keep her steady, give her something to dream about, something to organize her life. I think I’ll register my guys in karate this winter. If anyone can break boards with their bare hands, it’s my two.”
Carley laughed again, then added more soberly, “Isn’t it hard, making and enforcing rules without another adult to help?”
“Actually, no. John was so hopeless. His head was always in a book, and when he wasn’t reading, he was reciting poems to himself in his head. Sometimes I was certain he was looking at us and wondering who we were. I do miss being able to go out of the house at night, just to run down to the library or the convenience store. John at least would have protected the boys. I mean, doesn’t your house seem awfully big to you sometimes, in the middle of the night?”
“Yes,” Carley agreed solemnly. “Yes, it does.”
“Back to the smoking thing. I think you did exactly what you should have done. Stand firm on this issue, and she’ll get it that you’re going to stand firm on the harder ones down the line—staying out late, drinking, all that.”
“You’re right, Maud. Thanks.”
Cisco didn’t speak to Carley at dinner that night. Afterward, she shut herself in her room and when bedtime came, Carley knocked on the door and looked in to find Cisco already tucked in bed and sound asleep. Or pretending to be.
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