“I thought you got past that all.”
“I did. But sometimes . . .” Gincy found that she couldn’t go on.
“Look, Gincy, I know you had a real wedding,” Danielle said patiently. “I was there. So was Clare. We were your witnesses. And Justin carried the ring, just in case you’ve forgotten that, too.”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Gincy said, rolling her eyes to the featureless landscape. “It just drives me crazy that Mom thinks a wedding is not ‘real’ if it’s not a traditional service at the local church with a reception in the basement afterward. It’s bad enough we had to endure the party back here a few months later. Three different kinds of ambrosia salad, gloppy casseroles made with mystery meat, and a few buckets of KFC for good measure. And then she complained that I don’t let her see Tamsin more often. Well, if she just got on a bus once in while, she could see her all she wanted!”
“Gincy.” Danielle’s tone was firm and commanding. “Take a deep breath and listen to me. First, for all we know your mother really does have an anxiety disorder that makes her genuinely fearful of noise and crowds and tall buildings. Phobias like that are real, and they can be bad. Second, you know your mother’s not suddenly going to stop complaining about not having had the opportunity to be Mother of the Bride in a fancy chiffon dress so she could lord it over her Appleville friends with single daughters. And from what you’ve told me over the years, she’s not the kind of woman to stop bringing up a painful topic just because you ask her to. So, what’s left? If you can’t change something, accept it.”
Gincy laughed grimly. “Adapt and survive. Easier said than done. But you’re probably right. Tamsin is with me, by the way. She wanted to come. The kid’s a saint.”
“Rick’s genes, obviously. Look, if your mother is still grieving, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t be, now is not the time to antagonize her, so remember to be nice.”
“I know, I know.” Gincy sighed. “I have to admit that seeing her yesterday for the first time since Dad died, well, it was a shock. She’s lost a lot of weight, she seemed so confused, and the house is in bad shape. It scared me, Danielle. I felt so responsible, like I’d been ignoring her since my father died, and I have been. And yet, this morning Mom seemed so much more like her old self that she managed to infuriate me all over again!”
“That doesn’t mean she’s not in trouble,” Danielle said. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need your help.”
“I know. Let’s change the subject. Tell me about the girls.”
“I just posted a whole bunch of new photos on Facebook,” Danielle said. “You know Michelle turned seventeen last week—thanks for the card and the check, by the way—and we hosted an enormous party at the house. That girl is so popular. I mean, everyone likes her, from the jocks to the hipsters to the nerds, or whatever they’re called these days. It was insanely fun. And Mykaela just got the first round of braces on her teeth, and she says they hurt terribly. It’s the pressure that does it. She is not happy but she’s a trooper, she’ll get through it. She’s amazingly resilient.”
“And Marissa?” Gincy asked. “How is she?”
“Marissa is her father’s daughter all around,” Danielle said. “Straight As almost without trying. She’s only a freshman but she’s already talking about what college she wants to go to, and let me tell you, none of them are party schools!”
“You’ve become your mother,” Gincy said, smiling. “She always thought you and your brother were absolutely perfect. Your father thought so, too.”
Danielle laughed. “I am perfect! But you’re right. I spoil my children, not to the point where they’re insufferable—all my girls are well-behaved you know, and they earn their allowances, believe me, and they treat their grandparents with respect—but I do like them to be aware of their inherent value.”
“I think that Rick and I have done a pretty decent job instilling in Justin and Tamsin a belief in their inherent value,” Gincy said. “At least, I hope we have. As for my mother, I don’t think she’s ever been familiar with the concept. Certainly not where Tommy and I were concerned.”
“A person can offer only what’s in her possession to give, Gincy. Your mother gave you what she had to give, no more and I’m sure no less. Let it go. There’s no point obsessing over what did or didn’t happen in the past.”
“You’re right, Danielle,” Gincy said after a moment. “And I do promise to try to stop fighting what’s gone by, if only for the sake of my own sanity.”
“Good,” Danielle said firmly.
“Look, I’ve got to get going. I’m freezing my butt off sitting out here on a bench in the cold.”
“Why aren’t you in your car with the heater turned on full blast?” Danielle asked.
“I’m a glutton for punishment and self-deprivation, you know that.”
Danielle sighed, and Gincy imagined her shaking her head. “You haven’t learned anything from me in all these years, have you? When was the last time you treated yourself to a massage?”
“Never. Bye.”
“Good-bye, Gincy.”
When life gives you lemons, Gincy thought, getting stiffly up from the bench, make lemonade. It was one of Ed Gannon’s favorite clichés. Make something good out of something bad. It wasn’t much different from Danielle’s advice. If you can’t change something, accept it. Let it go.
Gincy got into her car and turned the heat up full blast. She was glad she had called Danielle, and she was grateful for such a good friend. When she first met Danielle, she had thought she was an airhead, one of those women totally focused on her looks and oblivious to the really important things in life. Well, Danielle had proved to be more than just what she appeared. All three of them had, actually—Danielle, Clare, and Gincy.
All during that amazing, transformative summer, now twenty years in the past.
CHAPTER 12
Gincy continued on into the heart of town. After a quick stop at the post office for stamps—she chose stamps featuring Santa Claus; she figured her mother would have no objection to Santa Claus—she headed on to the grocery store. Tommy had worked as a checkout person at Harriman’s in his midtwenties. He had somehow managed to keep the job for almost three years before being fired, for what misbehavior Gincy never knew. It was the longest time he had ever held a job.
Today’s shopping list was composed solely of cleaning products. Gincy was determined to wash every bit of fabric in the house, from couch coverings to curtains, including the better pieces of her father’s clothing, still, according to Tommy, in the bedroom closet and old dresser; if the clothes were to be given away, as Ellen had said at the funeral that she wanted them to be, they should be cleaned first. Maybe that would eliminate some of the musty smell that had worried Tommy.
It’s the perfect Christmas getaway, Gincy thought, climbing out of her car in the parking lot and stepping into a half-frozen puddle of water in the process. House cleaning and laundry in Appleville, New Hampshire!
It had been years since she had last been in Harriman’s, but nothing much had changed and she had no trouble locating the cleaning supplies, just where they always had been. And it was there, by the mops and sponges and stain removers, that she spotted her old friend Chrissy Smith. They had gone to grammar school and high school together and just after graduation, Chrissy had married her longtime sweetheart. Over the years Gincy’s mother had given her updates on her former classmate, but truthfully Gincy had never paid much attention. She did remember that Chrissy had had her first child before she was twenty. She could be a grandmother by now, and probably was.
It was Chrissy who spoke first. “Gincy!” she cried.
Gincy smiled. She had last seen Chrissy at Ed Gannon’s funeral, but they hadn’t really gotten to speak. Now Gincy noted that life in Appleville seemed to have agreed with her old friend. Chrissy was attractively plump—she had been a scrawny youngster, like Gincy—and nicely dressed. Around her neck she wore a long chain with a gol
d locket in the shape of a heart. It looked like an antique, and a good quality one at that.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to say more to you at the funeral back in June,” Chrissy said now. “We were all so sorry when we heard the news that your father had died. Me, Marty, and the rest of the family.”
Gincy felt tears threatening. She had never been a weeper and her reaction to Chrissy’s sympathy, expressed six months after the fact of her father’s passing, surprised her. “Thank you,” she said.
“Marty always said it was too bad when Ed Gannon retired from the hardware store. He said Ed was the only one who really knew what he was doing.”
“Thanks,” Gincy said again. “He really loved that job.”
“So, are you back home for Christmas? Your mom must be so happy.”
Gincy managed a smile, and Chrissy went on. “I used to love seeing your parents walking down by the pond out along Margery Road. I can see the pond from my house, you know. Not that I was spying on them! But it was so nice to see a couple that’d been married for so long still holding hands. Every Saturday afternoon, around three o’clock, right up until your father passed, rain or shine. It was, well, it was inspirational.”
Gincy felt her heart begin to thud in her chest. Her parents held hands? The Gannons were an inspirational couple? Who was Chrissy talking about? Not the mother and father she knew! But . . . Gincy thought hard. When was the last time she had really spent any length of time with both parents? More to the point, when had she last had an open mind about their relationship?
At a loss for a reply, Gincy asked after Chrissy’s own parents, and after a few further niceties were exchanged, Chrissy said she had to dash. “There’s always so much to do at the last minute,” she said. “I’ve still got a few Christmas presents to buy!”
Gincy watched her old classmate turn into the next aisle. Though the meeting had been pleasant enough, it had left her feeling somehow disoriented. I’m an alien here in Appleville, she thought. That was to be expected. It was understandable. She hadn’t lived in Appleville for over thirty years. But she was an alien in her birth family, too, wasn’t she. And somehow that didn’t seem right, expected, or understandable.
With as much haste as she could, Gincy filled her shopping cart with cleaning products and took them up to the checkout lines. She was eager to get back to Number Nineteen Crescent Road before she ran into another living reminder of the past she had so firmly rejected.
CHAPTER 13
That big stone building on the right. Gincy frowned. Hadn’t that once been a bank? Now, according to the sign on the grounds out front, it had been converted to condos and was known as the Appleville Estates. Gincy remembered the interior of the building, at least the ground floor, with its high ceilings and scrolling plasterwork and marble floors. Those apartments must be gorgeous, she thought. And expensive. Was there now real money in Appleville? Had it become a bedroom community for those who had good jobs in the closest big cities? If that was the case, it was news to Gincy. But things changed. They always changed.
Correction, Gincy thought. Not always. There, coming up on the left, was the high school. At least on the outside it was exactly the same as she remembered it—imposing red brick put together with no obvious reference to grace or style. It had always reminded Gincy of a prison. Even the big sign on the lawn looked the same, though it was probably a replica of the one that had been there when Gincy was a student. A lot of years had passed since then. A lot of wear and tear.
Gincy sighed and drove on. How would my life have been different if I had never gone away to college, she wondered. How would it have been different if I had come back to Appleville after graduating from Addison University? She wondered if her relationship with her mother—and her brother—would be better than it was now if she had never left or if she had returned to the family fold. She wondered if she ever would have grown close to her father in the way that she had if she hadn’t first put some distance between them.
She tightened her hands on the wheel. It was silly even to consider the idea of a life lived in Appleville. It never, ever could have happened. She would have to have been a completely different person right from the start. She would have to have been Chrissy Smith. She would have to have been a person who felt content with her lot. And she had been anything but content as a young person, certainly not after the age of thirteen. Contentment had only come with time, with marriage and children, with Rick and Justin and Tamsin and the life they had built in Boston.
When Gincy pulled into her mother’s driveway and got out of her car, shopping bags full of laundry detergent, stain remover, and bleach in tow, she noticed the neighbor to the right, Adele Brown, waving to her from her front step.
Suddenly, Gincy remembered how she used to rant on about the town being overrun with Browns. When she was young she used to claim, based on nothing more than a superior, snarky attitude, that actual inbreeding had taken place, but now she suspected the truth was far less dramatic and that there were actually two or more large unrelated families with the surname Brown occupying Appleville. What a jerk I used to be, she thought. And for what? What did it get me? The good things I’ve achieved in my life have all been due to hard work and to kindness.
Adele Brown now motioned for Gincy to join her. Gincy put down the shopping bags and began to cross the lawn. “Will you come inside for a moment?” Adele asked when Gincy was close enough to hear.
Gincy followed her into the tiny entrance hall characteristic of all the houses on Crescent Road.
“I won’t keep you,” Adele said. “I just wanted to apologize for not having called you about your mother.”
Gincy felt that sense of alienation again. Alienation and disorientation. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well,” Adele explained, “of course I noticed that she didn’t seem to be eating. I mean, it was obvious. Her clothes started to hang off her. And the few times I stopped by with a pound cake or a streusel—your mother does love my baking, so I thought it would tempt her to eat—I couldn’t help but notice that her housekeeping wasn’t as, well, as good as it had been. And sometimes she puts the trash out on the wrong day. Pick up is Thursday around here. Those times she puts the trash out on a Tuesday or Wednesday, my husband, you’ve met Mike, he goes over and takes care of it. He brings the bags back here and we put them out with our trash on the right day. We don’t want to embarrass your mother by pointing out her mistakes.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Gincy said. “Thank you.”
“No worries. I did ask Ellen once, about a month ago, if she wanted me to call you, but she said no and she was emphatic about it. She said she didn’t want to bother you, what with your big, important job in the city. She insisted that she was fine, that nothing was wrong.” Adele put her hand briefly on Gincy’s arm. “But she isn’t fine, is she?” she asked.
Gincy felt her throat tightening again. Don’t cry, she commanded herself. She had no choice but to face the truth. She was at least partly responsible for having caused the situation in which her mother found herself, alone, depressed, confused—and assuming that her daughter would not want to be bothered by a lonely old woman. Gincy wondered what the people of Appleville must think of Ellen Gannon’s daughter. And why do I care, she wondered. But she did care. More than she ever thought that she would.
“It’s okay, Adele,” she said finally. “You have nothing to apologize for. You’ve been a good neighbor. Anyway, I’m here now. Hopefully things will be . . . I’ll do what I can.”
Adele smiled. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything else Mike and I can do, won’t you?”
“I will,” Gincy promised. “And thanks again for taking care of the garbage situation.”
Gincy left the Browns’ house and retrieved the shopping bags from where she had left them by the car. The door to Number Nineteen was unlocked and Gincy went inside. For a moment she stood in the tiny entry hall, shopping bags hanging from her hands. Sh
e had always prided herself on being responsible, on having a strong sense of duty, but where her mother was concerned she had been neglectful. There was no way around that startling fact, no matter how strongly her husband argued it.
“Better late than never” is what her father used to say. But was that really true? Sometimes, Gincy thought, it must be too late to help.
She hoped this wasn’t one of them.
CHAPTER 14
“Is Tommy coming for dinner?” Tamsin asked.
Gincy, once again battling with her mother’s unpredictable appliances, shrugged. “I have no idea. Better set four places, just in case.”
When she had finished setting the table, Tamsin joined her mother at the stove. “Mom,” she said, voice low. “Grandma was really upset when we were writing out the Christmas cards this morning. She kept signing her name and Grandpa’s and then getting angry and tearing up the cards. I’m not sure we should have talked her into doing it.”
Gincy sighed. “Sensitivity never was my strong point. I didn’t even think about that part of the process and how it might upset her. I should have. I was glad that no one had sent a card addressed to the two of them. I knew that would upset her. Did she get any cards completed?”
“A few. I put them in the mailbox on the corner. But Mom, even her handwriting is different now. It’s shaky.”
“That’s not uncommon with older people,” Gincy pointed out. “Grandpa’s handwriting became almost illegible by the time he was seventy.”
“But back in the spring, before Grandpa died, her handwriting was fine. I remember because she sent me a nice card for my birthday.”
Before Gincy could respond to this—and what could she say?—her mother joined them.
“Where were you all afternoon?” Ellen asked peremptorily. “You never told me.”
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