The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle

by Jennifer McMahon

  “Your aspects. They show how the planets in your chart relate to each other. See here.” He’d pointed to a line at the top. “You have sun square moon. The sun represents your intellectual self and the moon is your emotional self, and the square is a dynamic, tense aspect. Basically these two parts of your self are in constant conflict with each another. It’s no wonder you’re so uncomfortable with feelings.”

  She’d rolled her eyes.

  “And here.” Len had pointed to a funny little glyph with an arrow, just above the horizon line. “You have Sagittarius rising. That’s what makes you so frank—you don’t bullshit people, you tell it the way it is, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.”

  Though she couldn’t possibly believe that the position of the planets at the time you were born could have an effect on the way your life turned out, she had to admit the design of the chart—the concentric circles, the crisscrossing lines, the inscrutable symbols—was compelling. Then her eye had caught on a little blue trident just over the horizon line, next to the Sagittarius symbol.

  “What’s this?” she’d asked, trying to sound casual while pointing with a shaking finger.

  “Hmm? Oh, that’s Neptune. You have Neptune in the twelfth house,” Len had said. Suddenly, her heart was banging in her chest and her mouth was dry. “It’s what makes you so intuitive. You’re in touch with the forces of your unconscious. Neptune in the twelfth is a classic placement for great artists. And tormented souls.”

  Standing alone in her office now, Reggie reached out to touch the little blue trident, covering it with her pointer finger. Then she turned back to her open bag and threw in her cell phone and charger, looked around the office, and grabbed the rough sketches she’d done for her latest project: a small, portable home she called the Nautilus. It represented the ultimate freedom: the ability to have a home that went wherever your life took you.

  “There’s one thing I’m having trouble visualizing,” Len had told her when he first saw the rounded, shell-shaped sketches. “How are you going to put wheels on it? I mean, does it need to be mobile? This design looks like it would work better being stationary in one place.”

  “Because life is about movement,” she’d said.

  “Movement?”

  “Our ancestors,” Reggie said, “were hunter-gatherers. They moved where the food was. They went away from bad weather and danger. They roamed. That ancient instinct is still alive somewhere deep inside us.”

  “But doesn’t a house represent the ultimate stability?” he’d asked. “Isn’t part of our instinct also to hunker down in one place? Put down roots?”

  “We’re not trees,” Reggie said dismissively, covering his mouth with her own, kissing him a bit too roughly. His stubble scratched her face. His mouth tasted sour.

  Damn it. She needed to focus. To get her bags packed, get on the road to Worcester, and stop letting Len creep into her thoughts again and again.

  All packed up, she started to leave the office, then turned back and opened up the top drawer of her desk. Reaching back in the far right corner of the drawer, her fingers found the old silver chain and pulled it out. There, dangling on the end, was Tara’s hourglass. Reggie turned it over, watching the pink sand run out.

  You have one minute . . .

  Then, she undid the clasp and put the necklace on, hiding it under her shirt, where it rested cool against her chest.

  PUNCHING THE HOSPITAL ADDRESS into her GPS, Reggie navigated the dirt roads, passing snowmobile trails and hunting camps, then hit blacktop. Turning left on Route 6, she went by the Rockland town hall, Christ the Redeemer Church, and then the Hungry Mind Cafe—the lot was full of cars there for the breakfast rush. She saw Len’s old pickup and thought of stopping, but didn’t want to get tied up for too long. She thought again of telling him the real reason for her trip to Worcester, pictured his intense face full of worry, and imagined he’d probably insist on going with her. But this was something she needed to do on her own.

  She’d told almost no one about her mother and Neptune. Not friends, colleagues, or casual acquaintances. Len was the only one who knew. Len and everyone back in Brighton Falls. Which was a big part of the reason why she’d never gone home.

  She regretted ever telling Len. He drove her crazy with his pop psychology analysis of the whole thing.

  “You’re Neptune’s victim, too, you know,” he’d said when they were in bed together last Friday night. They’d opened a couple of his bottles of homemade dandelion wine and both had had a little too much. He was drawing slow circles around her belly with his fingertips.

  “How’s that?” Reggie had asked. She’d known a second bottle of wine was a bad idea. Len always got very philosophical and emotional when he was drunk.

  “Look at your life, Reg. You have everything, but in some ways, it’s so barren.” He was slurring his words a little.

  “Barren?” she said. She sat up, forcing his hand away from her stomach.

  “You put up all these walls around yourself. You don’t talk to people.”

  “I talk to plenty of people,” Reggie blurted out, pulling the covers up over her naked chest. “I go around the world talking to people.”

  “I mean really talk, Reg. Have you ever let yourself get truly close to anyone? Had a relationship that felt solid and long-term? I mean, look at us. As soon as it feels like we’re moving to the next level, you get all freaked out and start pushing me away.”

  Now her hackles were definitely raised. “You’re not exactly Mr. Commitment, either. As I recall, you were the one who wanted the no-strings-attached relationship. And I’ve gotta say, you seem pretty content to come and go as you please like a tomcat.”

  It was a relationship that suited them both. They’d met four years ago at a gallery that was showing several of Len’s paintings. He painted abstract geometric shapes and lines that brought to mind stained-glass windows. Reggie was drawn to the cleanness and balance in his work. And she found his disheveled artist look downright sexy. She bought two of his paintings and asked him out.

  He made it clear that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. He’d gone through a messy divorce a couple of years before and said he just wasn’t ready to get involved.

  “Who said anything about getting involved?” Reggie had asked. “I’m talking about a cup of coffee, a glass of wine maybe.”

  “Nothing more?” Len had asked, eyebrows raised.

  “If you want to know if I’m going to show up at your place with a U-Haul after the third date, the answer is no. I’m quite content on my own. But sometimes it’s nice to have a little company. A coconspirator to pass the cold nights with.”

  He’d smiled. “No strings attached?”

  “If it’s no strings attached you want, I’m your gal,” she promised.

  They’d had an on-again, off-again relationship ever since, joining each other for movies, parties, even weekends away. They enjoyed each other’s company, but after more than two days together, Reggie would begin to feel slightly panicky and claustrophobic. The closer she got to Len, the more she felt this happening, and she’d find herself doing little things to piss him off and push him away. Len was right. It just wasn’t in her nature to let herself get too close to people. It was a safety mechanism she’d developed years ago, one she felt totally comfortable with. And now here was Len making her question the wisdom of her ways.

  “I am happy,” Len said. “I have a life that suits me. But the difference between you and me, Reg, the real difference, is that I’m not afraid to let people inside. I’m not afraid to love someone.”

  “So now I’m incapable of love?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said you were afraid.”

  “That’s a big assumption. What on earth gives you that idea?”

  “You think everyone’s going to leave you. That we live in this world where at any second, someone you love could get snatched away.”

  “Bullshit,” Reggie said, pissed off because she k
new that on some level Len, drunk as he was, was right.

  “I’m just saying I think it’s sad, that’s all. That because of one psychotic prick, you’re going to spend your whole life being afraid to get close to anybody.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it,” Reggie hissed.

  “Don’t you ever wonder where all this is going?” he asked.

  “All what?”

  “This,” he said, gesturing over the bed at the two of them with great flaps of his arms. “You and me. Christ, I’m forty-five, Reggie. Are we going to be doing this twenty years from now, slipping into and out of each other’s beds, no strings, no commitments?”

  Reggie squinted at him. “What is it you’re saying?”

  “That maybe it’s time we had something more. Something beyond being fuck-buddies.”

  Reggie cringed a little at Len’s definition of their relationship. “Like what?”

  “I was thinking we could move in together.”

  Reggie gave a great caw of laughter. It was, quite possibly, the most absurd thing he’d ever said to her, and it had caught her completely off guard.

  Len looked crushed.

  “You’re not serious?” Reggie said. “What, you want to have me bring you your slippers and pipe each evening, then pull a casserole out of the oven?” She thought of her house, her perfect little house, being slowly filled with pieces of Len: dirty shoes, crumpled sketches, roaches from the joints he was constantly smoking.

  Len shook his head, reached for the nearly empty bottle of wine, and took a swig.

  “I should have known that’s how you’d react,” Len said, leaning back against his pillow, closing his eyes. “It’s all there in your chart—your fear of commitment, your success, nightmares, intuition. Your need to control every situation, to be in charge.” His voice trailed off. “All the things that make you who you are. The things that make you . . .” He was nearly asleep now, his voice soft and breathy. “So damned impossible.”

  Reggie shut her eyes tight, seeing that little blue trident, tucked down in her twelfth house. She rolled over so that she was facedown against the pillow as she listened to Len snoring softly beside her. And she was sure she could feel it then: that little piece of Neptune inside her like a fishhook, jabbing away, reminding her she wasn’t fit to live with anyone.

  REGGIE PASSED YE OLDE Antiques Barn, the Maple Leaf Inn and Hotel, and the Hare on the Moon glassblowing studio. Twenty minutes later, Reggie was signaling to turn onto the entrance ramp for 89 South, the road toward Boston. As much as she traveled, the truth was, she always hated leaving Vermont. As soon as she crossed the state line, the skin on the back of her neck prickled. The billboards, four-lane highways, and skyscrapers gave her a temporary case of attention deficit disorder, left her unable to make decisions, focus or concentrate. She hated the sameness of chain restaurants and big box stores, the “planned communities” of oversize, identically ugly houses that popped up overnight like horrid clumps of mushrooms.

  She cranked up the radio, listening to solemn voices talking about the global economy. All wrong for a road trip. She flipped through stations until she hit the Kingsmen doing “Louie Louie.”

  Fine little girl waits for me

  Catch a ship across the sea

  She was back in her mother’s Vega, the music pumping from the crackling speakers, her mother keeping time with her fingers on the steering wheel, mouthing the words of the song, her lipstick perfect. The windows were down, the wind blew through their hair, making them feel like they were flying.

  “Where are we going, Mama?”

  Her mother smiled a secret, conspiratorial smile. “Wherever the wind carries us, lovie.”

  When they were alone together, it was the two of them against the world. Life was one big adventure and anything was possible. They could end up at the greyhound track, where Vera let Reggie put money on the dog of her choice, go to Bushnell Park in Hartford to ride the carousel, or drive to the ocean just for fried clams.

  “The world is our oyster,” Vera would say, wiping tartar sauce from her chin. “Or at least our clam roll!”

  The Vega was gone now, turned to scrap metal and rust.

  Reggie wondered if she and her mother would even recognize each other.

  She tried to picture the stump where her mother’s right hand had been—the hand that had once tapped out the rhythm of every song on the radio; the hand that held hers ice-skating on Ricker’s Pond.

  Reggie pushed her hair back, fingers finding the small crescent moon of scars behind her prosthetic ear.

  Maybe, she thought, feeling her own scar tissue, they’d know each other by what was missing.

  Chapter 4

  May 26, 1985

  Brighton Falls, Connecticut

  “THE EAR’S A KEEPER,” Charlie said when he first saw it. “Now maybe you can do something about this mop!” Charlie tousled Reggie’s long tangles, sending sparks through her scalp, down her spine, turning her into a glowing, live-wire girl.

  They were up in the tree house in Reggie’s yard, looking over the plans Reggie had drawn for its renovations. The sun was coming through the tarp over the unfinished roof, casting an eerie blue glow.

  “You should totally get your hair cut, Reg,” Tara said. She was on her back on top of a sleeping bag, and rolled over, reaching into her ratty drawstring bag for the pack of cigarettes she’d swiped from her mom. “Go see Dawn over at Hair Express. She does my hair.” Tara’s hair was long at the back and short and spiky in front; dyed black with blond tips. There were four earrings in her left ear and two in her right. She wore dark eyeliner, but no other makeup. With her pale, gaunt face and raccoon eyes, she looked a little like the undead, which is why everyone in the eighth grade called her a vampire.

  “You got that right,” she’d say to the popular girls in their acid wash jeans and cheerful blue and pink eye makeup. “Mess with me and I’ll come flying into your window at night and drain you dry.” Kids pretty much stayed away from Tara, just like they stayed away from Reggie—the weird one-eared kid without a dad who lived in the creepy stone house. Charlie, a nervous, spindly boy who everyone said was gay, was an outsider, too. Reggie had known him her whole life—they lived two streets away, had gone to nursery school together—and she knew Charlie liked girls. All anyone had to do was notice the way he looked Tara—his brown eyes strangely glassy and full of longing.

  Tara lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out through her nose, then fiddled with her lighter. She was one of those people who always had to have something in their hands. When she wasn’t smoking, shuffling cards, or scribbling out lines of poetry, she’d play with the tiny hourglass pendant around her neck, watching the pink sand fall through, then flipping it to watch again.

  Tara was wearing a tight black V-neck shirt with long sleeves that had tears in them held together with safety pins. She ripped up most of her clothes, then put them back together with rough stitches, safety pins, even staples. She was pretending not to notice Charlie practically drooling as he stared at her chest. She wore a B cup already, while Reggie was so flat she was still in a training bra, when she even bothered with a bra at all. Reggie cast a self-conscious look down at her own baggy gray T-shirt Lorraine had picked up on sale somewhere.

  “Can I have a drag?” Charlie asked, which was stupid, because he didn’t smoke at all. He didn’t believe in it. Even a month ago, he was hassling Tara, showing her pictures of blackened smokers’ lungs. His mom had been a heavy smoker and had died of cancer when Charlie was ten. Reggie could remember going to his house back when his mom was alive and coming out smelling like an ashtray. His mom was real nice, though. She’d taught Reggie how to do cat’s cradle and how to make a multicolored Jell-O parfait. The woman was a miracle worker with Jell-O. Once, for Presidents’ Day, she brought a Jell-O mold in the shape of Mount Rushmore for their second-grade class. It had been three years since she had died, and Reggie missed Mrs. Berr like crazy. And if she missed her lik
e that, she couldn’t imagine how Charlie must feel.

  Tara pushed the pack toward him. “You can have your very own.”

  Tara had never met Charlie’s mom. She moved to Brighton Falls last year after her parents got divorced. Her dad stayed behind in Idaho with his new girlfriend, who Tara said was half her mom’s age. The girlfriend was pregnant, which meant Tara would have a little half brother or sister, but she didn’t seem all that thrilled about it.

  “It’s not like I’ll ever even see the kid,” Tara had said. “I mean, why would I? My dad, he totally sees this whole thing as his second chance to get the perfect wife and kid. It’s not like he’s gonna want me hanging around to remind him of how crappy his life used to be.” She said it like she didn’t care, but afterward, Reggie watched the way she picked at the skin around her fingernails until it bled.

  Tara and her mom rented a tiny two-bedroom unit at the Grist Mill Apartments, which was where people on disability and welfare lived. It was a big ugly two-story building in an L-shape with a courtyard full of broken glass and cigarette butts, where two old men were always perched on the bench like a pair of gargoyles. Tara swore one of them had once shown her his penis. Lorraine didn’t like Reggie going over to the Grist Mill Apartments, so on the rare occasions she went, she lied to her aunt about it.

  The first few days of school, Tara sat alone in a corner at lunch. It was Charlie’s idea to invite her over to their table.

  “She looks like a freak,” Reggie had complained.

  “Oh, and we’re not?” Charlie had said, getting up to go talk to Tara without waiting for Reggie’s consent.

  Tara’s mom had grown up in Brighton Falls and still had family around. That’s what Tara said anyway, but Reggie never saw any aunts, uncles, or cousins or even heard about them. When she pressed Tara for more, Tara changed the subject. Her mom worked as a waitress over at the Denny’s on Airport Road. When she wasn’t working, she was in her bedroom sleeping or watching TV while she sipped coffee laced with brandy. Sometimes Reggie, Charlie, and Tara would ride their bikes out to Denny’s, and Tara’s mom would give them free desserts. Her eyes were always puffy with dark circles underneath and her skin smelled boozy-sweet, like she had brandy seeping from her pores.