by Lynne Hugo
The engine coughed and Cora kept pressure on the key, but then it was grinding with a high harsh refusal that made her startle back afraid even to try the key again. She pounded the steering wheel with her fists once, and then put her head against the top of it, wanting to bang it, or just sob and quit. Finally, she looked at the distance to the house and sighed, opening the car door with her left hand while her right dragged her cane out behind her.
She’d counted on Jolene being home, or Bob, but after seven rings, Cora knew neither of them was. She looked at her watch, felt panicky. She reached information for the phone number of Lexie’s school, and called. “Please tell my granddaughter to take the school bus to her…father’s house,” she said to the secretary who answered. “I’ll get there if I can. She should call me, though. Will you be sure she gets this message before school gets out?”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am. It’s Alexis O’Gara, you said. That right?”
“Yes. But you might have her listed as Detta O’Gara. It’s…um…her nickname.”
A commotion sounded in the background on the school side of the connection. “That’s not the bell now, is it?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am. Early dismissal for an assembly.”
“Will you still be able to…”
“If my student aides can spot her in the assembly, she’ll get the message. That’s all I can do.”
Cora started to reiterate the problem, as if by explaining it adequately she could ensure the right result. A sense of futility came over her, and she ended by asking the secretary to please be sure to have Alexis call her if she got the message. Then she pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down heavily. She rocked slightly, chanting calm down, calm down like a mantra. She was not a woman with an excessive need for control, never had been, but lately her life seemed like a closet with coats, pans, gift wrap and screwdrivers all jumbled together, and she couldn’t stand it.
She knew where Alex worked. She could get the number from information and call him. Really, there was no other choice, at least not until Jolene came home.
His voice, low and reedy, came on the line after three transfers, scarcely audible over machinery noise, but distinctly suspicious.
“Hello?”
“Alex?”
“Who’s this?”
“Cora. I’m sorry to bother you at work, but it’s something of an emergency.” Cora had been raised to politeness, just as she was to church teachings. The politeness had been less beaten down, although it had been Alex who’d most sorely tried it. “My car is broken. I can’t get to the school—I called, but there’s an assembly and they may not get a message to Lex…Detta. I’m worried about her standing outside the school waiting and nobody coming.”
A long hesitation. “Can’t Rebecca get her?”
Cora didn’t want to tell Alex anything. Maybe it could be used against her in court that her children died off prematurely. Cora instinctively shook her head and remonstrated herself for having such a thought; Becca wasn’t going to die.
“She…can’t. Lex…Detta and I are supposed to spend the weekend there, um, helping out. For me to help out, I mean. Becca is…not feeling well.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I’ll bring her to Rebecca’s. Detta knows where, right?”
“Yes, of course. Would you do that?”
“Just said I would.”
“Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, I can’t let her know, I mean, in the message I tried to get to her, I told her to take the bus to your house and I’d try to get there. But I don’t know if she’ll get the message.”
“Okay.”
Cora hated to ask again. “Okay…what?”
“I’ll clock out. Probably have to come back here, so can’t bring her till tonight.”
Alex was word-stingy, or maybe hard-up for them, Cora thought. Her polar opposite.
“That’s very nice of you. I’m sorry to put you to the trouble.”
“Okay.”
Cora hung up, relieved and confused. Now all she had to do was call Becca, and wait for Jolene to come home. Jo would take her to Becca’s and she could use Becca’s car to get to the appointment tomorrow. She guessed she’d have her car towed into Darrville. If things were starting to go wrong with it, though, she’d have to think about getting another. She had to have something she could rely on.
Tears came. She covered her face with her hands and her shoulders heaved. “Christine, oh, my Chrissy, Chrissy. I’m doing my best, but I don’t know if I can do this. Oh, Chrissy, Chrissy, my Chrissy.” Her nose ran and her hands were wet, and just to go to the bathroom for a tissue was too far.
SATURDAY MORNING, CORA could tell Lexie was trying to shake off apprehension and the sour mood she’d been in from Alex’s having picked her up instead of Cora. (“Ramon would’ve brought me,” she’d complained to Cora after Alex dropped her off at Becca’s. “Who’s Ramon? Cora had asked immediately, but didn’t pursue it when Lexie said, “Just a guy who lives where Alexander the…does.” Cora, of course, knew the part of the moniker Lexie was omitting in the three-beat pause she left after the name. Lexie was testing her, she guessed, and she wouldn’t bite.)
In Rebecca’s rattly green Dodge, scarcely in better health than Rebecca herself, Cora tried to reassure Lexie as they headed back to Cora’s so Lexie could dress them both for their interviews.
“Honey, Dr. Vallade is very nice. My appointment was fine, even though I was a nervous wreck before I went. She’s going to talk to you by yourself, then talk to us together.”
“What do we have to talk about?”
“She said nothing special. She just wants to see how we communicate, you know, how we get along together. Our relationship, she said. I don’t know what she’ll ask you when you’re in there alone, but just answer honestly. Tell her how you feel. Don’t hold back, but, you know…”
“Be polite and show that I’m a lady,” Lexie inserted, her tone skimming the surface of sassy like a mosquito on a pond, not exactly landing there. Her hair was falling out of the high ponytail she’d worn to bed, and sleep sticks were in the corners of her eyes. She tipped her head against the back of the seat and closed them. “Don’t worry,” she said a minute later. “It’s Alex that has to worry.”
Cora started to ask what Lexie meant by that, but then thought better of it. She was too tired to take on a conversation the end point of which she didn’t know in advance. Rebecca had been awake from pain, up a lot in the night, and Cora had been up with her from three o’clock on. Finally, she climbed into Rebecca’s double bed with her and stroked down Becca’s forehead over her eyes, barely grazing the lashes, until she felt her daughter release into sleep. Then she’d not dared move from her—Rebecca was lying on one of Cora’s arms—and had stayed on the bed as the night gave way to soft gray, infused with yellow and blue as first light reached a tangle of clothing, then a hung picture.
Then Lexie had, at six-thirty, come in to get her, and Cora had been immobile, her arm so numb, then so pain-streaked that Lexie had had to go wake Jill up, and it required both of them to get Cora off the bed. Becca slept through the whispers, Cora’s muffled gasps and the girls’ extraction of Cora’s arm, which made the current crippling stiffness and exhaustion worthwhile.
“What did she ask you?” Lexie said a minute later as they were crossing the town line.
“You know me. She just asked what was going on, or something vague like that, and I told her about your mother…and you and me, and it was a half hour before she got to ask another question.”
“You told her about him, didn’t you? About what he did?”
“Yes, honey, but it’s important you tell her what you want her to know yourself.”
In fact, Cora had abided by Brenda’s instructions and not emphasized Alex’s shortcomings. “That can backfire,” the lawyer had said. “A psychological evaluator wants to know about you, not what you think of him. All that stuff—about
Tina, I mean—will come out…better from your granddaughter than from you, in case Dr. Vallade decides it’s fantasy.”
That had outraged Cora. “Fantasy!” Her voice had cracked over the word. “He basically admitted it to me. I told you about that.”
“Yes. And I believe it. But I’m trying to tell you how to play it with the evaluator.”
The use of the words play it had troubled Cora, but nonetheless, she’d worn the exact outfit Lexie had dictated, had had Jolene billow her hair into something youthful with a curling iron, worn makeup, gone way early so there’d be no risk of being out of breath—and told the truth. Without emphasizing Alex, what he’d done, what he hadn’t done. There’d been questions about her background, her marriage, her children. She’d cried when she’d told the doctor about Christine’s death, hadn’t brought up Rebecca’s illness—so it wouldn’t seem she had too much on her plate to provide proper supervision for a teenager—and otherwise stuck to the truth.
DR. VALLADE LET Alexis choose whether to come in alone first or with her grandmother. Lexie hesitated, then said, “I’ll go myself.”
“We’ll be about an hour, Mrs. Laster, maybe longer, until we’re ready for you to join us,” the doctor said as Lexie got up to follow her out of the waiting room. “You’re welcome to leave and come back, if that’s most convenient, or wait here. Whatever you like…”
Cora pegged the doctor as fortyish. Wide-set, broad-lidded green eyes and high cheekbones. Petite—which always made Cora feel like a horse—and a cap of short dark hair, thick, wavy, expensively cut. Blue slacks, white knit top, red earrings and a red scarf artfully around her neck today: Lexie would like that touch. She’d tried to get Cora to wear a scarf to hide the lines in her neck, but it gave Cora a choking sensation, so Lexie had reluctantly substituted a necklace. Dr. Vallade had three children, Cora had surmised from the pictures on the desk, and Cora hoped it would help in some nebulous way, that the doctor would empathize with a mother’s loss.
“I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind,” Cora answered, trying to sound chipper and energetic. “I brought a book.” She’d also left her cane in the car, quite on purpose, steadying herself on Lexie’s arm until they got to the office door.
“That’ll be just fine,” the doctor said. “We’ll see you in a bit.”
Cora settled in the padded chair—she’d had to wedge her hips between the armrests—and thought about how she should practice to make sure she could get out of the chair without help, with reasonable grace, in case the doctor was observing when she had to do it. The room was neutral, with horizontal blinds on the windows, beige walls and carpet, Monet water-lily prints framed on two walls, and an enormous peace lily in one corner. Violins argued then settled it on a hidden radio. Cora had, as she said, brought a book, but she never got it out of her purse. And she didn’t practice getting out of the chair. Sleep slipped over her like a gown.
“YOU WERE SNORING, Grandma. Your mouth was open. Oh, my God. What if she’d seen you? You looked about a hundred years old,” Lexie said when they were safely in the hallway outside the doctor’s office suite.
Cora had seen the upset on Lexie’s face when she’d been dragged back to consciousness by Lexie’s frantic whispers and shoulder jostling. It hadn’t even been like wakening, really. Truth be told it was more like reluctantly swimming up from the bottom of a midnight pond, that dark, that deep, that still. Lexie’s face had emerged from the moon after Cora broke the surface, trying to remember how to breathe and where she was. She’d stalled for time by having Lexie go ask Dr. Vallade where the bathroom was, and say her grandmother would like to use it before she and Lexie had their joint session. Fortunately, Lexie came back alone, and helped Cora haul herself out of the chair. As she was about to enter the bathroom, Lexie hissed, “Don’t wash your face, it’ll take your makeup off.” So Cora cupped her palms for cold water but only to freshen her mouth. She folded and wet a paper towel and laid its coolness on the back of her neck for a minute before turning it over and sponging off the front. She used the toilet, checked herself in the mirror, fluffing the back of her hair where it had been flattened out, and removed the evidence of sleep from the corners of her eyes.
Lexie was waiting right outside the door. She gave Cora a critical once-over. “Okay,” she said quietly. “You look fine. Are you awake?”
Cora nodded.
“Just follow my lead.” And Lexie smiled then, the sort of heartening smile a mother gives her child, and the backwardness of who was taking care of whom broke Cora’s heart nearly as much as anything else ever had. It was a spur that made Cora will herself to stand upright, forget anything and everything else, and show Lexie that she still had something of a mother in Cora.
They answered questions about Christine, about her rules, expectations, communication and how Lexie saw her grandmother’s ways as compared to her mother’s. Cora suppressed a double take when Lexie explained, “My mother was strict, but she wasn’t unfair. I thought her rules made sense even when I didn’t like them. Grandma has the same rules Mom did.” When Dr. Vallade asked how they were coping with the death, with death itself, Lexie said, “Grandma and I have talked a lot about Mom’s death. I think I’m doing better because of that,” and Cora worked to keep her astonishment invisible. From what reserves the girl had pulled such an on-target performance, Cora had no idea, but she was fairly sure performance was the operative word. Lexie even looked the part: nicely conservative in an unadorned cornflower-blue dress—not too short—stockings, flats, light makeup befitting a sixteen-year-old, no jewelry except a locket Christine had given her. She’d worn her hair down, demurely curled under, as if she had an eerie instinct for what an adult would think the perfect sixteen-year-old should look and sound like. Still, Cora saw it: even when Lexie wasn’t trying to look older, the adolescent juts and angles were softening. Lexie wouldn’t be hers much longer however things turned out.
“What issues are there between you two that aren’t so easy to work out?” Dr. Vallade asked, an array of framed diplomas from Michigan schools behind her.
“I wish Lexie would talk with me more than she does, I mean. I worry that too much stays inside her,” Cora had said quietly.
“Grandma, I want to, except now it’s too hard, I mean, I’m not with you very much and it just doesn’t feel right on the phone.”
“What about on your side, Lexie?”
“I think Grandma should let me go to parties without calling to check if the parents will be home. I mean I think she should have…”
Dr. Vallade drummed her fingers lightly in punctuation. They tapered to blunt, unpolished nails. She wore a fat silver wedding band with a delicate-looking engagement ring perched over it, like they were never intended to match but she could make anything work. “That’s something a lot of good parents do, Lexie. Mrs. Laster, what are your feelings about this?”
Cora hesitated. It had never once happened; Lexie hadn’t asked to go to any parties when she’d been with Cora. “I, um, didn’t know this was a problem for Lexie. I always said I’d do that because even good kids, and I know Lexie’s a good girl, can get into situations they can’t handle.” Cora warmed to the subject, as she could be counted on to do almost any. A talker, Marvin had always called her. “With drinking and smoking and marijuana so common, I don’t know how young people can be expected to fend it all off without some adult help. Especially for a girl, well, I just don’t think it’s safe to go someplace without adult supervision.”
“But, Grandma, Tim would watch out for me. I mean, do you think he’d let some guy touch me?” Lexie interjected.
“Honey, that’s not a job for your boyfriend. You shouldn’t be in a situation where it could happen anyway.”
“Sounds like you have a good handle on safety issues, Mrs. Laster,” Dr. Vallade said, and her approval was clear and warm as amber. “Lexie has raised some disturbing issues regarding her father,” she went on. “She says you’re aware of them.”
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
“Would you be willing to schedule another appointment to give me the background information you have?”
“Yes, I can do that.” Cora felt a click of recognition, like dentures sliding exactly into place. It was as Brenda had said. Information had come from Lexie, and now Cora was being asked to corroborate. It makes a much stronger impression on the evaluator that way, she’d said. If Dr. Vallade was dismissing what Lexie told her, she wouldn’t be asking for more, Cora surmised.
Even before they were out the door and Lexie started in on her again about having fallen asleep in the waiting room, Cora was trying to decide how she felt. On the one hand, she thought they’d both made a good impression. The issue of her age hadn’t even come up, the only question and answer they’d both feared and rehearsed. On the other—what, exactly, was going on with Lexie? It was as if the girl were captain of a boat, and Cora along for the ride, hanging on to a rail in the stern, woolly-headed and slightly seasick.
“What did you say to her?” Cora interrupted Lexie’s complaint. “No, that’s not what I’m worried about. You told her you’d talked to me about your mother, and you…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Lexie interrupted. “I know what I’m doing.”
Cora braced herself against the hallway wall, the fatigue of the previous night and the strain of the interview making her breath break like surf. “Honey, this is too hard. Would you run to the car and get my cane? I’ll wait here.”
“Grandma, lean on me. I can get you there as well as your cane. Better.” Lexie looked small to Cora, as if she were caught in some warp between child and woman. But right then, she looked like Christine, too, the color of her eyes heightened by the blue dress. The set of her head was Christine’s, the unspeakable stubbornness, the will. Christine had used those very qualities to ruin her own life and then to rebuild it.