Jane frowned. “I’m pretty sure Mackenzie won’t know what to think. If she can’t understand true friendship, then she definitely can’t understand forgiveness.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Anyway, you shouldn’t worry about what Mackenzie thinks.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” Rosie said. “Just curious. I feel like I understand more about people like Mackenzie now, but there are still some things I don’t understand. I think she must be a very lonely person deep down.”
“I think you’re probably right.”
“I suppose I should feel sorry for her in a way.”
“Do you?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know,” Rosie said after a moment. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
Jane smiled. “I guess I do, too.”
Rosie considered. She had been wanting to talk to her mother about something important, and now seemed like a pretty good time. “Mom?” she said. “Why can’t you and Mrs. Giroux be friends again?”
Her mother’s smile faded and she hesitated before answering. “It’s—it’s a difficult situation,” she said.
“Is it because Mrs. Giroux doesn’t want to be friends?”
Jane fiddled with a button on her blouse. “No. That’s not it. In fact, she sent me a very nice note around my birthday. She basically asked if we could sit down and talk. The reason we’re not friends again is because I’m just not ready to—”
“To forgive her?” Rosie said after a moment of her mother’s silence. “But she didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jane shook her head. “I’m just not ready to be friends again. That’s all I can really say, Rosie. I’m sorry.”
Rosie shrugged. “Okay. But that’s too bad. You guys used to have so much fun together. She would have liked coming to Old Orchard Beach with us the other day. If she could have gotten off work, I mean. She loves cotton candy. And we could have stopped at that place she used to like on the Pier. She said they had free popcorn.”
“I know.”
“She must have some vacation days,” Rosie said, aware that she was pressing her mother. “Though Meg says she hasn’t taken any this summer.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “I suppose she has some vacation time.”
Rosie remembered something her mother had said only a moment before. If Mackenzie couldn’t understand true friendship, then she couldn’t understand true forgiveness. Rosie wondered if the same held true for Jane Patterson. Did her mother really not understand true friendship? Had she never really understood it?
“Meg says her mother hardly ever smiles anymore,” Rosie said now, watching her mother’s expression closely.
Jane abruptly stood from her perch on the desk. “I’d better get to that laundry,” she said, turning away. “It won’t wash itself.”
Rosie knew her mother had deliberately changed the subject, but that was okay. She wouldn’t push her mother any further, at least, not yet. Instead she groaned. “You always say that! Laundry won’t wash itself. Dinner won’t cook itself. Blouses won’t iron themselves.”
Jane laughed from the vicinity of the washing machine. “And I’m always right!”
44
Saturday morning found Jane at the wheel of the car again, the chaperone of another excursion. This time Rosie and Meg were less interested in spotting cute guys or funny bumper stickers. Meg had a copy of Allure magazine, and from what Jane could hear the girls were debating the coolness factor of the latest crop of nail colors. She caught the word “peridot,” which she knew was a semiprecious stone, and the interesting phrase “Hello there, beautiful.” Since when, she wondered, did Rosie care about nail polish? Well, as long as she was enjoying herself and not debating what tattoo or piercing she was going to get ...
A minivan packed with kids in soccer uniforms trundled by. Jane caught a quick glance of the smiling mother behind the wheel. She looked as happy as Jane was troubled. She had been deeply embarrassed by the conversation in the basement with Rosie. The last thing any parent wanted was for her child to be disappointed in her, and Jane would bet money on the fact that Rosie was, indeed, disappointed in her failure to make peace with Frannie.
Later that night, after Rosie had gone off to bed, she had talked to Mike about her conversation with Rosie. She had gotten the distinct impression that he was getting a little frustrated with her inability or unwillingness to make peace with Frannie. Not that he said as much, but Jane had known him a long time. Mike didn’t need to spell out what he was thinking. It was all over his face, if you had the skills to read it. And Jane was highly sensitive to signs of Mike’s disapproval.
Honestly, she could understand her husband’s frustration, even if a very small part of her was upset with him for not taking her side on the issue. By refusing to accept Frannie back into her life she was depriving her daughter of so much, like, for example, the annual mother-daughter afternoon at Chauncey Creek in Kittery Point. They had kept the tradition for the past five years, rain or shine. Frannie always brought the homemade macaroni salad that Rosie loved and Jane always brought the homemade sugar cookies that Meg loved. The adults shared a lobster and the girls usually got lobster rolls. Last year, Jane and Frannie had caught the girls watching—and pretending not to watch—the strong young men hauling nets and lifting large wooden crates off the boats and onto the dock. They had shared a smile over that.
But this year there would be no excursion, no shared smiles, and no holiday routines like taking Petey to the mall in South Portland to get his picture taken with Santa Claus, and making cupcakes with green icing for St. Patrick’s Day. There would be no annual shopping trip to Freeport or Kittery for back-to-school clothes, and no movie Saturdays. So much was lost now... . And she was the one person standing in the way of it all returning.
So, in another attempt to assuage some of the guilt she felt about not befriending Frannie, Jane had offered (via Mike, though she knew using him as a go-between couldn’t go on forever) to take the girls to Portland for the day. In Jane’s opinion, Portland beat Old Orchard Beach by a long mile. For one, there were no dangerous amusement rides or dark, noisy arcades, though there were the occasional shirtless guys who really should have been at the gym instead of displaying their poor excuses for abs and their lewd tattoos. Well, no place is perfect, Jane thought now, city or country, uptown or downtown.
“Mom?”
Jane wasn’t comfortable talking while driving. It distracted her. Rosie must have forgotten that.
“Yes?” she said.
“Would you ever wear green metallic nail polish?”
“Never.”
Shouts of laughter came from the backseat. “I so know you wouldn’t,” Rosie said. “I just thought it would be funny to ask.”
Jane smiled. She was so, so happy that her daughter was laughing again and being silly like a young person should be. Only weeks ago ...
No, Jane thought, sitting up even straighter. No bad thoughts now. Instead, her mind drifted back to the moments just before they had left their house on Pond View Road. Something, maybe sheer nostalgia, had compelled Jane to retrieve the plaque that Frannie had given her from the drawer where she had stashed it out of sight earlier in the summer. She had read the words on the plaque out loud. “Friends Are Forever.” Frannie had given her the plaque for her birthday about a year or two after they had met, and until Jane had yanked it down, it had hung on the kitchen wall where the family could see it every day.
Purposefully, Jane removed the small watercolor painting she had hung on the nail above the silverware drawer and replaced it with Frannie’s gift. It seemed like a small act of commitment to ... to what, she wondered. Maybe to the future. Maybe even to the past, if that made any sense. What once had been should be honored, especially if it had been good.
Jane, Rosie, and Meg arrived in Portland around ten-thirty. “Art first,” Jane decreed when they had parked the car on Free Street. “Shopping later.”
With a little grumbl
ing from Meg they went to the Portland Museum of Art where they viewed an exhibit of New England–based artists in the main gallery. Downstairs, by the café, there was the museum’s impressive collection of antique glass and art glass, which Meg, who had ignored the work on past visits, suddenly found “mind-blowing.” Rosie seemed really struck by the white marble statue of Ulysses S. Grant in the Gillian Rotunda. Meg thought the interactive learning tools in the McLellan House were interesting.
Later, while the girls examined the books and one-of-a-kind jewelry and glass ornaments in the gift shop, Jane sat on a bench in the Great Hall and remembered. She and Frannie had come to the museum one day about three years earlier to see an exhibit of Depression-era photographs of native Mainers. The show was moving and in its own way, beautiful. Afterward they had gone to Bessie’s diner for lunch (Frannie’s choice; she craved the egg salad on white toast) and then had spent some time strolling along the waterfront. Frannie had declared the day a mini-vacation and Jane, too, had enjoyed herself immensely. But that was in the past, Jane told herself, smiling vaguely at an old, very well-dressed woman sitting down beside her.
After the girls had bought some postcards from the gift shop, Jane led them down Congress Street toward Monument Square. Along the way, they stopped in a variety of stores. In Renys, Meg bought her mother a bright purple summer-weight scarf for four dollars. “She never wears bright colors,” Meg said. “I’m going to make her wear this. She needs a change.” Jane silently wished Meg luck with changing her mother’s habits. She remembered the time she had suggested—tactfully, she hoped—that Frannie spruce up her look by wearing a different shade of lipstick; she had been wearing the same orangey pink color for years and Jane thought it was not at all suited to the skin tone of a woman in her mid-thirties. But Frannie had stubbornly stuck to the color until mercifully (to Jane’s thinking) it was discontinued.
Jane shook off the memory of that awkward conversation—maybe she shouldn’t have tried to change Frannie; Frannie had never tried to change her—and focused on choosing a new garden spade and a pair of gloves. Rosie picked out a navy T-shirt for her father. “There’s just no way my dad is going to wear anything other than tan, navy, and maybe, if he’s feeling really daring, brown,” she said as they were checking out. “Ever.”
Meg snorted. “At least his clothes are clean. I don’t think my dad ever does laundry. Ever.” Jane winced at that remark.
Rosie wanted to visit the store where Meg had bought her the rose quartz pendant, so they stopped in Stones and Stuff and met the owner, a very friendly woman named Heather with beautiful dark, curly hair. Rosie bought a chunk of citrine for three dollars. She loved the sunny color. Meg bought a small but real uncut ruby for fifteen dollars. It was a big splurge and Jane quietly suggested that Meg seriously consider her purchase. What would Frannie say to such an extravagance? But she didn’t protest further when Meg handed over her cash with a huge smile on her face. Everyone needed to treat herself on occasion. And those occasions for Meg and her mother were rare. For a moment Jane wondered if she should have bought the stone for Meg. But Frannie might not have liked that at all, and given the situation between the mothers, Meg might have felt awkward about it, too.
Across the street in a resale and antique store called Encore, Meg and Rosie gazed openmouthed at the racks of beautiful old furs from the forties and fifties and fancy dresses from the sixties and seventies and investigated the trays of gaudy, gorgeous, and sometimes costly costume jewelry. On a shelf over the front counter Jane spotted an intricately beaded antique purse almost identical to one Frannie had inherited from a great aunt, the same one who had left her the pair of silver candlesticks. She wondered if Frannie knew the bag’s twin was being sold for a whopping fifty dollars. Not that Frannie would part with a family heirloom, but she might be interested to know its market value, just in case times got even tighter.
Jane sighed and turned away from the display. Frannie might as well be with them here in Portland. Every single thing—the museum, the purple scarf, the antique beaded purse—had triggered a memory. Someone didn’t actually have to die to haunt another person. Certainly, Jane realized that now.
After twenty minutes or so, Jane dragged the girls back onto the sidewalk and directed them down to Exchange Street. Making it from one end to the other took close to forty-five minutes as the girls insisted on going into just about every single clothing, shoe, and jewelry shop on each side of the street. Eventually, they made their way past Fore Street and down to Commercial Street, which ran along the water’s edge. In big rains the street had been known to flood, but on this sunny summer day it was dry as the proverbial bone and packed with visitors in shorts and sneakers and baseball caps.
“Look,” Jane said, pointing. A cruise ship was in port, one of the many ships that made a stop in Portland each year between August and mid-October. The city benefited from the trade the passengers brought, though Jane was at a loss to understand just who, exactly, could afford a cruise in the current economy.
“It’s insanely big,” Rosie said with a shudder. “I mean, it’s actually kind of terrifying.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Meg said, squinting up at it through her clip-on sunglasses. “I can’t wait to go on a cruise someday.”
“Not me,” Rosie said. “All I would think about is the ship sinking out in the middle of nowhere. I saw Titanic, you know. I can’t think of anything worse than drowning. Unless it’s burning to death.”
“Like flying in a plane is any safer than being on a ship?” Meg laughed. “You could crash in the middle of nowhere and yeah, burn to death! At least if you’re shipwrecked there’s a chance you’ll survive. Not everyone died when the Titanic hit that iceberg. Some people were rescued.”
Rosie shrugged. “Still. I’ll take a plane over one of those ... behemoths ... any day.”
“What’s a behemoth?” Meg asked.
“A behemoth,” Jane explained, “is an animal described in the book of Job. Scholars think the writer was describing a hippo. Today people use the word to describe something huge and cumbersome.”
“You know way more about the Bible than I do,” Meg said. “All I know is what I’ve heard someone read in church.”
Jane shrugged. “It’s a good book. I studied it in college. Anyway, I have to say I agree with Rosie on this one. Though I would like to go on a tour of a cruise ship. As long as it’s safely docked.”
“I’m going to take my mother on a cruise someday,” Meg said, reluctantly turning away from the monster of a ship. Jane forced a smile. She wanted to say something like, “That’s nice of you,” but couldn’t make the words come out of her mouth.
Jane took the girls for lunch at the Portland Lobster Company, a bit farther down the street and right on the water. They sat on stools at a high table from where they had a clear view of the bar area, where a skinny young guy with a scraggly little beard was playing guitar. “He is so cute,” Meg whispered and sat enthralled, mouth open, her chicken wrap barely touched. Rosie spent much of the time petting the furry mixed-breed dog that had come with the people at the next table. When the dog settled down for a nap at their feet, Rosie watched the water taxis and the touring and whale-watching boats coming in and out of the docks.
Jane ordered a bucket of steamers. Meg said they looked gross, and then apologized for insulting Mrs. Patterson’s lunch. Secretly, Jane agreed, they did look gross, but they tasted delicious. While she ate she judged the clothing of fellow diners. Of course, if Frannie were at the table with her, she would have someone with whom to share her observations. The cut of that woman’s sundress was perfect; that girl’s shorts fit badly but could be saved. True, Frannie wouldn’t be much interested in talk about cut and fabric, but she would listen amiably as a good, comfortable friend does, and then, when Jane was done critiquing, she would talk about her own concerns (the idiots at the office, Peter’s latest antics), and Jane would listen in turn. That’s what friends do, she thought.
They listen even when they might not want to. They endure and tolerate; they accept and they share. Jane tried to shake off the heavy feeling of loneliness that had suddenly overcome her. There was scientific proof that people got sick when they were deprived of love and affection. But you didn’t need to be a scientist to know that. Just human.
The guitarist finished his set (Jane had to admit that he was pretty talented, though she wished he was wearing shoes rather than sandals) and Meg was finally persuaded to finish her lunch. Afterward, Jane suggested they go across the street to a store called Asia West. The girls made a dash for the jewelry cases and Jane wandered among the furniture until the sight of two women, clearly good friends, chatting about something that was making them both smile sent her across the store. At Rosie’s urging, Jane bought herself a woven tote bag the color of gingko leaves for ten dollars and the girls each got a beaded bracelet from Indonesia for six dollars. Rosie’s was mostly blue. Meg’s was mostly orange.
“I really feel like I’m on vacation!” Rosie said when they emerged into the bright sun, shopping bags in tow.
“I know,” Meg said, “isn’t it great! I wish we could come to Portland all the time.”
“At least once a month. Could we, Mom?”
Jane mentally estimated the cost of lunch out and shopping and museum admission, not to mention gas and parking, and blanched. A monthly expedition was out of the question. “We’ll come more often than we have in the past,” she said. “How about that?”
They strolled farther down Commercial Street, stopping in the gift shops geared for summer visitors, until finally, exhaustion seemed to embrace all three at once. They turned around and began what now seemed like an overly long and hot walk back to where Jane had parked the car up on Free Street. The girls walked ahead, talking nonstop. Jane walked behind, lost in her own thoughts, thankful for the peace. She was a little bit tired of listening to countless exclamations of “Awesome!” and “Oh, my God!” and “I so have to have this!” That last was exclusively Meg’s. It seemed that every time an interesting item caught her eye she would “literally die” if it couldn’t be hers. Jane had never met anyone so covetous, but she thought it indicated Meg’s desire to live with items of beauty rather than an unhealthy desire to own things for the sake of owning things. At least, she hoped that was the case.
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