The words echoed inside Lacy’s skull. Her eyes drifted to the coffee table, where the broken pieces of the ceramic crèche figure lay side by side with Ted’s marble apple.
Metaphors, Alison would say. The forbidden fruit. The camel. The Wise Man.
What was the proverb about the camel with its nose in the tent?
Already the beast had pushed its way in. The sweet flavor of revenge, the seductive idea of returning to the love that had captured her heart so many years ago.
The broken Wise Man, lying on his side, gazed into the distant beyond. Toward the stars. Toward an unknown future.
Go back, Trip had said. Start over. But there was no going back. She was not the same person she had been in college. She was older now and, she hoped, wiser. Wise enough to realize …
That he didn’t love her. What he loved was the image of her, the memory of the girl she had once been.
There was no way to recapture the past. It was a beautiful illusion, but it wasn’t real. He didn’t love her. And she didn’t love him.
The truth broke over her like a bright and liquid light. Lauren was real. Ted was real. The rest was smoke and mirrors, a mirage, a distorted reflection. At the end was a cliff and a deadly fall.
She looked at him again and saw him as he was. And once more she asked the question that demanded to be answered:
“Do you love my sister?”
Silence. He cleared his throat, pressed his hands against his knees, shrugged. “She doesn’t love me. And how could we love each other when you were always there?”
Lacy smiled. Trip was a good man. A good father. He would be a good husband too, given the chance. “She does love you. So does Ted.”
At the mention of his son’s name, Trip’s countenance changed. She could see the agony there, the raw longing. He didn’t want a divorce or a different life. He simply wanted to be free.
“Go home to your wife and son,” she said quietly. “You made the right choice. You married the right twin.”
He held her gaze for a moment, staring into her eyes as though wishing to see something that belied her words. Then, without uttering a sound, he made his exit, shutting the door behind him.
After he left she sat there for a long time, crying a little but not turning away from the pain.
Dusk was falling. She had not yet turned on the lamps, and in the flickering glow of the gas fire the shattered Wise Man still lay on his side on the table, gazing into the distant beyond.
Toward the stars.
Toward an unknown future.
TWENTY-FIVE
LABOR DAY
SEPTEMBER 1984
Lauren stood at the kitchen window and looked out into the backyard, where a slow gray drizzle soaked the lawn and ran in rivulets along the edges of the grass. What was Trip doing out there in the rain? For fifteen minutes he had been sitting on the bench next to the koi pond, getting drenched, just staring into the water.
After breakfast Ted had flung himself from the table and stomped upstairs to his room. Lauren could hear the steady thump thump as he tossed a tennis ball against the wall. Poor kid. He had been looking forward to the annual Labor Day baseball barbecue put on by Trip’s office. Lauren suspected—although Ted would never confirm her suspicion—that he had a crush on the teenage daughter of one of Trip’s colleagues, an adorable little redhead named Ainslee Long.
Ainslee attended a private school. Ted never got to see her except at office functions like the barbecue. Now the event had been canceled because of the rain, and Ted had lost his chance to impress his girl by knocking a home run out of the park.
She could, of course, invite the Longs over for dinner, but then Ted might feel as if he’d been set up, and the results could be disastrous.
Lauren sighed. Parents always thought the worst was over when their babies finally learned to sleep through the night, express their feelings in words, and use the potty on their own. They had no idea, when they lamented the sleep deprivation that came with infancy, that teenage romantic angst would try their patience to new limits.
She wondered what it would be like next year, or the next. Anxiety about drugs and alcohol and smoking, no doubt. Uncomfortable sessions about sex and condoms and deadly diseases and respect for the girls he dated. Late-night discussions with Trip about how to handle the most recent crisis. Constant worry every time Ted took the car.
But at least she wouldn’t be in it alone.
Nine months ago Trip had left her, and then, like a miracle, he had come back.
Ted had assumed his dad was off on a business trip, and Lauren had chosen not to tell him any different. Five days later, when Trip returned, it was no big deal. The boy never knew how close he had come to losing his father for good.
No one knew, except Trip and Lauren. And Lacy, of course.
Lauren hadn’t spoken with Lacy since that day in January. Whenever the two of them were together with the family, they feigned politeness and avoided any genuine conversation. Lauren longed for a real reconciliation with her sister, yet she wasn’t in a position to press the issue. She believed, though he had never admitted it, that Trip had visited Lacy too during his five-day absence from hearth and home. When he returned, he said not the first word about what he had been doing—he simply unpacked his suitcase and merged back into the family.
But since that moment, everything had changed. Whatever Lacy said to him had made a difference. And what Lacy had said to Lauren had changed everything.
Do you love him? she had asked.
For the first time in years, Lauren had been forced to consider the question, and her answer brought her face to face with reality. Up until that point she couldn’t have articulated any realistic definition of love. She had always thought love equaled heat, passion, sexual desire and fulfillment. But it had to be more than that. Commitment, focus, oneness. And yet not only oneness. Twoness was important as well, an identity both within and apart from the relationship.
Lauren’s understanding of love still was not as clear as she’d like it to be. And yet she knew she loved Trip. Living without him seemed utterly unthinkable.
A week after his return, he had come to her with the news that he had scheduled an appointment with a family therapist and asked, politely and formally, if she would be willing to go with him.
She went. At first it was sheer hell, rehashing the past, dredging up old sins from the murky recesses of her soul and displaying them in the harsh light of objective scrutiny. Seduction and lies, betrayal and denial—all of it came out, including the truth about Ted’s paternity. Everything seemed so much worse when you said it out loud. But admitting the truth resulted in a strange kind of catharsis too, a lifting of the weight that had pressed in upon her for all these years.
Trip’s love for Ted, as it turned out, became the glue that held them together during the dark months of counseling. Just as
Lauren couldn’t imagine living without Trip, Trip couldn’t imagine abandoning Ted.
“I married her because it was the right thing to do,” he had told the counselor one day. “And I don’t regret it. I fell in love.”
At the words, Lauren’s heart leaped into her throat. And then he went on.
“I hadn’t counted on falling in love with such a small, wailing, demanding little bundle of human potential,” he said. “But the minute I took that baby in my arms, I fell in love with him.”
The revelation shredded her ego, and in that moment any hope she had harbored crashed into shards at her feet. Trip was honest, at least. He didn’t pretend to love his wife, but he did love his son.
“The problem is, love for my son isn’t enough anymore,” he continued. “I’m tired of feeling trapped.”
Gradually, as the bitter truth emerged and they faced it head-on, therapy began to take an upward turn. The path through purgatory began to lead them toward the surface, away from the sulfurous hell that burned below. Silence gave way to a little laughter. They watched movies, playe
d games, bonded, became a family as they had never been before.
Things were better. More normal. And yet a bittersweet longing swelled in her as her own love deepened. At night she wept silently in the darkness, soaking her pillow with remorse.
Nine months they had been in weekly therapy sessions, and in all that time he had never touched her. Not even the occasional dispassionate sex that had marked their marriage for years. Through it all Lauren had watched Trip, as she watched out the window now. Waiting. Searching for a sign.
What she saw, instead, was a flurry of activity. Trip suddenly stood up and strode to the shed. He returned with a net, a shovel, a length of black plastic liner, and a huge corrugated tub. He filled the tub with water, and then, after transferring the three koi to the tub, he began to dig.
Lauren sloshed through the puddles into the far corner of the backyard. “What are you doing?”
Trip looked up. He was drenched to the skin and covered with mud, but he had a look of utter delight on his face. “I’m enlarging the pond,” he said, as if this should be perfectly obvious.
“I can see that. Why?”
“Because they don’t have enough room to grow.” He pointed at the tub, where the temporarily transplanted koi hovered as if in suspended animation.
The back door slammed and Ted came loping across the waterlogged grass. “What’cha doing?”
“He’s enlarging the pond,” Lauren answered.
“Yeah, I know. But why?”
Lauren shrugged. “He says the fish don’t have room to grow.”
Ted dug the toe of his sneaker into the mud. “You’re nuts, Dad, you know that?”
Trip leaned on his shovel and grinned. “Probably. So, do you two want to help, or do you want to just stand there and criticize?”
Ted grinned back. “I figured I’d just criticize.”
Lauren wasn’t quite certain who threw the first fistful, only that within five minutes all three of them were splattered with mud and laughing hysterically. She wiped the goo out of her face and chanced a glance at Trip. He was gazing at her as if he’d never laid eyes on her before, as if she were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She walked to the shed and came back with two more shovels, one of which she pushed into Ted’s hands. She raked her mud-caked hair back and placed one foot on the lip of her shovel.
“You want a bigger pond?” she said. “We’ll give you a bigger pond. Let’s dig.”
IT WAS THE LIGHTEST OF TOUCHES, a tentative caress on her shoulder. Even before his fingers brushed her, she felt his warmth at her back, edging nearer. “Are you awake?” he whispered.
“No, I’m sound asleep,” she responded, and he chuckled.
“That was fun today,” he said. “Digging the pond and all.”
She turned over, and his arms went around her. “It was fun. I’m still not certain I quite understand it, but—”
“I’m not sure I can explain it either,” he said. “I just know it’s time to put the past behind us and move forward.”
Lauren shifted in his arms and peered at his face, illuminated faintly by the streetlamp outside their bedroom window. “What does that mean, put the past behind us?”
He let out a breath. “It means I’ve been holding out on you. Refusing to forgive. I want to let it go, all of it, and start fresh. Can we do that?”
“You’re willing to forgive me?”
Trip tightened his hold on her. “I should have forgiven you a long time ago. Can you forgive me, for being such an ass?”
“What have you been an ass about?” she murmured
His muscles tensed, and his face went cold in the blue of the streetlight. “When I left in January, I went to see Lacy. I asked her to take me back.”
Lauren exhaled sharply. “I know.”
“You know? How—”
“I should say, I suspected as much.”
“But you never said anything.”
“I figured you’d tell me when it was the right time. I went to see her too. Tried to reconcile with her. It didn’t work.”
He was silent for a moment or two. Then: “What did she say?”
Lauren hesitated. “She asked me if I loved you.”
“What answer did you give?”
“I said—” Lauren paused.
“I hope you said yes,” he murmured. “Because she told me I had married the right twin.”
“My sister,” Lauren whispered, “is a very wise woman.”
She nestled in his arms, and for the first time in years she felt safe. The last of the secrets had been told.
In the vague drowsiness that comes just before sleep, she thought she heard him whisper that he loved her. And then she surrendered to a dream of a wide lake fed by a waterfall, with enormous koi swimming in its clear green depths.
PART 5
MERCY
One voice
can lure us to our doom
or to our calling.
Let those who have
eyes to see
and ears to hear
watch
and listen,
perceive, interpret, understand—
For no one ever tells us
that doom can serve
as well as call
to lead us home.
TWENTY-SIX
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
DECATUR, Georgia
SEPTEMBER 1994
For two weeks Delta had wandered around Cassie’s house aimlessly, plagued by an empty churning in her gut. Rae Dawn had never returned her call, nor had she received any response from the answering machine messages she had left for Lauren and Lacy
“Are you sad, Aunt Delt?” Mouse asked one night.
Delta looked up from the novel she had been pretending to read and surveyed her small niece, who lay facedown on the rug working word puzzles from a book Delta had bought her. The child reminded her so much of Cassie at that age—not her looks, but her intelligence, her quickness, her razor-sharp evaluations of her world and the people in it.
Delta hedged. “Why do you ask?”
Mouse shoved the puzzle book aside and sat up. “For one thing,” she said, “you don’t smile and laugh as much anymore.”
“I’ll try to do better.”
Mouse frowned. “It’s not about pretending. It’s about really getting better on the inside.”
Delta laid her own book aside. “Come here, honey.”
The child scrambled up and settled herself on Delta’s lap.
“You remember your uncle Rankin, don’t you?”
Mouse nodded solemnly. “I’m losing my picture of what he looked like, but I remember him. He laughed a lot.”
A knot twisted tight in Delta’s throat. “Yes, he did. He was my husband, you know, and my best friend. I loved him very much. And I was very sad when he died.”
“I know.” The little girl gave Delta a worried look. “Mom and I talked about it before you came to live with us. She told me about dying, and how people react to it when someone they love a lot gets dead. But…” She hesitated. “I heard her tell Daddy that you have eight out of ten.”
Delta peered down at the child. “Eight out of ten what?”
Mouse furrowed her brow in thought. “Eight out of ten symptoms of chemical depression.”
“Do you mean clinical depression?”
She bit her lip. “I think so. Is that like a tropical depression? I heard about that on the Weather Channel.”
Delta stifled a laugh. “What’s a six-year-old doing watching the weather channel?”
“I’m seven, Aunt Delt,” Mouse said, looking offended. “And the Weather Channel is very interesting. You should try it sometime.”
“I’ll do that.” Delta tightened her arms around the little girl’s warm body. “Now, don’t worry about the depression. I’ll talk to your mom about it.”
“Promise?”
Delta gazed down into the eager, trusting little face. “I promise.”
<
br /> Just as they were finishing their conversation, Cassie came in from the kitchen. “What are we promising? Or is it a secret?”
Delta gave Mouse a kiss on the top of the head and sent her back to her word puzzles. “We were talking about depression. About how I apparently have eight of the ten symptoms.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, Cass, I know you’re a therapist, but—”
“But what?” Cassie sat down on the sofa next to Delta. “I’m sorry my daughter overheard a conversation I had with her dad. But I can’t just ignore this, Sis. I’m worried about you.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you ever call those friends of yours—the ones in the singing group?”
“I tried a couple of weeks ago. Left messages on the machine for Lauren and Lacy, and talked to some guy at Rae Dawn’s club. I gave him the number, but she never called back.” She shrugged. “End of story.”
“You’re not going to try again? This reunion would do you good, you know.”
“Really?” Delta said, making no effort to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “It would do me good to tell old friends about Rankin’s death over and over like a gruesome video loop on the nightly news. To pretend I’m over it, that everything’s back to normal. Whatever normal is.”
“You could use a change of scenery, not to mention the support of those friends,” Cassie insisted. “Besides, the telling makes it real.”
“It’s plenty real to me,” Delta shot back. Having a therapist in the family wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She looked over at Mouse, who had abandoned her puzzles and was staring at both of them with wide, knowing eyes. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” she said. “Trust me, I’m fine.”
But the following morning, after another restless night interrupted by dark dreams, she knew she wasn’t fine, even if she wasn’t about to admit it to her little sister.
She had to do something. Had to pull herself out of this.
Maybe Cass was right—not about the reunion, but about getting out of the house, getting a change of perspective. Russell was at work, as was Cassie, and Mouse wouldn’t be home from school until three. She could have the whole day to herself, outdoors in the sunshine, if she wanted.
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