Picture Perfect

by D. Anne Love

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’m only going into ninth grade this fall.”

  “There’s no hurry,” Beverly said. “That’s what high school is all about. Exploring different subjects, figuring out what you’re good at, what you like to do.”

  Daddy got up to refill the coffeepot. When he came back, Beverly said, “Tell me, Sumner, what’s it like being a judge?”

  It hurt me to see how grateful Daddy was to have somebody interested in his life. I wondered how long it had been since Mama paid any attention to the things going on in his world. When I was much younger and Daddy was still practicing law, he and Mama would talk for hours about his cases. Sometimes she would listen to him rehearsing his closing arguments and tell him how she would vote if she were on the jury. But when I was in third grade, Daddy became Judge Trask, and Mama became a beauty consultant. After that she was too busy demonstrating products, taking orders, and talking on the telephone to new customers to listen to Daddy.

  “… can be frustrating,” Daddy was saying when I tuned back in to the conversation. “But I’m still old-fashioned enough to believe in the majesty of the law.”

  He poured himself a fifth cup of coffee. Or maybe it was the sixth. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had a writer living in Eden before,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “I’m working on a couple of books, and I’m behind schedule. I wanted a quiet place to work, but someplace not too far from a good airport. My real estate agent found Mrs. Archer’s charming house, and it seemed like the perfect place to settle down.”

  Then Daddy launched into the entire history of the town, beginning with its founding in 1882, explaining that it had once been a trade center for half of east Texas, until the railroad line was built twenty miles farther west, leaving Eden high and dry. He talked and talked, as if a dam had broken inside him, unleashing a torrent of words. It was almost time for lunch before Beverly checked her watch and stood up. “Good gravy! I can’t believe I’ve taken up your whole morning. You should have stopped me, Sumner!”

  “I enjoyed it,” Daddy said. “Give me a few minutes to clear away this mess, and Phoebe and I will be over to give you a hand with your books.”

  Beverly grinned sheepishly. “I’m all finished. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I figured I might as well get things organized. You know how it is, the first night in a new place.”

  I thought back to the summer after sixth grade, when Lauren and I went away to camp for the first time. We had talked of nothing else for weeks, but the reality didn’t live up to the hype. The food was terrible, the lake was coated with scum, and you had to take a flashlight and walk down a dark path to go to the bathroom. That first night the sounds of night birds and the insects constantly batting against the window screens about drove us crazy. We hardly slept at all.

  Beverly said, “By Saturday night I’ll be ready for a break from my work. Why don’t you all come to dinner at my house? I can’t promise anything as delicious as your pancakes, but people say my fried chicken isn’t too bad.”

  “Sounds great,” Daddy said. “But I’m taking Zane and Phoebe to Shreveport on Saturday.”

  I stared at him. Shreveport? Since when?

  Daddy went on. “My wife phoned this morning, and—”

  “Mama called? And I missed her?” Mama had been so busy with her new job that any time she called home was a treat that never lasted long enough.

  “You were in the shower,” Daddy said. “But don’t worry. She’ll call back later. You can talk to her then.”

  He turned back to Beverly. “Beth is conducting a sales seminar there this weekend. It’s a chance to see her and take in the crawfish festival. There’s good food and great music. When the children were little, we used to go every year. You ought to come with us, Bev.”

  Bev?

  “It sounds like loads of fun,” Beverly said. “But I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  “We’d enjoy your company,” Daddy said. “And Beth would enjoy meeting you. She used to write quite a bit herself. Poetry mostly.”

  I stood there dumbfounded at this new fact about my mother. I wondered whether there was a part of herself she’d purposely kept hidden, or whether she had told me she was a poet at heart and I’d been too caught up in the details of my own life to remember it.

  “All right,” Beverly said. “You talked me into it. But only if we take my car.”

  “It’s a deal.” Daddy walked her to the door, and they talked some more, their voices twining together in the summer air.

  “Ciao, Phoebe!” Beverly called a few minutes later.

  We scraped the dishes and left them in the sink. Daddy went into the den to watch a ball game. I messed around in my room, impatient for Zane to come back so we could drive out to the lake. I got into my swimsuit and threw on an oversize T-shirt that Shyla had brought back from a rock concert a couple of years before. I checked my e-mail. There were two messages from Lauren, mostly about picking out paint for her new room at her house in Atlanta and a trip she’d made with her mom to a fancy shopping mall in Buckhead. I wrote her back about Beverly’s moving in next door, about my new necklace, but not about how well Beverly and my father were hitting it off.

  It was nearly four o’clock before Zane finally pulled into the driveway and honked the horn. I yelled bye to Daddy, told him not to wait on us for supper, and ran outside.

  “Hey.” Zane was definitely in a much better mood than when he left the house that morning. He turned the radio down as I slid into the front seat beside him. “How was breakfast?”

  “She and Daddy talked practically the whole morning.” As he backed out of the driveway, I fastened my seat belt, gave my brother the gist of the conversations, and showed him the necklace Beverly had given me.

  He whistled softly. “Holy cow. Tiffany’s. That’s pretty expensive.”

  “I know. I can’t understand why she’d give such an expensive present to a perfect stranger, unless she’s got an ulterior motive.”

  “Such as?”

  “I think she really likes Daddy and wants to get on his good side.”

  “Huh. Maybe she should have given him the necklace.”

  We pulled out onto the highway, heading for the lake. “There’s even bigger news,” I said.

  Zane put his blinker on and zipped past a dump truck. “What?”

  “After you left this morning, Mama called, and she wants us to come to Shreveport next Saturday to see her. She’s got a meeting there.”

  “No way!”

  “Way. And get this: Daddy invited Beverly to come with us.”

  “Is he crazy? Mama will go ballistic.”

  “That’s what I thought too. But Daddy told Beverly that Mama would be tickled to death to meet her because Mama used to be a poet. Did you know that?”

  “Nope.”

  A few minutes later we reached the turnoff for the lake and bounced along the rutted road that wound through a stand of pines. Zane parked next to a mud-spattered Jeep. We got out, and Zane took a grocery sack from the trunk of the car.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Stuff to make s’mores,” Zane said.

  We walked down the grassy path to a concrete pavilion next to the water. Ginger and Caroline were already there, stretched out on a pair of air mattresses. Me and Zane dumped our stuff onto the picnic table.

  “Hey,” the girls said.

  Caroline shaded her eyes with her hand. “How’s it going, Phoebe?”

  Okay.

  Caroline’s brother, Will, arrived with another guy from the swim team. Zane made the introductions, and the boy called Ryan set an ice chest on the table. “Anybody want a soda?”

  He passed them around and said, “Hey, Zane. How about a race?”

  “You’re on,” Zane said. “You coming, Will?”

  Will said, “You girls want to come and watch?”

  It seemed to me like more fun than just sitting around, but Ginger said, “No, t
hanks. We’ll stay here and guard the food.”

  The boys headed down to the cove, leaving me with Ginger and Caroline. They were both really nice, but they were two years older than me, which is no big deal when you’re five or nine or twenty-six, but when you’re fourteen, it’s the Great Wall of China. Ginger and Caroline were going to be high school juniors. Already they were stressing about their SATs and college applications, whereas my biggest worries were whether I would find my locker and whether the teachers would like me. Aside from the fact that we all adored my big brother, we had little to talk about.

  I sat on the picnic bench and sipped my cola. Across the water I could see kids jumping off the pier, yelling as they hit the cold lake. I looked for Zane and his teammates, but they had gone in the opposite direction, where they wouldn’t have to dodge the casual swimmers. Caroline and Ginger were talking about people I didn’t know, so I swam for a while, idly paddling back and forth near the shore.

  Finally Zane and the others returned from their race, dripping wet, sand sticking to their bare legs. They were laughing, breathing hard, teasing one another about who had won.

  “Let’s eat,” Will said, grabbing a grocery sack from beneath the table. “I’m starved.”

  We made a fire in the pit next to the picnic table and roasted hot dogs over the flames. When those were gone, Ginger said, “Time for s’mores! I’ve been looking forward to them all day.”

  While we roasted marshmallows, Will jogged out to his Jeep and came back with his boom box. He popped a CD in and turned up the volume.

  Zane pulled on a T-shirt over his swim trunks and plopped down between Ginger and me. The fire crackled and sent a shower of sparks into the air. “Having a good time, Phoebe?” he asked.

  “The best.” This was the most magical time on the lake, when the water reflected the dark shapes of the trees, the croaking of frogs wove through the dark, and flickering campfires circled the water like a golden necklace. The scene reminded me of other times at the lake, before our family split apart. I wished for those old times again, but I was learning it was a mistake to want anything too badly. Start feeling like you can’t live without something, and the next thing you know, it’ll be taken away.

  We ate s’mores, washing them down with soda, until Ryan stood up. “It’s been a blast, but I gotta go. Curfew.”

  Will jumped to his feet and doused the campfire. “Yo, Romeo and Juliet,” he called to Zane and Ginger, who had wandered off and were leaning toward each other like the stems of flowers, whispering in the dark. “The light through yonder window breaks. Time to go home.”

  We packed up and headed for our cars. Zane and I followed Will’s Jeep back up the road to the highway. Caroline and Ginger were behind us in Caroline’s ancient Beetle. At the intersection Zane tooted the horn. We turned left and started home.

  I reached for the radio, looking for our favorite late-night disc jockey, but Zane said, “Don’t, Phoebe. Leave it off.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing! Do I have to give you a reason for everything?”

  “Are you still mad at Daddy?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “Did you and Ginger have a fight?”

  “Not exactly.” He blew out a long breath. “Maybe. Oh hell, I don’t know.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Zane ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a big mess. Junior prom is almost a year away, but Ginger and Caroline are already all over it. I thought Ginger was hinting around for me to ask her to go with me, so I did. Then she tells me she’s not sure; she really likes Ryan, and she doesn’t consider me a potential boyfriend.”

  “What? You could have fooled me, the way she was holding on to you all night. Plus you guys have known each other forever.”

  “That’s the problem.”

  We were approaching the Eden city limits; Zane slowed down and went on. “Ginger thinks I’ll never sec her as anything but a friend, and maybe she’s right. I’d feel awful if I talked her out of dating Ryan and then found out we really don’t click as a couple.”

  “Maybe you’re just worried that if she falls for Ryan, you’ll lose her as a friend. Or maybe it’s true love. Do your palms sweat? Do you feel sick to your stomach, dizzy sometimes, like you just came off a ride at Disneyland?”

  Finally he laughed. “Shut up, wiseacre.”

  He pulled into our driveway and killed the engine. The light in Daddy’s study blazed brightly, but the rest of the house was dark.

  Zane said, “Is Dad still mad at me for not hanging around this morning?”

  “I don’t know. After Beverly left, he watched the Rangers game and made a bunch of phone calls. He seems pretty excited about seeing Mama.”

  We got out of the car. Then the porch lights came on and the front door opened. Daddy pointed to his watch as we came up the steps.

  “Cutting it close tonight, I see. It’s two minutes to eleven,”

  We went inside, and Zane made a beeline for the stairs. “I smell like the lake. I’m hitting the shower.”

  Daddy locked the front door and turned off the porch light. “Did you have a good time, Feebs?”

  “It’s Phoebe, Daddy. And yes, it was great.”

  He pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. “I was starting to worry about you.”

  “We have a cell phone. We’d have called if there was trouble.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m just lonely, I guess. This house seems too big these days.”

  “She’ll come back,” I said. “She has to.”

  He nodded and turned back toward his study. “Good night.”

  I went up to my room and stripped out of my damp clothes. I desperately needed to talk to Shyla about Beverly, about what was happening with Daddy, about my upcoming meeting with Mama. I burrowed into my bathrobe, and while I waited for my turn in the shower, I placed an emergency call to my sister.

  The next Saturday morning Beverly rang our doorbell at eight sharp. Daddy had been up for at least an hour; I’d heard him bring the paper inside while I was still in bed, and now the smell of fresh coffee was wafting up the stairs. I was up and dressed. Zane was awake; I could hear his shower running. He and Daddy had had a big argument the night before. Zane didn’t want to waste half his weekend driving to Louisiana and back to see Mama when it was plain to him that we were hardly a blip on her radar screen, but when Daddy gave him a choice of handing over the keys to his Ford or going with us, Zane gave in. Now he was giving Daddy the silent treatment, and my stomach was knotted like a ball of twine. Mama’s birthday was just around the corner, and I’d bought her a present, a book of poems by Emily Dickinson. I wasn’t sure Mama would like Emily’s short, fierce poems, but as Shyla once said about the little black dress, a classic is always a safe choice.

  I put Mama’s present in the bottom of my tote bag and went down to the kitchen.

  “There you are!” Beverly trilled. “I’ll bet you’re just thrilled to pieces to see your mom.”

  I grabbed a bagel and smeared some strawberry cream cheese on it. My feelings were too jumbled to explain, so I said, “I guess so.”

  Daddy shook his head and refilled Beverly’s coffee cup. “You know how teenagers are.”

  Then Zane came downstairs, dressed in a pair of cargo pants, a white T-shirt, and sneakers, his hair still damp from the shower.

  “Zane,” Daddy said. “This is our new neighbor, Beverly Grace. Beverly, this is my son, Zane.”

  Beverly held out her hand. “Hello, Zane. I hear you’re quite a swimmer.”

  “Hello.” Zane made a point of avoiding eye contact with Daddy as he shook hands with Beverly. He opened the fridge and stuck his head in. “Any OJ?”

  “On the top shelf,” Daddy said.

  Zane’s head reappeared, along with the Florida Tropic carton. “I was talking to Phoebe.”

  “Zane,” Beverly said smoothly, “I read in the paper about your double win at the
Y last week. That’s pretty impressive.”

  My brother chugged some OJ and fixed himself a bagel. “Thanks.”

  Daddy wiped down the counter, turned the coffeemaker off, and said brightly, “Okay, gang, let’s get going.”

  I picked up my tote, Zane grabbed his music player, and we followed Daddy and Beverly out to the curb. Zane’s eyes lit up when he realized we were taking Beverly’s convertible, but since he was still operating in silent mode, he just slumped in the backseat next to me and plugged into his music.

  Beverly tossed Daddy her keys. “You drive.”

  Daddy slid behind the wheel, adjusted his sunglasses, and pulled away from the curb. Beverly covered her hair with a silk scarf, tying it under her chin like Queen Elizabeth on vacation in Scotland.

  We got to the freeway, and the car picked up speed. The rush of wind through the open car tangled my hair. Beverly turned around and raised her voice above the engine noise. “Phoebe? You want a scarf? I have an extra.”

  I shook my head. I liked the feel of the wind in my hair. Even better, I liked that the noise saved me from having to make conversation. I thought back to last weekend’s midnight phone call to Shyla.

  “What’s the matter?” Shyla had mumbled when her roommate, Alison-from-Florida, put her on the line. I imagined Shyla sitting up in bed, pushing her hair out of her eyes, squinting at the clock.

  I told her about breakfast with Beverly, about the Tiffany necklace, and that I was worried because Daddy was paying so much attention to our new neighbor. “It feels like too much, too fast,” I told her. “She hadn’t known us for twenty-four hours, and there she was, looking into Daddy’s eyes, hanging on to his every word, giving me presents, and telling me how special I am. I think she’s after him.”

  “I doubt that.” I could hear Shyla yawning.

  “Huh. You didn’t see how they were looking at each other. Don’t you care if our parents break up?”

  Shyla sighed. “They’re not going to break up.”