The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

  Phil looked surprised to see all of us crowded into the kitchen. He nodded indiscriminately. “I have to be going. Does anyone know where Sarah is?”

  “Out by the pool,” I said, thinking with snotty satisfaction that he was going to have to walk into another crowd of people who made him uncomfortable in order to say goodbye to his daughter.

  “Thanks.” He started toward the door that led into the dining room then stopped and turned back toward us. “Do you know if there’s anything I can do for Suzanne?”

  “Why, yes, there is,” I said immediately and sharply. I met his eyes across the space of the kitchen and fancied that our mutual dislike made a dark cloud somewhere under the overhead light fixture. “You can tell Sarah the truth. She needs to know that her mother wasn’t the only bad guy in the end of your marriage.”

  He hesitated. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “She certainly is,” said Vin, her voice crisp and cool. She folded a dishtowel, its corners snapping droplets of water all over the place. We all ducked in unison.

  “It might not help Suzanne, though,” said Phil quietly. “What if Sarah thinks I was right?”

  Jean gave him her best hostess smile, although I could see definite overtones of superiority in it. “She won’t.”

  “Try the truth,” Vin advised. “It often works wonders.”

  I remembered something Suzanne had said within the past few days and beamed at him. “Just like cowshit.”

  Jean

  In the end, Tommy was a hero. The car hit him after he pushed a child to safety. I don’t know how much comfort that is to Suzanne, but I must admit it makes me feel better, if it’s possible to feel better so soon after you bury someone you’ve known all his life. Whose diapers you changed and who you helped teach to do the swim and the frug for the sixties dance when he was in junior high.

  This evening, we ended up as we have so often in our lives, the four of us around a kitchen table. David and Paul went to take Lucas to the Indianapolis airport and Jake went to Miranda’s.

  Trent had left when they did. He and Suzanne had held each other for a long time before he left. We watched, and our hearts broke a little more.

  We didn’t say much at first. We were all very tired and Suzanne’s wounds were too new and too raw to take the chance of throwing salt on them. “It was nice of Lucas to come,” she said. “I appreciated it.”

  Vin nodded.

  “He’s a nice guy,” I said.

  They all nodded.

  We were silent.

  “I believe,” said Andie in a strangled voice, “this is the scene from Steel Magnolias where Sally Field lost it and earned herself another Oscar nomination. Or should have. I don’t remember which.”

  I stared at her, aghast. Vin dropped her head into her hands. Suzanne got up from the table and pulled a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. She set it in front of Andie with a thump. “Here, Weezer, open this.”

  Andie fluffed her white hair. “I look more like Olympia Dukakis than I do Shirley McLaine.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t remember what Olympia’s name was in the movie,” said Suzanne.

  I reached behind me for the corkscrew and tossed it to Andie. I ended up getting up anyway to retrieve four glasses from the dishtowel beside the sink.

  After the first glass, I said, “I really hoped we’d never have to share a day like this.”

  No one said anything until Andie spoke into the silence that wasn’t silent at all. “Do we all wonder the same thing?”

  Yes, we probably did. The look we exchanged acknowledged that, but this was Suzanne’s conversation to lead, not ours. It was, as horrible as it sounds, her day.

  “He left a note on my door,” she said. Her eyes were bright, her voice wistful. “He said he was sorry to have missed me. He knew I’d been worried about him but he was going to be okay. He said he was on his way to Sarah’s but if he missed her, too, to give her his love. Do you think he really was okay?”

  “Sure, he was,” said Andie.

  Vin and I nodded. “Absolutely,” we said together.

  Suzanne smiled around at us as huge tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. “You’re all such liars.” She reached for Andie’s and my hands and we automatically grasped Vin’s. “And I love you all so much.”

  Suzanne

  Two weeks after Tommy’s funeral, I drove to Chicago and turned in my retirement papers. I had lunch with Jake and drove home. When I got back to Lewis Point, I went to the only realty in town and listed my condo. I stopped by the dealership and traded my Camaro in on a nice dark blue midsize that had four doors and built-in GPS that might keep me from getting lost in my own backyard if I could only learn how to use it.

  The next morning, I went to Willow Wood Daycare, where Miranda and Carrie both took their children while they taught school, and applied for a position.

  I was hired on the spot and went home with finger paints in my hair, paste on my sleeves, and unidentified residue on the front of my skirt. I had read Green Eggs and Ham seven times, changed six diapered butts three times, and given three bottles of nasty-smelling formula that left yellowish stains on the shoulder of my blouse.

  I called Sarah when I got home and asked her to come over for supper.

  “What are you having?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Pizza. I’ll call for it when we hang up.” I hesitated. “You can ask young Jake to come if you like.”

  “Don’t forget the black olives.” Her voice became muffled, as though she’d covered the mouthpiece, then she came back. “He says he doesn’t like them, but get them anyway. He can just pick them off.”

  I took a shower, and when Sarah rang the doorbell, I answered it wearing sweats. My wet hair hung in strings around my face.

  Young Jake looked stunned, Sarah uncertain.

  “Mother?”

  I drew them inside, kissing both their cheeks and herding them into the dining area. “Pizza just got here, so it’s hot. Who wants beer and who wants soda? Jake, why is it you’re not working? Did you get to go to day shift?”

  “No, ma’am. Days off.” He came into the kitchen and took me by the shoulders, looking down at me with his father’s face and his mother’s eyes. “It is you, right, Suzy-Q?”

  My bravado wavered under his scrutiny, and my voice wobbled a bit when I said, “I don’t know whether it is or not. I just know that who I was wasn’t working out worth a damn.”

  He gave me a squeeze. “Good luck. Beer, Sarah?”

  Her affirmative drifted in from the living room. I looked up at Jake. “Is she doing all right?” I whispered.

  “I think so.”

  When the pizza was nothing except a few dried crusts and all the breadsticks were gone, I brought three more bottles of beer from the kitchen and said, “Young Jake, do they ever call you anything else? Are you destined to go through life as young Jake?”

  He laughed. “No one calls me that except family. Everyone else calls me just Jake or Lo.”

  “That started in junior high,” said Sarah, “when he’d come out on the football field and people would chant ‘Lo-gan, Lo-gan.’”

  I took a sip of beer and tried out the name. “Lo. I like that.”

  “You listed your condo,” said Sarah. “I saw the sign. What are you going to do if it sells?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “But this place is too white, just like the car was. Did you see the new one? It’s the same color as yours.” I took a deep breath because I felt like crying and I didn’t want to do that anymore. “I need that, I think…more color.”

  “I saw it when I saw the sign.” Sarah turned her beer in a wet circle on the table. “You can stay with me for a while, you know, if you need to.” She smiled selfconsciously. “Elmer likes you.”

  “Thank you, honey. I’ll remember that.”

  They got up to leave an hour or so later. Lo gave me a bear hug and a damp raspberry on my cheek that made me laugh and swat him. Sar
ah stood, looking uncertain.

  “Daddy told me,” she said. “After the funeral, he told me the truth about the day the Rivers’ house was trashed. He told me some other things, too. Like that he didn’t want me to go to vet school so you footed the whole bill.”

  “I didn’t want you to have to work too much,” I said. “It’s such a hard course.” I beamed at her. “I’m so proud of you for doing so well.”

  I don’t know which one of us reached first; all I know was that in the next moment, my daughter was in my arms and we were both weeping buckets. We cried so hard and so long that Lo put his arms around us both and we stood as a small quaking circle on the sidewalk in front of the condo.

  We cried for Tommy, for times lost and times wasted, for the great gaping holes his death had left inside us. I think we cried for our own and each other’s pain because of our estrangement, too, but maybe I place too much weight on a few tears.

  When the weeping finally subsided and we were sniffing into crumpled tissues Sarah pulled from her pockets, she said, “I’m very proud of you, too, Mom.”

  It was the first time since Tommy died that I thought I might actually live. It was the first time I wanted to.

  Vin

  My work at the office was so backed up that Gunderson’s actually broke down and hired me an assistant. He’s a brand new college graduate who’s spent the last few months interning at another publishing house. He’s smart and eager and he wants my job.

  Most days, I’d like to let him have it.

  I don’t believe I’ve ever known such discontent. I’ve been unhappier—I’ve just come off the worst two years of my life—but I’ve never been so restless.

  It would be so easy to chuck it all and move to Hope Island, bag and baggage. I love it there, I believe I love Lucas, and I could do free-lance editing to stave off boredom. It would be easy, yes, but something holds me back and I don’t know what it is. At least I didn’t till I talked to Andie.

  “You’re afraid Hope Island will become Tonsil Lake,” she said bluntly when I told her. “What if it doesn’t work out with Lucas? What if you can’t stand the winters there? What if you wake up and you’re facing the same dead end we were facing back there in those trailers?”

  “I guess so.” I leaned back in Mark’s leather desk chair and stared at the ceiling. “I think I’m scared of starting over.”

  “With good reason,” she said. “It’s a forny bitch.”

  “How’s Suzanne?”

  “Scary.”

  “What?” I sat up.

  “She retired and went to work at a daycare center, sold her car, and put her condo on the market. You knew all that, but, Vin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We all had lunch today because Jean’s working too hard and looks like a dishrag, and I saw Suzanne’s roots. I saw Jean’s earlier this summer, but I think that was just a fluke because her hair was a mess. But Suzanne didn’t have a hair out of place and I could still see them.”

  “Get real.” Andie and I had teased Suzanne about her perpetual blondeness ever since she’d discovered a peroxide bottle in our freshman year of high school. I wanted to keep doing that.

  “No, I’m serious. She doesn’t seem miserable or anything, but when her lipstick disappeared while we were eating, she didn’t put more on. And she was wearing sweats. Jean and I were, too, but we always do. Suzanne always wears skinny pants with a shirt tucked in. I’m afraid she’s doing some kind of self-imposed penance because of Tommy. You know that game everybody plays when somebody dies.”

  “The ‘if only’ game? Yeah, I know it well.” I had been at a writers’ conference in New Jersey when Mark died. I went against my own better judgment because he insisted. It took me months to forgive myself. I don’t think his daughters have forgiven me yet. “Give her time.”

  “I know. It’s just that…”

  I waited a minute. “What? Just that what?”

  “Time’s so damned precious. I hate to see either of you wasting it.”

  “What do you mean, Andie?” Alarm made the hairs on back of my neck stand up. “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Of course,” she answered too quickly. “Hey, you should see Jean’s office. Actually, you should have been here while we all created it. It looks great, but she worked us to death. David threatened her with a hammer one day, I swear.”

  I laughed in spite of the prickles of unease I still felt. “What did she do?”

  “I’m pretty sure she offered him sex. We told her that was probably the only thing that would save her. So then all the guys were fighting over the hammer to threaten us with. It was a really mature kind of afternoon.”

  “I’m glad she got it. The office, I mean.” I looked at the clock, surprised at how long we’d been on the phone. “How’s Jake?”

  “Not good.”

  “Ah, Andie, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. Probably later I’ll be calling you screaming my brains out against wicked fate, but for now we’re just doing one day at a time.”

  “Well, call if you need anything.” I yawned. “I need to get off here and go to bed. Tomorrow’s another forny wonderful day at the office.”

  “Vin?” Her voice was quiet. “I’m serious when I say time’s too precious to waste. Don’t let that second chance we talked about in Maine pass you by, okay?”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Promise.”

  I hung up and went into the bedroom to crawl between the sheets, wondering if that was a promise I’d be able to keep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Andie

  Paul and I had just come back from a four-mile walk. I like walking a lot, but I like sauntering. You know, just cruising along sniffing at flowers and tossing beer cans into a garbage bag and noticing that so-and-so’s lawn needs mowing in the worst way.

  One does not saunter when she’s walking with Paul Lindquist. We do a lot of cardio-vascular stuff and warming up and cooling down. The cooling down part is the only one I really like, and if I had my way, I’d never get hot enough to need it.

  Of course, it’s August now, which is no laughing matter in the Midwest. All you have to do to get hot is exist. I was all for giving up walking altogether in August, but Paul wouldn’t hear of it. Now we go after dark, which is cooler—or it would be if he’d let me saunter.

  “How’s Jake doing?” asked Paul, when I was leaning against the relative chill of the refrigerator pouring a bottle of water down my parched throat.

  He hadn’t even broken a sweat, drat his in-shape hide.

  “He’s had to quit work and go on disability,” I said. I looked past Paul and out the kitchen windows at the darkness that lay beyond. In life, I guess there’s always darkness just beyond. And in death. “He gets tired just talking on the phone.”

  Silence stretched between us, not comfortable as it usually was, but tense like the heavy air before a thunderstorm. I knew what Paul was going to ask and what I was going to say. The silence was probably better.

  “What’s he going to do when he can’t take care of himself?” He spoke carefully, his eyes on mine.

  I opened the refrigerator door to replace my water bottle and answered with my back turned to him. “He’ll come here. We’ve already made all the arrangements with hospice.”

  Paul’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Andie?”

  I turned back to face him, closing the door and leaning against it. “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think you might have mentioned it? That we might have talked about it?”

  “It wasn’t your decision to make, Paul. It was mine. He can’t go to Miranda’s because both she and Ben work and because of the kids. Lo doesn’t have the time, room, or temperament for it.” It was funny how, after twenty-eight years of “young Jake,” it was so easy to call my son Lo. I wondered if it was one of those rites of passage, when you see your children as real adult people rather than beloved responsibilities.

  “And what about you? Y
ou’re still trying to get your health completely back.” Paul looked angry, and I didn’t know whether it was at me, Jake, or himself. “What about you, Andie?” he said again. “How could Jake ask—”

  “He didn’t,” I inserted crisply. “He wouldn’t. And he fought us tooth and nail on it. Do you want some coffee?”

  “Please.”

  I made it as I talked. “We discussed it in Maine, and the children and I had talked about it before then. Jake was all for staying in Chicago, but that’s too far for them to see him often. So then he wanted to go into a nursing facility down here.” I poured the water into the reservoir and turned back to Paul. “None of us could stand the idea. We want him to die among people he loves. People who love him. That’s us.”

  I wanted him to understand, but I’d been on my own too long to plead for that understanding. I had survived without Paul Lindquist before; I could do it again.

  He didn’t say anything at all until we had gone out to the patio with our coffee and taken our accustomed seats in the two lounge chairs Lo had bought me for my birthday.

  “When my wife was sick,” he said quietly, “it got to where I couldn’t take care of her alone anymore. It was hell on her, me, and the kids. On a good day, she asked me to put her in a nursing home so that we could remember her as the woman we’d loved.”

  He cleared his throat, staring toward the stillness of the woods behind the house. “I wouldn’t do it, so we got help and we kept her at home and took care of her till the end.” He looked over at me, and his eyes looked hot and unhappy in the dusky light from the kitchen. “It was the hardest thing I ever did. The last month or so, she wasn’t even the person I knew. The medication and the disease had made her into someone else, someone I wasn’t in love with. Someone who…I was relieved when she died.”

  “But you still loved her,” I said. I swung my feet to the ground between the chairs so that I could look into his face. “I haven’t been in love with Jake for years, and I know full well that it will be a relief when he dies—the idea of seeing him suffer is unbearable—but I still love him. He’s still Miranda and Lo’s father. This is something I can do for him and for them.”