Grand Avenue

by Joy Fielding

  “What does?” Jeremy asked simply.

  “What?”

  “I’m just starting to wonder, darlin’, that’s all.”

  Was he going to walk out on her? Vicki wondered, thinking that all her life people had been walking out on her. She could get their attention, she thought, but despite all the theatrics, she couldn’t make them stay.

  “Anyway, darlin’, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired. I’m goin’ to bed.” Jeremy paused. “You comin’?”

  “Soon,” Vicki said gratefully. “I’ll be there soon.”

  Then she sank back against the stiff back of the antique dining-room chair, drifting in and out of consciousness, and listening to the grandfather clock behind her tick away the minutes till morning.

  Epilogue

  Almost nine years have passed since Barbara’s death, eight years since the trial that sealed our fate once and for all. We have entered a new century, a new millennium. The years have passed quicker than I ever thought possible. So much has changed, although Grand Avenue remains essentially the same, at least on the outside. I still live here. I’m the only one left.

  The film ends. Automatically, I press the rewind button, listen as the tape whirs quietly past my ears, like the hum of a dying fluorescent light. How many times have I watched this tape already today? Five? Six? Maybe more. I try not to think how many times I’ve watched it over the years. Must be hundreds. Birthdays, anniversaries, too many days in between. Still, I’m not ready to say good-bye to these young women I love and will love until the day I die. The Grand Dames, I say silently, almost like a prayer, as once again their faces fill the giant TV screen, and their laughter melts my heart. Can twenty-three years really have passed since that first afternoon? Is it possible? Why can’t I let go?

  The doorbell rings.

  “Mom, the door!” a voice calls from upstairs.

  “Can you get it, sweetie?” I ask. “It’s probably for you.”

  Footsteps on the stairs. They sound like a herd of elephants, although it’s only a twenty-one-year-old girl.

  “Check who it is before you open the door,” I call out, but it’s already too late. I hear the door open. Soft voices wind through the small foyer toward the newly constructed “media room” to the left of the front hall. “Who is it, sweetie?” I ask as my daughter appears in the doorway.

  “Someone for you.” Delicate shoulders shrug. “She says she knows you.”

  I stop the film, watching the women freeze on the screen. I’ve become very adept at manipulating the VCR, which amazes me as much as it does the rest of my family. In fact, I’m the only one who knows how to program it so that it will tape something while we’re away or asleep. I even know how to tape a show on one channel while watching something on another, and I am curiously, even alarmingly, proud of this accomplishment. “Did she give her name?” I ask, reluctant to push myself off the sofa.

  Another shrug. I get to my feet, follow my daughter toward the front of the house.

  Sitting all afternoon in my air-conditioned den, the drapes pulled, the room dark save for the light coming from the TV screen, I’ve forgotten how bright the day is, how warm the July sun, how fresh the outside air. It almost knocks me over in its rush to embrace me as I approach the door.

  She is standing in the doorway, her face partially obscured by the shadow of a nearby weeping willow tree. She brings with her the scent of freshly cut flowers. I see a bouquet, like a baby, resting in her trembling arms. “Hi,” she says simply, as my heart stops.

  I open my mouth to speak, but no words come. What cruel trick of the imagination is this? I wonder. Have I been sitting in the darkness for so long that I’m starting to see ghosts, that I’m no longer able to differentiate between what is real and what is impossible?

  “Mrs. Norman?” she asks, bringing me back to myself.

  “Mom?” Whitney touches my arm. I feel the concern in her fingers.

  “I guess you don’t remember me. I’m Montana,” she says, almost as if she isn’t sure. Her voice has a nervous, breathy quality, quite unlike her mother’s, but aside from that, the two women are almost identical. It is as if Chris has stepped out of my VCR, assumed solid form, run around to the front of the house, and now stands in front of me. It is as if I have pressed the wrong button and miraculously erased the last twenty-three years. “Can I come in?” she asks.

  I step back to allow her entry. “Montana,” I murmur, unable to say more.

  She smiles, tucks her long blond hair behind her ears in a gesture remarkably similar to her mother’s. “Actually, I prefer Ana. One n.”

  “Ana,” I repeat, savoring the simple sound.

  “I was never very comfortable with Montana.” She looks at the flowers in her hands, as if noticing them for the first time, pushes them toward me. “These are for you.”

  “For me? Thank you.”

  “I’ll put them in water,” Whitney volunteers, sensing my inability to function at normal speed. “Why don’t you guys go into the living room and sit down?” She points the way, as if I might have forgotten. Dutifully, I lead Montana—Ana, as she now prefers to be called—into the sun-filled room at the back of the house. From the kitchen, I hear water running in the sink.

  “You have a lovely home,” Ana says, sitting at the edge of one of two floral-print wingback chairs on either side of the never-used black marble fireplace.

  Neither Owen nor I have the slightest interest in fireplaces, which suddenly strikes me as odd. We look like the kind of people who would like nothing better than throwing a few logs on the fire and sitting back to bask in its warm glow. The image is, admittedly, lovely. The reality is too much work. Neither of us can be bothered. It’s easier to simply turn up the heat.

  How often, I wonder, hesitating between a wing chair and the rose-colored sofa at right angles to it, are things what they seem?

  Ultimately, I select the sofa. It takes several seconds to get comfortable. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Lemonade?”

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  Seconds later, Whitney appears with the flowers neatly arranged in a deep crystal vase, deposits them on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go back upstairs.” She looks to the ceiling, as if this is explanation enough.

  “It was nice seeing you again,” Ana says as Whitney makes her exit. Then, lowering her voice: “I can’t believe how grown-up she is.”

  I nod. I can’t believe it either. Actually, I’m surprised Montana even remembers my younger daughter. It’s been so long since she’s seen her. “She’ll be a senior this year.”

  Ana shakes her head with the kind of dulled amazement usually reserved for women decades her senior. She is only twenty-five, too young to be so aware of the passage of time. “What university?”

  “Duke.”

  “Is that where Ariel went?”

  “Ariel chose not to go to university,” I say, trying to hold on to the smile in my voice. It still bothers me that my older daughter decided against a higher education, that she chose instead to marry a modern-day cowboy and move with him to a ranch outside Casper, Wyoming, where she is expecting my first grandchild in December. “It’s so strange,” I hear myself confiding. “I spent half my life working for a degree. I’m considered something of an authority on women’s issues. I give speeches all over the country. I’m even writing a book …” I stop. What does this young girl care about an aging woman’s résumé? “And I have this daughter,” I continue, despite my best efforts, “this throwback to another era, who thinks it’s romantic to be barefoot and pregnant.”

  “She might go back to school later.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “You did it.”

  “You’re right.” I smile, feel better. “Anyway, what can you do? It’s her life. Gotta let her live it.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Ana says with such certainty I find myself believing her. Then: “I hear Vick
i’s become quite the star.”

  My smile vanishes. “No surprise there.”

  “Do you ever watch her show?”

  I shake my head. Four years ago, Vicki and her family took up residence in Los Angeles. Lately, she’s become a fixture on Court TV and was recently anointed one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People magazine. The accompanying article said she’d recently been reunited with her mother. There was a photograph of the two of them together, and even though the picture was very small, the family resemblance was unmistakable. They each have the same thin face, the same ferocious intensity around the eyes. Vicki’s hand was draped casually across her mother’s shoulder, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Vicki wasn’t subconsciously trying to keep her mother from running away from her again. Owen said I was reading too much into the picture, and he’s probably right. At any rate, I hope their reunion was everything Vicki wanted and needed, that her mother was everything she’d hoped her to be. I thought of calling her, wishing her well, decided against it. Some wounds are just too stubborn to heal.

  “What about Tracey?” Ana asks. “Do you ever hear from her?”

  “No, thank God. Last I heard she was acting in some off-Broadway play.” I pause, momentarily overwhelmed by one of life’s little ironies. “What about you? What brings you back to Cincinnati? Don’t tell me you got tired of French cooking.”

  Chris’s smile radiates from her daughter’s heart-shaped face. “No, Paris is great. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. And there’s this guy I met …” The sentence stops, the words lingering like smoke from a cigarette. She rolls her eyes, laughs her mother’s laugh.

  “Have you seen your father?”

  A frown creases Ana’s forehead. “It’s my brothers I came back to see.”

  “How are they?”

  “They’re doing okay. It’s hard to tell. You know boys—they don’t say much.”

  “I haven’t seen Tony in years,” I remark, speaking more to myself than the girl I once knew as Montana.

  “He hasn’t changed. He was in this car accident last year. It slowed him down a bit. He walks with a bit of a limp, but other than that …” She stops, takes a long, deep breath. “Tell me about my mother,” she says softly.

  I close my eyes, open them again, see Chris where her daughter sits. What can I say? “What do you want to know?”

  Ana tilts her chin toward the ceiling, as if to prevent the tears growing in her eyes from releasing down her cheeks. “Everything.”

  I shake my head, still angry at yet another of life’s bitter ironies. “About three years ago, I found a lump in my breast,” I begin, feeling its shadow still. “My mother died of breast cancer some years back. I don’t know if you remember that.”

  Ana nods respectfully.

  “Anyway, the doctor scheduled a mammogram. I was terrified. Your mother volunteered to keep me company, then decided she might as well schedule a mammogram for herself. My lump turned out to be a harmless cyst.…”

  “My mother wasn’t so lucky,” Ana whispers.

  “Everything happened very fast after that. In less than two years, she was gone.”

  Ana stifles a small cry in the back of her throat. “I had no idea she was sick.”

  “We tried to contact you, but your father gave us the wrong address. Our letters all came back.”

  “Bastard,” Ana says clearly under her breath. “All I got was a phone call after she died.” She jumps to her feet, although once there, she doesn’t move. “Although I really can’t put all the blame on him, can I? It was my decision to cut her out of my life, my decision to take off for Europe.”

  “You were a confused young girl.”

  “I was a self-absorbed brat!”

  “No,” I tell her, longing to take her in my arms, afraid to overstep the invisible boundary between us. “You mustn’t feel guilty. Your mother loved you. She was so proud of you.”

  “Why? What did I ever do to deserve her pride?”

  “You were her daughter.”

  “Is that enough?”

  Ariel’s face, in all its assorted transformations, appears before me, growing from jealous toddler to rebellious teen to expectant mother in a fraction of an instant. “Yes,” I say softly. “It’s enough.”

  Ana wipes a tear from her cheek, sits back down. “Tell me about those two years. Did she suffer? Was she alone?”

  “She didn’t suffer,” I tell Ana honestly. “She had wonderful doctors. They made sure her pain was minimal. And no, she wasn’t alone. Her friend, Donna, was with her.”

  “Donna was the woman she lived with?”

  “She met her when she worked for Emily Hallendale. Donna’s a lovely woman. I think you’d like her.”

  “Do you have her phone number?”

  I nod. “It’s in the kitchen. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  It takes a while to locate Donna’s number. My kitchen drawer is a mess of loose scraps of paper and old newspaper clippings. Of course there’s an address book, but it’s hopelessly out-of-date. I haven’t written anything in it in years. So I’m forced to examine every torn envelope, every change-of-address card, until I find Donna’s current address and phone number. Amazingly, it’s right near the top of the pile, but I missed it the first time around. I close my fist around it, carry it back to the living room.

  Ana isn’t there.

  A moment of panic ensues as I run to the front door. Has she left? Maybe I can still catch her.…

  And then I hear her crying softly. I walk toward the sound, knowing exactly where I will find her.

  She is standing in the doorway of my renovated den, now a full-fledged media room, with its impressive array of computers, stereo equipment, CD players, assorted speakers, and giant television screen. She is staring at her mother, only a few years older than Ana is now. I tiptoe into the room behind her, press the start button of the VCR, stand back and watch the women come to life. The camera pans jerkily from Chris to Barbara to Vicki. Barbara’s face fills the screen as she grabs the camera, waves it in my direction, then returns to Chris’s struggles trying to keep Montana on her lap.

  Ana watches the child Montana kick angrily at her mother’s ankles before sliding off her lap, the toddler’s face awash with tears, as Ana’s is now. Chris extends her arms, waits patiently for her daughter to come back. But Montana refuses her entreaties, remains stubbornly on the edge of the frame. “Come on, baby,” Chris coos. “Be a good girl. Come to Mommy.”

  “Oh,” Ana cries now, the word escaping her lips like a lover’s sigh. Her arms lift from her sides, as if she is being pulled by gentle strings. She sways, floats toward the screen. Instinctively, I reach over, press the pause button, watch as Montana folds into her mother’s waiting arms.

  She’s been waiting so long, I think, approaching quietly, assuming Chris’s place, drawing her daughter close. I feel Ana’s legs give way, her body collapse into mine. We cry together, both of us embracing a memory, taking unexpected comfort in one another.

  If life is the choices we make, as my mother once told me, then too much of life is spent bemoaning those choices. Too much time is wasted on regret. We can do nothing with the past but acknowledge and accept it. It is over. Done with. It is gone.

  But if I am no longer the young woman I see laughing with her friends on my giant TV, I know she hasn’t disappeared altogether, that she is still a part of me. Sometimes I see her winking at me through tired eyes when I look into the mirror. Sometimes I feel her pulling my shoulders back when I’d rather slouch. She pushes my fingers when I write, selects the words I speak. She is the voice of my youth, of all I hold dear and close to my heart, and she is still whispering in my ear.

  She is my friend.

  Who says life has to make sense? That it owes us any explanations? Perhaps there is no such thing as justice. Perhaps there will never be peace. Or resolution.

  But there is hope, I think, hugging Ana to
me, embracing all that was and all that will be.

  And there is love.

  SEAL BOOKS

  PROUDLY PRESENTS

  WHISPERS AND LIES

  JOY FIELDING

  Turn the page for a preview of Whispers and Lies.…

  She said her name was Alison Simms.

  The name tumbled slowly, almost langourously, from her lips, the way honey slides from the blade of a knife. Her voice was soft, tentative, slightly girlish, although her handshake was firm and she looked me straight in the eye. I liked that. I liked her, I decided, almost on the spot, although I’m the first to admit that I’m not always the best judge of character. Still, my first impression of the amazingly tall young woman with the shoulder-length, strawberry-blond curls who stood tightly clasping my hand in the living room of my small two-bedroom home was a positive one. And first impressions are lasting impressions, as my mother used to say.

  “This is a real pretty house,” Alison said, her head nodding as if she were agreeing with her own assessment, her eyes darting appreciatively between the overstuffed sofa and the two delicate Queen Anne chairs, the cushioned valances framing the windows and the sculpted area rug lying across the light hardwood floor. “I love pink and mauve together. It’s my favorite color combination.” Then she smiled, this enormous, wide, slightly goofy smile that made me want to laugh out loud. “I always wanted a pink-and-mauve wedding.”

  This time I did laugh out loud. It seemed such a wonderfully strange thing to say to someone you’d just met. She laughed with me, although I doubt she knew why we were laughing, and I motioned toward the sofa for her to sit down. She immediately sank into the deep, down-filled cushions, her blue sundress all but disappearing inside the swirl of pink and mauve fabric flowers, and crossed one long, skinny leg over the other, the rest of her body folding itself artfully around her knees as she leaned toward me. I perched on the edge of the striped Queen Anne chair directly across from her, thinking that she reminded me of a pretty pink flamingo, a real one, not one of those awful plastic things you see stabbed into people’s front lawns. “You’re very tall,” I commented lamely, thinking she’d probably heard that remark all her life.