by Jean Stone
22
Tuesday night Jo picked out an ivy-colored Ellen Tracy suit and stretch silk jersey T to wear to New York. When she was in the city, there might be a chance for her to meet some of Andrew’s friends. He’d dodged them at the wedding, but this time it would be different. This time they’d be on his turf, where he no longer had to hide. This time she was the woman who was sleeping with him, if one all-nighter and a snow day counted as sleeping together. As having a relationship. As wanting to be with each other. She wondered if he would let that fact be known or if he would keep her a secret from his city life, the way he’d kept that life a secret from her for so long.
She folded the silk T and told herself to stop being paranoid.
“Lily said I should tell everyone who calls that you’re in New York on business,” Jo’s mother, Marion, said from the rocking chair across the bedroom that once had been hers but now was Jo’s because Marion’s new husband had bought them a fancy condominium out by Tanglewood, and Jo had moved back into her childhood home. Rather than leave the answering machine on, Lily had deemed it best to have a real live person pick up the phone. She’d railroaded Marion with promises of assistance to decorate the condo, not that Marion needed to be coerced. “I think it would be better to say there’s been a death in the family.”
“That’s awful,” Jo said, layering another top, a pair of pants, a neat black dress in case Andrew wanted her to join him and Irene and Cassie and anyone else for dinner. She supposed she should tell the girls of Second Chances about their relationship now. Otherwise they might be hurt or confused if Andrew included Jo but not them in any plans. Not that Lily would have allowed such a thing, if Lily had anything to say about it. “We really are going on business, Mother. We have three weddings to plan very quickly.”
“But we both know the real reason is so you can check up on Irene Benson. And Andrew.”
“John isn’t dead, Mother. Neither is Andrew.”
“When a man leaves, he’s gone. It doesn’t matter how or why he goes.”
Jo wasn’t sure if her mother was talking about John Benson or Andrew. She pushed down the sting, the string, of memories of Brian. She looked into the suitcase, wrung her hands, and wondered what she was forgetting.
“You’re only going to New York, Josephine,” her mother said, “not to Princess Grace’s wedding.”
In spite of her nervousness, Jo laughed. Since she was a little girl, Marion had used the Princess Grace analogy to bring her daughter back to earth when she was getting too obsessed with how she looked or what she wore. Poor Grace had been gone more than two decades now, but her legacy remained alive and well in West Hope.
“I want to make a good impression,” Jo told her mother. “In case I meet anyone.”
“Anyone special?”
She smiled. “Yes, Mother. Any of Andrew’s friends. Or his former colleagues.”
Marion rocked once, then twice. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew the two of you would finally get together.”
“We’re not ‘together,’ Mother. We’ve just decided to go out once in a while and see if anything, you know, clicks.”
Marion nodded. “Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Jo. I’m a newlywed, remember?”
Jo looked back into her suitcase, embarrassed to be having this conversation with her mother. Sometimes she thought she belonged in her mother’s generation more than her mother did. “Something casual,” she said. “What about my navy sweater and pants—you know, the Dolce and Gabbana ones?”
Marion lifted an eyebrow.
“All right,” Jo said, “don’t say it.” She took the pants from her closet, the sweater from her drawer, while Marion rocked some more.
“He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”
“He isn’t Brian, Mom. Andrew is a good man.”
“I know. I believe I’m the one who told you to give him a chance.”
If she brought the pale green sweater and her Calvin jeans, she could do something with Cassie—maybe take her shopping or to a museum to help give her a break from the monotony of adults.
“Does Andrew know you’re coming?”
Jo realized she had enough clothes now to stay a week or two. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Lily thought it would be best for him to be surprised.”
“You mean, you’ll just drop in?”
“Drop in?” she laughed. “Mother, for one thing, we’ll be staying at Lily’s apartment. For another, there are no more secrets between Andrew and me. You sound as if he has a wife and another family stowed away in New York City.”
“Well, he did have another life there, that’s all. What if his ex-wife shows up again? Won’t that make you uncomfortable?”
The only things making Jo uncomfortable were Marion’s presence and her comments. “Mother, to use two of your favorite terms, you’re being both a worrywart and a spoilsport. For one thing, we’ll get a lot of business done while we’re there. We’ll check out some bridal shops, maybe even a couple of wedding planners. And Andrew will be delighted that we’ve come. Cassie will be too. Everything will be fine. Just you wait and see.” She had no reason to doubt anything. Did she?
She zipped her suitcase closed before she could add another outfit, another option for a date that might or might not happen. The phone rang; it was Lily.
“I can’t get the limo! Can you imagine! The only limo in town is booked. Booked! So here we are—us, of all people, having to take the train into the city for what might be John Benson’s funeral if only he were dead!”
Yes, Jo thought with a smile, us of all people. She did not mention it was also a pity that they’d all been born long after Princess Grace had wed.
“There’s an eight-fifteen train,” Lily moaned. “We might as well take that one.”
Jo hung up the phone and it rang again. This time it was Sarah.
“Lily is hysterical about not getting a limo. I’m still going with you, but I’ll stay at Jason’s. While you girls are doing whatever Lily has planned, I’ll spend time with my son. Or Lily will drive me insane.”
Jo agreed that Lily sounded rather wired.
As soon as Jo clicked off, the phone rang: Elaine. “What are you wearing? How long will we be there? Do you think we can pick up my father and Mrs. Tuttle at the airport on Saturday when they fly back from their cruise?”
When Jo hung up that time, Marion laughed and reminded Jo how lonely she’d been when she first returned to West Hope and how she’d worried about whether or not she’d ever have a new life.
They sat in the two-and-two seats, Sarah and Jo facing Lily and Elaine. Sarah and Jo rode backward; Lily said if she could not face the direction in which they traveled, she might throw up. She had the same problem in limos.
The train clickety-clacked out of the Berkshires and wove its way along the Hudson River that shimmered in the morning sun, past the little islands of snow and ice that floated slowly downstream, toward the city too. Sarah sat by the window, her knees not quite touching Lily’s, her ears not quite listening to Lily’s description of the layout of Frank’s new store. She had a far greater matter pressing on her thoughts, though she doubted she’d ever have the courage to share the details of her quandary.
“I told him the Duncan Phyfe collection should be in front,” Lily went on. “I said, ‘Tourists expect things like that up here in the Berkshires.’ ”
After a brief silence, Elaine asked why, and Lily went on to say that though he ended up in New York City, Duncan Phyfe’s family emigrated in the late eighteenth century from Scotland to Albany, “practically across the street from us.”
Sarah mused at the way Lily referred to “us,” as if she’d lived in West Hope all along, not in places like New York and Milan and even Copenhagen. “Those are just cities,” she’d said once with a quick wave of her hand. “West Hope—where you girls are—will always feel most like home.”
It was too bad, Sarah thought, that Jason didn’t feel the same way.
A tiny flutter squirmed inside her stomach as she thought of Jason and Burch and her in New York—her, Laura Carrington.
Jason had said, “Great,” when Sarah called yesterday and told him she’d be coming into town, staying until Saturday. “I’m pretty busy at the studio now, laying the tracks for the new album, but we’ll make time in between. And I won’t tell Burch. You can surprise him when he comes home from school.”
It was hard to hear Jason refer to their son as coming home to a new home that was not hers, home from a school that was new too. Burch had said that school was “cool,” but they’d moved into the city during Christmas vacation, so he’d only gone a few days so far.
She wondered if she’d be able to tell Jason about Laura.
“Among so many other things,” Lily’s voice chirped over Sarah’s thoughts, “Frank has a special fondness for antique mechanical banks. Do we all know what they are?” She posed the question as if this were a classroom, not a train, and they were students, not passengers.
They all nodded, because what else could they do?
“Well, I had this stupendous idea. In what used to be the tax collector’s office, there’s a big, beautiful, walk-in safe. Imagine! Who’d have thought West Hope had so much cash they needed to put it in a safe?”
Elaine laughed, Jo politely smiled, and Sarah looked out the window again.
“The thing is painted black and has magnificent stenciling on the inside. The inside! Anyway, I convinced Frank to set it up as a display area for his mechanical banks. It’s too perfect, don’t you think?”
Yes, Jo and Elaine thought it was.
Sarah wished she could break the monotonous conversation. If she told them her mother was alive, that she was white, that she was Laura Carrington, that would certainly stop Lily in her Donald Pliner tracks. The looks on their faces might be well worth the effort.
“What’s so funny?” Lily asked, and it took a few seconds before Sarah realized that the others had gone quiet and Lily was talking to her.
“Funny?” she asked.
“You laughed. You laughed out loud. What’s so funny about Frank’s mechanical banks?”
Sarah shook her head. “Nothing. I was thinking about something else.”
“What?” Lily asked.
“Nothing important.”
“Well, it was important enough to make you laugh.”
Sarah looked at her watch. She suddenly thought of Glisi, who’d always said the Cherokee believed the best healer in nature—for heart and spirit—was laughter. “Find something to laugh about every day,” her grandmother had said. “If you can’t find something funny, make something up.” In this case, Sarah wouldn’t have to pretend, because despite its seeming serious ramifications, the fact that at age forty-three Sarah discovered that she had a mother was a little absurd, worth a chortle or two.
She glanced at darling Lily, who waited for an answer. “I was thinking about my mother,” Sarah said. The words popped from her mouth before she’d reconsidered, but the silence that dropped over the two-and-two seats made her want to laugh all over again.
“You’ve never spoken about her,” Jo said. “Other than to say she died before you knew her.”
Sarah smiled, the veil of boredom now lifted, the cloak of depression gone. Glisi—and the Cherokee—had, as usual, been right. She turned to Jo. “I thought she died, but I guess I was wrong.”
Blinks and scowls and appropriate “What?”s blinked and scowled and were uttered all around.
“My mother is alive and well and living in New York City,” she said, then laughed again. “Isn’t that a hoot? She’s in the same city as my lover and my son. I might meet her while we’re here. For me it will be more interesting than visiting Irene.” She stood up. “I’m going to the café car. Can I get anyone anything?”
23
It was childishly amusing that for the first time since Sarah had known them, for the first time in over two decades, she had rendered Lily, Jo, and Elaine—all of them—thunderstruck, flabbergasted, speechless, all at the same time.
It was childishly amusing, and yet it had been fun.
She walked away with a grin, thinking it would be good for the others to take a few minutes to discuss her revelation with one another. Of course, she would have loved to be a fly on the window of the railcar. She chuckled all the way to the café car, which was empty because it was past morning rush hour and there were few commuters this far north, anyway.
“Good morning,” the attendant behind the counter said with a smile. “You look happy this morning.” He was young (well, maybe in his thirties), with bright blue eyes and blond hair and a notable physique outlined beneath his standard-issue white shirt and black vest. It was also interesting that he had a tan in January on a train that ran along the Hudson.
“Oh, I am happy,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day.” She ordered tea. He poured hot water into a cardboard cup and pointed at the small tray of various tea bags.
“Help yourself,” he said, and when she picked green tea he said that was his favorite.
She started to pay, but he said, “My treat.”
She said thank you, then dunked the bag, and he said, “Nice skirt.”
Her eyes fell to the long, dark skirt that she’d tie-dyed a few years ago. “Oh,” she said, “thanks.” Then she glanced back at him and said, “Nice tan.”
His smile flashed more widely, the tip of his tongue resting between his healthy, straight teeth, and he said, “Oh, thanks. I’ve been working the Auto Train from D.C. to Orlando.”
She had one of those quick, unexpected, sex-with-a-stranger fantasies, where they were both naked and he was on her and she was on him and he was in her and she was breathless.
She caught her short, happy breath and turned back to her tea, gently squeezing the bag until it no longer dripped, tucking it into the flap in the counter that read TRASH, and hoping he wasn’t as psychic as he was good-looking.
Something to laugh about, Glisi’s words echoed.
“You’re with those other women,” he said, nodding toward the back car. “I saw you get on.”
She grinned. In her fantasy he was all sweaty and she was now spent. “Yes,” she replied. “They’re my friends.” She wondered if he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him. She wondered why life was so full of subtext and moments not captured, moments not acted on. She suddenly wondered how many of these moments Jason had been exposed to on buses, on trains, on planes. Then she pushed thoughts of Jason from her picture, because it was more fun doing this on her own, laughing at her life, laughing at herself, not dwelling on lovers and on mothers and on other things that she could not control.
He leaned on the counter. “Did you make it?” he asked, gesturing back to her skirt.
“Ah. Yes. Yes, I did.”
He nodded approvingly. Was he flirting with her?
She supposed she should pick up her cup and return to her seat, return to the questions, return to explain the contents of the imaginary box (perhaps Pandora’s) that she had opened. But then the young man smiled again and asked if she was going into the city to go shopping. “That’s what usually happens,” he said, “when four women travel together.”
Sarah laughed again. “Oh, not these women,” she said. “Our adventures are much greater than that.”
“Sounds intriguing. I’d love to hear the outcome. Are you coming back on the nine-thirty train?”
Yes, he was definitely flirting with her.
“She absolutely is not.” Lily must have tiptoed up to Sarah’s side. Unlike Sarah, she was not laughing. “Sarah will be spending three days in the city with her son and her son’s father,” she remarked. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
The young man laughed and saluted. “Just being friendly.”
Sarah shook her head. “Lily…” she said.
“Don’t you dare ‘Lily’ me. You get back to your seat right this instant and tell us what the
hell is going on.” She placed a hand on Sarah’s elbow and steered her away from the young man with the tan.
Sarah looked back to him and shrugged. “Thanks for the tea,” she said, and knew the time had come to trade in her laughter for some serious talk; the time had come to let her friends in on the great mystery of her life.
24
The Yellow Cab dropped Sarah off in front of Jason’s building while the others went on to Lily’s. She rode the elevator to the twenty-first floor, feeling lighter now that she’d unburdened her secret—well, part of it, anyway.
She hadn’t told them that her mother was who she was. She’d only said that she existed, that she lived in New York, that she was white. She’d decided to share the woman’s identity with Jason first. It seemed only right; it seemed like the kind of intimacy that partners should share first.
And she and Jason were still partners, weren’t they?
“Make yourself at home,” Jason said now, gesturing to a dark brown sofa that Sarah had never seen. “Would you like some tea?”
“No,” she said. “I’d like a big hug.”
He quickly obliged. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the strength of his arms wrapped tightly around her. “I miss you,” she said.
“Me too,” he replied.
They stood quietly, Sarah feeling his heartbeat, offering hers. It was a scenario they’d played out many times over the years, when they’d been so often separated by time and by distance, when Jason had been on the road touring and she’d stayed home. She pulled back from him and grinned. “Can I see Burch’s room?”
Jason smiled that crooked smile she always loved so much. “I’m not sure that’s allowed. Not by me but by our son.”
He’d always been more lenient than Sarah. She’d thought that was because he was a part-time father. She wondered if she’d become the lenient one now, giving in to Burch’s every whim so there would be no disagreements in the few hours they’d have to visit. She sat down on the sofa and smoothed the long skirt that the young man on the train had liked but that Jason had seen too many times over the years. She wished she’d worn something else, something prettier, more citylike.