“We better get you a new suit?” Sara Beth asks.
“You didn’t sign us up.”
“Oh Katherine.” A duffel bag stuffed with their towels and goggles lies on the grass.
“We rode our bikes all the way to the pool and waited for Nicole to call our names. Nicole is my favorite lifeguard,” Kat starts. “And she’s teaching my level this session.” She blinks her eyes against her tears.
“Except you’re not in the session.” The girls love to swim. Tom teases them, searching behind their ears for gills when they come out of the water all wrinkled. Every summer, they’re the first to enroll in each two-week session. Until now. Signs-ups for the summer programs were held in May at the High School gym. Sara Beth never went.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry.” She sits on the bench next to her daughter, hands limp in her lap. Sometimes, well there’s really nothing she can do and it’s her fault, her fault, her fault.
“Jenny was going to make it to Lifeguard level this summer, and now she can’t. And Nicole won’t be teaching me.” Kat takes her anger, jumps up from the picnic table and rushes to her bicycle, pushing Owen away from the pedal he’s been spinning. He falls backward in the grass. “Stupid Owen,” she yells and picks up the bike, jumping on it and wobbling off through the grass to the front of the house. Owen starts to cry.
Something that passes for music spills into the yard from Jenny’s bedroom window. Sara Beth looks up, not sure who she’s angry at, Jenny in her music cave, Kat for plowing into Owen, or herself for causing the whole damn mess and this killer headache. “Owie, Owie,” she assures him as she scoops him up and runs her hand close over his head. Her fingers lift his hair and find no bumps.
By the time they get to his room, Owen calms and Sara Beth’s wet tank top is stretched out of shape from holding him against it. “Let’s pick a book from your new blue bookcase.” Owen sits dead center in front of it and starts pulling all the books off the shelf. “Mommy will be right back,” she says, kissing his moppy head, straightening her top.
Down the hall, she jiggles the knob and pushes at Jenny’s locked door. She knocks, listening, and when she tries the knob again, the door opens.
“Just get out,” Jenny says over the music.
Her gaze moves from her daughter to the stereo shelf system. The music is too loud, Jenny sounds too mad, Sara’s shirt is still coffee-wet, her patience is gone and so when she glares at the stereo, the controls blur. The last thing she needs to do is seem inept fumbling with them, because won’t it prove to Jenny that she is inept at everything? She walks over to the stereo and yanks the plug from the outlet. Jenny sits straight on her bed, staring out the window.
“Jenny, listen. I’m really sorry.”
“Would you stop calling me that?”
“What?”
“Jenny. Jenny. It sounds like I’m four years old.” She turns and glares at Sara Beth. “It’s Jen.”
“Since when don’t you like Jenny?”
“If you can be someone else now, so can I.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why do you dress like that all the time? You’re so embarrassing.”
Sara Beth glances down at her clothes.
“God. Those crappy old jean shorts, a dirty shirt, your short hair pulled back under an ugly bandana like you’re going to a rodeo. You take Owen and disappear all day, then come back all sweaty and happy. So if you can be someone else, so can I.”
“Listen. Jen. I’m going down to Parks and Rec now. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll sign you up for swimming lessons. I really forgot about it last month.”
“That’s because you were too busy in New York. Kat says you were having a midlife crisis. That that’s what happens when you turn forty. She heard Aunt Melissa tell Uncle Kevin that you ran away on Rachel. You left her there. Now you’re probably going to get a divorce.”
“Katherine? She said all that?” Sara Beth thinks of her young daughter trying to grasp those words, to lasso them into some corral where she can look at them closely and understand them. “Well, I’m fine, so she must have heard wrong.”
But there is truth to Katherine’s words. Sara Beth knows it, facing off with her sullen daughter, facing off with the knowledge of Claude’s whereabouts. The truth is right there, right between them in the room glaring at her, hands on its hips. If Tom stands in her way, she really might leave. Because there has to be more to her days than quibbling with her kids about swimming lessons, or school, or friends. And play groups and committee meetings. There needs to be a balance, a personal balance; something for herself to keep the scales even.
She waves off Jenny’s accusations. “If this swim session is filled, we’ll try the next.”
“Forget it.” Her daughter walks to the stereo. She slides the cord from the back and calmly plugs it back into the socket, the music blaring right where it left off. With all the cool Jen can muster, she turns the unit off. “I like it better when you don’t live here. And I don’t want to swim anymore.”
“Of course you do. You’re just upset because I forgot to sign you up.”
“Even Aunt Melissa went today, with Chelsea, who’s a lifeguard this summer with Nicole. Auntie had her sand chair and visor to watch. And an iced coffee waiting for you. Like every year.”
“Melissa did? What did she say?”
“If you want to know, ask her yourself. Because I’m not swimming anymore.” She turns her stereo back on. “And I mean it!” she screams, no longer able to maintain her indifference to this odd Sara Beth, her odd mother.
“Please come with me to Parks and Rec, Jen.”
Sara Beth waits. Her daughter’s back is turned to her as she skims through her iPod playlist. She isn’t even seeing the titles. It’s like when a storm is coming but there is more than a storm. It is the humidity, the dead calm, the sky darkening, the heavy clouds.
So Sara Beth turns around and closes the bedroom door behind her, leaning against it in the hallway before going into her own room for her purse. What an enormous effort it takes to simply do something for yourself. All she wanted was to take Owen to the carriage house and spend a couple hours cleaning up some furniture. Now one glance in the mirror does her in. A half hour ago, she looked fine. Pretty even. Her clothes were clean and unwrinkled, her bandana in place. She even put on lip gloss and a stone bracelet.
Who is this woman? How can she have turned so disheveled? Her bandana is slipping off, wide strands of hair hang out the front, her tank top is soiled, her shorts are wrinkled and where the hell did those haggard eyes come from?
Sometimes the day keeps on tainting you, leaving the detritus of family life on the fabric of your clothes. Coffee stains, crumbs, wrinkles, tears, what have you. She pulls a t-shirt and denim capris from the dresser drawer. This won’t be the last change of today. She kicks off her flip flops, sending them flying across the room, then peels off her clothes before slipping into her second outfit. And it’s only ten o’clock. So there are another twelve hours of possibility, of summer outfits. Even her hair is limp. And her headache, will it ever stop? The warning headache averages about two weeks before a ruptured aneurysm. It is known as the sentinel headache. Maybe she needs a prescription.
When she was in college, her mother would often call in the middle of the day. Just call and listen to her campus stories. And those phone calls meant so much, connecting simply over everyday life. She turns to the phone on her nightstand. Her mother’s voice would fix this. They checked in with each other all their lives, from her mother poking her head into Sara Beth’s bedroom to calling the dorm to sending letters to Europe to Instant Messaging daily. It’s all about the minutiae. Sara Beth picks up the phone, slowly presses in her mother’s number, then hangs up before the connection goes through. She wants that same bond with her own daughters and has to fix things with them first.
“Jen! I’m going to Town Hall,” she yells through her daughter’s door before swinging it opened. Jenny si
ts on a chair pulled up to the window. Her feet are propped up on the sill, her arms crossed in front of her. “Keep an eye on your sister. I’m taking Owen.”
Jenny looks like a mannequin. She leaned out, morphing into someone new this year, seeming more like seventeen than fourteen. Her hair is pulled back in a simple low ponytail.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” she asks gently.
From where she is standing, she can’t see her daughter’s eyes. But she imagines they are brimming with hot tears that her daughter summons every bit of effort to hold back. If Jenny says anything, even one word, it will come out in a painful sob. Maybe this is better. Right now her daughter hates her guts. The silent treatment is better than crying in front of her. Especially if they are sad tears. Sara Beth has a funny feeling they are more sad than anything else. As though she misses her old mother. And longs to have her back.
Three antique children’s chairs line the side wall of the Parks & Rec office. The chairs are pint-sized, dark maple, with rush seats. Sara Beth found them at a church bazaar in New Hampshire five years ago and stuffed them into the back seat of Rachel’s already stuffed car that October Girls’ Weekend Out. They liked to do that sometimes: Leave the kids with the dads and take off flea marketing, sightseeing, and coffee shop hopping. It was good for the kids, good for the dads and good for the town. Whole Latte Life uses her antique oak coat rack; the Savings and Loan displays her cast iron horse bank; the library houses a large country table in the Reference Room. At Parks & Rec, someone stacked old Highlights magazines on a table beside the chairs and the Kiddie Korner was complete.
Owen sits in one of the chairs, studying the Timbertoes page.
“I meant to call you,” Margaret Grinheim says. She logs onto the computer on the countertop. “I thought it was funny that your girls weren’t enrolled. They’ve been swimming every year since forever.”
“Is there anything this session, even later in the morning? Maybe at another pool?”
Margaret runs down the list of names under each pool, each timeframe, her squared off, peach-painted fingernails dragging the mouse up and down each column. “Nothing. Gee, I wish I called you.”
“Me too. How about a waiting list?”
Margaret turns the monitor around so that Sara Beth can see the screen. “These are the waiting lists for each session, as noted on the designated column. At least ten kids are ahead of yours. I’ll put their names down, but don’t hold your breath.” She adds Katherine’s and Jenny’s names. “Give me your telephone number, hon,” she says as she tabs over. When Sara Beth hesitates, Margaret looks up at her.
“You know, never mind. Maybe I’ll put them in the winter lessons at the Y.” Owen sits behind her swinging his legs on the antique chair.
“Are you sure? Now, wait a minute. There is one opening in the last session, at eleven-fifteen?”
“That wouldn’t work with my schedule.” Because Lord knows she needs a schedule. This running around arranging lessons and micromanaging kids can’t be all there is. She hoists Owen up on her hip, thinking she’ll hire Chelsea and Nicole for private swimming lessons. “Thank you anyway.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.” She smiles at Owen. “Bye bye little fella.” Owen tucks his head on Sara Beth’s shoulder as she turns to leave. “Oh Sara Beth, I meant to tell you. The Green came out beautiful. It was getting so we thought you had forgotten all about the flowers.”
“Flowers?” She turns back and moves to tuck her short hair behind her ear.
“In the barrels. Didn’t your sister tell you I saw her? You must have been busy at another barrel.”
“Melissa?”
“Rachel was there, too. Of course it was the end of the day. Pete and I’d come out of Smith’s and I walked over and said hello.”
“Must’ve slipped her mind.” So Rachel planted the barrels after all, with Melissa’s help. Swimming lessons, flowers, even the kids’ clothes shopping. Dates and routines are like sand slipping through her fingers.
“Everyone’s pleased with how you plant those flowers. It’s such a pretty spot.”
Sara Beth hears the sympathetic tone in Margaret’s voice. She can imagine the thoughts. Maybe she’s getting a divorce. She shifts Owen on her hip. Sometimes late babies are a last ditch effort to save a marriage. And those earrings. The voices are almost audible as she hurries through the hallway, down the flight of stairs and outside to her car, growing louder with each pound of her headache. She snaps Owen into his seat and takes a deep breath.
That’s what she needs. Relaxation and harmony. Deep breathing. Peace. She’s been out of sync with herself for so long, a little life harmony would feel good.
Before driving away, she digs her leather journal out of her hobo bag and opens to the familiar page.
Did you ever take a Yoga class? Or meditate in some way?
Just writing it helps, wishing for a mantra, feeling calmer driving through town, circling The Green before pulling over beneath the shade of a tree, feeling nauseous from the headache.
She knows. You get a sense for these things; they leave a feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is why Rachel stopped at the carriage house that day. To invite her to plant. Each barrel brims with zinnias of red, orange and yellow, fresh green spikes and baby vinca vines. She gets out of the car and dips her fingers into the soil. It is rich and damp, freshly watered.
Owen makes a beeline to the wishing fountain. He hurries around and around the circular stone wall of the fountain, laughing each time he passes his mother. Her hand feels down to the bottom of her purse, sweeping along for a stray coin to drop in the water.
“Penny?” Owen asks.
“No pennies today.”
“No penny?”
Owen looks back at the fountain and she closes her fingers around his hand. It’s early still and the morning sun is hot. She planned to stop at the carriage house after lunch. But Owen needs a nap. And she yelled to the girls as she ran out that they would hit the mall later to stock up on shorts and tops and sandals. But they’ll still be mad about the whole swimming lesson thing so the shopping will suck with attitude and whatever. She’ll call them on her cell now and promise them tomorrow instead. An all day thing complete with tacos and fries, when they are in better moods. When even the light isn’t bothering her head.
Because suddenly, cupping a fat, blossomed zinnia, none of it matters. Seeing all this planting, the velvet petals of summer framed by cool green cascading vinca vines makes her words in the carriage house, her Get out, seem all the more harsh. Because she knows the meaning of zinnias, oh she knows what message Rachel is sending her. They always research the meanings of the flowers before they make their barrel choice. And Rachel’s zinnias break her heart with their message…Thoughts of absent friends.
Apparently she can’t keep anyone happy, because at forty, she has this: No penny, no clothes for the girls, and no friend. But touching a yellow zinnia, she realizes what she does have: Flowers. And her mother. Both can cheer her up.
I really need to talk, Mom. I’m going to pick a bouquet from my garden for you. And paint my nails, too. Remember when we’d do each other’s Then after lunch, when Jen can stay home with Owen, I’ll come for a visit. I’ll sit outside in the sunshine with you and have a long overdue heart-to-heart.
Love,
Sara Beth
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth,” Tom says. “You’ve got to help me out here. Sara misses you so much, she can’t handle it anymore. It’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do.”
Dr. Berg had suggested that a psychological emergency can trigger a breakdown. When Tom realized yesterday exactly what psychological crisis prompted Sara Beth’s changes, he called Berg right away.
“What’s important to know, Tom, is that there are several stages of grief. But if a person gets stuck in one stage, the grieving isn’t complete. It’s crucial to go through all five stages. At the same time, people can live
on forever inside our hearts. So you have to carefully distinguish the difference. Is what you’re seeing Denial? Or her mother living on in a new way?”
The sun’s rays are low now, casting a deep color to the thick green grass, to the trees, the violet twilight sky. Tom reaches down to straighten the simple garden bouquet Sara brought to the cemetery, noticing how precisely she’d trimmed the surrounding grass. An old navy and gold Matrioshka doll is nestled on the grave side. Its colors are faded by the summer sun, the wood of the doll dried out. He pauses before touching her mother’s gravestone, bowing his head as though waiting for an answer, then leaves.
The drive along Old Willow Road feels sad with what’s about to come, but he’s glad for one thing. Owen wasn’t the emotional emergency that triggered Sara Beth’s crisis. So there’s relief for his son. Tom checks the house numbers. The river ribbons beyond the road to the west, where at the end of long driveways, captains’ houses look out over the water. Crumbling stone walls border the properties.
He finally pulls over on the side of the road and shuts off the car, hearing only the cicada buzzing and melodic robin song. The driveway, littered with twigs and scattered leaves, winds up beside the big old house. Now he understands why Sara arranged to stay here when he’d kicked her out, because of the strong connection to her mother. Elizabeth’s close friend owned the property. It all made sense, the way she sought to get closer and closer to the mother she’d lost last year. He steps out of the car and gently closes the door.
It doesn’t look like anyone is home in the farmhouse. He thinks they probably went to the summer concert at the bandshell. It’s where Sara Beth is supposed to meet him in a little while. Her car is parked beside an oak tree, with the library books she said she’d drop off still piled on the front seat. But the carriage house stops him. It’s made with rough-hewn white planks with deep green cross beams on the two doors. Black iron hardware hangs from the cross beams, big heavy loops to get a grip on in order to pull the wide doors opened. They had to be wide, so that the buggies could fit through in colonial times.
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