Looking for Peyton Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  Mind you, other than the fiasco with Aidan Meade, I never gave Mom cause for worry. I didn’t date. What I did, starting soon after I could drive, was to go down to Plymouth on a Saturday night, stake out a table at a coffee shop, and read. Being alone in a place where I knew no one was better than being alone on a Saturday night in Middle River. And Mom would be waiting up for me when I returned, which eased the loneliness.

  Feeling the full weight of that loneliness now, I went on up the stairs, opened the door, and slipped inside. Mom wasn’t there, but neither was the kitchen I recalled. It had been totally renovated two years before, with Mom already ill, but determined. I had seen the changes when I was here for the funeral, but, climbing those side steps, my mind’s eye still had pictured the old one, with its aged Formica countertops, its vintage appliances and linoleum floor.

  In the warm glow of under-cabinet halogens, this new kitchen was vibrant. Its walls were painted burgundy, its counters were beige granite, its floor a brick-hued adobe tile. The appliances were stainless steel, right down to a trash compactor.

  I didn’t have a trash compactor. Nor did I have an ice dispenser on the refrigerator door. This kitchen was far more modern than mine in Washington. I was duly impressed, as I had been too preoccupied to be in June.

  The kitchen table was round, with a maple top, wrought-iron legs, and ladderback chairs of antique white. Setting my computer bag on one of the latter, I turned off the lights, went through the hall and into the front parlor to turn off its lamp. There I found my sister Phoebe, under a crocheted afghan on the settee. Her eyes were closed; she was very still.

  Of the three of us, she resembled Mom the most. She had the same high forehead and bright green eyes, the same wavy blonde hair, the same thin McCall mouth. She looked older than when I had seen her last month, perhaps pale from the strain of carrying on. Totally aside from any physical problems she might be having, I could only begin to imagine what the past month had been like for her. My own loneliness in coming home to a house without Mom was nothing compared to Phoebe’s feeling it all the time. Not only had she lived with Mom for all but the short span of her own marriage, but she worked with Mom too. The loss had to be in her face day in and day out.

  Lowering my bags, I slipped down onto the edge of the settee and lightly touched the part of her under the afghan that would have been an arm. “Phoebe?” I whispered. When she didn’t move, I gave her a little shake.

  Her eyes slowly opened. She stared at me for a blank moment, before blankness became confusion. “Annie?” Her voice was uncharacteristically nasal.

  “You got my message, didn’t you?”

  “Message,” she repeated, seeming muddled.

  My heart sank. “On your voice mail? Saying I was coming?” I had assumed the lights were left on for me.

  “I don’t…on my voice mail? I think so…I must have.” Her eyes cleared a little. “I’m just groggy from medicine. I have a cold.” That explained the nasal voice. “What time is it?”

  I checked my watch. “Twelve-ten.” Deciding that grogginess from cold medicine was reasonable, I tried to lighten things with a smile. “The kitchen startled me. I keep expecting to see the old one.”

  I wasn’t sure she even heard my remark. She was frowning. “Why’re you here?”

  “I felt a need to visit.”

  After only the briefest pause, she asked, “Why now?”

  “It’s August. Washington’s hot. I finished the revisions of my book. Mom’s gone.”

  Phoebe didn’t move, but she grew more awake. “Then it is about Mom. Sabina said it would be.”

  “You told Sabina I was coming?” I asked in dismay. I would rather have called Sabina myself.

  “I was over there for dinner. I couldn’t not say.”

  Fine. I didn’t want to fight. Sabina would have found out soon, anyway. “I miss Mom,” I said. “I haven’t taken the time to mourn. I want to know more about those last days, what was wrong with her, y’know?”

  “What about the house?”

  I frowned. “What about it?”

  “Sabina said you’d want it.”

  “This house?” I asked in surprise. “Why would I want it? I have my own place. This is yours.”

  “Sabina said you’d want it anyway. She said you’d know all the little legal twists, and that it would be about money.”

  “Money? Excuse me? I have plenty of money.” But I wasn’t surprised Sabina would think I wanted more. She was always expecting the worst of me, which was why I would have preferred to phone her myself to let her know I was here. Then I might have nipped her suspicions in the bud.

  “Have I asked for anything from Mom’s estate?” I asked now.

  Phoebe didn’t reply. She looked like she was trying to remember.

  “Mom’s been dead barely six weeks,” I went on. “Has Sabina been stewing about this the whole time?”

  “No. Just…just once she found out you were coming, I guess.”

  That quickly, I was back in the midst of childhood spats. Sabina was the middle child, which should have made her the peacemaker of the family, but that had never been the case. The eleven months between Phoebe and her had left her craving attention, a situation I had aggravated with my arrival when Sabina was barely two.

  Now I said, “This is why I called you and not her. I knew she wouldn’t be happy about my visit, and that’s really sad, Phoebe. Middle River’s where I grew up. My family is here. Why does she have to feel threatened?”

  Phoebe still hadn’t stirred on the settee, but her eyes were as sharp as Mom’s could be when she was worried we had done something wrong. “She doesn’t know you anymore. I don’t either.”

  “I’m your sister.”

  “You’re a writer. You live in the city and you travel all over. You eat out more than you eat in. You know celebrities.” Her eyes rounded when she recalled something else. “And your significant other is on TV all the time.”

  “He isn’t my significant other,” I reminded her.

  “Roommate, then,” she conceded and took a stuffy breath. “But even that’s totally different from Middle River. Single women don’t buy condos here with single men.”

  “Greg and I protect each other—but that’s getting off the subject. I’m your sister, Phoebe,” I repeated, pleading now, because the discussion was making me feel even more alone than I had felt entering the kitchen and finding no Mom. “I’ve tried to give in the last few years. Isn’t that what our vacations were about? And the money for the new van? And even the new kitchen,” I added, though my part was the appliances alone. “Why do you think I would try to take something you have?”

  Seeming suddenly groggy again, Phoebe lifted an arm from under the afghan. She squeezed her eyes shut, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know. I don’t keep lists.”

  “Phoebe,” I chided.

  “I guess not, but Sabina says—”

  “Not Sabina,” I cut in. “You. Do you distrust me, too?”

  In a reedy voice, she said, “I’m confused sometimes.” Her hand fell away. She opened her eyes, looking pitiful, and again, my heart sank. Something was definitely wrong.

  “It’s your cold,” I reasoned, but was suddenly distracted. With the afghan lowered, I could see what she was wearing. Smiling, I teased, “Are those pajamas?”

  She was instantly defensive. “What’s wrong with pajamas?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that it was a Mom thing to do.”

  “She was cold. Now I’m cold.”

  The room was not cold. If anything, it was hot. I had entered town with my top down, while Phoebe had her windows shut tight. The house had no AC. Even the warmth outside would have stirred the air in here. Surely the moisture of the night would have helped Phoebe’s cold.

  Again, I thought how wan she looked. “Have you been sick long?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I’m not sick. It’s just a cold. They’re a fact of life. Customers bring them
into the shop all the time. It’s late. I’d better go to bed.”

  I rose from the settee and shouldered my bags, then glanced back. Phoebe was holding the arm of the settee with one hand while she pushed herself up with the other. She reminded me of Mom the last time I had seen her. That wasn’t good.

  “Seriously, Phoebe, are you okay?”

  On her feet now, she held up both hands. “I. Am. Fine. Go on. I’ll get the light.”

  I was in the hall when the parlor went dark, leaving the stair lit by a lamp at the top. I went on up, then down the hall to the room that had always been mine. Dropping my bags inside, I turned back to wait for Phoebe. She walked slowly, seeming a tad unsteady. Middle-of-the-night grogginess? Possibly. But the niggling I had felt after being here last time was now a bona fide burr.

  She came alongside, very much Mom’s height, which was several inches shy of mine, and said, “Your room’s just the same. I haven’t touched anything.”

  “I wasn’t worried. What about your room? Are you still sleeping there?”

  “Where else would I sleep?”

  “Mom’s room. It’s the biggest. This is your house now. You have a right to that room. Didn’t Sabina suggest it last time I was here?”

  “I guess,” Phoebe said, confused again. “But it’d mean moving all my things, and I’ve been in my room for so long.” Her eyes grew plaintive. “Do I really have the energy for that?”

  She should have it. She was only thirty-six. Clearly, though, she was depleted both physically and emotionally. I wondered how she managed to handle the store.

  Rather than express doubt when she seemed so vulnerable, I said, “So, what time will you be up in the morning?”

  “Seven. We open at nine.”

  “Can you stay home if your cold is worse?”

  “It won’t be worse.”

  “Okay then. I’ll see you for breakfast?”

  She nodded, frowned, added, “Unless I sleep later. I’ve been exhausted. Maybe it’s the cold. Maybe it’s missing Mom.” With an oddly apologetic smile, she went on past me, down the hall.

  “Want me to turn out the lamp?” I asked.

  She looked back. “Lamp?”

  I indicated the one at the top of the stairs.

  She stared in surprise. “No. Leave it on. If it had been on that night, Mom wouldn’t have tripped. It was dark. If she’d been able to see, she wouldn’t have fallen, and if she hadn’t fallen, she’d still be alive.”

  “She was ill,” I reminded her. “It wasn’t so much the dark as her balance.”

  “It was the dark,” Phoebe declared and disappeared into her room.

  I didn’t sleep well. Once I opened the windows, pulled back the covers, and removed every stitch of clothing, I could deal with the heat, but the city girl I had become wasn’t used to the noise. Traffic, yes. Sirens, yes. Garbage trucks, yes. Peepers and crickets, no. Naturally, lying awake, I thought about Mom, about whether Phoebe was sick, too, and, if so, whether it was from lead or worse, and each time I woke up, I thought of those things. Dawn came, and the night noises died, which meant that the river emerged. Our house sat on its banks. The waters rushed past, carrying aquatic creatures from upstream, leaves and grasses from its banks, all hurrying past the stones that lined its bank.

  Seven came, and I listened for Phoebe, but it wasn’t until seven-twenty that I heard signs of life in the house. Wearing a nightshirt now, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, about to stand, when Sabina slipped into the room.

  Sabina and I were Barneses, with Daddy’s midnight hair, pale skin, and full mouth. When we were kids, these features had come together on her far better than they had on me. Sabina was pretty and popular. I was neither. We were both five-eight, though Sabina had always insisted she was half an inch taller than I was. I didn’t fight her on it. There was plenty else to fight about. Even as she approached the bed now, I felt it coming.

  I tried to diffuse things with a smile. “Hi. I was going to call you. Is Phoebe awake?”

  “No,” Sabina replied in a low voice. She folded her arms and held them close. “I wanted to talk with you first. This has been really tough on her, Annie. I don’t want you riling her up.”

  Dismayed by the abruptness of her attack, I said in a conversational tone, “I’m doing okay, thanks for asking. How are you?”

  She didn’t blink. “We could spend five minutes on niceties, but this is really important. Phoebe is having trouble accepting that Mom’s gone. I don’t know why you’re here, but if you’re thinking of doing anything to stir up trouble, please don’t.”

  I was annoyed enough to lash back. “Phoebe is doing more than ‘having trouble accepting that Mom’s gone.’ She looks physically ill. She says it’s a cold. I’m wondering if it’s something else.”

  “Oh, it is,” Sabina confirmed, “but it’s nothing you can fix. The way she’s acting—like Mom did? It’s a natural thing that sometimes happens when a loved one dies. I talked with Marian Stein about it.”

  “Who’s Marian Stein?”

  “A therapist here in town. I’m on top of this, Annie.”

  “Is Phoebe seeing her?”

  “Of course, not. Phoebe doesn’t need therapy, just time. This’ll pass.”

  “Has she seen her doctor?”

  “No need. Colds disappear. Symptoms pass.”

  I knew not to mention lead. It wouldn’t be well received. So I said, “Mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It can run in families.”

  Sabina’s eyes hardened. “And that,” she said, still in a low voice but laced now with venom, “is why you shouldn’t be here. She needs encouragement. You’re so negative, you’ll set her back.”

  “Oh, come on, Sabina,” I scoffed. “I have enough sense not to mention this to her. But I Googled Parkinson’s after Mom was diagnosed. If Mom had it, and if Phoebe has it, you or I may stand a greater risk. Aren’t you worried about that?”

  “If Mom had it?” Sabina charged. Her arms were knotted across her middle.

  “There are other causes for the symptoms she had,” I blurted out and regretted it instantly.

  “I knew it! I knew you’d stick your nose in! Well, where were you last year or the year before that or the year before that? Fine and dandy for you to criticize us now—”

  “I’m not criticizing.”

  “—but you weren’t around. We were, Annie. Phoebe and I took Mom to the doctor, got her medicines, made sure she took them when she would have forgotten. Phoebe has been running the store for the last five years—”

  “Five?”

  “Yes, five. It’s been that long since Mom was functioning well.”

  Five years put a crimp in the lead theory. It would mean Mom had become ill long before the store was awash in lead-paint dust. There might yet be a connection, certainly with regard to Phoebe, but it would take some looking.

  I was annoyed. “Why wasn’t I told back then?”

  “Because you weren’t here!” Sabina shouted and immediately lowered her voice. “And because the symptoms were so mild we thought it was age at first, and because Phoebe was there to cover at work, and because Mom would have been horrified if she’d known we were talking behind her back. You know how she was. She hated being talked about. So we didn’t tell you—didn’t tell anyone—until the symptoms made it obvious, and even then you stayed away. So don’t criticize us, Annie,” she warned. “You have no idea what it’s been like. We did the best we could.”

  I was quiet. What could I say to that? Yes, I felt guilty. I had from the moment I learned Mom had died. I kept telling myself I was here on a mission; that was the initial premise. But maybe my mission was broader than I had allowed. So mentally I amended that premise with TRUTH #1: Yes, I had come to Middle River to learn whether Mom had died of something that was now affecting Phoebe, but I was also here out of guilt. I owed my sisters something. I wanted to make it up to them that I hadn’t helped when Mom was sick.

  Not that I could sa
y that to Sabina. The words would positively stick in my throat.

  Instead I asked, “How are Lisa and Timmy?” They were Sabina’s kids, aged twelve and ten respectively. I actually knew how they were; I had an active e-mail relationship with them, and had been in touch with them a lot in the last month, though I don’t think Sabina knew it. Her kids were astute; they knew there was tension between Sabina and me. My relationship with her kids was a little secret we kept. None of us was risking Sabrina’s wrath by rubbing her nose in it.

  She did relax a bit at mention of the kids. “They’re fine. Excited that you’re here. They’ll probably ride their bikes over later. They want to know how long you’re staying.”

  “They want to know,” the devil made me ask, “or you do?”

  She didn’t deny it. “Me. Phoebe, too. This is her house.”

  It was a definite reminder. “For the record,” I said, “I don’t want the house. I don’t want the store. I don’t want Mom’s money. The only thing I want, which I told you in June, is to have this room to use when I come.”

  Sabina looked dismissive, clearly doubtful I was telling the truth. “How long are you staying?”

  “Assuming Phoebe has no problem with it, until Labor Day.”

  “A whole month?” she asked, seeming alarmed. “What’ll you do all that time?”

  “I have some work. Mostly I want to relax. Give Phoebe a hand. Help her get better. Talk with people around town.”

  “Who?”

  The sharpness of the question put us right back in the boxing ring. “I haven’t really thought that far.”

  “Are you kidding? Annie Barnes hasn’t thought that far? I know what you’re here for, Annie. You’re here to cause trouble. You’ll walk innocently around town like you did when we were kids, asking questions you have no business asking, pissing people off right and left, and then you’ll go back to Washington, leaving us to mend fences. And then there’s the thing about writing. You have some work. What work?”

  “Whatever final edits my publisher wants on next spring’s book. Written interviews that they’ll need. Plotting a new book.”