As Good as It Got (3 page)

Her cell rang. Fighting the familiar painful pressure of tears, she fished in her purse, wishing she’d stopped at Star-bucks for an iced café mocha. Today’s bullshit excuse for an interview had wrung her out, now this traffic . . .

She blinked at her cell display. “Hi, Ma.”

“I heard about the ghastly traffic on the radio, thought I’d call. You stuck in it?”

“Up to my eyeballs.”

Her mom made tsk-tsk noises and Ann smiled, probably her first sincere one all day. Forty-three years old and Mom’s sympathy still helped make everything feel better. “How did your interview go?”

“Terrible. The guy picked my brains for two hours on sales 18 Isabel

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and marketing strategies, then told me, gee, they weren’t quite ready to hire. He just wanted ideas. Complete waste of time.”

Another inch. The yellow Scion behind her bounced to a stop, apparently just avoiding her rear bumper.

Ann’s personal hell would be like this. An eternal traffic jam, freedom and space just out of reach, no way of getting where she needed to go.

Ha. Forget hell, her life had become that now. She glanced at her gas gauge, hovering on empty. She should have filled up on her way in.

“Your old friend Betsy Spalding just called. I gave her your cell number, hope that was okay.”

“Wow. I haven’t spoken to her in years.”

“She heard about Paul.”

“Right.” Ann’s pleasure died in the kick to her stomach.

By now she should be used to it. People found out. People couldn’t wait to tell each other. Did you hear? Ann’s husband killed himself.
Gasp. No. Really?
Lost all their money and then some. She got fired and he couldn’t take the guilt. Put a metal wastebasket over his head so the bullet wouldn’t make such a mess. Neighbor walking by heard the shot and called 911.
Gasp. No. Really?

Along with the horror of news that bad, the dark pleasure, and a certain pride that the tragedy happened to someone they could claim connection to, the frisson of anticipation that they’d be the next one passing the tidbit along in the guise of deepest pain and sympathy.
Did you hear
?

“Betsy runs a camp in Maine for women who are ‘suddenly single,’ as she put it.”

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19

“Oh for God’s sake.” The kick turned her stomach sour and sick. “She’s going to try to sell me?”

“I think she wants to
offer
you the chance to go. Apparently it’s a great place for support and for—”

“Right. I’m so broke I’m living with my parents, but I’d be glad to fork out money for some touchy-feely estrogen camp.” She closed her eyes, loathing the bitchy bitterness she couldn’t seem to control anymore. Her mother sighed, that bone-weary sigh she reserved for trying to make her children understand how much of an endless trial they were. As usual, it worked.

“Just talk to her, Ann. They have scholarships. It might be good for you to have a change of—”

“Ma. I need to find a job.” Her voice cracked and she nearly caused an accident blindly edging her Mercedes forward when the Civic in front of her hadn’t yet edged. “I don’t have time for—”

“You have all the time you want right now. Your Dad and I think the camp would be good for you. You’re holding too much in.”

“I’m—” Ann’s throat muscles contracted so tightly her throat felt like it had caught fire. “Ma . . . ”

“Think about it, okay? She’ll probably call you right away.

She said she would.”

“I bet.” Ann rolled her eyes. Ambulance chaser. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Not warning, heads-up. I want you to listen and think it over seriously. Your dad and I are worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Ma. I’m always fine. You know that about me.”

She clicked off the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat, 20 Isabel

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breathing hard, open-mouthed, to try and release tension. An ambulance wailed by on the shoulder, followed by a police car.

Ann shuddered and lost the fight to one tear in each eye. Up there where the jam started, someone’s life might just have changed in one unexpected instant they’d wish they could take back for the rest of their lives.

Soon someone else getting dinner or reading or watching TV or driving home from work might pick up his or her phone with no thought to it being anyone but a child, or a friend, or a telemarketer.
I’m sorry to have to tell you, there’s
been an accident . . .

Sometimes it seemed ludicrous that so many other people’s lives were going on normally, that their days and nights continued in smooth uninterrupted patterns. Her life had been like that once, though there were days now when it seemed she’d always been coping with this anger and guilt and grief and upheaval. Given Paul’s suicide and the surprise disclosure of their financial ruin, at times she felt those bad days held more of the truth. The perfection of their charmed life had existed mostly in her mind. How could she not have noticed how bad his depression was getting, how far he’d withdrawn from her and from everyone? Why hadn’t she—

“Jesus, Ann.” She’d promised herself no more going down this road. Six months later, it was ridiculous. No, pointless.

No, damaging.

Her phone rang again, an unfamiliar number. “Hello?”

“Ann? This is Betsy Spalding. A voice from your past.”

A voice gentler and lower than Ann remembered. As if in the years since Betsy had been a high school bimbo cheerleader, she’d found great inner peace. Or had a lobotomy. Or was more likely affecting that annoying sorry-for-your-loss As Good As It Got

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hushed monotone people felt obliged to speak to Ann with.

Ann equaled loss for most people these days. Her mental state, her financial state . . . just call her the empty part of the glass.

The Civic moved an entire half car length, which was exciting enough for her to speak pleasantly, even though she was in the mood to tell Betsy where she could put her camp.

“Hi, Betsy. Mom just called, said she’d spoken to you.”

“Yes, it was good to talk to her.”

Ann let the silence hang. Betsy called, she could get around to her sales pitch all by herself.

“So . . . how
are
you?” Said with that emphasis on
are
, which communicated that Betsy
knew
. Oh, how she knew.

And how dreadfully sorry and yadda yadda.

“Ducky.” The word flew out like a hurled dagger. “You?”

“I’m . . . fine. Thanks.”

Ann lifted her hand from the wheel and let it drop back. “Actually, since you knew me, I’ve turned into a bitch. Sorry.”

“Stress is an inevitable reaction to what you’ve been through.”

“Right.” Ann rolled her eyes. And here came the wind-up for the pitch.

“I don’t know if your mom told you about the camp I run.”

Bingo. “She mentioned it.”

“For women in your situation.”

Ann snorted. Who the hell was in her situation? How many women had been fired because of one lousy year missing quota following five years overshooting it, and then had their husbands blow half their heads off instead of facing that they’d ruined the family? Possibly others, but others weren’t her, which meant one, as far as she was concerned.

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One woman, currently sitting in traffic hell, nearly out of gas, money, and patience, and no chance of escaping anytime soon. “What do you mean, in my situation?”

“Women who’ve lost the men in their lives. Who feel cut adrift from the life they knew, from dedicated sources of emotional and financial support. Whose occasional feelings of hopelessness alternate with a manic determination to fix everything, cycling back into hopelessness when the task seems too great. Who have unrealistic expectations of rescue mixed with periods of brutal awareness that there’s no rescue at hand.”

Ann’s mouth opened for a retort, then snapped shut. Another half car length opened up in front of her and she filled it. Okay. So there were other women in her situation.

“Um . . . yeah.” She cleared the huskiness from her throat and reached for who-cares irony. No way was she going to break down on the Mass Pike, either her car or her emotions.

She might be low on fuel and strength, but she had enough of both to make it. “That’s about the size of it.”

“Camp Kinsonu has helped hundreds of women. We have a session starting in early August. We’re privately subsidized so I can offer you a free ride. Think of it as a starting push on your road back to sanity and peace.”

“Um . . . thank you. That is really nice of you. But I need to find a job now. I need to get my life back on track
now
.” Her voice cracked again, and she didn’t add that sitting around in the woods with miserable women sounded about as much fun as she’d have sitting around here. No, less. A lot less.

“Think about it. Each session is only two weeks, so you won’t lose much time. We fill up quickly, but I can hold your spot for another couple of weeks.”

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Her
spot? Ann grimaced. There was no such thing as her spot. Right now she just wanted to get Betsy off the phone, get home, and have an economy-sized martini and a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, enough to take the edge off for a few precious hours. “Okay, thanks for calling.”

“I’ll send you a brochure. Give me your address?”

Ann twisted the phone away so Betsy wouldn’t hear her exhaling annoyance. Then she caught herself starting to give the number of the house she and Paul had bought in Way-land ten years earlier, and had to start over with her parents’

address. Someday maybe this would all sink in. She wished it would hurry the hell up so she could stop having to feel this much.

Betsy cheerfully promised to get the brochure in the mail the next day. Incredibly, the traffic started a slow, earnest roll forward. Relief eased some of the tension in Ann’s chest.

She thanked Betsy sincerely and hung up, making a mental note to ditch the brochure without opening it. Her foot left the brake and pushed down on the gas. Finally. Time to move forward.

Her engine faltered, sputtered, made one last valiant effort to run on fumes . . . and died.

Chapter 3

Martha took in a deep breath over nine counts, filling first her belly, then her rib cage, then higher into her chest.

She held that for a count of three, then blew out a sustained exhalation for fifteen counts until her lungs were as empty as possible. When her body prodded her for more oxygen, she repeated the process. And again. And again.

She was sitting on her couch in front of the blaring TV, feet tucked under her, favorite shawl drawn tightly around her shoulders. This one had purple, yellow, and black stripes, and thin coins tied into the fringe, which tinkled when she moved. Eldon had bought the shawl on a trip to Mexico her senior year in college, when they were dating openly. He’d said the shawl reminded him of her—colorful and musical.

Most of the world didn’t see colorful and musical in Martha. Most of the world saw fat and flaky and not very attractive, which was why losing Eldon would be like losing part of herself.

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The commercial for Coke ended with a flourish of marketing eagerness, and the local news came back on. She had to remind herself to keep her relaxation exercise going.

Five and a half weeks ago Eldon Cresswell, Vermont’s favorite state senator, widely considered a shoo-in as the next governor, had been the subject of daily news stories for an endless, agonizing week while he lay first in a stroke-induced coma, then in the limbo horror of waking and sleeping cycles without real consciousness.

As of yesterday he’d spent a full month in that state, referred to noneuphemistically as “persistent vegetative.”

Sooner or later this milestone would go public, since patients who failed to wake during the first thirty days had a much lower chance of ever doing so, though recovery wasn’t un-heard of.

Nine counts in, three held, fifteen out. More than almost anything, Martha wanted to rush to the hospital to be with him. A deep part of her believed that if Eldon could only hear her voice, he’d wake up. But there was one thing she wanted more than to speak to him, and that was to avoid their love being discovered by the press and having Eldon’s good name dragged through the mud by people who wouldn’t understand. Now was the worst possible time to bring on the scan-dal they’d managed to avoid for nearly twenty years.

After his night nurse must have mentioned the daily calls from Eldon’s “sister” to his wife, of course Bianca put a stop to them. Now, Martha had to rely on VTTV’s perky blond anchor, Kathy Ashcroft, for news, like everyone else in the state.

Kathy finished a story on a black bear cub found playing with a kitten in someone’s back yard, and turned to a new 26 Isabel

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camera angle, smile fading theatrically. Behind her, Eldon’s publicity photo appeared, which made Martha jerk involun-tarily, even though she was braced for the sight. She hated that picture. Eldon at his most political, his most polished.

The picture that represented every reason he’d married Bianca Souterman instead of Martha Danvers.

Kathy Ashcroft, vainly trying to suppress her perkiness, speculated that Senator Cresswell’s wife Bianca, beloved by Vermonters—who compared her to the late Jackie O—would take over his seat in the state senate, but that there had been no official word from the governor’s mansion. VTTV was going live, to Bob Silkwood, standing by with the senator’s wife and three children at their lovely home in—

Martha grabbed the remote and zapped the set to dark.

She didn’t need to see the senator’s wife and three children at their lovely home to know how the segment would go. Bianca, beautiful and impeccably dressed as always, would show courage, dignity, and enough sorrow to convey her grief, but not enough to spoil her makeup. The children would be somber and achingly attractive. Hearts would break all over the state, watching the brave family cope with such devastating loss.