Bittersweet Homecoming (9 page)

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

“That’s impossible,” I frown. “Everyone has a cell phone. My ninety-two year old grandmother has a cell phone.”

“I don’t have one,” she repeats. “I’m either at home or the bar. People generally know how to get a hold of me.”

“You know it’s not just about phone calls and texting, right? You can put e-books on your phone and read them at the beach.”

“Or I can bring an actual book to the beach.”

“Are you anti-technology or something? Or one of those Doomsday Preppers who lives off the grid?” I say in jest.

“I’ve never had a cell phone, so I don’t know what I’m missing out on. I also don’t have a computer at my house. I have an e-mail address, but I only check it when I’m at the library. I write personal checks, and my car is a stick shift.” She props a hand on a defiant, jutting hip. “Anything else you want to know about my life in the Dark Ages?”

“No. That actually sounds really nice.” I lean my hip against her car. “Refreshingly uncomplicated.”

“I’ve got enough to deal with as a single mom. I don’t need to be adding anyone else’s drama to mine.”

+ + +

My dad’s house is silent when I return for the night. If I stay up any later though, I might catch Emily and her compulsive early morning tinkering. I still haven’t heard from Kambria all day—not even a text message. I go to my dad’s den at the back of the house so I don’t wake up anyone. I try my girlfriend’s number, but the phone rings and rings with no response.

“Hey, it’s me,” I say when her voicemail picks up. “You said you’d call back last night, but you never did.”

I don’t know what else to say in the message, so I hang up and call my friend Claire instead. Besides Anthony, my closest friend is my literary agent, Claire, another girl from the Midwest. We’d met in college and had become fast friends over our shared love of sci-fi and country music. After graduation we’d both pursued new adventures, me to San Francisco to get my MFA and she to Chicago. When I’d made the jump to Los Angeles a few years ago, she’d done the same, following her dream of becoming a talent agent.

Unlike Kambria, Claire answers my call. “Hey, I was just thinking about you. How are things?” she asks.

I sit down on the leather office chair and twist from side to side. “Weird.”

“How so?”

“It’s just weird being back. Like, this place is stuck in a time warp, but there’s subtle differences that throw me off,” I try to explain.

“It’s like that when I visit my hometown, too,” Claire remarks. “The landscape is basically unchanged, but no one looks like you remember them. The worst is when you run into someone you’ve known forever, but they’re completely unrecognizable now.”

I make a noise in agreement.

“How’s your sister doing?”

“Not so good,” I admit. “She’s a ghost, walking around and rattling her chains.”

“I hope you’re exaggerating.”

“I wish I were,” I sigh deeply. “Charlotte says Emily will get through this though—says she doesn’t have a choice. But I’m just not sure. She’s like a shell of her former self.”

“Who’s Charlotte?”

“She’s a bartender. She went to school with Emily. Her daughter Amelia is adorable, and I don’t even like kids.”

“Sounds cute.”

“She is,” I concur. “And her mom is smoking hot. Legs for days.”

“You do remember a girl named Kambria, right?”

I know I have a girlfriend and any discussion of my attraction to Charlotte borders on emotional infidelity. But I can’t help that Kambria’s being a shitty girlfriend right now while Charlotte is warm and lovely and engaging.

“Of course I do. I called her tonight, but she didn’t answer. And yesterday she was at a club or something so we couldn’t hear each other.”

“Try calling again,” Claire orders.

“Yes, mom.” I stick my tongue out even though I know she can’t see me. It’s refreshing getting to talk to someone about where my head has been these past few days. But the fact that it’s with Claire and not my actual girlfriend has me annoyed.

“So what else is going on?” Claire asks. “Are you having any fun at all?”

“I guess. Charlotte showed me how to make a brandy Old Fashioned tonight.”

“Oh, she did, did she?”

“Don’t start on me,” I complain. “It’s just an innocent crush. You know how I get.”

“Yeah, you of the wandering eye.”

“Any bites on the new play?” I ask, desperate for a change in subject.

“Not yet, but don’t let that discourage you. I’ve got a few more contacts who might be interested.”

After I sold my first play and then my second in rapid succession, I had probably become too cocky. I couldn’t fail, the voice in my head had told me; this business was easy. But finding a producer for my third play was turning out to be more of a challenge than I’d wagered.

Thankfully I hadn’t blown my first royalty checks on any major purchases. I could live off of my savings for a while longer, but if I didn’t sell a play or write something new, I’d have to find a job as a waitress or a barista or something equally Hollywood cliché so I didn’t completely drain my nest egg.

Claire and I talk a little more before saying our good nights. When we hang up, I try Kambria’s phone one more time. But like before, the call rings with no one picking up on the other end. When her recorded message ends and I hear the beep, I leave her another openly frustrated message: “Why aren’t you picking up?” I complain. “We need to talk, so call me when you get this.”

The sun’s not up yet, and the whole house is dark. Only a limited amount of moonlight and my memory of where everything is in the house keep me from bumping into too many things on my way to my bedroom. Before I make it to the stairs, I hear noises coming in the direction of the dining room. In a city like Los Angeles, the sounds would have me calling the police, but in Grand Marais, I’m only curious.

The sounds are unrecognizable as I approach the dining room. I reach into the room and hit the light toggle. My sister, sitting at the dining room table, squints into the light. There’s an assortment of tools—screwdrivers and wrenches and pliers—spread out on the table in front of her.

“What are you doing sitting in the dark?” I whisper. My dad is a light sleeper, and I don’t want to wake him up.

She gestures towards the electronic circuit board in front of her. “Fixing my alarm clock.”

“Was it broken?”

“It is now.”

“Emily,” I sigh, “what’s going on with you?”

“Adam wanted to have a baby.”

I freeze at her words.

“He wanted to start a family,” she says sullenly, “but I wasn’t ready. I told him there was no rush. I told him we had plenty of time.”

I pull out a dining room chair and sit down. I remain silent; I can sense these words have been building up in her brain over the past few days. There’s a leak in the dam, and it’s about to break.

“I wanted children with him, but I was afraid. What do I know about being a mother? I never had one.” Her bottom lip begins to tremble. “And now I’ll never have his babies. It’s too late.”

I chew on the inside of my lip. My instinct is to pat her hand, but the movement feels trite.

Her blue eyes are heavy with tears. “Why did he have to die, Abs?”

It feels like there’s a heavy weight pressing down on my chest. “I know, sweetie,” I try to soothe. “I know.”

CHAPTER FIVE

My dad used to tease me growing up that my nose was going to turn out pointed because it was always stuck in a book. Rules had to be made that reading wasn’t allowed at the dinner table, and whenever I acted out as a child, my punishment was time away from books. Since I’d moved away from Grand Marais, the public library had been updated from a windowless, musty catacomb, to a bright, welcoming new construction with a separate room for children’s literature. It’s in that room where I find Charlotte and her daughter the next morning. Amelia’s sitting at a low table reading aloud while Charlotte reads to herself in a rocking chair in a corner of the room. They’re the only two people in the small room—in fact, besides the librarian at the circulation desk out front, we might be the only souls in the building.

“Hey,” I whisper.

Charlotte smiles when she looks up from her book. “Hey. You found us.”

There’s no other place to sit except for the biggest beanbag chair I’ve ever seen. I choose a pint-sized painted wooden chair and drag it near Charlotte’s rocking chair. When I sit down, my knees practically touch my chin.

Outside the day is overcast and intermittent rain has spoiled the prospect of a day at the beach. Rain splatters against the frosted windows. Charlotte looks comfortable in light washed skinny jeans that hug her calves and a University of Minnesota t-shirt. It makes me feel a little overdressed in jeans and a sleeveless shell, but I’m running out of clothes that she hasn’t seen me in yet. I wasn’t planning on being away for so long when I’d first thrown clothes into my suitcase.

Amelia is wearing a yellow tank top with dark blue shorts. The
tour de force
, however, are the dark green rain boots that are designed to look like turtle faces.

“She dresses herself,” Charlotte remarks when she notices my amused stare. “When she turned six she no longer required mom’s help.”

“Ouch.”

“My baby’s growing up too fast,” she wistfully sighs.

“I bet she learned that independent streak from you,” I note.

“Maybe,” she hums, “but it’s going to make first grade next fall a chore if she gets the reputation as the girl who dresses weird.”

“Better than her being the smelly kid. That’s elementary school suicide.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” she chuckles. “Were you the smelly kid?”

“Hell no,” I insist. “But I was a total bookworm. That was enough social suicide.”

In my hometown if you didn’t participate in high school sports, you didn’t matter. Charlotte had played a number of sports and had gone to college on a volleyball scholarship to the University of Minnesota. It makes me wonder if she has any old uniforms lying around. I wouldn’t mind seeing her in bun-hugger shorts.

“I wish I had liked the school part of school more,” she remarks. “I suppose I was having too much fun to take academics seriously. But,” she says, lifting the hardcover book in her hands, “better late than never.”

“What are you reading?” I ask.

“
Animal Farm
. I’m on a kick right now where I’m reading all of the books I was supposed to read in high school, but never did.”

“Oh, before I forget,” I say, “I saw something at my dad’s store and thought of you guys.” I’d been looking for a way to say thank you to Charlotte for standing up to the town’s municipal hierarchy without going overboard.

She waits while I retrieve the cellophane packaged gift from my bag. “They’re Chinese lanterns. You set the bottom on fire and it floats up into the sky,” I explain, although I’m sure she probably knows how they work. “My dad, Emily, and I used to set them off every summer. I thought Amelia might like it. They’re kind of like fireflies, I guess.”

“I bet she’ll love it. Thank you, Abby.” Charlotte smiles at the gesture, which makes me feel less foolish for bringing the lanterns with me. “Do you want to come over and show us how it’s done? Since you seem to be the expert at it.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that would be fine.”

“I’ve got weird hours, but I’ll let you know when my next night off is. Maybe you could come over for dinner and then we can light these things off in the yard,” she suggests.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be in town for,” I warn.

“It’s okay. If we can make it happen, cool. If not, I’m sure Amelia and I can figure out the lanterns on our own.”

She goes back to reading her book, and I take a notepad out of my bag and rest it on my lap. I shake out my hands at my sides and try to write.

ACT 1

Scene 1

SETTING:                                          A high-rise in New York City                                                                                     overlooking Central Park. The                                                                       colors on the trees are just                                                                                     beginning to change.

MAIN CHARACTER

Why is your play set in New York City, Abigail? You’ve never been there before.

Almost as soon as pen touches paper, I’m crossing out the words with agitation and trying again.

SETTING:                                          The interior of a passenger                                                                                     train.

AT RISE:                                          Two women sit across from each                                                                       other, stealing glances at the                                                                       other over the pages of their                                                                       respective newspapers.

I tap my pen against my notebook.
And then what?
I put an X through the text. I stare at the blank page and will it to speak to me. Something.
Anything
.

SETTING:                                          The moon.

Okay, maybe not
anything.

“Is everything okay over there?”

“Sorry.” I look away from my mangled notebook. “Am I writing too loudly?” I realize my pen tapping has become progressively louder and more aggressive.

“Something like that. What are you working on?” she asks, nodding toward my notebook.

“I’m supposed to be working on a new play.” A displeased frown settles on my face. “But the words won’t seem to come. I’ve got the worst writer’s block.”

“Is that pretty common?”