Mad River Road (17 page)

“The hero of the book we’re supposed to be discussing?” Lily pointed out.

“Oh. Him.”

“Yes, him.”

“Isn’t she cute?” Jan said, unraveling her body with remarkable ease and getting up from the floor to give Lily a hug. “She still thinks we meet every month to discuss books.”

“Isn’t that what book clubs are supposed to do?”

“Isn’t she cute?” Jan said again.

“I think Lily’s right,” Pat said meekly, her voice soft and tremulous. “I don’t think men are so bad.”

“How can you say that?” Jan demanded. “After all the times you’ve cried on my shoulder because of that imbecile you married!” She continued before Pat had a chance to answer. “How many times did he tell you he wasn’t ready for a commitment, even after you told him you were pregnant? What about the time he took off in the middle of the night, didn’t call for a week?”

“He came back,” Pat said proudly. “We got married.”

“Call me when you live happily ever after,” Jan advised bitterly.

“Can we get back to
Wuthering Heights?”
Lily tried again.

“I just don’t see how we can be so disparaging of men,” Pat continued. “Some of us are raising sons of our own.”

I should be home with Dylan, Emma thought, a fresh wave of guilt washing over her.

“Daughters are worse,” Cecily chimed in. “At least according to my mother, who had two of each. She said all you had to do was get a boy interested in sports, and you’d be okay. Unless of course, you had one who was artistic. Then you were doomed.”

“And speaking of doomed,” Lily ventured, waving her copy of
Wuthering Heights
in the air. “Is Cathy’s relationship
with Heathcliff doomed because their love is so intense? Or is it so intense precisely because it’s doomed?”

The women looked at her as if they had no idea who she was.

“I think it’s a bit of both,” Emma said, sensing Lily’s growing frustration with the direction of the conversation and amazed at how authoritative she could sound when she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. “I think one thing plays off the other, so that it’s almost impossible to say where one leaves off and the other begins.”

“It
is
a great love story,” Anne said.

“Only because it ends badly,” Carole said.

“You’re saying there’s no such thing as romantic love?” Pat asked.

“There’s no such thing as romantic love that
lasts,”
Jan corrected.

“You really can’t imagine Heathcliff and Cathy sharing toothless kisses in some old-age home, now can you?” Anne said.

“You wouldn’t want to,” Carole said.

“No. You want them haunting the moors as these forever-gorgeous, young ghosts,” Cecily agreed.

“What do all the great love stories have in common?” Emma asked, emboldened. “Romeo and Juliet? Tristan and Isolde? Hamlet and Ophelia?”

Jan smiled triumphantly. “Everybody dies,” she said.

“Well, that was an interesting evening,” Lily said as she and Emma sat sipping coffee on the outside steps of Lily’s home.

It was almost ten o’clock. The other women had departed en masse five minutes earlier. Emma had fully intended to leave with them, but instead she’d found herself lingering, allowing herself to be coaxed into one more cup of coffee, even though she had enough caffeine in her body to keep her awake for a week. She was feeling better, having run home to check on Dylan during an earlier cigarette break, and finding him sleeping soundly. Besides, her house was easily visible from where she and Lily were sitting. She had nothing to worry about. “It was fun,” Emma agreed.

“Took a while to get to the book.” Lily laughed. “I guess that happens a lot whenever a bunch of women get together.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t have a lot of girlfriends?”

“Don’t have a lot of friends, period.”

“You’re more of a loner,” Lily observed.

“Well, we’ve moved around a lot this past year, and it’s hard, you know.”

“I think friends are so important. I love my women friends.”

“No men friends?”

Lily shrugged delicate shoulders. “Not lately.”

“What about Detective Dawson?” Emma asked.

Again Lily shrugged. “Seems like a nice man.”

“So, have you changed your mind?”

“About what?”

“About whatever the two of you were discussing when I walked into the gym this morning. I’m assuming he asked you out.”

“For tomorrow night. Dinner at Joso’s.”

“And you turned him down? Are you crazy?”

“I thought you didn’t like cops.”

“I don’t. But I can appreciate a good dinner as much as the next girl. Why’d you say no? I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but you seemed to have a certain chemistry.…”

“I don’t know why I said no,” Lily said. “I’ve been asking myself that question all day.”

“Have you dated at all since your husband died?”

“A few times. Nothing serious.”

“But you sense this could be different, that with this guy, it could get serious?”

“What? No. Who said anything about serious?”

“You did,” Emma reminded her.

“I hardly know the man.”

“But you think maybe you’d like to.”

Lily exhaled, looked toward the star-filled sky. “I don’t know what I think.”

“Well,
I
think you should call him. You owe it to the rest of us.”

Lily laughed. “How do you figure that?”

“Give us something to talk about at our next meeting. Along with the Steinbeck.”

Lily laughed again, a clear, bell-like sound. “So, you’ll join our little group?”

“Can I think about it?”

“Absolutely. Your comments tonight were really insightful. What you said about Romeo and Juliet, and Tristan and Isolde, really got the discussion going.”

Emma smiled, recalling her mother’s enormous collection of opera recordings. While she herself had no patience for opera and had no idea who Tristan and
Isolde were, or what exactly their story was, she’d just assumed it ended badly. Operas usually did. Funny how seemingly insignificant memories could sometimes come in really handy, she thought, taking another sip of her coffee and wishing she could stay here, right here on this front step, sipping coffee all night and feeling wonderfully, gloriously free. From care. From responsibility. From the past.

“So you think I should call Jeff Dawson, tell him I’ve changed my mind?”

“Have you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a sitter,” Lily said in the next breath. “And it’s a Saturday night.”

“So bring Michael over to my place,” Emma heard herself offer.

Lily glanced toward Michael’s bedroom. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? I’m home anyway. The boys can have a sleepover. I’m sure Dylan would be thrilled.” Would he? Emma wondered. Would her son be thrilled about such a disruption to his nighttime routine? “They can sleep in my bed. They’ll have a blast.” Would they? Would they have a blast? Or would it be an unmitigated disaster?

“Can I think about it?” Lily asked, borrowing Emma’s earlier question. “I mean, Michael was an angel tonight, but he can be a bit of a handful.”

“Not to mention Detective Dawson.”

The sound of dogs barking cut through the ensuing silence. Both Emma and Lily looked toward the sound, saw Anne and Carole leaving their house, their two overweight schnauzers straining on their leashes, pulling them down the street.

“Who’s taking who for a walk?” Lily called after them as the dogs pulled them past her house, only to stop abruptly at the next lamppost. First one dog lifted his leg to mark his territory, then the other, then the first again.

“Men,” Anne said with a laugh as the two women linked arms and continued on down the street.

“You ever been hit on by a woman?” Emma asked.

“What?” Lily’s eyes widened.

“I was,” Emma continued. “Long time ago. One of the teachers at this private school I went to.”

“My God. What happened?”

“I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. Just starting to fill out. More than a little self-conscious about it. And there was this gym teacher, Mrs. Gallagher, who everybody loved. She had long, shiny, blond hair that she used to let all the girls brush. I mean, can you imagine? We actually thought it was some kind of honor to brush this woman’s greasy hair. And one day, that honor fell to me. And so I’m standing behind her, brushing away. My arm feels like it’s about to fall off, but I keep brushing, and she tells me I do it better than any of the other girls, that I have a real feel for it, which of course makes me brush even harder, and she asks me to come back at the end of the day. So I did. Only instead of me brushing
her
hair, she starts to brush mine. And I have to admit, it feels great. And she’s telling me I have this fabulous hair, so soft and pretty. And then suddenly I feel something brush against my neck, only I know it’s not the brush.”

“She kissed you?”

Emma nodded, raised one eyebrow, folded one lip inside the other.

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing. I was terrified. I just sat there. And she’s saying stuff like, ‘Does that feel good? Do you like that?’ And then suddenly, I just bolted off that chair and ran. Didn’t stop running until I got home.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“I told my mother. She was the school principal.”

“And? Did she fire her?”

“She didn’t believe me, said I was making the whole thing up to get attention.”

Lily looked horrified. “How awful for you.”

Emma shrugged.

“You’ve had a very interesting life,” Lily remarked after a pause of several seconds.

“A little too interesting at times.” Emma finished the last of her coffee, pushed herself to her feet. She handed the Scully’s mug to Lily. “I guess I should be getting home.”

“I’m really glad you came tonight.”

“Me too. Let me know what you decide about tomorrow.” Emma walked down the steps, waved good-bye from the sidewalk. “I had a wonderful time,” she called back, forcing one reluctant foot in front of the other. When she reached her house, she turned back, but Lily was no longer standing on her front steps. She probably shouldn’t have told Lily her mother was a school principal, she thought, unlocking the front door and tiptoeing inside. Was she afraid that Lily wouldn’t like her if she knew the truth? That was silly. Lily wasn’t like the girls she’d grown up with. She wouldn’t think any less of her if she found out her mother had been part of the custodial staff.

And did one more lie really matter all that much, when she’d told so many lies already?

Emma checked Dylan’s room and saw he was sleeping soundly. If only I could sleep like that, she thought enviously as she undressed and climbed into bed.

She closed her eyes and waited for the demons.

I
n the few minutes of twilight between sleeping and waking, Jamie relived the almost two years of hell that had been her life with Mark Dennison. It began, fittingly enough, on their wedding night, when a series of frantic phone calls from the groom’s mother repeatedly interrupted their attempts to consummate their marriage.

“How could you do this?” Jamie heard her new mother-in-law wail through the phone wires. “How could you marry a girl you just met, a girl you know absolutely nothing about?”

Jamie waited to hear her new husband say “I know everything I need to know. I know I love her.” But instead what she heard were a string of abject apologies—for the rashness of his decision, the unnecessary speed of his elopement, the stunning disregard for his mother’s feelings—and his assurances that he and his new wife had no intention of settling in Palm Beach, that they’d abandon their plans for a honeymoon in the Bahamas and fly to Atlanta first thing in the morning in order to reassure her. Jamie even heard herself trying to console her new mother-in-law by offering to let her tag along when they
went apartment hunting, telling the clearly distraught woman that she welcomed her input and was looking forward to being part of such a close-knit, loving family. What she heard in return was the stony silence of a phone going dead in her ear.

Needless to say, their lovemaking that night had been a disaster, her husband unable to sustain an erection, no matter what she tried. “Where’d you learn that little trick?” he’d demanded, angrily pushing her away. “Your college boyfriends teach you that?”

That was the first time she thought of leaving. Pack your bag and walk out the door, she remembered thinking as she huddled on the other side of the bed. Swallow your pride and go back home to Mama. It’s been less than twenty-four hours. You can get an annulment, go back to law school, reenroll for the spring term. Just get out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into, and get out now.

Except how could she leave him when he was so vulnerable, when he was literally crying for her to stay, apologizing to her over and over again for the awful things he’d said? He was upset, confused. He hadn’t meant any of it. Surely she knew that. Please understand, he’d begged. If she would only be patient, give him another chance. His mother had had a hard life, he explained. She’d been widowed when she was only thirty-six, and he’d become her sole source of comfort, the one she turned to and relied on, the only thing that kept her going, allowed her to get out of bed in the morning. At the tender age of eight, he’d become her little man. For the last two decades, it had been just the two of them. Naturally it was going to be hard for her to accept a virtual stranger into their lives. If Jamie could just be patient …

Jamie agreed to try. He was right after all. His mother was just upset because of the suddenness of their union. It had nothing to do with her. She shouldn’t take it personally. Hadn’t her own mother been almost apoplectic when Jamie announced her intention to marry a man she’d known barely two weeks?

“Mom, this is Jamie. Jamie, this is my mother, Laura Dennison,” her new husband said, proudly introducing the two women in his life to each other.

Jamie was surprised at how small her mother-in-law actually was. Despite her towering voice on the telephone, in person she measured a scant five feet two inches tall and couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds. At almost five feet seven and 120 pounds, Jamie loomed over her like a large building. What was I so afraid of? she wondered, extending her arms magnanimously toward the woman with the short auburn hair and cold blue eyes.