The Girls of Tonsil Lake (22 page)

“Thank you very much. Did you know your ass was dropping? You’ll be feeling the old slap on the backs of your knees any time now. And all that plastic in your face is melting.”

I grinned at her, then turned back to dump my duffel bag into the drawer. “You said I could stay.”

“If you needed to. Not as a one-woman rescue unit.”

“No one-woman to it.” I began peeling off the clothes I’d worn in the daycare center that day. Carrie’s little girl had puked all over me. “We’re all in it together, kid. I can be more helpful here than from out at Sarah’s. Besides that, I think I sort of cramp their style. Hers and Lo’s, I mean. They spend an inordinate amount of time checking on the animals in the barn, and it’s getting really cold for that sort of thing. Hand me that other bag, will you?”

I rummaged through the bag she tossed on the bed, coming up with some sweats. “Now,” I said, “go get Paul and you two go for a walk.” I pulled a sweatshirt over my head and fluttered my eyelashes at her. “Find a barn and check on the animals.”

She stood still, her gaze and mine clashing as our personalities almost always had. “Thank you,” she said.

“Go.”

Vin

“You just got here.” Lucas nuzzled my neck.

“Two weeks ago,” I corrected him, keeping my knees from wobbling by leaning them against the kitchen cupboards, “and now I need to go to Indiana.” I turned in his arms. “I’ll be back.”

He pushed my hair behind my ears, looking down at me, and I finally understood what romance writers meant when they wrote about getting lost in someone’s eyes. If I’d ever memorized any poetry after Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” in the seventh grade, I’d have started spouting it.

“Well, I gotta go. Have a good flight and give me a call to let me know you got there safe.” He gave me a kiss, long and leisurely enough to weaken my knees again, then tapped the end of my nose. “Love you, Lavinia.”

I closed the back door behind him and lifted the curtain to watch him negotiate the path toward the village. He turned to wave before he moved out of sight and I lifted a hand in response. It felt as weak as my knees did, and I let it drop to my side. “ ‘I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree...’ ”

Archie came into the kitchen, carrying my bag. “Excuse me?” she said absently.

“Nothing,” I mumbled, but I could feel myself blushing. “Are you sure you don’t mind being stuck here?” I said.

“Stuck?” She gave me a look of astonishment. “I love it here. Reminds me of home, it does, but with differences.”

She looked younger and prettier, I noticed, and wondered if she’d met someone on her daily trek into the village. “Archie, how long have you been widowed?” I asked.

“Twenty-five years. We were only married a couple of years, but we made them good ones.”

I almost asked why she had never remarried, but then I remembered how she’d felt about Mark. “What do you think of Lucas?” I asked instead.

“He’s lovely.” She grinned at me. “Seems more to the point to wonder what you think of him. I must say, I’ve lived in the same house as you for over twenty years, and I’ve never heard you recite poetry before. Though I did wonder at your choice in verses.”

“It’s the only poem I know,” I admitted. “But he is lovely, isn’t he?”

****

I rented a car in Indianapolis and arrived unannounced at Andie’s, too late for supper and too early for bed. I tapped lightly on the back door and went in just as Jean walked into the kitchen pulling on a jacket.

Our hug was silent and hard.

“He’s sleeping,” she said quietly. “Do you want to see him?”

I nodded and followed her into the dining room. Young Jake, or Lo, as I couldn’t seem to get used to calling him, shared a recliner with Sarah. I touched their heads, kissed their cheeks, then turned to the hospital bed.

I’d thought I was prepared. I’d talked to one of the girls almost daily, so I’d expected to scarcely recognize the skeletal man in the bed. But I couldn’t stop my horrified gasp, and when I touched my cheek lightly to Jake’s, mine was already wet.

Andie and Suzanne came in shortly, and we put blankets around our shoulders and carried coffee to the patio.

“The doctor says it’s probably a matter of days,” said Andie, her voice low and thin with exhaustion. “Happy goddamned Thanksgiving.”

Her eyes glittered in the dim light that flowed from the house. “When he first came, he talked a little about suicide, and I was so afraid he’d do it. Now, I almost wish he had. This isn’t living.”

“We may not feel like it’s living, but this time has been a gift.” Suzanne had her face turned away from the rest of us, and her voice was muffled. “He’s been able to say his goodbyes, put everything in order. I’d give anything...” The words trailed away unsaid, but we didn’t have to hear them to know what they were.

“See that brightest star up there?” Jean’s voice was cheerful and strong. She pointed. “No, not the tower lights, the other big one above them.”

We all craned our necks and nodded.

She smiled at each of us. “That’s Tommy, you know, waiting for Jake.”

It was the kind of thing Reverend Parrish said to us in Sunday school at the little church that sat on a hill right in the middle of the Hendersons’ farmland. We’d trudge up there every Sunday morning, not putting on our shoes till we reached the churchyard because the road was dusty and we figured dirty feet were better than dirty shoes.

When the minister cut loose with one of those platitudes, we’d all look at each other and Andie would smirk because living on Tonsil Lake taught you better than that. Clichés about God’s will and angels on high weren’t intended for the likes of us. It was only later, when we attended Rosie’s funeral in the little church, that we admitted we’d taken comfort from some of the tired expressions.

“Look,” I said now, pointing. “There’s Mark, too, and Rosie behind them to watch over them the way she did us. They’ll be all right.”

We watched in silence for a little while, sipping our coffee, then Andie said, “Goddamn it.”

“What?”

“Rosie’s star’s a forny airplane.”

Chapter Fifteen

Andie

Sometimes I feel as though sadness has seeped right through my pores and become a part of my bloodstream, poisoning me in much the same way as the cancer did. Only they don’t have chemo and radiation for sadness; there is no prosthesis or reconstructive surgery to replace the part of you the sadness destroys. I look at the shell of the love of my life as he lies in bed, at my children as they lose their father, and think I can’t bear another day.

That’s when I understand the murder-suicide scenarios you read about in the papers. How easy it would be, if there were no one else to consider, to put Jake out of his misery and then turn the weapon of choice on myself.

What about Paul? The thought dances through my head like a song I can’t stop singing, but I don’t know that there will be enough left of me when this is over to make real the relationship we only play at in these awful days.

I think all of this as I sit in the recliner listening to Jake’s breathing. Sometimes the space of time between sucking in air and shuddering exhalation is long enough that I lean forward in the chair and say his name.

“Still here,” he says, his voice little more than a sigh.

It is the Friday before Thanksgiving, though I’ve given little thought to either the holiday or giving thanks. I feel remorseful about that sometimes, when I think of my loud-but-happy children and grandchildren, of Jean’s grapefruit-sized benignity, of my own restored health. But then the sadness overwhelms the remorse.

Lo and Sarah came in as I stared out the window at the bleak November landscape. Suzanne was with them.

We exchanged the kind of silent conversation we’d all gotten good at, with raised eyebrows and headshakes, and went into the kitchen. I turned up the monitor on the counter, and for a moment we stared at it, hearing that shallow breathing.

“Uh, Mom, Suzy-Q, we need to talk to you.” Lo was at the coffeemaker, preparing a fresh pot, making it strong enough to cut with a knife. “You got anything to eat?”

“You know where the refrigerator is,” I said. “You spent half your life standing in the open door of it complaining.”

“True. Sarah, would you make me a sandwich?”

“No. Your legs aren’t broken.”

I beamed at her. “What a good girl you are.” Suzanne rolled her eyes.

He settled for pecan pie, eating it straight out of the pie plate because there was only a third of it left. Seated at the table, he jerked his head toward the dining room. “Any change?”

“No. He sleeps more every day, but you know that.”

“Well.” He exchanged a look with Sarah. “We thought we’d get married.” He fluttered his long eyelashes at her and gusted an unconvincing sigh. “She thinks I should make an honest woman of her.”

Sarah rolled her eyes just as Suzanne had, and it was uncanny how much like her mother she looked. “Truth is,” she said, “he says he won’t sleep with me anymore if I don’t marry him.”

“But, sweetheart…” Suzanne was all wide eyes and breathy voice—I wanted to smack her one. “You
do
realize who you’re getting for a mother-in-law, don’t you?”

So then I
had
to hit her, then we held each other close and hard before turning to hug our children.

“We’d like to do it here,” said Sarah, when we were seated around the table with cups of thirty-weight coffee, “on Thanksgiving, with just you two and Miranda and Ben and Jake.” She met my eyes. “I’d like for my dad to perform the ceremony. Would that be okay?”

“Of course,” I said. Although I didn’t particularly like Phil Lindsey, he had gained points with me when he told Sarah the truth about his divorce from Suzanne. And whether I liked him or not, he was the father of the young woman who was about to become my daughter-in-law.

I saw in Suzanne’s eyes the regret that her only daughter was going to marry in someone’s dining room with no guests to speak of. No white tulle or bridal showers or flower girls. Sarah would be married as we had all been.

There had been no money for weddings for the Tonsil Lake girls, and we’d all been too proud to allow our fiancés or their families to finance the kind of luxury we’d lived all our lives without. We’d lived out that particular dream in our children’s marriages. All three of Jean’s kids and Miranda had had big weddings and noisy, laughing receptions at the country club or the park or, in Josh’s case, in Jean’s back yard.

Sarah must have seen her mother’s eyes, too, because she said gently, “This is what we want, Mom. We want for Jake to be there.”

“Of course you do,” said Suzanne, her smile instant and bright. “You’ll have to watch him, though. You know how he always becomes the life of the party. Remember when you kids were all little? None of you wanted to have a birthday party unless he was going to be there.”

“You gotta admit,” I said, “playing Pin the Tail on David O’Toole was entertaining.”

We all laughed. “And David was so good,” said Suzanne, “yelling like a banshee every time a kid even approached the target Jake put on his butt.”

“Remember when Carrie wanted a swimming party and Jean said no because it was too cold?” said Sarah. “Jake started pushing people into the pool and it became a swimming party anyway. Jean was the first one he pushed in.” She looked anxious. “Will they understand why we’re doing it this way?”

“You know they will,” I said. “But Jean will have a party for you at some point. You can bet on that.” In the silence that followed my comment, I listened to Jake’s breathing as it came through the monitor. He would think he was a lucky guy, seeing his son married to a girl we both loved.

I smiled at my son and Suzanne’s daughter, willing the sadness—for the moment at least—to go away and leave me the hell alone. How could I do any less? “It’ll be the best Thanksgiving we ever had.”

Jean

“My editor hates it.” I looked down at the sheets of manuscript Vin had printed out. “She says it will disappoint readers who expect a certain thing from me.” I frowned at the plethora of red ink on the printed pages; there were slashes and scribbled notes everywhere. “It looks as though you weren’t thrilled with it, either.”

“Look again,” said Vin sharply, pointing at the pages with her butter knife. “Of course your editor doesn’t like it. Although you’re an excellent writer, your voice is also predictable. If you released a book under a pseudonym, your readers would still know it was you. You’ve stepped way outside that box on this, and that’s not something your publisher wants from you. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.”

“Oh.” Pleased, I went back to looking at the manuscript. “What can we do for Sarah and Lo?”

“I was thinking about that.” She sat at the table with her toast. “I thought maybe a honeymoon of sorts. They’re off work until the Monday after Thanksgiving.”

“They won’t want to leave town,” I said, “with Jake being so bad right now.”

“I know.” She looked thoughtful. “The Henderson farmhouse at the lake is a bed and breakfast now, and that’s only fifty miles away. What do you think?”

“I think that’s inspired.”

“Good. I’ll call them this morning.” She sighed. “And one of these days soon I’ve got to bite the bullet and go see my mother.”

I grinned. “Carrie will be saying that about me one of these days, if she’s not already.” I looked curiously at Vin. “Do you ever wish you’d had children?”

“Sometimes, I guess, but most of the time I think it’s good I didn’t. I’m too selfish for the full-time business. I want to put my toys away when I’m tired of them. I like being the fairy godmother, with all the good stuff but none of the heartache. It was nice of you guys to give me that opportunity.”

“We thought so,” I said primly. I leaned an elbow on the table and propped my chin in the palm of my hand. “So what’s with you and Lucas? You talk to him every day, you blush when David teases you about him, and you’ve left New York behind you. What comes next?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll just go call that bed and breakfast.” She hurried out of the kitchen even though there was a telephone right there, and she was blushing.