Untethered (16 page)

T
he following Monday was the second in April. Allie had been home for a little over a week and the weather had changed dramatically since her return. It was spring at last and the dirty strips of snow along the sides of the roads had melted. Lawns were turning from brown to green. The wood deck off the family room was no longer stained dark and wet with melting snow and ice but had been dried and baked into a soft caramel color by the spring sun.

Around eleven, Char rose from Bradley's desk and put on more coffee, then carried the deck chairs and their cushions up from the shed. Colleen was coming over for a visit, and Char planned to stay outside after and continue editing on the deck. One of the best things about working from home was the freedom to move her operations outside. For most of the past five summers, she had done her editing from a lawn chair. The view of the sloping yard, the ravine at the bottom, the state land on the other side was all so lovely. Especially at this time of year, when each new burst of green on branches or spray of color on shrubs was a thrill.

For Char, the coldness of Michigan winter was only half the problem. It was the gray that really got to her. The monochromatic dullness that bled from the sky into the landscape, as though the entire atmosphere had gotten depressed and given up. Bradley, sympathetic to her plight, loved to point out the smallest bits of cheerfulness in the yard and the state land.

“Look, Char! A cardinal!” he would yell, and she would come running to the window, squinting to find the tiny dot of red among the stands of leafless, charcoal-gray trees beyond the ravine.

Springtime gardening had become one of her annual rituals, even though she had never been a gardener before. “You're not so much a gardener as a coaxer,” Bradley used to tell Char. And it was true. She had little interest in keeping up the chore once summer was in full swing. It was only in those early April days that she was eager to be out there, clearing fall's last leaves from the front garden to let the daffodils peek through, inspecting the shrubs and pruning out any parts that didn't seem to be greening up as fast as the others.

“Nature has a schedule,” Bradley joked to Allie once as they tossed a baseball in the backyard while Char threw every last bit of brown into the compost bin. “But so does Char. Once she's decided it's spring, any part of the garden that disobeys is subject to . . .” He drew a finger across his throat.

Char crossed to the deck railing and found the spot in the yard where Bradley had stood that day, tossing and catching the ball with his daughter while he heckled his wife, the impatient gardener. She could see him, leaning forward as he threw, his running shoes and the bottoms of his jeans splattered with mud from the spongy spring grass that spit up flecks of dirty water each time he planted his foot. Tossing back his head with laughter as Allie held the ball up like a
major league pitcher, looked left, right, left again before winding up, bringing her left leg so high she lost her balance and fell over.

A tear trailed down Char's cheek as she smiled at the image, the sound of his voice, the feel of his five-o'clock shadow when he jogged over to kiss her as he waited for Allie to run inside for a glass of water before they resumed their game. Tilting her face up to the sun, she felt another tear slide and wondered if she should abandon her idea of sitting outside. She had cried through too many visits with Colleen over the past few months.

No, she told herself. Bradley would be appalled to know she had given up the first lovely spring afternoon because of him. If she cried through coffee with Colleen, so be it. If she had to edit all afternoon through tears, that would be fine, too. And later, after her work was finished, if she sobbed as she trimmed the hedges out front, she would deal with that as well.

Normally, she would force Allie around the property to show her the progress she had made. She did it every year, dragging Allie and her dad by the wrists, pointing out all she had done, the colors she had uncovered. Allie would politely pretend it was exciting. Char wasn't sure Allie would play along today, though.

Things hadn't changed much since the teenager's return from California. The tearful call from Lindy's hadn't signaled a return to normalcy, as Char had hoped it would. Allie was cool in the car on the way home from the airport, and whether it was because she was still angry with Char for telling Lindy about Justin or because she was still upset that her mother hadn't spent time with her, the result was the same: one-word responses to Char's questions and, the minute they had parked in the garage, a quick “Thanks for getting me,” before Allie darted out of the car and ran up to her room.

Allie was still spending too much time with Kate and the boys. Char was still avoiding a confrontation about it. As upsetting as things had been for Allie since her father died, they had gotten even worse during her stay in California. If the girl felt better, easier, around these kids than she did around Sydney and her other friends, Char didn't want to dismiss that.

But avoiding the issue hadn't dissolved the tension between the two of them. “Maybe she
wants
me to argue with her about it,” she said to Colleen as they carried their coffee out to the porch along with the box of doughnuts Colleen had picked up on the way over. “Do you think that could be it? Is she annoyed with me because I'm
not
saying anything about it?”

They settled in their chairs. “I mean, all this time, I've been trying to be respectful. Do you think I'm coming off as uncaring? Does she think I'm the same as Lindy?” She took a bite of a doughnut. “Mmmm. I love these glazed sour cream ones. You're the reason my diet always fails, do you know that? And I love you for it.”

“Nothing about you is the same as Lindy,” Colleen said, reaching into the box. “Anyway, here's a newsflash: Allie might be annoyed with something that has nothing to do with you. I mean, this whole thing between her and Sydney? It's major. Last time I asked Sydney about it, she said they weren't even sitting together at lunch anymore. I know it's made things at our place a little tense.

“Or it could be that she's fifteen. I can't tell you how often we suffer through the whole I-can't-tell-you-why-I'm-angry-with-you-and-I-don't-even-know-myself-but-I-am-so-I'm-going-to-my-room-and-don't-bother-trying-to-talk-to-me thing at our place. And of course, you can't rule out grief. Both of you have been so amazingly stoic. I've wondered if one of you would crack at some point. Maybe this is Allie cracking.”

“I'm not so amazingly stoic,” Char said, thinking of the many nights she had cried herself to sleep, Bradley's pillow clutched tightly to her chest. “If you were in my room late at night . . .”

“Well, you put on a pretty good show for the rest of us,” Colleen said.

“Wait,” Char said. “Do you think
that
could be it? Is she still upset because I'm
not
falling apart over her father in front of her? I told you about the night in his office, right? She's never mentioned it since, so I assumed she let it go. Or that she decided maybe it does help after all, to not have to watch me bawl.

“I really do think that's one of the best gifts I can give her right now, you know? I don't want her to feel she has to comfort me. And I don't want her to think I'm, I don't know, swooping in on her life, somehow, by being so upset about a man I was married to for five years when she spent three times longer than that with him.”

Colleen narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“In a first family,” Char explained, “you're all free to grieve the same amount when you lose someone. In a blended family, you have to allow for the fact that there might be an unspoken seniority rule in some people's minds. I came in at the end. I've been trying to be sensitive to the fact that Allie might think I don't have the right to be as upset as she is. For a while, I wasn't even sure I should be as upset as Lindy.”

Colleen opened her mouth to protest and Char said, “I know. Will set me straight on that one. The thing is, I haven't wanted Allie to get the idea that I think my relationship with him was more important than hers was. Or even
as
important. I mean, the bottom line is that I could marry again. She can't get a new father.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Colleen said. She set down her coffee cup and held up her hands. “Why can't you be as sad as you want to be
about the love of your life, and let Allie be as sad as she wants to be about her dad, and leave it at that? Do you really think she's running these measurements in her head, gauging how broken up you're acting in any given moment, and assessing that against some Stepmom-O-Meter in her brain?”

Char angled her head as if to say, “Duh, yes.”

Colleen lifted her cup again and waited, her expression expectant.

Char put a finger to her lips and tried to think of a way to explain it to her friend. The fact was, there was some kind of meter in Allie's head, the same as there was in Char's, and had been in Bradley's. You didn't enter into a stepfamily and simply carry on about your business as other people did. You measured, you compared. You weighed. You considered and reconsidered, evaluated and reevaluated. You questioned and worried and second-guessed.

If you were Bradley, you counted time, ever vigilant about not spending so much of it with your new wife that your daughter felt slighted, and not spending so much with your daughter that your wife wondered why you bothered remarrying. You balanced each conversation, not talking so much about the past that your wife felt left out, not talking so little about it that your daughter felt her childhood was being erased.

If you were Char, you worried you were trying too hard, making your stepdaughter (and her mother) suspect that you were gunning for someone else's job. So you eased off, and in the next hour, you worried you were playing it way too cool, making the girl think you viewed her as something only to be tolerated—an extra, unattractive appendage that came attached to her father.

If you were Allie, you questioned everything your father and stepmother did, every day. And if there was a day when you felt sad and you couldn't put your finger on why, you decided to put your
finger on them, and their new marriage, and the fact that before she came along, you had him all to yourself.

Char didn't know how to say all of that to Colleen in a way that wouldn't make Allie seem petty, and Char and Bradley seem paranoid. As good a friend as Colleen was, as much as she knew about the history of Bradley and Lindy, one reality Char had learned was that people who weren't in stepfamilies couldn't really understand the dynamics of people who were. Colleen's “simple solutions” for dealing with some teen angst that Sydney was going through were often things Char wouldn't dream of trying with Allie.

So instead, Char told her friend, “You know, now I'm starting to wonder if that's the issue. Maybe it's not that my ‘pretending,' as she called it, isn't helping her. Maybe she thinks it's a betrayal to Bradley—”

“Do you think you might be way overthinking this?” Colleen asked.

Which was one of the things people who weren't in stepfamilies always said to people who were.

B
y afternoon, the sun was strong enough that Char had stripped down to her long-sleeved T-shirt, and she had gotten enough work done that she rewarded herself with a glass of wine. Her cell phone dinged before she could take her first sip. It was a text from Allie.

can you come get me?

It was only three forty-five. Tutoring was from three thirty until five thirty. Char was about to ask what was going on when another text came.

morgan's not here

Char:
Oh, too bad. Did the staff say why?

Allie:
they won't tell. “participant confidentiality”

Char:
Ah. Well, I'm sure it's just a cold or something.

Allie:
morgan and I never miss mondays

Char:
Not so easy for a 10yo to make that call. I'll leave right now.

Allie:
tks, cc

In the garage, Char looked to the furthermost bay and the shrouded convertible. She tapped out another text to Allie:
First nice day of spring, btw . . .

Allie:
yeah

Char:
And I was thinking . . .

Allie:
convertible?

Char:
And ice cream! And you can drive.

Allie:
!! :)

Allie squealed at seeing the convertible in the community center parking lot. She tossed her backpack onto the floor in the back, climbed into the driver's seat, and set her phone in the cup holder. She was about to turn on the ignition when her phone rang. Peering at the screen, she tapped “ignore” with a finger.

“You can answer it,” Char said, “since you're not driving yet. But after the call, you should put your phone in your backpack. Remove the temptation to answer calls or texts when you're driving, you know?”

Allie reached back and put her phone in the front pocket of her pack. “It's a telemarketer,” she said. “Some area code I don't recognize. They've called a few times and they never leave a message.”

“Do you remember that one telemarketer that called all three of us last year?” Char asked. “We kept trying to ignore them, but they called so many times every day that we decided we should just answer and say ‘No, thanks' and put an end to it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Allie said. “And when we answered, that really loud ship's horn blared in our ears and we couldn't hear for like an hour after.”

“And they still kept calling,” Char said.

“They were the worst. I'm kind of afraid to answer this one, in case it's another obnoxious horn or some siren or whatever.”

“Got to love the ‘ignore' button on cell phones,” Char said.

“Zactly.”

Allie pulled out of the parking lot. They were quiet for the first few blocks. The new driver spent a lot of time checking and rechecking her mirrors and blind spots, pretending, Char knew, that she was too busy focusing to carry on a conversation.

“So,” Char said. “No Morgan today.” It was the one subject Allie couldn't resist.

But the teen only said, “No Morgan,” and checked her mirrors again.

“I'm sure it's nothing, and she'll be back next week,” Char said.

“Yeah.”

They drove a little farther, and Char reached for the radio dial. “Ah! Proclaimers! We love this one!” Allie smiled, but refused to act more excited than that.

“I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more,”
Char sang.

Allie didn't join in, and Char stopped. Another theory she had about Allie's recent recalcitrance was that the teenager was upset with herself for complaining to Char about her mother while she was away. Char had seen similar behavior before, albeit far shorter lived. Allie didn't like being disloyal to Lindy.

What are you trying to say?
she could imagine Allie thinking now,
after Char's brief solo.
That you're the only one who would walk that far for me? That my mother wouldn't?

Allie braked at a stop sign and put on her right turn signal. “If you take a left here,” Char said, “we could go to Doozie's for our first cone of the season. Might as well find the silver lining to your having a few spare hours this afternoon.”

Allie twisted her lips and turned right. “I'm trying to eat clean this week. Final soccer tryouts, you know?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Thanks, though.”

When Allie turned onto their street, Char told her to leave the car in the driveway so she could get out some gardening tools from the shelves in the third bay.

“You want to bring your homework out here?” Char asked as they climbed out. “Sit in a lawn chair, get some sun and fresh air while you work? Keep me company?”

Allie squinted at the sun as though it were painful to be standing in it. “Better not,” she said.

Char nodded as though she had a clue what that meant.

•   •   •

C
har was putting away the rake and searching for pruning shears when the sound—or rather, the pulsing sensation—of loud rap music made her turn. It was Wes's car, with its windows down, radio up. Kate waved to Char from the front seat as Wes turned to speak with Justin in the back. Seconds later, the front door banged closed and Allie ran down the front walk.

“Hey, Mrs. Hawthorn!” Kate sang. “Music!” she hissed at Wes, who punched the button and shut it off.

“Hi, Kate,” Char said as she walked to the passenger side of the car. “Boys.”

Wes grunted from the front and Justin pointed out his window to the convertible. “That's the car we should be taking.”

“Nice try,” Allie said. “It was, like, one of my dad's prized possessions.”

“Weren't you one of the others?” Justin asked.

“Idiot,” Kate said. “We're not taking the convertible.”

“Is it okay if I go?” Allie said to Char as she climbed into the back of Wes's car. “They wanted to take a drive, since it's so nice. And I'm done with almost all of my homework. We'll be back in an hour. Hour and a half, tops.”

“Just a quick run to Doozie's, Mrs. Hawthorn,” Kate said. “You want us to bring you back a cone?”

“They wouldn't take no for an answer,” Allie told Char, trying unsuccessfully to hide her guilt with a forced laugh. “I hope a kiddie cup of fro-yo won't ruin my chances of making varsity.”

“I'm sure it won't,” Char said.

Allie leaned out the window. “You sure you don't want us to bring something back for you? My treat. Vanilla with a caramel swirl?”

Char could hear the plea in the girl's voice as she sought to make up for her bad behavior. It would be so satisfying to shrug and say, “Better not,” in the same too-light tone Allie had used each time she had uttered those words over the past several weeks, shutting down Char's many efforts to make up. To turn back to her gardening without a wave and let the kid stew in her guilt as she rode all the way to Doozie's and back.

But satisfying and adult were two different things.

“Sure,” she told Allie. “A kiddie cup would be great.”