Cul-de-sac

by Joy Fielding

  “Who said I don’t like you very much?”

  “You don’t have to say it,” Norman tells her.

  Julia lowers her head, guilt surrounding her like a poisonous halo. “You’re my son. I love you very much.”

  “Love more or less goes with the territory,” he says. “Liking’s another story altogether. And it’s okay,” he adds quickly. “We’re just two very different people. We don’t have to like each other.”

  Julia’s eyes shoot to Norman’s. “You don’t like me?”

  “You’re my mother,” he says with mock solemnity, throwing her words back at her. “I love you very much.”

  Tears fill Julia’s eyes. It appears her son might have a sense of humor after all. “What an awful thing to say,” she says.

  And suddenly they’re both laughing. Julia laughs until her sides ache and she’s gasping for air.

  “Are you okay?” Norman asks as the laughter subsides.

  “I’m fine, darling.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” he says.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” Julia says in return.

  “I could really use that cup of tea now.”

  Julia jumps to her feet. “Follow me. And bring the scones.”

  “Slow down,” Norman cautions, trailing her into the kitchen and laying the plate of scones on the kitchen table. “Remember your blood pressure. You don’t want to faint again.”

  “I’m not going to faint.” She turns on the burner under the kettle. “Have a scone.”

  Norman dutifully picks one up and takes a bite. “These are really good,” he admits before his mother can ask.

  “Your son has a real gift. I’m eating better than I have in my entire life.”

  “Much as I hate bringing this up,” Norman says as his mother is pouring the tea, “I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to selling the house.”

  “I haven’t, no,” Julia lies. In fact, she’s been thinking about it quite a bit the last few days.

  “Look. It’s not that I’m insensitive to your feelings or trying to minimize what your independence means to you,” Norman tells her. “I understand. Believe me, I’m not trying to take that away from you. It’s just that this is a lot of house for someone your age, and face it, Mom, Mark isn’t going to hang around here forever. Even if he sticks around another year or two, there’s no guarantee he’ll be here the next time you faint or, God forbid, fall down the stairs or…whatever. I’m not some heartless bastard who’s out to steal your house and pocket the cash. You can give it all to charity if that’s what you want. I don’t need the money. I happen to be a very good…”

  “Gambler,” she says.

  “Speculator,” he corrects.

  They smile.

  “And it doesn’t have to be Manor Born,” he says. “We can look around, find a place you like better….”

  “Drink your tea,” Julia says, depositing two china cups on the table and sitting down across from him.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He finishes one scone and reaches for another. “These really are very good.”

  “Take some home for…Poppy.”

  “Thank you,” her son says.

  “No problem. Mark can always make more.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  They drink the rest of their tea in silence.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The middle-aged woman marches into Lola’s Lingerie as if on a mission.

  “I need a new bra,” she tells Heidi.

  Heidi takes a glance at the literally hundreds of bras on display throughout the store. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Any particular style in mind?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Well, why don’t you have a look around and see if anything appeals to you?” Heidi glances surreptitiously at her watch, noting that her shift is up in less than ten minutes. And while she’s normally very patient with customers who have no idea what they want, she’s been feeling tired and a little nauseous the last few days, and she’s been looking forward to going home and putting her feet up.

  Especially since Aiden’s mother has announced she’ll be moving in over the weekend, and this is probably one of the few evenings she’ll have to relax over the next few weeks.

  Dear God, please don’t let Lisa’s renovations drag on any longer than that.

  “What size are you?” Heidi asks.

  “That’s part of the problem,” the woman answers. She has long flaming-red hair and is what might euphemistically be described as full-figured. “I don’t know anymore. I used to be a 38D, but everything’s so damn tight, I can hardly breathe anymore. God, I hate these things.” She motions toward her ample bosom. “What men see in them, I’ll never know.”

  Heidi nods sympathetically. The cancer that killed her mother had started in her breasts, and Heidi has always had something of a love-hate relationship with her own as a result. While they’ve always been enviably round and full, lately they’ve been looking swollen and feeling heavy. As if they belong to someone else.

  Something is wrong.

  Her mother wasn’t much older than Heidi when she succumbed to the disease—the cancer having metastasized from her breasts to her lungs, spine, and brain—and Heidi knows there’s a possibility that she inherited the deadly genetic strain.

  How else to explain the fatigue, the nausea, the swelling of her breasts despite her recent loss of appetite?

  She has cancer. She knows it.

  Heidi reaches into a drawer containing a colorful selection of size forty DD bras. “Suppose we go up a size. How about something like one of these?”

  “I guess I could try one on.” The woman reluctantly takes the lined sepia-toned bra from Heidi’s hands.

  “The fitting rooms are over there.” Heidi swivels to her right. A wave of dizziness sweeps over her, and she grabs the woman’s arm to keep from falling.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asks.

  “I have cancer,” Heidi whispers.

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” She thrusts the bra back into Heidi’s hands. “I’ll come back another time.” She runs from the store as if Heidi’s cancer might be contagious.

  Heidi watches her bright orange head of hair disappear into the steady flow of people walking the mall’s main thoroughfare.

  “What the hell did you say to her?” her co-worker, Shawna, asks, appearing at Heidi’s side.

  “I told her I have cancer.”

  Shawna takes a step back, her brown eyes opening in shock. “Why on earth would you tell her something like that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “You have cancer?”

  Heidi nods.

  “What kind?” Shawna asks.

  “Breast.”

  “You’ve been to the doctor?”

  “No.”

  “You found a lump?”

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think you have cancer, for God’s sake?”

  “Because I’m nauseous and I’m tired and my breasts are sore and heavy, and my mother got it when she was my age…. What the hell are you smiling about?”

  “You don’t have cancer, dude,” Shawna says gleefully. “You’re pregnant!”

  “What? No. That’s not possible. I have an IUD.”

  Shawna shrugs. “My mother had an IUD when she got pregnant with me. Apparently I came out holding the damn thing in my fist.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Don’t look so upset. Wouldn’t you rather have a baby than cancer?”

  “You really think I could be pregnant?”

  “Well, I’m no doctor, but unless you’ve been celibate this past month, which would be
a real waste considering how hot your husband is, I think I’d rule that out before I start writing my will. Anyway, it’s easy enough to find out. Get one of those pregnancy kits. That way you’ll know for sure.”

  “Oh my God,” Heidi says, her hands reaching down to cradle her flat stomach. She’ll stop at a CVS on the way home.

  If it’s true, how will Aiden take the news? she wonders, trembling with a combination of joy and terror.

  More to the point, what will Lisa say?

  * * *

  —

  Heidi sits on the tile floor in her bathroom, staring at the thermometer-like device in her hands. Pregnant, it reads. 1–2 weeks.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers, staring at the two other discarded pregnancy kits on the floor, both of which have revealed the same thing: She’s going to have a baby.

  But while a baby might be what she’s always wanted, she knows Aiden is ambivalent about fatherhood, his own father having deserted the family when he was a child. There’s also his PTSD to consider. So, if she’s being practical, this is probably not the best time to be adding to their family.

  Then there’s Lisa.

  She has no doubt that Lisa will be apoplectic when she finds out. When Heidi first mentioned her dream of starting a family, Lisa had pretty much demanded they postpone any such talk for at least a few years. “Babies are expensive. You can’t afford one,” she’d said. “Besides, you need to give yourselves some time alone together. To make sure your marriage is on solid ground. For Aiden’s nightmares to fade,” she’d continued, unprompted, couching her directive in a veneer of concern for their welfare.

  “You’re the nightmare,” Heidi says to the image of Lisa in her mind’s eye. She pushes herself to her feet. “I’m having this baby, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  We’ll see about that, she hears Lisa say, as downstairs, the front door opens and closes.

  “Babe?” Aiden calls out. “You home?”

  “Be right down.” Heidi gathers up the pregnancy kits and tosses them into the wastepaper basket, then heads down the stairs, deciding to tell Aiden the news straightaway. They can figure out together the best way to tell his mother.

  He’s watching her from the bottom of the stairs. “Hi, you,” he says as she reaches his side.

  “Hi, you,” she says in return, standing on her tiptoes to plant a tender kiss on his lips. “How’d it go with the therapist?”

  He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.” He walks into the living room and plops down on the sofa.

  Heidi sits down beside him. “I have some pretty exciting news.”

  “You got a raise?”

  “No. It has nothing to do with work.”

  “Then, what?”

  “You know how I haven’t been feeling so hot the last couple of days…?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I got myself all worked up this afternoon, convinced myself I had cancer…”

  “Cancer?”

  “I don’t.”

  He laughs nervously. “Well, thank God for that.”

  “And Shawna said…” She stops, sniffing at the air. “What’s that smell?”

  “We picked up some KFC on the way home. It’s in the kitchen.”

  Heidi’s stomach turns over at the thought of a bucket of greasy fried chicken and then turns over again when she realizes exactly what Aiden just said. “ ‘We’?”

  “My mother.”

  “She’s here?”

  “In the bathroom, washing her hands. She picked me up at the therapist’s, said she was really in the mood for some Southern fried chicken, so…”

  “She’s staying for dinner?”

  “Is that a problem?” Lisa asks from the hall. She’s dressed in white capris and a clinging navy jersey. Her makeup is impeccable and matching red polish adorns her fingers and toes.

  “No, of course not,” Heidi says, trying to remember the last time she could afford a mani-pedi. “I just didn’t realize…”

  “Are you all right? You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

  “Heidi hasn’t been feeling great,” Aiden begins, chuckling. “She thought she had cancer.”

  “Oh my God,” says Lisa.

  “I don’t,” Heidi assures her quickly.

  “No, of course you don’t,” Lisa says. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Aiden says. “No, she isn’t…. Heidi?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you. My exciting news. I just took a test. Three of them, actually. They were all positive. It’s still very early. Just one or two weeks.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” Lisa says. “We have lots of time to make arrangements. I’ll call my gynecologist in the morning, find out who to contact, whether a hospital or clinic would be best….”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What do you think I’m talking about?”

  “I’m having this baby.” Heidi turns toward Aiden, willing him to say something. But he remains silent.

  In the next instant, Heidi is racing for the front door. A second after that, she’s doubled over, emptying the meager contents of her stomach on the front lawn.

  “Oh my God! Heidi?” she hears a woman say, as footsteps approach and solicitous arms surround her. “Are you all right?”

  Heidi looks up to see the kind face of Maggie McKay. “I’m pregnant,” she hears herself say.

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful!” Maggie exclaims. “Congratulations. That’s terrific.” She gives Heidi a gentle hug. “Except for the throwing-up part, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Heidi says through tears of gratitude. “I really needed that.”

  “Heidi?” Lisa calls from the doorway. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I should go back inside.”

  “Congratulations,” Maggie calls to Lisa. “You’re going to be a grandmother. How exciting is that?!”

  Lisa manages a tight smile. “Stupid girl,” she whispers as Heidi brushes past her into the house.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Well, she certainly looked less than thrilled with the news, Maggie thinks, as Lisa closes the front door. Wonder what the story is there?

  None of your business, she hears Craig admonish.

  “Screw you,” she mutters, looking toward Hood Road for his car. There are a couple of things she wants to talk to her husband about, and she’d come outside hoping for a few minutes alone with him before he took the kids out for their weekly Wednesday night dinner. She checks her watch. She’d also been hoping to make an exercise class at a nearby gym at seven, and it’s already closing in on six-thirty.

  But instead of Craig’s car, she sees the Grants’ front door open and Olivia step outside. “Hey,” Olivia calls, crossing the street to the Youngs’ front lawn. “What was that all about?”

  “Not sure,” Maggie says truthfully. It’s up to Heidi to decide if and when to share the news of her pregnancy. “So, how’s it going?”

  “Good. Great, actually. Sean started his new job Monday and he really seems to be enjoying it.”

  “I’m sure that’s a big relief.”

  “Yeah. No more credit cards being declined. Thanks again for coming to my rescue.”

  “Please. Don’t mention it.”

  “Mom!” Erin calls from their front door. “Do you have my phone?”

  “Why would I have your phone?” Maggie calls back. “Why would I have her phone?” she repeats to Olivia.

  “I can’t find it,” Erin whines. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Look again.”

  Even from two houses away, Maggie can see Erin’s eyes roll toward the sky. “I’m not leaving here without it.”

  “Then I better get moving,�
� Maggie says. She can’t afford to waste time searching for Erin’s phone after Craig arrives, not if she wants to make that seven o’clock class.

  “See you Saturday,” Olivia says.

  Maggie takes another glance down Hood Road before heading back to her house at the rounded end of the cul-de-sac. “Where did you see your phone last?” she asks as she steps inside the front hall.

  “She found it,” Leo says, walking toward her from the kitchen.

  “You found it?”

  Erin’s response is a barely perceptible nod as she walks past her mother into the living room and flounces down on the sofa.

  “Where was it?” Maggie asks, following after her.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It was in her jacket pocket,” Leo says, joining them. “When is Dad getting here?”

  Maggie fights the urge to check her watch again. “Soon, I hope.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “He’s late,” Erin says, as if Craig’s tardiness is somehow her mother’s fault.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here any second. Traffic’s probably bad.” Maggie gives in and glances at her watch.

  “You’re getting awfully chummy with the neighbors,” Erin remarks. “What were you talking to Mrs. Grant about?”

  “Not much.”

  “Her husband’s creepy, always spying on everyone.”

  “Well, he won’t be doing that so much now that he’s got a new job.”

  “He got a job?”

  “Started Monday.”

  “That’s quite the job,” Erin says, scrolling through her messages. “Is he some kind of sand tester or something?”

  “Sand tester? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact I saw him sunning himself on the beach Monday afternoon.”

  “No. It must have been somebody else.”

  “It was him. You can ask Mark.”

  “Why would I ask Mark?”

  “Because he saw him, too.”

  “You were at the beach with Mark?” Maggie watches the color drain from her daughter’s face. “You told me you went with a bunch of kids from school.”

  “Shit,” Erin mutters.

  “Erin…”