“Gary,” Mitch called, and waved a hand when we both turned. “We’re up.”
“Be right there,” Gary said, then turned back to me. “You going to the Duck afterward?”
“There’s a good chance of that, yes.”
He tucked the note into his pocket and gave me another of those smiles. “See you there then. I’ll talk to Mitch about this. You talk to Brenda.”
“Will do,” I said, watching him jog back to the baseball field and wishing he were anyone’s brother but Brenda’s.
She sat down next to me. “Stay away from him,” she whispered, as though reading my mind.
“I’m just looking.” Gary took his spot on the bench next to Mitch. Raised a hand and waved to me. I waved back and tried not to think about brown eyes, or full lips, or a wiry naked body moving over me—
“I mean it,” Brenda said, taking her cell phone out of her purse and punching in a number. “He is off limits.” She rose and spoke into the phone. “Hi Marty. It’s Brenda.”
Marty West was the owner of the Duck. He rarely came into the pub, leaving Brenda in charge on a day-to-day basis, but his was the number they called in case of emergency.
“I can’t come in tonight,” she said. “You’ll have to call Stevie.” She shook her head. “Don’t give me a hard time on this, Marty.” She walked away from the blanket and I couldn’t hear what was being said anymore. But I could see her spine stiffening and her hand clenching at her side.
“Then screw you, Marty!” she finally yelled. “I quit.”
She closed the phone and came back to the blanket, sank down on her knees, and stared at the cooler a moment. Then she started picking up plates, napkins, empty drink boxes. Her movements brisk and efficient, almost masking the shaking of her hands.
I screwed the lid on the pickle jar and crawled with it over to the cooler. “Brenda, I know how hard this must be, and it’s really none of my business—”
She snatched the jar out of my hand. “You’re right, so drop it.”
“It’s just that Gary told me what’s going on and—”
“And he should have kept his mouth shut.”
She kept her head down, her lips pinched tightly together while she wrapped the sandwiches, snapped the lid on the brownies. Proving she was tough and strong—and breathing deeply enough to keep the tears from giving her away.
“Brenda, you need a plan—”
She raised her head and glared at me. “I suppose you have a plan. And I should take advice from a drunk who hides in the trees because she can’t talk to her own mother?” She picked up the last Tupperware container, dropped it into the cooler. “You need to leave. I have to see to the boys.”
“Mitch is never going to see that money,” I said softly.
Her hands stilled, her eyes met mine. “Leave me alone.”
“You have to talk to your lawyer.”
She got to her feet. Kept her voice low, her tone level. “And you have to drop it.”
I rose and picked up my backpack. “Fine. Just promise me—”
She shoved me hard enough to get the attention of the families around us. “Are you fucking deaf? I said drop it.”
I felt the eyes of her neighbors taking my measure, assessing her risk. I swung the backpack over my shoulder. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along. “Take care of yourself, Brenda.”
She said nothing, just glared at me, lip curled, fists clenched at her sides. All she wanted right now was to smack me a couple of good ones. Pow. That’s for Hal. Pow. That’s for my husband. Pow, pow, pow. And that’s for the asshole lawyer who should have come up with a plan before the fucking drunk.
Instead she snatched up the garbage bag, tied the top, and walked away, leaving me alone, a visitor no longer welcome at her party. What else had I expected? Brenda wasn’t a sorry, sloppy drunk with no one else to talk to. Her family was close, her circle of friends probably still intact, and she didn’t need the likes of me for advice.
The beat of Ruby’s drum was suddenly all around me, steady and low, like a heartbeat. Walking back toward the trees, doing my best to avoid the stares from the sidelines, I glanced over at the diamond. Gary was up to bat. I couldn’t resist pausing a moment, watching the windup, the pitch, and every player on the bench leaping to their feet when he drove that ball right out of the park. “Off limits,” I whispered. “Way off.”
He started running the bases and I started walking again, heading for my hideout in the trees. I was sober enough to feel a little foolish taking those first few steps off the path, but the drum drew me on and I promised myself I would only stay a couple of minutes. Just long enough to shake off this shit mood and get ready for a night at the all new Brenda-free Duck. Yes indeed, good times were on the way.
By the time I was in position, act II was already in progress: Ruby marching, Mark following, and everyone chanting something about birds again. The only difference was Ruby’s hot-pink baseball cap. How about that? Back for less than a minute, and I was already smiling, wondering when she’d forgotten how much she hated those things.
I parted the leaves for a better view but must have made more movement than I intended because suddenly Mary Anne turned and looked straight into my eyes. She raised a hand and pointed. I shook my head. “No, no, please.” But Mary Anne was indeed faithful and Ruby was her friend.
“Ruby!” she called. And again, louder. “Ruby!”
Mark looked over. Dropped his sign and started toward me, coming through the taxis and limos while Ruby kept beating that drum and marching. I gripped my pack and backed away from the hiding spot, reaching the path as a car screeched to a stop and Ruby’s drum fell silent.
“Mark!” she screamed.
My whole body went hot and then cold. I couldn’t feel my legs, but I didn’t need them. My feet were taking me around the trees all on their own. I saw people running, Mary Anne fretting, and Ruby leaning over Mark, who lay on the ground in front of a taxi.
“Call 911! Call 911!” someone hollered, and suddenly baseball players and little kids were all around me.
“Don’t bother,” Mark said. “I’m fine,” He put a hand on the grill of the taxi and tried to pull himself up. “Just a little winded is all.” He made it to his knees and paused. Looked around. Spotted me. “Liz. Stay there.”
Not a chance.
Telling myself he was okay, I turned and pushed my way through the crowd. Sprinted along the path toward the bathrooms. I had a good fifty-foot head start when Ruby hollered. “Liz, please. Just talk to me.”
Maybe it was the way she said please or maybe it was just too much trouble to keep running. Either way, I stopped and turned around. Watched my mother walk toward me for the first time in more than two years.
She was flushed and sweating as I must have been, and we both made a discreet ladylike dab at the line of sweat on our upper lips at exactly the same moment. Funny, the habits you pick up from your mother and cannot shake for the life of you. I did not, however, tip my head to the right and fold my arms over my chest once she was standing in front of me. That pose was all Ruby’s.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Nice to see you too, Mom.”
“Liz, I’m sorry. But I haven’t seen you in a while, and you’re so pale and thin …” She lowered her arms on a sigh. “It was a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
Couldn’t be any worse than the view from this end. She looked good from a distance, but up close her skin was dry and there seemed to be too much of it for her face. The tiny lines around her eyes had deepened into a full-blown web that was starting to reach down as well as out. My mother was getting old—just not old enough for Alzheimer’s.
“Were you equally shocked when you saw me outside Fran’s the other day?” I asked.
She had the grace to look away. “I only had a glimpse of you. And then you were gone.” Her eyes flicked back to mine. “I ordered you a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“And
apple pie. Yes, I saw.”
“But you didn’t come in.”
“And you didn’t come out.”
She took a few steps away. Turned and came back. Pacing as she always did when she was trying to think, to pull her story together. I could only imagine what great shape she’d be in soon, now that she had Alzheimer’s.
“I wanted you to make the next move,” she said. “Prove that you’re as interested in getting past this nonsense as I am.”
This nonsense? Is that what she was calling it now? Like everything had been a silly misunderstanding. Another tale of the Donaldsons to be trotted out whenever one of us had too much to drink. Remember the time Mom took out a restraining order against me?
She smiled. “But what happened at Fran’s or anywhere else doesn’t matter any more. The important thing is that you’re here and we’re talking.”
I wanted to hit her so badly. Make a real impression on my mother for once. But I didn’t. I merely moved in closer and closer until she either had to back up or rub noses with me. It was almost funny the way the very idea had her moving away, putting space between us again.
“Liz, you have to work with me. For Grace’s sake. You’ve spoken to Mark. You know the challenges I’m facing.”
“The Alzheimer’s, yes. Bad bit of karma there.”
“Karma has nothing to do with it.”
“They say suicide only makes things worse. You may come back as a rock on Uranus.” I didn’t know much about karma or reincarnation. I just knew it would piss Ruby off to hear it.
She glanced out at the street, the crowd still gathered for Mark. “I don’t have time to get into this with you. I need to get back to Mark and you need to come to the house. I have to make plans. Ensure that Grace is taken care of and the house is secured for the next generation.”
I leaned in close, lowered my voice to a whisper. “But what if there is no next generation, Mom? What if you, me, and Grace are the end of the line?”
She looked back at me. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you? Deny yourself the joy of a child just to spite me.”
She was trying her best to be patient, to keep the fight from starting. But the button was right there, and someone needed to push it. “You don’t have to worry too much, Mom. Grace is young. She might have another baby one day.”
“I can’t imagine she’d ever want to go through that again.”
I smiled and pushed that button a little harder. “You never know. There may be another man waiting right around the corner.”
“Let’s hope not. We’ve already seen where that leads, haven’t we?” She wrapped her arms around herself again, stared across the field at the flashing lights of an approaching ambulance. “I always knew there’d be trouble the moment men came sniffing around. What that boy did to her was tantamount to rape.”
I almost laughed. Pretty Bobby Daniels had been many things—vain, cowardly, dumb as dirt, to name a few—but sexually abusive? Hardly. Grace met him at the coffee shop on the main floor of my building shortly after she moved in with me. He was the new barista, she was new to espresso. He taught her all about lattes and the importance of milk texturing—and he always poured a teddy bear face on top of her coffee.
After a few weeks, Grace started borrowing my makeup and humming while she was getting dressed, and I knew Bobby was teaching her about more than lattes. But she was twenty-five for chrissakes. And every movement, every smile told me she was having fun. So we had “the talk” because I was sure Ruby had never told her anything about birth control, and I let her go, I let her grow up.
Bobby told her from the beginning that he was only passing through, that he was traveling cross-country to find himself. I expected Grace would cry when he left, even miss him for a while, but I wasn’t ready when she bought herself a backpack and said she was going to join him on the hunt. “You need to find yourself first,” I told her. But she only laughed and said she already knew where she was, and she wanted to be somewhere else. What could I do? Tell her I’d lied about the importance of travel and freedom? Become my mother and hold her back? Of course not. So I gave her my telephone card and made her promise to call me—and Ruby—every Sunday to let us know she was okay.
I made sure I was in a public place when I told Ruby, but that still didn’t stop her from shoving my face against a bus shelter. That was when we officially stopped talking.
She tried everything to get Grace back. Private investigator, social services, even told police she’d been kidnapped, but nothing worked. Grace was an adult in everyone’s eyes but hers, and there was nothing she could do but wait for those weekly calls.
Being Grace, she kept her word. No matter where they were—Winnipeg, Calgary, Galiano Island—my phone rang precisely at noon every Sunday. She always sounded happy. Said Bobby was taking good care of her. She was gone for seven months. Then one day, the phone rang on a Saturday. A local call. Grace trying not to cry. “I’m downstairs,” was all she said. “And I can’t find my key.”
“Bobby didn’t rape Grace,” I said evenly. “She wanted him. She loved him.”
Ruby turned her head slowly, like an owl. Looked at me like I was the slow child, the one who didn’t grasp everything the first time around. “She loved the idea of him,” she said. “Like any little girl loves the idea of Prince Charming and happily ever after. But there was no happily ever after for Grace and her baby, was there?”
“His name was William, Mom.”
She held up her hands and walked away. “I am not getting into this with you again. Everyone knew I would have gladly looked after both Grace and that little boy—”
I was right behind her. “You can’t even say his name can you.”
She rounded on me. “I would have gladly looked after William. Loved him and raised him as my own. All you had to do was let her come home.”
“She didn’t want you to raise him. All she wanted you to do was help her learn how to be a mother herself.”
“Grace was never equipped to be a mother. It still shocks me that social services allowed her to take that infant home.”
“If you’d been there, you’d know that they were happy to see her take her son home. She was a fabulous mother, completely devoted—”
“And yet she killed him.”
The breath caught in my throat. “You can’t honestly believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” Her shoulders slumped and she turned away. “He died in her care. That’s all that matters.”
“And when you found out, you weren’t sad for an instant, were you? Your own grandson and you didn’t feel a goddamn thing.”
She shook her head, hand fluttering at her throat. “You have no idea what I felt.”
“Devastated, I’m sure.” I took a step toward her, crowding her, stalking her. “But now she’s back on the Island. That should make you happy.”
She backed up a step. “I’m happy she’s safe. And you don’t know it, but she’s flourished since she’s been home. She’s working again, she bikes every day. She even has a hobby.”
I laughed and closed the space. “You are so oblivious.”
She shoved me backward, reclaiming her ground. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just know that I applaud your decision to take yourself out of the picture now that you have Alzheimer’s. And rest assured that once you’re gone, I will do everything in my power to get Grace on a ferry and off that island for good. Until then, you keep telling yourself she’s fine.”
I turned and started walking away, heading east to the Duck and a fresh start to happy hour.
Ruby followed me for a few steps. “Where are you going? Liz, come back here.” She stopped and made her final stand. “Elizabeth Lucille Donaldson, how dare you walk away when your family needs you.”
I laughed and kept going. “I learned from the best, Mom. The very best.”
GRACE
Jocelyn’s friends didn’t arrive o
n the next ferry or the one after. In fact, they didn’t come at all because some boy named Josh sent a message inviting everyone to his house. I was still spinning the wheel on that iPod, trying to get it to come on without having to ask her how, when her phone made that funny half ring that meant she had a message, not a call.
She was so mad when that message came in, she said, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Then she got on the phone with someone named Maddison and it sounded like Josh’s parents were going out and that meant a party. Not a birthday party or a dinner party, but the kind of party my mom used to warn me about. The kind with beer and boys and God knew what else, and Jocelyn wanted to be there so bad I was afraid she’d say to heck with what her dad wanted and get on that ferry anyway.
But just like she didn’t climb out the window earlier, she didn’t get on the ferry then either. She just yelled and said the f-word a lot and told this Maddison that she hated her dad, but I didn’t think that was true. I’ve seen what hate looks like, and that wasn’t it.
“We can still go to the Carousel,” I said when she hung up.
“With you?” She curled her lip. “Nice try,” she said, and started walking back to her house.
“You forgot your bike,” I called, but she gave me the finger and kept going. So I put the iPod in my pocket, picked up both bikes and followed. It wasn’t easy walking two bikes at once, but if I went nice and slow and made sure they didn’t get too far apart, I could manage. The hard part was getting them up over the Algonquin bridge and then keeping them from running away on the other side. That was a killer.
When I reached her gate, I pushed the bikes through one by one, and left them next to the front porch stairs. Jocelyn was already inside, sitting on the couch, eating bread and peanut butter. I took the lasagne out of the freezer anyway and turned on the oven. “It’s good you’re having something now,” I said. “Because this will take a while.”
“Like I give a shit.” She pointed the remote at the television. I couldn’t see the screen, but I could hear the theme from CSI: Miami, which changed to the song from The Simpsons. She kept clicking the remote while she punched numbers into her cell phone again. A commercial for cheese with chanting monks was quickly interrupted by a trailer for a new Angelina Jolie movie. “It’s me,” she said to whoever answered.
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