by Sonja Yoerg
“Don’t get up. I’ll be right there,” she called to Geneva, loudly enough for everyone in the house to hear.
• • •
After Eustace had gone to sleep, she stared at the ceiling as if it was a movie screen that was about to show her what to make of her husband and her eldest daughter. Or Eustace and her, because in her mind there most certainly was a connection. When was it she had gone from being grateful that he’d taken an interest in one of the children to feeling it had maybe gone too far? She couldn’t put her finger on it, not even near it, because all that time she’d been too busy thinking about how nice it was to have one out from underfoot. And who could blame her? Four children was a handful and a half.
Lying there, she made a conscious decision not to take it personal. Pure foolishness, it was, to on the one hand be happy to have Eustace’s attention settle elsewhere, and on the other be jealous of it. And it was only attention. He was a big man who liked the light shining all over him. Helen didn’t think she could muster up the energy for that job anymore, even with a gun to her head. Heck, she couldn’t even remember being young enough to entertain the notion. If Paris was content to stoke that man’s pride, then Helen should step out of the way. Jealous feelings would do none of them a lick of good. She’d be forced to do away with those concerning Eustace. It only required practice.
Helen thought it natural a woman would come to look upon her own daughter with envy. She’d seen it clear enough in the face of her own mama when she came to visit, and probably she’d have seen it earlier—before Eustace—if she’d known to look for it. How could a woman not look at a girl, fresh as a rosebud, hair shining, eyes bright, her breasts perched high on her chest, and not think of herself as coming up a bit short? And when the daughter’s looks were a pure gift from her mother, as Paris’s were, that made it all the worse. At times Helen imagined her youth and beauty pulled out of her and soaked up by Paris. If she was a sweet girl, or deferential to her mother, Helen might have swallowed it better. But Paris took her looks as her right, and Helen couldn’t help but be niggled, just a bit.
It was the course of nature, and the way of life. Even a woman like Helen could see that, at the ripe old age of thirty-three.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GENEVA
On the Monday after Geneva’s confrontation with her mother, she drove into Mill Valley to meet Drea for lunch. She bought a salad at the café counter, found her friend at a table by the window, and apologized for being late.
“Forget about it. It’s my day off.” Drea smiled broadly. “I could sit here all day.”
The café bordered a park. Dappled light played across the cheerfully painted wooden tables. Geneva wondered if she or Drea had ever whiled away an entire day in a café.
“But you won’t. Knowing you, you’ve got a list of errands as long as your arm.”
“Longer. But a girl can dream.”
They started on their lunches. Drea filled her in on shelter news, and said she had placed the retriever Geneva had evaluated with a childless couple with a large backyard.
“I love happy endings,” Geneva said.
“Hey, what happened with your sister-in-law’s Dobie?”
Geneva put down her fork. “Not a happy ending. Juliana asked me not to file a report. What was I supposed to do? Plus, the doctor filed one.”
“She shouldn’t have put you on the spot.”
“Oh, she did better than that. It was my fault because I opened the garage door.”
“Yeah, that was irresponsible of you.”
“Wasn’t it? And if she and Jon break up, I may lose my honorary status as a Novak.”
“I’m guessing the dog had to be put down.”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Where’s Tom in all of this?”
“Officially neutral. But he witnessed the whole thing, and was bitten, too, so as much as he would have liked to sweep the snarling Doberman under the rug, he couldn’t. But I was hoping for more than neutrality.”
“Poor you.”
Geneva nodded, grateful for her friend’s acknowledgment. What a relief not to have to explain she was trying to behave with integrity. She’d been doing a lot of explaining lately. Her chest tightened with emotion.
“You okay?”
“Yes. There’s just a lot going on.” She told her about Ella drinking the vodka-laced iced tea, and about her ambivalence around allowing her mother to continue to stay with her.
Drea listened, then said, “Neither of your options sound very good. You’d feel guilty if you dumped her. But it’s not as if your mother meant harm, and you’ve put her on notice. How much longer does she need?”
“I don’t know. Three weeks, maybe longer. She wasn’t strong to begin with, which doesn’t help.”
“She’s already been here three weeks, hasn’t she?”
“Four.”
“So you’re probably more than halfway.”
“You’re right.” Geneva picked at her salad, then stared out the window.
Drea put her hand on Geneva’s arm. “What else is going on?”
Geneva turned to face her. “When Josh got suspended, did you and Bill really have no clue? Not the slightest hunch?”
“Yeah, we had a hunch, but doesn’t every parent? I mean, you hear stories all the time about kids doing dumb things and their parents being completely in the dark. How can every parent not think it could happen to them?”
“But nothing specific.”
“No. We thought he was squeaky clean. Thank God it was only a little weed.”
“And he’s okay now?”
Drea laughed. “According to the clueless parent, yes. He’s earned back some privileges, so we’ll see.” She paused. “You got a hunch?”
Geneva nodded.
“Charlie?”
“Yes. Well, maybe both.”
“Both?”
“I’m probably wrong, and it’s probably because of my mother. I’m seeing conniving addicts everywhere.”
“Maybe. And maybe you’re a teensy bit stressed.”
“You think?”
They both laughed.
“Then again,” Drea said, “a hunch is more than we had.”
• • •
On her way back to the clinic, Geneva stopped at Ella’s favorite bakery and picked up an assortment of cookies and muffins. Ella deserved some recognition of what she’d been put through. Geneva planned to talk with her that evening about Helen’s role in making her ill. Yesterday she had asked her mother to be part of the discussion—the first words she spoke to her after their argument—but Helen refused, just as she refused to admit anything of consequence had happened.
She was carrying the bakery box to the car when Dublin called.
“Hey! Guess what.”
“What?”
“No, really. Guess.”
“No hints?”
“Nope.”
From his tone, this was more than a typical Dublin joke. He had news. But Geneva, buoyed from seeing her friend, played along. “Mom got drunk and crashed her car.”
“You’re almost as funny as I am. Guess again. Think improbable.”
“You won the lottery and will pay for a nurse so Mom can go home.”
“Nope. Something that hasn’t happened in ten years.”
Geneva got behind the wheel and glanced at the dashboard clock. “As much fun as this is, I’ve got to go to work.”
“Okay, okay. You’re such a good sport, you get a hint. Say it’s June, which it is, and you want to go to Europe’s most famous city, but instead it comes to you. Or, rather, me.”
She was sliding the key into the ignition and froze. “Dub, you’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. She’s in town for some aid conference. Called me an hour ago and said she’
s got time midday tomorrow.”
“How did she sound?”
“Remote. Awkward. You know, the same.”
The same. A decade had passed and Paris hadn’t changed. Neither had she changed during whatever interval had passed between visits before then. Five years? But in that moment, Geneva realized that while Paris may not have changed, she had. She was no longer content to be the baby sister who watched everything and understood nothing.
Her brother was still talking. “I’m taking the kids out of school. They’ve never met her. They think I’ve made her up.”
“That’s understandable. Sometimes I don’t think she’s real. And you do have a casual relationship with the truth.”
“I prefer to think of it as a fertile imagination. But if I was making up a sister, I’d pick a more interesting name. Aunt Helsinki. Aunt Budapest. Aunt . . .”
“I’m coming to see her.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Is she staying with you?”
“No way. A hotel and a couple of hours of family time, tops.”
“I’ll only be there for the day.”
“Pity! You know how I love sleepovers.”
“I’ll email you the details.”
“It’ll be a party.”
• • •
It was only a short drive from the bakery to the clinic, but in that time Geneva made two decisions. First, she was not going to tell Tom she was flying to L.A. tomorrow to see Paris. Although reluctant to keep secrets from him, she felt distanced recently. His fence-sitting concerning the behavior of both Juliana and Helen smacked of disloyalty to her. Not taking sides was his default stance, but she was nevertheless hurt. And the last thing she wanted was to defend her motives for the trip to him—or to anyone. She wasn’t certain of her motives herself, but knew she had to go. She’d be there and back before anyone missed her.
The second decision was to ask Paris the hard questions and not let her off the hook. Geneva hadn’t seen her sister in ten years. Who knew how long it would be until she saw her again? Ten years ago, Helen was still in South Carolina, and Geneva was buffered by distance from her mother’s behavior. Most of the drunken phone calls went to Florence and Dublin, and all Geneva had been required to do was show up periodically at holidays and limit the damage. But now Helen was too close. And although her siblings seemed to accept Paris’s decision to opt out, Geneva did not. She wasn’t willing to give up a sister—even one she barely knew—without a reasonable explanation any more than she would accept that her mother’s drinking was without cause. She had gone out on a limb to do the right thing by her mother and, in return, she hoped to get some straight answers.
• • •
Geneva thought her talk with her daughter went well. She’d kept it short, not wanting it to devolve into a lecture, and tried not to be overly critical of her mother. Ella didn’t say much, but she seemed to be listening. The pastries were a hit.
After dinner, while Tom finished up some work in the barn, Geneva retrieved the old photo album and leafed through it while sitting on her bed. She compared features, expressions and postures at various ages, and tried to reconstruct how she and her siblings had related to one another. Florence told her Paris had always been different. Geneva had her memories of Paris as aloof and detached, but did not trust them. She knew that people often remembered what they wanted to believe, and she’d had little chance to gather new data over the last three decades. The photos were hard evidence, if she could study them dispassionately.
She understood genetic recombination, and knew siblings could get any mixture of traits from their parents. She could see, for instance, that she was a version of Florence, with a lighter build, wider eyes, and a more reflective, less competitive nature. She and Dublin were also versions of each other, but mirror reflections, opposites that nevertheless betrayed a common origin. Dublin and Florence also shared features, and their smiles were identical. As Geneva studied the photos more closely, the familiar backdrops of backyards, swimming pools, and holiday tables receded, leaving only disembodied figures. Paris was obviously the only blond, the only petite one, but other than that, she looked like one of four siblings. Her eyes, though blue, were the same shape as Geneva’s, and the look of surprise captured in one grade-school photo was pure Dublin. Photos didn’t lie. In group photographs, Paris stood, perhaps, a little farther away from her siblings. Then again, Geneva herself could also be singled out for directing her gaze at the others, rather than at the camera. A stranger shown this album and asked, “Who’s different?” would not, she wagered, have necessarily selected Paris. Only the last several photos, particularly the one of Florence and Paris sitting on Paris’s bed, would have drawn comment, due to the contrast in their poses, and Paris’s solemn, almost regal, poise.
“What’s so captivating?”
Startled, Geneva fumbled the album in her lap and raised her head. Her mother stood at the end of the bed.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
Helen stared at the open album. “Walking down memory lane?”
“I suppose.” Geneva thought of her trip the next day. “How many years has it been since you’ve seen Paris?”
Her mother didn’t hesitate. “Just gone twenty-seven years.”
“And you don’t want to see her?”
“I never said that. It’s her that wants nothing to do with me. Although by now I’ve laid it to rest.”
She examined her mother’s face to see if this could possibly be true. Her blue eyes gave nothing away. “Mom, what if you stopped drinking, if you tried a program? Do you think Paris would be more amenable to mending bridges then?”
Helen laughed. “It’s you that would please, not Paris.”
“But the reason Paris won’t see you . . .”
“Isn’t drinking.”
“But if she thought you were making changes . . .”
“She wouldn’t care.” Helen sighed as if she hated air. “Honestly, I can’t blame her.”
The room darkened around the edges. Geneva’s head felt light. She rested a hand on the bed to steady herself.
“Mom,” she said, her voice a whisper. “What did you do?”
Helen looked straight through her. “Not enough and too much, all at the same time.”
She swung the walker around a quarter turn, then another, and left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ELLA
When Ella saw the pink box from Brioche, she knew her mom was prepping her for A Talk. She came through big-time. Turns out she’s the only teenager in history to get drunk for the first time this way: accidentally, on the morning of the SAT, and at the hands of her grandmother. Her mom was all apologetic and told her it was okay to be angry with Nana, which she guessed she was. But it’s not like everyone didn’t know Nana was an alcoholic. Did they all think she’d just lie there and detox quietly? That obviously wasn’t her style.
Her mom said Nana brought the vodka home from Grandpa Novak’s party, but Ella knew damn well she didn’t. She thought about telling her mom about what she almost knew for certain about the Prince—that he was Nana’s connection—but decided against it. First, her evidence was all—what was that Law & Order word?—circumstantial. Her mom wasn’t going to believe the Prince was up to no good without cold, hard facts. Second, from what she could see, one more piece of bad news and her mom was going to need to be fitted for a straitjacket. Nana should be spiking her drinks to chill her out a little. So because the mother-daughter heart-to-heart seemed to be making her happy, Ella left it alone. It was all ammo for another day, when the hammer would finally come down on the Prince. Or not. He’d gotten away with a lot so far.
While her mom talked, Ella stayed quiet. Because if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, right? Even though Nana was the alcoholic and the one who messed up her SATs, it was h
er mom who invited her to their house in the first place. So, if her mom asked, which she didn’t, Ella would say it was her mom who messed up. Just saying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HELEN
Helen knew something was wrong as soon as she picked up her handbag. It was too light. She’d gone to get one of the pills she’d stashed in there, after getting—temporarily, she hoped—cut off from her vodka supply. Saturday Ella had drunk her iced tea, and Sunday Helen finished off the emergency vodka she hid in the closet inside Charlie’s rain boot. She did feel sorry about the girl getting sick and missing her test, although she considered it the unfortunate consequence of making an elderly woman who ought to be treated with respect sneak around like a low-life junkie. Here it was Monday and she was left with pills.
She hobbled over to her nightstand for some water to get the pill down with. Maybe once the medicine took hold she could think straight and remember where she’d put the confounded gun. She could see it now—triangular hard case, pale blue. For the life of her, she couldn’t recall ever taking it out of her bag. But she must have done it, because it wasn’t there.
She prided herself in being careful with the weapon. All her life, she’d been around guns. She knew what to do and what not to do, not that her daddy had been a paragon of safety. Helen bought the predecessor to the missing gun shortly after Geneva went to college and left her alone in that big house. But it wasn’t the house that got to her; it was the nightmares. How she thought a gun could protect her from the inside of her own head, she didn’t know, but the gun did provide a measure of comfort. In case the dreams turned real, she supposed. Before she moved to California, she’d treated herself to a new one, with a blue pearled handle and matching case. She cleaned it from time to time, but otherwise it stayed in her bedside drawer—until she was dragged up here. Good thing she managed to sneak it into her purse while Geneva was getting the suitcase from under the bed. And it stayed a good thing right up until it went missing.
A gun was a darn sight more dangerous than an iced tea and vodka, but what could Helen do? Say to Geneva, “Have you seen my gun anywhere? It’s light blue and loaded”? Maybe in L.A. she’d have some sympathy, but not up here with the granola people. The way she saw it, a gun in your purse was no different from a pack of tissues. You don’t often need one, but if you do, it comes in handy. Helen imagined Geneva and the rest of them would just as soon carry a rattlesnake around. No, it was a nuisance she’d misplaced the gun, but she’d have to figure out where it wandered off to herself. She’d probably taken it out when she’d had a drink or two, just to feel the cool of the metal in her hand. Then she’d hidden it somewhere better than her purse. The only question was where that might be.
