by Freya North
For Ben and Matt and Zac it was quite simple, really. Men for the most part are blessed with the ultimate take on the situation. Say less. It’s not Neanderthal, it’s genius. A variant on the theory that it takes a multitude of muscles to frown, but only three to smile. It was far easier to be nice than to be at loggerheads, it was far nicer to just feel love than argue about the vagaries of it. Love wasn’t a matter of equality after all, but of equilibrium.
However, though Fen and Pip felt a welcome sense of relief at the warm waves of harmony and support, Cat’s feelings of unease and dissatisfaction were contagious and before long a gnawing realization crept in that fundamentals remained untreated, unfixed.
So, though Fen acknowledged her present disinclination to even think about Al or anyone like him was due to her overriding concern for Django, the fact that she had been indisputably courting infidelity, could not be explained by Django’s cancer. Similarly, though Pip now welcomed Zac’s embrace and found great comfort in his calm and level-headed assessment of her uncle’s illness, she knew too that joining forces on Django’s behalf cleverly waylaid them from tackling the impasse existing in their marriage. As for Cat, if she split her time on a purely practical level between being a nurse and a bookshop manager, if she focused on jazz with Django and cancer with Ben and ISBNs with head office, then she reasoned she would have no time for the needling concerns about her own sense of self.
Mothers, daughters, lovers, liars – who were they? And how might Django’s illness shape who they could become? In the clear light of each new day, questions yet to be answered came more and more to the fore. Questions to face head-on and answers not to be flinched from. They were prepared, at last, to question themselves. And at last they felt prepared to seek answers from somebody else too.
‘What will Denver be like at this time of year?’ Pip asks Cat.
‘Hot,’ Cat says and she doesn’t need to say Why? It’s of sudden comfort to her that the telepathy gifted amongst sisters obviously extends to half sisters too. She’s always had it with Fen and Pip. The more recent discovery of specific DNA wasn’t going to alter it. ‘Lovely,’ she says, ‘but hot.’
Fen looks from left hand to right, from Cat to Pip, and lets her gaze rest on her daughter who is grabbing at Pip’s rug in a bid to get onto her knees. ‘I’ve never left my baby for more than a few hours,’ Fen says quietly, attuned to their thinking.
‘Could you leave her for a few days?’ Pip asks tentatively, burning a knowing look at her sister.
Fen locks eyes with her. She shrugs. She nods. She shrugs again.
Pip turns to Cat. ‘Could the shop spare you for a few days? Do you have any holiday entitlement?’
Cat shrugs and then she nods.
‘Django will have an address,’ says Pip. ‘Who’s going to call him?’
‘You are,’ say Fen and Cat together.
Django isn’t surprised by the request. But he won’t tell them he is relieved until they’re back home again. ‘OK. Hold on. It’s in my address book. Where’s my address book?’ The telephone receiver is clattered down as he rummages around for some time. Pip raises her eyebrows to her sisters who listen in and smile. ‘Here’s my address book,’ they can hear him say in the background because he’s momentarily forgotten to retrieve his receiver. He picks it up. ‘Hullo? Hullo? Are you still there? Ericsson. Here we are. Mrs P. Ericsson. 84 Emerson Street. Lester Falls.’
‘Thanks,’ says Pip, about to change the subject, as if the intended trip is no big deal.
‘Vermont,’ Django adds, ‘VT 05154.’
Pip’s pen hovers, frozen. Fen mouths, What? What! ‘Pardon?’ Pip says.
‘It’s a zip code. VT 05154.’
‘I know it’s a zip code,’ says Pip, ‘but what’s it doing in Vermont?’ Cat and Fen now crowd around the telephone, which irritates her. She’s trying to concentrate and figure it out. She brushes them away as if they’re children.
‘Because your mother lives in Vermont,’ they all hear Django clearly say, however, ‘she never moved.’
‘You said Denver,’ Pip objects and Cat backs away now, feeling deflated at possibly more twists to the tale.
‘I did not,’ Django is saying carefully. ‘Your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small. But you’ve never asked where they lived. And they lived in Vermont. Never moved.’
LESTER FALLS
They didn’t expect rain. Nor did they anticipate Lester Falls to be so plain. Pip knew better than to expect the maple trees to be ablaze with fiery foliage in June, but she had hoped for pretty weather-boarded houses, Adirondack chairs on porches, the odd covered bridge or white wooden church; it was thus difficult not to feel hard done by with this incessant drizzle in a rather nondescript town. Especially after an arduous three-hour drive from Boston. For Fen, picture-postcard perfect scenery had been an imperative notion when it had come to packing her suitcase and leaving her eleven-month-old baby; her ache for Cosima was now manifest in the gut-hollow, throat-ripped perpetual threat of tears. Cat found herself resenting her sisters for organizing the trip in the first place and she lagged behind, sulking to herself darkly that it must be easier for them than for her. With Fen close to tears and Cat glowering to herself, it was down to Pip to jostle maps and leaflets and figure out what they should do and where they might stay. Privately, she cursed her mother for not living somewhere more picturesque and she cursed her sisters for standing around gormlessly leaving everything to her. She remembered the quote on the mug Fen had bought her last Christmas which said that an older sister helps one remain half child, half woman; just then, Pip wished her younger sisters would opt for the grown-up identity.
‘We should have stayed in Boston,’ Cat said sulkily. ‘A little retail therapy would probably be far more curative than some misguided fact-finding mission with some woman we don’t even know.’
‘We shouldn’t have come in the first place,’ Fen muttered, staring at outdated fashions fastidiously displayed in a shop window. ‘What do we hope to achieve anyway? We don’t even know what we want to say. We’d have been better off spending time in Derbyshire with Django.’
‘For God’s sake you two!’ Pip snapped. ‘We’re jet lagged and we’re nervous. But we’re here. So let’s find somewhere to stay – and something to eat. It’s lunch-time.’ She stomped off with Cat and Fen mooching behind her.
There’s little a great cup of coffee can’t soothe. Especially when served by a friendly soul in the comfortable surroundings of a genuine diner. Combined with a sturdy plateful of eggs and grits to raise blood sugar levels and stave off tiredness, Cat and Fen felt revived and able to assess their surroundings and consider their options with Pip.
‘We don’t know where exactly she lives,’ Cat said, squinting at the map.
‘Or if she’s even here,’ said Fen.
‘Please God let her be out of town,’ Cat said. ‘Then we can justify a weekend’s shopping in Boston.’
‘If she isn’t here, I might just fly back home, actually,’ said Fen, brightening at the possibility.
‘I’ll ask the waitress if she knows where Emerson Street is,’ Pip said.
‘Don’t mention her name!’ Cat rushed.
The waitress, who had ‘Betty’ embroidered on a pristine pale blue gingham uniform, was sorry to be unable to help, but she asked the short-order chef who scribbled down directions on a paper napkin.
‘Is it walkable?’ Pip asked.
‘Joe – lady here wants to know if it’s walkable?’
Joe came right out of the kitchen, appeared to evaluate the age and fitness of the girls and nodded. ‘I reckon. About a half-hour. Who you looking for?’
The girls paused.
‘Oh, no one, really,’ Cat said.
‘You guys on vacation?’ Joe asked. ‘In Lester?’
‘Just passing through,’ Pip said lightly. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend lives on Emerson Street – we thought we’d look her up.’
‘Who’s that?’ Joe asked.
‘Um. A Mrs Ericsson?’
Joe thought hard. ‘Nope. Can’t say I know her. You know her, Betty?’
‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking – but no, don’t think I do. Say, are you from England?’ the waitress asked with breathless awe.
‘Yes,’ the girls told her.
‘That is just so nice,’ Betty enthused. ‘I could listen to you speak all day long.’
Automatically, the girls found they rounded their vowels and used choice adjectives, much to her delight. After more coffee and flattery, Lester Falls seemed less dull and their hostility lessened too.
‘Well, thank you so much,’ said Pip, ‘that was simply super.’
‘Indeed!’ said Cat. ‘Splendid coffee.’
‘Have a nice day!’ Betty said.
‘Cheerio,’ said Cat.
They strolled along Main Street. The rain had stopped, revealing the town to be less dreary than first impressions suggested. The shops were old-fashioned but quirky, the façades comfortingly indicative of small-town America, as portrayed in so many of the films the sisters had seen. A promising landscape was now impressively visible beyond the town. The mountains so thickly forested that they appeared to be clothed in thick green bouclé sweaters.
‘We’re in the lie of the Green Mountains here,’ Pip looked up from the guidebook. ‘Vert Mont – Vermont! Do you see?’
‘Shall we walk then?’ Fen asked tentatively. ‘Joe said it would take half an hour.’
‘But say she is in,’ Cat said. ‘We don’t even know what we’re going to say.’
‘Let’s find somewhere to stay first,’ Pip said.
Sitting tightly together on one of the beds in the family room they’d found in a decent guest house on a pretty street a short walk from the centre of town, the McCabe sisters pored over the local phone directory. They’d missed the entry initially, forgetting that Bob was most likely a diminutive of Robert, but had then found the entry for R. Ericsson. The address was the same as that which Django had provided and gave the girls a bizarre sense of triumph, as if they were veritable sleuth-hounds. Pip jotted down the telephone number. Then they stared hard at the entry again, as if utter concentration might suddenly provide fly-on-the-wall privilege, some sort of telepathy or more clues.
Pip looked at her watch. ‘Shall we mosey on up there now,’ she suggested lightly, ‘you know – just in time for tea?’
‘We have another three days, remember,’ said Cat and Fen felt herself lurching to the verge of tears at the thought of four more days until she’d actually be home. ‘We could look around the town and get our bearings.’
‘Find somewhere for supper later,’ Fen agreed.
‘This is not a holiday,’ Pip said impatiently. ‘We’re here on family business. Now come on.’ She picked up the car keys and led the way.
Pip crept the car along Emerson Street. The houses, modern but unexceptional, were set spaciously along it, fronted by steeply pitched gardens making the buildings appear more squat than they actually were. Under their breath, the sisters spoke out the house numbers, falling silent when they came upon their mother’s home. Though it fitted well with the style and scale of all the other houses they had passed, its blandness took them aback. Fen felt embarrassed that she’d actually thought along the lines of Bates Motel. She realized how, deludedly, she had been expecting something else; presumed that somehow she’d instantly recognize the house where their mother lived. Something more sinister. Something a lot less ordinary. Pip stopped the car at the bottom of the drive and they looked up.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s anyone at home,’ said Fen though she could not base this theory on fact.
‘Might as well come back later,’ Cat said, ‘or tomorrow.’
‘God almighty, you two,’ Pip sighed, ‘come on.’
They walk up the drive.
They loiter by the front door.
Then they turn on their heels and walk briskly back to the car.
Unseen from an upstairs window, Penny had watched them arrive and now she’s watching them leave. And they’ve gone. She goes downstairs and sits heavily in Bob’s chair. What could it possibly mean? It was a sight she has never envisaged, never even thought about, never hoped for, never dreaded. What on earth should she make of this? What on earth is she meant to do? What on earth do they want? Why didn’t they ring the bell? Why didn’t she open the door anyway? she asks out loud, again and again. But no one answers.
‘We could head off to Boston,’ Cat suggested, once they were back in the guest house.
‘Or we could just go home,’ Fen said. ‘Do you mind if I do that? You two hit Boston, by all means.’
‘We’ll call her,’ Pip said and Fen glanced with resentment at the phone book still lying in the centre of Pip’s bed. ‘We can’t go without trying a bit harder,’ she told her gently. ‘We’ve come this far. And spent a fortune.’
‘How about we phone the number at 9 p.m. tonight, and if there’s no answer, we pop up there again at 9 a.m. tomorrow and if she still isn’t there, we head back to Boston and Fen can make the 9 p.m. flight?’ Cat said.
‘Cat o’ nine tales,’ Pip laughed.
‘We can send her a postcard, or something,’ Fen said quietly, looking from one palm to the other.
‘Are you missing Cosima dreadfully?’ Cat asked.
Fen nodded. ‘You have no idea how much.’
‘But Matt’s mum said everything was fine when you last phoned home?’ Pip said.
Fen nodded and shrugged.
‘Weird to think that Cosima’s other grandma is just a couple of miles away,’ Cat remarked.
‘Weirder to think it’s our mother just a couple of miles away,’ said Pip and they stared at the phone book. ‘Right, I’m calling her now.’
‘What if she answers?’ Cat gasped as Pip lifted the receiver. ‘What will you say?’
‘What if it’s an answerphone?’ Fen asked. ‘Will you leave a message?’
Pip was already dialling. ‘Answering machine,’ she said, hanging up.
They stared at the phone.
‘What did it say?’ Fen asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Pip said, ‘I hung up on “Hi”.’
‘Can I listen?’ Fen asked. Pip shrugged, phoned the number and passed the receiver over to Fen who glued it against her ear and tried to detect clues from the wording of the message, the timbre of her mother’s voice. She hung up in a hurry before the beep.
‘I suppose I ought to as well,’ said Cat and Pip dialled the number again. Cat listened hard; though she’d heard the voice only once before, it sounded strangely familiar.
Hi. You’ve reached Penny Ericsson. Can’t take your call right now. Leave your message after the tone and I’ll call you as soon as I can.
‘Hullo – who is this?’
The voice rang through before the anticipated beep. Cat was so taken aback that one hand was paralysed to the receiver, the other frozen in mid-air where it had been hovering over the phone’s cradle. The voice filtered out of the receiver, tinny and faint yet filling the room.
‘Hullo?’
Fen stared at Cat wide-eyed while Pip mouthed, Say something Say something whilst holding out her hand for the receiver.
‘Hullo? Who is this?’
Cat cancelled the call.
They sat in silence, staring at the phone with trepidation, as if their mother might suddenly materialize from it, like some wicked genie.
‘She was there,’ Cat whispered, ‘she’s there right now.’ She looked at Pip. ‘Please don’t make us go back up there tonight.’ She held her hand out for her sisters to observe how it trembled. Fen took it and held it between hers. Pip sat and wondered what they should do next.
It was like a skewed take on Postman’s Knock – the resultant addled adrenalin rush caused by the near miss. Derring-do mixed with jet lag and crisp cold beer in a local bar, combined to ensure a lively evening for the
McCabe sisters. They picked at peanuts and at the labels on the beer bottles and giggled at the details of the day.
‘It’s all very Enid Blyton,’ Fen said, chinking her beer bottle against her sisters’.
‘Woody Allen, more like,’ said Cat, with a long drink.
‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn Stephen King,’ Pip laughed and she put down her bottle and laid her hands on the table as if they symbolized facts. ‘Right. We know that she’s here but she doesn’t know that we’re here. Do we phone first or just front up?’
‘I wonder if she was in all along, this afternoon,’ mused Fen, ‘spying on us stalking her.’
‘We didn’t ring the bell,’ Cat said, ‘but perhaps she traced our calls. Do they have 1471 in America?’ she wondered, hiccing softly.
‘The thing is,’ said Pip, ‘what do we want to say? What is it that we want to hear?’
Tracing the paths of the condensation on their beer bottles, tracing the pattern of the wood grain on the table, making patterns out of peanuts, they could draw no conclusion.
If Pip had been subconsciously looking for any excuse to confront her middle sister, that night it was presented to her on a plate, or rather in a beer bottle, in the guise of four studenty local boys offering to buy them a drink. It wasn’t as if the boys loitered with intent. Or made a pass. Or even flirted harmlessly. They didn’t ply them with alcohol, just the one friendly round of beers. They weren’t suggestive in their conversation; if anything they were refreshingly artless in their questions. After all, three English girls were something of a novelty and buying them a drink bought an evening’s entertainment. They asked about the Queen. They asked the girls to say ‘squirrel’ and ‘bath’ and ‘pasta’. They asked how old were the houses in which they lived. Though Fen’s smile and easy chatter was harmless enough, to Pip it seemed otherwise. With her beer goggles on, she computed simple facts into complex danger signs. She fused the tone of Fen’s laughter, the slant of her smile and the glint of her eyes, into the image of a trollop warranting chastisement.
