by Nancy Thayer
“You take your son in,” Darcy said. “We’ll stay out here with Alfred and George.”
As soon as Susan and Henry went off, Willow sat down next to Darcy. The two boys were now engaged in a contest to see who could name the color of the next Skittle they would take from the bag.
“Susan is so nice,” Willow said mournfully. “Her husband is a pig, and my mother is…” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Willow, don’t say things like that near the—” She jerked her head toward the two boys, who weren’t within hearing distance but might wander over at any moment. “Besides, you’re old enough to know that people are unfaithful sometimes.” Darcy knew she sounded like a schoolmarm, but this was a course she’d never navigated before. “You really can’t judge people by one act. You don’t know what else is going on in their lives.”
“Yeah, well, I know my stepfather would never be unfaithful to my mom!” Willow crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin defensively.
“Honey,” Darcy softly reminded the girl, “your stepfather was unfaithful to me. You know that.”
Willow frowned, perplexed. “Yeah, I know, but that was different. That was my mother.” She picked at her lip. “I mean, my mom is so beautiful.” Embarrassed, she hurriedly added, “Not that you’re not beautiful, too, but in a different way. Plus my mom said Boyz never really loved you. That you two knew it was a mistake right away.” She wrinkled her nose, doing that sinking into herself thing. “I should stop talking, right?”
Darcy put her arm around Willow’s shoulders. “No worries, Willow. Your mom was right. Sometimes people make mistakes, and Boyz and I both made a mistake when we got married. I was sort of enchanted by his family, and Boyz was looking for someone he didn’t find in me.”
Willow shrugged. “But if he’s found it in my mom, then it will make him so sad…and the dining room table. That’s so gross.”
“You need to talk this over with your mother. You need to tell her what you saw, and how sad that makes you. Everything. All of it.”
Willow nodded again. In a little voice, she agreed, “Okay. I guess I will.”
George and Alfred had finished their Skittles and were blowing into the bags, making fart noises.
“What about Susan?” Willow asked.
Trying to lighten the mood, Darcy said in a comedian’s voice, “What am I, the oracle at Delphi?”
Willow pulled away from Darcy. “Huh?”
“Sorry, Willow. I was kind of making a joke. The oracle at Delphi was a wise woman who answered questions about what to do…this was in Greece, a long time ago. We don’t have anyone that wise in this day and age except maybe Oprah and I don’t have her number. For now, I think we shouldn’t tell Susan. We don’t know how her marriage works. Maybe she doesn’t mind if her husband is unfaithful. Or maybe she has so much pressure in her life with the three boys that one more problem would cause her to melt down. Let’s think about it, okay? And not say anything yet.”
“Okay,” Willow agreed.
Susan and her son came out from the ER.
Henry held up his hand for his brothers to inspect. “I got two stitches!”
“Here, Susan,” Darcy said, handing Susan the car keys. “You drive home with your boys. I’m going to walk home.”
“Are you sure?” Susan asked.
“Absolutely. It’s only a few blocks and the night is so beautiful.”
“Oh, well, then, thank you,” Susan said. “Willow, thanks for babysitting, and please don’t worry. Things like this happen all the time with the boys.”
Willow shrugged, nodded, smiled, and looked worried all at the same time. “I’ll walk home with Darcy,” she said.
Susan gathered up her brood and herded them out the door and into her car.
“Come on, kid,” Darcy said to Willow. “The walk will do you good. Clear your head.”
“I wish it really could. I wish it could clear my mind of the image of my mother—naked!—with Otto. He still had his shirt on and his pants were down around his knees. I saw his butt. So weird.”
“Yes, well, sex can look pretty bizarre.” They crossed South Prospect Street and walked along Atlantic Avenue. The sidewalk was so narrow they had to walk single file. Darcy was glad. She didn’t want to answer all of Willow’s questions about what she’d seen.
When they reached Pleasant Street and could walk side by side, Darcy asked a question of her own. “Did you have sex with Logan?”
Willow shook her head violently. “Yeah. No. Maybe.”
“Well, which is it?”
“We didn’t do it. But we messed around a lot. I touched his—him. He— I can’t talk about it. It was fun, it was exciting, he’s so hot, and he wanted to be with me and I don’t know whether I let him touch me because I enjoyed it or because I was so impressed, kind of honored that someone so old would pay attention to me.”
Darcy put her arm over Willow’s shoulders. “You’re pretty smart for someone your own age, Willow.”
“Well, I know this much. Sex makes a mess of everything.”
Darcy walked quietly, wondering how to respond. Finally, she said, “Sometimes it does. But sometimes, if there’s love, it makes everything all right, at least for a while.”
17
Darcy and Willow arrived at Darcy’s house to find Susan’s car parked in front of her house and Susan sitting on Darcy’s doorstep. The front door was open to the Brueckners’ house and sounds of the boys shouting carried out to the street. Darkness had fallen, and the lights of the houses up and down the street glowed, softening the edges of the houses, blurring the trees, erasing the lines on Susan’s face so that she looked young again.
Susan rose. “Willow, let me pay you tomorrow, okay? I’m in too much of a flap and the boys are wild, and their father just got home.” Before Willow could respond, she reached out and folded Willow into a hug. “You did such a perfect job, taking care of my sons. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Mrs. Brueckner—” Willow cried.
“It’s not your fault Henry cut himself. My sons are walking disasters. I’m only surprised a hurricane didn’t hit the house at the same time.”
If you only knew, Darcy thought.
Willow had frozen, as if she were playing the old game statues.
Darcy reached out to take Willow’s slender wrist. “Come with me, Willow. I’ll make hot chocolate.”
Willow allowed herself to be pulled away from Susan. The three kissed each other’s cheeks and said good night. Susan went into her noisy house and shut the door.
“It’s too hot for hot chocolate,” Willow said as she trudged next to Darcy to her house.
“You don’t have to drink it,” Darcy responded calmly. She needed hot chocolate, preferably with a shot of rum in it. Making it would give her something to do while she thought about this mess, and it would allow Willow a chance to settle down. Sometimes sitting at a table, turning a spoon over and over, staring down at a cup of warm sweetness was exactly the thing that helped one’s poor confused brain to mend.
Willow sank into a chair at the kitchen table. Darcy gathered the box of Hershey’s cocoa powder, the sugar, the milk and carefully mixed them in a pan. She didn’t speak. She focused all her attention on the easy concoction, as if she were a scientist creating the world’s newest, most potent antibiotic.
It was quiet in the kitchen. As if she and Willow were serene.
But, Lord, this was a mess, and Darcy had no idea how to advise Willow.
She poured the hot chocolate into mugs, sprinkled the tops with miniature marshmallows, and sat down with her own mug.
Willow stirred her drink. Without lifting her head, she mumbled, “I can’t tell Boyz. That would be too gross. Besides, it would hurt his feelings.”
Darcy sat back in her chair, surprised that Willow was worried about Boyz’s reaction. Immediately, a sense of relief moved through her. So Willow cared about Boyz, and felt cared for by him, connected to him.
/> “Maybe,” Darcy suggested, “you could talk to your mother about tonight. Let her be the one to tell Boyz. Or not.”
Willow lifted her head. “Really?”
Darcy was quiet. This was such an odd situation. She wasn’t sure she should even be counseling Willow, and she remembered Boyz’s visit, his admonition to stay away from Willow, his belief that Darcy was befriending the girl for her own twisted reasons—to get his attention, to seduce Boyz. Plus, there had been that weird and unpleasant visit when he came to her house and suggested they enjoy each other and then forced a kiss on her. He was smug and offensive, but Darcy didn’t care about him. She cared about what would be best for Willow.
“Well,” Darcy said after a long silence, “whatever the reason for what you saw tonight, you need to talk to your mother.”
Willow met Darcy’s eyes. “Will you come with me?”
Darcy flinched. “Oh, honey, no.”
“Please?” Willow put her hands together, as if she were praying or begging. “I can’t do this by myself.”
“Willow, I’m sure your mother would be angry if I were there. This is a private matter, a family matter.” Darcy pushed back her chair and stood up. She walked to the sink and set her empty mug down. “I’ll go with you to your door,” she offered.
“No! Please come in with me!” Willow dissolved into tears, her shoulders shaking, her face turning scarlet. She pushed back her own chair and rose, her chest heaving as if she couldn’t get her breath. She gasped out the words: “I need you to be there to help me!”
“Willow—” Darcy’s sense of compassion streamed toward the girl.
“I can’t do it. I won’t do it! I’ll run away, I won’t go home, I’ll disappear and you’ll never see me again, and my mom will never see me again, and then you’ll have to tell her about tonight! Don’t think I won’t run away, because I will, I’ll go find Logan, I’ll have sex with him, I’ll do the heroin, because why not?—all the adults in my life don’t give a shit about me!”
“Oh, Willow.” Darcy moved toward the sobbing girl, meaning to wrap her in her arms, but Willow shoved her away.
“No!” Willow’s face contorted with anger. “Don’t think you can hug me like a kid and give me a Popsicle and send me away! I’m not a kid!”
“No, you’re not a kid,” Darcy softly agreed. Willow was not an adult, either, but tonight she’d been presented with some confusing adult behavior.
She stepped away from Willow and leaned against the kitchen counter, waiting for the girl to calm down. This was horrible, Darcy thought. Should she tell Willow that Boyz had warned her off hanging around with his stepdaughter? No. That would only confuse Willow more. And anyway, why should Darcy even give the smallest damn what Boyz thought or wanted? He was no longer her husband. He was a philanderer himself, and an idiot besides. If she tried to put herself in Willow’s position—and she thought she almost could, because she’d read so many of the YA books in order to talk to the middle and high schools about them—if she tried, she could guess how Willow felt. Sex was such a bizarre topic to talk about, after all, no matter your age. Beautiful words and angelic songs translated what, from the outside, appeared to be an awkward and even violent act, into the powerful, blissful, transforming experience it could be. Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” Or something like that. The body definitely had its own unreasonable reasons, too.
Could she explain this to Willow? But no. Willow didn’t need Darcy to quote a seventeenth-century French philosopher to her.
She watched Willow, who was standing her ground, fists clenched at her side, her face as ugly as fury could make it while tears flew down her cheeks.
“All right,” Darcy conceded. “I’ll go with you, Willow.”
“You will?”
“I will. But first you need to wash your face with cold water. It will make you feel better. Help to calm you down.”
“I wasn’t having a tantrum,” Willow said defensively.
“Oh, I kind of think you were,” Darcy told her. “And when you’re through with it, we’ll go over to talk to Autumn.”
“What if Mr. Brueckner is still there?” Willow asked with horror.
“Susan told us he was home, remember? Come on, now, let’s get it over with.”
She ran a clean dish towel in cold water and handed it to Willow. The girl obediently patted it over her face, and as she did, her breathing slowed. She touched her neck with the cool cloth and stood there for a moment, eyes closed, calming down.
“Okay,” Willow said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
They walked through the house, out the front door, and around to the narrow path between Darcy’s hedge and the Brueckners’ until they came to the small grassy spot at the end of the Brueckners’ house that bordered on the Szwedas’ garage. They turned left, behind Darcy’s back hedge—which towered like a tall thick green wall. Little wonder people had no idea Darcy was over on the other side.
Lights shone from several windows of the house. Willow’s pace slowed. She reached for Darcy’s hand. Darcy continued walking, almost pulling Willow, across the lawn, up the steps, and into the kitchen.
As they entered the house, Willow made a whimpering noise, like a lost kitten.
“Shake it off,” Darcy said. “Where’s your mom now?” She certainly wasn’t going to have this little chat in Autumn’s bedroom. Nor in the dining room!
“Mom?” Willow’s voice shivered.
“In here.”
Darcy and Willow engaged in an almost comic struggle to make the other one be first to walk into the room. In the end, Darcy entered first, pulling Willow along by the wrist.
The luscious Autumn was curled at one end of a beige sofa, watching a baking show on the large screen TV. She wore a brief and clingy fragment of peach-colored silk and lace, and her abundant hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back.
Darcy remembered how she had worn an old, overwashed, faded, and shapeless Red Sox T-shirt to bed with Boyz. Autumn wore her peach concoction when no one was around.
Darcy made a mental note to invest in some lingerie from Victoria’s Secret.
“God,” Autumn said, seeing Darcy and Willow. “Now what have you done to upset your precious librarian?”
Darcy could see lace at the top of Autumn’s thigh. She noticed Autumn’s finger- and toenails were shellacked a pale peach. She made a mental note to have her own fingernails shellacked sometime. That was supposed to last longer than polish, and didn’t ever chip…What was she thinking? How could she be thinking about shellac at a time like this?
Willow froze in the center of the room.
“Let’s sit down, Willow,” Darcy said quietly.
She tried to tug the girl toward the other end of the sofa, but Willow shuddered and cried, “Ugh! Not so close to her!”
Autumn’s eyes narrowed. Darcy half shoved Willow into a club chair across from Autumn. She sat in the other one. The glass coffee table was between them and Autumn.
Autumn sat up, tugging at the skirt of her lacy lingerie so it covered the few inches at the top of her thighs. Her expression had grown wary.
Darcy prompted Willow, “Willow. You need to tell her.”
Willow, staring steadily at her feet in her sandals, mumbled, “I saw you and Mr. Brueckner.”
“What?” Autumn reared backward. “What did you say?”
Willow raised her head and glared at her mother. “I saw you and Mr. Brueckner.”
Autumn stonewalled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“On the dining room table,” Willow said, and this time she spoke almost too loudly, and her words were clearly an accusation.
Autumn flinched, but immediately recovered, firing back a defensive shot. “Willow, I think you should tell your friend to leave. This is personal business, between you and me. I can’t imagine why you brought her here.”
“Because I need her!” Willow burst out, her voice stro
ng and angry. “Because when I was babysitting, I needed to get Band-Aids because Henry cut himself, and I phoned her to come watch the kids so I could come home to get some!”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Autumn asked, and she seemed to be genuinely curious.
“Because you said you wouldn’t be home!” Willow shouted. “Because you said you were going to walk on the beach and fucking think!”
“Watch your language, young lady,” Autumn said.
“My language? I’m supposed to watch my language while I tell you about seeing you naked with Mr. Brueckner on the dining room table?” The words spilled from Willow’s mouth. “Darcy was home, and she came to help me right away and we had to call Susan, and we had to take Henry to the hospital and he had to have stitches and Susan was so nice to me even though I was babysitting when Henry cut himself, and all I could think about was seeing you with Mr. Brueckner!”
“Oh, honey.” At last Autumn softened as she absorbed Willow’s words.
“And I had to make Darcy come with me because I was afraid of telling you because it is so gross.”
“I’m sure Darcy was delighted to hear about what a tramp I am,” Autumn replied, a sullen note to her voice.
“Believe me,” Darcy said keeping her tone neutral, “this brings me no pleasure. Not any of it. And it’s none of my business. I know that. I know it’s personal between you and Willow. I came here to support her, but I’m going to leave now.” Darcy rose.
“No!” Willow cried.
“Stay if you want,” Autumn said. She made a mocking sound. “It might be helpful to me if you stayed. Willow needs to learn that she’s still a girl, not a woman. She’s not old enough to judge what women do.”
Darcy almost said, Not all women do what you do, but she bit her tongue. She sank back into the chair and waited.
Autumn took a moment to gather her thoughts. When she spoke, it was gentle, directed right to Willow.
“You know that photo I snapped of you eating a chocolate ice cream bar and reading a book? You were completely absorbed by that book. You didn’t see me come into the room. You didn’t even know you had dripped chocolate on your favorite shirt. You were really going after that chocolate ice cream like a starving child. You hadn’t combed your hair for hours and you had chocolate smeared on the end of your nose.”
