Love, Suburban Style

by Wendy Markham

  The trim will be cranberry, to contrast with the varying shades of yellow on the clapboard, shingles, and gingerbread embellishment.

  Last year, when Sam added to his home improvement agenda the insane task of painting the exterior of his recently inherited Queen Anne fixer-upper, he was actually amused that the color palettes read like a supermarket shopping list: from butter to lemon to mustard.

  Now there’s nothing amusing about anything remotely involving paint.

  But today is dry and sunny and breezy, and he needs to get moving on this trim so that it’s all finished before summer’s humidity and afternoon thunderstorms descend.

  He’s halfway up the ladder with a full bucket of white primer when a bloodcurdling scream nearly causes him to topple backward.

  Whoa!

  It didn’t come from either of his kids—he dropped twelve-year-old Katie at piano lessons ten minutes ago, and fifteen-year-old Ben couldn’t emit a high-pitched scream if he tried; his voice is decidedly baritone these days.

  No, it came—not surprisingly—from the house next door.

  Sam maneuvers his lanky frame down the ladder, sets the bucket on the grass, and takes off running around this side of the house to the backyard.

  Here we go again, he thinks as he sprints across the side yard and crashes through the overgrown hedge on the property line—just in time to hear another screech and a loud bang.

  The sound a door would make if, say, someone bolted through it, scared out of their mind, and slammed it shut behind them.

  Terrific. The newest residents of the old Duckworth place—a nice young family from Brooklyn—haven’t even moved in yet, and already it’s starting.

  “Station Stop… Glenhaven Park.”

  Snatching the magazine from Cosette’s hands and ignoring her protest, Meg grabs her daughter’s arm and escorts her off the train with a smattering of other riders.

  The long, concrete platform looks exactly the same as it did the last time Meg was here. Only then, she was headed to New York… for good.

  Or so she thought.

  “This way.” She leads the glowering Cosette along the platform, toward the stairs that rise to the enclosed station one story above the tracks.

  From there, opposite flights of stairs descend back to ground level: the commuter parking lot and taxi stand on one side of the tracks, the main drag of the business district on the other.

  “I can’t believe I’ve never brought you here,” Meg tells her daughter, as they descend to the street.

  “I can’t believe you’re bringing me here at all—especially today, of all days,” Cosette mutters.

  Meg ignores her, just as for the past forty-eight hours, she ignored Cosette’s pleas to let her keep her standing Saturday afternoon movie date with Jon, her boyfriend of the past four months. Jon, who—as Meg just discovered—is not a high school student at Fordham Prep in the Bronx, as Cosette implied. No, he’s a college sophomore at Fordham University in the Bronx—and part of the reason Cosette was expelled—just before finals, no less.

  “You were this close to finishing the school year!” Meg shoved her hand in her daughter’s face, her thumb and forefinger pressed together. “This close! Couldn’t you have hung in there for another two weeks without getting yourself into trouble?”

  “It wasn’t even a real gun,” was Cosette’s maddening reply.

  “You didn’t bother to tell that to the kids you threatened with it, did you?”

  “What would have been the point of that?”

  “What was the point of any of this?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. I’m not the one who goes around harassing people because of how they look. They should have been kicked out of school, not me.”

  Privately, Meg happens to agree with her daughter on that count—at least, that the school should also have a zero tolerance policy against bullying.

  If only she had known that a group of kids have been tormenting Cosette at school lately. Kids who used to be Cosette’s friends, back when they were all on the soccer team together. Meg knows their parents; in fact, knowing their parents, she isn’t particularly surprised by the kids’ behavior.

  She herself was frequently cold-shouldered by the cookie-cutter women she dubbed the “Fancy Moms” from her first encounter with them. With their moneyed husbands, spectacular Central Park West apartments, and tasteful designer wardrobes, they did little to conceal their contempt for a single working mom. Even if she was an accomplished Broadway actress. Meg knew they regarded her Tony Award with as much esteem as they would a “World’s Best Mom” coffee mug—not that it ever mattered to her.

  Well, not much.

  And she certainly never let on to Cosette that she felt ostracized by the Fancy Moms.

  Just as Cosette never told Meg what their mean-spirited little brats were doing to her.

  Still, there was no excuse for how her daughter chose to handle the daily abuse when it threatened to go from verbal to physical.

  After a couple of girls got their boyfriends to gang up on her after school last Friday, a shaken Cosette turned to Jon.

  Not to her mother, or a teacher, or the principal.

  No, she turned to her much-older boyfriend, who gave her the fake gun and told her to brandish it the next time anyone dared to bother her.

  Bad advice.

  “What do you think I should have done, then?” Cosette demanded. “Dyed my hair into a perfect blond pageboy, gone shopping at Talbots, and run for student council?”

  How was Meg supposed to answer that?

  Yes, life would be easier for Cosette if she were a conformist.

  But you weren’t, Meg reminded herself then—and again now, as she lands on Main Street, where she spent her formative years.

  She can’t help but remember how, bitten by the acting bug her freshman year, she quickly gave up trying to fit in with the preppy crowd at school.

  But I never threatened anyone with a gun.

  Her daughter’s offense is so heinous that Meg wasn’t even sure where to begin punishing her. Being grounded for a month is a good start. And Cosette seems to think this Saturday afternoon jaunt to suburbia is a fate worse than that.

  But maybe she’ll come around.

  After all, Glenhaven Park is the quintessential all-American small town, and it looks particularly appealing on this beautiful summer day. Everywhere you look, flags are flapping in the slight breeze. The grass and shrubs and trees are verdant and lush. Brilliant blooms spill from window boxes and hanging pots.

  “Well?” Meg asks her daughter as they pause on the sidewalk. “What do you think?”

  Cosette glances around glumly.

  Meg follows her gaze, taking in the broad, leafy green that stretches for three blocks. A brick path meanders the length of the park, past clusters of wrought-iron benches and tall lampposts. In the center, surrounded by a bed of pink and purple annuals, is the bronze statue dedicated to the eleven local soldiers who died on D-day.

  The road on either side of the green is lined with tree-shaded sidewalks, diagonal parking spaces, and nineteenth-century architecture.

  On this, the northern end: a row of mom-and-pop shops and businesses that have been there for years. The quaint pastel storefronts appear to be in surprisingly good repair for their age—better repair, in fact, than they were back when Meg lived here.

  At the southern end of the green, the street becomes more residential, lined with stately nineteenth-century relics Meg recognizes from her childhood.

  There’s her friend Andrea’s old home, a classic Victorian with multiple turrets and a wraparound gingerbread porch. It used to be white with black shutters; now it’s a bona fide painted lady, clapboard and trim enhanced by complementary vintage shades of green and gold.

  Next door to that is the looming stone mansion where Miss Oster, the high school Latin teacher, lived alone with a half dozen cats…

  And across the green, the three-story monstrosity once ho
me to the Callahans, who had sixteen redheaded freckle-faced kids and assorted pets. There’s no one hanging out any of the windows or dangling from tree branches out front, and the lawn is no longer covered with bikes, scooters, and wagons. It’s probably safe to assume that the Callahans have all grown up and moved on.

  “I wonder if anyone I know still lives around here,” Meg muses.

  In the split second after she poses that mostly rhetorical question, mostly to herself since Cosette doesn’t appear the least bit engaged, Meg spies a familiar figure strolling toward them along the sidewalk.

  “I don’t believe it!” she exclaims, clutching Cosette’s sleeve—long, and black, despite the midday heat.

  “I don’t, either. There’s not even a Starbucks around here,” Cosette grumbles.

  “No, that’s Krissy… Krissy!” Meg calls and waves at the woman.

  Hmm. Maybe it isn’t Krissy after all; she doesn’t wave back, nor does she even look up from the cell phone or BlackBerry or whatever it is that’s poised in her hand.

  Is it Krissy? Krissy Rosenkrantz was Meg’s first kindergarten friend, and her partner-in-crime right up through graduation. When they signed each other’s yearbooks, they wrote about all the things they were going to do together, like get tattoos and travel through Europe, and they prefaced their signatures with BFA—Best Friends Always—and YFF—Your Friend Forever.

  Meg’s last memory of Krissy Rosenkrantz is of her standing by her father’s packed Jeep on the stifling August morning she left for Bennington College, with a heartfelt promise to visit Meg in New York over Columbus Day weekend.

  Columbus Day came and went, Thanksgiving came and went, the years came and went, and Meg never saw Krissy Rosenkrantz again…

  Until now.

  Or is it really her?

  Most of her face is obscured by large brown sunglasses, but there’s something about her that seems so familiar…

  “Krissy?” Meg calls again, waving both her arms over her head this time to get her attention.

  “Mom, shh! Stop making such a spectacle. What are you doing?”

  “I could swear that’s an old friend of—yes, it is her!” Meg recognizes the distinct motion with which the woman tosses her thick, tawny hair over her shoulder as she pockets her electronic device.

  “You’re Krissy Rosenkrantz,” she says triumphantly, sidestepping right into the woman’s path.

  The woman looks up, startled, her perfectly arched brows rising above the frame of her glasses… then breaks into a grin.

  “Meg?”

  “I knew that was you!” Meg hugs her. “Though when you didn’t answer me when I kept calling you, I did wonder for a minute.”

  Krissy smells like expensive perfume. She’s crisply dressed all in white: cool linen pantsuit, designer pocketbook, leather sandals with heels. As Meg releases her she can’t help but wonder if she’s left a newsprint smudge on her old friend’s back.

  “I’m sorry… I didn’t even hear you! Probably because nobody’s called me ‘Krissy’ in ages! I go by Kris, now… and it’s not Rosenkrantz, it’s Holmes.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Twice. And divorced. Twice. But I kept my first husband’s name—even when I married the second. I wanted it to be the same as my son’s. How about you? Are you married?”

  No. But I didn’t even keep my own name—first or last, Meg wants to tell her.

  No need to get into the whole Astor Hudson saga here, though. Especially now that she’s all but decided to give up everything about that life—not just the name, but everything that goes with it: both the stage career and the city.

  It’s time to open a new chapter. She’ll miss the creative outlet of performing, but she hasn’t craved the spotlight in years—not like she did in the early days. She’s achieved what she set out to do; she is—no, was—a genuine star.

  And now the star is aging, fading; her voice is mature, but so are her face, her body, her mind. Deeanna Drennan was a blessing in disguise once the dust settled. Losing the part—and accepting that her ingenue days are long over—allowed Meg to realize that she doesn’t need a stage career to fulfill her anymore.

  What she needs at this stage in her life is to move on to something new.

  Perhaps something old is more apt.

  Cosette doesn’t know about any of it yet. As far as she’s concerned, this jaunt up the Metro-North tracks to Westchester County is simply a pleasant—for Meg, anyway, if unpleasant for Cosette—way to spend a summer Saturday afternoon.

  Meg isn’t going to tell her daughter anything more until she’s certain what their next move will be—and when it will happen.

  All she knows at this point is that she’s going to be settled in a new life, with Cosette, before the school year resumes in September.

  Glenhaven Park is the natural place to commence the search for a new home… since it once was home. And still feels like it… at least, so far.

  “I’m still Meg Addams,” she replies in answer to Krissy’s—rather, Kris’s—question.

  Cosette rolls her eyes at that, undoubtedly thinking, Still? You haven’t been Meg Addams since you left this place behind. At least she doesn’t say it.

  “And who is this lovely young lady?” Kris asks, turning to look at her.

  “This is my daughter, Cosette.”

  Who is looking like anything but a lovely young lady. Cosette’s unnaturally black hair has been straightened and shorn so that it falls past her shoulders in a vaguely shaggy nonstyle. Her eye makeup is Halloween-thick and her once rosy, healthy complexion is masked beneath a layer of ivory pancake base. Any curves she possesses are camouflaged beneath a boxy, long-sleeved black T-shirt and black jeans, and she’s wearing black boots—yes, boots—in June.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Cosette.” With a jangling of chunky gold bracelets, Kris stretches a manicured hand toward Meg’s daughter.

  Meg wonders if she’s remembering that she, like Meg, was also a nonconformist at Cosette’s age. Though their most extreme physical deviation was to triple-pierce each other’s earlobes using a threaded sewing needle, an ice cube, and a potato.

  Meg still has the battle scars to show for it, though these days, she rarely wears six earrings at once. And a quick glance at Krissy’s lobes reveal only a pair of tasteful gold studs.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” Cosette is saying, politely extending her own black-polished fingertips to shake hands.

  Meg heaves an inner sigh of relief that at least the good manners she worked so hard to instill didn’t go the way of Cosette’s auburn ringlets and wholesome prettiness.

  Kris turns back to Meg. “So what are you doing here in town, and when did you get back?”

  “About two minutes ago. We just stepped off the train.”

  “From the city? You’re still in New York? Last I knew, you were on Broadway. Literally.”

  Meg raises an eyebrow, surprised, somehow, that news of her stage career has made it back to her hometown. Then again, it’s not as if it’s all that far away from the city—and perhaps not the cultural morass she recalls.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Mr. Dreyfus talks about you all the time, about you having success on Broadway,” Kris tells her. “I think he takes personal credit for your success.”

  Meg smiles. Mr. Dreyfus is her former high school drama teacher. “He was definitely responsible for getting me started.”

  After all, it was Mr. Dreyfus who believed in her from the start. He even cast her, as a freshman, as the lead in the all-school musical—causing an immediate scandal, particularly among the senior divas.

  “Is he still teaching at the high school?”

  “Sure is. Plus he directs a drama program for teenagers through the town’s recreation board. Do you realize he’s only ten years older than we are? The teachers all seemed so old back then.”

  “Most of them really were,” Meg recalls, aware of Cosette shifting her weight, bore
d. “Are a lot of them still there?”

  “None of them, except Mr. Dreyfus.”

  “What about our old friends? Who else is still around?”

  “Just me, really. And ‘old’ is right.”

  “Oh, come on, you look exactly the same. And so”—Meg sweeps an arm to indicate Main Street—“does this place.”

  “You think?” Kris shakes her head. “You haven’t taken a close look yet, have you?”

  “Not yet… why?”

  “Just… trust me, Meg, nothing stays the same. Including me. So, are you married, or…?” With an eye on Cosette, Kris tactfully trails off.

  “Divorced,” Meg says briefly.

  No need to go into the gory details—and not just because Cosette is here. She rarely discusses her ex-husband. In fact, she had known Geoffrey a few years before she even got around to telling him the truth about her ex… and she did so only because it would have been awkward not to, under the circumstances.

  They were standing on line at Regal Cinemas on Fourteenth Street at the time. Normally Geoffrey pooh-poohed mainstream movies, but the indie film he wanted to see was sold out, so he suggested they catch the new summer blockbuster “starring that hot action movie guy.”

  Who happened to be none other than Calvin.

  “How could you not have told me that you were married to him?” Geoffrey asked when he managed to recover from his fake faint.

  “Trust me, it’s not something I like to think about. The only good thing that came out of that marriage was Cosette. Whom, by the way, he has never even been interested in meeting.”

  Geoffrey’s jaw dropped. “He’s never met his own daughter?”

  “He walked out when I was eight months pregnant and never looked back.”

  That was before Calvin was a big star, but he was already on his way.

  The only contact Meg has had from him in the last fifteen years is the sizeable alimony and child support check that arrives monthly like clockwork from his West Coast lawyer’s office.

  But without him, there would have been no Cosette, and for that, Meg is grateful. She held her breath as Cosette grew older, but her daughter embodies none of her father’s less-than-admirable characteristics—except, perhaps, for his moodiness. But then, he’s an actor; most actors are moody.