Deep Down True

by Juliette Fay

  When she woke in the morning, she stretched her arm and her fingers slid into a mass of thick, coarse hair. She turned to find Connie’s eyelids testing the brightness in the room. They blinked at each other for a moment. “That was really bitchy,” Connie murmured.

  “I know,” said Dana. “Sorry.”

  “It’s not like you.”

  “It kind of is, these days.”

  Connie’s sleep-wrinkled cheeks shifted into a sly smile. “Wish Ma was here,” she said. “She’d never believe it. Perfect Dana, bitching someone out.”

  Ma, thought Dana, and she could almost smell the Charlie cologne that didn’t quite cover the residual cigarette smoke. She had died in August, and last Thanksgiving had been the first holiday without her. Another holiday without Ma.

  “Stay for Thanksgiving,” she told Connie.

  An uncharacteristic uncertainty rippled across Connie’s face. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “DON’T FORGET YOUR PERMISSION SLIP,” DANA reminded Alder, who was slathering peanut butter onto chunks of banana. Connie came into the kitchen wearing a T-shirt silk-screened with a group of ethereal-looking women in flowing dresses. NINE MUSES BOOKS & ART was written under their sandal-clad feet.

  “What permission slip?” Alder asked.

  “Wadsworth Atheneum. It’s for tomorrow, so you need to get it in today.”

  “Or you could blow it off,” said Connie, opening and closing cabinet doors. “Most of that crap’s so derivative anyway.”

  Alder shot Dana a look that could have meant anything from “Maybe she’s right” to “I may have to hit her.” Dana chose to believe it meant “Help.”

  “The whole art class is going,” Dana said. “It’s mandatory.”

  “She could teach the class,” grumbled Connie. “And not by dragging them past dusty portraits of dead rich people.” She turned to level a suspicious eye at her sister. “You don’t have any green tea?”

  “Oh. I guess maybe I don’t.”

  “They have it at Whole Foods,” Alder told her mother as she rose to put her plate in the dishwasher. “It’s right in Glastonbury.” To Dana she asked, “Where’s that slip?”

  “On the table in the mudroom. Have a great day, sweetie!”

  “Bye,” said Alder. “Bye, Connie.”

  “Whole Foods,” Connie muttered derisively after the door slammed.

  “Now, what’s wrong with Whole Foods? I thought you liked all that organic, unprocessed—”

  “It’s just so corporate and well lit. Might as well be McDonald’s, for godsake.” Her face was pinched in annoyance, as if whatever she was looking for was purposely hiding.

  “Are you still mad about last night?” Dana asked.

  “No.” Connie’s expression burst open like a hand grenade. “I’m mad about this morning. How is it that my kid is going on some bullshit expedition to a so-called art museum and you’re the one signing the permission slip!”

  “Oh, Connie,” Dana murmured sympathetically. “I’m sorry.” She reached out from her seat at the table and slipped her hand into Connie’s.

  “And don’t hold my hand!” But Connie did nothing to rid herself of the warm fingers in her palm, and Dana made no move to withdraw them. After a moment Connie rolled her eyes and made a show of pulling her hand away. But her face had softened, and she sank into the chair next to her sister. “You need anything at Whole Foods?” She gave a little sneer. “An organic Happy Meal, maybe?”

  “I’ll be working till five. Feel like making dinner?”

  Connie shrugged a confirmation, then looked out the window and watched the curled brown leaves blow across the yard. “How come we haven’t seen each other since Ma died?” she said.

  “I don’t know.” Dana sighed. “We don’t always . . . click.”

  Connie let out a laugh and raised her eyebrows as if to say, Isn’t that the truth. “Milkweed and skunk cabbage for dinner,” she said. “Just to warn you.”

  Dana waited at the big glass office door. I should ask him for a key, she thought. But for all she knew, his real receptionist would get over her morning sickness and return to work tomorrow. The realization made Dana flinch. She could find another job, she told herself. Her skills were up to date, and Tony would give her a good reference. Oh, but ...

  “I should have a key made for you,” Tony called out as he came around the corner of the building. There he was, the best boss she’d ever had. And she would lose him. Probably sooner rather than later. How long could an unmarried, pregnant woman afford to stay out of work? Not very long. And then Dana would be the unmarried, unemployed one.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.” He slid the key into the bolt. “I had to deal with a little holiday drama that’s been playing out over the weekend.”

  “Oh?”

  “Thanksgiving.” He held the door open for her. “Total nightmare. Lizzie—the one at Brown—was supposed to be in New Jersey with her boyfriend. Zack.” Tony made a face as if he had just tasted mud.

  “We don’t like Zack?”

  “No,” said Tony, hanging his coat in the closet and holding out a hand for hers. “We don’t. Especially after they had a screaming fight this weekend in which he told her he thought the whole ‘meeting-the-parents thing is such a cliché.’”

  “Commitment issues.”

  “Of the epic variety.” He pulled his white lab coat from the closet and put it on. “So there’s one daughter at loose ends. Then Abby, the doctor—assuming she can stick with it—Abby is supposed to be working and having a quick midshift slice of processed deli meat with a couple of her med-school friends. She was planning to come home next weekend for about half a day just to see the old man.”

  “You were going to be alone for the holiday? Why didn’t you tell me? You could have—”

  He held up a finger. “I was supposed to go to New York to spend it with my . . . girlfriend? That sounds childish, but it’s better than ‘lady friend,’ which makes me sound like Wilford Brimley.”

  Girlfriend? Dana had a vague memory of Tony’s mentioning a relationship. Something about her being there when one of his daughters had come home unexpectedly. But he’d never spoken of her since, which seemed strange, since he was so open about everything else.

  “Anyway,” Tony continued, leaning in the doorway, “a psych patient started a fire in Abby’s hospital by knocking two pebbles together near an oxygen tank—”

  Dana let out a little gasp and Tony nodded. “I know, can you beat that? So they started shipping patients to other hospitals and handing out days off to the staff. Abby won the lottery and got Thanksgiving. So now I have not one but two daughters who want to come home, and I’m not even supposed to be there!”

  “But then why doesn’t your . . .”

  “Martine.”

  “Why doesn’t Martine just come here?”

  “Because she kind of went overboard and invited a bunch of friends, and it got sort of... enormous. Like fourteen people. But more than that, I think it got enormous in her head.” Tony stared into middle space for a moment, then shifted his gaze back to Dana. “You know when something suddenly takes on grander proportions than it normally would?”

  Dana nodded. It had happened to her with Kenneth from time to time, usually because she was imagining that whatever was so important to her was also important to him. It was always an embarrassment to find out it wasn’t. “So did she invite the girls, too?”

  He gave an odd, almost melancholy smile. “Eventually. When she called back. It took her a little while to come up with it.”

  “Does she have children?”

  “Yes, she does,” he said, pointing at Dana as if she’d figured out the answer to a riddle. “One son. Got a job in Singapore when he graduated last year. She describes him as ‘studious.’”

  “Studious? That’s all?” What kind of mother had only one adjective to describe her child? Dana had hundreds for Grady and Morgan. Which, she rea
lized, might be excessive.

  “Uh, I think I’ve also heard the word ‘independent.’”

  Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? Dana thought. “So are the girls going to New York with you?”

  “Okay, that was this morning’s series of phone calls. Abby’s exhausted, and Lizzie’s furious-slash-heartbroken, and they want to sleep in their own beds and not play the pride-inducing daughters of Tony Sakimoto for two straight days.” His hands went up in a “there you have it” gesture.

  Dana laughed.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, grinning back at her, “easy for you! Just go right ahead and enjoy the entertainment!”

  Her smile dimmed. Easy for her—but not really. In the happy distraction of Tony’s story, Dana had forgotten that her own children would not be in their beds. They would be a thousand miles away with her adulterous ex-husband and his home-wrecking, pregnant girlfriend. And with no confirmation that Connie and Alder would be there for Thanksgiving, it was actually possible that Dana would be alone. She couldn’t even beg an invitation to Polly’s.

  “Oh . . . hey,” Tony said apologetically.

  “My sister Connie showed up unexpectedly last night.” She gave a little eye roll to wrench herself from a descent into self-pity.

  “Yeah? Alder’s mom?”

  She nodded. “If there’s anyone out there who’s more my opposite, I have yet to meet her.”

  “No kidding!” said Tony. “This I’ve gotta see. Hey, is she around still? Invite her for lunch!”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” Connie in an enclosed space with her boss? Dana wasn’t sure she was up to the potential for disaster that would present.

  “Seriously,” Tony said as Dana went to greet a patient coming in the door. “Think about it.”

  As it turned out, it was just as well she didn’t call Connie; Tony spent the better part of the lunch hour in his office placing and fielding phone calls from Nashville, Providence, and New York. By the time he was able to get to his veggie sub, he was irritable and exhausted.

  “So?” Dana hazarded to ask.

  “Cranky daughters coming home, angry girlfriend definitely staying in New York,” he said around bites. “Ohhh, it’s gonna be one happy Thanksgiving.” He took a swig of his iced tea. “Okay, tell me about this polar-opposite sister of yours.”

  All too soon the next patient arrived, but throughout the afternoon he popped his head into her work area between appointments and murmured things like, “What about Alder’s father?” and “If she weren’t your sister, would you like her?”

  He couldn’t possibly be so interested in this, Dana told herself. He’s just trying to keep his mind off his own problems. Enjoying the distraction of someone else’s drama, as she herself had been doing, though she really did want to know about Abby and Lizzie. She found herself hoping she’d get a chance to meet them. And Martine . . . well, maybe not. Dana knew she was hearing only one side of this one incident with Martine. She was very likely a nice person if Tony had chosen her to love. Assuming it was love. He hadn’t ever ascribed that particular word to it. Hadn’t really given any words to it at all. Nonetheless, Dana had a less-than-positive impression.

  “If Connie weren’t my sister?” Dana had to think about that. Her instinctive response was, Yes, of course. But would she really? “Well, I hate to admit it,” she told Tony, “but Connie wouldn’t be the kind of person I’d gravitate toward.”

  “No kidding,” he teased. “And you two being such peas in a pod. What I meant was, knowing who she is down deep, would you be friends with her?”

  Down deep, she mused. Leave it to Tony to want to know everything down deep.

  Later, as they were locking up the office, he said, “Well, keep me posted.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “But if . . . you know, if things went completely haywire and you wanted someone to bounce things off of, you could call me at home.”

  “Okay, thanks,” she said, squinting into her purse as she rooted for her keys, knowing she would never call her boss at home with a personal problem.

  “Though I don’t think I ever gave you the number.” He patted the pockets of his bomber jacket, looking for a pen and paper, she supposed. “Well, here,” he said, holding out his hand. “Give me your cell phone, and I’ll program it in.”

  As she handed over the cell phone, she couldn’t decide whether the buzzing in her head meant she was appalled or—even worse—happy that he was taking such liberties with her personal items. Either way it was a bad sign.

  He’s just being his usual kind self, she told herself. Something he would do for any half-broke employee who had been dumped by her husband, invaded by her overbearing sister, and was facing a major holiday without her children, possibly completely alone. In fact, who wouldn’t take pity on such a sad sack?

  But the look on his face bore no signs of charity as he handed back her cell phone. “Hope that wasn’t out of line,” he muttered. “Next I’ll be telling you my health problems.”

  “You have health problems?” she asked, suddenly worried that he had some undisclosed condition.

  “Fit as a fiddle.” He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I just meant I hope I wasn’t being intrusive . . . or presumptuous . . .”

  “Not at all,” she assured him. “And I promise not to use it except for emergencies.”

  “Use it anytime,” he said. “Really.”

  CHAPTER 39

  POSSIBLY IT WAS THE CURRIED LENTILS WITH TEXtured soy protein. Didn’t their mother always say spicy food before bed made for a night of wandering with the hobgoblins? And having Connie sleeping next to her, in almost constant motion—twitching her toes or grinding her teeth—didn’t help either. Whatever the source, Dana found herself drifting in the long-gone Paragon Park of her youth.

  Where are they?

  It was dark, and the place seemed abandoned, though the rides still lurched along. She darted from attraction to attraction, certain that Morgan and Grady were there somewhere, waiting for her, needing her. They weren’t on the carousel, which screamed its warbling organ music at her. Not on the Wild Mouse or the Congo Cruise. She kept searching, desperate to find them.

  “Mom!” It was Grady’s voice, and she darted toward it, past the smell of burning sugar—cotton candy, she realized, left to spin too long in the heat of its enormous Bundt pan. Grady was the lone rider on the Matterhorn, cars wagging wildly as they sped over a circular track, into a building painted with cartoon mountains, and back out again. His car was filled with golf balls, which he raised one by one, looking for identifying marks. “Jump!” Dana called to him.

  “I have to find it!” he yelled. His car swept into the darkened building, and she waited, but it never came back out.

  “Mom!” A cry from the opposite direction. She ran toward it. Then she was on the platform of the Comet, screaming to Morgan, who was clamped into the front car beside her cello. The panic on Morgan’s face turned grotesque as the ride took off, shaking and grinding up the track to the top of the roller coaster’s peeling white latticework. Dana lunged for the last car. In the dream she was screaming, but when she opened her eyes, she knew it had been a whimper.

  Connie groaned. “Y’all right?”

  “They’re gone,” she breathed before her throat closed around the words. They’re never coming back. In the wake of the dream’s terror, the possibility seemed very real.

  “What’s gone?” muttered Connie, scratching her neck. “The kids? They’re just in Plasticland with their idiot father.”

  This was true. But there was a goneness that defied geography, and Dana couldn’t ward off the sense that something essential was changing, that they were now separated from her by more than just distance. “I miss them,” she choked out. “I feel like they’re dead.”

  “It’s Disney World,” said Connie. “They’ll recover.”

  Dana gave her a shove. “You make
fun of everything! I’m sick of it! Go sleep somewhere else.”

  “Oh, all right. Y-ross.”

  It jiggled something in the back of Dana’s brain, and she turned to squint at Connie in the waning darkness.

  Connie said, “Come on. You made me say it to you about every other night when we were kids.”

  Growing up, they had shared a room the size of a closet that accommodated only two twin beds separated by a tiny bedside table. Y-ross. Dana remembered. “Sorry” spelled backward—sort of. “You can’t just say Y-ross and think it makes everything okay.”

  Connie considered this for a moment. “Double Y-ross,” she said. “Best I can do.”

  Wholly unsatisfied, Dana lay there sulking, nerves still pulsing staccato from the terror of the dream.

  “I do know a little bit about this, by the way,” Connie said after a while. “You’ve had my kid for almost two months now.”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to keep her, am I? I’m not going to go marry some thirty-year-old and have more babies and kidnap her into my new life without a backward glance.”

  “What if she likes your life better than mine?” Connie said quietly. “What if she chooses you?”

  Dana stared at the ceiling, predawn beginning to wear the edges off the darkness. What if Alder wanted to stay—needed to? And if she left, what would it be like without her comforting presence? “I would never take Alder away from you,” Dana said.

  “Yeah, but what if it happens anyway?”

  By noon Dana could barely keep her eyes open. It seemed that whatever little sleep she’d gotten had been erased by the nightmare and the disconcerting conversation with Connie. The day’s schedule had been full, but several patients had canceled, citing the holiday, incoming relatives, and grocery-store trips that had taken on the magnitude of preparations to climb Mount Everest. With no patients in the office, Marie had left early for her lunchtime run, and Dana took a moment to lay her head in the crook of her arm on her desk and close her eyes.