by Jean Stone
“My father has always had to be the one who’s in control,” Katie continued.
Hannah’s father hadn’t been like that. Her mother had been the one … especially after Daddy died … Hannah tried to think of something else, but she could only picture Betty Barnes with that jet-black hair like Riley’s.
“It turns out my father and Ina were having an affair for years,” Katie was saying. “He deceived me as much as he deceived my mother.”
“Well,” Rita said, “that must piss you off.”
“All I can think about right now is getting through tomorrow. No matter what Ina did, she was my assistant, she was Miguel’s mother, and for a long time she was more like a mother to me than the one that I had.”
“Which is why we’ll go to the service,” Faye said. “It’s in a funeral home, so chances are they won’t throw us out.”
They ate a small meal in trepidated silence. Hannah wondered if the others, too, were trying to think of something pleasant and fun to say and if, like her, they simply could not.
After dinner Faye suggested a walk along Broadway.
“The lights of Broadway,” Hannah said. “Wouldn’t my Riley be wicked excited.”
They had all laughed at that—well, at least a little—then they went outside into the night air. But on the yellow-cab-lined street, they hadn’t walked more than a block under the dazzling, amber-red-orange glow when Hannah stopped on the sidewalk and let out a startled yelp.
Ten stories up, between two huge billboards—one proclaiming that Pierce Brosnan’s choice of a watch was an Omega, the other promoting The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables—Katie’s image flashed down in radiant, pink-sequined splendor.
JULY 4TH, the poster promised. CENTRAL PARK.
Katie came to a halt beside Hannah and followed her gaze with her eyes. Then the girl quickly turned and darted through a walkway that led to an entrance of the Marriott Marquis.
“Oh, God,” Katie said after they’d scurried after her into the lobby and rode up the glass elevator to the lounge on the eighth floor. “This is way too real. Look at me. How can I do that concert? Even if the baby does come early or on time, how can I possibly prepare? What about the cancer?”
Hannah, for one, could not offer a solution.
They sat by the bank of convex windows overlooking Broadway, overlooking the enormous image of Katie in pink, complete with the rhinestone tattoo of a rose on her left cheek.
“My father’s in denial. And I’ve been right there beside him.” No one responded right away. Katie looked around the table and said, “My world’s unraveling. What am I going to do?”
“Tell the truth,” Faye said. “Tell him it’s impossible.”
Katie picked up the small, paper sign that had been tented on the table, a picture of a frothy beer on one side, a wine list on the other. She folded up the edges into a nervous accordion.
“You can always run away,” Rita said and ordered a rum and Coke, easy on the ice.
“Running away never solved a thing,” Faye responded.
Hannah looked back at the gazillion bright lights. How many times had she seen this image of Times Square on The Today Show and Letterman and Good Morning, America?. How many New Years’ Eves had she watched the ball drop right there in that very place where the Cup o’ Noodles sign stood steaming even now?
She thought about Riley, about her dreams of becoming an actress. Would Hannah have the courage to help her make them come true? Even if it meant that Riley would have to leave the safe harbor of the island?
“I disagree with Faye,” Hannah said suddenly. “Sometimes running away can solve everything. I ran away. It changed my life.”
The waitress returned and set down their drinks. Hannah took a sip of her Kiss Me Kate, a strawberry-colored fruit drink that contained no alcohol. She didn’t know how alcohol would mix with chemo, and besides, she’d always preferred whipped cream to scotch, anyway.
And then she told them. Without even an ounce of liquor to loosen up her tongue, Hannah Barnes Jackson told them about how she’d grown up in Texas, the daughter of a cattle-rancher and a social-climbing mother, who now sat in a San Antonio prison, doing twenty years to life.
“My father died when I was twelve,” Hannah continued. “My mother worked like crazy to keep the ranch intact so the money would be there for me to go to medical school.”
They all were rapt. Hannah supposed she would have been, too.
“We had a foreman named McNally. I graduated from college and went to medical school in Boston. My mother was so proud. Then she learned McNally had been stealing from her for years. There was no money left: He had gambled it away. She lost the ranch. The night that she found out she took a shotgun from the cabinet and killed him. She didn’t even give her story to the jury. Not that it would have mattered: McNally and the jury all were white. My mother was—is—Mexican.”
It was very quiet for a lounge that overlooked Broadway.
Then Rita spoke. “Holy shit,” she said.
Yes, Hannah echoed, holy shit.
“You don’t sound like you’re from Texas,” Katie added.
Years of practice, Hannah explained.
Faye held up her glass. “Here’s to your mother,” she said. “What a gutsy lady.”
“But what about you?” Katie asked. “What about medical school?”
Hannah took another sip of her drink. “I’d always wanted to be a doctor. But I left school during the trial. I was so ashamed. I was afraid that they’d find out.”
“Do you ever see your mother?”
She paused for a moment, because this was the hard part. “No. I was so upset I got into my car and drove down to the Cape. I took the first boat to the Vineyard. No one ever tried to find me, not even for the trial.”
All eyes were on Hannah: Katie’s problems no longer were on center stage, though Hannah now wished they were.
“You never went back,” Katie stated.
Hannah shook her head. “And no one has been the wiser. At least until now.”
“Surely your family knows,” Faye interjected. “Your husband, your kids …”
“No,” Hannah replied, “they don’t know a thing.”
An odd silence fell over the small, round cocktail table and for the first time Hannah was afraid that, sooner or later, her life, like Katie’s, might unravel, one thread at a time.
SIXTEEN
Katie had listened or had tried to listen to Hannah’s confession. Sometimes it was difficult to be sympathetic when all she could think of was, well, herself.
She lay on the small bed in the dark hotel room and pulled the crisp white sheet up to her neck. It smelled of bleach and cleanliness and laundry hung out on the line, the way her mother did it on the Vineyard, way back before Katie had to think about death and life.
Shouldn’t she cancel Central Park? Shouldn’t one of them face reality, despite the media?
Her thoughts drifted to Ina: What would she have advised? Would she have agreed that this time her father’s decision was not the best for Katie? Or had her love for him been completely blind?
Ina.
Her father.
She tried to picture them together, then decided that was not a good idea.
And now Ina was gone. Ina, Katie’s friend, who had betrayed her by keeping such a secret. And yet Cliff had said Ina could not be trusted to be told about the cancer. Maybe what he really meant was that he could not trust himself: If anyone else knew about Katie’s cancer, the door to his denial might have been forced open.
He might have had to cancel the concert. And the dream once denied him by Joleen.
Suddenly Katie felt a cool hand on her cheek.
“Katie? Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes. In the darkness of the room she could make out the woman’s silhouette, slightly bent over the bed. It would have been nice if it was Joleen, but it was not.
“I’m okay, Faye. Thanks.”
“I don’t want to go tomorrow. I’m sorry we came.”
“Because of Hannah’s mother?”
Hannah’s mother? Oh. She’d already forgotten about her. How could Katie be so self-centered? Had her father made her that way as well as making her a star? “Life is so screwed up, Faye. My life, anyway.”
Faye sighed. “Most lives are.”
Katie laughed. “I’m a rock star who’s pregnant and has breast cancer and is hiding from the world. My father’s mistress probably pretended to be my friend for the sake of their affair; my boyfriend probably pretended to love me because it was a gig that paid well; and my father probably kept both of them because they kept me in line, kept me singing my mother’s old songs and convincing me I was good. I wonder how much extra he paid them for that.” She considered what she’d said, surprised so much pain had spilled out. “Yeah,” she added, “I guess that would qualify as screwed up.”
Faye snapped on the lamp. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s see. I am a woman who’s divorced, who had a daughter who drowned and who has a son who’s gay, though I haven’t seen him in ten years and don’t even know if he is still alive. I have a successful business that I now couldn’t care less about. Oh, and I’ve had cancer twice.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “Would you like me to go on?”
Katie shook her head.
“Still,” Faye added, “some problems can be fixed. If my daughter were still alive, and if she were in your shoes, how should I advise her?”
Katie pulled the sheet over her head. “Tell her to forget about the funeral and go back to the Vineyard and move in with Joleen.”
With a gentle laugh, Faye said, “Well, I guess isolation can be a solution. When my daughter died, I isolated in a different way. I obsessed over my business. I pretended to work hard, but I was only trying to protect myself from being hurt again.” She paused a moment. “Sometimes it’s good to isolate, because it gives you time to heal. The trick is to learn when the healing is as good as it’s going to get, and when to get back to the world.”
Sliding the sheet away from her face, Katie said, “Sometimes I’m so scared, Faye. I’m scared for my baby and for what lies ahead. And mostly I’m damn scared that I have cancer. I look in the mirror sometimes and say, ‘Katie, you have breast cancer.’ But it’s so hard to believe because I don’t look any different except that I’m fat now, not like the girl up on that billboard.”
Faye said nothing. Katie sat up and Faye simply held her, though Katie didn’t cry. After a moment Katie quietly asked, “So we should go to the funeral?”
“It might be a good place to start finding some closure.”
Closure? Yes. The end of one life, the beginning of another. She thought about Hannah and about Faye. She wondered why life had to suck, and how it was that people still went on, guided through it all on the wings of hope. On butterfly wings, like in Joleen’s song. “Okay,” she said. “But only if you tell me about your daughter who died, and about your son who’s gay.”
Then she closed her eyes and heard a bedtime story about a girl named Dana, who had loved beach roses, too, and about a boy named Greg, who filled their lives with magic and with laughter and with love.
The women waited until the crowd—and there was a crowd, much larger than Katie had expected—had dissipated into the white-brick funeral home, before they emerged from the Mercedes.
At first Katie thought there must be more than one funeral going on. But as they stepped inside the room marked INA ENRIQUEZ and Katie’s eyes adjusted to the half-dark, she realized every seat was occupied. She recognized some people from the industry, including her own roadies, young men and women she did not really know but saw every spring, summer, and fall when they toured the North, South, East, and West.
Many Hispanics were there, too, neatly dressed and somber—neighbors, Katie assumed, from Ina’s other life. Katie did not know them, either.
There were flowers, too. Hundreds of yellow hibiscus draped the casket, the altar, the ends of the pews. Had they been Ina’s favorite flower? Katie didn’t know. One more thing that she hadn’t known.
Flanked by Faye and Hannah, Katie let Rita guide them to a small corner at the back of the room. She was glad she’d worn the black lace mantilla that hid most of her face, and the nondescript canvas raincoat that was large enough to cover her distinct pregnancy and succeeded at concealing any starlike delusion.
They had to stand because the folding chairs were occupied. Rita stepped in front of Katie to help block the view not from her to them, but from them to her. Rita wasn’t exactly Brady, but the red hair served as a distracting decoy.
Then Katie felt a hand loop through her arm: It belonged to Hannah, the child of a woman who had killed a man. Katie blinked back the thought. She couldn’t make room in her heart for Faye or Hannah’s pain; it was already overcrowded with her own.
“Is he here?” Rita turned and whispered to Katie. “Your father?”
She peered over Rita’s shoulder and squinted across the room. “I can’t tell.”
The lights grew dimmer and from a hidden place the sound of a piano filled the room: not a dreary organ, but a soulful, rich piano. And then Katie realized that instead of an old hymn, the score was more than familiar: It was an instrumental of her latest top-ten hit. A hit that had been another remake of Joleen’s.
Katie thought that she’d be sick. Then her father stepped up to the podium.
She ducked behind Rita’s red hair. Her heart started to flutter in disjointed, childlike flutters.
“Ina Enriquez was beloved by many,” Cliff Gillette began, “and a friend to all.”
Katie closed her eyes as if doing so could erase the sound of her father’s voice. She could not believe he was so blatant as to play a song of Joleen’s, the woman who’d been tossed aside because of the woman who’d just died. Katie reached out and found Faye’s arm. She clung to Faye and Hannah.
“I remember the first day we met Ina,” he continued, and Katie knew the we meant Cliff and Joleen. The mourners went silent with rapt attention; the hush of Joleen’s name always brought rapt attention. “We were at a vigil for our beloved John Lennon …” Katie wanted to scream. Lennon, she knew, had been killed in 1980. She’d been born in 1982. That meant her father had taken up with Ina two years before Katie had been born, two years that he’d already betrayed her mother.
“I have to get out of here,” she whispered to Faye, but Faye must not have heard her, for she simply smiled.
Katie then tugged on Hannah’s arm. “Let’s go,” she mouthed.
As she turned toward the door, her father said, “I’d now like to introduce the pride and joy of Ina’s life.”
Could she leave without seeing Miguel? Just one look …
Her father left the podium. For a moment nothing happened, then she saw the back she knew so well—the strong, muscled back—move to the front of the room. A warmth flooded through her; she loved him, didn’t she? Loved and trusted him despite what Cliff had warned?
As Miguel turned to face the crowd, Katie noticed a little girl standing next to him, holding his hand. Katie had never seen her, but she was quite a beautiful child. She felt a pang of envy that the child, not her, was holding, touching, feeling Miguel’s love.
“Ina Enriquez was a wonderful mother,” Miguel began. Then he looked down at the child. “She was also a wonderful grandmother to my little Adelaide.”
Katie squinted as if that might help her hear what she thought she’d heard.
“If it weren’t for my mother, Adelaide would not have had a good upbringing. But she loved my Adelaide as if she were her own. Now I only hope I can raise my daughter in a way that would have made my mother proud.”
Katie’s mouth went dry. Her knees grew weak; she was too stunned to respond. She watched as the little girl knelt d
own and kissed the casket.
Faye’s,
Hannah’s,
Rita’s eyes all turned to Katie.
She ripped her hands from them, pressed her palm against her mouth, and pushed through the crowd, rushing through the door and out onto the street.
She ran up Seventy-ninth Street as if she, too, were being chased by a determined mugger. She ran because she feared that if she stopped, she might throw up on the sidewalk or, worse, she might race back to the funeral home and shout about deceit of father and of lover, and about the perils of trusting anyone in life or death. She ran because she feared that if she did not, she might resort to murder, the way Hannah’s mother had done.
She would kill Miguel first.
Then her father, for surely he had known.
When she reached the corner, Katie slowed and clutched the sharp pain in her side. Then she heard footsteps running up the walk. She knew the sound, the heavy sound. It was not her father and it was not Miguel. The footsteps belonged to Brady, protective, steadfast Brady, who’d never done her any harm.
Just as he caught up to Katie, Faye’s Mercedes pulled up along the curb. Katie shoved aside her bodyguard and jumped inside the car.
SEVENTEEN
It always had seemed strange to Faye that fantasy had the power to keep one going, that dreams of what might be could often be sufficient to sustain a genteel disposition and an ability to cope. She’d watched it happen with her mother, who’d raised her girls to think they were aristocrats, when they were the daughters of a mere professor and his wife.
As Faye said good-bye to Katie, the last of her passengers, she realized that the worst part was when fantasy was shattered, when reality demanded notice, as Katie’s had these past few days.
Faye’s parents had been lucky: Death had entered before pain. Claire would be lucky, too; it’s how things worked for her.
