Kindred Spirits

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Almost exactly. He obviously likes you,” she said as he waved to catch her attention.

  “It’s the earrings.” Mary Kay touched her dangling hoops, though it was true. She had a way with babies.

  “Hey, I’m beginning to get kind of jealous,” Drake joked. “A new man walks onto the scene and suddenly I’m history? What kind of way is that to treat a guy?”

  “You can relax. He’s out of my life now.” She waved bye-bye as the mother carted him away. “What a heartbreaker.”

  “What you need is one of your own,” he said. “Not that I’m pressuring you or anything, but, come on, Mary Kay, you have to admit you are a natural-born mother. Look how well you raised Tiffany, and you did that on your own.”

  She knew it was a mistake to tell him about the baby. “I’m sure you’re right, but I can’t think about that now,” she said, pushing onward. “Right now, all my focus is on finding Lynne’s baby, not my own.”

  “Yeah, well, I knew Lynne too, and if she were here, she’d take my side on the issue.”

  If Lynne were here, Mary Kay thought, surveying a wilted bunch of basil, she wouldn’t feel so alone.

  “Don’t you get it? This wouldn’t be just your baby, MK. This would be our baby. Ours. Think about it. Think about how much love we have to give.”

  “Sure,” she said, staring at Beth’s list, trying to determine if she couldn’t read the words because of her crappy handwriting or because her eyes were filled with tears.

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  “I know.”

  That was the problem.

  If Lynne were here.

  Ah, but Lynne was there. She knew, and she was the only one.

  And now she was gone.

  Mary Kay unpacked the groceries, removing the coffee and crackers, the various vegetables Beth had requested, remembering that night, that awful night when she called Lynne in a cold sweat. Her fever had climbed past 102 and the cramps from hip bone to hip bone and across her back indicated a raging infection.

  “How do you feel about making a midnight run to the emergency room? You’re the only one I know with four-wheel drive.”

  This was before Lynne was diagnosed, before she was so familiar with the emergency room nurses she could ask about their kids by name. “I’m on my way,” she’d said, pulling on a pair of jeans. “Hold tight.”

  With Tiffany asleep in the back of Sean’s Jeep and Mary Kay shuddering in the passenger seat, Lynne drove silently through the winter storm, gripping the wheel at two and ten, pumping the brakes slightly whenever the tires lost traction. Mary Kay would remind her of this night years later during their many trips to the hospital when Lynne was the one suffering, apologizing constantly for being such a burden.

  “Some nurse I am,” Mary Kay had moaned as another sharp stab rippled across her back. “You’d think I’d know the warning signs by now. I am so stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Lynne said. “You’re unlucky.”

  Pelvic inflammatory disease, the scourge of the young, sexually active woman. Mary Kay’s introductory go-round had been when she was twenty-two in the tiny town of Russian Mission, Alaska, where she made the unwise choice to grit her teeth and stick it out, relying on an old cure of alternating between hot and cold baths to soothe her cramps.

  But hot and cold baths couldn’t stop the bacteria waging a war within her reproductive organs. A laparoscopy confirmed Mary Kay’s worst fears: scarring of the uterus and, worst of all, scarring of the fallopian tubes.

  Lynne held her hand as the ob-gyn interpreted the results. Mary Kay felt as if the walls were closing in. From that point on, she would be a different woman. She’d never be able to have children.

  They went home and Lynne made her a cup of tea to help ease the pain from the laparoscopy. She kept up a running chatter about Tiffany and about the marvels of modern medicine, what they could do these days to cure minor inconveniences like blocked fallopian tubes.

  But all Mary Kay could think of was that internist with the blue eyes and devil-may-care attitude, bounding through life clueless and asymptomatic, like most men. Or maybe, being a doctor, he knew and hadn’t bothered to tell her.

  Creep.

  She opened a bag of pita chips and spread them on a plate around a small dish of low-fat hummus for Carol and Beth when they returned. Folding up the bag, she collapsed on the couch and replayed the scenario again. Every possible outcome sucked. Simply sucked.

  “We’re back!” Beth flounced in and threw herself onto the chair, red-faced and sweaty, her brown hair in a messy bun. “That was torture.”

  Carol, who hadn’t so much as perspired, deposited the white key card onto the table. “No it wasn’t. You loved it.”

  “I loved the end when you said ‘last round.’ That’s the part I loved. As for the rest of what you put me through, I’m pretty sure it violated the Geneva Conventions.”

  Rallying, Mary Kay clapped her hands once. “How about you guys hit the showers. And when you come out, I’ve got hors d’oeuvres and we’ll discuss martinis.”

  “That sounds lovely. I’ll cook.” Beth winced as she pushed herself out of the chair and headed for the shower in the single room where she was spending the night.

  “You OK, Mary Kay?” Carol stood in the doorway of the double they were sharing. “You seem kind of quiet.”

  “Just tired. I’ll get a second wind.”

  Twenty minutes later, she did feel better. Beth had slipped into her pj’s, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She produced an iPod of ridiculously girlish songs, Lynne’s favorites, which she plugged into mini speakers. As they listened to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Beth sautéed diced garlic in olive oil and tomatoes as a base for her famous pasta puttanesca with artichokes, kalamata olives, capers, and a touch of balsamic vinegar and crushed red pepper.

  Meanwhile, Carol and Mary Kay tweaked their lemon martinis, a recipe that had taken them, no kidding, close to nine years to perfect. Not that they had perfected it. It was absurd how much time and effort they’d put into adding more limoncello, less limoncello, citrus vodka versus regular versus lemon, grated lemon rind, Cointreau, no Cointreau. You’d have thought they were working on the Manhattan Project, and that America’s security—nay, world peace!—depended on mixing this martini so it was not too sweet and not too tart.

  “It’s a tough job,” Mary Kay said, measuring out a shot of limoncello, “but someone’s gotta do it.”

  “You guys have been working on the perfect lemon martini since when?” Beth asked, pitting olives.

  “Since Cape Cod.” Carol tasted their latest. Citrus vodka. Limoncello. A squeeze of lemon juice and dash of bitters, shaken vigorously with ice. She made a face and shook her head. “Not quite.”

  Mary Kay dumped it out and, this go-round, left out the bitters. “Cape Cod was the first time we tried inventing our own martinis because we’d left DeeDee’s cookbook at home.” She rinsed the martini shaker, waiting for Carol’s review of the newer version. “Well?”

  Carol licked her lower lip. “I think it’s almost there. You can definitely taste the lemon, though it’s a tad tangy. How about running sugar around the rim?”

  “We don’t have any sugar.”

  “Yes, we do.” Beth waved her spoon toward the tiny packets by the tiny coffee maker. They ignored her.

  “Then let’s try zesting lemon, a touch, with a double shot of limoncello and regular vodka.”

  Mary Kay cracked open a new bottle of Grey Goose. “The sacrifices we make in the pursuit of perfection.”

  Beth wiped her hands on a towel and turned off the sauce. “Here. Let me try this.”

  Mary Kay shook the martini and poured out a glass of the frosted yellow liquid. In one sunny sip it all came back to her—the Cape in April, fog rolling across the Atlantic blanketing their tiny cottage in mist, Lynne with her jeans rolled up to her ankles, laughing as the waves splashed her soaking wet. Always laughing.r />
  It was their first trip together as a group, their first without husbands or kids. A babysitter was taking care of Tiffany, and Kevin and Kyle were in Sean’s care. David was with Elsie and Chat so Marc could use the weekend for writing. Jeff wasn’t on call, so he could look after Amanda and Jon.

  They felt incredibly guilty for caring and not caring, for daring to be free.

  They rented the cottage for a long weekend, which they could do because it was the off season, right on the beach in Wellfleet. It had a tiny fireplace and two musty bedrooms. During the day, they took long walks up and down the coast as far as they could go, arm in arm, talking about kids, jobs, books, the mothers they loved who drove them batty. And husbands.

  After the sun set, they’d boiled lobsters and dined on raw oysters, a new experience for Lynne, who chased each one with a gulp of martini. Lemon martinis. Luscious, lemony, powerful martinis with a kick. That was the start of Carol and Mary Kay’s quest to mix the ultimate martini, whether that be lemon, ginger, chocolate, or just plain gin. They became obsessed.

  That was the weekend when they convinced Carol to return to Deloutte Watkins, her old law firm, part-time so she wouldn’t feel so trapped in Marshfield. It was the weekend they told Mary Kay to break up with that egotistical anesthesiologist Connor what’s-hisname because she deserved better than a man who rated her daily wardrobe on a scale of A+ (never) to C- (frequently). That was the weekend when Beth got truly, completely, ecstatically inebriated for the first time in her life. And loved every crazy minute.

  That was the weekend Lynne mentioned that the flu symptoms she’d been experiencing for months weren’t going away, that she felt “off,” though the doctors assured her it was nothing. And they, her best friends, did too, because that’s what best friends say.

  It’s nothing, Lynne. You’re just stressed. Relax.

  Relaxed, all right. Giddy on lemon martinis and oysters and the sheer joy of no-holds-barred irresponsibility, they left the cottage that night and ran through the mist to the ice-cold Atlantic Ocean. Sending themselves into hysterics, they dared one another to jump in the waves, bowling over in laughter as they reached for one another’s hands in the pitch-black, salty darkness. It was nutty. They could have been sucked into the undertow and drowned. They could have died of hypothermia. But they didn’t.

  Beth couldn’t remember when she felt so free, so lemony-light and fizzy.

  Perhaps Lynne was right. Maybe it was time she let go, because you never knew, you just never knew, what the universe had in store.

  Throwing back the entire drink, she plunked the glass on the hotel table, shaking her brain clear. “You know what’s missing?”

  “Cointreau?” Mary Kay suggested.

  Carol said, “Fresh lemon juice?”

  “Lynne.”

  Then Beth cranked the next song on Lynne’s playlist—the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”—and danced, the towel falling off her head as she waved her sautéing spoon in the air, twirling around their tiny suite living room.

  Mary Kay and Carol downed their martinis and joined in, dancing to Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse and Green Day and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” Beth carefully carrying Mary Kay’s flowers to the kitchen, snuffing the candles and pushing aside the coffee table, maybe once or twice jumping off and onto the couch, not caring if management called to complain.

  “Whoo-hoo!” they shouted when Gloria Gaynor belted out “I Will Survive,” the song that Lynne played at the start of every chemo session, the anthem that had kept her alive past the crucial five years, past when the doctors and specialists and grim statistics clinically insisted she should be dead.

  They raised their fists and pounded the air, stomped their feet, for they, too, had been petrified. And like Lynne, they grew strong. They were learning how to carry on. They would survive. As long as they knew how to love, they knew they’d stay alive.

  This was the song they played again and again, twirling and twirling and twirling and twirling until the pain of losing Lynne rose up and out, spinning into orbit where it lost its force. Where it became nothing but a memory to be forgotten, leaving behind only her life and love and passions and her brilliant smile.

  Twirling and twirling and twirling.

  Chapter Ten

  That night, Carol had the strangest dream.

  She was floating on Kindlewah Lake under a gentle summer rain. Jeff was next to her, his arm across her back as they lay facedown, side-by-side, naked. Mary Kay and Beth sat on the opposite bank in lawn chairs, drinking martinis and chatting, and Lynne was there too. Sort of. Drifting in and out, gliding across the water, hands behind her back as if she were skating.

  Carol felt like she’d been rescued from drowning and was recovering in the sun, even though it was raining. “That was strange, wasn’t it?” she murmured to Jeff, his skin so warm and smooth against her body. “What was that about? Did it even happen?”

  Jeff, in the voice of Dr. Dorfman, turned his head and said, “Motherhood is a natural state. Nothing to be feared.”

  “Hmm,” Carol replied, yawning, thinking, Whatever.

  “If there were more shame, less permissiveness . . .,” he drawled, suddenly humming the gypsy dance from Carmen.

  Wait! It was more than just a song. It had meaning.

  Amanda!

  Forcing herself to consciousness, Carol extended a hand from beneath the covers and groped for her cell phone from which Amanda’s ringtone blared. She tried to answer perkily, but it was a lost cause. Her voice was like sandpaper.

  “Mother?” Amanda was alarmingly youthful and awake. “Are you OK?”

  “Sure, I’m OK.” Carol sat up and blinked at the clock, trying to get her bearings. This wasn’t her apartment in New York or her house in Connecticut. Oh, right. Pennsylvania. With these heavy, rubberized hotel curtains designed for airplane pilots and nighttime travelers, you could never tell what time of day it was. Ten thirty? No, no, no. Checkout was at eleven. There had to be some mistake.

  “Mother?” Amanda said again.

  “Is it ten thirty?” Carol checked with Mary Kay who, blinded by her lavender silk eye mask, was fast asleep in the other queen bed, dead to the world.

  “Ten thirty-five to be exact. I woke you, didn’t I?”

  “Not really. I was kind of dozing.”

  Amanda was doubtful. “Where are you, anyway?”

  Good question. Reorienting herself, Carol said, “Pennsylvania. Someplace off I-80.”

  “Oh, yeah. Dad told me last night you were on a road trip with Tiffany’s mom and Mrs. Levinson.”

  Funny how Amanda refused to call Beth and Mary Kay by their first names, a holdover from when she was in grade school. Beth would probably always be Mrs. Levinson to Amanda, just as Lynne, her cherished elementary school art teacher, would forever be Mrs. Flannery. As the mother of Amanda’s favorite babysitter, Tiffany, only Mary Kay LeBlanc was spared. She was “Tiffany’s mom,” and nothing else.

  Hold on. Back up. “You spoke with Dad?”

  “When I got your message that you had something really important to discuss, I tried to reach you last night but you didn’t answer. So I called Dad to ask him what was up.”

  Carol was positive her phone never rang the night before, and she’d positioned it on the kitchen counter so she could hear it while they were singing and dancing. Besides, if Amanda hadn’t been able to reach her, why didn’t she leave a message?

  “Did Dad tell you what was up?”

  “Uh-huh. Since I couldn’t reach you—since I can never reach you—he explained about the house. He said I needed to call you so . . . here I am, calling you.”

  Pressure built under the bridge of Carol’s nose, a sure sign of a burgeoning headache. This standoff with Amanda was eating away at her soul. If they didn’t reach some sort of rapprochement soon, they were very much in jeopardy of ending up like Lynne and her mother, a cold, unyielding prospect that would leave them both miserable.

 
“I’m so glad you did. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about us, lately. I miss us.”

  “Yup.” Amanda cut her off. “So Dad said you have to sell the house.”

  There was a stirring in the other bed. Mary Kay was awake, eye mask on her forehead, smiling encouragingly.

  “Is that OK?” Carol pressed.

  “I don’t know if it’s OK. In an ideal existence, I’d have voted to keep you both on the same island, but it’s not really my choice, is it?”

  “In a way, it is. After all, this is your house too, your childhood home.”

  “I’m going to be twenty-one next spring, Mom. I’m an adult, not a child anymore.”

  Her heart sank, making Carol feel like a hypocrite. All those years of slogging through young motherhood, counting the days until her time was her own and wishing she could sleep through the night undisturbed, and now she was feeling sentimental. As her own mother used to say about parenthood, the hours inch by like years and the years fly by like hours.

  “But what about Christmas?” she said, clutching on to the last vestige of childhood. “You love coming home to Connecticut for Christmas.”

  “Suddenly you care about Christmas?”

  “Of course! Don’t you remember the fun we used to have decorating the house and trying to string lights on the pine tree in the front yard? I swear, every year your father nearly broke his neck climbing that. . .”

  “My father,” Amanda said, “is no longer your husband. And our home is no longer our home. Don’t you get it, Mom? Our family doesn’t exist anymore. The Goodworthys are neither good nor worthy.”

  “Don’t say that. A family is still a family even if the parents separate.”

  “Some families are, but not ours. And don’t call me naïve. When Molly’s parents split, we were all for it because those two were fighting constantly. Even Molly was relieved. But you guys . . . you never fought.”

  Carol resisted the urge to jump at the chance to tell Amanda that it was precisely because they hadn’t fought that their marriage fell apart. Jeff bottled up his feelings. It was like being married to a brick wall. “Sometimes not fighting is a sign of a communication breakdown.”