Kindred Spirits

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Someone’s been watching too much Dr. Phil,” Amanda scoffed. “Anyway, Christmas is a nonissue. Like I told Dad, I’m going to France this year for Christmas. I met someone last semester in Paris and he asked me to come visit.”

  Carol pictured a dark-haired French scam artist in an ill-fitting suit pinching a Gauloise and trailing behind Amanda in the Louvre, a swindler who would shake her down for every last dime and leave her with a broken heart and a case of the clap. Dear. God. No.

  “We’ve been Facebooking and just the other day he asked me what I was doing over the holidays, if I’d like to spend them with him.”

  “In Paris!” Carol didn’t mean to scream, but she couldn’t help it. “How well do you know this guy?”

  “Well enough. He’s the brother of a friend of my roommate from junior year abroad.”

  The headache grew. “Which is to say, not at all.”

  Amanda was silent. “Actually, quite well. Even Dad knows him through Facebook.”

  Naturally, Jeff would be more involved in their daughter’s life than she. Then again, it was kind of difficult to be up to speed with your daughter’s comings and goings when she didn’t give you the time of day. “How old is he?”

  “Old enough.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “We’re not in court, so you can quit with the cross-examination. We’re just getting together for Christmas. It’s no big deal. Why do you make everything into such a big deal?”

  Carol motioned to Mary Kay and mouthed, Help me! Mary Kay jumped up and went to the kitchen, returning, by some miracle of miracles, with Carol’s favorite: a Starbucks latte, soy, three shots. “We gotta go,” she whispered, pointing to the clock.

  Just as well, because Carol did not have enough caffeine in her system to handle the news that her daughter would be spending Christmas with some unemployed French drifter. “Look, Amanda, they’re kicking us out of the hotel, so let’s discuss this later.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss. I’ve got enough of my own money saved to buy myself a plane ticket. It’s not your decision.”

  Carol inhaled a fortifying sip. “I meant the house.”

  “No need to talk about that, either. If Dad says you’ve got to sell it, then you’ve got to sell it. You never asked me if it was OK if you left my father. So why do you care what I think about selling the house?” And with that dramatic sign-off, she hung up.

  Carol held the phone in her hand, shaking.

  “You poor thing,” Mary Kay said, sitting on the edge of the bed, her own cup of coffee between her knees. “That sounded rough.”

  “You have no idea.” Carol mechanically took another sip. It had no taste. “And the kicker is, that was the longest conversation we’ve had in months, maybe years.”

  Mary Kay put down her cup and, patting Carol as she passed, went to her suitcase to find clothes. “You know the only reason she’s acting out is because she loves you so much.”

  “You must have me mistaken for Jeff.”

  Mary Kay collected a bra and blouse. “She loves Jeff, sure, but it’s you she identifies with. You’re her hero, Carol. Remember that paper she wrote in middle school about how she wanted to be a lawyer someday? She parroted your most famous cases word for word.”

  “Well, she doesn’t want to be a lawyer now. She wants to be an artist, like Lynne. It was Lynne Amanda turned to when I left Jeff. It was Lynne who, even in her sickness, stepped up to the plate and did what I couldn’t—be her mother.”

  Beth appeared at the door in black pants and gray sweater, clutching her own white paper cup of coffee. “How’s that soy latte working for you?”

  “It’s perfect. Thanks.” Carol did her best to look grateful.

  “She just got off the phone with Amanda.” Mary Kay gave Beth a knowing look. “And now we’re talking about Amanda’s relationship with Lynne.”

  Beth sat on the bed with a bounce as Mary Kay slipped off to the bathroom to take a shower and get dressed. “That still bugs you, huh?”

  “It doesn’t bug me,” Carol answered, finding it hard not to feel slightly defensive at the insinuation that she was in any way jealous of Lynne. “But it does remind me of what a failure I’ve been.”

  “Lynne didn’t see it that way.”

  Carol tried the latte again. “She probably did.”

  “No, she didn’t. The way she saw it, you two are so similar that you couldn’t be in the same room without setting off sparks. Lynne thought of herself as a buffer, kind of like insulation.”

  “Insulation.” Such a quirky but appropriate comparison. Leave it to Lynne.

  “You know, the kind you wrap around wires so they don’t touch each other and ignite.”

  Carol had never thought of it that way. It used to bother her that Lynne always seemed to know things about Amanda’s life. Nothing major. Nothing bad. Usually complimentary. Like when a professor had chosen her as the only student to display her artwork in a show. Carol had resented the bond between her daughter and her friend, but it never occurred to Carol that Lynne might have been working behind the scenes to repair their relationship. And now it was too late to say thank you.

  “I wish I’d known.” Carol put her cup on the bedside table. “I just took her interest for granted.”

  “She wasn’t doing it for the accolades,” Beth said. “She was trying to keep you two connected because she knew how much you needed each other.”

  “Or maybe . . .” Carol had a thought. “Maybe she didn’t want us to end up like her and Eunice.”

  Beth considered this. “Could be.” She nodded. “After what Therese said yesterday, you’re probably right. Sounds like Lynne and her mother were close once.”

  “You could say the same thing about Amanda and me.”

  The bathroom door opened, releasing a puff of white steam. Mary Kay stepped out in her black lace bra and matching underwear, a white towel wrapped around her hair as she brushed her teeth. “You two still talking about Amanda?”

  “Partly,” Beth said. “We just figured out that maybe one reason why Lynne was so eager to keep the lines of communication open between Carol and Amanda was because of her messed-up relationship with her own mother.”

  Mary Kay spit into the sink and ran the water. “That makes sense.”

  “Now that I know that, I feel like even more of a jerk,” Carol said, slipping out of her T-shirt. “I should have thanked her.”

  Mary Kay unwrapped the towel from which tumbled a mass of black wet curls. “It’s not too late. Look at it this way, maybe that’s something you and Amanda can work on together—finding a way to thank Lynne.”

  Carol reached into her suitcase and stopped, the answer suddenly clear. “You’re right. Lynne tried to bring us together in life. What better way to honor her memory than the two of us reuniting after her death?”

  It was the sort of sweet, practical advice Lynne would have given if she’d been there. And who was to say that in some way she wasn’t?

  That morning, Beth was in rare form.

  Up since eight, she’d packed the kitchen, wiped down all the counters, and even managed to squeeze in the free hotel breakfast—artificially yellow eggs, stale toast, and sausages that didn’t taste quite right. For Mary Kay and Carol, she’d pilfered a green banana, a mushy apple, and a couple of light yogurts. But the coffee didn’t pass, so she got in the car and hunted down a Starbucks, thoughtfully tailoring each order to their needs before returning to the hotel and checking out to prevent them from being charged another day.

  Now she had her bag in tow, ready to go. “They said the room was already paid. How did that happen?”

  Carol pretended to be busy organizing her work stuff.

  “Did you pay, Mary Kay?”

  Mary Kay grabbed the handle of her suitcase and unlatched the door. “Not me. Must have been Carol.”

  Carol shrugged as if she, too, were clueless, though she wasn’t. She’d paid the bill the night befor
e, partly to save Beth the money and also as a way of mollifying the manager who’d called twice to report that guests had filed noise complaints.

  “Hmmm. A mysterious bill payer. I must get to the bottom of this.” Beth dragged her suitcase out, limping.

  “You OK?” Mary Kay asked. “You look a little sore.”

  “I am sore. I made the mistake of sitting down and reading the Sunday paper. Now I can hardly move from that running we did yesterday.”

  “You just need to stretch more before and afterward,” Carol said, wistfully conducting a last-minute scan of the room, boring and lifeless now that Mary Kay had packed up her candles and pillows and stuck the flowers in the lobby. They’d had such a terrific night. It was almost a shame to leave. Plus, it was raining and a Sunday, a day to be home in sweats doing laundry and lollygagging on the couch reading the comics.

  On rainy autumn Sundays like this, she and Jeff would make a big pot of chili, much of which they’d freeze and eat as leftovers throughout the month. This wasn’t just any old chili. This was the works. Chicken, beef, pork sausage mixed with sautéed chopped onions, garlic, chili powder and cumin, mustard, high quality tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, two kinds of beans, black olives, red pepper flakes, and (her secret) a handful of fresh dill.

  A football game would be playing in the background and Jeff, puttering around the house fixing this or that, would stop by the TV to shout at Bill Belichick while the kids did their homework in the living room or upstairs. If it were cold, too, he’d build a fire in the fireplace and she’d make both cornbread and an apple pie along with a crunchy, tart salad.

  Then they’d eat early and watch The Simpsons or maybe a movie. Sometimes Carol read The New York Times Magazine in the bath and then climbed into clean sheets, snuggling up to Jeff and listening to the rain beat against the windows, the cold wind whipping across the lake. There was delicious comfort in being assured that her family was under that same roof, safe and warm, as the elements battled outside.

  She never fully appreciated the quiet joy of domesticity. Before, it had always seemed so claustrophobic, which was why she’d find herself awake a few hours later, roaming the house, an inner restlessness making it impossible for her to sleep through the night.

  They loaded their bags into the Highlander and Carol climbed into the back, adjusted her safety belt, her cell phone, BlackBerry, and legal pad, checked her pens. Then she booted the computer on her lap and opened the file for the memorandum of law she was working on. Usually, after a few minutes of switching gears, she could delve right into work. Not this morning. This morning she was recovering from her martinis and Amanda’s call and the dream of Jeff’s skin against hers.

  Mary Kay started the car and they headed out for their second day on the road.

  Somewhere on I-80, about an hour into their trip, Beth put down the sock she was knitting and asked, “Aren’t you curious about what Lynne’s daughter looks like?”

  Mary Kay and Carol were kind of stunned that they hadn’t already asked themselves this question.

  “She could be anyone we’ve come across,” Beth said. “We might have walked right past her in the mall when we went shopping yesterday. She could have been at the McDonald’s where we changed to meet Aunt Therese.”

  “I hope not,” Mary Kay said. “That was a pretty scuzzy Mickey D’s.”

  Beth giggled. She was unusually chipper this morning.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Mary Kay asked, amused.

  “I can’t help it. I know I should be dragging my red wagon, but I’m so. . . giddy. Is that wrong?”

  “Why would it be wrong?”

  “Because Lynne’s gone, and I don’t know”—she shrugged—“I’ve stopped feeling sad. Instead, I feel kind of liberated.”

  “Liberated?” Mary Kay cocked her head. “Because Lynne’s dead?”

  “Not because Lynne’s dead. Certainly not. It’s more like . . .” Beth tried to phrase this the right way. “You know how you always say you’ll do something, something big like writing a book or moving to another country, but then little problems tie you down?”

  “What kind of little problems?” Carol asked from the backseat, where she was searching case law and paying only half attention.

  Beth turned slightly, thinking. “Oh, like how Marc can’t work on his book full-time the way he wants because we need his paycheck. We can’t move because of my parents. That’s what I mean by getting bogged down.”

  “With all due respect, in the category of worries, those don’t sound so little,” Mary Kay said.

  “They are when you think about Lynne and how there was so much left for her to do with her life, finessing her art and, of course, finding Julia. Then she got cancer and—zip—that was that.”

  Mary Kay and Carol couldn’t argue with Beth’s logic.

  “So, that’s what I mean about feeling liberated. Last night, remembering how we were at the Cape, I realized there’s no value in holding back. Every once in a while, you gotta let go.”

  Carol saved her place in the memorandum, unable to take one more soporific paragraph of arguments. “And where would you go, Mrs. Levinson?”

  “Italy.”

  “Italy?” they chimed.

  “I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to go to Amalfi.”

  “Amalfi’s easy enough,” Mary Kay said. “Just buy a ticket and go. Where else?”

  Beth reddened slightly, embarrassed to be embarrassed by an insecurity that had plagued her since high school. “It’s not so much where I’d go as what I’d do. Like get a makeover. Nothing too radical,” she added quickly, grabbing a hank of her hair. “Just a new haircut and some highlights so I’m not so . . . drab. Lynne was always after me to spruce myself up. She claimed it would, you know, boost my confidence.” Beth punctuated this with a slight laugh.

  “To feel good you’ve got to look good, is that it?” Carol asked, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Exactly.” Beth dropped her hair. “What do you think, MK?”

  “I think Lynne would be pleased as punch that somehow her death finally convinced you to head off to sunny Italy and get a makeover, not necessarily in that order.”

  “Let’s make sure that when this trip is over, you do just that, get a makeover,” Carol said. “The whole kit and kaboodle.”

  “The whole kit and kaboodle sounds expensive,” Beth said.

  Mary Kay dismissed this with the flick of the left blinker. “No sweat. It’ll be our treat, our way of paying you back for driving your car all over hell’s half acre.”

  “No, you guys have done enough already. You bought all the food and drink last night, Mary Kay, and, Carol, you got me the running gear and one of you paid for that hotel room. I’m no Blanche DuBois, relying on the kindness of strangers.”

  “Are you calling us strangers?” Carol asked, searching her iPhone for spas around Marshfield, thinking the coolest thing would be to invite Beth to New York and surprise her with a trip to the Frédéric Fekkai Salon on Fifth Avenue.

  “I’m just saying I’m not a moocher.”

  Mary Kay reached over and pinched Beth’s cheek. “You’re not a moocher, you’re a smoocher.”

  “You’re a hootchie-coocher,” Carol added.

  Beth leaned her head against the window in defeat. “You two are impossible.” Though, secretly, she was smiling with delight.

  It was a shame they couldn’t do the makeover right away, but today they had to rush across this humongous expanse that was Pennsylvania in order to catch Lynne’s mother at the nursing home.

  They hadn’t exactly been looking forward to breaking the news to Eunice before. But after hearing Therese’s tragic story about how Lynne had been Eunice’s miracle baby, they were dreading this meeting even more.

  Beth reached into her purse and pulled out the letter that Lynne had written to her mother. “I can’t tell you how tempted I am to read this. If there were a hot kettle here, I’d steam it open.”
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  “I know. I’m dying to know what it says,” Carol added.

  “What if Lynne lashes out at Eunice and calls her every name in the book?”

  “That doesn’t sound like Lynne’s style,” Carol said. “And if the letter is nasty—which I doubt—we’ll be there for her.”

  “Look, this is what we’ll do,” Mary Kay said. “We’ll calmly introduce ourselves and tell Eunice what happened. Maybe we should mention that Lynne had always spoken about her in loving terms. . ..”

  “But!” Beth interrupted. “She never—”

  “I know. But sometimes a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, you know? Would it hurt to say that Lynne loved her? She did, deep down.”

  Beth dumped her knitting in a plastic Ziploc bag and pulled the blue zipper tight. “You’re right. Sometimes it’s OK to lie.”

  Sometimes, Mary Kay thought, trying not to obsess too much over her own lying to Drake. But rarely.

  Outside Lynne’s hometown of Calais, they stopped for gas and to go to the bathroom and freshen up before heading down to the Beckwood Landing Assisted Living Center. There was no other option besides JJ’s Brew ‘N’ Burn, a truck stop with tractor trailers lined up spewing diesel fumes.

  “The last time we were at a truck stop together,” Mary Kay said as she and Carol left Beth to pump the gas, “was on our way back from the Cape.”

  It took a beat, but Carol remembered, bursting out in laughter. “And we accidentally went into the men’s room.”

  Mary Kay opened the heavy glass doors for two truckers. “It wasn’t our fault. The men’s room wasn’t even marked. At least, not very well.”

  “What I can’t get over is that you, me, and Lynne got as far as the stalls before we realized something was off. Lynne asked, ‘Since when do women’s rooms have urinals?’ And I remember wondering if that was some liberal Massachusetts law, coed bathrooms.”

  “Until that guy at the sink said, ‘I think you ladies meant to take a left instead of a right. Not that I’m complaining.’ ” Mary Kay shook her head. “If a guy had done that in a women’s room, could you imagine?”