Kindred Spirits

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Good night.”

  Beth went into her room next door and found Mary Kay sitting on the edge of the white Jacuzzi. “Is this skeevy, or what?” She played with a button by her foot. “I keep thinking of all the drunken chemical engineers over the years who scrumped in this thing.”

  “E w w w .” Beth laid her suitcase on the counter and began her search for a telephone book. “Carol’s not joining us for dinner. Is it me, or do you get the feeling she wants to be by herself?”

  “Definitely got that vibe.” Mary Kay opened the Igloo cooler, surveying the contents to make ginger martinis. They needed pear nectar, which she did not have, darn it. Maybe she could find some in the lounge. “Don’t take it personally. Lynne’s fight with her mother is hitting Carol close to home. You heard what she said about having a glimpse into being a parent estranged from her child, about being able to sense if Amanda were dead. This has got to be killing her.”

  “I didn’t see the point of disagreeing when she said that. But sensing your child’s death seems to me something we’d like to believe, even if, scientifically, it doesn’t hold water.”

  “In the words of the immortal John Lennon, whatever gets you through the night.” Mary Kay pulled out the vodka. “On top of that, she’s talking to Jeff tonight about selling the house. You know how that’s bumming her out.”

  Beth had the phone to her ear, on hold waiting to place their sushi order. “Doesn’t she have to get the OK from Amanda first?”

  “She did. That’s partially what got Carol so upset this morning.” Mary Kay dug out her pretty glasses. “Amanda was really hard on her, laying the guilt thicker than marmalade.”

  “She said no way.”

  “Worse. She said yes.”

  “Amanda wants them to sell the house?” Beth was incredulous. “After her tantrum last year about them giving up her childhood home?”

  “That’s when it was a home, when Amanda thought of her parents as being together. But her parents aren’t together anymore.” Mary Kay grabbed a key card in her search for some pear nectar downstairs. “So, it’s not a home anymore. It’s just a plain old house. And those are a dime a dozen.”

  Carol pushed her bags against the wall and flopped onto the bed, staring at the blank white ceiling.

  She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Amanda since they’d left Eunice. She pulled out her phone and searched for Amanda’s name. Her cell number popped up, she pressed Send, and, like clockwork, Amanda’s voice mail came on.

  “Hi,” Carol said, deciding to let the words come instead of carefully scripting them as she usually did. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but we have to. We have to talk about Lynne. There’s something you need to know. Call me, please.”

  Tossing the phone aside, she took a shower, slipping into her pink cotton pj’s and white terrycloth robe. Then she called up the memo she’d been working on and flipped to a new white page on her legal tablet to take notes and doodle, which for mysterious reasons helped her brain function when she got stuck. Like she was now.

  It was gratifying to immerse herself in work, to focus on something besides family breakdowns and death. Work had always been her salvation, the one consistency that she could count on when things got scary.

  OK, think, Carol. The memo pertained to her lawsuit on behalf of a college student suing a sperm bank so it would release the identity of her biological father. The girl had a deep desire to know who she was and where she came from and there was nothing wrong with that. After all, what’s more basic than understanding our origins? Carol asked herself, doodling.

  Despite her concentration on what was a fairly interesting case, Carol’s thoughts drifted from the girl to Lynne’s daughter. Here they were, expending so much effort trying to find Julia and never once did they think about tracking down the father. It didn’t make sense that Lynne didn’t want them to even try.

  The clock on her computer got closer to six. She carefully placed her cell on the desk and folded her hands, waiting. Somewhere across Pennsylvania, across New York, and in Marshfield, Connecticut, Jeff was probably doing the same. Except he’d be in his study, the most recent medical journal open to something distressingly technical.

  At 5:50 the phone rang and her heart skipped a beat. He was early, which meant he was probably as eager to talk to her as she was to him. “Jeff?” she said hopefully.

  There was a pause. “Actually, it’s Scott.”

  Oh. Shit. Carol knew it was wrong to feel disappointed, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m waiting for a call from Jeff about the house. Sorry.”

  She checked her phone. She had five minutes.

  “I’ve been waiting for your call, but I didn’t want to bother you in case you were in something deep. I couldn’t take the suspense. How’s it going?”

  “Pretty well,” she lied, writing her name in perfect cursive, a holdover from when she was bored in law school. “I mean, if your definition of well is telling a mother that the child she hasn’t spoken to since 1981 is dead and she’ll never have a chance to hold her or see her again.”

  “Wow. That’s a tall order. I know Lynne and you were close, but to obligate you to break the news to her mom seems above and beyond the call of friendship, I have to say.”

  Carol bristled slightly at the implication. “She didn’t obligate us to do anything, Scott. We’re her friends. This is what friends do.”

  “But clearly you’re upset about it, and that has me worried. You know, social workers and chaplains who have to inform families their loved ones have died often go through a formal counseling process. CISM it’s called. Critical Incident Stress Management. I had a case once, where. . .”

  Scott often slipped into technical jargon, a trait that hadn’t really bothered her until now.

  “That’s not all that’s got me down.” She wished Scott knew Lynne and knew Amanda so he could relate. “It’s also Amanda. The way she’s not talking to me and refusing to take my calls reminds me of how Lynne stopped talking to Eunice.”

  “The aunt, you mean.”

  “No, Eunice is Lynne’s mother,” she said, slightly exasperated. “Therese is the aunt.”

  “The names are so similar it’s hard to keep them straight. Go on.”

  “Well, Lynne and her mother stopped speaking when Lynne was slightly younger than Amanda. What if that’s what happens to Amanda and me? What if I end up alone in a nursing home and three friends of Amanda’s come to tell me she’s dead? I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  “Those are two entirely different situations, Carol. See, this is what I mean about post-traumatic stress and you not being your usual logical self. If you were in your normal state of mind, you’d recognize that Amanda’s simply going through some sort of obnoxious phase.”

  Carol quit doodling. “My daughter is not obnoxious.”

  “Let me rephrase. Adolescent is what I meant.”

  “Beth says we clash because Amanda and I are so much alike.”

  “That’s what they always say when parents and kids don’t get along, isn’t it? They used to say it about my father and me when the bottom line was the old man was just an S.O.B.” Scott laughed slightly. “I’m sure that as a nurse Beth fashions herself to be an observer of human nature, but the fact of the matter is that Amanda was a teenager when you left Jeff and this is what teenagers do when their parents get divorced. They act out.”

  Carol said, “Beth’s not a nurse. She’s a librarian. Mary Kay’s the nurse.”

  “Right. I knew that.” Then, sensing her growing irritation, he said, “You’re very tired and understandably so, especially with this conversation about the house hanging over your head. I’ll let you take this call from Jeff and maybe we can talk tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to recuperate.”

  Frankly, Carol was relieved to have him off the line. “You’re right. Like they say, tomorrow is another day.” Then again, it was doubtful Scott had ever seen Gone with the Wind. If he had, he wo
uld have detested Scarlett O’Hara.

  No sooner had she said good-bye to Scott than the phone rang at 6:01. This time, Carol checked the number, saw it was Jeff, and said, “Hi.”

  “Hey, is this . . . Carol?” he asked, unsure.

  “Of course it is. It’s my cell.”

  “I wasn’t sure. You sound different.”

  “Tired.” She told him about Therese and Eunice. “It’s been draining, to say the least.”

  “Sure, sure. I should have guessed. How insensitive of me.”

  “No, it’s OK. I didn’t mean to guilt-trip you. It’s just. . .”

  “Just what?”

  She repeated almost exactly word for word what she’d said to Scott. “I’m afraid of ending up like Eunice. It’s because I’ve been such a lousy mother.”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Carol,” he muttered, understanding where she was coming from right away. “You know Amanda. She was always a drama queen, even as a tiny kid. You were a terrific mother. The problem is, you two are cast from the same mold.”

  “You mean, we’re too much alike.” She sniffed and patted a Kleenex to her nose, thinking about Beth. And Scott.

  “Yeah. You’re both hardworking and ambitious. Always going someplace, never staying still. Never time to talk. You and Amanda give one hundred and ten percent. Whether it’s the law or school. Your dedication is one of the qualities I most admired.”

  Admired. Past tense. Carol sniffed again.

  “Remember that spring when you collected tadpoles and set up the aquarium so Jonathan could see how they turned into frogs?” Jeff said. “You didn’t just leave it at that. You got out books from the library on amphibians and made a huge poster of the stages between eggs and full-formed frogs. That was the beginning of Jon’s interest in environmental science, you know, those stupid frogs.”

  “We had to let them go in the park.” She thought of Jonathan and her, hand in hand, waving good-bye to each frog he named. Lumpy. Bumpy. Croaky and Chirp.

  “And remember the chrysalis you found?” he said.

  She hadn’t thought of that chrysalis in years. She’d come across it in the field behind their house and stuck it in a mason jar with holes punched in the lid to see what would happen. For weeks it was just a lump on a twig. But one warm July night while the kids were at a sleepover and she and Jeff were sharing a rare moment alone sipping chardonnay on the back deck, something stirred inside the clear cocoon.

  Carol sat in Jeff’s lap as they watched in awe as the butterfly extended first one limp wing and then another before inflating both and becoming fully magnificent. After it flew off, Jeff kissed Carol’s fingers and led her upstairs to the bedroom, the fireflies twinkling outside their window.

  “The monarch night,” Carol sighed, remembering the sensation of his incredibly taut body moving with hers, responding to a call as natural and magnificent as the butterfly’s flight.

  “One of the best nights of my life. Next to the night we got married, of course.”

  “Of course.” She pulled her robe tighter, her heart actually aching liked she’d read in books. She hadn’t known such a phenomenon was physically possible.

  “Hey! Guess what.” Jeff shifted to an upbeat attitude. “You won’t believe what we’re getting tonight.”

  She decided not to overanalyze his use of the word “we.”

  “Snow! I can’t think about first snows without thinking about when the kids were small.”

  Carol laughed. “Amanda and Jonathan, co-conspirators in their flannels, insisting they sleep in the same room with an AM radio tuned to the news so they could be the first in the house to hear the official cancellations. And then their utter disappointment when, in the ultimate betrayal, the snow refused to stick. Cruel world!”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, “Amanda tells me the two of you have discussed the house.”

  Carol gripped her doodling pen, disappointed their stroll down memory lane had reached an end so soon. “We spoke this morning. Did you know she’s thinking of spending Christmas in Paris with some man she hardly knows? A friend of a roommate’s brother or something.”

  “She’s almost twenty-one.”

  “I know, but. . .”

  “But let it go. She’s old enough, Carol. Face it. Your chicks have left the nest.”

  No! Bring back that magic time of little sticky hands and soft hugs, sweet kisses, tadpoles and butterflies on balmy summer evenings. “I can’t believe our children are grown,” she said. “I miss those years.” Then, though this contradicted everything she thought she knew about herself, about how she hadn’t been cut out for motherhood, she added, “I’m glad I had the chance to stay home with them.”

  “Me too. We were very fortunate.”

  She nodded. “Very.”

  “So, I guess it’s decided then.”

  What? What were they talking about? “You mean the house?” She hoped Jeff couldn’t hear the panic in her voice.

  “The kids are OK with it. Which means the only people holding back from selling are you and me, ironically.”

  “Yes,” Carol said quietly. “Ironically.”

  “By the way, I’ve put aside a few things that the Realtor said we should remove for showings, like your grandmother’s antique fish plate and the photos of our family skiing vacation in Vermont.”

  Another golden memory. Another twist of the knife. The two of them snuggling by the fire as a light snow fell outside their window, Jeff running his hands under her sweater, kissing her neck, her shoulder, and then more, both of them stifling moans of pleasure so as not to wake Amanda and Jon in the next room.

  Did he mention this, the monarch night, the first snowfalls on purpose? Or was she just being supersensitive?

  “Carol?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I said I thought maybe you might want to pick those up on your way home if you happen to be stopping off at Marshfield before you go back to New York.”

  “OK. Sure,” she said, a little dazed. What was she supposed to pick up again?

  “Or I can pack them up and ship them to you, if that makes more sense.”

  “No, I can stop by.”

  “There’s some china involved.”

  “No, honestly. I don’t mind at all.”

  “Really? Could be awkward on the train.”

  Carol wanted to throttle him. First he reminds her how wonderful it was when they were married, then he refuses to be in the same room with her. What was he up to?

  He waited a second and said, “Carol?”

  “Yes?” she asked, hopefully.

  “I’ll need your signature on the Realtor form. Once that’s done, I expect we’ll have an official offer by the end of this week and then we can formally, completely, start our new lives.”

  They hung up and that was that. Carol blinked at the computer screen. Forget the stupid memorandum.

  Shutting down her computer, she grabbed her key card and padded to Mary Kay and Beth’s room. “I just got off the phone with Jeff.”

  Mary Kay quit shaking the silver martini shaker. “And?”

  “And we might have an offer on the house as early as this week.”

  Mary Kay lifted the top off the shaker, poured a ginger martini to the rim, and handed it to her. Carol knocked it back in one gulp. Like a cowboy slugging whiskey.

  “Hit me again,” she said, holding out her empty glass.

  “Don’t you have to work?” Beth asked.

  “Fuck work.” Carol took the shaker and poured herself a glass. “Work can kiss my ass.”

  “The amazing thing about ginger martinis is they feel almost healthy for you. No, really. I’m serious.” Carol exhaled a plume of smoke over her shoulder, so it wouldn’t pollute Mary Kay and Beth, who stood next to each other on the other side of the balcony, clutching their half-drunk martinis, keeping watch.

  She hadn’t had a cigarette since learning about Lynne’s suicide and it felt great. Fabulous!

&nbs
p; “How about some sushi?” Mary Kay suggested. “And then you can go to bed.”

  “Bed? Hah!” Carol took another hit of the cigarette and tossed it over the balcony so it landed in a bush by the parking lot. She emptied the last of her glass and regarded it fuzzily. “Who wants another round?”

  Beth opened the sliding-glass door to their room, hoping to entice Carol to put some food in her stomach and drink something besides alcohol. Right now, though, she was on a tear.

  “What’s in this again?” Carol asked, making a beeline for the martini shaker.

  “Vodka, ginger brandy, pear nectar, and a squeeze of lime.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  Mary Kay eyed Carol warily as she sloppily poured in the ingredients, pausing at one moment to take a big swig of vodka straight out of the bottle. “Just checking to see if it is fresh,” she said, wiping her mouth on her pj’s. “Forget this ginger, pear watchamacallit. Straight vodka is A-OK by me.”

  “You wanna talk about it, hon?”

  “Talk about what?” She tried capping the bottle, but the top fell off, forcing her to bend down and pick it up with a groan.

  “Jeff. The house. Amanda.”

  “It’s done. The house is practically sold. And then we’ll all live unhappily ever after.” She peered into the martini shaker and scowled. “No ice.” She checked the ice bucket, where a layer of water was all that remained. “No ice there, either.” Placing a hand on her hip, she said, “Now what are we going to do?”

  “Sushi?” Beth offered.

  “No. Hold on. They have ice machines here. I know because this is a hotel. And in hotels they have free ice. It’s a perk!” She hiccupped slightly.

  Mary Kay said, “Oh, don’t bother about that, Carol. There’s a cold Diet Coke in the cooler.”

  She went over to the Igloo, but Carol grabbed the bucket. “You two stay here and I’ll be right back in a jiffy.” And she toddled off in nothing but her slippered feet and pink pj’s.

  The door closed and Beth let out a breath. “Whoa. I have never seen her like this.”

  Mary Kay handed Beth her sushi. “It’s exactly like when she decided to leave him. And we called that emergency meeting. Did we have ginger martinis then, too?”