Kindred Spirits

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  Carol paused, careful. “I thought we should honor her in some way. Got any ideas? You’re so creative. I know you can think of something.

  “Oh, another thing. I drank a few too many ginger martinis and danced on tables in front of a bunch of chemical engineers last night. Thought you might appreciate that.”

  She turned off the phone and nodded. If that didn’t blow open the lines of communication, nothing would.

  A half hour later, Carol waited in the pool room with the ingredients she’d picked up at a store across the parking lot—tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, and Blue Curaçao, the makings for a blue martini, the drink that had started it all.

  “A w w w,” Beth said, stepping into the pool room. “You remembered. How sweet.”

  “I thought on our last day together we should do something to commemorate our first meeting of the Society, don’t you think?” Carol held up the bottle of lime juice apologetically. “It was all I could find at the last minute. Sorry.”

  “It’ll do in a pinch,” Beth said, pulling out a white deck chair and having a seat as Carol mixed DeeDee Patterson’s special recipe for blue tequila martinis, measuring out the lime juice and the tequila in equal portions. That brought back memories.

  Tequila had been the only booze in Mary Kay’s house that night if you didn’t count the Cointreau and Curaçao, leftovers from her Mexican-themed New Year’s party months before. Then again, they hadn’t come to the PTA meeting at her house to party. It just worked out that way.

  The PTA meeting itself was the usual Michelle Richardson dog-and-pony show. Since it was the opening gathering of the school year, Michelle was busy assigning members to run the holiday craft fair and debating whether they should sell wrapping paper or candles to raise money for their spring project. Beth and Lynne were new members, so they sat side-by-side, quietly counting the minutes until they could split, praying that Michelle wouldn’t ask them to oversee the annual food drive.

  Finally, conversation turned to the PTA spring project. Several mothers were in favor of bringing in puppeteers to run a workshop on puppet making. One group felt that since there was no music instruction in Marshfield worth a fig, the PTA should buy recorders and teach children how to play “Three Blind Mice.” Others were all for buying encyclopedias for the school library.

  It wasn’t until someone mentioned funding a gifted program that the wind shifted. Women who’d been delightfully congenial while discussing puppets immediately, upon hearing the word “gifted,” extended their claws in defense of their offspring. Beth was horrified to learn that not only were children in her son’s kindergarten learning their letters, but they were reading chapter books!

  Her son, David, bless his heart, was still drawing his d’s and b’s backward and though she and Marc were avid readers, their attempts to teach him how to parse out words had been disasters. Either David yawned and pretended to fall asleep or he drew over the Beginning Reader pages with angry orange crayon. In light of what she knew now about his peers, Beth wondered if he were possibly verbally retarded.

  Meanwhile, across the room, Mary Kay was fretting over her own inadequacies as a single mother. Yes, Tiffany was studying piano and ballet, but these mothers had husbands who took their children on camping trips and coached indoor soccer. They championed the importance of “family dinners”—father, mother, sister, and brother gathered around the table, sharing their day—while every night it was just her and Tiffany eating their grilled cheese sandwiches and talking about stupid stuff like the Spice Girls.

  With absolutely no male role model, Mary Kay started to sense the limitations to her parenting. No matter how much she loved and volunteered, Tiffany would always only have half of what she deserved.

  Having exhausted ways to compare their kids, thankfully the meeting ended. Beth and Lynne stayed to help Mary Kay clean up the coffee cups and cookie crumbs while Carol, as PTA secretary, polished her notes. In the kitchen, Beth had just thrown out the coffee grounds when Mary Kay said, “What would you do if your son didn’t have a father?”

  Beth was so caught off guard, she didn’t know how to respond.

  Lynne, stacking cups in the dishwasher, said, “Are you worried about Tiffany?” As the art teacher, Lynne had taught Mary Kay’s daughter for several years and found her to be cheerful, bright, and firmly well grounded. “Because you shouldn’t. That girl is awesome.”

  “I can’t help it.” Mary Kay tossed away a wad of pink paper napkins. “Everyone was talking about what their husbands are doing for their kids, what good fathers they are, how they’re teaching them to ski or. . .”

  The swinging door flew open and Carol breezed in, a pencil behind her ear. “That’s a bunch of BS, Mary Kay. They might say their husbands are perfect, but take it from me, the wife of the local pediatrician, no family in this town is perfect. I could tell you stories—if Jeff would let me.”

  “I know what you mean, Mary Kay.” Beth pushed down the trash. “I was just thinking about my son, David, who’s often lost in his own world. He didn’t start talking until he was about three, and to this day he can’t pronounce his r’s. After listening to these other mothers talk, I’m thinking of having him tested.”

  “But you have someone to lean on. I’m all alone in this.” Mary Kay told them how her sister and brother-in-law had died in a crash four years before and how without any living relatives nearby she was learning how to be a mother on the fly.

  “I had no idea you had no family around,” Carol said, giving Mary Kay a big hug and finding the muscles in her back were knotted harder than steel. “You know what you need?”

  “A husband?”

  “A martini.”

  Beth laughed and Mary Kay said, “No, I’m fine.”

  “I’m not,” Carol said, dropping her notes on the kitchen table. “All that talk about whose kid was taking Suzuki violin and how much they planned to spend on summer camp has me on edge too.” Carol started opening cabinet doors, searching for liquor. “Come on. Don’t tell me you’re a teetotaler.”

  Indeed not, though all Mary Kay had on hand were the margarita makings, but no margarita mix. However, she also had a cookbook containing martini recipes that she’d found among her sister’s collection, Best Recipes from the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Marshfield, 1966. It had belonged to the original owner of the house, DeeDee Patterson, who’d jotted quirky notes in the margins detailing the effects each martini produced.

  Next to “Blue Martini,” DeeDee had written: Turns strangers into friends and, therefore, turns failures into triumphs. Good icebreaker for tough crowds.

  “Let’s do this one,” Mary Kay said, pointing to DeeDee’s scrawl. “We have most of the ingredients, except for the fresh limes.” Opening the refrigerator and peering in the back, she said, “Aha! Rose’s lime juice.”

  “I’ve never had a martini before,” Lynne said, curious as Mary Kay handed her the startling blue drink.

  “I don’t know if this counts as a martini, but it’s close enough.”

  Beth had had the pleasure of a few martinis in her time, but none like this. This was cool and tangy and powerful all in one punch. Lynne said it reminded her of her honeymoon with Sean in Mexico and Carol said it was like a margarita, only without the annoying dilution of a mix.

  Mary Kay lifted her glass and toasted to “friendship and failure.”

  “We’re not failures,” Carol countered. “We’re women who walk to the beat of a different drummer.”

  “Ringo?” Lynne joked, her nose instantly pink from the tequila.

  What happened after that was mostly a blur. Beth remembered that they’d made sandwiches and stayed so late that Marc called, wondering where they were. When he found out they’d been drinking, he insisted on picking them up, smiling to himself as Lynne and Beth giggled that they had just formed the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Martinis—a title they found in their tipsiness to be sidesplittingly hysterical.

  That was th
e beginning.

  Now, fourteen years later and miles away from Marshfield, Beth was so grateful that Carol had thought to remind her of what they’d once been.

  Shaking the mixture vigorously, Carol poured out three glasses, garnishing each with a tiny paper umbrella.

  “They’re beautiful,” Beth said.

  Carol handed her one. “We’re beautiful.”

  Mary Kay burst into the pool room, a wild red-and-gold sarong wrapped around her waist. It perfectly matched the gold rings on her toes and her thin bangle bracelets. She was about to apologize for being late when she took one look at the blue martinis and blanched. “How did you know?”

  “Wasn’t that thoughtful of her?” Beth said. “Our first martini together.”

  “Not exactly.” Mary Kay twisted the knot of her sarong. “I’m not sure we should drink those anymore.”

  Carol’s lips had barely touched the rim of the glass. “Why?”

  “That was Lynne’s last drink. The one she used to chase the morphine.”

  Beth felt a shiver ripple up her spine. “Huh? You told me she drank martinis, but not these martinis.”

  “When Drake and I went to her house that morning, on the kitchen counter were a bunch of bottles. Tequila. Cointreau. Curaçao. I didn’t know what was going on. Then Drake checked the back porch and”—Mary Kay replayed the awful scene in her mind—“there she was, a half-drunk blue martini on the glass table next to her. The police told me later the oral morphine is so bitter that she would have needed something super strong to cut the taste.”

  Carol rested the drink on the table, mortified. “I had no idea.”

  Beth said, “I never knew she drank the morphine, though that makes sense since she told me she couldn’t swallow the pills anymore, what with the scar tissue in her throat.” She went silent, regretting her choice of words. “I’m sorry. That was pretty morbid.”

  “No, it’s not. We have to discuss these things to get them out in the open.” Mary Kay got up, unleashed the sarong, and took a few steps into the pool, her hourglass figure emphasized by her orchid-colored low-cut wrap tank and bandeau top. “That morning when Drake found her, I kept thinking how that had been our first martini and that we’d have to send the recipe into retirement because we’d never be able to drink it again.”

  “It was her favorite,” Beth said. “Even after she tried a vodka martini and those delicious cosmopolitans and the raspberry-chocolate, she always came back to this.”

  Carol noticed offhandedly that Mary Kay hadn’t replaced her engagement ring after she’d dropped it in the car. Joining Mary Kay in the water, she said, “Trust me, I had no idea. I was just being sentimental.”

  Beth sat by as Mary Kay and Carol worked their legs and arms in the pool, each lost in her own thoughts. It was a shame their party had been ruined. They should be celebrating their efforts to find Lynne’s daughter and toasting to the hope that Julia would someday come into their lives. They’d done what Lynne asked, and if Lynne were here she’d be lifting her glass too.

  This was not what Lynne had in mind when she wrote that they should drink a different martini every night on the trip. Not at all.

  “You know what?” Beth went back to her untouched drink. “If Lynne were here, she’d want us to drink this. L’chaim.” Not bothering to wait for their reaction, she took a big sip of the martini and let the distinctive tequila taste slide down her throat.

  Palm trees swaying in balmy Caribbean breezes. Steel drums softly tinkling in the air. Toes in the sand and walking hand in hand by turquoise waters. This was the essence of a blue martini. Not death, but the best of life.

  She let the potion wash away her guilt and anger and flood her with happy memories of their martini nights. She remembered a sudden frost when, at midnight, the women tipsily tiptoed through Lynne’s and Beth’s gardens—and the gardens of their unsuspecting neighbors—covering their perishable tomatoes with pillowcases and towels for protection. An entire neighborhood of vegetables was saved, thanks to them.

  She thought of the blizzard that left them snowbound at Mary Kay’s house, gathered around the fire in her spare nightgowns and robes after a power outage had cut the lights. Playing Scrabble. Drinking hot chocolate and giggling like they were schoolgirls. And those spring evenings among the roses, rejoicing in the rebirth of life. A summer solstice at the lake. Splashing in the waves on the Cape.

  She thought of them coming together and trying to save Lynne for as long as they could.

  Beth realized why Lynne chose to die by this, of all their martinis. It was her signal to the Society that, in the end, she was with them. And that they were with her.

  Mary Kay and Carol emerged dripping from the water. “How is it?” Carol asked.

  “Here,” Beth said, handing a martini to each.

  First Carol then Mary Kay took apprehensive sips, followed by less apprehensive ones. “I’d forgotten how delicious this is,” Carol said, holding her glass slightly away from her, admiring the shimmering blue. “Like lying on a hammock.”

  “Or at night on the beach after a day in the sun, your shoulders brown in a white sundress next to the man of your dreams.” Mary Kay put hers down.

  “It was Lynne’s way of saying good-bye to us, so we’d know not to be sad for her.” Beth lifted her chin. “It was her decision and she was at peace with that.”

  Carol put her arms around Beth and Mary Kay and hugged them both. They were standing there like that when there was a knock on the door of the pool room and a woman in a black uniform entered, wheeling in a cart piled high with plates of fresh fruit—pineapples, strawberries, grapes, and cut apples—along with a dish of guacamole, chips and salsa, chicken wings, and several sandwiches.

  “Did you order all this, MK?” Carol broke away and wiped her eyes.

  Reaching for a piece of pineapple, Mary Kay said, “Yeah. I might have gone overboard.”

  While Carol signed the check, Beth dug out her iPod and tiny speakers, searching for the Beach Boys and Bob Marley, to complete the atmosphere.

  “Looks like you guys are having fun,” the waitress said, tucking away her bill and pen.

  “We are,” Beth said.

  “We’re toasting to a dear friend of ours.” Carol clicked the pen and handed her the black case.

  “Somewhere in heaven, she’s dancing on a Caribbean beach under a glorious full moon,” Beth said. She knew this in her bones.

  Lynne is OK.

  The waitress left, turning down the lights as she went. Mary Kay lit a few candles she’d brought and Beth assembled her playlist as Carol mixed another batch of blue margarita martinis, splashing in more tequila, extra Cointreau. They hoped no one else showed. Maybe, since it was a Monday night, they’d have the place to themselves.

  Then they got in the water and floated on their backs, their bare feet touching as they formed a three-petaled flower. “One Love,” Lynne’s favorite Bob Marley song, filled the air.

  “You know what?” Beth said. “We’re not failures.”

  “Failures?” Mary Kay said. “What made you say that? Because we didn’t find Julia?”

  “We came close,” Carol said. “Closer than anyone.”

  “No, it’s not that. The blue martinis brought back memories of the night you toasted to friendship and failures.”

  “Because that’s what DeeDee’s entry said. The blue martini turns strangers into friends and makes triumphs out of failures,” Mary Kay said. “I was just fooling around after a meeting where I felt like such a loser mother.”

  Beth swam over to the edge of the pool and took another sip of her drink. “You forgot the ‘therefore.’ The exact line was ‘Turns strangers into friends and, therefore, failures into triumphs.’ That ‘therefore’ makes all the difference.” A glass in each hand, she frog-kicked out to the middle of the pool and handed them to Mary Kay and Carol. “We triumphed because we are friends, get it?”

  Carol said slowly, “Maybe. Though I’m pretty
sure DeeDee was talking about how to save a dull cocktail party.”

  Mary Kay laughed and Beth playfully tweaked her button nose.

  “Look at it this way,” Mary Kay said. “If we hadn’t become friends, I’d have raised Tiffany without any advice or help or babysitting from you guys. You became my family and you saved my ass.”

  Carol kissed her on the cheek. “You’re my family too. I ran to you when my marriage fell apart and now, when I wonder if I made a mistake, I’m back again like bad breath.”

  Mary Kay slid an arm over her bare wet shoulders. “Glad to hear you say that, Carol. We’re here for you, still. You know that, right?”

  Carol nodded.

  “Think of Lynne,” Beth said. “She wrote in her letter if it hadn’t been for us, she never would have been able to deal with cancer as bravely as she did. Mary Kay drove her back and forth to her appointments and I tried to keep her house neat and keep her fed. But I never did learn what you did for her, Carol, besides buying the Swedish divan.”

  Before Carol could shut her up, Mary Kay said, “She paid for all her outstanding medical bills.”

  Carol blushed. “Not all of them. Only the ones that her insurance didn’t cover.”

  Beth was flabbergasted. “You’re kidding! That must have been huge. Thousands of dollars.”

  “It was what it was,” Carol said dismissively. “It’s not worth getting into.”

  Nonsense. It was further proof that without their support, each of their lives would have been harder and lonelier. A mound of medical bills was the last hassle Lynne should have had to face in her dying days.

  Beth gazed into the blue at the bottom of her glass, realizing there wasn’t that much she could do about scraping up the money for David’s tuition or repairing her father’s heart, just as, despite her most valiant efforts, she hadn’t been able to cure Lynne.

  But no matter what happened, she fully trusted that Mary Kay and Carol would be there for her if things got tough. Lynne, too, in a way.