“It’s the most peculiar experience. Actually, I think I may get to like it. I started opening my mouth and talking and it seemed pretty simple, kind of nice to have someone listen to me talk for an hour. But after we got through the easy stuff and she asked me to tell her what I felt—about families and babies and all—nothing I said made very much sense. I felt like I was babbling.”
Jeanne did not say what she was thinking, that therapy and therapists were for the weak-minded and undisciplined. This had been her father’s opinion, seconded by her mother and since the events of the last week, Jeanne wasn’t sure she believed it anymore. It worried her to think she had taken the opinion on without examining it. What else did she only think she believed?
“She’s so young,” Hannah said. “I almost walked out when she opened her door and there she was in her size six Ann Taylor suit, not a line on her face. Gorgeous fingernails. And she doesn’t have kids. I asked her that right away. So how can she understand someone like me?”
Hannah described feeling awkward at the start of the therapy hour; for the first time in twenty years she had wanted a cigarette, a whole pack of Marlboros to hang on to. Jeanne knew just what she meant. Gradually, however, she had relaxed and started gabbing about Angel.
“And then—I don’t know how it happened but I kind of segued into Eddie and Billy Phillips and Bluegang.”
She leaned forward. “I amazed myself, all the details I remembered. I’ve been hoarding that memory inside, whole, all these years.”
“What a surprise,” Liz said.
“Did you cry?” Jeanne imagined Hannah bawling inconsolably.
“Not much really. Which when you think about it is also weird except I feel cried out, you know?” Hannah poured more wine for herself. “Last night Dan and I stayed up talking, that’s when I cried. Did we keep you awake, Liz?”
“Dan gave me a pill. I was out in five minutes.”
Lucky Liz. Jeanne had been on-and-off awake most of the night. The wind drove the rain against the bedroom window in sweeps and though the bed was warm, she was cold, missing Teddy’s warm bulk in the bed beside her, wondering if he was asleep, wondering what James was doing. What did her boy dream of? What did he long for, what did he fear?
“What I think is I’ve been trying to save Billy Phillips all my life,” Hannah said. “I love Angel but more than anything I think she’s been a way to assuage my guilt.” Hannah colored. “Does that make sense? Tamara—the therapist—said it does.”
Liz said, “And I think when you look at Eddie—”
“I know, I know.” Hannah’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so ashamed.”
That morning Hannah had stopped Eddie on his way out the door with Dan. The bridge over Bluegang had not gone down but the way was blocked on both sides by black-and-yellow striped sawhorses with blinking orange warning lights. The only way into town was up the Overlook pass, a tortuously narrow and twisting county road.
She described the conversation to Jeanne and Liz.
“I’ll drive you, Eddie,” she said. “Go ahead, Dan.”
Eddie had looked wary, like a half-savvy animal being baited to a trap.
“Please, Eddie.” We need to talk. If she said that he’d take off running. “It doesn’t matter if you’re late.”
“I’ll take your car,” Dan said. “Drop it off at the garage. I’ll get you a rental and come back for your appointment.”
“We could skip it,” she said, before she could stop herself.
Dan laughed and shook his head. “One-thirty, Hannah. Your appointment’s at two.”
“What about me?” Eddie wailed. “What about school?”
“You stay, son. You need to talk to your mom.”
“Shit.” Eddie flung himself onto a chair and stared sullenly out the window.
In the middle of the night it rained hard and the windblown drops had sounded like pellets thrown against the house, but in the morning it fell softly and steadily and the drops seemed to weigh barely enough to answer the pull of gravity. It was the kind of rain that would soak in deep and do the most good, Hannah had thought as she stood behind Eddie’s chair looking at the barn and paddock, the bedraggled line of the wildwood edging the slope down to Bluegang. If she could just get through the winter, in the spring there would be green everywhere, the tender chartreuse of new growth that always lifted her heart with hope. She told herself that she must cling to the promise of hope even if it was purely intellectual at this point.
Several moments must have passed. When Eddie spoke his irritation did not completely conceal the alarm in his voice.
“What is it, Mom? How come you got me sitting here? It’s almost first period. I’ll miss—”
“This is more important,” Hannah said.
“What’d I do now?”
“Nothing. Don’t be frightened.”
“Who said I—”
“I’m not angry with you. You’ve done nothing wrong.” She swallowed. “It’s me. I’ve done something wrong.”
He scratched his head. “Is this about what happened yesterday?”
Hannah told Jeanne and Liz, “I was sitting on the windowsill facing him. The old casings let in a draft that found the space between my wool sweater and the waist of my jeans, but I didn’t want to get up for a jacket or to bring a chair around for fear of losing Eddie’s attention.” So she stayed where she was.
She said to her son, “You know how I never let you play at Bluegang? You did, of course, I couldn’t really stop you.”
“It wasn’t just me, Mom.” He was on the defensive immediately. “Ingrid used to go down there and take sunbaths on the rocks. Her and Margaret.”
“I didn’t know.”
“There’s lots of stuff you don’t know, Mom. When I was little they used to pay me not to tell on them.” The idea that this conversation might be about Ingrid and not him appeared to lift Eddie’s spirits.
Hannah said, “I told you not to go down there because I wanted to protect you.” The only way to tell the story was to leap into the middle of it, heart first. Make a big splash and get his attention. “Something terrible happened to me down there.”
Liz said, “You told him?”
“Everything,” Hannah said.
She told him about Billy Phillips and the day when there were no new polio cases and the town pool opened for business, leaving Bluegang Creek to the crawdads and crows and a twelve-year-old girl with her shirt tied around her midriff like Debra Paget. Eddie fidgeted at first but her story captured him and he soon grew still.
“He died?”
She nodded.
“He attacked you. It was self-defense.”
“Maybe. But the thing is, the bad thing is, I could have helped him but I didn’t . . .”
“You were scared. Who wouldn’t be? You were a little kid.”
She nodded again and waited for the next, the inevitable question.
“So, what’d you do?”
She took his hand, turned it and stared down at the hair sprouting on the backs of his fingers. A man’s hands soon. But she wouldn’t think about that. She would think about it when she saw Tamara again. “We went home.”
He looked at her.
“And until now, we never told anyone.”
He looked down at her hand holding his. “God, Mom. You let him just lie there?”
And if she hadn’t? If she had run home and told her parents and her mother had called an ambulance and her father had gone next door to see Mrs. Phillips, what would have changed in her life? She probably would have gone to Stanford, met Dan and married him. They might not have bought this house, but then again, it was such a lovely house and she liked being near Hilltop. So nothing major would have changed but in the deep core of her where the guilt and shame had taken hold and produced their poison, she would have been fundamentally different.
“It was wrong, awfully wrong, but I just . . . let him . . . lie there.”
He could look a
t her again, she was grateful for that. And there were tears in his eyes.
“You were scared. I would’ve been too. I probably would’ve done the same thing.”
She blessed his generous, forgiving heart, his innocent and uncomplicated view of the world.
“I’ve been unfair to you, Eddie.”
“No way, Mom.”
“I looked at you and saw that boy. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing but it was and after a while,” her voice faltered and she tightened her hold on his hand to steady herself, “after a while I stopped looking at you at all.”
He was embarrassed now and wanting to get away.
“All that football stuff . . . I made you up, in my mind.” She smoothed back his hair and rested her hand against his cheek, turning his face so their eyes could meet and hold. “I made you up instead of seeing my very own, real-life, beautiful boy.”
Jeanne listened as Hannah talked about Dan and Tamara and Eddie and what might lie ahead for them. Thoughts of her own son in Berkeley distracted her. She wondered what to do about him. She nodded absently when Hannah asked her if she wanted the night’s specialty, canneloni. The waiter took her martini glass and filled her wineglass, went away and in a moment returned with a wooden salad bowl.
Jeanne watched Liz and Hannah serve themselves. She took a breath, held it a minute and said, “There’s something I have to tell you, Hannah.” She forced herself to look right at her, not to blink, not to glance away.
Hannah looked up from her salad, her fork holding a tomato wedge in midair.
“I took your underpants.”
“Jesus,” Liz muttered and ripped a slice of sourdough bread in half. “It never ends.”
“If you don’t want to listen—” Jeanne snapped.
“It’s not that. It just . . . it never ends.”
Hannah said, “I always suspected you had them.”
Liz said, “How could you do that and then never tell her? Let her worry all her life?”
Jeanne speared a lettuce leaf and looked at it. She wished Liz would just be quiet and let her tell the story her own way. Liz had come from Belize demanding disclosures and confessions and seemed to think this had earned her a superior moral position, at least the right to orchestrate the revelations. As if they had not all been at the creek that day.
“You want me to be quiet,” Liz said, reading Jeanne’s thoughts. “You want me to act like oh, this is just more business as usual. Well, Jeanne, I don’t just shut up and follow the leader anymore.”
Jeanne stared at her.
“Okay, okay,” Hannah said, waving her fork still bearing the tomato wedge. “We’ve all changed, inside and out. Let’s agree to that, okay? And get on with what happened to my panties. I can’t believe you did that to me, Jeanne. Why would you be so mean?”
Jeanne shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep, the night after. I kept thinking we’d forgotten something, a clue that would lead the police to us. And then I remembered you said Billy had your underpants and I remembered how your mom used to write your name on the elastic with a laundry pen. I wanted to protect you.”
“Thank you so very much,” Hannah said acidly. “For saving my reputation. All these years I thought some boy from Hilltop was going to blackmail me. One day there’d be a knock on the door . . .” She stopped. “No, that’s not true. After the first few days, I knew it was you. But I was afraid to confront you.”
“I meant to tell but then I knew you were upset and I sort of. . . liked that.”
Would Hannah forgive her for enjoying the tiny illusion of power those secret panties gave her? Where were they now? Hidden in some box of mementos along with other things she’d taken over the years: her mother’s checkbook dated 1954, her father’s favorite cuff links. She could still hear him storming through the house, raging at the housekeeper, accusing her of theft. And she remembered the feeling that gave her. Pity for the maid, a university-educated refugee glad for a job while she waited for her documents to clear. Excitement. Strength. Power.
“I was a kid with no control over anything.”
“No kid has any control,” Liz said. “That’s why they call them kids.”
Jeanne cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m not excusing what I did—you’re right, Liz, it was mean—but this is the only explanation I’ve got. So do you want to hear it or not?”
Liz sighed. “I know, I know.”
“My mother and father were drunks. My brother died in a freak accident. When I was a kid I felt like my life could just spin out of orbit at any given moment and I was hanging on for dear life. Knowing where those panties were made me feel like I had a little power. Over something. Someone.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Hannah said.
“I still take things sometimes.” Jeanne couldn’t help grinning. “When I’m mad at Teddy.”
Liz laughed. “You just redeemed yourself, old girl.”
“I don’t want any more talk about me going to a therapist,” Hannah said. “You’re as sick as I am.”
Liz said, “We’re all sick.”
“Omigod,” Hannah said, “the voice of authority.”
“As it happens, I am. This is all I’ve thought about for the last year.”
“And so you came here to force us to think about it too. I hope you’re satisfied.”
Liz nodded.
Hannah looked at Jeanne. “What about you? Is it all out now?”
Jeanne nodded slowly, asking herself: How do I feel? Not shamed or humiliated as she had always expected. The only word that came to her mind was empty. At first this made her unhappy and then she saw that it was good. To be empty was to be ready—for change, a fresh start or a new take on a bad start. She held up her glass in a toast. “To us—”
“Battle, Murder and Sudden Death,” Hannah said.
“—We survived.”
It was after ten when Jeanne parked the car and walked to the house through the oleander hedge. The rain had stopped and patches of star-studded night sky were visible between the clouds. The cold night smelled sharp and tangy. She opened the patio door and stepped into the kitchen. Teddy surprised her, standing in the dark, wearing his blue satin pajamas.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” she said.
“I wanted some juice.” He opened the refrigerator. “How ’bout you? Orange? Cran-grape?”
She didn’t think juice would mix well with martinis and wine. She’d had too much to drink again. This was something she was going to have to worry about eventually, but not now; she thought she might need liquor for a little while longer.
“A bottle of water.”
“Such restraint. I am impressed.” He handed her a cold plastic bottle. She handed it back to him and he tore off the plastic seal.
Jeanne sat down and gestured to the chair across the old wooden table. “I think we should talk a while.”
She hadn’t planned or practiced a speech. She just knew there was something important that had to be said.
“I know where James lives. I’ve seen him.”
“You’ve talked.”
“No. But I’m going to.” She looked at Teddy and in the unlighted room she could not read the subtleties of expression that would have given her a clue to his thinking. She had to ask him, “Well? What do you think?”
He breathed deeply. “I think you’ll be sorry. I think you can’t go back.”
“This isn’t about going back. It’s about moving forward. In my life.”
“Sounds selfish to me. What about him? I think you’ll be sorry.”
“Why?”
He leaned forward, resting his arms on the scarred tabletop. “You can’t just turn yourself into his mother, just like that, because you’ve got some menopausal last chance panic. He already has a mother. He’s a man now and he’s lived his whole life without you. Why would he want you?” He meant to hurt her and he was on target.
“Aren’t you even a little curious?” she asked when she could speak e
venly.
Teddy shrugged.
“I know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you have a son and you don’t care.”
“And now you’re going to tell me.”
“You’re the only one who interests you, Teddy. No one else really matters.”
“I don’t think that’s fair.”
“But it’s true. And I . . .” She stared out the window at the rushing sky that was almost clear now. “. . . I don’t want to be around a man who isn’t interested in me.” A thought struck her. “Were you ever, Teddy? Interested in me?”
He opened his mouth and closed it. She made out the creases in his forehead, the two indentations between his eyes.
If she waited long enough, he’d say he loved her. Experience had taught him this worked to bring her around when she was out of sorts. And maybe he would mean it. Teddy’s version of love might be one of the more peculiar varieties: Here today, gone yesterday and the year before, but from this day forward constant as seasons and school bells. More likely, if he said he loved her it was because he didn’t want to think about changing his life. She didn’t want to think about it either. Separating, divorcing, selling the school, keeping the school: it flattened her to think of the consequences that might arise from this conversation.
“I think we ought to try again,” he said. “We’ve built something fine here, Jeanne. Hilltop is an excellent school.”
She nodded, vaguely impressed that he had resisted saying what he did not mean.
“But it’s taken both of us to build it. If you tried to run it alone . . .”
“I might sell it. There are those Tibetan monks.”
He snorted. “And what would you do then?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe marry Simon Weed.” Even in the twilight she saw his incredulous expression. It made her laugh. “Don’t worry, Teddy, I haven’t been coming on to him. But astonishing though it may seem, someday, someone might actually want me.”
“Give me a chance. You owe me that.”
She didn’t owe him a damn thing. If she stayed with Teddy it would have to be for herself. She had given him more than twenty years of submission borne of her fear that he would abandon her if she did not please him. So now what? Should she see what would happen if she were no longer cowed and submissive? How would Teddy react to a new Jeanne?
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