Senseless Acts of Beauty

by Lisa Verge Higgins

Riley stuttered, “Tess, I don’t—”

  “I’m not used to hanging around, Riley.” The tape closed with a snap. “Gives me too much time to think. A project like this would give me something to do other than dodge grammar school teachers in downtown Pine Lake, as well as cops who should have retired years ago.”

  “So I take it that you still haven’t visited your mother.”

  Tess’s jaw tightened. She paced to a far bear as if she hadn’t heard the question at all. Riley wondered if Tess was using this project as an excuse to give her more time to muster courage. She felt a twinge of sympathy for Tess—and admiration, too—for having the guts to come back at all.

  “It’d be great to have you stay longer, Tess. Claire Petrenko is visiting soon and I know she’d love to see you. But though this is a great idea, I’m not sure I can afford the materials—”

  “That’s on me. As is the labor.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Consider it a gift.” Tess avoided Riley’s eye. “It’ll be a bit of senseless whimsy in honor of Bud and Mary.”

  Riley opened her mouth but words failed her. Of all the things she expected Tess to say when she saw these bears, this was certainly not one of them.

  “I can’t say no to free labor.” Riley planted her hands on her hips. “Though I don’t know how I’m going to run it.”

  “Hire your runaway.”

  “Sadie?” Riley laughed. “She won’t be here that long.”

  With a slow tilt of her head, Tess gave Riley a one-eyed look.

  Riley knew that look. She’d been getting that amused, knowing look ever since she was ten years old and proposed a new law at a city council meeting requiring every resident of Pine Lake to adopt a cat.

  Riley said, “What?”

  “I’m just saying.” Tess raised her brows. “You seem so sure that Sadie won’t be here long.”

  “Of course she won’t. She’ll do her research, and then…she’ll go back to wherever she came from.”

  “I hope that’s true.” Tess stood up and took her time clipping the measuring tape on the waistband of her jeans. “But if I were the runaway eating blueberry pancakes in your kitchen, Riley, I’d be dreaming up some way to stay here forever.”

  *

  Going to lunch with her mother was bad enough. A thousand times worse was arriving for lunch only to discover that the person waiting in the far booth was her estranged husband.

  Riley stood just inside the door of Josey’s staring at the nape of her husband’s neck. He sat in the booth with her mother. His elbow was extended like he was taking a sip of coffee. Black coffee, she knew. No sugar, no cream, and no nonsense.

  Her mother caught her eye and then slipped out of the booth, placing a hand on Declan’s shoulder before striding down the aisle.

  Riley said, “Mom—”

  “Just hush for once and listen.”

  “No. I can’t believe you—”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Her mother placed both hands on Riley’s shoulders. “I will have my say.”

  Her mother’s grip was strong, riveting Riley to the black-and-white laminate floor. Riley went mute.

  “When your father and I first started our family, I was so sure I could handle anything that came at me, Riley. I thought I could mold my children like you were all made out of clay. But by the time you became young adults”—she squeezed Riley’s shoulders—“I wondered if I ever had any influence with any of you, ever. Sometime along the way, I just figured I’d stop wondering and just do whatever I think is best, whether it’s right or wrong. Like I’m doing today. You can hate me for it later, but I’d hate myself more if I didn’t try.”

  The pressure of her grip eased. Her mother stepped back. Then she was gone, the chimes over the front door ringing.

  Riley closed her eyes, but it didn’t help. Against the inside of her lids she could still see the tapering point of Declan’s hair on the nape of his neck.

  She strode across the black-and-white tiles and tossed her purse on the far end of the red vinyl seat.

  “Don’t blame your mother,” he said, settling his cup back on the saucer as she slid in. “Both of us thought this would be easier than me showing up at the camp.”

  “Mom always knows best, doesn’t she?”

  His cheek twitched. She stifled a pinch of guilt. She had no reason to feel guilty. Showing up in a public place with her mother was an underhanded, manipulative thing for him to do. For maybe the first time in their relationship, she was on the moral high ground.

  “Hey, Riley, can I get you something?”

  Riley glanced up at Josey’s daughter, April, the twenty-something who ran the place now that her mother had decided to retire to Trinidad. “I’m fine, April. Short on waitresses?”

  “I can’t always depend on these college girls.” She hefted the coffeepot. “What’ll it be today?”

  “Just coffee.”

  April filled the cup. “I’ve got a maple-pecan pie coming right out of the oven.”

  “Tempting,” she said, “but I won’t be staying long.”

  Declan didn’t respond. He just raised a brow as he looked into his coffee and somehow that old politeness only made Riley feel worse. Declan had always been so well bred, so diplomatic, so kind in the face of what others thought of as her quirks—her hesitance in making even the smallest decisions, her shyness amid his boisterous friends, her obsession with birding. There was good reason for why she’d fallen for him straight out of college. It didn’t help that right now he looked so good, even just wearing a faded Villanova T-shirt over a pair of khaki shorts. It was the easy athletic build, the barber-tamed black hair, the low brow, and the steady blue eyes that made women think of movie stars.

  Everybody always told her she’d chosen well.

  Riley looked away from those eyes. “Dec, I thought we agreed it was better if we did our talking long distance.”

  “If you’d pick up your phone whenever I called, I wouldn’t have to hike up here and conspire with your mother.”

  “I get your messages. I’ve called the lawyers whenever they needed something. I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

  “You don’t call me back.”

  “There’s nothing left to talk about.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  He gazed at her with those vivid blue eyes, and whatever moral superiority she had shriveled. Until the day she destroyed their marriage, their life had been ticking along nicely. She’d been pulling down a respectable income, he had a healthy 401(k) plan and had just received a raise at his architectural firm. Only when the keys to Camp Kwenback were dropped into her hands had she realized that their future had been imagined, drafted, and created by his dreams.

  Declan leaned forward. “I keep waiting for the lawyer to call me and tell me that this is all over. But he still hasn’t received your signed copies.”

  It’d be easier if she could claim those divorce papers were lost in the mail, but the tracking labels were right there on the envelope, sitting on the reservation desk at Camp Kwenback amid the rest of the mail she just couldn’t open because it meant she had to make decisions. She had no rational explanation to give Declan, so she didn’t bother making one up. She dropped her gaze to his hands instead. He’d always had lovely draftsman’s hands, wide-knuckled, long-fingered, flecked with pencil lead, peppered with splinters on the days he visited worksites.

  “Riley?”

  Mechanically she picked up a spoon. “I’ve been busy.”

  “So your mother told me. Three banks have rejected your business plan.”

  Thanks, Mom. “There are a lot of banks in the world.”

  “I know the finances. The details were in the divorce papers. After all this time you can’t have much more capital on hand—”

  “It’s my business, not yours.”

  “I want you to succeed at this, Riley. I really do.”

  She didn’t bother to call him out
on the lie. He’d just say he’d forgotten how doubtful he’d been after they’d received the news that Riley was the heir to the camp.

  “I’m serious.” His fingers flexed around the coffee mug. “I’ve been thinking about this. When your grandparents left you that camp, I guess you must have seen it as an opportunity to run your own business. I was ready for a different future, but I understand the urge.”

  She laid her spoon on the saucer and suppressed a sigh. Ambition was Declan’s specialty—it had never been hers. She just wished he could slip into her skin for one moment and see the world through her eyes. Then again, nobody seemed to be able to understand the world through her eyes.

  “If you make this camp viable,” he continued, “then you’ll have checked that box. That’s why I want you to succeed. Because after you’ve succeeded, maybe you’ll be willing to move on to other things.”

  “I don’t want children, Declan.”

  His eyelids twitched like he’d been hit by a blast of sand. He’d heard these words before. The first time she mustered the courage to tell him—a few weeks after their engagement—a smile had flitted across his lips, like surely she must be joking. But she hadn’t been, and she’d braced herself for the condemnation she expected—that sense that she couldn’t possibly be a natural woman if she didn’t want to take the next logical step in life.

  The truth was that she understood the sacrifices a woman made when she committed to a family. With three sisters, she’d seen up close the full-body, twenty-four-hour, never-ending immersion, the crazy three a.m. feedings, the emergency room visits, the moments when you thought you lost them, the fears that kept you up all through the night. Society questioned why a woman would choose to be childless, when considering the stress, level of commitment, and sacrifices involved in raising children, Riley always thought the real scrutiny should be about why a woman would choose to have babies at all.

  But poor Declan. She must have seemed like a natural mother, having been raised the youngest child in a big family, growing up among dozens of cousins, working as the children’s activity coordinator at Camp Kwenback from the age of fourteen on, saving enough money from babysitting gigs to afford her own car at eighteen. She adored other people’s children. She loved being a godmother, a favorite aunt. She’d known the truth about her feelings for a long time, but Declan had convinced her that her feelings would change. He didn’t want children, either, at least not right away, he said. But that urge to have kids snuck up on everyone eventually, didn’t it? She found herself thinking maybe he was right. Maybe someday she’d feel that womb pull of maternal instinct, that fecund hormonal rush that made people ooh and aah over newborn babies, that overwhelming need to breed.

  Riley figured that if she hadn’t felt that burning urge in bed beside this wonderful man, she likely never would.

  He said, suddenly, “I just made partner.”

  “Oh?”

  “Effective last month. No corner office yet, but…someday.”

  “Congratulations, Dec.” She felt a rush of warmth. “I know how much you wanted this.”

  “It means a good step-up in pay.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t amend the papers—”

  “It means that you wouldn’t have to work.” He brushed imaginary crumbs off the red laminate table. “You could stay home. I could take care of you, until you…decide.”

  Riley looked at the face of the man she’d vowed to love through sickness and health, till death do us part, and felt a twist of regret. Declan wasn’t wrong. There was a part of her that still wanted to return to their lovely apartment with a sliver of a view of the East River, to settle into the easy routine of sharing coffee in the morning, walking to the subway together, coming home after picking up Thai food at the corner hole-in-the-wall, watching home improvement shows and talking about the dream house he wanted to build someday—yes, one part of her, deep inside, still wanted to burrow in someone else’s nest, to have someone else to make all the hard decisions for her.

  But she’d spent a lifetime doing what her family wanted her to do, and then what her husband wanted her to do, like a mute brown wren tumbling helplessly in the gale-force winds of other people’s advice.

  She reached across the table and took his hand, warm, just like she remembered. “My feelings are not going to change.”

  “You’re not your birth mother, Riley.”

  Riley froze. The words had a taste like vinegar on her tongue. She tugged her hand away, but he just tightened his grip.

  “You have a mother who loves you,” he said. “She’ll do anything to make you happy, even if it pisses you off—”

  “Stop.” She yanked her hand so hard that, when he released it, she slammed her elbow into the back of her seat. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “You never do.”

  Of course she didn’t. Who would want to talk about a biological mother who’d given her away with all the care of putting a TV on the curb for recycling?

  “I shouldn’t have pushed so hard,” he said, reaching across, trying to touch her as she dug out her wallet. “That was my mistake. But your birth mother is in the past, Riley, and you’re letting her destroy your future—”

  “This isn’t about my birth mother.” Not in the way he thought, anyway. “This is about us.”

  “Weren’t we good together, Riley—”

  “I can’t do this.”

  Riley threw a couple of dollars next to the coffee. She slipped out of the booth and made a wide berth so Declan couldn’t grab her arm. He called her name but her legs kept moving. She ignored the looks cast her way by the folks at the counter as she pushed out through the front door and into the sunshine.

  She was fumbling in her purse to find her car key when he finally caught up to her in the side parking lot.

  “Riley, stop.”

  “You shouldn’t have come all the way up here.”

  “You’re just scared.”

  “I’m not scared. I’ve never been scared.”

  “Then why haven’t you signed those papers?”

  She found her key in her purse and pressed the button to unlock the car door. The beep echoed in the parking lot. She slipped into her car, closed the door, and put it in gear. As she backed out of her parking spot, she came up beside him. She pressed the button to lower the window.

  She wanted to yell at him to get a wife who wanted the same things that he wanted—the satisfying career, the domestic life, the dinner parties with colleagues. She wanted to tell him to find a sane, smart woman who’d decorate his dream house with care and style and enjoyment, not with odd red-lacquered knobs, not with wallpaper covered in roosters. A man like Declan deserved someone who shared his ambitions, someone very different from herself.

  She deserved something different, too, if she could just figure out whatever the heck that was.

  “Declan,” she said, her heart filling her throat, “I’ll get to the papers. Don’t ambush me like this again.”

  Chapter Ten

  On the beach of Bay Roberts, young boys raced down the length of the dock to hurl themselves into the water, only to swim back to shore and do it again. A clique of teenage girls planted their blankets close to the lifeguard’s chair, talking behind their hands and giggling and trying not to get caught looking up at him. Toddlers struggled to stay upright on the sand, clutching pink plastic shovels, followed by their mothers. White clouds like cotton candy floated across the sky.

  Sadie lay on her stomach on a towel with her chin propped on her hands. Nearby, under an umbrella, three kids sat in front of their mother playing Old Maid. They hid their smiles behind oversize playing cards while their mother tapped her chin and screwed up her face as she eyed the backs of their cards. The mother reached out and pulled a card out of the middle boy’s hand, looked at it, gaped, and then rolled back on the towel in mock horror. The boys squealed in high-pitched unison, bouncing and laughing.

  A weak, shivery sensation st
arted in her stomach. It was like when she picked up that photo of her parents and held it real close to her face. In the picture her mom’s and dad’s smiles were fixed, but Mom’s hair was all messed up like the wind was tossing it. When Sadie brought the photo real close, she could imagine that wind blowing. She could almost hear her mother laughing. Sometimes she swore she smelled a sweet scent, an apple and dirt scent, the kind that used to cling to Daddy’s clothes.

  Sadie sat up and swung her legs under her. It didn’t do any good to think about Mom and Dad. It wouldn’t do any good to think of Nana, either, alone in the hospital. If she spent too much time thinking about them, she’d end up brooding in a corner somewhere. She had to think about her future while she still had time to make it for herself. So she opened her composition notebook and flipped through the pages—eyeballing the scribbled notes, sketches of the Camp Kwenback logo, eye color inheritance diagrams—until she found the first empty page.

  Bay Roberts, Wednesday—

  Mother, blond, and three kids, two blonds and a brunette, one of the blonds called Mikey. I can’t see the color of their eyes, but their hair is pin-straight and there’s not a freckle on them. Not likely.

  She flicked the end of the pen, seeking other subjects.

  Father with a young boy, curly hair like mine but not a lot of it. The son is Asian, I think. He reminds me of Izzy. There’s a lifeguard, too, probably a local. He’s sixteen or seventeen. Long, straight hair in a ponytail, skin like caramel. Oh, Izzy, you’d go crazy over him.

  Sadie lifted her pen from the paper as a thought struck her. She really had to sign onto one of the public computers at the library. Izzy had promised not to say anything, but if Sadie didn’t send her a message soon, her friend might get all scared and do something stupid.

  “Writing poetry?”

  A shadow fell over her. She looked up to find that Tess-woman, that interfering friend of Riley’s who’d threatened to call the police. She was dressed in cutoff jeans and a tank top with her face half hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. Except for the baseball cap, Sadie thought Tess looked like the singer Pink on an angry day.