by Luanne Rice
From the photographs on the back of their books, she had learned that John Cheever loved dogs, that Laurie Colwin had once worn a striped shirt and tilted her head as she’d squinted in the sunlight. These were people Margaret wished she could get to know.
Sighing, she lowered Family Happiness to her knees. Colwin’s characters came from loving families who weathered each other’s weak spots with affection and equanimity.
“Jane,” Margaret called. “Jane!”
No reply. Yet Margaret could hear her up in the attic, going through God-knew-what boxes. Fresh from reading some lovely dialogue between Family Happiness’s Wendy and her daughter Polly, Margaret wanted to modify but basically reenact the same thing between herself and Jane.
“Jane!” she called louder.
A moment later, her elder daughter walked in, glittering with dust motes. She wore black jeans and a purple T-shirt with a cupcake in the center. That locket she always wore dangled from her neck. Her hands and forearms looked dark with dust. Margaret’s lips tightened.
“Dear, what are you doing up there? Sylvie finally has a date and leaves us alone for a night, and you abandon me!”
“Finally has a date?” Jane asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes. With John Dufour.”
“I know who she’s with; I just don’t think it’s very flattering for you to say ‘finally.’ She’s smart and gorgeous, and he’s obviously smitten beyond belief.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. My God, you misunderstood!” Margaret said. “I mean, she’s so dutiful, never wanting to leave me alone, even since you’ve come home, all they ever do is play Scrabble downstairs . . .”
“You mean she doesn’t trust me alone with you?” Jane asked, grinning.
“I don’t mean that at all! Dear! Please, don’t be so contrary,” Margaret said, wanting to steer the conversation to something lovely. Surely Laurie Colwin’s mothers and daughters would sail through this situation more smoothly.
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, perching on the end of the bed, one foot resting on the rocking chair.
“Polly knows how much Wendy loves her,” Margaret said, hugging the book.
“Who?”
“The Solo-Millers,” Margaret said, as Jane pried the book from her arms. She watched Jane flipping the pages. “I wish we were more like that. I wish you knew . . . and I wish you didn’t hold so much against me. Polly doesn’t hold things against Wendy.”
“Characters?” Jane asked, looking up. “In this book?”
Margaret nodded, and to her dismay, she felt her chin wobbling.
“Mom,” Jane said. “We’re not characters.”
“Neither are they!” Margaret said passionately. “They’re real. They love each other. If Wendy wants Polly to come for Sunday lunch all the time, it’s only because she loves her so much! So, maybe she made some mistakes when the children were small, perhaps she doesn’t understand every nuance of her daughter’s personality . . . but Polly forgives her!”
“Mom . . .”
“What’s in that locket?” Margaret asked, staring at the silver disc around Jane’s neck.
“Nothing,” Jane said.
“That’s not true,” Margaret said. “You never take it off. You’ve worn it ever since . . .” Her voice broke. “Oh, how I regret letting that picture be taken at the hospital. You were so emotional, and you begged me—”
“Stop,” Jane said. She sat there, so stiffly. Margaret longed to have Jane reach out, take her hand the way Polly would have taken Wendy’s. She longed to have a shimmering moment where her gaze locked with Jane’s, where forgiveness could flow between them.
“Do you have her picture in there?” Margaret asked.
Jane didn’t reply. She looked down, studying her dusty hands. Margaret saw blue paint smeared on her fingers and wondered where it could have come from.
“Where do you go on your drives?” Margaret asked.
“Mom, I just drive around.”
“Sylvie seems nervous about it. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Mom, let’s talk about you instead,” Jane said slowly, changing the subject. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, dear. I’m fine. I really am.”
“You’ve seemed so tired, ever since you went to Crofton.”
“Yes, the potluck dinner.” Margaret sighed. “Seeing all those people—teachers from my school, other administrators, and the new generation—so many young educators I’d never met before. Saying hello, seeing baby pictures of everyone’s children and grandchildren. Then, of course, reporting on the state of my health . . . I get so tired of that. You know, when you have good health, you just take it for granted. People say ‘How are you,’ and you answer ‘Fine.’ I long for those days. . . .”
“I know you do,” Jane said.
Margaret sighed. Her feet and legs hurt. Just one night, over a week ago, on her feet for longer than usual, and she was still in pain. Lately, also, her eyesight had begun to fail. She was finding it harder to read. She dared not tell the girls, though. They would add “deteriorating eyesight” to the minus column, another reason she should be in a home.
“All in all, I have few complaints,” she said, trying to smile.
“Mom, we know it’s hard for you to get out of bed by yourself,” Jane said. “And you don’t want to call Sylvie or me late at night . . .”
“Shhh,” Margaret said, closing her eyes. She felt herself blushing. Jane was right: She didn’t want to disturb her daughters. And last night, not calling for help in getting herself to the bathroom in time, she had had an accident. Nightgown, bedsheets soaked . . .
“We weren’t upset,” Jane said. “We’re just worried about you.”
“Do you talk about what to do with me?” Margaret asked.
“I want to,” Jane said, her eyes big and steady. “But Sylvie won’t.”
“You want to get back at me, don’t you?” Margaret asked. “For what I did.”
Jane shook her head. “Of course not.”
“For protecting you, finding a good home for the child.”
“The child has a name,” Jane said steadily. “Chloe.”
Margaret bit her lip. She had never used the name, and she never would. It only made the unbearable even worse. Why did Jane, her lovely, sensitive daughter, do this to herself? She stared at Jane’s locket. She wished she could rip it off her neck and throw it out the window. She wished she could throw away all Jane’s memories, all those awful feelings. She wished the doctor had never given Jane that time alone with the child, had never let her put the bow in her hair, never let the picture be taken.
“I did it for you . . .” Margaret began.
“Mom, please don’t,” Jane said. “That was so long ago. The point is to move forward now. To find a way to take better care of you. I’m afraid you’ll fall. I’m so afraid that, with your feet in such bad shape, you’ll trip and fall and hit your head. Or I’m afraid Sylvie will hurt her back, trying to get you out of bed.”
“I’m light,” Margaret said. “I don’t weigh much . . .” She could eat less; she could lose even more weight. She could take better care of her own feet. She could try that antibiotic salve the doctor had prescribed. She could start using the magnets in her slippers, even in bed.
“What about someone to live in?” Jane asked. “Like a nurse.”
Margaret shook her head. She had heard horror stories of friends hiring the wrong person. Silver stolen, phone bills run up, small cruelties such as pinching and shoving. “Why are you talking about this?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to be like my friends,” Jane said, “who decide what’s going to happen to their parents without discussing it with them. Because that’s not my right.”
“I’d almost rather have you ship me off, than consult with you about it. It’s as if you want to make me an agent of my own demise.”
“Demise? Mom,” Jane said, smiling.
“Just read Dickens
!” Margaret said, grabbing Oliver Twist and waving it. “He knew what institutions were like! This is to get me back. Right?”
“You never consulted with me,” Jane said quietly. “You just told me where to go and what to do. All those months at St. Joseph’s . . .”
“I had your best interests at heart,” Margaret said, moaning. “You were a brilliant girl . . . you had your whole future ahead of you . . . I despised your father for his legacy to you! For letting you think you were so unworthy, that you could just be used and discarded! Oh, my love—I was so afraid you’d throw it all away, drop out of Brown . . .”
“And become a baker?” Jane whispered. Just then a phone rang. Jane patted her pocket, pulled out a small silver cell phone, checked the little blue screen, and left the room.
Margaret shuddered, stifling a sob. She put down Oliver Twist and picked up Family Happiness again. She thought of those wonderful characters, the Solo-Millers, Wendy and Polly. She hung onto them—a mother and daughter with a solid relationship. She felt they were her friends, with her now. And she wished, more than any words in her beloved English language could ever say, that she could have that with Jane.
“Hello?” Jane said, standing in the hallway outside her mother’s room. Her heart was racing from the conversation she had just had as she held the cell phone to her ear.
“Jane?”
Jane hesitated, trying to place the voice.
“This is Dylan Chadwick,” he said.
“Oh, hi!” she said.
“I got your number from the card you gave my niece. And I wanted to call, to thank you.”
“You didn’t have to . . .”
“The apple tarts were delicious. And it was really thoughtful of you to drop them off. Just because I’d mentioned that we liked them.”
“Well, I haven’t been baking much,” Jane said, wanting to explain, hoping he hadn’t thought it strange. “I was getting rusty.”
“Are you still in Rhode Island? Or have you gone back to New York?”
“I’m still here,” she said.
“Well, the stand is almost ready,” he said. “You could probably see that it’s going to be a major summer employment opportunity for my niece and her friend.”
“I did see that.” Jane smiled.
“The thing is, the apples won’t be coming in till September. I’ve planted some strawberries, which won’t be ready till June, tomatoes and corn to sell in July, but right now, it’s looking as if I have a freshly painted stand with nothing to sell.”
Jane couldn’t believe this; Chloe’s uncle was about to make a business proposition with her.
“You want me to—” she began.
“Bake apple tarts and pies,” he said. “Chloe really loved the ones you made for us. She loved the pictures you made on top, with the crust. She had no idea who you were, of course.”
Jane’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”
“The Calamity Bakery.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “You know me from New York . . .”
“I used to live there,” he said. “My wife was a designer, and she used to give, and go to, a lot of parties. I remember I was always happy when you did the desserts. Because they were always so good and, I don’t know, homey. They weren’t fancy, but they were great. And I liked the way you decorated them.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Like yesterday: apples and apple trees. Chloe loved it, too.”
“I’m so glad,” Jane said, thrilled.
“So, will you bake for us? I was thinking, the girls want to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Maybe we could start out with two or three pies for each day. And a bunch of apple tarts.”
“Like five?”
“Sure. Five.”
“What about the apples?”
Dylan was silent, thinking.
“I mean,” Jane said, “everyone will want to know whether the pies are made out of Chadwick Orchards’ apples.”
“Really? We don’t have any yet. Do you think people will care?”
“No, it’ll be okay. In New York, everyone wants to know that the chanterelles came from a certain farm in Stonington, Maine, or that the raspberries were hand-picked by friars in County Wicklow, Ireland . . .”
Dylan laughed. “I remember that from New York. Except for some of the best restaurants in Providence, we’re not that picky around here.”
“So, you think I can get away with Granny Smiths from the grocery store?”
“I’d say so.”
“Okay, then,” Jane said. “I’ll give it a try.”
Chloe’s parents were fighting. It was Saturday night. They were in their bedroom, with the door closed. Didn’t they know she could hear? If not the actual words, at least the tone of their voices. She knew their fights were usually about one of two things: money or her.
The grounding had finally caught up with her. It had taken a few days of smoldering, but finally her father had told her: Her punishment for getting fired by Ace Fontaine was two weekends of being banned from going out to the movies with her friends.
Chloe wondered what life had been like before her arrival. Had they been happier? She walked through the neat house. Her socks slid on the newly waxed wood floors. She stopped in the living room. The couch and chairs were upholstered in flowered chintz. The butler’s table gleamed. The hooked rug had a white background. One of the reasons animals were not allowed inside the house was that fur made a mess. Chloe wasn’t allowed to sit on the living room furniture; she was encouraged to use the den, where the chairs had blue cotton slipcovers.
The bookshelf held very few actual books, but lots of decorating and gardening magazines, her mother’s collection of milk glass, and some framed pictures. Chloe picked up the one of her parents at their wedding.
Her father’s face was wide open, as if he hadn’t one care in the world. Her mother’s eyes were filled with happiness, her mouth a perfect smile. How content they looked together, and how alike. With their reddish blond hair and brown eyes, they looked almost like siblings. They’d gotten married at twenty-five. By the time they were thirty-seven, they had despaired of ever having a baby. And by the time they were thirty-eight, they were about to adopt Chloe.
She came with a name.
That was part of the deal, a condition of the adoption. Her real mother had held her in her arms, looked into her blue eyes, and given her the name “Chloe.” Although her parents would have preferred “Emily,” they agreed to abide by her real mother’s wishes. That’s how much they wanted her.
But did they? Would they have agreed if they’d known how she would change their lives? Into this light-haired, brown-eyed family had come Chloe, the demon seed. Black hair, ice blue eyes, more cat than girl, protester and insurgent.
Chloe walked over to the window, pushed it open. The orchard cats were dancing tonight. She saw them playing in the moonlight, tumbling around in the yard. More new kittens were being born every day. Some of them cried in the distance, as if they had lost their way home and wanted their parents to come and find them.
Upstairs, Chloe heard her father raising his voice. She heard “bills,” “money,” and “that goddamn orchard.” Chloe shivered, from the breeze coming through the open window, but also knowing that her father was talking about Uncle Dylan, wanting him to agree to sell off some of the land.
The phone rang. Chloe ran to get it.
“Hello?” she said.
“It’s me,” Mona said. “Are you allowed to talk on the phone?”
“Yeah. It’s a movie grounding. No movies till next week.”
“Oh. That’s not too bad. What are you doing?”
“Listening to them fight.”
“What about?”
“Money,” Chloe said. She didn’t feel like going into the whole thing, about her father and uncle and Isabel’s death and the orchard and how much happier her parents had been before they’d adopted her. But luckily Mona had been her friend for so long
, she knew most of the background. She had been there to feel the tension. She knew that Chloe got stomachaches from the fights that never quite exploded.
“You know, it really isn’t fair,” Mona said.
“What isn’t?”
“Well, if you’re born into the mayhem, that’s one thing. But if you’re invited to the mayhem party, that’s another.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that they adopted you. If you were their flesh and blood, that would be one thing—you’d have no recourse. But in a way, you’re their guest, so they’ve lost the right to the mayhem chip. They invited you. You could have gone to how many other families? So shouldn’t they be a little more considerate about your emotions? It takes a huge toll on you when they have those closed-door fights.”
Chloe’s stomach dropped, but Mona was only echoing things Chloe herself often said. She knew that Mona felt the same way about Rhianna. In some ways, adoptive parents and stepparents were quite alike. “Especially when the fights are about me,” she agreed. “I’ve shamed my father with Ace Fontaine at the Rotary.”
“Bad girl.” Mona chuckled.
“Their real daughter would never have done such a thing.”
“Never.”
“She would be as perfect as they are. She would keep her room perfectly clean. She would eat meat with the rest of the family. She would certainly never feed the orchard cats.”
“No, no, no.”
“And if she did, she wouldn’t have to make sure the cat food was nonmeat, nondairy.”
“Oh, the cats are vegan?”
“I’m looking into it,” Chloe said. “That food is expensive. Guess it depends on how much Uncle Dylan pays us for working at the stand.”
“Mmm, Uncle Dylan,” Mona said, sounding dreamy.
“Stop,” Chloe said. “He’s grieving. And he’s old.”
“He just needs someone to help him learn to love again. I can be that person. He needs me . . .”
“He’s forty-eight. He’s older than your father.”
“But younger than your father. How come, if your father is so hot to sell off the orchard, your uncle—his younger brother—gets to have his way and work the land?”
