“This is so awesome,” Gigi said. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” As Ava watched the girl diligently rinse the tools in the sink, she asked, “So where are you supposed to be right now?”
Gigi didn’t turn around, but by the defiant toss of her head, Ava knew she was about to lie. “Nowhere. It’s summer, remember?”
“Don’t even try to lie to me. I’m a high school teacher and I have two sons older than you are,” Ava reminded her. “I won’t be mad. Just tell me the truth.”
The girl spun around, her cheeks almost as pink as the tips of her hair. “All parents say they won’t be mad when you tell them the truth. Then they are anyway.”
“First of all, I’m not your parent. I’m your sister. Second, I really care about you. I’m sure your mom does, too. She just wants you to be happy.”
“That’s what all mothers say.”
“No. Some mothers actually drown their children, or shoot them or shake them or give them away.”
Gigi looked startled, then giggled. “God. You’re even more morbid than I am.”
Ava doubted that. “I’m telling you the truth. I care about you, and about your mom, too.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why you were at the house every day Dad was dying.”
“I wanted to come. Your mom made it clear she didn’t want me around.”
“I believe you,” Gigi said with a sigh, her narrow shoulders slumping. “Mom didn’t want anybody around, especially not you or Elaine. I didn’t blame Elaine for doing what she did at the funeral, you know. If I were you guys, I’d be pissed off at my mom, too, for stealing your dad.”
“Oh, honey. Your mom didn’t steal him. Our dad hadn’t been happy for a long, long time.” Ava bit her lip, wondering what she could say that would be true without being too honest. “Everything that happened with our parents was long ago. It had nothing to do with you, me, or Elaine. Nobody outside a marriage can really know what’s happening on the inside of it.”
She stopped talking, reminding herself that the girl was only fifteen. If Gigi had been older, Ava might have said that falling in love was like visiting a foreign country: Occasionally, you felt so at home in a new place, you wanted to stay there forever, adopting new customs as your own. More often, things went stale. If you were lucky enough to get out, you could search for a new country to visit. Or maybe you’d quit traveling to new places altogether, as Ava had done.
“There are more mysteries about love than you and I could solve in a lifetime,” she told Gigi. “What I want to know is what you’ve told your mom about where you are.”
“She still thinks I’m at riding camp.”
“Riding camp?”
Gigi glanced up at Ava’s incredulous tone. “Yeah. You know. Horses? My mom has this thing about them. Like, horses are her obsession.”
Ava chewed her lip, trying not to laugh at the look of disgust on Gigi’s face. “So I’m guessing you don’t love horses like your mom does.”
“That’s not true! I probably love horses more than I love people, actually. But I hate competitive riding. And the people who do it,” she added.
“So how did you get out of going? Doesn’t your mom drive you there every morning?”
“No. I ride my bike. Mom doesn’t leave the house, not ever. Not since Dad died, except for the funeral.”
“Not at all?” Ava touched her own forehead, imagining Katy’s pounding head, cottony with grief. “That poor girl. I should stop in on her.”
“She wouldn’t see you.”
“Maybe not, but we need to go to your house and at least tell her where you are.”
“No!” Gigi looked stricken. “She’d kill me if she knew!”
“Why? Does she really hate us that much?”
“I don’t know. But she doesn’t like you. She thinks you and Elaine have been bitches to her. Not that Mom would ever say the b-word,” Gigi added quickly.
“I don’t blame her,” Ava said. “We haven’t been very nice to her in the past. But I think she might really need some help, don’t you? The kind of help you probably can’t give her by yourself.”
A long silence followed, while Gigi chewed on a fingernail. Finally she nodded and said, “Okay, I guess.”
Ava’s car was ancient, so old and sketchy it was easy for Gigi to imagine they were leaving a trail of rusted-out car parts behind them as they rattled over the bridge from Beach Plum Island toward Newburyport. She wondered if Ava was poor and then felt bad about wondering. If Ava was poor, wouldn’t that mean Dad hadn’t taken care of her, when he’d always given Gigi everything?
But Ava was a grown-up. A mom. Gigi had seen Ava’s sons—her nephews!—at the service, two blond kids older and taller than she was. She was curious about them, not just because they were guys and went to public school—always an attraction, since the kids in her prep school were mostly posers—but because Ava’s sons clearly loved music as much as she did. There were guitars and amps and sheet music all over Ava’s living room, and even a drum set. She had kind of been hoping the boys would come home while she was there.
Now Gigi was glad they hadn’t shown up. They would probably hate her anyway because her mom had stolen their grandfather. And she would have been totally humiliated to have them see Ava driving her home. She couldn’t quit chewing her nails, wondering what would happen. Mom could be in one of those painkiller comas and not even wake up when they arrived. Or maybe she’d go totally ballistic when she discovered Gigi had been hanging out with Dad’s other family instead of riding. She was relieved when Ava put on some chill tunes, a burner CD, so they didn’t have to talk.
Mom was upstairs in her bedroom, where she always was these days, lying under a blanket like it wasn’t the last day of June and eighty degrees. She looked like a little kid, her pale hair knotted and her face puffy and pink. Beside her was a whole blizzard of crumpled Kleenexes.
The maids cleaned twice a week, a trio of Brazilians that sounded like parakeets when they flitted around the house, talking in their singsong way and cleaning things Gigi would never think to clean, like the tops of picture frames, and folding the toilet paper ends into triangles. The cleaners had been here today, judging by the slick sheen on the counters and wood floors downstairs, but her mom hadn’t let them into her bedroom since Dad died. Her bed was a mountain of blankets and pink sheets; there were so many clothes on the floor that it looked like her dresser had exploded, and there was a tray on her night table that smelled like cat food. Gramma Dawn must have left the food but not been back yet to retrieve the tray.
Gigi’s scalp prickled with shame, having Ava see her mom this way, as helpless as an abandoned kitten. Before Dad got sick, Mom was prettier and more fun than any of her friends’ mothers, and Gigi was proud to belong to her. Dad was, too.
“Your mother’s the sun and I’m her moon,” Dad always said. Then, to crack Gigi up, he’d add, “Not that I plan to moon her with you in the room, though. I’ll save that for later.”
“Bob! Do you always have to be so inappropriate?” her mother would say, but she’d be giggling, too, like she was hardly older than Gigi.
Gigi left Ava in the bedroom and carried the tray of food downstairs. She set it on the counter and stood at the sink, her nose and eyes running as she stared out the window. Rain spattered like handfuls of gravel against the glass, as if the sky were crying, too.
She scraped the plates into the trash, rinsed them, and loaded them into the dishwasher. This kitchen, with its gleaming giant stove and a refrigerator big enough to fit a cow inside, was the opposite of Ava’s tiny kitchen, with its painted yellow cupboards and small white wooden table. Ava’s felt like home. This one embarrassed her, suddenly. It looked like it should be inside a hotel, not a house. No wonder her mother stayed in bed. The two of them were rattling around in this house like dice in a bus.
It sounded like Ava had pissed her off: Gigi could hear a thrumming tension in her mother’s voice. Well, fine. Mad was definitely better than sad. Gigi slumped to the floor, her back against the cool wall, and listened.
“You don’t understand. She has to go back to that camp,” Mom was saying. “I can’t have her running all over town unsupervised. She’s only fifteen, for God’s sake.”
“But she hates the camp,” Ava said. “Why make her go back? Can’t you get the money refunded?”
“This isn’t about the money! This is about what’s best for Gigi! She needs structure over the summer and she needs to conquer her fear of riding. I know she loves horses. It’s just a matter of getting enough experience and building confidence.”
Gigi heard a rustling sound. Was her mother actually sitting up? She was afraid to look.
“She does love horses,” Ava said. Her voice was soothing and warm, the way it had been with Gigi that first day. Ava’s kids were lucky, knowing their mom wasn’t going to fly off the handle and slap them, or crumple and cry in front of them, the way Mom started doing after Dad got sick last year. “But I think the camp environment might be too stressful for her right now.”
Gigi sighed with relief. Thank God Ava didn’t say anything about her not wanting to ride competitively. Mom was so sure Gigi had what it took to be an Olympian, or to at least compete in the Grand Nationals. Gigi would rather set herself on fire than do that.
“Everything is stressful right now,” Mom said. “Gigi misses her father. She has to get back in the saddle and keep going.”
There was a small hesitation, as if Ava was struggling not to say the most obvious thing: Oh, like you’re doing, lying here day after day? Is that what you mean by getting back in the saddle?
But Ava wasn’t mean enough to say anything like that. Instead, she said, “Maybe she could go back to camp next summer, when she’s had time to grieve. I think Gigi needs a complete change of scene for a little while, something that doesn’t remind her so much of her dad.”
Gigi was startled by this idea. What did it matter what she did? She thought about Dad all the time anyway, no matter where she was or what she was doing.
“Like what?” her mom said, sniffing.
“How about art? Gigi seems very creative.”
Her mom actually laughed. “That’s an understatement.” There was another rustle of blankets. “I remember one teacher who taught Gigi’s class how to make gingerbread houses at Christmas. You know, the kits you can make with graham crackers and canned frosting and candy? Well, every one of the kids in that class made a tidy little A-frame cottage, just like the picture on the box. But not Gigi! Oh, no. Her house was all different levels and flat roofs. When the teacher tried to apologize for not being able to make Gigi follow directions, Bob stopped her. He said it was the only gingerbread house Frank Lloyd Wright might have made, and he was damn proud of Gigi for making it.” Her mother was crying now, a little huffing sound. “Bob understood Gigi, but I never have.”
That was true, Gigi thought. How would the two of them ever get along without Dad around, acting like one of those rubber bumpers that keeps ships from crashing into docks?
When Gigi peeked around the corner of the doorframe, Ava was picking up the tissues on the floor and throwing them away. Then Ava sat down next to Mom and smoothed her hair. “Raising a child is never easy. It’s like making art.”
Her mom sniffed. “If you mean it’s like molding them into pleasing, useful shapes, then I’m a dunce at it.”
“No.” Ava shook her head, her long streaky hair moving softly around her shoulders. “Being a great artist takes good technique. But you have to be open to your instincts and emotions, too. You have to stop trying to force a piece and let it evolve organically.”
“And what does Gigi need to be? Organically, I mean?” Her mom was looking at Ava, really looking at her, with her beautiful gray eyes glimmering like tide pools.
“Herself,” Ava said.
Gigi pressed a hand to her mouth and scrambled downstairs, not wanting to hear any more. How could she be herself, when she didn’t even know what that was?
• • •
When she sat down to write to Katy, Elaine let herself say everything she felt, crumpling pages of stationery one by one and burning them in her sink. It was the Fourth of July; rather than drive north to Ava’s and fight traffic, she had gone to a rooftop party in Boston with Tony and his new boyfriend, a swanky lawyer who probably owned more shoes than she did, to watch the fireworks. Now she was alone and melancholy, missing Dad because the Fourth was his favorite holiday.
Every year he’d drag them to Rockport, that ridiculous toy of a town at the tip of Cape Ann with its too-often-painted red fishing shack, its bright buoys dangling like earrings from its clapboards. Dad always insisted on a lobster picnic, despite the fact that she and Ava hated lobsters. They’d eat the lobsters cold on Back Beach with whatever rank potato salad they could buy in town, and stay for the parade of fire trucks and out-of-tune high school bands and bagpipers. Rockport always had a bonfire, too, with something like a pirate ship at the top of it that threatened to topple onto the eager crowd.
Now Elaine poured herself another glass of wine—it was the Fourth, after all—and pressed her pen to a fresh sheet of paper. “Dear Katy,” she wrote, then:
I’m sorry that my dad died and left you a widow and I acted like a punk about it.
I’m sorry that my dad left my mom and I lost a year of my life and wanted to kill you.
I’m sorry that you were ever born. You’re the reason my mom died of a broken heart.
I’m sorry that I’m so petty and mean and jealous.
I’m sorry that I never knew my dad the way you and Gigi did.
This last line made her hand tremble as she lit a match to the page.
Why hadn’t she known her dad? They were too different. Everyone said so: Elaine was dark and high-strung and delicate, like Suzanne, and Ava was Bob’s scrappy outdoorsy girl, the son he never had. Dad and Ava loved to hike and make up stupid limericks and songs. They loved things like Salisbury Beach and the Topsfield Fair, that horror show of racing pigs, puke-inducing thrill rides, and fried dough.
Dad was proud of his working-class roots and flaunted them, making people—especially Elaine, as she got older—uncomfortable with his childhood stories about stuffing rags in the walls of his family’s home for extra insulation and eating roadkill. Meanwhile, Mom, whose family had no more education than Dad’s but more money, thanks to Grandpa’s car dealership, was still just a small-town girl from Bumfuck, Maine, and practically killed herself trying to fit in with people at the country club. She joined the PTO and the garden club, volunteered at the hospital, learned golf and bridge, and ordered her clothes out of the right catalogs. She loved her children, Elaine knew, and tried her best to play the part of a good mother. Mom was always home when they returned from school, even if she was just parked on the sofa in front of her soaps. She read stories to them at night, took them shopping for sports equipment or just the right outfit for a party, and displayed their school papers and drawings on the fridge.
Yet, even as a child, Elaine was acutely aware that Suzanne was doing some sort of memorized dance, counting steps as she parented with the tense, distracted air of someone looking over her shoulder to see if she, herself, was earning a positive report card. By the time Elaine was lea
ving elementary school as a skinny, determined fifth grader, Suzanne seemed unable to cope with even these clearly earmarked mothering tasks and increasingly handed them over to Ava.
After Dad left, Mom fell apart, transformed into the kind of woman Elaine would have crossed the street to avoid: an unwashed hoarder, a timid agoraphobic, a woman who might burst into tears or crumple to the ground if you even looked at her cross-eyed.
Elaine hadn’t been able to avoid her, of course. It had fallen to her to care for Mom after the divorce. She’d worried the whole time that Mom would never get better.
And guess what? She was right to worry. Mom never did get better. That knowledge was like a flickering match leading Elaine down a dark tunnel to an even damper, more shameful fear: that she might look as much like her mother on the inside as she did on the outside.
Elaine didn’t have to deal with their mother while Ava lived at home, because Ava, five years older, had always cooked and helped Elaine with homework. Elaine got to be a kid, with her own agenda: school, field hockey, boyfriends. Then, when Elaine was fifteen, Ava married Mark and moved out of the house. She remembered feeling angry and hurt and abandoned, just as Gigi must be feeling right now. Entitled brat or not, Gigi couldn’t find it easy, losing her father at fifteen.
Their father.
Elaine sighed and started over on a fresh sheet of paper.
Dear Katy and Gigi,
I am sorry for your loss. Dad was a powerful presence in all our lives. I know he was a good husband and father to you, and that you were close to him in ways I never was. I guess maybe that’s why it hit me so hard when he died: I never really got to know him, and I will regret that forever.
I want to apologize for acting the way I did at the service. I would like to blame my atrocious behavior on the wine. [Here, Elaine barely refrained from adding, “Which could have been better, by the way.”] But I hold myself fully accountable for my outburst. You were trying to honor my father with the memorial service and I greatly appreciate the effort you made. You were generous to include us, and I thank you.
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