Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  “More pizza for us, then,” Sandra said. “Let’s eat out-side. It’s the most gorgeous day we’ve had all year.”

  “I’ll set up the folding table,” Mary Margaret offered, scrambling to the deck of the Fat Chance.

  “Go wash your hands, okay, Kevin?” Sandra said. “You might need the mineral spirits to get that tar off.”

  He clomped into the boat. Sandra sounded kind of like a mom, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. But most of the time, she was pretty nice, friendly and never fake. She was more fun than most grown-ups Kevin knew. She actually seemed to like hanging out with kids rather than putting up with them because she thought she had to. Sometimes Kevin got that feeling about Carmine. They’d be right in the middle of shooting hoops or something, and Carmine would get a call on his cell phone, and that would be that. When he cut a game short, he’d slip Kevin a five-dollar bill, which was way cool. But sometimes Kevin would rather have the game.

  He figured he was lucky. At least Carmine didn’t pretend to be his father, like other stepdads seemed to do. Kevin had never met a kid so stupid he couldn’t tell the difference.

  While he scrubbed away at his hands, he wondered if Sandra might become his stepmom one day. She and Dad never did any lovey-dovey stuff around him, but some-times he saw them looking at each other in a special way that made him a little nervous.

  Outside, the three of them ate the steaming, gooey pizza, throwing the crusts to circling gulls while Zeke barked his head off. Afterward, Mary Margaret decided she wanted her hair done in fancy braids, so Sandra got a comb and went to work. Bored, Kevin found a net and fished off the dock for a while. He got a crab, and Zeke went nuts barking at it before it scuttled off the dock and dropped into the water. While they were all laughing and talking, his mom showed up.

  When she saw Sandra doing Mary Margaret’s hair, Mom got a hard look on her face. “Where’s your father?” she asked.

  “Harbormaster’s office,” Kevin said.

  Sandra finished the braids, her hands quick, all of a sudden.

  “Go get your stuff,” said Mom. “We need to get home.”

  Kevin and Mary Margaret went down to their state room to shove everything into duffel bags. It was weird, packing for a trip every time they went to visit their dad. He was getting used to it. But he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  “Hey,” he said to his sister. “Where’s my Gameboy?”

  “Shh.” Mary Margaret stood still, her head cocked as she listened to Mom and Sandra talking abovedecks.

  “. . . could lose his visitation privileges,” Mom was saying.

  A pause. Then Sandra said, “You’d do that?”

  “It’s up to the custody evaluator. I didn’t make the rules. I’m looking out for my kids. That’s what’s important. “ It was the voice she used when she went to school to complain about a teacher. She tried to sound really nice, but sharp underneath.

  Sandra said something else, but it was too soft to hear.

  “. . . or this will show up on the next custody evaluation. Your choice,” Mom said.

  Kevin frowned. “What are they —”

  “Shh,” Mary Margaret said again. She nibbled at her bottom lip, the way she did when she was thinking hard.

  “. . . force him to choose,” Sandra said.

  “Look, it’s one thing for him to work for you,” Mom said. “But another . . . Hey, life’s full of hard choices, isn’t it?”

  “Mom’s mad about something. What’s she got against Sandra?” Kevin whispered.

  Mary Margaret shrugged. “She doesn’t like him dating, is what I think.”

  “He’s not dating,” Kevin said. “Is he?”

  “God, you are a moron.” She tossed him his Gameboy.

  They finished packing and took their stuff to shore. Mom waited by the car, the lid of the trunk up. Sandra carried the empty pizza box to the trash. Her face was white and real serious when she said good-bye. Kevin felt a squirmy sensation in his stomach. He had never liked good-byes.

  Chapter 33

  Sandra drove home from Newport, knowing she ought to concentrate on the meeting with Milton Banks. He had been coaching her about the up-coming hearing—how to act, what to wear, what to say, and most importantly of all, what not to say. But she couldn’t focus on that; instead, even though the lawsuit loomed like a bank of heavy clouds, she thought about Mike.

  She’d found a glimpse of happiness with him. She could admit that now, though only to herself, no matter how great the temptation to confess it to him. The idea of letting him go hurt so much. It meant letting go of all the hopes and dreams she had built in such a short time. It meant forcing herself to forget him, the kids, all the impossible things she wanted and should have been smart enough to know she could never have.

  She tried to imagine what it would be like, never again to feel his arms around her, never to hear the easy rumble of his laughter, never to know the soaring ecstasy of making love with him. But she had to end this. She had no choice. Angela had made it clear that Sandra was poison. She declared her kids off-limits.

  Angela Falco wasn’t a bad person. She actually seemed to be a pretty good mother—with a mother’s very real concern for the people in her children’s lives. She’d do what it took to keep Sandra away from Kevin and Mary Margaret. And from Mike. If Sandra insisted on staying with him, he’d be forced to choose between her and his kids. And for a man like Mike, that was no choice at all.

  How to tell him? She couldn’t explain that she was afraid he’d lose his kids because of her; he wouldn’t stand for that from his ex-wife.

  The temptation to draw the lines of battle burned as intensely as the afternoon sunshine breaking through the clouds. She gripped the steering wheel and grimly shut down the impulse. She could never do that to Kevin and Mary Margaret.

  She braked and pulled her car over to the mailbox— the first thing Mike had fixed at Blue Moon Beach. Near the base, a trio of daffodils nodded in the breeze. When had those come up? she wondered.

  Putting off the confrontation a few moments longer, she sifted through the mail—catalogs and coupons, credit card solicitations and grocery circulars. Tossing them onto the seat of the car, she turned into the driveway.

  The crew had finished the porch. The ornate white railing circled the house like spun-sugar icing. Solid, symmetrical steps led to the front door and the entranceway, now as handsome and welcoming as it must have been the day the first Babcock had brought his new bride here for a summer-long honeymoon more than a hundred years before.

  She stepped out of the car and blinked, feeling as though she was coming out of hibernation. Malloy had done it. He’d taken the broken wreckage of a neglected house and restored it to the private retreat envisioned by the original builder. The improvements had been gradual, but until today, in the dazzling sunshine ripe with the warm promise of spring, she hadn’t realized how dramatic the changes were.

  Over the weekend, she and Mike had worked side by side with a yard crew, cleaning out beds, pruning lilac bushes and wild roses, trimming the edges of the walk-ways. Coaxed by the sweet, inexorable breath of spring, crocuses pushed up their purple bell-shaped heads; daffodils and early tulips splashed color through the garden.

  The world was bright and brand-new, clean and promising as an unwritten page. But with her usual caution, she reminded herself that springtime was an uncertain prospect in Paradise. The season of storms wasn’t over yet; the weather of coastal Rhode Island could never be counted on.

  Two workmen stood on ladders, stripped to their undershirts today as they installed newly repaired and painted antique shutters. One of them waved at her. “There’s a delivery for you on the porch,” he called.

  At the door, she noticed a lavish flower arrangement beside a FedEx envelope. Her heart lurched. Who would be sending her flowers? Frowning, she plucked out the card and read the message, “Marvelous! Good luck!” Her editor’s name had been signed to it. Confused now, she opened the
envelope to find a certificate from the National Library Society, announcing that Every Other Day had been short-listed for the Addie Award.

  She let out a gasp. The Addie was the Holy Grail of prizes for children’s literature. It belonged to writers she had admired all her life—Beverly Cleary, Madeleine L’Engle, Lois Lowry—and represented a validation by the booksellers of America. Winning it meant her publisher would sell more copies of her book, bringing that many more readers to her. And that, she concluded, was the whole reason she wrote—in order to touch readers’ hearts.

  She ran her thumb over the embossed letterhead of the stationery. Slowly, she picked up the big glass vase. For a fleeting moment, she savored the beauty of the flowers, the house and the satisfaction of her news. One thing was missing. Someone to share her joy. She wanted to race inside, fling her arms around Mike and babble the news to him. But she couldn’t, not now.

  In the old days, she would have gone running to Victor. He would have hugged her, kissed her, taken her somewhere exclusive for dinner and ordered a bottle of Cristal.

  She went in through the warm sunroom in the back, setting her purse on the kitchen table. “Mike?” she called out. “Hey, Malloy!”

  “In the study.”

  She expected to find him caulking a window, installing crown molding or changing the hardware on the cabinets. Instead, he sat at the desk where she usually worked.

  When he saw her, he got up and walked around the desk. “Sandy—”

  “Mike.” She interrupted him, trying to figure out how to tell him about her decision. “I have to talk to you.”

  Her tone made him frown. “What’s with the flowers?”

  She set down the vase. “My book is up for an Addie Award—big prize for a children’s book.” Chickening out, she went on, “I won’t win, of course. I’m listed with the best writers working today.” She heard herself babbling, but couldn’t help it. “Anyway, thanks for asking.”

  “Congratulations.” He offered the small dish of M&M’s he’d kept filled on her desk ever since she had told him the M&M’s story.

  She helped herself to a few, nervousness itching through her, turning—irrationally—to irritation. “Mike—”

  “Look, Sandy, I need to talk to you about something, too.”

  She studied his face and realized with a start that he was deadly serious, and had been since she’d barged into the study. Maybe his ex-wife had given him an ultimatum, too. Maybe he was going to do the breaking up.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Have a seat.”

  Eyeing him warily, she sank down on the wooden chair beside the desk. “Did you find termites? Is the house falling down?”

  “It’s about Victor.” He propped a hip on the desk and regarded her in a way that made her deeply uncomfortable—as if, for the first time, he didn’t trust her. “I want you to tell me the truth about you and Victor.”

  It was the last thing she expected, and she felt unbalanced by the abrupt demand. She’d spent half the day being grilled by her lawyer; now Mike?

  Studying his troubled blue eyes, she tried to figure out what he wanted from her. What was he digging for? Her father’s warning rang in her ears. Life had taught her to distrust everyone, even the people she loved. Did she love him enough to trust him?

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  He slammed his fist on the desk. She’d never seen him like this—edgy, threatening. It occurred to her that she had never seen him angry. Could you ever really know a person until he got angry with you?

  “I won’t let you do this anymore,” he said, his voice quiet yet somehow ominous. “I won’t let you hold back.”

  “I never—”

  “It’s time you told me the truth about your marriage.”

  Her marriage.

  “I ‘ve already done that. We were married, and then he died in an accident.” She thought about the way she and Victor had been together. About the things he’d said to her in the car that night. The things she’d said to him. Victor. She loved him. She hated him. She wanted just five more minutes with him.

  “What in the world is your point?” she demanded.

  He narrowed his eyes until they glinted like ice. “You haven’t leveled with me from the start. Were you ever planning on doing that?” When she didn’t reply, his stare drilled deeper. “How long did you know he was gay?”

  Everything stopped—breath, heartbeat, the waves on the sand, the world on its axis. Instantly she thought, He’s bluffing. He can’t know. But Mike Malloy never lied, never bluffed. That much she knew about him. Her throat froze, trapping denial in a vise. Her mouth worked, but only silence hung in the room, as though someone had just breathed his last breath.

  So this was it, then, the moment she’d dreaded, the moment she’d prayed would never come. This was what she’d been afraid of all along. This was why loving Mike was so foolish, so futile. As foolish, in its way, as loving Victor had been.

  She crossed her arms in front of her and bent forward as though shielding herself from a blow. But it was too late. She should have known from the start that a man like Mike would keep delving deep into her life, that he would finally succeed in opening secrets she’d kept bottled up. The moment confirmed what she had known all along — that although it hurt to hold her secrets in, it hurt even more to give them up.

  Shame, guilt, and inadequacy lashed at her from a past that would never really go away. She wanted to retreat back into her frozen state, to keep her anguish private, for it was as much a part of her as her soul. Now, with one simple question, he’d taken the shadowy truth from her. He held it up, forcing her to face it.

  She stood and walked away from him, toward the window. For one terrible moment, she felt a soaring relief— maybe she could confide in someone at last. Then she hesitated, watching one of Victor’s suncatchers spin slowly, a dolphin of blue and green glass turning the sunlight to the deep and mysterious colors found at the heart of a flame, and she felt hostility, not gratitude. “D-damn you, Malloy,” she said in a tortured whisper.

  “No,” he said, and his hand closed on her arm as he pulled her around to face him. “Damn you, Sandy. Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

  “I would never do that,” she said, dragging conviction from her well of pain. She yanked her arm away from him. “It’s none of your business—or anyone else’s. Why would I tell you? So you can accuse me of killing your best friend because he was gay?”

  For a moment, incomprehension suffused his expression. Then he gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Anyone who finds out is going to assume it.”

  “So you haven’t told anyone.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Yes. You withheld information from a formal investigation—” “Information that would only cause more hurt, and it wouldn’t change a thing. It would only get me in deeper trouble and damage more lives.”

  “It’s already damaged your life.”

  “I’m dealing with it.”

  “You’re running from it. Again—I think this is a habit with you. You’ve always held part of yourself back from me. From everyone. From life. You’re using this as an excuse.”

  It was an effort just to breathe. “I think you should leave, Malloy.”

  “And make it easy for you? Hell, no, I won’t. Not until I get some answers. Did you know when you married him? Christ, is that why you married him, so you wouldn’t have to endure the mess of actually loving someone? So you could hold him at arm’s length and keep your heart walled off?” His face was hard, uncompromising, and he made a visible effort to take hold of his temper, inhaling slowly and deeply. “Why couldn’t you trust me with the truth?”

  “You have it so wrong. It’s not about trusting you.” It’s not even about the truth.

  “Sit back down, Sandy. You might as well, because I’m not leaving.”

  Defeat shuddered through he
r. Or was it surrender? She couldn’t tell. Her stomach twisted, and she sat down on the cushioned window seat. Outside, the wind picked up, and an arching branch of forsythia scratched across the antique glass pane. Plump yellow buds clung to the branch where, just a few weeks before, the bushes had appeared naked and dead.

  Sitting beside her, he took both her hands in his, rubbing them, trying to warm them. “Talk to me, Sandy. I want to understand.”

  “You could never understand. We were happy, Malloy. We liked being together. We shared things, but. . . there was this other side to him.”

  “The fact that he was gay.” He planted his elbows on his knees, his eyes filled with lost incredulity. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out.”

  “For all I know, you did,” she shot at him. “You were his best friend.”

  “You were his wife, and he had you fooled. So which one of us is the bigger idiot?” Agitated, he got up and paced the room, which suddenly seemed too small for him. For the first time, she realized that he was dealing with this, too. What sort of earthquake was it to learn that your best friend, the person closest to your heart while growing up, was not the person you thought he was? It must be a real shock, particularly for someone like Mike, who hid nothing.

  “He was good, Malloy. You don’t know how good.”

  “I should have guessed, but, Jesus, it was Victor. Your mind just didn’t go there.” He stopped pacing to study the photograph on the desk—a smiling Victor, his arm around Sandra, laughing out at the camera. Mike’s eyes were awash with torment. “Maybe he tried to tell me, and I never took the hint. And then maybe he quit dropping hints.”

  She could relate to his guilt, though it didn’t ease her resentment of his prying. But she felt guilty, too, and stupid and blind. Right under her nose, her husband had been fighting to deny his sexuality, to beat it out of him-self, to smother it. And he’d used her as his means of self-flagellation.

  “He did everything in his power to hide it,” she said, then added bitterly, “and that’s where I came in.” She felt a familiar sting of anger. Victor’s love and friendship had been secondary to his need to use her as a smoke screen. “What better way for a gay man to hide his preference than to marry a woman? And to make that marriage look as blissful as a fairy tale?”