Blue Midnight (Blue Mountain Book 1)

by Tess Thompson

  I put both my hands on the sides of her arms. “Tomorrow you’ll be on your way to Hawaii. Think about the water slides.”

  “What if I’m afraid to go down them? And you won’t be there to catch me.”

  I looked over at Lola. “Your sister will help you. Just have a really good time. Both of you.”

  “What about you, Mommy?” asked Clementine. “Will you be all right without us?”

  “I’m going to miss you. But I’ll be here when you get back. And we’ll still have the rest of the summer to do fun things together. Just hug Lambie if you feel sad, and think about how much I love you. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Clementine wrapped her arms around my neck. I felt her sweet breath on my skin. “I left Belinda Bear in my bedroom for you, Mommy. In case you get lonely you can hug her just like I’m hugging Lambie.” Belinda Bear was Clementine’s second favorite stuffed animal.

  “I’ll sleep with her every night,” I said, trying not to choke on the lump at the back of my throat.

  Lola hugged me next. “I love you, Mama,” she said. I held her lightly in my arms. She had the beginning of breasts, tender to the touch. She protested if I hugged her too tightly, yet another change in the last year.

  “I love you, too.” I didn’t say anything else. Lola insisted the last words whenever we said goodnight or goodbye were: “I love you.” If Clementine or I said something else afterward we had to go through the same routine again.

  I stood on the steps and watched as Betsy helped them into her rental car. They both turned and waved out the back as they drove away, like a goodbye scene in a hundred movies. After I could no longer see the car, I swiped away the unwelcome tears and went back into the house.

  Bliss stood in the kitchen, typing something into her phone. She looked up when I came in. “My flight takes off in eight hours. That gives us just enough time to do something about your hair.”

  “My hair?”

  She put her hand in the air to silence me and then glanced back at her phone. A moment later, she spoke to someone on the other end, arranging a time for my ‘improvement’ afternoon. An hour later, I found myself in a chair at an expensive salon, with a petite gay man named Alphonse staring at me in the mirror. With one eyebrow raised, he clicked his tongue against the back of his whitened teeth, which I took as disapproval at how I’d let myself go. He adjusted the salon chair with his foot and waved a pair of scissors in the air. “We need layers, especially around your face.” Alphonse took a section from both sides of my face and brought them to the middle of my neck, indicating with his fingers where he proposed a new length. “The shortest layers will stop at your chin. It’ll bring more attention to your eyes and less to, well, the rest of your face.”

  In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of another client walking past with one of the stylists. I realized with a dart of horror that she was an acquaintance from the girls’ former school. The mother of twins Lola’s age, she was secretary of the parent group and involved in everything. Had she seen me? Please, no, not now. Nothing could be worse than seeing someone from my old world under these harsh lights. I looked down at my hands to avoid eye contact. But I needn’t have bothered. She walked by without even looking my way, a whiff of Gucci perfume her only greeting. I was invisible to her now.

  Divorce amongst my peers, the wealthy of Seattle, with 5,000-square-foot homes and Lexus SUVs and private schools, felt like a disease everyone thought highly contagious. Don’t get too close, and wear a mask if you can’t avoid contact. Although the mask remained invisible, I could see it anyway, like fine woven gauze over the polite smiles of the other mothers at my daughters’ private Catholic school that Michael had insisted they attend, regardless of his lapsed Catholic status. These size two mothers, dressed in workout clothes, full makeup, and perfectly coiffed hair, dropped their children off promptly at 8:15, never a moment later. After the children were safely ushered inside, they stopped in the parking lot to exchange pleasantries, gossip, and dinner invitations.

  Friday evening you must join us for dinner at the new Italian place on First—it’s to die for and totally worth the calories. The Comstocks will be there and I absolutely need you to help me get through the evening. Lowered voice, did you see how much weight she’s gained? I feel terrible for her, poor thing. Ever since those rumors were going around about Hank’s business being in so much trouble, not that you’d know it by the way they drop money, she’s put on at least ten pounds. Her face is all puffy. Maybe she’s drinking a lot. Who knows?

  Do you want to hit the Nordstrom half-yearly sale this afternoon? There’s a dress in their spring catalogue I must have.

  Hot yoga? Best workout I’ve ever had. It’s getting rid of all the hereditary cellulite on my thighs. I’m not even kidding.

  I participated gladly. This was my circle. These were my friends, my community. We attended school auctions together and watched our husbands, after one too many scotches, outbid one another for a week in Maui. We exchanged numbers for piano teachers. We left our children for girls’ weekends to Orcas Island.

  But that was before, when I was still one of them. Now I was an outsider with the stench of divorce clinging to my clothes. I didn’t want the rejection to hurt, but it did. It was ironic, this hurt, this feeling of being misunderstood, because I had not revealed myself to them in any authentic way. What should I expect now? True friendship when I had never given it myself? Instead of offering vulnerability, the gateway to real love, I hid my secrets with impenetrable masks, just as I’d done growing up. No one guessed the truth—that underneath the mask of perfect mother and wife was a deep apathy toward this life I’d chosen. No one knew that Michael and I were polite roommates, passing one another without touching in the hallways of our large home. Or that I was not interested in shopping or restaurants or the latest decorating trends. When I met friends for coffee or drinks, I feigned interest, nodding my head and making polite comments, but all the while I was merely a shell. I lived in an imaginary world of my own making, reading fiction, as I had done as a child, living full lives through the characters, or losing myself in music as I cleaned house or did errands, living at what I now call half-mast, with only part of my vessel engaged in the world. At night when I couldn’t sleep, I made lists of places I wanted to visit, people I wished I could meet.

  After Michael left me, word spread like a wildfire in southern California. I imagined what they said to one another outside of hot yoga or Whole Foods or the coffee shop.

  Did you hear about the Grahams? I heard Michael left her for some paralegal in his firm.

  Most would come up with something I’d done that caused him to stray. This is what we do when something scares us: tell ourselves stories so we can remain convinced it couldn’t possibly happen to us. Not my marriage, not my child.

  Maybe she never had sex with him. She’s cold, don’t you think?

  I knew I would not hear from any of them again, especially now that I’d moved to the suburbs and the girls would be in, horror of all horrors, public school.

  Now, looking in the mirror, I grimaced, noticing the wrinkles around my eyes. When had my face gotten so thin? There were practically hollows in my cheeks. To think, in my younger days I’d actually worried about my face being too full. If only I could go back to those days of copious collagen. “Can I still wear it in a ponytail?”

  Alphonse’s left hand fluttered near his heart, horror in his eyes. “Did you just say a ponytail?”

  “Um. Yeah. You know, I wear it at the gym and stuff.” Or at home, or running errands, or picking the girls up from school—tasks real women did, not actresses in the magazines that lined his shelf. “It’s kind of my go-to hairstyle.”

  “Go to?” He raised both eyebrows this time. “No.” That was it: just the one word, uttered emphatically and with his head shaking like a puppy after a bath. He opened the cabinet next to my chair, retrieving several expensive looking products and setting them on the counter. He seemed to think bet
ter of his succinct answer and spoke in a quick succession of appalled utterances, without an ounce of humor. “Oh, God, no. You’re to never wear a ponytail again. A woman your age? No, no, no. A ponytail does nothing for you. Ever.” He reached for a spray bottle and began dousing my hair with it. “Trust me. It’ll be pretty enough you won’t want to put it in a ponytail. You need pretty hair, you see? Pretty. Not a ponytail.”

  My sister, standing behind us, touched the gray spots around my temples with the tips of her manicured fingers. “What about this?” She withdrew her hand and wiped it on the front of her pants, as if my graying hair was contagious.

  Alphonse, as if I wasn’t there, turned to her. “Yes, we must do something about that. I’m thinking some highlights as well, to add some shine and bring out her eyes.”

  “I’ll leave you two to do your thing,” said Bliss. “I have some shopping to do.”

  I bid her goodbye absently as I examined myself in the mirror. Under these bright lights the fine lines around my eyes and mouth seemed more prominent. I could see my graying hair clearly under the light. Sometimes when driving I would glance up into the rearview mirror to say something to one of the girls and spot one of the thick white hairs sticking up like they were magnets attracted to a metal ceiling. I used to pluck them until my sister mentioned that two grow back for every one you pluck. But I could no longer think. Alphonse’s scissors snipped and hovered and came in for more, as long locks of hair fell around me.

  ***

  Two hours later, I gazed at myself in the salon mirror. The soft layers around my face did bring out my eyes. Alphonse might have been right. The layers and highlights did make me look slightly younger. While I didn’t look thirty, I looked younger, more put together. The gray was gone and the highlights were flattering; I had to admit I liked my hair a mixture of gold upon honey instead of the color of weak tea.

  I didn’t have time to admire myself for long. Bliss, with her hands full of shopping bags, hustled me over to the makeup department, where a girl young enough to be my daughter proceeded to give me a makeover. Bliss insisted on buying me the entire line of products, including some kind of moisturizer that was supposed to purge those dreaded fine lines around my eyes and mouth. Regardless that it wouldn’t actually work, I kept quiet. I knew better than to argue with my sister. “I feel like the nerdy girl in one of those teen movies when the popular girl gives her a makeover,” I said after the lipstick covered my mouth in a shiny glow.

  Bliss pointed at the shopping bags that were now at her feet. “Speaking of which, I bought you a few new outfits.”

  “Shouldn’t I try them on first?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I think I know what looks good on you.”

  When the makeup girl walked away to tally up our purchases, I slid from the seat and took my sister’s arm. “Bliss, you’ve done too much for me. You shouldn’t spend your hard-earned money on me.”

  “Nonsense. I do this for myself, anyway. You know what a show-off I am. I just want you to be proud of me.”

  “I am, Sister Sue. More than you can imagine.”

  “I’m proud of you, too. We’re warriors. Look at all we’ve done considering what we came from. Don’t forget that.” Bliss smiled but there was something deeper in her hazel eyes. She squeezed my forearm. “I just want you to be happy. Is that too much to ask?”

  “I am happy.”

  “You’re existing. There’s a difference. But it will do for now.”

  CHAPTER 5

  ON THE WAY to the airport in my SUV with its lovely new-car smell and the leather seats that hugged my middle-aged body, my sister booked a room for me in Peregrine, Idaho. “I looked for the nicest one I could find,” she said, still typing into her phone. “But all I could find was this Bed and Breakfast. It might be awful but you have a reservation.”

  “For how long?”

  “A week.”

  A week? Seven days? It seemed endless, the time stretched out without my daughters.

  Teary for the hundredth time that day, I hugged my sister goodbye outside airport security. She promised to visit soon; I promised to write her emails from Idaho with all the details of my adventure. After I left her, I sat in my car, listening to the sound of planes taking off and landing. After a while, I reached for the shopping bags Bliss had set on the backseat. She’d chosen several sundresses, one yellow with white dots, the other a soft blue with a fitted bodice and full skirt, both from Nordstrom. Two cotton blouses waited in the Macy’s bag, one with geometric patterns, the other a soft peach with ruching down the front. Also from Macy’s were a new pair of designer jeans with decorative pockets (I could only imagine what they cost) and two simple A-line cotton skirts. The last of the bags, from Victoria’s Secret, contained several lacy bras and a dozen pairs of panties in every color of the rainbow, including black and white. I held one up to the light. Thongs, I realized with a gasp. This strip of fabric in the back—was one truly supposed to place that between butt cheeks? Surely it was bothersome to have a piece of fabric no bigger than a shoelace rubbing against parts of the body not meant for rubbing? I cringed at the thought of my almost half-century-old derrière hanging out in the breeze, replete with its dimples and sags. Still, it made me laugh to think of my sister picking these out for me. I grabbed my phone and sent her a text in all caps.

  “ARE THE PANTIES FOR WEARING OR FLOSSING MY TEETH?”

  Almost immediately a reply came back.

  “Those are for all the dirty divorcée sex you’re about to have.”

  “Oh, so they are for flossing my teeth. Got it.”

  “Hey, good on you that you learned to text,” she replied.

  “I am also familiar with the term ‘texting’ as it relates to being a verb, just as I was about ‘Googling.’ I’m not completely out of it.”

  “Just when I thought you were an old lady, you surprise me. Gotta go. Love you.”

  “Love you back.”

  “And I mean it about the sex.”

  “Whatever.”

  I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat when I noticed one more bag on the floor. Picking it up, I recognized the logo from the high-end camera shop in the mall; I studiously avoided looking in through their windows whenever I walked by. What had Bliss done? I opened the bag. A new camera? It was a digital with a zoom lens and a leather camera bag in a rich brown, wrapped in tissue. I shook my head in disbelief. How could she do this much damage to her pocketbook in the time it took for Alphonse to give me a new hairstyle?

  This gift unsettled me more than the wrinkles, gray hair, and subsequent makeover. I stuffed it all back in the bag.

  Then I went home and took a six-mile run, trying to exhaust myself so I might sleep that night. After eating a light dinner, I went to bed with a new mystery novel and read until I fell asleep sometime around midnight. I slept a dreamless sleep and woke the next morning feeling surprisingly refreshed.

  After coffee, I called Lola’s phone. It went immediately to voicemail. They were on the plane by now, I thought, glancing at the clock. I wished Lola a happy birthday, keeping my voice happy and excited. “The day you were born was one of the two happiest days of my life. I love you, sweetie.”

  I hung up, remembering my promise to Clementine to keep Belinda Bear close. As I walked across the hall to fetch her, I thought about the girls on the plane without me. Had Michael thought to feed Clementine a little breakfast so she wouldn’t feel nauseous on the plane? It was best to keep the barf bag close, just in case. Why hadn’t I thought to remind him of this? Maybe Lola would. Of course she would. She had to now that I wasn’t around all the time.

  Belinda Bear ate her breakfast in the toy highchair in the corner of Clementine’s room. The size of a newborn baby, Belinda sported the usual brown cotton fur and glassy button eyes, with only her shabby pink nose revealing the results of being overly loved by a sweet little girl. “Breakfast is over, Belinda Bear. Time to get ready for our trip.” Had I just spoken
out loud to a stuffed animal? Apparently solitude rendered me seven years old. Or crazy. Maybe I should seriously consider a cat. At least they mewed in response once in a while. I grabbed her out of the highchair by her hand and held her against my nose for a moment, hoping to smell Clementine. Yes, there she was, a mixture of baby powder and floral shampoo.

  Across the hall, I leaned Belinda Bear up against the pillows on my bed and pulled a medium-sized suitcase from the closet. I packed it with my running clothes and shoes and the new clothes Bliss had picked out for me, including the ridiculous panties. I tucked the brightly colored dental floss underwear, tags still attached, into the interior zipper pocket of my suitcase. I would return them when I got home. Like she was in the room with me, Bliss’s voice entered my head. So, why are you taking them? I didn’t answer her. Actually it might have been nice to flip her the bird, but I resisted this, too.

  I tucked Belinda Bear, with her head out, into the suitcase’s side pocket. “Want to go to Idaho?” She didn’t answer, just stared at me with her glassy eyes the color of weak coffee. I straightened the pink bow around her neck. “It’ll be an adventure. Don’t be such a chicken.” Again, the same blank stare. “Well, think about it while I shower.”

  ***

  When ready, my new hairdo styled as best I could, I locked up and went to my new fancy car. I lifted Belinda Bear out of the suitcase pocket and put her in the front passenger seat. She stared up at me with her head flopped to one side, as if questioning her safety. “You’re fine. The airbag won’t hurt you.” I shrugged and rolled my eyes, reaching for the seatbelt and buckling it around her furry tummy. “You happy now?” No answer. Typical.