“Faith into action,” she said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Flynn. “Well, this time it went wrong.”
“Went wrong? Mom, a guy is dead. Dead!”
“Yes, dead. That’s the horror of it, of course. That, and Sandra’s going to prison.” Mrs. Flynn settled back in the chair and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I don’t think it was an easy decision for her to make, to cooperate with the authorities.”
“So she and Daryl came here for the Woodies’ vote of approval, right? You took a vote, guilty or not guilty. Cooperate or defy.”
Mrs. Flynn’s gaze was steady and strong. “They came to see their friends. They are going through a hell that can only get worse, and they wanted to be with friends.”
Beamer couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. She looked at the table, picked up a matchbook, and relit a candle. Her fingers traced the waxy bumps on its surface. Then she looked at her mother.
Mrs. Flynn was waiting. “Bea, I spent twelve years trying to carve out a new, different way of life. I failed. Now I am happy just to have a business that is part of the community and a home that’s open to friends.”
“So open that your own daughter feels crowded out.”
“I’m sorry if I have failed to see that.”
“Sometimes, Mom, it seems so ridiculous—after all these years the whole crowd is still sitting around, arguing over this, agreeing on that, taking votes on any little problem in somebody’s life.”
“We don’t take votes; we listen.” Mrs. Flynn’s voice was sharp. “Beamer…” She paused, then lifted and cupped her hands, as if trying to shape the words, mold the clarity of what she was feeling. Her hands dropped and lay still in her lap. “Bea, I’m sorry you are hurting. But I am not sorry to have given you a life filled with people who love you.”
“Fewer of them would have been okay, Mom.”
Mrs. Flynn was smiling now. She rose, stretched, and yawned. “Maybe I agree with that, but then, how to pick and choose?”
“Vote.”
Her mother’s exasperation rekindled. “Oh, Bea, in a short enough time you will be my age, and Lord knows what you will have gone through by then, but if you are very lucky you will still have the friends who helped you survive.” She reached and smoothed back the hair on her daughter’s temples. “And if you are very, very lucky you will have a daughter who questions it all.”
The candle sputtered and was extinguished in its own pool of wax.
Mrs. Flynn turned and moved toward the doorway. “I’m tired, Beamo. Goodnight.”
Beamer held one hand tightly with the other. She had to say something, had to let her mother know that she had heard.
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t think I hate all of you.”
“None of us does.”
“And it’s not as if I totally hate my life, the way it’s been.”
“Good.”
“But now I want it to be my life. Mine. I’m tired of being the group project.”
“Beamer, you are not, and never have been, anybody’s project. You are our daughter, Bob and Carolyn’s child.”
“You’ve had input.”
Her mother smiled again. “That’s true enough. And plenty of it.”
The shadows and light were playing tricks again. Beamer looked at her mother and saw a tall, slender young woman, tired and just a bit unsure. Mrs. Flynn pulled down the cuffs of her sweater and then crossed her arms.
That sweater. Andy had—Beamer buried the thought.
“Yes?” her mother prompted.
“Yes what?”
“You’re thinking something.”
“It’s nothing much. Just that once Andy told me he thought you were the prettiest woman he had ever seen. You were wearing that sweater the night he said it.”
“He said that? Oh, I always did like Andy.”
“You always did like flattery.”
“No, dear. It’s your father who loves flattery; I’m more detached.” She considered saying more. Finally her curiosity subdued her caution. “Bea, don’t you miss Andy?”
“No.”
Mrs. Flynn arched her eyebrows. “I’m your mother, Beamo. You can’t get a lie past me.”
“Maybe I miss his company.”
“I’ll accept that. Perhaps—”
“Mom, we’ve talked enough tonight, okay?”
“Just one more bit of advice?”
“If you must.”
“I just hope you didn’t break off with him when it was really the Woodies you wanted to chase away.” Just what Andy had said. Beamer didn’t answer. Mrs. Flynn yawned. “Don’t tell our friends, Beamo, but I’ll confess that sometimes your father and I are very happy to chase them away. Tonight I was glad to see them go.”
“The two of you looked pretty cute outside, hugging in the snow.”
“Shame on you for watching.”
“I often do. I see a lot.”
Mrs. Flynn nodded almost imperceptibly. “I’m sure you do.” She flexed her shoulders to chase away the end-of-day stiffness, and shoved her hands into her sweater pockets. She pulled out a handful of paper scraps. “Charade commands.”
“Sandra’s going off to prison and you played the same old games?”
“We stopped when they arrived. Oh, don’t be so disapproving. Beamer, as you muddle through life you’ll discover the things you can’t change and the things you can’t escape. Sometimes the best you can do,” she said, sprinkling the paper scraps over the table, “is to have a little fun. Goodnight, Bea.”
“Goodnight, Mom.”
Chapter 19
Martin returned the night the Woodies were all at the store celebrating Mr. Flynn’s birthday. Beamer had tried her civil best to enjoy the occasion and be pleasant to everyone. She had led the younger children in building snow statues; she had helped her mother bake and decorate the cake; she had personally supervised the outdoor grilling of the tofu-and-crushed-walnut burgers, enduring the cold wind and deep snow so that her father could have his favorite food on his birthday. She had even been cajoled into joining his team for charades and was just beginning her turn when Martin arrived.
Everyone flocked around the newcomer, who greeted them all cheerfully. The group then broke up for refreshments. Martin took Beamer aside and hugged her warmly. He stepped back, laughing. “Don’t panic.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Stiff as a board. I was just saying hello.”
Maud passed them, and Martin teased her about her newly permed and gray-free hair. Maud feigned insult and turned away.
“I’ve been dying to say something about her hair all week,” said Beamer. “I didn’t dare.”
“Take a chance, girl,” said Martin.
The Woodies reassembled around the stove and called loudly to Beamer to resume playing charades.
“It’s your turn? What have you got?” Martin asked. Beamer showed him the slip: “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.”
“Oh, I can figure out how to do that one,” he said. “Let me take it for you.” Beamer nodded. She stood to the side, laughing along with the others as Martin pantomimed the title. As he performed, Beamer suddenly, clearly, remembered her mother’s words on the night they talked in the kitchen. “Sometimes the best you can do,” she repeated silently, “is to have a little fun.”
Martin finished to a round of applause. He bowed ostentatiously, then said he was leaving. At the door he signaled to Beamer. “May I have my keys? I’m beat—I want to go home.”
She retrieved the keys from a hook behind the store counter and handed them to him.
“Thanks.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay any longer?”
“I don’t think I can cope with this craziness anymore.”
“Neither can I. It’s been going on since noon. You wouldn’t be interested in driving back to Chicago and taking me for company, would you?”
“Car wouldn’t make it. I�
�ve got something for you, though,” he said. “Can you stand the cold for a minute?”
It had been snowing all evening, and Beamer wiped Martin’s windshield clear with her hand while he rummaged in a duffel bag on the back seat. “Here we go,” he said. “I knew they were here somewhere.” First he handed her a limp wrapped package. “Nothing special, okay? Just a late birthday present.” Then he gave her a large brown envelope. “I want you to read this. It’s a story I wrote that was just accepted for publication by the university literary magazine.”
“Martin, that’s great. You’ve never told me you write fiction.”
“Just one of my many secrets, Merry. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“And if you don’t, well, never mind. You’ll understand after you read it.”
“Understand what?”
He kissed her softly on the cheek. “See you soon.” She opened the package in her room. It was a dark blue hooded sweatshirt from Northwestern University, Martin’s school.
She prepared for bed before reading the story. Then she propped pillows, lit a candle, turned on her reading lamp, and crawled under the comforter. She opened the envelope and pulled out the sheaf of papers. “Everybody’s Daughter,” she read. “Everybody’s Daughter”?
She read the story through twice, then laid the papers down on her chest. She understood Martin’s concern. The story was about her—about her family, their life, their friends, but mostly about her.
“Why did you do this?” she whispered. She scanned the story again, and her eyes fell on a passsage that had caught her interest the first time. She read it aloud:
The object of everybody’s passion, everybody’s hope, everybody’s love, she had built a wall, as if that alone could protect her from being smothered. Cold and distant, she stayed hidden behind the wall. He wondered how long she could remain alone, resisting the hand that waited to guide her to the place where it would be safe to love.
Beamer put the story on the floor, lay back, and stared at a shadowy corner of the room. What had he been thinking when he wrote that? Sarah had said he was just waiting for a signal. Was he? Were those few casual kisses his signal? And what about his girlfriend? She recalled his silly pantomime of the book title. And the good feeling she’d had when he’d arrived unexpectedly. Take a chance, he’d said. Beamer smiled. Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe it was time to ride out of town on the back of someone’s motorcycle. Martin had said he had one.
She had to talk to him. She had to make him talk. “No jokes. No quick kisses and no glib jokes,” she said aloud.
*
The next day it was so cold that the few travelers and fishermen who stopped by the store didn’t even pretend to like winter weather. They paid for their purchases silently, sullenly, as if they had been physically assaulted by the cold and were now entirely alone in their misery.
Beamer left the store, ignoring her parents’ appeals not to go out. Her parents, she had long ago discovered, disapproved of much but forbade little. They trusted her judgment.
The bright sun and clear sky belied the frigidity. By the time she reached the north shore clearing, her lungs ached and her fingers were numb. She warmed her hands between her thighs for a moment, then skied on. When she reached Martin’s cabin her eyelashes were iced over and heavy. Leaving her skis and poles in the snow, she pounded on the door and entered. Martin rose from the sofa—he had been reading—and led Beamer to the fire. He took her mittens and offered her a tissue.
“Why in the world did you come out today?” he asked.
“To see you, obviously. It wasn’t that bad. I kept moving.”
Martin took Beamer’s hat and wiped ice crystals from her brow. Then he warmed her cheeks with the backs of his hands. She covered his hands with her own, squeezed them, and sighed.
Martin stepped back. He hadn’t needed a word to understand, and now he was unhappy. “Oh, God, Merry,” he said. “Oh, please, not that. When you broke up with Andy, I started worrying that this would happen. Do you think I’m an idiot? I thought you would understand.” He turned and called, “Daniel, Merry is here.”
Daniel entered from the bathroom. He had been thawing frozen pipes—an innocent task; he was a plumber—but to Beamer, who glowered at her old friend, he might as well have been a rapist stalking a victim.
Beamer refused the offer of a ride and left when her mittens were dry. Her rhythm was gone, she could find no words to chant or tune to hum, and the skiing was difficult. She fell twice, and the frozen crust scraped her bared wrists. She stopped at the clearing to rest and to swear at Martin and to swear at herself for being so stupid. Wondering what had happened, she resisted the desire to throw herself into the lake—it was frozen, anyway—and did not jab with her ski pole at a fallen, frozen chickadee. A strong wind had risen and brought in clouds. Beamer lowered her head and skied home, a long, slow trip into a cold and biting wind.
*
The wind removed the cold but brought in a cycle of four blizzards, each lasting two days. After the second storm the schools were closed and store deliveries stopped. No one bought bait. Beamer’s parents and brother were caught by the fourth storm in Grand River. “We won’t try to get home until tomorrow,” her father said on the phone. “Peter and Sue are near if you need them.”
Jessie called twice, the first time to complain of her new boyfriend’s inattention.
“It’s your own fault, Jessie,” said Beamer. “You grovel like he’s Prince Charming, and he thinks he can get away with murder.”
Jessie hung up but called back immediately. “This weather makes us all crazy and grumpy, so I forgive you. Besides, I forgot to tell you I saw Andy in town on Saturday.”
“Was he with Jacqueline?”
“No. His sisters. He asked about you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’d made a move on Martin and it blew up in your face and now you wanted to get back together.”
“Jessie!”
“Just kidding. I told him you missed him.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not. Now stop it. He gave me a message for you. Do you want it?”
“Yes.”
“He said, ‘Tell her I won’t cross any lines. Tell her the thermostat is fixed and running steady.’ He said you’d understand. I know I don’t.”
Beamer smiled. “I do.”
“So, Bea?”
“Jessie, you know I like Andy. I like him a lot. But you also know how I feel about the relationship.”
“Relationship? Oh, Bea, get real. Most of us just want boyfriends; you want a relationship.”
Beamer didn’t answer.
“Are you there? Andy may have his flaws, Beamo, but next to a sleazeball like Martin, who spends weeks teasing you with kisses and warm chats by the fire and then just uses your life to get published, he looks pretty good. Martin used you. He used you, he used you. He comes up here for a few months and thinks he’ll mend his broken heart by playing with every female who gives him a second look. And then the first chance he gets, he goes running back to his girlfriend. Which is exactly what you should do.”
“Go back to my girlfriend?”
“You know what I mean. Face it—Martin was fun, but he was just playing with you.”
“Oh, Jessie, I don’t know what I want.”
“You want what everyone our age wants—a magician. A little hocus-pocus and poof, your life is changed.”
“How did you get so wise?”
“I didn’t. Andy said that.”
“He said that about me?”
“Right on target, isn’t it? Kind of scary, if you ask me. So will you give it another chance? I’ll call him for you, and then he can make the move.”
“Jessie, you have no idea what kind of year it has been, with Daniel out of the hospital and hanging around and Sandra killing a guy. And then all the norma
l stuff my parents bring home. Just this huge crush of people, and on top of it, Andy wants to get closer.”
“With all that crazy stuff going on, I’d think you would like a shoulder to rest on.”
“You do love to meddle, don’t you?”
“Then I can call him?”
“No.”
“Oh, you are an idiot.”
“I’ll call him myself. Jessie…”
“Spit it out, Beamo.”
Beamer closed her eyes and saw what she had first seen—a strange, smiling boy lying on the ground with a broken leg. “I think I’ve missed him.”
“Tell him, not me. When will you call?”
“Maybe not today.”
“But you’ll call?”
“I’ll call.”
They chatted longer, then hung up. Beamer made a cake, and while it baked she cleaned her room. She thumbed through a textbook and read exercise advice in a magazine. She ate hot, crumbling cake and drank a glass of cold milk. She thought she liked being alone, but realized she didn’t want it to go on forever.
The phone rang. It was Martin. Beamer caught her breath, then answered casually. She was cool; she was in control.
“Is anyone there?” Martin asked.
“I don’t count?”
“Of course you do. But I need help. Daniel has crushed his foot. His car got stuck in a drift, and we were pushing it out. He slipped and the damn thing rolled back over his foot and smashed it against a rock. He’s really hurting, Merry. And my car battery is dead, so I can’t drive him out. He’s waiting in his car.”
Beamer quickly calculated the risks and options and said, “Try to get him back to your place. I’ll call the highway patrol. With luck they can get here, and meanwhile I’ll come for Daniel on the snowmobile. There’s no one else.”
Rescuing someone in a blizzard was a fool’s mission, but Beamer felt up to the task. The family seldom used the snowmobile, but it would be ready, gassed and greased; her parents kept things in order, she could rely on that.
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