Just Like Heaven

by Barbara Bretton

  And that was exactly what scared her. She could see her daughter thirty years from now with a string of marriages under her belt. “She’s flighty, immature, and irresponsible.”

  “She’s also highly creative, high-spirited, and searching for the right path.” Maeve poured herself a glass of water and plucked a shiny red apple from the basket near the radio. “The truth is, she’s nothing like you, honey, and that isn’t a crime.”

  “And what exactly does that mean?”

  “Look at you,” Maeve said, her Balinese dancer earrings jiggling with the movement of her head. “You had a heart attack four days ago—and an angioplasty, no less—and you act like nothing happened.”

  “It was a minor heart attack,” Kate reminded her. “Angioplasties are outpatient procedures. No big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal,” Maeve persisted. “You needed CPR. Most people in your shoes would be wrestling with some major life issues right now.”

  “I thought you raised me not to be like most people.”

  “Quite frankly, honey, this isn’t normal. You’re in denial.”

  “Now you’re telling me I shouldn’t bounce back so easily?”

  “Well, it does strike me as a tad odd.” Maeve bit into the apple and chewed with great gusto. “This should be a time for reflection and renewal.”

  “You reflect on it,” Kate said, wishing she had an unlisted hospital room. “Personally I can’t wait until I get home and everything gets back to normal.”

  She had the feeling she was the only woman in the world with more than a passing affection for normal.

  Maeve considered her for what seemed like forever. “I went wrong somewhere with you, but I can’t figure out what my mistake was.”

  “Six husbands might be a good place to start.”

  “That never bothered you. I married good men. You liked them all.”

  “They were terrific guys, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me. I would have liked it better if you’d let one of them stick around long enough to unpack.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “I got pregnant and married at seventeen. That should’ve been a clue.”

  “There were options available to you,” Maeve reminded her. “You could have chosen a different path.”

  “I was a practicing Catholic then. There were no different paths.”

  “We always have choices,” Maeve said in her best New Age Guru voice, the one she used on book tours and speaking engagements. “What we don’t always have is the guts to own those choices.”

  Emotional confrontations were her mother’s lifeblood. They invigorated Maeve and brought her closer to the other person and the universe.

  Emotional confrontations made Kate feel as if she’d been run over by a UPS truck, and as a rule she did her best to avoid them.

  She leaned back against her pillows and met Maeve’s eyes. “So she told you this afternoon?”

  “I’d had my suspicions,” Maeve said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Nope,” said Kate. “Not a single one. I thought he was just one of the crowd where she works.”

  “She’s been seeing him for a few months.”

  “Yes, but she sees lots of people. I had no idea he was special.”

  “Then you haven’t been listening, Kate.”

  Score one for the alpha female in the family.

  “So tell me about my car,” she said, putting aside Gwynn’s earthshaking decision for the moment. “Any dents, scratches, or parking tickets I should know about?”

  “Your car is fine but an odd thing happened while we were there.” Maeve put down the half-eaten apple. “Some guy was checking it out.”

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “He was parked right behind your car. He stayed there for ten seconds, then drove away.”

  Who needed a nuclear stress test when you had family to do the job? “I stole a spot from a guy in an old blue car.”

  “The plot thickens,” Maeve said. “This guy was in a beat-up blue Honda.”

  “Now that’s scary. What sane person would nurse a grudge over a parking space?” A flicker of memory tickled the back of her mind, then receded. “Did you ask him what he was doing?”

  “By the time we wound our way around to where you were parked, he was gone.”

  “Did you see what he looked like?”

  Maeve closed her eyes. For a second Kate was afraid her mother was trying to channel the guy, but then she said, “Dark hair. Maybe late thirties. Sad eyes. I could see that all the way across the parking lot.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck lifted just enough to catch her attention.

  . . . hold on to me . . . I won’t leave you . . .

  “I think that was him.”

  “Our Good Samaritan?”

  “He was the only man around at the time. I was walking across the parking lot and I saw him leaning against his car, talking on his cell phone. He looked over at me and I saw he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and I was afraid he was going to start up over the parking spot—”

  “And—?” her mother prompted.

  “And nothing. That’s all I can remember.” She aimed a look in Maeve’s direction. “I wish you’d managed to talk to him.”

  “We don’t know this is the same man, Kate. Gwynn thought he might be a car thief sizing up your Miata.”

  “And it might have been the man who saved my life.”

  “And what if it isn’t? You can find out just about anything on the Internet. We don’t want some nut showing up on your doorstep.”

  “I don’t think it’s some nut,” Kate said. I want him to find me, Mom. Can you believe it? I actually want a stranger to track me down.

  “It’s all part of the grand plan,” Maeve said. “If you’re meant to see him again, you will, and if you’re not, there’s nothing you can do to change your fate. It’s all been preordained.”

  Was Maeve going Buddhist again? At least during Maeve’s Wicca period, there had been spells and charms designed to goose fate along a different path.

  They both looked toward the door at the sound of a familiar laugh. It was Gwynn, aglow with excitement. “You won’t believe who I found wandering the halls!” She poked her head back out into the hall. “It’s okay. She’s awake.”

  Ed Bannister stood in the doorway, barely visible behind an armful of more larkspur and wisteria than Kate had ever seen any place short of a botanic garden in paradise.

  On a surprise scale of one to ten, the appearance of her ex-husband with her favorite blooms was off the chart.

  “Ed!” Maeve leaped to her feet. She had always had a soft spot for her former son-in-law. “It’s been too long.”

  Ed handed Gwynn the flowers, then enveloped Maeve in a bear hug. “I read your latest on the plane, Mae.” He mimed wiping sweat from his brow. “Nobody warned me you were X-rated these days.”

  Maeve laughed as she hugged him back. “A healthy sex life promotes a healthy life,” she said, “and that isn’t limited to people under sixty-five.”

  Maeve’s current book promoted the sexual, social, and psychological benefits of Tantric sex for the senior citizen. Kate was proud of Maeve’s success, but there were times she wished her mother wrote under a pseudonym.

  “How cool is this?” Gwynn said, clearly delighted with the impromptu family reunion. “The elevator doors opened and there he was, wandering the halls looking for Mom.”

  Gwynn was an unapologetic daddy’s girl. Kate braced herself for the pangs of jealousy that usually followed one of these father/daughter get-togethers, but this time she felt only regret that they hadn’t been able to make it all turn out the way their daughter obviously still wanted it to.

  “We’re going to need two vases for all of these,” Gwynn said, then dashed off with the flowers to the utility room down the hall.

  “I thought you were in the outback,” Kate said to her ex-husband. She could still see the teenage boy she ha
d married in the grown man who stood before her, and probably always would. Once, a very long time ago, she had believed she would grow old with him.

  “Marie tracked me down through the bush pilot who flew me in.” He had met and married Marie a few months after their divorce became final.

  Poor Gwynn. Romantic impetuosity ran in both sides of the family.

  “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Of course he did,” Maeve piped up. “We’re family.”

  “We were family,” Kate reminded her mother. Thirteen years was a long time to be divorced.

  “You share a child together. That makes you family, no matter what the courts say.”

  For a woman who had danced through a half-dozen marriages and more engagements than anyone cared to count, Maeve retained an old-fashioned reverence for the institution that was as charming as it was illogical.

  “Sit.” Kate gestured toward a chair near the window. “You look exhausted.”

  “Good idea.” Ed stifled a yawn. “I came straight from the airport.”

  “I’m going to strangle our daughter. What did she say to Marie anyway that pulled you out of the outback?” Gwynn could turn a root canal into major neurosurgery. Kate could just imagine what she could do with a heart attack.

  He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “She said you had a heart attack. I didn’t need more than that.”

  “I’m fine, Ed. Stop looking at me like I’m going to disappear.”

  He didn’t crack a smile. “Gwynn said you flatlined and a stranger gave you CPR in the parking lot.”

  “That’s the story, but I don’t remember the details.” They said he held on to me when I thought I was going to slip away and he didn’t let go . . .

  “You should call and take him out to dinner when you’re back on your feet,” Ed said. “There aren’t many Good Samaritans out there. They deserve a little recognition.”

  “I wish I could, but I don’t know his name.”

  Maeve looked up from her knitting. “Kate thinks he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt.”

  “A Deadhead?” Ed threw back his head and laughed. “I’d pay good money to see Kate with a Deadhead.”

  “You make me sound a little judgmental.” Kate’s feelings were seriously wounded. “I wouldn’t judge a man by his T-shirt.”

  Her ex-hippie mother couldn’t resist. “Honey, you came out of the womb with a scorecard in your hand and God help anyone who doesn’t measure up.”

  She considered the source. This was Maeve French talking, the woman who made her living with her imagination, a copy of the Kama Sutra, and a deck of tarot cards.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Maeve said, waving a bejeweled hand in the air. “You are a formidable woman, but somebody has to tell you the truth.”

  Ed had been around the French women long enough to know better than to allow himself to be drawn into one of these impossible-to-win discussions, and feigned a catnap.

  “Your heart was trying to tell you something,” Maeve said. “You need to let some whimsy into your heart.”

  “I’ll tell Dr. Lombardi,” Kate said. “He’s leaning toward Lipitor.”

  Maeve, who was very good at ignoring cheap shots, plunged ahead. “This is a sign from above that it’s time for a change.”

  “A sign from above? I thought your goddesses were all earthbound.”

  “A woman’s belief system isn’t meant to be parsed like a subordinate clause.” Maeve looked toward Ed for support. “Besides, a little spirituality wouldn’t hurt you, Katherine Margaret.”

  “I agree.” So much for Ed’s fake catnap. “Marie and I decided a few years ago to start going back to church. Best decision we’ve ever made.”

  Kate didn’t even try to mask her surprise. “I suppose you went back for the kids’ sake?” Ed and Marie had three children, all under the age of twelve.

  “That’s how it started,” Ed said, “but I think we’ve gotten more out of it than they have.”

  “So you’re a practicing Catholic again.” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had told her he’d decided to take up ballet.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said with a laugh. “I thought twelve years at St. Aloysius had pretty much beaten it out of you too.”

  “I found I missed the ritual.”

  “You always did like the smell of incense.” She meant it as a joke, but nobody laughed. What on earth was going on today? A sense of humor was definitely an endangered species.

  “I’m not talking about the theatrics of religion,” Ed said as Maeve nodded in agreement. “I’m talking about the sense of continuity.” Apparently for Ed it was about family, about his own history, about taking strength from something bigger than he was, bigger than any problem life could throw his way.

  It was a side of him Kate had never seen before, and she was intrigued. Funny how you could know a man your entire life, share a ten-year marriage and a beautiful child, and still not begin to understand what made him tick.

  “You never miss it?” he asked her.

  She thought about it for a moment. “Last Christmas I thought about going to midnight mass but I stretched out on the sofa with some eggnog and the feeling passed.”

  “My daughter the comedienne,” Maeve said with a shake of her head. “The closer you get to her authentic self, the more she makes with the jokes.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Organized religion isn’t for everyone,” she said, wishing she didn’t sound quite so defensive. “I think I’m managing to lead a decent and productive life without it.”

  “But are you as happy as you could be?” her mother prodded.

  “Is anybody?”

  “Some people are.”

  “I don’t see what religion has to do with my happiness.”

  Ed raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to start a holy war, ladies.”

  “Don’t worry. You didn’t start anything, Ed. This is an ongoing skirmish,” Maeve said. “My daughter doesn’t think much of my spiritual quests.”

  “Maybe I’d think more of your spiritual quests if they didn’t always end up with a new wardrobe and a six-figure book deal.”

  They were all grateful when Gwynn floated back into the room carrying two plastic vases overflowing with Ed’s very expensive flowers. Gwynn herself overflowed with funny stories and observations, all tailored to amuse her father and remind him that his firstborn still needed his attention too.

  Kate couldn’t help but wonder when Gwynn planned to drop the Andrew bomb on poor, unsuspecting Ed.

  Then again maybe Ed wasn’t half as clueless as she had been and was prepared. His emotional radar had always been more well developed than hers. He had known she wanted to leave him before she was willing to admit that the marriage had run its course. She doubted he would be as blindsided as she had been by Gwynn’s news.

  Kate pretended to doze as conversation washed over her. All of this emotional Sturm und Drang was exhausting. Her heart attack had made everyone else just the slightest bit crazy and they were wearing her out.

  She finally convinced Ed that she wasn’t going to have a relapse and that he should go home to his family and catch up on his sleep.

  “You should eat something first,” Gwynn said. “Why don’t we go get something in the courtyard before you go?”

  Ed hesitated, but something in his daughter’s eyes and tone of voice persuaded him to go with her. No surprise there. Kate had chosen the father of her only child very well. Ed was a terrific father, and her only regret was that they hadn’t been able to grant their daughter’s greatest wish: that her parents would stay married.

  “He’s good with her,” Maeve said after Ed and Gwynn left. “She’ll listen to what he has to say.”

  “Ouch,” Kate said. “That hurts.”

  “She’s a daddy’s girl, sweetie. Always was, always will be. T
here’s nothing you can do about that.”

  “Do you think he can persuade her to go home and get back to work?”

  “I hope so,” Maeve said. “She’s on the phone with Andrew from the moment we get to your place until we leave the next morning.”

  “A slight exaggeration, Mom?”

  “She sleeps with her cell phone on the pillow so they can breathe for each other.”

  “Oh God. I thought we left that behind when she turned eighteen.”

  “She’s a romantic. Some of us never leave it behind.”

  “And how about you?” Kate asked. “You should get back to your book tour.”

  Maeve looked surprised. “And leave you to fend for yourself?”

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I’ll be going back to work next week.”

  “I thought Dr. Lombardi told you to take three weeks off.”

  “I don’t know where you got that from. He hasn’t mentioned anything like that.”

  Maeve tapped her earrings with her index finger and set them dancing, the way she did whenever she was about to make a big announcement. “I cancelled my tour, honey. I’m going to stay right here and take care of you until you’re back on your feet, no matter how long it takes.” She leaned over and kissed the top of Kate’s head. “It will be like a mini-vacation for both of us.”

  Was forty-one too old to run away from home?

  Four

  Friday meetings could go either way. Sometimes it was standing room only, everyone looking to stockpile support against the uncertainties of the weekend ahead, while other times it was the leader and a handful of longtime members who found strength in routine, not numbers.

  Mark had been leading the group for almost a year and he’d grown used to the ebb and flow. Ultimately it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with everybody else.

  They were an eclectic group of cops, lawyers, doctors, writers, teachers, housewives, ex-cons, and a priest on sabbatical, with one thing in common: they were all recovering alcoholics who wanted to stay sober and were willing to do whatever it took to make that happen.

  He’d been to groups that were nothing more than an aggregation of individuals linked by an acronym. But this one was different. He’d found some real friends and he wasn’t looking forward to telling them that the New Hampshire job had come through and he’d be leaving Memorial Day weekend.